Vacation to Die For

by Josie Brown

  Dominic must think so, too, now that Julie is proving to be such an amenable consolation prize. Good enough. As far as I’m concerned, his next heart attack is her problem.

  I snap my fingers at the waiter. “Vodka martini, please.”

  The bartender nods. “One of our guests has started a new trend. We call it ‘the Dominic.’ It has three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, over ice and with a twist of lemon.”

  Aw hell, why not. I quit slamming my head on the bar just long enough to give him a nod.

  “Would you like that shaken, or stirred?”

  I yank him closer by his bowtie. “Do I look like I give a damn?”

  He takes the hint, and hands me a bottle of Skyy 90 instead.

  Good boy. Let the guzzling begin. But I’ve got no cash for a tip. I’d leave him the Omega, but it is property of the National Bank of Acme.

  Jack leans against the bar beside me. “Who was that on the phone?”

  I lick the vodka trickling from the corner of my mouth. Too late. It’s already made a wet spot on the front of my dress. Will the sales clerk notice? It’s not like it reeks with some fruity infusion, or something. Okay, maybe some throw-up, thanks to my success in resuscitating Dominic. In fact, another couple of spills, and I can pass off this gown as a Jackson Pollock original. “It was our very dear neighbor, Penelope. She’s excited about taking you up on your invitation to dump the boys on our doorstep in the middle of our mission.”

  He grimaces. “Oh yeah, about that—”

  “What are you trying to do, Jack? Blow this mission?”

  “No, not at all. She just sounded so stressed out. And when she mentioned that she and Peter were having trouble, I thought, hey, why not be a good neighbor?”

  “You should have asked me first. I’m the lead operative here, remember?” I take another swig of vodka. “That’s what this is all about isn’t it? The fact that Ryan put me in charge as opposed to you—or for that matter, Dominic the Douche.”

  “So, you think he’s a douche?” He’s trying to sound nonchalant, but he can’t stop his lips from lifting into a smile.

  “Oh, I see now. You’re so jealous that you arranged for me to babysit the boys!”

  “You’re wrong, Donna…Okay, yes, to be perfectly honest with you, I was a wee bit jealous. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that another man finds you as beautiful and interesting and fun to have around as I do.”

  That earns him a lip lock—

  And an apology from me. When I resurface from the bliss of his kiss, I sigh. “I hope you can forgive me for buying into Dominic’s shenanigans. I was a fool, I admit it. I’m also a woman in her mid-thirties, with three kids. So sue me for being flattered that the world’s most charismatic spy asked to partner with me on a mission.”

  “You’ll just have to settle for the world’s second most charismatic spy wanting you by his side for the rest of his life.” He squeezes my hand gently. “Donna, seriously, when I said yes to Penelope, it was under the assumption that being around at least one of the kids would put you in a better frame of mind.”

  “Not if Mandrake plans on poisoning us all—or have you forgotten why we’re here in the first place? If the bacteria plague gets loose and Jeff gets ill because of it…or worse—” I can’t speak though because I’m choking on my tears. “Jack, I’m not as callous as Carl. He had no conscience about endangering anyone, let alone our children. But I can’t stand the thought of putting them in danger again.”

  He frowns. “I’ll call Penelope and tell her it was a rotten idea.”

  “No, never mind. Your heart was in the right place. And besides, Abu and Arnie have been diligent in monitoring the safety gauges.” I grab the vodka bottle in one hand, and his hand in the other. “Look, since it’s the last night we have to make wild unabashed whoopee, I’m taking you some place special.” I hold up the keys to the Aston Martin.

  His eyes light up. “I’m in!”

  We practically run out to the garage.

  There it is—the car.

  And there he is: Dominic—fogging up the windows in the throes of passion.

  He’s beaten us to the punch.

  We rock the car. Then we run off.

  Time’s a’wastin’. It won’t be long before the boys are back in town.

  Chapter 11 Are We There Yet?

  Seeing your vacation through the wide and innocent eyes of your children can be enlightening and memorable. Needless to say, don’t be surprised if you get the following questions. Here are some answers that will satisfy their curiosity:

  Question: “How do we know where we’re going?”

  Answer by being candid: “Because despite your father’s propensity to ignore her, the GPS lady is telling us how to get there.”

  Question: “I have to pee. Can we stop?”

  Answer with a hygiene warning that may save your little one’s life: “Yes, but don’t touch the toilet seat. Do what everyone else did before you and make the best of it—which means peeing on the floor.”

  Question: “Can I sleep in the bed with you and daddy?”

  Answer in a manner that won’t traumatize your child, and result in years of therapy: “Trust me, you don’t want to. Daddy hogs the covers and farts in bed and if I let him—and I won’t!—he’d be on top of me…Oh, never mind! Sure, hop in.”

  Question: “Are we there yet?”

  Answer by being precise—but firm: “No. And at the speed in which your father is going, we may never get there. In fact, we will probably still be in this car when it’s time to celebrate your sixteenth birthday, which is great because then you’ll be old enough to drive us. It will be a hell ride, but anything is better than this.”

  Granted, your child will spend the rest of the trip sobbing at the thought of all those wasted years in the back seat of your car, but it’s better than hearing him ask the same question over and over, now isn’t it?

  “Hey, can we go to the nude beach?” Jeff’s friend, Morton Smith, must think this specific page in Fantasy Island’s thirty-eight page four-color brochure opens into a centerfold because he turns it sideways.

  “Why bother? We can just watch a porn channel,” Jeff declares, without moving his eyes from the television set. “This joint has got three of them. What does ‘BSDM’ stand for?”

  Jack rips the brochure out of Morton’s hand. Then he grabs the TV remote from Jeff, and turns off the set. “Get off your cans. Go out there and be boys–you know, build a fort, or a sandcastle. Throw ice on the girls hanging by the pool.”

  I dig my nail into Jack’s palm as my way of saying, thanks but no thanks. “Cheever dear, I think what Mr. Stone is trying to say is that you should go out and enjoy the many activities Kamp KidStuff has to offer. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Did you know you can parasail, and go fishing? Why, there’s even a pirate party! They tell stories about real pirates, like Blackbeard and Jean Lafitte, while roasting marshmallows by the campfire. And there are treasure hunts—”

  Cheever falls off the couch, laughing. “What do you take us for, babies?”

  I grab Jack’s arm before he picks the kid up by the scruff of his neck and tosses him out the door. We’ve had the boys for only six hours, and already they’re driving us up a wall.

  Jack glares at Cheever. “No, in truth I’ve got you pegged as a future serial killer. Let’s see, you’ve only been here a few hours and already you’ve buried one of the other kids up to his neck in sand, and scared one of the poor counselors into thinking you were drowning so that she’d give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

  “Until she saw he was getting a boner,” Morton snickers.

  “The other boys hate them, and the counselors run in the other direction when they see them,” I mutter to Jack. “At this point, I don’t think we could pay someone to babysit them.”

  Cheever shrugs. “Toss me a Benjamin and I’ll stay out of your hair.”

  Jack snaps his fing
ers. “Hey wait. That’s not such a bad idea.”

  I shake my head. “Are you crazy? Pay them to watch themselves?”

  “Why not? In the real world, an employer would compensate them, am I right?”

  “Yes. But I don’t owe any of these slugs a living, except for this one here”—I jerk my head toward Jeff—“and only through college.”

  “That’s just the point. We’ll make it a job, and tie their pay to proven productivity.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Cheever whines. “I come from a long line of Socialists. We believe in a strong welfare state—”

  Jeff slaps his hand over his friend’s mouth. “I’ve got my eye on an iPad Mini, so shut up and let’s hear what they have to say. Go on, Dad.”

  “It’s very simple. Every day you’ll be out of the bungalow by nine, and back here by six. Three times a day, one of you is to document your activities to Mrs. Stone, on video, via your iPhones. At the end of the day, you’ll each get paid with a twenty dollar bill.”

  “What a rip! For nine hours, that’s not even minimum wage,” Cheever mutters.

  “Listen up, you little union agitator—this isn’t exactly the coal mines of Kentucky. You’re getting three square meals a day—none of which is tofu, like your mother would feed you—and you’re living in paradise.” Jack opens his arms wide to make his point. “Also, there’s a bonus plan to sweeten the pot. Five extra bucks a day if you get a counselor on video singing your praises for making nice-nice with the other boys on the island.”

  Morton frowns. “Some of those dudes are real dweebs. And their leader is a moron. The only reason we buried him in the first place was because he pissed off Jeff when he called Mrs. Stone a fox.”

  A fox? Me? Jeff and I turn almost the same shade of pink.

  Morton turns to me. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Stone. Jeff set him straight. He told the boy you were probably older than his mother. When the kid heard that, he barfed. It was a hoot!”

  Ah, how chivalrous of my little man. Note to self: Remind Son that any compliment toward his mother is a good thing—not worthy of belittling, beatings, beheadings or for that matter, the truth.

  Jack looks at the clock on the wall. “It’s two o’clock now. You can put in half a day’s work, if you want. That’s ten bucks each, and any bonuses you can scrounge up.”

  Morton looks at Jeff, who glances over at Cheever, who nods.

  Oh, boy. If Cheever is the boss of this mob, we’ll have our hands full, despite Jack’s offer. That’s okay, it’s not as if I have a lot of petty cash lying around to pay them.

  The boys troop out the door just as the cell phone rings. It’s Abu. I put him on speaker. “Hey, what are the chances you and Jack can make it over here?”

  I brace myself for the worst. “Trouble?”

  “Not at all. In fact, we may have stumbled onto Mandrake’s lair.”

  Jack laughs. “Quite an interesting word for his hideout.”

  “Only because it appears to be in an interesting place, and I don’t mean the plush gambling salons of the Hunt Club. If we’re right, we may be able to wrap up this thing tonight.”

  “Nothing would make me happier. We’ll be right over.” As I ring off, I turn to Jack. “What should we do about the boys?”

  “Call Emma. She can watch the little monsters while she monitors our mission. They’ll be putty in her hands. Jeff still has a crush on her, you know.”

  “He could do worse.” I pick up the garment bag holding my Cinderella gown from last night.

  “What are you doing with that?” Jack asks.

  “Returning it. Between the tricks I know with crushed aspirin, meat tenderizer, lemon juice, salt, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and liquid dish soap, it looks as good as new.”

  I shut one eye and hold it up to the light. Well, almost. If the sales girl is blind, I may just get away with it.

  Since our bungalow at Kamp KidStuff is under the name of Donna Stone, Jack had no reason to give up his suite at the Hunt Club. The whole mission team is already there, except for Emma, who’s listening in via speaker while she hangs at the bungalow until our little hellions come home, hopefully with all appendages still attached.

  But just in case one doesn’t, I’ve left her a MediPack.

  Arnie has a map of the island projected onto the wall, for all of us to see. “Emma and I have tried to detect a pattern to Mandrake’s travels over the past couple of days. What we’ve noticed is this: he stays on the outskirts of the resorts, but rarely does he go inside their boundaries.”

  “There was one exception,” Jack interjects. “His signal was picked up near Donna’s tiki hut, that one night.”

  Arnie nods. “Yes, that anomaly stumped us, too—at first. But even then, it had one thing in common with all the other verified coordinates: he is never far from a body of water. Even when he was next to the tiki hut, he was hugging the beach, along the shallow part of the surf.”

  Jack shakes his head, confused. “Does that mean he’s traveling by boat?”

  Abu runs his finger over the map. “Could be. Although, from Arnie and Emma’s research, it looks like he comes on shore periodically, but certainly he never wanders too far from the coastline or one of the island’s many tributaries.”

  “So, what does this tell us?” I ask.

  Dominic taps the wall beside the map. “My guess is that he’s not a guest. But he’s not being held captive either.”

  I’m confused. “So, he’s squatting—like Sasquatch?”

  “Even so, they’re obviously not working together,” Jack counters. “Otherwise Sasquatch wouldn’t have been spooked at the mention of his name.”

  “Arnie, tell them the great news.” Emma’s voice echoes from the speaker.

  “Whereas in the past he seems to have been moving continually, for the past few hours he’s been hanging in one specific quadrant.” He stabs the map.

  “Could he be dead?” asks Abu.

  Arnie shakes his head. “Every now and then he moves slightly. More than likely, he’s injured.”

  “Where is it?”

  Abu scrutinizes the map. “From what I can tell, it’s very close to the VIP reserve.”

  Jack shrugs. “Well, since we don’t know why he’s still and how long he’ll stay that way, I suggest we go there as soon as possible. Abu, both you and Julie mentioned that sometimes there are night safaris. Do you know if any are taking place tonight?”

  Abu shakes his head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Good,” I say. “Less chance of us running into someone who may not appreciate our presence. I say we work in pairs. We’ll equip ourselves with video lenses, earbuds, and night-vision goggles. Until we know Mandrake’s business here and we secure the bacteria, shoot to stun, not to kill. And since we’ll be in uncharted territory, prepare for anything and everything.”

  “Lions and tigers and bears? Oh my,” Dominic murmurs.

  He may be joking but after our run-in with the Fantasy Island pygmies, the thought of being chased by something with fangs sends a shiver up my spine.

  Not that I can show my team how I feel. “Okay grab your gear. Let’s meet off-grounds, in exactly an hour.”

  “Well done, boss lady. Very Hillary, but with just the right dollop of an Anna Wintour chill.” For a fleeting moment, Dominic’s smile fades. He takes a lock of my now brown again tresses in his hand and sighs. “Already I miss that clueless hussy, Lotta Tallant.”

  I have to laugh at that. “Thank you…I think. Look around you, Dominic. Everywhere you turn there are a lot of Lotta Tallants—especially on this island.”

  He nods. “True that. But too much of anything becomes a bit of a bore. Pra’ps its time I settled down, like you two old sods.”

  He actually sounds wistful. I think of what it would mean for Hilldale to have him in its midst. The women would go gaga. The men would be insanely jealous.

  It would be Nirvana for him—

  For all of a week.
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br />   But no, it would never work. International Men of Mystery don’t live in Orange County, California. They don’t put down deposits on McMansions on quiet Cul-de-sacs. They don’t trade in their Aston Martins for Lexus sedans or BMW SUVs, then double down with the requisite John Deer mower and a coveted Napoleon Mirage gas grill.

  They have to save the world, and while they’re at it, a pretty girl or two.

  They don’t have wives and children. They don’t attend meetings at school with teachers who tell them what they already know about their kids, let alone wince when the teacher has the guts to say that their son is too lazy for his own good, or that their daughter is too boy crazy.

  Or that they’ve got a little assassin in the making.

  Yep, the kid is a chip off the old block.

  Besides, if the Dominics of the world opt for everyday lives, who will stop the really bad guys?

  Not that I can say this to him.

  In truth, I don’t have to say anything. He already knows it.

  The Jacks in this world are few and far between—those men driven to get into the game, who excel at it, who are used to its junkie high.

  And yet, should they come across her in their world travels, they would readily trade the thrill of the chase for the love of a good woman.

  I know, because he proves it to me every day, and in so many ways.

  Dominic would be very lucky to find his own soul mate. But I won’t hold my breath. Hell, I have to do that enough in my line of work, what with all the people who try to choke or drown me.

  Instead I smile and say, “Sure thing. Go for it. And I’ll be the first to welcome you into the neighborhood, with my world renowned cherry pie.”

  “If it’s as good as you say, you’ll have to give me the recipe,” he murmurs as he saunters out the door.

  Well, la-dee-dah. I didn’t see that one coming.

  I hurry out after him.

  Mandrake’s GPS coordinates take us around to the south side of the island, moving west. We’re on an undeveloped beach, very close to where Battoo picked us up the other day, when Sasquatch saved us.