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“So much for being subtle,” Bess mutters under her breath.
“She was purchasing luggage,” he says matter-of-factly. “You can do the same. Once the luggage is left unclaimed for over thirty days, we consider it abandoned so we sell it. All proceeds go to the Maui Wildlife Foundation. She paid a little extra to have it delivered to the ship she’s sailing with. We also deliver to all of the local hotels and condos.”
“Well, if it’s for a good cause.” Nettie is quick to crane her neck at the wall of luggage before us.
“No,” Bess says. “You know you don’t have room for one more thing in that cabin of yours.”
“Well, I say yes.” Nettie pulls her toward the wall of wonders. “Now help me pick out a good one.”
While they hem and haw over the different bags before us, I step over to the man whose nametag reads Louis.
“Louis, why do you think my friend”—I motion in the direction Nadine took off in—“chose that trunk in particular? I mean, she was here just for a moment. It’s almost as if she knew what she wanted.”
“She did, and it’s called luxury. We see her type here all the time. They give our inventory a once-over, and if they see something expensive they pay. I bet that trunk is filled with fancy clothes and shoes. And who knows? It might even have some jewelry in it. Owning stuff like that makes people feel as if they’re loaded themselves. You know, keeping up pretenses.”
“I got one,” Nettie shouts as if she just hooked a fish onto a line. “We’ll take that one.” She points to a small rectangular shiny red case and I nod. If I had to guess which one Nettie would pick, that would be it.
“That one?” Bess balks. “It looks like a miniature coffin. It probably has a body inside it.”
“I bet it has a fiddle,” Nettie says, fishing out a couple of bills from her wallet and practically throwing them at the man. “And I bet that fiddle belonged to the devil himself.”
I glance back and note that Nadine is on the move again as she makes her way out of the building.
“We have to go,” I say. “We’re losing her.”
The miniature red casket lands in Nettie’s hands, and soon the three of us are in the back of Dogo’s sedan once again
“There she goes,” Bess says as Nadine jumps into the same car she arrived in and they pull away from the curb. “Follow that car!”
We peel away from the curb ourselves and that shiny red suitcase rattles across all three of our laps as if it had a skeleton in it.
“Wow,” I muse. “It almost sounds as if something is knocking to get out.”
Bess grunts, “So help me, if there’s a body in there.”
“Well, Nettie,” I say. “Don’t keep us in suspense. Open her up.”
She does just that, and the three of us let out a bloodcurdling scream.
CHAPTER 12
“Quick, throw it out the window,” I shout.
“Set it on fire first,” Bess shouts with just as much vigor. “Surely Dogo has a lighter around here somewhere.”
“You ladies are sadists,” Nettie says, suddenly having a change of heart and cradling the creature she just exhumed from the box of horror.
“Oh, come on.” Bess clucks her tongue. “You can’t be serious. You screamed just as loud as we did.”
“Because I was excited,” Nettie says, giving the demented doll a kiss on the cheek.
Nestled in her arms sits a ventriloquist’s dummy, about three feet tall, with red hair and bright green eyes. His globe of a head is carved out of wood as is what I can see of his limbs. He’s dressed in a dark suit and has on a pinstriped shirt underneath that with a black tie.
The car goes over a bump and the dummy gives a hard blink right at us.
The three of us scream once again and this time Dogo joins in on the fun.
“What’s going on back there?” he calls out as the car careens off the road for a moment. “It sounds like you’re having one heck of a party.”
