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Authors: Noire

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BOOK: Sexy Little Liar
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“Nah, for real, though,” Barron said, getting back on his game real quick. “I'm sure that hundred grand was more money than you've ever seen in your whole life, Mink. So what did you do with it? Did you invest in any stocks and bonds?”
All eyes were on me now, but I gave not a damn.
“Yep,” I lied. “I sure did.”
“Oh really?” Barron smirked and nudged Dane, who was stuffing his face like he had the munchies. “Which ones?”
I laughed real loud because I didn't know shit about stocks
or
bonds. “Uh-uh, big brother,” I wagged my finger at him and said mysteriously. “You know I can't tell you all that. You ever heard of trading insider secrets? That's what got Martha Stewart put under the jail.”
My shit sounded real slick and clever, and Bunni and Dane laughed with me, but Barron wasn't done fucking with me yet.
“Okay, so how about metals? No portfolio is balanced without them. Did you buy yourself any precious metals, Mink?”
I thought about the grip I had dropped on diamond earrings, platinum necklaces, silver ankle bracelets, and glittering gold belly rings in places like Tiffany, Neiman Marcus, and Michael C. Fina.
“Oh, I got all that.” I waved my hand and bragged, picturing my icy platinum jewels and all my gorgeous white gold. “Don't worry about me. I covered myself with precious metals, baby.” I glanced at Bunni and giggled again. “From my head to my toes!”
“Mink,” Selah cut in and tried to change the subject. “It's actually good that you came back when you did, baby. You're right on time for our annual Labor Day picnic. Viceroy hosts it every year in honor of his employees at Dominion Oil.”
“Hold up, Mama,” Barron said. “Don't tell me you still wanna have the picnic this year. That's a whole lot of work, and with Daddy being sick and all . . .” He shook his head. “I've gotta make a little run out of town soon, so it's a bad time for us to throw a party. I think we should just skip it.”
“I disagree,” Selah said, and frowned at her oldest son. “I think we should do just what we've always done. None of our employees stopped showing up for work when Viceroy got injured. They kept right on doing their jobs and doing them well. I think they should be rewarded for their loyalty and dedication the same way they've always been rewarded. By us giving them their annual bonuses, and providing them with a day filled with good food and good times.” And then she added as an afterthought, “Where are you going anyway? I didn't know you had an out-of-town trip scheduled.”
“New York,” Barron said, and looked dead at me. “I'm going to New York. I gotta see a man about a snake.”
While Barron was steady grillin' me, I was steady watching Selah. I busted the way her face crumpled when Barron said the words
New York
. She looked like somebody had stabbed her in the gut, and her hand shook as she reached for her glass of wine and tipped that baby way the hell back.
“Yo, what's poppin' off in New York?” Dane came up outta his haze and put his fork down. He poked me with his eyes, and then turned back to his brother. “If you lookin' for snakes, we got more belly crawlers right here in Texas than you could ever find in New York.”
“Yeah, but New York snakes are slicker,” Barron said as he looked at me and then chuckled. “And from what I can see, them belly bouncers crawl a whole lot closer to the ground.”
 
Me, Dane, and Bunni stayed up half the night drinking gin and talking mad shit about Barron. “Ay, he's going to New York to try to get you, Mink,” Dane said. “I heard him talking to somebody on the phone about tracking down fingerprints and arrest records. I sure hope your shit is clean.”
I slept with that thought on my mind, and the next morning we boarded Selah's private jet called the
Diva Dominion
, so we could go see Viceroy at the hospital in Houston. The
Diva Dominion
was a dope little flying lounge that had every luxury that you could want while you was up in the air. I sat beside Selah feeling right raggedy from all the slut juice that I had guzzled the night before, and even though the flight was smooth, I had a hangover and my gut was tossed up pretty bad.
We touched down at the same airstrip that we had landed at the first time I visited Viceroy in Houston, and once again there were some bad-ass limos with big shiny rims waiting to whisk us away to the hospital. The whips were spotlessly clean and straight-up luxury on wheels, but that didn't stop me from leaning over and up-chucking all over the place before we could get to the hospital.
“Damn, girl!” Barron jumped and cursed and tried to scoot outta my splash range. No dice. I couldn't help but hit him. The bottom of his expensive pants was now dotted with pink and yellow goo, and his face was all frowned up as he stared at the nasty slime that had also hit his thirty-eight-thousand-dollar Amedeo Testoni shoe.
“Mink!” Selah patted my back and handed me her lace handkerchief to wipe my mouth. I had turned away from her when I felt the hot tide rising in my throat, so she was safe. “Are you okay, baby? You catching a stomach virus or something?”
As pissed as he was, even Barron had to laugh real loud at that one, and for once I didn't blame him because Selah woulda had to be stone dead not to smell all that nasty gin that came up outta my stomach.
We were escorted into the hospital by some administrative staff, and instead of going into the ICU with Selah, me and Bunni headed straight to the girls' bathroom so I could rinse out my mouth.
“What did you do?” Bunni got hyped when I told her I had thrown up on Barron. “Stick ya damn fingers down your throat just to piss that square off?”
“No, stupid.” I ran some water in the sink and started rinsing out my mouth real good. “I think I just got car sick.”
Bunni smirked. “Car sick my ass. Girl you just need more practice holding your liquor.”
I shrugged Bunni off with the
whatever
look. My stomach felt like shit, and as much as I wanted to go crash out in one of them big chairs in the visitors lounge, I needed that three hundred grand, so my ass had work to do.
I waited until Fallon came out of Viceroy's room, and then I went inside. That nasty smell of hospital sickness hit me as soon as I opened the door, and I almost gagged again as I stepped up to Viceroy's bedside.
“It's okay.” Selah rubbed my shoulder, mistaking my gag for a muffled sob. She stared down at the empty-looking shell on the bed that was her husband. “It's been a long, hard journey but he's in good hands now.”
I got real hopeful.
“You mean in Jesus' hands?”
Barron shot me a shitty look.
“No, idiot. He's in his new neurologist's hands.”
I stared down at Viceroy. “Them doctors ain't tryna tell y'all he's gonna wake up, are they?” I asked with my voice full of doubt.
“That's what we're paying them the big bucks for, Einstein. To figure all that out.”
“Well how long is all that gonna take?” I demanded, getting
waaay
too hasty with it. “I mean,” I said, tryna clean it up, “doctors like to do a whole lot of experimenting sometimes, you know. If it's all gonna end up the same anyway, I just don't think we should let him suffer like this forever, y'all feel me?”
“Mink, we got this,” Barron barked, swelling up and shutting me out. I could tell he had peeped my hold card just by the way he said it. “Nobody's pulling no plugs or making any decisions yet. We don't know
how
this is gonna end up. You feel
me
?”
Selah sighed and put her arm around me. She pulled me close to her and I fought the urge to shrug her off. “I just wish he could have gotten a chance to really see you, Mink. A chance to get to know you like the rest of us have. You were his little girl. His baby. The apple of his eye. I think it would have meant the world to him.”
Ain't gonna happen,
I wanted to tell her as I stepped out of her embrace. I didn't care how many new head doctors they dragged through the door. Viceroy was gone. His whole vibe had been deaded. They might as well call the funeral home, dig the grave, and pry the lid off the trust fund, because papa-man was a wrap. Yep. That big old eyeball wasn't even giving me the heebie-jeebies no more because his ass just wasn't there. But hey, I was just a scheming little paper-chaser from Harlem. Who was I to pronounce the old man dead?
CHAPTER 12
I
could tell shit was crucial the minute I heard Peaches' voice.
“Mink,” he said. “Girl, when you and Bunni bringing y'all asses back home with that money, girl?”
“Why, what's wrong?” I asked, frowning. “Is it Mama, Peaches? Is something wrong with my mama?”
“No, your mama is doing okay. But it's that nigga!” Peaches said. He sounded scared, and fear wasn't something I was used to hearing from a dude like him. “It's Gutta. That fool is back on the streets and he's looking all over for your ass!”
“For real?” My voice was damn near a whisper.
“
Errrrm-herrrrrm!
If he ain't bangin' on the damn door then he's blowing up my spot! That nigga is hunting for you, Mink. He wants his money and he ain't playing!”
I didn't know what the hell to tell Peaches, or what the hell to do.
“Umm . . . I ain't got it yet, P. I'm working on it though . . .”
Die, Viceroy, die!
“But I ain't got it yet.”
“Well what the fuck you gotta do to get it, Mink, huh?” Peaches wanted to know.
“I gotta wait a little while,” I told him, trying to calm him down. “Don't worry, I'ma have it soon. If Gutta comes back just tell him I moved and you don't know where I am. I'm sorry all this fell on your head, Peaches. I really am. But I'm trying. I swear, I'm trying.”
“I know you are, Madame Mink,” he said, and I was glad to hear some of the fear was gone from his voice and he was back to loving on me. “Just get that loot and get back here as fast as you can. I would hate to have to bust a cap in Gutta's ass, but I will stretch that muthafucka out if I have to,
okay
?”
Now that's the gay beast Peaches that I liked!
“Handle ya bizz, P,” I told him. And then I added, “You said Mama was doing okay, right?”
“Yeah. I went up there the other day. Your aunt Bibby was sitting with her and I chased her ass right out the door.”
“Good,” I said. P knew I didn't want them trifling-ass LaRues nowhere near my mama. “Thank you, Peaches. I lub you, boo.”
 
I was a New York City snake, just like Barron had said, and I didn't waste no time sticking my forked tongue deep inside Selah's ears. I had a hunch that Dane was dead right. Barron was going straight to Harlem to try to dig up some doo-doo on me and fuck my game up with the board. Uncle Suge had pulled up the company cell phone records, and damn if Barron didn't have about a million calls to some Harlem private eye named Frankie Gaines. Well, two could play the sneak-tip game, and when Barron left for New York he was barely out the door good when I hit Selah with a smooth little story that was sure to cushion my fall when Bump tried to flip my ass down to the mat.
But not everything I told Selah was a lie, though.
“Selah,” I said softly as we held hands and took a walk around the large pond in the back of the mansion. The gardeners had planted all kinds of colorful flowers around the border, and every now and then she stopped to pick one, or just to stare down at them or gaze out at the water.
“I almost didn't get to come back down here, you know.”
“Why?” she asked, looking at me with those soft eyes of hers.
I shrugged. “Not because I didn't wanna come back but,” I lowered my gaze and whispered, “but because I had to go to court.”
I bit my lower lip and kinda turned my upper body away from her, like I was so damned shamed of myself.
“You had to go to court? For what?”
I took a deep breath and glanced at her real fast. “For writing bad checks,” I blurted out. I caught her quick frown, and I went deep into actress mode.
“But I didn't write them,” I insisted, which was true. I
didn't
write the hot checks that I was telling her about, but I had damn sure written a whole bunch of other ones. “It wasn't me. They had the wrong girl. The checks didn't even come outta New York. They came from some other city when I could prove I was in New York, so they had to drop the charges and let me go.”
“But why did they blame you in the first place?”
Now I damn sure wasn't about to tell her all that! The truth was, I had gotten busted for getting down on an insurance scam, and somehow when they arrested me and ran my fingerprints, they came back a match for some chick who had a warrant out on her ass for cashing stolen checks and failing to show up in court. Even though I had to sit in jail madder than a mutha for getting knocked for somebody else's scheme, the idea seemed like a damn good one to me, and as soon as they cleared shit up and let me loose, I got me my own check-cashing hustle going and I rode that baby until the wheels fell off.
But was I gonna explain all that to Selah? Hell to the naw!
“I was a victim of identity theft,” I told her instead, and that was not a lie. “Somehow my fingerprints came back a match for a girl who did all kinds of illegal stuff while she was pretending to be me.”
“Really?” She frowned. “Who was she? Did the police ever catch her?”
I shook my head and said truthfully, “I don't know who she was, or if she ever got caught, but she was good. Real good.”
Matter fact that chick was
damn
good. I'd gotten busted more than once behind her bullshit. Just like me, she was a fraudster. A master thief. Any kind of scam you could think of that involved stealing somebody else's dollar, this grifter had pulled it off.
“That girl was into
everything
,” I told Selah, and ran her down a list of stuff that I had been busted for in the past, as well as some shit that I didn't really do but had been charged with anyway. “And guess what? Right before I came down here the first time, this same girl got busted in some kinda credit-card scam, and
I
was the one who had to show up in court!”
I spit all that out like I was real offended by the fact that somebody was skunking up my good name, but the truth was, if it was this easy for me to take over Sable's identity, it had probably been way easier for some other chick to steal mine.
Selah pursed her lips and looked pissed off.
“It's such a shame,” she said, shaking her head, “that nothing is sacred or safe these days. Sure, the Internet gives us great access to information and cultures and trends that we could have never reached before, but it also gives other people a lot of opportunities to exploit us. Really, your word and your good name is all you own in this world. I'm told it can take years to get your credit straightened out after your identity is stolen.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed real fast, setting the stage for all my other denials later, “and it can take years to get your arrest record wiped clean of all those bogus charges too.”
“Well, be careful, baby. Nothing is truly secure these days. Thieves are everywhere, and if they're trying hard enough to get you, they'll get you.”
BOOK: Sexy Little Liar
11.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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