by Rose Pressey
“Were they trying to take your wallet again?”
“I guess they were,” he said.
I surveyed the area. “Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. They ran away.” He gestured. “They attacked me from behind. I turned around for a better look, but all I saw was the back of them. They looked like the same guys from the café.”
“This is really concerning,” I said.
This couldn’t be a coincidence. I hoped that Jack felt the same way. He seemed to want to shrug it off as if it was no big deal. It just wasn’t normal to be attacked by the same people twice.
Shelby and Lily walked up. Jennifer was still talking to Freddie Cool, I guessed.
Lily placed her hands on her hips. “Exactly what is going on here? I walk this way and I see Jack on the ground.”
Mustard stained the front of Lily’s T-shirt.
“I almost lost fingers when I tried to hand Lily a napkin.” Shelby had a terrified look on her face. “I think she even growled at me a bit.”
It was no surprise Shelby looked that way after watching Lily devour a hot dog. A hungry werewolf tends to forget table manners.
“Those guys tried to take his wallet again,” I said.
Lily frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The guys grabbed him from behind and tried to take his wallet. They must be stalking him or something,” I said with a wave of my hand. “It is too strange.”
“I smell a rat somewhere,” Lily narrowed her eyes.
I would refrain from making a snarky comment, but it was hard to bite my tongue. There were so many options of what to say.
“I’d like to get my hands on these guys,” Lily said, pumping her fist.
“Lily, it’s okay. It’s over now. We should just get out of here,” Jack said.
“Yeah, but what if they come back another time? And maybe they’ll be successful the next time.” I took Jack’s hand.
“I don’t think that it would happen three times.” Jack squeezed my hand in reassurance.
“Yeah, it would be third times a charm for them,” Shelby said.
I wanted to think that Jack was right and that we shouldn’t be that concerned. It was just one of those things of being in a crowd. There would be a criminal deciding that they wanted to take advantage of the large amount of people. Though we had stepped away from the crowd now. The sidewalk was mostly empty since the festival was down the street just a bit.
I still couldn’t get over the fact that it had happened twice in a row and that they tried to grab Jack. I was really concerned. Were they trying to kidnap Jack? If so they were going at it the wrong way. Why would someone want Jack? Since Jennifer and Shelby had been taken, I was worried about their safety all over again.
“Let’s go find Jennifer and Freddie Cool,” I said.
“For someone named Cool he certainly isn’t all that cool.” Lily snorted.
“Can you believe all that happened tonight? And we still didn’t get any info on the mermaids. They’re kind of sneaky, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Like I said before these women are not nice,” Shelby said. “They’ve been known to be very mean and kidnap people.”
“Yes, there was the kidnapping,” I said.
“I really don’t think these guys would ever do anything like that,” Shelby said.
A short distance down the sidewalk and we found Jennifer and Freddie Cool.
“Freddie, do you think that maybe the mermaids have kidnapped the guys?” I asked.
“I’m sure they can take care of themselves,” Freddie said.
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
“I guess maybe we should go ahead and leave,” Jack said.
I knew he was getting tired of standing around. I didn’t blame him after what had happened. Calling the police and reporting this would be pointless.
“You’ll let me know if you hear from them?” I asked.
“Yes, I will make sure to call you right away if I hear anything.” He tossed his hand up in a wave.
We headed back to the car while Jennifer said goodbye to Freddie. It had been an eventful evening, yet we had gotten nowhere. We had almost run over Freddie Cool, Jack had been attacked, and we’d lost the mermaids. Needless to say, I was incredibly frustrated.
“So what’s the plan now?” Lily asked from the backseat as she leaned forward.
“The plan is we call it a night,” Jack said, peering at her through the rearview mirror.
“What? The night is young. We should go out and enjoy it while we’re here. I’m not sure if I’ll ever have a chance to come back to Miami.”
“Well, enjoy by yourself,” Jack said.
I looked at him as if he was crazy. “You can’t send her out into the wild alone. I wouldn’t do that to the city of Miami. What have they ever done to us?”
Jack frowned. “I think I’ve had enough for tonight.”
“Lily, come on, we can go tomorrow night.”
Jennifer came back over and got in the car. She waved as the guy walked away, but they kept waving for entirely too long before Jack pulled away.
“You all seem lovestruck tonight,” I said. “We’ll just go back to our place and rest up and start over in the morning. I have to get some work done before it’s time to get back to New Orleans. We may never know exactly what happened. And I suppose I should just give up on trying to find out.”
“But there has to be some connection with the murdered guy,” Jennifer said.
“You know, Rylie, have you ever stopped to think that maybe you should just mind your own business? Maybe you’re just butting into things that you have no business prying into. There’s probably nothing to check out. The mermaids may be right for telling you to take a hike,” Lily said.
“Speaking of telling people to take a hike,” I said.
Chapter 23
Lily’s golden colored eyes narrowed as a smug smile spread across her face. She brushed a strand of hair from her shoulder.
“All right, let me have it. What is it that you want to say?” I asked.
She studied her red polished fingernails. “Maybe I’ll tell you and maybe I won’t.”
“You know you want to tell me so just get it over with. Spit it out.”
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said.
“Okay. Whatever.” I went back to my business.
“I found out about the mermaids.” She rushed her words.
“What about the mermaids?” I asked with a quirk of my eyebrow.
I wasn’t sure if I trusted her.
“I know where they work,” she said.
Okay, so maybe this was a good find on Lily’s part. Would this lead to some kind of clue?
“If we go to their place of employment we might find out some useful info,” she said.
“All right, I’ll give you that it’s a good one. Are you going to tell me where they work?”
“I found out that they work at a mermaid show.” Lily had a smile on her face. She was proud of herself.
“A mermaid show?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“They swim around in a tank just being mermaids.”
“Okay, they are mermaids.”
“But they don’t use their actual mermaid tails. They wear fake ones. I guess it would freak people out if they saw the real mermaids’ tails.”
“So they pretend to be mermaids? Mermaids pretending to be mermaids,” I said.
“You got that right,” she said.
“Where is this place?” I asked.
“How am I supposed to know? I’m not from around here. However, I do have the address.”
“All right, so let’s go check it out,” I said.
“Only if I’m driving,” Lily said.
“No way,” we all yelled in unison.
“I’ll drive,” Shelby said, holding up her hand. “I know how to get to the place. I’ve been there before.”
“Fine. That sounds like a
plan to me,” I said.
We all got into the car and headed in that direction. Shelby, Jack, and I were in one car and Lily and Jennifer were in the other. Jennifer had looked completely terrified to know that she would be left alone with Lily. I didn’t blame her for that. Lily was terrifying. But I had warned Lily that if she did anything wrong then I would let her have it. She’d laughed at me.
After the short drive we pulled into the parking lot for this aquarium. We all got out of the cars and headed for the entrance. We purchased our tickets and waited in line to get in.
“I sure hope we find out something from this trip,” I said.
“Well, if we don’t at least we’ll have a day of fun,” Jack said.
“That’s not much help,” I said.
The line was moving kind of slow and I wasn’t sure how much longer this was going to take.
As we moved down the line I thought I saw someone staring at me. When I peered over my shoulder I could’ve sworn I saw a guy peek out from around one of the bushes. It kind of looked like one of the mermen.
“Did you see that guy?” I asked.
“No, we didn’t see anyone,” Jack said.
Lily twirled her index finger next to her temple. “She’s losing it.”
“No, really, there was a guy back there. He just peeked out from around the bush.” I pointed.
“I’ll go check it out,” Jack said.
We stayed in line so that we wouldn’t lose our place while Jack went to check around the side of that building. I hoped there wasn’t some guy waiting there ready to attack Jack. I was nervous with anticipation as I waited for Jack to return.
After a few minutes he emerged from around the building. Jack walked back over to us.
“Did you see anyone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t see anyone at all.”
“Well, where do you think the guy went? I know I saw someone.”
“Maybe he went in through the side door of the building. Maybe he works here.”
“I wonder if they work here with the mermaids,” I said.
Maybe they’d known the mermaids all along and they were just pretending so that they could go along with our plan. They’d tell the mermaids what we had in store for them. That would be a sneaky and low thing to do. But it wouldn’t surprise me.
As we stayed in line I kept checking over my shoulder to see if the guy appeared again. But I didn’t see him. We had moved up in line until finally we were at the entrance. One more time before entering I looked back to see if the guy was there. There was no one in sight. I wondered why he’d been watching us. He would probably report back to the mermaids that we were on the premises. I didn’t care. I mean, it wasn’t like they could keep me away from this place. We had bought our tickets and we had every right to come in and watch the show.
We finally showed our tickets to enter the building. It was dark, of course, with lots of water tanks everywhere. I was just interested in finding the mermaids.
Jennifer pointed out a sign. “Look, that’s where they are.”
‘Mermaids this way,’ the sign read.
We headed in that direction. I was anxious about what would happen. Maybe the mermaids would kick us out as soon as they saw we were here. We followed the arrows back and then came to a large glass wall, with water, of course. There were no mermaids in there.
“What time do they come out?” Jennifer asked.
I looked at the wall that had a schedule up. “It says it starts in five minutes.”
“What can we do until then?” Lily asked as she paced across the floor. “You know I can’t sit still for five minutes.”
Asking her to sit still for five minutes was like asking anyone else to stand there for an hour.
“We could just look at some of the other stuff and then come back,” I said.
“Fine.”
I ushered Lily down the hallway to look at the sharks.
“You’ll like looking at the sharks. You guys have things in common,” I said.
“Very clever,” Lily said.
I thought it was witty, considering Jennifer and Jack laughed. We stood in front of the glass watching the fish glide through the water.
“I’m not sure if I like this,” Jennifer said with a frown. “What if they break the glass?”
“Who do you mean they? The sharks or Lily?” Jack asked.
We laughed again, but Lily narrowed her eyes and sent us a death glare. Moving on to a couple of other tanks, we studied the other fish waiting for more time to pass.
Jack checked his phone. “It’s almost time for the show to start.”
We hurried back over to the room where the show would take place. Jack held the door open for us and we ushered inside. People had already filled up the small space in the time that we’d been gone. We managed to squeeze our way in at the back of the crowd. Lily had elbowed her way into creating space for us. Now we had to wait for the mermaids to come out.
“Can they see us out here?” I asked.
“Yes, I think they can see the audience,” Jack said.
“This should be a lot of fun,” Lily said.
“Lily, you have to promise to behave yourself, okay?” I warned with a point of my finger.
She crossed her heart with her index finger. “I promise.”
About a minute later the mermaids splashed down into the water from the top of the tank. They gracefully swam through the water and over to the glass. They waved at the crowd. So far they hadn’t noticed us.
A few seconds later they started swimming again, doing flips and things like that. Then they came up closer to the glass again. Of course, we stepped closer to make sure that they saw us this time. The looks on their faces were priceless. Lily snapped photos with her phone, which made the mermaids even angrier. I thought they might actually get out of the tank and come out here to attack us. The audience was beginning to notice something was amiss. It almost looked as if Tori had flipped her middle finger at us. Maybe she’d just had an itch on her face.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have made them mad or even let them know that we were here. This would only make them want to get us out of there. We wanted to ask people they worked with if there was anything about the mermaids that we should know. But now that the mermaids knew we were here, they might warn the others not to talk to us.
“I have an idea,” I said. “While they’re in the tank we need to go talk to people. Now that they know we’re here though they’ll probably try to get out of the water and have us kicked out. So before that happens we’ll go talk to people.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Jack said.
“Me too,” Jennifer said.
“Can I stay and watch?” Lily asked.
“Actually, that’s a good idea. You can watch them and tell us when they get out of the water. Text me when the show ends.”
“Why do you get to tell me what to do?” Lily asked.
“Because you would start a fight if I didn’t tell you.”
Lily nodded. “That’s true. I probably would.”
“All right, so we agreed that you’ll stay here and text me when the show ends?”
“Yes,” she said around a sigh.
Lily waved at the mermaids while we slipped out of the area. The mermaids probably wondered where we were going. My hope was that they thought we were leaving. If they knew what we were really up to then they would freak out. As soon as we stepped into the main area I spotted the guy I’d seen outside. I gestured for the others to look. They spotted him too. We took off in that direction, hoping to catch up with him. He walked into a room in the back. It was marked ‘employees only.’
“I guess he works here,” I said. “In the meantime, we can ask some other people about the mermaids.”
“What are you going to ask?” Jennifer said. “I mean, they may not want to give out a bunch of information to strangers.”
“I know, you’re right. We’ll have to be subtle a
bout it. First, we have to find someone who looks available to actually talk to us,” I said.
“Over there is someone who looks friendly.” Jennifer pointed.
We headed over in that direction.
“I just really think I’ve seen that mermaid somewhere before,” I said as we stood next to the female employee.
Jennifer shook her head as if she couldn’t believe this was the tactic that I was using. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t great, but it was a spur-of-the-moment type of thing. Unfortunately, the woman didn’t seem to notice us.
“Excuse me,” I said, catching the woman’s attention. “But do you know much about the mermaid show? It was really great. We enjoyed it.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed the show,” she said. “What kind of questions do you have about it?”
“Oh, I just guess I wondered what kind of experience the mermaids have to have before they do the show.”
“Well, I’m not sure,” she said. “I guess they work other jobs before here. The show has a big audition.”
“I saw one of the mermaids and she looks so familiar. I was wondering where I’ve seen her before.”
“Not sure. Which one is she?” the woman asked.
“Blonde hair with blue streaks. She has hypnotizing blue eyes.” I gestured toward my eyes. “Maybe Melinda is her name."
“Oh yeah, I don’t know if she’s originally from here or not, but I heard her say that she moved here from New Orleans.”
We all exchanged a look. That was certainly odd. Though we had met Shelby in New Orleans. I didn’t know any of the other mermaids. I turned around to ask Shelby about this, but she wasn’t behind us. Where had she gone?
The woman looked over my shoulder and said. “Haven’t I seen you here before?”
I whipped around to see that Shelby was once again behind me.
Shelby flashed a wide grin. “Perhaps I just look like someone else.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it.” The woman eyed us and said, “You know, you can get special tickets for access to the mermaid show.”
“Really? I haven’t heard about that,” I said.
She leaned closer as if someone might overhear. “Oh, it’s kind of confidential. We don’t tell everyone. I thought since you seem so interested in the mermaids that maybe it would be something you’d enjoy.”