“Yes, sir,” I said, so giddy with wonder that I almost saluted. As Mr. Curtis went to use the phone I said to Polly, “I can’t believe that worked.”
She shrugged modestly. “I picked up a few pointers about finding your opponent’s weak spots while working in my parents’ law firm this summer.”
Mr. Curtis had been on the phone with his back to us but now I overheard him saying, “We can fight about that when I get there. Just get your gear in place and be ready. We’ve both been outdone by a group of teenagers. The important thing now is for each of us to do our parts right. Yes, I’ll see you there.” Outdone by a group of teenagers! Way to go us!
“What do we do with Jack?” Tom asked me.
“Bring him,” I said. “I’m not done undressing him.”
“Jas—”
“I was kidding!” I was. I WAS.
(Mostly.)
(Come on, I’m human. And he was F-I-N-E. And he smelled ever so slightly like Oreos.)
“Seriously, we can’t leave him here. What if THEY come back to finish him off?” I asked Tom, who had to agree with my outstanding and mature logic.
I was so excited that Mr. Curtis agreed to let us go that I was practically skipping and felt like I was brimming with superhuman strength. Tom and I hoisted Jack between us and drag-carried him to the elevator and through the lobby to the valet.52 No one even gave us a second glance.53
When the Pink Pearl pulled up, we stashed Jack in a cozy corner. Mr. Curtis succumbed to Polly’s Look of Don’t Even Think About It when he offered to drive, so instead he sat up in the navigator’s seat, while Tom, Roxy, and I stayed in back.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we pulled out of the parking lot.
“Lake Mead. The marina. I think Red Early might be hiding out on a boat there.”
The drive turned out to be kind of long, and seemed longer because Polly will only drive the EXACT speed limit, and Mr. Curtis kept looking at his watch and fidgeting nervously with the thread caught there in a way that showed how anxious he was, which was making me that anxious as well. He did spend some of the time filling in a few things about the Red Early/Fiona Bristol case we hadn’t known. Like how until recently, Fiona had been in hiding, not even using credit cards, afraid for her life if Red Early had any idea where she was.
He said, “She became the prisoner while her husband was out roaming around.”
“I wonder what made her come out now,” I said.
“Maybe she decided she couldn’t stand all those old clothes,” Polly said.
Mr. Curtis chuckled. “I think that’s close. That she felt like she couldn’t live that way anymore.”
“She made a pretty radical change,” I said. “I mean, from living like a recluse straight to celebrity parties and gossip columns. And it was a risk—it seems obvious that her husband would come after her as soon as she resurfaced.”
“I guess it was a chance she felt like she had to take,” Mr. Curtis said. “And there are certainly enough professionals looking for him. Police in both California and Nevada have been trying to track him since he skipped out of custody, not to mention the bounty hunters.”
“Who did he kill in Las Vegas, anyway?” Tom asked. “None of the papers were very clear about that.”
“Young man, Adam Nightshade. Adam worked casino security at one of the other hotels. A real up-and-comer, wouldn’t have been surprised if he had my job someday.”
“Why would Red Early want to kill someone who worked casino security?” I asked.
“Rumor has it Adam used his position to collect dirt on people, then blackmail them. I don’t believe it. Adam was a good boy, and no one’s been able to find any trace of it. The best anyone can figure is, he had something on Red Early, and Red got tired of paying.”
I’d moved up and was sitting toward the front of the van, between Polly’s and Mr. Curtis’s seats. Behind me I heard Roxy say to Tom, “What do you think would happen to me if I ate just one?” and heard her jiggling the Pounce.
Little Life Lesson 49: When embarking on a day of crime fighting, take time to have a good breakfast. Because it takes a lot of energy, and you never know when you’ll get to eat again.
If ever.
Mr. Curtis had his arm across the back of Polly’s seat, which I knew she hated—it was almost like touching—but at least it made him stop fiddling with his watch, and it gave me a chance to check the time. Three twenty-five. No wonder I was hungry.
I was just starting to wonder if maybe there was a taco place we could stop at really fast, when we came around a bend and saw Lake Mead close by. Mr. Curtis pointed to a secluded spot by the side of the road and said, “This is it. Pull over right here.”
Polly deftly maneuvered the Pink Pearl into a little clearing and turned off the engine. “Now what?”
“Now you stay here while I go—” Mr. Curtis started to say, but stopped short as the driver’s side door was wrenched open and the muzzle of a gun was pressed hard against Polly’s head.
Twenty-eight
Little Life Lesson 50: If you think there is anything worse than seeing your best friend with a gun pointed at her temple, you are wrong.
“What will happen now,” a voice attached to the arm with the gun said, “is that you obey me.” Even if I hadn’t been able to see the hint of long brown hair, I would have known the Fabinator anywhere by his fascinating use of English.
Roxy’s heartrending cry in the back merely confirmed the identification.
I glanced out the window. From what I could see, this was just the kind of place I’d pick if I were organizing a mass grave site, an overgrown area with a view of the lake. There was a rusted picnic table off to one side, some faded beer cans, and nothing else.
In the far back of the van, Jack started to snore.
“That is a CB?” the Fabinator asked.
Polly nodded.
And just in case any of us still harbored a hope, he reached across her with his free hand and ripped the cord out of the dashboard, ripping some of the pink leather with it.
Here is how brave Polly was: She didn’t even flinch. Even though I knew she must have felt like he ripped out her heart.
“I’ve got a gun,” Mr. Curtis said to the Fabinator now. “And I’m pointing it right at you. I’ll use it. Drop your weapon and step away from the van.”
The Fabinator cocked his head to one side but did no dropping or stepping. “I think no,” he said. “Where you are sitting, you have no aim. Also, I can shoot first. No, I think you give the gun to me. Now. Or—” He pushed his own weapon harder against Polly’s head and made a clicking noise with his tongue.
I swear, he was enjoying himself. I have never hated anyone as much as I hated that man at that moment.
There was nothing else for Mr. Curtis to do but hand over his gun. As he took it, the Fabinator said, “Mr. Curtis gets out first, hands up. This one”—pointing at Polly—“will follow. The rest of you after.”
Before getting out of the van, Mr. Curtis turned toward me to say, “I’ll try to distract him by fighting. If you can get away, run for the marina. There’s a—”
“Quiet!” the Fabinator barked. “Move. Now.”
We watched Mr. Curtis walk slowly around the front of the van with his hands up. I thought I heard him trying to negotiate, saying something about fighting to protect us, but I wasn’t sure because at the same time Polly hissed, “I can’t believe you got us in to this, Jas.”
In the nearly thirteen years I’d known her, I’d never seen Polly really angry. Ever. I said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Almost getting us killed and now you’re making excuses to boot,” she said, and her eyes met and held mine in the rearview mirror.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I wrapped my arms around my shins.
“No talking,” the Fabinator said. “Exit the vehicle. Now.”
He pulled Polly out of her seat, while Roxy, Tom, and I lined up near the sliding door. K
eeping the gun on Polly’s head, Fab opened the sliding door and stood to one side. “Get out. One at a time, slow.”
I looked at Polly. She looked at me. She nodded. I pulled the tube out of my cowboy boot, pushed my finger on the top, and—
—nothing happened. I was courageously brandishing…lip gloss.
“What—” the Fab one opened his mouth to say, and that was when Roxy hit him full force in the face with the Designer Imposters perfume. He choked and coughed and his eyes closed. As soon as Tom saw that, he grabbed the roof of the van and swung himself out, legs first, landing both feet right in the center of the Fabinator’s chest.
The Fabinator staggered backwards, tripped over the shiny pink shoe Polly stuck out, and let go of her. Mr. Curtis was there to grab him and twist the gun out of his hand. But Fab was not so easily subdued. Oh, no. He stood up and started fighting back, and soon he and Mr. Curtis were pummeling each other like TV cowboys in a saloon brawl. You could almost hear the Wham! Bang! Pow! of punches hitting. Mr. Curtis got Fab hard in the gut, but the Fabinator came back with a sock to Mr. Curtis’s jaw that sent him reeling backwards into Roxy. Roxy stumbled under his weight, and they went down, Mr. Curtis landing with his ankle at a weird angle. For a second I thought he was done, but he staggered back up and threw himself onto the Fabinator. Mr. Curtis grunted, said, “This time you’re going down,” and hit Fab with a left jab. It must have been the power of positive thinking or something, because the Fabinator jerked backwards, hung in the air for a second, and then fell to the ground.
Victory was ours!
But this was not the time for party hats and confetti. From the way his eyes were already starting to open, it was clear the Fabinator was only out for a little while. Mr. Curtis turned to me and said urgently, “I’ll keep him busy. Take that pathway down to the marina and look for a boat called the Payoff. My sources say that’s where Fred and Fiona are being kept. Be careful—there are probably guards all around it. I’ll make sure this guy can’t send up an alarm, but do your best to be quiet.”
“What about Jack?” Tom said to me. “Do we just leave him?”
“In his passed-out state, he’s totally defenseless. I think he’s safer in the Pink Pearl than anywhere else. Besides, we should be back soon.”
“Get out of here,” Mr. Curtis said. “Now!”
We went. I felt bad leaving Mr. Curtis there to contend with the Fab one alone, but he seemed to be able to hold his own, and if it meant saving Fiona and Fred, it was worth it.
We found the Payoff moored at the end of a dock with a bunch of other fishing boats. It was by far the largest and fanciest. There was an upstairs section with a cabin, another enclosed space on the main deck, and portholes in the side suggesting quarters down below. We didn’t see any guards. In fact, we didn’t see anyone. It looked completely deserted.
“Mr. Curtis might have had bad information,” Polly suggested. “This might be the wrong boat.”
“We’ve got to check,” I said. “If Fred and Fiona are on here, this could be our chance to get them away.”
“We can inspect it faster if we divide up,” Roxy said.
We fanned out. Roxy went upstairs, Polly and Tom took the main floor, and I walked around until I found a staircase that went below. Next to it was a hatch with a padlock on it. The padlock was unlocked, and the hatch opened easily when I lifted it. Inside was a wood ladder, going into the bottom of the boat. I felt like I had been working fast but when I looked at the shipboard clock, I saw it had been about ten minutes since we left Mr. Curtis and the Fabinator in the clearing. There was no time to waste deliberating. I looked from the wood ladder to the stairs, then back at the hatch. Yes, definitely. If I were stashing someone on the boat, I thought, this is where I would stash them.
I had my foot on the first rung of the ladder when I heard it.
Click clack, snap pop. Followed by the voice of my psychic scars saying, “Jas, are you here? Calamity? Jas, where are you?”
Evil Henches!! We’d avoided them all day and yet somehow they managed to find us here. HERE!
And they were shouting about it! In case there were bad guys lurking around who needed to be alerted to come down and find us.
“Alyson, be quiet!” I whisper-slash-shouted as I ran toward her. “Please, just shut—” And stopped cold.
Alyson and Veronique were standing at the edge of the gangplank. Actually, despite their white vinyl four-inch platform boots, they weren’t standing, they were more like dangling. Each from one of the Fabinator’s XXL-size biceps.
Superpower, apparently: To be unstoppable.
Which would be a handy superpower. If anyone who hands those things out is listening.
I was dismayed to see that the Fab one was fully functional, but he wasn’t his usual dapper self. Whatever had happened to Mr. Curtis, and it made me scared to think of it, he hadn’t gone without a fight. There were splotches of dirt on the Fabinator’s clothes, a trickle of what looked like blood on his chin, and his hair had come out of its bow. As he pushed Alyson and Veronique onto the boat toward me, he said, “Now you obey.”
Not a sparkling conversational opener, but it got his point across. Especially because I could see he had somehow recovered his firearm.
So when he said, “Call your friends. Now,” I did.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Alyson as Polly, Roxy, and Tom joined us.
“Following you. Duh,” she said. “Nice of you to go on a cruise without us.”
“Why? Why would you follow us?” I meant it as a question but I think it came out as a whine.
Veronique answered for the Hench Collective. “We saw the Pink Pearl pulling out of the Venetian as we were on our way back from buying collars at the pet st—” A look from Alyson stopped her for a second. “I mean, when we were on our way back from shopping, so we told our taxi to follow you. You know, ‘Follow that car,’ like in the movies? Only we said, ‘Follow that van.’ And we didn’t expect it to be so—” She looked over my shoulder and she started grinning. “Hi, Tommy!” She gave a little wave. “Anyway, it took us forever to find you. I mean, at first we thought it was because we stopped for those Diet Cokes for lunch but, you know, you parked in a really weird place. It was totally hard to see the van. We had to drive by like three times before we even noticed it. And when we finally did, you weren’t even there. But that nice man was. He was looking for you, too.”
“What do you mean looking for us?” I asked.
“Looking around the van. He said you were in trouble and needed our help and we came down here right away. But it doesn’t look like you’re in trouble.”
“Oh, we are,” I assured her. “Did you see anyone else?”
“No.”
At least that meant Mr. Curtis had gotten away before the Fab one regained use of his gun. He’d probably left the Fabinator passed out and gone for help.
Alyson, who had been carefully checking her makeup in the mirror of her eye shadow compact during this exchange, snapped it closed and said, “Um, Jas, instead of twenty questions-slash-Jeopardy! could we like—”
“Enough talking,” the Fabinator intervened. He looked at me. “Remove the boots.”
“My cowboy boots? No way,” I said, planting my feet on the ground.
But the Fabinator ignored me, turning instead to Polly to say, “You also. With the pink shoes. Take them off and—”
He didn’t get to finish that thought because Tom went Chow Yun Fat54 on him, spinning around and landing a kick in his ribs.
I have to say, I was very impressed. The Fabinator once again found himself the victim of Tom’s Feet of Fury, falling backwards, this time onto the ample bosom of Alyson.
“Eeew, get off of me! My manicure!” she screeched, pushing him back from whence he came and saying, “Tommy, get him!”
Tom was ready to unleash more FoF’s, but before he could get off another kick, the Fabinator had regrouped and, being twice as wide and a foot taller than
Tom, not to mention forewarned, grabbed him in an illegal wrestling hold and disabled him.
It was a valiant effort on Tom’s part, which would have worked if Someone had been working for the team rather than protecting her nail tips. But this was not a time for finger pointing. This was a time for coming together. And mourning. Because the Fabinator had put Tom in handcuffs, and then moved to Part Two of his plan. Which was to grab Alyson around the neck and point a gun at her head. I guess if you have a good trick, you keep using it.
“Now you obey,” he said, probably with the hope that enough repetition would make it true. “If you do not, this one feels pain.”
Little Life Lesson 51: When selecting a member of a group to put on the Endangered Species List, it’s probably best not to pick the least popular person, because there is always a chance everyone will shrug and be like, “Um, okay. Hey, anyone want pizza?”55 and leave.
Little Life Lesson 52: On the other hand, it could be diabolically clever. Because everyone feels so guilty about their initial “Yes, pizza56 would be great, half with pepperoni?” impulse that they immediately behave. And are tortured with the knowledge that they have brought this on themselves.
Little Life Lesson 53: And let me tell you, that is quite torturous. Especially if you haven’t eaten in, like, twelve hours.
Little Life Lesson 54: And if the Endangered Species nominee turns to you to hiss, “This is all your fault, Jas. I swear, if he hurts me, I will kill you. Slowly.”
Mmmm, pizza.57
But of course, I couldn’t let Alyson get hurt. My father would never forgive me, and it would make Uncle Andy and Aunt Liz sad. And I am not heartless.
Much.
So we did what the Fabinator told us to. Tom, handcuffed, stood manfully by as Polly took off her pink glitter stilettos with the gold heels, and I took off my cowboy boots, and we threw them overboard. They were followed by all the cell phones we had among us. After an insufficient mourning period, we all marched toward the hatch I’d been inspecting in the back. I climbed down the ladder first.
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