Double Up Read online

  Quinn stirred. She opened her eyes and yawned. She blinked in delighted surprise when she found her parents. Joy spread across her precious face as she grinned her way into her daddy’s lap. He kissed the top of her head. A dozen times. Then Bex woke to find everyone she loved. She dove into our tight family circle and my world was whole. If I only had a magic wand, I would’ve waved it right then and frozen us in this small safe place.

  “Are you busy today?” I asked.

  “Are you serious?”

  Bradley was covered up all day every day.

  “What about Baylor?”

  “He pulled a double yesterday, Davis. And he has a vault audit this afternoon.” He took a peek at his watch, then at me, over our daughter’s heads.

  “I know,” I said. “You have to go.”

  And so, it would seem, did I.

  Where was my wand?

  Me: Are you busy this morning?

  Her: Why?

  Me: I need to run an important errand. I was hoping you could go with me.

  Her:

  Me: I haven’t seen you in forever.

  Her: I’m sorry, Davis. I can’t.

  Why? Why couldn’t she?

  I made my way to the nursery, where July was in one of the Mayfair gliders with a book on her lap as Bex and Quinn napped in their cribs. I sat in the glider beside her.

  After a long minute, neither of us saying a word, she whispered, “Whatever it is, Davis, you can do it.”

  I swallowed.

  “Do you have to go somewhere?” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  “Do you need me to go with you?”

  After forever, I shook my head no. I needed her here. With the twins.

  “You’ll be fine, Davis. You can do it.”

  Seventeen

  By insurance definitions, FBO meant “for the benefit of.” In aviation terms, it meant fixed-base operator. If you weren’t Delta or Jet Blue, you landed at an FBO, and the Falcons base of operation was the FBO in Gulfport, Million Air. Which I thought was cute. It was twenty minutes from my husband, my babies, and my home, and I hadn’t been there in at least a year. I hadn’t been anywhere. I knew I could do it—I had to—but I couldn’t go alone. I just couldn’t. I didn’t know if my knees would work that far away from my safe space. I needed someone with me in case my knees gave out.

  I knocked on the door of Condo Ten Wednesday morning at ten fifteen, two days before Wheels Up. I’d knocked on her door exactly zero times since the day she showed up at mine. She opened it, looked around me, past me, above and below me, then asked, “What’s up?” To her right, powder room door wide open, I caught a gold corner of the oil portrait of Hyatt Johnson. Don Juan had hung it opposite the mirror. The effect was two huge Hyatt Johnsons in one small powder room.

  “Can you run an errand with me?”

  “You’re going somewhere?” She wasn’t, for once in her life, passing judgment on me.

  “I think so.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll go with you. Let me get my stuff.”

  Bea’s stuff was a giant red Powerade and a giant black bag. You couldn’t pay me to reach in that bag. I wouldn’t put my hand in Bea’s purse to pull out a million-dollar bill. There was no telling what might be growing in it, because it had been hanging off her left shoulder my entire adult life. Plastic holds up.

  We took the service elevator to the first floor, walked through shipping and receiving, then went out open bay doors to find my driver, Crisp, waiting in the vendor parking lot. He said hello like we hadn’t seen each other in forever.

  I guess we hadn’t.

  “Crisp, this is Bea.” We climbed in. “Bea, Crisp.”

  “Howdy doo,” Bea said. Then to me, “We could’ve taken my car.”

  No thanks. Her big green car wasn’t in any better shape than her big black purse.

  “Did you get a third strike?”

  “What, Bea?”

  “Drunk driving,” she said. “Third strike and you’re out?”

  I cleared my throat. “No. I don’t drive because I don’t have a car.”

  “What happened? Your insurance run out?”

  Maybe I should have braved it alone.

  “Right.” She snapped her fingers. “You gave your car to Eddie.”

  I did not give my beloved Volkswagen Bug to her rotten son. Well, I did, but under extreme duress. At the time, my ex-ex-husband was in my face. And the quickest way to get him out of it was to hand over my keys. I’d accidentally wrecked his car. And it was accidentally impounded in another state. So, yes, technically, I gave him my car, but there needed to be another way to put it.

  “You don’t go goober, do you?” Bea asked. “That’s a real good way to get your throat slit.”

  “I don’t Uber, Bea.”

  “Well, don’t get any bright ideas. You’ll be deader than a doornail.”

  We were five miles down I-10 in the fast lane on our way to Million Air at FBO in Gulfport. Ten to go. I glanced at my watch. I’d be back home in no less than forty-five minutes.

  “You know May May Simon?”

  “What, Bea?” It was hard to calculate the time, how long I’d been gone, when I’d be back, with her jabbering.

  “I asked if you know May May Simon?”

  I knew May May. Everyone in Pine Apple knew everyone else, including May May Simon. She somehow managed to bring Phyllis Diller into every conversation. Didn’t matter what the topic was, May May managed to work Phyllis Diller into it.

  “She’s a nut,” Bea said. “One day she parked her station wagon in the middle of Banana Street for no good reason. Just sat there reading her Phyllis Diller book. After a few hours of her blocking the whole road your daddy tapped on the window and told her to move her car. She said she was starting a goober business. As if we need a goober in Pine Apple.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Pine Apple was already full of goobers. “What happened?”

  “She finally fell asleep and Beef Dooley put her in neutral and pushed her out of the road.”

  Ten miles down, five to go. I was fifteen minutes from home; I’d be back in thirty-five if the test went quickly. And I planned on it going lickety-split fast.

  “Cars are so dadgum smart now,” she said. “Mind you, I’m not talking about mine. My car’s a dumbass. New cars are smart. You should get you a smart new car. I see them all over the road.”

  She’d graduated to ten miles a day all over the roads. Rain or shine. She knew the nooks and crannies of Biloxi’s side roads better than I did, and her weight loss, she reported earlier, when she called to tell me that in four hours of Blitz surveillance the day before she hadn’t once seen Robin Sandoval or the gold jacket security guard who’d been with her on Saturday, was thirty pounds. She used the word “superfood.” She told me she could see the benefits of a dairy-free diet.

  “I’ll tell you one I see all the time is that little coop car,” she said. “Cute cute.”

  Mini Cooper, no doubt.

  “’Course, that wouldn’t be near enough room for you, baby chairs and all. Me neither, for that matter. I tell you what I’d like is a truck.” She went on to give me her thoughts on trucks. Big trucks, little trucks. Diesels. Spoilers. Bumpers. Deer racks. Monster tires. Juan drove a truck. And the more she talked about trucks, the more I understood. It was finally dawning on me why Bea was hiding out in Biloxi with me. Because she didn’t have anyone else. Bea was totally and completely alone. Her only child was grown, and she’d run through everyone and everything else, including her husband, and she was talking my ears off because she didn’t have a friend in the world.

  And I’d knocked on her door and asked her to ride with me to the airport because I didn’t either.

  I couldn’t see. Everything was black dots.

 
“Are you getting the car sick, Davis?” She punched Crisp in the shoulder, a right hook from an odd backseat angle, and the poor guy bounced off the driver door. “Pull this thing over. Davis needs a Coca-Cola.”

  Me: Seriously, can we get together? Coffee? Anything?

  Her:

  Crisp got us through security at Million Air with a code punched into a drive-up gate lock. The fence rolled away and he took a right on the tarmac, past the private terminal, then through the massive open doors of the third hangar where four Falcon noses pointed at us.

  “Lands sakes alive,” Bea said. “Good grief gravy.” She craned to see the Falcons through the car’s tinted windows. “Are these moon rockets?”

  It was my first live look at the Falcons too, and I was just as impressed. They were gorgeous, sleek, and looked like all in the world that was powerful.

  The hangar was equally impressive. Massive, easily as large as the main terminal next door at Gulfport-Biloxi International. It was stark white—aluminum walls, metal and steel purlin roof, concrete floors—all snow white, with evenly spaced canopy lights so bright I needed sunglasses. The air in the hangar wasn’t moving, even with doors open wide enough to clear eighty-five feet of wing span, and it smelled sharply of aviation fuel and money.

  Bea’s voice was lost in the cavernous structure. “Are these your airplanes, Davis?”

  “The Bellissimo owns them.”

  Her Nikes squeaked along the floor. “I’ll take two.”

  A man wearing crisp blue khakis and a starched white pilot’s uniform shirt stepped out of an office at the back of the hanger. He made his way to us head down and at a clip. He didn’t look happy. He did look like Captain Denver Sandoval.

  “You know I’ve never been in a airplane.”

  I almost stumbled. “You’ve never flown anywhere, Bea? Ever?”

  “Nope. Never. Nowhere to go. And I don’t eat peanuts anymore, so what’s the point?”

  The point was her life was small and confined. Did she not realize there was a big world out there? And she was missing it?

  My ears rang with a siren only I could hear and the white walls wobbled.

  “Davis?” Bea caught me. “Are you going to fall out?”

  I’m sure she only meant to pat me on the back, not crack my ribs. “You need to start a exercises program.” I could feel my vertebrae realigning. “You need to buck up.”

  At which point, Denver Sandoval bucked up to us, and thankfully, Bea let me live.

  “Fly boy? Do you have any soda crackers?”

  “Excuse me?” His tone was dismissive. His look, condescending. He’d better watch himself or Bea might give him a pat on the back. Meanwhile, I got it together, checked myself for paralysis, took a deep breath, then stepped between them.

  “Davis Cole.”

  We shook. Firmly.

  “I know who you are.”

  “I wrote the Wheels Up game.”

  “And?”

  He was short, both in manner and stature. Compact and muscular, his hair buzzed close to his scalp. His eyes were dark, wide-set, and suspicious. All in all a very surly military package who clearly didn’t appreciate his day being interrupted. Maybe I should have called ahead.

  “I’m here to beta test the game.” I was there so I could be a thousand percent certain the game didn’t short out the minute I started playing it. If my patch didn’t work, I needed to know the easy way on the ground today, rather than the hard way when the planes were in the air on Friday.

  He processed my words slowly, rocking back and forth on his heels, then swept an arm left in the direction of the closest plane. “This way.”

  I followed; Bea didn’t. She was busy taking it all in, her head rolling and lolling around the hangar as if she were tracking a butterfly.

  “Bea.”

  Squeak squeak. “Holt up. I’m coming.”

  When we reached the airsteps of Falcon One, Sandoval said, “A flight attendant is on board should you have any questions. Don’t touch anything in my aircraft with the exception of the entertainment system. I’ll be in my office. Are we clear?”

  Bea tipped her head back. She curled a lip. “You’ve got a burr up your butt.”

  His head slowly swiveled her way. “I beg your pardon?”

  I stepped between them quickly. “Thank you, Captain Sandoval.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Cole.”

  He snarled at Bea, then marched off.

  I looked at her.

  She said, “Well, he does.”

  We climbed aboard, Bea first. She poked her head in the door, left, took a peek at the cockpit, then turned back to me. “It’s like Stars War in here.” She took another peek, right, to the cabin, then turned back to me again.

  “What, Bea?” I waited patiently on the narrow steps, Bea’s rear end in my face.

  “The gold jacket from the Blitzer?” She tried her best to whisper. “The one who followed your girl Robin around? He’s on your airplane.”

  What should have taken two minutes—if the patch hadn’t worked and the game was going to short out, it would’ve happened immediately—took almost an hour. Bea wouldn’t stop playing Wheels Up, whooping, hollering, and laughing at herself (“I crashed again!”), and I was too numb to move. I stared straight ahead without blinking, running every possible scenario I could dream up where one man was both a security guard for Blitz and a flight attendant for the Bellissimo. When I realized I’d been away from home for an hour and Bradley hadn’t called once, no Amber Alerts had been issued, and July had answered my every text immediately—the first twenty or so telling me the girls were fine, the last one telling me they were napping in their cribs—my heartrate dropped to a normal level. For one, the Falcon seats were like beds. For two, I had a lot to think about.

  I hadn’t finished thinking when we left Million Air. We were at the stop sign at the intersection of Hangar and Phantom roads. Crisp had the blinker on to take a right, which would lead us to US 90, the boring shortest-route way we’d come. Instead of asking him to break the sound barrier getting me back to the safety of my home and family, I opened my mouth and these words came out:

  “Crisp, take a left.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

  Bea smacked his headrest. “Sure, she’s sure.” Then to me, “We should let Don Juan drive us in his big truck. This guy’s a back talker.”

  The back talker could hear her.

  “That’s one thing I like about Don Juan.” She took me into her confidence like I was her best girlfriend. “No back talking. ’Course I don’t speak Italyish, so he could be back talking my ears off and I wouldn’t know it.”

  We drove through the city of Gulfport, then east for miles on South Beach Boulevard. We saw Beauvoir, Jefferson Davis’s home, and Sharkheads, Biloxi’s famous souvenir store with its two-story-tall open-mouth shark entrance. The Biloxi Lighthouse. The Katrina tree sculptures. All things I hadn’t seen in a long long time and my girls had never seen.

  “Say,” Bea said. “Are we going to pass the Sonic? I could use a Diet Cherry Limeade. You ever had one, Davis? They’re good.”

  “Crisp,” I said. “Could you find us a Sonic?”

  A beautiful ride home later when we were pulling into the Bellissimo, Bea said, “Maybe Don Juan would like to go somewhere in a airplane with me.”

  In the end, when the whole thing blew up, which looked imminent, at least I’d be able to say I’d helped Bea Crawford.

  The text messages poured in.

  From my father. I heard you got out today, Sweet Pea. Good for you.

  From my sister. WHAAAAAAA? You’re killing me. You don’t leave your house for nine months and when you do it’s with BEA!!!! Please call me. I want to hear every single thing.

  From my mother. The Bastille nose I’ve hat
in formaldehyde.

  From No Hair. Checking in. Proud of you.

  Honestly. It was ridiculous.

  From Bianca Sanders. David. (It’s Davis.) The desert air is wreaking hell on my skin. Research moisturized oxygen infusion into my home. I’m sure I’m inventing it. My nails are so dry, I inadvertently scratched myself when I reached to adjust one of my Harry Winston earrings, the four-carat square cut diamonds, you know the ones, and drew BLOOD. Make this a top priority. Air kisses, Bianca.

  Nothing from Fantasy.

  But out of the clear blue sky, a text from Sadie Matthews, professional escort who’d had her own little corner table at Ivories, the piano bar in the Bellissimo lobby. Sweet girl. Fantasy and I always took the long way escorting the escort out. We’d stop for steaks or drinks, and laughs, before we put Sadie on the road. Sadie, like everyone else, moved to Blitz long ago. I hadn’t heard a word from her since the girls were born and she sent Isabel Garreton taffeta dresses with a row of teeny ivory rosebuds on the Peter Pan collars and the cutest bloomers in the world. Her text said, I knew you’d come around!

  You’d have thought I’d gone to the moon today.

  And who was the big blabbermouth around here?

  I had, however, left my home and family without destroying anything, that I knew of, and returned to find everything and everyone whole.

  Eighteen

  Thursday, the day before Wheels Up, was a blur.

  I had more than a month of my life invested in the game. The Falcons were fueled up and ready, sixteen registered players had their bags packed, eight hundred thousand in Wheels Up registration dollars were already banked and spent with twice that, if not more, coming in the next night on the flights while the game was in play—and one flight attendant threatened it all.