Double Trouble

by Gretchen Archer

  “Get your apron and go to Danish, Mother. It’s in the lobby beside the coffee shop. Behind Danish is the kitchen that bakes most of the desserts for the Bellissimo. Their ovens are down. They need you.”

  Crowd reduced by one.

  I turned to Bea Crawford. Who shouldn’t have even been there. “Bea, the tomatoes stink. I could go on and on, but that’s the bottom line. They stink. Stop dragging them down here. My front door—” I pointed up “—is wide open, because without a doubt, you left it that way. If you need to water the tomatoes or stare at the tomatoes or sing to the tomatoes—” I swept an arm in the direction of the Magnolia door “—be my guest. But do it upstairs and stop dragging the tomatoes down here.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, because she’d rather her precious tomatoes be in the Magnolia Suite with her rather than upstairs with the carpenters, painters, and cleaners who were crawling all over what used to be my home, but I shut her down with a look that said one word, Bea, just one, and I might put you out of your own and my misery.

  Bea’s mouth snapped closed.

  “Birdy.”

  She was petting Mortimer backwards. She had his ends mixed up. “Yes, Davis?”

  Having been five foot two and a half all my life, I was very much enjoying my elevated status on the coffee table. My people were listening to me. I was in charge. I was on a roll.

  “Birdy,” I said, “among other atrocities, the pigeons picked and pecked all the upholstered furniture in my living room including your wingback chair from the dining room. I have very little living room furniture left. The wingback chair, even if I had caught it before they tossed it, still wouldn’t be fit for—” I lost my words. “Find another chair, Birdy.”

  Then I turned to July, who had Baby Oliver on her lap with Bex and Quinn, glued to the Mama Show, squeezed on either side. “Do you need me?”

  “No,” she said. “I came to see if you needed me.”

  “I do. Can you watch the children for an hour or two?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you keep Candy too?”

  “Yes.”

  “At your house?”

  “Yes.”

  I stepped down from the coffee table, kissed the blonde curls on the tops of my daughters’ heads, then Baby Oliver’s, because the top of his head was so cute too, and turned for one of the two small suite bedrooms.

  They all asked my back a version of where-was-I-going.

  “To the closet.”

  “Why?” they asked in unison. I might have even heard Quinn.

  “To make a phone call.”

  It was far past the point of telling all to my husband.

  I dodged two rollaway beds, Oliver’s Pack ’n Play, grocery bags stuffed with clothes, dog food, toys, diapers, and a kitchen sink on my way to the walk-in closet, where there was a small dressing table I could use for a teeny desk, a safe with my loaded gun already in it, and peace and quiet.

  I flipped on the dim light, then closed the closet door behind me.

  I might never leave the closet.

  I pulled my gun and my laptop full of Sara Z., Nathan Z., and Clone dirt from the safe. I tucked the gun in my waistband, settled in at the small dressing table, then clicked on the laptop. I placed my phone beside the laptop and stared at both. With much trepidation, I turned on the phone. The beeps, whistles, and sirens of notifications I’d missed in the time it had been off made me want to change my number. Or wipe the phone clean and start over. Or march out of my closet womb, through the balcony doors, and sail it into the Gulf.

  I didn’t.

  Nor did I start to read what could easily be published as a collection of horror short stories that were the episodic text messages, one on top of the other, waiting for me. I did catch Colleen’s last one—Davis, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do—before the closet door flew open and there stood my husband.

  * * *

  It was with odd relief, which I attributed to the fact that I loved him, and a gargantuan lump in my throat, which I attributed to terror, that I followed my husband out of the Magnolia Suite, down the hall, to the elevator, up one story, through the foyer, then into the living room of our annihilated home. I would say I was being called on the carpet in the living room of our annihilated home, but we had no carpet.

  “Leave,” Bradley said.

  Painters, carpenters, and cleaners stopped what they were doing, dropped what they’d been holding, and left.

  I stood in the middle of the living room and listened carefully as Bradley’s footfalls echoed through the sparsely furnished and heavily pigeoned warzone of what was formerly our home. He spent an inordinate amount of time at the veranda doors studying the tomato buckets. I heard him in the kitchen. I heard him as far away as the unscathed guest wing. He finally returned to the living room with two somewhat intact kitchen chairs.

  He placed them facing each other, interrogation style.

  I would say our voices bounced off the walls in the desolate room, but neither of us spoke. We were waiting each other out. He was waiting for me to explain myself, and I was pulling a Quinn. I didn’t want to explain myself. I didn’t know where to start. It was easier to keep my mouth shut. Had Bexley been there, I might have whispered the story to her, then she could Cyrano de Bergerac for me to her father. Her very angry, her very weary, her very deeply disappointed father. Who wouldn’t break eye contact with me, but who had absolutely nothing to say to me either. After an hour, the most miserable hour of my life, an hour in which both our phones exploded with calls and text messages we didn’t take, after a solid hour, he stood.

  “We’re getting nowhere, Davis.”

  He stood; he walked past me. I was on the verge of a meltdown, watching him walk away, ready to end the silent stalemate and tell all, everything, even the wedding cake, when he seemed to change his mind. He turned around at the living room door. “Come with me.”

  I went. I didn’t want to be left alone in the tomato-pigeon wasteland.

  In our foyer, he stood at the private elevator that led to the Penthouse.

  He hit the elevator button.

  I panicked.

  When the door opened, he swept an arm, ushering me in.

  I didn’t move a muscle.

  We stood there like that, him holding the bouncing elevator door until he asked, “Did you stuff Clone in a freezer?”

  I shook my head no. Adamantly shook my head no. I almost shook my head off my neck denying it.

  “Do you understand your ex-ex-mother-in-law shouldn’t even be here?”

  I nodded yes. Adamantly nodded yes. I almost nodded my head off my neck agreeing with him.

  “Were you arrested for grand theft auto?”

  My head didn’t know which way to turn. I think it lobbed. Maybe it bobbed. He’d asked a complicated question with a tricky answer.

  He rolled his eyes, then said, “Go, Davis.” He gave the interior of the elevator a nod. I didn’t move a muscle, just stared at the back wall of the elevator I didn’t want to ride until he said, “You’re not going to work things out with me until you work things out with her.”

  Well, for sure, I wanted to work things out with him. If I had to go through her to work things out with him, then so be it. I stepped into the elevator alone, then stepped out of it at the Penthouse alone again—no Lurch, hopefully she’d fired him too—then sulked my way to Bianca’s suite of rooms only to immediately learn there’d be no working it out with Bianca until we both worked it out with Sara Z. Stone, Esquire, who, from a lounging position deep in the soft white leather glider behind Bianca’s white marble desk, welcomed me to Bianca’s office with the business end of a Kimber Micro Bel Air. And by Kimber Micro Bel Air, I meant a .380 semi-automatic pistol. Pretty, with a blue alloy frame and mirrored slide, but still, a handgun, directed at me. “Stop.”
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  I stopped.

  She lobbed out a palm. “Phone.”

  I pulled my phone from my pocket. I tossed it. It landed square on the desk with a crack. Next, the small battery from my phone flew over my head to land somewhere deep in white carpet behind me.

  “Earpiece,” Sara said.

  I had no earpiece.

  “Tracking device? Headset? Microprocessor? Transmitter? Any other miscellaneous spy gear?” she asked.

  Nope.

  “Empty your pockets.”

  I hesitated.

  She shook the Bel Air.

  I had no choice but to hand over the keycard to the Magnolia Suite.

  She placed it squarely on my dead phone, then changing her mind, tucked it in the pocket of her jacket. She patted the pocket holding the keycard that would give her access to the Magnolia Suite, those still in it, and the laptop full of dirt on her. Next, with the muzzle end of the Bel Air, she directed me to sit. I compliantly, and by compliantly, I meant at gunpoint, took a seat in a white leather chair on the other side of the desk, shoulder to shoulder with Bianca. Immediately and instinctively, my left arm dropped to meet her right arm and we hooked pinkie fingers.

  And that was all it took to make things right with Bianca.

  Sara waved the Bel Air again. “Hands where I can see them.”

  Palms up, I splayed my fingers, then lowered my hands to my lap.

  She tossed a black nylon zip tie. I caught it midair. “You know what to do.”

  “How am I supposed to restrain myself?”

  Sara waved the Bel Air at Bianca. “Help her, Princess.” To me, she said, “I don’t trust you.”

  It was so mutual.

  With shaking hands, Bianca, out of fear or forethought, loosely did the zip tie honors.

  Sara planted her elbows on Bianca’s desk. She leaned in. She rested her chin on her interlaced fingers. “Where’s my money, Davis?”

  “Where’s Megan Shaw, Sara?”

  She laughed, a single sharp utterance. “You’re kidding, right?” The more she thought about it, the funnier it was. “Who cares?” She laughed even harder. “Save the world, Davis!” She fell back into Bianca’s leather chair, still laughing. “Should we nominate you for a humanitarian award?” She wouldn’t stop laughing, waving the Bel Air around in circles, the confident laugh of dominance, victory, with a touch of hysteria, when what she should have done in the very beginning was frisk me.

  Amateur.

  EIGHTEEN

  In a perfect world, or in the movies, or had it been Fantasy with free hands beside me, I’d have leaned forward and given her access to the Glock tucked in the waistband of my jeans. The tables would have turned, which was to say the manic laughter would have stopped and Bianca’s solid white office would have a whole new color palette.

  That didn’t happen.

  It was in my DNA, it had been for years, and it would be as long as we were under the same gargantuan roof, to protect Bianca, who wasn’t proficient with firearms, and while clearly Sara wasn’t either—who waved a gun around like that?—she still had the advantage. The best I could hope for was that she locked us up fast so I could shoot us out faster.

  That didn’t happen either.

  Sara Z. Stone, who wasn’t an idiot, and having had total access to Bianca, Bianca’s home, Bianca’s accounts, and Bianca’s very life, led us to the new weatherproof saferoom. A room I’d only heard about, installed adjacent to the master suite as part of Bianca’s lilapsophobia program, and the only location in the Penthouse my Glock would be helpless to create an emergency exit. I couldn’t shoot us out of the weatherproof saferoom with a bazooka. And that’s where Sara parked us.

  It took Bianca’s handprint to open the door.

  “Give me that.” Sara waved her Bel Air wand at the only form of communication in the saferoom, a satellite phone. I picked it up with my imprisoned hands and passed it to her. She snapped off the antenna and threw the pieces of the broken phone over her shoulder. “You two kiss and make up while I’m gone.”

  The iron-reinforced concrete door didn’t close quietly.

  I struggled to free myself of the zip tie so I could finally get one up on Sara Z. Stone. I slapped the large red panic button to the left of the door with my open palm, which didn’t free us, but trapped Sara in a locked-down Penthouse with a roaring siren, strobe lights, and a computer-generated genderless voice screaming, “RESCUE, RESCUE, RESCUE. WEATHERPROOF SAFEROOM OCCUPANT IN NEED OF RESCUE, RESCUE, RESCUE.” On a loop. Over and over. Take that, Sara Z. Stone.

  “Help is on the way, Bianca.” I sounded more confident than I was. Then I repeated it for myself. “Help is on the way.”

  “When will it arrive?”

  I opened my mouth to answer over the panic sirens on the other side of the saferoom door when they stopped as suddenly as they’d started. With my first heartbeat, the blood pumping through my veins carried relief—help had arrived—and with my second heartbeat, hard cold fear, when the saferoom lights flickered, then blinked off, only to power up again by way of a generator. The alarm disengaging so quickly and the weatherproof saferoom on auxiliary power meant Sara had flipped the First Responder toggle in the main breaker box. If she knew where the main breaker box was, and she knew which was the First Responder toggle that would render the panic button useless, then she certainly knew how to leave the Penthouse by secure stairwell.

  Maybe she wasn’t such an amateur after all.

  I beat on the disabled panic button again and again.

  Help wasn’t on the way.

  Having nowhere else to go, we sat on the stiff sofa. Bianca delicately cleared her throat. “I realize you tried to warn me about Sara, David.”

  It’s Davis. And on the rare occasion of her taking an iota of responsibility, I lowered my guard. On a sigh, I said, “I should have tried harder.”

  “You were right about her.”

  The words came easily because, as it turned out, I’d been waiting eight long months to say them. “It was just as much my fault as it was yours.”

  Maybe more.

  “I’ve missed you terribly, David.”

  My head dropped. “Same.”

  “Could I implore you to return to my employ long enough to kill her?”

  “I’d be happy to, Bianca, as soon as we get out of here.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t necessarily kill her, as I would miss you all over again when you’re given the death penalty, but do thoroughly maim her.”

  “How about I send her to prison for the rest of her life?”

  “That will work.”

  The saferoom had all the ambiance of a crypt. We scooted closer together. Bianca whispered, “She was the devil in disguise, David.”

  “That’s an Elvis song,” I whispered back.

  “What is?”

  “Devil in disguise,” I said. “Elvis.”

  “Oh, please.” She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “Had I known I’d be returning to hordes and masses and throngs of pedestrian Elvii—”

  My head popped up. “Thank you.”

  “You’re most certainly welcome, David. For what?”

  * * *

  The new Penthouse weatherproof saferoom, half a mile from the original saferoom adjacent to the children’s wing, built to protect the Sanders’ sons in the event of a kidnapping attempt, was there to provide temporary shelter for Bianca and Richard Sanders during a sudden weather event. It cost a blue fortune, but worth every penny, claimed Bianca’s lilapsophobia therapist. She could sleep soundly knowing she wouldn’t be ripped from her warm bed and tossed out to sea should a hurricane sneak up on her. The room was a concrete cube nowhere near the square footage of Bianca’s shoe closet, just five feet of iron-reinforced concrete away. The main room held a sleeper sofa, two chairs, and a smal
l desk. On the desk, a hand-cranked AM/FM/Weather-Alert radio and two industrial flashlights. Through a small doorway to our left was a bare essential bath, and by bare essential bath, I meant bare essential bath. I’d seen more luxurious facilities in a pop-up camper. To the right of the main concrete room, in a space not large enough for one person to turn around, was the kitchenette. In it, a battery-operated hot plate, a coffeepot, the percolator kind with a glass bulb on top, and concrete inset shelves with nonperishables, bottled water, first aid supplies, batteries, and screw-cap wine.

  We hit the wine.

  “Where are the wine glasses, David?”

  “We don’t have wine glasses, Bianca.”

  We passed the bottle back and forth quietly until it was half gone.

  I broke the ice. “Where have you been?”

  She delicately dabbed at the red wine dribbling down her chin and passed the bottle to me. “Dr. Von Krügerschmitt?”

  “The spiritual awakenment doc?”

  “The same.”

  “What about him?”

  “Butcher, David. The man was a butcher. I recovered from extensive facial enrichment treatment only to find my left eye was a thirty-second of a centimeter higher than my right eye.” She touched the tip of a pinkie finger to her left eyebrow, probably saying hello to a miniscule scar the eyebrow hid, and lost her grip on the wine bottle in the process. I barely caught it on the way down and passed it back to her. She secured it in both hands, lifted it to her lips, and took another slug. “My face, David. My left eye was higher on my face than my right eye. I looked positively bizarre. Dr. Von Krügerschmitt robbed me of my facial symmetry.”

  I had a feeling that before it was over with, we would learn she’d been robbed of much more than her facial symmetry.

  She passed me the bottle. I took a long drink, then passed it back to her.

  “How did you know?” I asked.