Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  The gunfire must have affected my hearing. “Medical bacon?”

  He nodded. “Comfort food in a capsule. Drives cholesterol through the roof but what the hey?”

  Roger shook his head. “Listen, Igor, you asked us to tell you when we’re leaving so you could lock up. Well, break out your keys because we’re gone.”

  Panic started to show in his eyes again. He popped another capsule. “But… but… this mess?”

  Roger made a show of looking around. “What mess?”

  He took out his iPhone and snapped a few photos of the mummies. We left Igor sitting on the floor babbling about reports and eased into the corridor. We inched along the walls and scooted out the door into the parking lot, quiet as mummies in a tomb.

  Not one gun-toting mummy stealer in sight. We jumped in Goldie. Her engine purred to life. I backed out and headed toward the guard gate. “Okay, Roger, who were you going to name just before the shooting started?”

  “Kyzer Saucy because I’m positive he’s behind the theft of the mummies in Peru. But bringing those mummies here doesn’t compute.”

  “Saucy? You said he wants to kill you and somebody just tried. That computes. Perhaps you’ve become the man who knew too much.”

  “I can’t figure it. Saucy wants me dead because I’m getting close to him and his multimillion-dollar-stolen-mummy-and-antiquities operation. But to bring his action to the states is really pushing his luck. The feds just broke up a major mummy smuggling ring in Virginia.”

  “Is Saucy connected to Senator Grant? Tippy thinks he’s mixed up in the mummies being found on her property then mysteriously being moved out here.”

  Roger shrugged. “Not that I know of, but anything’s possible with Saucy. One thing is obvious. Somebody’s trying to keep me away from that dig and killing me is an acceptable option to accomplish that. Let’s get there fast before they succeed.”

  We reached the guard booth which was empty and turned onto the unpaved road that brought us here. I checked the rearview mirror a dozen times. We weren’t being followed. The more I thought about it the more it worried me. Mummies among the kale and cabbage.

  Goldie sputtered. I looked at the gas gauge. “That can’t be. I always keep her at least three-quarter full. And the dinger didn’t go off.” I thumped the gauge as if that would help.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We coasted to the side of the road into a rut near a field of sprinklers swishing over rows of dull green plants. Ignoring Roger’s frown I said, “AAA will be here in no time.”

  I fumbled in my bag for my membership card. Nuts. It was on the kitchen counter as a reminder to renew. I smiled at Roger sheepishly. “Slight problem. My membership expired. No road service. How about a quickie instead?”

  “Never a quickie…always a longie.”

  I laughed. “Love at First Bite with George Hamilton.”

  Roger hmmpfed. “Now that we have the humor out of the way, where’s the nearest gas station?”

  The GPS showed a gas station one thumb distance away. I tapped the mileage. Six miles. Shit. We had a mummy emergency and no gas. How did this happen?

  “Call nine-one-one. They should be able to send road service to us.” A great idea but flawed, no cell service down in the boondocks.

  Roger scowled at me. I shrugged. We popped our doors and stepped onto the sandy limestone road. I clicked Goldie’s locks and followed Roger. “Speak to me,” I called after him. He was twenty feet from the car when I caught up. “You know I always keep a full tank. This isn’t my fault.”

  “Maybe someone syphoned your gas while we were in the lab. Your car’s probably bugged, too. If this mummy mess didn’t have Kyzer Saucy’s fingerprints all over it, I’d think it was connected to that key around your neck you avoided discussing.”

  Damn, he hadn’t been distracted by my interest in his Peruvian-Mexican adventure.

  He turned our walk into a trot. Good thing I was in my Nike trainers. Plumes of dust coated my black jeans and DKNY t-shirt. We’d been stumble-trotting for about ten minutes when a biplane crop duster appeared in the sky to the west and passed over us at a couple hundred feet. It did a U-turn and came diving toward us. Good, help was on the way. I expected the agile little plane to land or at the least give us a wave and thumbs-up to let us know he was calling for road service.

  I pulled Roger to the side of the road into a dry drainage ditch making way for a rescue landing. Instead the rattling two-winger dove at us full bore trailing a stream of white powder. What the hell?

  We covered our heads and flopped into the ditch. The plane cleared us by about five feet but the powder covered us and fouled the air, a white granular fog cut our visibility to a few feet. I didn’t know what he was dumping but it sure as hell wasn’t health food. My eyes were on fire and I couldn’t catch my breath. I heard the plane slow. It was going to circle and make another pass at us.

  Roger was coughing violently. I stood and pulled him to his feet. “Run!”

  My eyes were blurry and streaming tears but Roger appeared to be blinded. My sunglasses must have given me some protection.

  I held on to his hand as we staggered down the road, coughing and hacking, unable to build up speed, Roger clomping along in his wingtips. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the crop duster banking.

  We couldn’t survive another direct hit of that toxic spray and if we stayed on the road, the plane could give us a fatal haircut with its wheels or fuselage. I angled us to the right side of the road and chanced a peek. The plane was about five feet off the ground bearing down on us, the nasty spray thick behind it.

  “Roger, can you see at all?”

  He was still wiping his eyes but choked out, “A little.”

  “When I say go, make a hard left and dive into the ditch on that side of the road.”

  I heard the plane closing in, took one last look, and screamed, “Go!”

  We streaked across the road, and hit the ditch as the crop duster roared by blowing dirt and sand, but the wheels and body of the plane and the heavy part of the spray missed us.

  The pilot had to pull up sharply to avoid a stake-bed truck about a hundred yards down the road. The driver had his bare arm out of the window shaking his fist at the crop duster. I dragged Roger to the middle of the road and did some jumping jacks to flag the rattling truck to a dusty stop.

  A weathered farmer in bib overalls and no shirt sat behind the wheel. His face resembled a dried apple doll with tobacco-stained picket-fence teeth, gray hair cut short under his straw cowboy hat. He raised a knotty-muscled veiny arm and put the truck in neutral.

  “Looks like you folks need a hand and that dang fool crop duster needs a foot up his butt,” he said in a Florida cracker twang. His truck was bursting with watermelons, the wood-slatted sides ready to release the load and create a Gallagher mash up.

  I heard an engine. I turned and saw the plane had circled and was coming at us again with spray spewing.

  The farmer did a double take. “What in the blue blazes? That guy’s dumber than a bag of hammers.” He stuck a giant Dirty Harry revolver out his window and fired. One shot hit a wheel, popping the tire. The second shot shattered the windshield. The plane banked and flew off without getting close to us with the spray.

  “High on drugs. Seeing more and more of that out here.”

  He pulled a gallon water jug from the passenger floorboard and handed it out the window. “First thing you need to do is wash that crap he was spraying off your faces. I got two more gallons if you need it. Old Betsy here occasionally gets cantankerous when she’s loaded and needs some juice for her radiator.”

  I bent Roger backward over the fender and used half of the gallon to flush his eyes, face, and hair then carefully dabbed the other half on me. My face and eyes quit burning and Roger and I quit coughing. But I was pissed. Somebody was going to pay for this, and not with money.

  I gave the farmer the empty jug. “Thanks. I’m Wendy Darlin and this is Roger Joll
ey.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Squire Pengallon.”

  “Are you really a squire?”

  “Nah. My momma had a thing for English novels.” He turned his craggy face and took a hard look at me. “You appear familiar, little lady. I’m getting old but I never forget a pretty face. Matter of fact, I remember them better now than when I was young.”

  He chewed on it for a minute then slapped the steering wheel. “I got it. I saw you on TV, on that early Sunday morning local news magazine, I think they call it Miami Nice. They talked to you about how you went from selling exclusive real estate to finding valuable old junk, you know, treasure hunter stuff. You were in some tight scrapes too, best I recall.”

  “We’re more like treasure rescuers.” I figured I’d get his attention. “And we’re hot on the trail of stolen treasure right now.”

  “Well smack my ass and call me Norma, this is exciting. Never been in an adventure except gators and snakes, and they hardly count. What can I do you for?”

  “My car broke down and we need to get to downtown Miami. It’s a matter of life and death.” I exaggerated. “We’ll pay you for your gas.”

  “Don’t be insulting me. I’m mighty pleased to assist a hero lady. Just tell me where we’re headed and hang on.”

  Roger and I crammed into the passenger side along with the tools, jugs, old newspapers, and cardboard coffee cups Squire had stashed in the cab. He floored old Betsy. The watermelons shifted in the truck bed which creaked ominously.

  “You are a god-send,” I said.

  “I like your unjustified positive attitude, missy.”

  Within a few miles we had cell phone service. Roger placed a call to Peru, and then a call to the archaeological society ordering them to secure the sitting mummies, immediately. I loved watching him in action.

  I called the Jag dealership. They promised to rescue Goldie. I could pick her up after they checked her out.

  Forty-five minutes later we were in downtown Miami. Getting there we’d broken the watermelon truck land speed record. Twice. Squire pulled onto Tippy’s construction site. Roger and I took our dusty butts out onto the rough gravel and crumbling macadam. My back felt as if I’d been mule-kicked. A watermelon truck does not ride like a Jaguar.

  The abandoned Bates Hotel had a semi-stunning view of the Miami River surrounded as it was with mirrored high-rise condos and office buildings. If this worked out the way it should Tippy would have a kick-ass condo complex and a penthouse for herself.

  Roger shook Squire’s hand, and I squeezed his bare arm.

  “Take a melon to remember me,” the old guy said looking awestruck to have been in my presence.

  And to think I’d done the TV magazine interview just to help out my friend who was the producer and looking for filler. If I hadn’t, Squire wouldn’t have recognized me and Roger and I might still be stuck in the boonies outside Florida City.

  I didn’t want to hurt Squire’s feelings so I hefted one of his huge watermelons out of the bed. A twenty-pound watermelon was exactly what I needed on a mummy hunt.

  “Give ’em hell!” he yelled, bouncing onto Southeast Fifth Street, his cargo verging on hitting the street and becoming a Guinness Book fruit salad.

  “Nice guy,” I said to Roger who was already climbing over the dig, a kid in FAO Schwarz.

  He turned his head and said, “As long as you’re not on the wrong side of his .44 magnum,” then chugged on.

  “Hey! Wait up!” I ran with the watermelon cradled in my arms. The lingerie football league was in my future.

  The site was covered with bright blue hurricane tarps held down by stakes and stones, which almost broke me as I tripped over them with my melon burden. Red string looped around iron pins and formed a square at the dig site. Mounds of orange clay and sand were heaped in bulldozer size piles outside the tarps. The clay, a remnant of early twentieth-century developer Henry Flagler’s efforts to increase the size of his riverfront land by trucking in clay from north Florida, buried the remnants of an ancient civilization at the mouth of the Miami River. The dirt had to be carefully removed by skilled workers.

  There wasn’t a soul around, and the only sound was the constant hum of the traffic on the South Miami Avenue overpass bridging the Miami River. There must be a thousand mirrored windows looking down on the site and yet not one on guard duty.

  According to recent news, Tippy cooperated with the city by following the code for historic preservation but she still stood a chance of losing the land to the state. I hoped we didn’t bump into the prickly princess until Roger had a read on the mummies. Her lawsuit threats had pissed me off and I was already a little grumpy after somebody tried to kill us twice and the day wasn’t over.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Roger held his freshly bullet-holed fedora in one hand, shaded his eyes with the other, and spun a slow three-sixty. “I must be going blind. I don’t see the first sign of security at this site.”

  I watched the hole in his hat, waiting for my chance to make his precious fedora disappear.

  His jaw muscles bunched. “What the hell is going on? If this is an archaeological dig and integrity is to be maintained, security is mandatory. And who leaves a construction site unattended? There should at least be a watchman here. As Shakespeare penned, ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ Except in this case Denmark is spelled F-L-O-R-I-D-A, or more specifically, M-I-A-M-I.”

  He started to roll back a section of blue tarp. I placed Squire’s melon on the ground. I ran around the pit, and pulled the cover ’til we had it flopped back a good ten feet. Roger slid down the stones bracing his hands on either side of the tunnel-like entrance, and disappeared from sight.

  “Have you got a flashlight in the car?” he called.

  “Yup. But the car is out in the sticks.” When he zones in on an antiquity Roger’s short-term memory evaporates. Goldie was having lord knows what done to her fanciness on a lonely country road waiting for a tow truck. Probably stripped of her parts and left to die like Hic, fermenting in the sun parlor of an abandoned hotel. I felt helpless.

  “There’s a pharmacy a couple blocks away. I’ll be right back,” I called to the absent-minded professor who teetered at the edge of the pit like Alice down the rabbit hole.

  I felt angry eyes bearing down on me as I turned to make a quick run to the Walgreens. Two tall young dudes with straight black hair and chiseled features approached. It was too late to jump back in the pit, besides Roger was exposed and not in a good way.

  The taller man was yummy in an ethnic-male-with-long-dark-hair way. He took care not to touch me if you don’t count eye-locking. “You’re that Wendy woman.” It was a statement not a question.

  I nodded.

  “The government has taken our ancestors’ bodies. Our tribe demands they be returned so their spirit journeys will not be disturbed. Senator Grant is ignoring our requests. He will live long enough to regret his greed. But now you must leave and take the man in the hole with you.”

  I bounced from foot to foot trying to decide whether to run or light up a peace pipe. Problem was I wasn’t packing a pipe. “Gentlemen, I am a licensed real estate broker and that man in the pit is a world famous archaeologist. We have seen the mummies that were taken from this sacred ground. They are sitting mummies. Do you know what that means?”

  They looked at each other in puzzlement and stepped aside to engage in head nodding and brow twisting. I waited hoping Roger wouldn’t pop to the surface like a whack-a-mole and mess things up.

  The yummy dude spoke in a courteous voice, “We will give your expert until the next full moon to share what he knows of those mummies.”

  “When is the next full moon?”

  “One week from today.”

  “Piece of cake.” I smiled hoping to seal the deal. “Excuse me now. I’m going to assist Dr. Jolley. Nothing will be desecrated. I promise.”

  There goes that word again. Where the heck was the pau
se button on my promises?

  The tribesmen left and I completed my Walgreens run.

  Ten minutes later I held the flashlight as a weapon and ducked into the dig site. I stumbled down the steps cut into the sandstone whispering Roger’s name. The air was damp and oxygen poor although I was only a few feet below ground level. I managed to scrape my right arm along the rough walls and twisted my ankle, twice.

  The pit smelled like seawater. It occurred to me that the Miami River could sweep in and create an underground tidal wave or the dig had hit the water table and the pit was about to flood. That would explain why everyone scrammed or I’d been watching too many Indiana Jones movies.

  I pointed the light at a platform with a string of rope pulleys anchored to the wall. It looked like a Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang prop. The pit was silent as a tomb. I hate when I say that, it’s so cliché.

  “You’ve got a flashlight!”

  “Yipes!” I almost peed my pants as Roger stepped out of the darkness.

  Roger pulled a tampon-shaped gadget from his pocket. He’d perfected the Multi-phasic Unidirectional Density Diviner or MUDD as it’s commonly known, to a higher sensitivity. It could now detect abnormalities as finite as cloth in the earth.

  “Shine the light on the MUDD while I set the controls.”

  With shaking hands I focused the beam on the device while I stood in a pool of murky gray-black water.

  Roger fiddled with the MUDD settings, aimed it down the pit, nodded, and patted my shoulder. “I may be awhile. You go back up top and keep watch. Call for help only if there’s a cave-in.”

  I looked at the fissure he was about to drop his semi-hunky body into. “I’m going with you.”

  “I’m only going down as far as they’ve dug, another five or six meters.”

  I shot him a blank look.

  He smiled. “Fifteen or twenty feet, max. There’s not enough room on the elevator for two.”

  “That’s no elevator. That’s a board on strings.”

  Roger stood between me and the rickety Otis lift. “Those sitting mummies were planted here to delay the condo construction. My archaeologist gut feeling is someone is trying to buy time to get down there and grab something worth the risk of transporting two ancient cadavers from one continent to another. This goes beyond the boundaries of dirty developers.”