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

by Scott, D. D.

Once snuggled along the edge of the cozy cash fabric lining the floors of the suite’s gorgeous study, our pot-bellied and very pampered pig was now nibbling on the stunning white orchids contained within one of the most gorgeous antique, wooden planter boxes I’d ever seen.

  “No-No,” I gently but firmly disciplined our little swine sweetheart.

  “I’m thinking you might want to up the ante a bit there, Mom,” Roman said, pausing from his photo-taking to take-in Vinnie’s attempt at a late afternoon snack.

  “Not according to my research. Pigs only respond well to positive reinforcement. When he’s exhibiting good behavior, we’ve got to use praise and treats, and when he’s not so good, we use the technique I just demonstrated.”

  “Too bad that doesn’t work on you.”

  I didn’t even dignify that dig with a comeback, instead giving Roman my best eat-shit roll of the eyes then went back to Pot-Bellied Pig Discipline 101.

  ‘Course that wasn’t gonna work since Vinnie was now missing.

  But ohhhhhh…what a schmoozer.

  Here he came, around from behind the bar with a bottle of beer between his teeth.

  “Now that’s some kind of positive reinforcement, My Little Man,” Roman said giving Vinnie an ‘ole atta boy on the head to which he received extra loud ouffs.

  “Damn. They really can learn to open refrigerators,” I said, knowing the beer had to have come from the mini-fridge in the wet bar across the room.

  I made a mental note to pig-proof the refrigerators, cupboards, pantry, and wherever else food may be lurking in our suite. Vinnie’s quest for food was his unrelenting mission in life.

  I pulled out the bag of treats I now kept close-by whenever we were around Vinnie, but debated before I pulled-out one.

  I certainly didn’t want to reward him for bringing his Dad a beer, but then again, I didn’t want him thinking the royal-crested lager was his reward.

  A wee bit jealous that only Roman and the beer had gotten one of Vinnie’s too cute and very satisfied ouffs, I shrugged, then tossed him an apple slice.

  I had just tucked the treat bag back into my pants pocket and Roman had resumed his photography when his cell phone rang.

  An uneasy quiver ricocheted through my stomach.

  Maybe, to prepare for my new Bond Girl role, I’d been reading way too much Donovan Creed lately. But just like Donovan, I was learning to dread any phone anywhere once it started ringing.

  I kept my hands and my mind busy by focusing on the string of glass beads forming the statement-piece baubles I wore around my neck. Hell, I was caressing ‘em as if they were rosary beads, and I wasn’t Catholic, or my Buddhist mala bracelet, which was sort of close to my life’s guiding principles. But hey, when you’ve been raised in Toyland by Mr. and Mrs. C, you have all kinds of strange belief systems. So the fact I was a wee bit philosophically confused was normal…for me.

  What wasn’t normal was the look on Roman’s face, which had quickly gone from happy as his pig to one animal who must be feeling backed into a corner and seriously trapped.

  My prince’s dark-side was back…in full force and in full view.

  John Locke’s Donovan Creed was right. You’re always just a phone call away from a life-changing event.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I just can’t believe it. Shit,” Roman said, shoving his phone into his white linen pants pockets while he took-up pacing the tile floors. “Hell yes I can. But I can’t. Damn. You know what I mean?”

  Not sure I did but wanting to be supportive of my future husband, I simply nodded and waited for an explanation.

  He finally stopped pacing and looked at me. But within seconds, his frantic pacing continued. Finally, he started talking.

  “Ross found the discarded laptop…in Sonja’s countryside villa’s trash. Just as you thought he might,” Roman continued, as I swear, he was about to walk-off the brilliant wax coating on the floors.

  “Well that’s good, right? Maybe we’ll be able to figure out what all these numbers connect to,” I said, clueless as to why Roman would be Dark Knight-ready over such terrific news.

  “That is good. Very good. But they’ve got Ross.”

  Oh boy. Not so good. Although I didn’t much care for the guy, I sure didn’t want to see him get hurt…or worse. And the fact I had to always think the “worse” part now really had my stomach in sailors’ knots.

  “But who’s ‘they’?”

  “Raj.”

  “I thought Raj was awaiting his sentencing in New York?”

  With that, Roman let out a very low, very dark and beyond exasperated groan.

  “The Judge only required home detention and electronic monitoring of the son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Oh.”

  “Right. Oh,” Roman mimicked me, but not to be nasty, I was certain, just out of frustration. “As if a twisted shitbag like Raj isn’t going to find a security company employee to pay-off.”

  “That’s like thinking the former IMF Chairman will stick around ‘til the courts decide whether they have the means to go after him for rape. If he can buy his freedom, so can a guy like Raj.”

  Roman didn’t say anything, but I could tell from the pleased look on his face, he appreciated my line of thinking.

  “Well, it’s time Raj and I have a showdown in the ring.”

  “Ahhh. I read the guy is into sports and military metaphors.”

  Roman laughed, one pent-up, ultimate fighter-worthy outburst.

  “He thinks he’s a warrior. Some prize fighter like Ali. And he also hates to lose. Well…every prize fighter’s got to lose at some point.”

  “I take it this is about to be Raj’s some point?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Where are they holding Ross?”

  “At the gelato shop.”

  “Why the gelato shop? Why would they go back to the scene of another crime?”

  “Because they want to do-in Ross like they did-in my grandfather.”

  “Why would that matter?”

  “They want to take down my family, one-by-one, all in the same way.”

  “So Ross is…”

  “My brother,” Roman said, giving me a please forgive me, puppy dog plea.

  “He’s gonna be my brother-in-law?”

  “If he lives that long.”

  I didn’t have the heart to say he stood a better chance of living at the hands of the mob than he did with me as his sister-in-law.

  But who knows. Maybe after I help save his sorry ass, he’ll be a little more tolerable to be around.

  Vinnie started screaming and shaking his head back and forth in wild, exaggerated movements.

  Yeah. I doubt it too, Vinnie.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Criminalists follow the evidence.

  But I bet their evidence doesn’t normally come in the form of chiffon, silk, and gelato.

  And even if the crime scene techs knew to look in The Royal House of Savoy’s gelato shop, they weren’t going to find anything. The place was wiped clean.

  There wasn’t one piece of forensics anything I could see to even suggest this was a recent crime scene, let alone anything to identify a perp or connect anyone to a crime.

  As usual, there were tons of gelato tubs in pristine coolers, inside a postcard-perfect shop to eat it in, but not a single customer or dirty scoop to be found.

  On our drive to the shop, and this time we took an entire fleet of dark SUVs, Roman and R explained to me what we were getting into in order to save my future brother-in-law and his trash-picked laptop.

  “So let me see if I got this right. Unlike McCall, who could sleep well knowing regulators didn’t yet have a clue how to handle Ponzi schemes, Raj was big-time crapping his pants because the S.E.C. knows how to prosecute insider trading cases,” I said, putting my analysis out there for Roman and R to hopefully add some detail to.

  “Well done, Plum Puddin’,” Roman said.

  “Not since the Boesky case
s in the 80s has insider trading been such a big deal both on and off Wall Street,” R added. “And thanks to the internet and today’s multi-media world, millions more people the world over now know their worst fears have been confirmed.”

  “What fears are those?”

  “That the financial industry and the trading done in it is rigged and always has been,” Roman said, without a smidgeon of room for any doubt to coat his conviction.

  “What exactly is insider trading?” I asked, not sure I really knew and wanting their official take on it.

  “Ahhh…the million dollar plus question,” R said, puffing on his cigar, as if it were normal to smoke a stogie on the way to save a prince and take a few others out while doing so.

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Roman said, a small crack of a smile flavoring his cold and calculated tone.

  “Some say, as the Supreme Court tried to summarize pornography, you know it when you see it,” R cut-in, between stogie hits.

  “But don’t let ‘em fool ya. If they do know it, they do their best not to admit they’ve seen it,” Roman said, tightening his grip on the oh-shit handle attached to the ceiling above his side of the backseat.

  Now that we were damn near travelling at hydrofoil speeds through the streets of Positano, I grabbed hold of my crap handle too.

  “Legally, it’s not as simple as ‘you know it when you see it’. Thus, guys like McCall and Raj can bilk multi-millions from the market without anyone knowing for decades. But insider trading goes something like this…generally someone buys or sells a security, in breach of a relationship of trust and confidence, while in possession of material that is nonpublic scoop about that security.”

  Leave it to Roman to give some sort of intellectual, official definition.

  R laughed then offered-up, “Yes, that’s what the S.E.C. says on their website, but, in the financial industry it’s a ton more grey than that.”

  “You mean green,” Roman joked.

  “That too,” R agreed, producing super cool rings of cigar smoke that looked very old-world Hollywood glam while he hit a corner on nothin’ but two wheels. “Just think Martha Stewart. That’s insider trading. You get a phone call or email with a tip, and you trade based on it.”

  “Most people accused of insider trading make deals with The Feds, like Raj did, but the Raj’s of this world have a lot more to worry about than The Feds,” Roman said just as our SUV pulled into the small piazza in front of the gelato shop.

  I bet they do, I thought, catching the glint of Tuscan sun ricocheting off Roman’s gun as he opened the door. He stepped out and waited for me to exit his side of the vehicle where more of his soldiers were already providing additional cover.

  “Raj’s deal is kill or be killed, right?”

  Roman never answered me just tilted his head at an angle indicating I could very well be onto something quite close to reality. I was well aware of his pre-hit posture and quirks. And that’s what I was lookin’ at once again.

  “Time to take out our little Gekko,” Roman said in a low, very dark voice.

  It’s not every day you meet the Gordon Gekko’s of the underworld in a gelato shop. I had the distinct feeling, however, that this Gekko’s little birdie wasn’t gonna be sharing anymore inside scoop, unless it came from the barrel of a big gun or a gelato scoop bashed over his noggin’.

  Chapter Nineteen

  What I didn’t count on was death by limoncello.

  But that’s what Raj was apparently about to be served. Or at least that’s what it looked like to me when I walked into The Royal House of Savoy’s gelato paradise.

  There sat Raj, and I knew it was him from the research I’d done regarding his trial. He was surrounded by the best security money could buy a royal family. And they were all holding glass bottles of limoncello to Raj’s mosaic investing head.

  Good thing Raj preferred to do business imitating the tiny glass shards making up the finest mosaics in the art world, ‘cause he was about to have a gazillion pieces smashed over his thick head of oil-rich black hair.

  “Where is he?” Roman asked, not wasting any time before sitting down in the empty chair next to Raj and beginning his interrogation. “I’m only going to ask you once.”

  Raj may be a cucumber cool securities player, but I got the feeling he wasn’t too into playing with the likes of Dark Guy Knights like Roman and his bottle-wielding entourage.

  The schmuck was a ball of beaded-up sweat and wrinkled silk suit, anxiously eyeing the bottles of lemon liqueur aimed at his frontal lobes.

  “You know, Raj, there’s only one thing a guy, like me, likes to hear less than information that guys, like you, have mismanaged my money. Do you want to know what that one thing less is?”

  Raj’s eyes widened, which must have meant he was listening, because Roman continued.

  “That one thing less is that you’re fucking with my family.”

  Still nothing from Raj except another drop of sweat from his bangs onto the bistro table at which he was held hostage.

  “Have it your way then,” Roman said, his voice still calm and in a tone sounding as if he was simply excusing himself from dinner with a friend.

  He got up from his seat, left the table and whispered into his main soldier’s ear before then coming to stand beside R and me.

  “No wait…,” Raj squeaked like a mouse seeing a shitload of cats about to pounce.

  “Let’s hope you make the wait worth my while,” Roman said.

  “And mine,” said a very controlled Godfather like voice coming from behind us.

  I turned in the direction of The Godfather, then, noticing neither Roman nor R shared my curiosity, turned back around to face Raj while Roman’s grandfather Vitto decided to join us, apparently after rising from the dead, and now standing, once again, next to his grandson.

  “How did ya’ll pull that off? I thought Vitto was…”

  “The AbP ID test,” R whispered.

  “ADD what?!” I asked, apparently louder than I’d planned to.

  Roman coughed in what I was sure was a cover-up for his uncontrolled guffaw at my interpretation of R’s acronym.

  “It may be ADD for you, Princess, but in our world it’s AbP . And don’t worry, I’ll explain it on our way home,” Roman said, before turning back to Raj and his limoncello death squad.

  “So what’s it gonna be, Raj?” Vitto asked. “You can tell me where my other grandson is or make me and my boys here force it outta ya. Your choice. But either way, I hope you like lemons.”

  Vitto’s making lemonade out of lemons joke got a hearty round of laughs.

  From everyone…except Raj.

  “I’ll tell you where your grandson is,” Raj “The Mouse” Kumartnam said with more determination and guts than we’d seen and heard from him so far. “But you’ll never find the laptop.”

  “You bastard,” Vitto growled, yanking a bottle out of his nearest soldier’s hands and cracking it against Raj’s arm.

  Glass and lemon liqueur sprayed throughout the gelato shop.

  “I’ve already got your damn computer. Now tell me what you’ve done with my grandson.”

  Raj shook in his seat, fragments of broken glass dripping off his head along with tiny droplets of blood from the myriad of cuts he’d sustained.

  “Please. Please. Okay. Okay. The burn bag. Ross is in the burn bag at my villa.”

  AbP s and now burn bags? What happened to my Gomorrah world where vics were just shoved in their trunks?

  Vitto and Roman looked at each other until one soldier interrupted their silent conversation, “What do ya want us to do with this piece of shit, Boss?”

  “Save him,” Roman ordered.

  “We might need him later,” Vitto added.

  “R and I got Ross,” Roman said to his grandfather. “Can you…”

  “Yes, I’ve got Zoey,” Vitto said, taking me by the elbow and leading me out the back door of the gelato shop.

  I thought we were into
front doors now. But evidently that had changed too.

  Vitto got me settled into another dark SUV before giving my driver orders to take me back to Le SirenMuse.

  “Where will you be?” I asked him, not one bit okay with someone from The Royal House not being with me in my car.

  Vitto tapped my brooch and smiled, then disappeared into one of the waiting sedans in our line-up.

  Not more than a couple minutes later, my brooch crackled and sputtered to life.

  “I’m sorry about what you had to see back there, My Princess,” Vitto’s soft, once more grandfatherly voice filled the brooch’s speaker system. “Sometimes, more than one’s financial resources must be used to defend his family.”

  “Yeah. I’m getting that. But how is that you still have a family to defend? We thought you were dead.”

  A soft laugh filled Vitto’s throat and echoed through my brooch.

  “No-No, my dear. You were the only one who thought I was dead.”

  “Why does that not surprise me? Seems like I’m always the last to know everything in our little family.”

  “But that’s only so that my grandson can protect his future queen.”

  “We’ll deal with the Queenie bit later,” I said, deciding it was much healthier for my withering sanity to tackle the understanding of one dead-end job at a time.

  “So why don’t you fill me in on how it is that you were shot multiple times and somehow survived.”

  “Just like in Hollywood, My Princess. Body doubles.”

  “So someone actually did die, but that someone just looked like you and wasn’t actually you?”

  “Probably a reasonable analysis.”

  “Did Roman and Granny V now about this?” I asked, because ever since I thought Vitto had been eliminated, I’d been amazed by just how stoic both Roman and Granny V had remained.

  Stoic should be The Royal House of Savoy’s middle name or at least their mob street-names. Something along the lines of Roman “The Stoic” Bellesconi.

  The street-name for all the Bellesconis but Granny V. With the size her lips, she always looked as if she were pouting. So, in her case, who knew how she really felt about anything. There was waaay too much plastic there to differentiate between emotions.