Extreme Heat Warning: A Shallow End Gals Trilogy, Book Two

by Graybosch, Vicki

  Thor shook his head, “Noooo. I think you are spooky and don’t know it!” Paul lost it. He laughed so hard, he knocked over a small table where they found another listening device.

  Ray had been sitting in his computer chair listening to all of them and finally spoke, “Do I have this right? All evening I have been here alone, drugged out, and there was a secret passage door in my closet?” Nobody bothered to answer him. Ray threw his arms up into the air and went back to his computer.

  Pablo noticed Nelson’s shirt had blood on it. “What happened to you?”

  Frost answered for him, “Todd and I helped the local PD at a shootout. Ten dead, two wounded.” He pointed at Todd, “He’s one of the wounded.”

  Roger said, “WHAT?” Frost explained to Roger what had happened. When they got to the part about the rental car being totaled, Roger looked at Thor who said, “You deal with what you’re dealt.”

  Roger chuckled, “Yes you do. Dan already knows this, but speaking of bad news…” and he told them about Mark Mills escaping, killing the two FBI transport agents, and taking their badges. He finished by saying it was a pretty sure bet that Mark Mills was already in town.

  Frost was up and pacing. He shouted, “Nothing holds these guys! How can they keep escaping from us? Those two with badges is bad.”

  Ray spoke again, “I know this isn’t the biggest problem we have, but someone may still be listening. We haven’t found the source pad.” They all stopped talking and continued the search. They found it built into the microwave.

  After an hour long meeting, the team decided whoever wanted to have breakfast at the Marriott at 7:30 was welcome, and then at 9:00 have a briefing at Star Ship. Pablo asked Roger for permission to stay with Jeanne at her house. It was about six blocks away. Roger thought it was a good idea. There was still plenty of room at the Star Ship, three floors of space, but he didn’t want Jeanne alone. Roger told Jeanne he wanted to meet with her directly after the next morning’s meeting.

  Paul, Roger, and John were walking back to the hotel when John said, “I appreciate you bringing me in the loop with your team.”

  Roger said, “I know I can trust you John.”

  John started laughing. Paul and Roger stopped walking and just looked at him. John seemed to have a case of giggles he couldn’t control. Finally he held his hand up and said, “I am sorry. I appreciate you said that Roger. You can trust me. Absolutely, but most people in your position wouldn’t at this stage of the game. Which is why I can’t stop laughing…” he started all over again, stopped himself and said, “It’s like you know you can trust me. Tourey told me today he heard you and Paul were spooky, and Thor just said…” then they all lost it. They were all so tired they were just slap happy. Paul was hanging onto the side of the building laughing, as a couple walked by and gave them thumbs up. He was sure they thought the three of them were drunk or high.

  Suddenly Mathew Core was looking at a blank screen. They had found the source pad. He wished he had gotten home sooner, so he could have watched more of the feed. As it was, he had only seen a few of them discussing finding the passage to the bookstore. He chuckled to himself. None of them would sleep well tonight. He had gone jogging and his body smelled of sweat and New Orleans. He went into the kitchen, grabbed an apple from a bowl of fruit on the counter, and yelled for Lisa. He heard her mumbled answer come from the basement family room. He went downstairs to see what she was doing.

  Lisa had yards of bright pink fabric lying on the floor and his daughter Jamie had her body spread out holding a fold of fabric. Lisa had a row of pins sticking out of her mouth and waved her elbow at him as he came down the stairs. Mathew rubbed Jamie’s head and said, “What are you and Mommy making tonight?”

  Jamie’s eyes got big and she said, “Dad, you can see we have an unbelievable amount of work to do. I can’t talk right now.” Lisa rolled her eyes. They joked that their daughter had been born an adult. Her vocabulary for a six year old was fantastic. The school said she was one of the brightest children they had ever seen.

  Lisa removed the pins from her mouth, “Jamie and I are putting some finishing touches on the school play costumes she volunteered me to make.” Lisa rolled her eyes again.

  Mathew bent down and kissed her cheek. “I’m going to take a shower and then about a two hour nap. I need to meet a guy tonight I haven’t seen for a while. Is that okay?” He was smiling.

  Lisa smiled, “Like I ever know where you are?”

  She raised her chin for him to kiss her again, and Jamie moaned, “YEWWW…. we are never going to finish if you don’t stop that. There is a proper time and place. Daddy you stink.”

  Mathew rubbed her head as he passed by her, “Daddy knows.”

  After his shower he went out to the veranda and placed a call to Carl. He answered immediately, “What now?” Mathew asked if Carl had spoken to Thomas. Carl answered yes.

  Mathew was pleased, “I am assuming we are back to business as usual?”

  Carl paused, “That might be an issue. I have two dead CIA agents.”

  Mathew answered, “You did that, not me. I didn’t order that lab bombed. You and Thomas, that’s on you. And I want Jason back.”

  Carl hissed, “Jason! There is no way Jason is getting out of this! How would I explain that?”

  Mathew said, “You’ll think of something. I want him released tomorrow at the latest. And Carl? I had to take a little money from your account to replace my lab, I know you understand.”

  Carl spit the words, “I’ll see what I can do.” Mathew chuckled as he placed the phone in his pocket. He rolled his neck and decided to take that nap. He was meeting Mark at midnight.

  Jeanne and Pablo decided to walk back to the house. A strong breeze blew and the air smelled of storms coming. They walked the first four blocks in silence. Finally Pablo asked, “How are you?”

  Jeanne looked at him, “Better than I thought I would be. It actually helped a lot that I stayed at Mambo’s. She helped me get my center back.”

  Pablo stopped walking and touched her arm, “You know Roger may not want you involved in this anymore.” Jeanne looked at him and started walking ahead. Pablo caught up with her and asked, “Can you stay out of it if he asks you to?” Jeanne wouldn’t answer him.

  They reached the house, and Pablo was struck at how familiar it all still seemed. It had been almost twenty years since he had stood on that porch. He had been seventeen. He saw the lines on the door jamb that they used as a growth chart and chuckled, “Look how short we were!” Jeanne laughed. Most of the time their mom was too ‘sick’ to be much of a mom. It wasn’t until they were much older they realized it was her ‘medicine’ that made her sick. She still had managed to live into her fifties. Pablo and Jeanne split her bills, and that was pretty much the extent of their relationship with their mother after high school. A few phone calls, Jeanne visited once. It was all very depressing.

  Jeanne turned on a light next to the couch and turned the TV on. Pablo thought the house looked much better than he had remembered. Jeanne noticed Pablo’s expression and said, “I had a friend remodel one room at a time as Christmas gifts from us.”

  Pablo said, “Why didn’t you tell me? I must owe you a lot of money.”

  Jeanne smiled, “Just don’t worry about it. I think I might live here a while and then we can sell it. I have money in the bank and this suits my needs right now.”

  Pablo gave himself a tour and came back into the living room with a beer for Jeanne and one for himself. He noticed a large post at the end of the living room that obviously didn’t belong. “Looks like you have some big termites down here.” The wood was shredded from floor to ceiling. He knew what it really was. Jeanne stood, turned her back to the post, and in one stealth motion, pulled a knife from her pants, spun around and threw the knife squarely in the center of the post. She had speed and precision. Pablo was impressed. He went over to yank the knife from the post and return it to her.

  He raised an ey
ebrow and asked, “How did he get you?”

  Jeanne took a big gulp of her beer, looked at Pablo and said, “I was feeling sorry for myself, just buried Mom, no boyfriend…I was getting ready to go back to work, thinking about the grind of it all. New York City in the winter.” Pablo noticed Jeanne had begun twirling a thin strand of her hair. She used to do that when she was young. Only back then, she would twirl it tight and pull it out. He had found twisted strands of her hair all over the house. Jeanne continued, “I talked to him. At a bar. He is fairly good looking now, but I remember he wore surgical gloves. Said he had skin allergies. I think I felt sorry for him.” Pablo was shaking his head. Jeanne continued, “He must have drugged my drink. I remember feeling drugged, leaving the bar. He told me he was driving me home. Then he injected me.”

  Pablo was up pacing, his heart was on fire and temples were pounding. Jeanne kept talking, “It was days of being so drugged, I barely realized what was happening. I finally stopped eating and drinking the water, and I became stronger. I fought him, almost had him. Then he shot me with a stun gun and injected me again. That’s when Patterson came and took me. He drove me to the edge of the swamp and told me if I could get to the other side alive to just keep going. His friend wanted me dead. He was giving me a chance. I was so drugged and sick…. I couldn’t even move for two days.” Pablo was sick to his stomach. He went to the bathroom and puked. When he returned to the living room and sat down, Jeanne asked him, “Can you stay out of it if Roger asks you to?” Pablo wouldn’t answer her.

  We were giving ourselves a tour of Bourbon Street. Mary had turned into quite the fashion diva. Every time I looked at her she was wearing a different outfit. She said she was getting inspired by the people we were passing. The problem was that we kept losing her! I must have tapped the shoulders of twenty women thinking they were Mary.

  We came upon a bar that was having an Impersonator Show and decided to go in. It was fabulous! They had Cher, Diana Ross, Bette Midler and Gladys Knight! When Gladys Knight began to sing, we all decided to become Pips. We got on the stage with her. This came naturally for Mary and Linda because they were famous for breaking into song whenever the conversation moved them! Teresa did a mean Whoo Whoo for the train sounds in “Midnight Train to Georgia”, and I just tried to keep up with the fancy footwork of Linda and Mary. It is really too bad that no one could see us. I think we stole the show!

  We stayed to watch one more show. People kept sitting on us, and there really wasn’t enough room to practice our new routine. We figured we should move on, so we went back out to the sidewalk.

  Suddenly, a guy dressed as a pirate jumped in front of us and said “Boo!”

  Mary yelled, “He can see us!” I think I screamed.

  Linda said, “Hi Ellen.”

  Then Ellen said, “Time to get to work. You gals follow me. We are going to Devon’s house.” Uh oh. We followed Ellen and ended up in Devon’s bedroom where he was sleeping. It sure didn’t look like Devon. That new face must have cost a fortune! Ellen said, “See that glass of water next to his bed there?” We all nodded. Ellen said, “That bottle on his night stand is the drug he keeps giving these women. We are going to put some of that in his water. We need him to stay here at least all night tonight and some of tomorrow morning.”

  We watched Ellen dump about an ounce of the clear drug into his water. Teresa said, “You sure that’s enough? Why don’t we double up and make sure?”

  Ellen frowned, “We can’t really harm him, remember? We are angels. Now look over there at that screen.” We all looked and Ellen turned on a picture of two women in a room. They were on a bed, crying. Ellen said, “We are going to go see them now and see if we can find out anything to help Roger. First we are going to turn off the air conditioning in this room, so Devon gets hot and drinks all of that water!” As we left the room Ellen said, “Nighty-night,” to Devon.

  We found the room in the basement and listened to Amy and Rebecca talk. They both sounded really drugged. We could tell from what they were saying that Devon had already raped them at least once. The girl named Rebecca was especially upset. She blamed herself for Amy being there. Amy said as soon as she felt better she was going to study the lock. Her dad was a locksmith, and she used to go with him on jobs. Ellen told Mary, “Write a sticky note for them not to eat or drink, it’s drugged. They are so druggy I don’t think they will remember the note.” Mary quickly wrote out the note and put it on Amy’s nose.

  Amy peeled it off and tried to read, ““Don’t eat or drink ..what?” and the note disappeared in her hand.

  Mary wrote a second note and put it on Amy’s nose, “You’re being drugged.” Amy’s eyes got big and the note disappeared in her hand again.

  She reached over and swatted the bottle of water from Rebecca’s hand before she drank any. “We are being drugged! Don’t drink or eat anything!”

  Rebecca was weaving a little and mumbled, “How do you know that?”

  Amy lay down on the bed, “I don’t know. Let me think.”

  It was very hard to read their thoughts because of the drugs. Between their clear memories and Ellen’s help, we were able to piece together the story. Now we had to figure out how to get Roger to discover the information.

  “Amy and Rebecca had some text messages that refer to Devon, so we want Roger to find their phones, somehow.” Ellen looked at Teresa, “You and Linda go back upstairs and see if you can find out where he buys those plastic gloves. Also see if Amy’s groceries are in Devon’s car. If they are, the receipt may be in one of the bags. Oooh! Devon bought Rebecca earrings at the Mall…. see if you can find out which store and how he paid for them.” Ellen looked at Mary and said, “You know, we could probably use one of Devon’s phone bills too…might be able to get Patterson’s number from there. We need to connect the dots for Roger. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  Once we had all the information we could find, we went to the basement of the Star Ship. It was evening and I couldn’t believe I could see in the dark. As a mortal I had night blindness and never went anywhere. Ellen said it would be safe to work in the basement because no one was down there to see us moving papers. When we arrived, we sat around a huge table, and Ellen grabbed a notebook from a shelf and started writing. “Okay, I found out both Amy and Rebecca work at the French Quarter Bank branch on the corner of Royal and Bienville Ave. They both took yesterday afternoon off to shop and of course neither one of them will report to work in the morning. I don’t know if the bank manager is going to be alarmed enough to do anything. We need to get Roger to that bank.”

  Ellen also had us review all of the information scanned from Spicey’s scanner to Roger’s e-mail. Ellen kept shaking her head and saying, “We have a lot of work to do.” None of Spicey’s information made sense to any of us and every time Ellen said something like “We have a lot of work to do”, we all freaked out. I am pretty sure our mortal is getting in the way of some of this.

  Mary asked, “Can’t you give us a hint what is coming up? You know, so we can prepare our mortal a little?”

  Ellen answered, “I wish I could, but I think your mortal has to be given this stuff a little at a time. Remember Roger and Paul have to discover all of this stuff in an explainable way. It can’t just all be dumped on them at once.” The meeting went on and on. Ellen finally announced we could go sightseeing for a while, and she would call us.

  Most of the streets were empty. It was six o’clock in the morning, in the French Quarter. At least Mary wasn’t changing clothes every five minutes. Linda saw a black cat sitting in an alley, and she touched Teresa’s sleeve, “Is that Ellen? Is she following us?”

  Teresa laughed, “I think it is just a black cat.” We walked down another street looking in the windows of the shops and a black cat was sitting on the sidewalk ahead of us. Teresa looked at Linda, “Maybe it is Ellen.” Teresa yelled, “Is that you Ellen?”

  Just then a big truck came around the corner and blasted us with water. The f
orce of the spray was so strong it blew us all against the brick wall and held us there until it passed. Every morning in the summer the city sprays down the streets and sidewalks in the Quarter with sudsy lemon scented disinfectant water to clean the streets.

  Like some strange sea monster it spit water on everything in its path and turned the corner. We were all soaked. The air smelled like lemon puke. Geesh! I looked at Linda’s facial expression and started laughing so hard I tripped myself and sat on the sidewalk. The black cat walked up and sat on my lap.

  Mary said, “Even that stupid cat knew to get out of the way of that truck!”

  I looked down and put the cats head between my hands and rubbed its nose with mine saying, “You aren’t a stupid cat are you? You are a pretty kitty.” Then poof, it was Ellen’s face in my hands. FREAKED me OUT! Ellen was rolling on the sidewalk laughing.

  Ellen said, “I actually let that happen to test how your mortal is dealing with mass. We still have some work to do. If you had thought about that wall being mass you could have just gone through it, and not felt the force of the water. Your mind will determine if a mass is solid or not. It will be whatever you want it to be.” That actually made sense to me. Huh. Why am I afraid to fly? My mind can make everything in my way disappear. This might work.

  Ellen continued, “I think we can best help Roger by starting to collect information that identifies William Patterson’s associates. Roger has the information from Spicey in his computer, but I think it will be a while before he gets a chance to review it. I am thinking that the names in the little black book are going to be the important people to investigate.” Ellen smiled at us, “Okay, touch the face dial of your watches.”

  We did and each of our watches projected a hologram screen in front of us. Cool! I wonder if we can watch movies? Ellen glanced at me, “I don’t think you have time for a movie right now. Now think pages from Patterson’s little black book.” Ellen was still smiling as she watched each of our screens fill with data from Patterson’s book.