03 - Three Odd Balls (22 page)

“No. Not right. Let me assure you I have never, ever, seen anything like what I’m witnessing right now in my rooftop garden in Clarence, North Carolina. My garden is not the big, bad, wild wilderness. There are no spiders, no bugs, no rats, n—”

“Rats!?” Chris screamed.

“Rats!?” Bee Bee screeched, and I hastened to say I had not actually seen a rat.

“Really?” Chris’s voice was a bit unsteady.

“Really,” I said firmly. “In fact, I think I read somewhere that there are no rats in Hawaii.”

“What? Like how Ireland has no snakes?”

“Exactly.” I did some quick thinking. “Somebody, umm, some Hawaiian god, drove all the rats out of Hawaii, just like Saint Patrick did with the snakes in Ireland.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes.” I nodded enthusiastically even though Chris couldn’t see me. “It was Maui, actually. Not the island, but the god. Maui was a helpful god, you see. He wanted to help mankind. So he got rid of the rats. He, umm, he gathered them up and herded them out to the Pacifi—”

“Jessie?”

“Yes?”

“You’re making this up, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe we should concentrate on the bugs.”

Maybe. I went back to obsessing about the bugs and soon noticed something disconcertingly indiscernible scurrying along near my feet. Why oh why was I wearing those stupid, stupid flop flops? I almost started the heebie-jeebie hum again, but stopped myself in order to concentrate more fully on my imminent demise.

“Maybe the two of you are not going to die here,” I said. “But I am quite certain I will perish.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really,” I insisted. “So when you do get out of here, I want you to give your father and my mother an accurate report of what killed me.”

“The heebie jeebies?” Chris asked.

“Heebie jeebies, heebie jeebies,” Bee Bee added.

“Exactly,” I said as whatever was near my toes turned around and scurried back in the opposite direction—no doubt sizing me up for its dinnertime repast.

“Maybe we should think about something other than rats or bugs,” Chris suggested in an almost-kind tone of voice.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. What do you usually think about when you’re trying to take your mind off your troubles?”

“Sex.”

***

It took the stupid kid an inordinate amount of time to stop guffawing.

I waited patiently and then reminded him I write romance novels. “I’m almost always thinking about my stories and my characters,” I said over one final guffaw. I tilted my head and grimaced at Ms. Huge and Hairy. “There is a bitter irony here, you know?”

“What’s that?”

“Virtually all of Adelé Nightingale’s heroines end up getting themselves kidnapped at some point or another. Some evil, vile, and altogether unsavory character holds them captive in some altogether nasty and uncomfortable location.”

“But your stories always have a happy ending, right?”

“Of course.”

“So think, Jessie.” Chris sounded remarkably upbeat. “How do these women escape? How do they get away from the clutches of the evil bad guys?”

I pursed my lips and thought about the various and sundry predicaments Adelé Nightingale’s heroines had found themselves in over the years. “First of all,” I said, “none of my heroines has ever had to deal with bugs. Let alone Ms. Queen Mother Spider, Huge and Hai--”

“Yeah, but what do they do?”

I blinked at Ms. Huge and Hairy. “Umm, I think I’ve lost my train of thought.”

“Concentrate!” Chris ordered, and I flinched. “How do your heroines escape from the bad guys?”

“Their paramours rescue them, okay? The handsome and dashing hero swash buckles his way down to the dungeon or up to the turret and saves the day, and the damsel, from certain ruin.” I paused. “You didn’t happen to bring a sword with you?”

“What else?” he persisted. “What would happen if the hero didn’t show up with his sword?”

“Well,” I said, “modern women like reading about other resourceful women. So more and more, I’m having my heroines find their own solutions.”

“Such as?” Chris asked eagerly.

“Such as, in Temptation at Twilight. Alexis Wynsome solicited the help of a servant in the evil Lord Derwin Snipe’s household. Alexis just happened to know Annabelle Goodloe from childhood. And so, with Annabelle’s help, she discovered an escape route out of the dungeon. There was this handy-dandy tunnel that no one had ever noticed before—”

“Jessie?”

“Yes?”

“We gotta get out of here.”

I sighed dramatically. “Yes, Chris. We do.”

While Bee Bee regaled us with a sing-song “We-do, we-do, we-do,” I asked Chris if he had ever been a Boy Scout.

“Yeah. Why?”

“It has been my experience that former Boy Scouts know their knots. I was a Girl Scout for a short time until they wanted me to go camping. But even women of my generation who were Girl Scouts for years and years never learned knots like the boys. Hopefully time has rectified this oversight, and girls today are learning their knots, but I myself could not tie a decent knot if you paid me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Knots,” I said. “Let’s see if we can untie this thing behind us.”

“If we work together maybe we can.”

And so we worked together, blindly fiddling with the ropes that bound us. I dutifully followed Chris the former Boy Scout’s instructions. Bee Bee helped also. But boy or not, Bee Bee had clearly never been a Boy Scout. And the pecking of his inch-long and remarkably sharp beak at our wrists was more than a bit distracting. Never mind that we also had to avoid crushing the poor thing in between us. Thus, with lots and lots and lots of patience, cooperation, and contorting of arms and wrists, we finally made things worse.

We stopped and regrouped, and the three of us had ourselves a little contest of who could sputter out the most four-letter words.

We tried again.

What’s the saying? When there’s a will, there’s a way? And when Ms. Huge and Hairy got hungry again and started propelling herself downward, I had a pretty good incentive. I ignored Chris’s complaining that I was hurting him and frantically tugged and pulled and pried.

And we did it!

“We did it!”Chris shouted and jumped to his feet.

My own fifty-two-year-old body was a bit slower to cooperate. But with Bee Bee’s encouragement and Chris’s assistance, I finally hobbled to a more or less upright position.

I stepped aside from the trajectory of Ms. Huge and Hairy, and that’s when I noticed the only way out of the cave. A tunnel—no doubt a spider-infested tunnel.

Heebie jeebies, here I come.

***

Actually, it could have been worse. The tunnel looked relatively short, and it was bright and sunny. It had provided us with what little light we had, and now it was our path to freedom. That tunnel was my friend.

Chris and I would have been right on it, but Bee Bee was not so easily convinced. Who knows what was going through his bird brain, but the poor thing was clearly terrified of the tunnel.

“This is probably why he wasn’t tied up like us,” Chris said as he tried in vain to get the bird to cooperate. Bee Bee happily hopped onto Chris’s wrist, but instantly flew off whenever Chris stepped toward our escape route.

I suggested we try to get him to walk, and sure enough, that worked. I took the lead, coaxing and encouraging him from ahead, and Chris took up the rear, corralling and scooting him forward. And thus, inch by slow inch, Bee Bee waddled his reluctant way out.

Proof that there is a God in heaven—we finally did reach the end. We staggered into the sunlight and waited for our eyes to adjust.

Not a big surprise, we now stood in a dense, and no doubt, bug-infested jungle. To make matters worse, it must have rained while we were in Pele’s Prison. Everything—every leaf, bough, branch, and bug—glistened with raindrops, which in case you do not realize, only serves to exacerbate the heebie jeebies.

I reminded myself that at least I was out from under the clutches of Ms. Huge and Hairy and watched as Chris spent a few moments stretching and smiling at our newfound freedom. Bee Bee also seemed his old self. He fluttered his wings, and ruffled his feathers, and hopped around from bush to bush.

“Good as new!” he chirped.

“Good as new!” Chris repeated, and they both looked at me.

Oh, what the hell? “Good as new,” I said and swatted at a mosquito.

Chapter 24

I scanned the immediate vicinity. “When Alexis Wynsome emerged from Derwin Snipe’s tunnel, a handy-dandy white stallion was tied to the nearest tree to whisk her away to safety.” I pointed to a few trees and appealed to Chris. “So, like, where’s the horse?”

“Nice try, Jessie.” He invited Bee Bee to hop onto his wrist, and this time the bird readily accepted the offer. “Let’s roll,” he said, and the two of them disappeared into a thicket of who knows what. I sighed dramatically and hastened to follow before I lost them completely.

With Chris in charge of leading the way, Bee Bee in charge of repeating our mantra whenever the mood struck, and me in charge of flailing frantically at the numerous and varied flying insects of Hawaii, we pushed forward, desperately seeking the trail that supposedly ran so very close to Pele’s Prison.

Far be it for me to burst Bee Bee’s bubble, but trust me, we were not good as new. And we were altogether unprepared for any sort of arduous hike. Chris was bare-chested, since he had just gotten out of the shower when he was abducted. But at least he was wearing running shoes. No socks. I myself was still clad in the ever so impractical tank top, shorts, and flip flops—an outfit about as useful as that leaf Delta Touchette was sporting.

Needless to say, we were slow-going. But Chris the wilderness expert insisted we just needed to keep moving.

Yeah, right. Even I, the wilderness wimp, knew we were hopelessly lost. Maybe the rain had camouflaged it, or maybe Chris had gotten almost as disoriented as Bee Bee while we were in the cave, but the Maka Koa Trail remained stubbornly elusive.

At some point Ranger Rye must have given up on finding it. He stopped saying it had to be right around the next grove of sandalwood trees or the next clump of oleander bushes, and started suggesting we would find an actual road.

“A road?” Skepticism veritably oozed out of my every bug-bitten pore.

“It’s got to be right here,” Chris hallucinated out loud. “Right past those trees up ahead.” He waved toward the trees. “Think about it, Jessie. Whoever kidnapped us couldn’t have carried us all the way from the Wakilulani. They had to have driven us up here, right?”

“Right,” I said as I stumbled over a tree root.

He continued revising his theory, “If we keep heading downhill we’re bound to find the road, right?”

“Right,” I was forced to agree again.

I reminded myself that Christopher Rye had been a Boy Scout. Also, he and his father had likely been hiking in various woods and forests since the kid could walk. Chris would find the way out of La La Land. Please, God—Chris had to find the way out of La La Land.

***

About four thousand bug bites and an hour later, we were still roaming around La La Land. I was wondering if the situation could get any worse when Bee Bee flew away.

Well, that answered that question.

We cursed the Hawaiian gods and searched high and low for the bird. The good news? We finally did locate him. The bad news? We managed to get ourselves even more lost and confused in the process.

Altogether unconcerned with our plight, Bee Bee was perched in some sort of bush, munching contentedly on an abundance of large purple berries.

Chris plopped down on a nearby boulder, and testimony to my frazzled state, I accepted a seat beside him without even checking for bugs beforehand.

“I hope they’re not poisonous,” he said, and I sprang up.

He rolled his eyes and patted the boulder again. “There’s nothing on this stupid rock, Jessie.” He pointed to Bee Bee. “I’m talking about those berries.”

“Bee Bee’s smart,” I said as I sat back down. “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”

“I wonder how long he was in Pele’s Prison before we got there.”

“Two days, I imagine. He needs to eat.”

I studied the bird and tried not to think about Chris and my own dietary needs. If possible, we were even less equipped for our jungle adventure than Delta Touchette. At least she had possessed the foresight to bring along a canteen.

I tilted my head toward the stream we had just hopped across in our search for Bee Bee. “We should drink some water,” I suggested.

“No way. You can get giardia from drinking out of the streams up here.”

“Is it worse than the heebie jeebies?” I slapped an insect from Chris’s right shoulder as he regaled me with all the unpleasant consequences of this giardia thing. I will spare you the details, but yes, apparently giardia is worse than the heebie jeebies.

“We’ll find the road soon enough,” he repeated for the umpteenth time. “Then we’ll get rescued and get some water.”

“Hopefully before we die,” I mumbled and swatted at the bugs swarming overhead.

“Will you relax?” Chris grabbed my flailing hands and pushed them back into my lap. “Can’t you try to enjoy this?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s right, Jessie. Enjoy. This place is amazing.” He continued to hold my arms down and pointed outward with his free hand. “Take a look around.”

I grumbled something about hating the wilderness and took a look around.

Okay, so maybe it was beautiful. First, there was the pleasant babbling of that brook off to my left. And then there was the lush jungle in all directions. The greens were out of this world. All the flowers were lovely, too. And the orchids. And the slow, steady, and refreshing breeze. The air smelled nice—sweet and fresh. Nothing like yours truly at that moment.

“La La Land,” Chris said and flashed a Rye-grin.

I squeezed his hand and replaced it on his own lap. “So who did it?” I asked as Bee Bee moved to a bush bearing red berries. “Who’s the killer, who kidnapped us, and why?”

“You’re the sleuth. You tell me.”

“Well then, I think we can rule out a woman,” I said. “At one point your father suspected Bethany, but clearly she couldn’t have gotten us into that cave.” I nudged my companion. “You’re a rather large specimen to lug around.”