Do Wah Diddy Die

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “Sorry.” She hesitated, then said, “He didn’t feel it, you know. It’s not even attached—”

  Mickey shook his head. “I’ll get your—statement later.”

  She nodded soberly, her hands clasped behind her back, as she looked straight ahead. “I suppose it’s a—touchy subject for a guy.”

  If she smiles, he decided, I will shoot her with my gun. And no jury on earth will convict me. Not if I call the old ladies to the stand.

  Perhaps she read his thoughts. Or his intentions. She didn’t smile, didn’t even look at him as sirens once again wailed in the distance.

  Artie didn’t like the rock and hard place he found himself in. Fern and Donald were positioned at one end of the street doing something pretty odd again with the map they’d been pretending to study. Sirens could be heard coming toward them from the other direction. And he’d scuffed his new shoes and couldn’t do anything about it because the blind guy he was pretending to be wouldn’t know he had scuffed shoes. He hadn’t thought this particular disguise through, but he had to get into the house, and who could say no to giving a blind guy a drink of water? Not even Louise the Heartless. Now the cops were coming and he was boxed in.

  Not that anyone was likely to bother a blind guy, but he was sticking out like a sore thumb on the soon to be less quiet street. He’d just have to continue tapping his way toward Fern and Donald, but would they penetrate his disguise? And why weren’t they getting out of here with the cops coming? He’d had a bad feeling when he’d seen Luci and Boudreaux digging near the bougainvillea. Just went to show you couldn’t even count on a bush to keep your secrets for you.

  As the sirens got louder and closer, he backed up and up. One minute he was watching Fern and Donald’s car, the next he was wrapped in leaves and branches. Sharp little buggers, but at least he was out of sight when the cop cars came squealing around the corner.

  13

  “What the—?” Donald’s voice faded into choking incoherence as he stared at the police cars that once more engulfed the house.

  “There’s the forensics van.” Fern looked at Donald. “These people have done more killing than we have, in less time!”

  “What’re we doing wrong?”

  “Everything, apparently.” Fern shifted in the seat. It wasn’t easy being a wheelman with her arm in a sling, but the Town Car with the automatic was a big help. “Let’s go. We can’t plant the bomb with the police crawling all over the place.” Just being this close to police made her skin crawl.

  “Wait. Look.” He pointed past the confusion down the street. On the edge of the action, but not in it, sat the Nash, alone, unattended under a shade tree just past the driveway. “Busy bodies’ll be watching the bulls. Bulls’ll be working. I’ll just be an old man tinkering with a car. Bet no one will even remember me.”

  “I don’t know, Donald.” Fern was uneasy. Everything that could go wrong with this hit had gone wrong. Why should today be any different? And when it did go wrong, what chance did they have of getting clear with half the police department crawling everywhere?

  “Sit tight, stay cool,” Donald directed, sliding out the door with the bag containing the bomb, also purchased from Teddy.

  It wasn’t east to sit quietly, her arm throbbing in sync with her pounding heart while Donald strolled over to the Nash.

  After a quick look around, he popped the hood, opened the bag and installed the bomb with a deftness that peeled away the years. Dang, if the old boy can’t still surprise the hell out of me, she thought with a half grin.

  The grin froze when the gate opened and Luci came out.

  Artie saw his opportunity and untangled himself from the tree, adding only a few more scratches to his face and hands. He righted his glasses and started tapping his way down the street away from Fern and Donald. He had to pass Luci, but that seemed like the lesser of two evils right now. He considered warning Donald, but discarded it. With Donald on the verge of discovery, this was not a good moment to link himself to him.

  Luci turned to close the gate as Donald closed the lid of the Nash and dusted his hands down the sides of his pants. Donald started back to the Town Car while Luci started toward the Nash. They passed within a few feet of each other, but with their backs to each other, neither was aware of it. Donald slid into the passenger side of his car as Luci tossed her handbag onto the seat of the Nash, then slid behind the wheel.

  When Fern started the car, it only took Artie a couple of beats to realize what Donald had just done to the Nash and what was about to happen. Yes, it would solve his little problem, but it could also end his problems permanently. Tapping faster, he turned and almost stepped out in front of a painfully familiar black Buick. It honked, giving him a good reason to jump back. He did a quick about-face. At the moment, bombs and the hit couple seemed the lesser of the evils confronting him.

  He didn’t know how Dante’s boys had managed to find him, but maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t recognize Cloris’s erstwhile groom in the blind man with scuffed shoes.

  “Well.” Donald’s voice was a couple of octaves higher from the close call, and he dabbed at the sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Least we get to see the show.”

  Fern let the car roll forward, her whole attention directed to the rear view mirror and the girl taking a long time to settle herself in the seat, find the keys and get ready to insert them in the ignition.

  “I put it on a delay. Ten seconds after the engine starts, its Disney World here we come,” Donald said hoarsely.

  Artie had to look. He pretended to stop and feel his watch. Only shock kept him from showing how shook up he was. And then Dante’s goons grabbed Luci out of the Nash, slamming the door, but leaving the keys dangling in the ignition. He turned away as the dark car snaked past him and turned the corner. Was this the solution to his problem? Or an escalation of his problems? Why would Dante want Luci—

  He didn’t have time to finish that thought. It was replaced by the realization that Fern and Donald’s car had drifted off course with the street and on course with him. It was moving slow, but not so slow it didn’t clip him as he tried to leap out of the way. He landed behind a familiar looking small hedge. In a distant sort of way, he heard the car continue on until it crunched into a large oak, releasing a shower of acorns to pelt it and him.

  Dante was working on a new sketch when Cain and Abel thrust Benny’s “Jane” into his office. For purposes of intimidation, he kept writing. First there would be the inevitable burst of indignation. Then the demand to know what was going on, why she’d been brought here. When he didn’t answer, she would subside into an uneasy silence. A full minute after that, he would look up and ask his questions. And she would rush to answer them.

  So he smiled and continued to fill the silence with the scratch, scratch of his pen...until she strolled past him to stare out the glass window of his office into the warehouse where his Persephone waited the Mardi Gras call.

  He looked at his guys first. They lifted their shoulders in identical shrugs. And, he noted with a deepening frown, they looked odd. Cain and Abel didn’t do odd. He tapped the pen against the desk, faster and faster as hope faded that she would crack first. Okay. He spun his chair around. Her back was to him, but even so, she wasn’t at all what he imagined Benny’s “odd bird” would be. Tall and reed slim, she was wearing a yellow sundress with clean, graceful lines that flattered the greyhound lines of her body. On her feet was something that might have been sandals, so brief were they, and on her head she had a bright red cap with the brim pointed back.

  He got up and joined her, finding no sign in her pure profile that the elongated silence or getting snatched by his boys troubled her in any way.

  A feral smile edged up the corners of his mouth. He did love a challenge, and “Jane” looked to be a bit of one. “Benny didn’t say half enough about you, Miss Jane.”

  “Who?” Luci gave him a brief, questioning glance before returning to her examination of the float,
a critical and assessing look on her face that seemed to assume he’d invited her here solely to get her opinion on it.

  Not sure whether to get mad or laugh, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “Not that I buy your name is Jane.”

  She looked at him for a long unnerving beat. Her eyes were green x-rays that seemed to look right into his soul.

  “I would hope not.” She returned to her study of the float, her head tipped, as if a new angle would solve the conundrum. After a pause, she added, “Luci Seymour. And you are?”

  “Dante.” Seymour. He’d heard that name before, but in what context?

  He looked at her, but before he could ask, she said, as if she heard him thinking, “The stiff in the freezer. On the news.”

  “Oh yeah. Guy looked exactly like my tailor. They find out who it was?”

  Luci shook her head, her thoughts still missing from her expression.

  For a moment he could feel his temper—or was it something else?—trying to slip the leash. Cain and Abel, who knew what happened when he lost his temper, reached inside their jackets for their guns.

  “The boobs,” she said, turning to face him. “They aren’t—”

  “Aren’t what?” His temper jacked up another notch.

  “Very real. I mean, look at them. They’re the same size. Real boobs aren’t the same size.” She didn’t say it, but the question was implied: didn’t you know that?

  “Of course I know that,” he snapped, adjusting his jacket in a defensive movement. “They’re art.”

  She looked at him, one brow arching. “They’re fantasy.”

  Cain and Abel started to pull their guns clear of their jackets as Dante teetered on the brink of letting his temper turn deadly.

  “If you had them you wouldn’t be so fascinated with them.” She turned from the float and her gaze passed over the goons as she surveyed his office. “Have you been doing boobs long?”

  It had been a long time since anyone had tried to startle Dante, let alone succeeded. He examined the novel feeling from all sides and decided it was rather intriguing. He laughed. Not loud, not long. More of a snort, really. But a snort with amusement in it.

  Cain and Abel looked at each other, as surprised as they were capable of being. Then they put away their guns.

  “Benny was right.” He trailed a finger down her cheek. “You are…unusual.”

  Luci stepped away from him, toward the desk and the plans spread out there, so as not to appear to be avoiding him.

  “Benny?”

  “He works for me.”

  No surprise there. Not that she had a clue what he was talking about, but it didn’t seem prudent to tell him that. “Oh.”

  “The shoebox he brought me was most interesting.”

  Not only did the light bulb go off, so did alarm bells. He wasn’t one of her aunts’ intimates, so how did he know about the shoeboxes? It was all weird enough to keep Mickey’s headache going into the next new millennium if she were stupid enough to tell him about it. It was obvious she needed more information. Could she get it without giving any away?

  She arched her other brow, thanking the powers that be for the Seymour-ness that kept her expression bland and cool despite the intensity of his very dangerous regard. “Really?”

  Cool, very cool. Obviously a woman after his own heart. Dante smiled his satisfaction. “Absolutely.”

  He joined her by the desk, letting his body brush against hers.

  “I found them so interesting I’d like more of them.”

  Luci traced the line of the float with her finger, the action moving her around the desk and away from him. “Would you?”

  Dante leaned across the desk and trapped her hand against the paper. Trapped her gaze with his. “Yes, I would.”

  She didn’t even blink. “They aren’t mine to give.”

  He studied her face with interest. There was charm in the angular lines that wasn’t apparent to the undiscerning eye. He prided himself on having a discerning eye—particularly where women were concerned. Initially, he’d planned to ferret out the scam, eliminate the principals and take it over for himself. But she was an unexpected bonus. Perhaps, if she wasn’t too clever, he’d keep her. For a while anyway. It might be fun.

  “You gave one to Benny.”

  Luci slid her hand away from his and took his chair, sliding back and crossing her legs. Both movements worked the skirt of her dress up enough to draw attention. The three men practically created a vortex with their collective and simultaneously indrawn breaths. When they turned a touch blue around the lips, Luci smoothed the dress back in place.

  There was a combined exhaling that ruffled her hair. Luci waited until Dante’s dazed gaze found her face again before she said, “I’m afraid that wasn’t me. I couldn’t have given Benny anything yesterday, since I only arrived last night.”

  “What?” He wheeled to look at his suddenly worried men. They both gulped, swallowed and backed into the wall. “Idiots.”

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on them.” Luci stood and walked around the desk. “This Benny doesn’t sound like a person who pays a lot of attention to detail.”

  “That’s right, Boss,” Abel said hoarsely. “Benny said it were the younger one. That the rest are old. Wouldn’t know about her, now would he?”

  All three of them looked at him. He wasn’t a fair man, but he liked to appear to be one, so he nodded. “Then who was it?”

  “I suspect, though the idea fairly boggles my mind—and you should know a Seymour doesn’t boggle easily—that it was Unabelle.” For the first time she looked more than mildly curious. There was a tiny frown between her oddly straight brows. He studied it and decided to like it. “Though I wouldn’t have her picked up if I were you. Her fiancé is a retired cop. Eddie Ross?”

  Dante scowled. “Ross?”

  “You know him?”

  “Let’s say I’ve had some...interaction with his nephew.”

  Luci smiled. Dante wasn’t ready for it and he thought he was ready for anything. He kind of heard the boys inhaling again, but all he could do for the space of it was stare and bask in it.

  “We have something in common then.” She turned off the smile. Rational thought took a bit longer to be restored. “I’ve had a few encounters with him myself.”

  Dante took a shaky breath, then said with assumed calm, “Then you know how unreasonable he can be?”

  Luci laughed. The sound invoked an extraordinary feeling of delight that once again blurred rational thought and made him want to grin like a fool. He looked at his men and saw they were grinning like fools. He realized his mouth was starting to turn up and stopped it.

  Get a grip, man. She’s just a woman. One who made him want to sit up and beg, but just a woman. He rubbed his brow, hoping to clear his head. What—oh yeah.

  “The boxes. What I’d really like to know is how the boxes got that way.” He chose his words with care, not anxious to use the actionable ones like scam and defraud. It didn’t seem possible that she was wired, since no one knew she was going to get grabbed, but he stayed in business by not trusting anyone, especially anyone as attractively packaged as Luci Seymour.

  “Another thing we have in common.” This time the wattage on her smile was turned down, as if she knew its danger to the male brain.

  “Is that a problem?” he shot back.

  “No.” Her shrug was a study in the elegant. “The contents just don’t seem to be your style.”

  He stepped in front of her. She was as tall as he, so he had to use the force of his personality to intimidate her. He gave her a deliberate once over, mentally stripping her. “What’s in those boxes will always be my style.”

  She looked amused instead of intimidated. “Okay, but my aunts—”

  “They’re your partners?”

  “I’m not in it at all. I’m just here for the wedding.”

  “But you can talk to them? They’ll listen to you?”

  She
looked at him, her gaze closed and cool, with no sign of the charm that had taken his breath away. “Maybe. The situation is...complicated.”

  She’d piqued his interest now. He was accustomed to people experiencing a full range of emotions in his presence, but he’d never met anyone so politely indifferent. Maybe a change of tactics was in order? He captured her hand and gave her his most charming smile.

  “Luci, I hope it’s all right for me to call you Luci? And you can call me Dante. I’m counting on you to uncomplicate it for me.”

  Luci studied him. He wasn’t just going to go away. And it would really be annoying if his men kept grabbing her off the street. Not to mention what it would do to Mickey’s blood pressure if he got involved, which she had a feeling he would.

  “It would help if you met them. They’re giving a party on Sunday. You should come, bring a friend.”

  His eyes gleamed. “I like parties. And I’m quite good with old ladies, aren’t I, boys?”

  “Sure, boss.”

  It was hard not to grin at their less-than-enthusiastic endorsement, but Luci knew it wouldn’t be wise. This guy’s ego was probably more fragile than Dresden.

  Dante squeezed her hand, his eyes broadcasting his confidence that he was good with ladies her age, too.

  “I probably ought to warn you,” she said. “There’s more than just the freezer stiff that you saw on the news.”

  “Oh?” Was she warning him, perhaps even threatening him? Only if she didn’t know who she was dealing with. She couldn’t be that stupid. Not with those eyes. When dealing in word games and innuendo, it required good instincts to tell what was bluff and what wasn’t, but he wasn’t getting a clear read from her. She was too unexpected, too far outside the norm. He toyed with the idea of being blunt—but it was such fun to match wits with someone who actually had some. He’d give her a little more slack before he pulled her in. Add a little spice to the game.

  “I found another body. Under the bougainvillea.”