by Dawn Dugle
"Hey, it's me. I wanted to say thanks for a fun few weeks, but let's face it - this thing isn't going to work out. While I kinda' enjoyed our nights together, they're a little too safe for me and I think it would be best if we broke up. I know you think I love you, but I don't. I've never really been that into gingers, you know? Anyway, since I need to travel for work for a while, I need you to back off and don't try to find me. And don't even think about reaching out to my family, because they won't help you find me either. Mmm'kay? Thanksbye."
I stood up, my stomach plunging to the ground.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
That voicemail had just come in. Seconds ago. The blood was roaring in my ears. He still had to be here. "Dixon give me the closest weapon you have behind the bar."
Dixon didn't hesitate and tossed me a baseball bat. I ran toward the men's restroom, kicking open the door with my uncle hot on my heels. "What's going on Wysdom?"
I couldn't say anything because there, on the restroom counter, were Luke's phones. Both of them.
I spun and tore out of the restroom, running toward the back door which was bouncing closed, as if someone had just walked outside. I kicked that door all the way open and looked around the alley behind the bar.
Screeching tires on the pavement to the right caught my attention and I hauled ass down the alley in that direction. I barely caught a glimpse of a beat up gray minivan, before it turned the corner and sped out of sight.
Dixon caught up with me. "What the hell was that?"
"They took him." I panted and leaned down to put my hands on my knees. I couldn't breathe.
"Who?"
"Luke. They took Luke. He's gone."
The End
What happened to Luke?
Turn the page for a preview from A Counterfeit Midlife Crisis: Flamingo Cove Book Two.
A Counterfeit Midlife Crisis
Flamingo Cove Book 2
1
Day 131
Wysdom
A redhead simply has no business sitting by the pool as if she won’t burst into flames in the sunlight. Yet here I was, trying to stay in the shade of an umbrella and my floppy hat while keeping my eye on the prize.
The dirtbag in front of me.
I’ve been tracking him for five months. The slippery sucker evaded me at almost every turn, until I found him at this hotel. Holed up with his much younger girlfriend.
He’s been living it up at the Safety Harbor Resort and Spa. Daily couples massages. Room service twice a day. And the sex sounds could be heard up and down the hallway, behind the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door.
Freaking dirtbag.
I watch as my quarry slathers sunscreen on his hussy. She’s half his age, but already has added plastic enhancements to her body. She pulls her long blonde hair to the side so he can rub sunscreen onto her back, now free of the string bikini ties that she has undone. He works his way down to her butt cheeks and spends a little too long there.
Yeah. He’s real worried about her butt getting sunburned. I just bet.
Dirtbag.
I can feel my PMI, or Peri-Menopausal Irritation, climbing to about an eight on the scale of one to ten. Earlier this year, my doctor told me I had come down with an incurable case of peri-menopause. That’s the period before women come down with menopause that includes: hot flashes, night sweats, PMI and - my personal favorite - increased libido.
It’s like your ovaries are having a fire sale. Last chance for fertility! Get these eggs while they’re hot!
Yep. You’re horny all the time, which is great if you have someone to unleash it on… uh… share it with.
Share. That’s what I meant.
But the rest of peri-menopause really sucks. And the worst part? The part that our moms and sisters haven’t really told us about? This shit can last ten years. Then it segues into menopause, an even worse version of this.
Guess how long menopause can last? Up to ten more years.
Twenty possible years of this shit.
Someone really needs to send out a newsletter to all of us women over 40. It can be called: “Things You Really Need to Know About, But No One Will Freaking Tell You”. We’ll put peri-menopause and reading glasses in there.
Don’t. Even. Get. Me. Started.
Dirtbag has decided he’s had enough of feeling up Hussy and sits down on the chaise lounge next to her.
I realize I’m probably going to get my Feminist Card revoked by calling this woman a hussy. Yes, she’s been carved and painted up to look like a living Barbie doll, but inside she could be a rocket scientist. Or a STEM… person. Whatever the hell that means.
But this woman is messing with another woman’s man. He has a family who has been trying to find him for five months, so his current wife can get him to sign divorce papers and get him to start paying child support.
Dirtbag ran before that could happen, and has been blowing all of his money on Hussy.
I pick up my phone, pretending to scroll through social media, and take a few pictures of Dirtbag and Hussy. They join the other photos I have of them canoodling over the last two days. His wife will have more than enough to take him to the cleaners, if I can get him to show up for court.
That’s going to be the tricky part.
My finger has a life of its own, moving toward the voicemail message I have saved.
Who leaves voicemails anymore? Most people just text if they have something to say. But this voicemail is special. It’s the last time I heard from my lov…boyf…PERSON.
I hit play.
"Hey, it's me. I wanted to say thanks for a fun few weeks, but let's face it - this thing isn't going to work out. While I kinda' enjoyed our nights together, they're a little too safe for me and I think it would be best if we broke up. I know you think I love you, but I don't. I've never really been that into gingers, you know? Anyway, since I need to travel for work for a while, I need you to back off and don't try to find me. And don't even think about reaching out to my family, because they won't help you find me either. Mmm'kay? Thanksbye.”
Not exactly professions of love, but I know it’s a coded message because it came from his disposable cell phone number. He had programmed my phone with the number under the name “Ginger”. It was our emergency code.
He had told me: "If the day ever comes that we need to use that number and code word, it will not matter what the message is. It might even sound completely backwards to you. But you'll know it's an emergency.”
The message came in during my belated 40th birthday party at my uncle’s bar. The second I heard it, I knew Luke was in trouble. I ran outside to find a gray van disappearing around the corner.
He had left both of his phones in the men’s restroom, so either he was kidnapped or he walked away with the bad guys willingly.
That was five months ago. I’ve been trying to find him ever since.
The van itself had been stolen from a sketchy neighborhood in Tampa. Cops found it abandoned, a few miles away from Flamingo Cove, without a shred of evidence in it. No fingerprints or DNA.
And there were no cameras for miles around where the van was dumped. All of the leads had gone cold.
He was trying to tell me something with the message, but it’s driving me crazy, because I can’t figure it out.
I frowned at my phone and scratched my head. Where could he be?
Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. Dirtbag was looking right at me, actually looking at my hair, his eyes going wide.
I put my hand up to my hairline.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
My blonde wig was off-kilter, along with my hat, which means my real, bright-red, hair was showing underneath. I’ve been made.
Dirtbag took off running.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I tossed my phone, wig and hat into my beach bag and took off after him. Thank Oprah I was wearing running shoes and not sandals.
Dirtbag weaved through th
e crowded outside bar and headed toward the waterfront. I dodged drinks, people and pool floats, trying to catch up with him.
For a middle-aged man with a dad bod, he was moving pretty fast, and people kept stepping into my path.
Damn it!
I watched as he made it to the waterfront, turned and saw me several yards away. He saluted with his middle finger, then took off running toward the right.
I looked right to see a cater waiter getting out of a golf cart.
“Mind if I borrow that?” I pulled a pamphlet out of my bag and flashed it at him. “Detective emergency!”
I hopped into the golf cart and took off after the Dirtbag. The cart was fast, one of those gasoline-powered ones that are used behind the scenes at fancy resorts. Apparently, if one needs to get the catering to its destination tout suite, it didn’t matter if the gas engine made a lot of noise.
Dirtbag was making good progress, but I was gaining on him, until I came to the end of the sidewalk where it melded with a running trail. There were posts in the sidewalk to prevent motorized vehicles from driving onto the path.
He was only a few feet away from me. I turned off the cart and hopped out, grabbing my beach bag and running after Dirtbag.
He turned his head to see that I was gaining on him, now that there weren’t a hundred drunken spa visitors between us. I put on some extra speed and tackled his waist, just like a very special drag queen had showed me.
Dirtbag went down on his face, into a pile of sand along side the paved trail. I landed on top of him, with my knees in his lower back. He tried to buck me off.
I reached into my beach bag for a set of zip ties. “Your wife has been trying to find you for months.”
Dirtbag started screaming as I zip tied his hands behind his back.
“Quit your bitchin’, dirtbag! There is a subpoena for you to appear in court, and I’m going to take you to a nice place to cool off until that happens.”
Dirtbag continued to squirm and scream as I got off of him and stood up. The screaming was grating on my last good nerve. What the hell was his problem?
I was pulling him to a standing position when I noticed my legs were being stabbed, by tiny knives or needles. All over the place. I looked down and realized we had both landed in a fire ant hill.
“SHIT!”
I grabbed a bottle of water out of my bag and rinsed the ants off of me, then poured what was left onto Dirtbag. I got most of the ants off of him, but there were still a few crawling around on his neck, which he couldn’t reach to knock off.
Fire ants are the spawn of Satan. They look like regular ants, but if you step onto one of their mounds, they come out fighting. With their teeth. They bite you and inject a venom underneath your skin that feels like you’re being burned alive, from the inside out. Hence the name “fire ant”.
The venom will stay there, in a little bubble underneath your skin, for days… weeks even. I’ve learned the best way to deal with them is to pop them like a zit and get the poison out.
Still burns and itches like a mo-fo, though.
I stood back and watched Dirtbag wiggle and twist, trying to get the remaining fire ants off of him. Served him right.
“Come on, we have to get you back to Flamingo Cove,” I grabbed his zip tied hands and marched him to my car, where I unceremoniously tossed him in the back area of my 12-year-old Ford Edge.
∞∞∞
2
Wysdom
Damn fire ant bites were itching like the devil, but I had been sitting out in the sun for hours trying to capture Dirtbag. I needed a drink and some white vinegar, which would take the sting out of any bites and my sunburn.
I headed to my uncle’s bar for a beer, and some air conditioning.
June in Florida was a bee-yotch. We were smack in the middle of Hurricane Season, which means lots and lots of humidity. Every day the temperature would get into the 90s. When the sea breeze from the Atlantic Coast of Florida reached the humidity of the Gulf Coast where I lived, it would rain. Like clockwork.
The skies had already darkened and I could tell we were about an hour until the storm began.
It was between police officer shifts, so that meant The Squad Room was fairly empty. Only the professional drinkers were there, perched on the precarious stools Dixon kept around the bar. They were super old and not a one of them sat straight, the stools that is.
Although, come to think of it, the drinkers looked that way too.
Dixon came out of the back as I walked up to the bar. He was wearing a t-shirt that had the outline of a golfer and said: Golfers Do It On Their Tees.
I snickered. I don’t think Dix ever played a round of golf in his life. He had been a police officer until he retired about a decade ago, then opened the bar that catered to cops and their incredibly short meal breaks. His t-shirts were gifts from his fiancée.
“Hey Dix. Grab me a beer, would ya?”
He opened a bottle and set it on the bar. “You look like a lobster. What the hell were you doing? Hanging out on the sun?”
My uncle may love me, but he’s a tell-it-like-he-sees-it kind of guy.
“Something like that. I had a stakeout at the Safety Harbor Resort, but I finally caught the guy.”
Dixon smiled at me, then looked over my shoulder as someone came into the bar. His smile got bigger and that could only mean one thing. Kate Sweeney was here.
Kate and Dix had been seeing each other on the down-low for about a year, until he made it official and proposed. They were getting married next month.
She is a captain with the Flamingo Cove Police Department and up until a few months ago, was my boss’ boss. Now, she was about to become my aunt.
Life was weird.
Kate came around the bar to kiss Dix. “Hey Wysdom, did you know there’s a guy tied up in the back of your car?”
“Hey, I cracked a window!” I sipped my beer. “He skipped out on his family and financial obligations so he could go gallivanting around with a bona fide hussy. He’ll be all right in the heat. Probably.”
Kate nodded her head and said nothing else, but she gave Dixon a look.
Dixon cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. We have something to ask you.”
I put down my beer and looked at them. This wasn’t starting off well and that could only mean one thing. Medical advancements had been made and the 65-year-old Dixon and 58-year-old Kate were pregnant. I shuddered. People that old having kids? Poor possible baby.
“What?”
“We want you to marry us!” Kate exclaimed.
“Say what now?” I frowned.
Dixon laughed. “She means we want you to be the officiant at our wedding.”
I certainly did not see that coming. I was stunned and stared at the two of them a little longer.
“She’s speechless, we should write this down,” Kate looked at Dixon.
I laughed. “I am speechless, because I am honored. YES! I will marry you… er...marry the two of you… you know what I mean.”
Dixon and Kate came around the bar to wrap me in a big hug, and nearly knocked me off my rickety stool.
Kate patted my arm, then kissed Dixon again. “Okay, gotta’ go back to work. Great seeing you Wysdom!”
When she left, I turned to Dixon. “That took me by surprise. I didn’t think Kate liked me very much.”
“She likes you just fine.”
“She wasn’t very helpful when I was a police officer,” I started.
Dix waved it away. “Kate wanted to make sure you were tough and could take the harsh realities of the job.”
I shook my head. “She didn’t try to toughen up my brothers.”
“Not much she could do about that,” Dixon crossed his arms and tried to look stern, but he couldn’t do it. He was a man in love and less than a month away from being married.
I sudden pain hit my chest, and placed my hand over my heart and rubbed, looking down at the bar.
He put his arm around me and pulled me
in for a side hug. “Missing Luke?”
I nodded. I couldn’t say anything just now because I knew if I did, I would probably cry. Crying was not good when you’re a woman starting a private investigations firm. I needed to suck it up, buttercup.
“Any leads?” Dixon asked.
I cleared my throat. “No. It’s all cold. His sister Celia even tried to wrangle some help from the FBI, but they wouldn’t help her. That’s a fine how-do-you-do for an immigration and customs officer.”
“What about his message?”
“I keep playing it over and over, trying to figure out what the backwards meant. Like… safe… does that mean unsafe? And don’t reach out to my family.. the opposite would be to reach out to his family. But I’ve already done that. His sister Celia has done all she can do.”
Dix crossed his arms. “Luke is a super-smart man who was trained by the Marines and all of the undercover ops he worked for his military consulting company. He wouldn’t have just left you that message without leaving you a clue somewhere else. Maybe you haven’t found it yet?”
“I’ve been through all of his clothes, his toiletries, his car - what was left of it from the explosion. Nothing. I asked Celia if she could get me a look at all the stuff Luke had in his storage units that were confiscated by the ATF, but that evidence was destroyed. Or so they said.”
“I don’t think he would have left you a clue there,” Dixon shook his head. “It would be someplace you would have easy access to.”
“Maybe. But in the meantime, I feel like an asshole, just sitting here doing nothing, while he is God knows where,” I shrugged.
“You’re not doing nothing, you’re building a business and training, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s training going?”
“Sol is kicking my ass.”
Dixon smiled. “What’s he training you to do?”
“Ugh, we’re boxing and he’s teaching me Krav Maga, that self-defense fighting that the Israeli military uses.”