Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
List Price:	$3.99				$3.39
You Pay:	$2.79				$2.37
You Save:	30.08%				40.6%

eBook Category: Mystery/Crime/Romance Knowbetter Suggested Reading List
eBook Description: When a dismembered body is discovered in the sewer tank of her boyfriend's trailer, trailer park manager Tina Anderson becomes a murder suspect. Can she find the real killer before the police, or the murderer, close down on her?

eBook Publisher: BooksForABuck, Published: 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2005

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Amy Eastlake's Tina Anderson Mystery Series

21 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [273 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [283 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [241 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.7 MB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [268 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [251 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [278 KB] , hiebook (KML) [671 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [348 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [219 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [276 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [342 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [348 KB]
Words: 85917
Reading time: 245-343 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"I highly recommend Tornado Bait in the Mystery section ... great read!"--Jay Hartman KnowBetter.com

"Tina, Babe? I need you." An intensively male voice.

My insides got a little wobbly at the sound of it.

I hid the ice cream bowl behind my back and opened my door.

The trailer door veered at a crazy angle, threatening to come off in my hand. Lucky me. Since I'd taken the job as trailer park manager, a day hadn't gone by without something breaking.

My high school classmates had called me clumsy Tina. And those were my friends. My enemies called me Tornado Bait Tina, or Trailer Trash Tina when they were in a really uncharitable mood. I was living up to their expectations.

It figured that too-cute Billy Love would drop in when I was porking out on ice cream, didn't have a lick of makeup on, and my hair hadn't seen a comb in better than twenty-four hours.

"What is it, Billy?"

He scowled at me. When he'd moved in, he'd asked me to call him William. He seemed more like a Billy to me. Besides, I liked bugging him.

"My trailer stinks," he told me.

"For two hundred a month, you're lucky it doesn't get up and walk away."

He looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about. Then his pretty face cleared. "I don't mean it's a dump. It smells bad."

I pulled the ice cream from behind my back and dug out one last spoonful. Too often, stink means plumbing. Pipes kill my appetite.

I swallowed the ice cream, savoring the high-fat taste. I wondered if Billy would taste like that, cool and rich. So much for the fantasy life of a late twenties trailer park manager.

"Let me get my plunger."

I got the tool, then followed him across the trailer park, trying to keep my eyes off his butt. He was about my age, but that was the only thing we had in common. He drove a BMW, of all things. It didn't fit the trailer park image, not like my Geo Storm, which described me to a T. It ran, got pretty decent mileage, and on a good day could be described as vaguely cute in a low-class way.

"I noticed it when I got home from work today," he explained.

It took me a moment to realize he wasn't talking about his butt. I was the one who always noticed that, ever since he'd moved in. "If you don't take out your trash," I reminded him, "it's bound to smell."

Billy shrugged. "You'd know, I'm sure."

I took a deep breath, then let it out. A man is entitled to defend himself, I guess. My housekeeping skills didn't come close to Home and Garden standards, but I did take out the trash twice a week. "Trust me, I've learned a lot about what stinks in the past six months."

Two things struck me when Billy unlocked his door. First, he'd fixed up his trailer special. None of those rent-to-own dinette suites or anything. Furniture, rugs, even pictures on the wall, all were first-class. Second, he hadn't been kidding about the odor. Unfortunately, it didn't come from his trash.

"I think I'm going to be sick," he announced.

"You do, you clean it up," I said.

I kicked off my sandals to enjoy the sensation of Billy's two-inch-thick antique Persian carpets and headed toward his bathroom with my plunger.

Damned if Billy hadn't ripped out the toilet and replaced it with one of those black low-rise things. I'd priced one like it at five thousand dollars once, back when I'd tried the rich thing. Billy was making less and less sense. Anyone who had enough money to fix up a trailer like this had enough money to live somewhere else.

"Do you see what it is?"

Billy leaned over my shoulder, his breath tickling my ear.

"It isn't a toilet, it's Count Dracula's coffin," I told him. "That's why it smells so bad."

"Very funny."

I hadn't had a bedmate in a couple of months and was due. In the two weeks since Billy had moved in, I'd been fantasizing about him, even to the point of taking him a plate of brownies one afternoon. He hadn't responded with anything more than a polite thank-you.

It was just as well, I told myself. I'd finished my rich phase.

Billy walked around his trailer ostentatiously holding his breath and jerking up windows that had been painted shut back in the fifties.

I admired Billy's testosterone display for a few seconds before approaching the toilet and flipping open the lid.

"Is it backed up?" He shouted at me from his kitchen.

"You didn't bother to look before you came over and bothered me?"

"I'm saving you from eating too much ice cream. You don't want to lose that figure, do you?"

"I'm finding more of it."

"I like it pretty much the way it is."

Finally, a mild flirtation. His timing could have been better.

I flushed the commode. It ran a little sluggishly but it also belched a truly fetid swamp-smell into the bathroom.

I gagged, fighting down the need to vomit.

"What the hell did you do?"

"Shut up and open some more windows," I told him.

I wasn't sure my plunger was going to do the job, but it was here so I decided to give it a try. First, though, I needed to get some air.

When I emerged from Billy's trailer, half the park's residents stood in a respectful circle around it. About twenty feet seemed to be the safe distance, so I walked out to where Hank Harrison, my next-door neighbor, stood.

"Smells like something went and died," he told me.

"Yeah."

"I got a case of beer. Want to come over to my place after you're done here? I'll hose you down good." Hank was persistent, I had to give him that. If he ever lost fifty pounds, stopped looking in my window when I showered, and took a few baths himself, I might let him have what he wanted. His odds were just slightly better than winning the Texas lottery.

"I guess not," I told him. "Billy just reminded me I've got to watch my figure."

"I can handle watching it for you, honey," he said.

I'd gotten all the breathing I needed and headed back.

If anything, the inside of Billy's house smelled worse than when I'd left. I braced myself against the stench and pushed myself back into the bathroom. If I wanted to keep this job, I had to respond when paying tenants had problems.

"Have you got it figured out yet, Tina?"

I was glad Billy sounded twerpy when he tried to talk with his fingers pinching his nose shut. He wasn't perfect, just kinda cute and rich. I had to keep reminding myself that "rich" was a bad thing.

"I'm working on it."

"I'd help but--"

"Yeah, yeah, sure."

Billy wasn't going to go any closer to that smell than the open window he guarded.

I took a determined step closer to the toilet, instantly regretting it as my bare foot slammed into a sharp corner of linoleum that edged up between two of Billy's rugs.

That made me mad, and that's when I made my next mistake. I slammed that plunger into Billy's toilet, flushed, and gave it a hard push-pull.

I use a heavy-duty model plunger. One of the ones that are almost cylindrical and generate fantastic pressure. In the trailer park, you don't go for halfway measures.

More stink came up from Billy's toilet, so I gave it another couple of hard yanks.

Something black and filmy got sucked into the toilet bowl. I almost flushed it back down, but then I recognized it. A bra. From the size of it, 42 super D, it had belonged to Linda Trujillo, the woman who'd lived in that trailer before Billy had moved in.

I hoped it was hers, anyway. Imagining Billy wearing something like that would mess up my fantasies, but good.

I grabbed a wire coat hanger from the towel rod, bent it out, then used the hook to grab the thing. "This might be your problem."

"What the hell is that?" Billy stood directly behind me, almost close enough to touch. His curiosity must have been sharper than his nose. Better than his eyes, too.

I tossed it into his bathtub and flushed again.

The water level rose, threatening to overflow the basin. "On the other hand, maybe that isn't your problem."

I pumped at that plunger as hard as I could. What kind of an idiot walks into a bathroom and starts plunging without her shoes on, anyway? I didn't think Billy would be impressed if I got stinky water all over my feet.

"Oh my God." Billy gave a little gasp.

I stopped and looked into the bowl.

It was bloated, gray, and disgusting but it was recognizably a human hand.

I couldn't contain myself. I turned and barfed all over Billy's Gucci slippers.

"My slippers." Billy's priorities were way misplaced.

I pointed the plunger at the hand. "It's--" I bent over and vomited again. It would have been disgusting enough had the hand been attached to something, but seeing it floating there all by itself was worse.

"Whoa, Tina. Are you all right?"

I truly regretted that second bowl of ice cream because I had a feeling I'd be seeing more of it.

"We've got to call the police."

"You mean the sanitation department."

Either the love of my hormones was terminally stupid or he still hadn't recognized what had come out of his toilet. "I don't think anyone should be in here."

Patrick Adams caught me as I stumbled out the door. "What's the matter, Tina?"

Patrick, who lived next door to Billy, hadn't paid his rent since I'd taken over management of the park, so I was half-way surprised he knew my name.

I headed toward his place. "Is your phone connected?" I asked urgently, figuring he might not pay phone bills, either.

"Yeah, but I'm downloading something from the Internet."

"You can look at your naked pictures later. This is an emergency." At least, I was pretty sure the cops would consider a dead hand in Billy's toilet pretty urgent. I pushed my way past Patrick's soft body, opened his trailer door, and picked up his phone.

The receiver gave the modem squawks. I didn't have time for protocol. Instead of logging Patrick off properly, I yanked the computer's power cord out of the wall. That got me a dial tone in a hurry.

"I told you I was in the middle of something," Patrick whined.

I'd never liked it when guys whimper. Especially when they're the kind of guy who would rather make it with a computer girl than a real one. "Trust me, you want me out of here before I heave all over your computer."

"Are you sick?"

"No. Green is the new color for makeup this year," I snapped. "Of course I'm sick."

"So, what did you find in Billy's toilet?" Nothing like something truly morbid to bring out the worst in someone.

"Nothing you'd want to put on the Internet."

"I wouldn't do that."

I waved him off. "I'm on the phone."

After the twentieth ring, I started to wonder whether the 9-1-1 operators had all gone out for donuts with the cops.

"Operator." She sounded just a little out of breath, like she'd been blowing on her nails and hadn't wanted to pick up the phone until they were safely dry. "What's your emergency?"

"I've got a hand in the toilet," I explained. "You'd better get the cops over here."

"Have you tried calling a plumber?"

"It isn't my hand."

"Well then, whose hand is it?" Pretty clearly this operator hadn't been chosen for her smarts.

"Look, lady," I told her. "It's a severed limb. And it looks like it's been rotting for a while."

"Oh." From the moment of silence I guessed I'd finally gotten her attention. "I'll dispatch a unit."

She confirmed the address and made sure she had my name. "Don't go away," she warned me. "The police will want to talk to you."

Before she got off the phone, I heard sirens.

"You called the cops? From my phone?" Patrick looked a little green himself.

"Don't worry, they aren't interested in you."

He leaned toward me breathing a nauseating mix of Twinkies and cheap coffee. "You know they'll use this as an excuse to shut down this trailer park."

"If you're so paranoid, why don't you just delete your dirty pictures," I suggested. "I'm going out to talk to the cops."

Patrick gave me a look like I'd suggested he slice up the Mona Lisa, but then he scurried to plug back in his precious computer.

I headed outside and waited for the police.

You have to give cops credit--it didn't matter what they were supposed to be doing, I don't think a single cop missed tromping through Billy's house and checking out the hand in the toilet. Poor Billy had enough mud tracked onto his Persian carpets to build a brick wall.

The stink had gotten worse since I'd started plunging and nobody in the park wanted to get too close. Even so, the cops made everyone move back. Patrick was right about one thing, cops don't have much use for people who live in trailer parks.

I sat on Patrick's stoop and watched the excitement, ignoring his efforts to shoo me away.

After about half an hour, a crime scene unit van appeared on the scene along with half a dozen plain clothes detectives. I figured it was just in time because the uniformed cops had finished making a mess of the place and showing off their uniforms. A few of them had lost their studliness barfing in the bushes.

Two of the detectives headed for me and another two marched toward Billy. None of them looked especially friendly. Maybe they thought I was supposed to make popcorn for the show.

"You're the manager?"