Sandra Hill - [Jinx] (8 page)

No, no, no! That is the road to disaster.

So it was that four hours later, the three of them were tooling down the Garden State Parkway on their hogs. The next morning, they were packed and on their way to the West Coast.

He’d called Trish’s cell phone and left a message saying she could move back into the apartment since he would be gone for several weeks—on a bike trip to Vegas. He didn’t want her to think he was off somewhere with Ronnie, boinking himself into a stupor. She’d called back and left a message on his cell phone: “The gray matter in your head must have turned to sludge. You don’t need to clear your mind. You’ve already lost it.”

So, now the three of them were on their way, wind in their hair, good vibrations under their asses. Life couldn’t get any better.

Chapter
7

New leaves are sometimes hard to turn. . . .

After two days in Jinx, Inc.’s, Barnegat warehouse office, Veronica was finally making headway with the paperwork. The actual search would begin the day after tomorrow—if there were no more problems with the boat’s motor.

It was only nine-thirty, her third day in the office, and thus far she’d organized the files in a rudimentary fashion. She’d paid bills from a dismally small business account, something she needed to discuss with her grandfather, but he was steering clear of her on that subject—and a few others. After the argument they’d had the first day she came back, when he’d been showing her around the place, he was probably afraid she’d ask more questions—not just about the business but about his personal finances as well. Thus far, he’d managed to evade explaining the missing bank statements, mortgages, deeds, that kind of thing. She didn’t even know if he outright owned the diving boat, the warehouse, or his home. All she’d seen were general office files and Project Pink data. It was a start, anyhow.

She’d managed to handle her aversion to salt water and its scent by placing air freshener cones around the office. When she went outside, the saltwater breezes didn’t bother her as much as they used to; even so, she was popping Peptos like peanuts from a quart-size jar she’d bought at Wal-Mart. Forget pink diamonds; she should invest in the company that made pink Pepto.

Henri Pinot, the man hired to captain the boat, had been forced to drop out at the last minute. It appeared the prostate trouble that Tante Lulu had alluded to was more serious than he’d originally thought. He was scheduled for surgery in Baton Rouge on Friday. Her grandfather had commiserated with Henri and told him not to worry, that there was a treasure-hunting venture he wanted to try in Louisiana in the next few years. Henri should be on his feet again by then. Besides, her grandfather said, he could take over the captaining job himself, which made Veronica reach for the Pepto yet again.

Aside from Henri, everyone else was here, raring to go. Except Jake. But then he’d never promised Frank, or her, that he would participate. She was better off without Jake here, she told herself, although she could use his help with the ancient computer. Well, it was ten years old, but that was ancient in computer land.

She decided to put all her concerns aside because, frankly, she was enjoying herself. And that was a surprise. She should have felt out of her comfort zone, but she didn’t. She wasn’t an auditor, but she had a little accounting experience from college. It was a sign of her sorry life that she got satisfaction out of balancing the books, much the same as she used to feel after a successful legal battle. She wondered if Jake felt the same when he won a a poker tournament.

“Va-va-voom! You are lookin’ hot, hot, hot today, darlin’,” John LeDeux said. Strolling into the office, he laid an ink-toner cartridge on the desk. She’d asked him last night to buy it while in town.

Her face heated at the young Cajun’s blatant perusal of her body, clad in what was the first stage of a wardrobe makeover. The new Veronica Jinkowsky. When she’d awakened this morning, just past dawn, she had donned tight, low-riding jeans and a midriff-exposing, stretchy black T-shirt that proclaimed, “I GOT STUNG.” She’d put on and taken off the cropped shirt three times this morning before murmuring with self-loathing, “Get a grip, girl.” Not her usual style. At all.

“What’s with the ‘Stung’ T-shirt?”

“Jake is a huge Sting fan. He must have given me a dozen Sting—or Police—concert shirts over the years.”

“Yeech! Sting is an old codger,” John said with a grin, dropping into one of the office chairs in front of the desk. “Now Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, that’s another story.”

Sting an old codger? He better not say that around Jake.

“I do like your jeans, though, chère. Very, very sexy!”

Give me a break!
Actually, she’d had to lie on the floor to get into them this morning. It should be interesting when she had to use the restroom today.

“And I really like that watch. Where’d you get it? I’d like to buy one for Tante Lulu.”

Veronica glanced down at the only jewelry she was wearing—a smiley face watch, another gift from Jake. During the painful tail end of their Insanity Marriage, he’d put the gift in her lap with a hug and a whisper in her ear: “You need to smile more, honey.” Wearing the watch now was certainly . . . timely.

“It was a gift,” was all she replied. Then she laughed and added, “I’m not sure whether these new clothes make me look hot or hilarious. The big question is, Do I look like Martha Stewart trying to be Pamela Anderson, and failing? Don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question.”

He grinned. “I like the new you.”

“I do, too,” Veronica admitted, also with a grin.

It was silly to place so much importance on apparel, but after the unpleasant confrontation with her grandmother, Veronica had gone immediately to her apartment in downtown Boston and made all the preparations for a one-month absence. Paying bills in advance. Notifying the doorman. Clearing out the fridge. Canceling appointments. She’d wanted to take care of everything right away before she changed her mind, or her grandmother tried to change her mind. It never happened.

Then, she’d done the silly thing . . . well, silly for her. The drive back to Long Beach Island had been well under way when she’d stopped at the behemoth Woodbridge Mall. If she was leaving her old professional life behind, she’d decided she was going to change her personal life, too. Her grandmother’s remark that Veronica was just like her had cut to the quick. Inside, Veronica was not prissy and boring like her grandmother. At least she didn’t think she was.

So, a whole new nonboring wardrobe completed her transformation. She hoped. That meant jeans, bright-colored tops, a few daring dresses—and not one single suit. Some cute hair clips. A gold lamé one-piece bathing suit, with black squiggles edging the rounded top and the leg holes, a signature of Daphne, an up-and-coming designer. The suit was cut high on the hips, very conservative in front, but exposed her back all the way to her buttocks. It wasn’t a bikini, but it was racier than anything she’d ever bought before.

Every purchase she’d made had been decided with one question in mind: “Would my grandmother ever wear this?” If the answer was no, she had tossed it in her bag. She wasn’t going for the bimbo look, but she was definitely avoiding the lawyer-with-a-pole-up-her-butt look, which her grandfather had insinuated was her style during one of their arguments.

“So, what’re you doin’?” John asked her, jarring her back to the present. She already knew he had time to kill before meeting Adam and Caleb at ten for some practice diving in the bay to test their equipment.

“Inputting Project Pink data into the computer. Employees, job descriptions, salaries, equipment needed, fixed and variable expenses, assets, liabilities, along with research details about the enterprise. The only thing missing is the exact site location. My grandfather says it has to remain secret.”

“Oh, yeah! Every salvager knows to protect his numbers.”

“That’s what Frank says: ‘Trust no one, or else pirates will steal the site.’ I mean, really, pirates? He must be delusional . . . or trying to scare me. More likely he’s been OD’ing on old Errol Flynn movies again.”

“It’s not as wacky as it sounds. Deep-sea treasure hunters always worry about someone stealing their wreck sites. If even the scent of a new site gets out, boats within a thirty-mile radius would use directional finders to zero in and steal the discovery.”

“Couldn’t Frank get a government order protecting the wreck from rival treasure seekers?”

“Hah! That would be like trying to kill a shark with a flyswatter. Nope, Frank is right to be tight-lipped about this.” John stood and ambled over to the wall to study some pictures. “Wow!” he said.

That had pretty much been her reaction when first entering the office. The grungy walls were a testament to a lifetime of respected work. Awards and thank-yous from many quarters—everything from local historical societies to the Museum of Natural History. From different countries, too—Italy, Greece, Spain, and various parts of the United States. Despite all her grievances about Frank, she had to give him credit for his achievements in a career she had always considered just a step below, well, poker playing.

“Well, look at that. Jacques Cousteau.” John pointed to one of the many framed photographs, this one a picture of a younger Frank in a diving suit with the famous ocean explorer. “And President Friggin’ Reagan. Oops, ’scuse my language.” Yep, there was Frank in a suit and tie with President Reagan, for heaven’s sake!

“Who’s that?” she asked. In this picture, her grandfather stood with another man of similar age, their arms looped over each other’s shoulders, grinning at the camera.

“That’s Mel Fisher.”

“And I should know who Mel Fisher is?”

John laughed. “He’s famous in wreck diving as the guy who discovered the
Nuestra Señora de Atocha,
a Spanish galleon that sunk off the coast of Florida in the 1600s.”

Veronica moved on and noticed a framed diploma from Princeton University dated 1953, the same year Frank and her grandmother had presumably married. She’d never seen or heard any reference to their marriage anywhere, not even a wedding picture.
How sad!

“Yo! That is so cool!”

Veronica looked at the photo John was admiring. Only a young man like John would think it was cool for Frank to be photographed sitting on Mussolini’s gold toilet. She shook her head at his misplaced admiration.

“And is that really Mel Gibson shaking Frank’s hand in that photo?”

“Seems to be.”

“Do you think Mel might have been considering a movie about Frank’s life?”

Veronica chuckled. Wouldn’t that be the last straw on her grandmother’s back? “I sincerely hope not.”

After John left, Veronica continued, perusing the wall. She’d had no clue about Frank’s reputation, her opinions probably colored by her grandmother’s hatred of him. Still, she was a grown woman and should have formed her own opinions.

That didn’t mean she’d suddenly developed a great affection or admiration for Frank. He was still the same ornery old man who’d made her life miserable on more than one occasion. Like their argument last night, when he’d inferred that she had the same judgmental pole up her ass as her grandmother, just because she’d lectured him about not marrying Flossie. So much for a new wardrobe and new image! To Frank, she was the same as always. Okay, in his defense, she’d also thrown in his smoking smelly cigars, his failing to get a real job with retirement benefits or a good IRA, and his never growing up in general.

She sat down at the desk then and started to work at the computer again. It made a funny whirring sound, and the screen went black. “Oh, no! No, no, no! Dammit!” she yelled, trying desperately to bring the machine back to life by punching various buttons.

Stefano, one of Rosa’s sons, rushed in, handgun raised. “What?” Before she could blink, he was in a crouched firing position, surveying the room.

“Omigod!” She ducked to the floor, behind the desk. Her tight jeans strained their seams. “What’s the matter?” she yelled from her hunched-over position.

After a long silence in which Veronica could swear she heard her heart beating, Steve said a foul word. Then, “You can come out now.” He still had the gun dangling from his fingertips when she emerged.

“Why do you have a gun?” She practically screeched as she crept warily from behind the desk.

He gave her a look that pretty much put her in the idiots class. “Why did you fuckin’ scream?”

“Nice language! Because the computer crashed—for the fifth time in two days.”

“Un-be-fucking-lievable,” he muttered, oblivious to her complaint about his swearing.

She stood and dusted off her behind—actually, she was checking for splits in her jeans.

He put the gun back into a shoulder holster, hidden under an open denim shirt, which he wore over a white wife-beater T-shirt and jeans. Actually, he didn’t look half bad in a dangerous sort of way. At least that had been her opinion before he’d done his Rambo impersonation.

“I thought you were in danger,” he grumbled.

“Jeesh! What did you think, that I’d been attacked by some cybercrook . . . or a dust ball?” she joked.

His face didn’t crack even a sliver of a smile.

Steve and Tony had been standing guard outside the office and Frank’s house every day, all day, being relieved occasionally by some cousin or other. What they were guarding, she wasn’t sure. Maybe they thought Frank and his crew were going to run off with the diamonds. Or maybe—ha, ha, ha!—they feared pirates.

Steve continued to glare at her.

“I wish I had a new computer,” she said, trying to break the silence. “But Frank doesn’t want me to spend any more money than I have to and, really, I can probably get it to reboot, but holy cow, what did you—”

Steve turned and stomped out the door in the middle of her nervous blathering.
Well, so long to you, too, Mr. Manners!
She was lucky she hadn’t peed her pants.

She worked till noon, saving her data every five minutes just in case the computer crashed again. Flossie and her grandfather showed up with a “little” lunch Flossie had prepared.

Her grandfather grumbled to Flossie, “It’s cheaper to make the food ourselves, but did you have to make so much?”

Flossie just elbowed Frank in the side. “Stop being so stingy.”

While her grandfather went aboard the
Sweet Jinx,
his diving boat, to help Brenda work on the troublesome motor, Flossie enlisted Veronica’s help to set up folding tables in the warehouse where the office was located.

On the way out the door to get the boxes of food from Frank’s truck, Veronica almost ran into a big, chest-high carton that had been placed near the entrance. “Who put this here?” Veronica asked.

Flossie shrugged.

Veronica read the print on the box: “MACINTOSH.” She was pretty sure it wasn’t a carton of apples.
Could it be? I don’t believe this!
It was a new computer—a super-dooper computer with all the bells and whistles. “Did my grandfather buy this?”