Blown To Pieces (PTO Murder Club Mystery Book 2) (18 page)

“I’m going to keep them alright, but I want the gold too. You have one more chance. Drop it off outside of the Chili Parlor by five this evening or else.” He hung up.

“What’s with the ‘or else’ thing?” Monica leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “The Mike Tyson’s voice is creepy.”

“Yep, he’s creepy. And I don’t know about the ‘or else.’ The guy’s not big on details.” And he had Daman’s diamonds.

I called Bautista.

He picked up on the first ring. “Yes, madam?”

“He knows about the box of rocks, and he knows about you. Any ideas?” I was certainly running out of them.

Bautista thought about it for a couple of beats. “I have no idea how he knew about the rocks. I’ve had eyes on them since you left them on the doorstep, and no one has been anywhere near the Chili Parlor.”

“I don’t know how he knows, but he knows.” I glanced at Monica, who looked like she’d just puzzled out the mysteries of the universe.

“Daman is a DEA agent.” Monica laughed to herself. “He’s not a drug lord, he’s DEA.”

“Yes, he’s DEA, and I couldn’t tell you. And you can’t tell anyone, including Haley.” It had been hard keeping that little piece of info from my best friends, but I hadn’t had a choice.

“Yes, you need to keep it to yourself. There are only a handful of people in the world who know about Daman, and it needs to stay that way.” Bautista had dropped his usual matter-of-factness and become deadly calm.

“I understand.” Monica nodded—not that Bautista could see it. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Back to the problem at hand.” Bautista was just as good at keeping us on task as Monica. So they had some common ground. Maybe her crushing on him wasn’t such a bad idea.

Monica whispered, “He’s so hot.”

“I heard that.” Bautista was back to being Mr. Matter-of-Fact.

Monica’s face turned red.

“You’re so cute when you blush.” There was a smile in his voice.

I looked around. “Where are you?”

“See that tree on your two o’clock?” The smile was still there.

I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t two o’clock. “I don’t understand.”

Monica reached over and turned my head to the right and pointed to a huge oak tree. Barely visible in the canopy was a green blob.

“Are you the green blob?” I shaded my eyes from the sun.

“I have less than nine percent body fat. I am not a blob.” Bautista didn’t sound angry.

“So hot,” Monica whispered and blew him a kiss.

“I just caught it and sent one back to you.” Bautista was flirting. It was both sweet and grotesque.

“If the two of you are finished, could we get back to the problem at hand?” I couldn’t believe it was me keeping us on track.

“Of course.” Leaves crinkled in the background, and I watched as he climbed down from the tree. “I’ll get the gold and meet you back here.”

“You know where the gold is?” Monica looked confused.

“No, different gold.” Bautista, dressed in green fatigues, walked toward us. He had a really big rifle of some sort resting on one shoulder and a pair of binoculars in the other hand.

People coming in and out of the mall didn’t seem to notice the really big gun. Then again, most people in this town wouldn’t notice an alien invasion. Come to think of it, maybe we’d already been invaded and I hadn’t noticed it.

Monica rolled down her window, and he walked to her. Without saying a word, he leaned down and planted a kiss on her lips.

Her eyes turned huge, and then she kissed him back.

I’m not going to lie. It was hot.

He ended the kiss and leaned back, grinning like the cat who’d eaten a flock of canaries.

Monica looked a little shell-shocked. “Wow.”

“In addition to being a really good kisser, I also make fantastic croissants.” Now Bautista was just bragging.

“That was you?” I’d eaten some of his croissants at Daman’s house. They really were fantastic.

“What happened to the khakis you had on earlier?” Did he just happen to have green fatigues in his car?

“A work colleague brought them to me. Along with this.” He waved the gun.

What kind of work colleagues does a butler have? Had the upstairs ladies’ maid brought the gun?

Bautista winked at Monica. “You ladies go back to work. I’ve got it from here.”

“We can’t.” I didn’t know what would happen if I didn’t drop off the gold.

“You said the gold weighed twenty-five to thirty pounds?” Bautista rubbed his chin. “I’ll get it together for you. I can have it ready in an hour.”

Was it okay to drop it off early? I wasn’t familiar with extortion etiquette.

“He said to drop it off by five. What are the chances that if we drop it off early, someone else will take it?” I was already into Daman for a cool two mil; I couldn’t afford to lose his gold too. Then again, I was giving it away...okay, I couldn’t afford to lose his gold and still not pay off Mike Tyson too.

“You need to drop it off as close to five as possible.” Bautista rested his forearm on the passenger’s-side open window frame. “Less chance of things going wrong.”

“I don’t know about you,” I turned to Monica, “but I can’t go back to work.”

“Me either.” She worked her smartphone out of her back pocket and pulled up her calendar. “I have three more meetings today, plus a new stack of claims I need to review.” She mulled it over. “I’m not going back. I’ll figure something out.”

“I don’t think either of you should go home.” One corner of Bautista’s mouth turned up. “Daman has twenty-two guest rooms. You both should move in with us.”

Monica’s whole demeanor turned all “yes please.”

“How am I supposed to clean up my house?” I couldn’t leave it all messy. That would drive me nuts, especially if I was away from home.

“Already in motion. A cleaning crew is there now.” Bautista threw up a hand like a traffic cop. “Daman’s orders. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“That’s not...I don’t...I couldn’t get the words to come out of my mouth fast enough. “That’s my house. I need to clean it up.” I couldn’t stand the thought of more strangers prowling through my things.

“Sorry, they’re already done.” He leaned against the car door.

I thought about asking him if he wanted to put that gun down in the backseat; it looked really heavy, but he didn’t seem to notice that he was even carrying it.

“Thanks a lot.” Gratitude wasn’t what I was feeling, but there was nothing I could do about it now. “We can’t go home and or back to work...what are we supposed to do?”

“Daman suggested that you go to Best Buy.” Bautista nodded in the direction of Best Buy, which was across Highway 71 in the Shops at the Hill Country Galleria. “Apparently, there were some electronics that didn’t make it through the cleanup process.”

I put my hand over my heart. “Which ones?”

I couldn’t afford to replace my toothbrush, much less my electronics. Wait, I had electronics? I couldn’t take any more charity from Daman. Hell, I’d lost his diamonds, was about to take several pounds of his gold, and now he wanted to buy me new electronics? True, he had bottomless pockets, but I couldn’t handle bottomless pity. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Did my microwave fall under the heading of “electronics”? I used the heck out of that microwave. I couldn’t afford a new one. Did Goodwill sell microwaves?

The TV was on its last legs, the computer was even worse than the TV, and Max’s Xbox had only barely worked before the break-in. I hoped he’d taken his iPad to school with him.

“If you don’t pick them out, he’s going to send me to do it. Daman will instruct me to buy the most expensive items they have. Believe it or not, you’ll actually be saving him money if you pick out the items yourself. As you know, when he sets his mind to something, there’s no changing it.” Bautista was right, and I knew it. Still, that didn’t make me feel any better about taking more charity. I liked to stand on my own two feet, but this time someone had swept a leg out from under me.

That life’s-not-fair thing had reached up and bitten me in the ass.

Monica put her hand over mine. “He’s right. And it’s not charity.”

But we both knew it was. She understood perfectly. Neither of us were women who asked for help often. We needed to prove to ourselves and the world that we didn’t need a man.

I needed a microwave, and Max didn’t deserve to have his Xbox taken away. He’d already lost so much. I didn’t want to be the cause of him losing so much more. And I was...this was on me. I hadn’t taken Mike Tyson seriously.

“I guess.” I would only be getting the essentials.

“The manager is waiting with a list of things you need.” Bautista grinned at me. “Please don’t take the cheap way out. Be a clever girl, or I’ll have to go over to Best Buy and pick out the rest of the things you didn’t.”

Daman knew me so well.

“Do you know why he’s so generous with you?” Bautista turned serious.

I’d assumed he treated everyone the way he was treating me. We’d kissed a couple of times, and it was wonderful, but we didn’t have any sort of claim on each other.

“No.” I couldn’t work up enough excitement to get, well...excited over a shopping trip.

“It’s because you don’t expect or want anything from him. All of the other women he’s been interested in only see dollar signs. You don’t care about that.” Bautista waggled his eyebrows. “That both excites and infuriates him. It’s fun to watch.”

I’d known that Bautista was more than just Daman’s butler, but I hadn’t realized how good of friends they were.

Bautista pulled out his phone and thumb typed something. My phone buzzed with a new text.

“I sent you the list of things you need.” He dropped a kiss on Monica’s cheek. “Remember, don’t cheap out. I don’t have time to shop today.”

He backed away and walked across the parking lot.

I pulled up the text. There was a picture of a list that was at least two pages long. The first thing on it was a toaster. I didn’t have a toaster. I rolled down my window. “I’m not getting a toaster. I draw the line right there. I’m only getting things I need.”

Bautista just shook his head.

After almost two hours of the most frustrating shopping imaginable, where the Best Buy manager kept trying to push really expensive items on me, like a TV bigger than the wall at my house where it would hang, Monica and I finally pulled out of the Best Buy parking lot and headed to pick up the boys.

We still hadn’t heard from Haley, which worried me sick. Something was very wrong. I’d called her house and spoken with Anise, who also hadn’t heard from Haley. I hadn’t wanted to alarm poor Anise, but I’d made her promise to call me the minute she spoke with Haley.

Maybe Haley really had turned off her phone and taken a spur-of-the-moment trip with Daniel to Las Vegas? Yes, and Donald Trump was born Oompa-Loompa orange.

I pulled into the Bee Creek Elementary parking lot and parked in my reserved, president of the PTO parking spot. Sometimes parents like to overlook the giant placard announcing that this is my spot, but it had only taken me having three cars towed for the general populace to understand that I’m serious about my reserved parking space.

We were a little early, so the gym wasn’t unlocked for parent pickup.

“What do you think about Bautista?” Monica had refrained from gushing over him while we shopped. Keeping your private life private in a town the size of Lakeside required gushing out of the public ear.

“He seems to like you.” I mashed my lips together to keep from laughing. “Based on that kiss, I’d say he likes you a lot.”

“I know...right?” Monica was brimming with excitement. I’d never seen her brimming with anything but attitude. “He’s so hot.”

“You have my permission to lust after him.” I made the sign of the cross, starting with her forehead. “Go forth and lust.”

“Since we’re going to spend the night at Daman’s, do you have a bikini I can borrow? I only have mom swimsuits.” Monica thought about it for a minute. “I haven’t been to CrossFit in three weeks. Maybe a tankini?”

Daman had an indoor pool that was larger and nicer than most resorts.

“I have a bikini somewhere, but since my house was tossed like a Caesar salad, I’m not sure where it is.” I held my fist up for her to bump. “I hear ya on the mom swimsuit—too much coverage, but oh so comfortable.”

She gave me a pound.

“And oh so flattering.” Monica put a chokehold on her excitement. “I’m not sure I’m okay with introducing him to Landon. Not that I date much, but I never introduce my dates to my family.”

Monica was like me. We weren’t the type of girls who fell madly in love every ten minutes. We didn’t go out with a guy and have our future kids’ names picked out before dessert.

“I know what you mean.” I’d felt the same way about Max meeting Daman. And like Monica, I didn’t have a choice. Necessity always changes things. “But we don’t always get to choose.”

“I guess maybe I can just introduce him as Daman’s butler.” Monica seemed satisfied with that.

“Is your mom coming to the big Daman sleepover?” I checked the clock. We had five minutes.

“No, she’s in Austin staying with my Aunt Helena.” Monica’s mother lived with her. “It will be a wonder if they both make it through the night without killing each other. My mother and her sister get along better on the phone than they do in person.”

Fifteen minutes later, the boys were buckled in the backseat.

“In addition to getting out of extended care, we have another surprise for you.” I’d learned that with children and dogs, it was all about the tone of voice. Excitement dripped from mine like melted ice cream from a cone. “We’re all having a sleepover at Daman’s house so we can play in his indoor pool.”

Landon’s eyes turned the size of silver-dollar pancakes. “I need to go home and get my swimsuit.”

Max’s turned skeptical. “Why?”

“There’s some sort of electrical problem at our house,” I continued in my overly excited voice. “Daman’s out of town, but he’s letting us use his house for a couple of days.”

Max wasn’t buying it. “Is there something wrong with Landon’s house?”

“No, we’re just coming along for the ride,” Monica gushed. “An indoor pool. I can’t wait. I hear it has a waterslide.”