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  But on Friday night, sneaky old Rat Man Dan must have been listening in. He’d focused on the part about millions of dollars and hatched about five minutes’ worth of a plan to kidnap me and get ransom money from Tom. There hadn’t been much time. And there hadn’t been much thought. Or much of a thinker either. For example, Dan hadn’t an inkling that Tom didn’t have the money in his possession yet. I shivered, thinking about what it might have been like spending a couple of very long weeks with Dan.

  He’d shown up on Monday morning, about a half hour after our appointment was scheduled. He lurked around vacuuming—which to his credit was the job he was supposed to be doing—until we came out. Then he herded us into the elevator, covered us with his big gun, transported us down, sent Tom back up, and dragged me out. That was the sum of his success.

  Unlucky, lucky, and shot. That was Dan. In the space of five minutes: He was a loser. He was a winner. He was dead. A synopsis of his entire sorry life, as far as I could tell.

  Poor, poor Nan. She stood up to the interrogation while her brother, whom I assumed she loved or at least felt some familial responsibility for, lay bloody and lifeless on the cold, wet, concrete floor. She took her part of the blame like a trooper, sparing herself not at all, but adamantly refusing to share the name of her friend. Which I assumed everyone upstairs could figure out anyhow.

  The cops weren’t unsympathetic, but it was their job not to unbend much. My Nan was no way an accessory to Dan’s sorry plan. I had not a shred of doubt. But the cops didn’t know her like I did. They explained she was a material witness and she’d need to come with them and give her statement.

  As she went, she turned to the guy who seemed most in charge. With her dirty, oily outfit, her ravaged face and disordered hair, she was a caricature of the immaculate, gracious person I’d twinkled goodbye to maybe a grand total of forty-five minutes before.

  “Officer,” she said, proud as a condemned queen, “would you please see that someone covers my brother up?”

  Poor Nan. If I hadn’t already been crying, I’d have started up right there.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Monday night everything was different. For starters, Monday afternoon was the first afternoon since the day we met that it hadn’t stormed like a bloody maniac. The wind had changed, the humidity was down, the temperature had dropped, the sun was out, the sky was crystalline.

  The honeymoon was over.

  Not in a bad way. Not like we weren’t still falling in love. I had begun to meld myself into Tom’s world where it was always midnight, and I like to think he was finding his way more into the crystal blue afternoons of mine. Now that he had me around to ask about how something was looking, I thought his worldview was expanding. At least that’s what he said.

  But the delectable, ignorant, us-against-the-world bliss? That had ended Monday morning when one or both of us could have gotten killed.

  Here’s a bitter truth.

  Human beings don’t often take someone else’s death or threatened death quite as personally as their own. And the death or threatened death of someone you love comes in a photo-finish second on that one. Then your friends. And your acquaintances. The rest of the population of the planet you’re only sorry to hear about. Some of those are bound to become part of today’s regulation one hundred-fifty thousand. You can get over most of them. But you yourself? And your loved one? That takes the wind out of your sails.

  Even our talks about needing to solve some murders and prevent our own had been semi-hypothetical until this morning. Now every bad thing was personal. When Dan pressed that cold muzzle up against my skin, my sassy, girl P.I. illusions evaporated, and I understood I’d squandered my last scrap of beginner’s luck. By Monday night I’d become profoundly more realistic about my private eye skills.

  Tom and I addressed the dread that came with this shared knowledge of mortality and vulnerability by taking ourselves off to visit Margo. I’ll give Margo this. In spite of the way death and destruction were following us around like a lost beagle, she sounded delighted to hear my voice. And she insisted we come down for dinner.

  In her words, “Screw those idiots. I’m not afraid. And you all have to be brave about the things that count. If you can’t eat spaghetti and drink some good red wine with your friends, what’s the point of being a supergazillioniare?”

  Too true.

  I drove out the Shoreway, my fingers clutching the wheel again, and my shoulders hiked up around my ears. I made a mental note of every vehicle I saw that didn’t pass me up before I took the Lake Shore exit. When I got off the ramp, I pulled over for a minute so I could watch the traffic that came down with us. There was one car. It was full of teenagers.

  Even then I didn’t go straight to Margo’s. I drove around through the neighborhood. Making four right turns in a row may help you flush out somebody who’s on your tail, but it made me nearly drive into a phone pole. If Tom noticed, he didn’t feel compelled to comment.

  After that, I called Margo on my cell, shoving down the tracker paranoia that popped up every time I touched it these days.

  “It’s us, Margo. Open your garage door and put it down as soon as we drive in. I don’t want—”

  “Shhh, girl. I’ve got this. Get yourselves in here. I’ve been so worried about you.”

  I drove in and parked next to the Volvo. The door ground down behind us, and there was Margo in the doorway, a halo of warm light from her kitchen behind her. Margo, my beacon. I exhaled and part of my fear and sorrow escaped with the breath I’d been holding onto for what seemed like hours.

  Safe home.

  In Margo’s kitchen a stockpot of something tomato-and-herbal-smelling was simmering on the back of her antique Magic Chef stove and something meaty was making a delicious sizzling sound in one of Mable’s ovens. Margo called her stove Mable. Mable was a work of art and a first-class instrument of food. I thought to myself that if I ever had a stove that deserved a name I’d call it Margo. Or maybe Margo-rita. She’d like that.

  When everything was ready, Margo led us out to her garden. My favorite hideaway. A table was set in the sheltering arbor. The vine-covered walls gathered us in. A sweet breeze off the lake stirred the trees. Shadows danced.

  Those damn dancing shadows were my problem. Everywhere, in all this peace and quiet, I saw stalkers and slayers. Every rustling bush shrouded the gun-wielding ghost of Rat Man Dan. I practiced sitting meditatively, breathing calmingly, repeating silently, Relax, Alice Jane, you’re safe here. It’s okay.

  I might have gotten away with it, if something about the way I was jiggling around in my lovely wrought-iron garden chair hadn’t alerted The Blind Spidey.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Allie. But it’s catching. You’re about to make me jump around, too.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry tonight, Tom,” Margo began. “Because—”

  “Margo.” I broke into her soothing explanation. I was now seeing an actual someone…something. Lurking. Beneath the long swaying dreadlocks of a weeping mulberry tree. A dark-hooded shape. The gleam of eyes…

  I gripped Margot’s arm. “Margo, there’s someone—there is—back there, under that—”

  “It’s a dog, Allie.”

  “What—”

  “A dog. Her AKC name is Barkly’s Princess Vespa. But we can just call her Princess.”

  At the sound of its name, the dark shape unfolded itself under the mulberry and rose up. Slowly. The shape poked a vast dark head through the cascading leaves and shook it, an action that caused the skin of its face, including its big rubbery lips, to swing freely from side to side.

  “What the—?“

  “She’s a mastiff, Allie. Big. Loud. Mean-looking. Thousands of years of guard dog roots. Castles and moats. She’s an old sweetheart with a killer bark.”

  A big toothy dog. Margo had been talk
ing toothy dogs for us from the day Felix and those guys got shot. Had she been conjuring the Princess Vespa even then?

  “Where’d you get her?”

  “I borrowed her. But I like her. The people think she’s too much work. I’m not taking her back.”

  Princess lumbered up, checked me out, and then leaned her big heavy head against Tom’s hand. He obliged her by tenderly rubbing her bony skull, and she rewarded him by plunking her whole head like a ton of bricks onto his arm.

  He grinned. “Thanks, Margo. I feel much…safer now.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Margo served up the spaghetti in big shallow bowls with homemade sauce from real August tomatoes, many torn leaves of fresh basil, and hefty meatballs that had been roasted to crusty brown perfection. She’d made us a fine salad and there was a loaf of ciabatta and a bottle of robust Italian red. While we ate, the Princess Vespa guarded us and our table, coveting everything on it but the wine.

  Strangely enough, with Her Doggy Highness stationed between Tom and me, panting and generating many degrees of body heat, I could let myself feel the terror of the day. Look at it straight on, without screaming, crying, or running away. I soaked up the warmth and kindness of Margo’s little table, unclenched my hands, and let my shoulder muscles go. I was beginning to believe I could survive being scared to death.

  We ate in reverent silence, mostly, taking a moment here and there for chatting about easy stuff. Like, for example, my beautiful, awesome, expensive Jimmy Choo sandals. Margo allowed how she’d expect nothing less if a person were willing to put out for a babe supergazillionaire. We could laugh now as the tension eased. The wine didn’t hurt either.

  But the respite couldn’t last forever.

  “I’d feel better if you guys had a gun,” Margo said after we’d skirted around the elephant on the table several times.

  That cracked me up. “Margo, give me a break. First of all, you’ve always been the Goddess of Gun Control. Second, I don’t have any idea how to shoot. And last but not least, Tom’s blind. His aim would have to be crappy. Things aren’t that bad.”

  Tom cleared his throat. “I take exception to that, Miz Harper.” He let the syrup of the South thicken his drawl. “At one time, I was acknowledged by my peers to be a crack marksman. And although I may have lost a step or two in the deadeye aim department, I feel that one’s ability to shoot is like one’s ability to ride a bicycle. I expect, with a little practice, I could hit anything that, say, beeped.”

  I giggled. “Remind me never to beep at you when you’re armed. Is that what they mean when they talk about a duck blind? If you were shooting I would want to duck. A lot.”

  Margo refused to be diverted. “Stop that, you two. Don’t laugh! I’m going to take the wine away. If things aren’t ‘that bad,’ then tell me how things are. Do not lie to me. I know Felix and those other two guys got shot. I get the strong feeling there’ve been others. And I know there was an attempted kidnapping and a shooting in the parking garage of the Arco Building, not some ‘upsetting incident’ or whatever the fu—whatever you said when you called. I know you were going there this morning.

  “Don’t keep me in the dark about this. Sorry, Tom—oh, never mind. The stuff I know you’re not telling me makes me jumpy and being jumpy makes me mean. So tell me.”

  We told her. We told her the good news which was that we’d got rid of the ticket and that the one hundred-ninety million dollars was going to be doing its thing now without any help or handling by us. We told her about Renata and Ulysses. We lied and said their deaths were rather suspicious, but that we were pretty sure Ulysses had died of natural causes and that even Renata’s death could be considered a probably unintended consequence of the criminal assault.

  I left out the part about finding the DIRTY!!! note. Bad enough that I’d involved Tom in my felony. No need to drag Margo into that mess. As far as I was concerned, the fewer people who knew about DIRTY!!! the more safe people there’d be.

  The sun was low in the sky now, orange and purple. It was falling into a thick mist above the horizon, so that it was something you could stare at and not burn your retinas. If that was anything you worried about. Which one of us didn’t need to.

  “Do you remember mauve?” I asked Tom, and he nodded. Something about that made Margo tear up, but she hid it well.

  Wave music was playing on the rocks beneath the cliff. Gulls were sailing out over the water the way they do at end of day. Morning in the basement of the Arco Building was a lifetime away from here. But that didn’t change what had happened. Or what hadn’t, that could have.

  I could be in a cooler at the ME’s office. Me. The once-in-a-lifetime Allie Harper.

  I shivered and attempted to pass it off as a shrug. “We were lucky, Margo. This guy, Dan, who—now, don’t get all screechy and start swearing—just listen. This guy, Dan, who held us at gunpoint in the elevator and tried to kidnap me, was dumber than Felix Reposado, when it comes right down to it. I don’t know how much real danger we were in.”

  Yeah, I do. I’m lying, can you tell?

  “It was over in five minutes. Less. And it’s totally over now. Dan is dead.”

  The word “dead” dropped like a rock into my soothing monologue, and Margo didn’t look at all soothed. I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t giving my pep talk very high marks either. It was hard to take any comfort from this morning’s train wreck. “Dead” was not the bright spot.

  In the silence that followed my summation, I remembered Otis and made a mental note to call about him when we got back to the hotel and to say a prayer for him when I wasn’t lying to Margo. I thought God bless you, Otis, and then I moved my worries right on over to Nan and the turmoil she must be facing tonight.

  Nan would be grieving for Dan and no doubt furious with Dan and then back to grieving again. And in the midst of that was the certain knowledge that her job was toast. GG&B gave no quarter to indiscretion. As much as Nan was an unwitting accomplice to Dan’s stupidity, she’d be out. I needed have a talk with Skip about Nan….

  Wake up, Allie.

  Margo was staring at me. Quiet. Very quiet for Margo. Then she left the table, went into the house for a minute or two. and came back carrying a lantern with a lighted candle in it and a plate of cookies. She set the lantern and the cookies on the table, touched Tom’s shoulder, muttered “cookies” to him, and directed her attention back to me.

  “I agree with a lot you’ve said except that nonsense about no real danger this morning. But it’s over so I’ll let it pass. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ You got plenty of trouble without getting all mired up in the bad stuff that’s happened up to now and is already over. Like this Dan. Like Felix, and those two guys. Muff and Frank?”

  I nodded, trying to keep my mind on its toes.

  “But in the middle of your sorry-ass story? Where Ulysses and Renata maybe died of ‘natural causes’? I don’t believe that for a minute. And neither do you.”

  The lantern cast its flickering shadows on her face. She looked like a Voodoo priestess with malediction on her mind. “The person who was on the scene when those two died is one very smart, very slippery person. A clever, capable, determined murderer.”

  I opened my mouth and she glared at me to squelch whatever I might be about to interject. I closed it back.

  “I mean it. There’s a killer out there tonight you both should be very afraid of. Maybe more than one.

  “In about another fifteen minutes, even the stupid people will comprehend that they can’t steal your ticket. And the smart people will understand that you don’t have the money yet. They’ll leave you alone. For now.

  “But once you get the money—Look at me, Al. Eye contact—they’ll be after you again. And it’s kidnapping that’s your biggest problem. Allie, they’ll hone in on the one person that it’s getting pretty obvious Tom will pa
y a lot of money to protect. That’s you, girlfriend. And you know it.”

  I reached around and over the mountain of dog and touched Tom’s knee. I wasn’t about to agree with Margo. Not tonight. But the three of us were on the same page. Margo—who was no slouch when it came to figuring stuff out—believed the murdering was probably on the back burner for now. And, clearly, the kidnapping phase was well underway. Not that it wouldn’t turn back into murder once a ransom was paid. I didn’t like it, but how could I not accept it? The events of the morning were speaking for themselves. And I could tell Tom felt it, too, by the way he put his hand over mine.

  I also agreed we’d maybe be safe until the money transferred. Except from dolts like Dan. We’d need to be alert to the possibility of dangerous goofballs until we got the money, and after that we’d need to figure out how the rich people stay alive and well—and not kidnapped—without looking over their shoulders all the time. It was going to be a major pain in the patooti. Earthquakes and tsunamis without end, Amen. I was ready to give back the Jimmy Choos.

  Tom was silent now, but I knew what he was thinking. “Tom,” I began, “I know you wish you’d never—”

  “Allie, stop that.” Margo’s voice was harsh. “And Tom, you too. You guys stepped into a nest of 550 million vipers on Tuesday night. Nothing can change that. Pandora’s little jackpot is wide open. No help for it now.

  “But if you keep walking around wishing you didn’t have it, you’ll attract the attention of even more predators who are wishing they did. Respect what fortune has dealt you. Both of you. Be responsible for it. And stay awake.”

  Damn. She was probably right.

  ***

  Dinner was over. We thanked Margo for the food, the fun, and the sound counsel. We told her to lock her doors for a change and that if she felt the least bit threatened, we’d bring her up to the top of the Marriott with us. That made her smile her self-satisfied Margo smile.

  “I don’t think so. I bet nobody at the Marriott is getting any sleep with you two going at it all the time up on that concierge floor. Besides, I have Princess to guard me now.”