Trouble Under Venus

by Autumn Piper

  I tripped and ended up on the floor just under the edge of the desk. Whew, lucky I didn’t crack my head again. It wouldn’t be good for me to knock myself out and not escape. What the heck was that little brass plate on the underside of the center drawer?

  Hecho en Havana por Valentino. Amor, Abuelo y Abuela.

  Grandpa and Grandpa had sent the desk from Cuba. Cute. Had they known he was fast becoming a mob boss like his dad? And what would they think of him going undercover as an FBI agent?

  Man, was I sleepy.

  Mitch. I had to get out of here for Mitch. I’d better quit chugging Italian liqueur and get on with my escape. Now. What would Indi do? WWID? I chuckled out loud. If I ever got out of here, I’d make my own bumper sticker. Actually, I could leave the J in WWJD and make it “what would Jones do?” Oh, I cracked myself up. I really did.

  “Hey, who’s over there? What the hell are you laughing about?”

  Oh, Stu. If you only knew.

  Back to the coat tree. Hmm. Damn nice silk suit jacket Tino’d left hanging on it., A bit Don Johnson for my taste, but I wasn’t above wearing it over my jeans to keep everyone from seeing all my owwees.

  With the jacket hiding my weapon—scissors in back pocket—and my whip—handy dandy phone cord—and the itty bitty bottle shoved in the neat hidden inside pocket, I was ready to go. Funny how those pegs intended for holding coats didn’t look so sturdy as prospective branches to hold my weight. Especially towering above me on the coffee table.

  How the hell was I going to get around outside with no shoes on? I couldn’t carry the skates along while I scaled the unscaleable coat rack. Besides, there’d still be the minor problem of getting back into Conga to release the beast next door. Would I be able to find a pay phone with an actual phone book so I could call Dennis and have him come help me? I sure as hell couldn’t remember Grandma’s phone number. Not to mention, I didn’t have so much as a coin on me.

  Besides, Keen might not be so keen—haha—on rescuing Stu anyway, if he knew the jerk had tried to kill me.

  No, I’d have to figure out the locks myself. When I’d been in Vegas once, my car was broken into. The cops said the vandals had used a plain straight screwdriver and hammer. I didn’t have a screwdriver, but I did have scissors. Hammer? Skate. And hey, maybe I could use them to get out of this office, instead of risking my neck by climbing that scary furniture tower! What a dumbass. So much time I’d wasted by trying to go out the window and all I had to do was break an interior lock.

  I weaved over to the door, grabbing a skate on the way. Shoved the tip of one scissors blade into the key hole, then held it steady with my left hand and gave it a really sound whack with the skate’s toe stop. Stuff rattled inside the lock. Christ, my wrist!

  “Hey! Who’s over there? Lemme outta here!”

  “Will you shut the fuck up, Steve!” Guess my voice was back, if a bit raspy.

  Silence truly is golden.

  The scissors were jammed in the hole, so I used both hands to swing the skate. With a pop, the blade lodged deep. I tugged my handy-dandy make-shift Slim Jim free, and held my breath as…

  It turned. Glory, hallelujah. The scissors went back in my pocket.

  Only the emergency lights lit in the hallway, but it wasn’t hard finding my way down to the next door.

  What condition was Stu, er, Steve, in? If I opened the door, would he come after me? I wasn’t in tip-top retreating shape.

  I rapped my knuckles against Rico’s office door. How hurt was he? “Knock-knock!”

  “Uh, who’s there?” he called.

  Inspiration hit. “Stu.”

  A long silence. “Stu who?”

  “Stupid of you to try and kill me, ’cause I could help you escape now if I wanted.” Teehee.

  “Funny. Lemme outta here!”

  “Nope. And you know what, Steve? As soon as Rico gets what he wants from you, he’ll cap you.” Silence. “Yeah, I heard it all. Your whole little deal. And I’m reporting you at my first opportunity. Which will be in, oh, about two hours and seven minutes.” Silence. “Are you still with me?”

  “What do you want?”

  “There is another option. You could get out of here, if somebody helped you, that is. There’s that nice little retirement plan you’ve got all set up for yourself, back at Bea’s. Pretend tonight never happened. You never met Rico Romero or read my journal or tried to kill me.”

  Rustling and a few awkward thumps inside. His voice was just on the other side of the door when he spoke next. “And if I don’t? You’ll be in never-never land forever, won’t you, Randi?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But you won’t live to enjoy it for long if you get tangled up with Rico. He can’t afford to have somebody like you alive, somebody who could blackmail him down the road and jeopardize his inside contact, let alone his son’s life.”

  His evil cackle made the Wicked Witch of the West sound sweet as the Pillsbury Doughboy. “You’re a quick thinker. But you’re probably right. Tell me how my ‘retirement plan’ pans out.”

  “Better than you can imagine. The idea you’re planning to steal from Dennis will be a household name. Just about every American will have one. You’ll be rich beyond his wildest dreams.”

  “I like what I hear so far.”

  I wanted to vomit. Here I was, selling this jerk on stealing from my father and my grandma. But what choice did I have? Was there another way to keep the thread of my existence from fraying?

  “Okay. So here’s what I wanta hear from you, Stu. Gimp your happy ass back across the office to the opposite wall. And start counting. By sevens. Don’t stop until you make it to two hundred and three.” Was two hundred and three divisible by seven? Did it matter? “You better shout the numbers, Stewie. ’Cause if I can’t hear ’em, I’m not unlocking this door. Ever.”

  Bump, scoot, bump. “Seven! Fourteen! Um, twenty-two!”

  Jesus.

  This time I just jammed the scissors blade into the keyhole and twisted.

  While he called out, “Twenty-nine, no twenty-eight!” I quietly turned the lock, then checked the knob. Who else but a gangster would have the knobs put on his doors backward so he could lock someone in his office?

  Running barefoot down the hall, I paused at the outside door.

  Like a personal invitation, there hung keys, in a neat row. To bikes and cars alike.

  It would be so easy to swipe a bike. But I probably wasn’t safe to drive, not with a concussion and the booze too. No way would I get behind the wheel of a big old car like this. No harm in taking a couple of keys to use later. After all, they were going in Tino’s jacket pocket, haha.

  “Forty-nine! Fifty, uh, seven. Six! Sixty-three!”

  The sun was blinding outside. Yowch. Now how was I going to get anywhere with no money and no wheels? And no shoes, of all things?

  Mitch’s place wasn’t far away. Maybe, just maybe, I’d get lucky and he’d be there.

  Please don’t fail me now, little glass turtle.

  Chapter 31

  Maybe my lucky charm worked in mysterious ways. Goodbody was nowhere to be found.

  Fortunately, his crappy little apartment had an equally crappy lock on the door and I only had to jam the scissors into the keyhole to gain entry. No attention-attracting pounding necessary.

  Where could he be? It didn’t look like he’d come home all night. Please, please, please. He couldn’t be hurt and in the hospital. Couldn’t. Especially since the cops were looking for him. If he got arrested, what would I do? For all I knew, both he and Keen had been hauled in for fighting in front of Skate Fever 4Ever.

  Maybe he’d turn up. In the meantime, I seriously needed to rest. Later, if he didn’t show, I’d go back to Conga and swipe some wheels to go looking for him and Keen. Surely Grandma would know something.

  Grandma. Hmm. Had Mitch written down the phone number somewhere? On a little shelf under the phone, a little ahead of its time, sat a sticky pad. With a phone number scrib
bled on it. No phone book in sight. Well, it was worth a shot.

  I dialed. It rang. And rang. And rang.

  It could have been Grandma’s number and nobody was home. Or it could have been someone else’s number. Time for another approach.

  “Information. City and name, please?” Hopefully the FBI wouldn’t mind my using their line for a call to Directory Assistance.

  “Miami. For Bea Keenan?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Hold please.”

  When she came back and read the number to me, it matched with the one I’d just dialed.

  Damn. It was really time for me to sleep. My head hurt even more than before.

  I downed a full glass of truly putrid tap water and then sprawled across Mitch’s bed to sleep. It could have been the smell of him on the neatly made bed, or the idea of him lying there, naked between those sheets. But my attempts to squelch thoughts of him were futile. It was nearly ten before I drifted off, reliving our little afternoon in the hotel room.

  The heat woke me. It was stuffy and awful. And four o’clock! Crap. Since nobody had come looking for me, I’d best go looking for them. Time to commit Grand Theft Motorcycle. But I really needed shoes. Hopefully Mitch wouldn’t mind me borrowing some of his, at least until I got back to Grandma’s.

  Good Lord, his feet were huge. Of course they were, as were other key parts. It took three pairs of his socks to keep his shoes on my feet. And I’m a size ten-and-a-half.

  The handful of change on his dresser might come in handy in case I needed to gas up my bike. Just in case, I looped the phone cord over my shoulder before donning the jacket, and shoved the scissors into my back pocket. The cord really hadn’t been useful so far, but concealing it felt fun.

  I clomped down the stairs and out the back door, getting a couple of strange looks from Mitch’s neighbors. Geez, what I wouldn’t give for some shoes in my size.

  Several more vehicles were parked at Conga now than there’d been at seven AM.

  Rubbing the little turtle, I muttered, “Okay, my friend. Help me out here. Don’t let anybody be watching.”

  The keys jangled as I pulled them from my pocket, visually matching makes and keys. Two Harleys parked in the lot.

  Another caress to my good luck charm. The Sportster. Please, let one of these keys go to it. I ran as fast as my oversize shoes would carry me, straddled the bike, and stuck the key in the ignition. It fit. And the engine turned over.

  As I sped from the lot, I tossed the other keys over my shoulder.

  I took a couple of wrong turns trying to get into Grandma’s neighborhood, but finally found her house.

  The driveway was empty.

  It could have been worse. Stu could have been there.

  With the trusty key in the planter, I let myself in.

  “Hello?” Tomb-quiet. “Hello?” God, now I sounded like Stu-pid had earlier.

  Four-thirty. La Pilar would be leaving port in ninety minutes and I still needed to dress and try to find my way there. One problem. My entire backpack was missing. Gone. Nowhere to be found. Crap with a capital C! Just who had been here since last night and swiped all my stuff? Part of me hoped it was Mitch, except there’d be hell to pay if he’d found my journal.

  Sure couldn’t show up on a yacht in dirty, bloody Brittania jeans, head to toe bruises, and men’s sneakers.

  I’d have to impose on Grandma’s wardrobe another time.

  She didn’t seem to have much in the “elegant and understated” category in her closet. Much more of the “hot pants” variety. I couldn’t wear the same outfit again, not when Pilar had that exact dress. Opting out of the Lieutenant Uhura-uniform-with-fringe left tight leather pants in several colors. Crud. Uhura it was.

  At least the high neckline and long sleeves hid most of my bruises. The skirt was damn short, but my legs weren’t too banged up.

  Now I knew where I’d gotten my big feet. Grandma had rows of shoes in my size. After years of Granny Jenny telling me my feet were huge because I ran around barefoot so much, it was certainly vindicating to know how I came by my pontoons, when Mom and little sis both wore a size six.

  Hmm. High heels or tall boots? Given the amount of leg I was flashing above the knee and the fact that I’d be driving a hog, boots seemed the better option. My hair was an absolute disaster after riding a bike with no helmet. Next question: was Keen’s spare helmet still out in the living room? Yep.

  Not much point in spending lots of time on my hair then. I’d give it a good brushing-out and put it in a pony tail when I got to the docks. And since my makeup was gone…well, hell. A clean face was about as fancy as I’d get tonight.

  One more item. A jacket. After making fashion a priority for my last ride out to the docks, I knew better this time. But I wouldn’t borrow another of Grandma’s. Nostalgia had hit and I wanted one of my dad’s jackets.

  A black leather number, like three others hanging in his closet. Not a man of much variety. Too damn bad he wasn’t as loyal to his women as he was to his outfits.

  Which was a really lousy thing to think. Was it really fair to think that way after meeting him?

  At the door, I shook my head and looked back at the living room where I’d first met my father. Sure, I’d met him. But had I really gotten to know him? I’d thought I knew my grandma before coming here, and boy, had an adult’s perspective shaken up that theory! There was so much more to her than I’d known.

  The turtle felt smooth and warm between my fingers as I thought of Bea’s skating championships. And knew, without a doubt, I’d seen her for the last time. She had only a couple more happy days left, before her son and her boyfriend disappeared. Forever. And so would I.

  The pen with my grandfather’s monogram was cool and hard between my shaking fingers. Below, stationery I recognized from letters Grandma’d sent me.

  Dearest Bea,

  Thanks so much for taking me in and giving me a place to stay here in Miami. Words can’t express how much it’s meant to me, getting to know you. You’re an amazing lady.

  You’ve had more than your share of hardships. When times get you down, know that nobody thinks less of you for it. You’re the strongest, bravest woman I’ve ever met. Your little granddaughter is very lucky she has you to look up to.

  I apologize, but I had to borrow one of your outfits. I’ll try to mail it to you from Arizona. Please don’t worry about me. I had to go back home. Thanks to you—God willing—I’ll be with Mitch. Miguel, I mean. You were completely correct about him.

  I’ll love you and think of you always,

  Drew.

  Was it wrong of me to stick Grandpa’s pen in my jacket pocket? Probably. I took it back out and, with teary eyes, laid it across the note.

  No point taking another “last look around”. I couldn’t see for shit anyway.

  Once outside, I took a moment to breathe in and out, in and out, smell the petunias in the planter before I replaced the key.

  I needed to focus now. Which way had we driven to the dock Tuesday night?

  * * * *

  In retrospect, roaring up to the front of the yacht on a stolen hog might not have been the least conspicuous way to make my re-appearance.

  Yet, Tino—leaning over the bow along with Pilar and Armando, Mitch and Keen—could hardly re-kidnap me this way. And since the boat had all but left port by the time I boarded, he had no time to call Papi and inform him of my whereabouts.

  Lots of dirty looks passed between Keen and Tino. Likewise, between Mitch and Tino. Poor Armando was obviously out of the loop and confused.

  Pilar was under the impression I’d been ill and hadn’t planned to attend. Now that I’d “recovered”, she wanted to talk clothes with me. And I wanted to closet myself in a stateroom with Mitch for a few weeks and hold on to him for dear life. Instead, I had to make small talk with our hostess while Mitch’s eyes roamed up and down me, pausing each time he saw another bump or bruise. His brows would raise and all I could do was try to flash a reassur
ing smile. Besides, he had a few bruises of his own, including a bit of swollen nose.

  Before the first round of cocktails, Tino had slid into the shadows.

  Pilar kept up the fashion chitchat, mistakenly assuming the outfit I wore was my own choice. God, what I wouldn’t do for a minute alone with Keen or Mitch. Not with both of them, though. Keen knew too many things, which I wasn’t sure I wanted Mitch to know he knew. And Mitch, well, I just wanted to be alone with him. And then tell him about Stu and the deal Rico was trying to make.

  At last, Pilar got called to the kitchen to handle some question regarding dinner.

  Armando waited until she was out of earshot and said, “Come, Miguel. We go see where is our young Romero friend. We leave Señor Keen and his lady alone for some moments.”

  Mitch did one impatient neck roll, pursed his lips in our direction, and followed. He was so damn cute. Even in those very high and tight pants.

  To my supreme astonishment, my father pulled me into a hard bear hug. “Rico. That fucker. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll get him.”

  “How’d you know—”

  “He sent one of his guys last night while we were still in the parking lot at the rink and told us he had you. You were his ‘insurance’ to make sure he got his delivery tonight. He’s screwed with me one too many times now. Crossed the line.” Dad looked damn scary when he was feeling vindictive. I wouldn’t wanta be on his bad side.

  Ho, wait. I couldn’t have him endangering his life even more by taking on Rico because of me. “Technically, Tino saved my life when he—”

  Dennis let me go so he could step back and look at my face. “Saved you from what, and how the hell did you get away?”

  Maybe if he’d quit interrupting me and let me talk, I could tell him. “Stu. He tried to strangle me but Tino—”

  “Stu! That corrupt piece of shit. What beef did he have with you? And where’s he—”

  “Corrupt? Wait a minute. You know Stu’s a cop?”

  “Hey!” He actually pointed his index finger at my mouth, parent-style. “Don’t you interrupt me when I’m talking.” Monkey see, monkey do, Pa. As if! “Yeah, I know Stu’s a Fed. I knew it since the first week he started hangin’ around Ma all the time.”