Fool's Moon, page 16
But, unlike a heron, the housekeeper didn’t have big wings that would let her fly away fast!
“I—I am sorry I disturbed you,” she went on. “Por favor, I go back to my rooms now.”
“Nonsense.” This from the Joan female, who gave the son a stern look. “Terry, don’t just stand there. Help Luciana inside so we can see how badly she is hurt.”
“Fine.”
With that grudging word, he stuck his phone in his pocket and shoved a shoulder beneath the housekeeper’s arm. Despite her soft protests, he half walked, half carried her to the front door and inside the house. Joan, with a final look around the yard, followed them inside.
Ophelia waited until the blazing lights that flooded the grass had dimmed again. Then, keeping low, she rushed from her hiding spot in the fountain grass toward where her brother was crouched near the garage.
Brandon met her halfway at the big open room. “The son took her,” he meowed in concern, pacing in a circle with tail bristling. “We have to get her out of there, before the son puts her in a box.”
“Not yet. Let’s look inside first. The human Joan seems like she might be nice after all. She made the son help Luciana.”
Brandon growled. “It’s my fault she got hurt. We need to make sure she’s safe.”
Still, he followed her at a swift trot back to the windows. This time, the humans had moved to the parlor. Ophelia pressed her soft black nose to the glass in time to see the son lowering Luciana into a chair and then raising her injured leg up on a matching footstool.
Then they talked … or, at least, the Joan woman talked. The son stood there looking angry. As for Luciana, her chair was turned away from the window, so that all Ophelia could see of her was her arm and her leg.
“Can you hear what they’re saying?” she whispered to her brother.
Brandon flicked his ears back and forth, then shook his fuzzy head. “I hear them, but I can’t make out the words. Even though this isn’t the soundproof room, the glass is still too—”
“Wait,” Ophelia cut him short with a soft hiss. “Look, the son and Joan are leaving.”
While they watched, the female smiled and nodded; then, putting her hand on the son’s arm, she made him walk with her. She paused at the door, however, and turned. Giving the housekeeper a smile, she spoke while raising her finger in the air … a gesture Ophelia had learned that for humans meant just a minute.
But it seemed that the housekeeper wasn’t willing to wait. As soon as the door closed behind them, Luciana tried again to stand. Ophelia could see her pushing up with her hand pressed down against the arm rest, her bad foot touching the ground.
“She’s really hurt,” Ophelia whispered. “Look, she had to sit back down again.”
Which was perhaps just as well, for the door opened again. The son came back in along with Joan, who was carrying a small clear glass half filled with brown liquid. Ophelia squinted for a better look, deciding it must be the same drink that the old woman used to make for herself.
Brandy.
As she and Brandon watched, Joan handed Luciana the glass and made gestures encouraging her to drink. A moment later, she gave a satisfied nod and took back the glass, which was empty now. Then she bent for another look at the housekeeper’s ankle.
“Maybe the brandy will fix her,” Brandon softly suggested as he peered through the window glass. “It always made the old woman feel better.”
“I hope so,” Ophelia agreed with a glance up at the stars to check the time. “Because we have to leave soon if we want to meet Zuki back at the truck.”
But while they were whispering, the Joan female gestured the son toward the door again. They stood there for a few moments, heads close as they talked, and kept looking back at Luciana.
Planning something, Ophelia thought, green eyes narrowing. And then, the two walked back over to the housekeeper again. A moment later, they had lifted her from the chair and were walking, one on either side of her, out of the parlor.
“Maybe they’ll take her back to the cottage now,” Brandon softly mewed. “Quick, back into the fountain grass.”
Not waiting for Ophelia’s reply, he dashed back to the grassy clump. She followed after him, slipping under soft green plumes just as the lights flared on again, illuminating the yard. The front door opened and the three humans came out. But instead of heading for the cottage, they paused alongside the red car with no top.
“Here, let’s get her in,” the Joan woman told the son, leaving him to support Luciana while she opened up the passenger side door.
To the housekeeper, she said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to take you to the emergency clinic. They’ll fix your ankle.”
Between them, they settled Luciana on the seat and closed the door again. The housekeeper made no protest to any of this, her head lolling back against the headrest.
“The brandy must have worked. She looks like she’s sleeping,” Ophelia hissed.
Brandon nodded. “I think they’re taking her to the veterinarian.”
“You mean to the doctor,” Ophelia replied with a snort. “That’s where they take humans, silly.”
Joan, meanwhile, was talking to the son. “Go to the cottage and get her purse. I’ll stay here with her.”
The son muttered something that Ophelia couldn’t hear. As he walked off toward Luciana’s quarters, the Joan female got into the driver’s side of the red car. By the time the son had returned with a small green purse that Ophelia recognized from that day at the Botanica, Joan had made the car’s black top rise up to cover her and Luciana.
“Here,” the son said in a curt tone and dropped the purse through the window into Luciana’s lap.
He walked around to the driver’s side and leaned into the window. What he said to Joan, Ophelia couldn’t hear. A moment later, he straightened and stepped back from the vehicle, then started for the house again.
“I promise you, it’s the right thing to do,” Joan called after him.
The words were loud enough for Ophelia and Brandon to overhear, but the son didn’t turn around. Pretending to ignore her?
By way of response, the car emitted a loud metallic crunch that made the son scrunch his shoulders in apparent pain. Ophelia winced, too. Once, she’d heard the son yell at a deliveryman who made that same sound with his truck. Grinding the gears, he’d called it. But apparently he didn’t care that the Joan female couldn’t drive any better than the deliveryman. Instead, he made his way to the front door and went inside without looking back.
The car crunched again and then lurched forward.
“They’re leaving,” Brandon whispered unnecessarily as the vehicle with the two females rolled down the driveway. It paused at the front entry while the iron-barred gate slowly opened.
Ophelia gave her brother a nudge. “Quick, before the gate closes.”
Together, they raced down the darkened driveway to the entrance. By the time they got there, Joan’s red car already had squealed out onto the street, while the gate had started to close once again. They reached the entry with seconds to spare, bounding out onto the grassy strip alongside the road just as the bars all clanged shut.
“There they go,” Ophelia said.
She waved a paw. It was the same direction they’d be going, too, once they made it back to Luis’s truck. The red lights on the back of Joan’s car glowed in the dark, looking like rodent eyes. But at least Luciana was safe from the son now, and going someplace where the human doctor would fix her hurt leg.
“We’d better hurry,” Brandon replied. “We need to get back to the other house where we left Zuki before Luis leaves, too.”
But it was too late for that. They’d barely made it a block when Ophelia spied the black PAWN truck coming down the road, headed in their direction.
Fifteen
“What do we do?” Ophelia mewed in concern as the truck drew closer. The human hadn’t stayed long at the other house at all, she thought with a worried look at the stars.
Brandon’s whiskers drooped as he swiftly considered the problem.
“I don’t know,” he meowed back. “The truck is going too fast for us to jump inside when it passes by. But with Luciana gone, I don’t think we should stay here alone with the son.”
Then he bristled his tail in excitement as another idea occurred to him.
“Wait, maybe there’s still a chance. See that big bump in the road? Luis will have to drive over it. Maybe when he does, he’ll slow down enough that we’ll have time to jump inside the truck bed.”
Sure enough, just a few feet away Ophelia saw what looked like a big flat concrete log lying in the street. The bump. But she wasn’t sure about the slowing down part. All the way here, the truck had seemed to go as fast as a bird flying. She didn’t remember Luis slowing down for anything.
Trying to keep the doubt out of her voice, she agreed. “All right, let’s do it.”
They kept to the shadows as the truck approached, though Brandon gave a warning yowl to Zuki, riding in the truck bed.
We’re here! We’re going to jump into the truck at the big bump!
While the human wouldn’t have heard the cry, Ophelia knew that the canine’s sensitive ears would surely pick up on Brandon’s caterwaul and would be watching for them. Sure enough, a faint whine drifted to them on the night air.
Be careful!
Brandon snapped his fangs. “Get ready. As soon as the truck reaches the bump, we’ll run out behind it, and when it slows down, we’ll jump in together.”
But the truck wasn’t slowing. In fact, it was moving faster now, its crooked headlights, like a cross-eyed Siamese, bouncing in the darkness. Ophelia could see Zuki’s white muzzle peering around the camper top’s edge.
“Watch ou-u-u-ut!” the canine howled as the truck never paused but took the bump at full speed, all but tumbling Zuki out the back.
Ophelia and Brandon stared after the truck as it sped on down the road, tail lights flaring and splashing Zuki’s blocky white head with a red glare.
“He didn’t stop!” Ophelia yowled. “What do we do??”
A high-pitched canine howl, something that human ears couldn’t hear, drifted back to them. “Wa-a-a-a-it for Ru-u-u-u-by at the ga-a-a-a-ate.”
The two cats exchanged glances; then, like they were being chased again by the street dogs, they bolted down the road in the same direction.
“Zuki’s right,” Brandon gasped out as they ran. “It will be a while before Ruby’s finished at the party. We can wait at the little house with the wooden arm and jump into the back of her bug car while she’s waiting for it to open.”
“But what if she put up the top? How will we get in?”
“We’ll jump on the back and sink our claws into the cloth roof. We’ll hang on just like the surfer humans. It’ll be fun.”
Ophelia gave a yowl of agreement but saved her breath for the remainder of their run. The truck lights had already rounded the turn, leaving them in the dark—which was only half-light to felines. Both were out of breath by the time they reached the guard house some time later. They found a palm tree surrounded by a ring of yellow and green shrubs right behind the shack and collapsed there beneath the concealing leaves.
Once she’d caught her breath again, Ophelia rolled on her back and waved her paws in the air.
“Wake me up when Ruby gets here. I’m going to take a nap,” she said and shut her eyes.
What seemed just a minute later, but according to the stars was a human hour, Brandon was poking her in the side.
“Come on, get ready. I hear Ruby’s bug car coming.”
A cool breeze tugged at Ruby’s fringed red headscarf … one disadvantage of driving with the convertible top down. She brushed the annoying threads away from her eyes and stifled a yawn as her car approached the guardhouse on the way out of the neighborhood.
The evening had been, in her humble estimation, a rousing success. Though she’d been a bit nervous about hobbing with the nobs, the bridal party had proved surprisingly warm and welcoming. Both the hostess—JoJo’s friend, Courtney—and the bride had exclaimed over her vintage sequined ten-yard skirt and coin-trimmed hip scarf she worn in her Tarot reader guise. And rather than simply pointing her to a table and chairs, they’d actually brought in a tiny fortune teller’s tent that looked like something Jeannie the Genie from the old television show would feel at home in.
The guests had seemed equally impressed. From the flower girl (a shy, cornrowed preteen) to the grandmother of the bride (a potty-mouthed octogenarian with spiked silver hair), all the major wedding players had been excited to receive readings regarding their love life. In between imbibing copious amounts of high-dollar champagne (except for the flower girl!), opening risqué gifts, and creating toilet paper bridal gowns, they’d eagerly filed one at a time to her tent.
To Ruby’s relief, no errant messages about cheating or divorce had popped up in anyone’s reading, most particularly the bride-to-be’s. Even better, Courtney had been so pleased with the guests’ enthusiasm that she’d vowed Ruby would be her first choice for entertainment at any future girls’ night out parties.
Clutching the fat envelope filled with cash that Courtney had handed her at the conclusion of her session, Ruby had agreed that she’d be pleased to make an appearance at any of the woman’s upcoming events.
She stopped the Beetle near the gate, next in line behind a dark green Jaguar—the most budget-friendly car she’d seen on the island besides her own VW. Well, except for the battered black pickup that had been in line in front of her when she’d first come through the gate, she reminded herself with a snort. She’d almost expected the guard to turn the driver away as an undesirable. Instead, he’d seemed to be chatting in a familiar manner with the guy, as if he were a frequent visitor. Maybe someone’s hired help, or maybe just an eccentric rich guy who liked to slum when it came to his ride.
Though probably not the latter, she decided now with a grin. She’d been startled while waiting behind the truck to glimpse a white pit bull that looked surprisingly like Zuki peeking from its bed.
Not the sort of dog one found on Palm Beach.
She rather suspected that the rich folks on the island who wanted guard dogs went for Rottweilers or Dobermans. Pitties would probably be too “thug” for them. But when the pickup entered without issue, she’d been relieved. That meant her vintage but spotless Volkswagen convertible would pass muster, too. And so it had.
While she waited for the Jag to move on, she reached for her phone. She’d turned the ringer off during the party, and she’d received a couple of texts during that time. One was from JoJo—a big smile emoji and a thumbs up. The other was an automated reminder from her cell service provider that payment was due in ten days. She also had a call from a number she didn’t recognize, along with a voicemail. Curious, she played the message.
“Ruby … I need … ” the message droned, and then abruptly cut off.
Frowning, she listened to it again. It was a female voice, but not one that she recognized. The call had come about thirty minutes earlier, while she was winding up the readings and settling up with Courtney.
Maybe one of the women from the bridal shower had wanted to schedule another reading and had been too impatient to call the next day? She’d handed out her card to everyone there. Besides, the voice in the recording sounded distinctly out of it, like the person had had a few too many glasses of bubbly.
Funny, but also kind of creepy.
Shaking her head, Ruby set the phone down again. “Call me back when you’re sober, girlfriend.”
The Jag moved ahead as the gate arm opened, and Ruby eased her car even with the guardhouse doorway. She glanced over at its lighted interior and gave an inner grimace. The uniformed guy manning it was the same potbellied, middle-aged comedy school reject who’d taken her information when she’d arrived.
“Hey, it’s the gypsy queen again,” the guard proclaimed with a toothy grin as he checked her off on his clipboard list. “So how did the ‘entertainment’”—he waggled his sandy eyebrows at that last word—“go tonight?”
“It went just fine. And you can see from the lack of frosting on me that I really didn’t jump out of a cake,” she replied, trying not to roll her eyes.
A typo on his list had shown her as entertainment for a bachelor party, and he’d pretended not to believe her explanations to the contrary. It had made for a few annoying moments, but she’d let it slide … mostly because he was the guy with the clipboard. Plus she had a bit of sympathy for him, stuck as he was in that guardhouse. No doubt he had to be deferential when it came to dealing with actual residents, so the poor guy was probably looking for a bit of levity in his work. And since his comments had been more corny than outright sexist, she gave him a pass.
Still grinning, he nodded and hit the button to activate the barrier arm. “Glad it went good for you. You have a good night, now.”
“You too, and … oh!”
“Something wrong, ma’am?”
Ruby glanced behind her, squinting into the darkness and seeing nothing back there but the empty street. She’d felt an almost imperceptible bump, as if someone had nudged the back of her vehicle. But unless the Invisible Man was behind the car kicking tires, she had to have imagined it. That, or her foot had slipped a fraction off the clutch and caused the bug to give a tiny lurch.
“Everything’s good,” she assured the guard, giving him a smile for emphasis. “Have a quiet evening.”
She drove past the upraised barrier arm, taking care to keep to the posted speed limit, since Palm Beach was known for having zero tolerance for speeders. A minute or so later, she had reached the bridge that spanned the Intracoastal, heading back west.
