The ladies exchanged looks again. This time it was the smaller lady who spoke. “I am Mrs. Savita Gupta, and this is my sister-in-law, Mrs. Pratima Gupta. We are respectable ladies, and—”
“What were you doing stealing a Humvee, then?”
Mrs. Savita Gupta’s eyes widened, as if surprised at his sharp tone. What was with all the women around him not taking him seriously?
“Well?”
“He stole our kesar,” Mrs. Pratima Gupta blurted.
Dante blinked. “Your—”
“Our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar.
Saffron,
” the short one exclaimed.
Dante looked from one woman to the other and shook his head. “Why in the world would he steal your saffron?”
“Because it’s expensive. It’s a spice,” Zoey said. She frowned. “Or maybe an herb. Anyway, we sell it in bulk at the health-food store I work at. Saffron comes from the stigmas of crocus flowers. There are only two or three stigmas per flower, and they’re really small. You have to pick a lot of flowers to get a little saffron, so it’s pretty expensive.”
“Oka-ay.”
The taller lady—Mrs. Pratima Gupta—leaned forward. “We used a very large portion of our savings to buy our Grade 1A Very, Very Fine Mongra Kesar. This is the very best kind of saffron in the world and most important for the dishes at our new restaurant. So when That Terrible Man took it, we knew we had to steal it back. He kept it in his very big truck, and we bided our time, and when he wasn’t looking, we took the truck!”
“So he would not be able to follow us,” the shorter lady said.
Now his head really did hurt. “And you didn’t go to the police because . . . ?”
Both ladies looked slightly chagrined.
Savita Gupta cleared her throat. “We did not purchase the saffron, hmm, exactly
legally.
”
Dante’s eyebrows shot up. “You have contraband saffron?”
Both ladies drew back as if he’d blurted out a foul word. Pratima Gupta shook her head. “Not—”
“But what about Pete?” Zoey cut in. “I don’t understand. Was she in the Humvee when you stole it? Did you have her until recently? How was she? What happened?”
Mrs. Pratima Gupta immediately turned solicitous. “What a pretty baby. So sweet and adorable! When we, er,
took
the Humvee from That Terrible Man, we found the babies in the back. Such a surprise, you cannot imagine. I thought poor Savita-di might have failure of the heart. And what could we do?” She shrugged elaborately, appealing to Dante and Zoey as if their actions were perfectly practical. “We could not go to the police because of the saffron, and the babies could not be returned to such a Terrible Man, so naturally we took them with us.”
Amazingly, Zoey was nodding along with this nonsense, as if she agreed completely.
“And you drove some three hundred miles with two kidnapped children, why?” Dante drawled.
The ladies flinched again and glanced at each other. The little one licked her lips nervously. “We did not think our nephews or nieces in Chicago would, hmm,
understand
precisely our reasons for keeping the babies safe—”
“Kidnapping,” Dante muttered.
“Uh, yes.” She turned to Zoey, perhaps realizing Zoey was the more sympathetic party. “We decided it might be wise to leave Chicago just for a bit, until That Terrible Man gave up looking for us—”
“So we came to visit our nephew, Rahul, who owns a very nice motel in Cairo,” Pratima Gupta finished triumphantly.
Both ladies looked at him as if that wacky explanation made any sense at all. Even Zoey was looking at him expectantly. The baby in his arms chose that moment to stir. He opened wide blue eyes and stared up into Dante’s face. He must not’ve liked what he saw, because his little mouth opened wide, like a baby bird wanting a worm, except instead of a cheep what came out of his mouth was a loud, drawn-out scream.
Dante winced, his headache now full-blown. He looked over the head of the screaming child and asked the final, unanswered question:
“So who the hell does this kid belong to?”
Friday, 6:25 p.m.
A
shley was going to fucking kill him.
It was Neil’s only thought as he stared, stunned, down at the strange little girl. Ashley would fucking
massacre
him. He’d stolen back the wrong kid.
It’d been pure luck that he’d seen the purple minivan with the big daisy on its side from the highway. The van’d been stopped at a gas station, and he’d had to find a place to turn around, praying the whole time that it was the right fucking minivan and that it’d still fucking be there when he fucking got back. It’d seemed like his luck had finally taken a turn for the good when he’d snatched the van out from under the old biddys’ eyes.
Only to turn around three exits later and find that Neil Junior wasn’t in the van. Now he was stuck with a naked girl baby with a shitty diaper.
Somebody fucking hated him.
The baby girl smiled up at him and kicked her legs, nearly sending her full, smelly diaper into his stomach. She seemed to enjoy having a bare ass. Kinda like Neil Junior. Ashley used to say how Little Neil liked to wait until she took his diaper off and then take a wizz into the air. Neil had thought it pretty funny at the time. Of course that was before he had to change a diaper full of shit himself.
He glanced around the rest-stop men’s room, scowling. Had he known that the girl was a girl, he wouldn’t’ve brought her in here. It wasn’t right, a little girl lying not five feet from a urinal. Fucking disgusting was what it was.
A guy with long stringy hair in a ponytail strolled in and glanced at the naked baby. Neil bared his teeth at him and Ponytail did an about-face, rethinking his need to take a piss. Fucking pervert. Served him right. This was why these plastic changing gizmos in the men’s can were an oddity of nature. Guys were not supposed to have to deal with baby crap. That there was clearly a woman’s job, and guys who went around changing babies in the men’s can were clearly pussies.
Except there wasn’t a woman around to change this baby, and the kid smelled like a sewer. Neil sighed and grimly started mopping shit.
Ten minutes later, he held a dripping baby girl over the sink. He’d finally decided to hose the kid down, which should’ve been simple but had somehow turned into a water park. He stared glumly at the baby. She grinned back, her pudgy legs bicycling in the air. Her dimpled pink butt was now clean and smelling of the cheap sink soap, but it was still totally bare. He didn’t have a diaper.
Behind him, a guy in designer sunglasses and a turquoise ski jacket entered the restroom. He was holding a kid on one hip and a blue and white striped diaper bag over the other shoulder.
He looked at the plastic changing gizmo—littered with the baby girl’s clothes—and then over at Neil. “Uh, you gonna be done soon?”
“Yeah,” Neil grunted, still holding a wriggling, wet baby girl. “You have a spare diaper on you?”
“Uh . . .” The guy looked at him, obviously not wanting to give up a
baby diaper,
for chrissake. Fucking prick. See? This was the kind of guy who changed his kid in the men’s can: a fucking pansy.
The baby girl chose that moment to pee, a tiny yellow trickle running down her leg and into the sink.
Pansy Boy cleared his throat. “I’ve got an extra diaper, but they’re for boys.”
Neil curled his lip. “So? What’ll that do? Give her a package?”
“Uh, no.” Pansy Boy knit his eyebrows. “Well, they all have packages, babies I mean. When they’re wearing these disposable diapers. Even the thinnest leave kind of a bulge, ah, in the crotch area. And when they pee . . .”
Neil growled and grabbed a bunch of paper towels to dry off the baby’s butt. “Give it.”
“Ah, okay,” Pansy Boy stuttered. He rummaged in his blue-striped diaper bag and came up with a blue plastic diaper. Natch.
He held it out.
Neil snatched it out of Pansy Boy’s hand and laid the baby down on the plastic changing table. She immediately tried to roll off.
“Fuck!” Neil dropped the diaper and grabbed her. But the kid didn’t like being restrained. She let out a bellow and began screaming like something out of a horror movie.
“Gotta watch that,” Pansy Boy yelled over the noise. “Have to keep one hand on the kid at all times, otherwise they try to jump.”
Neil glared. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” The guy bent, picked up the diaper, and gave it back.
Neil could feel Pansy Boy breathing down his neck as he tried to open the diaper one-handed.
“Other way around,” Pansy Boy yelled.
Neil looked at him.
“The diaper.” Pansy Boy gestured. “The Velcro strips need to be on the bottom.”
Neil closed his eyes and briefly considered popping the guy right there in the men’s can. But then he might never get the diaper on the kid. His anger management instructor called this “envisioning consequences.” So Neil envisioned himself running from the men’s restroom with a peeing, naked-assed kid under his arm. Not a good scenario.
He took a deep breath. “Show me.”
Fifteen minutes later, Neil had sweat dripping off his nose and Pansy Boy’s hair was standing on end, but the baby girl was dressed. She’d stopped screaming at the top of her lungs midway through, but the kid Pansy Boy held had taken up the slack in the meantime.
“Jeez,” Pansy Boy said now. “Babies can be quite a handful, can’t they?”
That remark was so fucking dumb-assed that Neil didn’t even bother answering. He felt like he’d gone five rounds with a grizzly bear on steroids. Instead he picked up the baby girl and slung her under his arm. She began chewing on his right thumb.
“I gotta say I admire you,” Pansy Boy said as Neil neared the door.
Neil half turned. “Yeah?”
Pansy Boy smiled. “Yeah. I used to think guys who changed baby girls in the men’s room were, y’know, wusses.”
Friday, 6:42 p.m.
Y
ou can’t arrest them—they’re little old ladies,” Zoey hissed as she bent over the Beemer’s steering wheel.
“Who brought illegal saffron into the country,” Dante murmured back. He held a road map up under the ceiling light. “Have you any idea how many laws they probably broke?”
“It’s saffron, not opium!”
“Is everything all right?” the taller Gupta lady called from the back seat. She and her sister sat on either side of the little blond boy.
“Fine! Just fine,” Zoey sang back. Under her breath she muttered, “Gestapo.”
“I didn’t say I was going to arrest them,” Dante muttered.
“Humph.”
Dante cleared his throat and shook out the map. He’d decided without consulting anyone else that they would all go to the motel the Gupta ladies had been heading to in the first place. He hadn’t offered an explanation, but Zoey assumed that he didn’t want to drive back to Chicago on the roads tonight. Either that, or maybe he thought Pete was still in southern Illinois. Hard to figure out someone else’s train of thought when they weren’t talking to you.
The two Mrs. Guptas said they had no idea who the little boy between them was. Maybe Tony the Rose’s henchman was a specialist in kidnapping babies and always traveled with a few in his Humvee. Zoey wrinkled her nose at her own rather dark humor. What they did know—maybe the only thing they knew for sure right now—was that Tony the Rose’s employee had kidnapped Pete.
Again.
Which brought her back to the one guy she could blame all of this on, Ricky Spinoza. Pete was the only good thing that’d come out of stupid Ricky-the-jerk’s life, and she was worth ten of him.
Oh, please let Pete be safe.
Zoey tightened her lips as she looked for the exit.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
The snow was falling thick and fast now, sticking to the faces of road signs and obscuring the letters.
“I think it is here,” one of the Mrs. Guptas said from the back seat.
“No, no, Savita-di,” the other Mrs. Gupta said. “Do you not remember that we passed a Kentucky Fried Chicken sign before the proper exit?”
“And what if the Kentucky Fried Chicken sign is no longer there?” the first lady shot back. “What then, Pratima Gupta?”
What then, indeed?
Zoey thought.
Beside her, Dante cleared his throat. “I think the exit we’re looking for is the one after this, actually. There’s a sign for the motel right there.” He nodded with his chin to a dim billboard by the side of the road. The Beemer’s headlights briefly lit a familiar chain logo, and then they were past.
“See? What did I tell you, Pratima?”
Zoey rolled her eyes. These ladies had obviously known each other waaay too long. She squinted, looking for the exit.
“Here,” Dante said.
She’d almost driven past the exit. Hastily she clicked on her turn signal and steered the Beemer to the off-ramp. The motel sign was lighted and clearly visible from the top of the ramp. Zoey pulled into the nearly full parking lot and under the concrete awning next to the front doors. The tiny lobby was lit, but no one was in sight inside. A neon NO VACANCY sign flickered above the door.
“Are you sure your nephew will have room for us?” Dante asked, echoing her own thoughts.
“Naturally,” the shorter Mrs. Gupta said airily. “We are his aunts, after all.”
Dante glanced wryly at Zoey, and for a moment she felt a familiar connection with him. Funny how close you could become to a person in so little time. He hastily looked away again.
Zoey sighed and opened her car door.
Inside, the motel lobby was so warm that the windows had steamed up in places. No one was behind the counter, but TV gunfire and spaceship noises were coming from the back room. Zoey inhaled. Spicy cooking smells also came from the back room.
The shorter Mrs. Gupta marched to the counter and tapped the bell imperiously.
Nothing happened.
She frowned and banged on the little bell, making it clatter obnoxiously.
“There is no room!” a male voice shouted from the back. A short, dark man in a burgundy velour bathrobe stomped out of the back room. “I tell you there is no bloody room! Shoo, now, and stop ringing my—” His words ended in a kind of gurgling squeak as he caught sight of the Mrs. Guptas.