I counted to ten. “Vree? You can come out now.”
“No!”
I barely heard her.
“Seriously, Vree. Come out.”
The closet door cracked. I could see one of Vree’s eyes. It was wild.
Finally, she worked up the nerve to put one toe out. She leapt on the twin bed closest to the door, then almost knocked me down clearing the six feet from the foot of the bed to the hallway. We flattened ourselves on either side of the door. “If you can just stay here long enough for me to get a baby gate, Vree, I’ll be back in two seconds.”
“No,” she said. “You stay here and I’ll get the baby gate.”
“Fine.”
“And I’m taking my time,” Vree whispered. “That dog is crazy.” She opened her mouth to explain, and would probably, before she finished, throw in a few Crock-Pot recipes and give me her thoughts on naval ships, when my arm shot out and I pointed. As in, go.
I would be guarding the dog alone—me versus it—for several minutes, so I prayed. I had two daughters to raise and a sister to save. I needed the dog to let me live long enough to get those two things done. There was nothing between me and it but a thin wall and an open door, and I didn’t want to distract the dog by closing the door, just to distract her again when I opened it after Vree returned with a gate. And who knew how long that would take, because she had to go down the hall, through the foyer, to the other side of our house to get to the storage closet where I hadn’t found the time to return any baby equipment. Vree could very well find a wall to talk to at any point along the way. I cautiously poked my head in to check on Princess, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Hearing, rather.
The dog had Madeleine Albright’s TED Talk memorized. Which was not to say the dog was talking. But she was nose to laptop screen imitating Madeleine Albright’s words. Tone, inflection, modulation, and delivery. In dog language, yips and yaps, Princess was vocalizing along with the speech.
What in the world?
I observed until Vree returned lugging a baby gate. I stopped her with a hand motion, then pointed at Princess and the laptop, then to my own ear, as in, listen.
Vree cocked an ear, shrugged, then made what? hands.
I made binocular hands over my eyes, as in, look.
Vree whispered, “Do you want me to look or listen?”
“Both!”
She peeked. “Oh my gosh!” She clapped her hands to her face. “What is she doing?” she whispered. “What is she watching?”
“Madeleine Albright’s TED Talk.”
Vree’s mouth dropped open. I could see her molars.
I latched the baby gate, effectively trapping Princess, but still able to hear or check on her without having to set foot in the bedroom, then led Vree to the kitchen. I said, “Don’t overreact when you see Fantasy. Pretend like nothing’s wrong.” We stepped into the kitchen, Vree took one look at Fantasy and screamed bloody murder.
Soon to be matched by the scream that escaped Fantasy when she met Princess.
And still, no housekeeping.
No sister, no million dollars, and no housekeeping.
* * *
The first Pop N’ Play was wrecked. We set up the second one in the living room, just off the kitchen. Fantasy kept making suggestions I couldn’t understand. In a huff, she grabbed my laptop and recorded the TED talk, then set it up to run on a loop. When the recording stopped, fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds in, it started again. Princess patiently waited out the Ancestry and Cialis commercials.
Fantasy, Vree, and I returned to the kitchen table, where I was gearing up to tell all, but just then the doorbell rang. Finally. Two big burly housekeepers greeted me with blank stares. One had a thick beard that hit him mid-chest and the other was wearing a green-eyed skull and crossbones nose ring. Past the facial hair and the piercing, they had enough industrial scrubbing equipment to clean up a crime scene. They were armed with everything. I think I saw a jackhammer. I know I saw a multi-purpose floor cleaner the size of a riding lawn mower. Maybe I shouldn’t have used the words “nuclear waste spill” when I called it in.
I pointed at the puddle. Then I pointed down my guest-room hall.
They circled, examined, and peered down the hall.
“I’ll be through there if you need me.” I pointed again.
Thirty minutes later the nose-ringed housekeeper poked his head in my kitchen door and said, “You’re good to go, Mrs. Cole. You got anything else? We’re scheduled here for two hours.”
I opened my mouth to say no, thank you, take your lawn mowers and hit the road, when a piece of paper landed in front of me.
Send them to my house to get the witch.
I wrote her back. We don’t know these men.
She wrote back. They’re Bellissimo employees and they’re only going to the garage. It’ll be fine. Have them jump my car off while they’re there.
While they didn’t look like ninety percent of the housekeeping staff, the ones in starched uniforms who pushed cleaning carts in and out of guest rooms, they did look like they could handle Bootsy Howard. Not only did I need to get Bootsy out of the bonus room, I needed her for bartering purposes too, and her phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with texts from Gully. Sister Bootsy, has the Lord moved in mysterious ways yet? Sister Bootsy, have God’s blessings from the casino rained down on us yet? Sister Bootsy, has the righteous hand of God struck Davis Way about the head yet?
I paid the housekeepers cash, retrieved from my cash-stash cookie jar, two hundred dollars each, then called transportation to tell them I was sending two men to pick up a sturdy vehicle. I asked them to throw in jumper cables. Then I gave the housekeepers Bootsy repo instructions and directions to Fantasy’s house. Fantasy said, “ANK OOOH,” to the nose-ringed housekeeper.
I said, “Be careful. She bites.”
“Bring her back here?”
“Yes.” (No.)
I saw them out, then it was back to the kitchen, where Vree and I told Fantasy everything. The first time Vree got sidetracked, I said, “Maybe I should tell the story.”
We didn’t have all day.
Fantasy responded with gestures, jotting specific questions in writing. In the end, she wrote at length. When she finished, she flipped the paper around. I bent over it and read.
I agree, tell no one, act as normal as you can. But first things first, you can’t rob the Bellissimo. If you’re going to rob a casino, rob the Slipper. Or Last Resort. Or even Hard Rock. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Second, everyone knows Bradley is in Nashville nosing around about a job with Southern Gaming because he’s convinced Bex and Quinn are going to grow up to be degenerate gamblers if you stay here one more minute. Forget it, Davis. You’d hate Nashville. You don’t even like country music, or barbeque, and that’s all they have in Nashville. This is your home. Third, you can’t put that dog in the show. Look at it. I don’t care if it could wag its twiggy tail all the way to the White House gate and pass itself off as Madeleine Albright, talent is only part of the competition, and that dog’s obsession with Madeleine Albright is hardly a talent. Forget it. I’m not sure it even IS a dog. It might be a ferret. Finally, and most importantly, get the witch’s phone and call the preacher. Stop texting him back with glory hallelujahs. He’ll answer, because he’ll think it’s the witch calling. Just level with him. Tell him you know everything, and you’re working on the money, but you want Meredith and Vree’s dog in a nice hotel, not stuffed in his ratty camper under lock and key, and tell him you want open communication with her. Tell him nothing happens unless Meredith convinces you she’s going through the procedure by choice, with no undue influence. Do you have any Benadryl? I’m positive this is a spell your witch cast on me, but on the off chance it’s not, I need an antihistamine. Either that, or I’m going to have to go to a doc-in-a-box for a shot. I can feel my lips
getting BIGGER.
I said, “Fantasy, she’s not a witch. There’s no such thing.”
Vree said, “She most certainly is—”
“Vree,” I said, “stop with the witch business. Just stop.”
The house phone ringing scared us to death.
We were so on edge, with Madeleine Albright yammering in the background, the unexpected noise almost did us in. It was the bearded and pierced housekeepers. It had been well over a half hour; I’d forgotten all about them. They called to say no Bootsy. The bonus room was empty. And they didn’t jump off the car in the driveway because there was no car in the driveway. No woman, no car, sorry.
Having held it together since the morning before when I realized my sister wasn’t coming, I gave up. I was terrified for my sister; I missed my husband; I missed my daughters, who I hadn’t seen or held in hours. Vree wouldn’t shut up, Fantasy had balloons for lips, and I had to rob the Silver Slipper. I’d saddled myself with a Democrat dog that smelled like carnage and hated me, I was a nervous wreck from living on coffee, and I had to wear horse clothes and judge a dog show that night. Now Bootsy was gone?
It was too much.
I laid my head down on my kitchen table and was on the verge of coming undone.
A slip of paper joined my pity party. On it, Fantasy had written, Davis, the preacher isn’t going to touch a hair on Meredith’s head. He needs her. And the witch is still in the bonus room. I have no idea where my car is, but the witch is there. She hid somewhere and the housekeepers didn’t look hard enough. Come on, and we’ll go flush her out. Do you have any way, shape, or form of antihistamine?
Then, patting her chest, Fantasy said, “I ILL ELP OOO.”
A very good thing, because I needed “elp.”
* * *
Fantasy’s lips still took up half her face, but the bottle of Children’s Benadryl she chugged reduced her swollen tongue enough for her to speak somewhat clearly. We were stuffed in the cab of her husband Reggie’s beat-up work truck, Fantasy driving, Vree riding shotgun, me bouncing off both from the middle seat.
“If the Benadryl is working, Fantasy, that means you’ve had an allergic reaction to something. Bootsy didn’t voodoo you.”
“You two need to get on the same page,” Fantasy said. “Is she a witch, or isn’t she?”
“She is.” Vree leaned past me. “One time she turned the water black. For three days, all the water in Pine Apple was as black as ink. Our grocery store, the Pig, ran out of bottled water. And it was all Bootsy’s fault—”
“It was not,” I said. “It was manganese.”
Vree said, “It was Bootsy.”
“What is manganese?” Fantasy took a right off Beach Boulevard. We were less than a mile from her house.
“Manganese is like iron,” I said. “And like iron, it can make its way into a water supply from groundwater runoff. When it does, the water turns black. Which was what happened.”
Vree said, “Also if a witch puts a spell on the water it turns black.”
We passed a Coast Electric Power truck. A big truck. A bucket truck. And two men were sky high in the bucket, repairing a transformer. I said, “There’s your power flickering on and off. It was a transformer. Not Bootsy.”
“It was Bootsy if Bootsy was the one who blew the transformer,” Vree said. “Do you remember when Orange Bennett cut line in front of her at the Gas ’n Go? And ten minutes later he broke out in hives all over his body? Even his privates?”
I did remember that. Orange wore nothing but Wolverine boots, calamine lotion, and a spray-painted wooden sandwich board with BOOTSY HOWARD IS A WHICHY WHICH on the front and BURN BOOTSY HOWARD AT THE STEAK on the back. For a month. And the month was January. When the tip of his nose turned black, Daddy told him if he caught him walking up and down Banana Street one more time wearing nothing but his sandwich board he’d lock him up. Free speech was one thing. Frostbite was another.
“Why are so many people in Pine Apple named after foods?” Fantasy turned into the driveway and drove past the house. “Orange? As in juice?” I didn’t have time to answer—his daddy was a Tennessee fan—before Fantasy said, “Where in the world is my car?”
The housekeepers were right, the car was gone. The garage was still there, and so far, so good. No shooting flames, no bats, no National Guard. Fantasy shifted the truck into park and killed the engine. “Where’s my car?”
“Maybe Bootsy witched it somewhere,” Vree said.
“Where would she have witched my car to, Vree?”
“Let’s go in and ask her,” I said.
“What if she’s really not there?” Vree asked.
“She’s there,” I said. “And if by some chance she’s not, surely she left us a few clues.”
* * *
She wasn’t there.
And there were no clues.
Clues? No.
A solid black Standard Poodle guarding a dead body? Yes.
TEN
Fantasy and I opened our mouths at the same time—in all fairness, Fantasy couldn’t close her mouth because of her lips, still bee-stung swollen, by a whole hive of bees—to tell Vree not to touch anything, but we didn’t need to. Vree swooned again. We were three for three: She hit the floor yesterday when we shot Bootsy with the tranquilizer gun, then again that morning, when she connected the bloody dots between Meredith and Greene Gully, and just then, when she realized the woman in the easy chair behind the big black dog was dead.
The dog was glad to see us. It rushed us, clearly seeking help. I tried to calm it; it tried to pull me by the sleeve. “I know.” I patted the huge fluff ball on its head. “I know.”
Fantasy checked the body for a pulse. She shook her head. “Davis, she’s still warm.”
I stepped around the eat-in kitchenette bar and rifled through the drawers for something to use for a cold compress for Vree. Vree needed to buck up. There were no pools of blood, no gaping wounds, no signs of trauma. If it weren’t for the woman’s gray pallor and glazed dead stare, she might be asleep.
I found a Saints t-shirt.
I dragged a moaning Vree farther from the body, put a throw pillow under her head, then positioned the wet t-shirt across her brow, while Fantasy poked the dead woman with a rolled magazine. It looked like a gamer magazine.
“What are you doing, Fantasy?”
She was poking a dead woman with a magazine was what she was doing.
“No purse,” she said. “No keys, no nothing except a dog leash. I’m seeing if she has anything in her pockets. What should we do here?” she asked. “Call the police?”
“And say what?” I asked. “Our witchy prisoner escaped and in her place we have a dead woman we don’t know?”
She patted her swollen lips and thought about it. She could see where calling the police too soon might not be the best idea. She stepped past the dead woman, around the corner to the small room with the bunkbeds, then I heard tapping.
“What are you doing?”
She reappeared. “I turned the air down to popsicle.”
Good idea.
We searched high and low, over and under, above and beyond, for Bootsy Howard or any sign of her, and the only thing we found was her tapestry bag full of witch clothes. The housekeepers were right—no Bootsy. No sign of her and not a single clue. Our search stopped where it started. In front of the dead woman.
“What happened to her?” I whispered.
“I don’t know,” Fantasy whispered back.
“Should we pray?” I asked.
“Yes, Davis. We should pray. But at this point, I think we should pray for ourselves.”
“Her necklace,” I whispered.
“I know.” Fantasy crossed herself.
We stared at the pendant around the dead woman’s neck. It was a cameo in an antique silver setting. A hum
mingbird fluttering above morning glories on a powder blue stone. I wasn’t even Catholic, but crossed myself too.
The big black dog, between us, paying his own respects, woofed, snapping us out of our death trance and back into the here and now.
“Do you want the dog or Vree?”
Fantasy looked from one to the other. Clearly not wanting either. “I’ll take Vree.”
It was a morbidly quiet ride out of Fantasy’s subdivision, other than the dog barking at thin air.
* * *
The plan had been, once we returned to the Bellissimo with our Bootsy leverage, to get Preacher Gully on the phone and hammer out a deal. We had no Bootsy, we had no leverage, so we had no plan. A dead woman in Fantasy’s bonus room, another dog, a missing car, but no plan. We were three miles from the Bellissimo, and Vree was coming around. Again.
“This is a real dog.”
The real dog was big. Standing, it was two feet off the ground. Nose to tail, it was three feet long. It weighed maybe fifty pounds, but the real story was the haircut. The trunk of his body and his legs were almost shaved. Everything else was cut into huge fluffy balls. Like pompoms. His head was a giant pompom, it looked like he was wearing pompom bracelets above his paws, the tip of his tail was fashioned into another perfect fuzzy ball, and he was getting sand all over the truck.
“The woman had the dog at the beach.”
“Clearly, Fantasy.” I swiped sand off my leg.
“How did she end up in my bonus room?”
“How did she end up dead?”
Double Dog Dare Page 9
