Carats and Coconuts

by Scott, D. D.

  But wild screams coming from upstream made the pinching for reality totally unnecessary.

  Whatever was happening back there was very sure to be real and possibly life threatening.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time we’d scrambled to our feet, Beefcakes was heading toward us along the river’s edge. He was waving his arms high in the air, as if we wouldn’t be able to see that jolly-tanned giant coming at us.

  Roman quickly arranged for Beefcakes to guard our Long Tom while he, R and I took off for Bunny and Grams’ mining site.

  I don’t even want to take you to where all my mind was racing as we did the best we could in our heavy waders to scramble to their site to see what the hell was going on up there. Those thoughts were surely scarier than what we were about to see. Although, nothing good could make people scream like that. Let’s just hope the screaming continued, which would mean they were still alive.

  Reaching the base of the last tiny hill before Grams and Bunny’s camp, I paused just long enough to catch my breath, thinking if there was ever a time for a yoga deep breath, it was sure as hell now.

  “You okay, Princess?” Roman asked, stopping beside me and rubbing my back.

  I bent forward, hands on my knees, trying to suck in some much needed air.

  “Yeah. Just a little out of shape. That’s all.”

  We crested that last hill together and speed-walked the last few yards to their Long Tom, which was now abandoned.

  But to our relief, at least life hadn’t abandoned them. I scanned the small crowd and quickly accounted for everyone. Okay…everyone…except Grams.

  “Where’s Grams? And what’s all the screaming about? Jesus. We thought you all were dying some horrible death,” I said, trying to shield the sun from my eyes as I continued scouring the site for Grams.

  “At this point, dying would be a relief,” The Foz said, clearly shaken by whatever had occurred.

  “Don’t wish for something you’d regret receiving,” R said, in that stoic but dead serious way he did while threatening someone’s well-being.

  Have I mentioned that I hope I’m never on that guy’s bad side? I love him like an adopted grandpa, but I’m still scared shitless of him.

  Fosito said something in Portuguese that clearly got Roman and R’s panties in a pinch, but I didn’t have a clue what it was, which was probably a good thing.

  The sooner we could nail that asshole, the better. But for now, we had to continue to let him think he was part of our trusted team.

  “So again…where’s Grams?” I asked.

  And with that, there she was, naked as a very disturbed jaybird, waving her arms and speaking in tongues over the tops of a nearby row of wild jungle shrubs.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked her, seeing her clothes on the picnic table the crowd had been gathered in front of.

  I grabbed her horridly mismatched garments and headed for the shrubs.

  “It’s my job to keep track of this Foz bastard, and I prefer to garden in the nude,” she said, almost hissing at me, probably because I was holding out her clothes with a look strongly indicating she’d better get her small skinny ass into ’em.

  “What does gardening in the nude have to do with guarding Fosito? And for what it’s worth, you’re mining for gems, not gardening.”

  “Gardening in the nude is a lot cheaper than using scarecrows,” she said, without a hint of hesitation or inclination that there was anything wrong with what she’d done.

  “Let me guess. Another Maxine-ism?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps, my ass. Cover up yours and get out of those bushes. There could be snakes in there.”

  I looked at Grams, and unfortunately, I knew precisely where her mind was now wandering.

  “And not the kind of snakes you prefer.”

  “You should be thanking me,” she said, not waiting to get dressed before sashaying out from behind the bushes, which for a moment, had covered at least part of her.

  “Thanking you for what?” I asked, blocking her tiny frame with mine, so as to not further incite the crowd.

  “You told me to guard that son of a bitch, and I did. And trust me, after what he’s seen today, he’ll be too traumatized to do anything else all day long.”

  “You’ve got a point there,” I said, thinking she was probably right.

  Hell, The Foz actually looked kind of pale, which was hard to do with his dark skin.

  “You’re damn right I’ve got a point. And for the record, I don’t do anything half-ass.”

  “Obviously,” I said, looking away from her trying so hard not to laugh.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Back at the lodge, we settled in for the remainder of the afternoon. All of us were too out of sorts to continue our mining operations.

  Following our Bonus Stone discovery and Grams’ latest Maxine Moment, Roman, R and I couldn’t deal with the idle chitchat the others were engaging in. Besides, we needed to place a conference call to my parents. So, we excused ourselves and met up in my father’s den.

  At this stage in the game, we had to not only keep Fosito in sight at all times, we also had to go deeper still within his gem-trading schemes.

  I settled into my father’s well-worn, faux leather club chair, while Roman and R sat on the large matching sofa across from me.

  My father’s comforting voice began to filter through the conference phone’s speaker system.

  Even in the midst of the total chaos we were now involved in, my father always remained a source of quiet, self-assured reason.

  Actually, the only time he ever waivered from that was when he and Father Time were at each other’s bearded throats. Thank goodness their latest hullabaloo was over, but I wasn’t in total denial. It wouldn’t be long before they were at it again.

  So, Father Time rattled my St. Nick possessed Dad, but the thugs from his gem-mining jungle world didn’t.

  “You’re certain that Stanley has already given the Maple Lynch money to Fosito?” Dad posed the question to any one of the three of us who could answer him.

  I could picture him and my mom in their home office, back along the fabulous shores of Lake Michigan. The office was set up a lot like this one. My mom would be in a chair just like mine, while my dad would have the whole couch to himself with his feet up. Both of them were more than likely sipping hot cocoa while chatting with us as if this were just a normal staff meeting.

  Just the thought of that made me feel a little more calm. And wow could I use a whole bunch of that!

  “Yes. Bunny and Beefcakes confirmed for me this morning that the transfer has taken place. Actually, it took place yesterday. So we’re all good there,” R said.

  “And Fosito claimed he’d indeed try to buy more gems from his rogue Sol Larga sources,” Roman added.

  “We’ll be there when the trade goes down,” R said.

  “And that’s when we’ll finally nail the bastards,” I said.

  As I thought about stopping Fosito and Stanley’s smuggling ring, the calm completely left me.

  “This investigation has taken waaay too long,” my mother finally spoke. “And I’m still not convinced we know everything.”

  “I have to agree with you, Suzie,” Roman said, as he left the couch to take up his habit of pacing off a room while connecting his theories and concerns.

  “We now know there are over a hundred Brazilian police officers involved, as well as government officials from the Bureau of Indigenous Affairs. Not to mention the Belgian buyers egging on all this greed to its maximum take-everything mentality. This is much more than the sale of our gemstones,” Mom said.

  Her voice was always much more intense than my dad’s.

  I had always thought I was more like my mom in that regard, but it wasn’t until I started down this latest Cozy Cash Trail that I realized just how much.

  I wish I had more of my dad’s easygoing ways, but in this world, that could get you killed.
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  “Even the governor of the state on which your mines are located is now under investigation,” R added.

  “Chief Valente was approached by the governor and a local mayor. They wanted to trade improved roads, schools and medical clinics in exchange for placing new Long Toms and other extraction machines on the reservation. When Valente refused, the officials pulled Fosito’s men from the roadblocks and allowed their own wildcat miners to continue business as usual,” Roman said.

  “That also meant back to business as usual for Stanley and Fosito. Their smuggling operations are back in full swing,” I said, “but that’s what’s bothering you and I most, Mom. If business was sooo good now, why did Stanley place that last call to Myra?”

  “Precisely, my dear. Why now, when all was back in high gear, would Stanley tell Myra how nervous he was and that he needed to get out of the country immediately and back to their New York Diamond District base?”

  I knew my mom, and she was thinking the same thing I was, but if we voiced those thoughts in front of the men we loved, we’d basically be putting a price on their heads that was even higher than those on ours.

  I’m not usually a person who waits for anyone to take the lead away from me, but this time I needed to let Mom start this part of the conversation.

  “Stanley was worried about one particular shipment,” she began.

  An eerie silence descended both in our room and in my parent’s office in Michigan.

  Not one of the men said anything. And the silence was horrible to sit through.

  At least Roman and R had each other to take comfort in. My poor dad had no one.

  I knew Roman would be the first to finally say something, and he proved me right.

  “What shipment?”

  Now that he was back to his two-sentence questions, I knew the intensity in our hemisphere of the world had rocketed to new heights.

  “The missing shipment he’d promised Fosito,” I said, looking at Roman, begging him with my eyes to just hear us out before he flipped his gourd.

  Not that he wasn’t entitled to flip his gourd, because he certainly was. I just hoped to keep it to one single explosion instead of a fireworks extravaganza.

  “What kind of missing shipment?” Dad asked.

  I envisioned his hands tightening around his beard.

  “Stanley used another, unreported and very large shipment of our stones as collateral on a second Maple Lynch loan, a loan he then planned to use to finance another deal he’d made with Fosito,” I said, beginning to fill in the blanks of this saga.

  “But Fosito, not knowing that shipment was Stanley’s collateral, not that he would care anyway, stole the shipment and sold it himself in Antwerp, leaving Stanley without the collateral to make good on his loan or his deal with Fosito,” Mom continued.

  “So Stanley needs to find or at least needs us to find this new stash of the largest ever take from these mines to pay off Fosito? And if he doesn’t, then what?” Roman asked.

  The fact he was back to using more than two word sentences gave me hope.

  “Or…one-by-one, Fosito will take out all of Witherspoon and Witherspoon and our associates,” I said, knowing this time, the silence would be broken in a big way with finale-worthy fireworks from Roman, R and my dad.

  “How did you find out about this shipment?” Dad asked, his voice louder than I’d ever heard it, even when he was fighting with Father Time.

  “Would you believe…,” I started to explain, not even knowing how to say this, “on Facebook?”

  “Facebook?!” Roman, R and my dad all shouted in unison.

  “According to Grams, that’s how you learn who’s bad and who’s good. ‘On that damn Facebook’ to quote her exact words,” I said, feeling heat flush my cheeks.

  “Hmmm…I’ll have to make a note of that for next year’s Naughty List,” Dad said, clearly back in his own private Santa Claus Land.

  “Let me guess…she learned that from Maxine too?” Roman asked.

  I didn’t have to say anything. My now super hot, and probably brilliantly cherry red, cheeks gave it away.

  “So Grams can found out something on Facebook, and you didn’t have the decency to tell me, knowing damn well all of our lives are at stake?!” Roman’s tanned Italian skin suddenly looked more tomato red than sun-kissed Mediterranean.

  “Our lives would have been more at risk if I had told you!” I shouted at him for the first time.

  Actually, for the record, till that moment, he’d never shouted at me either. Nothing like a couple’s first argument to know your relationship is real.

  “No, Zoey! You’re always more at risk from what you don’t know. It’s not what you know that kills you. It’s what you don’t know!”

  And with that, he stormed out of the room and slammed the door.

  I looked at R, who looked just as distressed by Roman’s behavior as I was.

  “He’ll be okay. Just give him some time.”

  “We don’t have time, R. That’s my concern. You do know that I only withheld all this because I care so much about all of you, right?”

  “I know that. And so does Roman,” R stood up and started for the door. “But what you don’t get is that your marriage isn’t just a publicity stunt to Roman. He loves you, Zoey. And your family too. But he can’t protect you, and neither can I, if you don’t tell us everything you know.”

  “I’m sorry, R.”

  “Don’t tell me. Tell your husband,” he said, then left me alone in the room.

  Well, not alone. My parents were still there via conference call.

  “I think you and your mother here better start spillin’ the damn beans, Pumpkin,” my dad said, calling me by the name he used when I was in trouble as a little girl.

  I didn’t know how to answer that. He was right. Absolutely right.

  “I love you, Pumpkin.”

  “I do too, my dear,” my mom said, her voice clearly shaken by Roman’s outburst.

  “I love you both too.”

  “We know that,” Dad said. “But it sounds like there’s someone who doesn’t.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I waited patiently outside the lodge’s bar while Roman made it clear to Grams that she should definitely keep up the great work on Facebook.

  Who would have ever thought that Grams was both the dare devil of The Mom Squad, as well as the computer hack of the bunch?

  From what I could hear from where I stood behind a large potted palm tree at the bar’s entrance, Grams wasn’t just proficient at hacking. She was a government spy-worthy, quant-level computer genius. A quant, who, from the way it sounded, actually could have given Zuckerberg a run for his money creating Facebook.

  Still eavesdropping on Roman and Grams’ conversation, I couldn’t believe she was a quant by hobby only. Instead of spending her working years in a cubicle cracking and hacking codes, she’d spent them in a kitchen as a Meat n’ Three Diner queen. A-mazing.

  Let’s just hope I had more skill than Zuckerberg and Grams when it came to interpersonal relations.

  Somehow, I had to get Roman to understand that I do care about him – a lot – and that’s why I’d kept all this from him.

  But how was I supposed to say that?

  And here’s something else I was stewing about…

  Here I was being made to look like the asshole, but I don’t ever recall one moment in which Roman has ever said he loved me.

  Nope. I’d have definitely remembered that.

  So why was it suddenly up to me to take our relationship to another level?

  “Are you now a plant whisperer too?”

  Before I could come up with a plan, I’d been busted behind the potted palm by my Prince.

  “What all did you hear?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t matter what I heard. I’m more interested in what you decide to tell me, now that you know you’ve got my full attention.”

  Damn! I hate it when he gets all tough on me.


  “Is it hot in here?” I asked.

  “We’re in the rainforest. It’s always hot.”

  “How ‘bout we sit out on the porch and get some fresh jungle air?”

  Roman lifted his eyebrows and ushered me toward the French doors which led from the lodge to a wrap-around veranda.

  We took a seat in two kudzu vine chairs side-by-side and settled into our thoughts.

  I could only imagine what he was thinking, and where I was concerned, it couldn’t be good.

  But that’s okay. Even though I finally realized how much I was actually in love with the guy, I didn’t always think warm and cuddly thoughts about him either.

  “So what’s goin’ on in that head of yours?” He asked.

  “I’d tell ya, but then I’d have to kill ya,” I answered, twirling my hair so tight around my pointer finger, I’d have one terrific ringlet thanks to another steamy night in the jungle.

  “That’s my line,” Roman said, taking my hand in his.

  Even though I wanted to be mad at him, I could never seem to get there. And I knew, even though he’d gotten on me pretty hard back in my dad’s office, he was still my number one fan.

  And yes. I wasn’t in denial.

  I’d deserved every bit of what he’d dished out.

  Sort of.

  “You do understand why I withheld all this from you, right?”

  “I don’t know. Should I?”

  Well damn. He’s wasn’t about to make this any easier on me was he?

  “You want to play hard ball? Fine. Let’s see how tough you really are,” I said, knowing right then exactly how I was going to play this.

  I looked right at him, deep into those eyes that I’d come to think of as my home away from home.

  “I love you.”

  I said it. Just like that.

  But he never so much as batted a lash.

  “Is that all you got? All hands played?” He asked, although his voice, now huskier and deeper than usual, betrayed his attempt at a Bond-cool response.

  “Yep. Everything I’ve got is on the table with just that one card,” I said, able to hear the tremble in my voice.