Lacey Luzzi Box Set

by Gina LaManna

  “Meg,” I said, offering my suggestion gently. “How about we don’t shoot him here?”

  “Give me one good reason why not,” she said. “One single reason.”

  “Well for starters, there are not enough rags in that box to clean up the blood. Even if he’s a twat, you can still get in trouble for shooting him,” I said.

  “Keep talking,” Meg said, hesitation in her voice. “I’m not convinced.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking a moment to think. I hemmed and hawed, trying to find a reason that’d better connect with Meg’s logic. “How about this? He ruined your helmet. And since it was customized, you should make him fix it. It’s not simple for you to just buy a new one.”

  “Yep,” Meg said, nodding her head. “I hear that. That there is a pretty dang good reason. You ready to glue my mohawk back on that helmet one strand at a time?”

  “Yes, sure,” he said, not sounding particularly enthused about it.

  “I don’t like your attitude,” Meg said. “I want more excitement.”

  “Why should I have to fix your helmet?” he argued. “You were the one trespassing on my property when you lost it. It’s mine, now.”

  “He’s got a point,” Meg said, turning to me. “What now, Sherlock?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not. Deciding that she was in shock and her decision trees were a little crooked right now, I explained patiently. “It doesn’t do him much good if he’s dead. He should want to fix your helmet so you don’t shoot him.”

  “Oh, right.” Meg smiled. “I’m the one with the gun here. So now, let’s try this again. Are you ready to fix my helmet?”

  The man opened his mouth, and I could tell he wanted to argue. To prevent more confusion, I barged in, partially to save his life, but also because we didn’t have all day to discuss the details of saving his life.

  “We have errands to run,” I said. “Meg, let’s tie him up and take him with us. We can deliver him to Anthony or Carlos, and they’ll better know what to do. It’s probably not a good idea to go to the cops with this one.”

  “Yeah,” Meg said. “Can you imagine Chuckie’s face? He’d have a heart attack if he heard the whole shebang.” She referenced her cop friend who’d arrested me on one occasion. Then speaking to Grease Ball, she added, “I used to be a cop, so I know their kind.”

  “Used to be?” he muttered. “Would never have guessed why you’re not anymore.”

  “You don’t wanna go there, buddy,” I said. “You almost found out today.”

  Meg’s finger twitched, and the whole situation was making me nervous. The longer we sat here talking, the more time he had to escape.

  “Let’s go,” I encouraged.

  “You’re right. I’ve seen the movies,” Meg said. “We’re not gonna be those stupid bad guys who die at the end because they talk too much. Explainin’ all their crap.”

  “Uh, Meg?” I gave her a “what the heck” gesture. “We’re not the bad guys here.”

  “Oh – right.” Meg shook her head and chortled. “Sometimes with you, chickadee, the lines blur.”

  “How are we going to get back to the Lumina?” I asked. “Should I go get it?”

  “No way are we giving him a lift. We’re walking. He made us walk; we’re making him crawl.”

  WE MADE IT TEN STEPS from the cabin before Meg changed her mind.

  “Jog on ahead and grab the tractor, will you?” she asked, glaring at our captive. “I forgot I’m wounded.”

  “It’s a four-wheeler,” the man grumbled.

  “Can’t we just walk?” I asked. “We can take it slow. It’d take longer for me to run there and drive back...” I trailed off at Meg’s murderous gaze.

  “I jumped in front of a bullet for you – with my most prized possession. And now you can’t be bothered to give me a lift?” she asked, one hand on her hip.

  I couldn’t find it in myself to mention that it was only a scratch.

  Her injury could have easily been much worse. Not to mention, it was the thought that counted. The last thing I wanted was to underplay her sacrifice for me. Plus, she was still holding a gun, and I didn’t want her mind to creep towards revenge.

  “Yeah, I’ll go get it,” I said. “Where are the keys, Grease Ball?”

  “Name’s not Grease Ball,” he said. “And I’ll never tell you.”

  Meg accidentally stepped on the man’s foot and elbowed his forehead. Magically, he then decided to give us the location of the keys, just before her knuckles accidentally collided with his nose.

  “That’s what I thought,” Meg harrumphed. “We’ll be waiting for you right here. I’ll be standing, since I can’t sit, thanks to this jerk.”

  I took off at a light jog, reminding myself to visit the gym more often. A side ache, however, was the least of my problems at the moment. My bum was scratch-free and my head didn’t have a hole in it. I couldn’t complain; thirty was shaping up to be the start of a pretty decent year. Maybe we’d celebrate tonight. I could take Meg out for drinks. Or, as per the usual, I could stop by her bar for free drinks.

  It took fifteen minutes for me to jog back, find the key, and then figure out how to turn the dang thing on. Motor vehicles were not my forte, and this one only seemed to drive backwards.

  “You know there’s a switch to make it go forward,” Grease Ball said unhelpfully, after I reversed my entire way back to the shack where he and Meg awaited my arrival.

  Meg stood over him with a leer on her face, while our mean little friend looked completely, utterly disgusted. I didn’t want to know what had transpired in my absence.

  “Tell her to stop giving me wet willies,” he complained, as I eyed them up.

  “You’re lucky that’s all it is,” I said.

  Meg guffawed. “He hates it.”

  “Sometimes it’s the little things,” I said.

  Meg urged the man up with the nose of her gun, retrieved her orange mohawk helmet from where Grease Ball had unceremoniously dropped it, and plunked it on her head.

  “Looks great,” I lied, pretending all the jagged edges didn’t exist.

  “My head makes anything look good,” Meg said. “Let’s get out of this shack. They don’t have proper bathrooms, and I’m beginning to feel the urge to drop the kiddies off at the pool.”

  “That is the grossest analogy I’ve ever heard,” Grease Ball said.

  “Stick around,” I muttered. “It’s really quite tame.”

  “Forward, march!” Meg instructed, pointing straight ahead.

  We’d all assembled in an odd, jenga-like puzzle on the back of the four-wheeler. Grease Ball, tied up by the hands and the feet, lay across the back. Meg sat, reverse-cowgirl on the seat, holding the gun wedged halfway up our man’s nose. I drove the beast.

  Well, I tried to. Upon Meg’s cry of forward, march, we shot straight backwards, nearly ramming straight into the shack.

  “Yes, forward I said,” Meg repeated. “Want me to drive?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not taking the gun.”

  “Will you be gentler if I tell you how to put it in the correct gear?” whined Grease Ball.

  “I’ll consider it,” I said. “How do I make this puppy go straight?”

  “SAY CHEESE,” MEG INSTRUCTED Grease Ball. “Big smile, there ya go.”

  I unlocked the car as Meg positioned our captive on the back of his own four-wheeler, moving his arms about and fluffing his hair as if he were a glamour shot model.

  “I wish I had some dry shampoo for your locks,” she said. “I’m getting a gigantic glare from the grease.”

  “It doesn’t have to be beautiful,” I said. “It just needs to serve the purpose so we get the sauce.”

  “Sauce?” Grease Ball asked.

  “Yes. This whole mess is over some stupid sauce. Whoop-de-doo,” Meg said. “Better be great sauce, is all I’m saying. Ain’t nothing wrong with regular ketchup in my mind.”

  “Did you get the picture?” I asked
.

  “It’s a beaut,” Meg said, holding the camera so I could see.

  I winced just looking at it; Grease Ball had forced a painful looking smile on his face, while a gun was balanced precariously on his lap, the bullets removed. His hands and feet were bound behind him, but Meg had draped her vest over his shoulders so his bindings were hidden.

  The only problem? Meg didn’t like to wear clothes under her vest.

  Dressed in only a flimsy cotton bra, she moved her arms like a duck. “Gotta get some circulation in here,” she said. “The air flow in that cabin was subpar. You know what that means.”

  I didn’t, but I assumed it meant that she was sweating profusely. The temperature was quickly climbing as we entered the hottest part of the afternoon. July in Minnesota could be sweltering, and today was becoming one of those days when the humidity felt like a hot blanket had been super-glued around my shoulders. I belonged at a lake, not chasing after a skinny twerp on a backwards ATV.

  “Put your shirt on, and let’s hit the road,” I said.

  “Nope to the first, Amen to the second, sista,” she said.

  That’s how we ended up in a crappy old Chevy Lumina with me at the wheel, a naked ex-cop in the front seat of the car and a man tied up with excessive amounts of rope in the back. I begged Meg to lower the gun a little bit, so it wasn’t sitting right on the dashboard.

  “Not necessary,” she said. “After all, I was a cop. I’ll just show them my badge if we get pulled over.”

  “Do I want to know where your badge is?” I asked, looking over at her. She wore painfully little clothing except for her pants, which she’d already started to roll up to the knees.

  “Don’t ask if you’re not ready to hear the truth,” Meg said.

  “Preach,” Grease Ball chimed in from the back.

  “Stop it, please,” I said. “I’m driving. I gotta concentrate, here.”

  “Can you please take the vest off of me?” he asked.

  “Nope. We gotta make your bindings invisible in case anyone sees you all trussed up back there like a Halloween turkey,” Meg said. “Just like we glamorized you for your photos. I almost uploaded it to my Facebook account, but Lacey would have killed me.”

  I nodded.

  “You have turkeys for Halloween?” the man in the back asked.

  “I have turkeys for every national holiday,” Meg said. “Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Martin Luther King day, Earth Day, both the winter and summer solstice, my quarter birthday—”

  “What’s your name?” I jumped into the conversation, hoping to stall Meg’s unending list of holidays. She had some occasion or other to celebrate most days of the year. In fact, she was the only person I knew who managed to celebrate four hundred and sixty-two holidays during a calendar with only three hundred and sixty-five days.

  “I’m not saying anything,” he said.

  “You are,” Meg said. “When you use your mouth to speak a sentence, it means you’re talking. That counts as saying stuff.”

  “I’m not giving you any details,” he said. “You still don’t know my name.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You don’t have to deal with us. But when you see where we’re headed, you’ll wish you’d talked when you had the chance.”

  “What are you doing, bringing me to the police station?” He gave an evil-ish laugh. “No way. I heard you say she’s an ex-cop. You two don’t seem like you much care for the rules, anyway. You wouldn’t risk getting in trouble yourselves.”

  “Not the police,” I said.

  “Who else?” he asked with confidence. “It’s gotta be the police. But what are they going to say? I didn’t do anything wrong. You guys trespassed on my land, and held me hostage with my gun and took my four-wheeler for a joyride. They’re gonna laugh you straight out of the building,” he said, shaking his head. “They’ll turn around and arrest you. I can see why they fired her.”

  The cocky smirk on his face, the way he leaned back with a pleased expression, the way his shoulders sat relaxed while mine were more tense than a bungee cord stretched to capacity, all made me want to slap him. But I didn’t.

  Instead, I smiled in the rearview mirror, feeling angry enough to spout steam from my nostrils and grow a set of fangs. My knuckles clenched the wheel, and it took every bit of restraint to react calmly. “That’s why we’re not going to the police, silly,” I said. “We’re going to see my Family.”

  “I’M NOT WAITING IN the car,” Meg said. “He’s tied up. Let’s just roll the windows all the way up, and hopefully he’ll pass out by the time we get back.”

  “Put a rag or a sock in his mouth,” I said. “We’ll only be inside a minute, but I don’t want him screaming. He’ll ruin everything.”

  “He already ruined my hair,” Meg said, shaking her mane. “And he’s about to ruin my vest. I need my vest back, buddy, and I’m not liking the fact that you forgot to tell me you have dandruff.”

  “I don’t have dandruff,” he said. “And you just told me not to take off the vest.”

  “Right.” Meg rolled her eyes. “It just snowed in July – inside the car.”

  “Give her the vest,” I pleaded. “Please.”

  “I’ve grown fond of it,” Grease Ball said, giving his hair a toss worthy of a wannabe Herbal Essences model.

  “You hear that?” Meg asked. “He says he’s grown fond of it. Well, I got one way to deal with this, buddy.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked my friend. I remained seated in the driver’s seat, while she balanced the gun in the passenger’s seat. Ying alternated between sitting on Meg’s lap, mewing with happiness, and staring menacingly at Grease Ball. The cat gave no sign of recognizing her own home, though we parked less than a block from Anastasia’s house.

  There’d been a small outlet just before her driveway where we were able to pull over and park. The car remained tucked away and mostly hidden; good enough for our brief stop.

  I was thankful for the witchy shrubbery lining the road that helped block the captive in our vehicle. It would be rather unfortunate if we dipped inside for a short moment, and at the same time a brave dog walker decided to venture out on this sweltering afternoon. If anyone accidentally noticed a backwards-kidnapping in progress, she or he might get the wrong idea and call the cops on us. As a reminder – we were not the bad guys. Grease Ball started it.

  Meg grunted and groaned as she kicked her shoe off. A fairly unpleasant scent began drifting from her half of the car, but I didn’t dare roll down the window in case our captive began to scream before we could properly keep him quiet.

  “I didn’t actually mean you have to knock him out,” I said, plugging my nose. “Sheesh.”

  “You know what they say about booze,” Meg said. “They say you sweat it out your pores. Well, I was drinking a lot of tequila last night before you came to my bar, Lace.” She turned to face Grease Ball. “Then you made me walk a freaking marathon – the kind without a lunch break and a beer tub – so to say my feet have a little bit of sweat on them is probably adequate.”

  “Gross,” I said for both Grease Ball and me. The man’s face showed utter horror.

  “It’s up to him,” Meg said. “He can hand over the vest easily if he’d like, so I don’t gotta climb back there and take it with force. I don’t wanna mess up my hair anymore, and I can already feel my butt-scratch starting to itch.”

  I blinked.

  “Pun not originally intended, but now that I think about it, pretty freakin’ funny,” she said, slapping her leg with one hand and a chuckle, as the gun bounced dangerously on her lap. “Anyway. Hand over the vest and you get one of Lacey’s socks in your mouth. Don’t hand it over, and my tequila infused tube sock will gladly rent out your mouth-space for an hour.”

  “I have an extra pair of socks I keep in my trunk for emergencies,” I added, hoping to make his decision easier. “They’re clean. Freshly laundered. I used to work at a laundromat.”

  “Take the dang ves
t,” he said without hesitation.

  “You’re being too nice,” Meg said, scoffing at me. “Now that you offered your clean pair of socks, you’re gonna have to wash two dirty pairs instead of one.”

  I shrugged. “The curse of the Minnesota nice.”

  I climbed from the car, retrieved the socks from the trunk, and handed them over to Meg. She inserted them sorta gently into his mouth, then ensured that the man’s words were muffled and his bindings were fastened tightly. At my insistence, she made sure he could breathe, but only after a good amount of arguing.

  “We don’t have all day,” I said. “We have to get the sauce, figure out the whole fireworks thing with Anthony, and deal with this guy.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Meg said. “Plus the barbecue starts at seven, and I was considering showering. I haven’t decided for sure, ‘cause dudes seem to like the whole wild woman look, but...hmmm...”

  “I thought the barbecue wasn’t until tomorrow,” I said, turning to Meg.

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t until tomorrow,” Meg said. “But Clay texted me and told me Carlos moved it up to tonight.”

  “When did he tell you that?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “While ago.”

  “Meg! That would’ve been helpful to know,” I said. “I have a deadline to get the sauce back before the barbecue starts.”

  “Well your deadline just became tonight. At seven,” she said, shifting a bit uncomfortably. “Sorry, Charlie.”

  “But Carlos never moves the barbecue,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.

  Meg leaned over. “Nora had the invites printed with the wrong date on them or something. I think he’s just doing her a favor so she doesn’t get upset.”

  “I didn’t get an invite,” I frowned.

  “Well, consider yourself invited. Tonight at seven,” she said.

  I pulled her from the car, leaving off the fact that Meg had passed wild woman status back at the shack. She was approaching a whole new level of...well, I couldn’t actually think of a fitting description. We were in uncharted territory here.

  Then again, I wasn’t a beauty queen myself. The slight odor of tequila hung in the air around us, our clothes drenched with sweat from our hike to the shack, our hair decorated like a bird’s nest with stray twigs, fluff, and leaves, and our clothes tattered and skin scratched. Then there was the issue of Meg’s bullet wound. Though only a surface wound, it should still be looked at by a professional.