Dog Collar Couture

by Adrienne Giordano

  They fought.

  Hard.

  She sat forward, met Mr. Edwards’ gaze. “Well, Mr. Edwards, that just makes the challenge more fun now doesn’t it?”

  “That it does. And it’s Eric. Drop the ‘mister’ part.”

  Lucie saluted. Saluting? She was on a roll today. “You got it. What’s the plan? We need to flush this creep out.”

  Another grin drifted across Mr. Edw—Eric’s face and he propped his arms on the desktop. “If you’re up for it, I think we should call his bluff. Tell him we’ll give him the money.”

  Humina-wha? Where would she get ten thousand dollars? Lucie’s head fell forward, her shoulders slumping with it.

  “If you’re not comfortable with it . . .”

  Comfortable with it? With her last name there weren’t a lot of things she couldn’t get comfortable with. She straightened up and visualized her tongue rolling back into her mouth. “It’s not that. I don’t have ten thousand dollars laying around.”

  “Don’t need to. I’m dead certain it’s a con. If you give him the ten K, he’ll take the money, tell you to wait by the phone and then nothing. Boom. Con completed and you’re out ten grand.”

  People could be such bastards. Evil, scheming bastards. “So what do we do?”

  “When he calls, tell him you’re in. He’ll probably tell you to leave the money somewhere. We’re not doing that. Tell him to meet you and ask for proof he can get you the dress.”

  “What kind of proof?”

  Eric shrugged. “Let him figure that out. He’ll argue with you, but if he’s desperate enough—and I believe he is—he’ll agree to a meeting. Then you tell him you’re bringing a friend with you for safety.”

  “You’re the friend?”

  “I’m the friend. When we get there, we’ll tell him he’s not getting the money until he shows us the dress.”

  Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. “And we’re not afraid we’ll lose him and the dress?”

  “My guess is he’ll walk away. He’ll tell you he’ll be in touch, and you’ll never hear from him again.”

  “But what if he does know who has the dress.”

  “If he does, he’ll prove it.”

  Lucie sat back again, rested her head back and drew a long breath. “There are a lot of ifs.”

  “You’ll have to decide if it’s worth it.”

  To clear her from the suspect list and save her reputation, she’d do it. She’d spent most of her adult life trying to break away from the stigma of her father’s ways. She’d worked hard in school, got an MBA, landed a great job and then when that fell apart, started her own business. Everything she’d done was simply to prove she was more than a mob princess.

  And she wouldn’t let some slimy blackmailer take that from her.

  No.

  Sir.

  She sat up again, pushed her shoulders back and nodded. “I’m in.”

  9

  “Blocked number. This is him.”

  Eric nodded. “Put him on speaker.”

  Lucie poked the screen. “Hello?”

  “This is Bill. Am I on speaker?”

  You sure are, buddy. “Yes. I’m driving. Sorry.”

  Bill hesitated, most likely deciding if he believed that line. As for Lucie, she thought it was fairly quick thinking on her part.

  “Oh,” Bill said. “What about the dress?”

  Game. On. “Ten thousand is a lot of money. I’ll need proof you can connect me with the seller.”

  “Believe me, I can connect you.”

  Eric wrote a note and slid it over to Lucie. PROOF. Lucie held her hands out and Eric picked up the newspaper. Ah. She knew. She’d seen this in movies at least five hundred times.

  “Well, Bill,” she said, “I’d like to believe you. Still, just to be sure, I’ll need some proof.”

  “What kind of proof?”

  “The kind where you put today’s newspaper on top of the dress and send me a photo. You do that, and you have a deal. And no funny stuff.”

  Eric rolled his eyes and slashed his hand across his neck. Apparently, Lucie’s method acting wasn’t nearly as superior as Ro’s.

  Another long moment passed. Come on already. She tapped her foot, waiting, waiting, waiting. Wow, she had to pee. As usual. Ever since she and Frankie returned a million dollars’ worth of jewels, she’d had this issue with flop-peeing whenever she got nervous.

  She gently set the phone on the desk and stood. Maybe it would help extinguish some of her nervous energy. “Bill? You still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “I’ll send you the photo. It’ll take a few minutes, but you’ll get it.”

  Eric gave her two thumbs up. Yay, Lucie.

  “Good,” Lucie said. “Assuming all goes well with the photo, let’s discuss the exchange.”

  More silence. Apparently she was throwing Bill off his game.

  “Nothing to discuss,” he said. “You’ll leave the money where I say.”

  Eric had nailed that one. Boy, oh, boy, this guy knew his stuff. Lucie could learn from him. She set her hands on either side of the phone and leaned in. “Bill? You do know my last name, right?”

  “Uh, yeah. Why?”

  “Do you think Joe Rizzo’s daughter is really going to leave ten thousand dollars in cash on a park bench? Without some kind of guarantee?”

  “If you want the dress you will.”

  Eric jotted a note on his notepad and held it up. HANG UP!

  Hang up? Wha? So much for him knowing his stuff. Had he lost his mind? Why would she hang up? He pointed again then paddled his hand. Finally, he gave up, grabbed the phone and poked out of the call.

  “Hey,” Lucie said, “what gives?”

  “He’ll call back. He needs to know he can’t push you around. That you’re serious.”

  “But—”

  Eric held up five fingers and curled each finger down one at a time. Four, three, two, one . . .

  Lucie’s phone rang. Damn the know-it-all.

  Eric grinned. “He wants that ten K.”

  “Smartass.” She scooped up the phone. “Hello?”

  “You hung up on me.” The shrill in Bill’s voice carried and scraped against Lucie’s eardrums, making her wince.

  Eric rolled his hand. Ooh, right.

  “I did. Listen, Bill, I’m not kidding around. I want that dress, but I’m not about to get swindled.”

  Swindled? Really? God, she was lame. She should have picked a better verb. Screwed. Now that would have sounded much tougher.

  “So, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll meet somewhere. I’ll bring the money, and you’ll take me to the person who has the dress. Once you do that, I’ll turn over the ten thousand. And, just to be sure I stay safe, I’m bringing a friend.”

  “No. No friends. How do I know this friend isn’t a cop?”

  “Bill, be serious. I’m paying you ten thousand dollars for a stolen dress. I’d be arrested right along with you.”

  “Uh . . .”

  Please, don’t less this guy be the sharpest knife in the drawer.

  Eric whipped his pen up, scrawled another note. YOU’RE LOSING HIM.

  “Bill, this is a limited-time offer. I want the dress, but I’m taking a big risk here. We either make this deal in the next ten seconds, or I’m hanging up.”

  Eric gave her another thumbs up. Yay, Luce!

  “Five seconds.”

  “Okay. Okay. Fine. We’ll meet.”

  “After you send me the photo.”

  “After I send the photo. You’d better be ready with that ten grand, or I’m gone.”

  “Oh, I’ll be ready.”

  She sure would.

  Two trips to the ladies room—thank you, flop-peeing problem—and a barely tolerable twenty minutes later, Lucie’s phone chimed the arrival of a text. “This is probably it.”

  Yep. It took a few seconds for the photo to load, but—holy moly, would you look at that?
<
br />   “Well?”

  “It’s the dress. At least it looks like it. And that’s today’s Banner-Herald.”

  She knew this because her father read the newspaper every morning and that morning, while waiting for her coffee to brew, she’d skimmed the article on the front page. Yet another story on corruption in local government. Thieves everywhere.

  “Did he send an address?”

  Huh? Lucie cocked her head. Address. Meeting. Right. “Yes.” She rattled off the address. “He said to be there at midnight.”

  Eric shook his computer’s mouse, bringing the screen alive. “If that address is where I think it is, this should be interesting.”

  Lucie knew. “It’s on the South Side. Vicious neighborhood. Ro calls it the Death Side. I won’t walk dogs there. Too dangerous. Particularly at night.”

  Eric’s fingers pounded the keyboard— not the hunt-and-peck method a lot of men used—and a map popped onto the monitor. He zoomed in to street view and a row of one-story warehouses.

  “Damn.”

  “What?”

  He tapped the screen. “For-sale sign. The building is empty. Which means there’s probably no security or any sort of life there at night. We’ll be alone.”

  This setup—at the very least—sounded sketchy. “So, Bill wants me to come to gangbanger central with ten thousand dollars in the middle of the night?”

  They were sure to die. No question. In that neighborhood, people bled out on the street for a pair of sneakers.

  And now she had to walk in there carrying a boatload of money?

  Not happening.

  She shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We bring backup.”

  “He said to come alone. No cops. That’s what he said. He’ll bolt.”

  “We’re not bringing cops. I’ll pull together my team.”

  His team? She didn’t have a clue who his team was. How could she trust them? Any of them? Even Eric. He seemed like a good man, but he had a client to protect. His loyalty was to corporate America.

  Not Lucie Rizzo.

  Forget his team. She had her own. A team she could trust.

  Two hours later, Lucie marched through Ro’s front door wearing skinny, black jeans, a black sweater and her black, leather jacket. The Lucie Rizzo version of Catwoman.

  Not surprisingly, she found Joey’s humungous body stretched across the recently acquired sectional—most likely acquired for said humongous body—while he took in a Blackhawks game.

  “Pass!” he shouted. “Pass!”

  And even if she still hadn’t quite gotten used to her brother making himself at home in Ro’s living room, nothing about it struck her as odd. They’d all been friends for years. So all this Ro and Joey constantly together? It all seemed . . . well . . . normal.

  As normal as normal could be in the Rizzo world.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Joey whipped his head around and levered up. “Hey. Why do you look like the SWAT version of Little Orphan Annie?”

  Such a jerk. She marched up to him and smacked him on the back of the head. Not hard, but enough for him to know she wasn’t in the mood for his caustic humor.

  “Where’s Ro?”

  A few seconds later, Ro swung into the hallway that led from the kitchen. “Hey, girl.”

  Dressed in gray yoga pants and a body-hugging, hip-length sweater, she was barefoot and carrying a bowl that she shoved at Joey.

  “Popcorn? Suh-weet.” He grabbed her arm, pulled her down for a lip smack that, with any luck, would be over quick.

  Once again, Lucie had become the third man in a two-person band. She looked down at her sneakers, the super-cool Chuck Taylor’s she’d swapped out the white laces on so they wouldn’t glow in the dark. A smudge marred the front rubber.

  She stole a peek at Ro and Joey, whose kiss still dragged on. Kill me, please. Lucie’s cheeks burned, and she cleared her throat. “Hey! I’m standing right here.”

  Finally—thank you, sweet baby Jesus—Joey pulled back. “Seriously,” he said to Ro, “you’re the best.”

  Ro scooted around the edge of the sofa and swatted Joey’s sock-clad feet. Immediately, he lifted them, Ro sat and Joey dropped his legs.

  To keep her brother focused, Lucie snatched the remote out of his hand and hit the power button.

  “Uh, I was watching that.”

  “I know. But I need you. You can watch the highlights.”

  Lucie set her messenger bag down and sat in the chair across from Joey and Ro. She’d always loved this chair. Ro described it as a chair-and-a-half, and, with Lucie being of rather diminutive stature, her body curled right into it.

  “What’s up, Luce?” Ro asked.

  “We’ve had a development on the dress. I need your help.”

  “We’re in.”

  “Well, more Joey. Ro, I’m not sure you should be involved in this mission.”

  Ro did one of her famous drama-girl gasps. “We are a team. I’m always involved.”

  “I know. But this time it could be dangerous.”

  “Ah, dammit.” Joey shot to a sitting position and waved his arms. “What now? You know, Luce, with Dad on the outside, it’s getting harder and harder to keep stuff from him. You’re not making it easy.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. Believe me. Things just happen to me.”

  Her brother’s dark eyes pinned her like targeted prey. “Well, make it stop. Fast. I can’t take it anymore.”

  Unable to stand the pressure of Joey’s stare, Lucie turned to Ro. “The Cock Head meeting wasn’t a bust after all.”

  Ro scooted to the edge of her seat and leaned forward. “Do tell, Sister.”

  “Yeah, Sister,” Joey said, “do tell.”

  Apparently Lucie was getting good at summarizing her exploits, because in less than five minutes she’d wrapped up her dealings with Eric and Bill and their scheduled meeting.

  Joey poked a beefy finger. “You’re not going.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “In that neighborhood? Nuh-uh. I’ll go.”

  “You can’t. It has to be me, or the guy will bolt. I’ve already pushed him by telling him I’m bringing Eric Edwards. I can’t risk another person.”

  Joey rolled his eyes. “I’ll be Eric.”

  That stupid, demeaning, you’re-an-idiot eye roll drove her to madness.

  She clamped her teeth together, counted to three and breathed until her pulse quieted. “No, you won’t be Eric,” she said. “I made a deal with him, and I’m sticking to it.”

  “Then, smarty, why the hell are you here?”

  This would kill her. More than kill her. She’d spent her entire adult life distancing herself from all things Joe Rizzo, Mob Boss, and now she expected to utilize the very thing she’d found so disgusting.

  Total hypocrite.

  Eh, if it kept her from bleeding out in a warehouse parking lot, she’d accept it.

  Lucie dug into her messenger bag for the manila envelope she’d prepped. “We have to meet behind a warehouse.” She slid the photos out of the envelope and walked to where Ro and Joey sat. “I printed these from the Internet. It’s the back view of the building.”

  “Desolate,” Ro said.

  “Yes. The warehouse is empty. Big for-sale sign on the front.”

  “Which is why they chose it.” Joey drummed his finger on one of the pictures. “And I don’t like these railroad tracks.”

  Ditto on that. The tracks, used for freight trains, ran alongside the warehouse so the closest building, store or home to where they’d be meeting was at least half a block.

  Ro swirled her finger just above the photo of the tracks. “Joey, you could round up some of the guys and set up a perimeter around this area. That way, if it’s an ambush, you’ll see it and break it up.”

  Perimeter? Ro might need to lay off the military action films. Surely, Joey had some kind of equally
smart-mouthed comment to that.

  But . . . no. He cocked his head, mulling the idea. “It’ll be dark. We could use the trees for cover.”

  Perhaps they’d been watching the films together. “I have to meet the guy at midnight. Can you get something set up by then?”

  “For you? Sure. The guys love you. Plus, they’re pissed the cops harassed you at the store.”

  “Oh, please. They didn’t harass me.”

  “Hey, you want help or not? The imaginary harassment is gonna get these guys on board.”

  “Well, fine. But I don’t want them being mad at Tim. He was just doing his job.”

  Joey waved that off. “Tim can handle it.” He checked his watch, the one with the platinum band and ice-blue face that Dad inherited after Grandpa died. For years, Lucie had never seen her father without it. Then he went to prison, and from that first day—the first minute of Dad’s absence—Joey wore it. Whether he missed their dad or simply wanted people to know that Joe Rizzo wasn’t out of reach, Lucie didn’t know. Most likely, a bit of both.

  In the two months since Dad had come home, he obviously hadn’t asked for his beloved watch back. But that would be typical of their father. If the watch made Joey happy, he’d let him keep it. Simple.

  “All right,” Joey said. “We have two hours. It’ll take a good twenty minutes to get there, and we want to be in place at least an hour early. Which means, I gotta haul ass.”

  He hopped off the sofa. “I’ll call you when I’m on my way there. Text me the address.” He turned to Ro. “You stay put.”

  “I can—”

  “Whatever you’re gonna say, forget it. I’m not screwing around with you on this one. Bad enough I’m letting my sister do this. You? You’d be collateral damage. Forget it, Roseanne.”

  Ro scrunched her nose, a sure sign she was about to launch into a full attack.

  “It’s not happening,” Joey said. “If you come anywhere near that warehouse, we’re gonna go at it. And I don’t care how naked you are. I’ll stay pissed for a long time.”

  Eeep. Lucie peeled her lips back, gave Ro the save-yourself headshake.

  “Fine.” Ro folded her arms, let out a good solid huff. “The minute it’s over, you call me. Both of you.”

  But Joey had never been accused of being stupid or a fool. He bent low, got nearly nose-to-nose with Ro. “Promise me.”