Cold Feet (Five Star Mystery Series)

by Karen Pullen

  Furious at being handled, I unpeeled his fingers from my arm and twisted from his grip. “He comes along or the deal’s off.”

  “How about he holds the money, she gets the kilo, brings it back out to him, gets the money, takes it in?” Bebe asked, ever the negotiator.

  Fredricks looked at me and I nodded. “I’ll wait by the door,” he said. I unbuckled my waist stash and handed it to him. Overhead the clouds suddenly parted and moonlight poured through, lighting up the scene. I took a mental picture. Woods pressing in close, overgrown shrubbery. A second story with dormers, shingle roof, red door with a knocker. Mildewy siding, cobwebby eaves. A German shepherd, on a lead tied to a stake in the ground, growled anxiously. I knew just how it felt.

  Mo took a minute to process Bebe’s suggestion. “Okay.” He motioned me along with his arm. “Come on.”

  On either side of the door, planters held long-dead vegetation. Fredricks wedged himself up against the door jamb to wait. Moonlight reflected off his bald head. As I passed him, he winked at me. I followed Mo inside.

  Oh, the smells. Heavenly smells. Someone was cooking, reminding me I was once again starving. I smelled roasting chicken and coconut and lemon, heard sizzling Latin jazz. We had entered into a center hallway.The room to the left contained leather sectionals and a huge flat-screen TV on a thick multicolored Persian rug. The room to the right was empty except for a pile of flattened cardboard boxes.

  “Wait here,” Mo said, pointing to the room with the TV. He didn’t tell me to sit so I stood, hearing the party sounds, smelling the party food, feeling utterly unwelcome, hyperaware of the gun mashed against my thigh. Minutes passed.

  “Ah, Stacy, welcome to my humble abode.” A smiling man advanced toward me, hand outstretched for a shake. “I am Jax. I am sorry you had to wait.”

  I froze, shocked. A spurt of adrenaline flooded my body. Did he recognize me? Was I blown? I flipped my hair forward to hide more of my face as I shook the hand of my grandmother’s latest acquisition. Jax, the chicken-house-builder. Jax with the vicious scar. At least he’d be easy to pick out in a lineup, if I lived long enough to reach that point. He wore an embroidered white cotton shirt, linen trousers, and sandals. He turned to Mo. “You didn’t tell me she was so attractive. I would have lowered my price. What is a pretty girl doing with all these drugs?”

  Ah, patronizing sexism, how charming. It seemed he didn’t recognize me. Fredricks had assured me no one would, and I hadn’t thought I cared but it now seemed terribly important. I tried to breathe normally. “A lower price sounds good,” I said in my best southern-cracker accent. “Ah’m a starving student.”

  He smiled, crinkling up his eyes. The left one wasn’t real. “Then how about something to eat instead? Join us in the kitchen? We can talk, develop a trust.”

  My hunger had vanished, leaving cement in my gut. Behind him, Mo was shaking his head no no no. I thought of Fredricks by the door and Bebe waiting in the truck, wanting me to buy the coke and get out of there. “It smells wonderful. Maybe next time, Jax. It’s late and my mom will wonder where I am.”

  He burst into laughter. “Encantadora! Certainly I understand. One minute.” Jax left the room and Mo rolled his eyes. I dug my nails into my hands to prevent trembling. I thought about meeting Jax at Fern’s. I’d been standing in the doorway while he was thirty feet away next to his car. I’d been wearing jeans, a Haw River Festival tee-shirt, no makeup. My hair had been bunched behind my ears with a couple of retro plastic flowers. I looked really different tonight, didn’t I? Didn’t I?

  I thought he’d come back with the drugs but when Jax returned, a woman followed him. Another face I knew. A familiar atmosphere of air freshener enveloped Dana DeGrasso of the squat on East Waters, who’d sold me an envelope of ice Sunday night. Small world, I thought, wondering what to make of the coincidence. Mo knows Jax knows Dana. And everyone knows me. I wondered if she still had my umbrella.

  Dana was dressed up tonight, in a soft drapey blouse, tight black pants, and four shades of eye shadow. She towered over me in four-inch wedge heels made entirely of clear plastic, and outweighed me by a good hundred pounds. Jax motioned toward her. “Just do as she says,” he said. I frowned at Mo but he shrugged, clueless.

  Dana led me into the kitchen where a dark-haired woman was stirring something fragrant in a saucepan. “Hi,” I said, and the woman muttered “Hola,” as she studied me with big black eyes. A cake on the counter looked like German chocolate, its milk chocolate frosting lumpy with coconut and pecans. Dana issued a command in Spanish, and the woman turned off a burner and left the room.

  “I remember you,” Dana said. “How ya doing? Someone hooked you up with Jax, I see. Show me some ID.” I pulled out my wallet and showed her Stacy’s driver’s license, everything about it fake except the photo. “Give it to me.”

  “No problem.” Dana couldn’t kill me with a piece of plastic.

  She carefully copied every item of data from the license, including Stacy’s organ donor status (yes). “Okay, sweetheart, I’m going to pat you down.”

  Her hands moved down my back, over my hips, down my legs, until I had to stop her. I took hold of her wrists. “I’m carrying a gun. For protection, that’s all,” I said.

  “You don’t trust us, darling?” She twisted back but I didn’t let go. “You want to wrestle?”

  That was the last thing I wanted, my nerves were screaming to get out of there, but I couldn’t let her touch the Seecamp. Too bad for me. She shoved me into the wall, raised a knee to pin me there, and forced my right arm over my head while she blocked my left with her weight and fished for the gun strapped to my inside thigh. We banged elbows and I kicked her good a few times, but I twisted like a hooked trout, caught by her hundred-pound advantage. When I knocked my head into her windpipe she grabbed my hair and pulled, stepping back, holding my gun in one hand. I dove for the gun and she stiff-armed me. I fell back, side-swiping the chocolate cake and bringing it to the floor.

  With shaking hands she raised the gun and pointed it at me. “Aghck,” she said, clutching her throat. I must have bruised her esophagus—good. The only thing good at that moment. I lay on the floor in cake and hurt. Fredricks was outside, probably napping. Mo and Jax? Not on my side.

  “You can have it,” I said. “Just don’t aim it at me, okay?”

  “Get up,” she said. “You shouldn’t have brought a weapon into this house.” She took hold of my arm—she had hands like steel claws—and pushed me into the other room. She conversed with Jax in rapid Spanish. I wished Fredricks were there to translate, but the gist of the discussion was clear enough.

  Jax took the Seecamp from Dana and held it midair, loosely. “Students do not carry guns in leg holsters.”

  I wanted to scream Fredricks! Get your jiujitsu moves in here! at the top of my lungs. “I came into some money and wanted to make more. Just like you,” I said. I threw a glance at Mo. He had eased himself out of the room, into the hallway, and had one hand on the doorknob. He was watching Jax like a mouse watches the cat.

  Jax stared at me. His good eye was as cold and emotionless as the glass one. “Stacy, if I find you are lying to me, you will pay with your life.”

  “I’m not lying. I’m just trying to buy some coke. If you don’t want my business, I’ll leave.” It wasn’t an idle threat. I was sweaty with fear, sticky with coconut frosting, and ready to be anywhere else.

  “Release her.” Jax left the room, taking my gun with him. Dana let go of me and I pulled away from her, out of arms’ reach. I heard him go up the stairs. After a while I leaned back against the wall and took deep slow breaths to calm my pounding heart. Dana went into the kitchen and fixed herself a plate from the saucepan on the stove—chicken and rice, it looked like—topped it up with some sour cream, came back into the living room carrying the plate, sat down in a chair, crossed her legs, and began to eat. She didn’t offer me any, not that I could’ve eaten anything. My stomach was clenched in a tight spasm. />
  Jax returned with a plastic-wrapped package and a digital scale. He set the scale on the floor and weighed the package in front of me, exactly two point two pounds. “So you know you are not being cheated. Do you want to try some?”

  I shuddered. “I don’t. What’s the purity?”

  “Eighty percent. Very good product.”

  “I believe you, Jax. Part of that trust between us.” I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  “So get your money now, chica.” He held out an empty manila envelope.

  I pushed past Mo and opened the front door to find Fred-ricks leaning against the planter, rubbing the German shepherd’s head. He handed me his cash and my waist stash. I unzipped it, pulled out my half—a hundred hundreds and twenty fifties—and put all the money in the envelope.

  It made me sick to exchange twenty-two thousand dollars for a plastic-wrapped block of white powder but I put on a happy face and gave it to Jax. He handed me my gun and I slid it into my pocket. At that moment I decided to go so far undercover even a bulldozer couldn’t unearth me. It was time for wigs, brown contacts, aging creams and powders, padded clothing.

  Like that, the deal was done. Now it was up to the surveillance team, the sheriff’s department, and the DEA to organize a raid, and send Jax and Dana to jail for a long time. I wanted never to see his scarred face or smell her sickening toilet water again.

  Fredricks and I were back in our blindfolds, Mo was humming along with a hip-hop ditty. I took deep breaths and every so often I trembled, a peculiar aftereffect of adrenaline. It was almost over.

  “So how’d it go?” Bebe asked, once she’d pulled onto the highway.

  “They didn’t like that she was carrying,” Mo said. “Gave her a bit of trouble about it.”

  “I fell on top of a cake,” I said. “Ruined it.”

  Bebe chortled. “What kind? Did you bring us some?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “Stacy? You okay?” Fredricks asked.

  “Sure, fine.” What I had to say couldn’t be said, yet.

  No one else seemed to want to talk much for the rest of the ride. When we reached the Evergreen Apartments, Mo removed the blindfolds. I stretched, twisted right then left, looked behind. A block away, headlights. My watch said 2:17. Bebe pulled into the parking lot.

  Mo turned in his seat to look at us. “I’ll take my payment now.”

  “Good job, my man.” Fredricks reached inside his sweatshirt and pulled out an envelope. Mo extended his swirly-tattooed arm and took it.

  Bebe grabbed the envelope from him. “Give me that.”

  “No, it’s my seed money. Gotta spend money to make money.”

  “You can keep a hundred.” She handed him some bills and he stuck his hand out again. “More,” he said.

  “Uh, we’re gonna get going here,” I said. Their bickering was fraying my last nerve. I wanted to throw the boots, these clothes, into a trash can. I needed a long shower to wash away air freshener and coconut frosting and cocaine powder. I nudged Fredricks with an elbow and he opened the car door.

  “Bye, honey,” Bebe said to me.

  Mo shook Fredricks’s hand. “Take it easy, man,” Mo said.

  Lovely evening, thank you so much.

  “What happened back there?” Fredricks asked. We were in the truck, driving to the lab with the package of coke.

  “That woman, Dana. Remember her, from the squat on East Waters?”

  He nodded. “Sure. Big gal, rode hard and put up wet.”

  “That’s the one. She was there. She patted me down and tried to take my gun. We tussled. Then the guy didn’t believe I was a student since I had a gun.”

  “But you convinced him.”

  “I guess so. And here’s the kicker. I recognized him. He was at the wedding I went to Saturday, the one where the bride died. He goes by Jax.” I’d decided not to mention the budding friendship between Jax and Fern. He would be behind bars in twenty-four hours and I didn’t want to drag her into this. I described him to Fredricks.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know him. Did he recognize you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Fredricks studied me. “A scary guy, huh?”

  I nodded. “Very.” The tremors had stopped, but the real damage didn’t show. My body felt bruised and disrespected. First Fredricks, then Mo, then Dana had pulled, shoved, and handled me roughly. Possibly, Brazilian jiujitsu was in my future.

  But first, it was imperative—Fern needed to be warned. Before Jax figured out who I was.

  CHAPTER 10

  * * *

  Wednesday Morning

  We disbanded around five. Aching, exhausted, I managed to get about two hours of restless sleep, clutching my phone in one hand and dangling the other over the bed to rest on Merle’s smooth fur.

  At eight, I handed the Seecamp to an evidence tech who pulled a good print off the barrel and told me to come back in two hours. I hoped it would help to identify Jax for the raiding team.

  My boss Richard wanted a debriefing. He was GQ-ready as usual, in a tailor-made charcoal suit over a pale pink shirt of a fabric woven so tight it would repel water, French cuffs, gold knot cufflinks, and a solid burgundy silk tie. He set the fashion bar high for the rest of the agency, too high. Many had quit trying, like Fredricks in his extender-waist Dockers.

  I stood in his office doorway listening to the familiar screech of his coffee grinder. Richard roasted his own beans. If he lived within eight degrees of the equator, he probably would’ve grown them. But he didn’t share. Only the director got a cup of Richard’s brew.

  The coffee maker huffed and trickled. I took a big sniff and told the part where Dana had lifted my gun. I wasn’t proud of that.

  “You did well not to get killed,” he said, as close as Richard would get to a compliment. He held out his left arm and adjusted the shirt cuff to a perfect inch. “And where was Fred-ricks?” He gazed over my head at his wall of awards and pictures of himself protecting visiting dignitaries. George H. W. Bush, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Glory days, until he was promoted to managing the likes of me.

  “They insisted he wait outside.” The memory of the wrestling match with Dana made me shiver. “I didn’t want to wear the gun in the first place. Next time I’m not wearing a gun. There’s an advantage to being nonthreatening.” I wanted him to agree with me.

  “It’s your choice.” His intercom buzzed and he picked up the phone. “Yes?” He listened then hung up. “A warrant is being prepared. They’ll put the house under surveillance and go in sometime tonight to make arrests.” He stood and picked up the coffeepot, my cue to leave. “Good job, Stella.”

  A pat on the head didn’t quite cut it. I wouldn’t relax until Jax and Dana were locked into new living quarters.

  I set two turkey club sandwiches and a pint of Chunky Monkey on the table. Between a vase of daisies and the salt shaker I slipped a manila folder containing a single-page printout of the criminal record of Juan Xerxes Covas, aka Jax Covas, to be discussed after eating.

  Fern greeted me with a cautious hug. “Careful—I’ve got paint on me.” She led me into her painting room and gestured at a canvas. Hillary and Bill’s sweet donkey faces peered at me. They looked so real I could almost hear them. Actually I could hear them—they were outside hee-hawing at Merle, who was in the field sniffing, digging, pouncing as another vole went to rodent heaven.

  “Let’s eat,” I said.

  “Thanks, darling.” She took a big bite. “Mmm, good sandwich. The turkey’s really juicy.”

  “I can only stay a little while,” I said. How much to tell her? Not much. While supportive of me personally, she was ambivalent about government agencies. “I had occasion to become reacquainted with Jax. He’s not what you think.” Though I didn’t know what she thought, actually, other than he was good with a tape measure. “He’s a drug dealer.”

  Fern sat up straight and sipped her tea. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  I ope
ned the file and extracted his booking photo. “He was arrested fifteen years ago for obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and four counts of distribution of a controlled substance. He went to prison for six years.”

  She studied the picture with a puzzled expression. Jax’s flat scarred face, even fifteen years younger, was unmistakable. “Yes, that’s Jax. But so what? It was years ago. People make mistakes.”

  “But he’s still dealing, Fern, I know. You have to distance yourself.”

  A pause. She folded her arms. “How do you know?” Though the words were challenging, her voice was gentle.

  I didn’t say anything. We looked at each other for a long moment, Fern’s gaze drilling into my eyes as if she were trying to read my mind. “You can’t tell me.”

  “That’s right.” I spooned some ice cream into a bowl and handed it to her. “I don’t usually interfere with your relationships, do I?”

  “Not exactly. But I always know what you’re thinking, darling.You are transparent to me.”

  “Really?” I wanted to stump her. “Which one did I like the best?”

  “Oh, too easy. The Irishmen.”

  I smiled, remembering. “They were wonderful.” When I was in school at NC State, studying criminal justice and working three part-time jobs, too busy to call her, let alone come home, Fern had two entertaining suitors from Ireland, unrelated but alike in their love of football, dry stout, and her. She’d met them at a kiln opening—they were potters. Ted from Wexford liked music and horse racing, and Arlo from Dingle appreciated dirty jokes and dancing. When she was with either one of them, Fern never stopped laughing.

  “Okay, maybe they were the best,” I said. “How about the worst?”

  I didn’t think she’d offer up a name. Then, “Ben Parsons. Remember him?”

  “The psychologist with the convertible? He was okay.Why do you pick him?”

  “You were going through that bad patch your senior year of high school. When you disappeared with that guy. Ben said I was negligent and you were tired of parenting me and that’s why you ran away.” She looked sad, and I took her hand.