“You knew his flaws. You knew his weaknesses. He was your brother. Paula was your niece.” My voice broke, and I felt the loss of those two for a moment as if they were my own kin.
Poe looked at Marsh, still standing armed and attentive beside me. Then his eyes returned to mine and he said, “I’d warned him. He knew. There is nothing I prize above loyalty. And family is the bedrock of that virtue. A disloyal family member is worse than betrayal by an outsider.”
“What about Paula? She didn’t do a damn thing to deserve what she got.”
“That was unfortunate, but necessary, after she witnessed her father’s fate.”
The pain in my head had returned full force, and my stomach was roiling. I felt sick. I was sick of talking to this murderous sociopath. I wanted to unleash Marsh.
But I had one more question that I needed an answer to. “I saw Angelique leave the room. I followed her, and then I went directly back there and found Bobby’s body. Was someone else in the room? Angelique couldn’t have snuck back in to hit me, there wasn’t time.”
Poe answered simply, “Family takes care of family.”
There it was.
He’d murdered his brother and niece with his own hands. Angelique had been there only as a lookout. He’d been in the room when I returned, and he’d been the one who delivered the blow to my head.
It was a huge risk on his part, but he probably thought it was his duty.
His obligation to make things right, to even the score, to make amends for the failures of his family, his own brother.
I wondered, at that moment, when he pointed the gun at Bobby, what he felt. When he sighted Paula in the crosshairs, just before he fired a bullet into her head, as she stood trembling and confused, did he feel nothing?
Had he extinguished all human feeling, sublimating them to his own selfish purposes? Or had they been stunted in the first place, never developing when he was a boy?
I didn’t know and, right then, didn’t care.
“Now what?” I said, feeling unsteady on my feet.
“Answered all your questions?”
I shrugged. “What about Leslie and the rest of the men that were involved?”
“Leslie,” he glanced down at the Rolex watch on his wrist, “committed suicide about thirty minutes ago. A sad case. He was despondent over his lover’s death and the fact that he was deeply in debt.”
“What do you mean—” Jewel cried out.
“Silence,” Poe said. “As for the three other gentlemen, other than Carlos here, who was quite successful playing blackjack at one of my tables, they’ve disappeared. Rather permanently. I doubt anything will ever be heard from any of them again.”
“Oh shit,” Carlos mumbled. He grabbed the couch with his hands and started to lift himself up, but Rex shoved him back down and forced the barrel of the gun against his neck.
“We’re both going to disappear too. You’ll never hear from us again. I did everything you asked. Carlos did too. Just give us the money you promised, and you won’t ever see hide nor hair of us again.” Jewel’s voice pitched high, balancing on a razor’s edge of hysteria.
“You want more of my money,” Poe said, flatly.
“It’s what you told me you were going to do, soon as everything worked out right for you. You promised. And you got most of your money back, all that I had still. Please.” A muscle began trembling in her cheek. “You don’t have to give us any money at all.”
I looked from her panicked face back to Poe in time to see him nod his chin toward Art and Rex, who already had their guns pointed.
A moment later, two virtually simultaneous explosions rocked the room as bullets penetrated opposite sides of Jewel and Carlos’s heads.
Carlos pitched sideways, a gush of blood spraying across Jewel’s face as she tumbled forward onto the floor.
Marsh pedaled back, crouching into a shooting position. I ducked down behind the desk and took my own gun out of the side holster.
My heart was in my head and vice versa.
Jewel’s blood-streaked, shocked-eyed face flashed over and over again in my mind. I clutched my gun. Marsh put his hand on my back and said, “Steady.”
That didn’t make me feel better. I took a deep breath through my nose, pictured the location of all the players, planning the next move, the right step.
“Gentlemen,” Poe said. “Don’t over react.”
No. Wouldn’t want to do that. No reason to worry.
A double murder is no reason to panic.
“You’re armed. So are we. It’s a standoff. Let’s see if we can come to an understanding before we suffer more loss of life.”
Marsh leaned in, pressing his lips against my ear. “I can take out Art and Rex with two shots. Do you think you can handle Poe?”
While I was considering that proposition, Poe said something that completely changed the equation.
“Angelique,” he said, “could you bring Ms. Alexandra in?”
Thirty-Nine
I stood up to find Alexandra in the doorway, Angelique right behind her.
Angelique had an AK-47 strapped over her shoulder and a knife at Alex’s throat as she pushed her over the threshold and into the room.
Poe turned to Art and said, “Seal us in.”
Art stepped over Jewel’s body and moved to a table with a lamp on top of it, fronting one of the glass walls overlooking San Francisco Bay.
He knelt on the floor and reached under the table and flicked a switch.
Suddenly, the whole room shook, and solid steel walls appeared out of sheaths hidden somewhere in the room’s joist structures.
The walls moved slowly, accompanied by a low hum, a funereal sound in my ears, proceeding from opposite sides of the room until they touched at the entryway, sealing tight, closing us off from the outside world.
Poe smiled. “It’s kind of a safe room. Nothing can get in or out now, without my approval.”
Despite his reassurance, I didn’t feel safer in the slightest.
I was watching Alexandra, who was looking at Jewel and Carlos’s lifeless bodies with horror on her face. Still, she seemed relatively composed despite the knife at her throat.
“So,” Poe continued, “most of the loose ends have been tied up. The guilty have received their just punishment. There’s just you, Plank. What to do about you.”
I looked from Alexandra back to Poe, studying him, trying to figure out what he was after now. Was he afraid I was going to go to the police? What evidence did I have?
Everyone involved in the scam was dead. There were no witnesses. Marsh and I had just witnessed cold-blooded murder in the first degree. Poe and Art and Rex deserved the electric chair, but I assumed Jewel and Carlos’s bodies were going to disappear and were unlikely ever to be found.
Poe was going to pay someday. I was going to do my best to see that he did.
“Don’t forget about little old me,” Marsh said. “I hate being ignored.”
“No. You’re difficult to overlook.” He stepped back and brought his hand to his chin and rubbed it, like he was thinking about some perplexing problem.
“Rex, come relieve our visitors of their weapons.”
“Rex,” Marsh said, “I wouldn’t move a muscle if I were you.”
Rex stayed put, looking to Poe for help.
“Gentlemen, I believe what I have is an ace high strait, to put it in gamblers’ parlance. Are you willing to forfeit this lovely woman’s life right now?”
Poe nodded toward Angelique, who pressed the curved edge of her knife against Alex’s throat until a small spot of blood appeared. Alexandra groaned, trying to wriggle free, but Angelique held her tight, an arm wrapped around her shoulders.
“If you hurt her—” I said.
“Your guns. On the desk.”
I placed mine in the middle of the desk and looked at Marsh. He put both of his beside mine.
Rex ambled over.
“Search them,” Poe said.
Rex patted us
down, finding my knife in the process. He removed it from its sheath on my shin. He showed it to Poe, who nodded. He took the knife and guns with him and dumped them on the floor next to Jewel’s body.
“Unfortunately, I do like Alexandra. You don’t deserve her, Plank.” He paused, shaking his head, affecting a sad expression. “But I feel that you need to learn a lesson. I warned you back when you broke into my home a couple of years ago that I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of violation again.”
The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck felt alive with electricity. The bottom was dropping out of my gut. There was only one way he could punish me profoundly without killing me.
But didn’t he know what would happen if he tried that? Didn’t he know he’d have to kill me anyway?
“Angelique,” he said.
“Don’t!” I cried.
Angelique angled her body and tightened the grip on Alex’s shoulders, steadying her, quieting her struggle. She clenched her teeth and the knife quivered, then—
A blade appeared out of nowhere, wavering from where it had stuck in the side of Angelique’s throat. Her hands dropped away, her own knife clattered to the floor, and she clutched her throat with both hands, blood trickling around her fingers. She stepped back unsteadily, fell to her knees, and sat on her haunches, gasping for breath.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Alexandra stood shocked still, her hands grasping her own neck, reassuring herself that it was safe and sound.
I knew Marsh had thrown the knife that he’d somehow managed to hide from Rex.
I rushed forward just as Alex was stumbling toward me, pulling her into my chest, diving to the floor with her cradled in my arms.
A bullet whizzed above my hand, shattering plaster on the wall a few feet away. Alex and I crab-crawled the couple of feet to the relative safety of the desk.
Marsh, using the desk as a shield, was firing a small snub-nosed revolver.
Bullets were flying overhead and hitting the desk, exploding splinters of wood all around us. We were trapped with only Marsh’s little gun to protect us. I wasn’t sure what kind it was, but it couldn’t hold more than maybe eight or ten rounds. He’d fired at least six.
He fired another, and I heard a man cry out. It sounded like Art.
The firing stopped then. Rex called out, “Boss?”
I pushed Alex further behind the desk and then leaned forward around the side, back toward where Angelique had been kneeling, injured, bleeding.
Poe was kneeling over her prone body. He was holding his hand over the knife wound. I saw her chest rising and falling.
I’d never seen him look so panicked. So stricken with grief.
“Open the walls. Now!” he screamed.
Rex scurried over, scrambling, looking nervously at the desk. I put my hand on Marsh’s arm. Rex snaked his hand under the table, and the steel doors began sliding open.
“Help me carry her out. Call Dr. Wiseman. Tell him to send a private ambulance. Then come back and seal the place up again the way I showed you.”
Poe turned, found me watching him. “Go. The same way you came in. Now!”
Then he turned back, stood up, and he and Rex awkwardly carried the groaning Angelique out of the room.
Alexandra, Marsh, and I, not needing any further encouragement, hurried to the elevator and got the hell out.
Forty
TWO MONTHS LATER
CHRISTMAS EVE
There couldn’t have been a better place for a wedding than the middle of San Francisco Bay on Dao and Meiying’s beautiful yacht, Sweet and Sour.
While Alexandra danced with Tommy and Meiying with Marsh, I sat at a corner table by myself.
During the ceremony, seeing Alexandra, who was, more or less, the best woman and ring holder, standing next to the couple as they stated their vows, I was overwhelmed with emotion. She looked so beautiful, and I thought again about how close I’d come to losing her that terrible night.
It turned out that no one else had died in Poe’s office. Angelique had survived and fully recovered.
Whatever setup Poe had with the private doctor he had on his payroll, all of what happened that night had stayed out of the public eye.
I assumed there’d been a clean-up crew and that Jewel and Carlos’s bodies were buried deep somewhere where they’d never be found, just like Leslie, whose “suicide” was reported in the paper.
Marsh had only grazed Art’s shoulder with his bullet, so he’d be fine too.
Poe had called me about a week after that night to tell me about Angelique.
He actually apologized for what he’d almost done to Alexandra, claiming that the whole affair had cast him into a terrible, violent state of mind.
I didn’t accept his apology. I did tell him I was glad that Angelique was going to be alright.
I still owe him one, though I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to get him to face the justice that he deserves.
Tommy and Meiying, working together, had turned all three decks of the boat into a wedding wonderland, festooned with flowers and balloons and festive nettings and streamers and other decorations beyond my powers of description.
The groom had looked resplendent in a blue tuxedo.
As had the other groom.
They were a hunky pair.
Tommy was younger, more innocent, but totally in love with Marsh.
He’d made that clear in his toast, which had Marsh blushing, not an easy feat. Marsh had been more restrained in his own little speech, but he’d made clear his affection for Tommy, who basked in the glow of it all.
Meiying left Marsh on the dance floor to go back to her job as Mistress of Ceremonies. Next up, I understood, was the cutting of the cake.
Marsh wandered over and plopped himself down beside me.
“I am happy for you, buddy. Tommy’s great.”
Marsh didn’t respond. Not for a long time. I figured it was just more of the same. He couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge any true feelings he had.
“He’s dying,” Marsh said, finally.
I turned to him. “What?”
“It’s in his pancreas. He’s got probably only a few months. Maybe a little more, if he’s lucky. Although I don’t know if you’d call that luck.”
“Oh, Marsh,” I said.
“This,” Marsh waved at the boat, all the elaborate wedding pomp and circumstance, “was his dream.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“His dream is me,” Marsh whispered. “Can you imagine that?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I can.”
“I’ve got to go. I think we’re cutting the cake.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, gripped it for a moment, then got up and left.
Frankie raced over and tumbled into my lap.
I held her tight against my chest. She mumbled against me, “This guy Nicky keeps asking me to dance.”
“Good. That’s good, Frankie.”
“I don’t know. I like him. But I don’t know.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
She pulled back and looked into my eyes. “I can’t wait for tomorrow. I’ve never even been on a plane.”
I smiled at her. We were going to Hawaii, finally. It wasn’t going to be that romantic trip I’d initially planned. Alexandra had always felt uncomfortable leaving Frankie behind.
And I was good with that now too. I was looking forward to showing the both of them my favorite places in Kauai.
I’d made sure to make amends, to give Alexandra and Frankie all the attention and time I could muster the past couple of months. They both seemed happier with me,, and I was good with that. I hadn’t taken another case since then, had turned down a couple of offers.
I wasn’t ready, but I knew that would change eventually.
Alexandra plopped down beside me, and Frankie moved to her, settling in her lap.
“What did you think of the wedding?”
“Beautiful,” I said.
“Yeah. Wasn’t it though?”
I nodded.
“I think, no matter what Marsh says, that Tommy is really good for him. I think Marsh cares more than he lets on.”
I closed my eyes, but that didn’t stop a tear or two from escaping.
“What’s wrong?” Alexandra said.
“Nothing,” I said. “I guess I’m just so happy for them.”
Alexandra gave me a look, but I didn’t respond.
I didn’t want to spoil Tommy’s dream.
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Author Note
Hello Dear Reader,
You made it to the end of the book and I hope you enjoyed the journey.
Thanks for giving me your valuable time. I surely appreciate it.
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Also by robert bucchianeri
Stray Cat Blues (Max Plank 1)
The Ties That Bind (Max Plank 2)
Mystery Thriller Triple Pack
Between a Smile and a Tear
Ransom Dreams
Acapella Blues
Love Stings
About the Author
Robert Bucchianeri is the author of the Max Plank Mystery Series along with the suspense thriller, Between a Smile and a Tear, the psychological thriller, Ransom Dreams, the rock n’roll mystery, Acapella Blues, as well as the sunlit noir, Love Stings. He is also the author of the novella, Jet: The Fortress, an espionage thriller. Along with his wife, son, and wonder dog, Buddy, he resides, mostly, on Cape Cod.
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