Chapter Twenty Four - All the Way to Guam

The following day Rudy agreed to meet Circe and bring her back to Punaluu after she dropped off her rental car. She had left early to shop for some clothes and then they were to meet at the Ala Moana Mall that afternoon. He would follow her to the rental agency and bring her back.

Rudy arrived at the Mall early and headed to the book store. He’d been busy recently and hadn’t been in a book store in months. He was enjoying browsing the New Arrivals when a book called “Growing Up Behind the Zion Curtain” caught his eye. The lost manuscript that he’d written several years before had been similarly titled.

He picked up the book and promptly dropped it when he saw the author’s picture on the dust jacket. It was Circe, though she’d used the pen name Holli Rudolph, an obvious dig at Rudy.

He picked it up again and thumbed through it. It was the missing manuscript with a different gender bias. He was astonished! His pulse quickened and he felt hot blood rush to his head until he felt dizzy.

It was nearly two so he headed off to meet Circe, walking quickly and fighting hard to get a handle on his temper while imagining several very elaborate ways to inflict harm upon her person. If whatever was going on weren’t already his problem, it sure was now.

When Circe shows up, I’m gonna kill her, he thought. Better yet, I’ll feed her to the goons that are after her and let them do the job.

He paced the floor in front of the food court until four o’clock but there was no sign of Circe. She hadn’t mentioned what rental agency she was going to and he kicked himself for not finding out. Not knowing where to look for her only added to his anger and frustration until he finally had to admit defeat and head for home.

Kicking things around in his head while driving back to Punaluu, he remembered hearing Circe slip out the door during the night. He’d assumed that she was going for a walk on the beach until he’d heard some noises under the floor joists.

Like a lot of houses in Hawaii, his duplex was built on stilts and people often used the space under the house for storage. The duplex was a little to close to the water to make that a wise idea but there was a removable access panel in the rear.

He’d been groggy and had decided that the noises were just his imagination or the result of a half-awake dream but now he realized that he hadn’t imagined it at all. He dropped the BMW down a gear and picked up the pace.

When he got home he found the back door swinging on its hinges. The furniture was turned over and the drawers were pulled out of the cupboards and dresser. The place had been thoroughly and carelessly ransacked.

He went back out the rear door and crawled under the floor. A sand crab scurried past his head as he crawled around under the house and then he saw them. Wedged between the floor joists and their supports were two briefcases. He pulled them out of their hiding place and crawled out. At least Circe had been smart enough to find the one hiding place that the goons didn’t think to check, more proof of her devious mind.

He quickly headed for the car, eyes wide open and scanning the horizon in a fit of paranoia. In seconds he was on Kamehameha speeding toward Raven’s house.

He fumbled through his key chain until he found her key, his heart pounding as he stumbled through the door. He ran to Raven’s bedroom and rummaged through her jewelry box until he found the key to Nevermore and then he locked and double checked the front door and sped away.

He and Nevermore were ten miles off shore before he cut the motors and let the boat drift in the open water. He ws glad that Raven had a practice of topping off the fuel whenever she got back from a trip. He opened the first case and it was full of sealed plastic bags of what he was sure was cocaine.

He latched the briefcase and opened the other one. It was full of crisp, new $20 bills, neatly banded together in bundles. He had no idea how much was there but he was sure it was well over a hundred grand. He wasn’t about to take the time to count it right now. Instead, he stashed the briefcases, opened the fuel cocks and fired up the diesel engines.

He ran through every scenario he could come up with trying to make sense of recent events; the book, the dope, the money, Circe’s disappearance, the break-in. He tried to stick with what he knew for sure. There had been two things missing from his safety deposit box; the stock certificates and the manuscript. It was pretty clear now what had happened to them though he had no idea how, even with the key, Circe had been able to talk her way past bank security.

Obviously Circe had stolen his manuscript and John had arranged it’s publication with Circe claiming authorship. And it had been published! He’d friggin’ been published! A little satisfaction crept into the cauldron of his emotions with that realization. Now he knew. Even if he never got credit for his work, he knew that he wasn’t a poser.

Back to business; John and Circe had attempted a major drug buy and the money must have come from the book and/or his stocks. Either way, it had been stolen from him. No way did that kind of dough come from an advance on a book from an unknown author. It had to be the stocks. Somehow they’d managed to sell his stocks.

Something had obviously gone wrong. Since John had ended up with a bullet in his belly and Circe had ended up with both the money and the drugs, it was a good bet that Circe was behind whatever it was. She’d believed that John was dead and Rudy hadn’t corrected her. She hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about John’s apparent demise.

Wasn’t that just like her? Anyone else would have been satisfied with stealing his money but not Circe. She had let her greed ruin the perfect crime. Rudy would have a tough time proving that the book was his, since he’d only shown it to Pete. Still, it was pretty dumb to publish it with her picture all over it. Rudy was bound to see it at some point.

“So where does that leave us now?” he wondered aloud. John was in rehab and couldn’t be reached anytime soon. Circe was God-only-knows-where, and Rudy was in possession of the goods. Wherever Circe was, one thing was certain, she would be back for the briefcases and since she was obviously strung out, it was likely to be sooner rather than later.

The thing to do, he decided, was to stash the briefcases where no one else would ever find them until Circe returned and he got some answers. It was called leverage.

He knew exactly where to stash them. He pulled the throttles back and the big diesels roared, lifting Nevermore’s nose high out of the water. What a rush.

He was feeling much better now, realizing that the scales had just tipped in his favor. He couldn’t help feeling a bit smug, anticipating the look in Circe’s lyin’ eyes when she crawled under the house and found the joists empty.

Must have been high tide, washing them out to sea, he chortled, all the way to Guam.