In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book 5) (8 page)

 
“Potato potata.”
 

“I don’t think that works here.”
 

The chauffeur opened my door and I had a moment of panic. Years of duct taping flashed before my eyes. “What about Myrtle and Millicent? What about Lester? He just barely made it out of surgery. I can’t leave. I’m the nurse in the family.”
 

“Mercy, my girl, I can say that trio would rather have you gone and safe than here and in danger.”
 

“But—”

“Get out of the car,” growled Dad.
 

I got out, but I made a fuss about it, lots of grumbling. Dad and the chauffeur removed my many bags from the trunk and stowed them in the limo’s trunk next to the Troublesome Trio’s flowered matching luggage. My luggage looked like it’d been thrown from a train and stomped on by a horse. I wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t been. I inherited my luggage from Great Uncle Ned who was once a rodeo clown and thought train tickets were for those too slow to jump on.
 

Sadly, all the luggage fit and I was fast losing my chance to get away. Of course, I could just jump out at some point and make a run for it. I could hole up in some seedy motel for the four days and call it good. My eyes darted around the garage. It was just the limo. No other cars were there.
 

Dad laid a big hand on my shoulder. “What are you looking for?”
 

“The tail,” I said in a moment of surprising honesty.

“No tail today.”
 

“Yeah, right.”
 

“I’m not bothering to tail you, Mercy,” he said.
 

“Why not?”
 

“I know where you’re going and I’ve taken steps.”

Oh, no. Not steps. Steps is bad.

“What steps?” I asked.
 

“Don’t worry about it. You’re not to leave the estate for any reason for the next four days. The property is secure. John and Leslie will be watching.”
 

“Swell,” I said. “This’ll be fun. So you’re saying no bodyguards.”

“Nope.”
 

“What about Aaron? Isn’t he going to be dogging my every step?” I asked. The good thing about Aaron was the food. Besides bothering me, he owned a restaurant, Kronos, and was the best cook ever. I’d been avoiding him since New Orleans in case he tried to feed me.
 

“Aaron’s got other things to do. You want him watching you get a manicure?”

“I have to get a manicure? What about the Shut-ins? Am I allowed to go there?”

“Absolutely not.” Dad squeezed my shoulder. “You don’t need to go anywhere. You’re going to be girly. They have a spa. Do that.”
 

I rolled my eyes. “Four days?”
 

“Four days.”
 

The chauffeur opened the limo’s back door and I gave in to the inevitable. At least the inevitable until I managed to jump out. I sighed as Sorcha aka Weepy peeked out. Her long red hair brushed the floor and she tossed it back over her shoulder. “Mercy, what’s taking so long? Let’s go.”

Dad gave me a thumbs up. Great. The last time he did that was at my eighth grade graduation a second after I got my diploma. He gave me the thumbs up and I proceeded to fall down the stage stairs, flashing everyone my polka-dotted panties and giving myself a fat lip. I won’t even discuss the time before that. Dad’s thumbs up were a harbinger of doom. My doom, specifically.
 

“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
 

“No problem.”
 

Not for you.
 

I got in the limo and doom was right. Sitting in the forward seat between my cousins, Bridget and Jilly, was Uncle Morty. No one in the history of the world has ever looked more out of place. I would say that he looked miserable, but he always looked like that. Think grumpy old toad. In comparison, my duct tape wielding cousins were lovely. They all had the Watts red hair and skinniness like my dad, except on them it was swan-like elegance.
 

I sat on the backseat with Sorcha. Pick jumped in behind me, spun around three times, and laid on the floor.
 

“Why on earth are you here?” I asked.
 

Uncle Morty snorted. “‘Cause you’re gonna try to jump out of this freaking limo.”
 

Ah crap!

Bridget and Jilly stared at him with wrinkled noses, but he didn’t smell any different than usual, pizza, cigars, and Irish Spring soap.
 

“I’m not going to jump out,” I said with a good amount of astonishment.
 

“I know. ‘Cause I’m here in this freaking ridiculous limo.”

Jilly ran her fingers over the suede roof liner. “Our mom made sure to get a good one.”
 

“A good what?” growled Uncle Morty.
 

“Limo, of course. There are different levels, you know.”
 

He stared at her in a way that made me think that Jilly was going to show up in his next novel as a sniveling twit soon to be killed off.
 

“You wouldn’t want to go in one of those limos they rent out for proms. They can’t ever get the vomit smell out.” Jilly shuddered. “We totally deserve a good limo.”
 

Sorcha rolled her eyes. “You think you deserve a limo for a trip to Kroger.”
 

Jilly tilted her head and showed off her two-carat diamond earrings. “But it would be hard to park.”
 

“Un. Freaking. Believable,” said Uncle Morty and he belched. It smelled like pickled eggs. We all leaned back and Pick put his snout under his paws.

Bridget smiled brightly. “Morty’s just here for the ride. He’s not going on our special weekend.” She sounded sure, but her eyes were worried.

“Ya damn skippy,” said Uncle Morty.

My cousins all smiled at me with a look I’d never seen them have before. Something like a cry for help.
 

“Why didn’t Dad just come?” I asked and the Troublesome Trio perked up.
 

“He’s got shit to do, saving your butt and what all. I sit all day anyway.” He patted the laptop bag at his feet. “I’m gonna work and keep an eye on you. I ain’t even getting out of this limo when we get there.”

Bridget nodded, her bobbed hair swinging wildly. “It’s a two-hour ride. We can get lots done. What’ve you been thinking?”
 

“Um…what?” I asked.
 

“For the wedding. I want to hear all your ideas.”
 

A mischievous grin spread across Uncle Morty’s face and he cracked his knuckles. “Let’s have it, Mercy. What are your ideas?”
 

You and me, fat man. One of these days, I will—

“I brought these,” said Sorcha as she dropped a pile of bride magazines in my lap. Then her voice hardened, “From when I was maid of honor.”

Oh, lord. I am so going to get taped.

“Ow, um, thanks.”
 

Uncle Morty got out his laptop. “I’m sure Mercy has been through all…seventeen of those freaking awesome magazines. Since she’s not dating my wizard anymore, she has lots of time to focus on the wedding.”
 

And there it is. I’m being punished.

Jilly lacquered her thin lips with a layer of gloss and eyed me over her mirror. “You were dating a wizard?”
 

“My wizard,” said Uncle Morty.
 

“I thought you were dating a doctor,” said Sorcha, wistfully.
 

“She was,” said Bridget and then she lowered her voice like someone could overhear, “Then she kissed Chuck on that porny video. Don’t worry, Mercy. I don’t mind.”
 

“Don’t mind what?” I asked.
 

“Well, you’re notorious. But my mom says you’ll lend a kind of je ne sais quoi to the wedding and that’s good.”
 

“Er…”

“Je ne sais quoi translates to I don’t know what,” said Uncle Morty with his big hairy hands poised over his keyboard. “Come to think about it, that’s pretty accurate.”
 

“That’s not what it means,” I said.

“It does when they’re talking about you. Who knows what you’ll add to that freaking wedding.”

I sneered. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome for ruining my life.”
 

“Right back at you.”
 

I had not ruined Uncle Morty’s life any more than he had ruined mine. I made a mistake. I kissed the hell out of Chuck. It was caught on video, which wasn’t porny by the way, and my then boyfriend, Pete, saw it. He dumped me and his Dungeons and Dragons cronies a.k.a. Uncle Morty. Pete was their wizard and apparently irreplaceable.
 

Morty pressed the intercom. “What the hell’s the holdup? I got four women back here and no booze.”
 

The back door opened and Dad leaned in. “I got it.” He handed me a pizza box from Louie’s with a rank smell coming out of it. “Have a good time, girls.”
 

Dad slammed the door, thumped the roof, and the limo started rolling.
 

Morty grabbed the pizza box, dropped it in Jilly’s lap, she only squawked a little, and lifted the lid. Noxious fumes rolled out and Jilly recoiled. Sausage, anchovy, and onion. Extra onion by the look of it.
 

Uncle Morty rubbed his hands together and said to me, “And now we’re even.”
 

Gag.

Chapter Six

TWO HOURS IN a limo sounds like cake, except we didn’t have cake. We had an obese fantasy writer, a stinky pizza, the air-conditioning on high because said writer was hot, and the constant clatter of typing. The muttering and cursing didn’t help either.
 

I didn’t think this would ever happen, but, after an hour and a half, I turned to Sorcha and said, “I’m sorry.”
 

“For what?” She glanced at Morty, who was muttering something about a freaking dwarf. “It’s not your fault.”
 

“It kinda is.”
 

“It’s okay. We’re family.” Then she grinned at me, popping out the famous Watts dimples. “Besides, we brought duct tape.”
 

I winced.

“I’m kidding.”
 

Jilly shook her head. “She’s not.”
 

Bridget plopped a magazine in my lap. “So we’ve agreed?”
 

I nodded when normally I would’ve said no way. The bridesmaid dress my cousins wanted was a short, busty girl’s nightmare. Even after losing twenty-five pounds I could not pull off a satin column dress. The thing was backless. Backless! I’d be using Sorcha’s duct tape to secure my breasts. Nightmare.
 

“I love love love it,” said Jilly.
 

She would. Jilly and Sorcha were five foot ten, had no breasts to speak of, and zero body fat. They would look like Audrey Hepburn with their long swan-like necks and I’d look like a badly upholstered sofa.
 

But I owed them. They put up with Uncle Morty in the form of a smelly, loud troll for a long time with no complaints. These were not the cousins I remembered. They did not live up to their names of Weepy, Snot, and Spoiled Rotten and nobody had taped any part of me to any other part.
 

“It’s the one,” I said.
 

“Success,” said Bridget and we toasted the decision with tiny Cokes out of the mini fridge.
 

“And the color matches the green of your eyes,” said Sorcha, her own eyes red from tearing up over how beautiful Bridget’s dress was. Sorcha wasn’t dating anyone and had no prospects. Her career in law wasn’t helping. She didn’t want to date another lawyer and they weren’t keen on her either. She’d probably make partner by the time she was thirty, but I had a feeling that wasn’t the sort of partner she aspired to be. Sorcha was meant to be a wife and mother and she knew it. I wished I was as sure about anything as she was about that.
 

“Eyes. Yeah, that’s important,” muttered Uncle Morty without looking up.
 

“What?” asked Bridget.
 

“Nothing. He said nothing,” I said.
 

Sorcha finished up the list of wedding decisions we’d made and tucked it in her laptop bag. “There. The first stage is done.”
 

First stage? What can be left?
 

I decided it was better not to ask and pressed the intercom. “There’s a gas station. I’ve got to go.”
 

Everyone agreed to take a pit stop, even Uncle Morty after I kicked him in the shin. We pulled into a little one-pump gas station with a rusted awning and lots of beer signs. The chauffeur opened the door for us and Uncle Morty pointed at me. “Get me some beer and a pizza.”