Orange Blossoms & Mayhem (Fantascapes)

by Blair Bancroft

  All in all, I’d had a lousy day, but Rhys’s voice warmed me, caressed me.

  I slept.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The air marshal wasn’t so bad. An actual Florida native. Medium build, big gun. Married, two point five kids. He was handy for whiling away the hours. Since our plane was moving west with the sun, there was plenty of daylight left when I finally made it back to Bella. With my almost-home juices pumping hard, I was in Golden Beach well before the sun began its nightly spectacular over the Gulf of Mexico.

  I taxied into the hanger, did the shut-down routine, and turned Bella over to our faithful mechanic. When I opened the door of the Lexus, blast-furnace heat rushed out. Long accustomed to the Florida climate, I climbed in anyway, started the engine, and thrust the fan to max. Obediently, cold air began to churn. I took a deep breath, slammed the door shut.

  And got the shakes. My hands gripped the wheel, nausea roiled my stomach. How easily, how very easily we forget. Day before yesterday, I’d been close to hypothermia in the frigid waters of the Rhone. Today I was fighting off an oven of superheated Florida air.

  I tightened my grip on the wheel, fought my way back to some sort of equilibrium. When my fingers were steady, I phoned the family and told them not to wait supper for me, as planned, I was going straight home. Ignoring the concern in my mother’s voice, I promised to tell all tomorrow. The trouble was, I was stalling, working up to a frantic fandango around the truth. I’d had one hell of a time in Lyon, and I was contemplating sweeping ninety percent of it under the rug.

  And if Interpol Washington contacted Charlie Purvis, the Calusa County Sheriff?

  My goose was cooked.

  I felt like the teenager who comes home to find both parents waiting up, arms crossed, feet tapping. They were expecting a report on the Gaudios’ recovery, garnished with some juicy tidbits about Rhys and Interpol. They were not expecting ominous rumblings about Viktor’s wedding, human trafficking, or mob wars. So I went home, ordered pizza, and went to bed, promising myself I’d sleep the morning away. In the afternoon, I was taking Viktor (Aleksei?) to Sarasota for final approval of the eggs. Maybe after that . . .

  After that, the shit was going to hit the fan.

  There was no way, I discovered, that I could see Viktor Kirichenko the way I’d seen him in the past. Rhys had me nearly convinced this man was Aleksei Tatarkin, hitman for the Rufikov mob. My big brown Russian bear had turned into King Kong.

  Intellectually, I knew Interpol could be right. Viktor could be a Bad Guy. But in the here and now, as I watched him settle into the front seat of the Lexus, tighten his seat belt, and cast one of his appreciative Viktor smiles over my beige silk pantsuit with Chanel-style jacket, open to reveal a tight-fitting black shell beneath, it was impossible to accept. Then common sense triumphed, my gut tightened, my heart pounded, and I pictured the variety of hardware that could be hidden beneath Viktor’s rumpled suit.

  Viktor, the Fabergé egg guy. The romantic bridegroom, who had enveloped me in a bear hug the minute he saw me today and had been treating me like a long-lost friend ever since.

  But if Interpol was right and I was wrong, I’d better do casual, friendly, and innocent of evil thoughts on an Oscar-level scale. Laine Halliday, fresh back from an exhilarating trip to Europe, ready and eager to put the final polish on Viktor Kirichenko’s wedding plans. I flashed a broad grin, turned the key, and we were off on the forty-minute drive to the Ringling School of Art and Design.

  “You are pale,” Viktor said. “Was not good trip?”

  “I’m fine,” I countered. “It was an excellent trip, Our clients were rescued from the avalanche, and I visited a friend in France. A nice combination of business and pleasure.”

  “You have cut on forehead.”

  “A fender bender in France.”

  “Fender bender?” Stumped by the expression, Viktor turned to look at me, his beard close to tickling my right arm.

  “Car accident. A close call, but my friend and I survived.”

  “Is good.” I had an odd feeling he actually meant it. Five minutes in Viktor’s company was almost as bad as five minutes with Rhys. What a straw in the wind I was, swaying first one way and then the other. Not the Laine Halliday I thought I knew. Was this what love did to you—scrambled a perfectly good brain into ineffective mush?

  Amend that. Not love. I wasn’t ready for love.

  “The Candy lady”—that’s what Viktor called my aunt—“she say truck is ready. You check on this?”

  “Less than an hour ago. Everything’s fine.” I didn’t add that I had a few qualms about the students loading the eggs into the rental truck. Even more about their ability to get the eggs down again after they reached the Slavic American Club where the wedding was to be held. I had visions of the largest egg, the pink one, tilting, toppling. Crumpling into pink confetti.

  Just one more crisis in the life of a troubleshooter for Weddings Extraordinaire.

  But the sun was brilliant, the day balmy, Viktor all smiles over the four Fabergé imitations. The hinges on the back of each egg were efficient, and nicely disguised. The eggs opened wide like a book, giving a broad view of the next magnificently decorated egg beneath. Shimmering pink, jade green, Romanov blue, and iridescent white. They were gorgeous. They worked. Viktor’s wedding was going to happen as planned.

  Dazzled by the eggs, I found it hard to conjure a sense of foreboding. A fear for anything more than damage to painted icing or loss of a glittering glass jewel or two. And yet . . .

  I delivered Viktor back to his car in Golden Beach, watched him drive out of the parking lot, then turned the Lexus toward the South County Sheriff’s Department, just as I’d promised Rhys during our last phone conversation in Paris. In a matter of hours, after Viktor’s fingerprints were run through Interpol’s criminal database, we’d know if he was really Aleksei Tatarkin. Since warning prickles had surged through my own personal information system during my drive with Viktor, I wasn’t going to be surprised if the answer was yes. In Lyon my ID of Viktor had seemed more a hope to please Rhys than solid fact. Today, from his gargantuan build to ice blue eyes, I could feel the clean-shaven, beefily handsome man who had looked out at me from the computer screen at Interpol.

  After my car was dusted for Viktor’s fingerprints, I headed back toward the office, and promptly got stuck in a long line of cars waiting at the south drawbridge for a two-masted sailboat to pass through. Okay, the Lexus might be stopped, but my mind kept churning. I’d done my civic duty, taking Viktor’s prints to the police. Time to get back to my real job. For the first time I wondered if Viktor planned to keep the eggs, or would he be willing to let Fantascapes have them. For a suitable rebate, of course. We had a large warehouse for our wedding paraphernalia, so storage wasn’t a problem. The Fabergé eggs would be a great addition to our inventory—I should have thought of it sooner.

  The drawbridge went down, the gates went up, the traffic light turned green. The line of cars, pickups, and SUVs began to creep forward, picking up speed. By the time I walked into the office, I’d been able to put most of the bad stuff behind me. I was, in fact, feeling pretty smug. Back less than twenty-four hours, and all systems were go.

  Jessie took one look at me and pointed toward the circular staircase. Blast it! My adventures in Lyon were about to come back to bite me.

  When my head emerged on the second floor, I found the whole family. Dad in his wheelchair at the head of the conference table, Mom beside him, Aunt Candy next to her. Grady, on the far side next to Dad, smiled and patted the seat beside him. Oh, shit, I was done for. I sat, folded my hands in front of me, and tried to look as if my days in Europe had been entirely peaceful.

  “Now, Laine,” Dad said, deceptively mild, “explain the call I had this morning from Charlie Purvis.”

  Oops. Too bad Interpol wasn’t still stuck in the age of snail mail.

  I dodged Dad’s question by offering a brief report on my time in Switzerland, but whe
n I wound down, Dad pinned me with his whiplash look and snapped, “Get on with it.”

  I can’t remember the last time I blushed, but I could feel red sweeping up from my toes to the roots of my hair. “Fine, I admit it. I went to Lyon looking for Rhys.”

  “And?”

  “And got more than I bargained for,” I mumbled.

  “Laine!” From Mom, totally shocked out of her customary calm.

  I waved my hands like a semaphore gone wild. “Sorry. Wrong expression. It’s nothing like what you’re thinking.” I plunged into the difficult job of reconciling our Russian bear of the Fabergé egg wedding with his possible persona of Aleksei Tatarkin, assassin for the Russian mob. And finally, reluctantly, I told them about my dip in the Rhone, censoring it to a bare minimum. Mom and Candy gasped, Grady dropped his cell phone. Dad looked ready to eat nails.

  I hastened on to my afternoon at Interpol, but my possible ID of Viktor as Aleksei Tatarkin drew a second round of horrified reactions. Except from Dad, who remained silent, but he took on that scary glow he gets when he scents a Bad Guy worthy of Jordan Halliday’s attention. Candy, however, was outraged. “Someone might be after this Rhys of yours,” she declared, “but how dare Interpol say it’s connected to one of our weddings? Absurd! They’re a bunch of old fuddy duddies, nothing but a clearing house for wild rumors.”

  When she paused for breath, everyone turned to Dad.

  He sat there a moment, arms crossed, contemplating the high polish of the conference table. “Let’s see if I have this straight,” he said. “Starting back in Peru, someone’s been trying to kill Tarrant, and on Wednesday morning, on your way to Interpol, you nearly got taken out with him.” Glumly, I nodded. “Because Tarrant specializes in human trafficking, Interpol decided this is why he’s being targeted. Instead of, for example, his having ticked off some wealthy and easily irritated husband.”

  “Dad!”

  “Don’t be naive, Lainie. It doesn’t suit you. There are far more murders for domestic reasons than over international intrigue.”

  “But Aleksei Tatarkin is a hitman for the Russian mafia, the organizatsiya, in Miami.” Blast it! I’d just made Interpol’s case. And Dad’s.

  “Precisely. It was all pie in the sky until you ID’d Tatarkin. After that, things got serious.”

  “The ID was tentative,” I muttered.

  Candy cut me off. “Jordan,” she declared in her most ominous voice, “you cannot possibly think there’s a problem with the wedding. It’s all above board. We’ve been working on the eggs, the decorations, and the reception for weeks. Laine is even going with Viktor to meet the bride in Tampa. Both ceremony and reception are at the Slavic American Club, only a couple of blocks off the Trail. That’s almost as public as you can get.”

  “The guest list?”

  Candy pursed her lips, tossed her bronze curls, attempting to look cool even when I knew she was chagrined. She was boss of Weddings Extraordinaire and didn’t care to have her arrangements questioned. Particularly by her brother-in-law. “Forty guests, but I never saw the list. Viktor took care of that.”

  “Security?”

  I had trouble looking Dad in the eye. “Viktor’s handling security,” I said. “Inside and out. And, yes, when he had so much money to throw around, it occurred to me he might be a criminal, so I wasn’t surprised when he said he’d take care of it. I mean, even the Viktors and Alekseis, of this world get married. Without problems,” I added more firmly. “I had ten hours on a plane yesterday to look at the wedding from every angle. I don’t see what could go wrong.”

  Dad tapped his index finger on the table. “I’d really like to see that guest list.”

  Mom spoke up. “Laine, you must be sure the bride is willing. Your Russian’s good enough for that, isn’t it?”

  “Just about. It’s hard to keep up the vocabulary when I so seldom use it.”

  “Does Viktor know you speak Russian?” Dad asked.

  “No.” Practice my rusty college Russian on a native? I could hear Viktor’s guffaws. Like the taxi driver I’d encountered in Moscow a few years ago, who’d flashed me a broad grin and said, “Ah, you speak Russian, but you don’t understand it!”

  It was so quiet I could hear the clock on the wall ticking away the seconds. “Here’s what we’ll do,” Dad said at last. “I’m going to tell Charlie Purvis the physical threat is vague, but it’s likely there’ll be some interesting faces among the wedding guests. Since we may be dealing with the Russian mob, he’ll need to bring in the Feds. He won’t be happy, but there’s not much choice. Hopefully, Jeff can wangle the job of riding shotgun with Flint. And we’ll put the Gerries on stand-by, some place close.”

  “Ridiculous!” Candy protested. “Three Rivers is the end of the earth. There’s nothing for anyone to target.”

  “Except the wedding guests,” Dad pointed out.

  “A hit in Three Rivers? Don’t be absurd, Jordan. I will not have all our efforts destroyed by turning the Kirichenko wedding into a training exercise for the SWAT team and your has-been heros.

  I could swear I heard a bell ring for the end of a round. Dad took a deep breath. “Candy,” he said in that ultra quiet voice that always scared the shit out of me, “you are undoubtedly right that Viktor is entitled to the wedding he asked you to create for him. It is his right to ask, and your right to fulfill the obligation. And at the moment there simply aren’t enough facts to justify direct interference by law enforcement or by us. But we will be prepared. I’ll see what I can discover from my sources at the FBI. Meanwhile, we’ll circle the wagons, be ready for anything.

  “Laine”—Dad looked at me—“you’ve had a bad few weeks. Don’t think we don’t appreciate that. From what you’ve told us, I’d be calling out the troops for this wedding even if Interpol hadn’t got the Sheriff’s Department involved. Believe me, we’re not anxious to lose you.”

  Grady squeezed my arm. From across the table, Mom and Candy gave me tremulous smiles. The lump in my throat was so big I could only nod my head and mumble my thanks. But beneath the warm fuzzy I felt a sharp pain. The inevitability of my farewell to Interpol. To Rhys. I could never leave the family. For better or for worse. I would be sitting here twenty years from now, holding on until the brothers’ children (as yet unborn) were old enough to fill our shoes.

  The brothers’ children. But what about mine?

  Dad left with Grady, who would accompany him down to his van in the parking lot. Not that Dad couldn’t do it by himself, but the elevator and transfers were easier with help, and he seemed to tolerate assistance from Grady better than from the rest of us.

  “The balloon ascent went off without a hitch,” Candy said, “soaring off on the early morning breeze. You would have loved it, Laine.”

  “All we could do was wave farewell,” Mom added. “There was only room enough for the bride and groom, the minister, and a witness, plus the operator, of course. But we all chased off to the landing site to greet the newlyweds.”

  “Mini hot air balloons on every table at the reception, larger ones in the corners.” Candy said. “It was glorious. A permanent addition to our event list.”

  “I’d like to go up sometime,” I said, before my smile faded as I recalled the view of Lyon from the top of the Meridien. A memory filled with joy . . . and pain.

  “Fortunately, you organized security for the Palmer wedding before you left,” Candy said, switching to tomorrow’s waterfront event at Crest House, “so that shouldn’t be a problem. Perhaps you should warn the Gerries they’ll likely be on call for next Saturday, too.”

  “More likely, Dad will get there before me.”

  “Yes,” my mother said, patting her sister’s hand, “do let Jordan take care of the extra security for the Kirichenko wedding.”

  “But I can’t believe we need it,” Candy wailed.

  I leaned forward, arms crossed on the table’s shiny surface. “Two words, Candy. Russian mafia. Much as I hate to admit it, there’s reaso
n to be cautious. We live every minute of this coming week with our eyes wide open, our minds wide open. Anything can happen.”

  “Karen,” my aunt declared as she stood up, “how did you ever get mixed up with Jordan Halliday? Men like that should have to wear warning signs. And now you’ve got a whole passel of children just like him.”

  Mom, as always, just smiled. And gave me a wink as Aunt Candy swept toward the spiral staircase.

  The next morning I stood, greeting wedding guests and discreetly directing traffic, on the dock at a large marina at the head of Golden Beach Bay. Fortunately, Aunt Candy didn’t believe in classic business wear. Weddings Extraordinaire had to uphold its reputation for the exotic, a touch of flamboyance without, we hoped, being vulgar. So I was wearing a lacy white cotton crochet top, discreetly peek-a-boo, over a turquoise silk camisole that matched my skirt, which consisted of two asymmetrical layers of gauze. My Peruvian turquoise earrings and necklace were set in gold, my three-inch heels white patent leather. After the month I’d had, knowing I looked better than good was a real boost to the ego.

  When doing a wedding at Crest House, we have a card for the bride to include in her invitations, giving three options for transportation. The first is private transportation, with valet parking at the House, but we urge the use of our two Hummer limos or travel by a tour boat, whose services we reserve on wedding days. Both limos and boat leave from the marina, which has an unusually large parking lot, and where we pay a generous fee to cordon off a private area for our use. High school students—cheerful smiles required—direct car parking and point the guests toward the limos or the tour boat, as desired.

  So far this morning, everything was going well. Two Gerries were overseeing the parking lot, two on the tour boat, and one on each limo. I was fixed at the head of the dock, where I could greet each guest personally and keep an eye on the smooth functioning of the parking lot. Frankly, from smiles and bright greetings to my words of welcome, it was all old hat. I was skimming on cruise control, while I tried to picture the guests arriving for Viktor’s wedding a week from today. All by private transpo. All under the gimlet eyes of big men in dark rumpled suits, some maybe even wearing fedoras. Now I was really getting fanciful. But that vision had come from somewhere . . .