A Breath of Dead Air (The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Book 8)

by Nic Saint

  “The mayor’s wife, you mean,” she couldn’t help muttering. She’d been informed by her mother that Caroline had been granted her emotional ambassadorship by the mayor’s wife, not by the mayor himself. Not that it made much of a difference, which Carline’s next words confirmed.

  “Yes, well, whatever the mayor’s wife wants, the mayor wants. We all know that,” Caroline stated pointedly. And with a flourish she proceeded to hand out diaries to the rest of the gathering, stressing the importance that they write down their emotional experiences daily, and read the quotes.

  “What do I do with this?” Reece asked, flipping it open to the first page.

  “Well, dear, you simply write down any distress you might feel, any emotional issues you’re currently dealing with, whether big or small.”

  Reece eyed her blankly. “I don’t get it.”

  Caroline clasped her hands together primly. “Well, we all feel a little under the weather from time to time, don’t we?” She pointed to the diary. “You simply jot down all that gloomy goosery and read the motivational quote printed at the bottom of the page. You’ll feel better in next to no time.”

  Reece blankly stared at the page, then up at Caroline. “I still don’t—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Caroline snapped. “When you’re down—”

  “But I’m never down,” Reece interjected. And when Caroline stared at him, open-mouthed, he shrugged. “I just ain’t. Used to drive Dr. Depp mad.”

  “Who’s Dr. Depp?” Rick whispered.

  “Reece’s shrink. They all have them in Hollywood,” Felicity replied.

  It was true, though. Reece rarely got depressed. In fact, she couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him gloomy or glum. Made her a little envious, to be honest. Whenever things weren’t going her way, she could be quite unhappy. Like when she was trying out one of Granny’s recipes and the end result was a bust. But sitting down to write all that out wasn’t really her thing. Nor did she want Caroline to learn about her most intimate thoughts.

  “Well,” Caroline said, pressing her lips together in a disapproving grimace, “that’s quite impossible, isn’t it? We all feel a little blue from time to time. No sense denying it, Mr. Hudson.” She snapped back her head and cleared her throat. “I will now read a motivational quote.” She dramatically stretched out an arm to the ceiling and fixed Rick with a piercing look. Then she declaimed with hollow voice and commendable poignancy, “Never let anyone treat you like a yellow starburst. For you are… a pink starburst!”

  There was a pregnant pause, but if Caroline had expected applause for her performance, she was about to be disappointed, for Starburst Rick, whether yellow or pink, clearly wasn’t impressed. “I’m not doing this,” he announced gruffly and handed Caroline back the diary.

  Caroline’s face clouded. “What do you mean, you’re not doing it? You are doing it, Ricky Dawson,” she snapped, handing him back the diary.

  “Oh, no, I’m not,” he insisted.

  “This isn’t merely for your own sake, young man. This is for the good of the whole community. Don’t you care about Happy Bays?”

  “Oh, I care enough. I just don’t care about this psycho mumbo jumbo.”

  “You’re a very annoying man,” Caroline stated, then turned to Felicity. “Your fiancé is a very annoying man, Fee. Is he always like this?”

  “Usually he’s quite nice,” Felicity said feebly and gave Rick a kick under the table. If he didn’t comply with Caroline’s wishes, the woman would raise hell. And since she was one of Bell’s best customers, business might suffer if she did. Rick eyed her questioningly, so she hissed, “Just do it already!”

  “I’m not doing it!” he hissed back.

  “Oh, yes, you are!”

  “Oh, no, I’m not!”

  Caroline Loosely eyed this vaudeville with a disapproving expression on her wrinkly face. “Why don’t you two share a diary?” she suggested in a faux-chipper voice. “Couples sharing their most personal issues bond together, and it will do you both a world of good.” She tapped Rick’s nose. “And don’t think I won’t check on you, Ricky Dawson, because I most certainly will!”

  Rick seemed to take offense with the tap on his nose, which was still sore after the Elroy Pomice incident, for he huffed out, “I’m not writing a single word in that silly diary and that’s my final word on the matter. And you can tell the mayor’s wife to—” But before he could utter the offensive words, Caroline had shoved a little piece of paper in his hands. He stared at it dumbly. “What’s this?”

  “That, Ricky Dawson, is a fine. For not complying with the stipulations of the Emotional Diary Program. In accordance with the mayor’s wishes, Chief Whitehouse has granted me temporary police powers. I can write out tickets to people in non-compliance with the program. So now you owe the town kitty fifty dollars.” She wagged a finger in his face. “And next time you refuse, I’ll double it. And again, until you get with the program, young man!”

  Rick sat stunned for a moment, then a resolute look stole over him, and he took the ticket and tore it into little pieces, then threw the resultant confetti in Caroline’s face. “I’m not paying that!” he told her defiantly.

  Caroline’s chin lifted, and she grasped her purse more closely to her body. “Well, I’ll see you in court then, Mr. Dawson. Prepare to be summoned!” Then, remembering she had a job to do, she turned to Bo Vickar. “And what about you, young lady? Are you new in town?”

  “You can say that,” Bo admitted.

  Promptly, Caroline shoved a little booklet into the senator’s daughter’s hands. “Please fill out this diary on a daily basis. We’re working hard to make Happy Bays the happiest place in the USA, and the emotional well-being of our citizenry is an important first step to reach that very lofty goal.”

  And after a last, scathing look at Rick, she turned on her heel and strode off, leaving the four friends and Bo Vickar looking quite stunned.

  “Christ,” Rick groaned. “As if I don’t have enough problems to deal with.”

  “Why didn’t you simply do like me?” Felicity asked, exasperated. “Just accept the silly diary and when she comes asking you just tell her you lost it.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” Rick pointed out. “Nobody has the right to demand that I subscribe to some lame-ass theory about mental health! I will see that woman in court and I will make her eat her own diary!”

  Reece laughed at this. “Ha ha. I want to see that. Eat her own diary!”

  The others weren’t laughing, however. What with the president of the United States kidnapping dogs, and Rick being dragged to court by Caroline Loosely, things were starting to look a little grim.

  “Oh, Ricky,” Felicity sighed, kneading her fiancé’s arm. “Why do you always have to be so principled and stubborn?”

  Rick shook off her hand. “Look, we’re facing bigger issues than this loony Loosely woman. Didn’t you hear what Bo just said? The president of the United States is conspiring against Senator Vickar!” Then, as he digested his own words, he broke into a smile. “The US president is conspiring against a US senator!” He licked his lips, and Felicity could see the words forming in his mind as if she possessed Bo’s mind-reading powers: ‘Pulitzer Prize Winning Reporter Rick Dawson Denounces President Jack Gnash.’

  Just then, Bo’s phone chimed, and her brow puckered into a frown. “It’s my dad,” she said, before picking up. “Dad? What’s…” She listened for a few moments, and then her face went ashen, her hands trembling violently. The phone fell from her grip, bounced on the table and dropped to the floor.

  “What?!” Felicity cried, jumping to her feet. “What’s wrong?!”

  “That—that was Dad’s secretary. Dad’s…” Her lip was quivering, big, fat tears freely rolling down her cheeks. “Dad’s… dead. He committed suicide.”

  Chapter 13

  Jerry pulled the door of Petra’s Pet Parlor closed behind him with a grunt of relief. He was bushed. Eve
r since starting work for the pet parlor’s eponymous owner he dreaded waking up in the morning. Not only was Petra Pearce a harsh taskmaster, she seemed to have developed a thorough dislike to humans in general, men in particular, and ex-cons more specifically. Petra loved all things canine, and she hadn’t taken kindly to the court order decreeing she harbor two dognapping crooks. Her antipathy had been instant and irrevocable, which made for a very disagreeable working environment.

  The two men formerly known as the Pet Bandits had left their petnapping days behind, and Jerry didn’t regret it for a single moment. The last time they’d tried to snatch a pet they’d gotten into so much trouble he hoped never to see his name associated with the now infamous moniker ever again.

  Unfortunately, in this day and age of Google searches, he realized that this particular blot on his reputation would never be completely expunged.

  Johnny, who stood idling on the curb, suddenly gave him an odd look. Jerry frowned. He recognized that look. Johnny had worn it when they’d snatched Mayor MacDonald’s parrot Moe, and again when they decided to grab Chazz Falcone’s dog Spot. Both endeavors had ended in disaster, and as a consequence they now found themselves snipping dog hair on a daily basis, which in his opinion was worse than knitting sweaters in Sing Sing.

  “What?!” he asked gruffly.

  Johnny didn’t respond but merely held up his smartphone. Jerry found himself face to face with a picture of some dumb mutt. There was nothing special about this dumb mutt. In fact it was indistinguishable from the seemingly endless procession of dumb mutts that passed by his pet grooming station every day.

  “Don’t tell me you’re gonna get yourself a dog,” he rasped irritably. The last thing he needed was for the room he and Johnny were forced to share at the Happy Bays Inn to become infested with some infernal happy yapper.

  “Someone sent me this picture,” Johnny explained. “Asks me if I’m interested.”

  “Tell him to go to hell,” Jerry suggested.

  Johnny thought about this for a moment but seemed disinclined to agree. “I think this is our chance, Jer. I think this is our opportunity.”

  “I think you should stop thinking,” Jerry growled.

  “But this will put us right back on top!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “That thing we talked about? That plan of ours?”

  “What thing? What plan? There is no plan.”

  “Our plan to snatch Spot 2?”

  “That’s not a plan! That’s just some dumb idea I told you to forget about.” Alarmed, he stared at his partner. It was just as he thought. That dumb brick was actually planning to go through with this latest harebrained scheme of his. “Don’t you realize that if we steal another mutt we’re gonna end up spending the rest of our lives working for that evil witch Petra Pearce?!”

  “Yeah, but no one is gonna find out, Jerry. Not this time. That’s the beauty of it, see? I posted a message on the interwebs that we’re looking for a mutt that looks like Chazz Falcone’s mutt, and this guy came back with a very nice offer. Only fifty bucks, see? And no one is ever gonna find out because it’s on this app, see? This app that deletes messages the moment they’re posted?”

  He pushed the phone into Jerry’s face, and Jerry slapped it away. “I don’t care about your stupid app! I don’t want this mutt! Not for fifty, not for nuthin’!”

  “But doesn’t he look exactly like Chazz’s mutt, Jerry? Look at that furry face! Look at those sparkly eyes! Look at that toothy grin! This mutt’s that mutt’s spitting image!”

  “All dogs look the same, you moron,” Jerry grumbled. “Big hunks of fur with dumb looks on their stupid maps. Just like you!” he added peevishly.

  Johnny stared at him. Abuse rarely registered in that miniature brain of his. “Well, it’s too late now, Jer. I already told him to drop Spot 3 by the Inn.”

  This stopped Jerry short. “You did what?!”

  “Yep. He’s dropping him off later tonight. Now all we have to do is make the switch, and Spot 2 is ours, Jer! Ain’t that great?!”

  Jerry balled his hands into fists and pummeled Johnny’s upper arm, which was about as thick as his own leg. “You dumb-ass! This is how we got into this mess in the first place! Write him back and tell him the deal’s off!”

  Johnny looked stumped for a moment, which wasn’t that much different from his default expression. “Can’t do it, Jer.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I told you. He sent me one of ‘em self-destructing messages. It’s a new app, see?” He shoved the phone back in Jerry’s face, much to the latter’s chagrin. “You send a picture and within seconds it’s gone. Just like Mission Impossible! I don’t even know the guy’s name, only his handle. The New Pet Bandit, he calls himself. NPB®. Says he’s a really big fan of our work.”

  “And where did he get this Spot 3?” Jerry asked moodily, the onset of a severe headache starting to throb at his left temple.

  Johnny lifted his massive shoulders in a shrug. “Didn’t say. All he said was that the dog is called Pronto and that his owner ain’t gonna miss him.”

  “Great,” Jerry grumbled. “Some deadbeat probably mislaid his dog and the moment we put our hands on him he’s gonna call the cops on us.”

  “I think it’s just great, Jer,” Johnny said with a stupid grin. “We just switch Spot 2 with Spot 3—this Pronto mutt—and that’s it.” The big guy’s map was lighting up like a Christmas tree. “We’ll have come full circle, huh?”

  Jerry didn’t even understand what that meant, but he decided not to probe. His partner’s mind wasn’t equipped to handle heavy thinking, and neither was it equipped to handle stressful situations like figuring out how to get out of this mess. As usual, that was going to be Jerry’s task. And he was damned if he was going to return to the glory days of the Pet Bandits. Even though he hated his life right now, the way forward definitely wasn’t going back. Which meant returning this Pronto to his rightful owner, and staying the hell away from Spot 2.

  He wasn’t going to risk having their community service extended indefinitely when they only had a couple of weeks more to go. He had plans. Plans for a future that didn’t include Johnny Carew. Plans that would have him trod the straight and narrow from now on, unhindered by that moron, who just kept pushing him back into a life of crime.

  He glared at his soon-to-be-ex-partner. “We’re handing this Pronto pooch back to his rightful owner. And we’re not stealing Spot 2 and that’s final.”

  Johnny’s disappointment was painful to watch, but so would Judge Lockhart’s face when he learned the Pet Bandits had struck again.

  “We’re Pet Bandits no more. And the sooner you get that through that thick skull of yours, the better.”

  “But, Jerry!”

  He held up his hand as he started to walk away. “I’m done, Johnny!”

  He wanted to win back the heart of the woman who’d divorced him because of his thieving ways, but he wasn’t going to tell Johnny that, of course. No, very soon now he and his partner would go their separate ways, and he was looking forward to it with something bordering on desperate glee.

  Chapter 14

  “This is a very bad idea, Chazz,” Regina said with a shake of the head.

  Chazz eyed her with disappointment etched on his flabby face. “You can’t be serious. How can you go back to Grover after what I just told you?!”

  Regina placed a hand on Chazz’s cheek. “Look, we loved each other a long time ago, Chazz, and it was wonderful while it lasted. In fact you were my first crush, and I’ll always remember you fondly. But I’m going to marry Grover, and this may come as something of a surprise to you, but I love that man. He’s a decent, hard-working gentleman and I deeply care for him.”

  Chazz looked at her as if all his hopes and dreams were crashing down around him, and possibly they were, Regina accepted. He’d walked up to her at the small reception Grover was hosting at his condo with a cockamamie story that G
rover was suffering from some kind of venereal disease, but she’d seen right through him from the moment he started talking. Obviously Chazz hoped that after all these years they could simply pick up where they’d left off—before her father had broken off relations with this budding billionaire and had sent her to China to cool off from the ill-fated affair.

  Her father had been right. She’d followed Chazz’s assent to the top of the financial and social ladder from afar, and when the first of his five marriages had been announced in the society column, she’d been shocked and appalled. He’d gone on to marry two more beauty queens and two socialites, and the steady procession of wives had quickly cured Regina of her teenage crush.

  She herself had married a wonderful man a decade her senior, and they’d made a great life together until he died in a boating accident a few years ago.

  And then she’d met Grover Calypso. The billionaire was a mess when they first met. His last wife had been fooling around behind his back, plotting with her lover to set Grover up for a costly divorce. The whole thing had gone south when Grover’s friends had thwarted the woman’s evil ploy, and the divorce had been sped through the system in next to no time, alimony not an option for the former Mrs. Calypso.

  The entire episode had left Grover bitter and disappointed, though, his faith in womankind at a very low ebb indeed.

  The country club where they were both members had been the place where he’d gone to lick his divorce wounds, and after having been introduced by a mutual acquaintance, a warm friendship had sprung up and blossomed.

  She was a recent widow and he a recent divorcee, which meant they had certain things in common, and when he turned out to be an old friend of Chazz Falcone’s, Regina had to laugh at this example of life’s little ironies.

  Meeting Chazz again had been something of a shock, and not in the sense she’d anticipated. Nothing of the fiery passion had survived the passing of four decades. Quite the contrary, in fact. For Chazz no longer resembled the dapper young whippersnapper he’d once been. With his florid, flabby features and his stocky frame, he now looked like something a fisherman had accidentally reeled in from the hidden depths of the Atlantic. And where once an unruly mop of hair had proudly whipped in the wind, a species of floppy orange growth had now attached itself to the top of his head.