“And that’s when Mrs. Rosenblatt had the vision.”
“Right, the vision.” Marco nodded.
The vision. This just kept getting better and better. “I know I’m going to regret this, but what vision?”
Dana took a deep breath. “Mrs. Rosenblatt said she saw an Italian guy-”
“Italian-American,” Marco corrected.
“Right. Italian-American guy. With a gun. She said he had teeny tiny eyes, a teeny tiny heart and a whole cloud of negative emotions looming over him. He was turning your aura a muddy brown.”
“Your mom was not happy about that.” Marco shook his head. “Brown is very bad for the soul. Very bad.”
“She said she wanted to teach this guy a lesson,” Dana continued. “And then my cell phone rang. It was Rico.” She paused, a goofy smile spreading across her face. “He picked up my LadySmith for me from Mac’s. Isn’t that just the sweetest thing you ever heard?”
I shook my head. “Wait, let’s get back to my mother and the mobster.”
“Oh, right. Well, as soon as I hung up with Rico I turned around and they were gone.”
“Poof, just like that,” Marco said, doing a jazz hands thing.
“And you just let them?” I cried. “Where were you?” I asked, turning on Marco.
“Little girl’s room.”
I rubbed my temples, the tension headache from last night returning full force. “So, let me get this straight. My mother is now on her way to teach a lesson to a member of the mafia because Mrs. Rosenblatt had a vision of my aura?”
“Kind of,” Dana said, biting her lip. “But that’s not the worst of it.”
What could be worse? “Oh, it gets better?”
“Well, see, before Rico called, your Mom was kind of admiring my cell phone. And well, when I noticed they were gone I checked my purse. The phone was gone too.
“Wait.” I held one hand up to silence her, tilting my head to the side as I tried to wrap my throbbing brain around this. “If they left while you were on the phone, how did they take it?”
Dana bit her lip again. “Um, yeah, see, they didn’t take that phone. They took the other one.”
“What other one, you only have…” And then it hit me. The stun gun phone!
I smacked the palm of my hand to my forehead. If there was one thing in the world more dangerous than my mother in lecture mode, it was my mother in lecture mode with a weapon.
I whipped out my own cell and dialed Ramirez’s number, in hopes he could head off the impetuous seniors. But, of course, it went straight to voicemail. So, we all quickly piled into the Mustang and made tracks for the Victoria.
My bags were still in the trunk so while Marco navigated the Strip, I did a quick changed in the backseat from Ramirez’s sweats into a pair of black cargos, a rhinestone studded tank, and my silver slingbacks. And tried not to picture Mom being stuffed into a mobster’s freezer.
Unfortunately, there was a wreck on the 15 and it took us another twenty minutes before we pulled up in front of the club. We dove out of the car and scrambled to the front doors. Since it was barely noon, there was no line to get in, the door left unguarded by the Crew Cut gatekeeper. We quickly pushed inside, blinking as our eyes adjusted from the Vegas sunlight to the windowless interior.
The dance floor was less crowded than before, though a few die hards still shook their tushies to a techno beat from the nineties. The big stage was empty, save for a lone Whitney Houston look-alike doing a baritone “I Will Always Love you” to a sparely populated room of convention goers. Half the barstools were empty, the other half filled with hard core AA dropouts who didn’t care if it was ten in the morning or ten at night. No sign of Mom or Mrs. Rosenblatt.
“Maybe they’re not here?” Dana said.
Marco nodded. “Maybe they changed their minds.”
Maybe Monaldo already had them bound, gagged, and fitted for cement loafers.
“Come on,” I motioned for Dana and Marco to follow as I wound my way to the hallway of offices. Dana clickety-clacked on her heels, Marco did his Broadway Bond slink, and I tried to make myself small so no cranky, sex-deprived cops noticed me breaking my pinky swear. We passed the bathrooms and the first ‘Private’ door, heading straight for Monaldo’s office. I was just about to put my ear to the closed door when I heard a loud thud on the other side.
I sucked in a breath. Oh God. Mom!
My heart leapt into my throat, pure panic racing through my veins as I grabbed the handle and twisted the door open.
The first thing I felt was relief. Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt were standing in the middle of the room, unharmed, un-shot, and generally un-victimized. (If you didn’t count the crimes of fashion being perpetrated by their wardrobes. Mom was wearing denim knee-length, elastic-waisted shorts paired with a long sleeve purple paisley printed shirt and hiking boots. Mrs. Rosenblatt had opted for her hibiscus printed muumuu in an orange and avocado color scheme that hadn’t been socially acceptable since nineteen seventy-three.) My relief wavered, however, when I saw they were standing over a pile of crumpled man on the floor who looked suspiciously like one very not-nice mobster. The relief disappeared completely when I saw the stun gun dangling from Mom’s hand.
“Mom!” I shouted, rushing at her like a linebacker and tackling her in a big bear hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
She was shaking like a leaf and the stun gun dropped from her hands as she hugged me back. “Oh, Maddie, I think I just killed him!”
Mrs. Rosenblatt nudged Monaldo with the toe of her orthopedic sneaker. “I don’t know. He doesn’t look dead to me. My third husband, Alf, he died on the living room sofa watching Jeopardy. When he hadn’t gotten up after Pat Sajak came on, I poked him in the arm. And, I gotta tell ya’, his skin was a lot more rubbery than this guy’s.”
“I only meant to scare him,” Mom muttered, her eyes kind of dazed. “I didn’t mean to kill anyone.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Mrs. Rosenblatt gave Monaldo another poke. “He was making your aura brown, so your mom and I decided someone had to talk to this punk. No one messes with our Maddie.”
I might have been touched by this had we not been standing over the motionless body of a mafia member.
“And,” Mom added, “after we saw Dana had two cell phones, we thought we’d take-”
“Borrow,” Mrs. Rosenblatt corrected.
“Right. Borrow one just in case things got out of hand.”
“Which they did,” Mrs. R cut in, poking Monaldo with a finger that resembled an Oscar Mayer cocktail sausage. “We told this guy to leave you alone and he says. ‘Oh yeah, and who are you?’ and we said, ‘Maddie’s Mom, that’s who,’ and then he says, ‘Who the heck is Maddie?’ Okay, well, actually he didn’t say ‘heck,’ he said a word a whole lot worse than heck, but seeing as I’m a real lady, I won’t repeat what he really said. So, then your Mom says. ‘Maddie, Larry’s daughter,” and then he gets this grin like he’s got some really bad gas or something and then he just starts laughing and says, ‘You married that fruit?’ And, well, you can imagine how your mother reacted to that one.”
From the look of Monaldo on the floor, not well.
“She may have called him a couple of names.”
“Schmuck,” Mom supplied. “Putz. Jerk. Motherfu-”
“Okay, I get the point.” Apparently Mom wasn’t as worried about being a real lady.
“Any-hoo,” Mrs. R continued, “this clown starts yelling how he’s gonna tear us limb from limb so your mom pulls out the phone to call 911 and the next thing you know, he’s out like a light.” She paused to nudge Monaldo again. “That thing don’t work like any cell phone I’ve ever seen.”
“Honestly, I didn’t mean to shoot him,” Mom said, her hands still shaking.
“You didn’t shoot him,” I reassured her. “He’s just a little zapped.”
She looked at me, her voice going into soprano range. “Zapped?”
“Do
n’t worry, he’ll be fine,” Dana said. “Rico said the jolt only lasts for a couple of minutes. Right Marco?”
Marco shuddered as if he only knew too well.
“Well, I’ve got a feeling he’s not gonna be too happy when he wakes up,” Mrs. R said, scrutinizing Monaldo’s face. His legs did a little jimmy thing.
“In that case, I suggest we go now.” I dragged Mom away by the arm, her eyes still glued to the crumpled form on the floor, and ushered our little band of accidents waiting to happen out the door.
I’d like to say we made an inconspicuous group as we made a beeline for the club’s front doors but between Marco’s slinking, Mom’s state of catatonic shock and Mrs. Rosenblatt’s three hundred pound frame clad in shower curtain chic, we might as well have been carrying a flashing sign that read ‘suspicious people here.’ Luckily, this was Vegas, and, though we incurred a couple of stares, no one tried to stop us.
We were almost to the front doors when Mom snapped out of her stupor and yelled, “Wait!”
We all halted, Marco running into the back of Mrs. R with a little moan.
“What?” I asked.
Mom pointed to the office. “I left the cell phone in there.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll buy a new one,” I said, pushing her toward the door. Just a few more feet and we were home free. Monaldo would wake up none the wiser and Ramirez would never know my pinky swear was worth less than flip-flops on a Payless clearance rack.
“But my prints are all over that one!” Mom protested.
I paused. Damn. She had a point. Not that Monaldo looked like the type to keep fingerprint dust in his back pocket, but Ramirez might. And I knew for certain Detective Sipowicz did. Considering the way I’d already gotten on the LVMPD’s bad side, I wasn’t sure I wanted to chance another encounter with Mizz Belushi and the soda-pushers.
“Fine,” I conceded. “I’ll go get it. You guys go to the car, and I’ll meet you there.”
Mom nodded, letting Dana lead her out the front doors and into the sunlight again. I waited until I saw Mrs. Rosenblatt bring up the rear, waddling to safety, before I spun on my heels and ran as quickly as my strappy slingbacks would allow back to the office.
I paused a moment outside Monaldo’s door, putting my ear to the wood and listening for any signs of movement inside. Nothing. I did a two count before reassuring myself he was still out and slowly pushed open the door.
He hadn’t moved from his crumpled heap on the floor, though his limbs were convulsing like he’d stuck a finger in a light socket. Which, I guess technically, he kind of had. I tippy-toed into the room, carefully stepping over Monaldo’s twitching form, and grabbed the stun gun, slipping it into my purse. Then I tippy-toed back out, keeping one eye on the drooling wise guy. I shuddered to think what he’d do if he woke up. The phrase ‘limb from limb’ came to mind.
I shut the office door behind me and skittered back down the hallway, out onto the main floor of the club again. I was just gearing up to sprint the last few feet to the front doors when I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled into my ear.
Oh crud. But with the way my luck was going, I shouldn’t have been surprised. In fact, I was starting to think they should rename Murphy’s Law, Maddie’s Law. Anything bad that could happen, did happen. And usually to me.
I slowly turned around to find Ramirez giving me the death glare – arms crossed over his chest, vein in his neck bulging, jaw clenched so tight he could crush diamonds with that thing.
“Uh… hi?” I did a little one finger wave at him.
“Hi!?” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Is that the best you can do?”
I gulped. “Hi there, handsome?”
He looked to the ceiling and muttered something in Spanish. Probably praying to the saint of ditzy blondes again for the patience not to strangle this one.
“See, I can explain,” I said, knowing I was gonna have to talk fast to get myself out of this one. “I was going to stay in the room. I really was! But then the latte was so good, and I really needed a change of underwear, and it had been such a long night with the tossing and the turning and the trying not to maul you with my leg stubble. So I went to the New York, New York, and I was just going to be a second, but then Dana told me about the visions, and we had to stop Mom, but we were too late and she’d already zapped Monaldo.”
Ramirez narrowed his eyes at me, that vein in his neck pulsing double time. “Zapped Monaldo?”
I nodded. “Just a little. He should be waking up soon.”
He opened his mouth to say something (which I’m pretty sure involved more naughty words) but was interrupted as the cell phone on his belt chirped to life.
He looked down at the readout. “Shit. Monaldo.”
I gulped, my eyes instinctively going to the hallway where any minute I expected to see a red faced, jimmy-legged mobster with a gun.
“See, I told you he’d be waking up soon,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on things.
Ramirez ignored the comment, instead doing another growl slash glare thing and grabbing me by the arm. He steered me around the bar, carefully avoiding the private offices, and through the maze of mostly empty tables, toward the back of the club.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I stumbled over my feet, trying to keep up with him. Hey, not all of us have 6’1” long, I-can-leg-press-a-Buick strides, you know.
“I am going to convince Monaldo he was not just zapped by some nosy blonde’s mother,” he answered, not slowing his pace any. “And you are going to wait for me. Then I am going to drive you to the airport and personally put you on the first plane back to L.A. Got it?”
“But what about Hank and Bobbi and Lar-”
But Ramirez cut me off, giving me that death look again.
Right. Never mind.
He pushed me ahead of him through a door in the back of the club leading out into a small parking lot behind the building. A handful of cars filled the spaces, mostly second handers spotted with an impressive variety of dents and dings. Two long, black town cars that I recognized as Monaldo’s preferred method of transportation were parked in the spaces up front. In the back corner of the lot sat Ramirez’s black SUV. He marched me in front of him and unlocked the doors with his remote before shoving me into the back seat.
“You,” he said pointing a finger at my nose, “stay.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not a puppy, you know.”
His eyes narrowed again. “No, you’re not. You’re a little pain in the ass that’s driving me up a wall. And, by the way, you’re also running precariously close to being hauled downtown for obstruction of justice, assault with a semi-deadly weapon, and pissing off an officer of the law.”
“You made those last two up.”
His eyes narrowed into fine slits. “Don’t try me.”
I gulped. Trust me, trying Bad Cop’s last nerve was not high on my list of to-dos.
“I’m sorry,” I said instead.
His eyes softened just a little, his jaw relaxing as he rubbed one hand over his eyes. “Maddie, you make me crazy, you know that?”
“I know. And I’m sorry,” I said again.
He shook his head. Then let a little half smile play at the corner of his mouth. He reached one hand out and fingered a lock of my hair. “It’s a good thing you’re so cute, you know it?”
Generally I’m not fond of being called ‘cute.’ Cute is for drooling babies, dogs in sweaters and cartoon teddy bears with rainbows on their bellies. I prefer ‘beautiful’, ‘sexy’, even ‘da bomb’ worked in certain situations. But somehow, delivered with Ramirez’s husky growl and dark bedroom eyes, the word ‘cute’ instantly switched my lever from cold to hot in two seconds flat.
Suddenly being in the backseat of his car didn’t seem like such a bad thing.
His hands left my hair, snaking around my middle as his lips moved in slow motion toward mine. T
he heat from his body suddenly washed a menopause-worthy hot flash right through me. His tongue brushed against my lower lip and he let out a low groan. Or maybe I groaned. I wasn’t sure which. In fact, I wasn’t sure of anything except the warm, wiggly feeling settling somewhere in my panty region and the fact I was a freaking idiot for not sleeping with this guy last night. Seriously, what was I thinking?
His hands slid down my arms, encircling my wrists as his thumbs caressed slow, small circles on my skin. He was kissing me in earnest now and I was so engrossed in the heady rush of hormones Mr. Big Guns had coursing through my body that I didn’t even realize what he was doing until I heard the unmistakable click of metal on metal.
“What the-?”
I broke our lip-lock just as I felt something cool circle my left wrist. I looked up. Ramirez had handcuffed both my hands to the headrest of his car.
My turn to give the death glare. Remember that whole cold to hot thing? I could go the other way too. Much faster.
“What the hell is this?” I yelled, jingling the two inch metal chain between my wrists.
“This,” he said, gesturing to the handcuffs, “is to make sure you’re still here when I get back.”
I stuck my chest out, mustering up as much indignation as a woman handcuffed to an SUV could. “Are you saying you don’t trust me?”
Ramirez pinned me with a look. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”
And with that he shut the car door and I heard the automatic locks click down as he walked away.
Great. Oh, this was just great!
I admit, in those lonely weeks of waiting for my phone to ring, I’d played out more than one scenario involving me, Ramirez, and a pair handcuffs. But none had ended like this! That was it, this whole couple/non-couple thing we had going on was so not happening. If he though he could treat me this way and still get a sneak peek at my sexy Fredericks lingerie, he was more delusional than both Mrs. Rosenblatt and her spirit guide!
Men. They were nothing but trouble anyway. I mean, really, look where the men in my life had gotten me. Handcuffed, fingerprinted, jailed… then handcuffed again! That’s it, I washed my hands of the whole lot of them. In fact, I was actually looking forward to flying home, sitting in my cozy studio and spending the evening alone with Joanie, Chachi, and the Keebler elves. Now those were my kind of men.
High Heels Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-5) Page 46