Charmed and Dangerous

by Toni McGee Causey

  She didn’t know which horror to watch.

  The tiara took one last bounce, sailing out over the dock, heading for the deep Mississippi. She glanced back at Vincent flying through the air and then averted her eyes as he landed, impaled on a metal spike protruding off the conveyor.

  She was going to be sick.

  She bit down, gritting her teeth against the bile rising in her throat, and then looked out over the churning Mississippi waters, no sign of the tiara to be had.

  It was gone.

  The Mississippi, with its ever-shifting muddy bottom and churning waters, rarely gave back anything it had sucked into its black heart.

  Leave it to her to lose an heirloom passed down for a couple hundred years. Perfect. Just perfect.

  She could picture her mom on the last parade float, wearing the tiara, waving, waving, waving to the crowd. Handing it down to Bobbie Faye, telling her how important it was to keep for the family. For tradition.

  Bobbie Faye buried her face in her hands.

  The shooting had stopped.

  She was so tired, so worn, she wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but she needed to find her family. She climbed down into the darkening night and the stillness was oppressive, the heat and dust seemed to hang and form a wall to push through.

  As soon as she stepped off the ladder, Trevor moved out of the shadows, followed by the FBI agent now holding him at gunpoint.

  “I ran out of bullets,” Trevor said, keeping a light, amused expression for her.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” she quipped back.

  “Stop right there, for your own safety,” the FBI agent said. “I’m Special Agent Zeke Wright, Ms. Sumrall. If you’ll please turn over the tiara, I can take this scum in and get him out of your hair.”

  Bobbie Faye had her gun drawn on him before he could move, but he didn’t seem terribly concerned; another FBI agent stepped out of the shadows to her right, his own gun trained on her.

  Cam found one of the FBI shot; he was alive, but unconscious. In his SWAT ear-com, he heard Aaron, saying, “Cam. We’ve got a wounded guy in a suit over here. Face is all kinds of ugly. And another big-ass guy sitting on the ground next to him, holding more than twenty brass doorknobs, and he’s crying.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Just that they’re beautiful and perfect, and now he’s not going to get to have his Guinness entry. Whatever the hell that means.”

  “Okay, get them out of here. I see something happening underneath the gantry crane. I’m coming up from the south end.”

  “Meet you there.”

  When he got there, his blood drained to his feet: there was a face-off between the agents, Cormier, and Bobbie Faye, with Zeke apparently holding a gun on Cormier. There was blood on Bobbie Faye’s hands, her legs, her hip. It was everything Cam could do not to just shoot everyone around her right then and there and get her to a hospital.

  What he didn’t understand was why Zeke wasn’t just arresting Cormier. Or why Bobbie Faye had her gun drawn on a federal agent. He studied his ex’s expression, and knew she wasn’t buying the cajoling spiel Zeke was giving her. Why, he wondered, was she suspicious?

  And then it hit him. The cell where Benoit had put the Professor . . . it was the one with a view of the desk sergeant’s TV. Not a good view, but a view. The Professor had flipped out over the name “Cormier” in the interrogation room. Then drugged, poisoned, the Professor had babbled: “Not corn. Right.” Cam would bet his next paycheck the Professor was trying to say, “Not Cormier. Wright.” Agent Zeke Wright. Could the Professor have seen the agent on the news coverage and learned Zeke’s name and so had been trying to tell them? Zeke had claimed to be hunting down Cormier as if he had the authority to do anything to get his man, but the Captain had told Cam to bring Cormier in unhurt.

  Cormier must be undercover. Zeke was the rogue agent. And Zeke clearly wanted something from Bobbie Faye.

  Sonofabitch.

  He’d led the man to Bobbie Faye all damned day long.

  Cam moved slightly and put himself in her line of sight so she’d know he was there and he could back her up. She did the damnedest thing. She gave him the little ear tug sign they’d had for years. It meant, “Wait. Something’s going on and I can handle it.”

  She had clearly lost her mind.

  “You were at the bank,” she said to Zeke, who twitched a little, and looked oddly antsy. “When I ran out of the bank, I saw you there, waiting in your car. And now you’re here. Wanting the tiara. Why don’t I think that’s a coincidence?”

  “Look, Ms. Sumrall,” Zeke said, his voice smooth as if talking to a child while he scratched at his upper arm and chest with his free hand.

  That wasn’t going to go over really well.

  “This man,” Zeke continued, “has been trying to double-cross you. He’s a mercenary, and he’s been after the tiara all along. Now I’m arresting him, and I need the tiara for evidence.”

  “Evidence? So it can conveniently disappear later on?”

  “Quit being ridiculous, Ms. Sumrall. Hand it over.”

  Cam watched her lower her eyelids and give Zeke the expression he’d come to know as the “slitty glare.” Cam caught himself grinning, even though Bobbie Faye could still see him.

  Bobbie Faye looked down at the ground, glancing around her as if something had fallen.

  “What are you doing?” Zeke asked.

  “Well, you must think my brains have fallen out of my head if you think I’m going buy a crap story like that. Trevor could have taken the tiara from me at pretty much any point today. If he was double-crossing me, he’d be long gone. Which leaves us you. I’m sort of amused that of all the people who are interested in the tiara, you happened to be in the parking lot at the time of the robbery. Was that your idea? Steal it from Roy’s kidnapper? Did you know what was going on and decide to take it for yourself?”

  Cam caught Bobbie Faye’s eye and nodded.

  The muscles in the back of Zeke’s neck tensed and knotted and he scratched more emphatically at his neck and arms. Zeke’s colleague seemed washed in a sudden sheen of sweat, and Cam could smell the fear from where he stood.

  Then Cam pinged on the fact that she’d said, “kidnapper.” And “Roy.” No wonder she’d pushed like the Terminator hopped up on steroids.

  “Look, bitch,” Zeke snapped, “you’re just a stupid girl who’s about to get herself and her whole family killed. This isn’t funny.”

  “Oh, really? You know what is funny? When you lose the ‘whose dick is bigger’ contest to a ‘girl’ like me. You’re never going to get that tiara.”

  “You should concede now, Zeke,” Trevor said. “This could get embarrassing.”

  “No ignorant set of tits is going to beat me.” Zeke’s voice curled with satisfaction in spite of him rubbing an ever-reddening blotchy cheek against his shoulder. “Especially when I have her niece.”

  Bobbie Faye froze, and Cam couldn’t catch her eye. He could tell she was calculating, when Zeke laughed.

  “Exactly. Let’s just say she’s in protective custody. So you give me the tiara, I shoot Cormier here, who is the bad guy as far as the cops are concerned, and then you get your niece back.”

  “You bastard,” Bobbie Faye seethed. “Where is she?”

  “With an agent of mine.”

  “Would that be Baker?” Trevor asked, sounding even more satisfied than Zeke had. “Because he isn’t an agent of yours, Zeke.”

  Cam could see Bobbie Faye assessing Cormier, and when she looked back at Zeke, it was clear she believed Cormier.

  “You’re not that stupid,” Zeke snapped. “You’re not going to risk her life on what this mercenary says. He’s played you all along, and you’re too fucking naïve to realize it. Hand over the tiara.”

  “How about, instead—” she said, lifting up her shirt, and Cam flinched, wanting to cover her, feeling protective, until he saw what she’d done: there was a microphone wire attached to
the center of her bra and a little sending unit under her arm.

  “—you wave to the pretty camera over there in that pedestal crane,” she finished, pointing toward a crane nearer to the entrance of the scrap yard. She smiled, big, and said, “You got it, boys?”

  And sonofabitch if the helicopter cameraman and pilot didn’t wave to them from the pedestal crane, and the streetlight glinted off their TV camera.

  “Yaaaaaaaaahoooooooo, we got it Bobbie Faye,” the cameraman shouted back. “All of it! Live!”

  Bobbie Faye looked directly at Cam then, acknowledging his presence there, signaling that’s all she had, and he stepped out, aiming at Zeke while she aimed at the other FBI agent.

  “We’ve got it, too,” he said, and Zeke spun.

  In a flash, Zeke turned back as if to shoot Bobbie Faye. Before Cam could plant a slug in him, Cormier disarmed the agent and had him on the ground, aiming Zeke’s own gun back at the prone agent.

  Without looking away from Zeke, Cormier said, “You’re Cameron Moreau, right?”

  “And?”

  “Call your Captain. I’m FBI, undercover. He’s already had the information confirmed; we couldn’t tell you until we’d flushed out this asshole once and for all.”

  Bobbie Faye squeaked a little when she asked, “You’re—you’re FBI?”

  Cam glanced at her and she looked a little woozy.

  “Ohmygod. I kidnapped an FBI agent. I am so going to jail.”

  Cam placed a call to the Captain while his SWAT surrounded Cormier, Zeke, and the other agent, and disarmed them all.

  Zeke’s neck had started breaking out in horrible hives.

  “Please, for the love of God, let me move so I can scratch. Are there oranges around here? I’m allergic. I swear, I’m going to have seizures. I need a doctor!”

  Roy stumbled out from behind one of the mountains of metal, his face nearly swollen shut. Bobbie Faye ran to him.

  She hugged Roy first. Then yelled at him. Then hugged him again, tears running down her face.

  They had all been through hell and back, and Cam was convinced it hadn’t needed to be that way.

  She wouldn’t have had to go through any of it, if she’d called him first. It made him livid. She put herself and everyone else in danger because she was too damned pig-headed to ask for help. To admit she might need something.

  From him. Especially from him.

  His veins grew cold and the iciness seeped into every pore, every heartbeat. He was furious with her for having put her life on the line. Every scrape she had, every cut, every bruise assailed him and taunted him with the clear indication that she didn’t need him. Never did. Never would.

  He made sure the ambulance was dispatched and he turned his back on her and walked away, knowing Aaron could handle the rest of the details.

  Ce Ce and everyone who could cram themselves into her Outfitter store stood in front of her little TV, completely slack-jawed and gobsmacked as the live coverage spun across the screen from the scrap yard in Plaquemine. There were ambulances there, a body being carried out by the Medical Examiner, and more cops than anyone could count, including SWAT and FBI.

  And there was Bobbie Faye, in living color, looking like she’d almost been beaten and pureed, but alive.

  “Where am I?” a muffled voice asked from the storage room, and Ce Ce nearly jumped out of her skin at the realization: the Social Services woman. They’d forgotten all about her in the excitement of seeing the live footage.

  Ce Ce quickly conferred with the crowd and they all knew their parts to play. Maybe, just maybe, they could stay out of jail.

  Forty-Two

  She’s alive. It’s over. Now we can all get back to our own normal lives.

  —first comment on the record after any Bobbie Faye event by Detective Cameron Moreau, Ms. Sumrall’s ex-boyfriend, as told to WFKD

  Bobbie Faye watched Cam walk off, and everything in her ached with fury. Tears welled up and she flat refused to let them slide. For a brief moment there when he was watching her handle Zeke, when he saw what she’d been up against and what she’d deduced, she thought she’d seen something akin to pride aimed in her direction. But no, he’d walked off, without a backwards glance, anger radiating off him in a too-familiar way. So as she stood there watching the paramedics do a preliminary check on Roy and get the wounds bandaged, and as another set worked on her, it surprised the hell out of her to feel Trevor’s palm soothe the back of her neck, kneading the knots of tension from her shoulders as if he’d been the one she’d known all her life and had dated.

  “I’ve called the agent protecting Stacey,” he said, “and she’s fine. She might be a little hopped up on sugar. I think she conned him into buying her every snack this side of the Mississippi, but she’s in great spirits. I’m having him meet you at your home; I know it’s destroyed, but I suspect you’ll want to go back there first?”

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  “Good. I’ve got a thousand reports to fill out.”

  And with that, he, too, walked away.

  “Let me get this straight,” the groggy Social Services woman said to Ce Ce’s crowd while they all stared at her, wide-eyed and a little too innocent. “First, I fell asleep on the box over there?”

  They all nodded in unison.

  “Then I walked in my sleep and offered to dance the tango with, let me understand this, that gentleman over there?”

  She pointed to tall, quiet Ralph, and everyone nodded in unison.

  “And after that, I suggested we all go to a stripper bar? Where I was going to ‘bust a move’?”

  They all nodded in unison, Monique a little more enthusiastically than the rest.

  “And I’m supposed to believe this?”

  “Well, honey, I don’t know what on earth makes people do strange things when they sleepwalk,” Ce Ce offered. “But maybe you should see a doctor about that.”

  The woman glared at her and Ce Ce smiled as innocently as possible.

  And everyone nodded in unison.

  The view of her trailer from the aerial footage had not prepared Bobbie Faye for the carnage that had been her home, and she would have lain flat on the ground from the weight of the depression, had a big black Ford not driven up at just that moment and out hopped Stacey, blond pigtails askew, Popsicle stains (several colors in fact) all over her face and hands, and something that looked remarkably like ice cream sprinkles all over her cheek. She was dragging a stuffed elephant that was slightly bigger than she was, and Bobbie Faye scooped her up and held her so long, so tight, she was pretty sure the sprinkles were permanently implanted in her own cheek, and she didn’t care a bit.

  “Aunt Bobbie Faye! It was so much fun! Me an’ Uncle Baker—”

  The new agent nodded a greeting.

  “—we went to the zoo and the pony rides and the merry-go-round and the planannniiinium—”

  “Planetarium?”

  “Uh huh, and then we went to McDonald’s and—whoa.”

  Stacey’s attention focused on the trailer lying on its side in several pieces.

  “It’s okay, Stace. We’ll figure something out. Okay?”

  “Uh huh. Can Uncle Baker come back again tomorrow?”

  She turned her little pig-tailed head his direction, beaming at him, and Bobbie Faye tried to hide her laugh as he blanched and nearly ran back to his car.

  “Stace, honey, I think Uncle Baker might need a little while to recover.”

  Twenty-four hours later, Bobbie Faye was still pulling the little rug rat off the counters and the back of the sofa. She was beginning to wonder if the kid had mainlined the sugar instead of just ingesting it.

  She looked at that kid, and her heart squeezed in her chest, and she couldn’t let herself think of how close she’d come to losing Stacey. Or Roy. As much as she wanted to knock him in the head herself, it had all been too damned close. She didn’t know if she was ever going to recover from it all. They’d just returned from s
eeing Roy at the hospital, where the doctor had said he was going to be fine. And Roy was already hitting up on the nurses, so clearly he was feeling better.

  Now Bobbie Faye sat outside her small trailer lot, watching the mobile home company move in her new (used) trailer. They had agreed to give her a good deal on it, with payments she almost could afford, in exchange for her occasionally appearing in a TV ad touting that their brand of trailers were tough enough to withstand a “Bobbie Faye” day.

  Nina moved away from overseeing the trailer installation and sat next to Bobbie Faye in a lawn chair someone had loaned them.

  “Any word on whether or not the reward from the stolen crap in the kidnapper’s office will pay for all the damages?”

  “Not yet. Benoit told me they’re putting a detective, Fordoche, on it. She’s supposed to be very good, honest, and anal up the wazoo, so hopefully, half of it won’t disappear.”

  They sat in companionable silence a few minutes, watching the chaos of the trailer being moved in with three different men all trying to be the boss and giving five different sets of directions to the driver.

  “Oh, by the way,” Nina laughed. “I heard where Dora went.”

  Roy had filled Bobbie Faye in on just where he’d been when the day had started.

  “She went to her mom’s, all freaked out because she didn’t want to deal with Jimmy coming home after the kidnappers had taken Roy. So Jimmy comes home, sees she’s run home to her mom, thinks it’s because she found out about him and Susannah the loon, so he goes over there to apologize and try to win Dora back. It’s a good thing Roy’s protected in the hospital right now, because Dora told Jimmy about Roy and the two of them turned Dora’s mom’s into a regular Jerry Springer show, especially when Susannah showed up.”

  Bobbie Faye whiplashed, as she turned to catch Nina’s wicked gleam.

  “Yup. And Susannah thought he was divorced already.”

  Bobbie Faye tried not to feel too evil about smiling right then.

  “Oh, brace yourself, here comes ‘Just Call Me Sunshine.’ ”

  Bobbie Faye looked over to the driveway where a car had pulled in. Cam. Looking distinctively peeved. She met him halfway between her chair and his car. From the way he slammed his car door, she thought he was about to lecture her.