Deborah Brown - Madison Westin 06 - Revenge in Paradise

by Deborah Brown

  “There’s a checklist of everything you need to do to get approved for a license.” I found the paper and handed it to her.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said in a huff. “I’m telling you, no one will be interested.”

  The front door blew open and my brother filled the entrance. “The prodigal son has returned. I bring fish.” He held up a cooler, and before veering into the kitchen, he dropped a duffel bag onto the floor.

  I eyed the bag with suspicion. I didn’t want to think about my brother sleeping on the couch and Creole walking in during the middle of the night or in the morning, small talk for five over coffee.

  “We should do a barbeque this weekend,” he called over his shoulder, walking out to the garage where he had recently replaced the refrigerator/freezer. I told him I’d get one. How hard could it be? Once he started listing his specs, I’d cut him off. “You do it.”

  “Is that how you maintain your pretty face,” Brad said, and motioned to Didier’s water. “I think I’ll have a beer.”

  “What’s up with the suitcase?” Fab’s lip quirked in a smile.

  “My boat’s docked for maintenance. I need a place to stay for a couple of weeks,” he called from the kitchen.

  All eyes turned to me, waiting for my response.

  I quickly blinked back my deer-in-the-headlights look. “I’ve got a better idea. Stay here tonight, and tomorrow you can have your very own cottage. You’ll be down the driveway from Julie and Liam.” Liam is Julie’s teenage son, who has his thumb on the pulse of the neighborhood, somehow always knowing who does what, and when. Mother and I are crazy about him.

  Brad sat down next to me on the daybed, putting his arm across my shoulders. “That’s okay, I don’t mind staying here.”

  “You’ll have to sleep here and if Julie wants to spend the night, you’ll have to smoosh together or she can take the couch. Liam, well…he needs to bring a sleeping bag.” Let that sink in; he wouldn’t have a second of privacy with his girlfriend.

  Brad picked up one of the papers Mother had thrown down onto the coffee table. “Hell no,” he exploded. “I refuse to visit my mother in jail. What the hell’s wrong with you?” He glared at me.

  “What did you do, miss every other word?” I huffed. “It’s going to be a game room, licensed by the county. It’s what I had planned all along until these two came up with their own plan,” I said, and winked at Fab.

  “Have you agreed to this?” he asked Mother.

  She shook her head.

  He gathered up the paperwork and shoved it back into the envelope. “I’ll read everything tonight.”

  I looked up to see Creole standing just inside the French doors. “Mother, make that six for dinner.” I jumped up and ran across the room and he pulled me outside, away from the door, to kiss me.

  “Staying the night?” I whispered.

  “I can stay for dinner, then I have a team meeting, but I’ll be back later.”

  I grabbed his hand. “Hurry, let’s sneak down to the beach before we get sucked in to going back inside. Why are we whispering?”

  He bent down and I laughed, climbing on his back and wrapping my legs around his waist. He piggybacked me through the opening in the fence and onto the secret path that led down to the beach. It was still called “secret” even though everyone knew about it. At the bottom of the stairs, he deposited me onto the sand.

  “This way,” he said, and grabbed my hand. “There’s a hideaway between the two boulders, we can sit and make out.”

  “Brad announced he wants to stay at the house––even after I offered a cottage.”

  Creole snorted. “I’ll have a talk with him and point out his choices: Go stay with the girlfriend or I’ll have him arrested. No ocean view at the jail.”

  “For tonight, I’ll sneak out and meet you at your house.”

  “It’s time to initiate Brad into our group. Didier and I will team up for a game of annoying. If he passes, we’ll get him a bicycle.”

  “Brad never passes up an opportunity to torment me. But he’ll be ready to fly out the door by tomorrow. Fab and I can help in the annoying department.” I nipped his earlobe. “How was your day, honey?”

  He pulled me onto his lap. “I hung out in a sleazy bar, waiting for a connection that showed three hours late and had nothing for me that I didn’t already know. Waste of a day. Later, I’m dragging your ass into the shower to get all soapy and then into my big bed.”

  “You do have that wonderful aroma of cigarettes and beer.”

  “Don’t flatter me like that,” he said, and rolled me in the sand.

  Chapter 9

  Before leaving the Cove we stopped for large lattes. Fab gulped hers down and shot up the Overseas Highway. We’d left the Keys behind, long past where the water hugged the sides of the highway, and everything was lush and green. She looked frustrated, having to slow to the speed limit after spotting a speed trap.

  “You’re grouchy,” Fab informed me.

  “Is it too much to ask to roll around in my king-sized bed with Creole, even if just for a little while? I snuck out last night to go to his house but Brad’s truck blocked the driveway.” I begged off early to go to bed, waited until the house was quiet, and snuck down the back stairs. So exasperated, I wanted to scream in the street but restrained myself, knowing the drama that would follow.

  “You’re an adult.” Fab laughed.

  “I’m not going to have S-E-X with Mother in the house. You laugh now, but you’d never do that.”

  “I wouldn’t do it with my husband in my mother’s house. She’d find out, tell Father, and—although they’d never discuss S-E-X—I’d get lectured on manners and have to hear, ‘Oh, Fabiana, why can’t you control your impulses?’” she mimicked in a deep male voice. “Why are you spelling S-E-X anyway? I know what it is.”

  “Really, Miss Ribbon-on-the-Door?”

  Fab’s subtle way of saying, “Don’t you dare knock,” was to leave a ribbon tied to the doorknob, indicating that adventurous things were going on inside.

  “Creole wouldn’t come over when Mother said she was staying. Brad would’ve flipped. It’s okay for him to have hot sex, but not his sister. The best part is, I know he didn’t get one minute of sleep with Mother snoring the roof off. On the way out this morning I told him to call Mac and he could have his choice of vacant units.”

  Mother had fallen asleep on the couch catching up with Brad’s life, which I’m sure included nosey questions about his love life.

  “What do I need to know about jail visits?” Fab turned into the visitor’s lot and backed into a space in the last row, closest to the exit.

  “It’s like airport security. Nothing metal and leave your gun.”

  Not a single person milled around, which meant the sheriff had unlocked the door and most of the people had filed in already.

  “How many times have you been here?” Fab unholstered her gun and I handed her mine to be locked in a storage box in the back under the carpet.

  “Never for the free room and board, but too many times as a visitor. I’m going to leave the money I owe her in her jail account so she has money for junk food, and let her know that if she needs anything to give me a call.”

  “You know it looks like she did it—fingerprints, hair, and a crappy alibi.” Fab was one of those people who thought Jami murdered Edsel.

  “If she did, why not do it on the night he beat her? And why at The Cottages? She had to know she’d be the number one suspect.” It surprised me that, with all the people who came and went and peeked out their windows, no one witnessed or heard anything unusual.

  Fab jumped up the stairs to the door.

  “Behave yourself,” I whispered.

  We breezed through the metal detector without incident and were assigned a cubicle in the far corner of the first row. Fab wasn’t going to like that the exit door was in the opposite corner. No quick getaway.

  I waited patiently for Jami to appear while
Fab paced up and down, which rule number three—posted on the wall—strictly forbade. She checked out each cubicle and waved to inmates waiting on the opposite side of the glass for loved ones who were running late or wouldn’t show at all. She had the nerve to pause a couple of times and eavesdrop on one-sided conversations.

  Jami walked through the door from her pod into the visiting area and sat down. Her orange uniform clashed with her pink hair. I waved and we picked up our respective red phones.

  “I don’t know what favor you called in, but thank you for the visit.” She had a slight case of the shakes. “This has been a horrible day. I got assigned to a cell with a psycho bitch from hell. She had a conversation going on with imaginary voices and then flipped out, screaming and throwing herself against the wall. They hauled her to the infirmary for a shot and shipped her off to solitary. When I realized I survived my first twenty-fours, I’m not as scared.”

  “I put your paycheck in your account so you can place an order next time.” The jail had a well-stocked commissary that sold anything from food to personal items. “Did you get assigned a good lawyer,” I asked.

  “My lawyer, Mr. Porter, is okay. Sucks he doesn’t believe me. I don’t care how much evidence they find, I didn’t kill Big Ed.”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes at “Big Ed.”

  Jami waved to Fab, who hadn’t stopped pacing. She’d soon be noticed by a sheriff and escorted out. “My only crime was that I didn’t call the cops when we found the body.”

  She found the body! We?

  I held up my hand. “Stop talking about your case to me, or to anyone else, except your lawyer.” I pointed to the sign that read: All visits are recorded.

  “Don’t worry about me. I have friends who will visit as soon as they can make appointments; the ones who don’t have charges pending.”

  A siren went off and all of the television screens went black. Fab grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the chair. She maintained such a tight grip that, when I stumbled, she caught me before I fell on the floor.

  “I don’t know what the hell just happened but let’s get out of here,” she said.

  The siren continued. A voice came over the loud speaker and said, “Visiting hours are over. Leave orderly through the exit.” The door closed behind us on that pronouncement. Fab didn’t waste time, and to her credit, drove calmly out of the parking lot. It didn’t matter where we went, Fab located the exit first. Good for getting out of tight spots.

  “That was horribly depressing,” Fab sighed. “One poor guy sat there and whoever he was expecting never showed. I thought about sitting down and talking to him.”

  “I think we should have a girls’ night, just the two of us. When’s Didier coming back?”

  “Later tonight.” She smiled. “He called on the way out the door, reminded me to stay safe and out of jail.”

  “Let’s walk down the beach to that new restaurant. They have tables on the sand.”

  Fab picked up her phone off the console and looked at the screen. “It’s Brick.”

  She had trained me to put all my calls on speaker, even though she never reciprocated. I punched her in the arm, making a poking gesture at the phone.

  She made a few unintelligible noises, then said, “Send me the address,” and hung up. “No fun tonight. We’re picking up the Jaguar.”

  She scrolled through her phone and called out the address, which I put in the GPS and a beeping noise sounded.

  “That’s Creole code for stay out of that area. Now what?” I felt nauseous knowing we had a decision to make; we couldn’t satisfy everyone.

  “We’ll lie and say we used the navigation tool on my phone. You stay behind the wheel and I’ll hop out and do the drive away.”

  “I’m not lying to Creole about anything. He’ll find out, and when he does, he’ll tell Didier.”

  Fab twisted her hair in a nervous gesture, then clipped it in an ugly bun. “I can’t do this by myself,” she whined. “How bad can the neighborhood be?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Take a look around…and we’re not even there yet.”

  We rode in silence. She made a couple of turns, landing us in the middle of a ratty commercial area. Our GPS had us turn onto an access road and bounce over rotted railroad tracks. Judging by the deterioration, the area had been abandoned for a few years.

  Fab hit the steering wheel. “I’ll park in front of the building. You leave immediately and go home. I’ll drive the Jag back to Brick’s and get a ride.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “You know I won’t let you go by yourself.”

  Chapter 10

  The paved road turned to gravel right before turning into the parking lot of a long-ago-vacant manufacturing plant. A block-long property, it was filled with old airport hangar-style buildings. They had missing doors, broken windows, and weeds growing up out of the cracks; at some point, the building had turned into a giant receptacle for hard-to-get-rid-of trash. Someone had gone to the expense of surrounding the property with barbed wire fencing only to have some creative soul hack out sections, making the area easily accessible by a car in several places. Two men, who were hunched over in the far corner of the fence, baseball caps covering their faces, looked up from sorting their shopping carts. They checked out the Hummer and looked away.

  “Please tell me that the car’s not parked in one of those creepy buildings.” The roll-up doors were also missing, probably ripped off and sold as a resale item. I wanted to cover my eyes and pretend we’d listened to Creole and turned down the job, having gone home instead. I stared into the cavernous dark spaces, daylight casting a slim shadow to just inside the open doors.

  “We’ll drive around back first.” Fab braked and drove slowly. “Setting foot inside the buildings is the last option.”

  “Fab, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end. Maybe we should listen for a change.” My phone wolf-whistled. “That’s Creole.”

  “Do not answer it. You need a more professional ring tone,” Fab said in disgust. “There it is,” she said, and pointed.

  Someone had taken the time to park the Jaguar in Executive Parking, or so the sign read. It was the perfect dumping place for a stolen car, or anything else, since it couldn’t be seen from the street.

  “He’s not going to give up.” I pointed to my phone. Creole’s call went to voice mail and instantly the phone started to ring again.

  “Give me that thing.” Fab jerked it off a mat on the dashboard. “Hold your shorts,” she yelled, “She’ll call you right back,” and threw it down.

  I rubbed the base of my neck where pain started to gather into a full-blown headache. This is my fault. I should’ve stamped my foot and told her, “Hell no!”

  “You better hide from Creole for a while. He’s going to kill you. Hopefully he’ll be exhausted, because I know you’ll fight him and he’ll spare me the same fate.” The thought of Creole’s angry face gave me a stomachache.

  “Make sure Dickie has me looking my dead best for my final send-off. I wonder where I’ll end up.” Fab chuckled. “You’ll have to rent mourners since I don’t have any friends.”

  Dickie, our good friend and the owner of the local funeral home, would give her the star treatment. I imagined a room full of Florida’s finest derelicts hired to pay their last respects. I better make it mandatory that they have to be sober.

  I pulled on her arm. “Let’s go home. Now.”

  “You don’t even have to get out.” She opened the door. “Slide over. When I get the Jag started, I’ll follow you back to the freeway, then meet you at Brick’s. Try stomping on the gas so I don’t have to wait all day.”

  Just as the door closed, my phone rang again. I hit the door locks and took a deep breath. “Hi, honey.”

  “When I get my hands on Fab’s skinny neck, I’m going to slowly choke her to death. What the hell are you two doing over in the Tracks district?” His angry voice was on the verge of yelling.

  It made me feel
safe in some odd way that I wasn’t alone. “Calm down. The doors are locked, I’m inside, and she’s retrieving the car.” I watched as Fab walked around the Jaguar, looking in the windows, and breathed a sigh of relief when the key worked in the lock and she opened the door.

  “Did the warning beep go off when the map came up?” Creole clipped his words.

  I hedged, not wanting to tell the truth, or to lie. “Do you—”

  All hell broke loose. I watched in disbelief as an assortment of law enforcement cars converged from every direction, screaming to a halt; police officers jumped out, guns drawn, pointing them at Fab.

  Another officer appeared out of my blind spot and banged on the driver’s side window. I screamed and jumped so hard that the seat belt cut across my neck.

  “Madison, Madison,” Creole yelled in my ear.

  “Help me,” I breathed.

  Seconds later, another loud bang and the window shattered into pieces. I covered my face and started the engine, but before I could get it in gear, the door flew open and I was dragged from behind the wheel, thrown face down on the ground, and my arms jerked hard behind my back and cuffed.

  “Creole, I’m sorry.” Tears slid down my face, knowing he’d never hear me, my phone left behind. He’d be going crazy wondering what just happened.

  I heard Fab scream something in French, probably something about the cops’ parentage. What the hell is going on? I tried to look up, but felt a foot pressed into my back. “Don’t move,” barked a man’s voice.

  I lay still to keep my wounds to a minimum, which meant holding my head at an odd angle with a view of the broken-up concrete. I heard male voices, but wasn’t able to make out the words. The sounds of hard-soled shoes hit the pavement, going in different directions. Car doors slammed, engines starting. A pair of hands wrenched me off the ground, and I stumbled to my feet and screamed as pain whipped through my shoulders.

  “What are you doing down here?” the officer asked. His badge indicated he was with the Miami Police Department. “You Madison Westin? Matches the photo we got back; the Hummer is registered to you. Where did you get the money for that ride? Better yet, can you prove it’s yours?”