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Suddenly a bizarre thought occurred to Cynthia. “Did Prince Ferrama hire you? Are you people hit men?” Stranger things had happened, she supposed.

“Hit men? Hit men? What is it with you women and hit men?” Elvis asked with disgust. “This is simple TCB…taking care of business. An old motto of Elvis’s, and a good one, too.”

“No, P.T. didn’t
hire
us,” the overall-clad female spat out. “P.T. is our stepbrother, but he has nothing to do with this. In fact, we should’ve
kidnapped him a long time ago. Then we might still have our family company…Friedman’s Wholesale Shoes.”

“Daddy made the best beach clogs in the world,” the other woman informed her.

Cynthia put a hand to her forehead, totally confused.

“I’m Naomi Friedman, and this is my sister, Ruth Friedman,” the coverall babe said testily.

Ruth, the bimbo sister, smiled at her and gave a little wave in acknowledgment of the introduction.

“You’re going to be our guest for the next twenty-one days,” Naomi continued. “So I’d suggest you cooperate, and no one will get hurt.”

A bubble of hysteria threatened to erupt inside Cynthia’s head.
Twenty-one days? That’s how long it will be till the Ferrama stock offering. I don’t care what they say, this is a setup orchestrated by the scuzzball prince. Boy oh boy, am I gonna make mincemeat of him. I really am
.

“And I’m Elmer Presley,” the little guy chirped brightly.

“Don’t you mean Elvis?”

“Naw. I’m Elmer Presley…Elvis’s reincarnation.”

“Oh, God!” Cynthia groaned. Then she decided she’d had enough of these silly games.

She lunged for the emergency button.

Elmer grabbed her arm.

Ruth squealed with distress.

And then the gun went off, shattering the mirrored wall to her right.

Everything happened so swiftly—like fast-forward on a VCR machine—that for a moment there was a stunned silence in the elevator as everyone, including the Clint Eastwood in coveralls, stared aghast at the broken glass surrounding them.

“Na-o-mi!” Ruth shrieked. “You didn’t tell us you had real bullets in that gun.”

“Now, now, sweetcakes,” Elmer comforted her. “There’s no real harm done.”

“Is this ‘Candid Camera’?” Cynthia inquired hopefully.

“Hardly,” Naomi sniped, her composure reinstated. She blew on the end of the gun barrel in a manner that would have been laughable if Cynthia didn’t fear the woman was a hair-trigger psycho. “
Now
are you going to be cooperative?”

“Whatever you say,” Cynthia agreed.
Half the tools are missing from this gal’s toolbelt
. “Where are we going anyhow? The palace? Ha, ha, ha.”

“Yep,” the trio answered simultaneously.

“I am
not
going to the Canary Islands,” Cynthia protested.
They’d probably bury me in some dungeon there. I’d live on bread and water…or maybe coconuts. Do they have coconuts in the Canary Island? No, I think it’s bananas. And the rack…would they put me on a rack and—

“Not
that
palace, silly,” Ruth said with a laugh.

Of course not. How silly of me!
“Which castle, then?”

“The one in the Catskills,” Naomi informed her dryly.

“The Catskills Castle. This I gotta see.”

 

Several hours later, they were cruising up I-87 in a stretch limo. Elmer, whose high hairstyle barely topped the steering wheel, was driving, with his girlfriend Ruth at his side. One Elvis song after another blasted out of the car stereo. If Cynthia heard “Don’t Be Cruel” one more time, she swore she was going to scream. Or do something cruel.

And Elvis trivia! Who cared if recent polls found that 43 percent of Americans describe themselves as Elvis fans? Or that there were one thousand legitimate Elvis impersonators—though the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate Elvises eluded her. Good grief, she wasn’t even impressed that there were 575 Elvis fan clubs, even though he’d been dead for twenty-one years.

She was sitting in the back seat with the gun moll. Her ankles and wrists were restrained with Bolgheri ties she’d learned were from Alvarez’s cherished collection.

Any thoughts Cynthia might have entertained about escaping at a rest stop or restaurant were quickly squashed. Naomi made her relieve herself in the woods along the roadside. And they all ate the god-awful fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches that Ruth had packed for Elmer, washed down with Perrier from the
miniature limo fridge. Cynthia was thinking about starting on the half-full bottle of Scotch real soon, especially if Elmer didn’t stop puffing on his smelly cigar and singing along in his horribly off-key voice the lyrics to every bloody Elvis song ever recorded.

 

Four hours after leaving Prince Ferrama’s office, Cynthia got her first view of Prince Ferrama’s palace. The Catskills Castle was not what she’d expected.

After a harrowing drive up a narrow five-mile access road through almost impenetrable, overgrown forests, Elmer finally maneuvered the vehicle into a clearing dominated by a massive crumbling mansion complete with towers and turrets, even a broken-down drawbridge over a muddy moat. A castle it might have been in another lifetime. Now it was just a sad, collapsing mass of stone.

That wasn’t quite true. One side of the castle was completely restored. Its stonework had been sandblasted and repointed, the leaded windows replaced.

Cynthia stepped forward, braced on one crutch, to examine this strange phenomenon. She noticed another bizarre thing. Sand. Lots of white sand. And banana trees. Huge,
fake
banana trees.

Half a dozen guard dogs patrolled the area—though who would be interested in trespassing here, Cynthia couldn’t imagine. The dogs were
the sorriest-looking mutts she’d ever seen. Pit bulls, they were not. Geriatric candidates, maybe.

When she voiced that opinion aloud, Elmer gave her a wounded, blinking look and informed her, “They ain’t no thin’ but hound dogs, darlin’. Ain’t you never seen a purebred Southern red dog, cryin’ all the time?”

The only dogs Cynthia was familiar with sizzled on pushcarts on the city streets.

“Well, what do you think of my…our castle?” Naomi asked, her face softening for the first time as she gazed at the deplorable heap of rock. Her expression could only be described as one of love. Or obsession.

“It’s…it’s interesting.”

Naomi’s lips thinned at the perceived insult as her eyes bored into Cynthia and her fingers tightened on the gun.

“I can see that it must have been magnificent at one time,” Cynthia backtracked.

“And it will be again,” Naomi asserted. “I’m going to restore every one of its one hundred and three rooms. And the gardens. And the pool. And the stables.”

One hundred and three rooms? Incredible!
“But that would take a fortune,” Cynthia blurted out before she had a chance to bite her tongue. She sensed, too late, that Naomi wouldn’t want to hear any criticism of her beloved castle.

“Right. The fortune I’m going to gain once the Ferrama stock goes public. Provided, of course,
that nothing and no one interferes with the success of that venture.” The look of determination on Naomi’s face bordered on the fanatical, sort of like Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction
. Except that Naomi’s obsession was with a piece of rock, while Glenn Close’s had been with a piece of c…well, Michael Douglas. Cynthia began to reassess her opinion of the woman. Earlier she’d thought Naomi was dangerous because she was half-baked. Now she feared that Naomi might do anything, even kill a hard-nosed stock trader, to achieve her goals. Cynthia would have to be very, very careful.

As Naomi prodded her forward toward the castle entrance, Cynthia asked, “Where does the prince fit into this whole scheme?”

“Screw the prince,” Naomi said.

Yep, I’ll second that
.

“He’s all part of the TCB,” Elmer hinted in contradiction.

Screw the TCB, too
.

Dusk began to settle over the mountains as the four of them trudged carefully, single file, over the rotting drawbridge. Just then, a million bats swooped out of the upper towers like black sheets fluttering on the wind, which set the hounds to wailing in long, doleful bellows.

It was not a pretty sight or sound.

What kind of castle was this, anyhow? And who was Prince Peter Ferrama if this was the best he could do for a palace?

Something is hinky in this kinky kingdom
.

And where, pray tell, is the royal fink?


Welcome to my world…
” Elmer serenaded Cynthia later in a husky Elvis croon, then immediately amended, “…ah,
our
world.” He threw his arms wide to encompass her new “home” for the next three weeks.

Naomi and Ruth had gone off briefly to do whatever needed to be done when establishing residence as the sole inhabitants of a hundred-and-three-room castle. Cynthia was being held in one of the forty-eight bedrooms of the castle, many of which were named after early twentieth-century moguls who’d visited the mansion built by zillionaire railroad financier Henry Fowler.

“There’s the Rockefeller Suite, the Gould, the Morgan, the Vanderbilt, the Stuyvesant…” El
mer explained with pride, like a tour guide. “Your…uh, domain is called the Frick Suite.”

“How appropriate! But dontcha think the Frick ’n’ Frack would be closer to the mark, considering the circumstances.”

Elmer tsk-ed his disapproval of her sarcasm. “We gave you the best room in the castle.”

Cynthia glanced around the huge chamber, impressed despite herself. The odd thing was that only one wall of the suite, a combination bedroom-sitting room, had been restored, just as only one side of the castle’s exterior had been refurbished. Antique wallpaper so finely detailed it resembled silk damask, a beautiful Aubusson carpet in a delicate floral pattern, fine embroidered bed hangings, gilt mirrors and original oil paintings in the landscape style of the Hudson River artists: all these decorated the room, but just the one side. The remainder of the huge room sported faded, peeling wall murals, a smoke-stained, ornately carved walnut fireplace, bare inlaid wood floors and battered Empire furniture.

The same was true of the rest of the palace, or as much of it as she’d seen thus far. The entryway was spectacular, with its Italian marble floors, Doric columns, intricate ceiling plaster-work, bronze chandelier dripping a dazzling spray of crystal pendants and wide mahogany staircase, but the parlors and hallways were a mess. The castle appeared almost like a movie set…a facade.

But Cynthia didn’t have time to think about that now. After a harrowing ride up the ancient clanking elevator to the sixth floor, not to mention Naomi shooting at a pigeon that had dared to roost in one of the hall sconces, her nerves were totally frayed.

And she had had enough of Elmer’s rock ’n’ roll nonsense, too. The twit was still singing, “Welcome to my world,” accompanied by a laughable one-knee swivel gyration.

“The only world you’re going to be in, Elmer, is prison…once I get out of here,” Cynthia declared. She was sitting on the end of a high, canopied bed that could be reached only by climbing up three steps. “Kidnapping. Assault. Arms violation. Extortion. Yep, you’re going to be doing hard time till your blue suede turns moldy, buster.”

“I’ve done a little
jailhouse rock
in my early days, darlin’,” Elmer admitted, unconcerned, as he checked out his pompadour in a mirror. He paid particular attention to the stray lock, which he arranged over his forehead, muttering something about needing to buy more gel. “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“Go…get…me…some…clothes,” she ordered, trying a different approach. She was wearing only her chemise and panties and a stretch blue suede headband wrapped twice around her one ankle. Elmer had lent her the headband from his Graceland memorabilia col
lection. The rest of her clothing had been removed to prevent her escape.

Not that she could escape anyhow. Reasoning that she couldn’t hold a gun over Cynthia twenty-four hours a day, Naomi had whipped out an electric drill.

“Oh, my God!” Cynthia had shrieked. “You’re a female Freddie Kruger. You’re going to drill me to death.”

Naomi had cocked her head in confusion, then let out a hoot of laughter. “You must have a corn on your brain, too.” Naomi had proceeded to make quick work of installing a retractable dog chain on the wall, with one end attached to a locked chain dog collar wrapped three times around Cynthia’s headband-padded ankle.

“No can do,” Elmer insisted, pulling her back to the present and her demand for clothing. “Naomi’s right. Nothing personal, darlin’, but a
hardheaded woman
like you would be out that door like a great ball of fire.”

“Aaargh! I’m chained to a wall. I’m on crutches. By the time that elevator got to the first floor, you three would be on me like gangbusters. Your guard dogs would tear me to smithereens, or lick me to death, if I managed to get that far. Incidentally, do they ever shut up? And—”

“The moon is none the worse for the dog barking at her,” Elmer broke in with what sounded
a whole heck of a lot like one of Grandma’s proverbs.

She glared at him for interrupting her tirade, which she resumed. “Furthermore, I don’t know how to drive a limo…assuming I were able to wrest the car keys from you. And hobbling down a dark road in the middle of nowhere is not my idea of fun.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. “So, get my damn clothes.”

Elmer shook his head, still studying his reflection in the mirror. “Do you think I should let my sideburns grow longer?”

Cynthia told him what he should do with his sideburns, explicitly.

Elmer winced. “You’ll be thankin’ me for this one day…once you open up your
suspicious mind
to the gift I’m givin’ you.”

“Thank you? Thank you? You are two strings short of a guitar. This reminds me of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. Yep, I’ve landed smack dab in the middle of
Three Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.” Then she stilled. “What gift?”

“Prince Charming.” Elmer beamed at her, waiting for her to express her gratitude, no doubt. When she didn’t, he stepped up to the bed and sat down next to her. His short legs looked comical on the high bed, his boots barely reaching the floor.

“You’re going to give me a prince? For a gift?”

Elmer nodded enthusiastically.

“Who? Jack Nicholson?” she scoffed.

“Of course not. Jack may be a prince in Holly
wood, but he’s not the type of prince I have in mind for you.”

“Oh, no! Please don’t tell me that Prince Ferrama is the gift.”

A speaking blush flooded Elmer’s face.

“I knew it! That louse Ferrama is behind this whole caper.”

“No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong.” He glanced furtively toward the closed door before confiding, “Naomi and Ruth think we shanghaied you because of your picketing and threats of a lawsuit. But I got the orders to help you long before that, honey.”

Oh, God! He really is nuts
.

“In a way, you could say I’m family.” Those momentous words were accompanied by a wink that seemed to contain some hidden message. “Your grandma—God bless her soul, the sweet angel!—put in a special request for you.”

Nuttier than a Snickers bar
. “My grandma put in a special request for a prince…for me?” she asked incredulously. The jerk apparently didn’t know that her grandmother had died ten years ago. “Who
are
you?”

“I’m your fairy godfather, Cindy.” He flashed a silly lopsided grin at her.

Walnuts, pecans, almonds, pistachios…I’ve landed in a peanut patch
. “My name is Cynthia, not Cindy.” Why she homed in on that irrelevant detail, ignoring his other, more ludicrous pronouncement, she had no idea. Maybe her corn really was moving to her brain.

“Where I come from, we like to refer to you as Cindy…for Cinderella.”

She groaned.
Maybe all that peanut butter has clogged his brain
. “And where might that be…the land of fairies? You did say you were my
fairy
godfather. Ha, ha, ha!”

“Some people do call us fairies,” he said, “but—”

She thought of something. “Fairies? You’re a fairy? I thought you and Ruth were…well, involved.”

Elmer make a harrumphing sound. “Not
that
kind of fairy.”

“Look, whether you’re a fairy or a guardian angel or a gay leprechaun doesn’t matter to me.”

Elmer straightened, insulted. “Are you saying I’m short?”

“Aaargh! I don’t care if you’re Tinkerbell.” She took several deep breaths to calm down, then tried again. “I refuse to be anyone’s Cinderella. I gave up believing in glass slippers and pumpkin coaches long ago.”

“That’s just what your grandma said: The wee lass has lost her dreams.”

“Dreams? I’ve realized all my dreams, thank you very much. I’m one of the most successful women on Wall Street. Put that in your fairy pipe and smoke it, Elvis.”

“Elmer,” he corrected.

“Elmer…Elvis…the Big Bopper…whatever.” She threw up her hands in disgust. “And stop bringing up my grandma. She’s dead. Do
you hear me? Dead.” Tears welled in her eyes and she fought to suppress the lump in her throat. Damn, she still missed that wily old lady, even after all these years.

“I know your grandma’s dead, Cindy,” he said softly. “And she’s worried about you. That’s why she wants you to have your prince. I’m here to help you get your dreams back.”

“Listen carefully, you lunkhead, because I’m only going to say this once. In the real world, a girl’s got to make her own dreams come true. And today’s woman knows Prince Charming doesn’t exist. That’s a fairy tale that’s been fed to generations of females. By men. To subjugate women.”

Elmer gazed at her sadly. “Is it not a lonesome thing, lassie, to grow old without a mate?”

“I’m not old. I’m only thirty.”

“Autumn days come quickly, like the running of the hound on the moors.”

“I am only thirty years old,” she repeated.

“And a beautiful thirty years old you are, too.”

“Don’t try to soft-soap me, you buzzard. Soft words butter no parnsips.”

“Ah, but they won’t harden the heart of the cabbage, either.” He beamed, finishing the old Irish saying for her.

Cynthia narrowed her eyes. He was continually quoting Grandma’s favorite proverbs. Could he possibly be telling the truth about being a fairy or Elvis reincarnated? No, there were dozens of those Irish proverb books on the market.
Heck, some of the witty sayings were even on coffee mugs. Elmer had probably seen them there.

“I do not want a man…prince or otherwise,” she said emphatically. “So forget the matchmaker business. I’m not interested.”

“But surely every women wants to find her soulmate. Even you, who have lost your dreams. Admit it, lassie; it’s a lonesome washing that has no man’s shirt in it.”

Cynthia glared, disbelieving, at the thick-headed fool. “If any man thinks I’m going to do his laundry, he’s got another think coming.”

“It was just a figure of speech, Cindy.”

“Aaargh! Figure this. No man! No prince! No gift! No Cinderella! No fairies! I…am…not…interested.”

“There, there.” Elmer patted her hand. “He—the big godfather—was right in answering your grandma’s prayers.”

The dumbbell must have a head like a sieve. He didn’t register a single thing I said
.

“You need a fairy godfather real bad. Your heart’s just cryin’ out for a sprinkle of magic dust.”

“Godfather?” Cynthia said tentatively. Why did Elmer keep harping on godfathers? “Oh, boy! I get it now. You’re with the Mafia, aren’t you? I’ve heard rumors that the Mafia is infiltrating Wall Street, but I never really believed it. What family are you with…Gotti, Gambino, Capone, Luciano—”

“Presley.”

“Huh? I never heard of Presley in association with the Mafia. Is that a Nashville branch?”

“Geez! I’m not with any gang family, although there is the Memphis Mafia, of course…Elvis’s old bodyguards. Unless…unless you consider seraphim a family.”

Her body slumped with exhaustion, the events of the long day finally catching up with her. “My life is going to hell in a handbasket. First I get a corn. Then I lose my job. Now I’m to be rescued by a fairy godfather guardian angel.”

“You
do
understand.” Elmer puffed out his chest with satisfaction and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “But I have to correct one little thing you said. I’m a fairy, not an angel. There is a difference.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that you’re a fairy reincarnated as Elvis? Come on!”

“Just think about it, darlin’. Fairies love music more than anything in the world. Elvis was the king of rock ’n’ roll, the best music ever created.”

“But why me?” Cynthia couldn’t believe she’d actually asked the question, as if she gave credence to Elmer’s ridiculous story.

“God had a plan for you, even before your grandma prodded him to get on with it. The corn was just the first step in the plan.”

Cynthia started to laugh hysterically. Between laughs, she choked out, “God…I mean, the big godfather…gave me a corn…as sort of a celestial spur to make me believe in fairy tales again?”

“Exactly.”

When she finally wiped the last tear from her eye, Cynthia cocked her head at the unsmiling show-biz caricature. “So where are your wings?” she asked derisively, suddenly frightened by Elmer’s penetrating eyes, which seemed to see too much.

At first, he didn’t answer. Then he relaxed and bobbed his eyebrows at her. “Why do you think Elvis wore a cape all the time?”

 

“She’s vanished. Pouf. Gone like the wind,” Dick told P.T. two days later, sinking down into a chair before his office desk.

“Gone like a shark, you mean,” P.T. concluded with a grimace. “She’s just circling the body, waiting for the perfect moment to attack….”

“…when we let our guard down,” Dick finished.

“Yep. This is a tactic, pure and simple, designed to drive us crazy.”

“She’s succeeding.”

P.T. thought about all the mental anguish he’d gone through the past few days and had to agree. “I’ll bet her lawyer is in on this. Another barracuda.” P.T. tapped his Mont Blanc pen on the blotter, then stopped himself. The stupid thing was shamefully expensive—equivalent to the down payment on his first car. “The picketing and threat of a lawsuit were deliberate teasers. They want us nervous and jittery. Just watch.
The two of them are going to sashay in here, unannounced, any day now.”

“And they’re going to attempt to extort a pigload of cash out of Ferrama.” Dick pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He looked tired. Even his usual meticulous attire was rumpled. P.T. knew the stress of pulling off the stock offering, doing damage control on the picketing episode and searching for the Wall Street princess was taking its toil.

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