The Goddaughter Read online

  This yearning I had for Pete went deep. The visual clues were all there, but it seemed to be triggered by his smell. This sensation was new to me. It was like hunger, only sweeter. The closer I got to him, the closer I wanted to get. I wanted—well, I wanted to follow it through… see where it would lead.

  After the shower, I dressed again in the blue suit and white tank. Not so white, now. This outfit was getting grungy—a shopping trip was in order tomorrow. But on it went, and out I went. Down the hall. Knocked on the door.

  Pete opened it, wearing only a towel.

  “Changed my mind,” I said.

  “We already paid for two rooms.” He raised one eyebrow.

  “I’m good for it.”

  He held the door wide, and I walked right in.

  * * *

  Next morning, reality hit.

  “This place is really a hole.” I was looking straight at the ceiling, trying not to look in the corners.

  “Murrrph?”

  “Darling, the places you take me. And on our first night together.”

  “First morning,” Pete mumbled and reached for me.

  “Oh no!” I gasped. “Not again. You can’t be—”

  “Yup.” He covered my mouth with his own.

  Sometime later, I woke up. I tried to sit up.

  “Ouch!” This was a first. Too much activity for one night.

  I heard a snicker.

  “Easy for you to say! All you have to do is pee from yours. I have to sit on mine.”

  Now he laughed.

  “And walk. I may never walk again,” I mumbled, shuffling over to the edge of the bed.

  “So don’t try,” Pete said, pulling me back.

  * * *

  It was lunchtime. I demanded food.

  “There’s a greasy spoon attached to this joint. Are you feeling brave?”

  I whipped on my blue suit and tank. “Lemme at ’em.”

  Checking out took no time, as it involved throwing the key on the counter of the empty reception desk. And, of course, we had no luggage to pack.

  “Can’t imagine what people will think, us leaving here with no luggage,” I said.

  “They’ll think we’re like every other couple sneaking out of here with no luggage,” quipped Pete. “And they’d be right.”

  I hit him with my purse.

  The greasy spoon lived up to its billing. God, it smelled good. I plunked myself down on the red vinyl bench across from Pete.

  “Hey, look here!” I pointed to the menu. “They have eggs Benedict.”

  Pete frowned. “You’re going to risk hollandaise sauce in a place like this?”

  “Done!” I said, putting the menu down. “And buckets of coffee.”

  The waiter was a skinny high-school kid with bad acne. The coffee was a blend of Colombian and old shoes.

  “Ick.” I pulled a face.

  “I’ll take you to Four-bucks later,” Pete said.

  The food came, and we leaped on it. We cleaned off our plates completely. Okay, maybe they had never been clean exactly, but they were free of major food groups. I leaned back on the plastic bench and sighed with contentment.

  “How were your eggs and bacon?” I asked. I sipped more of the coffee and pulled a face.

  “Better than the coffee,” Pete said. He signaled for the bill.

  I studied his face from across the booth. It was a nice face, I decided. Not movie-star handsome, exactly, but masculine with rugged planes. I could live with this face every morning.

  Pete paid the bill, and we were off.

  “So, first, gas for the car. Then—what exactly?” Pete walked briskly through the parking lot toward the rental car. I hurried along beside him, trying to keep up.

  “Don’t rush me,” I said. “Good plans take time. But I’m thinking we catch a flight back to Toronto. That’s probably the closest airport with a direct flight—ooph!”

  They took us from behind. I saw Pete go down with a thug on his back. Someone with huge arms grabbed me around the waist and lifted me off the ground.

  “Get her shoes!” Joey yelled.

  “Joey, you son of a bitch, put me down!” I shrieked. I could hardly breathe, he was squishing me so hard.

  Another goon—Bertoni—pulled at the shoes on my feet. I kicked him in the face. He yelped. “Bitch!”

  I kicked him again.

  “Stop squeezing me!” I yelled. I did not feel good.

  Joey hollered, “Got ’em! Let’s get out of here.”

  He dropped me, and I went splat on the pavement. Pete was just getting to his feet. Our assailants were already over to their van. They piled inside and pulled away.

  “Are you okay?” Pete asked. He sounded concerned.

  “I don’t feel so well,” I said. Then I lost the hollandaise.

  * * *

  It’s a good man who will take care of you when you’re throwing up. Pete was a good man. He held me so I didn’t fall over, and then he found something to wipe my face.

  “Well, that was a waste of seven bucks,” he said.

  I was more worried about being shoeless.

  We found flip-flops in a dollar store around the corner. Luckily, they had a pair in my size. Pete didn’t like the look of them much.

  “How can you stand wearing those things?” he said while we were going through security at the airport.

  “You should try wearing thong underwear,” I replied.

  The flight back to Toronto was uneventful, which was a real treat for a change. As we were landing, Pete said, “Phoenix is nice. I’d like to see more of it. We should go back there sometime.”

  I nodded and smiled. That we had a good ring to it. This was encouraging. It signaled he wasn’t planning to disappear as soon as we got off the plane. Which was a good thing, because we still had something left to do.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It was a nice dream. We were at David’s Shoes in posh Oakville, and Pete was buying me a pair of Manolos…

  The phone rang. It wasn’t the phone at David’s Shoes. It was the phone in my condo. I picked it up and muttered “Hello.”

  “They want the body.”

  “What?” I cradled the phone to my chin.

  “The body. They want it.” Was that Sammy’s voice, or was I still dreaming?

  “What body?” I said. Still not awake. What time was it? I looked at the clock. 4:30 AM. I looked to the other side of the bed. I wasn’t alone.

  “Tony’s. The body that’s in the morgue. The guys in New York. They want it. We hafta get it to them. Vinnie wants it done now, before the morgue creeps dissect it. Angelo says it’s on the schedule for this morning.”

  “Who is it?” Pete muttered. He lay on his back. His eyes weren’t open yet.

  “Sammy,” I whispered.

  “Gina, are you there?”

  “I’m here,” I said. “So they want the body. They can have it.” I didn’t want it.

  A pause.

  “Aren’t there rules about things like that? Taking bodies across the border?” I asked.

  “Not if nobody knows about it.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what this has to do with me.”

  “Vinnie said to call you on account of he has a high opinion of your brains.”

  So they needed a plan.

  “Sammy, I’m a jeweler, not a criminal mastermind. Why do we have to do this under the table?”

  “’Cause they want it now, not after the morgue creepies do their pulling-apart thing. They want the body intact. For burial.”

  I sighed. “And why do we care?”

  “You wanna start a war?”

  “I don’t want to start anything! But why me? I didn’t have anything to do with the shooting.”

  “They don’t know that. You took ’im to the place, and he got nailed. Maybe they think we set it up.”

  I was out of the bed and pacing now. “That’s nuts! I thought they got him plugged by his own people because he was out of c
ontrol, or something.”

  “So did I. They’re not sayin’. An’ Vince don’t wanna take the chance at starting bad relations, you know? So we’re doin’ this little favor for them. You gotta be involved so it’s looks like we’re doing this in good faith.”

  I counted to seven. I could refuse. Couldn’t I? But then they would do the whole comedy routine over again. I could see it all. Sammy phoning. Then Vince phoning. Then Paulo, Luca…Angelo at the door with more coffee. Then Aunt Miriam. Brrrr…I shivered at Aunt Miriam. Did I want to deal with a corpse or Aunt Miriam?

  Sometimes decisions come easy. I said, “Okay, where are we meeting?”

  He told me, and I hung up.

  Pete rolled over. “What was that all about?”

  “Nothing. I just have to go steal a body.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  First I had to peel Pete off the ceiling.

  Then I made him coffee.

  “Simple, really,” I lied. “We get the body from the morgue and then we take it to Buffalo.”

  “What—on a shopping trip?”

  This was going to take more explaining than I thought. Which was a problem.

  “So I haven’t worked out the details yet. But how much trouble can it be to smuggle one body over the border? I mean, really. People smuggle things all the time. Cigarettes…illegal handguns. We smuggled a house-worth of jewels just the other day.”

  “And look where that got us!” Pete sounded a tad upset.

  “You might say it got us into bed.”

  Pete didn’t seem to see the humor.

  I put my coffee cup down on the kitchen table. “It’s okay, really. I’ve got a plan.”

  He stared at me and started shaking his head. “Oh no. Not another one of your ‘plans.’”

  “No, really! It’s a very cunning plan.” And it was.

  I picked up the phone and punched numbers.

  “Sammy, did Tony have his passport on him?”

  Once I had the info, I spilled the details to Pete.

  When I was done, he shook his head. “I must be nuts.”

  “It’ll work!” I insisted. “We just have to act fast.”

  We were at the hospital by 5:00 am. Hospitals never sleep, but morgues do. So do their occupants. Angelo was there to meet us, and he hustled us in.

  “I got him good and cold,” Angelo said. He swung open the compartment door and showed us the body.

  “Thank God you dressed it! Angelo, you’re a prince.” A frozen wiener was the last thing I wanted to see. Especially a dead one.

  “Here’s a gurney,” Angelo said. “I figure, we put him on the gurney, and then I help you get him to the car.”

  Pete looked skeptical. “Not that I want to throw water on this very clever plan, but what if he melts?”

  “You drive like a bat out of hell to the border, and we got people waiting just over the bridge. One hour, tops. Use your air conditioning. He’ll hold till then.”

  I certainly hoped so.

  We got him to my car. Pete and Angelo worked to get the package formerly known as Tony into the backseat.

  “Just lay him down on those pillows back there. And cover him with the blanket.”

  “He’s frozen, Gina! His knees won’t bend well,” Pete said.

  “We’ll have to prop up his torso on the far side of the car to get his legs to fit in over here. Pile the pillows under him, and maybe when he melts a bit, he’ll lean over onto them.” Angelo was trying to be helpful.

  They struggled to fit the “package” in the back. I started to have doubts about this plan.

  But they managed it. Pete stood back and peered down at the body.

  “Looks a bit gray,” he said.

  “He looks ghastly,” I countered, “but then he would, after an all-night bachelor party at the Polecat Strip Club in Niagara Falls.”

  Pete groaned. “And who am I in all this deception?”

  “You’re my boyfriend.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m his cousin.”

  “I thought you really were his cousin.”

  “I am. Well, I almost am,” I said, thinking back to our whole cousin-in-law-through-marriage conversation. “That’s why this plan is so good.”

  It wasn’t really, but you have to celebrate the small things.

  “I gotta be getting back to the morgue. Good luck,” said Angelo. He practically ran back to the building.

  “Okay, let’s move it,” I said to Pete.

  “Why am I driving your car, again?” Pete started her up and shifted into drive.

  “Because your car only has two seats.”

  Pete glanced over. “I meant, why aren’t you driving?”

  “Ah!” I said. “Well, that’s the clever part of the plan.” And I told him what I had in mind.

  Pete sighed. “Tell me again why I’m doing this.”

  “Because you’re crazy about me, and because the sex is amazing.”

  Now he laughed. “Maybe I’m just crazy. But I’m glad you think it’s amazing.”

  Pete seemed pretty comfortable driving my car. We whipped through the streets of Steeltown and headed straight for the freeway. Next stop, Buffalo.

  It would have been a good plan. I’m pretty sure it would have worked.

  We almost got to Niagara Falls before the car broke down.

  “Son of a bitch!” yelled Pete, pulling off to the shoulder.

  Smoke billowed from under the hood.

  I reached for my cell phone.

  “Sammy, we got a problem.” I explained the situation.

  “Um, Gina? I think we should probably get out of the car.”

  I looked up. Flames were coming out of the hood now.

  “Holy crap!” I pushed open the door and pitched myself out. “Yikes!”

  The shoulder gave way to a steep ditch. I rolled into a mass of bulrushes.

  Pete whacked the top of the hood with his jacket, trying to put out flames.

  I crawled up the side of the bank on my hands and knees. Pete was still yelling and cursing. The flames shot three feet in the air.

  “Well, at least they’ll be able to find us easily,” I said. This day was not going according to plan.

  I found my cell phone at the side of the road. Sammy was still yelling out of it. I sat down and reassured him that we would live.

  “But we have another problem,” I said. “The package is melting.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When the ice-cream truck pulled up, I wasn’t surprised to see Sammy get out. Another car pulled up behind it. A nice new red one with spiffy wheels and no flames shooting out from under the hood. My cousin Luca got out of it.

  “Nice save,” said Pete, admiring the freezer compartment of the truck.

  I made introductions. “Sammy, Pete. Pete, Sammy.”

  Sammy moved forward to shake hands.

  “Sorry we got you into this,” Sammy said. Darn, I was proud of him. It was a nice sentiment. It might mean they weren’t going to kill him.

  Pete nodded. “Gina kinda dragged me into it.”

  “She can drag with the best of them.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And this is my cousin Luca,” I said.

  Luca was not tall, but he was built like a boxer, light on his feet and heavy with muscle. He was wearing all black, as usual. His long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail.

  Not surprisingly, he managed a gym.

  Luca glared at Pete. Didn’t hold out his hand.

  Pete took his cue from Luca’s folded arms. He bobbed his head. “Howdy.”

  Luca nodded, then turned to me. “This the guy with the newspaper?”

  “It’s okay. He’s been warned.”

  “Warn him again.”

  “No need,” said Pete. “I’m sports beat, not crime. And I’m not stupid.”

  Luca looked Pete up and down, like a breeder looking over a stud horse. Then he stood back and nodded.

  “You played for t
he Vikings. Quarterback. I saw the game they carried you off the field.”

  Pete nodded. He was clearly chuffed.

  I was also impressed. Had someone been doing their homework? Or was Pete a more famous guy in the sports world than I had ever realized?

  “Your first year in the pros.”

  Pete shrugged. “Wrecked my knee. That game finished my career.”

  Sammy nodded. “Gotta be tough to be a quarterback. Nerves of steel. They come at you from all directions.”

  Pete said nothing.

  “You box?” Luca asked.

  “Used to. College,” Pete said. Well, there was another thing I didn’t know.

  Luca squinted. “Two twenty?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  Luca turned to me then.

  “Bring him down to the club sometime, Gina. We’ll fit him up.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “But in the meantime, can you do something about this popsicle melting back here?”

  “I got this, Gina,” said Sammy. “You drive Luca’s car back to Hamilton. We’ll take it from here.”

  Relief ! I felt relief. “Umm…what are you going to do?”

  Sammy looked at me quizzically. “You really want to know?”

  “No!” I yelped, hitting my forehead with a palm. “Nope. Don’t tell me. I’m outta here. Say hi to Aunt Miriam.”

  “See you at dinner tomorrow. Bring the boyfriend.”

  “Sure,” I tossed back. To Pete, I whispered, “Get in the car. And don’t look back.”

  Pete jumped into the car. It was a sporty Japanese thing. The keys were in the ignition. He revved her up and booted it.

  “Sure glad that’s over.” He sighed. “I’ll turn around at the next exit.”

  “Umm…nope. Can’t do that. We still have to go to Buffalo.”

  “What?”

  My turn to suck in air. “It’s about the stones.”

  Pete glared at me. “What about the stones?”

  “Well…you may have been wondering what became of them.”

  Silence.

  “I thought Joey got them when those goons attacked us in Phoenix. Weren’t they in your shoes?”