There are times in a girl’s life when she would like to faint, and that was one of them.
Even Mr. Curtis looked like he wanted to faint. I had the distinct impression that Jack had not been on the Payoff passenger manifest and had somehow snuck onto the boat.
Mr. Curtis turned to glare at the Fabinator, who said, “I told you. I looked all around the pink vehicle and did not find him.” The Fab one frowned at Jack. “How do you come here?”
“Actually,” Jack told him, “I followed you. You seemed to be having such a nice time with those two lovely ladies”—he nodded toward Alyson and Veronique—“that I didn’t want to interrupt. So I just tagged along behind.”
Mr. Curtis attempted a BriteSmile. “I’m really enjoying this little play, but I’m afraid it’s time for the curtain call.”
“I agree. Do you want the negatives?” Jack asked.
“Why? Are you going to tell me you’ve got them with you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Jack said. And reached for his belt buckle.
“What are you doing?” Mr. Curtis said. “I’m not bluffing when I say I will shoot the boy.”
“The negatives are on my belt. I taped them there.”
Drat my puritanical friends. I knew I should have stripped him entirely. If they’d let me take his clothes off earlier, none of this would be happening. I would have found the negatives and solved the whole thing and gotten to have lunch and—
On the plus side, maybe now I would get to see him without his pants on.
Hello, inappropriate thought at life-threatening moment.
“Go back over with your friends,” Mr. Curtis said to me, destroying yet another dream.
As I walked by him, Jack’s eyes met mine and he said, “I hope you’re feeling macho.”
And my insides started to tingle.
I went and stood next to Polly and Roxy. Even from the sidelines, I watched Jack undress more attentively than I’d ever watched anything. Which is why I saw the split-second gesture when he reached into his pocket, brought his hand out clenched, and threw a fistful of what looked like pebbles at Mr. Curtis.
At first nothing happened and I thought I’d misunderstood, but then all of a sudden Mad Joe came wriggling out of the blankets with the kind of determination he’d shown the day I’d met him, and leaped on Mr. Curtis, making strange crunching noises. Apparently, Pounce had the superpower to revive cats from the dead. I didn’t get to think anymore about that, because as Mad Joe jumped on him, Mr. Curtis’s gun hand flew away from Fred, and I decided it was time for action.
With precision honed by hours of practice, Roxy and I got our wrists together, Polly jumped onto them, and we swung her onto Mr. Curtis’s back. She clung there with her hands over his eyes, and he started to turn around to try to smash her against a wall to get her off. But he floundered and tripped over his feet, going down face forward with Polly along for the ride.
“What just happened?” I said.
Roxy pointed at his feet. “Veronique tied his shoelaces in a box knot while you were talking about letters and proof. Nice diversion, by the way. Very Hogan’s Heroes.”
“Thanks—” I started to say, but stopped when I saw the Fabinator heading our way and looking big and mean. Veronique was assisting Polly, who was sitting on Mr. Curtis’s back saying, “And this one is for the Pink Pearl too”; Alyson was clinging to Tom and sobbing; and Jack was helping Fiona and Red move Fred inside; which left Roxy and me alone to contend with all million pounds of the Fab one.
Roxy and me and her heartbreak, I should have said.
“Bend down and leave this to me,” Roxy ordered. A second later, something pink whizzed past me and then the Fabinator’s head jerked back. When I looked up I realized that Roxy had made a weapon out of dental floss and gum, which adhered itself to his hair and then, by tugging on the piece of floss so his hair pulled, allowed her to distract him enough that I could wrap another piece of floss between an air duct and a cement block and watch him lose his footing just enough to make him ours.
Leaving Roxy to tie the Fabinator’s hands up with his very own navy silk jockstrap, I turned my head to check on Polly and Mr. Curtis and was blinded by a bright light coming from next to the boat. I blinked and saw a figure in silhouette leaping over the edge and onto the deck like a comic book superhero.
Or superheroine. Because she was wearing a black leather corset and black leather pants and black boots and a black leather choker and wrist cuff.
It was my Sage Master! The Queen bartender from the Voodoo Lounge. And, I realized, the clumsy cocktail waitress at the roller rink who had raised my suspicions by distractingly spilling on the Fabinator. Only she was wearing an additional accessory tonight: the gold medallion of a police officer.
She was a cop!
Little Life Lesson 56: Just when you think there are no more surprises, there are more surprises.
Fiona came running out to her, threw her arms around the woman, and said, “Alex! Thank God you’re here!”
Alex was a girl. When my Sage Master had disappeared from her place behind the bar at the Voodoo Lounge, I thought she was on a cigarette break—but she’d gone to call Fiona. This was Alex darling. This was the person Fiona couldn’t be seen with. Alex, Fiona’s best friend since third grade, now a Los Angeles police detective on leave, working unofficially in Las Vegas to offer her friend support in a difficult time.
“I should have listened to you,” Fiona told her. “I never should have trusted Mr. Curtis. Thank you for coming to save us.”
Alex looked around at the two men being pinned to the deck, chuckled when she saw the pyramid of cement blocks Roxy had erected on the Fabinator’s chest, and said, “Actually, Fi, you should thank Jasmine for our being here. Her father found a note she left that described some threats against her and included impressively lifted fingerprints of the person who’d done the threatening.70 He sent her note to the police, who ran the prints and matched them to Mr. Curtis’s. But we wouldn’t have found you so fast if a man named Captain Doom hadn’t gotten worried when he couldn’t raise the Pink Pearl and sent out an all-points bulletin for it. Still, I’m not sure you needed to be saved. It looks to me like this situation was pretty well under control. All that’s left for me is the cleanup and the paperwork.”
She pulled out a pair of handcuffs,71 and took over where we left off, getting the Fabinator and L. A. Curtis properly cuffed and stowed.
Which freed up Jack to walk over to Red Early, give him a long hug, and say, “It’s over, Dad. It’s finally over.”