Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc. (34 page)

“No,” lies Trina, but she gets out of her car and calls. “Hey! Anybody there?”

“Another one bites the dust,” muses Bliss as he and Daisy prop each other over the raised hood of Daisy's rental car. “The radiator's got a couple of holes, the air filter's punctured and some of the electrics look shot.”

“Can you make it go?” asks Daisy hopefully.

“If we push it,” laughs Bliss, then he looks down the track to the distant road and adds, speculatively, “although it
is
downhill most of the way.”

“Keep going… keep going…” encourages Daphne a few minutes later as Trina inches the Jetta forward with her tow-hitch tied to the fence.

“Just get ready to run,” Trina warns, still expecting half a dozen gun-toting guards to rush out and blast them, but Daphne isn't listening as she waits to slip through the gap.

“I'm only going to get what's rightfully mine,” she calls, readying her defence.

“This is very dangerous,” admits Bliss, at the wheel of the freewheeling Toyota as it gathers speed, in reverse, down the hillside towards the highway. “I just hope the brakes will hold without power.”

“See. I told you there was no one here,” says Daphne, strolling nonchalantly into the empty guardhouse and kicking at a few scraps of paper on the dusty wooden floor.

“Nothing…” agrees Trina, pointing to frayed wiring where phones, cameras and lights had been forcefully ripped out.

“I bet they didn't leave my bloomin' hat,” says Daphne despondently as they carry on through the compound towards the main building, but Trina is still wary, and she carries her useless cell phone ahead of her like a weapon.

“They were obviously up to no good,” Daphne is saying, pointing to the deserted offices and living quarters, now stripped of every trace of habitation, when a metallic
bang
brings them up short.

“Run!” cries Trina, but Daphne grabs her hand.

“Who's there?” demands Daphne with the authority of a sentry, and as her words echo around the empty buildings, the gulls take off in fright again. But amongst the birds' raucous cries there is an unmistakeably human sound.

“Help…” cries a weak voice from inside an old outhouse on the edge of the forest. “Help…”

“Someone's here.”

“I told you.”

“Help…”

“I didn't realize it was this steep,” yells Bliss as he grapples with the wheel, one-handed, while he hangs onto the handbrake with the other. Behind him, Daisy grimaces as she is flung around by the bouncing car. “Hang on,” he shrieks as he sees another looming pothole, but he's zooming backwards without power and can't avoid it.

“
Putain!
” screams Daisy as she flies off the seat and comes down heavily.

“Sorry,” says Bliss, keeping up the pressure on the brake.

“I think it came from over there,” whispers Trina, pointing to an old outhouse on the edge of the forest clearing, and they creep, hand in hand, towards the building. Then, after a moment's pause to look at each other, Daphne whips open the door.

“Willy — it's you!” cries Trina at the sight of the pitiable man chained to the steel pipe.

“Who?” asks Wallace.

“Oops — oh, sorry… Spotty —” she starts, but Daphne kicks her.

“What's your name?” asks Daphne.

“I don't think I should…” he begins, and Daphne starts to close the door.

“All right… all right.”

“Well?” questions Daphne.

“It's Wallace — Allan Wallace,” says the pathetic-looking prisoner. “Can you get me out?”

“Yes —” starts Trina, but Daphne kicks her again.

“Possibly,” says Daphne, as if giving it her fullest consideration.

“I helped you escape,” he pleads, and Daphne seemingly relents.

“All right. But we want to know what was going on here first.”

“I can't —” he starts, and the door begins to close again. “Okay, okay. I'll tell you.”

“Hold tight!” yells Bliss, seeing the traffic on the highway approaching at speed, and he puts all his weight behind the brakes and prays.

By the time Bliss has brought the car to a stop and flagged down a passing motorist, Daphne and Trina have used a tire iron to jemmy Wallace from his makeshift cell. And as Bliss and Daisy ride to hospital in Seattle, the forlorn CIA officer is cadging a lift into Bellingham from his erstwhile prisoners.

“Wait a minute,” says Daphne as they prepare to drive away. “I still I haven't got my bloomin' hat.”

“Never mind,” says Trina, happy to get away. “You've got plenty more at home.”

“No,” insists Daphne, “it's my favourite. And you never know; I might get invited to a wedding while I'm here.”

“
Daavid
. It is
la Tour Eiffel!
” yells Daisy, pointing excitedly towards the replica of the famous structure as the white limousine sweeps them to the door of the Paris Hotel two days later.

“I know,” says Bliss with his finger on a pictorial map. “I promised you a foreign holiday, and that's what you're getting. And look — over there is New York, and up there is Venice, Monte Carlo, Luxor, Mandalay…”

“We got the whole damn world here, sir,” drawls the Nevada driver as he opens the door for Daisy, and he's not entirely wrong. Samantha and Peter Bryan have arrived from England, Daisy's mother and an aunt are on their way from France, and a slew of people led by Trina and Daphne have flown down from Canada.

“Las Vegas?” Daphne had trilled disbelievingly when Trina had taken the call from Bliss on Saturday afternoon.

“Yeah,” Trina had assured her excitedly. “And he wants us to fly down there on Monday. He says that his Uncle Sam is gonna pay.”

“He's never mentioned an Uncle Sam to me,” Daphne had said, scratching her head. “Let me speak to him.” But Bliss had gone by the time she had taken the phone. “Where is he?” she'd asked, turning to Trina.

“He was on a pay phone somewhere,” she'd replied, looking puzzled. “But he said he had to go, because Daisy's ankle was being operated on.”

“Just remember,” Daphne whispers as she and Trina watch Bliss pushing Daisy towards them in a wheelchair. “Don't mention that we went back to the monastery. He won't understand.”

“Hello, Daphne,” beams Bliss as he spies the two women in the hotel's Parisian-styled lobby, then his face clouds in confusion. “How on earth did you get your hat back?”

“Uh-oh!” exclaims Trina, and Daphne kicks her foot. “This one?” asks the Englishwoman, as if she is surprised to find it on her head.

“Yes,” enquires Bliss. “Wasn't that the one you lost at the monastery place?”

“Similar…” nods Daphne, then she uses the cast on Daisy's foot to get her out of the jam. “Oh, dear. What on earth has happened to you?”

“Hey, Mike!” calls Bliss, leaving Daisy to explain her injury as he spies his Canadian counterpart talking to Trina's husband. “Any sign of the baby?”

“Another week, they think. But what's been happening? I heard you'd been shot.”

“Just a scratch,” replies Bliss before briefly outlining the nighttime attack.

“You could've been killed,” says Phillips, but Bliss shakes his head. “Just a friendly warning, I think; although I wouldn't mind catching them.”

“Maybe you should hire Daphne and Trina to investigate for you,” laughs Rick Button. “They're calling themselves ‘Lovelace and Button — International Investigators,' and Trina has run up some fancy business cards on my computer.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They reckon they've cracked the secret of that monastery place.”

“Seriously?” asks Bliss.

“Hi, Dad,” interrupts Samantha as she and her husband approach. “What have you been up to now?”

“Upsetting the natives,” he laughs.

“I've kept your seat warm for you, Dave,” says Peter Bryan, smiling broadly as he holds out his hand, though Bliss can't help feeling that it will always be something of a hot seat with Chief Superintendent Edwards at the helm.

“Actually, I want to speak you about that, Peter,” he starts. “But what's the outcome on the suicide situation?”

“It's pretty much resolved,” says Bryan, “and the charges against young Ronnie Stapleton have been dropped.”

“I was never really convinced that he'd shoved Minnie,” admits Bliss. “I feel kind'a bad that he ended up in hospital.”

“His father's gone public, demanding a gallantry award for him for attempting to save the old lady's life,” says Bryan. “And he's pushing for a public enquiry.”

“Talking of enquiry…” says Bliss, and he turns to Daphne. “Rick tells me that you've solved the monastic mystery.”

“Oh. Didn't I tell you, David?”

“No. You know very well you didn't.”

“Well, I thought you would have worked it out for yourself, to be honest,” she teases, “now that you're a
Chief Inspector.” Then she carries on relentlessly. “Especially as you're the great detective who discovered the identity of the man in the iron mask?”

“Yes, enough already,” he laughs. “But I'm keeping that under my hat until my book is published.”

“All right, then…” says Daphne, starting to wander away.

“Whoa!” says Bliss, holding her back. “You haven't told me what they were doing at the monastery.”

“No, I haven't,” she says, straight-faced. “I'm keeping that under my hat — just in case I decide to write a book as well.”

“Dad,” asks Samantha petulantly, “when are you going to tell us why we are all here?”

“I'll tell you at dinner,” he says. “But Daphne's going to spill the beans about the monastery first — aren't you?”

“Okay. I'll do a deal,” Daphne relents. “I'll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“Daphne Lovelace!” he exclaims. “I don't believe you said that.”

“It was a government hospital for tourists,” she finally explains, knowing that Bliss will jump to the wrong conclusion.

“So why the secrecy?” he asks, falling into the trap. “What were they — foreign dignitaries? Disgraced monarchs?”

“No — they were tourists with something to offer,” she replies enigmatically, playing a guessing game. But Trina can't wait and jumps in with the answer.

“Kidneys,” she says excitedly. “All the patients were each selling a kidney.”

“Really?”

“That's right,” says Daphne, then she recounts details of Wallace's confession.

“Do you realize that every time an American citizen goes to Korea or China to buy a kidney from a living donor it sucks seventy-five thousand dollars out of our economy?” the CIA officer had told them, repeating the mantra that had been used to sell him on the idea.

“And it goes into the pocket of some poverty-stricken peasant who is willing to risk his life to feed his wife and kids,” Trina had suggested acerbically.

“Sometimes,” Wallace had admitted. “Though more often than not they'll blow it on a new car, a satellite TV and a cell phone. Anyway, think of the health benefits of having the operation in a modern Western clinic compared to having your kidney whipped out in a backstreet butcher's shop in P'yongyang or Beijing.”

“So you bring them here so that they can blow it on a shiny new Ford —” Trina had started, but Wallace had cut her off.

“No. They don't get paid. They get something much more valuable — a passport from the U.S. of A.”

“Who told you all this, Daphne?” Bliss wants to know when he's heard her out.

“Chief Inspector!” she exclaims, apparently mortified. “I'm surprised you would expect me to reveal the source of confidential information.”

“What source?”

“You're doing it again. Anyway, don't you want to know about the lottery scam?”

“Are you saying that was them, too?”

“Yup,” says Trina. “And Daphne got Wilting Willy to confess that as well.”

“Got who?” asks Bliss.

“Oops! Sorry,” says Trina as Daphne kicks her again. “Me and my big mouth.”

“His real name is Spotty Dick, if you must know,” explains Daphne, confusing the issue. “And he was the one who tried to help us escape.”

“So you let him go?” nods Bliss, catching on.

“Once I'd put the bite on him a little,” admits Daphne as she leans into Bliss conspiratorially. “Anyway, he's a marked man.”

“So, c'mon, Dad,” says Samantha. “You didn't drag us all this way to discuss police business.”

“You'll have to wait —” he is saying when Trina cuts in.

“Your dad's gonna help with the kidney marathon — aren't you, Dave?”

“No, I am not.”

“Spoilsport,” says Daphne.

“She only expects me to dress up as a giant condom and hand out free samples along the road,” he explains in mock outrage.

“Oh, Dad…” laughs Samantha, but Trina is serious.

“Sexually transmitted diseases are a primary cause of kidney failure,” she says snottily. “I just thought you would want to help, that's all.”

“I do,” he says curtly. “I'll give you a hundred dollars.”

“We need kidney donations, not money,” snorts Trina. “I mean, look what was happening at the monastery. They were shipping poor Asians in so that some rich Yankee jerk who's spent his life abusing his kidneys could just buy himself another one. I bet they wouldn't give me one if I needed it.”

“Your kidney patient committed suicide while he waited for a transplant, didn't he?” Daphne reminds her as an example, but Trina looks around sheepishly before admitting, “Actually, I got it wrong. When the office said Norman wouldn't need me anymore because
he'd taken matters into his own hands — well, I just assumed he'd… you know.”