Malicious Mischief (A Rylie Keyes Mystery) (Entangled Select) (13 page)

Her responding
humph
was almost a bark, as though her mouth had farted, which I was pleased to note showed a flaw in my earlier assessment. Her beauty was only skin-deep. And no, I was not smiling. However, I was sidelong watching as she pulled Booth aside to say something close to his ear.

Booth hesitated, and then he said, “See, the thing is, she won’t thank you.”

“I’ll break your face if you tell her,” Queenie said through her teeth.

“Silence costs, baby,” he said.

“Your price is too high.”

Booth shrugged and moved back to take his seat. “But you’ll pay it for her.”

Queenie blew out a breath and joined him.

When the announcer tapped on the microphone and announced the competition was about to begin, I scrambled to my feet, crossed to the set-up table, and barreled back with a glass of water for Tita.

“My victory waits,” Tita said, pounding her fists on the table.

“Whatz with the diarrhea mouth?” Queenie asked.

Tita grinned; it was not a nice grin. “Booth,” she said, “how come you never told me that you had a dog?”

Queenie gasped. “You take that back!”

“Be afraid, geezer chaser.” Tita wielded a threatening finger. “Be very afraid.”

I wedged in between them, turned my back on Queenie, and placed the water in front of Tita. “Here you go,” I said. “You might need it.”

“Oh yeah, she’s gonna need it,” Queenie said. “Game on. Let’s trounce this bitch.”

Tita’s nasty smiled widened.

When a waiter set down a bowl of wings on the table in front of her, I leaned in for a whiff. My nose went up in flames. “Omigod, that’s hot.”

“Stop worrying,” Tita said.

The Roaring Wings announcer tapped on the microphone again. “Nothing but the hottest Trinidad Scorpion Moruga peppers, chocolate, red habaneras, and vinegar, folks. We at Roaring Wings want to wish everyone luck. Five seconds till start.”

“Milk,” Tita said in a hurry. “I need milk. Lots of it.”

“How come?” I asked.

“I’ve never eaten Trinidad Scorpion Moruga peppers, but I’ve heard they’re shitloads hotter than habaneras.” She whimpered, froze in horror. “You didn’t hear that. No whimper. Got it?”

I nodded.

“Get milk,” she said. “Now!”

The crowd had closed in, stalling my progress.

Tita scowled. “Why are you just standing there? Hurry!”

“Ready. Set. Go!” the announcer shouted from the podium.

The contestants dove into their wings. I rushed into a wall of onlookers. No one budged. Beyond them was a sea of gawking and pushing people. I felt like a spawning salmon, swimming against the current, thrashing for speed, bouncing off rocks. Going nowhere fast.

When my knee bumped into something hard, I looked down to find a sleeping toddler in a stroller. The little girl wore a one-piece jumper embroidered with the name Dodo Baby. And—like manna from heaven—a discarded bottle of milk lay in her lap. I scanned the nearby crowd for the child’s mother. No females, only men. All eyes focused on the competitors.

No way could I take Dodo Baby’s bottle.
No way.

Then a gut-wrenching howl split the air. It was Tita. I cut my eyes to the child again. This was wrong.
Really wrong.
But it was no time for principles. Fragile taste buds were at stake.

In a quirk of fate, Dodo Baby opened her eyes and smiled sweetly. I pointed to the bottle. “May I?” I asked, and she giggled. Necessity required flexibility, so I took that as a yes. “I’m coming, Tita!” I said on the run.

The frat boys were out of their chairs, bent over, and retching. Puke splattered everywhere. It was like running on oatmeal.

The werewolf was ringing his help bell. “Omigod!”
Gasp
.
Gasp
.
Gasp
. “I’m on fire!”

I squirted a weak stream of milk into his open mouth.

“More!” He clawed at me. “Give me more!”

Tita shoved him aside and, after clamping her hands over mine, she raised the bottle to her mouth, but still a meager bit of milk came out the nipple. I attempted to twist off the top while trying to wiggle free my other hand trapped beneath her death grip. The bottle tilted and the milk spilled on the floor.

On a cry of “No” the werewolf dropped to his belly and began to lap at anything white, which I’m sorry to say included some frat boy puke.

Tita gasped for air. I looked for water, spied a glass near Booth, and grabbed it.

“Give me that,” Queenie insisted. “That Latina got hot sauce on my top. You give it to me, or I’ll scratch your eyes out.” She flexed ten digits with ten red talons. “Give it!”

“Don’t—let—her—have—it—” Tita croaked.

Probably Queenie would gouge out my eyes if I didn’t. Then I would be blind over a T-shirt emblazoned with skulls and snakes. So I loosened my grip, but the cup whipped back and drenched her face with water.
Oops-a-daisy
.

“Oh. No. You. Didn’t.” She came at me with those badass nails.

A hush fell over the crowd, and I swear I heard Booth chuckle.

Queenie narrowed her eyes. I narrowed mine. Her mouth lathered up. I started to apologize, but stopped. Funny how hard it was to say sorry to a frothy mouth.

“You are dead.” She stabbed all ten nails into my shoulders, a ring of Jolly-Roger tattoos beneath her shirt collar exposed and straining from the effort.

“Oh, stop it, both of you.” Tita body-checked Queenie off me.

Queenie’s mouth made a sucker of an
O
as she flailed backward, her arms whirling, and squished—butt-first—into a huge bowl of hot wings.

Booth pushed aside his empty bowl, climbed to his feet. “Looks like I won. Maybe I’m full of bullshit, I don’t know, but that was fun. Come on, baby. Let’s get my iPhone. Here.” He tossed me his old phone. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“Thanks,” I said, hoping against hope that he had left behind his SIM card for some evidence. “I owe you.”

“Bet your sweet life you do.” He strode away with only the barest of a limp.

Queenie followed him, her tiny butt even sexier thanks to the two well-defined circles of hot sauce. Where was the justice?

Then from behind, a female voice yelled, “What asshole took Dodo Baby’s bottle?”

Uh-oh
.

~There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot~

I pleaded insanity to Dodo Baby’s mother—strange, how easily she accepted my excuse—then I tickled Dodo Baby under her chin and left the tent. Tita managed to stay upright—more like bowed and humped. If she dragged a leg, she would be Quasimodo—as she walked beside me on the sidewalk. I knew she was a wild stallion to the core, but right now, she looked more ridden hard and put away wet.

“Sure you don’t want any?” I held out one of four Roar Energy drinks she had received from Roaring Wings as a consolation prize.

She shook her head. “Keep ’em. I may not eat or drink ever again. Man, I was killing it until my throat closed. Two more wings. That’s all that stood between me and that iPhone.”

Physically, I was fading fast from lack of food or sleep, so I downed one of the energy drinks and pocketed the rest. “It’s all good, though. It may not be an iPhone, but I think Solo will be happy with Booth’s cell. And you want to know the best part? I discovered Booth is on painkillers. So all I need is some real incriminating evidence, something not just circumstantial.”

“He’s no barrel of laughs.” She righted from another stumble. “Watch yourself. He won’t go down easily, you know?”

“Gotcha.” I was anxious to get inside so I could look at Booth’s phone without him seeing me as I knew he planned to work a shift at the FoY booth. I scanned the front of Shlomo’s Deli, spied Solo and Gilad in a booth by the window, and waved. I grabbed Tita when she stumbled again and headed that way.

I was tickled pink about how my first dip into the investigative pool was shaping up. We pushed through the double doors. Solo and Gilad were bent over a table, combing through a cheese blintz with dueling toothpicks.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked.

“Looking for this varmint’s cohort in crime.” Solo pointed to a dead fly pasted to the plate in creamy cheese. The men resumed their hunt, trash talking the as of yet discovered second insect.

“Duck and cover, you germ spreader,” Gilad said.

“Watch yourself, you low life. A new sheriff is in town,” Solo added.

Tita’s response was neither pretty nor printable.

The guys made room for us as I relayed the details of the hot wing competition. I slid the cell phone across the table to Solo. “It’s Booth’s,” I said.

“Holy moly,” he said.

We stared at each other then stared at the phone. In the background, Tita and Gilad were discussing the competition.

“SIM?” Solo asked me.

“It’s there.”

“Perfect, mawn.”

I nodded toward Gilad. “Anything?”

He shook his head. “Tight as a tick.”

I was still marveling at how Solo and I could communicate in few words when Gilad unleashed a raucous guffaw.

“Trinidad Scorpion Moruga peppers!” he cried out. “I swear, Tita, is there anything you won’t put down your gullet?”

She shrugged. “Could have had an iPhone if Rylie had gotten me some more milk.”

I was doubtful. Booth had been a hot wing-eating machine. “Fine. At least let the record show, I sort of took a bottle from a baby,” I said and filled them in. “Come on. Come on. That’s enough laughing. I gave it back.”

“Empty,” Tita reminded me.

“Tut, tut,” Gilad said. “Guilt should be nonexistent when the crime is justified.”

I looked at him. “You believe that?”

“Yes,” he said straightforwardly.

I was reminded of his words to Elsa last night at the fundraiser.
“Otto isn’t here. He was too chicken shit to show up.”
What did Otto have to fear? I wondered. A jealous boyfriend, perhaps? Now that I thought about it. Gilad and Elsa had been arguing a lot lately.

I looked at Gilad again, frowning, and saw him frowning back. “How’s Elsa?” I asked. “Tita says she went to the ready clinic.”

“You’ve come to the wrong place for that answer. Ask her,” he said.

There was a sudden rocking of the table. Solo had shoulder bumped Tita. “You’re off the chain, girl. Thanks for trying to get me an iPhone.”

She managed a thin smile. “Rylie can be very persuasive,” she said. “Seriously,
chica
, you oughta go back to sales rep’ing for Coca-Cola. You’ve missed your calling, you know?”

“Fat chance,” Gilad said. “Hawthorne told me she got fired for drinking Pepsi while calling on Coke customers.”

I sighed, more dismayed than surprised. Granddad had such a big mouth. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea, having an honest relationship with a senior. It seemed with age came a sort of free rein to tell stories, even a granddaughter’s humiliating blunder.

“In my defense,” I said, “7-Eleven
was
out of Coke.”

Tita rolled her eyes. “I mean, really, what choice did you have?”

“I can’t look at this fly anymore.” Gilad pushed away the plate. “It’s nauseating, not to mention non-kosher. I think that yenta put it in my blintz on purpose.”

“Well,” Solo said in a clarifying sort of voice, “you did say something about her not knowing her ass from a hole in the ground.”

“I was within my rights,” Gilad shrieked, his bony face purpling. “I’m sick of being slighted. No one leaves what is mine alone. Hey, you!” he called to the counter girl. “There’s a disgusting fly in my blintz.”

“No charge for bugs,” she said.

“Does that sound like innocence?” Gilad popped up and rushed to the counter. “Young lady, I demand a refund!”

“I better go referee.” Tita rose. She was a salad bar of conflicting signals, tough talk, fragility, and protectiveness all assembled in one person for the choosing. “I need a drink anyway. What do you think the chances are of getting a margarita?”

If only
. I handed her a ten from inside my bra.

She stared at the limp bill. “Ever thought about carrying a purse?”

I shrugged. “Go ahead, if you want, buy us both a chocolate blintz. Solo, want one?”

“Ya, mawn.”

Tita grumbled something about being no one’s damn maid and strode toward Gilad. “Hold up,” she said to the counter girl. “Better watch out, he’s a Nazi hunter, you know?”

The girl’s eyes widened. “Holy smokes! Really? You must be a gazillionaire from all the rewards. I mean, it’s totally cool getting rich by tracking down those murderers.”

A radiant Gilad leaned a hip against the pastry case. “I did okay. Now had I captured Alric Mueller, I would have retired in style. A quarter of million would purchase a lot of Florida sunshine.”

“I’m sorry about the fly.” The girl then hollered to someone in the kitchen, “One
Oy Vey
special. We’ve got a Nazi hunter in the house.”

Several people waiting in line to order food moved in to crowd around Gilad. He regaled them with graphic tales of midnight chases and violent gun battles, his voice loud and swollen with pride. The counter girl was bent over the glass, captivated, a hand to her mouth. And behind the throng, wearing a tired but protective expression, was Tita, even when Gilad finished one story and changed to another.

“There definitely is good money in hunting Nazis—probably why some do it—I’ve hunted down so many vile ones it’s hard to keep count, so unlucky they were to be in my sights. I’m sure history will show the very mention of my name made many a men quiver,” Gilad said.

I looked at Solo.

“Now?” he asked as if reading my mind.

I nodded.

He went to work on Booth’s phone as something outside the window caught my eyes. The sun was still low-ish on the horizon, so I had to squint to see through the glare. I was about to pass it off as nothing, when I spied Leland, bondage outfit hidden by a baggy trench coat. He gazed around nervously as he hurried toward a plainclothes car parked at the rear police entrance. At the wheel was Alistair.

Leland had one leg inside the car when buxom Queenie crossed the parking lot to him. Huh? So Leland and Queenie knew each other. I didn’t like it, not one bit. I thought it looked bad, Leland having another connection to Booth. Unfair guilt by association? Probably. All the same, it gave me a bad feeling.

My stomach squirmed as if filled with live snakes. I watched Queenie take Leland’s hand in hers, twist his wrist, and draw a finger down his palm like a fortuneteller. This was crazy. “What is she doing?”

Solo looked up from the phone, blinked.

“Over there,” I explained. “Leland is talking to Booth’s girlfriend, though I think Booth has some competition for her heart.”

Solo stared out the window, squinting. “Where? Oh, there he is. I didn’t know Booth had a girlfriend— Wow, she’s his girlfriend. Sick!”

“I know, right?” I smiled at his slack jaw. “She’s young enough to be his granddaughter.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant.” His cheeks were a vivid shade of scarlet.

Seeing them, I realized his remark hadn’t been about their winter/spring pairing, but about Queenie’s amazing beauty.

“It’s shocking,” he went on.

“Oh, stop it,” I said. “So Queenie is a little pretty.”

“A little pretty? Queenie is beau-ti-ful. Look, Leland is in the car now. They’re driving off. Is that Alistair behind the wheel?” he asked, and I nodded. “Where did Queenie go? I don’t see her. Get out of the way, everyone. Did you see where she went?”

Men.

“I got another shocker for ya,” I said. “Booth is married to Happy Hye.”

He mouthed, “Omigod.”

I continued to search for Queenie in the crowd when something else grabbed my eye. It was Booth, and he was leaving the White’s Jewelry table just outside Roaring Wings. Then he crossed the street, heading in our direction, appearing to fasten a wristwatch to his left arm. His smile was overblown. As he drew near, he spied us through the window and gestured for me to come outside.

He was standing on the sidewalk when I pushed out the door. There were still loads of marathon watchers milling about, yet I had the strangest impression of being on my own in the lair of a monster.

“Have you lost your damn mind? A Jewish deli?” Booth said. “Kosher foods? All those stupid rules. It’s bad enough we have to eat that way at FoY.”

“Leland only has you making a couple kosher dishes,” I reminded him. “Plus, Shlomo’s serves a chocolate blintz.”

“I’m allergic to chocolate.”

“Omigod, Booth. Help. Help. Not chocolate.”

His expression soured. “Is there a grown-up around I can talk to?”

I dropped my gaze to the medical alert bracelet he wore alongside a half dozen other gold bracelets on his right wrist. “Is that why you wear that, because you’re allergic to chocolate?”

“I’m not decrepit, see. I have a few allergies, so what? I’m gonna need my phone back. What’s with the long face? I just need the SIM card. Yo, Queenie,” he yelled as she walked to a nearby parked Ford Explorer. “Come back in an hour. I should be done, then.”

She nodded, angled into the SUV, and turned the key. Though the windshield, we locked eyes, snarling at each other like pirates.

“What’s Queenie and Leland’s deal?” I asked Booth as the SUV pulled away. “Friends?”

His eyes thinned beneath his restless brows. “Here’s a nugget of wisdom. Don’t pry into things that don’t concern you.”

“But it does concern me. Leland is my friend.”

“Meaning?” He dug a finger under the wristwatch to get at his rash.

“Seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it? You set up Leland with Happy Hye for—for—”

“Just say it, Rylie. He wanted to practice S&M. So what? I’m a generous man.”

And he pecked me like a chicken
. “Are you generous with Queenie, too?”

His face went hard. “No.”

“Never?”

“I want my SIM card.”

I glanced over to the deli. Solo was no longer in the booth. “Unless you mean later, we’ve hit a road bump. Solo has it.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ve hit a bump. I want it now.”

Just then, Gilad in the company of a stylishly dressed older woman left the deli. Gilad paused to hold the door open for a man in a wheelchair.

Gilad’s female companion waited a few feet away from us. She was dressed in navy tapered pants and a red double-breasted short blazer. A designer striped scarf (bragging label visible) swathed her halo of black hair. She held a miniature poodle, its dyed pink hair shaped in a pompom. It looked like a cotton candy cloudburst.

“A woman in Denver got fined for dying a dog’s hair,” Booth said to her. “Get a thousand bucks ready should PETA see that mutt.”

She scowled at him, then at his rash. “I hope that’s a flesh eating fungus.”

“It’s a social disease,” he said with a heated snort. “Want to see if it’s catchy?”

She glanced over to Gilad, who was fast approaching. “The only thing I’m interested in catching is a Nazi hunter.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Booth said. “Even the best razors dull.”

Gilad rushed forward. “I am not dull!”

Or modest. Or discreet. Or faithful to Elsa.

“Listen, I’d love to hear another round of your amazing Nazi stories.” Booth continued to scratch the rash on his wrist. “But I have business with Rylie.”

Gilad cut his eyes to the rash and paled. There came an awkward moment where he appeared to assess its infectiousness, the sight creeping him out.

When Booth barked his name, Gilad looked up, his eyes narrow. “You should see a doctor about that urticaria—that rash,” he said. “Leland’s party is tonight, so I assume you’ll be working it.”

“You assume right. Why?” Booth asked.

“Nothing important, but when you see Leland, will you give him my apologies for not attending? Sunny and I have plans for the evening.”

“All night,” Sunny said with a creepy wink.

“Easy there, tiger,” Booth told him. “You don’t want to pop a gasket, see. Penis arteries get brittle with age.”

“Bleh!” Gilad said. “You cannot be serious. Sunny is new to Bellevue, she doesn’t know about me. Tell her, Rylie, you tell her how big the hill is from your lake house to FoY. How I trudge those three miles at least twice a day, up and down, back and forth. You tell her, Rylie, tell her what fine shape I’m in. Go on.”

“He is fit,” I managed.

“There is just no denying that, sugar,” Sunny said. “You’re a Nazi hunter, after all. Oh, look. There is my rabbi. Hello, Rabbi Cohen. Got a minute?” she called and trotted away.