“What an unpleasant surprise.” Mollie walked into suite 219 and saw Aaron DeDario with T.C., the photographer’s assistant who’d hit on her in New York, lounging on the couch.
“Roberta, what are you doing up here?” DeDario asked. “There’s nothing wrong with the computer system the judges are using, is there?”
“Hey, Bitsy. How’s it going?” T.C. said. “Long time no see. Did you miss me?”
Mollie ignored the question. She was glad they had met up with Johnny on their way upstairs. She didn’t want them to be alone with T.C. or DeDario, two of the slipperiest slimes on the planet.
Meredith approached DeDario, who looked confused. “Why did you set me up?” she demanded.
“I don’t even know who you are, babe,” DeDario replied. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
“I’m Meredith Hughes. I met you once when I was in your office talking to Amanda about the photo shoot in New York,” Meredith said. “Hilary’s my sister.”
“Funny thing, when she got back from New York, the cops busted her at the airport and found cocaine in her suitcase,” Hilary said. “But then, I’m sure you can sympathize because you know how that feels, getting busted for drugs. Don’t you, Dario?”
DeDario loosened his tie. “My name’s DeDario. Roberta, tell them!”
“Look, we’re not trying to hassle you,” Roberta said. “We just thought you should know that Detective Benjamin’s been arrested. He’s agreed to tell everything he knows about this case. We know you planted the drugs on Meredith. We just want to know who put you up to it.”
DeDario frowned at Roberta. “You were spying on me.”
“Yeah, well, I sure wasn’t working there for the company,” Roberta said.
“Come on, we’re waiting,” Mollie said. “Of course, you don’t have to tell us. You can tell the police. I think there are a few dozen cops downstairs.” She picked up the hotel phone on the desk. “I’m sure they’d love to hear your side of the story.”
Suddenly the bathroom door opened. Moeller stepped out, holding a gun. “That is enough out of you,” he said, aiming it at Mollie. She dropped the phone, and it crashed on the table.
DeDario laughed nervously. “There’s no need for a gun. They’re just kids!”
“Yeah, man, take it easy.” T.C. had edged to one side of the couch and one of his eyelids was twitching.
“Shut up, both of you,” Moeller ordered. He pointed the gun at three large steamer trunks over by the bed. “Get them into those trunks, now.”
“All of them?” T.C. asked.
“Except the Hughes girls,” Moeller said. “They are coming with us.”
“Where are we going?” DeDario asked.
“Shut up, you idiot, and get to work,” Moeller instructed him. “There’s some packing tape on the desk. Put it to good use.”
DeDario’s hands were shaking as he wrapped the thick tape around Mollie’s hands. Next he tied Johnny’s hands, then he ripped off a piece of tape and stuck it over each of their mouths. Mollie winced as the rough, sticky tape covered her lips. For a second she thought she was going to suffocate. Then she remembered to stay calm and breathe through her nose. T.C. held Roberta’s hands while DeDario bound them together, too.
“One in each trunk?” T.C. asked.
Moeller shook his head furiously. “You, both of you, in here.” He poked Johnny in the back with the gun. DeDario opened the trunk. Johnny got into it and lay down. Moeller pushed Mollie in next, so she was lying on top of Johnny with her hands behind her back. Then the lid shut on top of her. She thought she heard someone putting a lock on the outside.
What now? Mollie thought. She wasn’t claustrophobic, but she didn’t like being in a cramped, dark, musty-smelling trunk, either—even if she was with Johnny Chelios. He started to rub his mouth against hers.
She tried to send him a mental message: What are you doing? You call this kissing?
Then she realized he was trying to rub the tape off. By rubbing the edge of his tape against hers, it was gradually starting to loosen. A few minutes later, the tape on his mouth came off. He used his teeth to remove the rest of her tape.
“Not,” Mollie said.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about. This is all your fault,” Johnny said. “I told you we should have called the cops before we came up here.”
“No you didn’t,” Mollie said. “You didn’t even mention the police.”
“Well, I meant to. I said it in my head.”
“Just get us out of here.”
“You get us out of here—you got us in here.”
“I did not!”
“Yes you did.”
“Did not!”
Johnny kissed her. Their lips were still sticky from the tape, and for a second Mollie thought they might be permanently attached. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon.
Finally, they came up for air. “I’m glad they put me in your trunk,” Johnny said.
“We have to get out of here. Moeller’s getting away, and who knows what happened to Meredith and Hilary.”
“Where’s Houdini when you need him?”
“Stop joking around. This is serious. We might run out of oxygen soon,” Mollie said.
“In that case, you’d better stop talking so much.”
Suddenly Mollie heard a cutting noise on the outside of the trunk. The walls were so thick, it was hard to tell, but it sounded as if someone were working on the lock.
A few seconds later the lid swung open, and Mollie craned her neck to look up.
“Nothing like being caught in a compromising position,” Sherman said. He and Jaime were wearing identical black-and-white busboy uniforms.
“Where’s Roberta?” Jaime asked. He was holding a hacksaw.
“In one of the other trunks,” Johnny said. He and Mollie struggled to stand up.
“What do you mean? There’s only one other trunk here,” Sherman said.
“Uh-oh,” Mollie said. “How did you guys know we were up here?”
“Hilary didn’t show up when it was time for her to go down the runway, so we figured something was wrong. We came up here to check for DeDario, and we heard this murmuring coming out of your trunk,” Sherman said. “It sounded like fun, actually.”
“We were arguing?”
“Yeah, and if my hands hadn’t been tied up, I’d have had to belt her one,” Johnny said with a grin.
“Sounds like somebody has steamer-trunk fever,” Sherman joked.
Jaime was still working feverishly to saw through the chain lock on the other trunk. “Where did you get that saw?” Johnny asked.
“We stole it from the maintenance closet,” Sherman said.
Jaime finished cutting the thick chain and threw open the trunk lid. Roberta’s head popped up. Jaime grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, then carefully removed the packing tape from her mouth.
“Jaime, I thought I was going to die in there!”
Jaime wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a hug, kissing her on the neck. “It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“Whoa!” Sherman said. “Talk about your rescue tactics.”
Mollie looked at Johnny and raised one eyebrow.
“Were you guys ever going to tell us, or is this one of those Romeo and Juliet deals?” Johnny said.
Jaime took the tape off Roberta’s hands. “We were going to tell you.”
“Yeah, we just haven’t had a chance,” Roberta said.
“I want to hear all about it later,” Mollie said. “Right now we need to find Meredith and Hilary. I think they’re in the third trunk, which is gone.”
“Let’s go,” Jaime said. He grabbed Roberta’s hand as they left the room.
The lobby was deserted by the time they got downstairs. Everyone was in the ballroom watching the fashion show and eating dinner. Mollie quickly glanced inside to look for DeDario or Moeller, but they seemed to be long gone. She didn’t see Eleanor Whistler anywhere, either, which seemed strange.
“I bet they took off in DeDario’s boat,” Mollie said. “I’m going to check with the front desk.”
She went up to the desk marked INTERNATIONAL FACE SHOW INFORMATION. “Hello, I’m trying to find some people I came with. Eleanor Whistler, Aaron DeDario—”
“That whole crowd is going out on a cruise tonight. They may have left early since the opening ceremonies can get a bit tedious.” The woman pretended to yawn. “The real judging doesn’t start until tomorrow. This is just a flashy preview.”
“Really? You know, they mentioned that cruise to me, but I forgot to write down the information about it,” Mollie said.
“A local bigwig invited everyone out on his yacht,” the woman said. “I think his name is Hughes. Anyway, all the yachts belonging to people at the show are moored at Pier Six, which is practically right out the door. If you head down that way, you’ll catch up with them.”
Mollie was already out the door.
“Let’s face it, if that boat was still here, we could see it from the hotel,” Roberta said. “That’s how big it is.”
“I guess it slipped away,” Sherman said. “Get it?”
“Yeah, I got it, and I’m ignoring it,” Johnny said.
Mollie spotted a man working on one of the smaller boats, polishing the brass plates on the cabin exterior. “Have you seen a large yacht—about seventy feet long—leave in the last fifteen minutes or so?”
“Lots of boats have been in and out of the harbor,” he replied.
“This one’s called the Golden State,” Mollie said. “It’s white, but the upper deck is a yellow color—”
“And there’s a California flag flying from the top of it,” Roberta added.
“Would a bunch of people who were dressed to the nines be on it?” the man asked them. “And a dwarf dressed in black?”
“Yes!”
“Then it took off about twenty minutes ago,” he said. “They looked like they were in a hurry, too.”
“Did you guys hear that?” Mollie asked.
Johnny nodded. “We missed them. Now what?”
“Does everybody know how to swim?” Sherman asked.
“Not really,” Mollie said.
“Really?” Johnny asked.
“I can dog paddle for about two minutes, but that’s it.”
Mollie walked along the pier, trying to get a look out at the bay, only all the yachts blocked her view. She was hoping that Hughes hadn’t gotten too far away. Suddenly she came to a break in the wall of yachts. She glanced at the small boat that was letting her see the bay. It wasn’t that small, just a speedboat instead of a yacht. Then she noticed the name on the back of it.
“You guys! Come here!”
When they ran up, she pointed to the boat. “Wow, DeDario’s Daredevil,” Roberta said.
“I wonder why he didn’t take it,” Jaime said.
“Maybe Moeller wouldn’t let him. I think they have some unfinished business,” Mollie said.
“Yeah, and so do we.” Johnny hopped into the boat and started fiddling with the instrument panel. He pried off the protective cover.
“Are you going to hot-wire it?” Sherman asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Johnny muttered as he pulled a panel from underneath the steering wheel.
“The man’s talents are limitless,” Sherman said, shaking his head.
Roberta, Jaime, and Sherman climbed into the back of the boat.
“Mollie? What are you waiting for?” asked Roberta.
Mollie scuffed her shoe against the wooden dock. “I’m really not a good swimmer.”
“We’re not going to capsize,” Johnny said. “I’ll be careful—well, as careful as I can be in a top-speed chase.”
“Oh, great. That makes me feel better.”
“Look at it this way—it’s better than crawling into a pitch black tunnel filled with rats and spiders,” Sherman said.
Jaime rummaged in a bench locker on the side of the boat and pulled out a puffy orange life preserver. “Here. It’s your size and everything.” He tossed it to Mollie, who slipped it over her head and jumped into the Daredevil just as the motor started with a roar.
Johnny maneuvered the boat out of the harbor slowly, then picked up more speed as they hit the open water. Mollie gripped Johnny’s arm with both hands as they bounced through the choppy bay. She hoped they wouldn’t be too late.