Double Dog Dare Read online

  Davis, it’s Pastor Gully. Meredith is with me, and for the time being, she’s safe. We’re on our way to Guadalajara, Mexico.

  What? Meredith was safe? Why in the world wouldn’t she be? She was with a preacher. Gilford Gully was the pastor at Pine Apple Baptist Church, had been all my life. He’d baptized me when I was ten. He dressed up as Noah every year for Vacation Bible School. Why did Gully have Meredith’s phone? And what did he say about Guadalajara? All I knew of Guadalajara was organized crime, drug trafficking, and don’t drink the water. Meredith was with the preacher and his wife, yes. She left Pine Apple with the Gullys the day before in their new-used motorhome for a stop at Orange Beach, two hours away in Alabama, on her way here. Not Mexico. Meredith didn’t even have a passport.

  We didn’t go to the beach and I’m not dropping Meredith off in Biloxi. We’re on our way to Guadalajara and we’re staying in Guadalajara until you wire me $1,000,000. That’s a million dollars, Davis.

  I didn’t put the phone down so much as I threw it down.

  “What?” Vree asked. “What? I mean, what? Is something wrong with Bubblegum? What’s wrong?”

  I leaned over the phone lying on the table, one hand clasped over my mouth, the other over my heart, and read the rest.

  I’m giving you five days. You have until Friday morning to figure out how to get a million dollars out of that den of iniquity you live in or I will leave Meredith and Vreeland Howard’s dog on the street corner in downtown Guadalajara. I’ve prayed without ceasing over this, Davis, and I am confident this is the Lord’s will. Heed his message: I was put on this earth to show men the way, the truth, and the light. If word of this were to get out, my work for the Almighty would be finished. To ensure you and Sister Loose Lips don’t destroy my holy mission, I am sending a disciple to be my eyes, ears, and courier. If you or Vreeland Howard speak one word to one person, I will know, and I will leave your sister in the middle of Mexico with nothing but the clothes on her back. The dog too. You’re a child of God, Davis. Do his will. Do it swiftly, stealthily, and in secret, so that you may soon be reunited with your loved one. God be with you.

  I pushed the phone to Vree.

  She read the email, then the phone dropped out of her hands.

  She didn’t say a word.

  I hadn’t begun to process what I’d just read and Vree was in a mute paralytic trance when my phone rang. It was Security. Calling to say I had another visitor on the way up. I don’t remember running to the front door. I do remember almost tearing it off the hinges, praying it would be my sister, but there stood Aunt Bootsy.

  The witch.

  TWO

  “I don’t have a million dollars, Bootsy. I can’t believe Gully is stupid enough to think I do. Who has a million dollars lying around? What does Gully need with a million dollars anyway? An even better question, Bootsy, is what does his needing a million dollars have to do with my sister? What’s she done to him? What have I done to him?”

  “My dog!” Vree wailed. “What has my dog ever done to him?”

  Bootsy Howard had marched in my front door, dropped an ancient tapestry bag on the travertine floor of my foyer, and said, “Where’s Vreeland? I’m only saying this once.” A sorrowful howl floated in from the terrace. Bootsy’s head jerked. “There she is.” She followed the cries to the terrace, me on her heels, where she kicked the chair Vree was slumped over in, told her to stop blubbering, then helped herself to a heaping plate of cold breakfast before she sat down in the chair my husband had occupied not ten minutes earlier. Mouth full, she said, “Have a seat, Davis.”

  I didn’t want to have a seat so much as I wanted to have a fit. But sit down I did, because my legs wouldn’t hold me up another second.

  “Bootsy. Where is my sister?”

  “Pass the potatoes.”

  Vree was still bent over double, sobbing into her knees.

  “Vreeland!” Vree’s head jerked up. Her face was a mascara mess. “Pass the potatoes.”

  I hijacked the hash browns, guarding them with my life, and said, “Bootsy! Where is my sister?”

  “Where’s my dog?”

  Bootsy Howard, mid-fifties, never married, mean as a rattlesnake, had a long face atop a long scraggy neck atop a long lanky body. She’d been buttoned up in dark clothes from her chin to her ankles since birth, mine, anyway, even in the dead of summer, so the only exposed skin on her body was her face and hands, and they were ravaged, either by the sun, meanness, or standing over a boiling cauldron. She dropped the croissant she’d been buttering, pushed her plate away, and clasped her hands on the terrace table. Her fingernails were long, Cabernet red, and filed to points. She cleared her throat, and the two cardinals who nested in the cherry tree bolted.

  “You know where Meredith is, Davis.” She turned to Vree. “And you know where your silly dog is. You’ve read the message from Pastor Gully, I know you have, so you know where they are, and that being said, you know why I’m here.”

  A gust of wind blew a white linen napkin off the table.

  “They’re in Mexico,” she said. “And they’ll be in Mexico until you come up with the money.”

  That was when I told her I didn’t have a million dollars.

  “This is federal, Bootsy,” I said. “Aggravated kidnapping and extortion. You’re aiding and abetting. You’re going to prison for the rest of your life. Get yourself out of this mess while there’s still time. Call Gully.” I pushed my phone past the potatoes. “Tell him to turn the camper around and bring Meredith back this minute.”

  “And my dog!”

  Bootsy looked me in the eye. She had black dot lasers for pupils. “Go to the casino and get the money, Davis. Bring it to me. The minute you do, I’ll make the call and your sister will be on her way.”

  “Why?” Vree sobbed. “Why?”

  “Why isn’t your concern, Vreeland. The only thing you need to concern yourself with is keeping your mouth shut and helping Davis get the money.” Bootsy forked her fingers and toggled them at us. “You tell no one. Either of you. And that includes your husband, Davis.” She tapped her hollowed temple. “I’ll know. You say a word about this and I’ll know.” Bootsy pushed back from the table and stood. She stepped behind me and used the back of one of her veiny hands to smack Vree. “Get up, Vreeland. Show me to my room.”

  I shot out of my chair and wedged between them. “You’re not staying in my home, Bootsy. You weren’t invited, you’re not welcome, and you’re not staying.”

  Bootsy rolled her eyes. “You don’t understand, do you, Davis?”

  She was right; I didn’t understand. Twenty minutes earlier, my daughters had been at the same table eating strawberry pancakes. An hour earlier, I’d woken up and remembered my sister was coming—my funny, sweet, smart, loyal, beautiful sister. A day earlier, I’d been fluffing pillows on the guest beds, getting ready for my guests, and Bootsy Howard’s name hadn’t been on the list. So, no. I didn’t understand.

  “I’m here for the money.” Bootsy paused to use a long pointy pinkie fingernail for a toothpick. “And to keep an eye on you two until I get it. Make no mistake, this isn’t a test. Gully’s dead serious and so am I. Get the money, give it to me, or good luck getting your sister back in one piece.”

  Vree wailed, “My dog!”

  I fell back into my chair.

  “No money?” Bootsy popped Vree’s arm again. “No dog.”

  Vree gasped for air.

  Bootsy said, “I’ll find my own room.” And left.

  In her wake, my phone rang. Maybe it would be a dose of reality on the other end. Someone calling to tell me it was a hoax, April Fool’s. Maybe it would be Meredith, and by tonight we’d be on the road to putting this nightmare behind us. The caller ID said it was Bradley, which hit me like another, the tenth, bucket of ice water dumped over my head in as many minutes. For the first time in for
ever, maybe since I met my husband more than five years ago, I didn’t want to talk to him, because I didn’t know what to say. Nothing? Everything? Something in the middle? I hadn’t begun to process the onslaught of the incoming, so I wasn’t in any position to manage anything outgoing, like conversation. I rescued my arm from Vree, who was trying to pull it off, and the babble coming out of her was incoherent. I caught every thirtieth word. Those were “Bubbles,” “Clint Eastwood,” and “Mexico.”

  “Bradley?”

  “Hey, you.”

  He sounded fine. I could hear one of the girls, Quinn, I think, giggling. Nothing wrong. Everything right on his end. When it most certainly wasn’t on mine.

  “I didn’t know Vree’s mother-in-law was coming.”

  “What?” I was up and circling the terrace table. “Vree’s what? Who?”

  “Vree’s aunt, mother-in-law, husband’s aunt. I’m not sure. Tall? Older lady? Looks like my middle-school assistant principal? She was waiting on the lobby level when the girls and I stepped out of the elevator. She had two of those carnival suckers, the huge rainbow lollipops, for the girls.”

  “You didn’t let them have them, did you?”

  “I didn’t unwrap them.”

  Good.

  “I had Security send her up. Did she make it?”

  “She made it.”

  “Is she staying with us too?” he asked.

  I scratched my head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If any more of Pine Apple shows up, we’ll put them in hotel rooms. Bex! Davis, hold on.”

  I stopped lapping the table to stare out at the Gulf, in the direction of Mexico, looking for my sister.

  “She jumped on a luggage cart and was on her way to the tenth floor with a bellman.”

  I’d forgotten I was holding the phone with my husband on the other end. “Who?”

  “Your daughter,” he said. “Bexley.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Did you need me, Bradley?”

  He didn’t answer right away, probably because he wasn’t used to me rushing him off the phone. “Is she driving you crazy?” he asked. Then, “Quinn! Get back here!”

  “Who?”

  “Meredith’s friend. The talker. Is she driving you crazy?”

  Speaking of, where was Vree? Her chair was empty. She could have slipped into the house and have her hands throttled around Bootsy’s throat by now, which wouldn’t help my sister a bit. I scanned the terrace and found her on the other side of the cherry tree, sobbing over the balustrade.

  “Are you there, Davis?”

  “Here.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Sorry. Just busy.”

  “The girls and I are on our way to the convention center, where the show dogs are checking in. I have a feeling we may be there a while.”

  No doubt. Bex and Quinn loved dogs.

  And ladybugs.

  And witches with carnival suckers.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind if I skip the…girl talk?”

  “No. Not a bit.”

  “About that,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “The girl talk.”

  I was having so much trouble keeping up.

  “I have good news,” he said. “One of the judges cancelled.”

  “What? Who?”

  I could hear my scattered self, and if I didn’t calm down, just a little, I might as well blurt it out. Which I fully intended to do, the minute I figured it out.

  “A dog-show judge, Davis. A woman from Atlanta, a judge in the dog show, isn’t going to make it. A dental emergency. Something.”

  “And?”

  “It’s good news,” he said.

  I could use some good news, but couldn’t figure out how that was.

  “They want Bianca to fill in.”

  I dropped into Vree’s vacated chair. Bianca Sanders, the Bellissimo owner’s wife, who lived above us in the penthouse, wouldn’t be caught dead judging a dog show. We looked alarmingly alike, Bianca and me, and as such, I was her celebrity double. I had been for years. The news my husband was delivering was that I would be filling in for the missing dog judge. If they asked for Bianca, they would get me. “How is that good news, Bradley?”

  “You won’t have to entertain Motormouth and the aunt-in-law. You’ll be at the dog show.”

  How was I supposed to get my hands on a million dollars, get my sister back, take care of my daughters with him out of town, manage Vreeland and Bootsy Howard, and judge a dog show at the same time?

  I looked up to see Vree with one leg on this side of the terrace wall and one leg on the other. “Bradley, I have to go.” I hung up. Then pulled Vree off the ledge.

  We sat on the cool marble ground, our backs against the stone balustrade, and panted.

  “There’s nowhere to go, Vree.”

  “I figured that out.”

  Parents of toddlers who live twenty-nine stories in the air don’t take chances. Thanks to three levels of Plexiglass balcony shields, there was no jumping, falling, tripping, or otherwise exiting our home except by elevator, emergency stairwell, or helicopter from the roof.

  Vree was slumped beside me, her face buried in her hands. “What are we going to do, Davis?”

  “First, we’re going to find out if it’s true.”

  “How?”

  I found my phone. “My father will know.”

  “But we can’t tell!”

  “Vree, Daddy will tell me what he knows without me telling him what I know.”

  Doe-eyed, she said, “That’s so smart.”

  But when my father, the chief of police and mayor of Pine Apple, did learn two of his residents, under his jurisdiction, were holding his youngest daughter hostage and demanding a ridiculous amount of ransom from his oldest, if he didn’t shoot them on sight, he’d throw them under the Pine Apple jail until they could be carted off to Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery. What in the world were Gully and Bootsy thinking? Had they lost their minds?

  I speed dialed; he answered on the first ring. “Daddy.”

  “Sweet Pea.”

  I was almost-mid-thirties, married with children, and my father still called me Sweet Pea. He’d probably call me Sweet Pea when I was sixty. Or a hundred and sixty, like Bootsy, who must have been spying on me, because she suddenly appeared. The terrace doors blew open and Bootsy blew through them. She towered over us, her long shadow blocking the sun, with her feet planted wide and her hands balled into fists on her hips. Vree scooted closer to me, out of defiance, solidarity, or terror.

  “Hold on a second, Daddy.” I tucked the speaker end of the phone under my leg.

  Bootsy growled a low-pitched warning. “Don’t you say a word to him, Davis.”

  “Bootsy.” I lowered my volume to a loud whisper. “Let’s get one thing straight. Whatever it is Gully has dragged you into, and whatever you think your role is here, you don’t own me, and I don’t follow your rules. This is my home, my father, and my phone.” I glared at her, picked up my phone, and said, “Daddy.”

  “Can you believe your sister?”

  “Daddy, is Riley with you?”

  “Yes.” He said it in an of-course-she-is way. “She’s been here for two days. She’ll be here all week. You knew that.”

  I didn’t know a thing at that moment, except Riley, my ten-year-old niece and Meredith’s only child, was where she was supposed to be. Safe in Pine Apple with my parents, and that Daddy sounded fine. “What did you say about Meredith?” I asked. “Can I believe what about my sister?”

  There was a pause, just a beat, before he answered. “You don’t sound good, Davis.”

  Bootsy’s witchy eyes bore down on me.

  “Bex and Quinn,” I lied. To my own father. “No sleep
last night.”

  He said sweet somethings about his granddaughters, then asked what I thought about Meredith’s sudden change of plans.

  I tried to keep my voice steady. “I don’t know what to think, Daddy. What do you think?”

  “Well, for one,” he said, “I can’t imagine that Vreeland Howard isn’t upset with her. For another, your mother and I think it’s odd that Meredith would want to spend the week with Gilford and Gina.”

  My heart sank. “Did she say why?”

  “Something about Americana, the open road, landscapes, sunrises and sunsets.”

  Which was preposterous. Meredith didn’t have an ounce of wanderlust. If she did, she wouldn’t still live in Pine Apple. And she was the worst person in the world to be stuck in a vehicle with because she didn’t sit well. Vree didn’t have a quiet button; Meredith didn’t have an idle button. “When did you talk to her, Daddy?”

  “Last night. She called from Gilford’s phone, because she’d misplaced hers. She said she’d changed her mind about spending the week in Biloxi, and wanted to stay on the road with the Gullys. Have she and Vreeland had a falling out?”

  On the other end of the phone, Daddy waited for my response in comfortable silence. It was anything but comfortable on my end with Bootsy lurking over me, tapping a witch boot, ready to snatch the phone out of my hand.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Don’t be mad at your sister, Davis.”

  “I’m not, Daddy.”

  “Let her have her fun. She’s done little in her life on a whim.”

  “She deserves a whim.”

  “And get some earplugs.”

  Head bent, so Bootsy wouldn’t have the satisfaction, I blinked back tears. It was all so very real, this confirmation from my father: If Daddy said Meredith wasn’t coming, Meredith really wasn’t coming. And that meant Gully really did have her, and Bootsy really did expect me to come up with a million dollars to get her back. “Earplugs?” My voice cracked.