A Cut Above (26 page)

His chuckles die off. “We’re going to find them. We have to. There’s no other choice.”

A sob hitches its way up my throat. “I just hope we’re in time. Let’s go hit her office.”

“Let me stop in my dressing room first. I don’t want to go off Duo-hunting in a suit.”

Even though I’m impatient to get on with it, his words make me take a step back. “You’ve got a point. I’ll meet you at Miss Mona’s office in ten.”

By the time I get there, he’s inside, hands in his jeans pockets, turning slowly, staring at the bookcases, the file cabinets, the enormous desk with its multiple drawers. “Where do we start?”

I look around, and the sheer volume of stuff in the office threatens to overwhelm me. But I can’t let that kind of roadblock get to me. Miss Mona and Aunt Weeby come first.

“Tell you what. Since you’re taller than I am, how about you go through those bookshelves? I’ll hit the desk. And then maybe we can do the file cabinets together.”

“Sounds like a plan.” At the set of shelves closest to the door, he stops and turns. “Mind telling me what we’re looking for?”

“Hmm . . . I’m not sure. If I knew, I’d tell you. Since I don’t, you’re just going to have to wing it. The best I can do is tell you we’re looking for something that doesn’t quite . . . oh, I don’t know. Fit, maybe?”

“Oh man, am I in trouble here. That actually made sense.”

A rush of daring overtakes me. “See what love can do to a man?”

He laughs and heads for the nearest bookshelf. “That’s a subject for later, Andie. And we’ll have that talk too, the one about later. I promise.”

Blushing, I slide behind the desk and sit in the massive leather desk chair. I may talk a mean streak, but I don’t have a clue what I’m looking for. Something that doesn’t fit? Good grief.

The top center drawer seems like a good place to start.

But aside from a beautiful collection of true fountain pens and their accompanying rainbow of ink bottles, there’s nothing there. So it’s on to the right-side stack of drawers for me. And then I hit my first snag. It’s locked. I don’t have that key. Or a fake dog plop under which to find it.

But I do have Max.

Who does the deed with his magic metal gizmos, and within minutes, I’m rifling through contracts, employment records, banking statements, all kinds of information I don’t feel right looking at. “I can’t believe I’ve become such a sleaze, going through her stuff like this.”

“You want to join me over here and leave the desk for Chief Clark?”

“Not on your life. I don’t know how long it’ll be before he gets here. I don’t want to wait any longer than I have to.”

After I’ve plowed through the right side and find nothing unusual or interesting—about the emeralds, Colombia, or Creepella—I hit the left-side stack. With the same frustrating results.

“How’s it going?” I ask Max once I’m done.

“Aside from dueling massive collections of books—gemology and historical romance novels—I haven’t found anything too—”

I wait. Count to ten. “Well? Too what?”

“Hmm . . . this might be something.”

I fly to his side. “What did you find?”

He pats a group of tall, slim, leather-bound books with gold writing on the spines. “There’s something about these books . . . something about them rings a bell with me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Did you know she keeps all her school yearbooks here in the office?”

“Oh, those. Yeah. You know Miss Mona. She’s very loving, and sentimental to the max—no pun intended. Every so often she hauls them out and tells me stories from when she was in school. She went to some snooty boarding place.”

“I’ll bet those stories are pretty funny.”

“Trust me. They are.”

“But they’ll have to wait. We have to find her and Aunt Weeby first.”

I glance at him with gratitude. And love. He takes the few steps over to my side, then reaches out a hand to pull me to him. I close my eyes and breathe in the distinctive scent of his aftershave. But behind my eyelids a rapid-fire cascade of images clicks down, and I gasp, straighten upright, and bang my head against his chin.

“Ow!” I cry.

“Oooof!” He winces. “What’d you do that for?”

I rub the top of my head and answer him absently, my thoughts totally into the mental pictures still vivid in my wacky mind. “Hey, I’m Calamity Andie sometimes, didn’t you know?”

But in the back of my mind, a sense of been-there-done-that grows, strengthens, until I get to that aha! moment. “Oh! Oh-oh-oh-oh! Max, the books. There
is
something hinky about those books.”

He continues to rub his chin, but walks back to the bookshelf and points at the yearbooks. “These books? They look pretty normal to me. Old, but typical.”

“No! I mean, yeah. They’re normal but I just remembered something, something important. Think,
think
. And look at them. Where have you seen those books before?”

He gives me one of those you-really-lost-it-this-time looks.

“No. Seriously. Look at the books. Don’t just touch them.” “I’m looking, I’m
staring
at them, but I’m not seeing the same thing you are—obviously.”

I stomp over. “Okay, okay. Stay with me here. These are Miss Mona’s school yearbooks. But I saw another set just like them recently, very recently. And you did too.”

“I did? Where?”

“In Colombia, of course. At—”

“Doña Rosario’s office!” He rubs his hand over his forehead and shakes his head. “I remember now. Can’t believe I forgot. How could I? She stood there, running a finger over the books. I guess that honking emerald must’ve distracted me so much I didn’t pay much attention to what she was doing.”

“It boggles my mind.” I walk over to the books. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

He takes a deep breath. “I know what you’re getting at, but I’m having a hard time digesting it. It’s . . . it’s unbelievable.”

“It’s the stuff of heartburn, for sure. But didn’t you at least wonder how she came to speak English so well?”

“To be honest, I was so caught up in the danger of the situation, and worrying about getting you out of there in one piece, that I didn’t think about much of anything beyond that.”

“That’s where I was too. But we should’ve noticed.” I look at the yearbooks again. “To think they must have gone to school together . . . but that still doesn’t answer all the questions. Or does it?”

“She must have known Rodolfo was coming to offer the stones to her old schoolmate.”

“And that’s why she kept checking on Miss Mona.” My finger runs over the gold lettering.
Riverview Preparatory
Academy.
“There’s more to this, Max. I’m sure of it.”

“I think it’s pretty straightforward. I would imagine a major emerald vendor would be well known in Colombia, and if someone wanted emeralds, then they would keep an eye on him. When he headed here, she somehow managed to track his movements, and realized he was coming to sell stones to an old school friend. I think it’s easy to add two and two.”

“We’re still missing the somehow of your equation. How’d she find out Rodolfo was coming to see Miss Mona?”

“We’ll find out, and soon.” He squares his jaw. “This isn’t over. It won’t be until we find them—and Doña Rosario.”

I snag the last one of the yearbooks, hug it close, and spin on my heel. “Let’s go.”

“Whoa, Andie. Go where?”

“To find them.”

“Yes, but where? Where do you want to look?”

I slump. “You’re right. I’m not sure what to do next.”

He comes to my side and takes my hands. “Much as I know you’re not going to want to do it, we do have to call Chief Clark.”

“Yeah, but you know he’s going to tell us to let him ‘take care’ of things. And I can’t. I
can’t
just sit and let that crazy woman hurt Miss Mona or Aunt Weeby.”

“Calling the chief isn’t just sitting there. It’s helping. Even if it’s not in true Andi-ana Jones fashion.”

I roll my eyes. “All right, all right. I’ll call the man. Maybe I’ll get an idea while talking to him.”

But our conversation gives me nothing, no ideas, no hunches, no nothing. It doesn’t even help when the chief commends me for my observations, because he follows that up with another warning to stay out of trouble and leave the detecting to him. “I’ll leave the detecting to you, but tell me this. How did an old schoolmate from a foreign country track down Miss Mona? And how did she know Rodolfo Cruz was coming to sell her the gems? Don’t you think if we could figure all that out we’d be able to find them?”

A moment’s silence gives me no satisfaction either. We all have more questions than answers. And a nasty feeling has started to crawl around in the pit of my gut. Something tells me the longer we take to get those answers, the greater the danger the Duo faces.

“I’ll get those answers, Miss Andie. It’s my job, and I do know what I’m doing.”

He doesn’t give me a chance to comment, since he hangs up on me. Which is probably just as well. I do have a history of blurting out the worst possible thing at the worst possible time.

“How?” I ask Max as I whirl around to face him. “How did Doña Rosario track Miss Mona down?” And then, something really hideous hits me. “Oh, no. You don’t think . . .” I stumble and land against the office door. “Could she have been working with Rodolfo? Could they have some weird kind of racket going?”

“They could,” Max answers. “But I’m not sure it would make sense. If they were working together, why wouldn’t she just have gotten the stones from him?”

“Maybe it’s one of those ‘no honor among thieves’ deals. Maybe he’d promised the stones to her, but then reneged. Or maybe it’s just more greed. You know, they want the stones
and
Miss Mona’s bucks.”

“Could be.” He doesn’t sound convinced. “But this isn’t doing the Duo any good. Let’s go get something to eat. I think better on a full stomach.”

“How you can think of eating at a time like this, I’ll never know.”

“That’s why you’re the girl and I’m the guy.”

Who can argue with logic like that?

At the cozy seafood restaurant, I chew what looks like a shrimp but tastes like sawdust. I know I’m not scintillating company right now, and Max is being a good sport about it, but I can’t get Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona out of my mind. And I can’t convince myself I’m hungry.

I spear another shrimp with my fork, bring it up to my mouth, and have a brainstorm. The fork clatters down to my plate. The shrimp takes wing and flies straight at Max.

“Of course!” I cry. “Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could I miss it?”

Max daubs at the cocktail sauce on his light blue shirt with his napkin. “Care to let me in on the secret? I’d love to know why you’re calling yourself stupid.”

And probably why I catapulted food at him. I cringe. “Sorry about the mess. But it’s just so obvious now. Doña Rosario tracked Miss Mona down through the school. It’s the one connection between them. We just have to call the school, and I’m sure we’ll find out she called to get Miss Mona’s phone number recently.”

“And . . . ?”

I frown. “What do you mean, and?”

“Sure, Andie. Once you confirm she did call to get Miss Mona’s phone, what then? What difference will it make to know for sure she got the number from the school?”

Before I can answer, my cell phone rings. While I generally hate phones in public places like restaurants—I really don’t want to hear all about Aunt Fanny’s bunions, blow by blow—as long as the Duo’s missing, my phone’s not going silent.

“Hello?”

“It’s Chief Clark, Miss Andie. I just got me some information you oughta know. Mr. Sloan from the embassy in Colombia just gave me a ring. It seems that there Rosie woman’s taken herself a trip. She’s in America right now.”

In the middle of his pause, I gulp. Loudly.

He goes on. “I want to make sure you understand. This is dangerous, Miss Andie. Sooner or later that woman and her partner’ll come outta their hidey-hole and strike again. You and Mr. Max are the two most likely targets.”

The lonely shrimp I ate does a tap dance in my belly. “I see . . .”

“No, miss, I’m not so sure you do. Her brother’s killed at least a dozen men by now. I doubt that family’s gonna get squeamish about killing again. And again and again. You and Mr. Max need to stay outta trouble, now, you hear?”

“I hear,” I whisper.

He hangs up.

I do too.

Max says, “Well?”

I shudder, feeling colder than the bed of ice my shrimp’s remaining buddies are nestled on. “Well, Max, sometimes you kiss a cat and get a mouthful of fleas for your trouble.”

His jaw drops. His eyes widen. He shakes his head. “Cats . . . fleas?”

“Doña Rosario’s no longer in Colombia. Looks like she took me at my word when I told her back at the hacienda that I didn’t have the stones. She probably assumed I had them sent to Miss Mona. Wanna bet Doña Rosario’s in Kentucky? Right where we’ll find Miss Mona and Aunt Weeby?”

“I don’t bet.”

“Neither do I. Especially not against a sure thing.”

1700

I wait with a massive case of poorly hidden impatience for Max to finish his surf ’n’turf. So sue me. I want to get going to find Miss Mona and Aunt Weeby. I don’t really want to watch the love of my life stuff himself with food when I can’t even stand the thought of eating while they’re out there. No way.