Trouble In Spades (9 page)

"What about some highlights? Some gold to sass things up a little?" she asked. "My stylist could probably fit you in later today."

"I don't need highlights. My hair's fine."

"It's brown," she said, hitting the brakes as she took a corner a bit too sharply.

I reached behind me and buckled my seat belt.

"What's wrong with brown? Lots of people have brown hair."

She looked over at me, her nose scrunched in distaste. "You need texture. Nuances," she said, accentuating each syllable. "Men can get away with having brown hair. Women cannot."

I ignored her. It was either that or strangle her, and I really didn't think my mother would forgive me. "Ana's meeting us at my house. I need to leave Riley a note and change." She grimaced. "Yes, you do. Khaki, Nina? Really?"

I held my tongue only because her fiancé was missing.

She turned onto Jaybird, heading toward my house. No blinker, no warning. Just a jerking of the steering wheel and irritated honks from the car behind us.

Taking her eyes off the road, she looked at me. "I'm beginning to get worried, Nina. What if something has happened to him?"

"Maria! The road!"

She quickly turned her head. We were this close to rear-ending a Grizzly Bear water truck. She jerked the wheel hard right. The car bounced up on the berm. The tires spit gravel. Clear of the truck, she got back in her lane and stepped on the gas.

I wished I had another seat belt to put on. Maybe a helmet too.

"It's just not like him," she said as though our conversation hadn't been halted by two tons of delivery truck.

"I'm sure he's fine," I lied. I wasn't sure at all. Everything about his disappearance didn't make sense. Nate was habitual. Shredded wheat for breakfast. Light lunch at his desk. Home by seven o'clock. "We'll nose around today and see what we can find out."

She looked over at me. "Do you think Claire will talk to us?"

"Please, Maria, keep your eyes on the road. I don't know if she will, but just promise me you'll be on your best behavior."

Her mouth thinned and dipped into a frown. "We'll see," she said as she hurtled into my driveway and slammed on the brakes. "We'll just see."

Inside, I hurried to change. I scribbled a note to Riley that I might be late, and I was wrestling my Keds onto my feet when my cell phone buzzed.

Could be Kevin,
my inner voice crooned.

Why I would automatically think that, I wasn't sure.

It couldn't be because I wanted him to call, because I wanted to hear his voice.

Nope. Not me. Not Nina Colette I'm-so-over-him Ceceri Quinn. The phone buzzed again.

I hopped toward my backpack and tripped on a shoelace. It could be my mother letting me know about Uncle Giuseppe and Aunt Carlotta's travel plans. I definitely didn't want to pick up the phone to that. Maybe if I pretended I wasn't home, she wouldn't send them here to stay with me. Hadn't my relatives ever heard of Motel 6? The phone buzzed a third time as I rooted around in my backpack.
It could be Robert again
, my inner voice trilled. Definitely didn't want to answer that. Because if he was calling it was either because Riley was in trouble, or he was calling to talk to about that chemistry between us. I just couldn't deal with that right now.

Finally, I found the phone and pressed the Talk button before it switched over to voice mail. "Hello?"

Static echoed across the line.

"Hello?" I said again. Really, I needed to actually check the caller ID screen
before
answering the phone. What was I paying Cincinnati Bell all that money for anyway?

"Don't," a voice said.

"What?"

"Don't open it."

It was a man's voice. He sounded out of breath and spoke quietly, like he didn't want anyone to hear him.

"Open what? Who is this?"

"Nina, don't open it."

A bell of some sort sounded in the background as silence stretched across the line.

It struck me like a knock to the head who I was talking to. "Nate?"

"Be careful," he said.

The phone went dead.

I had a major case of the heebie-jeebies as I scrolled back through the caller ID readout.
Out of Area. *000-000-0000.
Damn.
Don't open it
, he'd said. The package.

A rock of uncertainty sank to the bottom of my stomach. Nate certainly hadn't sounded like a man on a romantic getaway. He'd sounded . . . scared.

Ack.

What do I do now? Should I tell someone about the pack
age? Tell Maria about the call?
I ixnayed that idea immediately. It would just freak her out. I didn't have any real information at all to tell her. Actually, I didn't even know for one hundred percent certainty that it had been Nate I was talking to.

Just gut instinct.

And that voice in my head telling me it was.

One thing I did know for sure: I wasn't letting that package out of my sight. I double-checked to make sure it was secure in my backpack and pulled open my front door. Ana and Maria had been cornered by Mr. Cabrera on my front porch. They stared at me accusingly.

"You really need to talk to Brickhouse, Nina," Maria insisted as I closed the door behind me, making sure it was locked. "I have such fond memories of her class." I shot a look at Mr. Cabrera. The tattletale.

He nodded to me. "Came over to let you know Mrs. Warnicke didn't make it."

I dropped my backpack. "What!?"

"Who's Mrs. Warnicke?" Ana asked.

Maria clutched her chest. "Oh no, not Mrs. Warnicke!"

I shot her a look. She didn't even know Mrs. Warnicke. Mr. Cabrera, always the flirt, scooted closer to Ana. "She's the sweet old lady who lives across the street. Lived." He shook his head sadly. Today he wore a Hawaiian print shirt and khaki cargo pants. I wondered if Maria had given him the khaki lecture.

Ana had recently developed a morbid curiosity where death was concerned. "What happened to her?"

Rain splashed off the porch roof as Mr. Cabrera's eyes widened. "The granny panty thief killed her."
Please, Lord, let her leave it at that.
But Ana perked right up. "Details!"

He explained about the rash of burglaries in the neighborhood, and how Mrs. Warnicke had woken up to find the thief in her bedroom.

"That's horrible," Maria murmured. "Just horrible."

Mr. Cabrera's bony chest puffed out. "I'm setting up a neighborhood watch."

"We better go," I said before he roped the two of them into helping.

As we made our way to the car, Mr. Cabrera said, "Tell Ursula I miss her! You will see her today, right?"
Just stick a knife in me and be done with it already.

"You know," Maria said as she slid into the driver's seat, "we're really not in that much of a rush."

Oh no.

"Seat belt," I told Ana. "Trust me."

"The Kalypso isn't going anywhere," Ana added from the backseat. "He really loves her."

"No."

Ana persisted. "He really does."

Maria backed out of my driveway, bumping over the curb. She put the car into drive and stepped on the gas. "No, I mean, no, I don't want to go to Mrs. Krauss's."

Maria slammed on the brakes. Ana and I flew forward, our seat belts keeping us from taking a header out the windshield.

Maria glared at me. "That poor old man!"

Colonel Mustard came out his front door, stared at us like we might jump out and raid his wife's underwear drawer. "Oh, all right!" I said. "We'll go."

Beyond the screen door, Brickhouse Krauss's cucumber-colored front door was open wide, allowing in rain-cooled air. I knocked softly at first, then more loudly.

No one answered. I turned to the car and shrugged.

Maria and Ana frowned at me and pointed toward the house in a "keep trying" motion.

Mrs. Krauss's car was in the driveway, the front door was open, and I apparently wasn't going anywhere until I spoke with her.

Great.

"Mrs. Krauss?" I called through the screen. Silence.

I stepped down off the front landing. Well, I'd tried.

Ana's window powered down. "You're not giving up already!"

"She's not answering."

Maria's window slid down. "She's got to be home! Maybe she's out back. Go check."

My jaw dropped open. "You go check!"

"You're already wet." Her window slid back up. So did Ana's.

Sighing, I pulled the hood of my spring coat over my head and trudged around to the back of the house. I should really be at work, I told myself. Here I was, trying to be a good sister by helping Maria track down Nate, and somehow—somehow!—I'd ended up at Ursula Krauss's landominium. How did these things happen?
Nate. God.
Had it been him on the phone? What was going on? I hadn't been able to stop thinking about that phone call or what was in that package. And how scared he'd sounded.

Ursula was sitting on the stone bench in the small garden I'd designed for her not too long ago. An umbrella protected her crisp white bob as she stared into the small goldfish pond. Looking up, she frowned, wrinkles pulling the corners of her blue eyes downward. She clucked at me. "He shouldn't have asked you to come."

I swear she had powers like my mother. Always knowing. The two of them should open a fortune-telling shop. I could see them now in twin turbans.

I didn't bother denying it. "He misses you."

She offered me a seat on the drenched bench. I pulled the hem of my coat down over my rear end and, reluctantly, sat. Brickhouse Krauss. Once upon a time she'd been my tenth grade English teacher. She'd made my life miserable, her animosity toward me quite clear. The feeling had been mutual. Still was.

Once I'd finished her job, I'd (for some reason I'm still not clear about) volunteered to set Brickhouse up with Mr. Cabrera . . . and was living to regret it.

"I know he misses me," she said. "I'm a hard woman to get over."
I fought back a snort.

She was short, squat, a German powerhouse, a true force to reckon with. I didn't want to be here, reckoning at all. But I felt slightly guilty for Mr. Cabrera's broken heart. "Any chance of reconciliation?" She clucked.

Bright colored goldfish swam in the small pond, blips of gold flashing under green and fuchsia water lilies. Raindrops splashed and spread in rings in the water.

I looked around, pleased with the growth of the garden. The varying pinks of the flowers surrounding us looked amazing. Mr. Cabrera had done a great job helping the garden grow. Not a deadhead to be seen.

"I don't know," she said finally. "I do care for Donatelli." Hearing Mr. Cabrera's first name always took me aback. For as long as I'd lived in the Mill, he'd always been Mr. Cabrera to me, and I was Miz Quinn to him.

"But," Mrs. Krauss continued, "I want to live to see my grandchildren grow."

That would be a long wait considering she didn't have any grandchildren.

"Those are rumors," I said. For the most part. Okay, so Mr. Cabrera's lady friends had been known to, er, up and die on him. All of natural causes, of course. "He's jinxed." I really couldn't argue with that.

The impatient blast of a car horn rang out. I rolled my eyes. Maria's empathy for Mr. Cabrera apparently only stretched to five minutes.

I rose. "I need to get going, Mrs. Krauss. My sister's waiting for me."

She clucked, looked so sad. I almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

"I go nowhere," she said, "now that Don and I are no more."

Ah, jeez.
Okay, so I felt a little sorry. Eensy. Barely even enough to mention. "Call him."

She rose, looking every bit like her nickname. Put a head, feet, and arms on a brick, give it a hostile attitude and a slight German accent, and it was Ursula Krauss. A white eyebrow arched. "Where are
you
going?"

"The Kalypso," I said, realizing too late she'd been fishing. Her face lit. "Oh?"

I cringed. "Business, really. Maria's fiancé . . ."

"I'll go with you, play some craps." She turned toward the house.

I followed her. "Really, Mrs. Krauss, I don't think that's a good idea." Not good at all. I'd be much too tempted to push her off the boat into the river.

"Ach. Nonsense." She waddled away. "I'll get my purse."

You didn't know fear until you'd driven on a rural highway with my baby sister. Unfortunately for Ana, Brickhouse, and me, the Kalypso was located in southeast Indiana, less than an hour under normal driving conditions. Thirty minutes if you drove with Maria. And that counted being pulled over once by a state trooper.

Brickhouse, looking decidedly green around the edges, quickly excused herself to find a restroom. "Go on ahead. I'll catch up," she squeaked.

Ana didn't look so good herself. Her dark complexion had faded three shades to a deathly mushroom color. "Ana's right, you know," I said to my sister. "Your driving is terrible. You can stop that pouting and just own up to it." Maria frowned. "It wasn't so bad!"

Ana wrapped her arms around her stomach. "Your license should be taken away."

Maria stomped her foot. "A few minor,
minor,
" she repeated for emphasis, "mishaps and you all get bent out of shape."

Ana ran a hand over her dark hair, smoothing stray strands. "Well, excuse me if I don't like getting an up close and personal view of the guardrail."

I tuned out their bickering. My thoughts of casinos, even in this day and age, conjured images of Vegas-style mobsters, money laundering, racketeering . . . murder. I wouldn't go there where Nate was concerned, even though my overactive imagination wanted to.

But something was certainly going on. He'd sounded terrified on the phone. Add that to someone breaking into his and Maria's condo and the mysterious package he'd sent me . . . and my mind was jumping to mafia-style conclusions. The package Nate sent was burning a hole in my backpack. What in the world was in it? Had he turned up evidence of wrongdoing onboard the Kalypso? Was he the one doing the wrong? Oh, the questions.