Pandora Walker was about to disappear.
Chapter 2
The first night in my new home in California did not go well. With the temperature hovering around ninety-five degrees, I discovered that the only air conditioning in the house was provided by the one enormous but elderly window unit that squatted in the only window of the larger of the two bedrooms. The ancient behemoth was badly rusted, sounded like a 747 taking off, and emitted a deafening death rattle while blowing a steady stream of humid air across my bed. Finally, I turned the monster off and opened the tiny window in the hallway, only to be struck in the face by a steamy wave of overheated air that smelled like raw sewage.
The following morning, after a sweltering night spent on the lumpy downstairs couch and rethinking the whole well thought-out and meticulously planned arrangement I'd signed up for just days earlier, I clamped a wet towel over my face and ventured outside to find the source of the nauseating stench that was still hanging like an unseen presence in my bedroom and hallway. And now, the smell had begun to creep down the stairs into the living room, like the sickly green pestilence in the Charlton Heston movie The Ten Commandments.
It seemed that, in addition to all the other amenities I was going to enjoy in my new home, I had a swimming pool/cum fetid swamp. Behind a tall, overgrown hedge at the rear of the back yard, I found a rectangular concrete pool half filled with foul-smelling sludge, in which floated an assortment of plastic bottles, a bloated eyeless teddy bear, rotting vegetation, a deflated rubber duck, and some large clumps of unknown origin and composition. I didn't especially want to know what the clumps were. I just wanted them gone—fast.
Obviously, I thought, a job for my 'local contact.'
(Note: Before I agreed to wing off to California, I had been warned never to try to contact anyone—family, friends, etc. My mother and most of my friends already knew that I would probably be testifying against Frank Bugosi, but that was it. For their own safety and mine, they weren't told my location or my new identity, which meant that, for all practical purposes, they had no way to contact me. On my side, I was forbidden to contact anyone—with the sole exception, and then only in an emergency—of my nameless, faceless 'local contact.'
So, with no other option, I used one of my secure cell phones to place a call to my local contact to complain about the pool, only to learn that, while I considered being overcome in my sleep by nauseating and possible lethal fumes an emergency, my local contact, apparently, did not.
"We cannot be responsible for every situation our clients encounter during their time in the program,” the electronic voice advised. "You will be expected to manage small problems of this nature by yourself." Even electronically altered, his or her tone managed to suggest I was a spoiled, whining ingrate for asking for help in draining the stinking swamp with which they had stuck me.
"Like hell," I replied, none too politely. "If you don't get someone over here to take care of this 'small problem,' as you put it, I'll go out and hire someone to do it—and send the fucking bill to you, whoever you are." (Under normal conditions, I am not usually a screaming, unreasonable bitch, but stress and loss of sleep can do strange things to people, right? That's the story I'm going with, anyway.)
There was a brief pause, and another voice—non-electronic—came on the phone. "Go home and wait," the new voice ordered curtly. "We'll locate someone to take care of the situation within the next seventy-two hours."
"Are you going to pay for it, too?" I asked, also curtly. "It looks like it's going to be a big job, and the budget you've got me on isn't going to—"
The new voice, again, "The financial arrangements will be dealt with as quickly as possible and through the appropriate channels. Until then, you'll be required—as agreed upon in your contract with us— to fund whatever the problem is by yourself and await reimbursement at a later date, in a transaction that we deem secure. And never, I repeat, never, use this number again unless there is a genuine emergency. When this call is complete, please remember to destroy and discard the cell phone you used to make the call, in the manner in which you were instructed. Is that clear?"
"Oh," I said quickly, trying to get in before I was cut off. "There's one more thing, I'm afraid. I forget to mention the air-conditioner. It's on the blink. Can you call someone to fix it, as well?" But the line had gone dead. I was facing several more sweltering nights breathing noxious fumes. 'Frank the Iceman' was getting a bit of revenge at government expense—and at mine.
Two days later, there was a soft knock at my front door, and when I peeked through the curtains, I saw a tall guy with a great tan, light brown hair, and a set of very impressive biceps standing on the doorstep. He was dressed in a pair of clean but well-worn jeans and a white tee shirt. Pool guy or hired hit man? My limited experience with hit men had led me to believe that they tend to dress very well, except for a curious predilection for loud ties, but you never can tell, now, can you? Since this casually dressed pool guy/hit man was quite possibly the best-looking man I'd ever seen, however, I decided to risk it.
"Are you here about the pool?" I ventured cautiously.
He nodded his handsome head, and I noticed that his eyes were a sort of deep sapphire-blue. Since the age of eleven, when I fell hopelessly in unrequited love with twelve-year old Aaron Hirsch, I've been a sucker for guys with blue eyes. Poor Aaron suffered from a bad case of acne, but he also had the bluest eyes I'd ever seen, which is why I allowed him to give me my first French kiss while simultaneously fondling my breasts—not that there was much to fondle.
"I live next door," the guy explained, pointing to the house to the left of my own. "Not in the front house, but in the guest house in back. The Spencers—the older couple who own the place—they rented it to me when I got back from my last tour in Afghanistan. I do a lot of odd jobs for them, gardening, small repairs—things like that—to pay the bills while I'm finishing my master’s. Anyway, Mrs. Spencer got a call from the same agency where they found me, asking if I'd be willing to clean your pool, so I thought I'd come over and have a look." He paused long enough to pull a card from the pocket of his jeans and hand it to me. The card read "Rent-A-Hubbie. Experienced handymen to do those 'Honey-Do's' that didn't get done."
I took a long moment to study the card. I had hoped for a professional, but I made a snap decision to settle for drop-dead gorgeous with sapphire-blue eyes. There just had to be at least one bright spot in being on a mob hit list, right?
The following morning, while I was still fast asleep and dreaming some intensely pleasant things about a guy who bore an amazing resemblance to the pool guy I'd hired, the real pool guy announced his presence and his readiness to begin work by hurling bits of gravel against the side of my defunct air conditioner. I climbed out of bed and slipped into one of my most ravishing nightgowns—a long, bleach-stained tee shirt with a ripped shoulder, that said, "Save The Whales." (I generally sleep naked, and since I technically didn't exist any longer, I hadn't seen much point in adding a lot of alluring sleepwear to my wardrobe.)
Once I was basically decent and had combed my hair, I went downstairs and greeted the guy, whose name, I learned, was Dan.
"Sorry about the gravel," he said, flushing slightly. "But you didn't answer when I rang the front doorbell."
"It doesn't work," I explained. "Ditto for the back doorbell. Two more items you can add to the Honey Do list. So, did you get a chance to look at the pool?"
"I did, and I'm afraid you've got a major problem back there," he observed in an apologetic tone. "You might want to call your landlord and let him know what's going on. If you're just renting, it should really be his problem."
"Does that mean you can't fix it?" I asked glumly.
"Oh, I can fix it, all right, but I'm warning you, right now, it's not going to be cheap."
I groaned. "How not cheap?"
"Hard to say until I run a couple of tests and check out the filter."
"Can't you just drain the damned cesspool and
be done with it?" I pleaded.
He shrugged. "You'd have to check with the city to be sure, but the way I understand it is that an empty in-ground pool is considered a safety hazard, and the law says it has to be properly covered. I didn't find a pool cover anywhere, though, and those covers don't come cheap. Frankly, it'll probably cost you more to drain and cover it than to clean it."
Perfect! I didn't dare call my mysterious 'local contact' again, and Pauline Marie sure as hell couldn't afford to pay for something like this, by herself. My intuition was telling me that we could both starve to death by the time the government got around to "reimbursing" us. There was just under two hundred bucks left in the "Pauline Peterson" checking account, and another twenty-two days before the next deposit would make a magical appearance at the bank—payable by United Office Products, Inc., our phantom employer. Luckily, I had done a full month's grocery shopping on the day after I arrived, and all the utilities were supposedly included in the rent I would be paying with Pauline's check—on the first of every month. The house phone was under the name "Pauline Peterson," and my two secure cell phones had been provided by the DOJ—with the proviso that I use them to call my contact no more than once per phone before disabling and discarding it. And as always, only in the event of a dire emergency.
I went back inside to ponder my options—which were limited to sucking it up and/or wearing a clothespin clamped on my nose. It was that, or find a way to foot the bill, myself. If Dan the Pool Guy's estimate was reasonable—meaning dirt cheap or one hundred percent gratis—I could probably handle it. Considering how attractive this specific pool guy was, I might even succumb to the idea of offering my lily-white body in payment. Or not. Up until that very day, there had been a lot of ups and downs in my love life. Okay, there'd been more downs than ups, to be honest, and I had enough on my plate, by being on some New Jersey lowlife's hit list. I didn't need another rejection in the romance department.
The next day, when I heard the estimate, I may have turned white and begun to gag, but before I actually threw up, Dan made an alternative suggestion.
"I talked to the guy across the street," he explained. "He and his wife are getting ready to move, and they've got a shed full of pool equipment and chemicals they won't need. The guy says we can have all the stuff for fifty bucks, flat."
"That's wonderful!' I cried. "I can actually afford fifty bucks—if I don't eat for two weeks, anyway. So, how much will you charge me for the actual cleaning?"
He thought for a moment. "Well, it's a pretty big job. How about seventy-five dollars?"
"Are you kidding?"
He held up one finger. "With one major stipulation. I get to come over and use the pool three times a week. Agreed?"
"You can use it as often as you want," I agreed. "Twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week, until you get so pruney and wrinkled your own mother won't recognize you!"
He put out his hand. "Deal."
It was a great deal, all right, and as far as I was concerned, I was getting the better part of the deal. Who knew? Maybe Dan liked to swim in the nude, like all the other military guys I'd known. All I had to do to get in the "swim" was to buy a knock-out bathing suit and lose fifteen (Okay, closer to twenty) pounds in a few of the right places. Worrying about rejection would have to wait until the end of summer.
"So, how long will it be before I—excuse me—before we can use the pool?" I asked cheerfully.
He grinned. "Slow down, there, Ms.?"
"Peterson," I said, after a moment's hesitation. "Now, what were you about to say?"
"The thing is, I haven't even started yet, and with all the algae and other crap in that pool, it's going to need a lot of chemicals, along with all the scooping, scrubbing and scraping."
I guess the disappointment showed in my face, because he put one tanned, muscular arm around my shoulders and chucked me under the chin. "Cheer up, Gidget. It'll only be three or four days 'til the surf's up, again."
But I wasn't ready to be consoled or patronized. "It's supposed to be in the upper nineties all week," I grumbled.
He sighed, but I detected a hint of annoyance in the sigh. "Okay, then, I'll get started first thing tomorrow morning, and when it's safe to go in the water, I'll let you know. Even after it's been cleaned, though, it'll have to be shocked—maybe more than once, according to the instructions."
"Instructions?" I asked
"This'll be the first pool I've ever done," he admitted. "Rent-a-Hubbie doesn't usually deal with swimming pools. Just remember how little you're paying for the job and try to be a little patient."
Chapter 3
While I was being patient, waiting for the pool to be cleaned and 'shocked,' I went shopping for a swim suit and got a shock of my own. Do you have any idea how much swimsuits cost, today? And how tiny they've gotten over the last few years? Years during which I did not get any tinier, and in fact, gained somewhere in the neighborhood of seventeen pounds, give or take a couple of neighborhoods. My customary bathing costume—on those occasions when it wasn't deemed acceptable to swim au naturel—consisted of a badly faded black tee shirt with short sleeves and a pair of cut-off jeans I've had since my sophomore year in college. Not exactly ideal for the swimsuit edition of "Sports Illustrated," maybe, but comfortable, resistant to sunburn, and fully paid for.
Every swimsuit in the store that I liked (or could squeeze into) was more than eighty bucks. Pauline Marie and I had already invested fifty bucks in pool chemicals, and we were in debt to Dan for another seventy-five, so if I blew the budget on a damned bathing suit, my selfish desire to paddle around in the water with the gorgeous pool guy was going to put Pauline in the poorhouse—and me, as well.
Which is why I left the store empty-handed and wandered off to self-medicate my depression with a large deep-dish pepperoni pizza, a super-size (non-diet) Coke, and something called a Chocolate Volcano Cake.
I arrived home bloated, slightly nauseous, and absolutely convinced that someone had been following me since I left the pizza place. It was more a feeling than anything else, but all the way home, I kept remembering that line from Macbeth about "Something wicked this way comes."
When I felt better, I went out to what I'd been calling the cabana—a small aluminum shed behind the pool that was close to collapse. On my first visit to the cabana, I'd learned that, though it was home to around a thousand spiders and their close relatives, one of the former tenants had apparently used it to store a stack of ratty old nylon webbed folding chairs and an assortment of dusty pool equipment. While making a hasty exit from the shed, I'd noticed several faded swimsuits hanging on nails.
So, equipped with a broom to defend myself from attack by the live-in arachnid horde, I returned to the cabana in search of affordable swimwear.
There were three bathing suits—one male and three female, all arachnid-free, and all available at exactly the right price.
The problem? The only suit that wasn't grotesquely ugly or in tatters didn't fit especially well. Besides which, it was a bikini—or a wannabe bikini, anyway. Not the string kind, but the modest two-piece kind that Annette Funicello used to wear in movies like "Beach Blanket Bingo." The two pieces showed a minimal amount of flesh and no belly button at all. Exactly what I needed until those extra pounds I had somehow accumulated went away, somewhere.
When I tried the suit on, though, the bottom part was a snug fit, whereas the top wouldn't hold a pair of small tangerines. My tangerines, I should explain, are on the large side and possibly my best feature—other than my fine mind and lovely personality. (My mother's description, not mine, and the same woman who named me Pandora.)
On the first miserably hot day of the pool cleaning project, I lay on a threadbare lounge chair and watched Dan work—a thoroughly nasty job that I tried to make a bit more pleasant by asking about a thousand stupid questions, flirting outrageously, and by changing my position on the lounge every few minutes so he could take in my astonishingly sensual beauty and as much
of my tangerines as he could make out through a somewhat raggedy black tee shirt. I had succeeded in stuffing myself into the bikini bottoms, but lacking a matching top, I elected to remain naked under my tee shirt and jiggle around a bit, every time he looked up from what he was doing. I could only hope that even that would seem like an improvement over collecting dead leaves and slime in a long-handled mesh skimmer.
With my attempts at flirtation evidently going nowhere, I dispensed with my seductress act and tried simply talking, which went a lot better than I'd expected. By day three, in fact, Dan and I had begun to learn a lot about each other—except that most of what I had told him about me was necessarily a collection of lies and half-truths. I hated being dishonest and could only hope that when it was safe, again, he'd understand why I had lied to him about so many things. We sat by the pool and talked every day until after dark, and when he finally went home, I felt happier than I had in years.
On day four, even with Dan working alone, the pool was clean and scrubbed, with no visible bathtub ring. Not quite sparkling, but certainly clearer than some of the public pools I'd been in as a kid. With the weather getting hotter than ever, I was more than ready to take the plunge.
But the pool guy shook his handsome head and said a firm no.
Hero Undercover: 25 Breathtaking Bad Boys Page 81