The morning sun fought through the smoke. Mina and I held hands hoping and praying the Jolley brothers had survived. My battered bouquet lay just off the pavilion. Mina picked it up and handed it to me. I smelled the flowers. They stunk of smoke but I held them to my face fighting back the tears.
We’d been forbidden to approach the buildings as the Vatican cops had it all under control. Yes, but where was Roger?
The early morning breeze lifted the smoke. I squinted, hoping it wasn’t my imagination. Two silhouettes walked slowly through the fog. It was Roger and Bram!
Mina and I ran to them. She beat me. Actually in the moment it took for me to blink away my tears, the little vampire was in Bram’s arms while I was still making my way to my husband.
Roger hoisted me into the air and spun me around, and then he fell coughing to the ground. Bram buried Mina’s face in his shoulder away from the Vatican Vampire Investigators.
Mina, Bram, Squirl, Kit, Roger and I gathered on the wedding pavilion and watched the first chopper leave with a load of monks, the whirring rotors blowing away the remaining haze. Words were unnecessary. We’d sort it out tomorrow.
A Vatican SWAT dude strode to our little group. Mina hid her face. “You folks okay?”
We nodded.
“Father Bram, we’ll need you to return to the Vatican with us.”
“I won’t be returning to Rome for a while. You can debrief me before you leave. There are folks here that need my care,” Bram said.
The VVI SWAT dude nodded then turned to Roger and me. “You folks really know how to throw a wedding.”
I would have smiled but I still had that gap in my teeth.
“The fires are all out but Carfax Abbey is gone. The Vatican will deal with the villagers.”
A small figure appeared from the rubble of the chapel. It tottered toward us like a half-squashed roach. Renfield. He was deliberately walking into the rising sun. He waved at us and blew a kiss to Mina.
Mina stood with her hand outstretched as if to reach for Renfield, but he was gone in a poof before her fingers could uncurl. “Renfield was a vampire?”
I patted her shoulder. There was no need to tell her that the abbot was her father or that she was conceived in a night of wild sex between a gypsy girl and a priest. It was enough for her to know her mentor sucked.
***
Roger, Kit, and I were on the weekly flight back to Miami without luggage. Most of our possessions were lost in the monastery fire. They were just things. We had each other and Little Roger was on the way. I smiled at the guys and lay my head back for a long snooze.
Mina and Bram were engaged. The wedding was to occur as soon as he could muster out of his religious vows. They were planning to hold a quiet ceremony in a dark quiet corner of the world.
We promised Squirl we’d return to the Van Helsing for our anniversary. We just didn’t tell her which one.
I still wondered about Mrs. MacGuffin’s predictions. “You will find your home though it will not be where you left it.” The riddle continued to puzzle me as Roger and I set up housekeeping in my condo and waited for the birth of our son.
***
Roger hugged me, a smudge of blue nursery paint on his nose. I placed the blue baby booties from Mrs. MacGuffin in the suitcase as we headed to the hospital birthing wing. Little Roger Jolley, Jr. would wear them home in honor of his psychic fairy godmother. We would be a happily-ever-after family of three.
Epilogue
I gazed from our cottage window, the green rolled on until it touched a bend in the road along the Thames just below the horizon. At that bend, I could make out Roger’s Range Rover on his way home.
It was exactly two years and six months since we became parents. I heard a clomp, clomp, clomp coming down the hall.
“Wendy Darlin-Jolley, bring mommy’s shoes back and put your cat mummies away before your daddy gets home.”
Wendy Darlin Tomb Raider ~ Box Set
Until last year Wendy Darlin was a full-time real estate agent for Miami Beach millionaires. Then she met Roger Jolley, world famous archaeologist, Johnny Depp look-alike, and at times the most irritating person on the planet. Join her as she travels the globe in search of lost treasures and antiquities. She’s been told her life is like the movie Romancing the Stone but at times she feels more like Indiana Jones with boobs.
WENDY AND THE LOST BOYS ~ Book One
Real estate agent for Miami Beach millionaires, Wendy Darlin, clashes with “SEC Investigator” and world famous archaeologist, Roger Jolley. He follows her out to sea on a mega-yacht owned by Charlie Hook, a Ponzi swindler on the run from federal agents and angry investors. Despite her fear of water, she finds herself a tomb raider on the Caribbean one step ahead of modern day pirates. Will she find the Lost Boys? Will she escape Hook’s clutches? And whom will she find on Nevis Island? Oh… and is Roger a good kisser?
LONDON BROIL ~ Book Two
When we last saw Wendy Darling and Roger Jolley in WENDY AND THE LOST BOYS, they were hot on the trail of Egyptian icons stolen from the British Museum. Wendy is now in a frantic race against time and a murderer as she searches for the last Lost Boy hidden somewhere in London while a killer heat wave invades the city. Wendy is held captive over a fish ‘n’ chips shop while Roger’s life is threatened. Can Wendy escape her captors, rescue Roger, and find the missing Lost Boy before the murderer strikes again?
CAIRO CAPER ~ Book Three
Part-time tomb raider and full-time real estate broker, Wendy Darlin joins her lover, archaeologist Roger Jolley, in a quest for Cleopatra’s tomb. All they have to do is get from Cairo to the Temple of Taporisi Magna alive. Armed only with a couple of hijacked ashtrays and faced with a trek across the blazing Sahara desert can Wendy out-maneuver Russian oligarchs, a dozen Dark Force mercenaries, and Roger’s chubby ex-girlfriend in time to find the tomb and seal it before chaos erupts in Egypt?
MIAMI MUMMIES ~ Book Four
The legendary mastermind criminal and mummy thief, Kyzer Saucy, strikes again. Part-time tomb raider and full-time real estate broker, Wendy Darlin joins her lover, archaeologist Roger Jolley as they struggle to save a rare Miami mummy from the clutches of this evil genius. Can Saucy be stopped before he kills again? Meanwhile can Wendy keep her promise to Alfred Hiccup as he attempts to transmigrate from the afterlife? Or has Wendy finally made one promise too many?
This book is an homage to the great Alfred Hitchcock
who is probably turning over in his grave.
VULGARIAN VAMP ~ Book Five
You are cordially invited to the destination wedding of Wendy Darlin Tomb Raider and Doctor Roger Jolley, world-renowned archaeologist to be held at the Van Helsing Resort and Spa in Loutish, Vulgaria. In lieu of wedding gifts please bring whole garlic buds. The ceremony will begin once the forty bloodless monks are contained in Carfax Abbey. This is the fifth book in the Wendy Darlin Tomb Raider series.
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Barbara Silkstone is the best-selling author of:
Wendy Darlin Tomb Raider series:
Wendy and the Lost Boys
London Broil
Cairo Caper
Miami Mummies
Vulgarian Vamp
Romantic Suspense Comedy series
The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters
Wendy and the Lost Boys
London Broil
Zo White and the Seven Morphs
Cold Case Morphs.
Adventures of a Love Investigator
Sample: Wendy and the Lost Boys
Chapter One
Sometimes the journey you set out on is not the one you return from.
I lay on my stom
ach on Belgian cream-colored sheets in my suite on the 370-foot yacht rocking in the waters somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. I had finished a pitcher of screwdrivers before the sun came up and was feeling woozy. As I dozed in my bikini, something jumped on my back. I tried to fight it off, rolled over, and found myself looking at a giant tongue and two beady eyes. It was like being married again.
All six feet of Hook’s bony body retreated when I brought my knee up catching him in his man-berries. He turned, rolling off the bed and abruptly slamming his johnson into the teak nightstand. His penis was huge, dark, and engorged. I was right about the blue pills in his master suite. They were erectile dysfunction drugs. Of course, with the name UpUGo, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.
“I knew you were taking that junk. Don’t waste your time,” I said to the naked old man with the flabby butt as he held himself with a panicked look on his face. “And get out of my suite. The door was locked for a reason! How’d you get in here?”
“It’s been more than four hours, Wendy,” he whimpered. “I’m still hard and it hurts like hell. Help me!” His once chiseled features hung like melted wax from his cheekbones.
“My promise to Marni to care for you did not include sex… no way… under no circumstances. That’s what you get for messing with that stuff. Just get out of my way!”
I snatched the ten-pound white hairball called Tinkerbelle from the foot of the bed and made my way to the sun deck. Hook’s Predator was a yacht on steroids. It took ten minutes to get from my suite to the upper floor. Hook had spent over $200 million of Ponzied money on this floating erection. He recited the Predator’s talents daily, like a mantra he hoped would keep away the feds, investors, and victims who wanted nothing more than to see him keelhauled.
Once on the sun deck, I reclined on a cushioned lounge chair. Tink licked my face, her Maltese dog fur tickling my nose. I wrapped her leash around my left hand and whispered into her ear, “You poor little puppy. You don’t understand we buried your mama yesterday.” The tears came. There was no holding them back.
How did I let myself get into this situation? I regretted the day I first heard Hook’s name and regretted even more the day I introduced him to Marni.
***
It started almost two years ago as what had become a normal poison-ivy-like night for me. Standing at the window of our suite at The Plaza, I gazed out over the pink and white blossoms of June in Central Park wondering when I would learn to say “no.” It was a hellacious sacrifice to drop what I was doing, leave my clients in Miami and haul up to New York to be at my husband Croc’s side as he pursued investors for his hedge fund Privateer, LLC.
I thought I’d finally found a good man when I first met James Crocowski at a fundraiser for hurricane victims. We continued to bump into each other at a series of charity events over the next few weeks. After a few months of frantic dating, I woke up in the bridal suite at the Luxor Hotel in Vegas. I was Mrs. Crocowski, the thirty-nine year-old wife of a hedge fund manager. I was ready to admit I’d made a mistake.
“How do I look?” Croc did a spin in his tux.
I turned from the window to study him. The man was an optical illusion. He looked intelligent, hardly the picture of a guy who’d just lost triple-digit millions. And obviously to him he looked primo. I bit off a really nasty comment and settled for, “Stop panting. You sound like a dog.”
“Yeah, but how great do I look? We’re going to a Charlie Hook party. It’s important.”
The name meant nothing to me. This was not a charity event, despite the embossed wording on the invitations. Croc, aka the Crocodile, was set to snare a new pool of investors with his welcoming grin and promises of extraordinary returns. I was sick to my stomach with what I suspected were his less than honest guarantees. I regretted my last minute decision to join him, torn between wifely loyalty and rat-sniffing instincts.
Dressed in my size-six little black dress that screamed designer original, while I screamed inside my head, I grabbed my velvet coat and struggled into it. My highlighted hair swung loose on my shoulders. “You look fine.”
“Didn’t I buy you some bling to wear to these events?”
I shot him my dirtiest look, feeling unclean being in the same room with him.
The doorman helped us into the hired limo, and we headed to a private party in Montclair, a city in northern New Jersey. I settled back and watched the cars rat race along.
Somewhere on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge we were sideswiped by another vehicle. First there was a thump and then a shattering crunch.
“What was that?” I yelled to our driver. The limo bounced over rough pavement, hit gravel, and came to rest against the guardrail.
Crack! A gun shot and then another ricocheted off the front right fender in a splash of sparks.
Croc threw his weight against the limo door but it didn’t open. I yanked his sleeve. “Don’t leave me here, you chicken-shit!”
We were still struggling when a tall thin man reeking of cologne and cigars got into the front passenger seat. He aimed a large gun at my husband. “Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off.”
I pegged his accent as Russian.
My precious mate tried for the door again, knocking me in the ribs with his right elbow.
The Russian flashed me a quizzical look. “You married this coward?”
“I was drunk at the time.”
He smirked. “I could never get that drunk.”
“Nobody asked you,” Croc snapped. His smart mouth was about to get us both killed.
I put my hands in the air and slid into the far corner of the car trying to fold into the upholstery.
The limo driver sat stone still, almost blasé.
“We told you three weeks. You have until Monday. Ninety-three million dollars,” the Russian said.
“I promise 18% on your money if you wait until Thursday!”
Had my husband lost his mind? Facing a gun he negotiates interest rates?
The Russian cut his eyes to me and left the car.
Croc exhaled in a whoosh. “I guess they want their money back.”
“Give it to them.”
“I don’t have it. We had operating expenses.”
It dawned on me. “Are you involved in a Ponzi?”
“No, it’s a creative new-age investment opportunity and my tireless efforts are under appreciated.” He avoided eye contact and stepped out of the car.
“Doesn’t this shake you up?” I asked the driver as I dialed 911 on the car phone. “By the way, shut off the engine.”
“Lady, welcome to the new Wall Street. You get used to it after a while.” He yawned.
Outside the limo, Croc puffed on a cigarette. I’d never seen him smoke before. There was a lot I didn’t know about this man I married after I’d downed three bottles of champagne. Drink in haste. Repent in leisure. I put my head back and closed my eyes. It was time to see a lawyer.
The police arrived in less than ten minutes. By then Croc had disappeared. Maybe he walked off into the night or maybe the Russians decided not to wait until Monday. Either way, my wish had been granted. I was Croc-less.
Along with the details of the mugging, I filed a missing person’s report then went back to the Plaza and did a happy dance in our suite. My husband had abandoned me. Confirming my morning flight back to Miami, I changed rooms and for safety’s sake registered under my maiden name… Wendy Darlin.
Chapter Two
Five months later, Kit and I were pigging out on stone crabs and Bloody Marys at Joe’s Stone Crabs. A November day in Miami is perfect al fresco weather. Kit is my nail tech and consigliere. I tell him everything. Sometimes I listen to his advice. We were talking about my recent divorce.
“You’re well rid of him. Croc could have cost you your life.”
“I wasn’t cut out for marriage. Being financially responsible for his unpredictable actions was driving me crazy. It was only a matter of time before I was
slaughtered or sued.”
Kit stretched his long legs and yawned. “I don’t know how you straight people do it… live in such close quarters.”
“Remember how crazy I was that first week after the final decree? I couldn’t wait to get away from him. I flew off shedding my possessions like feathers from a molting bird. I wanted to be free of everything that smelled, tasted, or felt like Croc.”
He laughed. “Not going to make that marriage mistake again, are you?”
“Nope. I live snug in my little condo on the beach. There’s no room in my life for a man. My closet’s too small.”
“Your teeny closet gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
I took a big swallow of my Bloody Mary before I spoke. “I wonder about Croc. It’s hard to imagine his huge ego would allow him to disappear into thin air. And I can’t help wonder how that idiot talked investors into parting with their money.”
Kit fiddled with the Tabasco, spicing his drink just this side of combustion. “He talked you into marrying him.”
I cracked a big claw and dipped it in the mustard sauce. “I had an excuse. I’ll never get that tipsy again.”
“Three of my salon clients went wonkers over their investment losses last week. They collapsed into crying fits while I was doing their nails. People aren’t coping well with the financial meltdown.”
He took a slow, easy swig from his glass and then asked, “What exactly is a Ponzi scheme?”
“A scam where a crook, a big kahuna, gets investment capital from Client A by promising him fat returns – like 20% – then gets Client B the same way, using his money to pay off Client A, making it look like he’s delivering on the investment promise. Then he needs Client C, D, and E to keep the circle of payoffs and influx of new cash going… you get the picture. It’s a ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ that never ends. At some point, that big kahuna gets caught, but not before he’s ruined the lives of many, many people.”
Vulgarian Vamp (A Wendy Darlin Comedy Mystery Book 5) Page 14
