“We’re looking for a girl,” said Hulk.
The young man took a deep breath. “Got none here, man. We’re just a bunch of guys living together.”
“This woman could be in trouble.”
The young man’s eyes narrowed and the door closed an inch.
“She fell off our boat in the middle of the night and we’re worried about her. We think she swam ashore and went looking for help.”
The man’s eyes didn’t flicker and the door closed another inch. “Sorry. I haven’t seen anyone new in the area.”
Giovanni showed him a picture of Harley standing on a bridge in Venice. A good shot of her. Damn that woman was beautiful. The young man looked closely for a second.
“If you see her, can you let us know. Her dad’s on the boat and he’s really worried.”
The young man nodded.
“And we’ll pay for any information,” Hulk said.
“Sure. If I see her I’ll tell the police.” The door began to close.
“No.” The blond stepped into the guys face and put his foot in the doorway. “If you see her, phone us.” He gave him a slip of paper with a number on it. “The police are too slow.”
“Okay, man, I can do that.” He shut the door and the clunking of a deadlock followed.
When the men got back to the sidewalk, Giovanni swatted the blond on the back of his head.
“Hey, what’s that for?”
“You scared the guy, asshole.”
“Hey, it’s my job to scare people. That’s what I do and I’m good at it.”
Giovanni nodded. “Yeah, you are.”
Three Sheets groaned.
The men looked around for the source of the sound.
“Did you do that?” Hulk asked.
Giovanni shook his head. “Don’t mess with me kid. You did it.”
The blond’s eyes widened. “Not me.”
Three Sheets groaned again, louder, and smiled as he listened to the rumble of his ghostly charm.
They looked at each other.
“Something’s wrong here.” Giovanni’s body stiffened. His head swiveled like a stiff-necked owl, first one way and then the other, but he couldn’t see the ghost. “Something’s very wrong.”
Three Sheets stifled a laugh and with his most rumbly voice whispered, “Go back to the ship.”
The blond turned to run.
Giovanni caught the back of his coat and yelled. “You’re staying with me. We have to finish the job.”
Slowly, as if his joints had been dipped in lead, the blond turned back towards Giovanni. “Do you think it’s a ghost?”
The other man smacked him on the side of the head. “Drop a pair, man.” He gave him a bug-eyed stare so angry it looked as if his pupils might pop out. “Come on, let’s try the next house. I’ll do the talking this time.”
No one answered at the next two houses.
When they reached the third, an elderly lady answered the door. Dressed in a powder blue jogging suit and matching runners, she looked fit, despite the wrinkles that lined her face. “I don’t want no religious booklets,” she said in a raspy, smoker’s voice.
Giovanni gave her a big smile, which looked more frightening on him than his sneer. When a mobster-muscle man who takes pleasure in hurting others smiles at you, you got to wonder what’s on his mind, and there was no mistaking that that was exactly who the thug was—a violent, low-life criminal. He could have just jumped off the set of a TV movie on the Mob. “Sorry to trouble you, dear.”
“Then why are you?”
“Why am I what?”
“Troubling me.”
“We’re looking for a friend of ours. She fell off our boat and may need help.”
The woman closed the door slightly. “I got a dog. A big dog.” But she didn’t close the door completely.
“Have you seen her?” said Giovanni.
“I might have. But you know I need new glasses.”
“We’ll pay you well for any information. That might help with your glasses. I hate the thought of you not having them.”
“How much?”
“A hundred bucks.”
The door opened wider as the lady looked them both over. “It may be nothing, but I saw a strange woman yesterday. We don’t get many strangers this time of year in Sunset Cover, so I noticed her.”
“Yeah.”
“She had the kind of face you remember.”
Giovanni nodded. He looked as if he were a pot about to boil over. Patience wasn’t his thing.
“See, here’s the thing: glasses cost more than a hundred.”
“Two hundred. We’ll give you two hundred.”
“She had blue eyes and dark skin.”
“Where did you see her?”
“Five hundred. I’d like to get nice frames.”
“Is this the woman?” Giovanni showed her the picture.
The woman nodded. “Five hundred and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Done. Where did you see her?”
“In the teahouse. Let me see the money, and I’ll tell you where that is.”
The blond pulled cash out his wallet and handed the money to the woman.”
She counted it slowly. “The teahouse is at the end of the street on the west side. You can’t miss it. It has a sign that reads: ‘The Sunset Cove Teahouse.’
Giovanni looked down the road in the direction the woman pointed. “Thanks lady.”
“I’ll tell you something else for nothing.” She snickered.
The men turned their attention back to her.
“It’s haunted.”
***
As the thugs descended the woman’s stairs, Three Sheets groaned, a loud, classic, haunted-house, groan
The blond stopped dead. “I don’t know about this!”
“I thought you wanted to make some extra bucks and make the boss happy.”
“She said ghosts. It’s not good, I tell you. It’s not good.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts. They aren’t real ya know. People just make-up stories and shit.”
Before Giovanni finished his sentence a rock hit him squarely in the forehead. Three Sheets smiled, pleased at his accuracy. While he wasn’t the most powerful ghost, he could use his kinetic magic to lift and move small objects at will.
Giovanni took a step back as a red mark grew in the center of his forehead. His eyes widened to large orbs and his mouth hung open wide enough to swallow a football.
“We can’t go running into a haunted house without back-up. Who knows what we’ll run into.”
“Let me think about this.” Giovanni’s mouth twitched as if he were talking to himself. Then he grunted. “We don’t have no choice. Boss’s orders are boss’s orders. We gotta get the bitch. Dead or alive. You heard him. No matter the odds, we gotta get her.”
The Hulk trembled from head to foot.
While tormenting these thugs was both pleasurable and somewhat productive, Three Sheets needed to get back to the house to warn Harley. Not for the first time, he wished he owned a cell phone and could work it.
Giovanni pulled his out of his pocket and punched a key. “Boss.”
He listened to him for a second.
“No, we don’t have her, but—”
Fish Breath must have interrupted him.
“We know where she is.”
He listened some more.
“Yeah, yeah, boss, I know you want the woman, but there’s a problem.”
He listened.
“The place is dangerous.”
Three Sheets could hear the cursing coming through the phone.
“I just think we would be more, uh, effective, if we had back up.”
He listened.
“Yeah, we have our guns, but boss, we’re talking the kind of danger that guns can’t fix.”
He listened.
Giovanni released air from his lungs so quickly he snorted. “You won’t believe me if I tell ya boss. Just tr
ust me. We need more men.”
He listened.
“It’s a teahouse.”
He listened.
“Okay, boss, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you. It’s a haunted teahouse, as in ghosts.”
He listened as loud swearing rolled through the cell phone.
“I know, boss, I didn’t believe in them either until about a half hour ago. Someone is following us. He groans and he hit me in the middle of my forehead with a rock.”
Three Sheets doubled over laughing; imagining the response the big, bad Mob guy would have to that line.
“Now the ghost is laughing. Okay, okay, boss. You know, I’ll do whatever I have to do. We’ll head there right now, but please tell the other guys we want their help.”
“To pick up what’s left of us,” muttered Hulk. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, boss.” Giovanni put his phone back in his pocket and looked at the other guy.
“Oh no, oh no, I’m not going into a haunted house,” said the blonde.
Giovanni shrugged. “Then you better get the next bus out of town and go someplace Michel and his people can’t find you, which is nowhere on the planet, cuz you’ll never live it down. The only thing he hates more than cowards is men who disobey his orders.”
The Hulk screwed up his face.
Three Sheets moaned. “Nooooooo.”
Giovanni winced. “I didn’t hear that.”
Three Sheets kept it up, all the way to the door of the teahouse. “Nooo, nooo, nooo. You are not welcome in my home.” The two thugs said nothing, but the briskness of their stride, not to mention their shocked expressions, spoke volumes. Three Sheets stayed on them.
Four middle-aged ladies wearing dresses and heels entered the teahouse before them. They walked up the steps, opened the door without knocking and went in.
“See? How scary does this place look now? Those ladies got in just fine.”
Giovanni led the way up the stairs. The blond stayed three steps behind. Giovanni touched the door knob and yelped in pain. He jumped back. “Mother fuckin’ hell,” he yelled.
“Do not enter,” moaned Three Sheets. He knew the teahouse would help Harley, but he didn’t know how. Locking them outside was just too much fun.
The blond froze.
“The door handle is ice-cold. Like fuckin’ dry-ice Give me your jacket.”
The blonde took off his coat and passed it to him, making sure he kept his distance.
Giovanni put the jacket around the door knob, but it wouldn’t turn. He tried and he tried, but it didn’t budge. “Come here. You try it.”
Three Sheets shook his head. These had to be the most incompetent crew he had ever seen.
The blond slowly came to his side and tried, but the door would not budge for him either.
“We’ll have to break in,” Giovanni said.
“In the middle of the afternoon with witnesses inside?”
“After dark then. We’ll come back after dark and break in. We’ll get that blue-eyed bitch.”
6
It's All in the Leaves
“Home is where the anchor drops.”
(Original source unknown)
Meanwhile, inside the teahouse, Harley sat opposite Azalea in a room she said was named after the mysterious black cat that lounged in the window sill. The medium leaned back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest and looked at Harley, who wasn’t sure she would ever get used to that stare. Ever since she had crossed the line of the law, Harley had guarded her secrets closely and she wasn’t about to share them now, even with Azalea who seemed motherly, in a weird, mistress-of-a-haunted-house, kind of way.
Harley had lost at black jack the night before, and, to pay her debt, Three Sheets gave her the choice of taking her shirt off or having her tea leaves read. She chose the leaves.
Harley drank the house blend, which tasted like a bold orange pekoe and evoked the warmth and comfort of sitting in a rose garden with a good book. Following Azalea’s instructions, she turned her empty cup three times in a counter-clockwise direction on top of the saucer. She then folded her hands tightly on her lap and waited.
Azalea picked up her cup, turned it right-side up and looked inside.
Silence.
Sunlight spilled into the room through the large, bay window. On the surface the room seemed—dare she think it—normal, but she knew how deceiving looks could be. Unable to wait another minute, Harley spoke. “Okay, we need to get some things straight.”
Azalea, consumed by the leaves inside Harley’s cup, took no notice of her words.
“Azalea?” Sheesh. How did I get into this? Oh yeah, playing poker with Three Sheets. That man could sure get a woman into trouble, even in his dead state.
The older woman looked up and peered over her tortoise-shell reading glasses. Her stormy-gray eyes, which looked murkier than usual, reminded Harley of the sea during a gale. Azalea lifted a brow. “Be quiet.”
Great. Wonderful. Her wet, clumpy tea-leaves, sitting on the bottom of the china cup had made the medium cranky. That couldn’t be a good sign. Harley had imagined a medium at the beginning of a reading would be beaming with smiles and good news. But no. Uh-uh. Not for her.
Fidgeting in her seat, she tried to think of positive things. There’s so much good stuff on the bottom of my cup, Azalea can’t decide what to tell me first. Yeah, right. As if. She squirmed some more as if her panties were too tight and tapped the toes on her right foot to a song she hadn’t been able to get out of her head all morning: “Ghostbusters.” Meanwhile a stringy, classical song played on the speakers. Bach or something. Irritating as hell. This Victorian tea place was so not her scene.
“Be quiet,” Azalea said without looking up.
Harley blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Your mind. It’s so noisy. Your vibe is making it hard for me to see everything I need to see.”
Noisy? Harley sighed dramatically.
Azalea looked up at her and rolled her eyes. “Behave.”
“Look, if you can’t see anything in there, it’s okay with me. Perfectly okay.” More than perfectly okay. “I’m only here because I lost at cards to Three Sheets.”
Azalea tilted her head as if she listened, but kept her concentration on the cup. She turned the cup in her hand. “I see things, many things.”
“Cluttered, huh.”
Azalea’s shoulders relaxed a quarter inch and she looked up at her. “You have so many possibilities in your life, many places to go and people to meet. Far more than most.”
“Okay. Thanks. Can I go now?”
Azalea gave her a steely look and shook her head. “You are a free spirit, but your butterfly wings, my dear, have been set on fire.”
“I didn’t need tea leaves to tell me that.” Harley tried not to sound bitter, but she really didn’t like being chastised for living her life the way she wanted to.
“You need to make choices,” said Azalea. “Some choices could lead you and others you care about to harm. You must be careful and choose wisely.”
Harley’s toes stopped tapping, and she leaned forward. Loved ones? What loved ones? “Are you talking way in the future?”
“No, my dear, I look at your past and your present. I can’t go far into your future, as your choices will make all the difference.”
Great, her future was being explained in fortune-cookie-styled, sound-bites. But Azalea seemed so powerful. She could be telling the truth. “So what exactly do you see?” Give your head a shake. She’s pulling you in with well-practiced, vague, mystical lines. You saw the inside of that cup. A teaspoon of wet, black leaves clumped in an indistinguishable pattern. Don’t get sucked in.
“Your skepticism will not change my reading. What’s in your cup, is in your cup. Some things in life you can’t change, no matter how tough you act. I know what lies beneath your mask.”
Harley’s toes started tapping again.
�
�I can see inside you as easily as you can see into my tea cupboard when you open its door. You pretend to be tough, to hide how sensitive you are. But you can’t hide from me. You are a gentle soul with an artistic temperament. You’ve had a hard time of it, growing up in a family who spent their time downing pain killers, rather than caring for you. You seek love.”
The image of finding her mother dead from an overdose flew through Harley’s mind and she shivered. “You’re good.”
“No.” Azalea shook her head. “I’m neither good nor bad. I am a medium. Information flows through me. You have a tortured heart, filled with painful memories. It is your nature to be a free spirit. If you are wise you will accept who you are and set yourself free. To do that, you must accept in your heart that you are worthy of love. You are, like all of us, a spark of the divine seeking completion.”
Harley didn’t know what to say to that. Never had she felt divine. What had happened to the fortune cookie comments? They were easier to deal with. She had expected more typical lines from Azalea, like those you hear in bad horror movies. She had not planned on being so revealed. She bit her bottom lip. “You said I have choices?”
“Choices, yes, and dangers.”
“Danger?”
“There is a man who wants you dead. Very dead.”
“Michel DeAngelo.”
Azalea nodded. “He won’t stop looking for you until he finds you. You have wounded his male pride and, worse, he’s terrified you will send him to jail. It’s not wise to back a dangerous man into a corner.”
Harley swallowed. “I know all this.”
Azalea’s brow lifted again. “The universe sent you to us and we will do what we can to keep you safe.”
“Will he get me?”
Azalea’s eyes flashed white for a second. “Not if you make the right choices.”
“Back to choices.”
“I see a new man in your life.”
“Tall, dark and handsome?” Harley gave her a lopsided smile.
“Dangerous. Tall, dark and dangerous enough to handle you. But …” She picked up the cup again and looked into it. “He’s got baggage of his own.”
Confessions of a Pirate Ghost (Gambling Ghosts Series Book 3) Page 3