“Vreeland.”
Right.
“Davis,” Daddy said, “your sister said to tell you everything would be okay and she’d see you soon.”
I turned as far away from Bootsy Howard as I could. “I love you, Daddy.”
“We’ll talk soon, Sweet Pea.”
Bootsy pushed back a dark sleeve and checked the time on her witch watch. She kicked my foot to get my attention, as if she didn’t already have it. “This can be finished faster than it started. Go downstairs and get the money. I’ll be resting in my room.” She turned on her witch heels. “And Davis…” She paused at the French doors. “I’m no happier about this than you are. Make it easy on us both. Get the million dollars, give it to me, and this will all be over.” Then she was gone.
Beside me, as quiet as she’d been in her life, and probably for the longest stretch since she’d spoken her first baby word, Vree broke her silence. “Did your dad say anything about Bubblegum?”
He hadn’t. I patted her leg.
She tipped her head onto my shoulder. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The cardinals returned. They circled. Coast clear, they settled in their tree.
“I’ll tell you one thing we’re not going to do, Vree.”
“What’s that?”
“Go downstairs, get a million dollars, then give it to Bootsy Howard.”
“Isn’t there so much money in the casino, Davis? Like millions and millions and millions? Would anyone really miss one of them? Can’t you just sneak it out?”
“Yes, Vree, I could. But it’s not my money. And I’m not going to rob the casino.”
THREE
I was the perfect person to rob the casino, because it was my job to keep the casino from being robbed. I knew every trick in the casino heist book. It had either been tried here, or I’d learned from attempts at other casinos, plus I’d seen all the Ocean’s movies. I knew how it wasn’t done. I could figure out how it was.
Not that I had any intention of robbing the casino.
What I wanted to do was march out my front door, find my husband, and tell him everything. For several reasons, Bootsy’s and Gully’s demands for secrecy not one of them, I didn’t. Before Bradley was president and CEO of the Bellissimo, he was an attorney. He saw things in black and white, including kidnapping and extortion. He’d have the FBI and their international counterparts here in five minutes.
I was a spy. Spies don’t call the feds until they have their man.
Or preacher.
Or witch.
Five years ago, I joined an elite internal security team at the Bellissimo. After a nice long maternity leave when Bex and Quinn were born, I’d recently returned to work, in a part-time job-share capacity with my best friend, Fantasy Erb. We reported to the head of security, Jeremy Covey, and we had a fourth on our team, Baylor. Just Baylor. He was mononomous. Like Beyoncé. And Snoopy. Before I took the Bellissimo position, I was a police officer for seven years in Pine Apple. Given my background, very different from my husband’s, I saw every shade of gray. Bradley went straight from A to Z. I meandered, often getting stuck around G, shot at near M, without a hope by T, but somehow pulled it together by Z.
I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with, and I wasn’t going to drag Bradley into it until I was. Too much was at stake—my own sister—for me to rush, trip, and possibly fall. I had too many questions. First, was Gully really on his way to Mexico with Meredith? I believed he had her, but for all I knew he had her across the street. I needed to find him. If I found Gully, I’d find my sister. Second, why did he need so much money? Because Gully had a million-dollar problem. If I knew what it was, maybe I could help find a solution other than grand larceny, with me being the grand larcenist. Third, I needed to level the playing field. As it stood, Gully held all the cards.
Typically, my first move would be to gather my team. Four heads, you know.
I couldn’t, because I couldn’t tell them.
I couldn’t tell them before I told Bradley.
(Marriage, you know? I had a good one and wanted to keep it that way.)
I couldn’t go to the police. What would I say? A preacher kidnapped my sister and a witch wants me to steal a million dollars?
I couldn’t, and wouldn’t if I could, tell my parents. My father survived one heart attack. I wasn’t about to give him another.
And that left…Vree?
“Are we going to sit outside all day?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we be doing something? Should we at least go inside? Make missing flyers and staple them to telephone poles? Call the milk box people? You know how they used to put pictures of missing people on milk boxes? We could call the police and have an Amber Alert issued for Bubblegum. Think, Davis, think. I can’t even think. You’re going to have to do the thinking. I’m way too confused to think. I can’t think past us going to Mexico and saving them. But if we go to Mexico, what about your babies? Can you take babies to Mexico? Could you leave them with a babysitter? Is there an app for babysitters? Like Lyft? Where you just ask for a babysitter, then one shows up? And once we get there, how will we find Meredith and Bubbles? Or should we do what Gully wants? Davis, please, let’s go to the casino and get the money. Just…go get it. You know where the money is. I mean, surely you know. Get the money, give it to Bootsy, then get Meredith and Bubbs back.”
“Vree.” I patted her leg again. “Of all that, we should probably go inside.”
“And then what? Get the money from the casino?”
“I can tell you right now, Vree, we’re not going to the casino and stealing a million dollars. That’s not happening.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “If we don’t give Bootsy the money, how do we get Meredith and Bubbs back?”
We launch Operation Sister Rescue was how we’d get them back. I picked up my phone, lying still on the terrace tile. I whispered, “Gully has Meredith and Bubbles. We’re taking Bootsy.”
The blood drained from Vree’s face.
“Go stand at the door. Watch for her.”
Vree pulled herself up, skirted the table, then positioned herself between the double French doors. She cupped her eyes with her hands and pressed her face against the glass. “I don’t see her.”
I speed-dialed. “Hey. It’s me. I need you to help me relocate someone.”
“From where to where?” Fantasy asked.
“From here to anywhere else.”
“Are you home?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“And there’s someone there you want gone?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not,” she said. “When?”
“Immediately.”
“I have a nail appointment.”
“Cancel it.”
“How big is he?”
“It’s a she. And why does it matter how big she is?”
“I need to know if this is a bag-over-the-head job, a chloroform job, or a gun job.”
That’s the thing about a best friend.
“Do you still have the pink gun you got for Christmas?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Bring the pink gun.”
“Good idea.”
Vree’s head whipped around. “We can’t get money from the casino, but we can shoot Bootsy with a pink gun? Not that that’s not a good idea. But isn’t killing worse than stealing?”
“Who’s that?” Fantasy asked.
“Meredith’s friend, Vree.”
“Oh, right. The chatterbox. Is that who I’m relocating?”
“No,” I said. “Her fake mother-in-law.”
“Why’s her fake mother-in-law there? And what’s a fake mother-in-law?”
“Long story,
Fantasy. Just get over here and help get this woman out of my house.”
“And what is it you want me to do with her once I get her out of your house?”
“I need to park her somewhere. Can you put her in your bonus room?”
“If all you need is to park her somewhere, why can’t we park her in a guest room at the hotel? Does she have to come here?”
“Housekeeping would find her.”
“Right.”
“How much trouble is she?”
“Not much,” I lied.
“For how long?”
“A few days. One or two.”
“How am I supposed to explain this to Reggie and the boys?”
Reggie was Fantasy’s husband. The boys were Fantasy’s three sons. The boys, all middle-school aged, played every sport under the sun, some I’d heard of, some I hadn’t. Lately, it’d been basketball. “I thought they were out of town at a basketball tournament.”
“They are.”
“Then why do you have to explain anything?”
“Good point,” she said.
“And go through your bonus room, Fantasy. Load it up with a few days of groceries and get anything out she could use for a weapon or to escape.”
“This is getting more interesting by the minute,” she said. “What else? Should I bring donuts?”
“No,” I said. “We just finished breakfast. But I need a West Highland White Terrier.”
“A what?”
“A dog. Cute little white dog with pointy ears.”
“A Westie,” Fantasy said. “I love Westies. Where am I supposed to get one?”
“I have no idea.”
“How about we take this one step at a time. The fake mother-in-law first, then we’ll worry about the dog.”
I closed my eyes in relief. And gratitude. And hope.
“What’s this about?” Fantasy asked.
I didn’t answer.
“Davis, is Meredith there? Today’s the day Meredith and her friend are coming, right? The friend is there. Is Meredith?”
I didn’t answer.
“What, Davis? What’s happened?”
Again, I didn’t answer.
She said, “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
Vree flipped around, then let the French doors hold her up. In the smallest voice, she asked why we needed a Westie.
“Because we don’t want to tell anyone yet, Vree. Which means we need to act normal. And that means you need a dog for the dog show.”
My phone rang in my hand. I looked at the caller ID and with its news, decided I’d had all I could take for one morning. “Bianca.” I said it on a sigh, an exhausted sigh.
“DAVID!”
* * *
Richard Sanders owned the Bellissimo. He bought it from his father-in-law, Salvatore Casimiro. Mr. Sanders was at times happily, and at other times, unhappily, married to Casimiro’s only daughter, Bianca. My doppelganger. Our coloring was off: I have red hair, more caramel than red, and eyes about the same color, while she’s honey blonde, with pistachio green eyes. But we were the same height, build, and weight, with alarmingly similar features, and with one can of B Blonde, which I bought by the case at Walgreens, plus tinted contact lenses, only our husbands could tell us apart. I’d been Bianca’s celebrity double since I walked through the Bellissimo doors, and I was good at it. Bianca was addicted to it. So addicted, she rarely went out. Which meant very little interaction with humans past her staff, who she didn’t even acknowledge as human, and that left me: I was her human. And she thought I was her staff. Not only did I represent her to the outside world, I was her only link to it. To beat it all, she fully believed my name was David. I hadn’t managed, in five long years, to convince her otherwise.
“David,” she said, “a person from Georgia—” she said it like, “A person from The Ninth Circle of Hell” “—came to my home with textbooks. Large, filthy, and unattractive textbooks about dogs. As in bow-wow. Several dilapidated boxes containing dozens of oversized, soiled, and musty canine reference manuals. He’s under the impression I’m going to study them, then take part in an activity downstairs involving dogs. Is the casino now filled with dogs? Am I living above a kennel and no one’s bothered to tell me? You, of all people, know I would risk Gianna and Ghita’s health, at their tender ages, by consorting with common street dogs exactly never, and I’d like you to stop whatever you’re doing and take care of this.”
By “tender ages,” she meant “senior citizens.” Bianca’s Yorkshire Terriers had to be twelve or thirteen years old. Maybe twenty. And the older they got, the less they liked me.
“The casino is still below us, Bianca,” I said. “The dogs are in the convention center, not the casino. They’re here for a show. A dog show.”
“As in Westminster?”
“Like that,” I said.
“These are European dogs?”
“Not exactly.”
“These dogs are from Georgia?”
She did it again.
“All over the South, Bianca.”
She huffed. “Why have these Southern dog people invaded my home with their filthy library?”
“They want you to be a judge.”
“Never.”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“You most certainly will, David.”
(It’s Davis.)
* * *
I called Plethora and asked for a terrace makeover. I wasn’t going back in my house until Bootsy Howard was on her way out of it, and I couldn’t look at breakfast one more minute. “And bring a fresh pot of coffee,” I said.
“For how many, Mrs. Cole?”
“Two.”
Bootsy was on her own. She wasn’t getting anything from me—coffee, hospitality, or a million dollars.
Vree and I sat facing each other at the table, positioned to see Bootsy coming.
“Start at the beginning.” I kept my voice down. “And be efficient with your words. Try to answer my questions as accurately and concisely as you can.”
“Okay, but—”
I held up a stop-sign hand. “Just okay.”
“What? I mean—”
I stop-signed her again. “‘Okay’ was the answer. That was all you needed to say. When I do this—” stop sign “—it means stop talking.”
“How am I supposed to—”
I gave her the stop sign. She slumped.
I scanned again for Bootsy. No Bootsy. She was probably busy casting spells all over my house.
“Vree, what’s the connection between Gully and Bootsy?”
“What do you mean? Like does Bootsy go to church? Or do you mean is she friends with Gina Gully? That’s a no, because no one is friends with Gina. You know that dead stare of Gina’s? How it makes everyone so nervous? People can’t take it. She’s just about goofy, and I think it’s from listening to Gully’s sermons too long. You say, ‘Good morning, Gina,’ and after she stares straight through you for ten minutes, she throws her head back and her arms up in the air, then screams, ‘Praise be to the Almighty! Jesus, take the wheel! Lazarus and Mary Magdalene!’ She’s, like, on another planet—”
Stop sign. “Vree, there has to be a connection between Gully and Bootsy. Think. Think hard. Gully didn’t knock on Bootsy’s door and say, ‘I’m going to kidnap Meredith Way, haul her to Mexico, and get a million dollars out of her sister. I’d like you to help.’ That didn’t happen, Vree. Tell me something, anything, that connects the two of them.”
Vree squirmed. “I can’t think of anything. I mean, I can’t hardly think. My brain is frozen. Like, shocked.”
“Try,” I said. “Try hard, Vree.”
Ten minutes later, I gave up trying to dig a connection between Pastor Gully and Bootsy out of her endless babble because it wasn’t coming
any time soon, and time was something we didn’t have much of. “Next question,” I said. “Why was your dog with Meredith?” I might have known, Meredith may very well have told me during one of the ten conversations it had taken to set up the week’s adventures, but I’d either forgotten or missed it altogether.
Vree took a deep breath—a bad sign. “You know The Front Porch.”
I let out the deep breath she’d taken. Of course, I knew The Front Porch. My sister and niece lived on Main Street in the antebellum my father was born and raised in. They lived on the second and third floors, above Meredith’s shop, The Front Porch. She sold antiques, collectibles, rare first-edition books, and vintage clothing. She served banana splits and milkshakes in the former kitchen she’d remodeled into an old-fashioned soda fountain. “Vree?” It was a warning.
“Right. Don’t stick your hand in my face. I’ll hurry and answer. How am I supposed to answer in, like, one word? Or two words? I mean, I have to start at—”
Double stop signs.
Vree crossed her arms. “Photoshoot.”
“See?” I asked. “How hard was that?” I could fill in the blanks. My sister was part stylist, part decorator, part retail genius, and all gold, as in everything she touched turned to. (Gold.) Meredith could take an eighty-year-old piece of unidentifiable furniture, a few milk crates, a bolt of ugly fabric, and a roll of duct tape, then turn it into elegant dinner seating for eight. A year ago, maybe, I’d been busy with newborn twins, she bought an antique camera collection at an estate sale. She’d tinkered with the cameras until they were in working order, but instead of selling them at the Porch, she started snapping photographs.
Gold photographs.
Meredith was good at everything.
And without a doubt, our mother’s favorite.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You let Bubblegum go with Meredith for a photoshoot.”
“Sunset on the beach. In her bikini.”
(The dog had a bikini?)
“Whose idea was it?”
“What idea? You mean for Meredith to take Bubblegum’s picture? Mine. For us to ride down here in Gully’s new Winnebago? His.”
Double Dog Dare Page 3
