Blown To Pieces (PTO Murder Club Mystery Book 2) (17 page)

“Don’t you already have them?” He was in DEA agent mode now.

“Yes, when I say borrow them, I mean...um...give them away...you know, to someone...forever.” I felt like I was digging myself into a huge hole, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

Daman took a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, letting each one out slowly. “Are you talking about giving them to a charity?”

“Something like that.” I wasn’t trying to be evasive; I had no real details to give him.

After a couple more deep breaths, he said, “Start at the beginning.”

Of what? I didn’t have time to run him through Adam and Eve and the apple.

“Let’s say that hypothetically, someone thinks I have Molly’s gold—”

“What gold?” Daman’s voice rose several decibel levels.

“You know, the gold we found along with the cash, your diamonds, and that cell phone we turned over to you.” We’d only turned over the phone after he’d threatened to have us all arrested.

There was a slapping noise, and I was pretty sure he was slapping his forehead. “You said you only found the phone and the diamonds.”

“Faulty memory. Anyway, back to the diamonds. Let’s say someone thinks I have Molly’s gold and they want it, but I really don’t have it. Would it be okay if I used your diamonds in place of the gold?” I was running out of time. I was almost to my house.

“Where is the gold?” He sounded like he was trying hard to keep up.

“I don’t know. Haley hid it, and I can’t get in touch with her.” That was odd, but maybe she’d decided to go to Las Vegas with Daniel. She sometimes went with him on his work trips.

“What about the cash?” I could hear the eye roll and head shake in Daman’s voice.

“It’s gone. We used it to pay for Molly’s mother to stay at Lakeside Living.” I pulled up in front of my guesthouse and threw Portia into park. “I kinda need to know right now about the diamonds.”

“What’s the hurry?” Daman sounded tired.

“There’s a clock on this. I have until noon.” I shoved my house key into the lock, turned the key, and opened the door. “Holy shit.”

My house had been vandalized. My sad little couch was overturned, and my TV was lying facedown in a pool of its own broken glass. My wagon wheel coffee table was missing a couple of spokes.

“What’s wrong?” Daman’s voice rose an octave.

“Someone ransacked my house.” There was nothing but devastation. Everything I had—my meager possessions were all broken. I glanced at the clock on the microwave, only the microwave was upside down on my kitchen floor.

“What? Someone broke into your house?” Daman’s accent got heavier the more stressed he was. “Stay there. I’m calling the police.”

“You can’t. If you do, something ‘really bad’ will happen to me.” Was this just a taste of what “really bad” meant to the man who’d called me? I really shouldn’t have hung up on him.

“Fine, I’m texting Bautista now. Stay there.” Daman went silent. “What do you mean, ‘really bad’?”

“A man called me this morning and told me he wanted Molly’s gold and that if he didn’t get it by noon, something ‘really bad’ would happen. I guess he meant to me. He wasn’t specific.” I felt violated. True, my house had been bugged, but this was worse. Someone had touched everything I owned.

“You didn’t call me until now?” Now he was shouting. “Why don’t you trust me?”

“It’s not about trust.” It was more that I hadn’t thought to call him until now. “Okay, next time I get a threatening letter and phone call, I’ll let you know ASAP.”

“What letter?” I had to pull the phone away from my ear because his voice was so loud.

“Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, there was a letter taped to my front door last night—”

“Ay Dios mío, how does trouble always find you?” He ground out a deep breath. “Bautista should be there any minute. Next time you are threatened by so much as a paper cut, I want you to call me.”

Arguing that I was an independent woman who didn’t need his help probably wasn’t going to fly, since I’d called him for help.

I glanced at my freezer. The door was open. I hurled away a pile of clean towels to find that the ice cube trays where I’d cleverly hid my diamonds were missing. “Oh crap.”

“What now?”

I got down on my hands and knees and searched for the ice cube trays. They were nowhere to be found.

“Your diamonds have been stolen.” My cell phone chose that very minute to die.

Bautista burst through my front door with his gun drawn.

I almost peed in my pants.

If I hadn’t already been on the floor, I would have dove for it.

“Christ, you scared the hell out of me.” I didn’t ponder the fact that it had taken him all of ten seconds to get to my house, which meant that he was still following me. I really didn’t have a good argument against it this time. I still held the cell phone to my ear. I lowered it.

“Sorry, madam. Daman’s text didn’t say if the perpetrator was still here.” Bautista nodded to the hallway. “Have you cleared the house?”

“Of what? Bad guys? No, I only made it to the kitchen.” I rolled onto my knees as Bautista’s phone buzzed.

Without breaking stride, he tossed his phone to me and walked down the hallway that led to the two bedrooms and one bathroom.

I caught the phone and saw Daman’s face smiling up at me. I hit answer.

“Is she okay?” His voice was frantic.

“I’m fine. Sorry, my cell died.” It might have been because I’d dropped it so many times, or perhaps because I never remembered to charge it.

“You scared the hell out of me.” Daman gulped in breaths.

“Sorry.” I continued to search for the ice cube trays. “It looks like whoever broke in took your diamonds.”

How was I supposed to pay Daman back for two million in diamonds? How was I supposed to come up with Molly’s gold in the next forty-five minutes? When had my life gotten so complicated?

Damn it, Haley. Where are you?

“Don’t worry about the diamonds. I’m just glad you’re safe.” What else could Daman say?

“Thanks for sending Bautista in.” What the hell was I supposed to do now? I might not have been scared of Mike Tyson before, but I was now. He’d showed me that he could get to me. What if he tried to hurt Max?

“Madam?” Bautista knelt beside me. “Are you quite well?”

Gently, he took the phone from my hand and helped me up. He righted a chair and sat me in it. He put the phone to his ear and said, “Sir, may I call you back in a moment?”

Daman must have said yes, because Bautista ended the call and slipped the phone into the back pocket of his khakis.

“How about some water?” He looked around for a glass, found one that wasn’t broken next to my sofa, and filled it from the tap. He handed it to me.

I took it but couldn’t quite get my hand to bring it to my mouth. What if “really bad” involved Max?

I looked up at Bautista. “Someone thinks I have some gold that I don’t have, and unless I give it to them at noon, they’re going to do something really bad to me or someone I love. Can you help me?”

“Of course.” Bautista nodded like I’d just asked him for a cup of coffee. “How much gold do you need?”

“I’m sorry?” I leaned closer to him, like that would help what he’d just said make sense.

“How much gold do you need? Daman told me to give you whatever you require. How much gold do you need?” He might as well have been asking me how much sugar I take in my tea.

“I don’t know exactly.” We hadn’t actually weighed the gold. It had been really heavy, but I figured he wanted something a little more precise. I picked up my phone to text Monica; then I remembered that it was dead. “My phone’s dead.”

I looked around for the charging cable, but that was like finding a needle in a haystack made of broken crap.

“Use my phone.” Bautista handed me his phone.

I took it and then remembered that I didn’t know Monica’s number. “I don’t know the number.”

Damn—Contacts, it’s ruined the world.

“Whom would you like to call?” Bautista was being so nice, and after I’d slashed his tire too. Okay, I felt bad.

“My friend Monica.” I guessed I could look up the number of the insurance company where she worked, call her assistant, and have her give me Monica’s cell...

Bautista took his phone back, scrolled for the number, and hit call.

“How do you happen to have Monica’s cell number?” I was over the Bautista-being-nice thing and back to being suspicious.

“I have all of your emergency contact numbers. Daman insisted on it. He likes to know that you’re safe.” Bautista grinned. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“I guess it’s hard to be mad at a man who’s trying to help me.” And I now owed Daman two million dollars for his missing diamonds...and possibly lots of money in gold.

“Hello.” Monica sounded like she couldn’t commit to that hello until she made sure it wasn’t a telemarketer.

“It’s me. I’m borrowing Bautista’s phone. I still haven’t heard from Haley, so I was going to substitute Daman’s diamonds for the gold, but my house has been ransacked. The diamonds are gone.” It sounded so much more hopeless when I said it out loud.

“I’m sorry...wait...back up. Your house was ransacked? Are you okay?” Monica shot out words like rapid gunfire.

“I’m fine. How much gold did we find at Molly’s?” We were running out of time.

“I don’t know. Lots.” I heard her car blinker clicking. “Where are you? I just turned into the Chili Parlor’s parking lot and it’s empty.”

“I’m still at my house. Bautista’s here. Daman sent him to help us. How much gold in pounds would you guess we found?” It had felt like fifty pounds, but that was because I don’t work out. Working out is a good idea, and so is giving up caffeine and carbs, but I’m not known for my good ideas, and I hate to be wishy-washy. Without caffeine and carbs, I’m just boobs and attitude.

“Crap, I don’t know. I’d guess twenty-five or thirty pounds.” Monica turned the engine off. “You realize that you’re supposed to be here in like ten minutes, right? And I mean ten actual minutes, not Standard Mustang Time.”

“I’ll leave now.” I didn’t know why I was in a hurry to get there. I didn’t have any gold or diamonds to use to buy off Mike Tyson. I hung up and handed Bautista his phone. “I need to go.”

Bautista blew out a ragged breath. “I need to stay with you, but I have to go home to get the gold.” He looked like he was weighing the odds. “What exactly were the instructions?”

“I was to get the gold and leave it at the Chili Parlor. He wasn’t specific about where I was supposed to leave it.” What was worse, going empty-handed or being late?

“So it’s a dead drop?” Bautista made it sound like that was a piece of cake. “Is he expecting both you and Monica?”

“No, just me.” Was I not supposed to have told Monica? If that was true, then Mike Tyson really was a man, because a woman would have known that best friends are always included in all life-changing, life-threatening, and life-saving decision making.

“Call Monica back and tell her to leave immediately.” Bautista put his hand in the small of my back and ushered me out the door. He closed it behind me and walked me to my car.

“We’ll skip the gold.” His eyes locked onto the two outdoor trash cans that we rolled down to the end of the street twice a week. He opened one and pulled out a good-sized Amazon box. He picked up several large rocks and stuffed them inside the box. The weight was too much for the box, and it began to crater.

He opened Portia’s hatchback and set the box inside. “I’ll follow you to the Chili Parlor. All you need to do is leave this on the doorstep. I’ll wait around and see who comes to get it.”

“Damn, that’s good.” I started Portia’s engine and plugged my phone in. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

“Call Monica now.” He got into the green Tesla I’d seen him driving the other day.

I pulled out of my driveway and headed to the Chili Parlor.

There were so many things that could go wrong with this plan...I hoped that Bautista was as good as Daman thought he was; otherwise, I was in “really bad” big trouble.

I pulled into the Chili Parlor’s parking lot at eleven fifty-eight. I’d broken speed records and the sound barrier to get here on time.

On the way over, Bautista had talked me through the dead drop.

I parked in the space closest to the door. My heart was hammering a mile a minute. I got out of Portia, walked around to the back, and hefted the box of rocks. I placed it on the doorstep, made sure that the flaps were closed, and got back in my car.

If this worked and Bautista caught Mike Tyson, I was home free. If it didn’t work, I was screwed.

I pulled out of the parking lot and drove around the corner to the Hill Country Galleria mall. I parked next to Monica at the Dillard’s entrance.

Monica opened Portia’s passenger door and got in.

“This is the part I hate most...waiting.” I couldn’t do a damn thing right now.

“I know. We control freaks hate to rely on others.” Monica closed the door. “Have you heard from Haley?”

“No, and it’s starting to worry me.” Haley had never not returned my phone calls. Even when she was in Italy or Dubai. I called and she answered. Either she’d turned over a new irresponsible leaf or something was wrong.

We waited and waited and waited.

Twelve thirty came and went. And then one turned into one thirty.

My cell phone rang, and I answered.

“Rocks? I guess you didn’t believe me.” Mike Tyson’s voice boomed over the hands-free.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have the gold. I don’t know where it is.” The only thing I had left to bargain with was the truth.

“Stop lying. I know you have the gold.” Mike Tyson turned mean. “Tell the DEA agent’s lapdog to go home.”

How did he know about Daman?

Monica mouthed, “DEA?”

I mouthed, “Later.”

“Thanks for the diamonds. I only stopped by your house to leave you a little message. I got thirsty, so I went to make myself some ice water. And surprise...surprise.” Mike Tyson sounded very satisfied with himself.

“How about you keep them and we call it a day?” It was a long shot...okay, it wasn’t even a long shot.