Chapter 11 A Man Wearing a Literal Boa #2
“So I’ve been told. Another reason why I find this desire to be my friend so confusing.”
“You really don’t want to be friends?” he asked. Was she reading this all wrong? Did he actually want to be her friend? The kind with beaded bracelets and traveling pants?
No. There was no mistaking what was happening between them, and it most certainly wasn’t platonic.
“I’d like to know why it’d be easier for you if we became friends.”
He tugged her hand to his chest, and for a flicker of a moment, it looked like Elliot was going to pull her into his lap and kiss her until her legs turned to jelly. It seemed both possible and utterly implausible.
Instead, headlights shone on the metal loading bay, and he let her hand go. She sat back down, and he looked toward the parking lot.
“We’ve got company.” He nodded up at the oncoming gray van. “Is it just me, or does that windowless van look sketchy?”
“It’s a van,” she answered. “I think it’s a prerequisite to look a little sketchy.”
Monty stepped out in a suspiciously stained thermal with a different white man in overalls (no shirt) with a—you guessed it—pencil-thin mustache.
“He’s even creepier with the shirt on,” Lainey observed.
Elliot unbuckled his seat belt. “I don’t love the look of these guys. You should stay in the truck.”
“They’re exotic animal dealers, Elliot. This is how they’re supposed to look.” But she was nervous, too. Not for herself, but for the turtles. They were so little and innocent. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of entrusting them into Monty’s care.
“They’re going to sell them to normal, nice people, right?” he asked.
Lainey wasn’t sure Monty knew any normal or nice people, but when she looked over at Elliot to say as much, he appeared visibly ill. “Let’s ask them a few questions,” she replied instead. She stepped out of the truck with him following close like a shadow.
“Nice to see you again, Monty,” Lainey said, her voice sounding far more confident than she felt. “Who’s your friend?”
“Skulls,” the man said, by way of introduction. She assumed. Both the tone and the name itself were inconclusive.
“Lovely” was all she could manage in response.
“You can’t race turtles this small,” Elliot declared.
He was going to ruin this deal. They were going to lose out on $1,650, and she was going to have to share a bedroom with a turtle tank. Still, she couldn’t help but find his concern endlessly endearing.
Skulls was chewing on something when he said, “Nah, I’ve got bigger plans for these runts.”
Elliot looked like he was going to be sick. “What are you…? What, uh, what are you going to do with them?”
Monty pressed a fat envelope into Elliot’s palm. “Money’s all there,” he said, sidestepping Elliot’s question.
Elliot wandered back to the bed of the truck and stared at the coolers.
They’d managed to fit them all comfortably in three, but they’d brought the fourth to keep all the coolers snugly in place as they drove.
Something about leaving this parking lot with one empty cooler made the contents of her stomach churn.
Seconds from pulling the plug on the whole thing, she watched as Elliot unloaded one cooler—the empty one—set the envelope of cash inside, and placed it a few feet from the truck.
He tightened the strap on the other coolers and stepped back into the driver’s seat.
“Get in,” he commanded out of the corner of his mouth.
She did as she was told. “Sorry, gentlemen. This isn’t going to work for us,” he called out, swinging the driver’s-side door closed. “Keep your money, and the cooler is a parting gift.”
The two men sprinted for the cooler. The truck tires screeched as Elliot laid down on the gas and peeled out of the parking lot.
“I’m sorry. I know. I just couldn’t do it to the turtles. They didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll live with them in a cabin. You can live in the other. It’ll be—”
“Elliot!” She laughed. “It’s fine. I was just about to do the same thing. Maybe not so dramatically…”
“I thought about that. I wasn’t sure how well they’d handle us pulling out at the last second, so I figured the element of surprise couldn’t hurt.”
“I guess we’re parents now. Turtle parents.”
She shook her head, smiling. “There has to be a better fate for these animals than us. They’ve suffered enough already.”
“I don’t think the rest of the underground animal-dealing community has much more to offer us than Monty did.”
“I’ve got to have other contacts,” she assured him. “Keep driving. I’ll see what I can drum up.”
Luckily, the second-shadiest person she knew, Gran, responded quickly with an actual solution that wasn’t even so shady: a link to a Facebook page for an aquatic animal sanctuary not far from her senior community on Lake Superior.
Gran, dressed in a long-sleeved chartreuse kaftan as though they’d interrupted her lounging on the lido deck on this unseasonably warm April day, had insisted on meeting them at the animal sanctuary, claiming that “the elderly require frequent interaction or they die.” Lainey suspected it had more to do with wanting to get her eyes on Elliot.
“I used to rehome Gil’s reptiles all the time. If the animals went through all the trouble of escaping captivity, they’ve more than earned their freedom, as far as I’m concerned,” Gran argued while watching them unload the coolers from the back of the truck.
“How did you get here so fast?” Lainey asked.
“They have real Uber over here, darling,” she parried.
Elliot’s mouth turned up in an amused smirk, catching the attention of Lainey’s grandmother. Gran arranged her face into a warm, inviting grin. “You must be the man who tried to evict my granddaughter and somehow coerced her into a fraudulent marriage.”
If Lainey had been drinking water, she would’ve done a spit take.
The color drained from his face. “I…uh…that’s not how I’d characterize it.”
“Really? How might you characterize it? Please. Explain it to an old woman.”
Lainey was enjoying this, but she was beginning to grow concerned for Elliot’s blood pressure. “All right, Gran. He’s not ready to go toe to toe with you quite yet. Give him some time to prepare talking points for next time.”
“Ooh! A debate. That sounds fun.” Gran looked Elliot up and down. “You’re handsome. I’ll give you that. What a chin!”
Elliot’s head spun between the two Davis women. “Um, thank you?”
“Don’t thank her. She’s not complimenting you. She doesn’t trust handsome men.” Lainey hiked up a cooler on her thigh with a grunt. “Carmen said on the phone that she wanted us to meet her by the outdoor enclosures.”
Behind the commercial building was a slew of natural-looking pools and sunbaked grass, all fenced in for protection from predators.
The vet tech, Carmen, was an older woman with dark brown hair and tanned skin dressed in head-to-toe khaki.
She lovingly examined each of the thirty-three turtles with gentle hands and a soft, soothing voice.
“Look at these guys,” Carmen cooed. “Thank you for bringing them to us. We’ll take good care of them.”
Elliot, who apparently had no idea what was good for him, volunteered to drive Gran back home, even agreeing to a quick stop at a local convenience store.
“Not this one,” Lainey suggested casually, working hard not to tip her hand. “The one on Peach has Rolos.”
“Every gas station convenience store has Rolos. It’s like a rule,” Elliot countered, pulling into the parking lot.
“Trust me,” Lainey argued urgently. But not too urgently. Gran’s hand was holding hers, and she’d sense a spike in her heart rate. Deception was a delicate dance. “The one on Peach is better.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll get you Rolos from the one on Peach.” He turned off the ignition and extended a hand to Gran.
Lainey knew they were made the moment they walked in. The man behind the counter, a gangly white guy with tattoo sleeves and a man bun, clocked Gran immediately.
“No. Nope. She’s banned. The old one. Banned.”
Elliot’s and Lainey’s heads swung toward Gran, the picture of innocence.
“Me?” Her eyelashes fluttered. “Banned? On what grounds?”
“Out,” the man demanded.
Elliot’s eyes shot between the man behind the counter and Gran. “You can’t be serious.”
Gran lifted a package of Rolos feebly. “Please, sir. Can’t I have just one?”
“Get her out of here before I call the cops,” the man threatened from behind a foggy barrier of plexiglass.
Deep lines carved into Elliot’s forehead. “She just wants a pack of Rolos, man.”
“I just want Rolos,” Gran repeated. She was wide-eyed, an ingenue confronting a wolf in the woods.
“The jig is up,” Lainey whispered to her grandmother, placing her pack of candy back on the shelf.
“I’ll go—if I must.” Gran was laying it on thick. “But Elliot, my dear boy, will you please purchase me this small, small package of my favorite treat?”
Lainey forced herself not to break. “Please, Gran. Let’s just go to the one on Peach.”
“No. We don’t need to do that.” Elliot grabbed the entire box of Rolos from between the boxes of Peanut M&M’s and Mike and Ikes and walked it to the counter. “Here. I want all of these. Are we still banned, or will you ring us up?” He plopped the box in front of the protective glass.
The man inhaled deeply through his nose. Lainey braced herself for a confrontation, but instead his tattooed fingers grabbed the scanner, and with a friendly beep, the machine rang up the packages of Rolos. One. By. One.
The clerk slid back a bag of chocolate tubes. “Cash or credit?”
Elliot handed the man his card and grabbed the bag in his very own Pretty Woman moment. “Your candy, Ms. Davis.”
Gran’s smile was triumphant.
“You must call me Elaine, my dear.”
They drove along the lake all the way back to Gran’s place. “Wait right here,” she insisted. When Gran returned to the truck, Lainey and Elliot were standing in front of the hood, stretching their legs. She was holding a cream-colored hat box. “You’re a Groffie, right?” Gran asked Elliot.
Elliot blushed. “I don’t know about—”