Today’s
excerpt is from Monster’s Palace, a stand alone book featuring Clyde Feegle and
several old friends. Jo, knowing she was
in deep trouble, goes on the run. Enjoy
and have a great day.
m.j.
In addition to being told she would get no more artifacts
for the foreseeable future, Jo understood the implied threat in Tino’s words,
so she agreed to do as asked. That’s why
she nearly bolted from the party when she felt the electricity in the air between
Clyde and herself on first sight of each other.
Getting an invite to the party was easy. She had simply called the Congressman and
asked if the party was to be a fundraiser.
If so, she would like to attend and make a contribution.
Then—after meeting and falling in love with Clyde (she had
meant what she said on the message she left)—Jo had gone to the mansion with
him. When she had invited Clyde to the
mansion, Tino and Basil had assumed for some reason he hadn’t wanted to take
her to his place. They had been down the
street from the Congressman’s home and saw them leave.
Well after Clyde and Jo had gone inside, Tino and Basil had
put a bomb in Clyde’s car. They then
decided to wait around until he tried to leave, to make sure he blew himself
up. Once he was picked up by the
helicopter, they had a long conversation about their next move. While they were talking, Jo left in her car,
headed for Clyde’s home—her decision made to come clean with him when he returned. Unknown to her, of course, Tino and Basil had
long since placed a homing device on her car.
The device made following her an easy matter. When she entered Clyde’s home, they pulled to
a stop and were soon inside as well.
When Jo saw what they were going to do, she waited until
both were in the kitchen, working on the rear door, and ran to her car. Instinct told her they would deal with her
when they finished rigging their bombs, so she decided to follow her carefully
prepared escape plan.
Getting around their car in the drive parked behind her car
had been no easy matter, but she managed.
As she drove off, Jo knew there was no way she would get Aldo Pedrotti
involved in her situation, so going back there for any of her things was out of
the question. She had long realized Tino
and Basil almost certainly worked for someone in the drug business, and said
someone would have a legion of men to come after her if she stayed around. In addition, the life she had planned, if the
need came, appealed to her…before she met Clyde.
Everything thought out, she went to her store. The most valuable pieces she had in stock
were routinely stored in a walk-in vault in easy-to carry-valises. She had previously put two bags of clothing
and other items in the vault, also. Jo
hurriedly loaded everything she wanted to take into her car, then drove to a
small airport outside D.C. where she kept her plane. No one she knew was aware of the plane—or
that she even knew how to fly.
After loading everything she wanted to take with her in the
plane, Jo drove her car two blocks away from the airport, and returned on
foot. Before she took off in the plane,
Jo called Aldo Pedrotti’s phone at the mansion and left a message, telling him
she had fallen in with the wrong crowd and was going on the run, to stay alive.
She assured him she was quite capable of
succeeding in her disappearing act.
She then stomped on her cell phone and tossed it down a
storm drain. Once in the plane and
airborne, Jo flew directly to the Cayman Islands in her twin engine plane. It had fuel capacity to make the flight
easily, without a stop. When she landed
there, it was Sunday morning (the party having been Saturday night) so she took
her two travel bags through customs and checked into a hotel.
Early Monday morning she went to a bank, where she had
previously opened an account. There she
arranged a wire transfer of almost all of her money in her Washington bank
account into the Cayman account. Then
she asked for a cashier’s check, made out to her new identity for almost all
the money—leaving the account open, with only two thousand dollars. Her next move was to check out of the
hotel…wearing the black pageboy wig.
Using her new identity, she deposited the cashier’s check into an
account with another Cayman bank. She
had already opened the account there on one of her earlier trips.
Everything accomplished to her satisfaction, Jo had her
plane refueled and took off for her final destination—Costa Rica. On her last trip out of the country to set up
her getaway plan, she had purchased a rundown store, with living quarters, in
her new identity. It had been vacant
until now. After clearing customs, she
returned to her plane and flew it to a small airport. Again, leaving the valuable art items in the
locked plane, she took her two travel bags and arranged a cab. Her new life was underway.
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