“She was hooking and smuggling bombs when she was fifteen?” said Athena. “And you thought you were precocious, LadyFat.”
“Bombs, guns, drugs, money laundering—whatever.”
Regina was glad to be able to talk about this freely, now that she'd pieced together the story.
“Titiana was the daughter of the chief of one of the oldest smuggling clans in these mountains. Her father sent her to work at the palace when she was barely in her teens, in order to gain access to the royal yacht anchored at Trieste. But once she made a romantic conquest of Max, she pretty much had free rein in San Montinaro, and eventually took over her father's criminal empire, keeping Max so bamboozled that he never questioned her.”
“He never even noticed?” Cady still had her eyes on the frescoes.
“Max wasn't raised to question things,” Regina said. “His father believed business was for the lower classes and had left the royal family nearly broke. Max had no head for business, either, but Titiana helped him start the fashion house and let him believe he was making big profits.”
“Prince Max's fashion house was just about money laundering?” Cady said.
“Pretty much,” Regina said. “If Max questioned Titiana, it would have meant questioning his own abilities. Besides, he had to put all his energy into keeping the affair a secret. The people of this country would have tossed him out in a minute if he'd married her; the daughter of a smuggler, and an Italian at that. And of course the fashion world would have humiliated him out of existence over Titiana's size. Imagine… well, you've heard the jokes.”
“Yeah, I wish Leno and Letterman would give it a rest.” Fatima flopped down on the 18th century settee. “But why did he marry you, if he's so hung up on fat ladies?”
“Actually, because I was so skinny. That's one of the reasons Titiana picked me—and hired Sybil to bring me to her. I was the perfect surrogate. I had the right pedigree to produce acceptable heirs, and then I totally played into her hands by walking out of the Paris fashion show and going “missing”. I was perfectly cast; the lost princess, fashionable, suddenly famous, and most of all scrawny. Titiana knew Max would never be attracted to me.”
“So what happened?” Cady sat at on the dressing table stool and removed her shoes. “He fell in love with you in spite of her?”
“Love? I'm not sure I'd call it that,” Regina said. “But yes, when I started to get fat, he began to lust after me, and one night last winter, when I'd had too much amaretto—after that picture in the tabloids making me look so pudgy—well, it almost happened. Unfortunately, Titiana walked in on us, and I guess she thought she saw her whole world about to collapse. So she decided to eliminate me. She also started doing bigger, crazier deals; kind of retirement insurance—until she tried to broker the sale of that Russian bomb.”
“She didn't think people would pay a little more attention to a bomb that could destroy most of Europe than they would to a few shipments of drugs and guns?” Cady said.
She was massaging her feet, but Regina noticed that she was wearing sensible flats, not the pumps she used to wear.
“Yes, but she thought she had a foolproof plan,” Regina said. “It was all supposed to happen at my funeral. She was going to smuggle the bomb via American diplomatic plane when the Vice President and his wife came to pay their respects. Unfortunately, I kept surviving the accidents Titiana staged around the palace, and even the clever homicidal efforts of poor Nigel.”
“Poor Nigel?” Fatima said. “I thought he turned out to be a mob hit man.”
Regina sighed. “Yes.”
“Too bad somebody executed him before he could talk to the DEA,” Athena said. “What a loss he was to the hairdressing profession.”
“One has to feel a little sorry for him,” Regina said. “Titiana, too. Nigel's failure to kill me left her holding the bomb-in-a-bag, which is why she'd had to hire Sybil to produce a body and stage my “death” in time for a convenient funeral. That was where she made her big mistake.”
“No. Her big mistake was checking the bomb onto the plane in Florence Adams' name instead of Tipper Gore's,” Cady said.
It hadn't been easy for Regina to talk Flo into coming back to San Montinaro for the wedding. Flo said she'd had enough of policemen with swords for one lifetime.
“That was an understandable mistake, though. Titiana made the last minute change because she kept reading about the Gores' campaign finance problems and decided they'd be more likely to be bothered at customs than a retired Republican schoolteacher.”
“I wish that woman could be tried for what she put Flo through,” Cady said. “But I guess the Russians are going to be pretty rough about her stealing their bomb.”
“I'm not sure Titiana wouldn't prefer the death penalty to life in a Russian prison. If you want revenge, think of a great chef spending the rest of her life in a country where the cuisine is based on cabbage. And I do love to think of Sybil D-D developing mounds of cellulite from all the fatty cheese in that Dutch prison while the international court in The Hague decides which country gets first go at trying the Queen of Clubs.”
Regina glanced over at the settee and saw that Fatima was fast asleep. Cady looked as if she might be in the same state any minute.
“It looks as if it's bedtime,” she said. “Athena, do you want to show Cady to the Fra Angelico room?”
Cady slipped on her shoes and stood.
“Regina, do you know I can't possibly thank you enough?”
“Max wanted to do something. He feels so awful about what you and Flo were put through.”
“Does he?” Cady looked directly into Regina's eyes. “Why are you still with him, Regina? What about your spy—your Mikhail? You love him. I read your diaries. And he loves you—has loved you, all these years. Titiana and Sybil knew it; counted on it. No matter what simplified stories the government tells, Athena was a target only because those women knew Mikhail would do anything for you—even trade a bomb for your daughter.”
Regina winced.
“Max is good to me now, and Mikhail…he's disappeared. Nobody's seen him since he took off in that helicopter.”
Chapter 50—Regina: Arrangements
Regina hoped she'd finally be able to sleep. She felt more at peace knowing Cady was here. But as she climbed into the canopied bed, more urgent knocking at the bedroom door startled her. She opened the door a crack.
There was Max. In the silk robe and matching pajamas she'd given him for Christmas. He was carrying a bottle and two glasses.
“I saw your light was still on and wondered if you'd like a drop of amaretto.” He gave a sad, hopeful smile.
She sighed. He was so full of remorse these days. But she couldn't bear for him to touch her, not after all the betrayal. He may have been blind to Titiana's Machiavellian plots, but he had kept the woman as a mistress for more than two decades.
“It won't work, Max, dear. But yes, a drink would be nice.”
“I thought we should give some thought to our arrangements.” Max perched on the seventeenth-century chaise in her dressing room.
“Arrangements? I suppose you want your bedroom back?”
The royal suite was rightfully his, of course, but when your wife has come back from the dead, nearly murdered by your mistress, a man is willing to give up almost anything. He'd even agreed to put on this wedding. Of course one couldn't overlook the fact it was great publicity for his fashions as well as a boon to San Montinaran tourism.
Regina took a sip of amaretto.
“I suppose I could be happy in the Tintoretto room.”
Max's eyebrows went up. “Really?”
“What did you propose giving me, then?” Regina was much too tired for games.
“I thought perhaps a divorce.” Max pulled a folded document from the pocket of his robe. “After all, if you're going to marry Mr. Mouse, getting a divorce first would be rather wise, don't you think? You get a sizable allowance, half the couture house and your cars, fu
rs and jewels. If you'd like anything else?”
“Mr. Mouse?” Regina clutched the amaretto glass to her chest to still her shaking hands.
“Yes. I'd hoped to change your mind, of course. When I thought you had died, I realized how very much I value you. But I did make an agreement with your Russian spy. He said he would make the bomb problem go away in exchange for—well, in exchange for my wife.”
“He said that?” This made his disappearance all the more strange.
“Yes. An awful thing to ask a man, really, but I thought you were dead at the time you see, so it didn't seem so much to promise, but now—Regina, I need you.” Max covered his eyes with his hand. She couldn't remember when she'd ever seen him show such emotion.
She lifted his pale, sad face and kissed him, lightly and sweetly, on his aristocratic nose.
“You need me?”
“How will I run the business on my own? The boys have no interest.”
Regina laughed. Same old Max.
“We'll always be friends. And if my sons have no interest in your business, I have a daughter who's a design genius. Look what she'd done with my matron-of-honor gown. Anybody can make a size four woman look good, but it takes creativity to make clothes look elegant in a size sixteen.”
“I know.” Max smiled. “I've offered Athena a job, if she wants it. She can design for anybody. A size four is easy—a clothes hanger. A size sixteen is…” He moved closer to her. “A size sixteen is curves and softness and looks better wearing… nothing at all.”
She maneuvered away as he began to reach for the sash of her robe.
“Sorry.” He stood up, his face all regret as he walked away. “So you'll be wanting these?”
“Maybe…” She accepted the divorce papers. Should she leave him? She certainly was over the princess thing. But where would she go? Max might think she had some arrangement with Mikhail, but for all she knew he was back in Russia, being a spy.
Chapter 51—Regina: Vermin Redux
“Maybe? 'Maybe' is all you can say?”
Regina froze.
The voice was not Max's. It came from behind her—from the walls—from one of the Carracci fat ladies, it seemed.
“Maybe you want to stay married to that twit? Maybe you have forgotten your promise? Maybe you have forgotten me?”
Regina watched in horror, as the queen of the wild things seemed to come at her, slowly moving off the wall.
A door. It was a secret door in the center of the fresco. Behind it was a man wearing a palace guard's neat uniform. Always the master of disguise.
“Mikhail! I never knew that was a door! How did you know? And where have you been?”
She was enveloped in a steely hug and warm kisses.
“I had one more job to do.” He released her only to breathe. “I heard about that secret door from Titiana, years ago. She knows all sorts of secret passages scattered around this country. Not a bad spot to live, San Montinaro, if you ignore the weather for nine months of the year. You do not really want to live here after the wedding, do you, my love?” He took off his guard's jacket. “Damned comic opera outfit.”
“Cady's wedding is the day after tomorrow, Mikhail. And I can't go anywhere. I'm still a prisoner of the media, you know. It's even worse since my funeral.”
“I meant our wedding. And you can go anywhere if you have the right disguise. There are benefits to being married to a former spy.”
“Married.” The word hung in the air. “To a spy?”
“Former spy. I have quit the guard business, too. I got a nice little reward for retrieving that bomb, and my old bosses finally let me go after I did one more job for them. Now I have bought a dessert business in Solvang, California. A bakery. Pastries, cakes, chocolates. Very lucrative during tourist season. The rest of the time we could travel. Incognito, of course.”
“A bakery?” She could only smile, thinking of her days working in Leona's kitchen.
“I have always dreamed of owning one. And a big ranch house with horses and a grand piano for my wife to play Hungarian music for me.”
“A piano? You bought a piano? How did you know I play?”
I heard you once, a long time ago, outside an awful, ostentatious house in a Philadelphia suburb. I thought you were there by choice, so I went away—sick with love from that music. I had never heard Liszt played with such wildness, such passion. It was only later I found out what those two did when you stopped playing. That is why I blew them up, of course. The East Germans were annoyed about losing the operatives, but their information had been fairly useless, anyway.”
“Franz and Freddy—they were East German agents? You killed them?”
Mikhail nodded. “We were all recruiting a lot of Ivy League kids in those days.”
“Do you mean… you're saying… you've been in love with me all this time? Since before the modeling… before I got skinny? Not because I was pretty… because of my piano playing?
“Because of you,” he said. “Your soul. Your passion for music, for life.”
He had on a thin T-shirt under the jacket. On the pocket of the shirt was a faded logo from Disneyland.
She could see his chest wasn't as gorgeously muscled as it had been on the beach in Greece all those years ago, and age and gravity had taken their inevitable toll on his abdominals.
But she had never seen a male form she found sexier—or more irresistible. She could think of no words. She let her own robe drop and sang softly as her finger traced the cartoon figure on his chest, “M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E.”
About the Author
Anne R. Allen is a publishing industry blogger and the author of the hilarious Camilla Randall Mysteries as well as the comic novels Food of Love, The Gatsby Game, and The Lady of the Lakewood Diner. She's a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and now lives on the Central Coast of California near San Luis Obispo, the town Oprah called “the happiest town in America.”
Anne loves to hear from her readers! Contact her at [email protected]
Anne R. Allen's Blog, was named one of the Best 101 Websites for Writers by Writer's Digest in 2013. Visit her there, or on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn or Google Plus.
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Table of Contents
The Stories
Death by Sarcasm One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Nine
Sixty
Sixty-One
Sixty-Two
Sixty-Three
<
br /> Sixty-Four
Sixty-Five
Sixty-Six
Sixty-Seven
Sixty-Eight
Sixty-Nine
Seventy
Seventy-One
Seventy-Two
Seventy-Three
Seventy-Four
Seventy-Five
Seventy-Six
Seventy-Seven
About the Author
Miami Mummies Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
About the Author
My Perfect Wedding Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author
Sadie’s Guide to Catching Killers Introduction
Murder One (1991)
Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Page 103
