Take the Monkeys and Run (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #1) (20 page)

ELVIS AND PUG MUG SHOVED Roz and me to the floor, threatening certain bodily injury if we tried to leave. Elvis took off across the expansive room, disappearing up a second set of stairs that I assumed led to the main level of the house. We were left with Pug Mug standing, arms crossed, to watch over us, his gun protruding visibly from the waist of his pants. This was the first time I had really seen him head to toe. He was actually quite short and solid. Not fat, but not thin. Bulky—muscular, possibly. He wore a very nice black leather jacket and black dress slacks that I guessed had a designer label. He might not have been the prettiest guy in town, but he was a snazzy dresser.

The two of us crawled to the corner, keeping one eye on Pug Mug. Roz immediately put her face down close to Peggy’s. “She’s breathing,” she whispered. Thank God. Roz shook her a bit and Peggy, stirred then opened her eyes. She was slow to come around, but she eventually recognized us both and seemed to remember where she was. We warned her to whisper, putting our fingers to our lips—one stray vocal emission could mean the end of us.

“Holy cannoli,” she whispered back. “My head hurts.” She rubbed her scalp.

“How did you get here?” I asked her.

“Oh, man, it really hurts.” She rubbed her fingers through her red locks and then tipped her head to toward us. “Do you see blood?”

Roz poked through her hair briefly. “No blood. You have a nice welt there, though. What happened?”

“Give me a minute,” Peggy said, “I’m still really woozy. Is the room spinning?” She laid down on her back and closed her eyes.

I took a moment to scan the room while she rested. There wasn’t much to see. The walls were white and bare. Not a picture. Not a clock. Not even a poster of Frank Sinatra. The carpet we sat on was a tan Berber that appeared to be brand new. The room was vast—probably large enough to fit two pool tables easily, together with a dreamy personal theater—yet there wasn’t a lick of furniture, with the exception of one lone black barstool which stood near the wrought iron monkey cages. Pug Mug saw me scoping out the place, but he didn’t move.

Finally, Peggy sat up, ready to talk. “So I did that research you asked me to do. I was on the Internet waiting for the kids to get off the bus. Almost the first thing I find, when I search on the name ‘Tito Buttaro,’ is that he’s been missing for fifteen years. Maybe it was thirteen. Fifteen. Thirteen. Something like that. Anyway, they called him Tito ‘The Butler’ Buttaro. He was some Mafia big-wig but I don’t think he was what they call a ‘boss’. . .” Peggy was getting excited and her voice raised a couple of octaves in her frenzy. We put our fingers to our lips again, warning her to keep it to a whisper. Every once in a while, we’d peer over at Pug Mug to make sure we weren’t being too loud for him. Quite frankly, the monkeys were so loud they could have drowned out the Boston Pops. This appeared to get under his skin, because once, he yelled out, “Shut up, ya damn apes!”

“Anyway,” she continued, barely audible now, “his wife, Viviana Buttaro, has become semi-famous. She wrote a book and she’s been doing the media circuit. She claims some guy—I forget his name—whacked Tito. Boy, I just love that word, don’t you? Whacked. Whacked. By the way, did you know there’s a
Mafia for Dummies
? I found it on Amazon.”

Peggy’s inability to stay on topic was driving me crazy. “Peggy, what about Tito and his wife?”

“Viviana. I found two different video interviews with her promoting her book—they were probably done five or six years ago—she’s kinda looney. She rambles on a lot and doesn’t really stick to one story.”

“But how did you end up here?” Roz pressed.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. So I’m finding all of this really cool information—there was a lot of stuff—you know, it’s really creepy how real it all is. These aren’t very nice people. But anyway, my doorbell rings and it’s Maxine,” she said.

That was it! I knew I recognized that Prius. It was Maxine’s. The stuffed animals in the rear window were poodles.

“Maxine?” asked Roz.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought when I saw her on my front step. She’s not someone who usually just stops by my house for a chat or anything, right? I know her, but not that well. She said she was just taking Puddles for a walk and was interested if I knew any more about what you two had found out about the vacant house. So, I tell her all about what I found on the Internet, about Tito and Viviana Buttaro . . .” She stopped talking abruptly because we heard movement on the stairs.

I was quickly coming to the conclusion that somehow our mobster friends must have scooped up both Maxine and Peggy. But that didn’t explain why Maxine’s car was outside. They must have kidnapped her in her own car.

Then I heard the barking. I’d know that ear piercing yap anywhere—it was Puddles the poodle. Just seconds after the barking started, Puddles came tearing down the stairs, with Maxine following behind. Puddles was dancing his poodle dance in circles around Maxine, who stood staring at us from across the room. She looked amazingly calm, I thought, for having just been kidnapped.

“Maxine!” I called out. “Are you okay?”

Peggy leaned into me and whispered in my ear. “Barb. Don’t you see? She’s one of them.”

“Well, if it isn’t the Trouble Triplets,” Maxine sneered. “Puddles! Shut up!” She pointed a skinny finger to the floor. “Sit!” Puddles sat. “Good dog.” She smiled. “Poodles are smart. You three—you’re not too smart, huh?” She had traded her Canadian “eh?” for a Jersey Italian “huh?”

She was like Sybil, this woman. It was like aliens had come and traded her with a criminal look-alike. No more neighborly lady. This was Al Capone in a peasant skirt.

“She’s kinda creepy, isn’t she?” whispered Peggy.

“I’m really confused,” said Roz.

“My knee-capping story was supposed to scare you broads. Normal people would leave well enough alone. What’s up with you three anyway?”

“Well,” I said, “I had monkeys in my trees. What would you do?” That didn’t make sense when I said it out loud.

“That doesn’t make sense,” replied Maxine.

“She’s right, Barb,” whispered Peggy, “that doesn’t make sense.”

“Peggy!” yelled Roz. “You can stop whispering now!” Roz was getting testy. Understandably. A kidnapping at gunpoint will do that to you. We all heard the clacking of what sounded like high heels on a hardwood floor, then a door opening and footsteps coming down the carpeted stairs.

Through the banisters, a figure revealed itself as it descended step by step. We saw the shoes first—three-inch-high red spikes; then the calves (I had better); the thighs (way too much cellulite); crimson miniskirt, white low-cut silk blouse (I was guessing the boobs weren’t real); the face (three inches of foundation, ultra-red rouge, fake eyelashes and probably at least three facelifts worth of stretched skin); and finally a towering bee hive of platinum blonde hair (with black roots). This creature appeared oblivious to the fact that it was no longer 1965. She sucked on a Virginia Slim and blew the smoke out slowly as she sauntered our way. She stood close, looking down and contemplating us while taking another drag. She tapped one foot. The smoke came out through her nose.

“So,” she said finally. “You know who I am?” Her accent was thick New Jersey and by the deep, coarse sound of it, I’d guess she sucked down one of those cigarettes about every three minutes. She was a walking lung cancer ad.

“No,” I said.

“Oh! I do!” Peggy raised her hand exuberantly in the air like a kindergartner on caffeine. “You’re Viviana Buttaro!”

“Give the girl a cookie,” grinned our new smoking fiend friend. She had one hand on her hip, and motioned with the other while she talked, the cigarette just along for the ride. “I’m Viviana Buttaro. I ain’t had an easy life. You ain’t makin’ it any easier, you understand?” I didn’t understand, but again, I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“Frankie,” she said, not taking her eyes off us, “get me an ash tray, will ya? I don’t want to make a mess on my new carpet down here.” Pug Mug moved out of the room obediently, so I took that to mean that his real name was Frankie. Original. I got the distinct impression, from his posture that the Sinatra-loving goon wasn’t too happy about being ordered around. I filed that observation away in my memory bank.

“It’s a very nice carpet—I love Berber!” gushed Peggy. Roz shot her a look that basically said, “If they don’t kill you, I will.” Peggy moved back against the wall and shut her trap. Viviana sashayed leisurely to the monkey cages. “Hello babies.” She made kissing noises at the chattering primates. “Give mommy some kissums?” She made more kissing noises, eliciting shrieks from the caged animals. “See,” she said, turning her attention to us humans, “you’ve become a real pain in my ass. What's the deal with yous anyway? Things was goin’ real good, except for a mistake here and there. I coulda cleaned things up and moved on just fine—this is what I do, you see. Except for you three bitches.”

Okay. That was it. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, a man who used three tubes of gel in his hair had thrown me into a basement, and now this ridiculous woman, who growled like a man, had the nerve to call
me
a bitch.

“That’s what I want to know,” I said putting forth my best bitchy attitude. “What’s the deal with these monkeys, anyway? Smuggling them into the country, Viv?”

Viviana just smiled. No answer.

Moving back over to me, Viviana bent her knees until she was looking me in the eyes, then exhaled her smoke slowly, right into my face. “Don’t get fresh with me,” she said, getting herself back to a standing position. “I’m menopausal. And I’ve got a gun.”

Frankie returned with a green glass ashtray. He thrust it at Viviana, who took it without any acknowledgement. It fit easily into the palm of her hand. She flicked her ashes into the glass object while Frankie returned to his station as hostage-guard. At the same time, there was a crashing sound, as if someone were being thrown into the door upstairs. There was shouting and then the sound of multiple footsteps. We could hear a, “Come on buddy, move it, move it!” as if someone were being forced down the stairs. It sounded like our friend Elvis. But who did he have with him now?

Sure enough, Elvis appeared, shoving another body into the room. He seemed proud of his most current prize, presenting it to his spiky heeled boss. “Viv, lookie here what the cat drug in!”

I was shocked. Stupefied. Beyond stupefied. Aghast. Could this really be happening? It was more than I could handle. I let out a scream as he looked at me with his puppy-dog eyes.

It was Howard.

Chapter Sixteen

HOWARD HELD HIS HANDS BEHIND his head, elbows in the air, while Elvis held a gun to his back. He pushed the gun hard, forcing Howard further into the room. Howard didn’t say a thing.

“Well,” growled Viviana, “if it isn’t our favorite friend from the FBI.”

FBI? This woman was very confused. Howard rolled his eyes. I couldn’t understand why he was only rolling his eyes. Why wasn’t he defending himself against the obvious misunderstanding? Certainly a huge mistake had been made, and I needed to set things right.

“He’s not FBI,” I cried, trying to explain my poor husband’s innocence. “That’s my husband, Howard!”

Viviana and her crew laughed.

“Why are you laughing? He’s an engineer. Tell them, Howard!” While words tumbled out of my mouth, I started putting two and two together. Very possibly, they equaled deception. I looked hopefully to Howard, praying that he would jump in and verify that I wasn’t the stupidest wife alive. His eyes drifted guiltily to his shoes.

Viviana grinned again, blowing smoke out of her nose and snuffing out the remaining little bit of cigarette in the ashtray in her other hand. She handed the ashtray to Frankie, who took it like a good servant as she did her slow stroll over to Howard.

“Where is it, honey?” she asked. Howard rolled his eyes again.

“Back pocket. Right,” he said. She moved her hand slowly around to his back pocket, keeping her face close to his and smiling.