Arkady giggled—literally giggled—and smacked me on the back. “She is quite beautiful, yes, my creamy macaroni and cheese?”
“Yes, my sassy Russian. I-almost-fell-out-of-my-chair kind of beautiful. How ever did you resist her, Win?”
There it was again. My dove’s skepticism, loud and clear without any attempt at all to hide it. I moved to the front passenger seat, even though she can’t see me, and I looked her directly in the corner of her eye. “I did not have an affair with Inga, Stephania. She was a married woman, and I do not toy with married women. Ever.”
Stevie made a face before she snorted at me. “Oh, settle down, Mr. Mission Impossible. It’s none of my business. Either way, I can see where my little Hardy got his looks. His grandfather is an ugly heathen who needs to be locked up for life.”
Settling back down, I drifted toward the backseat again, knowing full well she wasn’t entirely convinced I’d not tinkered with Inga. “Indeed, that was of course the plan. Yet, it all went quite awry.”
“I’ll say. He’s still at large if you listen to the Internet.”
Arkady growled, his deep, husky rasp of discontent echoing in the small car. “I tell you, if I were alive, I would find Von Krause and make messy meat of him!”
“Mincemeat,” Stevie corrected. “And let’s hope we bypass him altogether. I just want to know what happened to Inga and why she left the baby with you, Win. I get that she felt it was safe, but her note makes it sound like she didn’t intend to come back, and that worries me. It worries me a lot.”
“As it does me, Dove. As it does me.”
On a lilting sigh, Stevie attempted to lighten the mood. Something else she quite excels at. “So we have a little bit of a drive. It’s Backstreet Boys time.”
Both Arkady and I flung our heads back, our shoulders slumped, and moaned like five-year-olds. “Please, my sweet pumpernickel bread, do not make me listen to ‘I’ll Never Break Your Heart’ again. It makes Arkady Bagrov’s loins ache.”
“I don’t know what you mean with that misinterpretation, chap, but I’m most certain it isn’t loins that will ache,” I teased Arkady, giving him a jab in the ribs.
“‘I’ll Never Break Your Heart’ it is!” Stevie exclaimed as she pressed the button on her dash and the Backstreet Boys began to wail…er sing.
We made the rest of the drive to the blaring strains of boy bands, passing cars on the highway in a blur of color until we saw the lights of Seattle in front of us.
When Stevie pulled up in front of a bar located by an alley—a filthy, undoubted dive of a place—and put the car in park, both Arkady and I looked at each other as though she’d gone nutters.
I gave the crumbling brick building with darkened windows covered in fingerprints a once-over to assess and hoped she’d made a wrong turn somewhere. The blinking neon sign read The Hoe, which was actually The Hole, but the letter L’s light was out of order. And I had to agree, it certainly was a hole.
“Is this where you’re meeting Sunflower and Dandelion?” I asked, incredulous at the thought.
“It’s not Dandelion. It’s Rutabaga. Or Rhubarb. I think. Or maybe I’m confusing him with someone else they had on their communal earth-loving page. I don’t know. Either way, yes, this is the place Sunflower said she frequented, and she suggested I buy her a drink here at her favorite watering hole.”
“Turnip?”
“Borscht?”
“I do not like this place. It is, how you say, seeds. Nothing good can come from place like this.”
She scooped up Belfry and put him in her purse. “Seedy. It’s seedy, Arkady, and if you think this is bad, you should see where I hung out in my early twenties. We can’t afford not to look into this, can we? We have to find Inga, for Hardy’s sake. And it isn’t like we could have asked Dana or Sandwich, if we’re not involving the police. So please trust I can take care of myself with all the spy knowledge you’ve instilled in me, okay? It’ll be fine, boys. Promise.”
Just as she spoke the words and stepped out onto the pavement, before either of us could protest (for all the good that would do), the rusty door of the bar burst open wide and a man the size of a bald, pale giant hurled a ragged-looking chap out onto the cracking sidewalk as though he were a bowling ball and not a fully grown man.
Stevie paused for only a moment before she smoothed her long dress (I think she calls it a maxi) over her hips, straightened her spine, put her purse handle on the crook of her arm and wrinkled her nose in distaste before stepping over the moaning gentleman with her delicate wedge sandals.
As she entered the bar, she looked up at the burly bouncer thoughtfully, patted his expansive forearm, and asked, “Did he insult the chef? Was it the chicken wings? So what if they weren’t cooked all the way through? What’s a little salmonella among friends? Honestly, people are so ungrateful!”
I sighed, but it was fondly.
Only my Stevie.
Chapter 6
The bar was as dark as the bowels of a French prison and smelled as dreadful to boot. But that didn’t stop my Stevie from plowing through this dung of a tavern as though someone owed her money.
Naturally, she was the classiest woman in this dank watering hole. Thus, she drew quite a lot of attention in her flowing dress and denim shrug, but she had places to be, and the lift of her chin said so.
“Free Bird” screamed from the crooked jukebox in the corner as sweat and desperation saturated the air. There were three or four hard-looking men sitting at the bar, and only one man in a dark corner, watching the door with the eyes of a perspiring eagle.
“There she is,” she muttered under her breath, pausing by the sticky bar. “Now, you guys, if you can think of anything I should ask, just say so. Bel? You stay in my purse no matter what. Everyone got it?”
“Got it,” I muttered, liking this less and less.
Stevie plastered a smile on her face and held out her hand to the couple from the news footage as if she were meeting them for high tea at the palace. “Sunflower? It’s so lovely to meet you. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
Sunflower looked around the bar, her nervous eyes darting about as her boyfriend, Rutabaga-Dandelion, sat back, tipping up the front feet of his chair. His face was scraggly with stubble, his eyes bloodshot when they roamed up and down Stevie.
Sunflower patted the chair next to hers and Stevie sat in it without qualm, caring little about the gooey fake leather surface. “Can I buy you both that drink I promised?” she asked, turning to look at the haggard barkeep and waving a finger to summon him. “What’s your pleasure? A chocolatini? Mango margarita maybe? Both yummy in my book.”
“Stephania, this doesn’t look like the kind of place where you summon the barkeep to do your bidding or where they provide chocolatinis,” I warned, for fear she’d come off too refined for this desperate lot.
Rutabaga-Dandelion nudged Sunflower and pouted, his thin lips turning downward as he jammed his hands into his denim vest. “I thought you said she was gonna give us money,” he whined.
Sunflower, the skin stretched so tightly over her gaunt face I thought surely her cheekbones might break through, made a face at her greasy boyfriend. “Hush, and let me do the talking.” Then she turned to Stevie and smiled, her gapped teeth jutting out over her bottom lip. “Sure, a drink’d be nice.”
As Stevie took their orders and went to grab two whiskeys neat and her own virgin daiquiri, for which the bartender looked at her like she had two extra limbs attached to her face, I scoped out these two hooligans who claim they saw what happened to Inga.
“Do they trouble you as much they trouble me, Arkady?”
“Da, Zero. They look like the druggies back in Russia who sniff the glue at the factory. I do not believe they saw anything. They’re just in it for the rubles and the whiskey.” He paused and sighed. “Ah, I miss whiskey, don’t you, comrade?”
Some days, like today, I longed for the good old days. “I miss bourbon more, chap. Smooth and sh
arp as it goes down. And a good Cuban cigar. There’s no better combination.”
Stevie sat back down and set the drinks in front of the children of the earth, taking a sip of the barkeep’s syrupy version of a daiquiri. Her nose wrinkled, but she hid it well. “So,” she said on a generous smile. “Can you tell me about that day?”
Rutabaga gave her an odd look before he slugged back a gulp of his whiskey. “Who are you again?”
I saw the pulse in Stevie’s temple begin to twitch as she fought for patience. It happens every time she’s irritated. “I told you, I’m writing an article for the Ebenezer Falls Gazette.”
Sunflower chewed on her straw, twisting in her chair nervously. “So what do you want to know, lady? Let’s do this so we can get out of here. It sorta smells.”
I had to wonder if Sunflower knew the smell emanated from her…
Stevie went right to the heart of the matter. “I want to know what you saw. What you heard.”
Rutabaga clucked his tongue, revealing a piercing. “Didn’t you watch the news, lady? I think we said it all there.”
Stevie nodded affably, even though I knew she was simmering on the inside. “Then I guess we’re done here, aren’t we?” She rose, tucking her purse over her shoulder and holding out a hand with a smile. “Have a lovely evening, Rutabaga.”
I wanted to cheer Stevie for calling their bluff. “Bloody well done, Dove!”
He sighed with exasperation into the gloom of the bar’s dark interior. “It’s Leaf. L-E-A-F. You know, like a play on Leif Erikson or some dude?” He scratched his greasy head as though confused. “Can’t remember now. Knew it was stupid when she talked me into this. Come to Seattle, she said. We’ll live off the land, she said. Now look,” he muttered.
“Wait!” Sunflower jumped up from her chair, the colorful beads in her dreadlocks snapping against her shoulders. “Please.” She gripped Stevie’s arm, her eyes urgent. “Sit down and I’ll tell you everything.” Then she turned to Leaf and narrowed her eyes in a threatening manner. “Shut up, Dave. Just shut it, and let me handle this!”
Arkady and I both looked at each other, fighting an attack of giggles. Dave—a far cry from Leaf, eh?
Stevie returned to her chair and folded her hands in front of her, setting them on the napkin from her drink. “This is your last chance. You said you have information. Let’s hear it or I’m out. And you can take me at my word on that.”
Sunflower gulped her whiskey before she began, taking a deep breath.
“So, you were taking a walk last night, correct?” Stevie prompted.
Sunflower nodded, running her ragged fingernail over the rim of her glass. “Yes, and we were just talking. Not doing anything in particular or really going anywhere in particular. Swear it.”
How interesting, her defense of their comings and goings.
“They were looking to score the drugs, eh, Zero?” Arkady asked, voicing exactly what I was thinking.
But Stevie ignored us and our musings. “And?”
“And out of nowhere, this red pickup truck comes plowing out of like thin air right over our heads. I think we were both kinda so shocked we didn’t know what to say at first. When it hit that guardrail, it made so much noise—all that metal screeching—it was horrible!” Her red-rimmed eyes went wide to depict her perception of horrible as Leaf nodded.
“And you say you saw two people in the car? Is that accurate?” Stevie asked.
But Sunflower tapped the table. “Shouldn’t you be writing this down?”
“Nah. Eidetic memory. It’s all right up here,” Stevie responded, pointing to her head, pulling off one of her better tall tales.
“Idiotic what?” Leaf asked, scrunching his face up.
I watched as Stevie fought the roll of her eyes and instead twirled the straw in her drink. “Never mind. It just means I have total recall.”
Leaf smiled out of the blue and nodded as though he knew exactly what she meant—which was impossible. After all, he had let a woman talk him into changing his name to Leaf—not like some dude named Erikson. I remain doubtful he knows anything. “You mean like Schwarzenegger, right?”
Stevie popped her lips and refrained from sarcasm, staying on task. “Yep. Just like that. So tell me about the people you saw in the car. Can you give me a description of them? Did you see them clearly?”
Leaf shifted in his seat, his long legs shuffling on the tacky floor. “It’s like we told the cops, lady—”
“It’s Eliza. Eliza Doolittle,” she corrected with her stern teacher’s face, almost making me laugh at her choice of pseudonyms. If my dove was nervous, you’d never detect such from the way she let these two miscreants know who was in charge from the start. I can’t even begin to tell you the pride she brings me.
Leaf flapped a lean, very pale hand over his shoulder. “Whatever. It’s like we told the cops. The lady was hollerin’ something fierce, screaming like a banshee just as they went over the guardrail. She had her hands on the steering wheel, but the guy in the passenger seat was trying to pull ’em off. It was ca-raz-ee.”
“So, do you think the passenger was trying to prevent the accident?”
“Darn right, he was. I heard her scream ‘let go!’ Just before they pitched right over into the water,” Sunflower said, sliding to the edge of her seat, biting her lower lip.
“Did you see anyone else around who looked suspicious? What time did this occur?”
Sunflower shrugged her bony shoulders. “I don’t know. Like two in the morning, I guess. But we were just there taking a walk. Swear it, and we didn’t see anyone else, did we, Leaf?”
“And what did the driver look like? Are you sure the woman was driving? What did the passenger look like?”
Sunflower’s eyes shot to the grimy floor, her entire vibe growing more uncomfortable by the minute. “I couldn’t see her face so good.”
“But you told me you saw her clear as day,” Stevie reminded, pulling up the Facebook message Sunflower had sent to the fake profile Stephania had created, tapping it with her freshly polished nail. “See where it says that right here?”
Sunflower shrugged in clear guilt. “I got a lot of questions on Facebook, maybe I got confused.”
Now Stevie narrowed her eyes. “I’ll just bet you did. So, you didn’t see them clearly at all, did you?”
She sighed, letting out a huge gust of air before she lifted her chin in a defiant gesture. “Fiiine. I didn’t see them really close up. She had dark hair and so did he. That’s all I saw before they fell in the drink. Okay? Can you blame a girl for—”
“For trying to soak people for some cash?” Stevie patted Sunflower’s hand as she rose, and this time, I knew she meant to leave. This was a dead end and she knew it. “No. I don’t blame you. I can see how the misfortune of others is an opportunity for you. But you can rest assured, I’ll let law enforcement know you’re bilking people out of money for your fifteen minutes, or drinks, or who knows what on my way out of Seattle. Now, you two have a lovely evening.”
Leaf jumped up then, startling me as he knocked his drink on the floor, jamming his face in Stevie’s, his eyes angry with accusation. “You said there was money in this!”
“Dove? It’s time to go!”
But Stevie, my beautiful, fearless Stevie, thrust her face directly back into Leaf’s and she drove her finger into his skinny chest for extra emphasis. “I’m going to say this once—back off, Leaf. I said there was a drink in this. That’s all I said, and as an FYI, Leif Erikson was a Nordic explorer, one I’m sure is rolling about in his grave as we speak, knowing you’ve chosen his name to make a play on words. Now, sit your shady butt back in that chair and don’t come any closer or I’ll put your nose on the back of your head. Understood?”
Leaf backed off immediately, his nostrils flaring, eyes wide.
But that didn’t deter Stevie in the least. With those words, she turned on her wedged heel as though she’d just pivoted on the Milan runway wearing the latest
high-fashion dress, and strode out of the bar while Leaf stood mute in shock.
“Well done, malutka! You must always show who is boss. We are proud, yes, Zero?”
I fought the temptation to scold her for her sudden belief she was some sort reincarnation of Hercules, because if you know Stevie, you know she doesn’t like it when I discourage her. Rather than argue, I said, “Yes. The growth of your confidence when confronted by an opponent continues to amaze me.”
She smiled just as she stepped out the door into the muggy evening, but she didn’t respond as she made a beeline for the car.
Almost the very moment she stepped off the curb was the moment someone, someone large and lumbering, flew from the shadows and grabbed her around the waist, tackling her to the ground.
The thud of bodies and the crunch of limbs cracking together stopped my heart,
“Stevie!” both Arkady and I bellowed as she fell to the hard pavement.
The man who tackled her growled out, “Who are you and what are you looking for?”
But then, something incredible happened. Of course, I mean aside from the fact that my Stevie rose up like a winsome warrior, rolling to her side and preparing to bring both her hands down on her attacker’s chest. Nay, there’s more incredible to this story than that.
In the midst of this melee, in the midst of her grunt as she raised her hands high to strike, in the midst of her attacker’s surprise—she simply disappeared.
As I stand here before you today, I vow, hand to your choice of deity, she quite literally, disappeared.
Chapter 7
One moment we were, every one of us, in a seedy alley outside an equally seedy bar, the next, Stevie was rolling down the hill of our front lawn, screaming as though she were on fire the entire way.
Ain't Love a Witch? (Witchless in Seattle Mysteries Book 6) Page 7