T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril (8 page)

“Well, in my case, it’s my mom. She’s totally high-strung. I think I’m going to wait and tell them about Alaska, like maybe right after graduation. Or I guess I could tell my dad and let him tell her.”

Morgan opened the loading door and food preparation noises drifted out: long-handled stainless spoons clanking against giant pots, oil sizzling, tableware being stacked, and the strange, barked sentences that constituted kitchen language.

“Not a bad idea.” Morgan held the door for Brent and followed the employee back inside. “Maybe you should go somewhere with your father—just the two of you—and you can fill him in on your
game plan.” He looked into the kid’s confused face. “By the way, thanks for the job you do here for us.”

“Uh, sure. I mean, yes, sir. You’re welcome.”

When
Morgan reached the Green Table, Brent’s parents were finishing dessert.

“Hello, I’m Morgan. I understand you’re celebrating twenty-five years together and wanted to stop by to wish you a happy anniversary.”

“Oh, thank you,” the woman said. “Are you the manager?”

“I’m the owner. But in the restaurant business it’s all one and the same.” Morgan produced a modest grin. “Manager, server, window washer, you name it.” He still didn’t enjoy doing it, but he had definitely gotten the hang of polite, meaningless chatter.

“You’re Brent’s boss, then,” she stated.

“Yes, and let me say how thrilled we are to have your son working for us while he’s finishing school. He’s such a reliable employee, and so smart, too.” Morgan lowered his voice for effect. “And how many kids ever treat their parents to a dinner at Argo’s? Even with the courtesy discount, the gift certificate cost half his paycheck. He really wanted to make this night special for you.”

The woman’s already stretched face cinched up more, and her mouth puffed into an “O.” Morgan left the table feeling good and realized that he was hungry for the first time in days. Ravenous, in fact.

Nestled in a
vibrating chair and feet soaking in bubbling water, I studied up on the latest fashion trends in
Vogue
magazine—especially the undergarments and lingerie—and tried to ignore Spud and Fran. The day spa had a total of four pedicure chairs, but I had a feeling they were purposely leaving the last chair next to my father empty until Jersey and crew had left the building. It was my regular place for manis and pedis, and I hoped they wouldn’t blackball me. After all, I didn’t ask Fran to go. She’d invited herself and talked Spud into joining us. It was his first ever pedicure. And everyone within hearing distance knew it.

“That feels like you’re trying to yank my toenail off, for crying out loud! What the hell are you doing down there? Using a pair of pliers?”

“Nope,” the girl countered without missing a beat. “Somebody borrowed those and didn’t give ’em back. These are cuticle trimmers. Very
sharp
cuticle trimmers. One time, I sneezed and snipped
off the top of a little toe. Would’ve gotten fired, too, if I hadn’t found it floating in the water.”

Good for her. I made a mental note to leave a big tip. If only somebody were around to tip me for putting up with Spud on a daily basis, I’d be a wealthy woman.

I stretched my head from side to side to loosen up tight neck muscles. “Spud, a pedicure is supposed to be calming. Can’t you just relax and let her do her thing?”

“Sitting naked on a blender would be more relaxing than this,” he muttered. My father has a knack for offering visuals that people immediately wish they hadn’t visualized. And he mutters in a way that is akin to shouting. A chuckle came from one of the massage rooms.

Fran’s head appeared from behind an oversize fashion magazine. “Take a few five-count calming breaths, sweetie. You know, the kind we do in yoga class.”

“That yoga crap landed me in the hospital, for crying out loud.” Spud squinted at the girl working on his feet. “Ouch, ouch, and ouch! Can’t you go ahead and paint them or whatever you do and let’s be done with this torture?”

She smiled up at him. “What color would you like, Mr. Barnes?”

Wearing a pair of headphones—the noise-blocking kind with a hard plastic muff over each ear—my nail tech, Jenna, arrived. “Since you’re reading, I figured I’d listen to a little R and B,” she said with a wink.

“No problem,” I mouthed, wishing she had brought me a pair. I slid my holstered Ruger around the waistband of my jeans to a more comfortable position at the side of my hipbone, instead of toward the back where I normally carry it, and readjusted the hem of my top to cover it.

Jenna caught a glimpse of the gun. She stopped patting dry a foot and removed one ear cuff. “Thought you retired, Jersey.”

“I did. Sort of.” Months ago, I’d confessed to her that I had every
intention of leaving home without a weapon. However, strapping on a hunk of stopping power is part of my daily routine, a habit like flossing and putting in contact lenses and wearing a bra to push up my size D’s. “There’s a patch for everything else. Nicotine. Waning hormones. Back pain. But they haven’t yet made a patch for retired security specialists.”

Spud let out a sound like a wounded dog. “Holy bejeeezus! Are you into that maraschino crap, for crying out loud?”

“You mean masochistic crap, baby. Like masochism, the opposite part of sadism. Maraschino is the sweet cherry that goes into a drink.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Fran said. “That’s okay. It wasn’t on the Word-A-Day calendar.”

“Remind me to never come back to this toe salon,” Spud muttered.

Jenna replaced her headphones and pulled my other foot out of the water. Fran went back to her magazine. Spud crossed his arms and squinted at his nail tech, who threw him an air kiss and kept filing. I’d planned to get a manicure as well but decided that it was more important to get my father out of the salon. My fingernails could wait.

We
left the day spa—me in my hearse and Spud on the back of Fran’s Vespa—and took off in opposite directions. Gathered inside the glass storefront, a group of heads watched us go.

I decided to pay Morgan a visit, for lack of anything better to do. The front doors were locked when I arrived, but his car was parked in back, next to a Gaffney Enterprises van. The door panel told me that the Gaffneys were in the safe business. I found a rear delivery
door cracked open with a wedge of wood and stepped into a sparkling clean industrial kitchen.

“Hello? … Morgan?”

I followed the sound of voices to a small office. The office door was the kind with a hydraulic spring at the top, and it was held open with a chair. In jeans and a plaid shirt, a man—presumably the fellow from Gaffney Enterprises—crouched on the floor in front of a two-foot-tall metal safe.

“Morgan, hi, it’s Jersey.”

Morgan jumped at my voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Just out running errands.” I glanced at my watermelon-colored toes that stuck out of wedge sandals. “Thought I’d stop in to say hello.”

“I’m trying to get this safe opened,” Morgan said through a small laugh. “Couldn’t find the combination anywhere.”

“Well, it definitely saved me time when you e-mailed a picture,” the safe technician said. “You do the research in advance, you know exactly where to drill. This baby has a one-inch steel door and two different bolt systems.”

I don’t know a thing about safes, but the idea of breaking into one intrigued me. “Is the safe destroyed once you’ve opened it?”

He repositioned his large frame on the floor. “Naw, not if a person knows what they’re doing. Once it’s open, I’ll put a new dial ring and lock on it and repair the drill hole. Nobody will ever know I was here.”

“How long does it take?”

“I’ll have this one open in another twenty minutes or so.”

“Very cool.” I nearly went into bimbette mode to cull information on the safe’s contents but stopped myself. Morgan needed to trust me and open up, not blow me off more than he already had.

“You want something to drink?” He walked out of the office, waving me to follow.

“Water would be great, thanks.”

We sat at a booth in the dining area, only the drilling noise of metal cutting through metal coming from the kitchen disturbing the silence. Morgan’s knee bounced up and down. I asked how everything was going for him. Fine, he told me. Everything was fine. I drank my water. He fidgeted with his glass. I asked if he’d been getting out to explore Wilmington’s popular sights. He sure was, he lied. Trish had already told me otherwise. The drilling stopped, and Morgan glanced over his shoulder. He really wanted to know what was inside that safe. So did I. We heard pounding sounds and then silence. More drilling. More silence. We made small talk about Argo’s menu until the safe expert appeared.

“She’s open. You want to take a look before I install a new dial ring and lock?”

“That’s okay,” Morgan said, fast. “You’ve got my credit card info, so just leave an invoice on my desk. Don’t worry about fixing it right now.”

“Cheaper for you if I go ahead and do it while I’m here. That way you can use the safe. Otherwise, it’s a useless steel box.”

Morgan shook his head. “I’d rather you come back later. The extra charge is fine.”

“Your call.” The fellow shrugged and headed into the kitchen. “I’ll let myself out the back.”

Morgan thanked him and turned back to me. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got a lot to do. And I’d like to check out the contents of the safe in private. There could be family stuff in there.”

I nodded. There could be.

“So if there’s nothing else, then…” He stood and waited for me to do the same.

Maybe I should have gone with the bimbette cover after all. Then I could have shouted something like “Finders keepers!” and
raced him to the open safe. I decided that waiting in the hearse would be the next best thing. At least I could see if he hauled anything out when he left. I stalled a bit longer to see if he’d change his mind, but he didn’t and I gave up. When Morgan walked me to the back door, we came face-to-face with a man and a gun, both aimed our way.

“Hold it! That’s far enough.” The weapon was a blued revolver, maybe a .38. Its owner was a stocky, light-skinned thug type with dirty blond hair, longish and tucked behind the ears. Well, one ear, anyway. The other one was half gone from the lobe up, as though somebody bit it off. A tattoo of a clock without hands surrounded by some sort of symbol—the kind of crude prison artwork created with a makeshift tattoo gun and ink from a ballpoint pen—decorated one forearm. His grip on the gun told me he was quite familiar with how to use it.

Hands up, I made my eyes go wide and stuck out my boobs. Morgan swayed and caught himself against a storage rack of foodstuffs. “Who are you?”

“An old friend of your father’s,” Earless said, and shrugged the gun my way. “Who’s she?”

“Nobody.” Morgan’s face paled, as much as a black man’s can. “Just a woman I know.”

Earless’s eyes roved over me and he grinned. “Like father, like son. You both go for the white meat.”

“My mother wasn’t a piece of meat.” Morgan emitted something near to a growl and charged Earless. The man backhanded Morgan across the face with the butt of the handgun. Morgan went down but kept talking. “Don’t talk about my mother that way!”

“Rosemary was a damn good salesperson, too. Your mother knew how to work the rich bitch crowd, I’ll give her that.”

Blood ran down Morgan’s chin from a cut lip. He pushed himself off the ground. “What are you talking about?”

“Shut up and walk over there to that cooler, nice and easy. Both a you.”

Morgan’s entire body shook. “What are you talking about, working the rich bitch crowd? Answer me!”

The gun shrugged, just barely. “You really don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Earless nodded to himself. “To the cooler. Now!”

The thug was going to lock us in the freezer? Pulleeze. He’d been watching too many bad-guy movies. Walking to the cooler, Morgan swayed but kept going, planting each foot carefully like a drunk. After kicking off my sandals, I followed with bare feet, wondering if he was an alcoholic. I hadn’t smelled any booze on his breath. Strangely, his equilibrium was anything but settled. Maybe he had a medical condition.

“Go ahead, open it,” Earless demanded. “Doubt you’ll freeze to death. Somebody will find you when the restaurant opens.”

Pretending to reach for the walk-in’s lever handle, I spun and shoved his extended arm across his body—stepping into him so he wouldn’t have the advantage of leverage—and forced his wrist into a reverse twist. In an instant, I had his gun. I swung open the cylinder, dumped the six rounds, and passed the empty gun to Morgan.

“What the hell?” Earless came at me with balled fists. I sidestepped the first punch and threw a heel into his chin. His head snapped back. He came at me again. My next kick made contact with his kneecap, and he went down, pulling another revolver out of his boot. I trained the Ruger on him, but he was quick and we ended up in a standoff. Keeping the muzzle pointed at me, he crab-scooted backward on his butt. When he reached the back delivery door, he rolled through and slammed it shut. I went after him but couldn’t get the door open. He’d wedged something under the bottom to hold it shut from the outside. It was the thick metal type of door that would have broken a bone had I tried to kick it open. By
the time I went through Argo’s front foyer and around the building, Earless was gone.

“Holy crap,” Morgan breathed, catching up. “That was amazing, how you took his gun away and fought him!”

“No need to bruise my hands with a fistfight.” We went inside through the back door. I found my sandals and slid back into them.

Morgan handed me the stranger’s gun. “Who was that guy?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“I swear, I have no idea. Maybe he saw the Gaffney van pull out and knew I was still here and wanted to rob me.”

Earless’s gun was an old .38 special that looked like it might have been purchased cheap at a pawnshop. Or stolen. I’d give it to Dirk and let his department send it through ballistics. That’s the great thing about having a friend on Wilmington PD’s payroll—getting things done without too many questions. “Morgan, I can certainly pretend to be an idiot when the situation warrants. But trust me, I’m not.”