Queens Ransom (Sofie Metropolis) (3 page)

Three

Rule #5,612: Don’t ever take a case where the risks outweigh the potential rewards.

I was exaggerating on the number, but I’m sure I remember my Uncle Spyros reciting this rule to me, one of many I let float straight through my head and drop on to the ground at my feet before walking over it, only to later make my way back to tediously pick up what remained. Why? Because over the past few months, I’d learned that maybe it might be a good idea to heed some of his advice.

This rule in particular.

I was thinking any job that began with a snatch and grab, well, it couldn’t be good.

Uncle Spyros, aka Spyros Metropolis. It was his name that graced the windows and door of the office front on Steinway Boulevard I even now drove to. He was my father’s ne’er-do-well brother. A private investigator by trade who had one silent partner, Lenny Nash, who took his role literally and rarely said a word, startling both Rosie and me when we realized he was actually in his office half the time.

Silent also nailed our response to Lenny and his mysterious activities, which included large, unexplained checks he regularly deposited in the company account.

As for my uncle Spyros . . . well, shortly after I hired on at the agency – choosing him over apron duty at either my father’s restaurant or my grandfather’s café, where I’d spent most of my working life up until that point – he had taken off for an island in Greece. That was eight months ago, and I was beginning to suspect he might never return.

And if I was also beginning to suspect he wasn’t in Greece . . . well, that was between Lucille and me.

It wasn’t often I wished he were here so I might ask for advice. But I wished he were here now. Unfortunately, for reasons I had yet to ascertain, the only times I could talk to him were when he called the office weekly, having left no number where I could contact him.

‘Go to Lenny if there’s an emergency,’ he said.

Rosie and I had stared at each other as if we’d rather have our salon privileges revoked for a year before going to Lenny for anything.

As I negotiated my way to the office the morning after my late-day meeting with Mr Abramopoulos’ head of security, Bruno, Muffy slobbering all over the passenger window where it instantly froze there, making it impossible to see out of, I went over what I’d done so far on the case I’d been arm-twisted into taking.

Thankfully Lucille hadn’t been towed, but had been parked on the side of the street a block up from where I’d been grabbed, the keys in the glove box. Any other day, I might have been concerned, but it was so blasted cold outside, I doubted anyone doing any car browsing would have looked twice at my 1965 Bondo Special Mustang, much less have checked the glove box.

I also counted myself lucky I’d been given back my Glock as I left the Abramopoulos building, the ugly mug who had taken it from me grinning widely as I checked to find it unloaded.

‘What, afraid I might wanna shoot you?’

His grin merely widened.

Last night I reached my limit on guys who smiled their responses.

My first destination had been the address listed for the ex-wife, even though there had been a notation she no longer lived there. The small, squat house in Kew Gardens had been barely a shack in an otherwise good neighborhood and the sidewalks and driveway had been left snow covered, giving the place more than a deserted feeling – a desolate one, particularly in the dark.

My initial reaction was shock; you couldn’t have driven any farther from George Abramopoulos’ penthouse offices to this small, sorry-looking house his ex-wife had inhabited. Pre-nup? Or had the ex-Mrs Abramopoulos needed a better attorney?

Any way you spun it, her standard of living had taken a marked nosedive after the divorce.

And, considering her ex owned a good percentage of prime real estate inside Manhattan, I could only imagine how she felt coming home to this every night.

But did it give Sara Canton motive to kidnap her own daughter?

The second thing I noticed was the line of cars both in front of and behind me, all of them slowing as they came to the house. I realized that every PI in a three-borough area had probably had the same idea. I’d checked my gas gauge to make sure I had enough to last through the crawl then readjusted the rear-view mirror to wait my turn. I spotted the driver of the Crown Vic behind me. Sweaty, comb-over guy from Abramopoulos’ reception area, the one I thought I’d seen somewhere before. He seemed to be looking back at me. I adjusted the mirror again so I couldn’t see him.

I’d supposed I probably should get out of the car, go up to the door to make sure no one was actually in the house. But since there was no sign of footprints in snow that had fallen the morning before, meaning no one had come or gone since the girl had been snatched, and the fact none of the other PIs appeared interested in sinking into the snow up to their knees, I passed.

So I’d made my obligatory stop in front of the house, stared at it waiting for inspiration, taking in the half-open mailbox that appeared overstuffed and the plastic-wrapped newspaper peeking out of the snow near the stairs, before driving along.

What I hadn’t anticipated was nearly running over a kid who was pulling his younger sister on one of those oversized Frisbee sleds across the street.

‘Christ, lady, we’re walking here!’

‘Language,’ I’d said, rolling down the window to apologize and instead sounding disturbingly like my mother. ‘You shouldn’t be out walking like this after dark anyway. Had it been anyone else you stepped out in front of, you might have ended up roadkill. Frozen roadkill considering these temperatures. They probably wouldn’t have found you until spring thaw.’

He’d stared at me as if trying to decide whether to ignore me and continue on or flip me the bird. His sister was younger, her chubby cheeks round and red, her eyes huge and overly bright in her tiny face.

‘Hey, want to make a quick fiver?’ I’d asked.

Had he given me the finger, I probably wouldn’t have extended the offer, but he hadn’t and I had. And within ten minutes he’d met me on the next block with the mail that had been overflowing from Canton’s box.

‘I think this should be worth at least ten,’ he said to me.

‘Five and no more.’

He sighed and handed the mail over. I’d given him seven.

‘Gee, thanks, lady. You’re a regular George Abramopoulos.’ Then he’d gone back the way he’d come, pulling his sister behind him.

I’d sat for a minute watching him and wondering at his choice of comebacks and the coincidence of it. Then I’d sifted through the mail, thinking maybe some of it had born the name of the former Mrs Abramaopoulos. None of it had. I’d begun to go through it more thoroughly when I realized a car had pulled up, parking right behind me and shutting off the lights. I alternated going through the mail with watching for the driver to get out when I noticed the engine was still running, exhaust snaking up over the car in the cold wind and snaking around mine.

The Crown Vic.

Great. I’d been made.

I put the mail down and continued on, glad when he didn’t immediately follow.

Now, I glanced at the mail still sitting on the passenger’s seat that was now covered with dirty Muffy prints and then pulled on to Steinway Boulevard, finding a spot across the street and up the block from the agency.

That’s when I noticed a stalker of a different color.

Jake Porter.

My heart did a funny little side to side as I visually tagged the black truck with tinted glass, cigarette smoke curling out the crack in the driver’s side window like the fingernail of a carnival performer, indicating he was inside, probably watching me.

I took a deep breath, ordering my traitorous body to behave.

The hot Australian bounty hunter and I had a past, you could say.

I made a face. OK, maybe not that long of a past, but he and I? Well, we had a good beginning of one. He’d saved my bacon bits on a couple of occasions, including the time he’d swooped in from out of the sky to prevent me from being chucked off Hellgate Bridge in my new pair of unwanted cement overshoes.

Thing of it was? I didn’t want his help. OK, maybe that one time it had come in handy. But having gunmen shoot up his waterbed just moments after the first time he and I had sex? Then having his truck blow up when we made a run for it? And a growing litany of questions left without answers? Well, stuff like that I could do without, thank you very much.

Besides, I was completely capable of getting into at least that much trouble all on my own.

Of course, it didn’t help that the questions at the top of that list had to do with him and his feelings for me.

Why was he trying to protect me? And what from?

What was he, officially, since I was now pretty much convinced he wasn’t the bounty hunter I’d believed him to be?

And what was his interest in me beyond sex?

I’d asked those very questions one too many times without receiving an answer and told him in no uncertain terms, in his own language, to bugger off.

What he was doing parked at my curb again was anybody’s guess.

And I’d long since passed the point of being tired of guessing.

I switched off the engine and opened the door, holding Muffy until a car passed before letting him out. He ran straight for the office front with a short detour at a fire hydrant to leave his mark. I slammed my car door, snuggled down deeper into my sheepskin jacket, and negotiated the icy ruts between me and the opposite curb without nearly as much grace. I did take some comfort in knowing I didn’t have to visit the hydrant.

Another car door clapped shut. Against my better judgment, I looked to find Jake had climbed from his truck and stood leaning against it. Forget the little side to side heart movement; my entire body just burst into flame.

I squinted at him through the dim, cloud-covered morning light. He looked different. Not the scruffed-up bad boy I was used to seeing. His blondish hair was neatly cut above the collar. His jeans were newer. And he wore a crisp, button-up shirt under his leather jacket.

Funeral?

I shuddered at the thought, remembering the dozen voicemail messages from my mother the night before and the half-hour lecture I’d received for not immediately calling her back and having missed the
saranta
. Forget I’d been hauled out of my car by a gargantuan stranger and what might have happened to me; I’d ruined her night.

And somehow was made to feel guilty about that.

I realized I was staring at Jake . . . and he at me.

Until Muffy’s manic barking reminded me I was probably failing at my dog-owner duties.

I turned to watch a woman looking a lot like . . . was that Mrs Claus? Yes, as in Santa Claus’ wife. Anyway, she was stepping through the front door of the agency, her dress looking not so much a costume but the real thing, complete with ruffled apron and reading glasses.

Muffy stopped barking, I thought to get a pat from the woman.

Instead, he started lifting his leg.

‘Muffy, no!’

Too late.

He was already drenching her stockings.

I grimaced.

Guess that meant no presents under the tree for him this year.

Probably not for me either.

Four

‘I need you to find Rudolph.’

I’d hurried to the sidewalk as fast as my size-eight-and-a-half boots could carry me over the rutted, icy terrain, nearly falling on my ass twice, my face once, my mouth opened on an apology when Mrs Claus’ words caught me up short.

She wanted me to what?

Probably I was hearing things. Probably Muffy’s urine had short-circuited the woman’s mental wiring.

I looked down at the mutt in question, who had finished his business and stood staring at me as if he, too, were questioning the woman’s marble count.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You must think me insane.’

She had me there.

‘My name’s Noel Nicholas. Every year I turn my yard into a Christmas wonderland for the kids. Free of charge, don’t you know. And, well, my star reindeer has come up missing.’

I resumed squinting and noticed Muffy focusing his attention on a woman with red shopping bags walking in our direction.

‘No,’ I said, in both response to him and . . . was her name really Noel Nicolas?

I snatched the dog up with minimal fussing – probably his feet were numb – and stepped toward the office door.

Unfortunately, I didn’t close it fast enough; Mrs Claus caught it and followed me inside.

I didn’t miss Rosie’s expression where she stood on top of a chair and a box stringing cheesy ‘Happy Holidays’ garlands to hang from the ceiling. The gum-popping Puerto Rican gave me one of her trademark eye rolls even as I wondered how she could balance on her six-inch stiletto heels; boots that still only made her height somewhere around my nose.

Balance? Hell, I wanted to know how she could walk in the ice outside in them.

‘Told you,’ Rosie said. ‘‘Tis the season.’

‘For kooks, freaks and all things messed up,’ I silently finished the sentence she’d uttered the day before after a man came in for a follow-up on a job he’d hired us for to follow his cheating wife, only to be told the photos we had of her being jolly with three other females were allowed. And that, in fact, he was in those shots in a red wig and a push-up bra.

The interaction firmly placed him in all three of the ‘Happy Holidays’ categories. And made me wish we had never taken him on as a client.

Although as far as cheating-spouse cases went, his was by far not the most bizarre I’d encountered.

Christmas carols played on the iPod dock Rosie had set up on the filing cabinets lining the far wall, her desk holding small piles of other decorations I assumed she planned to put up. ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer’ was playing.

Considering my present company, I found the song amusing not at all.

I pulled a list of names out of my pocket and put it on her desk. ‘As soon as humanly possible,’ I said.

‘Please,’ Mrs Claus said, following me to my uncle’s office, which essentially had become my office, Muffy running and barking around her legs. ‘I know your assistant—’

‘Executive Office Manager,’ Rosie loudly corrected.

‘Office Manager says you no longer handle missing-pet cases, but . . .’

As far as I was concerned, there were no buts. With my current caseload, I couldn’t afford to go out tracking an animal that probably shouldn’t be in the city limits outside of a zoo.

Probably there was a law against it.

Not that that had stopped me in the past.

Still . . .

I shrugged out of my coat and hung it on the back of the door then rounded the desk.

‘I’m sorry . . .’ What had she said her name was?

‘Noel Nicholas.’

‘Mrs Nicholas. I’d really like to help you . . .’ Liar. ‘But the agency really can’t spare the manpower at the moment.’

Was it me, or did she smell like freshly baked sugar cookies?

I glanced down at her urine-stained stocking, thinking maybe I needed to have my nose examined.

‘I understand.’

OK, that was the fastest anyone had backed down. I’d been prepared for a fight. Dreading it.

Now I felt guilty.

I fought it by taking my cell phone out and scrolling through the numbers for the one to the plumber.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to Mrs Nicholas and turned away.

I made an appointment for the plumber to come by Mrs Nebitz’s place later that afternoon. When I hung up, I hoped to find Mrs Claus gone.

Instead, she stood in the exact place I’d left her.

‘Sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you meant for me to leave, but . . . Well, I’d ask if you could recommend anyone else, but I’m thinking I’m going to get the same response from them.’

‘Yeah, thinking you’re right.’

‘It’s just that I’ve had Rudy for five years. He spends the majority of the time on my cousin’s farm out on Long Island, but I bring him in especially for the holidays. The thought of him wandering the busy streets, no food to be had, no one to look after him . . .’

I didn’t even want to think of what could have possibly happened on those busy streets, but the word ‘roadkill’ came to mind for the second time in as many days.

I shuddered.

Rosie had somehow climbed down from the chair and the box in those heels without serious injury and leaned back to stare into my office.

‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you leave whatever information you have, like a photo, and I’ll see if there’s something I can do.’

Her face lit up like the Christmas lights Rosie was even now inspecting at her desk.

‘I can’t promise anything. Chances are I won’t be able to do anything.’

But I just couldn’t let her walk out of the office looking like someone had just crumbled her sugar cookies.

Or, rather, pissed on her stockings.

I couldn’t help looking again. Only I couldn’t make out the yellow stain.

Muffy got closer and sniffed then looked up at Mrs Clause as if he, too, were puzzled.

He began lifting his leg again.

‘Muffy, don’t!’

I shooed him away with a Manila folder I took from the corner of the desk even as Mrs Claus rattled off details, apparently completely oblivious to the Jack Russell terrier’s designs on her leg.

I gave a mental shrug. Could be worse. He could have been trying to hump it.

She pulled out a photo from the pocket of the white apron edged in red. ‘Here he is.’

I took the shot and began to put it down without looking at it but found myself looking closer instead.

Was that a red nose?

I shook my head and tossed the photo to the desktop. Since the shot had apparently been taken in the dark, probably it was red eye that had transferred to the nose.

‘I’ll call if I see anything.’

‘Is there a number I can reach you on?’

Rosie did her leaning-back bit again and shook her head in stern warning.

‘I think it would be better if I called you if I come up with anything, OK?’

There was that scent again. Only this time, it smelled like . . . peppermint?

I led her from the office and out on to the sidewalk.

‘Thank you so very much, Miss Metropolis. I can’t tell you how much this means to me and the kids.’

I nodded and mumbled something I hoped was appropriate, my attention already diverted to the hot Australian still leaning against his truck across the street.

Damn.

Jake gave me a brief nod, pitched his cigarette to the street, then climbed into his truck and pulled from the curb.

Hunh.

‘I can’t believe you let that poor old woman believe you’re going to help her,’ Rosie said, hanging the lights in the front window.

‘Shoot me, but I think kicking her to the curb is just a wee bit crueler.’

She tsked. ‘No it ain’t. Letting her believe you’re going to find her stupid reindeer is crueler.’

‘Whatever.’

‘When do you think you’ll get to that info I asked for?’

She walked to the printer, pulled paper from it and held it out, her ever-present gum popping.

There was no way she’d done all that . . . when? She’d been in my line of sight since I put the list on her desk. It was impossible. There was no way . . .

‘I think we should talk about Christmas bonuses,’ she said.

‘I think you should stop making this place look like a Christmas shop and get back to work.’

She raised a brow.

‘Sorry.’

And I was.

Kind of.

‘You’re not the only one allowed to have a bad day,’ I told her.

Bad day? Hell, the rate I was going, I was having the mother of all years.

‘I don’t never have no bad days.’

I gave her a long look.

‘I don’t.’ She went back to hanging her lights. ‘I get . . . moody.’

‘Oh. Is that what they’re calling it now?’

‘Whatever.’

I didn’t have to see her eye roll in order to know she was giving me one.

I scanned down the information she’d compiled, noticing a couple of names I didn’t give her.

‘Why’d you run these?’

‘New program. Gives you associates, et cetera. Thought you might need it.’ She popped her gum. ‘What’s going on with Abramopoulos? You working for him?’

Probably I should tell her. Probably she could help.

Probably I was a little miffed at her and didn’t feel like it at the moment.

‘You gonna leave that damn dog in here all day like you did last time?’

I looked to see Muffy had grabbed a hold of a piece of garland and was running it around and around my ankles.

Great.

All things being equal? I’d prefer to eat Christmas turkey, not be trussed up like one.

‘Maybe,’ I answered non-committally as I clumsily extricated myself from the garland and went back into the office.

‘Oh, call your mom,’ Rosie said. ‘She left at least five messages.’

‘I will.’

‘Now.’

‘Soon.’

‘Call her or I tell her all about that hot Australian guy always hanging out here looking for you.’

I stared at her over the paper. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

She flashed a dimpled grin. ‘Try me.’

I closed the door, leaving both her and Muffy to do to the outside office what they would.

Then I went to my desk and called my mother.