Sprouted

by Gina LaManna

“Is there anything we can give him?”

  “I’m going to need to talk to Clay about what exactly he put in this concoction. I’m afraid to give Anthony the wrong antidote—mixing medicines is never a good idea, and I’d hate to make things worse.” He waited until my breathing calmed, and he had my full attention before he continued. “When he wakes, you can give him some Tylenol if he needs it, but nothing else. I’ll let you know after I talk to Clay if anything else needs to be done.”

  “Thank you for coming over here on short notice, doctor,” I said. “Clay’s en route to the estate with Meg—you can find him there to go over his stupid potion.”

  “You know,” Dr. Gambino mused, “I’ve always wondered if your cousin is secretly trying to kill everyone in the family.”

  “We all wonder that,” I said. “It’s a hazard of being related to him.”

  “Brilliant guy.”

  “Genius,” I said. “And dangerous.”

  With a final nod toward the mobile, Dr. Gambino sighed. “While you have Clay here, I’d also have him take down that thing and burn it. Now, if I could have you strapping young gentlemen help with Anthony...”

  I watched uselessly as Dr. Gambino, Paul, and Toby worked in unison to help a slow-moving Anthony to his feet. It took half an hour and a broken picture frame before the three men were able to wrangle my husband into bed.

  I eased in next to him, running my hands through his hair in soft, soothing motions. I said goodbye to the doctor and kicked Toby and Paul out to the living room with instructions to order a pizza for their hard work. Then I set to daydreaming about where I’d left the other half of my pretzel.

  “Lacey?” Anthony slurred sometime later. “Iz-zat you?”

  “Oh, Anthony.” I winced at his pupils, mere pinpricks in his dark irises. “How are you, honey? Do you remember what happened?”

  Anthony pouted. “Some-zing hurts me.”

  “I know, I know, honey,” I said, hugging him closer. The poor guy was stoned out of his mind on whatever Clay’d shoved in that dart. I imagined how the throttling process on my cousin would go, and if I could get off on insanity charges thanks to out of control hormones. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Just sleep it off.”

  Anthony blinked a few times, looking up at me with an innocence I’d never seen from him. It was as if he’d been partially reset to his childhood innocence for a fleeting moment. His big dark eyes stared up at me, round with concern. His hand came up and felt around my face, smiling when he found comfort in its familiarity.

  “I love you,” he murmured, his eyes closing as his fingers grazed over my chin. “Love you, Lace...”

  Then he was gone, and his hand slumped back to his chest.

  I watched him sleep until dinner. Then I marched to the estate, thinking if someone didn’t hold me back, it might be Clay’s last supper. Nobody shot my husband with a sleeping dart and got away with it.

  Chapter 23

  “WHAT WERE YOU thinking?” I leaned halfway out the door to my grandparents’ estate and greeted my cousin with a snarl. “Don’t you back away from me!”

  Harold winced next to me. I’d left Anthony at home tucked under the covers to rest. I’d left Paul and Toby by his side as guards; they’d been instructed to not let Anthony step one toe out of bed, or else Clay’s neck wouldn’t be the only one I’d be wringing tonight.

  “I’m sorry!” Clay put on a brave face as he climbed the stairs. “I was still working the bugs out of the mobile! I didn’t know Meg was going to wrap it and send it to you without a warning label.”

  Since my words were failing me due to excess anger, I let my actions speak for themselves—and marched down the front stairs to grab Clay by the ear. “Thanks to you, it took Toby and Paul almost an hour to get Anthony down the stairs because he wanted to look at every carpet strand along the way. We practically had to package him up like a FedEx box and slide him down the stairs!”

  Clay recoiled. “I said I’m sorry!”

  “You broke my husband! The only thing he can say is I love you, Lacey. Fix him!” I shook Clay’s ear back and forth, and he looked rightly chastised. “You didn’t give any warning—nothing. What if the mobile had misfired and hit me and my baby?”

  “It wouldn’t have—I was going to explain...” he whimpered. “It never shoots directly downward into the crib, just off to the side. It’s a protective measure.”

  “Protecting him from whom?” I shrieked. “His evil parents from tucking him in at night or feeding him when he cries at four a.m.?”

  “It’s going to be a boy?” Clay’s face brightened, but when I turned my glare on him, he resumed his flinching.

  “I’m too mad to yell both pronouns, so until I calm down, the baby’s a him.” I let go of Clay’s ear and stuck my hand on my hip. “You very nearly incapacitated my indestructible husband. You’d better run while he’s too blitzed to, you know, work his fingers and hands.”

  “Maybe I’ll head out.”

  “Not yet you don’t!” I dragged him into the house. “You’re coming with me because Dr. Gambino needs to see what the heck you put in those things.”

  “You tell him.” Meg climbed out of the car. “I told him you’d be livid if he wired anything into your baby’s toys, but does he listen to me? Never.”

  “You wrapped it!” I whirled on my friend. “You wrapped it before it was ready.”

  “I didn’t know, Lacey. I just ordered the thing off Amazon because Nora told me she hadn’t bought one. How was I supposed to know Clay tinkered with it?”

  I squinted, deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt. Clay did have a way of sneaking things into places they didn’t belong.

  “This is the last time you’ll be giving Sprout anything,” I said, marching past a stiffer-than-usual Harold. “Do I make myself clear, Clay? No birthday presents, no Christmas ornaments, no Valentine’s Day chocolates unless it’s cleared by a metal detector and a bomb squad.”

  “Yes, Lace—ow. You’re pulling my ear off my head again.”

  “That’s peanuts compared to what Anthony will rip off your body if you ever do that again,” I said. “You think it’s bad now? If it were our baby...”

  The entire entryway went silent: Meg, Harold, Clay—even myself.

  “Yeah,” I said in the echoing silence. “You want your limbs? Your special parts? Probably should avoid explosive teddy bears. Got it?”

  Clay’s face had turned so green I believed he was on the verge of puking. I let go of his ear for the second time, mostly because my stomach was not strong enough to handle the sight of someone else’s vomit. I’d worshipped enough of the porcelain throne for myself over these last nine months, thank you very much.

  We marched down the hallway as a unit. Meg led the way, whistling. Harold stayed smartly behind. I fumed and trailed Clay. He trembled with nerves, so I laid off the verbal warnings for the duration of our romp down the Hallway of Infamy.

  “Hey!” Meg stopped as we neared the swinging kitchen doorway. Her exclamation of surprise was followed up by a solid thump of approval as she patted me on the back. “Congratulations, chickadee!”

  “For what?” I rubbed my shoulder.

  “You got the primo spot!” Meg pointed to the wall where Nora had hung my recent arrest paperwork. Though Anthony had worked his magic and gotten my record wiped clean of the charges, my grandmother had somehow obtained copies of the original. “You aren’t only on this wall with your spelling bee certificate anymore.”

  “Not sure that’s something to brag about,” I said, pushing the door open. But the little bubble of pride in my chest said differently.

  “What’s for dinner?” Meg plopped down at the table. “Thanks for the invite, Nora, I’m starved. All this drama has me on edge.”

  “Clay doesn’t get a bite to eat until he talks with Gambino,” I said. “Nobody feed him.”

  Nora stood at the kitchen stove, splattered from head to toe in tiny little flecks of red sauce. “Well
, we have lobsters and pasta. I was going to send leftovers home for Anthony, but from the sounds of it, the poor guy won’t be cracking any lobsters today.”

  “Clay.” I pointed toward the door. “Go.”

  Clay crept out of the room and disappeared, presumably to find the doctor in his office. Just in time, because the next moment, I lost my cool and keeled over with a cramp, almost smashing my face directly into the plate of noodles Nora had placed on the table.

  “Hunger pains,” I explained as the table looked at me. “I’m starved. I haven’t eaten since before the dart situation. Pass the sauce, please.”

  “We need to wait for Carlos,” Nora warned. “He doesn’t like—” My grandmother looked over to me, saw the terrifying expression plastered on my face, and shook her head. “Actually, he can join later. Buon appetito!”

  I dished up a single plate for myself. It was larger than usual. I heaped on noodles and meatballs, and a lobster for good measure. I glanced around the room as everyone surveyed my score.

  “It’s to share with Sprout,” I snapped. “Pay attention to your own plates.”

  “I thought I asked everyone to wait until I was ready—” Carlos appeared in the doorway then, glancing at the table and stopping suddenly. His sharp eyes darted to each of us. “Where’s Anthony?”

  “He’s broken,” I said. “He’s home in bed, thanks to Clay.”

  Carlos didn’t look convinced. “What did you do to him?”

  “Carlos,” Nora said warningly. “I wouldn’t—”

  I smacked my fork against the table and narrowed my eyes at my grandfather. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  Nora inched closer to her husband and shoved a plate in his hand. “Sit down and eat, Carlos. Don’t get between a pregnant woman and her food.”

  Carlos glanced down at his plate, noticed the lobster, and seemed appeased by the tradeoff. We all resumed eating, most of us at a normal pace, some of us at lightning speed. I cut up little bites of noodles and put them in a Tupperware container to feed Anthony later.

  Clay returned sometime toward the end of the meal. His eyes flicked slightly up toward me as he began dishing a plate. “I talked to Dr. Gambino. Everything should be fine—just make sure Anthony doesn’t take any medicine besides Tylenol.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because, ah—the stuff I used wasn’t exactly FDA approved, and we’re not exactly sure how the tranquilizers will interact with other medicines.”

  I turned growly, and my utensils somehow raised in a threatening gesture. “Tell me he’s going to be fine.”

  “He’ll be fine! It’s harmless, it’s just...” He hesitated. “Not legal.”

  You’d better make up for this,” I said, jabbing my fork toward him. “You can start by helping us solve this stupid bank issue.”

  “Bank issue?” Nora took a seat at the head of the table and poured herself some wine. “Is this about how long it takes to get customer service on the phone? Because it took me forty-seven minutes to get through the other day, and—”

  “The heists,” I corrected. “Nora, you were there.”

  Carlos chewed faster, and I wondered if that was news to him.

  “What I don’t understand is the motive behind the Femme Fatale’s heists,” I said. “The usual ones don’t seem to fit. Greed, love, power...”

  “They’re stealing from a bank,” Meg said. “Greed fits.”

  “It does,” I agreed. “If they’re really after the money. Doesn’t it seem weird to you the things they’re stealing? I don’t get the feeling they’re actually taking all that much. Just enough to do some damage.”

  Meg pursed her lips. “For fun? Power, maybe?”

  “They’d be splashier if they wanted power, don’t you think? They’d leave some sort of message or something. What sort of power do they have when they’re masked and anonymous?”

  “Love?” Meg tried it on for size. “Nah, I don’t think so.”

  “I might have something that’ll help.” Clay looked up feebly from his lobster. He was up to his elbows in sauce. “May I speak?”

  “You’d better,” I said. “Did you look up more information after the gala?”

  “Possibly,” Clay said. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to, but I pride myself in being thorough, so I took the liberty to tug on a few threads.”

  “Tell me you unraveled the sweater.”

  “It’s a freaking blanket,” Clay said, his voice rising with excitement. “There’s a lot going on here, Lacey. I think these women are out for revenge.”

  “Revenge?” I turned the idea over in my head. “I’m with you on the concept, but I don’t see how robbing banks is getting revenge at any one person in particular.”

  “You gave me names, so I investigated. Fidge and Rankle,” Clay said. “Well, I told you about Rankle accepting bribes from Fidge. I might have found out what Fidge wanted to cover up, and it has nothing to do with robbery.”

  “Then what’s Fidge’s deal?”

  “His last three secretaries have all made formal sexual harassment complaints to the HR department at Bank of the Lakes corporate office.” He hesitated for dramatic license. “The files were buried. All three of them. The only reason I found them at all is because I dug, and I unraveled.”

  “Last three secretaries?” I did the math. “You don’t happen to have photos of them, do you?”

  Clay reached into his pocket and withdrew several tightly folded bits of paper. “As a matter of fact, I believe I have what you’re looking for.”

  I stared at the faces of three pretty, normal-looking females. A blonde, a brunette, and a red-head. The red-head was closer to strawberry blonde, and the actual blonde had icy white hair, but I had no doubt about their alter egos: Blondie, Legs, and Ginger.

  I recognized Blondie, satisfied my suspicions had been correct. She was the woman from the gala, and the same one who’d complemented Venus while staking out the latest bank branch.

  I reckoned that if I brought these photos to Harriet, the dressing room attendant would corroborate my theories. She’d probably confirm these three women had purchased pants from her store several weeks back while wearing Bank of the Lakes badges.

  “Revenge,” I said, still putting the puzzle pieces together. “Maybe these three women went to the police, but their concerns weren’t taken seriously.”

  “Rankle’s helping to bury their complaints, I’ll bet anything,” Clay said. “Fidge probably nudged HR into burying them, too—he’s high enough up in the organization, and with power comes sway. HR ‘solved’ the problem by shifting each of the women to different departments.”

  “They all still work there?”

  He nodded. “I was surprised, too.”

  “I guess they didn’t want to lose their jobs because of one slimeball,” Meg said. “I can hardly blame them.”

  “Instead, they must have banded together,” I said, picturing the three women nonchalantly chatting over a coffee, or maybe a happy hour one afternoon. “They got to complaining about their jobs, their old boss, and they connected the dots. Yes,” I said to Clay’s dumbfounded expression, “women talk about everything.”

  “They must have bonded over their dislike for him,” Meg said, “and decided to do something about it.”

  “As the CFO,” Clay said, raising a lobster stained finger, “Fidge owns a large part of the company in stocks. If the company tanks, their stock tanks, and Fidge is toast.”

  “Maybe the women thought that if they could pull off a series of heists targeting only Bank of the Lakes branches, their customers would start to panic,” I said. “People might start withdrawing money, changing banks—we’ve got no lack of options in the Cities, so it’s a simple matter to switch over funds—and the stocks would plummet. Fidge would be left hurting, and the company that had buried their complaints would be in trouble.”

  “Doesn’t it seem a bit extreme?” Clay argued. “Would three women really do all that just to
get back at...”

  “Extreme?” I snipped. “Their boss was a creep, and he forced these women out of their jobs. You think a few bank robberies is extreme?”

  Clay backed off at my tone. “Just checking. Look, I’m not arguing the man’s not a prick, or that what happened to these ladies wasn’t wrong. I’m just saying...”

  “Add on a layer of a crooked cop,” I said, “and things start to click into place. Maybe they tried to go to the police, but a few bucks changed hands between Fidge and Rankle, and suddenly, the ladies felt like they have no place to turn.”

  “What about another cop?” Clay suggested. Before I could argue, he raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

  “Fair,” I agreed. “But I’m assuming Fidge chose to put Rankle on his payroll because Rankle’s high enough in the chain to sniff out other cops and ward off an investigation. I wonder if the girls did try to go somewhere else, and Rankle squashed it. He could have threatened to keep the ladies quiet. We don’t know what happened.”

  “That’s horrible,” Clay said. “I really don’t love cops, you know, due to the nature of my business—nothing personal—but that is really low.”

  “Hey,” Meg said, turning to him. “I was a cop. You love me, don’t you?”

  “You’re an ex-cop,” Clay said. “That’s different.”

  Satisfied, Meg nodded. “Well, what’s next? Are we waiting for the next heist?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not supposed to be doing anything at all.”

  “But you’re going to, aren’t you?” Meg prompted. “Because you want your ring back, and you know where these ladies work. And we know Rankle isn’t going to do anything about it.”

  “Maybe we could just pop into their offices tomorrow and ask a few questions,” I agreed. “Legs—we’ll find her first. She’s the one who’ll crack—I’ve been saying that all along.”

  “What will Anthony say?”

  “We’ll bring him along,” I said. “He should be fine by tomorrow morning—he can wait in the car.”

  “You’re welcome,” Clay said pointedly. “You know Anthony would never agree to this if he were completely conscious.”