Bootscootin' and Cozy Cash Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-6)

by Scott, D. D.

  “Continue. I’m impressed,” he said, his fabulous grin making me tingle inside, not just because I had the scoop, but because I’d made him happy and respect me more by providing it.

  “You asked me to do my homework, and I did. These scumballs don’t just operate through their direct contacts and intermediaries.”

  “That circuit is hot though in Sonja, McCall, and Raj’s worlds. And I’ve got the proof,” Ross said, finally contributing something to the conversation.

  “Okay. So what kind of proof do you have?” I asked him, loving how he bristled at my question.

  “I’ve got a shitload of secretly recorded phone conversations between ‘em all,” Ross said, stretching his neck so it was high out of his collar.

  Good. I’d have a better shot at slicing it off of his shoulders. His misplaced arrogance was really starting to piss me off.

  And now that I know the family pig doesn’t like him either, I don’t think the dumbass dared mess with both the princess and her pot-bellied pig.

  “What about copies of their hard drives? You got that yet?”

  Silence.

  Not even Vinnie ouffed.

  “So you want me to start digging through their countryside homes’ garbage for their old laptops?”

  “Might not be a bad idea once you also copy the drives on their current systems,” Roman said then turned to me.

  “Well done, Plum Puddin’.”

  “There’s more.”

  Silence again.

  My plan was really starting to neatly unfold across both lobes of my brain, and I wanted to get it out before it got lost in some of the potholes.

  “Raj’s hedge fund philosophy, which had him, at one time, managing more than seven billion dollars…”

  “Wait a minute. Seven billion dollars, huh? Sound familiar?” Ross jumped-in.

  Roman and I exchanged glances.

  “Yes. It’s the same amount McCall managed too,” I confirmed Ross’ a-bit-late-on-the-draw catch, but at least he was back to catching period.

  “Anyhoo…Raj’s philosophy was always having, what he called, two torpedoes in the water. In other words, he had his proprietary computers telling him what should be happening in the market, but he also had a network of informants telling him advanced scoop as well. That way, he figured, if one model or source missed, his other one likely hit.”

  There. I’d finished laying out my research.

  “Well we’ve got plenty of torpedoes, Baby,” Roman said then chuckled, causing, I swear, Vinnie to chuckle and snort with him.

  “I’m sure we do. But I’m not talking about the kind you fire at ships.”

  “I am. And it might be just what we need to stir-up the water.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I still couldn’t believe I’d let Roman talk me into this.

  And for the record, I do NOT think this is a task for a princess-in-the-making.

  But here we were, hours before dawn the next day, standing on jagged rocks along the edge of Positano’s Bay, dark-hooded sweatshirts covering our upper bodies and heads, freezing our asses off while preparing to board an R-modified hydrofoil to take us to Naples’ shipping docks.

  Not sure what a hydrofoil is?

  It’s a big-ass boat with what looks like wings under it and some kind of turbo jet-like engines that make it feel like you’re actually flying across the water at super-sonic speeds.

  How do I know this?

  ‘Cause I’m now flying on one. And OMG! do I mean freakin’ flying…aka haulin’ some serious ass!

  These boats — equipped with wing-like structures mounted on the struts below the hull — hover above the water’s surface. In other words, with no drag, these water rockets kick big-time butt when up on plane.

  And no, I didn’t use to know much about all boat jargon drag stuff, only the kind of drag which involved my favorite drag queens in my fave piano bars. Yes, I dress drag queens too. Those peeps have a fantabulous sense of fashion.

  However, I can now toss boating terms with sassy confidence, just like I can drag queen-speak, because our ever-faithful Quartermaster R is screaming this scoop to me while piloting our death machine to our bay-bound graves.

  “Do we have to go so fast?” I screamed while hanging onto some metal bar next to his captain’s seat, probably located there for that very type of oh-shit-handle usage.

  “Yes, we do. If we don’t want to be caught and killed,” R said never taking his eyes from wherever we were destined to die.

  “Caught and killed? By who?”

  “The boat behind us,” R said, again without so much as the slightest bit of concern in his tone.

  Shit. I held onto the bar even tighter, not sure if my knuckles had already been white for a bit or had just turned to ghost-like appendages.

  “Do you mind telling me to where we’re racing for our lives?”

  “No problem,” he said handing me a very cool, hand-held telescope like one of those spyglasses you’d see Johnny Depp using in Pirates of the Caribbean.

  I peered into the site part of the scope, my stomach in huge pitch n’ roll fits from the boat’s supersonic speed.

  How was I ever gonna adjust to life in the fast-lane, which now meant being chased by who…pirates?

  The spyglass scope treated me to a horizon filled-up by the largest yacht I’d ever seen. The damn thing looked like a floating mansion.

  “Who does that belong to?”

  “The Hedge Fund Temptress,” R answered with a sly grin.

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see, my princess, but you might want to have a seat and buckle-up ‘cause I’m gonna need to take this beauty up to full speed.”

  ‘Shit’ seemed to be the word of the day so far, I thought, quickly saying it under my breath while plopping my butt into the co-captain’s seat. Our boat, and all on board, was in some serious trouble if I ended up having to fulfill the duties of the seat in which I now sat.

  While anxiously watching the floating mansion get larger and larger as we approached, I lost track of the time it took to complete our ride. But I knew it wasn’t long ‘cause my toes hadn’t gone numb. And for some reason, if I sat too long, three toes on my left foot now tingled, zinged and pinged.

  Like I had time to worry about that affliction. Since I’d now traded in stilettos for high-action Sketchers, it was probably a psychosomatic condition, similar to withdrawal, resulting from my love of high-fashion footwear being unable to be fed. Oh well. I suppose toes are highly overrated.

  “How much longer, R?” Roman said, leaning into me and protectively wrapping his arms around my shoulders, giving me what was probably supposed to be a comforting gesture of very misplaced reassurance.

  Nothing about this entire scenario had me remotely comforted or reassured.

  “So who’s The Hedge Fund Temptress?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” he said, sharing the same sly grin R wore on his smug face.

  “Told ya,” R piped-in.

  “All I know is somebody better be tellin’ me somethin’ and fast.”

  “Or what?” Roman asked between full-bodied laughs that I had to admit were rather hot. “Are you going to jump in the sea and get your ass run over by Grams?”

  “Grams?! What does she have to do with this?”

  “Didn’t you tell her, R?”

  R just laughed and shook his head.

  “I thought you’d enjoy that pleasure,” he said.

  “R told me we had to travel at these ridiculous speeds to avoid being caught and killed by the boat behind us,” I said, now very confused, which was becoming normal in my new Bond Girl, Make-Believe-Princess world.

  “With Grams at the wheel of the boat behind us, I suppose we do have a good chance of being killed,” Roman said, agreeing with R and giving his partner a big, funny-boy punch on the arm.

  “Yeah. You two are just a stitch. What the hell is Grams doing here?! And beyond that, you’ve allowed her to drive one of
these beasts?! We all are as good as dead.”

  “Actually,” R said, recovering from fits of hee-haws, “she’s the only one that had the guts to run one of these for all it’s worth.”

  “Well then, may I ask why on God’s huge patch of blue, very deep part of earth, do we need Grams as a hydrofoil captain?”

  “Oh we need more than Grams, we need all of ‘em. What should I refer to ‘em as? Ahhh. Yes. Perfect. We require the assistance of all the Charlie’s Angels wanna-be’s,” R said, his tiny-but-mighty-guy shoulders bouncing up and down from his humorous take on our situation as well as from the hydrofoil slowly coming down from plane.

  “You mean the blue-haired version of Charlie’s Angels,” Roman said which got him an atta boy return punch from R.

  “Both hands on the wheel, please,” I ordered R, who looked at Roman, shrugged his shoulders and did as I asked.

  “What does The Mom Squad have to do with The Hedge Fund Temptress? No wait. Let me guess. I’ll see.”

  “Brilliant guess, Plum Puddin’,” Roman said then kissed me on the nose before disappearing below the captain’s deck.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With our two hydrofoils now anchored next to each other, just a few dinghy boat yards away from The Hedge Fund Temptresses’ floating mansion, I looked across to the captain’s deck of the second boat then couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

  Damn! They’re a hoot.

  Now that I was alone on our deck, waiting for either Roman or R to clue me in on what to do next, I kept laughing all to myself.

  There, across the way, was The Mom Squad — all five of ‘em — waving at me. Their faces were all plastered against the hydrofoil’s expansive control room windows.

  I could make out Granny Veruschka, the newest member of The Squad, her royal queen’s wave in sharp contrast to the Music City mayhem and over-the-top friendliness of her new partners in blue-haired crime-fighting.

  Next to Granny V, probably standing on the captain’s seat itself, otherwise she’d never be able to see out the window, was Grams. Once a Meat n’ Three Diner Queen and Grandma-in-law to one of my best friends Jules, Grams was now a hydrofoil captain extraordinaire.

  Probably steadying Grams on her feet while waving at me too, was Aunt Tulip. Well, she was actually Jules’ Aunt Tulip, but she was Aunt Tulip to the rest of our bunch, too. Tulip, who was probably, right now, as any great sex therapist and aphrodisiac queen would do, thinking of new sexual positions and thrills her clients could take advantage of while hydrofoiling.

  Kat and Lily, the final two Mom Squad Angels, were next to Tulip, their perfectly-coiffed, high-fashion get-ups making them the only women in the bunch that actually looked like Charlie’s Angels.

  I swear Kat actually gets more beautiful with every year she adds to her life.

  Funny, what not-an-ounce of botulinum toxin will get you later in life. Compared to Granny V’s huge ass lips mashed against the window and Lily’s rather freakish, abnormally tight cheeks and chin jutting out at weird angles from what was once probably her normal jaw line and cheekbone structure, Kat really did appear geriatric angelic.

  Unbelievable, I thought, waving back at ‘em all. I was still totally clueless as to what one or any of ‘em, other than Granny V, had to do with our mystery Hedge Fund Temptress. But I wasn’t gonna lie, I was thrilled they were here.

  Apparently though, as Roman called me to come down into the next level of the boat, I was about to find out the nature of their visit.

  I carefully wound my way around the curved staircase leading from the captain’s bridge to the next level down, noting they sure didn’t make these things for plus-size sea-faring chicks.

  “You okay?” Roman asked a somewhat worried but trying to be calm and cool look shadowing his eyes.

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  I was growing very tired of this hide n’ seek adventure and planned to have a talk with him about beginning to include me in the planning stages of our missions. Although honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what we were doing before we did it. That might scare the hell outta me even more.

  Thanks to Roman’s sleep apnea machine, I already found it rather challenging to get decent sleep. And yes, we were sleeping together. But in just a platonic way. Sort of. If you didn’t count the fake kisses and snuggling we had to do for a few minutes each night, just in case, like Roman and R feared, someone was watching or listening.

  Thanks to R’s brilliant counter-spy intelligence, they didn’t think we were bugged. But I’d been told, and took quite literally, that one could never be one hundred percent confident and then live to tell about it.

  So yeah. A breathing machine’s horrible hiss and gurgles coupled with impending doom at sunrise? Not sleep inducing measures at all.

  “Seriously, Plum Puddin’, are you in there and ready for this?” Roman asked playfully knocking on my head with his steel knuckles.

  “You betchya. You’ve got my interest piqued regarding The Temptress,” I said, while he helped me slip into a life jacket.

  “Just follow our lead and you’ll be fine,” he said, moving me toward a section of the hydrofoil’s deck that, with the touch of some sort of remote control by R, began to lower us onto another deck where a dinghy was docked, tethered to a hook, and waiting for us.

  I looked up at The Mom Squad, who were now no longer waving. They each had their noses pressed up against the glass, all except for Granny V, whose fish lips blocked her nose’s access to the glass. Damn those things were just gross.

  “Oh, and by the way, you’ll be introduced as the future Queen of The Royal House of Savoy,” Roman shouted above the roar of the dinghy’s engine.

  I curtsied and held out my hand to be kissed.

  “Cute,” he said, then surprised me by taking my hand and giving it the obligatory royal smooch.

  “Just practicing,” I said and knew I could sooo get used to his mouth on the top of my hand.

  Not sure if my stomach was fluttering from the waves rocking the boat or from Roman’s touch rocking my world, I took my place in the dinghy and headed, with my team, to meet The Temptress.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Once on the floating mansion and seated in one of, what I’m sure were many grand salons, I waited with R and Roman for The Temptress’s entrance.

  And OMG was I not disappointed.

  The Hedge Fund Temptress, who I now knew was named Janeel Chiesi, thanks to Roman’s debriefing once we were onboard the dinghy, cutting through the choppy water on our way to her lair, looked like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Lady Gaga.

  Her platinum blonde locks and slinky white dress, along with her cherry red lips, screamed Marilyn. In fact, I was waiting for a stiff ocean breeze to lift-up her dress.

  But along with her inner Monroe, screamed a Lady Gaga.

  The black face-paint drawn around her eyes and the golden, entire finger-length rings she wore on one hand made it look as if she were some kind of delusional cross between a predator and a Happy Birthday, Mr. President candidate.

  “I thought we’d be alone, My Prince,” The Predator preyed, dragging her gold claws across the edge of the bar, beside which she was slinking like an alley cat.

  “Not this time,” Roman said and cleared his throat.

  I’d be uncomfortable too, I thought, if my future fake wife thought I’d been schlepping around with this horny Godzilla.

  “You know I only do business for two,” she purred.

  “I bet you do,” I said, which earned me all eyes in the room.

  “Pardon me?” Lady Godzilla Gaga Monroe asked.

  “Do you have what I’ve requested?”

  It was apparently Roman’s turn to ask questions.

  Probably just to prevent an all-out catfight.

  “Depends on if you have what I requested.”

  Well isn’t this just a wayyy fun cat-and-mouse game, I thought.

  At Godzilla’s request, R removed a
gorgeous violet scarf from his jacket pocket and took it to The Hedge Fund Temptress.

  “No offense at you bringing me a gift, but that’s not what I requested to make this deal.”

  “If you’ll allow me,” Roman inquired, then at The Temptress’s nod, took out a pen from his pocket and removed the scarf from her claws.

  Suddenly, the room went dark.

  But not for much more than a couple seconds before Roman had a pencil-thin black light aimed on the violet scarf.

  Focusing on the path of the light’s rays, I saw what had caused, first Janeel to ooh and ahhh, and then me to do the same, although I could never stir-up the Monroe melodrama that diva could.

  “Happy now?” Roman asked, moving the light so it continued to illuminate numerical sequences galore.

  “Yes, very happy indeed, Darling,” Janeel purred as the yacht’s parlor lights once again flooded the room signaling the show was over.

  “It’s your turn now,” Roman said, holding out his hand.

  “Are you sure there isn’t more I can do for you?”

  The Temptress wrapped her metal-endowed claw around Roman’s backside and pinched together her talons.

  Ouch that had to smart, I thought.

  But Roman never flinched.

  “I understand, in your other deals, you’ve been required to do much more. Not when you deal with me. I don’t play those games. You either hand over what I’ve asked you to, or you’ll be serving jail time with all your former bosses, McCall included.”

  I admired the way Roman played his cards. He never bluffed. And I liked it that way. He came at you straight, hard and fast.

  Well, in business anyway. Not like I’d ever know how he played it otherwise. Although, every day that passed, I thought about it more and more.

  “You’re no fun,” Janeel tried again, and this time, slapped his ass with her deadly paw.

  “And neither will be prison. Not after those men know what all you did with the information you squeezed out of them, and what you’re willing to do to get that information.”