HERE COMES THE RIDE
Copyright 2015 by Lorena McCourtney
Cover by Patty G. Henderson, Boulevard Photografica, Tampa, FL
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, posted on any website, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, scanning, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author, except for brief quotations in reviews or articles.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
HERE COMES THE RIDE
Book #2
The Andi McConnell Mysteries
By
Lorena McCourtney
Chapter One
“Oh, no. It’s black."
The woman in the doorway didn’t even look at me. Towel poised at her throat, she stared past my shoulder at my limousine parked in her circular drive, as if it were a junker with crumpled fenders and a bumper sticker advertising mud wrestling.
“Pammi will not be pleased.”
This was a first. No other client of my new limousine service had objected to black. “What color did Pammi have in mind?”
“White, of course. White is the only color for a wedding.”
“Pammi is the bride?”
“Yes. Pamela Gibson. My stepdaughter. This is a joyous occasion, and black is much too, oh, you know, funereal.”
I’m not sure what hackles are, but I immediately felt mine rise defensively. The freshly washed limo, sleek and elegant as a black jewel, gleamed in the August sunshine. I felt like rushing out and draping myself protectively over its long hood. There, there. What do we care what picky Pammi thinks?
“Perhaps it would be best if Pammi engaged some other limousine service then,” I said stiffly.
I didn't want to lose a customer, but this wasn’t a big job. My friend Keegan “Fitz” Fitzgerald had said that all it involved was driving the bride from the house to the wedding, then ferrying the newlyweds to the Vigland marina, where they would board Fitz’s son’s charter sailboat for their honeymoon.
The woman shook her head. A blue headband held back an impressive tousle of blond hair. She’d apparently come to the door from a workout session, because she was still in Spandex shorts and a skimpy top exposing a midsection taut enough to bounce chocolate chips. Which is probably as close as she ever came to a relationship with chocolate chips. Unlike some of us.
“No, we can’t do that,” she said. “There have already been two limo services from Olympia that didn’t work out.”
The license plate her unlucky numbers? Upholstery the wrong material? Or perhaps Pammi the Picky Princess’s demands made them simply decide, no way.
The woman tilted her head, and her expression brightened. “But by the time we decorate with flowers and streamers, I think we can make it do.”
It would “do”? My hackles were still stiff as porcupine quills. I was ready to say that as far as I was concerned Pammi could ride to her wedding in a wheelbarrow, when the stepmother said the magic words that made me swallow my retort.
“We have numerous guests flying in who’ll need to be met at Sea-Tac and driven back later for their flights home. Plus various local trips. So what I need is to engage you full-time for at least five days. I assume you have an hourly or daily rate?”
A five-day job? Whoo-ee! My limousine service hadn’t been up and running long, but I’d never had any gig like this.
“In fact, I’m thinking it would be best if you stayed here at the house so you’d be available whenever you’re needed. There’s a room next to our cook/housekeeper’s room. Would that be possible?”
For a five-day job, I'd sleep in the backyard in a pup tent. With a pup in residence. But I controlled any crude display of eagerness and said, “Yes, I could arrange that.”
“Good.” She gave me a warm smile and held out a hand with short but shimmery nails. “Forgive my manners. I’m afraid this wedding has me to the point where I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I’m Michelle Gibson. As I said, Pammi’s stepmother.”
“Andi McConnell. Andi’s Limouzeen Service.”
The firmness of her handshake belied the delicate appearance of the slim hand.
“What Pammi has in mind is the wedding of the century, you know. I just wish she’d given me more than a few weeks to plan it.” She rolled spectacular blue eyes. “Sometimes I get a bit overwrought, I’m afraid.”
I could understand that. Big weddings often take months of preparation. Another woman has already reserved limo time with me for her daughter’s wedding six months off.
“Come inside and we’ll discuss the details. Can you give me a minute to go shower and throw on some different clothes?”
“Certainly.”
“You can wait in the Africa Room.”
She led me through a wide entry hall, where windows looked out on a lush expanse of grass sweeping down to the long inlet that connected Vigland Bay with Puget Sound, and past a staircase winding to the second floor.
The Africa Room had all the office necessities: computer, printer, fax, copier, a couple of file cabinets, and a small leather sofa, but African masks and spears flanked a leopard skin on the wall. The skin had the head attached, open mouth showing a lot of teeth. Beautiful, but a little jungle-creepy for my taste.
“Would you like iced tea or a soft drink?”
“Thanks, no, I’m fine.”
“I’ll be back in a minute then. Make yourself comfortable.”
I’d been inside this house before, long ago, when my former husband and I sold new and antique furniture. It had been occupied then by eccentric sisters who needed to dispose of several rooms of old furniture. The exterior was still vintage, with a wide front porch, two huge dormer windows above, and a gothic-type tower on one corner, which was where this Africa Room was located. The interior had been considerably remodeled. The dark rooms I remembered were now lightened by big windows and white walls and woodwork. Nice, but a certain old-fashioned warmth and charm had vanished with the remodeling, replaced by a chilly, lightbulb-in-the-refrigerator feeling.
Was the office hers or her husband’s? I resisted an urge to peek at the contents of the papers scattered across the desk. I was no longer in detective mode, I reminded myself sternly, as I had been when I first acquired the limo and found myself tracking down a murderer. Although peeking was still tempting. Reading upside down, I deciphered a letterhead that read Steffan Productions, with a Los Angeles address.
Good thing I hadn’t gone further than that minuscule peek, however, because Michelle was already returning. She was in dark blue sweats now, barefoot, damp hair tied back in a swingy ponytail, accompanied by a whiff of some heady perfume. Thirties had been my original guess on her age, but now I noted some lines around her eyes and decided that determined exercise and a diet regimen had probably preserved her nicely. Fortyish, then.
“Now, about the dates.” She sat down at the desk and put on glasses, small, no frames, and flipped pages on a calendar. “The wedding is Friday evening, the twenty-fourth. So you should be here on the twenty-first and stay until at least the day after the wedding. I’ll arrange for someone from the florist’s shop to decorate the limo on Friday.”
“Where will the wedding be held?”
“Right here. They’ll set up the tent the day before. One end will be arranged with seating for the ceremony, the other will be set up for the reception and dinner. Sit-down, of course. Prime rib and lobster, catered by a company from Tacoma. With live music and d
ancing afterwards.”
Prime rib and lobster. Too bad I’d be relegated to waiting outside in the limo.
“You won’t actually be needing the limo for transportation to the wedding then.”
“Oh, yes indeed! Pammi and I can’t walk from the house over to the tent in our gowns.”
Michelle shuffled through a drawer with a familiarity that said this was her desk, not the husband’s. She brought out a thick file. “Then there’s the ice sculpture. . . . But they’ll be delivering that in a refrigerated van, of course.”
I pictured a swan floating in a punch bowl, a graceful image dispelled by Michelle’s next words.
“It’s a life-sized bride and groom. A sculptor is creating it especially for Pammi’s wedding.”
I’ve heard about some extravagant weddings, but none that included a life-sized ice sculpture. That would leave some puddle, wouldn’t it? I wondered how the husband/father was feeling about the cost of Pammi’s wedding of the century.
Michelle went through more plans, checking off items. The wedding gown, which was being flown in from a designer down in LA. The cake, six tiers, with bridges to side cakes and a sterling silver ornament of bride and groom on top. Hair and makeup people. Photographer. The fog machine, which would deliver an ethereal mist around the bride as she walked down the aisle.
I wondered why she was telling me all this, then decided she wanted to make sure I realized this was the Wedding of the Century. “Her father will be escorting Pammi down the aisle?”
“Unfortunately her father passed away several years ago. I’ll be giving the bride away.”
Unusual but nice, I decided. So Michelle herself must be footing the bill. Very generous of a stepmother, especially with a stepdaughter making demands on the scale of a Hollywood production number.
“There are a few other details, but that’s it for the moment.” She removed the glasses and rubbed her temples. “I can count on you for nine o’clock on the morning of the twenty-first?”
“You certainly can.” I realized we hadn’t discussed price yet. I had a daily rate, although so far I’d never had a job lengthy enough to use it. I calculated a reasonable amount for overnight and named a five-day figure, although I was prepared to negotiate.
She didn’t bother. “Yes, that’ll be fine. I’ll give you a deposit now.”
She wrote out a check for a fourth of the amount while I did another silent Whoo-ee! My daughter, Sarah, and granddaughter, Rachel, were both starting at the University of Florida. Now I’d be able to send them something to help out. Hey, God, thank You!
Check firmly in hand, I started toward the door.
“Oh, and if this works out,” she called, “I’ll need you again in September. I think arrival by limo would be appropriate for the grand opening of my new health club. Maybe you’ve seen the sign? The Change Your World Fitness Center.”
“That’s where they’ve been remodeling the old Penny’s building?”
“Right. The new sign just went up yesterday.”
An impressive sign it was, the name written in glittery silver, with an icon of a lightning bolt branding a symbol of the earth, the whole thing dwarfing any other business sign in Vigland.
“I can reserve the date for you now, if you’d like.”
“Yes, let’s do that.” She handed me a sheet from a memo pad with a date in September scribbled on it. “So far I haven’t been able to devote as much time to the grand opening as I should, what with all the wedding details to take care of. But things should calm down after Pammi and Sterling are on their honeymoon.”
Outside, I congratulated myself on my good fortune. The bride might be a charter member of Bridezillas, Inc., but a five-day job—!
I was halfway down the wide steps when I spotted a figure leaning over the back of the limo. My first instinct was to yell, Hey, get away from there! But then I realized this couldn’t be someone just wandering by, not with that security gate at the end of the driveway.
So I held my yell and approached with a more cooperative attitude. Until I saw what she was doing.
Chapter Two
Whoever she was, she’d instantly found the lone flaw in my glossy limo. She’d loosened the circles of painted duct tape with which I’d covered the bullet holes in the trunk and now had a finger stuck in each of them. My start-up business had been doing nicely, but not nicely enough that I could afford a whole new lid for the limo's trunk. Especially after the expense of getting all the other damage repaired.
“Are you looking for something?” I inquired with as much politeness as I could muster.
She was perhaps fifteen, a little shorter than my five-foot-six, with an unruly mass of dark hair, eyebrows to make Groucho Marx envious, and a figure on the pudgy side. A skinned-up knee was probably the result of the skateboard overturned on the grass.
I looked at the skateboard with a certain envy. I’ve long had this secret desire to fly down a hill on a skateboard, a desire unfortunately not compatible with aging bones and joints.
“How’d the bullet holes get here?” she asked.
“What makes you think they’re bullet holes?”
“Limousines don’t get termites.”
Smart-alecky, but true. “A couple of thugs shot at it.”
She removed a finger and put an eye to the hole. The nail looked chewed on. “Don’t the holes leak when it rains?”
I started to point out that that was what the circles of duct tape she’d removed were for, but decided to ignore the question. “Are you Pammi’s little sister?”
“Are you one of Michelle’s cronies?”
Crony. Not necessarily an insult, but not something I could remember being called before.
“I’m the chauffeur for Pammi’s wedding. Andi’s Limouzeen Service.” I pulled a card out of the pocket of my black uniform and handed it to her.
“Why the misspelling?”
“Long story.” I wasn’t about to explain right now. “Will Pammi object to that along with her objection to the color of the limo?”
She hesitated, then said, “She doesn’t like being called Pammi. Especially with an i.”
“That’s what Michelle calls her.”
“That’s because Michelle thinks it sounds all fuzzy-wuzzy cute and cozy. What Michelle would really like to call her is This Pest of a Stepdaughter I Got Stuck With.”
Definite hostility here. Protective of the older sister?
“Michelle is going to an incredible amount of effort and expense to make Pammi’s wedding a success. Perhaps Pammi should be more appreciative.”
“Yeah, right.”
The girl’s cynical tone made me look closer, and I realized she could be older than I first thought. The hazel eyes had a definite fifteen-going-on-forty flintiness.
“And I told you,” she added, “she doesn’t like to be called Pammi.”
“What does she like to be called?”
“Pam. Pamela.” Pause. “Her dad used to call her Pixie.”
“Should I call her Pixie?”
“No. She’s not a Pixie now. The people she went to school with thought she was one of those quiet types who might any day blast into a post office or school and shoot everyone in sight.”
I felt a dawning realization. Baggy khaki shorts, oversized yellow T-shirt with So What? written across it, no makeup. Not what I expected of a Picky Princess who demanded everything from a life-sized ice sculpture to a wedding gown from LA. But. . .
“You’re Pammi . . . Pamela, aren’t you?”
She shrugged, then, with undisguised belligerence, added, “So?”
Now I noticed what I hadn’t earlier, that she was wearing a ring on her left hand, a small diamond in an old-fashioned white gold setting.
“Is any of what you said true?”
“That people thought I might attack a school or post office? Or that I might actually do it?”
“Either one.”
“I think some of them thought I might reall
y do it.”
“What about the ones who didn’t think that?”
“They just thought I was a nerdy, geeky, fat slob.”
“So, would you ever really do it?”
“I guess not. The only people I murder are in my stories.”
She sounded regretful, disappointed with herself; but perhaps, as proof of her inability to do harm, a cat appeared out of the nearby woods and twined itself around her legs. He had crystal-blue eyes and some Siamese markings, but a few misplaced splotches of gray suggested his genetic pool was a little swampy. She swooped up the cat and snuggled him under her chin. “This is Phreddie. With a Ph, not Freddie with an F.”
She’d asked why I misspelled limousine, so I figured I could challenge her. “That’s an unusual spelling. How come?”
She almost smiled. “He’s an unusual cat. He likes broccoli. And he’s a very good judge of character. I found him wandering around the post office all skinny and hungry.”
We were getting off track here, and I jumped back on it. “Why didn’t you tell me right off who you are?”
She hadn’t outright lied, but neither had she corrected my errors about age and identity.
“What difference does it make? People always think I’m younger than I am.” With a sly smirkiness, she added, “That should come in handy when I’m your age, shouldn’t it?”
Her tone suggested my age rivaled that of the ground she was standing on. Five-day job, I reminded myself. “So, how old you are?”
“Why?”
“Why not?” I challenged.
That seemed to satisfy logic for her. “I’m nineteen. How old are you?”
I felt like reminding her that polite young ladies don’t ask that of their elders, but instead I said, “I had a sixtieth birthday earlier this year.” Prime time, Fitz calls it, though I sometimes have to grit my teeth to remind myself of that.
“Does the limo have a name?”
“You mean like Belinda or Black Beauty or Cleopatra? No, it’s a working limo, not a pet with wheels.”
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