No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Do you think it’s even possible?” I asked Mac, horrified at the thought.

  “Honestly? There are a lot of crazy people out there with some pretty crazy ideas. Yes, I do think that terrorists would pay just about anything to be able to succeed.”

  “Five million dollars,” I said.

  “What? Mac’s eyes were on me, searching me for information, so I shared Tom’s comment about how I cost him a fortune. Mac shook his head, disgusted.

  “We’re still trying to identify him. So far, no luck. We don’t even have a nationality for the guy. My best guess? Tom was a spy, maybe for the Russians, but he went rogue on this one. Maybe he started out on a government assignment, to obtain information on the Vanguard Advanced program, but then he decided to share it with the highest bidder. He would have known that al Qaeda or one of its offshoots would have paid just about anything to know how to protect the suicide bombers.”

  “So, why not just get the information, give it to the Russians, and then sell it to the terrorists?” I wondered. “Why did he fake his own death?”

  “Maybe that’s exactly what he planned to do, but the Russians got word of it. They would have sent their people to stop him. He would have been hunted all over the world. Giving us a body meant that he was able to disappear, especially once he got his hands on that five million dollars.”

  Three days later, the Russians identified the fake Tom as Arkady Romanoff, but only after they confiscated the money in his Swiss bank account. It turned out that he had previously leaked information to al Qaeda and other terror organizations and was paid handsomely for it.

  “Mac,” I asked him, after hearing the explanation for it, “why did he use the spice box, the charm bracelet, the doll, and the automaton? Why not just memorize the account number? Or keep it in a special cloud account online? Why give me those things as gifts, if they were marked with the numbers?”

  “It’s the kind of thing professional spies do. They can’t keep the bank account number with them, because they never know when they’re being watched. By breaking it up, by not memorizing it, they can’t spill the beans if they get caught.”

  “But why did Tom give me the gifts? Why not just keep them at his place?”

  “The good guys and the bad guys would have gone over his place with a fine-tooth comb. If they found all four items, they would have spotted the pattern.”

  “I still don’t understand why he picked me. He lived all those years while posing as the real Tom Robacher. Why?”

  “You really want to know? It was all his cover. If things went south, things might get blamed on the real Tom Robacher. Vanguard Advanced would just assume they had a bad apple in the bushel. But as for you, he picked you for all the right reasons. It’s because you’re a sweet, decent girl. He counted on that. He expected you to hold onto those things out of sentimental value, so they’d stay safe in your custody, and he assumed that anytime he needed them, he could talk his way back into your life. He figured he would always be able to get his hands on those items. But you changed on him.”

  “That’s why he was so angry with me,” I sighed. “He kept calling you my new boyfriend.”

  “I was his competition,” Mac agreed.

  “I kept telling him that we weren’t a couple, but he didn’t believe me.”

  “We’re not a couple?” Mac’s brown eyes narrowed. “Wow, that’s cold.”

  “What?”

  “I thought I mattered to you,” Mac glared at me. “I thought you cared about me. Was it just my imagination?”

  “But you’re getting married!” I cried. “You told me yourself!”

  “To you!”

  “To me?” I was confused.

  “Kimmy, why do you think I bought this place? Why do you think I asked you to look after Mae for a year? It was all part of my plan to convince you to marry me! Mae was going to help me while I finished off my last assignment for Interpol.”

  “But you don’t even love me!” I said accusingly. After all, he acted like my almost brother, not a man in love. And he’d had those other wives, which I pointed out in no uncertain terms.

  “I was working undercover,” he insisted. “It was necessary to the success of the operations. My first wife was the granddaughter of the head of an international criminal syndicate. It took us five years to get close enough to break through the layers of secrecy enough to take them down. My second wife was helping her brother smuggle blood diamonds out of Sierra Leone and into Antwerp. We’re talking about millions of dollars worth of diamonds, funding terror organizations and empowering criminal gangs, Kimmy. It was my job to get in and out of their circle without them realizing we knew what they were up to before we were ready to shut them down. So I didn’t marry the first two times for love. Is that a crime? This is different.”

  “You really want to marry me?” Was I dreaming?

  “Well,” Mac raised an eyebrow, “not if you’re going to be this dumb about it.”

  “But you’ve never even kissed me,” I told him.

  “Not true. I seem to recall a rather magical moment on a roof,” he grinned.”You were ten and almost as adorable as you are right now.”

  “I thought you weren’t interested in me,” I confessed, feeling rather foolish. “I thought you didn’t find me attractive.”

  Mac shook his head and sighed, before opening his arms wide, inviting me into them. I wrapped my arms around his waist, my face against the soft cotton of his oxford shirt.

  “I have a confession to make,” I announced. “I fell in love with this place the second I saw it. All I could think of was how much I wanted to be here with you, and how jealous I was that another woman would be living here after the year was up.”

  “It is a magical place, isn’t it?” Mac nestled his lips against my ear. “The first time I saw it, I pictured you here with me. You know, you have Mae to thank for that kitchen.”

  “I do?”

  “She asked you to describe your perfect kitchen,” Mac laughed. I thought back to that day a year ago, when Adelaide and I took Mae to lunch at the Four Winds. We were sitting out on the terrace and Mae was quizzing me on my cookbooks and my favorite meals. “I needed the information, so I could make the kitchen just the way you wanted it.”

  “The master bedroom!” I suddenly understood. “Mae asked me what I like in a bedroom, and I said it all depended on the man involved, that I could never plan a bedroom without his input!”

  “Looks like we’ll have plenty of time to work on that room now.” Mac began to sway, easing me across the floor as he hummed in my ear. I found myself following the rhythm of his body, finally feeling like we fit together. It reminded me of that prom so long ago.

  “Oh, Mac,” I sighed as he dipped me. “What fun! We’ll have to pick out paint colors. I can make drapes. We definitely need some artwork on the walls….”

  “It’s very clear,” Mac began to croon, “our love is here to stay. Not for a year….”

  I recognized the tune. It was one of my favorite songs. For a moment, I gave myself up to the magic of being in Mac’s arms. But then I started thinking.

  “When did you know you really loved me, Mac?”

  “The night you wore that sapphire gown.” His lips were on my throat, nibbling tenderly. I felt a shiver go through me, but I shook it off.

  “All these years, you never said a word!” I frowned, leaving the accusation hanging in the air. I thought about all the missed opportunities. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Kimmy?” Mac twirled me around, waiting until I looked up at him.

  “Yes, Mac?”

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  Mambo with a Maniacal Mako

  We all have emotional baggage and we often bring it with us when we travel through life. This is the tale of two people brought together by crazy circumstances, similar trust issues, and self-absorbed ex-spouses. When they packed their luggage for this particular trip, they managed to pack their good sense,
although it took them a while to find it underneath all the stuff they didn’t really need….

  Chapter One —

  “You have just over twenty four hours to get here. If you’re not here by four tomorrow, consider yourself fired.”

  “But I haven’t found an available flight,” I protested. “I’m still stuck here in Florida!”

  “It doesn’t matter, Kelsey. Be here or don’t bother showing up at all. This exhibition should have been ready Wednesday. Prudence made a very big mistake giving out worthless promises she couldn’t keep. I’m not going to tolerate any more delays. And if I don’t see those last two canvases installed on the wall by noon on Sunday, I’m cancelling that bank check. You tell that to Walter.”

  Those were the last words Warren Fripp ever spoke to me. I found out later that they were probably the last words the much-hated art collector ever uttered to anyone, other than his killer. If I had known the bloody horror of what was going to happen to him, could I have altered the outcome? Could I have saved his life? I asked myself that question over and over again. To tell the truth, I honestly don’t know if I could have done anything to change the outcome.

  At that moment in time, however, I was almost a thousand miles away, desperate to find a way back to DC. I folded my flip phone shut, cursing the jerk. Here I was, stuck in the amusement park Mecca of Florida, finishing up my work for Uncle Jack. The local realtor I hired on his behalf had sold the third-floor unit at the Costa del Sol in nine days, thanks to an aggressive marketing effort and Uncle Jack’s willingness to drop the price by five thousand dollars. I had packed his things into boxes over the last three weeks and arranged for them to be sent to Merriweather Woods, the assisted living paradise where he was now comfortably ensconced with his lady friend, the lovely Leonora. None of this would have come about if it hadn’t been for the serious fall Leonora had out by the condo pool. She shattered her knee cap on the cement, leading her son and daughter-in-law to decide that it was time for Leonora to move back to New Jersey, closer to them. Heartbroken, Uncle Jack decided to follow his lady, and that’s when he enlisted my help. I finally took that vacation time I had been saving for a big trip, and instead of lying on a beach in Fiji, coconut drink in hand, I had spent the better part of a month in Celebration, Florida. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t really mind helping out. Uncle Jack has been good to me and I knew he was desperate to be with Leonora as she recovered. Her injury had been serious enough to warrant three surgeries, with a lengthy physical therapy program planned as soon as she was able to endure it. I focused myself on the positives. Once Uncle Jack was settled in New Jersey, I’d be able to visit him more often. Uncle Jack was a guy who deserved happiness. He had cared for Aunt Amelia, my mother’s sister, for six long years as she slipped into the black hole that is Alzheimer’s. Leonora brought him out of the darkness and back to life, filling his days with joy and kindness, not to mention golf and fishing. I wanted what they had, that lovely companionship and true delight in each other. I’m a sucker for a real romance, even late in life. I was hoping the magic of their relationship would rub off on me. Call it Kismet, but I wanted to believe that if I helped these star-crossed lovers to be together, I would be rewarded for my goodness with my own version of true love. It’s just that all this work for my uncle complicated the work I did for the ever-demanding, abrasive Warren Fripp.

  The moving van, loaded with all of Uncle Jack’s worldly possessions, had been on the road exactly six minutes when I called Warren to tell him I was working on travel arrangements. And now I had twenty four hours to get myself to St. Michaels, where my boss was entertaining friends and business acquaintances at the opening of his new gallery, Bliss Redux, on the Chesapeake Bay.

  “Son of a….” I sputtered as Warren hung up on me.

  “Easy, girl!” It was Mr. Wilfred, Uncle Jack’s neighbor. “You look like you’re going to blow a gasket. What gives?”

  I gave him the short version of my woeful tale, ending with the fact that I would soon be out of a job. There was no way I was going to find a flight on such short notice, not without filing for bankruptcy to afford the ticket. The fact that Warren was insisting that I come back early from my vacation just sent me over the top. If it weren’t for the fact that I had just bought a new condo in Arlington, and used almost all my savings for the down payment, I’d have told him to go pound sand.

  “I am totally screwed,” I sighed heavily. “No way out.”

  “Nonsense. Take the auto train. You can even bring your car with you,” he told me. “It takes about seventeen hours, so you could be there by tomorrow.”

  “But I don’t have a car,” I confided.

  “You definitely need a car to ride the auto train,” Mr. Wilfred admitted. “What about Jack’s car?”

  “I’m supposed to sell it when I come back in two weeks for the closing.”

  “Why don’t you take the car today? Uncle Jack won’t mind.” Mr. Wilfred reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “I have the number for the auto train in here somewhere. If you hurry, you should be able to make it there on time.”

  “But I’m not even packed,” I groaned. “There’s so much to do!”

  “No problem,” said the friendly neighbor. “Let me get the car all ready for you. I’ll gas it up and check the oil. You just get packed.”

  “Great,” I said. It took me half an hour, but I managed to pull it all together. I gathered my clothes and shoes from the walk-in closet, stuffing everything back into my suitcases. I took a last look around Uncle Jack’s condo. It looked presentable for the closing.

  Since I was going to use his car, I decided to stop at a local gallery on my way to the station. I had seen a couple of prints of street scenes done by a local artist with a decent reputation the week before, planning to ship them up to Merriweather Woods. Now I could just bring them with me. I knew Uncle Jack and Leonora would enjoy them as a reminder of the start of their romance in Celebration.

  “Any chance you could wrap these for me now? I’m kind of in a rush,” I explained. “I’m taking the auto train to Lorton.”

  “No problem,” said the older man behind the counter. “Anything else?”

  “That gecko over there — is that papier-mâché?”

  “You like it?” He walked over and picked it up to show me. “I can let you have it for fifty bucks.”

  I hesitated, wondering if I really needed it, especially at that price. Nearly three feet tall, it was bright green and blue, comical and fun. Warren’s show was contemporary and I thought it made a nice accent piece for the lobby of the gallery, to greet visitors as they walked in. The uplifted claws on one of the gecko’s hands might allow me to add a sign.

  “How about forty?” the man suggested.

  “Forty? That sounds good. I’ll take it. Can you wrap that, too?”

  Another customer came in as the gecko was whisked into the back for wrapping. Tall, good-looking, he sported a Florida tan and an intensity that was disconcerting.

  “Raul, is my sculpture ready?” he demanded as the gallery owner returned.

  “Oh, Mr. Cañizo, I am so sorry. I wanted to let you check it before it’s wrapped, to make sure it’s what you wanted. Let me go get it.” As he turned to leave, I called out.

  “Excuse me. I hate to interrupt. I just want to pop into the drugstore for a couple of things. I’ll be right back.”

  “No problem, miss,” was the reply.

  Dashing up and down the aisles, I searched for the things I needed for the trip and the gallery opening. Pantyhose, sugarless mint gum, a diet soda, and a pack of pretzels would tide me over. I plunked everything down on the checkout counter, swiped my debit card, and signed on the dotted line. I took the bag from the clerk and tucked it into my oversized purse before returning to the gallery. The owner was still talking to his customer. I could see an employee working with boxes and brown paper in the back room as I stood off to the side. He carried out a rather large box for th
e man who was waiting and put it down on the counter. He left momentarily and returned with my three packages. “These are for you, miss. Let me carry them to your car.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled at the gallery owner and his customer. Only one of them returned my farewell.

  When we got to Uncle Jack’s car, I popped the trunk and the young man loaded my packages in beside my suitcases.

  “Going on a trip?” he wondered.

  “Auto train,” I explained.

  “My auntie took that last year. She said it was great. Enjoy,” he told me.

  An hour later, I was sitting in line at the Sanford station, waiting to load Uncle Jack’s 2002 blue Camry on the train. Thanks to a last-minute cancellation and Mr. Wilfred’s negotiations with the clerk in the ticket office, I booked a coach seat for the ride to Lorton.

  Once I checked Uncle Jack’s car in and the attendant a large number 248 on the side of the Camry, I grabbed my two bags out of the trunk, and climbed aboard the passenger car of the auto train. I found my seat and settled myself down. Moments later, I hooked up to the Wi-Fi and sent off a couple of emails, trying to convince Walter that it was imperative he deliver the two canvases to Bliss Redux personally. I contacted my assistant, Bella, and gave her the priority to-do list for tomorrow. I went over issues that needed resolving, including arrangements for the two of us to be in St. Michaels on time. She emailed me back five minutes later and shared some of the more insidious incidents with Warren that occurred in my absence. I made a note to give her a bonus as soon as I was paid for this job.