Double Black Diamond (Mercy Watts Mysteries) (6 page)

Nancy and I chatted about various resorts, and I detected none of the dislike I’d come to expect from mothers. She treated me like someone pleasant that she just happened to meet at the airport and I was digging it. If only Wallace would stop barking and eyeing my feet.
 

We checked in, went through the interminable security line, and settled in at our gate. That’s when I saw that Denver was not on the board. Above the kiosk, it clearly said San Francisco and a takeoff time in two hours. What the heck? I leaned over to Pete, who was immersed in a scintillating article on post-operative pus, and said, “Are you sure we’re at the right gate?”

He shifted in his seat and avoided my eyes. “I’m sure.”
 

“When’s our flight?”
 

“After the San Francisco flight.”
 

“How long after?”
 

He mumbled something and looked at his parents who were reading their Kindles and not paying us any attention.
 

I prodded his shoulder. “When?”
   

“Two hours. Don’t be mad,” he said, his eyes pleading.
 

“Mad? Are you kidding me?” I whispered. “We’re at the airport four hours early and you don’t want me to be mad. I worked a twelve-hour shift last night. I could’ve slept.”
 

“They like to be early. Air travel is unpredictable,” he said, weakly.
 

“You know what isn’t unpredictable?”
 

“You killing me later.”
 

“Yes, and when you least expect it.”
 

I smushed my pee-covered coat against his shoulder and attempted to sleep with continual flight announcements and a pink-coated pug barking at me every three minutes. If it wasn’t for Keegan and his oil, I would’ve been out of there.
   

Chapter Five

Pug breath is bad to start with. Put a snoring pug on your lap in the back of a Tahoe for two hours and you’ll have a stink level close to asphyxiation. How I ended up with Wallace on my lap was a complete mystery. Pete was driving with Nancy riding shotgun. Wallace was on her lap. Calvin got in back with me. I thought this was going to make for awkward conversation with him trying not to stare at my chest as has happened so many times before, but Calvin went to sleep instantly. I’d never seen anything like it. We got in and Pete drove out of Denver International Airport.
 

Calvin turned to me and said, “Mercy, it’s so…”
 

Snore.

I thought he’d wake up from the incredible rattling coming out of his face, but he didn’t. He snored and I stared. Pete and Nancy were in a deep conversation about one of Pete’s high school friends’s heroin addiction and didn’t seem to register the colossal noise coming out of the back seat. Since I was trying to make a good impression and not cause trouble, which was something I did without trying on a regular basis, I wedged myself against the door with my pee coat and closed my eyes. Calvin’s snoring had a pleasant rhythm to it, once you accepted that it wasn’t an earthquake or a harbinger of an alien invasion. I managed to ignore the dog pee smell and went to sleep. Big mistake.
 

I woke up a lean fifteen minutes later with Wallace on my lap. On the upside, she wasn’t barking in my face. On the downside, she lay in a twisted donut on her back with her snout pointed at me. And she was snoring nearly as loudly as Calvin. Since I couldn’t exactly say, “How the hell did this stink dog get on my lap?” I decided to toughen up, buttercup, as my dad would say, and ease Wallace off my lap with her snout pointing at Calvin. But the second I tried it, she started growling. In her sleep. Growling.
 

To make it downright scary, Wallace’s little pink tummy, which should’ve been adorable, was distended, I assumed with urine. If that dog peed on me again, it was going to be ugly. Dogs can pee on me once, but twice is out of the question. My actions couldn’t be predicted or controlled. I might toss her out the window or point her at the back of Nancy’s head. I really couldn’t say. My only hope was to stay absolutely still and pray nothing happened. Of course I’d prayed to God to stop this trip from happening. I’m talking on knees, hands clasped praying. I was willing to take anything, ice storm, power outage, explosive diarrhea, but it didn’t work. There I was with a urine-filled stink dog trapped with Pete’s parents for a week. It was as if God whispered back, “So now you’re praying. Much good may it do you.”
 

That was the longest two hours of my life and I took accounting in high school. Only one thing helped. Keegan’s picture. I got it out of my purse and propped it up against Wallace’s threatening tummy and looked at that little boy. What did Cecile say? That he didn’t look like that now. My mind went to bad places, thinking of what it was like for him, not in control of his body, unable to speak or walk. I forced the images away and thought of the oil and how I was going to get it for him. More importantly of how I was going to get it back. Flying was out of the question. I’d have to rent a car and drive. How I was going to pull that off wasn’t clear. It’d have to be a very good lie and none were coming to mind. I blame the dog breath. Usually lying comes pretty easy.
 

I stared at Keegan’s picture and planned my strategy for getting the oil and concealing it from Pete and his parents. I had no illusions that they’d be on board with my smuggling operation. Nancy was a member of The Daughters of the American Revolution. It didn’t get much more conservative than that. Pete would probably support what I was doing, but what if he didn’t? That would be bad for us and I wasn’t going to take the chance. Sometimes it’s better to apologize than ask permission. Not that I would ask permission from anyone, ever.
 

I drifted off with my eyes on Keegan’s face and woke when I heard Nancy say, “Now that is just the cutest thing ever.”
 

She’d turned in her seat and smiled at me and the stink dog. Pete was biting his lip, trying not to laugh. He would pay for this. Calvin was still snoring and rattling the windows. My neck was cricked to the right and no longer wanted to support my head. I had to get out of that truck.
 

“Are we there yet?” I asked, pushing my head upright manually.
 

“Five minutes,” said Pete.
 

I tucked Keegan’s picture back in my purse and leaned forward. Snow fell in big flakes and made the mountains on either side of the highway pristine and perfect. We emerged from between two low hills and Copper Mountain came into sight. The village was nestled deep in the Rockies with no attached town to give it noise and traffic. Copper was all about skiing and was a local favorite compared to Breckenridge, which was favored by tourists. I’d been to both and I preferred Copper with its Swiss chalet look and quiet paths.
 

The snow increased as we turned right onto the main road and a feeling of peace came over me with those heavy flakes floating in the quiet. Copper had always been a place of happiness when I was younger. When the biggest thing I had to worry about was not crashing in front of cute snowboarders and The Girls were young enough that no one was asking about their will or the Bled Collection’s future. Copper took me back to a time when Mom and Dad hadn’t gotten our house by questionable means and I wasn’t having them investigated. A time when stress wasn’t part of my vocabulary. My shoulders relaxed and everything became perfect, hopeful, and easy.
 

Then Wallace woke up. The last three minutes were filled with barking, snorting, and my favorite, belching.
 

“What building are we in?” I asked, shoving Wallace off my lap.
 

“Copper One,” said Nancy.

Wallace leapt at me and bit my sleeve. She backed up, growling and shaking her head.
 

“Ah!” I squawked.
 

“Mercy,” said Pete. “I’m trying to drive. These roads are ice.”
 

Wallace lunged and knocked me into the window. “Oh crap!”

“Mercy!”
 

“She’s biting me,” I said.
 

“My little girl just gets upset when she wakes up suddenly,” said Nancy, totally ignoring my squawking and the growling that sounded like it came from a pit bull, not a five-pound pug.
 

Pete took a sharp left into Copper One’s underground parking and Calvin finally woke up. He took one look at Wallace leaping all over me, swatted her on the nose, and handed her to Nancy. “Your maniac, dear.”
 

“She’s just excitable,” said Nancy.
 

Calvin raised his eyebrows at me and shook his head. “Only a mother’s love. She also thought it was cute when Pete painted ‘I wuv you’ on the wall of my den.”
 

“I was five, Dad.”
 

“You were a menace. You painted your sister, the neighbor’s dog, our cat, your hamster, and the fridge.”
 

Nancy shook her finger at Calvin. “That was all your fault. It was your paint. You should’ve secured it better.”
 

“I had it on a six-foot-high shelf locked in the storage room. He’s a criminal mastermind.”
 

Pete parked and glanced back at me. “I’m not a criminal anything.”
 

“You used to steal your mother’s bras,” said Calvin.

I sputtered and then burst out laughing. Calvin joined me. Wallace was barking like crazy and Nancy’s lips were pursed so tight they were turning white.
 

“He was making a catapult,” she squeezed out.
 

“Explain the underwear then,” said Calvin, turning red and wiping his eyes.
 

 
Pete put his head on the steering wheel and banged it three times. “Why’d you have to bring up the underwear?”

Then the unexpected happened. I started to like my boyfriend’s parents. They weren’t the perfect couple with the perfect children as Pete had led me to believe. They were nutty and it was fantastic.
 

We got out and got a cart. We loaded skies, boot bags, and luggage on it, while Wallace continued to yap at me.
 

“You know me,” I said to the little nutjob. “I’m not new.”
 

Bark. Bark.

“I’m not new.”

Bark. Bark.

“She’ll get used to you,” said Nancy. “You just have to spend time together.”

Pass.

Calvin leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Escape while you still can.”
 

“Dad,” said Pete.

“Quiet, panty thief.”
 

Pete groaned as his dad pushed the cart toward the elevator.
 

“So,” I said, “what’s up with the panties? Should I be worried?”
 

“If I tell you, will you promise never to bring it up again?” he asked.
 

“No.”
 

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Yep, but you may as well tell me, because your dad definitely will,” I said with a smirk.

“We had a neighbor named Joey Tibiae. He was scared of women’s underwear and I kind of hated him.”

“And you did what? Chased him with your mother’s panties?”
 

“He was obnoxious. I only did it to shut him up.”
 

“You are a criminal mastermind.” I took his hand. “I like you better now.”
 

“Really?”
 

“Perfection is just two dimensional. Now you’re a panty-stealing graffiti artist. What else did you do?”

Pete steered me away from his parents’ elevator into another, but he couldn’t stop the stories. Calvin would tell me everything. That’s what you get for traveling with parents.

We got settled into the condo, a very nice one with a fireplace, two bedrooms, and a full kitchen. We hauled our suitcases into the bedroom and I closed the door before Wallace got in.
 

“So?” I put my hands on my hips.

“So what?” asked Pete, avoiding my eyes.
 

“So what did you tell your parents about me? How much am I supposed to lie?”
 

“You don’t have to lie exactly.”

“What exactly then?” I asked.
 

“Mercy, my parents aren’t like your parents,” said Pete.

I rolled my eyes. “Who is?”
 

“It’s a lot to take in. I wanted them to get used to you first before I hit them with everything else.”

“Used to me? Used to me? Am I really that bizarre that you have to temper me like eggs?” I asked.
 

“No. I don’t mean that exactly. I just want them to get to know you without the other stuff getting in the way.”
 

I tossed my bag on the bed and snapped it open. “Your parents aren’t hermits. They have to know. I’ve been all over the news. My dad gets interviewed on
Dateline
, for crying out loud.”

Pete inclined his head toward our door. “Do you hear that?”