Extra Dirty Page 6

  “Rushing” might not be the best word, Ruby thought. These things didn’t go past moderate running speed and it was already slowing down.

  She started the golf cart and buzzed away.

  “Hey!” Aaron shouted. “What were you doing with my phone?”

  He ran after her, golf club in hand. Bob, after a moment of staring like an idiot, followed.

  Cursing, Ruby slammed on the accelerator, but that did nothing to increase the golf cart’s pickup. It continued to coast along the grass with a sedateness that was almost Zenlike.

  Ruby felt anything but Zenlike. Aaron was chasing her with a golf club, and security wasn’t far behind.

  “Leave this to us, sir!” the security man called. Aaron ignored him. He was catching up, huffing and puffing with all his middle-aged might. Ruby could tell he wasn’t a jogger, but he appeared healthy enough.

  Good, because he wouldn’t have a heart attack. That would be a poor end to this investigation.

  Bad, because he began to catch up.

  Time for a change of tactics. She took a hard right. Aaron moved in the same direction, causing the security guy to slam on the brakes to keep from hitting him. The woman who had narced on her yelped as she nearly flew out the front.

  Aaron flinched, but didn’t stop. He kept right on after Ruby’s golf cart like the Terminator. Bob huffed and puffed several yards behind, already losing ground.

  “Why were you asking about my room?” Aaron demanded, his words punctuated by short, deep breaths. “Why were you looking at my phone? Is this about Bridget?”

  OK, so definitely innocent. But he looked like he wanted to be guilty of assault. Ruby had to lose this guy.

  She tried zigzagging the golf cart but Aaron kept on her like a bloodhound, gaining ground with every second.

  Time to use her natural born talents.

  She swerved the golf cart to a stop, leapt out on the opposite side from Aaron to buy her a precious couple of seconds, and got into a fighting stance.

  The irate golfing husband didn’t lose a beat. He came tearing around the meager barrier of the golf cart, golf club raised high.

  Then he hesitated, uncertainty coming to his eyes.

  And that hesitation and uncertainty told her everything.

  He couldn’t hit a woman, not even a woman who had lied to him and stolen his phone. Not even one he suspected of having something to do with the mystery around his wife’s lack of communication.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, brandishing the golf club in a threat Ruby sensed he didn’t mean.

  Most people would have been intimidated. Ruby wasn’t most people.

  With a lightning fast movement, she grabbed the golf club, twisted it until Aaron lost his grip, and tossed it far to the side.

  “RAAAH!” she shouted, sending a right cross at his face that she stopped half an inch in front of his nose.

  Aaron took several steps back, shocked. She hopped in the golf cart and drove away.

  It turned out she had only solved half her problem. While Bob stopped to see if his friend was all right, the two employees in their golf cart had gotten up to speed again and continued after her.

  Ruby headed back in the direction of the resort, the only exit to the parking lot that she knew about. The golf cart hummed along at a maddeningly sedate speed. The burly security guard, cramped inside his own little cart twenty feet behind her, kept shouting at her to stop.

  Ruby ignored him. What she couldn’t ignore was the employee saying something urgent into a walkie talkie.

  Uh-oh. Reinforcements.

  She looped around a palm tree, through a group of senior citizens teeing up, and edged around a sand trap. Nothing could shake her pursuers. This security guy must have been in the Golf Cart Special Forces or something.

  The resort building appeared ahead. If she could make it to the resort without this guy gaining any more ground on her, she could leap out and dash through the building, losing him.

  She hoped. He knew the building better than she did.

  Then came the next problem, because in Ruby’s life there was always a next problem.

  Another golf cart came at her from the direction of the resort, trying to cut her off. This one had two burly security guys. They couldn’t fit side by side and ended up leaning out a bit, each with one leg outside the golf cart like they were going to help the cart along by running.

  Ruby glanced around her, unsure what to do.

  Then she saw that she had two bags of golf clubs in the back—Aaron’s and Bob’s.

  Just the thing. She yanked out a nine iron like drawing Excalibur from the stone. At least she thought it was a nine iron. That was the only kind of golf club she could name. Whatever kind of golf club it was, it worked wonders when she tossed it at the wheels of the cart behind her.

  The cart ran over it with a loud clatter and immediately slowed. She tossed another one, and this hit the wheels so hard that the cart jerked to a stop.

  Grinning, she turned forward, only to see the cart with the two security guys was almost on her, playing a slow-motion game of chicken. She gripped the wheel, looked in the eye of the driver, and cackled wildly.

  The security guy chickened first. He wasn’t paid enough to deal with a golf club throwing madwoman and veered to the side at the last moment. The weight of all that muscle mass tipped the cart over and the two guys ended up in a heap.

  “Sorry!” she shouted over her shoulder, looking just long enough to make sure they weren’t hurt.

  Just long enough to forget to look where she was going.

  Screams told her to look ahead, only to find that she had driven onto the deck and between a couple of the tables. Playing cards, backgammon sets, and early morning cocktails flew everywhere as a stampede of senior citizens hurried to get out of her way.

  She drove right up to the back door, hopped out, and sprinted through the building. Several astonished guests and employees stared at her, but nobody tried to stop her. Apparently, all the security was already behind her, no doubt running as fast as she was.

  Heading out the front door, she ducked to the right toward the parking garage where that kid had taken her rental. As luck would have it, he was just emerging.

  Ruby ran up to him and grabbed him by his shoulders.

  “Where’s my car?”

  The kid gave her a stupid look. “In the garage.”

  “Show me. Now!”

  “Ma’am, I’d be happy to pull it up to—”

  “Now!”

  Ruby grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him after her.

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “Doctor’s appointment. Bad case of colitis. If I don’t get treatment right away I’m liable to make a mess right here on the pavement.”

  “Gah!” the kid started outpacing her and pretty soon was dragging her along instead of the other way around. Ruby raised an appreciative eyebrow. This guy might have a bright future as a sprinter for the Bahamas Olympic team. Teach those Ethiopians and Kenyans a thing or two.

  The kid took her to the parking space, then backed off, tossing her the keys.

  “Hope you make it, ma’am!”

  She climbed in the car and drove out of the parking garage right as two security men ran into it. Ruby sped between them, hoping they didn’t have the presence of mind to write down her license number, and pulled onto the street.

  Despite the chaos her little infiltration had descended into, it had been more or less a success. She had eliminated the main suspect—Bridget’s husband. The spouse is always the main suspect, and if he hadn’t done away with her, that meant she could still be alive.

  Could be. But she’d been missing for more than 24 hours now without having made contact to anyone she knew in the Bahamas. That did not bode well for her chances of being in a good place.

  As Ruby drove across town, she wondered what could have happened to her. From what little she knew about Bridget, she didn’t sound like the kind o
f person who would walk out of her life and disappear. She also didn’t sound like the kind of person who could handle herself.

  So what had happened? If it had been a kidnapping, the husband would have gotten a ransom demand by now. If it had been a simple robbery, Bridget would have woken up in the same alley as Helen. If rape had been the motive, they would have both been abducted. Or if the rapist or rapists only wanted to take one, they would have taken Helen, who was noticeably prettier. It made her shudder to think along these lines, but she needed to get into the mindset of whoever had made Bridget disappear.

  It would be the only way to get her back.

  She still had a few hours before Caribbean Dreams opened, and since she had nothing else she could do on the case until then, she decided to get some other business done.

  Business that was just as difficult, and even more important.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Everyone stared at Ruby as she parked her Lexus in the only spot that wasn’t taken by abandoned vehicles of heaps or trash. She was the only white person in the area, and was driving the only decent car.

  Well, they’d have to get used to it, because they were going to be seeing her a lot from now on.

  Madame Lawrence’s Tea and Sundries stood on a street of ragged storefronts and tenement buildings in the second worst neighborhood in Nassau. The worst was just downhill, the shantytown-filled valley called the Maze. Ruby had nearly gotten killed there twice in one night not so long before. The local mob boss wanted her to come back.

  But this fringe area just as the street sloped downhill was the closest she would ever let herself get to that hellhole. Her business wasn’t down there, but with Madame Lawrence.

  She scanned the crowd as she got out, looking for the little girl she had met here, but other than a few small boys playing in a pothole big enough to accommodate all four of them, she saw no children.

  The last time she had been here, trying to summon the courage to walk further downhill, she had met a quiet, adorable girl of about eight that had cheered her up with a smile.

  That’s all she had done—smile at her when she was feeling afraid and alone. That had been enough.

  Ruby passed under the ugly yellow sign and into a concrete interior painted a faded green. A single bare bulb tried to assist the sunlight streaming through the open door. Next to it hung a strip of flypaper that had even more flies stuck to it than the last time Ruby had been here. Now it looked like a strip of flies pirouetting in the breeze of an old metal fan. The store had two aisles of low shelves stocked with household items, various groceries, and bootleg DVDs. To her left was a counter covered with local newspapers and magazines, and behind it sat Madame Lawrence.

  A hefty Bahamian woman of indeterminate age, Madame Lawrence was dressed in a shapeless yellow dress and sat scowling at her.

  “You again. I thought you died,” Madame Lawrence said.

  “No. I went into the Maze and came back out again.”

  “I heard that, but I didn’t believe it.”

  “I could barely believe it myself. Have you been feeding that girl?”

  Madame Lawrence shifted her bulk as her frown deepened. “You think I stole the money you left?”

  “No. I was more worried someone would steal her.”

  “Give it time. Yes, I’ve been feeding her. What do you want?”

  Ruby paused. That was a damn good question. Why was she helping some stupid tourist get her equally stupid friend out of trouble? Not for money, she only decided to take some money to help the girl.

  And why help the girl? Some lost kid with no future who Ruby could only afford to feed every now and then?

  Something the Ufologist had said came back to her.

  “You don’t belong in here. You don’t belong in The Pirate’s Cove either, but we’re sure glad to have you.”

  She had been hiding and fighting for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to have people glad to have her around, didn’t even recognize it when it happened.

  Maybe that’s what I want. To be appreciated. To do something useful.

  It’s been too damn long.

  “I want to give you some more money to continue feeding her and maybe help some of the other kids around here.”

  Madame Lawrence folded her arms around her ample chest and cocked her head. “You a millionaire?”

  Ruby snorted. “Far from it.”

  “Well, you’ll have to be if you want to help all the kids around here.”

  Ruby pulled out the two hundred dollars Helen had given her. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Madame Lawrence took the money, looked at it with a frown, and studied Ruby for a long moment.

  “What do you want in return?”

  Ruby thought for a second. “Nothing. And don’t tell the kids where it’s coming from either.”

  She’d heard somewhere that charity done for show wasn’t charity at all. She wasn’t sure this even counted as charity. More of a necessity.

  Ruby went over to a shelf with school supplies and picked out a notebook and a ballpoint pen.

  “You going back to school?”

  “Not exactly.”

  More like I keep thinking of passwords. I’ve filled half a dozen bits of scrap paper already. I need to get organized.

  Ruby paid for them and headed out the door. “I’ll come back next week.”

  “Wait.”

  Ruby stopped.

  “Someone came here looking for you.”

  “Looking for me?” she asked, tensing.

  “Yeah. Some young punk with dreads and a Bob Marley shirt.”

  Ruby’s heart turned to ice. That was one of the men who had tried to mug her in the Maze. She’d knocked down his two friends and forced him to take her to an illegal bare-knuckle boxing match to help track down the last murder victim she’d investigated.

  That punk thought she owed him something, that he was going to be her manager on the underground circuit.

  Him sniffing around here wasn’t such a big deal. She could handle him, but she couldn’t handle the guy behind him, the guy running the boxing matches.

  The King. He had decided he owed her two more matches, and Bob Marley would be sure to tell him everything he found out about Ruby.

  “Did you tell him anything?” Ruby asked, her voice shaking a little.

  “No. He had already found out you were here. So I told him the truth. That you came in here with a black eye and ordered a tea and some Ibuprofen before heading down into the Maze.”

  “You didn’t tell him I gave money for the kid, did you?”

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  “No. Sorry. Has he been back?”

  “Not in here. But he’s been prowling the neighborhood, asking questions.”

  “Damn. Thanks.”

  Ruby went out onto the street, just in time to see a pair of teenagers kneeling beside her rental car.

  “Hey!”

  They ran off, the car’s hubcaps tucked under their arms. Within a second they had disappeared around a corner.

  Ruby ran up to her car. All four hubcaps were gone.

  “Damn it.”

  How was she going to explain this to Helen? And what had she been thinking parking such a nice car in a neighborhood like this one?

  Madame Lawrence came to her doorway.

  “You ain’t cut out for this,” she said.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Ruby grumbled, getting back into the car.

  It seemed every move she made added to her troubles. Now she had some explaining to do to her client, and had the local organized crime sniffing around her life. She didn’t know how she could stop Bob Marley and The King, though. This was their side of town. She had no power here.

  First thing first. She needed to find Bridget while she still had a chance to be breathing. And to do that, she needed to set her mountain of problems aside for a moment.

  Mt. Barsa, that mountain near the refugee camp. T
hat could be a password. I’ve already tried refugee, Syria, UNESCO, and militia.

  God, this is maddening. I could do this for the rest of my life and never find the answer.

  Focus on the case.

  She noted the password down on the first page of her new notebook, started the car, and went around the corner where the teenagers had fled. As she suspected, they were long gone.

  Grumbling at her foolishness, Ruby headed across town again. Caribbean Dreams wasn’t open yet, but she had an idea that might work to her advantage.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  From outside, Caribbean Dreams didn’t look all that much different from The Tropical Twerker. Sure, it looked bigger, housed in a standalone building rather than at the end of a decrepit strip of businesses, and the sign was bigger and freshly painted, but there the differences ended. It shared its poorer cousin’s windowless façade and heavy steel door. Parking in the large and nearly empty lot, Ruby went up to and knocked at the door. On it, a sign said, “We’re always hiring!”

  A speaker next to the door crackled to life.

  “We’re not open until 2 pm,” a male voice said.

  “Yeah, um, I’m here about a job. Can I see the manager?”

  Pause. “Come on in.”

  There was a buzz and she heard the lock on the door click open. Squaring her shoulders, she opened it.

  She entered a vast, dimly lit space. The only lights came from the bar at the far end, and another light in the hallway next to it. Otherwise everything was shrouded in darkness in stark contrast to the warm, healthy tropical sunlight outside.

  Ruby stood for a moment waiting for her eyes to adjust. She could make out tables with chairs upturned on them, and a big stage with poles in the center of the room. There were smaller stages against two of the walls, and close by her a DJ booth with some impressive equipment. This place looked like money.

  It also looked pretty forlorn with no people.

  “Over here,” a voice called from the bar. She looked over there but didn’t see anybody. She headed that way, all senses alert. She didn’t like passing through great swaths of shadows as a lone woman, especially when those shadows made up the interior of a strip club. If Caribbean Dreams was anything like The Tropical Twerker, a lot more went on here than just dancing.