A Dance with Murder (Kindle Books Mystery and Suspense Crime Thrillers Series Book 2) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: Contract – the offer

  Chapter 2: The four musketeers

  Chapter 3: Attack

  Chapter 4: At the farm

  Chapter 5: Counterattack

  Chapter 6: Contract- the consideration

  Chapter 7: the open road

  Chapter 1: Contract – the offer

  The wind buffeted the stunted trees at the end of the lot toward the freeway. The rain fell in sheets.

  A car was stuck at the center of a huge pothole filled with muddy water, and the two passengers inside, a man and a woman, had started to bicker and complain.

  “Why did we stop? Let’s go on!” the woman said, in a voice that was soft, but strangely compelling.

  The man seated on the driver’s seat moved his lips as if getting ready to respond, but apparently thought better of it because it was again the woman's voice that was heard in a more resolute tone although the sound of her voice seemed now rather more ironic than serious, “Neither snow, nor rain or sleet ...”

  “What? Not the postman credo, please,” the man, who seemed to have finally found his voice, complained.

  “Sorry! Wrong number," the woman responded somehow without conviction, and then continued in a calmer tone, "What I wanted to impress upon your young mind is the sanctity of the contract. We cannot let an externality, in our case the rain which, let's be honest, doesn't show any signs of letting up, to interfere with our contract.

  "The contract, my dear boy—and keep this firmly anchored in your head—is the cornerstone of Western Civilization. ‘Pacta sunt servanda,’ as our Roman forefathers used to say.”

  “Let this be as it may. Still, I'm rather doubtful that our particular case fits within the scope of what the founders of Western Civilization had in mind when thinking about contracts.”

  “Nonsense, my dear boy, it is exactly what they had in mind,” Caro retorted in a didactic tone. “The contract consists of two elements, the offer, and the consideration. We have accepted the offer and received part of the consideration.”

  “Our contract is not legally binding.”

  “Sure it is! And grave penalties are attached and ensue, I might add.”

  “Not legally.”

  “That’s another kettle of fish.”

  “You’ve really done it now! You knew I was starving. Tell you what! Why don't we get ourselves some fish for dinner?”

  “Not now. The fish is for later.”

  “Later?”

  “After we're done.”

  A few minutes earlier on the freeway, Mark had taken the correct exit and turned left at the first light, as indicated on their itinerary.

  This maneuver had led them into the middle of nowhere.

  He had stopped the car in what seemed to be a mud flat.

  Obviously displeased with their predicament, Caro was drubbing her finger pads on the dashboard while reviewing the situation like a general on the eve of battle.

  Caro was lanky and petite. A few stray strands of blonde hair slithered down from under the hood of the red cloak she wore for the occasion. Her deep-set blue eyes stared at the world with uncalled for intensity.

  Besides her stood Mark, brooding and dangerous. A huge, unhappy child whose morose features were crisscrossed from time to time by shivers of anxiety and anticipation, his carriage not unlike that of a young puppy, ceaselessly attempting to please the alpha leader.

  From the passenger side window, Caro was peering through almost solid sheets of water at the shimmering lights projected by a stout, square building.

  A restaurant yelled its name, THE BLUE ROYAL RESTAURANT AND BAR, with a red and yellow neon sign now punctured by the rain, on a garish marquee erected on the left wing atop the first-floor.

  The hotel occupied the rest of the building.

  Caro's gaze switched to the hotel's main entrance, where a striped canvas awning with black and white stripes had been raised to protect the disembarking patrons from the deluge.

  Close-by a security SUV was making the rounds. The glare of the headlights blinded her for a second, but the van moved away in the rain and didn't pay any attention to them.

  “I’ll get inside through the service door,” Caro decided. “You can wait for me in the parking lot.”

  If the rain had not chased most of the usual clientele, Caro had planned to use the main entrance.

  The idea had been to take advantage of the usual hustle and bustle ruling at dinner time in the front lobby of the BLUE ROYAL HOTEL. The restaurant was very popular and the hotel had its share of merchants, convention goers and nest seeking lovers.

  In this crowd of busy, boisterous people, nobody would pay any attention to the quiet, elegant young lady taking the stairs to the third floor of the hotel, where business called on that particular night.

  And if the first plan didn't succeed, there was always the restaurant to consider. To sneak from the BLUE ROYAL RESTAURANT, dark, cozy and especially intimate, onto the service stairwell used jointly by both hotel and restaurant personnel after passing through the kitchen, taking advantage of the eternal state of flux and creative disorder reigning in any busy kitchen: motley collection of waiters stepping briskly with platters of food on their shoulder, wine stewards bringing drinks, busboys carrying pitchers of water, was, she figured, child's play.

  But unfortunately—and Caro blamed this predicament on the rain—the restaurant was equally deserted.

  “Turn 'round the back!” Caro said.

  Like any good Swiss army knife, Mark possessed a multitude of qualities. Being an excellent driver happened to be only one of them.

  He turned the wheels and gently lifted the car from the mud bed in which they had lodged, and then veered smoothly toward the rear of the building.

  “Stop at the back entrance! Stop here!” Caro motioned.

  Her red cloak billowed for a second in front of Mark’s dazed eyes and then disappeared through the door, leaving him to peer at a vertical wall of water.

  Caro and Mark had met in an orphanage, a little more than ten years before when Caro was barely twelve and Mark was approaching his tenth birthday, and they had never parted company.

  Now, whenever she had to leave him, be it for only a few minutes, Caro was seized by an annoying bout of dizziness.

  Mark would have liked to come along, but, a long time ago, Caro had set the rules in place and she was not about to change them on the spur of the moment. The rules had proved safe and efficient. As long as they were followed to the letter, the chances of success were not diminished while the chances of discovery were minimized.

  She found the key and locked the service door from inside.

  She stopped briefly on the stair landing, to give herself a few seconds to think of her next step.

  The aroma of spiced food wafted from the restaurant's kitchen, mingled with the sour fragrance of demi-sec wine spilled from a broken bottle.

  Slowly, her mind and body adjusted to the environment.

  She was ready now.

  The staircase was unlit. Caro did not switch on the light, but inched up slowly through the dark, careful not to touch any surface, especially the walls or the handrail.

  She was feeling her way up slowly.

  The service door on the third floor was unlocked.

  She peered through the narrow glass panel attached to the upper side of the door, but all she could see was a cream white wall, which looked freshly painted.

  Carefully she pushed the door ajar
and glanced quickly up and down the corridor. She could still detect a slight smell of paint in the air.

  She didn't notice anybody in the hallway.

  The coast was clear.

  She padded down to lucky room number 3#13 and stopped in the doorway then glued her ear to the door and started to listen.

  She did not hear any sounds coming from inside.

  The rain was drubbing on the aluminum slates of the roof. She connected with the monotone patter as the drops of water hit and splattered on the soft ground.

  The repetitive sound had a hypnotic quality.

  It called for deep relaxation and sleep.

  Unfortunately, Caro had chosen the one profession where sleeping on the job was a definite no-no, with likely terminal consequences attached.

  Experience had taught her to be wary.

  She decided to wait for a few more minutes, just to be sure.

  Everything was quiet. She inserted a master key in the knob lock, careful not to disturb the people inside.

  She heard a click. She turned the knob and pushed on it slowly.

  The door opened one inch and then it stopped.

  She heard another click.

  The safety chain was on.

  She took a flexible rod from her tool set bag and inserted it through the narrow opening; she snagged the latch and tried to yank it off the rails, but was suddenly interrupted by a commotion coming from inside the room.

  She barely had time to pull out the grappler. She locked the door silently and moved a few steps backward.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” she heard a veiled, throaty feminine voice.

  “Somebody’s at the door.”

  "Somebody’s at the door? But I didn’t hear a thing."

  The heavy footsteps were coming nearer. She could hear the belabored breath of an agitated individual behind the door.

  Caro pulled out her piece, a small, black snub-nosed revolver. Using the gun would certainly make things easier. For a second she was tempted to shoot blindly through the door.

  She raised the gun.

  Yes, it's true. These things have been known to work, she thought.

  She might get lucky. But the risk was too great, and besides it was shoddy work.

  You don't bring a hammer to a rendezvous. For this kind of affair, a fine chisel does a much better job, so she knocked instead of shooting.

  “May I come in?” Caro asked matter-of-factly.

  “Who’s there? What do you want?”

  The voice at the other end sounded angry and suspicious.

  “I’m from management, sir. I bring a gift from management.”

  It was the first thing that came to her mind and it usually worked, but apparently not this time.

  The voices behind the door turned into whispers.

  “Honey, does anybody know you’re here?”

  A strong odor of eau de cologne, mixed with the cheap aftershave of freshly shaved jowls, wafted in through the cracks in the door.

  She heard soft voices, murmuring at a distance. She had to press again her ear to the wood of the door to distinguish their meaning.

  “Nobody dear, I swear.”

  “Gawd … what a mess! Could it be … your husband, Mr. Silvestre? Do you think he suspects?

  She didn’t hear the answer.

  She moved away from the door. She bid her time, passing her weight from one foot to the other.

  She decided to give it one more try.

  “Sir, the management appreciates your presence in our hotel. I am the evening maid with a surprise for you.”

  “Leave it at the door and go away!” the voice behind the door responded angrily now and in a commanding tone. “Now leave! Go away! Scram! Do you hear me? Go!”

  “Did she leave?”

  “I think she left. I’m sure she must be a detective. Did you know that she tried to open the door? Don’t open the door to anybody … hear, to anybody … honey!” She heard the muffled sounds as she retreated behind the service door back to the stair landing.

  Chapter 2: The four musketeers

  The Blue Royal Bar was one of those dark and mysterious places where all women look beautiful and all men seem dangerous.

  This deceiving appearance was mostly the result of anemic lightning, a fortuitous defect in the architectural design and walls that were thick and musty.

  No wonder the place had become such a favorite of geeks and adventure seeking romantics.

  The four youngsters who drank beers in a dark corner of the venerable establishment didn’t fit the profile.

  Taken individually they were common enough and unimportant, but together the Four Musketeers, as they liked to call themselves, constituted a formidable force.

  Joey Dermont, the leader of the team, a tall, athletic youngster with curly red hair, was smoking a cigarette while gazing around the room with a self-entitled, naughty smirk.

  Even since they had gotten together for the first time, in high school, the four had been playing an evil and very dangerous game. They were hunters and scavengers of a kind.

  The game had been interrupted when their leader, Joey, had been accepted at the famous Croesus University.

  The gang had disbanded and each had followed their particular path in life.

  But now that Joey was back in town for the summer, helping with his father's campaign in the Fall Elections in which Dermont Senior was running in the mayoral race, their leader had invited them for a new and final adventure.

  Like with all the other occupants that found themselves suddenly stranded within the confines of the Blue Royal Complex: lovers and merchants, convention goers and call girls, party lovers, and let’s not forget for a second the two newly arrived killers, the rain had put a wrench in their plans.

  The odds of finding the right girl to take home seemed now microscopic.

  The evening was fast turning into a waste of time.

  Joey, the leader of the team, was at his fourth beer and getting bored very quickly. His grinning blue eyes passed in review the other members of the team, of which, after two full semesters at an elite University, he had just realized he didn’t approve one bit.

  Maybe it was all for the best, Joey thought. It was a cinch. Why did he always have to find the biggest idiots to invite to his select parties?

  With the quality of people that he had to work with, and with the rainstorm messing up all his plans, attempting to find a suitable candidate for the game had suddenly become a very dangerous enterprise.

  But, damn! This only made him realize how badly he needed a woman.

  With lips slightly curved in a naughty sneer, Joey kept on watching his three friends.

  What a pathetic bunch!

  How could he? How could he have chosen these three morons to follow him?

  But he could see another side of the coin to consider, buried now deep in his memory.

  The lure of a childhood past when in the small provincial town everybody had known them as “the Four Musketeers.”

  He reconnected to a time when the four had been inseparable in the sports arenas and the hallways of the gymnasium.

  His friends had helped him withstand the small town boredom, which pricks the mind like the bite of a million introspective mosquitoes.

  There is something good in everybody, the evil man thought.

  The second member of the team, Mike Maxter, was the Don Juan and sports star of his class. His photo adorned the Trophy Hall at the Athletic Club.

  His mustache, white from beer foam, the heavy-set youngster was beset by thinking.

  The headhunters had come and gone. They had watched a few games in the local stadium and enjoyed a beer or two at the BLUE ROYAL BAR; some had even contributed to the high fertility rate of the sleeping town.

  They had come and they had gone.

  But the football contract never materialized.

  Now he was apprenticing to become a car mechanic.

  What a career! I’ll be sure
to bring him my BMW for a checkup, Joey thought. He’s always been such an honest chap. Like the high plateau herbivores of the Las Pampas, or whatever wherever. Yeap, he’s been ... all that.

  Can’t rub out the motor oil from under his nails. Even his dreams must stink of grease.

  “You’re so great, Mikey!”

  Mike returned a grateful smile, slightly embarrassed.

  A good, stolid doggie, that’s what Mikey was. For a few rotations of the planet, pumped up with testosterone and the adoration of the crowd in the school stadium he had dared dream himself a star.

  Sheriff Dermont had saved him once from some very serious trouble, for which Mike had remained forever grateful.

  This reunion. Nostalgia blended with regrets.

  In the morning, the vapors of alcohol will have evaporated, but the regrets will linger on with the blue coveralls and the smell of gasoline.

  The two remaining members of the team, Grego Russo, and Thom Huntson cheered and applauded anemically.

  Of the three Joey liked Grego the least. Grego was a now student enrolled in the local college. The perpetual wannabe. Joey had always tried to keep him at a distance.

  Joey’s parents were important people. His father had been sheriff of the town for well over twenty years. If everything went as planned, he will become mayor by November. His mother, of a famous family, had started as a trial lawyer and had then moved on to the D.A.’s Office. Now she was the D.A. Her political future was even more promising that her husband’s.

  His only real friend had been Thom Huntson. But Thom, overcome by patriotic fervor combined with a chronic lack of cash had enrolled in the army. He was about to leave in a few days on a dangerous mission.

  Joey was the leader, Mike and Thom always a step behind, willing to follow him to the ends of the world. And Joey had taken them there. To the ends of the world and back. So close to the precipice, so deliciously, painfully close, but never in it. Grego had trailed patiently behind. One day they had let him in, albeit reluctantly.

  They had watched a few games, drinking beers and munching nuts. They reminisced. They shot pool and threw darts. They even revived the old, screechy Juke Box, and played a few old tunes from the nineties.