by Nic Saint
I hissed, “I want to live in something like this!”
“I wouldn’t,” said Edelie, puffing a little. “Too hot for my taste!”
“Just remove that sweater already, Edie!” Estrella admonished.
“It protects me from the sun,” she said stubbornly.
I shook my head. If given a choice Edie would probably move to Alaska. The climate suited her a lot better than the tropics.
“I could live like this,” Skip said, nodding seriously.
“Me too,” said Estrella with a wistful sigh.
Skip draped an amicable arm around Estrella’s shoulder. “You and I, babe,” he said. “This could be our dream house one day.”
“I like that,” she admitted, shaking off his arm. “I could use a pool boy.”
His face fell. “I’m not going to be your pool boy.”
“Or you could be my cabana boy,” she said with a grin. “Or both.”
“If I lived in this house it would be as the lord of the manor.”
“Dream on, pool boy. But if you’re good you can serve me and the real lord of the manor piña coladas. And maybe, just maybe, give me a back rub.”
“And who’s going to buy you this villa, huh? Some Owen Wilson type?”
Estrella was a great fan of the funny actor. “Nope. A billionaire,” she said, her eyes sparkling like the azure sea now.
Edelie and I rolled our eyes. From the time we were kids Estrella had dreamed of the day she’d meet a genuine billionaire and he’d sweep her off her feet and treat her like his very own queen. He’d support her singing career, and build her a private recording studio in their expensive and expansive mansion. According to her, billionaires did that kind of stuff all the time. They took regular girls like her and turned them into a star. Her shining example was Pia Zadora, though apart from When The Rain Begins to Fall, I couldn’t remember a single hit from her.
“And of course he’ll be royalty,” she added.
“A billionaire prince,” said Skip dubiously. “And he’s gonna fall for you?”
“Yes, he will,” she said adamantly. “Just you wait and see. And we’ll live right here, and you can come visit if you want,” she said with a glance at us.
“Gee, thanks, Strel,” I said sarcastically. “That’s mighty nice of you.”
“It’ll happen,” she promised. “One day I’ll meet my billionaire prince and he’ll whisk me away to a life of love and luxury.”
“Why don’t we just get this over with,” said Skip, tiring from Estrella’s daydreams in which he apparently only played a bit part. The guy had a crush on Strel, but obviously wasn’t a billionaire prince, nor did he stand a chance of ever becoming one. Not on the salary we were paying him.
We carefully approached the low wall that divided Rupert’s property from the beach, and scaled it, then dropped down in the back part of his garden, hiding behind the shrubs. The house might have an alarm system, but the surrounding garden hadn’t, as Aruba wasn’t known for its thieves.
Darting a keen glance at the house, I asked Edelie, “So what do we do now?” She was the one who’d discussed the alarm system with Petunia.
“It’s Sofia’s birthdate,” said Edelie, wiping her brow with her sleeve.
“Rupert will have changed it by now,” said Estrella. “He’s bound to have.”
Edelie stared at her. This was a contingency she hadn’t bargained for.
“Why don’t we just, you know, pop in and out as quickly as we can?” Skip suggested. “By the time Rupert gets wise we’ll be long gone. Right?” He gave us a questioning look, as if to make certain we knew our business.
“Oh, sure,” said Estrella. “Who do you think we are? We’re natural born thieves!”
Well, that was a slight exaggeration, but before I could protest, I saw a figure moving inside the house, and to my surprise it was… Corina Hooke!
Chapter 31
“What is she doing here?!” hissed Estrella, greatly appalled.
“She must have jumped ship!” said Edelie.
“Yeah, she must have decided Rupert offered a better deal,” I agreed.
“What if she was in on this from the start?” Estrella asked. “What if she and Rupert set this whole thing up together? Behind Petunia’s back?”
It was possible, as Rupert would have benefited from Corina’s help.
“In any case, the problem of the alarm is solved,” said Edelie.
“Now we just have to get Corina out of the picture,” added Estrella.
“So how do we do that?” asked Skip.
I gave him a slight smile. “Don’t worry about that. We have ways of making people disappear.”
“You mean like the Mob?” he asked, eyes widening.
Strel and Edie nodded, gleeful smiles spreading across their features. This woman was responsible for stabbing Petunia in the back, so we had absolutely no qualms about making her disappear. The problem was that we never knew where the stuff we made disappear turned up, so we didn’t want to take that chance with the vault, but if Corina vanished, who cared where she turned up? And as an added bonus, Rupert would think that she was the one who robbed the vault, double-crossing him. Or was it triple-crossing?
“You stay here and watch out for Rupert,” I told Skip.
“Gotcha,” he said, though he seemed a little disappointed.
We snuck from the shrubbery, keeping a keen eye on Corina. She was dressed in a bikini, and walked out of the house, ready for a dip in the pool. The moment she saw us, she froze, her lips parting on a silent scream. But before she could react, we quickly lifted our hands, whispered our favorite spell, “Disapparato!” and before our very eyes, the Blackguard… was gone!
Then we heard a loud splash behind us, and when we turned we saw that Corina was now splashing in the pool. Apparently we hadn’t made her disappear far enough! She broke the surface and started screaming her head off. So we simply lifted our hands again, wiggled our fingers just so, and repeated the procedure, hoping this time she would disappear a little further than a few feet. And preferably to a place they didn’t have cell phone reception so she couldn’t warn Rupert that his place was being burgled.
We waited for a moment, looking left and right, fully expecting to see Corina popping up someplace else, but when we didn’t hear her shrill voice anywhere, we nodded happily. The first part of our mission was a success.
We hurried into the house through the sliding glass door and found ourselves in a sunroom, the wall plastered with Petunia’s platinum records.
The gall of the man! I thought as I saw them. I followed Edelie and Estrella out of the room and into the living room, where a circular staircase led up to the second floor, where I knew the study was. It was here that Petunia had planned to place the vault, and it was more than likely that Rupert had honored her original plans, as they were a testament to her taste.
We jogged across the landing and into the study, and there it was, right next to Rupert’s large desk: Petunia’s vault.
We all kneeled down next to the monstrosity, and then we simply let our fingers do the work. We flickered them over the dial, hoping the magic we’d inherited from our parents would do its work. Sadly, this soon turned out not to be the case… No matter how much we moved our fingers, nothing happened. And when Estrella placed her fingers on the dial, and twisted it idly left and right, pretending to be a master thief, still nothing happened.
“Um, this isn’t working,” said Estrella, pointing out the obvious.
“Maybe we have to say something?” said Edie. “Some kind of spell?”
“But what spell?” I asked. I only knew a handful of spells by heart, and none of them applied to safecracking as far as I knew. Oh, God. Where was George Clooney when you needed him?
Estrella mused for a moment, then said, “Why don’t we move the safe to Safflower House? That way we can put some thought into how to open it?”
“You mean ask Gran to give us a hand,” Edelie m
uttered.
“And that,” Estrella admitted.
“Did you try Petunia’s code?” I asked.
“Of course,” Estrella said. “Rupert’s not so dumb to keep it.”
“Gran is never going to help us open it,” said Edelie, frowning at the contraption. “But we could use a blowtorch. Or find some other way.”
I stood, and paced the room for a moment, giving this some thought. Moving the vault back to Safflower House was all well and good, but we’d discussed this before. The entire thing could very well end up at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, or any sea, for that matter, or dumped into Mauna Loa.
“Why didn’t she just, you know, compose her music on a computer, like normal musicians do?” grumbled Estrella. “Why put it down on paper?”
“Because she’s old school,” I pointed out.
Just then, a loud whistle sounded, and I knew it was Skip.
“Rupert is here!” I said.
“Shit!” cried Estrella. “Shit shit shit!”
That sounded like the appropriate response.
“Look, I’m sick and tired of this,” said Edelie, and then raised her hands. I could see tiny sparks flying from her fingertips and toward the vault.
“What are you doing?” I asked, alarmed.
“Fixing this, just like Gran told us to,” she muttered.
And before our very eyes, the vault started shaking and rattling vigorously, as if suddenly confusing itself with a pair of castanets.
Whatever Edelie was doing, this didn’t look good. “At least tell us what you’re trying to accomplish!” I hissed.
“I’m trying to move this sucker!” she grunted, sweat beading on her brow.
“Oh, you guys, just stop it already,” said Estrella. “It’s simply no use. Our so-called godfather was a big fat liar. Nothing he said was true, so why would we even think that we even have witchy fingers? We’re no thieves. We’re just the same inept witches we always were and that will never change.”
Edelie gave up now, and the vault gave one final rattle and settled down.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “It’s just no use.”
“Let’s just get out of here,” I said. “Before Rupert catches us.”
We raced down the stairs again, and just when we arrived in the living room we saw Sir Rupert waddling up past the pool, en route to the house.
“Crap!” I cried, and we ran back up the stairs and I dove straight into the bedroom and under the bed, while the others also looked for cover.
It was imperative Rupert didn’t catch us, or all was lost. He’d know we were trying to get Petunia’s music back and he’d simply have us arrested and use that to sink Valerie’s claim once and for all, claiming she’d set this up.
As I lay there, tucked away beneath the bed, I could hear him mount the stairs and stride into the bedroom. He took a seat on the bed, his heavy form depressing the mattress, pressing down on me. The guy was no lightweight!
I wondered where my sisters were, and how we were going to get out of this place, with or without the vault. As things stood, probably without.
And that’s when the doorbell rang, and Sir Rupert cursed under his breath. He lifted his heavy bulk from the bed to go and answer the door.
“Corina!” he bellowed as he waddled away. “Corina, where are you?!”
But wherever Corina was, she was well out of earshot.
The moment I heard him stalking down the stairs, I quickly shimmied from under the bed, and I saw Edelie stick her head out from the study, and Estrella pop out from what was presumably one of the guest bedrooms.
We listened intently as Rupert answered the door, and to my surprise I recognized Skip’s voice!
“Good afternoon, sir, have you found Jesus?” he was asking.
“Oh, Christ,” muttered Rupert.
“That’s right,” said Skip, well pleased. “Do you know that if you let Jesus into your heart you might very well be saved from the coming apocalypse?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” said Rupert tersely.
“If I could have a moment of your time, sir, I’ll tell you all about it.”
I knew this was Skip’s attempt to distract Rupert so we could slip out of the house undetected, and I wasted no time. “Let’s go!” I hissed.
We quickly made our way down the stairs again, careful not to make any noise, and then slipped out the glass sliding door, past the pool, hopped the low wall and sank down, leaning our backs against the warm stone, catching our breath.
I didn’t know what Skip could teach Rupert about the Lord Jesus, but I knew he’d saved us from considerable trouble, and I was extremely grateful.
“Well, that was a bust,” Estrella said.
“Not a complete bust,” said Edelie. “At least now we know we can’t open that vault just by relying on our innate skills.”
“Which we don’t have,” I added.
“And we know the vault is here,” said Estrella.
“We’ll have to return tonight,” I said, “and try our luck again.”
We were going to have to do this while Rupert was sleeping in the next room. It was the only way, but a lot riskier.
Just then, Skip joined us again, plunking down next to us, a jovial smile on his face. “Can you imagine? The guy doesn’t love Jesus!” he said with a laugh. “Or me, for that matter. He simply kicked me out. So how did it go?”
“It didn’t,” I told him. “We’ll have to try again tonight.”
“Great. I had a feeling we’d have to go with plan B.”
We all stared at him. “What’s plan B?” asked Edelie finally.
“Dynamite!” he cried happily, rubbing his hands.
“No. No way,” I said. “No dynamite, Skip.”
“But it’s the only way!” he said.
“There has to be another way to crack a safe,” I said.
“I have an idea,” said Petunia, and I shrieked in surprise.
She grinned at us. “You didn’t think I’d let you come on this dangerous mission all by yourselves, did you? Of course I’m going to help you!”
“And how, exactly, were you thinking of doing that?” I asked.
“Simple,” she said with a shrug. “I go into the vault and give you instructions while you fiddle with the knob. That should do the trick.”
We goggled at her, even Skip, who was usually pretty unfazed.
“I can see inside the mechanism!” she explained.
“Old school!” Skip cried.
“That’s brilliant, Petunia,” said Estrella with a slight gasp of admiration.
“Well, it wasn’t my idea,” she said deferentially. “It was your gran’s.”
“Gran told you to do this?” asked Edelie.
“Not only did she tell me how to open the safe, she also told me to join you. She said you were having great trouble getting anything done down here, so…” She held up her hands. “Here I am. Petunia to the rescue!”
So Gran did have our backs. Of course she had. Even though she talked tough, she’d never desert us when we were in real trouble, like we were now.
“So what are we waiting for?” asked Petunia. “Let’s do this, y’all!”
“No, wait!” I said. “We can’t. Rupert is in there. He’ll catch us.”
“He can’t catch me,” Petunia pointed out with a grin. “Though now that I come to think of it, maybe I can haunt him? Like I haunted Beatrix Yeast?”
“Better not,” warned Edie. “He’ll put two and two together and make things very difficult for Valerie. Better let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Well, he is a dog,” she admitted, settling down next to me.
“Let’s wait for nightfall,” I said. “We’ll have another whack at that safe.”
“And this time,” said Edelie, “actually succeed.”
Chapter 32
Rupert was sleeping peacefully, though the absence of his girlfriend worried him. Corina had vanished without a trace, and she wasn’t
answering his calls either. They’d planned to go out that night for a pleasant evening of wining and dining in one of the best restaurants on the island. The fact that she suddenly skipped out on him like this told him something was amiss.
As a consequence it had taken him a long time to find sleep, and then only fitfully. Ever since he’d devised his plan to get rid of that bore Petunia, he’d suffered from insomnia. His was not really a master criminal’s mind, and the whole situation was very stressful. After all, it wasn’t every day that you sold out one of your best friends, organized her death, and absconded with all of her money. And now this pesky Valerie was giving him a hard time about the inheritance. He’d hoped she’d be dead by now, but somehow she’d recovered.
It was all the fault of those meddling Flummox sisters. He should never have hired them in the first place. Beatrix had told him they were totally inept, their grandmother herself had said so. So when Petunia insisted he find someone to arrange her ‘retirement,’ he’d automatically thought of them.
Now they were proving a lot more capable than he thought, and he had a good mind to curse them with a couple of ghouls, too. Too bad they’d gotten to Beatrix, and had convinced her to retire from her lucrative trade.
Then again, Valerie didn’t stand a chance in hell. It was obvious that he was the only rightful heir: Petunia had written it in her final will so there was really no question. Still, the uncertainty of the situation preyed on his mind, and now this mysterious disappearance of his longtime secret lover…
And it was as he was tossing and turning, unable to find sleep, that he thought he heard something: whispers and muffled stumbles in the house.
Thieves! He’d thought that when he moved to Aruba, he’d be safe from marauders and robbers. Good thing he’d taken his precautions. He reached for the button behind the bed and triggered the silent alarm. Then he slipped noiselessly from the bed and moved to his bedroom closet, opened the door and tapped in the key code. The back panel of the closet slid open and he darted inside. The six-inch steel door slid back into place and sealed him inside the safe room. And as the lights flickered on, he checked the bank of screens, giving him an overview of the entire house.