Games of the Heart (Crimson Romance) (32 page)

“You know you really annoy me. Do you ever run out of perky chitchat? Do you ever act like an average person?”

I assumed these were rhetorical questions, as she didn’t look my way. She grumbled as we headed into the city.

I tried, I really did. Except my bladder kept interrupting. After four glasses of tea, what else had I expected? Definitely not being driven to God-knew-where. Would I be allowed to use the toilet when we got to wherever we were headed? “Much farther?” I asked.

“In all my years with the Agency, I never saw someone so anxious to get anywhere, especially when the place is isolated. You got a problem?” she growled.

“I do.” I squirmed. “I really, really have to go to the bathroom. Like now.” I fiddled with the stuff in my purse, hoping to take my mind off my bladder. There were car keys, keys to the church, more gum, tissues, lipstick, that promissory note with Bob’s signature on it, and a CD of the garage band that Gramps wanted me to listen to.

“Forget it. Think of something else,” she ordered, which as everyone knows never helps.

“Can we listen to music?” I asked. She nodded. I opened the plain, bluish-colored jewel case just as Eddie nearly rear ended a limo, and pushed the CD into the player as if on automatic pilot. Nothing happened. “Does the player work?”

“How would I know? I told you, the car’s Monica’s.” She grabbed the CD from my fingers. “Hey, stupid, turn the silly disk over. You put in it wrong.” She swore at me or the CD, it didn’t matter, but still nothing happened.

I pushed eject, placed it back in the case and in my purse. “Well, that was no help, and now I have to go even worse. Unless you want me to piddle a puddle of pee right here on the leather seats, we’re going to have to stop, Eddie.”

“Think again, lady.” She continued to inch along in the stream of cars and taxis that clogged West Flamingo.

“Hey, Eddie, you’re a woman.” I pressed my knees together. “Just this favor. I’ll be quiet for the rest of the trip. Look, there’s an Outback Steak House in that next shopping center. You can go in with me and stand by the stall. I don’t even have to close the stall door. If you don’t care to see me squat, I don’t care, either — of course if I had my druthers, and since we really aren’t that chummy, nor do I ever want to become that chummy, although you’re a really nice person down deep under those muscles, and I’m certain of it, because well, because … ”

“Put a cork in it, will you?” The growl came from between her teeth, and the space in the middle made a whistling sound as she swore words I won’t share.

“But, Eddie, I have to go now.” Desperation increased. The bouncing and jiggling and crossing and uncrossing of legs must have penetrated her hide, or maybe it was the line about the piddle on the seat.

She sighed in a burst of breath, clicked the turn signal, and made a right turn into the restaurant’s lot. She put the car into park. “Here’s the deal, Pastor. I’m going to be right here.” She poked the butter-soft seats with an index finger the size of my fist. “I do not care to watch you sit on the john or even listen to you use the bathroom. And look. From here I can see the front door and the back. Return in five minutes or I’ll be coming in for you. It won’t be fun.”

I was futilely flipping the door release, but she wasn’t about to let me out yet. “Thanks, Eddie. Thanks so much. If I’m not out in five minutes, I’ll be sitting at a table ordering appetizers — those onion blossoms have four zillion calories and every single one is scrumptious. Shall I get one for you?”

“Cut the crap.” She reached across my chest and held me in place. “If you call the police, lots and lots of innocent lives could be lost. Babies will probably die in the process. I don’t have to tell you this, but here it is. The Agency has everything under control. Delta Cheney is assuredly going to get caught with her fingers in the criminal cookie jar. The ditz has no clue anyone has anything on her, so she’ll just keep compiling records, grabbing money, and bilking unsuspecting Americans. Right now she’s probably out peddling babies. Petra Stanislaw will be sent back to Poland lickity split or sent to the big house that Homeland Security handles. Doesn’t matter to me. That bungling gambling pastor of yours will get his in the end.” She laughed and continued. “Monica and Louisa will come out of it with promotions, and I’ll be in Nassau, lounging on the beach, sipping a drink with a pretty umbrella as a pool boy brings me suntan lotion. Those are my long-overdue vacation plans, and you’re not going to botch this. Blow it and you’re history. So don’t blow it. Understand? Okay? Remember the babies.”

The pressure was on. Disaster pending. No time to waste. My bladder was going to burst. I would have agreed to anything. “Yes, yes, yes. Promise.”

I’ll pass on the details of what happened in the next five minutes. I am woman. I multitask. I used that time to pray for wisdom. Most normal, moral citizens would have quietly gone with the FBI, leaving matters in their beefy, legal hands. I would have, too, except I’m not typically a normal citizen. But something Eddie said came raging back as I flushed the toilet. She’d said, “The ditz has no clue anyone has anything on her, so she’ll just keep compiling records and bilking unsuspecting Americans.”

Au contraire
. The ditz did have a clue. She’d been sweating like a stevedore when we bumped purses the day before. The ditz was probably packing for Brazil whilst I sat on the toilet. It didn’t take a psychic to see that Delta knew the jig was up when she sprinted to her car. Would the Muscled Madam cracking knuckles in the Mercedes believe me? I couldn’t go to Tom, because he certainly wouldn’t buck rank with the FBI invading Vegas like ants at a picnic. I had to do something. And quick.

Well, duh. I had to get away. Or she’d be banging on the stall door and breaking through with one of her meaty shoulders. Walking out of the door marked “Women,” I bumped right into an answered prayer in the form of newspaper reporter and lovesick boyfriend of Gramps’ dance instructor. It was Carl Lipca. I grabbed the man by the collar.

He choked as I twisted the collar of his shirt and grabbed him around the shoulders. Then I gushed, “I am so glad to see you.”

“Jane?” He attempted to wrestle out of my half nelson. “I know you must be lonely as a preacher and all, but hooking up in the toilet is kinky even for me.”

Before I could scream, “Slime bucket,” reality informed me that I didn’t have time to put the jerk in his place. “Carl, I’m not making a pass at you. I need your help. Someone I want to desperately avoid is waiting outside. I’ve got to get to church. I have to get away.” Albert would help me. He might have a prison record, but he was a good guy.

The plan was simple. I’d sneak out of Outback … um, somehow … get to church, and have Albert take me to the PSA. We’d break in. I’d gather all the files. I’d call Gerry, and she’d tell me what to do.

Carl gasped, which was reasonable considering I was currently twisting all the extra fabric from his collar, and I shoved the restroom door open wide enough to drag his body inside.

“You know what you’re doing, Pastor Jane?”

“Don’t be a dolt.” I snorted. “You got a problem talking in here?”

A man and a boy were washing their hands. Another guy dashed from a stall, zipping his fly. A teenager looked up from finishing at the urinal. They all turned and stared. A fourth man bounded to the door, tripped on my foot, bounced against me, loosening my death grip on Carl, and blew the joint.

Whoa, apparently in my frenzied state the above restroom wasn’t the one I had previously been in. I clamped my eyes shut, also clamping onto Carl’s shirtsleeve. “It’s the men’s room?”

“Yes, Pastor.”

I dropped my sumo hold on the journalist and cupped my hands around my eyes like blinders on a horse and scooted to the door. But not before I heard the kid say, “Look, Daddy, it’s that lady minister from church, the one you’re always telling Mommy that she looks like she’s a hooker,” while his ashen-faced dad hustled out.

In the corridor to the restrooms, I pleaded, “Carl, listen, I need to get to church. I don’t want to call the police. Just get me away. If you care at all for Petra and what happens to her, you’ll help me.”

“Care for Petra? Oh, it was fun, but that’s it. And can’t we just trot outta here and get into my car?”

“No, I can’t. I need help. Carl, there’s someone out there in the parking lot I don’t want to see me leave. Can you humor me? Maybe if we change clothes? As weird as it seem, we’re about the same size.” Sometimes I think I understand everything, and then I regain consciousness.

Desperate situations require desperate measures. There was no way on God’s green earth I was going to return to the clutches of Eddie, if in fact she and Monica were real FBI agents, which was suspect since the FBI doesn’t usually foot the bill for mansions such as the one where Monica lived.

“I don’t think so, Pastor. I’d like to help, but I don’t think my dressing in drag and you fielding questions about your gender orientation when you’re meeting folks from your congregation in the men’s room are going to improve your reputation.”

I was about to scream, “Reputation be damned. Lives are at stake,” And quickly realized I had.

Then he said, “Wait, maybe, sure, I’ve got an idea that could work. But you’ve gotta promise to give me an exclusive after this is all over.”

“Yes, anything, the answer is yes.” I gulped.

“Look, the reason I’m here is the reason you’ll be able to leave.” This time he grabbed my arm and marched me toward the dining area. There sat Vera, she of the church secretary role, who looked up at us just after pinching a male food server on the rump. “Vera, look who I found in the men’s room.”

She jumped up as if the server retaliated, and perhaps he did. “Jane, you don’t look well,” Vera said, popping a large red straw hat back on her head, twisting a boa around her throat, and wiggling her generous hips as she nudged me aside to snuggle-close to Carl.

Carl looked like he’d said “g’day” to too much Foster’s beer at Outback. “Vera and I are, well, we’re friends.”

“Carl, baby cakes, tell her the truth. You love me. And ooh la la, you make me feel like a kid,” Vera said flickering her false eyelashes and adjusting the cleavage in her low-cut and skin-tight tank top.

I would have gagged if I’d had time, but the seconds were clicking down to when my abductor would storm in and grab me away. “I don’t care what’s going on with you two. Right now I’ve got fish to battle into a frying pan. Get me out of here, please. Help me, you two, or I swear I’ll tell the entire city, including your husband, Vera, all of this and more, now that I’ve put two and two and two and two together.” There was no four, six or eight at the end of my two-and-two desperate outburst, but it worked.

“Okay, Jane,” Carl said. “Vera, give the minister your hat, and that purple scarf thing. Now let’s get thing going, ladies, and I use the term loosely. I’ve got a scoop to scoop.”

Ignoring his dig, I tucked my hair underneath the hat, pulled the boa nearly over my ears, put my hand on Vera’s, and we walked out the big wooden doors. I twisted my head away from Eddie’s car and placed a napkin in front of my face, making sneezing sounds. “See that Mercedes? I don’t want the woman driving it to see me.”

Carl nodded. “I’ve got the blue one over there. Ready?”

I hunkered down and tilted my hat away from a black car. When I sneaked a peek up from the brim, I saw my goose was in the oven, and the timer was about to bing “done.” Eddie recognized me.

“Hurry, Carl, open the door. Start the engine. Forget Vera. No, she doesn’t need to come with us. Eddie is going to get me.”

Carl opened the passenger side, but instead of helping me in, he shoved me out of the way. “She’s the one who is after you? That woman punched me out when I was just asking some questions down at the shelter. In front of a bunch of ladies. I’ve got an ax to grind. Just get out of my way, Pastor.” With lightning speed, he yanked a bowling ball from the back seat and slipped his fingers in the holes. Suddenly Vera was screaming, “But Carl, that’s
my
bowling ball.”

The ball sped across the twenty yards between cars. It looked like it was square on target, but it hit a curb. It missed the Muscled One, hit a light fixture and bounced and slammed straight into the Mercedes’ windshield.

“Now get in,” he yelled. “And they said my bowling skills would never amount to much. Call you later, Vera.”

I would’ve jumped at the chance, but at that second a silver Lexus zoomed into the lot and screeched to a screaming halt. I jumped back as it nearly nicked Carl’s car. It would have broadsided me if I hadn’t inhaled, thought thin thoughts, and gritted my teeth. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people, especially Albert Miller driving the formerly good Pastor Bob “the gambler” Normal, who was riding shotgun.

Bob was out of his car before I could untangle myself. “Jane, forgive me for my sins. I need your help right now. Get into the car. We can’t spare a minute.”

I didn’t agree to anything, mind you, because he didn’t give me a chance, opening the back door and giving me the old heave-ho. Eddie was about three feet from me, and I could feel the steam of her breath.

Once I tumbled into the seat, I slammed and locked the door. “What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?” I clung to that seat for dear life. I didn’t want to be tossed to the floor again as Albert gunned the engine and drove over the lawn, speeding away from Eddie, who was screaming, swearing, and making obscene gestures.

His words came in puffs. “A call came into the church a few minutes ago about you using the men’s room at the Outback Steakhouse … a complaint about your behavior. Oh, but no, praise Jesus, it was a prayer answered.” Gambling Bob Normal raised his hands to on High, but of course the ceiling of the car stopped that.

“But where are we going?” I yelled over the grinding of gears and Albert grunting something I chose not to hear about someone’s parentage and ability to control a car. I tried unsuccessfully to find the seatbelt as Albert drove straight over the center median, flipped around the car around and in the opposite direction.