More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2) (21 page)

The third reason we were headed to Oxnard is, well, Jelicka finally wore us down with promises of a group ammo discount from her buddies at Shooter’s Paradise, along with a cushy drive up in her Audi A8—the one luxury item she’d held onto in her divorce settlement—and a box of red-velvet cupcakes from Sprinkles.

“What’s going on with the Titty-tranny?” said Jelicka, once we were on our way.

“Who?” asked Rachel.

“That little two-timing, bisexual Slovakian conniver.”

“She’s from Moldova,” I corrected.

“Still—former Soviet bloc borscht eaters. They’re all the same.”

“Come on, you eat borscht,” Maddie said.

“All the time; that’s how I know,” Jelicka retorted.

Maddie, sitting in the front, turned around to look at me. “Did you leave that picture button you found somewhere Jamie could find it yet?”

“There are problems with that,” I said. “
I
know it’s Titania in the picture, but it was taken at such an angle that reasonable minds might legitimately differ. And Jamie, with her unreasonable mind, well, who knows what she’d say? I need more proof.”

“I think you should get Titania alone and confront her. Say you have more on her than you do, and watch her body language,” said Rachel. “Maybe she won’t have time to come up with some lame excuse, you know?”

“I agree,” said Jelicka.

“Just be careful,” Maddie chimed in. “I’ve been thinking about it, and it could backfire if she calls your bluff.”

Jelicka was undaunted. “You want her on notice and worried about her own job. Tell her you suspect she’s keeping secrets from Jamie, and you know what they are.”

“Yeah, that’ll get her,” Rachel agreed.

I gazed wistfully as we drove by the Camarillo Outlet center, wishing I had five-hundred bucks to drop on clothes. A little retail therapy never hurt anyone—until the bill arrived.
Where was Frank Sexton, and what had he found out so far?
That’s what I really wanted.

“You’re not acting all that concerned,” said Jelicka. “What aren’t you telling us?”

There’s not much that goes unnoticed with these women. I decided it couldn’t hurt to tell them.

“Well, in an interesting turn of events, there’s somebody helping me—or at least I thought there was. There isn’t much time left to prove to Jamie that the damaging pictures will be contained. Whoever sent them is out to get me fired and ruin my reputation, but he or she is waiting for something—who knows what? —before they make good on the threat and put the pics online. So if we can find out who sent them and why, we might be able to keep that from happening.”

“It
is
you in the pictures,” Rachel verified.

“Unfortunately, yes. But no
Hello Kitty
girl was ever in any danger.”

“God forbid the world loses any
Hello Kitty
fans,” said Jelicka.

“If you want, I could arrange for one of the guys who pose for me to make a pass at Titania,” Rachel offered. “You might get some more pictures of her you can use.”

I kind of liked that idea, especially if Frank didn’t come up with anything soon. “I’ll let you know,” I told her.

“So who’s helping you?” Maddie asked.

I couldn’t remember if I’d promised Lauren that I wouldn’t tell any of the Muffs about Frank or just about the free ticket to her Alzheimer’s benefit.

“It better not be ‘married guy,’ ” Jelicka said.

“Don’t worry. Steven and I are completely done this time. By the way, Maddie, he claimed he didn’t know anything about someone following me.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Rachel asked.

I filled her in, and Jelicka doubled down on the need for self-protection.

“Are you going to tell us about this helper?” repeated Maddie.

I decided Lauren had meant the ticket and so plowed ahead with the explanation. “He’s this undercover guy from George’s dad’s company who’s on loan until we figure out why someone’s trying to sabotage me. But like I said, there isn’t much time.”

“Really? A private investigator?” Jelicka was thrilled. “Do you think he’d talk to me about his experiences? Because you know, that’s one of the areas I’m considering going into.”

“I can ask,” I said. “He might—but probably not until this is over.”

“What’s he like?” asked Maddie. “Must be kind of weird having someone following you.”

“Yeah, how is that?” Jelicka asked, checking the rearview mirrors.

“I don’t really know what it’s like,” I said. “To tell you the truth, I might have imagined the whole thing. He accosted me at the dance studio after class one evening, and since then, he hasn’t really ‘reported in’ or whatever it’s called.”

Jelicka checked her rearview again. “So you think he’s following you now?”

“I don’t think he’s following
me
; I think he’s supposed to be following the people who might be trying to get me fired. But it feels kind of nice knowing there’s somebody out there watching over me, you know?”

“That does sound nice,” said Maddie.

Rachel groaned. “Please...if being looked after means having a guy who takes your money and spends most of his days watching porn, I think we’re better off without one.”

“They don’t all watch porn,” Maddie pointed out.

As I’d suspected, and what had been made clear during the webinar, Rachel’s last couple of break-ups—first the gaffer and, after him, the rebound Greek—had been ugly, but she hadn’t said just
how
ugly. She’d been with women, but bottom line, she preferred men. She liked the cock. But now, having made the choice, she was embittered by her bad relationships and was taking it out on all men in her work. What was good and bad was that she’d found success (good) for her latest series of paintings depicting naked men with no faces, but she’d also found validation for some pretty negative feelings (bad). I wanted to tell her, “You’ll get over these guys,” or “This too will pass,” or some other tired bromide people say at times like this when they don’t know what else to say. But I said nothing. She knew I was there if she wanted to talk.

In the end, most of us have been through bad break-ups and heartache, yet we usually recover and try again for love. What else can we do? I put my hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. I think she got it.

Jelicka stood at the front of the shooting stall, earmuffed and begoggled, her gun arm extended toward the target. “Your stance can either be open or like this.”

She shifted easily from facing the paper target with her body—her legs parted slightly wider than her hips, straight but not locked—to having her right foot positioned behind the left with her left side facing the target. For Maddie and me, this was a review; I’d seen both stances on a previous visit to Shooter’s Paradise. For Rachel, it was brand new.”

“I prefer this stance myself,” Jelicka said. “It just feels more solid, especially if your gun has a kick on discharge.”

Rachel seemed twitchy. “You okay?” I asked her as quietly as I could, given our earmuffs and the sound of guns going off in the neighboring stalls.

“Oh, yeah.” Her eyes glowed through the scratched lenses of her goggles. “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

I smiled. “Easy, pardner.”

For Rachel, this could go one of two ways, I thought. Either shooting at drawings of men on paper targets would help her banish the demons and give her new and better ideas of things to paint, or she could become totally unhinged.

Meanwhile, Jelicka continued with her instructions. “You can hold the gun in one hand, but I recommend supporting the shooting hand with the non-shooting one like this. Being women we’re—
duh
— not as physically strong as the other sex.”

She suddenly changed her tone to that of a non-threatening Southerner: “I do declare, women are delicate flowers, meant to—
shit
!” She clutched her hand.

“What is it?” Maddie asked.

“Broke a nail,” said Jelicka. “Ouch—down to the quick, too.” She examined the damage. “Screw it.”

She faced the target—a life-sized drawing of a mustachioed man wearing a balaclava and holding his victim in a headlock—released the safety and let go two rounds from her Glock. She then put the safety back on, placed the gun down, and flipped a switch that brought the paper target closer so we could examine the damage.

“Oh my goodness, look at that—the delicate flower killed the big, bad rapist,” Jelicka said, admiring her handiwork.

The guy, had he been real, would most certainly have been dead. She’d nailed him twice, right between the eyes.

“I hope my aim is better than the first time we did this,” Maddie said. “This flower had no power.”

Jelicka picked the gun up again and sent the target out a few feet. “Don’t worry, you’ll get it. How do we get to Carnegie Hall, ladies?”

“Practice, practice, practice!” the rest of us said in unison, causing a couple of the tattooed guys in the next stall to glance over. All of us were wearing fitted jeans designed to flatter. Rachel was even showing some skin at the belly. The poor boys; we must have been distracting them from making a bullseye.

“I still can’t believe I let you talk me into going to Nissim’s house to look for evidence and you pulled out that gun.
That
gun,” Maddie continued.

All of us had heard about Jelicka and Maddie’s illegal search of Udi’s friend’s house after Udi had “died.” They’d turned up nothing, and the escapade could have landed them in jail—or even dead—had Nissim not been so forgiving.

“I want to try,” Rachel said.

“Let’s do it,” said Jelicka. She placed the Glock on the shelf and maneuvered Rachel into position at the front of the stall facing the rapist. Rachel claimed never to have shot a pistol in her life, but you’d never have guessed. She assumed the stance and positioned the gun like a seasoned pro. Surprisingly, most of her shots found the target—or at least the paper the target was on.

After she’d fired out the clip, she stood taller. That’s the strange thing about guns. Even if you hate them, or are scared of them and think they should all be banned for fear they could end up in the hands of a psyche patient off his meds, holding and firing one gives a person a sense of power and control in a world where we truly have very little of either. But the power isn’t real, and we’d be wise to remember that.

We took turns, and Jelicka was positively in her element. She
could
become a P.I., I thought—that is, if she could put up with the classroom part of earning the degree. And if she couldn’t hack that part, she could probably make money teaching marksmanship to Beverly Hills housewives. She’d been one herself.

I found myself wondering what kind of a shot Frank Sexton was. We hadn’t talked much that night about his background, only my own. A wave of panic hit me. I was running out of time. Where
was
Frank Sexton? He should have found something out by now—if not about the pictures, surely about
Yankees
. I wanted to call him to get an update, but he hadn’t given me his number, which I took to mean he didn’t want me to have it. That wasn’t how he worked. He told me he’d ‘be in touch’ when he had something. I decided I’d call Lauren later and see if she could find out what was going on.

After my third time up to shoot, and a fair-to-middling showing with two shots through the head of the paper rapist and a few others going way wild, dinging into the depths of the range, I flipped the safety on and put the Glock back on the shelf to give another Muff a turn.

I was backing out of the stall, out of the way of my friends, when I glanced over to where the tattooed guys were still checking us out. The more heavily tatted guy gave me his thumbs-up in approval. I gave them a polite tip of my head, but offered not a trace of encouragement.

Glancing beyond them, I spotted Frank Sexton. He was dressed like a member of the Special Forces Unit in
The Bourne Identity
. He stepped back from his stall, his handgun clipped to his holster and a badge flipped open on his belt. Our eyes met, and I felt my jaw drop open.

He began walking toward me and, as he passed, he gave me a barely perceptible nod. I almost said something before remembering he told me not to. I hesitated.
Should I do it anyway?
With only a few days until the pictures went public and Jamie fired me, shouldn’t he have told me what was going on by now?
Yes, he should have
.

I said nothing. Oh, but
man
, he looked sexy rigged up like he was.

Wait—did he really? I had to remind myself he wasn’t my type. All this exposure to the violent underbelly could not possibly be good for me.

I glanced over at the Muffs and found Maddie watching me curiously. I gestured toward Frank retreating toward the exit and mouthed the word “hot,” giving her the thumbs-up sign. She had just enough time to glance over her shoulder and take in Frank’s back as he opened the door out of the range and disappeared through it. Turning back to me, she shrugged and gave me the thumbs-up sign in return, but it wasn’t the corroboration I was seeking.

Disconcerting as it had been seeing my erstwhile Private Investigator, and the conflicting feelings that doing so summoned in me, his presence restored my sense of security—false though it might be.

“Anyone else?” Jelicka asked, bringing me back to my senses. “Last call.”

I shook my head, and Rachel ran her finger like a knife across her neck. We’d all had enough and were ready to eat. Kiki had promised us lunch and libation while we scoped out the libidinous neighbors. Shooting apparently works up an appetite.

Jelicka ejected the gun magazine for the last time, emptying the remaining bullets into her pocket. Flipping the wall switch, she brought the paper target within reach and pulled it from the clips. We stared at the bullet-riddled drawing of the rapist and his female victim.

“We nailed that sucker,” said Jelicka. “He’s either so dead his mother won’t recognize him, or he’ll wish he never went into that house for the rest of his castrated, crippled, blind life. But next time, ladies, let’s make more of an effort not to shoot his victim.”

An hour later, decamped from Shooters Paradise, the four of us were ensconced on Kiki’s patio where we had an obscured view of the notorious house next door. Kiki shuttled back and forth from the kitchen with platters of cheese, crackers, crudité and garlic shrimp, all of which was now laid out on the outdoor dining table around which we sat. The tasty crustaceans were almost gone, having been snatched up like gift bags at a charity lunch.