and inserted it into the DVD player, finally figuring out how to sync the player with the television. As big as life, the surround sound of his voice making it seem like he was in the room with me, was Ray. Well, actually, it was just Ray’s crotch, but being as I had some familiarity with that crotch, I recognized it immediately. Yep, there was his appendectomy scar and the mole on his left hip.
“Oh, no,” I said out loud. I sat on the couch and watched the scene.
Ray was sitting on his bed. I could tell it was him even though his head was cut off in the shot.
“Say hi to the camera, baby,” he said to a blurry woman.
“Hi, there,” she said and gave a little wave.
The woman was standing close to the camera. All the camera took in was a shot of her torso; Ray was apparently quite the amateur sex-videographer because all we had here was a sex tape with a blurry torso, indescribable penis, and no heads. Eventually, she walked away from the camera and I could make out a large heart tattoo on her lower back.
Well, that’s not very helpful, I thought. I watched more of the tape but it became clear that I would never find out who she was. I didn’t recognize her voice because she mostly spoke in whispers and moans, so unless I had a tryst with this woman and got her to moan like that, I wasn’t going to find out her identity anytime soon. I took the DVD out of the player and popped it back into the case.
Okay, so that gave me another suspect: Miss Blurry Tattoo Ass. Had she had second thoughts about the sex tape and had she tried to get it back from Ray? Had he denied her possession and had that made her mad? Was that why it was so well hidden behind the toilet? It was hard to tell but it gave me a lot to think about. Although I couldn’t see her face, she had appeared pretty tall in the video. Her head came up to the top of the bookcase in Ray’s room, so I went in and measured myself against it. Yep, she was about two inches taller than me, putting her at a good six feet. Wow. That was one tall woman. With the most toned thighs I had ever seen.
But any titillation I might have gotten from the sex tape was mitigated by the fact that everything was blurry and I couldn’t tell what the heck was going on beyond some murmurings of “you’re the best, Ray” and “oh, yeah, that’s how I like it.” Blurry and unoriginal. I felt sorry for Ray. His lasting legacy as a champion cocksman would now be sullied by a sex tape in which everything was out of focus and in which he clearly hadn’t satisfied his partner.
That poor guy just couldn’t catch a break.
Chapter 10
The next day, I taught my classes, ran interference with Sister Calista—who was still holding out on me—and visited with Kevin for a few brief minutes before heading home. I got home with an hour to kill before I had to take the train into the city. On top of everything that had been going on, tonight was my blind date with Jack McManus.
On the drive home from Ray’s, I had made a decision: the sex tape was mine. If Crawford or his colleagues ever found out that I had been in Ray’s apartment, I was toast. And what did a barely viewable sex tape have to do with anything anyhow? Maybe Miss Blurry Tattoo Ass was a suspect and maybe not. That was for me to find out.
So, I focused on the event at hand: I had a date. With a single man. Is there any law on the books—either legal or moral—that says you can’t go on a date shortly after your ex-husband has been murdered? As I brushed my teeth for what seemed like the seventeenth time in the past hour—it was the oral version of the clean underwear edict uttered by every mother in America—I justified my decision to go out with Jack. At first, all I had to feel guilty about was cheating on my married boyfriend; now, I had the added pressure of thinking about a handless and footless Ray (an image that was seared in my brain). I finally came to the conclusion that a diversion with a man,