Chapter 47
The muzzle of the gun pressed into my temple.
It was warm against my skin. That’s what I was thinking. Jim’s gun had been hidden under his whiskey-commercial suit coat, warmed by his body heat.
And now it was touching me.
Maybe because I couldn’t see it, I didn’t have that gut-sick feeling I’d had staring down the gun at Sicily’s house, Bonnie Young on the trigger end. I didn’t feel panicked. I was pissed.
Why was this happening?
Alex hung up the phone.
“Me,” Jim agreed with Marisa, almost apologetically. “I suppose you know my voice.”
Him?
Silent Jim was involved in all this? All this, whatever this was?
My eyes shifted from Marisa to Alex. Alex wouldn’t understand what was going on, that Marisa could only identify one kidnapper by his voice and his minion by—
Without moving my head, I tried to see what Quin was doing.
But Marisa hadn’t startled at seeing Quin at the bar. She’d only freaked out when—
“Gather them up,” Jim ordered.
Ned went into the kitchen and came back, pushing Pascal ahead of him.
Ned?
“You’re the only two in the kitchen?” Jim said.
“As usual,” Ned grumbled.
I was picturing the take-out containers bursting from the overfull garbage bag next door, where they’d been keeping Marisa.
They hadn’t been just any take-out containers, but the pulpy recycled ones Alex used only to please me.
All those extra meals Pascal had been concerned about—Ned had been stealing them to feed his prisoner.
And if he’d been acting like he might walk out on the job, then I guess I knew why. Why hold out for a dollar more an hour when you could—could …
“What do you want?” I said. “What’s all this for?”
“Count on Doll Devine for straight talk,” Silent Jim said. “All of your phones, now. Ned, collect them.”
Ned shoved Pascal behind the bar with Alex and Oona, took their cell phones, one, two, three, yanked the cord on the landline from the wall, and then went to Marisa and Sicily.
“You already have my phone, loser,” Marisa said.
I had never liked her more.
Sicily fumbled a bit, handing her phone over, like she wasn’t quite sure which pocket to pull from. The kid thought she’d already had anxiety.
“You’re not even collecting wallets and jewelry?” I demanded.
“Dahlia.” Oona shook her head at me.
“How much money do you think we keep in the till?”
“Zip it,” Silent Jim said. “I could probably guess down to the dollar what’s in that register. It’s not pocket change we’re after.”
“We don’t have a safe,” I said. He’d been playing a long game, sitting at McPhee’s all this time, and for what? “The building? Is Edith working for you?”
Quin spoke up from his end of the bar. “Dahlia, be quiet and let them do what they’re going to do.”
But he didn’t know what they were going to do. Unless he did. I still wasn’t sure I trusted him.
“Smart,” Ned said as he stepped up to Quin and held out his hand.
Quin reached into his jacket. There was a small hesitation, then he handed over his phone.
Was it an act? Was he in on it?
But the night I’d found Joey, he’d asked all those questions. What was Joey into? Would Joey get involved in—
“Edith who?” Silent Jim said. “That real estate climber? I’m not trying to buy this dump.”
“Just hold it upside down and shake it, right?” Ned said. “Your phone, Doll.”
Shake it out …
“The treasure?” I spat. “Are you kidding me?”
“Dahlia,” Alex said.
“Your pops said himself it’s real,” Jim said, his voice low in my ear. “Or whatever the hell he is to you. And I believe him. He’s the expert. He’s the boss. Your phone, kid.”
“It’s upstairs,” I said. “Also, it’s a brick. Which I have been telling…”
My heart sank. The band. The band was still back in the storeroom.
“Check her,” Jim said to Ned.
Ned was only too happy to frisk me, careful consideration of all my pockets and curves. Creep. He pulled out my set of keys and pocketed them, then the scrap of paper with my song notes on it, opened it, shrugged, threw it on the bar. “No phone,” he said to Jim.
“If I had a working phone, I would have already called the police,” I said. “And if we had treasure in this pub, you don’t think we’d be out spending it? Or selling this place to the gangster who wants it and retiring to a life of luxury? We’re in the red here.”
“We’re not in the red,” Alex said.
“All those envelopes in the office you’re letting stack up,” I said. “Some of them look kind of serious.”
“Some of those aren’t for us,” Alex said. “The bills and collections notices are for someone named Michael Jordan. I don’t know any Michael Jordan.”
Sometimes jokes were lost on Alex.
“The vendor invoices, then,” I said. “You’re not even opening them.”
“I set up online banking,” Alex said. “I wanted more time away from the bar.” There was a blush rising up his neck. He checked the top button on his flannel shirt. Yep, buttoned.
“To spend with me,” Oona explained.
“That’s so sweet,” Jim said in a buttery voice, pressing the gun into the side of my head. “But I would like to get on with business. Let’s all remember who has the gun in this room.”
“Me,” said a timid voice to our left.
Jim spun us both so that I was the shield against this new front.
Sicily had thrown off Marisa and stood there alone, a gun drawn at the end of skinny, shaking arms. She sagged at the knees in the glare of our attention.
“Let her go,” she said.
Oh, Disney princess, it sounded more like a question than a demand, and everyone watching already knew the answer.