Lacey Luzzi Box Set

by Gina LaManna

  I shrugged. “I suppose you’re right. If we have extra time after, then we can keep looking for Dave. But you’re right. I can’t allocate more time to tracking down a mystery man for barbecue sauce.”

  “That’s the attitude,” Meg said. “Take the deal. We’ll give the food critic a call when we get back to the land of cellular reception, but in the meantime let’s stop by Sixty-sixth, see who the weirdo is that moved to town, and move right along.”

  Nodding, I turned to Anastasia. “You can have a few bottles of the sauce ready for the Fourth of July? You know that’s in two days, right?”

  She nodded. “It’ll be ready by July 3rd at eight p.m.”

  “Great. We’ll stop by the place on the way out of town today and see what’s happening there. I’ll be back in two days ready to trade information for sauce,” I said, thinking to myself that it never hurt to have a backup plan. “Oh, by the way. This is for you.” I handed over the note from Dougie.

  “You’ll wanna hold onto that,” Meg said. “I think it’s a booty call.”

  Anastasia blushed, and I grabbed Meg’s hand and yanked her back out to the bike.

  I ran over the options surrounding the sauce in my mind. Dave could be my primo plan, and Anastasia my backup. If the food critic had information for us, I could always tell Anastasia I didn’t need the sauce. Or I could bring both and become a real mobsterista overachiever. Like Meg said, maybe Carlos would love me even more.

  I put the watermelon bucket-of-a-helmet back on my head, and looked expectantly at Meg.

  My friend gave me a blank stare. “So,” she said, putting the orange mohawk back on her head, “candy store now or later?”

  OUR VISIT TO THE CANDY store was cut much shorter than normal. We were on a time crunch; it was already late afternoon and we still had to get to Sixty-sixth Street, scout out the poor foreigner who’d deigned to set foot in Anastasia’s territory, and somehow make it back so Julio could take his date out for drinks. Or take his date in, rather.

  I stocked up on a few sugary sweets – licorice ropes and salt water taffy, along with a side of homemade fudge and a stack of cookies as long as my arm. Meg rounded out the purchase with half of the Sour Patch Kids, and peanut brittle so hard it rivaled my grandmother’s cookies.

  Our purchases in hand, we encountered a problem as we trekked back outside to Meg’s bike.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Why do you think I wear this bad boy?” Meg gestured toward her leather vest with more pockets than there were States in America. “Start shoving.”

  To my extreme surprise, it was a relatively simple task to find a home for each of our goodies. There was even a pocket near her waist that was deep enough to stick the row of cookies. At least most of the cookies; we only had to eat six of them to make the rack fit snugly.

  “Ta-da,” Meg said, doing a twirl.

  “Kudos to you,” I said. “I need to get me one of them.”

  “You could probably even expense it,” Meg said. “Since it’s work related costs.”

  “Is it, though? I feel like I already pushed the boundaries with my last expense report.” I cringed. “Carlos didn’t think it was necessary to get our rear ends scrubbed at the spa.”

  Meg gave me a horrified look. “Of course it was necessary.” She swung a leg over her bike. “Don’t listen to him.”

  I stepped on behind her. “He controls the money.”

  “Well, you have to be able to do your job,” Meg huffed. “Vests are lifesavers. Hang on. We’ll be at the house in a jiffy.”

  I don’t know the exact time equivalent of a jiffy, but according to Meg’s definition, a jiffy involved leaping over curbs and through driveways to make it there in four minutes.

  “This looks pretty normal to me,” Meg said, glancing at the very average American-looking house. “Less weird than that witch house we were just at.”

  I breathed a loud sigh of relief. “I agree. I bet Anastasia just doesn’t take kindly to newcomers. It’s probably just a nice young man moving to town, and she’s suspicious. Let’s go see.”

  Meg eyed the driveway. Though the house was small, it was set back quite a distance from the road. One didn’t stumble upon this person’s front door. Anyone showing up to the house on Sixty-sixth was there for a deliberate reason.

  “Should I drive up?” Meg asked.

  I glanced around the property. The nearest house was a good distance away: trees lined the edges of the property, thick and dense, creating a quaint, private yard. It was manicured and maintained, but nothing special besides grass and trees. A thick evergreen stood crooked to the left of the house, and a tall, sturdy maple cast a shadow over the roof. It looked like a two or three bedroom place if there was a basement attached. Almost everyone in Minnesota had a basement. Tornados happened, after all.

  “You can pull up on the driveway, but don’t go on the grass,” I warned.

  “Boring,” Meg said. “Such a buzz kill.”

  Despite her grumblings, she thankfully followed my instructions. We were standing at the door in no time, her bike parked a few feet from the front steps.

  “Can you, like...” I reached up and patted Meg’s hair down a bit. I loved that my friend had a wild side to her, but she was currently rocking a version of wild that could scare someone, and I worried the inhabitants of the place might not answer the door.

  “What’s wrong with my hair?” Meg shook it back and forth, undoing all of my work. “I like it like this. It says ‘party girl.’”

  “Mmm,” I tentatively agreed. A party girl who’d tussled with a bear, maybe. And won. The biker jacket didn’t help things. Even I was intimidated, and she was my best bud.

  “I think I forgot my lipstick in the motorcycle,” Meg said, abruptly turning and retreating down the front steps. “I gotta poof my hair and paint my lips, just in case he’s a hottie.”

  I took advantage of Meg’s sudden departure to ring the doorbell. When no one immediately opened it, I rang it twice more. After the third ring, Meg had figured out what I was up to and pounded her way to my side. However the door opened before Meg reached the top. The two of us, Meg panting quite heavily, stood face-to-face with a skinny, pale guy with greasy hair.

  “Yes?” he asked, first looking at me with curiosity, and then glancing at Meg with concern. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” I said as Meg wheezed out in agreement. “We’re sorry to bother you, but we just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”

  “Welcome me to...” the man looked around, puzzled. “I grew up here. I mean, not in this house, but just across town.”

  I glanced at Meg. Something was off. Either this guy was lying, or Anastasia hadn’t told the truth. My money was on Anastasia. This guy hadn’t had time to prepare a lie, and his confusion appeared genuine.

  “Oh, uh,” I was caught off guard, and kicked myself for not thoroughly thinking through a backup plan. I had been so set on the scenario being a nice young man who’d just moved to town that I hadn’t expected this. “That’s very nice.”

  “She never said the person who lived here was new to town,” Meg muttered.

  “Who said what?” the man shook his medium-length, oily hair. “I’m sorry, do you ladies need something?”

  “Yeah, actually,” Meg said, stepping forward. “What do you use in your hair? My friend here was just complaining that my hair is too wild.”

  “I didn’t say—” I started.

  “You said it,” Meg said. “Deal with it.”

  While Meg jabbered on about hair products to the obviously uninterested man, I took a second to scan him over. I didn’t get a dangerous or scary vibe from him, or anything except a needing-a-shower vibe. Tall and thin, the man had a bit of stubble around his chin, a single gold chain around his neck, and one small diamond stud in his ear.

  I was under the impression he’d had some rougher days in life, but was now settling down into suburbia and trying to adap
t. At least, that’s what his shabby-chic fashion statement told me. Maybe that was reason enough for Anastasia to be suspicious – a man with a past moving to her side of town?

  “Meg, get your hands off him,” I said as the she parted the man’s hair to supposedly look for dandruff.

  The man appeared a bit alarmed. Then again, I would too if someone started picking through my hair like a monkey looking for bugs.

  I grabbed her hand and we stepped back from the front steps. “We’ll be going now,” I said, quickly trying to think of a more thorough explanation of why we’d been there in the first place. When none came to me, I led Meg back to her bike and offered a wave as we climbed on.

  The man considered a wave back, his hand pulling up around his face with slightly twitching fingers, but then he dropped it and turned inside, shutting the door behind him.

  “That was awkward,” Meg said. “I haven’t seen one of them in a while.”

  “One of what? A man?” I asked.

  “A gun that size,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “All we did was make that poor guy uncomfortable. Anastasia was wrong. She just doesn’t like people that are a little bit different invading her town.”

  “Mmm,” Meg said. “I think you read him all wrong. See? You gotta start giving less fudges about making others uncomfortable. You don’t notice the little details, like I do.”

  “But you were poking through his hair. How did you see anything?” I strapped her helmet to my chin.

  “I had to peek around the door. It’s better for him to think I’m a bit strange than for him to realize I’m sticking my nose into his home.”

  I shut my trap, amazed at Meg’s rock star sleuthing. “Wow,” I said. “Great job! One question. Are you spying every time you behave strangely?”

  Meg waggled her eyebrows. “That, my dear, you’ll never know. By the way, don’t strap up yet. I wanna check something out.”

  “We’ve been sitting in the front driveway for too long,” I said, clasping my helmet strap to cement my point. “We have to get out of here, or he’ll be coming back and waving that gun at us. I’m not in the mood to get shot at.”

  “Well, I’m protected,” Meg said, patting her hundreds of pockets. “This peanut brittle could stop a bullet any day it’s so freaking hard.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you,” I said, “but I don’t have Kevlar Peanut Brittle attached to a vest, so let’s giddyup.”

  “Fine,” Meg said, snapping her ‘hawk strap. “Have it your way.”

  Instead of driving easily down the driveway from which we’d come, Meg roared the engine to life and zoomed halfway down the winding drive, skidding to a stop before we reached the road. I shouted a warning to her, but the words sailed off into the wind, ignored completely by my friend. She tipped the bike towards the grass and flew off the rocky pathway. We were outside of the line of trees that ringed the man’s house, and therefore we’d become nearly invisible to anyone watching through the windows. The bumps made my teeth chatter and my stomach bounce against my throat. I held on as tight as I could, my life resting in my sugar-laden best bud’s hands.

  I yelped in pain as my finger gripped the edge of the peanut brittle, nearly slicing one off with the sharp edge. “Where are we going?” I demanded.

  “I’m looking for something,” Meg said.

  “Get to the road,” I said, a cattail nearly striking me in the face. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Aha,” Meg said. “Found it.”

  She guided the bike from the bumpy ditch-slash-boulevard onto a new, hidden narrow path. I don’t know how she’d found it: the path was little more than weeds which had been beaten down by a stampede of feet and a variety of small motor vehicles over time. It led the way in a jagged line towards a small forest of trees at the back of the house. It wasn’t as wide as a sidewalk, but the path could easily fit Meg’s bike.

  “You can thank me now,” Meg said.

  “How did you know this was here?” I asked.

  “Spidey Senses,” Meg offered.

  “Mmm,” I said, still gripping tight. However, the bumps had significantly decreased in size since we’d jumped on the path, and now allowed for conversation. “Spidey, huh?”

  “Well, that and I saw a snowmobile, an electric bike, and a moped lined up against the side of our friend’s house. Nobody has toys like that without a place to ride them. I took those toys to mean that our guy has a place he needs to get year ‘round. A place inaccessible by car.” She chuckled. “I could see having one or two of the toys for fun, but all three? No. They serve a purpose.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Carlos should have hired you instead of me. Where did all these smart observations come from?”

  Meg cackled. “You know, when I wasn’t busy punching out the idiots I’d arrested for calling me fat, I made a decent cop. Well, before I got fired.”

  I sat back on the bike. I knew my friend was smart, but she was on a roll today. I needed to step up my game, or Carlos would be looking to adopt Meg into the Family and replace me with a new and improved mobsterista.

  Despite my fear of Meg’s impending adoption, I leaned closer to my friend, grateful for her help.

  Meg rode deeper into the woods; from the front, it’d looked like the tree line around the house had been only for privacy and maybe a bit of wind resistance. I hadn’t noticed the dense forest in the back of the man’s yard. He didn’t have any neighbors within a few acres back here. The wilderness was beautiful and eerie, all at once.

  “You sure you want to keep going?” I asked. “We could just say screw the sauce for now and come back with Anthony.”

  “I’m not going to take offense to that,” Meg said, “because I’m going to pretend you didn’t say it. What would Anthony do that we can’t?”

  “Well,” I said. “He’s got a gun. And he’s bigger.”

  “Not by much,” Meg grunted. “And I’ve got a gun in here somewhere. Don’t worry; we’re just taking a peek. That’s all Anastasia asked. Plus, that sauce was dang tasty and I want some for myself.”

  Unable to argue with her logic, I sat back for the next few minutes until the road suddenly came to a dead end. Flanked by underbrush and dense foliage, we were completely overshadowed by the tall trees, and large leaves all around us. Mosquitos hummed, and I realized we were cutting it close to our evening deadline.

  I shifted uneasily. “Let’s just peek around a bit and get back to Julio.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Meg said. “Whatever you say.”

  The two of us were becoming professionals at getting on and off Meg’s bike. It took less than a handful of seconds to dismount and take wandering steps deeper into the woods.

  “Hide,” I said, gripping Meg’s wrist as we came to a gap between two large oaks. Beyond the opening, I caught a glimpse of a log cabin – sturdy, plain, and simple, smoke curling from the chimney and creating a gray blotch on the horizon, where the sun was just beginning to sink.

  “What is this place?” Meg asked, as we crouched behind a bush taller than either of us and wide as a truck.

  “Something that someone has gone through a lot of effort to keep private,” I said. Of course I couldn’t know this for sure – I was basing my assumption on the fact that the house had no visible driveway, walkway, or entrance of any sort. The place had been freshly built, as evidenced by a dumpster behind the cabin, still full of building materials, and the fresh smell of chopped wood hanging in the cool evening air.

  “This place is not functional,” Meg said. “I’m not a plumber, but I don’t think they got a functional toilet out here. No way there’s running water. Plus, they didn’t even care enough to seal up all the openings. This is Minnesota – anyone living there in the winter is gonna have an icicle for a—”

  “—finger,” I said, jumping in to prevent any descriptive images I’d prefer not to have in my mind. She was right. There were huge gaps in the cabin’s frame, and it was
barely conducive to camping, let alone living. “But I don’t think anyone’s living here. It’s on this guy’s property anyway, and he’s got a perfectly good house.”

  “We don’t even know his name,” Meg said. “Bummer. I wanted to email him about his hair products.”

  “You might get the chance to see him again sooner than you think,” I said, my lips pressing firmly into a straight line. “Let’s head out for now. No use getting in trouble for something we’re doing for free. If we don’t come up with a clue to the sauce before the barbecue, we’ll come back out here and poke our nose around a bit more. At least, enough to satisfy Anastasia’s curiosity.”

  “We might see him even sooner than you think,” Meg hinted, poking me on the shoulder.

  “No, we don’t have time to go back now. Let’s go let Julio have his date. I want to catch up with Anthony regarding the fireworks assignment before it gets too late.”

  “You might not have a choice about seeing him again,” Meg said bluntly. “Help me haul the bike behind the bushes. We’ve got company.”

  Chapter 6

  SLIPPING INTO THE DENSEST underbrush we could find, Meg scattered a few evergreen branches over her bike, perched where we’d stashed it behind the thick bush. We weren’t hidden well, but unless someone was specifically looking for us, I hoped it’d be good enough. Seconds after we’d lodged everything into position, including Meg’s wild hair, the rumble of a four-wheeler sounded a short distance away. Meg barely had time to poke my visible hand with a pointy stick before I tucked it against my body and huddled near the closest tree trunk.

  Luckily, the man from the house on Sixty-sixth Street sailed right past, his eyes barely darting from the road before him. His hair blew back in the wind, sailing free on his vehicle.

  “Did you see that?” Meg mouthed.

  I wasn’t sure if she was referencing the fact that the man looked like a greasy Herbal Essences commercial, or that he carried a large sack affixed to the back of his four-wheeler. The bag was cloth – a heavy burlap material tied securely with what looked like twine. It was hard to tell since he passed us by so quickly, but it was clear that it was full of lumpy objects which clanked with a distinctly metallic noise. With as little rustle as possible, I followed Meg a few steps to the edge of the clearing. Probably looking like cartoon characters, we poked our heads under the low hanging branches and watched as Grease Ball (my new nickname for our four-wheeling friend) parked the vehicle and unloaded the sack in a hurry. It was almost too heavy to carry, and he set it down for a moment, his face wincing with the effort as he wind-milled his arms and massaged his shoulders.