The Hard Way: Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5

by Annika Martin

  It was right then that we heard it—the harrumph of a throat clearing. I nearly spit out the booze.

  Margie stood at the door, staring, lips parted. At first I thought it was the scotch-drinking the was the problem. Was there a rule about alcohol in the living room? Then, slowly, Odin removed his hand from my head, and I realized the insane picture we presented. Me lying with my head in Odin’s lap and my feet on Thor’s lap. Zeus kneeling in front of me showing me a computer. Odin dribbling booze into my mouth. It was positively Hedonistic.

  “Oh, hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Thor shut the phone book, smiling breezily. “Just verifying a few names and addresses.”

  “Yeah.” I sat up with some difficulty. “Verification. It can get a little tedious.”

  She nodded, but I could tell she wasn’t buying it. Verification had gone a long way for us, but it looked like we’d just found its limit.

  “Did you have a nice evening out?” Zeus broke in.

  She plastered on a smile and nodded again. “Very nice.” She waved at the group of us. “Well, I’m glad one of those directories came in handy. I keep them around for my older guests, but…”

  “It’s been very handy,” Thor said, face like a mask.

  She smiled uncertainly and bid us goodnight.

  Thor poked me in the thigh. “It can get a little tedious?”

  “What? I was trying to…I don’t know. Show how hard we work. How diligent we are.”

  “Dude, you made it sound like, ‘Our work as insurance adjustors is so boring we have to have group sex.’”

  “You think that’s what she thinks?” I looked up at Odin, who just kind of sparkled down at me. “Oh my god. She must think I’m a total sex maniac with a harem of men!”

  “She’d be right, goddess.”

  I hit him, and he grabbed my hand and bent down to kiss me.

  “Not here!”

  “I think the jig is up,” Thor said. “Let’s go through the rest. There are only a few more.” He proceeded to read more names in a quiet voice. Nothing sparked anything for me.

  “So we only have Chas. I don’t know…”

  “What about your sister?”

  “What about her?”

  “Would she know?” Zeus asked. “Your ear isn’t to the ground anymore, but hers is.”

  I checked the time. Nine at night. I hated to involve her, but Thor was right. He always had sensible ideas like that. “I’ll call her.”

  We put the phone books back in their place in the bookshelves and headed up to our room. My guys gave me privacy while I called Vanessa. I told her just that we had a lead that the nickname or initial of the person who’d helped Hank was Z. “If our theory is right, he did criminal things to help Hank, like the harder criminal things, not the amateur-hour stuff. I’ve been trying to think of Z guys. At first I thought about Mark Zebold, but I found out about his business.”

  “Can you believe it?” she said. “It’s amazing!”

  I asked her about a few others. She didn’t think any of them were likely to be involved, and she couldn’t come up with any leads, either.

  “Fuck,” I said. “Now what?” Somehow it was even more depressing to have had that burst of optimism earlier and then lose it than it had been to have no hope at all.

  “Wait,” she said. “I don’t know guys like that, but I totally know who would—Lexy Coventry. We used to work together at McDonald’s, and she’d totally tell me. Her man is, like, the worst guy. He’s not a Z, but she’s constantly complaining about him and his friends. And I see her all the time at the feed store. That’s where she works now.”

  “Can you go there when it’s dead and talk to her?” I asked. “But without being obvious? See if she knows a criminal Z?”

  “No, I’ll do better than that. She hangs out at Meatn’ Place. She’s always wanting me to stop by.”

  “I don’t want you out there investigating.”

  “I was gonna go one of these days anyway. Come on, let me help. Candace is here with Kaitlin.”

  “You can’t tip Lexy off that you’re going specifically to get this.”

  “Dude, trust me. I’ll make it into gossip or something. Like a game. Wait—I’ll tell her I have a friend who is having an affair with a criminal type in the area who’s nicknamed Z. I’ll say my friend won’t say who it is. She’ll enjoy the challenge of guessing it. She’ll think it’s fun. She loves analyzing Malcolm’s friends.”

  “I don’t want you getting mixed up—”

  “I’m more than mixed up in this. Let me help. I’m doing it anyway. You can’t stop me.”

  I smiled. Vanessa was stubborn like that. “You’re awesome,” I said.

  She lowered her voice. “Hank needs to go down. Everyone agrees, and I mean everyone, unless their last name is Vernon. Did you hear about Glenda?”

  Vanessa went on to tell me how the beloved owner of Blue Deer Ice Cream—the place I was so sad to see closed—killed herself after Hank made her lose the ice cream shop that had been in her family for generations.

  “Everybody’s scared of him. He has everybody’s mortgages, and it’s like this reign of terror. Nobody was reading the small print until it was too late, or else the terms are really good, and they think, ‘Hank screwed this or that person but he won’t screw me.’ And then he fucking screws them. And he sues them if they talk bad about him. He’s a liar and a cheat, but people want to buddy up to him because he’s rich. He’s horrible.”

  We can be more horrible, I thought, but I didn’t say that.

  Chapter 12

  By lunchtime the next day, things were seriously on track. Zeus got one of our shady friends from Guvvey’s to pay a dirty cop to request the fingerprints.

  But best of all, Vanessa came through with a name: Jeremy Zern.

  Jeremy was a guy in Dieter’s Corners who was apparently a total scumbag and stole a lot of electronics, according to Vanessa’s friend Lexy. When we did a police records search, we discovered he’d never been arrested.

  He wouldn’t be in the system. Excellent.

  We had two suspects! All we needed now were Jeremy’s and Chas’s fingerprints to compare with the ones taken from the scene of the break-in.

  It was decided that Zeus and Odin would find Jeremy Zern and get his prints. They were better at looking disreputable than Thor and I were, and I think Zeus wanted to keep an eye on Odin.

  Thor and I would hunt down Chas and get his prints. They weren’t sure about letting Chas see me, but I promised them that Chas and I had hardly known each other at all. The disguise would totally work on Chas.

  Zeus and Odin headed out to Dieter’s Corners. There was a bar that did a 10 a.m. happy hour that Jeremy Zern talked up on his Facebook page. He took pictures there a lot.

  Meanwhile, Thor and I headed out to the local coffee shop, me in my horrible but very convincing stick-on nose and unflattering glasses. The coffee shop had a bulletin board that was flyer central for everyone who offered services in town. There were massage therapists, arborists, computer repair guys.

  Sure enough, Chas the handyman had a flyer there. I ripped off one of the little rectangle ruffles, and Thor gave him a call to talk over a job.

  Chas agreed to meet us on his lunch break.

  * * *

  ***

  Thor and I settled into the back booth at the Morningside Diner. He was the mysteriously hot millennial, and I was his dorky bride.

  I scanned the room, relieved I didn’t know anybody too well, though it was really only my sisters I had to worry about.

  Strange how things look when you’ve been away two years. I vividly remembered the stencils of chickens all along the top of the wall, and the blue checked tablecloths. But there were other aspects of the Morningside I didn’t remember, like the chrome everywhere looking just a little bit fake, and the shabby bathrooms.

  Everything had seemed nicer back when I lived there.

  I grabbe
d a menu. “You have to try the banana walnut peanut butter pancakes.”

  “Not sure about that.” Thor tended to go for the healthier options. I pointed out the nuts and fruit aspect of the pancakes, and he ended up ordering them. The place might be shabby, but I’d put those pancakes up against any breakfast food on the planet.

  Chas showed up soon after.

  “It’s your lunch break; grab a lunch,” Thor said to him. “On us.”

  “It’s cool,” Chas said.

  “I insist. It’s on us.”

  Chas eyed Thor. “Where’d you say you’re from?”

  “We travel a lot,” Thor said. “But we’re looking at property near here. We’re thinking about gutting this kitchen…” Thor showed him pictures of our fictional kitchen. Chas wasn’t entirely comfortable quoting a job he couldn’t visit, but he gave us examples of costs. He had pictures, too. It was a completely useless meeting, really, until the waitress delivered a water glass to Chas, and he took a nice big gulp of it.

  Chas ordered a ham and Swiss and quizzed us a bit. How did we use a kitchen? Did we cook together? Did we like to spread out, or were we mostly heating restaurant leftovers?

  Thor smiled over at me. “We like to cook big dinners. Big projects,” he said. “Sometimes we have a drink and cook for hours, making everything perfect. Sometimes we cook with other people.”

  “Social cooks,” I said wistfully, remembering those brief, shining few months we spent at the Los Angeles safehouse in the hills where we really did live like that. That beautiful mod hideout with the outdoor tub and the big kitchen.

  It had been like a real home. We were happy there.

  “A lot of counter space,” Chas said. “I’d probably hire out the actual design. I have a few names.”

  “But you could do the work?”

  “After the design, I’d quote it and do the work.” He sucked down some more water and set down the glass. Both Thor and I gazed at the place where he’d grasped it. He’d left big juicy prints. His meal came, and he got oily cheese prints on the glass. And Thor went crazy for the pancakes.

  Myself, I had the sweet roll.

  The plan was to get Chas to leave first, and then we’d empty his glass and slip it into a baggie Thor had brought. The Morningside Diner was a nice family place, and I hated the idea of stealing its glassware—but partway through the demo, Thor got a text. “Ah. Interesting.” He passed the phone over to me, and I read the words from Zeus: JZ our guy. In the trunk. Heading up to ski slope.

  So Jeremy Zern was our guy. “Huh,” I said.

  “We’re going to have to cut this short,” Thor explained, passing across a fifty and two twenties. “Buy yourself dessert. Whatever you’d like.”

  “I’m not going to eat fifty desserts,” Chas said.

  “Leave a nice tip and keep the change. We’ll be in touch when and if.”

  “Wow, thanks,” Chas said.

  Well, he was innocent. We’d wasted his time, but at least he’d gotten a nice lunch out of it. And a little extra cash.

  We got out of there and headed to Ski Slope Road.

  “When and if,” I sighed. That was our life—when and if.

  Thor looked over at me—sadly. He missed having a permanent home, too.

  “I’m guessing JZ in the trunk isn’t a euphemism,” I added.

  “I'm thinking no,” Thor said. “They probably dusted his glass and did a visual comparison. And lured him out.”

  “Why the ski slope?”

  “They’ll probably hang him over,” Thor said. “As a threat. More organic than a gun to the head.”

  “Organic? Important to be organic with those threats.” I was mocking that comment, which I didn’t entirely understand, but there was a little bit of admiration in there. My guys were like master-level artisans of crime.

  I stared out the window at the passing scenery. “I wish we were designing a kitchen like we told Chas we were. I wish the four of us were moving to our own place where nobody could get to us, and that we really were going to have a large entertainment kitchen. Isn’t there some place we can be safe like that? A place without an extradition treaty or something?”

  Thor regarded me sadly. “Not for us.”

  Chapter 13

  The guys had taken my secret ski slope parking space. I had Thor park in the second most hidden spot, the one Vanessa had taken, and we headed in, crashing through the underbrush until we came to the fence around the clearing and the giant ski jump.

  “This is where you used to go?” Thor asked.

  “It seemed more modern back then.”

  “It was only two years ago!”

  “I know. Everything seems weirdly more shabby and rickety now that I’ve been places like Beverly Hills.”

  He looked the thing up and down, all the boards half off and the extra ones nailed haphazardly here and there. “I don’t think Beverly Hills is what’s making this thing look rickety.”

  I pointed up at the platform. “There they are.” Two figures were visible—Odin and Zeus. The lump on the platform was probably Jeremy. “If they let him drop, it’ll look like a suicide,” I observed.

  “They’re not going to let him drop,” Thor said. “They need him to think they might, though.”

  We climbed the fence and headed to the jump. I grabbed a board and started up. Thor followed.

  I was surprised Thor so blithely followed after me, but then I realized he’d know that Odin and Zeus would’ve checked it out. My guys trusted each other like that, almost like they were each others’ eyes and ears.

  Voices became audible as we got near the platform. Zeus’s head became visible first. He smiled at me. Then I saw Odin crouching next to him, over a man I presumed was Jeremy Zern.

  Jeremy had a scrubby brown beard, a close-shaved head, and puppy dog eyes, and he wore a lime-green windbreaker. He was holding onto a vertical support with bound hands; his feet were bound, too. “Hey! Help me!” Jeremy said.

  Zeus grabbed my hand and pulled me up. He said nothing, just nodded. Don’t talk, that meant.

  “You want to be an accessory to murder?” Jeremy continued. “Because if you don’t do anything—”

  Odin slapped the top of Jeremy’s head. “Shut it.”

  “What’s going on here?” Thor demanded, coming up right after me. “The fuck?”

  “They want me to turn myself in for something I didn’t do,” Jeremy said. “I’m not turning myself in for something I didn’t do!” This outburst had the flavor of something he’d repeated over and over.

  Deny deny deny. The usual criminal move.

  Jeremy gripped the vertical support more tightly and looked down. Frightened of heights? Maybe that’s why they wanted him up here. I couldn’t begin to guess how they could’ve figured out Jeremy was frightened of heights. The very powers of divination that made Zeus and Odin such amazing sexual partners made them the kinds of enemies you totally didn’t want to have.

  “Help me,” Jeremy said to me, thinking his chances were best with the resident female.

  “She’s not going to help you,” Odin said, all low and rumbly. “She’s cold as they come.”

  I suppressed a smile. Odin knew how I enjoyed being made out to be a badass. He shot a sly glance at me. I wanted to kiss him so bad.

  Thor looked from Odin to Zeus and back to Odin. “Let’s try being reasonable here. There has to be something…”

  Zeus toed Jeremy’s foot, which made Jeremy cling harder to that pole. “Jeremy here complained about the exertion of coming up here. I know a way for him not to have to deal with the stairs on the way down. How about that?”

  Jeremy turned his puppy dog eyes to Thor. “I didn’t do it. They said they’d shove me off if I didn’t go turn myself in. But I wasn’t anywhere near that place.”

  “Your prints match the crime scene,” Zeus said. “Are you suddenly a university researcher?”

  “Mmm.” Thor crouched on the other side of him, getting closer to
his level. “I appreciate your dilemma.”

  “It’s not a dilemma if I didn’t do anything.”

  I didn’t think that was technically correct, but I kept it zipped.

  “Here’s the problem,” Thor began in his empathizing tone, like he was so concerned about this grave problem that they shared. “We know that you did the break-in. And soon the cops will.”

  “I didn’t!”

  Thor winced and looked all around. It was the type of wince he’d sometimes give me during a sexual punishment. You were bad, Isis. You know we have to spank you now—there’s just no way to avoid it!

  There would be no awesome spanking for Jeremy Zern, though.

  Thor contemplated the distant trees. “You don’t want to go down for murder. I get that. It’s a serious fucking crime. You don’t have priors, but we’re talking about murder here…”

  Jeremy kept up the plea. “I’m telling you—”

  Thor held up a hand. “You shouldn’t have to go down, but there’s only one way you don’t.”

  Jeremy regarded him warily. Thor pulled out his wallet and extracted a card. “I’ll send this guy to your home—”

  “My home?”

  “This guy’s a lawyer. He’ll negotiate you turning yourself in—in exchange for immunity and turning in the man who’s really behind this crime. This guy can get you a deal.”

  Jeremy eyed the card like it might bite his fingers. “I can’t afford a lawyer.”

  “It’s paid for.”

  There was a long silence where he just kept his eye on the card. A pair of crows flew overhead, cawing. “Why do you care?”

  “You’re not asking the questions here!” Zeus barked.

  Still, Jeremy persisted. “Who are you?”

  “We’re either your best friends or your worst enemies,” Odin said.

  Again Thor winced. His sympathetic wince. “It really is all you have. It’s that, or we go to the cops and let them know how they can match the prints they have. And then you’ll be arrested. And you’ll have no chance at immunity, and you know who will have a better lawyer than you?” He let the question hang there for a bit. “Hank Vernon will have a better lawyer than you. He may even manage to pin the entire murder on you.”