Charming Grace (46 page)

I kissed each man on the cheek. Tex sighed. “Heard any more from Boone?”

“No. I only get information through Jack Roarke. Boone made him swear to keep me in the dark about their location. They’re getting the money together and waiting for me to express-mail a signed photo of Stone.”

Mojo frowned. “We could have gotten you—”

“I’m here to get a lot more than Stone’s autograph.”

Tex and Mojo stared at me. “We were afraid of that,” they said in unison.

“Stay in the shadows and pretend you didn’t know what I intended to do,” I said to Mika. I kicked off my shoes then started climbing a series of brightly lit ledges and crosspieces, all painted a shiny steel color, meant to mimic the outer section of a giant, multi-tiered space station. The fake space station was surrounded by a bee hive of scaffolds and walkways dotted with cameramen, boom operators, and assistant directors, none of whom had spotted me yet. Nor had two dozen actors—dressed either as lizard-like aliens or human astronauts. They were too busy clinging to the ledges, perches, and crosspieces of the S.S. Senterra’s fake hull.

Miko called in a loud whisper, “Be careful. There are intergalactic monsters in latex suits up there. You could get a rubber burn.”

I smiled grimly and kept climbing. Generations of Appalachian Southern womanhood whispered,
You have to take care of business, Bless Your Crazy Heart.

And so I would.

Stone was the bulky, silvery astronaut a few yards above me. Apparently he was in the midst of filming a scene in which his main acting job was to appear weightless. He had one arm wrapped around a strut of the fake spaceship the way a gorilla hangs onto the play bars at the zoo.

“Stone!” I yelled. “You can’t get away from me by hiding in outer space!”

When he looked down and saw me coming he began flailing his free arm. Lobsters trapped in the tank at seafood restaurants look less upset when they see the chef. The world’s highest-paid action star began yelling at me from behind the Plexiglas shield of his silvery fake helmet. Even muted, he sounded furious.

“
You.
” Stone’s spit speckled the inside of his visor. “Haven’t you done enough to me
already
?”

Alarms sounded. The director yelled
Cut
, and cameramen perched on cranes gaped through their lenses in disbelief.

By then I was twenty feet above the studio floor with my bare toes gripping the struts. In another few seconds I reached Stone, who fervently tried to wave me away. I anchored myself in the folds of some squishy silver netting that was supposed to mimic a lizard-alien spider web or something, then grabbed Stone by his spacesuit.

“Boone’s in trouble! I know you know about it! He needs your help! You can’t just ignore him!”

“Get off my ship!” Stone shoved his visor up. “This is some kind of scheme to get me to hire Noleene back,
isn’t
it! Give me
one
good reason to believe a single word you say! He’s probably sitting at the Downs waiting for me to call him up and beg him to forgive me for firing him! Nobody cares that
my
feelings are hurt! Nobody cares that my serious debut as a director has been brought to a big, screeching halt!”

“Stone, listen, this is no scheme—”

“If I want to finish making
Hero
I have to recast the main parts and film at least half the movie over again from scratch! From
scratch
! You and Boone planned it that way! You brainwashed my actors! So don’t tell
me
about trouble!”

“I’m not lying to you, I swear! Boone really
is
in trouble! He and Jack Roarke are somewhere in Louisiana planning to pay two million dollars in ransom for Armand! They can’t go to the police because the guys who have Armand will
kill
him if the police get involved! If you could just help me find Boone and Roarke, if you could just persuade them to let you schmooze with these thugs, use your star power to dazzle the bastards—”

“Hah! You can’t make up a better story than
that
but you accuse
me
of being a bad writer?”

“Stone, for godssake, what I’m telling you isn’t a scheme to get Boone’s job back! Believe me! You’ve got to help him! What about honor? And loyalty? And gratitude for all Boone’s done for you?”

“All he’s done?
He helped you sack my movie!
I treated him like family but he paid me back by
sabotaging
my movie! And now you want me to believe he really needs my help? Do I
look
stupid?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point!”

Two beefy security guards grabbed me from behind. Simultaneously, two stagehands reached Stone on the platform of a cherry picker. Stone backed into the platform’s metal basket like a crab retreating into its sand hole, glaring at me and waving his arms in frustration. He had all the frantic dignity of a giant silver dung beetle. “Go home!” he yelled at me. “I’m not trusting you and Noleene again!”

“Stone! Please!”

The brawny security guards pulled me onto a walkway then hustled me down a flight of metal stairs. “Who got you a security pass?” one demanded.

“Captain Kirk and Gandalf The Grey,” I shot back.

I looked down and gasped. Mika had climbed the first few feet of the faux spaceship’s ribbed side. She clung to a ledge and peered hard at a lanky, brownish-purple, lizard-alien who squatted there. The lizard looked back with soulful eyes.

“Leo!” she screamed.

The lizard sagged. “You have me confused with some other alien. I’m officially listed in the script as ‘the third alien from the left.’ I don’t have a name.”

She grabbed his scaly arm.
“Leo.”

“No, I’m just another everyday mutant extraterrestrial—”

“Leo.” Her tone became gentle and sympathetic.

He sagged even more. “I didn’t want you to know. I’ve turned into the Creature From The Interstellar Lagoon.”

“Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry—”

“No, you were right. I’m not a brave man. I’m not even a brave
lizard
.”

“Come down,” a female security guard called. She grabbed Mika by one jeanned leg. Mika shrieked.

Leo got to his feet. Or his claws. Whatever they were. “Let her go. She’s with me.”

“Sorry, Leo. Your dad wants her and her aunt out of here.”

“I don’t care what he—”

“Leo, it’s all right.” Mika straightened. Her chin came up. Green-eyed girls with mocha skin learn early to pretend that nothing anyone says can hurt them. Her curls trembled, but the rest of her looked calm. “You have to do what your dad tells you to do. I understand.”

She climbed down and followed the security guard.

Leo moaned.

A few minutes later Mika and I found ourselves standing unceremoniously alone on a sunbaked curb. Behind us, the manicured palm trees and luxurious Art Deco facade of one of the world’s biggest movie studios formed a wall to keep us out. I paced. “I have to think of a new plan.”

“Whatever it is, count me in,” a voice said.

We turned. There stood Leo, holding his lizard head in his hands.

He smiled gamely at Mika. Latex and makeup ringed his eyes and mouth. His hair stood up in sweaty spikes. His goatee looked wilted. “Kiss me, elfin princess, and I’ll change from a lizard into the man you want me to be.”

She wrapped her arms around him. He wrapped his lizard limbs around her. They kissed and hugged.

They had faith. Ideals. All those youthful fantasies Harp and I had once shared. That I wanted to share again, with Boone.

Don’t give up, Boone. On yourself. On me.

Life blooms like a ladyslipper, when lost souls least expect a flower.

I suddenly had a plan. Not a good one, but a plan. “Leo. Mika. I want you two to hop on the next plane back to Georgia. Distract everyone. Tell them I disappeared at the airport and you didn’t even see which way I went. I’m heading for Louisiana. Tell G. Helen I’ve gone to do for Boone what I couldn’t do for Harp.”

“What is that?” Mika asked.

“Save his life, or die trying.”

“I’ve only got one thing to ask you one favor before you walk into this mess.” Roarke looked grimmer than usual as he swung the rental car down a long gravel road through pine woods.

I kept my focus on the deserted road, ready for the first glimpse of the abandoned warehouse where Armand had better be alive. “What’s that?”

Roarke stopped the car and turned to look at me. When I frowned at him he said quietly, “Let me take the money and go in there, instead of you.”

The old con always made me want to cry.
Mon dieu
, he had it down to an
art
. I coughed and swallowed. “It’s not enough that you gave me two million bucks? Now you want to risk your hide for me and my bro? Man, when God was handing out smarts, you went and stood in the other line. The one that said ‘Suckers.’”

Roarke smiled. “Yeah, well. Takes one to know one.”

“Forget it, Jack. He’s my brother, and I’ve gotta do this myself.” I paused, working on my throat, again. “But here’s what you
can
do for me. If you, uh, have to pass along any messages for me, as in, for some reason I’m not around to do it, myself. . .
tell Grace I love her
. Tell her I should have
said
so. Tell her . . . Harp was the luckiest man to ever love her, and I was happy to be the second-luckiest.”

Roarke hemmed, hawed, and scrubbed one hand over his face. I almost smiled.
Got him back.
He scowled like an old tiger then jabbed a finger at me. “You
get
your ass in that warehouse, and you sweet-talk those fuckers, and you
do
this deal right. I’ll be waiting for you, them, and Armand tomorrow morning in New Orleans, just like we planned it. If you don’t show up, I
will
hunt those fuckers down and . . . and
get my money back
. You understand?”

I nodded. Then, “You should’ve had a son. You’d have scared the shit out of him, but he would’ve loved you.”

Roarke looked at me like he was going to punch me in the face or hug me. Tears came into his eyes. I could almost see the weight of some old devil settle on him, squeezing the past out. I should have sensed it coming my way, but I
never
would’ve guessed the whole thing.

“I have
three
sons,” Roarke said quietly. “You, Armand, and Stone.”

To say I stood out in the congregation of Reverend McCarthy’s church is like saying a marshmallow is easy to spot in a box of chocolates. When I walked into his Wednesday evening service so many heads turned at once that the sanctuary threatened to rotate on its foundations. I didn’t like making a spectacle of myself in church, but I wanted Rev. McCarthy to know I was capable of it. Roarke had mentioned him as Boone’s contact in the Armand situation. That meant Rev. McCarthy knew where Boone had gone to meet the kidnappers. I intended to get that information.

At least three-hundred affluent black New Orleaneans tracked my white-redhead-in-jeans progress down a side aisle as the choir finished its opening hymn. Maybe it was the ten-dollar Goodwill blazer I’d bought on my taxi ride from the airport. I looked tacky in plaid.