No Brainer ( The Darcy Walker Series #2) (26 page)

When Kyd left after a couple of hours, I pushed aside the guilt and immersed myself in what we’d discovered. Since the two murder victims in Lincoln’s briefcase were associated with Turkey Cardoza, then that meant they were mob fallout. Both more than likely were for-hire, but the person contracted obviously garnered some sort of pleasure in causing the pain.

As a starting place, we’d searched the names on the backs of the photographs. I typed in Bonnano, Giuseppe, and Carlotto and uncovered an article that said the two largest families in Los Angeles were the Bonnanos and Carlottos. As far as I could tell, Giuseppe was not the name of an organized syndicate. This third family that Paddy referred to—the family Turkey allegedly represented—might have been sending the Bonnanos and Carlottos a message. A message that they were bigger and badder than the both of them. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me, if they’d ordered the hits vis-à-vis Turkey.

Mobsters are a counter culture all unto themselves. Their values and behavior norms aren’t like our own. What they do appreciate, however, is a larger show of strength. Blowing someone to smithereens who meant something to you was a ballsy show of power. Without having names, I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we weren’t dealing with your average member. The two that were dead, more than likely, were high up the food chain or even a Bonnano or Carlotto themselves.

To prove myself right, I conducted an advanced google search on the words “murder, Carlotto, and Bonnano.” As suspected, one man from each family had died in the past year. The newspaper article stated the usual: no leads, no witnesses, just unsolved crimes that were obviously handled within the system of the mob. If my logic was right and Turkey Cardoza committed these murders, Lincoln said there were witnesses that saw him on the scene. The newspaper hadn’t interviewed those witnesses, or there’s a chance the newspaper truly didn’t want the story.

It got murkier and murkier.

With the FBI database at my disposal, I ended by searching on Gertrude Burr and Howie whatever-his-name-was. To my surprise, Gertrude had a file. It wasn’t extensive—containing only a few speeding tickets and a former request to file bankruptcy—but no cross-reference, whatsoever, about previous severed heads in her past. When I searched on Howie and the dead body in her pool, conversely, the strangest thing happened. Another screen popped up where you had to have special clearance within the special clearance.

Talk about a buzzkill.

17. KARMA

A
ND THE CRAZY CONTINUES.

Grandma Alexandra grabbed two handfuls of my hair, looking at it in horror. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

Oh, Jesus, was about right.

Orlando was a real butthead today, and I swear, the birds panted out profanity. Feeling our skin peel away in the heat, Sydney and I’d decided to swim. Like total morons, we swam right after the pool had been shocked—in other words, when it had been doused with a bucket of chemicals that weren’t supposed to kill you. We didn’t think it would matter, but apparently, it was a no-no for blonde hair. My hair was now seaweed green which might be karma kicking my two-faced arse. Kyd was one thing, flirting with the F—
freaking
—BI and lovin’ every minute of it was another. Problem was, my beauty happened to be a work in progress, and I’d nuked any headway Mother Nature had thrown me out of sheer generosity.

“For starters,” Grandma said cheerily, “let’s condition it. I condition mine weekly.”

I couldn’t find a logical reason to object. She went to the pantry, pulled out a bottle of extra, extra virgin olive oil (hellOOO, oxymoron), cracked it open, and massaged it into my hair. Before I knew it, half the Mediterranean was draining down my face.

Alexandra threw off such a dominant aura you found yourself doing whatever she said even if it felt stupid. By no means was she dictatorial; it’s just that she’d learned to survive as a first generation American. She did everything for her parents—even keeping their books before she was a teenager—and I’d always suspected that’s where Colton and Willow inherited their business savvy. Her early childhood experiences left her self-assured, but sometimes people like that think they have the answer to the whole enchilada. I mean, look at me. I felt so cocky about successfully tapping into her husband’s computer that I ignored the pool gods, and my hair now resembled mustard gas.

When finished, she gently turned me toward her and confidently said, “Go outside and sit in the sun. The heat will help.”

When I resumed my post poolside, I punched in Dylan’s speed dial. “How far out are you, D?”

He seemed quiet. No flirting, no “Hi, sweetheart” on pick-up, just a breathing so shallow he might as well have bought the farm. Finally, he breathed a two-worded, “Almost home.”

I’d showered, washed my hair three times, and dressed in my Gators t-shirt along with my favorite pair of cut-off jean shorts. They were too short, the white bottoms of the pockets falling lower than the inseam. In Murphy’s words, “heavy on the hoochie.”

I twirled a strand of hair around a finger, holding it up to my eyes. “The pool turned my hair green.”

Another equally unnerving pause. “You’re blonde, Darc,” he finally sighed.

“Not anymore. It’s some kooky shade of yellow. Kinda like mustard gas.”

At last, a chuckle. “I’m sure it will be fine. So how did you entertain yourself in the four hours or so I was gone?”

I made deals with the devil, and if he asked if that bothered me, he probably wouldn’t like the answer. Thing was, I had success today, and when you had success, it’s easy to overlook your transgressions—a practice that continued to serve my conscience well.

When he murmured a deep “Darcy,” my iron resolve cracked like Humpty Dumpty. Something lined his voice that felt unwavering and nonnegotiable; he was trying to will me into submission. Did he know? My word, my heart started thumping like the feet on a rabbit. Dylan was silent. I was silent right back. I mentally made out a grocery list, picked at my nails, then imagined my hands blistered to the bone doing ten years in a Siberian Labor Camp.

“We’re in the driveway now, Darc,” he said quietly. “We can talk in a bit.”

Five minutes later, the garage door activated. Wrapping a white towel around my head, I trudged into the kitchen, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase walk-of-shame. No Dylan, however. Instead, I found Lincoln, standing with arms crossed over his chest, leaning up against the doorjamb.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph …
he knew
.

“Hey, Lincoln,” I whispered. “Where’s D?”

“Cooling down,” he said, low and deep.

Cooling down
, I thought,
what did that mean
?

Lincoln ignored my request for specifics, sitting down at the kitchen table, unlacing his white sneakers.
Busted
, I thought. Just like that, the air sucked out of the room. “You’re acting odd,” I choked out.

“I’m a cop, Darcy. I can smell trouble a mile away. When Paddy called and said someone was messing with my
FBI clearance
,” he emphasized, “I thought, who do I know that’s sharp enough to crack my password and stupid enough to break into government property?” I grimaced, but didn’t admit to anything. “Exactly,” he grumbled. “This has your fingerprint all over it.”

True, left to my own devices, I did have a tendency to get into trouble. But I still intended to smack Paddy around upon introduction. I raised my chin a fraction. “What proof do you have?” I asked defensively. The one thing I
did
know was you’d better have proof of culpability before you accused anyone of anything.

“He has your transcript,” he said, holding up his index finger, “check stubs, IQ scores, your father’s credit rating, and photographs of you with my grandson,” he finished, holding up all five. “Believe me, he
knows
you.”

I grimaced, “He knows I’ve got bad grades?”

Lincoln removed his shoes, peeling off both socks. He balled them together and pitched them over the couch. “He thinks you’re bored out of your mind on a daily basis.”

“I kinda have attention deficit.”

He narrowed his eyes. “We all do, but my feeling is you only apply yourself on things you get obsessed with. You’re obviously extremely industrious, and his assessment is that you may have deviant tendencies. Plus, we know your father has a lengthy juvenile record in his past.”

He gave me the apple-doesn’t-fall-far-from-the-tree look. I tried my best to not seem like an apple, but I’m pretty sure I looked all red and shiny.

“Murphy’s a good man,” I mumbled.

Lincoln breathed deep, his eyes closing with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t say Murphy wasn’t a good man. I simply said he needed to entertain himself, too.”

Ahhhh, Murphy’s past … he used to gamble his brains out. Impulses like that never truly went away. You merely replaced it with something else. For Murphy, it was now food, fantasy baseball, fantasy football … you get the picture.

Colton thundered through the kitchen door, ready to ram bamboo shoots up my fingernails. Tromping past me, he opened the refrigerator and poured a glass of iced tea, then shoved the pitcher back inside, slamming the door even louder. “I don’t know what to do with you,” he complained, his black eyes narrowing. “You woke up in this mood, Darcy, and don’t think that I don’t know it was you that bamboozled me out of my shoes.”

Sheesh, I almost forgot. Before I went to bed, I literally threw Colton’s new leather golf shoes on the roof of the house. Why? The devil told me to. When he discovered them missing before breakfast, I even scoured the premises like a concerned citizen but admitted to nothing.

I’m going to Hell.

I’m going to rot down there with the
fast
ard that shot Bambi’s mother.

When it was clear I stood on the losing side, I finally fessed up. “What is this, the righteous mob?” No one laughed. “Okay,” I sighed, “clearly you don’t find the humor in this. At least, promise you’re not going to tell Dylan.”

“Dylan already knows,” Lincoln muttered.

Son of a beast … all I needed was TAPS and the 21-gun salute.

One day soon, he’d issue a pink slip on our best friend status—mark my words. No one could take the continual drama that I brought along with me.

Lincoln rattled off how they’d busted me: I’d erroneously called Paddy; I’d repeatedly messed up his password which flagged the bigwigs; and I’d left a paper trail the length of Hawaii by ordering clothing from his laptop via Murphy’s credit card. His partners performed a trace. Ugh, elementary mistakes.

“How’d Dylan take it?” I whispered.

“Dylan hyperventilated on hole eleven,” Colton tag-teamed. “My son sat in the middle of the fairway, head between his legs, in utter disbelief what his favorite
girl
,” he snorted sarcastically, “was doing.”

Oh, God
, I prayed. How much time was I looking at? Ten years? Twenty? Home for the holidays? “Can you grant me clemency or something?” I begged wide-eyed. “Community service? Work release? Promise of good behavior?”

“A trip to the clink is what you need,” Lincoln muttered. I didn’t want to debate my moral depravity, especially when it was so obvious.

“Are you going to tell Murphy?” I mumbled. Oh, boy, that wouldn’t produce anything but pain and suffering for all parties involved. My father had a way of making inanimate objects rue the day they were birthed into the imagination.

Colton narrowed his eyes. “That indicates I can’t control you, and calling your father will not only have you on the next flight home, but it will destroy my son, plus everyone else in the household.” He lowered his eyes, speaking even lower. “You’re going to behave.”

I wanted to vomit. I needed to upchuck all over the floor and be done with it.
They
knew, and
I
knew I’d be victim of my impulses until the day I died.

Lincoln chuckled when he eyed my panic. “Lighten up, dear. No charges are going to be filed, but you owe Paddy an apology. On the bright side, we’ll give you a job when you graduate. You might have a talent for profiling, and under my tutelage, the sky’s the limit.”

A fist slammed on the table … Colton’s.

“Darcy is
not
,” he interrupted, with emphasis, “going to pursue a career in law enforcement, Dad. You’d better count yourself lucky that your grandson didn’t hear that. God only knows what he’s truly capable of.”

Both abruptly stopped to ponder, flinched like they’d been hit in the head by a two-by-four, ending with a mutual shudder.

“What if I’d be good?” I interrupted.

Both were still stuck in the moment a good twenty seconds later. Lincoln looking at the ceiling; Colton into dead air.

“I have to do
something
,” I mumbled.

Colton gave his head a hard shake, scrutinizing my reaction. “Find something else,” he said. “I swear, dear. You and Sydney are going to kill me. I can’t ground you, and I try to ground Sydney, but she merely tolerates the conversation. The boys
never
give us any trouble.” I disagreed. Dylan never gave them any trouble. Zander, however, had been kissing girls since age seven, and I was pretty sure he’d mastered the European portion of the art.

“You’re mad,” I mumbled.

“I wouldn’t be a good father if I wasn’t.”

Colton had never figured out that I hadn’t been born from his DNA. Believe me, it had its perks. Times like these …
notsomuch
.

“They’re on the roof,” I blurted out, trying to smooth things over. “Your shoes are on the roof. You should’ve seen them when you backed out of the driveway. It’s honestly not my fault that your peripheral vision sucks.”

My word, was that what I called a concession speech?? I’d basically called the man an idiot.

Lincoln chuckled but squelched it down by swallowing water. Colton tabled his drink, talking überly slow. “What else … do you need … to confess?”

“Your password is Leo,” I said. Knew it was a mistake as soon as it fell out of my mouth. I actually waved my fingers in the air, trying to symbolically shove the faux pas back in.