My Ford chugged skyward as the night bloomed, providing me with a spectacular view of El Paso and her Mexican sister city, Ciudad Juarez. This was when the magic of twilight kicked in. The first hour of darkness swallowed up the poverty that lay on both sides of the border, and turned the twinkling lights below into shimmers of fairy dust. Up ahead loomed an immense structure painted brilliant shades of yellow and green. I checked the address, and turned into the driveway of the colorful monstrosity. I had arrived at Lizzie Burke’s house.
I parked my truck under an orange overhang and headed to the front door, where I rang the bell. In response, the music of 42nd Street gleefully pealed through the evening air, bringing a smile to my lips. Lizzie had always practiced her tap dancing to that tune in her Vegas bungalow. The chimes ended, swallowed up by dense silence. I rang the doorbell again. This time, the ensuing melody was drowned out by a voice as grating as harsh sandpaper.
“Will somebody get the damn door!”
The only noise to be heard above the screech was the shrill yapping of a dog.
“For chrissakes! What the hell’s wrong with you people, anyway?” yelled the voice, distinctly more irritated as it drew closer.
The door abruptly flew open, and a tiny terror of an old woman glared out at me. She leaned on a walker, her fingers gripping its aluminum rails as if the contraption might take it to mind to make a run for the border. One glance made me wonder what the walker was mainly used for: to support the frail frame underneath the elaborate dress, or to keep the woman from crumpling beneath her cotton candy tower of blue-tinted hair?
She paused for a moment, giving me the once over. “And just who the hell are you?” she snapped.
The clip clop of Lizzie’s platform shoes came to the rescue.
“Mother! I told you that my friend was coming for dinner this evening,” she chided. Her hip nudged the walker out of the way as she opened the door to let me in.
“Then you should have told her to dress better, while you were at it,” the old woman barked, stomping off with the help of her walker.
Lizzie stuck her tongue out at the receding figure, reminding me of the girl I’d known in Vegas—until I caught sight of the outfit she wore. A blue satin shirt, studded with enough rhinestones to form its own glittering Milky Way, was tucked inside a pair of bejewelled, white satin pants. I was barely through the door when a red ball of fur flew up off the floor, like a frantic junkie hopped up on crystal meth.
“Down, Ten-Karat! Down!” Lizzie commanded.
The Pomeranian paid no heed, but kept right on jumping and nipping at me as Lizzie turned and led me through the entrance way. I followed, doing my best not to gawk. Between the marble floor, the mirrored walls, and the massive crystal chandelier, it was all I could do to not whip out my sunglasses and slap them on to cut out the glare. I was grateful when Lizzie steered me into a room that wasn’t paneled in mirrors.
“Was that your mother?” I asked. The frenzied pooch leapt up again and this time came close to French kissing me. The damned dog was proving to be more persistent than most of the men I knew.
Lizzie caught the bouncing ball of fur neatly in one arm as she handed me a glass of champagne. “Bite your tongue. That witch is my mother-in-law, Crazy Krabbs. That’s what I call her—though not to her face, of course.”
Lizzie turned her attention to the dog cradled in her arms, her voice melting into baby talk. “And this little sweetie here is Ten-Karat.” She presented her mouth to the pooch, which Ten-Karat obediently licked. “I named her after the size of my diamond. Not bad for a girl from Jersey, huh?” She flashed a smile and clinked her champagne glass against mine with a tad too much enthusiasm.
But what had caught my attention was the name “Krabbs.” That, along with the taxidermied heads which littered the walls.
“The only Krabbs I know is the owner of a place called the Happy Hunting Ranch. He wouldn’t happen to be any relation, would he?” I asked, hoping against hope she’d say, “It ain’t so.”
“What a small world!” Lizzie exclaimed. “Why, that’s my husband, F.U.!”
Well, hit me upside the head and drag me on home. Sometimes life was just stranger than fiction.
“How do you know him?” Lizzie asked.
“I received an anonymous call this morning claiming some dead monkeys were stashed at the ranch. So I dropped by and your husband took me on a tour.” Referring to F.U. as Lizzie’s husband left a sour taste in my mouth, as if an express elevator filled with bile were rising up in my throat. “The monkeys turned out to be a bunch of stuffed toys someone had planted in the taxidermy shed.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes, as if not surprised by the story. “Then, I take it you met Velma, F.U.’s attack dog. That bitch scares me silly. You’d think she was married to the man, the way she stands guard over him.” Lizzie swirled her champagne and a little splashed over the rim. “Sometimes she even questions me when I call and ask to speak with him. I swear, someday I’m gonna punch that broad’s lights out,” she fumed.
“F.U. believes his son was responsible for the anonymous call.” I took a sip of the champagne. Mmm. Good stuff. I glanced at the bottle. Of course: it was Dom Perignon.
“Yeah. How do you like that? Not only did I inherit a crazy mother-in-law, but I also managed to get a pain-in-the-ass kid in the bargain. And F.U. wonders why I’m always running off to Tia Marta’s for a cleansing.”
“Does F.U.’s son live at home?”
Lizzie nearly snorted a stream of champagne out her nose. “F.U., Jr.? No way! That was settled before we got married. I told him he could have either his mother or his son live with us, but there was no way I was gonna deal with them both. Even a twenty-karat diamond couldn’t have bribed me on that one,” Lizzie responded.
“What the hell’s going on in there? Let’s eat already!” Mother Krabbs yelled, as if on cue.
“The gorgon calls.” Lizzie refilled both our glasses. “Here, you’ll need more of this to make it through dinner.”
I followed her back to the entrance hall, where she dropped Ten-Karat and picked up a mallet, its round head covered in felt. Lizzie took the stance of a slugger at bat, then whacked a large Chinese gong near the staircase. A resounding “ohm” resonated throughout the room. The next thing I knew, my body was oscillating in rhythm with it. Hmm. Maybe this was something worth investing in.
“This is how I call F.U. down for dinner. It’s better than having to scream, and it’s one of the few things he can detect when his hearing aids are turned down,” she explained. “All that damn shooting he’s done over the years has really taken a toll on him.”
I felt certain all the animals he’d shot weren’t too crazy about it, either.
“But what drives me nuts is that he’s so damned stubborn,” Lizzie continued. “He refuses to give up those old hearing aids and buy a new, updated pair.”
I caught sight of a seat mounted on the bottom of the staircase handrail. It had a lever on its side like those used in manually operated elevators.
“What’s this for?” I inquired.
Lizzie lifted the mallet, as if inclined to give it a whack. “That’s how my mother-in-law gets up and down. Personally, I’d just as soon rip the damn thing out and leave her stranded upstairs.”
The Krabbses were beginning to give a whole new meaning to the term “dysfunctional family.” The Colonel Sanders of hunters was already bounding down the stairs, obliviously muttering to himself before he caught sight of the two of us standing together. He froze in place with a horrified expression on his face, as if he were a deer caught in his own gunsites.
“I’ve never seen that woman before in my life!” he sputtered, holding a hand to his heart as if to keep it from jumping out of his chest.
Lizzie clipclopped over to his side and turned up the volume on his hearing aids. “This is my friend, Rachel Porter, who I told you about. Besides, you did so meet her! She came by the ranch this morning.”
; Lizzie turned and whispered in my ear. “He’s getting a little forgetful lately. I swear, it must be all that Viagra he takes. It has made him more chipper, but I’m afraid it’s beginning to affect his memory.”
F.U. caught my eye and gave a sly wink. Right. He was about as forgetful as a two-timing horny toad on the make.
“F.U., is that you out there? Get your ass in here now! I’m starving to death!” Mother Krabbs demanded from inside the dining room.
“We have one more guest coming, Mother Krabbs. He should be here any minute,” Lizzie responded for F.U., who gave a slight cringe.
“Are we waiting for F.U., Jr.?” I ventured.
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “No way. F.U., Jr. refuses to come here anymore. It seems we’re too bourgeois for his taste.”
I was beginning to think the kid had a point. The doorbell rang, prompting F.U. to check himself in one of the mirrors before he strode over and opened the door.
Standing in the entrance was a slight man with a copper-colored Afro, way too big for his head. It took a moment before I realized the shag rug was actually a cheap wig. Dressed in double knit bell bottom pants, the visitor also wore an olive green Nehru jacket, with a red ascot tied around his neck. Someone should have told him the sixties ended over thirty years ago.
Atop his long nose, Coke bottle lenses perched like a bird on a wire. The bottom of his face sloped off abruptly, due to the lack of a chin, and his complexion was the color of skim milk. But most perturbing of all was his smile. It appeared to be permanently etched on his face.
Lizzie kissed him on each cheek as she pulled him through the doorway. “Rachel Porter, meet Dr. Martin Pierpont,” she gushed. “Our resident genius.”
I was in for an even bigger surprise: in place of hands, Dr. Pierpont sported a pair of prosthetic aluminum devices which resembled the claws on a crab. Each device split open and closed, working much the same as a thumb and forefinger. Pierpont held out a hook and I shook it.
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he murmured. His smile remained plastered in place.
F.U. led the way into the dining room as Lizzie clasped Dr. Pierpont’s arm like a smitten schoolgirl. A highly polished table awaited us, laden with enough crystal, bone china and silver to make me feel I’d wandered into Windsor Palace. But the true showstopper was a large oil painting of F.U. dressed as a Spanish conquistador, wearing a helmet and bearing a cross and a sword.
F.U. sidled over to me. “I’ve always had this thing for Don Quixote. Personally, I think I look pretty hot that way. How about you?”
What I thought was that I needed a lot more champagne. I took a seat beside Lizzie. Pierpont crossed to the opposite side of the table and sat next to Mother Krabbs, who shot him a sour look. He lifted her hand to his mouth and gently gave it a kiss, holding it captive in one of his hooks
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s eat already before I drop dead from hunger,” she dourly responded.
Lizzie rang a crystal bell and an elegant butler appeared. It wouldn’t have been far off the mark to bet that Jeeves was better bred than the rest of us. He slowly made his way around the table, ladling cream of green chile soup out of a large silver tureen into our Limoges bowls.
“What kind of doctor are you?” I asked Pierpont, curious to know in which field his genius resided.
Lizzie piped up before the good doctor could remove his soup spoon from his mouth. “He’s a brilliant scientist.”
Pierpont’s smile never wavered. I took that to mean Lizzie had answered correctly.
“That’s wonderful. In what field of science do you work?” I noticed Pierpont had the same eyeglass frames as Elvis Costello.
Dr. Pierpont placed the tip of his hook against the bridge of his glasses, which slid up his nose as if gliding on an escalator. “I’m a doctor of veterinary physiology and pharmacology, with a specialty in embryo transfer. And what exactly is it that you do?” he countered.
“I’m an agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” I replied, wishing I could add “with a Ph.D. in nuclear bullshit-ology.”
“Oh, F.U.! Pleeeeease let me tell her!” Lizzie begged.
F.U. pulled on his goatee, causing a white hair to fall and daintily float in his cream of green chile soup.
“She’s such a good friend. Besides, I want her to know just what a sweetheart you are,” Lizzie cajoled, throwing him a kiss.
That seemed to do the trick. F.U. tickled her under the chin, and a chuckle rose to his lips. “You know I can never deny my baby doll whatever she wants.”
“Oh, for chrissakes, I’m trying to eat here!” Mother Krabbs groused.
“Are you certain you want her to know? We don’t need any unnecessary problems,” Pierpont added cautiously.
“Don’t be silly,” Lizzie responded. “Rachel would never do anything to hurt me, would you?” she asked, squeezing my hand in excitement.
“Of course not.” I was seriously beginning to believe I’d stepped into a roomful of lunatics.
The butler quietly removed our soup bowls, replacing them with paper-thin dinner plates.
“We’re having Ten-Karat cloned so that I’ll never have to be without her—not even when she’s dead and gone. And Dr. Pierpont is the man who’s doing it for us!” Lizzie exclaimed, nearly bursting with the news.
I remained silent for a moment, not quite sure how to react. “This is some sort of joke, right?”
“You see! That is exactly why I didn’t think she should know,” Pierpont pounced.
“And just why is that?” I challenged.
“Because as soon as the word ‘cloning’ is mentioned, every government lackey wants to tie it all up in some absurd set of rules and regulations,” Pierpont spat back, while retaining his grin.
The butler silently re-appeared and placed a slice of roast beef on Mother Krabbs’ plate.
“Personally, I think all elected officials should be spayed and neutered so they can’t reproduce their own kind. Speaking of which, have you got any kids?” Mother Krabbs asked, grabbing hold of the butler before he could leave.
“I’m not a government lackey or an elected official,” I said in my own defense. “I’m a Fish and Wildlife agent. And no, I don’t have kids.”
Mother Krabbs nailed me with rheumy eyes as she forked another three slices of rare beef off the platter.
“What makes any of you certain that cloning a dog can actually be done?” I inquired.
“Because Dr. Pierpont says it can. Isn’t that right, Martin?” She turned her gaze in his direction.
“Anything is possible. All it takes is money and time. But especially money.” Pierpont’s grin spread a little wider.
“And we have plenty of that,” Lizzie cheerfully added. “Why, F.U. has already given three million dollars toward having Ten-Karat cloned.”
F.U. affectionately pinched her cheek. “Anything my little sugar plum desires.”
“What a pile of bull dookey!” Mother Krabbs declared between mouthfuls of beef. She put down her fork long enough to dish a helping of mashed potatoes onto her plate.
“Just think of all the good things that can come from Martin’s work. For all we know, his research might even help save endangered species!” Lizzie chattered.
“It does sound intriguing,” I admitted. “Tell me, Dr. Pierpont. Where did you work before this?”
“Martin used to work for the government in one of their programs. That is, until there were some of those budget cuts, and his lab was shut down.” Lizzie seemed unable to relay the information fast enough.
“No wonder you’re not crazy about government officials. What was the program you were involved in?”
Pierpont focused on cutting his roast beef into precise, even squares, after which he attacked a piece with front teeth as small and sharp as a rodent’s. “It’s really nothing I can talk about,” he answered after carefully swallowing.
“Top secret?” I prodded, suspecting where this guy’s real genius la
y was in the art of making himself sound important.
“So then, he opened his own business,” Lizzie broke in. “But you know how hard that is, raising capital to try and get projects off the ground, and all.”
“I don’t think Rachel’s real interested in all the nitty gritty workings of the business world, sugar,” F.U. remarked, patting her hand.
“Sure I am,” I offered.
“No, you’re not,” F.U. corrected me. “Women in Texas never are.”
“So now Martin works for us here!” Lizzie summed up.
“Where’s the dessert?” Ma Krabbs demanded, drumming her spoon on the table.
“I’d be interested in visiting your lab sometime,” I ventured, as chocolate mousse was served all around.
Pierpont fixed his Elvis Costello glasses on me like a pair of high-powered telescopes. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
Man! Was this guy ever getting on my nerves. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning to steal your secret formula. It’s just that your work sounds fascinating.” If Pierpont was some sort of genius, I didn’t need to alienate myself from the possible savior of endangered species.
Pierpont shook his wig in refusal. “You’re very kind, but the answer is still no. My work is terribly demanding, and I don’t like to be disturbed. Therefore, I’ve made it a policy that no visitors are allowed.”
“Don’t take it personally, Rach. Even I haven’t been there,” Lizzie attested.
“Well then, can I inquire where your lab is located? I imagine you’re working in conjunction with a university in the area,” I hazarded a guess.
“Sorry, but that information is classified, as well,” Pierpont responded, slipping a spoonful of mousse into his mouth.
Border Prey Page 7
