Saffron Nights (15 page)

I
n the bright light of the morning, one was used to waking up and seeing things a bit differently. Maeve opened her eyes and immediately wanted to shut them. The room was filled with light and it hurt her eyes—and a sharp pain ripped through her temple. Hungover?

What the hell happened in this room last night? She and Jackson. . . well, it was like they were on fire. She couldn’t get enough of him. This morning, she was sore and throbbing. How many times had they had sex? She lost count. She’d never had to count before. No man she’d ever known had gone on and on like that. Something wasn’t right. Or maybe it was—and she’d never known it was supposed to be like that. Imagine that.

“Maeve, you awake?”

Next to her. On his elbow. Breathing on her skin.

She opened her eyes again, slowly. “Barely,” she said to him, who was looking right chipper. Damned morning people.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking—”

“C’mon, don’t do that,” she said.

“Ha. Ha. Very funny. But seriously. I think I know what we had last night.”

“Saffron.”

“Well, I think it was cut with saffron. But I’m thinking cocaine.”

“How do you know anything about cocaine? Oh wait . . . do I want to know this? Are you—”

“No! God, no. I don’t take coke, now. I mean. Listen,” he said, sitting up on the edge of the bed, turning away from her. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. A lot I never wanted you to know.”

She touched his shoulder, brought herself up to place her head there. “Jackson, you can tell me anything.”

He hesitated. “My mom is in prison for dealing. My dad was a thug. And let’s just say I knew all about coke by the time I was twelve.”

Her heart split open. Here was the cocky, talented Jackson Dodds, opening his past to her.

“I’m sorry to hear all that,” she said. “But you’ve made yourself into something more. You should be proud.”

He cocked his head, stood up, and walked to the window, completely naked. She was barely awake, but awestruck. How had she never noticed the beauty of him before? She caught her breath at the magnetism of him.

“It must be about noon,” he muttered. “And I’m really pissed I didn’t realize it was coke before we had it. Especially since . . . it was . . . the first time we were actually in bed together.”

“Yeah, it was kind of wild.” She laughed, then, it dawned on her. Did he just say that they’d had cocaine? There was coke in the saffron?

She jumped out of bed and reached for her robe. “Fuck, Jackson!”

He turned to face her, confused by her sudden outburst.

“We’ve been traveling all over the world with coke on us?”

He nodded.

“And we had this illegal, potentially dangerous substance last night?”

He nodded, again.

Her heart was racing, blood rushing. She paced back and forth in front of the bed. Back and forth. “Think. Think. Think.” Waves of panic soared through her.

“I think we have to call the authorities,” Jackson said.

“What? Are you crazy? The authorities in India? Do you know how corrupt this place is? We’d be lucky to get out of here. They could take the drugs and let us go. Or they could throw us in prison. Or worse.”

“Don’t we have immunity . . . um . . . I dunno.”

“No, that’s for diplomats. Not writers and photographers.”

“Maybe somebody at the publisher or the agency can help us figure out what to do.”

“Yeah, but they are halfway around the world. “

A slight rapping on the door. “Lunch?” It was the housemaid.

“Yes,” Maeve answered. “Give us thirty minutes, please.”

“Certainly.”

“Damn, I need a shower,” she said, taking a deep breath, calmer. “I need some fucking coffee. I can’t believe Chef would put us in this position.”

“You. Not me. Why you?”

“Good question,” she said.

He stood in front of her now, and she so naturally wrapped her arms around him, kissed him, as if they had been together for a thousand years. But they hadn’t—there was still so much to learn. To explore. And she was going to enjoy every minute of it. Just as long as they weren’t in prison. Or worse.

The next thing she knew, her new lover was leading her back to the bed.

“Thirty minutes?” he whispered. “Give me ten.”

W
hen they finally entered the dining room, they were surprised to find Sanj there, grinning from ear to ear, as if he knew what went on last night.

“Ah, you survived the storm, I see,” Sanj said. “I should have warned you two about the storms we get here. Thank you,” he turned and said to the woman who brought in a plate heaped with colorful fruit.

“Well, I just hope we can get a flight soon,” Maeve said. “I don’t want to get too far behind.”

“I should think tomorrow or the next day. We’ll see what we can do.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Maeve, you look unusually lovely this morning.”

She smiled. “I feel pretty damn good. Thanks.”

Sanj was right. She glowed this morning. After seeing her so ill and pale when they were on the mountain, it was refreshing to see the pink back in her cheeks. Jackson heard him say something, but he was looking at Maeve. Her eyes looked particularly bright and clear. She looked . . . like a woman who had just had the best sex of her life. He smiled inwardly.

“Jackson? Woo-hoo,” Sanj said, waving his hands in front of him.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Yes.”

Sanj rolled his eyes.

“Are there any more specific shots you need to get?”

“Not specifically. I was labeling and editing in the library last night when the storm hit. No electric.”

“Check this out,” Sanj said, holding a newspaper in his hand. “Isn’t this Chef’s wife? Yvette Delvechio? Busted.”

“For what?”

“Murder. They think she killed Alice . . . do you believe that?” Sanj read over the paper.

“That’s ridiculous,” Maeve said, remembering she’d not heard back from Yvette. “Why would Yvette kill Alice? Yvette?”

“Not only was Alice Majors the literary agent of Delvechio’s husband, but she was also partners with them in Charmed, an international chain of restaurants, mostly attached to Ever International Casinos,”
Sanj read aloud.

“What?” Jackson said. Did his heart just skip a beat? “Isn’t that the name of Snake’s casinos?”

Maeve nodded, wide-eyed, as she was drinking her coffee, taking all of this information in.

“ ‘These murder charges are absolutely pointless. My client was nowhere around when Ms. Majors was murdered. She has a rock-solid alibi.’ ”
Sanj continued to read from the newspaper.
“Investigators refuse to comment as to what evidence brought them to suspect Majors.”

Maeve gasped.

“Murdered? That’s the first we’ve heard that,” she said.

Sanj looked up from the paper. “Are you okay?

“Shocked,” she said, looking at her bread as if it were infested by maggots. Jackson knew she wasn’t going to eat a thing. He was uncertain if he could. His stomach was twisting.

“Look, Sanj, something kind of strange happened last night, and I think we need your advice,” he said.

“With you two?” He grinned.

“Well, besides that,” he said and looked sheepishly at Maeve. “Can we talk in private?”

“Certainly, let’s go into the library,” Sanj said.

After they were situated, Jackson told Sanj the story about finding the yellow powdery substance in the book.

“Can I see it?” he said. “I might be able to tell.”

Jackson went off to his room to get the Baggie.

“So, how do you feel?” Sanj asked Maeve.

“Physically, I feel okay. I feel stronger,” she said. “But I feel like I’m living in a surreal world. One minute, I’m writing about things I could only dream about several years ago, the next minute, I’m scared shitless because someone is shooting at us, or leaving a chicken over the sink in our beach house, or beating up Jackson.”

“But now it kind of all makes sense,” Jackson said as he entered the room, Baggie in hand. “This is what they are after. The question is what is it exactly? And why did Chef have it? Why did he have it hidden in this book?”

“And why did he give it to me?” Maeve said.

Sanj stuck his finger in the back, brought a bit of the substance to his tongue. “Yes,” he said. “There’s the coke tingle. This definitely is coke, saffron, and durian—the ultimate combination, one would think, for a very wild and sexy high. Let me look at it under my microscope. When the effects of the coke wear off, the durian and saffron would kick in, I imagine.”

“And durian? I had no reaction,” Maeve said.

Sanj nodded. “Just a bit, I think. And you may not be allergic to it. There was a lot of it on the mountain and it was in full bloom. You just might be sensitive to it.”

Jackson reached for Maeve’s hand as they followed Sanj to his basement lab.

“I like to keep a lab in my basement. You’ll never know the fun I have there,” he said and smiled.

“I bet,” Jackson said and rolled his eyes. “You always were a barrel of laughs, dude.”

The room was smaller than what Jackson had imagined, but it reminded him of Sanj’s dorm room. They had met while Sanj was in college and Jackson had just flunked out of art school and was apprenticing with travel photographer Ralph Matthews.

“Cool,” Jackson said, taking in the room.

It only took a few moments for Sanj to look at it in the microscope, mix it up with some liquid, and pronounce it “remarkable.”

“What is it?” Maeve said.

“It is the purest saffron and durian I’ve ever seen mixed with some of the purest cocaine I’ve ever seen. It was crafted with precision and care. Pure. Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, and cocaine, well. You know,” he said, dark eyes, larger, lit. “What you have here is worth millions. I mean, millions.”

“O
kay, so what we have here is a cocaine-saffron-durian mix worth millions that Chef hid in his book, somebody knows about, and is after,” Maeve said, her mind finally snapping in place after two cups of coffee. She sat down in a soft chair in the dark lab.

Jackson was glazed, back to his normal ADD self, and staring off into the distance.

“Mexico. Hawaii. Hong Kong. Italy. India,” Maeve said. “I need to get to my computer to see if all of these places have a Charmed or an Ever Casino. Is the Wi-Fi working yet?”

“Not the last I checked, which was about an hour ago,” Sanj said.

She turned to walk away.

“Not so fast,” Sanj said.

She turned toward him. He flipped on a light switch. “Any idea on what we’re going to do with this?”

“Good question,” Jackson said.

“I mean this is in my house,” he said. “I have staff in and out of here and am a little nervous about it.”

“I understand. Can you two come up with something while I go and try to search the Web?”

“No,” Sanj said. “We need to resolve this matter immediately.”

She nodded. “Okay. What’s the problem? Why can’t this wait?”

“I have a very high security clearance from my government,” Sanj said. “I worked hard to get it. I need it. This could really jeopardize things if we get caught with this. Or word gets out. And my government doesn’t take kindly to foreigners with drugs.”

“Let’s just pitch it,” Maeve said after a moment. “I don’t know why we’d need to keep it. If Chef wasn’t dead already, I’d wring his neck myself.”

“I guess we have no choice,” Jackson said. “But it’s a damned shame. We’d be set for life if we sold it. Split it three ways.”

Maeve looked at Sanj for a reaction, none, back to Jackson to scan to see if he was in any way serious. He was deadly serious.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she hissed, looking directly at Jackson. “You’d risk everything for money?”

“Not just money,” Sanj said. “Millions.”

“After everything you’ve been through,” she said to Jackson. “After everything we’ve been through. You’d risk your career, my career, our lives, everything, for money? I don’t care if it is millions. Neither one of you are hurting for money. Greedy bastards. I say flush the fucking stuff down the toilet and let’s be done with it.”

“I don’t know, Maeve, c’mon, think about this—”

“Jackson! There’s nothing to think about,” she said, feeling as if she were going to punch him again. She had been wrong about him. She should have never slept with him—there was nothing else to him but this need for MORE women, money, and prestige. She thought she was too ambitious. But this was absurd, maddening, revealing.
Walk away before you do something foolish.

“I’m walking out of this room,” she said with a quiver in her voice. “You two do whatever you want. I’m out. If you fuck up and get caught, I’ll never speak to either one of you again, and I’ll never work with you again, Jackson.”

“Maeve, wait—” he stood.

“Don’t follow me,” she met his eyes with a fury making him cringe. “I have work to do.”

She slammed the door behind her. The fury and fear shot through her body like a wave. Her legs were shaking from anger and as she walked up the steps to her room, she forced herself to concentrate on each step. Thank God, the housemaid had been there. New sheets on the freshly made bed—the scent of their night of passion completely removed. She wished she could as easily remove it from her memory.

It was like a kick in the gut. Last night, feeling closer to Jackson than ever before, thinking maybe a relationship was forming, finding out she’d ingested cocaine, and now this weirdness from Jackson and Sanj about it. Very strange. She took several deep breaths, calming herself.

The housemaid had left a plate of fruit and biscuits in her room next to her laptop; her appetite kicked in at the scent of the food. She sat at her desk and opened the computer. Aha, the Wi-Fi was back. She typed in Ever Casinos and Charmed Restaurants. It was just as she feared: there was one in Morocco, their next stop.

She sat back in her chair, mulling over the events. She knew restaurants were sometimes the fronts for drug operations; it was the perfect business for it—the long and strange hours, the overworked, underpaid kitchen staffs, and the greedy owners. It wasn’t a business for the meek.

Add in the gambling and booze from a casino and Maeve guessed the potential was ripe for countless seedy activities.

Maeve clicked over to her e-mail, deleted all of the junk e-mails, and noted one from Martin:

Maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn’t Snake at all. If he was that wealthy, why would he care that much about what was in Chef’s book?

An e-mail from Jennifer, one from the editor, and, oh, one from Yvette!

Intriguing.
So, Chef died owing money. Gambling money. And one of the world’s biggest casino owners had been in almost all of the places she and Jackson had traveled. Oh no, Martin was right, they didn’t want Jackson or Maeve. They wanted the book with the drugs in it, which would help pay for Chef’s debt. But questions still lingered. Why did Chef have this mixture? Why was he hiding it in a book? How did these people know? And why did he give it to Maeve?