All those lights were sure fun to look at though as they drove along in the ambulance. Lenny was so happy he’d tried to give his best friend a hug.
“Get off me you big ape, I’m trying to drive here!”
“You’re my best friend in the whole world, George!”
“Jeez, Lenny, you’re acting even weirder than usual! What were you doing in back anyhow? You didn’t get into the drugs did you?”
“Just the ones in the locked cabinet. I think I don’t feel so good, George.”
“Not in here, you big dummy!”
That was the best part for Lenny. After he got done puking in Technicolor, he found a little land crab there alongside the road. He’d had it in his pocket ever since. It was his little secret from George.
While they walked around Key West in the rain looking for their ambulance, Lenny would slip a hand in his pocket and pet the crab. That was some kind of good, but now George had done gone and got himself shot.
“George!”
Lenny jumped in the way of any more bullets and picked up his partner. He stood there with tears streaming down his face.
“No! You can’t shoot George! Speak to me George!”
There was some commotion behind him and the big man saw the little blonde woman pulling the gun away from the car-jacker while kicking him in the face. Still bawling and holding his best friend with one arm, Lenny reached over and grabbed the bad man by the head, then flipped him through the front window of the hotel.
“Speak to me, George! You can’t die, George, we still ain’t ate yet!”
George made a muffled sound Lenny could barely hear.
“Let go of me you big goon! I got a bullet-proof vest with the ambulance uniform!”
When George stepped back he was a little shaky and holding his chest, but much to Lenny’s relief, he wasn’t dead. The big man’s tears of anguish turned to tears of joy. He bet they even had something to make a sandwich with right here at the hotel. Lenny was having a great time in Key West.
♦
“Consuelo, keep the gun on him!”
Lydia ran out the front door and checked on the crazy bastard lying in the broken window glass in front of the hotel. Josephine pulled on some gloves and gave the unconscious man a quick check right there on the sidewalk. Lydia got the sign that he was out but mostly okay. Some cuts from the window and probably a concussion. Consuelo relaxed, but stood ready. Lydia was not happy.
“Who the hell is this guy anyway?”
Sara came to the window. “From what he said before you got here, it sounds like he’s the boss of the guys who kidnapped Brad.”
Jeremy came outside and started going through the prone mobster’s pockets. Lydia saw him try to put something in his own pockets.
“Put it on the ground, Jeremy.”
Jeremy looked up and saw what must be his worst nightmare. Consuelo with a pissed look and a big gun, both aimed his way.
The two guys from the ambulance came outside. The big goofy one sniffling with a big smile, the little one with the shifty eyes still rubbing his chest.
“If y’all be so kind as to give us those keys to our ambulance, we’ll be on our way.”
Lydia was ready for fewer people.
“Sure, here.” She looked at Consuelo to check out her own suspicions, and got the sign these guys were dirty, but probably not a threat to them.
“What are you two up to, anyway?”
“Oh, we were just in the area, thought we’d do a little sightseeing around the Navy base, then maybe look up and old acquaintance.”
Jeremy had stopped going through pockets and was just staring up at the two men. The big one cleared his throat.
“I don’t supposed y’all got some baloney and bread I could make a sandwich with?”
Lydia looked at the gangster laying on the sidewalk and had an idea.
“Consuelo, why don’t you whip up a couple of your famous sandwiches real quick.” Consuelo handed the gun over to her older sister and disappeared into the kitchen. “Since you boys have an ambulance already, I don’t suppose you could – &rquo; Lydia pointed the gun towards the man on the ground. The little man called George started to say something about needing to leave when the big one picked up the mobster like a sack of potatoes and held him under his arm. His eyes never left the door Consuelo had gone through.
A few minutes later Brad and Lydia watched the strange men called the Daltons walking toward the ambulance. The big one still had the mobster under his arm, but was so busy working on his sandwich he didn’t seem to notice the unconscious man’s head banging into lampposts and parking meters along the way.
With Brad standing conveniently next to her, Lydia decided it was time for a hug.
“Thank goodness they’re gone. We still need to get you over to the airport to meet the CDC people.”
“Right. I should get cleaned up a little first and maybe use your phone. I have a friend over at the Navy base. I’ll let him know they might have a couple of odd characters coming to visit.”
♦
The sisters decided to make a call to Detroit while Brad was in the shower. The man who had spent a few days in their basement in Pine Cove was humbled and horrified to hear from them. He agreed it would be an honor for him to visit a certain CEO again and deliver a simple message in a memorable way.
Brad was feeling much better by the time Josephine checked him over. He was pronounced bruised but unbroken. Sara was formally introduced to Brad. She suggested he eat plenty of soup to get his strength back and then went back to bed. The sisters fed him and fussed over him, especially Lydia.
“I still don’t understand how you knew that crabber had found the car though.” Lydia wished people would quit asking this.
“Maybe we’ll let you ask our mother about that. She seems to have left, but she might be able to explain it better than me.” Lydia threw the mother thing in there to change the subject. She remembered the strange look from Taco Bob when she’d mentioned lucid dreaming and remote viewing.
“Your mother?” Brad looked at the three women sitting with him. “I thought you told me your mother died. A year ago. In California.”
“Well, she did. But this is our real mother. She was one of the teachers we told you about, and she’s living here in Key West. Hangs out with that street artist Orange Dali.” Brad was looking confused.
“Anyway, I’m sure she would love to tell you all about it.” Lydia decided she needed to try to keep her mother away from Brad. She’d explain it to him someday herself. Someday.
Brad looked at the clock behind the front desk. The sun would be up soon.
“I better get to the airport. I want to be there when those people from the CDC get off the plane.” Consuelo jumped up and ran out the back. Josephine was about to nod out on the couch. Lydia patted her on the shoulder.
“You better get some sleep, Josey. Consuelo and I will get Brad to the airport.” Brad stood up to receive Josephine’s sleepy hug before she dragged off to bed.
“Goodnight Josephine, thanks again for everything!” Josephine gave a little wave over her shoulder as she left the room. Lydia stood and hit the remote to turn off the television. They were alone. Brad took Lydia’s hands in his.
“I really do want to know how you knew that crabber had the car.” He put his finger to her lips before she could say anything. “But you don’t have to tell me now.” He gave her a quick wink and a smile. Lydia got lost a little in that smile, and went for the clench. She hugged him, trying not to cry.
“Okay, I’ll try to explain it someday.” But she had her face buried in his chest and it sounded more like, “Mumft, mm mum mmft mumftmm.”
Lydia got a grip and looked up straight into those gorgeous eyes. Her lips were quivering just a tiny bit as he brought his mouth slowly to hers. As their lips barely touched, Consuelo brought the Caddy to a screeching stop outside the front door and laid on the horn.
“Let’s go folks! We haven’t
got a lot of gas here, you know!”
The horn made them jump, but they held on to each other for another few seconds. Lydia was pissed, but grinning. “That counts as a kiss, you know!”
Brad laughed. “Whatever you say, my dear. I believe our carriage awaits.”
And they walked out the front door of the Key West Manor Hotel, arm-in-arm.
♦
A week later the hotel was completely booked. My Josephine and her sisters were happy to be so busy. The town was under siege from wave after wave of eager tourists looking for a taste of the Key West Experience and a clever T-shirt to show the neighbors back home. Rental scooters once again buzzed the streets maneuvering around delivery trucks and barefoot locals.
Details of the Key West Nile Virus hoax were sketchy at best and that left plenty of room for speculation. But after a few days even the most eloquent and persistent of the local practicing barstool theorists had found something else to expound upon. Soon it was just another vague story in a town known for fuzzy memories.
The sisters did some checking and learned MegaDrug had moved quickly, and would eventually close on several lucrative real estate transactions. But the net result had to be far short of original expectations. This was, of course, due to the reappearance of the missing biologist and the subsequent early lifting of the quarantine.
A couple of days after that happened, MegaDrug’s CEO, some old guy named Greenfield, ordered all plans for future drugstores in South Florida scrapped. The inside story is he once again woke up with a large caliber handgun stuck in his mouth. Supposedly for health reasons, he soon afterward moved to an undisclosed island in the South Pacific.
Poor Wiola never did find Dali. She told Josephine her last blurry memory of the dream was a fleeting shadow flowing up the stairs of the hotel. She went after it, thinking it must be her Dali wanting a better look at the storm. She couldn’t remember anything after that though, and woke up in her own bed the next morning. At first she planned to get everyone to dream together again to find him, but then she thought better of it. She was pretty sad. She said perhaps her attempts to tame the wild artist had been a little too much and he’d taken the opportunity to move on. I think she’s getting over it. Wiola may have lost a lover, but she isn’t hurting for daughters these days.
Sara gets stronger every day. She’s staying here at the hotel, helping her sisters. Wiola told Sara that working with people at the hotel might be the best thing for her. Deal with sunburned vacationers from Pittsburgh for a while instead of vaporous phantoms from other dimensions. Sara agreed.
That fisherman guy, Taco Bob, helped Sara sell some of her gold at the best price so she could invest in mutual funds and a red convertible. She went on a date even, a real date. Some weird guy called Fish Daddy with a bird on his head took her to dinner at Blue Heaven last Friday night. Sara says she always did like older men.
They didn’t know it, but I heard the man wearing the expensive linen suit with the slight water stains sitting next to them in the restaurant that night was Toby Smith. He’d found the suit in a suitcase in the back seat of the Chevy. It was a little tight around the middle, but otherwise a perfect fit.
Consuelo is learning body painting from some guy she met a few days ago at that rooftop nude bar on Duval. I heard her say she’s also trying to get Taco Bob to take her fishing sometime.
The media forgot about Brad after a couple of days. He just told them what he told the police, and told the truth, up to a point. He said he’d never gotten a good look at the two men who held him in the motel room, and he’d slipped away when they both went out of the room. The police probably wouldn’t fully appreciate the little party the sister’s threw for his captors, so he left that part out. He didn’t mention the part about being stuffed in a car trunk and ending up as catch-of-the-day for a local crabber either. No one ever did figure out how the car had gotten from the motel parking lot to the water anyway.
Supposedly the police searched the room at the motel but someone had gotten there first and thoroughly cleaned the room. Nobody ever heard what happened to the two hoods or their crazy boss. The two guys with the ambulance turned out to be escaped convicts. They were arrested at the Navy base trying to steal a sophisticated piece of machinery that looked like a bomb but turned out to be a high-tech trash compactor.
The police finally lost interest in Brad. Lydia didn’t. She and Brad are getting closer, not close in the way Lydia would like, but closer nonetheless.
Brad came by late this afternoon to pick Lydia up for a ride up the Keys on his motorcycle. Afterwards they were going to check out the latest hot new Marty Manatee impersonator at Sloppy Joes. Lydia was looking through the mail when he came in and struck one of his better dramatic poses.
“There’s a lotta road out there, and it’s calling my name!”
Lydia rolled her eyes and smiled.
“Be right with you, my dashing vagabond.” She was reading. “Check this out. Here’s a letter from a real estate agent representing Jack’s Drugs. They say Jack’s wants to buy our hotel.” She shook her head and dropped the letter in the trash.
“I think we already did this. Let’s go see the sunset from the highest bridge in the Keys at sixty miles an hour instead.”
So Josephine is at the front desk this evening. When she’s not working in the hotel, Josephine and I are putting in some long hours on her hangover cure. We need to find a new test subject though. Jeremy saw me rolling a mango through the hotel last night and quit his job. Actually, he didn’t see me, just the mango. Rolling along.
Said he wasn’t going to work in a haunted hotel. Lydia told him it was probably just a side effect from all the hangover potions he’s been drinking, but he quit anyway.
I’m not worried though – he’ll be back.
EOF
Key Weird 03; Key Witch Page 15
