Читать книгу Sneak And Rescue - Shirl Henke - Страница 12

Chapter 6

She’d had to leave her .38 and the stun gun in the van because of metal detectors at the America’s Center. Damn! Sam whirled around, crouching, prepared to use fists and feet to do some serious hurt to her attackers. At the last second she pulled her punch. They were midgets, under four feet tall, and looked like oversize balls of brown cotton candy.

“Sam, don’t you recognize us?” the taller of the two piped up as the smaller one behind her started jumping up and down, clapping her hands and asking, “What are you doing here?”

Then Sam saw an adult figure puffing to catch up to them…as usual. “Jenny?” she asked incredulously, recognizing the voices of Jenny Baxter’s two daughters, Tiffany and Melanie. A plump woman dressed in one of those uncomfortable spandex suits complete with high jackboots and a fake weapon strapped to her waist, nodded.

“Hi, Sam,” she said, tugging on the inseam of the unflattering pants as she drew near.

Sam looked down at the taller kid swathed in what she could now see was brown fur. “Tiff?” Then turned to the littler one. “Mellie? What are you?”

“Oh, you silly, what are you doing at a Space Quest con if you don’t know we’re Dribbles?” Mellie asked.

“You know, the little furry animals that keep making more until Captain Turk’s ship is filled with them?” Tiff supplied in the same tone of voice that a person might use to explain why woodpeckers don’t like concrete posts.

“And I’m Harriett Mudd, the lovable but unscrupulous space merchant who brought them aboard,” Jenny said brightly.

Sometimes Sam thought Jenny’s voice was the only thing bright about her. “Uh, yeah, I get it. You’re big Spacer fans, right?” She groaned inwardly. On the case where she’d met Matt, Jenny and her two dragon kids had been nothing but trouble, nearly getting Matt killed by the Russian mob. “I thought you and your sister were living in San Diego,” she said.

“Oh, we are, but the girls begged to come to the con.”

“Is it safe? I mean, you know…” Sam groped for words, not wanting to bring up the girls’ father, who’d kidnapped them two years earlier.

“Oh, my ex got caught passing bad checks in Salt Lake. He’s doing three to five in a Utah state pen,” Jenny said blithely.

“Are you here to snatch somebody?” Mellie asked eagerly.

Great. All Sam needed were Larry, Curley and Mo bollixing up her retrieval as they had with Matt. “Nothing I can tell you about,” she replied, trying to think up an excuse to keep them out of it. “But I am attending the con. Er, it’s research for a case back in Miami.”

“If you’re going to snatch somebody at the con, you’d better wear a costume or you’ll never get close to whoever it is,” Tiff said, not fooled for a minute by Sam’s denial.

Sage wisdom from an eight-year-old. “I guess I could rent one,” Sam replied uncertainly.

Jenny shook her head. “Every good costume in town’s already been taken, but I have a great one for you. Why don’t you come back to our suite at the Renaissance and we can fix you up? Oh, if I was you I’d leave your car parked here. During the day it’s almost impossible to find a vacancy and the hotel’s just up the street. We have plenty of room. My sister insisted on paying because she and her son had to cancel at the last minute.”

What the hell? It was where she was headed anyway and there’d be no dodging their interference if they ran into her later and figured that she was after a guest. “Okay, I appreciate it,” Sam said as they started walking. “Say, what kind of costume do you have? I sometimes have to move quick and those…” She paused, gesturing to the girls covered head to toe in fuzz. “Well, anything like that would stop me.”

Jenny laughed but before she could explain, Mellie blurted out, “Mommy thought she looked fat in the outfit.”

“Believe me, it won’t keep you from kicking ass,” Tiff said cheerfully.

“Young lady! I won’t have such language,” Jenny replied with a genuine bite in her voice. “You apologize to Mrs. Granger at once.”

To Sam’s surprise, the girl meekly bowed what looked to be the top end of her “dribble” and said contritely, “I apologize for using a bad word.”

Now wasn’t the time to explain that she hadn’t changed her name when she married Matthew Granger. “Apology accepted,” she said with a grin.

“Tiff’s being good because Mommy says she won’t take us on the Questar battle simulation day after tomorrow if we don’t behave,” Mellie piped up.

That explained it, sort of. Whatever a Questar was.

Ida Kleb was a wiry little woman with a bulldog’s face and gorilla-size hands that looked capable of snapping the neck of anyone who crossed her. She wore a perpetual scowl and her gray eyes cut like lasers. No one in the IRS messed with her. Matt wasn’t about to break that rule. He stood in the door of her cramped little office, looking from Kleb to her austere surroundings. All the papers in the room were lined up with razor-edged neatness as if even inanimate objects understood her demands.

“You, again, Mr. Granger. I’ve already told you, our investigation of Dr. Reicht is confidential. Go find something else to write about for the Herald.”

“I’m not here on a story. I thought maybe you and I could have an exchange of information about the good doc.” Her eyes narrowed to tiny slits, seeming to move as if she were a Cylon Centurion from the original television series Battlestar Galactica. Matt smiled inwardly. Guess Sam was right. I’m still a geek.

“Any information you possess about Dr. Reicht you are obligated to give the Internal Revenue Service.” Kleb stared up at him as she walked around the desk. Despite the disparity in their heights, she was utterly undaunted.

He couldn’t help looking down at the rounded toes of her sensible shoes, wondering about a poison dagger for an instant before he replied, “Whatever happened to First Amendment rights for the press?”

“Nowadays, it doesn’t have any,” she shot back, standing almost toe-to-toe with him.

He refused to back away, but he did raise his hands in mock surrender. “Look, I just want to help. He’s involved in a case my wife’s working on and I’m looking out for her safety. I found out a few things that might help your investigation…if you help me, it might protect Sam.”

“You go first,” she said.

“You play chess?”

She turned and shuffled a stack of papers, straightening them even though they didn’t need it. “I don’t have time for hobbies, Mr. Granger.” Then, crossing her arms, she placed her big hands around her elbows and waited him out.

“Could I at least sit down?” he asked, eyeing a battered chair in front of her desk. Ida nodded and returned to her own counterpart behind it. Matt was stalling, figuring the odds of getting anything useful out of this cagey dame. Might as well go for it. “I did a little digging through a source with ties to the drug scene.” She might buy it since he’d done a big exposé on Russian and Colombian mobsters last year.

“Go on,” she prompted, tapping a sharpened pencil impatiently on a blotter.

“The doc’s been a naughty boy. He couldn’t disclose all of his income the last couple of years because it’s drug related. He’s got a lot of very rich patients with expensive recreational habits—illegal recreational habits.” He watched her for a reaction. The best she gave was one minute twitch of an eyebrow.

She tossed the pencil across the desk to cover it up. “We knew that, of course. You’re wasting my time.”

“I don’t think you did.”

“Give me the names of these patients.”

“Tell me what tipped you to go after him first,” he countered.

After sleeping poorly on the Hide-A-Bed in the sitting room of Jenny’s suite, Sam had arisen with two kids jumping up and down, yelling at each other while their mother entered the room carrying the promised costume. Sam took the outfit and headed to the bathroom to change into it. When she walked out the door and looked into the full-length mirror across the room, she flinched. “I look like a hooker from South Beach,” she said, then could’ve bitten her tongue.

“What’s a hooker, Mrs. Granger?” Mellie asked.

“Sorry, you’d think I didn’t grow up in a house with six younger kids,” Sam said to Jenny, not about to admit that her street-tough south-Boston brothers knew a lot more than that when they were Mellie’s age.

“A hooker is a bad lady,” Tiff explained, although from her expression, her mother and Sam figured she really wasn’t sure.

“But Lt. O’Hara isn’t bad,” Mellie said.

“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that this getup’s uncomfortable.” Sam tugged at the spandex miniskirt and tried to shift the plunging neckline of the uniform so it didn’t reveal quite so much of her “best assets,” as Matt liked to call them.

“You can see why I decided the costume wasn’t for me,” Jenny said with a blush. “The skirt fit me like a girdle. I don’t know what I was thinking when that rental clerk talked me into it, but I still thought my sister was coming and Tess would look great in it—just like you do. Harriett Mudd’s pants and shirt worked a lot better for me.”

“Well, at least I can move in it,” Sam conceded. The low boots that came with the outfit had small heels but not enough to bother her if she had to sprint after Farley. I’ll probably catch pneumonia in that air-conditioned hall. But with any luck, she could locate young Winchester and be back in her nurse’s scrubs, transporting her “patient” home by afternoon. All she had to do was give Jenny and her girls the slip.

“How about room service for breakfast?” Jenny asked. The girls immediately chorused agreement.

“Er, I don’t do breakfast. I’ll catch something later,” Sam said.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Tiff parroted like the merit-badge-winning Girl Scout she was.

“You’re right, kiddo, but if I’m gonna stay in this uniform, maybe I’d better skip it just this once. I’ll see you on the floor, okay?”

She left as Tiff insisted she’d have waffles and Mellie demanded French toast. Their mother fecklessly insisted they have yogurt or eggs for protein. Sam knew Jenny’d lose. She always did.

The outrageous Lt. O’Hara costume worked to her advantage. When she slithered up and leaned over the registration counter, the young clerk’s eyeballs bulged out of their sockets and his tongue practically lolled on his keyboard. After flashing Farley’s photo, she had her “cousin’s” suite number in a flash. But when she arrived at the room on the fourteenth floor, which was really the thirteenth, her luck ran in that direction. A maid was already busy making up the beds.

Farley and Elvis had departed for an early start at the con. “What were they dressed like? Could you describe their outfits?” she asked the smiling young woman with the fresh-scrubbed face of a kid working her way through college.

Cyndi, as her name tag identified her, rolled her eyes. “I loved Alien and Lord of the Rings, but these guys are way out there, if you know what I mean—oh, I didn’t intend any offense,” she hastily added, looking at Sam’s skimpy “uniform.” “Er, are they family?” she asked, dubious.

Sam grinned. “Not a chance in hell. One’s a car thief, the other’s a druggie.”

That alarming news oddly seemed to reassure Cyndi. Kid must really need this job bad.

“Well, the shorter one had this icky bulging forehead and a long brown fright wig, big bushy eyebrows and thick, dark makeup. The taller one wore white fur but he didn’t look like the Easter bunny, believe me. Had these antennae sprouting out of his forehead and extra arms—kinda like a big hairy white spider.”

Sam paged through her memory and recalled the photo plates from the reference book she’d brought. “A Klingoff and a Pandorian. Great. Two of the most elaborate costumes. I’ll never recognize them on the floor,” she muttered. “Do they ever come back to the room to chill, have lunch, anything like that?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I work the early shift so I can get to SLU for classes starting at ten. But you might ask Tilda. She’s the floor super and keeps a pretty close eye on what happens with the guests.”

Sam thanked Cyndi and went in search of Tilda, who was as crazed as most of the staff was coping with hordes of people in otherworldly costumes roaming the hallways. All she learned about Farley and Elvis was that they usually returned to their suite and ordered room service around midnight.

Since her odds of locating her target in full Klingoff regalia were less likely than winning the lottery, Sam decided to wait until he and his Pandorian pal returned to their room that night. In the meanwhile, she had escaped Jenny and her girls. They meant well, but this was business and she couldn’t risk having a pair of out of control kids and their noodle-kneed mom get in the way of her earning Roman Numeral’s hefty fee.

With any luck—and heaven knew she was overdue for some—she’d have Farley in custody and be all the way to the Tennessee border by dawn’s early light. Making sure they were gone, Sam used the key they’d given her and slipped into the suite. Her first impulse was to leave the costume behind along with the hasty goodbye note she scrawled on hotel stationary, but she reconsidered.

What if she blew the snatch and had to go back on the floor? No need to stand out. She pulled a wad of cash from her wallet and carefully counted out what she thought was a generous rental deposit. Once she had Farley back in Miami, she’d figure a way to get a receipt from Jenny and add it to Roman Numeral’s bill. Stuffing her personal belongings in her travel bag, she headed back to her van.

Just as she was stashing her gear, her cell rang. Recognizing Matt’s number, she picked up. “Hi sweetie,” she answered brightly.

“How’s St. Louis?”

She looked at the cloudless sky. It was 10:00 a.m. and already the heat was starting to fuse spandex to her skin. At least there wouldn’t be much of it to peel away. “Hot, hot, oh, and did I mention hot?”

“Got a little info on Reicht.” He explained about the illegal prescriptions the doc was peddling. “He’s a supplier for a lot of rich clients, according to my sources.”

“Which we know are always impeccable. The IRS nail him for not reporting illegal income?” she asked. “God forbid they should care about his contacts with drug dealers.”

“She was pretty closemouthed, but I don’t think Kleb knew about the drug thing yet. They started investigating him after stumbling across some large money transfers out of country.”

“He could be a drug dealer,” Sam said, digesting the surprising news. She paused a moment; then a thought occurred to her. “Say, you don’t think he might be blackmailing patients? All kinds of dirty little secrets the rich and crazy in Miami might be spilling to their shrink.” But she reconsidered. “Nah, somehow, I don’t think that fits. Oh, he probably does what your sources said, slipping padded scripts to his patients, but that wouldn’t be enough money to blip the IRS radar.”

“Ah, Samantha, great minds work along the same courses. Guess our meeting was fate.”

“Only if Aunt Claudia is its agent. She paid me to put you on ice, Granger,” she reminded him.

“It was a lot more complicated than that,” he reminded her, then headed off another argument about his aunt’s money by saying, “What’s going on there? Any sightings yet?”

“You ever try to tell one Klingoff from another? They look as much alike as Mary-Kate and Ashley, only with turtle shells glued to their foreheads.”

“That would be tough. An international con like this one must draw thousands. You might have to wait until its over and they’re out of costume,” he said.

“No way. I have their room number. Tonight I’ll be on the road with Farley in the back of the van all safe and secure. But I won’t turn him over to Reicht…or to his loving father right away. The old man doesn’t want the kid anyway. I need a good shrink.”

“I’ve told you that ever since we met, Sam.”

“This from a guy who married his kidnapper. I’ll ask Pat to find me a legit doc to take care of the kid.”

Matt snorted. “I’ve met Patowski. He’ll suggest a state asylum and a lobotomy.”

“Yeah, you have a point,” she admitted grudgingly. “Okay, you find Farley a doc. Deal?”

“Right. Oh, and Sam, don’t do anything crazier than usual. Deal?”