Rock Chick Revenge

  “Be safe,” Winnie called after us as we walked through her yard.

  “We goin’ to find Jeremiah after this dog business?” Olivia asked, following us.

  “Yeah, after the mall,” I told her.

  Daisy pulled up short and gave Olivia a look. “We good?”

  Olivia shrugged. “I’m over it. The man took Big Momma’s money, she almost lost her house. Fuck that. This hunt takes priority.”

  “I hear you,” Daisy said.

  I could swear I heard Tex growling to the heavens.

  “Can I ride with you?” Sissy asked Olivia. “I’m thinking, once I divorce my stupid, cheating husband, I’m going to get a Lexus. I’ve never been in one but they’re sweet. I’d like to experience the ride.”

  “Get yo’ skinny white ass in there,” Olivia answered, which Sissy took as a yes.

  Olivia, her posse and Sissy all scrunched into the Lexus, the rest of us shoved into the Navigator. Shirleen pulled out and Olivia tailed us.

  “Let me get this straight,” Tex boomed from the passenger seat. “Now Dexter has got Lee and his boys, Ava and the girls, the Zano family and four crazy black women after him. Indy and Ally are at a prison on a fool’s errand ‘cause that boy ain’t gonna talk. Smithie’s pinned in a yard by dogs and after we do a dog rescue we’re goin’ to a lingerie department?”

  “That’s right,” Daisy said.

  He blew out a huge sigh. “Shee-it,” he muttered (but it still came out as a boom).

  * * * * *

  Shirleen hadn’t gotten the story exactly right.

  Smithie wasn’t cornered by two German Shepherds. Smithie was treed by two German Shepherds.

  By the time we got there Smithie was perched on a stout limb twelve feet up and the two dogs were at the trunk, snarling and barking so viciously, white slobber was lapping at their doggie lips.

  Ee-yikes!

  Sissy valiantly tried cooing at them, one of the dogs broke off still snarling and chased her to where we all were standing behind a ten-foot chain link fence at the side of the house. She rushed through the gate and Jet threw it closed behind her.

  Luckily, the dog preferred Smithie-meat likely noticing that Sissy didn’t have as much juice on her bones and ran back to the tree.

  “Motherfuckers!” Smithie yelled at us. “Do somethin’! I been up here an hour.”

  “That isn’t true. He’s only been up there half an hour. Forty-five minutes, tops,” Stevie corrected.

  “Anyone tried to stun gun the dogs?” Daisy asked.

  “You wanna walk up to one of those dogs and stun gun it? I don’t think so,” Tod put in.

  “We should have brought Tasers,” Roxie said.

  “Indy and Ally have the Tasers,” Jet reminded her.

  “Maybe we should call the fire department,” I suggested.

  “You wanna explain to the fire department why a black man with no connection to the owners of this house is in their yard?” Duke asked.

  “Why is he in the yard?” I asked Duke.

  “Search me, I was down the block, not gettin’ shit about Dexter by the way, when I got the call from Roxie,” Duke answered.

  “I think he said he heard something and thought the owners were back here. He came around to talk to them and got caught by the dogs. Though I can’t really be sure since he was yelling the story and cursing a lot while he told it so I didn’t follow,” Roxie put in.

  “Why don’t we go buy a few steaks and bring them back? Lure the dogs away,” a voice said from behind us and my body got tense when I recognized it.

  I turned stiffly to look, hoping that I was hearing things, and not the usual Good Ava and Bad Ava nonsense, not even caring that it would mean I had finally lost what was left of my mind and everyone turned with me.

  Mrs. Stark and my Mom were standing behind our tribe. It had been Mrs. Stark with the steak idea.

  For the second time that day, I had to ask, what… the… fuck?

  “What are you doing here?” I screeched. Yes, I screeched, totally unable to control the shrill in my tone. I’d lost it, I was done. This was too much. I could take no more.

  “Who are they?” one of Olivia’s girls (earlier she had been quickly introduced as Rhonda) asked.

  “Hello. I’m Josie Stark, Luke’s Mom. And this is Christine Barlow, Ava’s Mom. Pleased to meet you,” Super Mom Stark came forward and started shaking hands and bestowing warm smiles on everyone as if she was at a church mixer.

  Everyone shook her hand but they all continued to stare at her.

  “You’re Luke’s Mom?” Shirleen asked, staring wide-eyed with wonder at Mrs. Stark.

  I wasn’t surprised at her reaction. Luke seemed more the type to explode fully formed out of a pit of blistering lava, not spring from the loins of a woman with a conservative hairstyle, low-heeled, faultlessly-shined, bone-colored pumps and sporting a short-handled, matching-bone-colored purse two steps up from a granny bag.

  “Sure am,” Mrs. Stark stated proudly.

  “I love this!” Daisy squealed and then giggled her tinkly-bell giggle. Jet, Roxie and Shirleen were grinning at each other huge and I feared they were about to join in on the giggles.

  “Um…” I cut in before hilarity could ensue. “Again, can I just ask, what are you doing here?”

  Mom and Mrs. Stark were warily looking Tex top-to-toe, obviously not certain what to make of him.

  Mom tore her eyes away from Tex first. “Well, Josie and I were talking. We’re both worried about you. So we sent Marilyn and Sofia to the mall and we decided to follow you, make sure you were okay.”

  “What?” I asked, even though I heard her answer, I just didn’t want to believe it.

  “I know it’s none of my business,” Mrs. Stark, obviously not hearing me or deciding not to answer, turned to Olivia. “But you’re a pretty girl. I like your lipstick. It’s the perfect color for you. You have a lovely grandma. A girl like you, well, she shouldn’t be out with a boy who has bounty hunters after him. I don’t know you but I’m a mother and I’m pretty good at sizing people up and, one look at you, I know you could do better.”

  Mom looked at me. “We listened at the side of Mrs. Conrad’s house. You were wrapped up in things, didn’t see us.” Her eyes got soft. “Ava, sweetie, I had no idea. Your troubles.”

  Fuck.

  Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “I’m fine, Mom, honest, I’m over it,” I assured her and turned my attention back to Super Mom Stark. I wasn’t certain Olivia Conrad was the kind of girl who liked anyone getting into her business, especially middle-class, white Super Moms. I thought that might be more pressing at this juncture than Mom finding out I was conned, beaten up and violated by a total jerk. I would deal with Mom later. “Mrs. Stark –” I started.

  “That Louis, he was no good,” Rhonda told Olivia, I thought unwisely. “I was always sayin’ you should cut him loose.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Olivia’s other two girls, Tamika and Camille, murmured their affirmation in unison.

  “Well, I loved him,” Olivia defended herself.

  “You loved his big dick,” Camille put it then she looked sheepishly at Super Mom Stark. “Sorry, but it’s true.”

  “Sex is not love,” Mrs. Stark said sagely.

  “If it’s good nookie then it’s close enough,” Shirleen muttered under her breath.

  I stared at them, stunned speechless at the fact that Mrs. Stark seemed to be intent on holding an impromptu woman’s talk show on a stranger’s lawn. The dogs were barking, Smithie was up a tree and Tex looked like the kind of guy no one wanted loitering around the neighborhood. I was pretty certain it was dumb luck that the police hadn’t already descended on our party. I was also pretty certain that dumb luck wasn’t going to hold out.

  Before I could intervene, Duke did. “Time for the honesty,” he growled, looking, scarily enough, at me.

  “I’ll say, brother,” Tex boomed, crossing his arms on his chest and also glaring at me. br />
  Before I could run away or will my body to spontaneously combust, Duke walked up and stared at me, straight in the eye. “I know you’re tryin’ to protect Luke and I’m okay with that ‘cause you care about him and he’s a good man. He deserves to have a good woman carin’ about him. I’m not okay with standin’ out in the bright sunshine with the neighbors watchin’ and a black man in a tree. I’m not sure I want to explain to Luke Stark why his mother’s been fingerprinted. I’m equally unsure of my desire to explain to him why I let his woman get fingerprinted. What I am sure of is that you don’t want to explain it to him either.”

  “Duke –” I began but he kept talking.

  “I don’t disagree with what he’s doin’. Someone put their hands on my wife Dolores hell would get paid and I’d be the one huntin’ down the jackass who’d be payin’ it. You got a whole bunch a people caught in the middle here and your shit is so far south we’re hangin’ onto a pole by our fingernails. Pretty soon we’re gonna have some angry badasses descending if this shit doesn’t get sorted and fast. Girl, I’m tellin’ it to you straight, give up the ghost. You got no idea what you’re doin’. Sort this shit out and sort it out now.”

  My eyes bugged out. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “You know what you gotta do,” Duke’s gravelly voice rumbled low.

  I did know what I had to do. And I knew I had to do it fast. Mainly because I didn’t feel like getting fingerprinted. Also, the fingerprinting ink would likely stain Mrs. Stark’s bone-colored handbag.

  Hell and damnation.

  With a heavy sigh, I pulled my phone from my purse and flipped it open. I scrolled down my phonebook, found the name I needed, pressed the green button and put it to my ear. It rang twice as I walked several feet away.

  “Yeah?” Luke answered.

  “Luke?”

  “Beautiful, I wanna say I have time to talk but I’m doin’ somethin’ important.”

  I wanted to know what important something he was doing but Smithie was up a tree, I didn’t have time to ask.

  “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t call but I’ve got a situation.”

  Silence for a beat then, “Talk to me.”

  “Well –” I started then stopped, mainly because I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Ava,” Luke sounded impatient.

  “See, the thing is…” I started then stopped again and before Luke could say anything I rushed on, deciding to let it all hang out. “We went to visit Winnie Conrad. She’s a nice lady but she didn’t have much for us. The thing is, her granddaughter, Olivia, showed up while we were talking with Winnie and apparently, somewhere along the line, both Indy and Jet had stun-gunned Olivia and Daisy got in a catfight with her. She wasn’t so happy seeing Daisy at her grandma’s place and there was kind of a mini-incident. Then she found out who I was, what happened to me and that we were after Noah so she decided to join the hunt, after we go to the mall and get Smithie out of the tree that is.”

  I heard noise as his hand covered the mouthpiece of the phone. Then I heard words and they were indistinguishable but, even though I couldn’t make out what he was saying, I could tell whatever it was, it wasn’t happy.

  Then he came back to me. “Let’s talk about why Smithie’s in a tree.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. Two German Shepherds have treed him in a stranger’s backyard. He was canvassing Noah’s old neighborhood. I’m not clear about how that happened but the dogs aren’t happy and we can’t get him down.”

  “Call the fire department.”

  “He’s in a stranger’s yard and we don’t have a good story about why.”

  “Call the fire department.”

  “Luke, he’s in a stranger’s backyard. He’s a black man in a stranger’s backyard. And there are, like, twelve of the now-extended Rock Chick gang hanging out beside the house. We don’t have time for me to describe Daisy’s outfit and you’ve seen Tex. I’m not sure the fire department is going to let us slide.”

  “Ava, call the fire department. I’ll call Eddie. Smithie won’t have any trouble.”

  “I’m not quite done with my story.”

  Silence. Or, more accurately, scary silence.

  I continued. “See, my Mom and I had a nice chat after breakfast but I’ll tell you about that later. Anyway, your Mom and my Mom got worried about my troubles and they decided to follow us. They’re here too. Your Mom thinks we should get steaks for the dogs but she’s also counseling Olivia on her man troubles.”

  More silence.

  I persevered. “So, not only do we need to get Smithie out of the tree without anyone getting arrested, someone needs to do something about the Moms because so far Olivia has been cool about the counseling. I think she’s coming to terms with her man troubles but, you know, we don’t know her very well. Your Mom has the best of intentions but, from what I’ve seen, Olivia can throw some attitude. I don’t know, she might turn at any moment. Not to mention, Tex is totally pissed because we have to swing by the mall –”

  “Ava. Quiet.”

  He said it in the tone where I knew he meant it and if he had been close I knew I wouldn’t have had the words but a hard shut-Ava-up-kiss.

  Then he said, voice still low and angry, “Give the phone to Ma.”

  “Okay,” I agreed readily and didn’t delay but turned to the huddle. “Mrs. Stark, Luke wants to talk to you.”

  She smiled happily, looking like she didn’t have a care in the world, and walked up to me. She took my phone, put it to her ear, listened for about five seconds, smiled and said, “Of course. Be safe.” Then she handed the phone back to me, her eyes giddy happy, she ignored my open-mouthed stare and she walked back to the huddle.

  Then she said something truly frightening, “Christine, we have to go. Luke says we need to make a reservation at a steakhouse. I’m thinking Buckhorn Exchange or Morton’s. If we get in at Morton’s, we can dress up.”

  Slowly, with creeping dread, I put the phone to my ear. “Why is your Mom making reservations for dinner?”

  He ignored my question. “Lee’s calling Eddie right now, Eddie will deal with Smithie. You go to the mall. I’ll pick you up at your place at seven.”

  My body got tight and I repeated, “Why is your Mom making reservations for dinner?”

  “You can call off the Rock Chicks and tell Winnie’s granddaughter to stand down. We got Dexter in the holding room.”

  My tight body went stone still and my lungs evacuated all oxygen. “Luke,” I whispered.

  “After the mall, if you want, you can have Tex or Duke bring you here if you got something to say, or do, to Dexter.”

  “Luke –”

  “You got two hours, you’re not here, we’re finishing with him.”

  “Luke –”

  “Two hours, babe.”

  “Luke!” I cried, fear taking hold of me as oxygen burned a wake into my lungs.

  He didn’t hear me, he had disconnected.

  The tribe gathered around as I numbly flipped the phone shut. Sissy knew me better than anyone. She read my body language, got close and took my hand.

  “The hunt’s off, the Hot Bunch got him,” I whispered and everyone looked at each other.

  “Well, that was no fun,” Olivia remarked. “Just a brother in a tree. I hope the mall works out. I need me a good top if I’m gonna find a decent man. This season, there ain’t no good tops. I need cleavage. Cleavage was last season. I can’t find cleavage anywhere.”

  “Sugar, you okay?” Daisy asked, eyes sharp on me.

  No, I was not okay. I needed a new plan and I needed it fast.

  I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath and then, as usual, I winged it. I opened my eyes and looked at Duke. “Eddie’s going to take care of Smithie,” I said and Duke nodded. Then I looked at Jet. “Can you call Indy and Ally, tell them it’s over?” Jet nodded too. Then I looked at Tod and Stevie. “I need an outfit for Morton’s and really good underwear. The outfit has to be the fuck-me outfit
to end all fuck-me outfits. The underwear has to be good-enough-to-manipulate-a-macho-man underwear. The kind he can’t say no to. Can you do that?”

  “You betcha, girlie,” Tod told me on a huge smile.

  My eyes went to Roxie. “I need the works and I need it fast. Once Tod and Stevie get the clothes and shoes, can you do the works?”

  She knew exactly what I was asking and answered, “Of course.”

  I turned to Olivia. “Go to your grandma, I’m going to be calling her in half an hour. If she agrees to my plan, you both have to be ready to roll.”

  “This mean I’m not goin’ to the mall?” Olivia asked.

  “I’ll take you to the mall tomorrow,” I told her.

  “Works for me,” she said.

  Finally I looked at Tex. “Luke says you’ll take me to the offices after I’m ready. Will you do that?”

  Tex’s gaze cut to Duke then back to me. “No problem, darlin’.”

  My eyes moved to Shirleen and I said simply, “I need you.”

  Without hesitation Shirleen said, “Whatever it is, I’m there.”

  Sissy squeezed my hand. “You want me to come with you too?”

  I turned to her. “No, I need you to babysit Marilyn and Sofia and I want you to come to dinner with us tonight. Can you do that?”

  “Absolutely,” she answered.

  That’s when we heard sirens.

  “What the fuck!” Smithie shouted. “Where did you all go? Is anyone fuckin’ there? I’m in a fuckin’ tree. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

  Tex got close and his huge hand settled on top of my head. “Let’s go,” he said, the boom muted but still there.

  I nodded.

  I looked back at the Rock Chicks as Tex, Shirleen and I headed to the Navigator. There were smiles, waves and chin lifts.

  I waved back but didn’t smile.

  I was too busy freaking out about what I was going to do next.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Octuple Revenge

  Tex drove his bronze El Camino into the parking garage under the Nightingale Investigations offices and I saw Olivia wheeling Winnie’s wheelchair around the side of her Lexus.