The sisters stopped. Liv heard Chaz breathe out an epithet from behind her.
Whiskey barked and planted his feet, growling at the newcomers.
“Shut him up,” the taller thug said and aimed his gun at Whiskey.
“No,” Liv yelled and scooped him up. Whiskey continued to bare his teeth at the man and growl. He knew a bad guy when he saw one.
So did Liv.
The men were dressed all in black—not the black of sophisticated New Yorkers, but the black of every gangster movie she’d ever seen.
And she was hit by a gut-level understanding of how clichés came into being. The two newcomers carried their parts to a tee. Down to the wiseguy Chicago accents. Maybe by way of Poughkeepsie, but they’d perfected it.
Liv took a breath. Her mind was ricocheting crazily, which always happened when she panicked. She needed to focus, but it was really hard to take these guys seriously. Except she had no doubt their firearms were deadly. That sobered her up pretty quickly.
“Hand them over,” the one on the left said.
Everybody just stood there.
Liv glanced at Chaz. He was focused on the man’s face. He was up to something. She could see the little muscle in his jaw twitching. She hoped to heaven he wasn’t planning on rushing them. He’d never make it.
It was Miss Ida who found her voice first. “If you gentlemen would just explain what you are looking for, we’d be delighted to help.”
The man’s jaw dropped. His companion took a step forward.
“I really think you must have made a mistake,” Miss Edna said in her sternest high school teacher voice.
“Which one of you offed Jimmy?” the other man demanded.
“No one.” That was Chaz. Liv was afraid to look at him. She really hoped he wasn’t planning to do something stupid. Not only stupid, but dangerous. Concentrate, Liv. He may want your help.
“We don’t even know who Jimmy is,” Chaz continued. “A man was fished out of the lake near here a couple of days ago. As far as I know, the police haven’t identified him.”
“Shut up.” He pointed the gun toward Seamus. “You. You know anything about this.?”
Seamus shook his head. Opened his mouth.
Chaz jumped in. “It’s probably that guy on the floor.” He pointed to Manny, who was still out cold. “He broke in and held everyone up. We overpowered him. You better ask him.”
Liv prayed that Manny stayed unconscious.
The gunman scanned the group. “Let me put it this way. We want this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.
Liv recognized it right away. It was her note from the fish camp. I’ve taken the fish to the Zimmermans’.
No one moved. He waggled the paper toward Chaz, who took it. Read it. Shrugged. “I don’t know anything about this.”
The man frowned at Ida and Edna. “Are you two the Zimmermans?”
“We are Zimmermans,” Edna said.
“But there are quite a few Zimmermans in the area,” Miss Ida said. “You probably have the wrong address. Would you like to borrow our phone book?”
Liv was afraid Chaz was going to laugh out loud. As for Liv, she was astounded at the sangfroid of the sisters.
“Yeah. Yeah. Where’s the fish . . . Miss Ida?”
“Really, young man,” Edna said. “We have a freezer full of fish.”
Seamus frowned at her. Liv guessed he was having a hard time following what was going on.
“Show me.”
“Well, it’s in the basement.”
The man motioned to his companion. “Go down with her. And don’t get smart, lady, or your friends will bite it.”
Miss Edna gave him a disappointed look. As if he’d just misspelled an easy vocabulary word. Liv hoped, really hoped, that Edna didn’t have any plans to overpower her guard.
She opened the door to the cellar and started down, followed by the sidekick.
A few moments later, the gunman inched over to the cellar door and called out. “What’s taking you so long? You’re looking for a fish.”
“They’re all wrapped up,” echoed from the cellar.
“Well, open them.”
Yes, do, slowly, thought Liv. That would give Bill time to get here and surround the building.
“You’ll ruin all the food we’ve put up for the winter,” Ida scolded.
“Ricky,” the man called to his partner.
“Yeah,” came from the cellar.
“Look for dates. That’s what my wife does. Take the newest packages out and bring them here.”
This guy was married? Liv couldn’t even imagine. Steal some stuff, maybe kill a few people, and come home to a hot dinner on the table. The mind boggled.
A few minutes later, footsteps sounded, and for an instant Liv thought it might be the police, but it was Edna and Ricky returning from the basement, arms loaded with frozen food. On the bottom of the pile Ricky was holding was the fish that Liv had brought them.
Gus groaned and sat up. Seamus slid down to sit beside him.
“Nobody move,” the gunman ordered.
A growl from Whiskey, which Liv quickly hushed by gripping his muzzle. And another growl, which Liv thought might have come from Gus or Seamus.
Edna dumped her load on the kitchen table and grimaced at Liv as she moved away. Liv tried to read what she was thinking. She was obviously perturbed about something. Maybe she was upset that she hadn’t been able to overpower Ricky while they were downstairs. With the sisters, you never knew what they would come up with.
Ricky dumped his armful on top of Edna’s. The pile of frozen foods shifted, and several packages slid to the floor, the big lake trout among them.
Whiskey, tempted beyond what he’d learned at obedience school, jumped from Liv’s arms and headed for the fish as the gunman leaned over to pick it up. But instead of going for the fish, Whiskey sank his teeth into the man’s ankle and held on.
The man yowled and dropped his gun. Whiskey let go of his ankle and grabbed the fish tail between his teeth, dragging it toward the mudroom.
Chaz threw himself at Ricky’s back, forcing him into the table of frozen goods. He hit with an oomph. Gus crawled over in an attempt to retrieve the gun, while Seamus went after the second thug.
Liv ran after Whiskey to save the fish.
By the time she caught up to him, Whiskey had chewed the paper off most of the fish. Liv could see it was just a fish. The same fish she had seen that day on the pier. She grabbed it anyway.
“Fish has bones,” she admonished him and ran back, cradling the lake trout just as the thug overpowered Seamus and rolled him to his back. The gun was just a couple of feet away. Liv rushed to kick it out of the way, but she was too late. She saw Chaz coming to help. But the gunman was faster. As he reached for the gun, Liv fought back with the only weapon she had.
She swung with all her might. The fish hit the gunman’s head with a whack. He went down; the fish flew out of her hands and landed in the sink, strewing rock salt across the counter.
The air was split by a bullhorn. “YOU’RE SURROUNDED. GIVE YOURSELVES UP.”
Chaz reached for his cell and pressed a number on speed dial. “It’s over. Come on in and get them,” he said and hung up.
Bill and his crew rushed in. They took in the situation and handcuffed the two intruders and Manny.
“What about Seamus and Gus?” Bill asked.
“Maybe,” Chaz said distractedly. “Come look at this.” He was at the sink, where the fish tail stuck out above the enamel rim like a flag of surrender.
Bill came over. “Holy cow. Is that what I think it is?”
Liv came, too. Along with Edna, Ida, and Seamus and Gus. They all crowded around the sink.
Not rock salt. “Diamonds?” Liv asked.
“They’re ours,” Seamus said.
“You too aren’t working with these goons, are you? I won’t be able to keep you out of jail if you are.”
“Naw,” Gus said. “We found them.”
“Found them?” Bill asked incredulously.
“Yeah.”
“Found them on Jimmy the Snail’s body before you tossed him overboard,” Chaz said.
Seamus frowned at him. Gus just shuffled his feet.
“Fellas, please tell me that you didn’t kill him.”
“We didn’t,” Seamus said. “We didn’t even know him.”
“Try again,” Bill said.
“It’s the truth. We were doing some, uh, fishing up near the border, and this guy hitched a ride with us.”
“And you shot him for the diamonds?”
“No. I’ll tell you what happened . . .”
Chapter 10
“So we’re minding our own business,” Seamus said.
Gus nodded from where he was sitting at the dining table with an ice pack on the bump on his head.
They all had been sent there while Officer Meese supervised the cleanup detail, the gathering of the diamonds, and the return of the frozen food to the basement freezer.
Now Officer Meese stood nearby taking notes. A.K. Pierce, who had arrived in time to oversee the transportation of the perpetrators, was standing in the doorway, his eyes on the two veterans.
As far as interviews went, it was pretty informal. After Manny and the two thugs were taken off to jail, Edna insisted that everyone else sit down for coffee and cookies.
“Besides, we want to know what’s going on,” Ida said, getting out the tea china. White with deep red roses around the edges.
“Really, Bill,” Edna said. “It isn’t fair that you’d take Seamus and Gus away without letting us hear their story. After all, Chaz and Liv overcame the bad guys and Liv was the one who found the diamonds hidden in the fish.”
Liv started to protest that her finding the diamonds was just the outcome of braining the bad guy with the frozen fish, but she might as well have saved her breath. The sisters had their own version of the story—one where Chaz and Liv were the heroes and Ida and Edna mere supernumeraries.
Bill caved, as everyone in Celebration Bay always did with the sisters. They all remembered being Miss Ida and Miss Edna’s students, and they were still in the habit of doing whatever their teachers said.
Bill cleared his throat. “Let me get this right. You and Gus were minding your own business, anchored in a cove on the Canadian border.”
“Fishin’s real good there,” Gus offered.
“Uh-huh. Was that before or after you exchanged goods and money with your contact there?”
Seamus and Gus looked blank.
Bill sighed and dropped that subject. “Then what happened?”
“We were shoving off and this guy comes running out of the woods.”
“Down the street,” Gus broke in.
“Oh yeah, down the street. There were a lot of trees though,” Seamus said. “Anyway, this guy comes running down to the water, yells at us that he wants to hitch a ride.”
“We thought it was kind of funny since he didn’t know where we were going, but then he said he could pay, and well, what the hey, we let him come aboard. He sat down on the bench on deck and we made for home.”
“He didn’t ask where you were mooring?”
“Nope,” Gus said. “Just said he had an angry husband after him. So we thought, least we could do, ya know?”
Neither Bill nor A.K. answered.
“Anyway. We shoved off and came home. He just sat on the deck, didn’t talk or nuthin’. But when we docked here, he just keeled over. That’s when we saw he’d been shot.”
“More than once,” Gus added.
“And he was deader than a doorknob,” Seamus said. “We didn’t know, honest. He didn’t say nothing, didn’t moan, didn’t even ask for a drink. Just keeled over right when we stopped at the pier.”
“So you searched him and decided to steal the diamonds?”
“No man, we looked in his pockets for some identification. You know, so we could notify the next of kin.”
“And where is this ID now?”
“That’s just it, he didn’t have any.”
“Didn’t have no money, either,” Gus added.
“That’s right,” Seamus said. “He stiffed us.”
“But you did discover the diamonds.”
“They were in a pouch in his pants pocket. And, well, finders keepers.”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “We found them, so they’re ours.”
“They are stolen property. And the people who shot Jimmy were the people he tried to double-cross.” Bill looked seriously from one to the other. “And you don’t want to mess with those guys.”
Seamus shook his head.
Gus shook his, too, but reluctantly. “Sure would have liked to keep them.”
Bill looked over to Meese. “Are the officers satisfied that we’ve recovered all the diamonds?”
“We did a thorough sweep of the room,” Meese told him.
Bill turned back to Seamus. “You didn’t keep any for yourself before you hid them in the fish, did you?”
Seamus shook his head slowly.
Gus shook his head even more slowly.
A.K. shoved away from the door frame. Crossed to the two men. And held out his hand to Seamus. “Hand it over, Sergeant.”
Seamus looked at A.K.’s hand, screwed up his mouth. Looked over to Gus. Who in turn looked back at A.K.
Seamus leaned on one hip while he searched his trouser pocket—and came out with a clear, faceted stone. He looked at it longingly and dropped in into A.K.’s palm.
A.K. nodded to Seamus. He turned to Gus and went through the same ritual he’d just gone through with Seamus, until Gus reached in his pocket and handed another diamond to A.K..
“We only kept them for good luck,” Seamus explained.
A.K. nodded. He opened his palm, displaying two diamonds that looked very small in his palm. “We appreciate you giving them back. Good work, soldiers.” A.K. spoke to them, but he was looking at Bill.
“I imagine there will be a reward,” Bill said. “Not as much cash as you’d get on the black market for the diamonds, but it will be safer, and it will buy a lot of fishing gear.”
Seamus and Gus looked at each other, then nodded simultaneously.
Liv realized that they hadn’t argued with each other once since she and Chaz had arrived at the Zimmermans’ house.
Bill stood as A.K. led the two men out of the house. “Thank you, Miss Edna, Miss Ida, for the use of your house. Liv, Chaz, I’ll talk to you later.” He left the room.
“What I don’t understand,” Miss Edna said as she watched the men leave, “is how those thugs found out where the diamonds were.”
“Probably heard about the shooting on the news,” Chaz said. “Traced Jimmy to the marina and followed the note here. Or, more likely, followed Manny here. He knew something was up. We caught him searching Seamus and Gus’s boat.”
“And that was my fault for putting your name on the note I left for Manny.” Liv sighed. “I led them all here.”
“It’s not your fault, dear,” Miss Ida said.
“And you kept them from getting away and found the diamonds,” Miss Edna added. “My, what a morning. More coffee, anyone?”
When they were finished, Liv helped carry dishes back to the kitchen, then she and Chaz walked out the back door with Whiskey.
“Well,” Chaz said, looking up at the sky, “looks like it might be a nice day tomorrow. Want to give fishing one more try?”
“Fishing?” Liv crinkled her nose. “Thanks, but I don’t t
hink so.” She started down the back stairs.
“Oh come on, Liv. You didn’t even get started good.”
“That was enough for me.”
“I’ll bait your hook.”
“Yesterday we had lures.”
“I’ve got smashed peanut butter sandwiches.”
“Sounds wonderful, but I think I’ll pass.”
“I can’t believe you’re wussing out on me after twenty minutes of fishing.”
“During which I caught a mafia bagman, was introduced to a band of smugglers, knocked a man out with a frozen fish, and discovered a cache of stolen diamonds,” Liv said. “No, tomorrow I’m going for that mani-pedi you kidded me about, and next year . . .” She hesitated. “I think I’ll just go to the beach.”
Keep reading for a preview of the next Celebration Bay novel
TRICK OR DECEIT
Available September 2015
Liv Montgomery stopped at the bottom of the town hall steps to button her jacket. A year before, she’d moved to Celebration Bay, New York, from Manhattan, complete with a totally new “country” wardrobe of corduroy, plaids, comfortable shoes, even a hat with earflaps. Now she only brought out the earflaps when it was below ten degrees, which, being early October, it wasn’t, and her jacket had finally lost its shiny, right-off-the-racks-at-L.L.Bean look.
And she was getting a lot fewer digs about being a city girl. Actually, since she’d taken over the duties of town event planner, attendance to activities had tripled, and she was becoming an accepted member of the community, most of the time.
Her assistant, Ted Driscoll, a tall, lean man of a certain age and an untalked-about past, tucked up his collar then took her elbow. Beneath the jacket he was wearing a black pullover with a bat knitted onto the front.
Ted loved his holidays, and the women at the Yarn Barn kept him in festive sweaters, scarves, vests, and hats. He had a good singing voice, adored Liv’s white Westie, Whiskey, knew his way around a computer, and had nerves of steel.
Trawling for Trouble: A Celebration Bay Mystery Novella Page 7