Protection for Hire (4 page)

Eddie coughed. “I think the reason it’s such a sudden decision is
because
of Aunt Coco.”

“Oh. Is it because of Mama’s cooking?”

“I got my own earful. You’ll get yours when Mama calls you.”

Charles sighed. “Aunt Coco likes to stretch a dollar into six. I told Mama that I thought Aunt Coco invited Mama to stay with her because she thought she’d be getting a free chef.”

“Well, I
didn’t
tell Mama, but I think the relatives purposely didn’t tell Aunt Coco about Mama’s cooking,” Eddie said.

And Mama’s love of excess pepper, unusual combos like beef and guava, and her new favorite spice, turmeric. All mixed together.

“She was a great cook when we were growing up,” Charles said. “I just don’t like these new exotic recipes she’s been trying the past few years. But I can’t exactly say no when she cooks for me.”

“You could sue the Food Network for existing.”

“It would be fine if she watched Paula Deen. The problems happen when she watches Iron Chef — once she tried to recreate some octopus pudding dessert she saw on the show.”

“Blech.” Eddie made a face, then slapped Charles on the back. “And Mama’s staying with you again. Good luck.”

“If she serves sushi gumbo, I’m forcing you to come over for dinner.”

“Hmm, now if
Tessa
made me sushi gumbo …”

“You’re a moron,” Charles said.

However, inwardly he couldn’t blame his brother. He’d been mesmerized during that short moment he’d met her eyes — dark brown with flecks of green, framed by long dark lashes. And her mouth had been soft and full and pink.

He gave himself a firm mental shake. She was yakuza, for goodness’ sake, and he knew exactly what she’d done because he’d been a law clerk at her trial. And he was thinking she was cute?

Actually, he’d thought back then that she was cute too — until he’d researched all the unsolved assaults and murders her cousin Ichiro had been involved in, and since she’d been part of his gang, he knew she had been involved in most of those as well, even if it wasn’t proven.

So when she’d pled out for manslaughter rather than murder, he’d advised the judge to extend her sentence beyond the maximum, and the judge had done it, giving her seven years instead of five.

Ironic that now, as a defense lawyer, he had defended a few corporate criminals.

Why was Tessa Lancaster applying for a job at OWA when she could just go back to working for her uncle? Had something happened between them?

Charles had no doubt that eventually she would go back to hanging out with her cousin Ichiro again. He had escaped conviction a couple times already. Tessa probably would too, unless she messed up again like she did with Laura Starling’s murder.

Regardless, he’d probably never see her again.

T
he living room couch was like a torture rack from the Spanish Inquisition. And probably just as old.

When they’d been younger, Tessa and Alicia had loved sleeping on the living room couch. Twenty years ago, the springs had already been sagging and swaying, and it had been a dark-blue corduroy cloud. Plus, sleeping in the living room had been reserved for sleepover parties and Christmas Eve, both happy-pink-fizzy-skies events.

But the arrival last night of Alicia with a pale and shaking Paisley had relegated Tessa to the couch so Paisley could be bundled up in her aunt’s bed. So, not such a happy-pink-fizzy-sky event.

What had caused Alicia to leave her house in the middle of the night to bunk at Mom’s house? After putting Paisley to bed in Tessa’s room, Alicia had holed up in Mom’s bedroom until Tessa finally went to sleep on the couch, concerned but too tired to stay up.

She spared a fleeting thought for the dangers of her niece in her bedroom. When Tessa had still been living with her mom in her teens, she’d accumulated a highly illegal weapons collection
that had been hidden in various places in her room. Because of her toys, she had also fortified the room so that G.I. Joe couldn’t get in.

She’d taken her weapons with her when she moved to her condo in her early twenties, and then after she got out of prison, they were all (tearfully) sold because of her parole. But Tessa didn’t quite trust herself to have remembered all the hiding places in her bedroom. Alicia would eat her alive if her daughter found a forgotten
wushu
chain whip or something.

She twisted to try to ease the ache in her back and would have rolled off the couch if she hadn’t thrust her hand out to plant into the olive-green shag carpet. She pushed her body back over the edge of the faded blue corduroy cushions.

She sat up and swung her legs down, intending to stand up, except: (a) the couch which had seemed so large when she was eight was in reality only eleven inches from the floor, and it was like trying to stand up after sitting in a kindergarten chair, and (b) since she’d grown a few feet since she last slept here, her feet had dangled over the edge uncovered all night and were now numb with cold.

She managed to hobble to the bathroom, then to the kitchen. Faint noise from her room — Paisley was up. What time was it? She glanced at the clock — seven-ish. She opened the fridge, grabbing a carton of yogurt. She opened it and yelped.

Mom had apparently been trying to conduct a science experiment. The entire inside was coated with greenish dark gray fuzz. She thought a section of it might have reached out to her with a spiny tendril before she slammed the lid back on.

She opened the cabinet door under the sink, but the garbage can sitting there was already full, so she pulled it out. May as well empty it.

“Morning, Aunt Tessa,” Paisley said from the doorway of the kitchen. She yawned and scratched at her wild blonde-streaked brown curls. “What’s for breakfast?”

Not yogurt, that was for sure. “Did you want me to make you some eggs and toast?”

“Naw, I can just get cereal.” Paisley opened the fridge.

And promptly burst into tears.

Alicia chose that exact moment to walk into the kitchen. She took one look at her crying daughter and turned to Tessa, who looked innocent of all wrongdoing while peeking into the garbage bin like a trash lady.

“What did you do?” Alicia demanded.

Tessa actually took one-billionth of a second to consider a calm, mature answer. But of course her temper sprinted past and won the race. “I friended her on Facebook. What do you think I did? Nothing.”

“That is not nothing.” Alicia thrust a hand toward her daughter, whose face was buried in her hands with tears running between her fingers.

“I was only trying to save her from more emotional trauma in the form of thousand-year-old yogurt.” Tessa gestured to the carton of yogurt sitting on top of the full garbage can.

“It’s not her fault, Mom,” Paisley said in between hiccoughs. She reached into the fridge and gingerly handed her mom a can of whipped cream.

Alicia made a disgusted noise. “I could kill your father.”

Now Tessa was completely confused. “Over whipped cream?”

Paisley covered her mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Look what you’ve done!” Alicia yelled at Tessa.

“Considering the wealth of information you gave me last
night, you’re lucky I didn’t offer it to her with her morning pancakes. I have no idea what’s going on.”

Alicia pressed her lips together and didn’t answer. Neither did she apologize for unfairly accusing Tessa of wrongdoing or even explaining what exactly Tessa had done wrong.

“So are you going to tell me why we’re instituting a Redi-Whip ban?” Tessa asked.

“You want to wait for my daughter to leave the room first, O Sensitive One?”

“Oh, I’ll tell her.” Paisley sniffed and swiped at her eyes, which were still red, but the rest of her was quickly returning to normal. While Tessa had often been tempted to hang her niece off a tall building for her smart mouth, for once she was glad for the resilience of youth.

“I was at Adele’s house doing homework —”

“Did you get it done?” Alicia said.

“Mooooooom, I’m telling a story here. And yes. Can you stop being a mom for a second?”

“Well, you can’t fire your mom, so deal with it,” Alicia said.

Ah, the huggy-huggy kissy-kissy bond of a mother and teenage daughter.

“I came home,” Paisley said. “I knew Mom was with you guys at OWA so I just let myself in. Oh, how did your interview go, Aunt Tessa?”

“Badly. Continue.”

“I went into the kitchen for something to eat because Adele’s family only eats vegetarian and while some of it’s good, yesterday her mom served this weird brownish-blackish baba-something that tasted like the underside of a rock.”

“Baba ghanoush,” Alicia said. “It’s eggplant …”

Paisley sent her an exasperated look.

“Okay, okay, tell your story.”

“So I walk into the kitchen, and what do I see?” Dramatic pause.

Was Tessa supposed to say something? “Uh … what?”

“My father, naked.”

“Ew!” Even if Tessa had liked Duane, the thought of a daughter seeing her daddy in the buff was too horrible to contemplate.

“With his girlfriend, naked.”

“What?”

In an aside to Tessa, Alicia said, “They weren’t doing anything … you know.”

“What do you mean?” Paisley protested. “Of course they were doing something. They were covered in whipped cream.”

“That’s a tragic waste of whipped cream,” Tessa said.

“See, Mom? I’m not the only one who thinks that.”

“You’re not helping,” Alicia told Tessa.

“So I screamed,” Paisley said. “And his girlfriend screamed. And Dad screamed too.”

Tessa could believe Duane screamed, all right. The pansy had called Tessa the night Alicia found him in his office with his girlfriend, crying and begging Tessa for protection from his Michael-Myers-crazy wife. “His stripper girlfriend should be used to performing.”

“Oh, it wasn’t the stripper,” Paisley said airily. “He dumped her the week Mom found them together. Dad’s had three girlfriends since. This one’s a flight attendant.”

The man needed to be neutered. “Why was he at your house?” Tessa asked.

Alicia took up the story. “After I put Paisley to bed, I called him to tell him I had to tranquilize his only child. He explained that he lost his condo.”

“How’d he lose it? The man makes six figures.”

“Because he also bought a Ferrari, a houseboat, a vacation home in Cancun, and a diamond tiara for the whipped-cream girl.”

“Which she was wearing,” Paisley added.

“I thought he couldn’t buy anything. Isn’t that how divorce works in California?”

“Not for the money he makes after the official separation.”

“He doesn’t make
that
much. Did he buy all that on credit?”

“And reneged on the condo. He’s homeless. Since the house is still in his name, he decided to move in.”

So that meant …

“Good morning,” Mom said as she entered the kitchen, then stopped at the sight of the three of them in intense conversation. “What’s going on?”

“I was explaining about Duane,” Alicia said.

Mom’s mouth twisted at mention of his name, then she changed the subject. “Everyone sleep okay?”

“Yes,” Alicia said.

“I guess.” Paisley shrugged.

“Like Def Leppard was playing a concert next door,” Tessa said.

The three of them looked at Tessa. “Tell us how you really feel,” Alicia said.

“I’m not sleeping on the couch again. Paisley can sleep there.”

“I don’t want to sleep on a couch —”

“How dare you make your niece sleep on a couch —”

“I’m sure we can fit everyone somehow,” Mom said.

“I’m six inches taller and almost twice Paisley’s age,” Tessa said.

“You could just move out,” Alicia said angrily.

Mom cleared her throat.

“And live where, on what salary?” Tessa asked.

“You could get a job,” Alicia sneered.

Mom coughed.

“I send out fifty to sixty resumes a week,” Tessa snapped. “And I was here first.”

“Oh, so you’ll send your sister and niece out into the streets?”

“You could get a job,” Tessa replied silkily.

Alicia’s mouth puckered shut and she looked away. “I’ve been too busy raising Paisley to get a job.”

“A-hem!” Mom nearly coughed up a loogie to get their attention. “We have plenty of space. We’ll clean out the spare room and put that storage stuff in the sunroom.”

Tessa was a little surprised at Mom’s sudden willingness to clean out Dad’s old office. Right after Dad left, her mother had been hysterical-psycho insistent that they leave Dad’s old office the way it was. A few years later, her bitterness had foamed over and she’d gone through the room, intending to throw away everything inside, but something about being in the room for the first time in years calmed her down, and instead she’d simply boxed everything up and used it as a storage room. She became angry-psycho agitated whenever her daughters asked to clear out the room, so they stopped mentioning it and pretended it didn’t exist.

“I, uh, think it’s still got the daybed in there,” Tessa said.

“In the sunroom, that stuff will be fine over the winter, but come spring, the sun will damage it,” Alicia protested.

She could just say, “I want my sister to enjoy the torture of sleeping for months on a three-foot-long saggy couch rather than work to clean up an old, unused room.”

“We’ll install those dark shades on the windows,” Mom said. “It can even be a spare bedroom if we can get rid of enough stuff.”

“And how are we going to afford it?” asked the jobless sister who was too lazy, scared, and unmotivated to find a job for the first time since her daughter was born.

“We’ll be cleaning out the room — garage sale!” Mom’s face lit up. Garage sales were like Macy’s stores to her — hours of unceasing, endless wonder and amazement.

This friendly, reasonable version of her mother was completely unfamiliar and maybe a little unpredictable. But Tessa said, “I’m cool with it.” Anything to keep her room. She’d already gotten rid of all the knives and swords from her personal collection, but she never knew if she had forgotten a stiletto hidden somewhere from her teen years, and if Paisley found it, Alicia would go Michael-Myers-crazy again.

“I’m not,” Alicia said. “Can’t you just find a place to stay with some of your yakuza friends? I don’t understand why you sold your condo. For a supposedly smart woman, sometimes you act completely crazy —”

Tessa didn’t really expect her selfish sister to suddenly become unselfish and easygoing, but this constant attacking put her back up. “Alicia,” Tessa interrupted in a low, succinct voice, “I am going to tell you this
one more time.
”

Alicia paused in the middle of her tirade with surprise in her eyes and pink in her cheeks.

“The reason I won’t go back to my yakuza friends is the same reason I sold my yakuza-money-purchased condo, and the same reason I won’t work for Uncle Teruo again. I’m done with that life. I’m trying to be normal, which is what
you
kept harping at me to be all those years before I went to prison.”

The flush in Alicia’s cheeks deepened.

“As soon as I find a job, I will move out,” Tessa said.

Mom pouted, but didn’t say anything in response.

“When I do, you can rule this castle the way you want. Until then, you’re going to just have to deal with it.”

Alicia’s eyes narrowed. “Well, work harder to find a job fast.”

Tessa was quite proud of herself when she refrained from retorting, “What about fifty to sixty resumes a week is not working hard?” Then again, she did bite her tongue hard enough to draw blood.

“You should take that bodyguard job,” Paisley said. Tessa had forgotten she was here.

“The unpaid one?” Mom asked.

“Elizabeth did promise to pay me when she got her money back.”

“Yes, yes, just take it, take it,” Alicia said impatiently. “She’ll probably pay you before you actually find permanent work.”

Were the only jobs available to her jobs like the one yesterday? (The interviewer for the janitor position had asked her to take her top off. Tessa had walked out.)

Not if she was careful. And she thought she’d actually be a really good bodyguard. Hadn’t she worked to disable bodyguards all the time when working for her uncle?

She also liked Elizabeth, with her maple syrup accent and bubbly personality, only slightly dimmed by her years of being used as a punching bag. She made Tessa feel like a real person, someone she wanted to get to know, and not an ex-yakuza.

Alicia stomped toward the coffeemaker. “The least you could have done was start the coffee,” she snipped.

Tessa hadn’t lived with her sister under the same roof since Alicia hightailed it out of the house when she was eighteen. And now she’d be living with Mom
and
Alicia? She might as well draw a red target on her forehead.

She went to the living room while Alicia and Mom went
about making breakfast. Tessa’s new cell phone — which Mom had gotten for her out of frustration when people kept calling the home phone — was on the coffee table, and she dialed Wings shelter.