Sis Boom Bah

by Jane Heller

  By the time we arrived at the entrance to Sharon’s ritzy country club community, it was nearly three o’clock. I must say, we caused quite a stir as we vibrated up Broken Sound’s long, palm tree-lined driveway, Mr. and Mrs. Easy Rider.

  The minute he saw us, the tall, uniformed, armed guard stepped out of the gate house (which was only slightly smaller than my house) and asked if we were lost.

  “No,” I shouted so as to be heard above the idling motorcycle. “We’re here for Sharon Peltz.”

  “Is Ms. Peltz expecting you?” he said, eyeing us suspiciously.

  “No, but I’m her sister,” I explained. “My name’s Deborah Peltz.” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, pulled my driver’s license out of my wallet, and passed it to him. For I.D.

  He studied it, then handed it back to me. “I’ll give her a call, but I think I saw her go out about three hours ago.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, clutching Ray’s hand in dismay, hoping the guard had mistaken Sharon for one of the other bottle blonds in the community, hoping she was still home, out of harm’s way, out of Barry’s way.

  Ray and I waited while the guard went back inside the gate house and dialed Sharon’s number. A few seconds later, he emerged, shaking his head. “Nobody’s there,” he said. “She went out, like I told you.”

  “And you think she left about three hours ago?” I said.

  “Yeah. Maybe four,” said the guard.

  “Was she alone?” asked Ray.

  “Alone with a driver,” said the guard. “They were in a black Lincoln Town Car. One of those airport limos, it looked like.”

  “Airport limos?” Ray and I said simultaneously.

  By this point, a short line of cars had formed behind us.

  “I’ve gotta move things along,” said the guard. “You can try again later, but now I’ve gotta have you leave.”

  “What should we do?” I asked Ray.

  “Just what the man said,” he replied. “Try again later.”

  We drove around Boca, stopped for some iced tea, and dialed Sharon’s number from a pay phone, to make sure she wasn’t there after all. Unfortunately, the guard was right: she wasn’t home.

  At five-thirty, we went back to the gate house. The guard swore he hadn’t seen Sharon come in but humored us by calling her again. Still no answer.

  “She could be at Barry’s,” I said to Ray.

  “Then why the airport limo?” he said.

  “Okay, then maybe she took a business trip,” I theorized. “Maybe someone wants her to coordinate a wedding out of the state, and she’s scouting locations.”

  “Would she tell your mother if she was going away for an extended period of time?” asked Ray.

  “Probably.”

  “Then call your mother.”

  We drove to another pay phone.

  “Mom,” I said when she answered. “Just curious: did Sharon go out of town by any chance?”

  She giggled. “Yes, but she swore me to secrecy.”

  “Why?”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “Well, unseal them, Mom,” I said. “I really have to get in touch with her as soon as possible.”

  “Deborah, dear. I’m so happy that you feel close to your sister at long last. You know how much I’ve wanted that. If you need to speak to Sharon, I’m sure she’d want me to tell you where she can be reached.”

  “I do need to speak to her,” I said emphatically.

  “Well, then.” My mother giggled again. “She’s flown off to Nassau with that nice Barry Shiller.”

  I grabbed Ray’s arm, feeling faint. “She didn’t.”

  “Oh, yes she did, dear. Apparently, he has a lovely house in Lyford Cay and insisted she come and spend a few days.”

  “But she’s doing some big shot’s wedding in a couple of weeks,” I recalled. “Isn’t this trip awfully sudden?”

  “Yes, and that’s the best part. Sharon suspects that Barry is whisking her off to the islands because he intends to propose.”

  “Propose.”

  “Marriage, dear. Oh, I can guess what you’re thinking—that Sharon’s deluding herself again. But this time, the man she’s set her sights on seems to have set his sights on her too. A whirlwind courtship if ever there was one. Imagine our Sharon finding a mate as impulsive as she is.”

  “I’m imagining.” What I imagined, of course, was that Barry was whisking my sister off to his romantic Bahamian retreat, not because he was madly in love with her and wanted to propose marriage to her, but because he was feeling squeezed by the cops and wanted to flee the country—go on the lam, in police parlance—and take Sharon along as insurance ... as a hostage.

  “I do hope her little vacation goes smoothly for her,” said my mother.

  “Listen, Mom. You don’t happen to have Barry’s phone number at Lyford Cay, do you?”

  “No. Sharon didn’t give it to me. Do you need to speak to her that urgently?”

  “That urgently.”

  “Perhaps if you call his law office, his secretary could—”

  “On second thought, I shouldn’t bother the lovebirds,” I interrupted, not wanting to tip Barry off that I was on to him.

  “That’s very considerate of you, dear. As I said, I’m delighted about the way you and your sister have worked things out between you. I’m very proud of my girls.”

  I told her we were proud of her too and hung up. I turned to Ray. “Is there any way you could take a day or two off from work?”

  “Because?”

  “Because I’m inviting you to fly over to Nassau with me.”

  “Why? So we can storm Barry’s house and rescue Sharon? You told me Lyford Cay is a private club. They’ll never let us get within a mile of the place.”

  “Then we won’t storm his house and rescue Sharon. We’ll sneak into his house and rescue her. We’ll figure out how once we get there.”

  He shook his head. “Barging into the nurse’s house here in Stuart was one thing. Flying all the way to Nassau to be shut out of some private club is another.”

  “All the way to Nassau? From what I’ve seen, people in south Florida commute to the Bahamas like people from New York commute to the Hamptons. It’s no big deal. Jeffrey used to go there on his boat, for long weekends.”

  Ray wasn’t committing.

  “Come on,” I coaxed. “I bet Nassau’s beautiful this time of year. You could use a change of scenery, couldn’t you?”

  “Sure, but why not let Gillby fly down and arrest Shiller? Then after he’s got him in custody, we’ll go and bring Sharon home.”

  “Gillby isn’t ready to arrest Barry. He’s still gathering evidence against him. That’s the problem.”

  I was frustrated now. Either Ray was in or out.

  “If you don’t want to go, then tell me,” I said.

  In response, he reached out and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “I don’t want you to go, don’t you get it?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You’re so into the drama of this, as if it’s just another episode on your soap opera, that you don’t see the danger. Barry Shiller’s a bad guy, Deborah. A rich and powerful bad guy. If you mess with him, you could be the next person to catch a bullet in the chest. I’m not real keen on letting that happen.”

  I smiled, enjoying the feel of his fingers against my skin, enjoying his concern for my welfare, for me. “Then come with me,” I urged. “Nothing will happen if you’re by my side. You’re my friend, my buddy, my pal.”

  “I’m more than that and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  “If you don’t, maybe this will convince you.”

  He leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth—a kiss that was sudden and lasted only a moment but definitely put a new spin on the nature of our relationship.

  At first, I was too startled by the kiss to register anything but bemusement. “That felt weird, like kissing my brother,” I said, running my fingertips alon
g my lips, as if to confirm that the kiss had actually occurred.

  “You don’t have a brother,” said Ray. “Maybe I’d better try it again.”

  He kissed me a second time, longer, more passionately, pulling me closer and encircling me in his arms. It was that second kiss that did it; when it was over, I hardly viewed Ray as a brother. I was so hot for him, so electrified by the sensations his kisses had unleashed, that I thought my insides would melt.

  “How about now? Still feel weird?” he asked, his voice low, husky.

  “No. Not weird at all.”

  I became the aggressor then, taking his face in my hands, folding my mouth into his, folding my body into his, as if I couldn’t get enough of him once I’d had my first taste.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he reiterated as we continued to paw each other in broad daylight, oblivious to the traffic along Yamato Road, one of Boca’s main thoroughfares.

  “You won’t lose me, Ray,” I said breathlessly between nibbles on his lips. “You won’t.”

  He protested, murmuring something about Beth, but I silenced him with another kiss. Ignited or liberated or a combination of both, he began to move his hands along the front of my body, down, down, down, touching, rubbing, massaging my breasts, my abdomen, my—

  “Ray,” I said, forcing myself to break away, just as his palms had made contact with my pelvic bone. “We’re worse than those horny teenagers up in the observation tower. Let’s at least do this in the car.”

  “We don’t have a car,” he moaned, nodding at the Indian.

  I laughed, picturing us trying to keep our orgy going on the seat of the motorcycle.

  “If there isn’t a lot of traffic, I can get us back to Stuart in just over an hour,” he said, practically panting as he returned his hands to my body, as if there were a powerful magnetic field between us and he couldn’t help himself.

  “And then what?” I said through half-closed eyes, finding it almost impossible to concentrate on anything but the feel of him.

  “We’ll do more of this.“ He kissed me again—this kiss, like the others, bearing the unmistakable mark of a man in lust.

  “What about Sharon and Barry and Nassau?” I asked, pulling away from him. “I’m serious about flying over there, Ray. I’m afraid for my sister, afraid she doesn’t have a clue what she’s walked into this time, and I can’t sit by and do nothing. Once and for all, I’ve got to prove to her that I care about her, that I’ve always cared about her, that I’m not out to take anything away from her. She and I will never be able to co-exist peacefully unless I make some sort of grand gesture.”

  Ray nodded. “Infiltrating Lyford Cay and dragging her out of there would qualify as a grand gesture, no doubt about it.”

  “Then you’ll go with me?”

  “Tell you what,” he said, taking my hand and leading me over to the motorcycle. “When we get back to Stuart, we’ll talk about Nassau, come up with a game plan.”

  I threw my arms around him. “Oh, thanks, Ray. You won’t be sorry. I swear it.”

  “But the first thing we’re gonna do when we get home is finish this other business we’ve started. Do we have a deal?” He pressed himself against me. He was, as they say, aroused.

  I smiled. “You drive a hard bargain, baby.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  We made it back to Stuart in record time, propelled, in part, by the kind of euphoria only a new romance can inspire. We pulled into Ray’s driveway, all worked up about hopping off the bike, tearing off our clothes, and engaging in lewd and lascivious behavior. There was a slight problem, however.

  “Holly!” said Ray, when he spotted her sitting cross-legged on his front steps. She looked even younger—and thinner—than she had the night I’d seen her with him at the Black Marlin, and she was dressed entirely in white. A vestal virgin. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s eight o’clock. You invited me for seven-thirty.”

  Ray looked stricken. “Jeez, Holly. I was going to make you dinner, wasn’t I?”

  “Grilled tuna, you said,” she reminded him. “With pasta and garlic bread.”

  The same menu he cooked up for me, I thought, minus the broccoli. What a coincidence.

  Coincidence, my ass. I was incensed by this turn of events. Instantly furious. Smoke-coming-out-of-my-ears pissed off. My anger zooming from zero to ten in a matter of nanoseconds. I mean, there I was, totally turbo-charged, sexually speaking, anticipating my first intimate evening with a man I genuinely cared for, my first intimate evening with a man in ages, as a matter of fact. And what do you know? Ray already had plans for the evening—dinner at his place with one of his goddamn tree-women.

  Never mind that I had encouraged him to see Holly again, encouraged him to fall in love and be happy. That was then—before I realized that the woman I was encouraging him to fall in love and be happy with was me.

  “I’m really sorry,” he told Holly. “Something came up and I completely forgot about our date.”

  “Something?” I said, glaring at him. “My, that’s flattering.” I strode over to Holly and pumped her hand, not wanting to be rude. This mess wasn’t her fault. It was Ray who’d led me to believe he wasn’t dying to go out with her again; Ray who’d given me the impression that he didn’t especially enjoy dating; Ray who’d morphed into another Jeffrey Hirshon before my very eyes. “I’m Deborah Peltz,” I said to Holly. “We met at the Black Marlin. How are you?”

  “Hungry,” she said. “My stomach’s growling. I skipped lunch today.” Holly may have had a pleasingly youthful appearance, but she had the voice from hell, it turned out. A sort of Fran Drescher honk.

  “Did you hear that? She’s hungry, Ray,” I said. “Better get right into the kitchen and feed her.”

  “But I—we—she—” he stammered.

  “Well, you’ve certainly got your pronouns down,” I said as I started back up the driveway, in the direction of the street. I figured I’d walk the couple of blocks into town and call myself a cab.

  “Wait! Where are you going, Deborah?” said Ray, rushing toward me, his expression full of what-should-I-do? As if I was supposed to bail him out.

  “I’m going home,” I replied as I kept walking. To take a cold shower.

  “Won’t you at least stay until I straighten this out?” he pleaded.

  “What’s to straighten out?” I said. “Three’s a crowd.”

  Ray was about to respond when Holly called out to me. “Nice meeting you, Deb! Have a beautiful evening!”

  “You too, Hol!” I said. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  “We’ve got to talk about Nassau,” said Ray, as he followed me onto Seminole Street. “I’m flying over there with you, remember.”

  “Just grill your tuna,” I said. “I’m flying over there by myself.”

  By the time I got to the cottage, I was so jazzed up I didn’t know what to do first—eat dinner? Call the airlines? Reserve a hotel room? Punch a hole in the wall? Besides which, I didn’t have a clue about Nassau, had never been to the Bahamas, and I wasn’t in the mood to run out to the nearest bookstore and buy a Fodor’s guide.

  And then there was another wrinkle: my job. The Historical Society was paying me to caretake the House of Refuge, not to go gallivanting on some island. I would have to tell Melinda I was leaving town on a family emergency. But if I did that, she would run to my mother to find out what family emergency, and I’d be stuck having to ‘fess up to Mom about Barry, which I was not about to do.

  Of course, Frank Gillby wouldn’t be too crazy about my rushing off to Barry’s Bahamian palace and taking the law into my own hands. But there are times when you can’t please everybody. (There are also times when you can’t please anybody, which was about to be the case here.)

  Ultimately, I decided to confide in Fred Zimsky. He would not only cover for me at the House of Refuge, I hoped; he would keep my scheme a
secret from my mother, because he was fond of her and wouldn’t want her to go into cardiac arrest.

  Yes, that’s the ticket, I thought as I dialed his number, crossing my fingers that he was not spending the night at my mother’s, which he wasn’t, luckily. After I laid out my story, he agreed not to tell Mom where I was going and he volunteered to sleep at the cottage for as long as I was away. I thanked him over and over and said I owed him one.

  “Just put in a good word for me with your mother,” he said. “Then we’ll wipe the slate clean.”

  I said I would, hung up, and called Helen.

  “It’s Deborah,” I said when she answered. “I need help.”

  “Oh, God. Don’t tell me the police arrested you and this is the one phone call you’re allowed from jail.”

  “No, I’m at the cottage, Helen. You were right about the murderer. He turned out to be the wronged business associate.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Unfortunately, this wronged business associate has flown off to his house in the Bahamas with my sister. She thinks he’s in love with her. I think he’s using her.”

  “For sex?”

  “No, as a hostage. He’s probably got her bound and gagged by now.”

  “So he is using her for sex.”

  “No, Helen. I meant that he’s taken Sharon to the Bahamas as sort of an insurance policy. When the police come after him, he can pull one of those ‘If I go, she goes with me’ numbers.”

  “Oh, like that scene we did on the show a couple of years ago.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one where Dirk Campbell, the bank president, fled to St. Barts to escape being charged with the murder of Hector Diaz, his personal trainer, and dragged Hector’s sister, Carmen, to the island with him. Remember?”

  “Not really. What happened to Carmen? Did she make it back to the States alive?”

  “Carmen? She was a tough broad. She broke free from her handcuffs, surprised Dirk on the deck of his house and pushed him off, into the sea. He was still holding his martini glass when they found him bobbing in the water.” Helen sighed. “We beat The Young and the Restless that day. Woody was ecstatic. How could you have forgotten?”