“You’re awfully quiet. I thought wardens were all tough and blustery,” said Sidney, before looking away. He regretted the statement. It wasn’t polite to mock the man.
“I can’t do this,” he mumbled.
Sydney pulled a second phone from his case and dialed. He murmured into the phone and almost simultaneously, a man in black clothing, a balaclava covering his face, appeared on the screen, standing behind the girl.
“No!” said Billet too loudly.
His personal assistant knocked on the door. “Warden? Are you alright?”
Billet looked at Sidney, who arched a single eyebrow. “Are you? Will she be?”
“Everything’s fine, Tracy,” called Billet.
Sidney sniffed. “Just to review, it’s all very easy. You call Jamie to a private room. The women swap. No one is the wiser. In a few days...” Sidney paused to make air quotes around his next two words, “‘Jamie Moriarty’ falls ill, receives care, but ultimately dies of cancer. You get to watch your daughter grow up.”
Billet looked at the screen again. The man in black placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
“Fine. Fine.” He set his jaw. “But don’t think I can’t find you, you son of a bitch.”
Sidney nodded to the phone. “Don’t think we can’t find her.”
He stood and smoothed his suit.
“Next time, we’ll skip the ice cream.”
Chapter Five
“If you have to go to the bathroom, take it outside,” said Bob, popping a Ritz cracker slathered in canned cheese into his mouth.
Charlotte stopped. She’d just walked through Mariska’s door and people were telling her she couldn’t use the toilet. She wasn’t aware she had a reputation requiring that sort of panic.
“Ignore him. Of course you can use the toilet.” Mariska bumped Charlotte out of the way to snatch the can of cheese from Bob’s hand, her voice dropping into an angry scold. “You’ve eaten half our snacks already. I told you to take it easy. I don’t know when you’ll be able to have canned cheese again.”
Charlotte sniggered. “That would be a shame. What’s going on? I’m not seeing the connection between bathroom breaks and spray cheese. I must not be half the detective I think I am.”
Bob twisted in his chair to better see her. “I’ve got a mystery for you. Where’s all the toilet paper?”
“What?”
Mariska’s expression fell grim as an executioner’s. “That stupid storm took one tiny stumble in our direction and the whole world lost their minds. Especially those snowbirds. You should have seen Publix. It looked like a bomb hit it.”
“The hurricane? They’re panic-buying already?”
“Yes. You’d think Godzilla is coming.”
Charlotte laughed. “This is Florida. Godzilla is always a possibility.”
“I know. It’s true,” said Mariska, sounding very serious. She often agreed to things she didn’t actually hear, often in an empathic tone, so friends never realized she hadn’t registered their comment. Having grown up with Mariska serving as her adoptive mother, Charlotte had spotted the pattern early and had fun with it over the years. Agreeing Godzilla might appear on the horizon wasn’t unusual. In the past, she’d commiserated with Mariska over the existence of the Death Star and an increase in jackalope attacks in the area.
Mariska continued with the thought Charlotte suspected had actually been on her mind. “Darla and I had to run around like lunatics to get potatoes.”
Charlotte thought about what might be missing from her refrigerator. “What about almond milk?”
“How do you milk an almond?” asked Bob. He never tired of that joke.
“They probably have that,” murmured Mariska. She didn’t trust milk from a nut.
“So that explains your bathroom comment. All the toilet paper’s gone.”
Mariska sighed. “Always the first to go.”
“No pun intended,” said Bob, clearly pleased with himself.
He tried to slide the spray cheese can out of Mariska’s hand, but she noticed and jerked it away. “No more today, piggy.” Storming back to her kitchen, she pulled six cans of baked beans from her shopping bag.
“Are you going to eat those or are you building a tin can shield around the house?” asked Charlotte.
“They were on sale.” Mariska opened a cabinet to find herself faced by a wall of canned goods. Thwarted, she put the beans aside to be dispersed around the house later. Charlotte knew she could open any cabinet, drawer or closet in the house and have a seventy-percent chance of finding food. Mariska’s food-hoarding could be disconcerting during regular times, but with an impending natural disaster, Charlotte secretly liked knowing they’d be the last people on the planet to starve to death if things went really bad.
Seeing an opportunity, she leaned toward Bob. “You sure you two want to be trapped in the house together with that many beans?”
He laughed and held up both thumbs to show his approval.
Charlotte took a seat on the stool tucked beside Mariska’s kitchen island. She liked hurricanes. Not when they destroyed lives and property, but the little ones that came and went with nothing worse than a shortage of toilet paper. The air crackled with excitement, businesses closed...
Hurricanes were a little like windy Christmases.
She supposed she harbored a fondness for storms because a small hurricane had hit days after her grandmother died. She’d already lost her parents and was about to be passed to yet another guardian. Hunkering down with her grandmother’s best friends, Mariska and Bob, had helped them grow closer, faster. She knew then that Sheriff Frank and the other residents of Pineapple Port would protect her from the mean social worker lady who wanted her sent to an orphanage.
It had been strange, growing up in a fifty-five-plus community, but corny jokes and golf carts beat orphanages every time.
“Frank found a body,” she said, remembering the reason for her visit.
“That’s nice.” Mariska tried to shove a block of meat into her packed freezer, and Charlotte
