[Rare, Aromatic, Lightly, Anger, Befriend]

  I got onto the bus and handed Amy and Anais each one of my two whistles.

  “What am I refereeing, a basketball game played by hookers? I’d rather do the play by play Swish, he scored. She really let her guard down, and the john scored easily.”

  “Anais, they are escorts, not hookers, and who are you supposed to be, Howard Cosell?”

  “Oh my god, I have heard that name in, like, forever.” said Amy

  I guided Willow out of town on Route Eighty-Six; we were parked out front of the Waterhole Number Eleven at about ten minutes to ten. So we sat there nervously till ten, then Willow laid on her diesel air horn. The escorts to the escorts, Amy, Anais, and I, were standing on the sidewalk by the bus when two young women exited the bar, saw the three of us, and headed our way.

  “Is anyone else coming?”

  “No, they said they want to stay; they like the money they are making.”

  “Where’s Florence?”

  “She was sent to the Copper Penny.”

  “Alright, that’s the furthest away; we’ll get her but last, I’m afraid.” I had mapped out the most efficient way to hit all the bars in the least amount of time. I thought that the girls at the first bar might alert their bosses of the defection of these two women. I hoped to have everyone collected before the bosses could respond in any way. We hit the Saranac Hotel next and got two more of the women. Next was two blocks up and a nice new bar right on the river, the Beer Factory.

  Only one woman came out and loaded quickly onto the bus.

  I asked the newest woman, “Is anybody else coming?”

  “No, they all said that they were happy to keep on making money.”

  Next we headed to a little bar located right on the river. It had a beautiful river view, and in the past I had enjoyed sitting there having a drink and watching the river flow by. But then Willow laid on the horn. No one came out. I told Amy and Anais to wait by the bus with the women, but Anais came with me anyway. We saw a table with three well-dressed young women with untouched drinks. I rushed over and asked them if they wanted to get away.

  “We have a bus; we can get the three of you to safety.” They looked at me like I was crazy.

  “No thanks, lady, we like it here.”

  Anais pulled me by the sleeve, and we exited the bar and got back onto the bus.

  Another neighborhood bar two blocks ahead, Willow laid on the horn, and two girls sauntered out and got onto the bus.

  “Is anyone else coming?”

  “No, just us?”

  Alarm bells were clanging inside of my brain; it sounded like the TARDIS’s cloister bell right before the Doctor was about to die. Just hearing the alarm didn't mean that I knew what was going wrong, was wrong, or would be wrong. I just knew that something was. I texted Lucy and Liz; I told them if they wanted to help the escorts to meet me at the store in forty-five minutes. The bar in town was our next stop. It was cheap and dirty and filled with old bikers. The younger bikers had moved on years ago.

  We stopped, and Willow blew the horn; we were waking kids all over town. One woman left the bar with an old biker on either elbow. I tensed for trouble, but the bikers let her go on the sidewalk. This escort was dressed like your stereotypical hooker, seen in every hard-boiled detective story ever filmed. Or on the cover of those twenty-five-cent detective novels pumped out in the fifties and sixties.

  I had Willow take a left and then go straight for three blocks; we had three more bars to get to. There has been no sign of opposition. Where was that black SUV I’d seen at the bowling alley? If there was going to be trouble, it would be at one of these final three bars. They were on the way out of town; instead of putting your best foot forward, these bars were the ones that even I knew enough to stay away from when I was a teen, and sneaking into bars was the height of fun for Amy and me on a Friday or Saturday night.

  I texted Lucy a couple more instructions. Then I texted Annette to be ready; we were down to the final three. The bus rumbled to a stop in front of the Rat’s Nest. When Willow blasted the horn, three men holding mugs came out the front door, but they didn’t approach the bus; they just stood there sipping their beers, staring at the bus. As I was about to tell Willow how to get to the next bar, a young woman exited the front door. One of the beer-drinking trio slapped her playfully on her ass. She just smiled and kept slowly walking toward the bus like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  Two more to go, still no trouble. Maybe this plan would really work. We could get out all the girls that wanted to get out. Willow drove carefully to the next bar on narrow streets lined with cars. She blew the horn, and another woman exited the bar and made her way onto the bus. She walked to the back of the bus and sat with the other escorts, who were speaking quietly among themselves.

  We took a left, then a right, and two blocks further on we pulled into the parking lot of the Copper Penny. As soon as Willow blasted the first toot of the airhorn, Florence Russo emerged from the bar, and she walked quickly as if afraid of pursuit and swiftly mounted the bus.

  “Anyone else coming, Florence?”

  “No, I tried talking the other girls into coming, but they were too scared to leave.”

  “I get it, fear can be paralyzing. That’s it, Willow, hit it.”

  Willow pulled out confidently onto Broadway. Florence went into the back and sat down with her friends. None of whom seemed particularly excited to be escaping. When we turned onto Main St, I could see that no one was following us. It was only as we drove past the Waterhole before turning onto River St. that I saw the black SUV I’d been searching for.

  I texted Annette and told her she needed to bring Ben; if she wanted the escorts, they’d have to meet us at the bookstore. Then I texted August. I was going to look pretty foolish if I was wrong. But I’ve looked foolish before, and it doesn’t really hurt. I could text Anais about what I was going to do, but it’d never work if I texted Amy. She loves games, but she sucks at poker. She’s just far too honest to pull off a good bluff.

  “We have to stop at the bookstore; Annette will meet us there.”

  “Why, Laura?” Anais asked.

  “Well, we are being discreetly tailed. Don’t let the escorts know. We’ll all be safe at the bookstore. Plus there is a clue there that might just wrap up this whole investigation.”

  “In a book, no doubt.”

  “Well, of course, Anais, it is in a book. How can you expect a bookseller to solve a mystery and not use a book? That would be like asking a cook to fix dinner without any food or a writer to write a novel with nothing to record it on.”

  I was using the front right mirror to keep track of the SUV. It was a big one, but it was also keeping well back. Stealth was the word that came to mind. It didn’t want to be seen. So I relaxed. The bus was not going to be rammed; it was going to be watched. No one besides Willow and myself even knew where we were heading. I texted some instructions to August.

  Willow kept it strictly under forty all the way to the Lake Placid town line. She slowed down to thirty, as did the SUV I’d been tracking since the Copper Penny. When Florence noticed we were headed to the bookstore, she walked up to the front and asked me what was going on.

  “I thought you and your friends were bringing us to a motel.”

  “We are; it’s just for your safety. We are switching cars at the bookstore. The bus is just too noticeable. So the plan is you’ll all come into the bookstore and have a drink. Then we’ll split you girls up into two parties. Then take nondescript cars in two different directions. But both meeting up at the same place. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe, and also you won’t have to worry about being recaptured. The cops just want descriptions of the men that have been holding you. How many men are there?”

  “There are two leaders and then six to eight other men, armed men. That’s why we couldn’t just get away on our own.”

  “Yes, I understand. I’m so glad that we got away smoothly from Saranac Lake, and that is why we are just being overly cautious now. Just to keep you safe. Can you tell me what the two leaders look like?”

  “Yes, the boss is really fat, grotesquely so. Mean too. The other is always disguised as a preacher. He’s also very mean; he likes hitting the girls. He often beats them if they don’t earn enough in any one night. This keeps the girls in competition with each other and makes it hard for us to trust one another. That’s why I had such a hard time trying to convince more girls to try and escape with us. Thank you so much for helping us.”

  “It’s our pleasure, Florence. In a world dominated by men, I think it’s a woman’s duty to help other women in need. I assure you, you will all be safe at the bookstore until the cars arrive to take you to your lodging. We weren’t sure if we were going to be attacked on the road. My own car was shot at; I thought they were trying to kill Faith, a friend of mine. But it was actually a warning shot. Meant to scare me off. Well now we can find this fat man; I have a pretty good idea just who he is. His partner too. I’m not sure which of them blew out my rear window, but they will pay for terrifying an old lady.”

  “I hope they spend the rest of their lives in prison for what they have done to us.”

  “I don’t blame you, Florence; I don’t blame you one bit. You must have been terrified. All you girls must have been. Well, you just relax; nothing bad is going to happen to you now. We’re almost home.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  And we were; we had passed the golf club about five minutes back, and Willow was just now slowing down as she approached the town line and the slower speed limit. It wouldn’t do to be stopped now. We turned off of Route 86 onto Mirror Lake Drive, and two minutes later the bus was pulling into the parking lot of the bookstore. It was around eleven thirty.

  Lis and Lucy were standing at the front doors, holding them open. Lis held a tray full of beer, and Lucy had a tray with assorted soft drinks. The girls offered a beverage to each of the escorts while Amy led them to the reading nook so they could sit and get comfortable while they waited for their rides to arrive.

  “I’ll be right back; I’ll get something for you all to snack on while we wait. Lis, Lucy, can you please give me a hand?”

  Once the three of us were in the kitchen and out of earshot of the reading nook.

  “So did you both notice the woman I called Florence?”

  “Yes,” they both answered at once. “Her real name is Olga Perez; she was two years ahead of us, and she graduated last summer.”

  “Perfect, do you know who she was dating?”

  “She had, like, three boyfriends her senior year,” Lis proclaimed.

  “Excellent, now did you bring the books?” They both nodded. “And the Joneses are in the TTRPG room?” They nodded again. “Alright Lis, you take the books to the Joneses and point out the three, then come back here to the kitchen and get the microwave popcorn and bring it out to the nook. I handed Lucy a bag of potato chips, and I grabbed some cheese puffs, and we returned to the reading nook. I opened the cheese puffs and poured them into a bowl and started passing them around. Lucy did the same with potato chips. Lis appeared with a bowl of popcorn and started passing that around.

  I wanted to get Lucy and Lis out of the reading nook without arousing suspicion, so I thought of my go-to late-night beverage.

  “Lucy, Lis, would you please go make some tea and coffee? Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, I’m getting quite tired and could use a pick-me-up.”

  They didn’t look happy, but they both did what I asked. That gave me ten minutes. My phone dinged; I had received a text. The escorts' rides were five minutes away.

  “That was my driver; your rides are five minutes away, ladies.”

  Florence was smiling widely. “Laura, I can’t tell you just how thankful we all are for helping us to get away.”

  “It was my pleasure, Florence. It was our pleasure, I gestured to Amy, Anais, and Willow. It was quite exciting. I was worried for a while that we would have to fight our way out of Saranac. I’m so glad that your bosses never got wind of the escape plan.”

  Then I heard the front door swing open, and ten Lake Placid police officers tramped in. August was in the lead; he had Dimitar Virk in handcuffs. The police officers surrounded the reading nook. The Joneses came out of the TTRPG game room. The store had never been so full.

  Virk hissed when he saw Ben Jones standing there. “You were fired.”

  “Yes, I was, but when I was fired, my wife was hired. She’s the real cop of the family and smart enough not to underestimate her opponent. To turn an opponent into an asset.”

  Florence looked at me and asked, “What gave it away?”

  “The marginalia on Sunday about the size and scope of the escort ring.” There is an escort service running in every bar in Saranac.’ I wondered why that was shared with me. I thought the main reason would have to be to distract me from exonerating Faith. If Faith had pleaded or had been found guilty, the heat would have been off your ring of escorts. Which had grown too large and too public to be ignored.”

  “Then Monday afternoon when my window was shot out, I thought Jones was trying to kill Faith to avoid a trial and him losing his job. When in actuality it was you who had me shot at. Probably by your old boyfriend Virk. Again, the aim was distraction; murder would have drawn too much unwanted attention.

  “That’s why you left the marginalia for me to get the following day, threatening me, ‘Stop investigating, or the next shot is bye-bye, bookseller.’ You were hoping that would stop me in my tracks after already being shot at. But in reality it just pointed straight at the ring. Like I said, my only real suspects at this point were the Joneses. I hadn’t made any friends with either one of them; in fact, I’m pretty sure they hate me. Which I don’t understand, as now Annette gets to do what she was clearly meant to do, and her husband gets to reinvent himself into someone who will do better. It’s clear he was not made for law enforcement, that was his wife’s calling.

  “That leads us to the third piece of marginalia and a real mistake. I actually thought for a while that it was a trap, meant to take me off the board entirely. But instead it led me to the head of the ring. Now you tell me, Florence, what mistake did you make when you wrote the third piece of marginalia?”

  “How do you know that I wrote any marginalia?”

  “Because you confirmed it was you in the bowling alley bathroom. When we came up with the rescue plan. So come on, what mistake did you make? You are a criminal mastermind who rang rings around the Saranac Police Department. Surely you can see the basic error you made.”

  “No, I can’t, bitch. If I could have seen the mistake, I never would have made it, now would I?”

  “Language, please; my employees don’t need to hear bad language from you. Especially because they were instrumental in catching your mole. But let’s deal with the mistake. The marginalia was ‘Not all of us want to do this anymore; can you help us?’ Clearly a plea for help to escape, which you confirmed in person at the bowling alley, you were being held prisoner. Yet you were also standing in my bookshop leaving cryptic clues. Those two facts are incompatible. You can’t be in my shop if you are a prisoner nine miles away. That’s why I suspected a trap. But it was a simple error in logic.”

  Then August piped in, “How did you know that Virk was the mole? Have you seen him hanging around?”

  “No, that’s why I needed Annette to bring her husband. She’s been hired by Saranac Police but has never been in the station so she could root out the mole. But once I knew who was the head of the ring, I thought it would be a high probability of someone that she had manipulated in the past. But I needed some books to figure out just who they were. That’s when I called my two employees—well, texted, really. Told them to have drinks ready at the door so they could get a good look at the women as they filed in. Florence had tried to disguise herself at the bowling alley, so I wanted both of my girls to get a very close look at her. They knew her right away, and they also knew her real name. Olga Perez. Olga was a few years senior to them in high school. Luckily they also knew the three guys she dated in her senior year. So the yearbooks I had requested from Lucy and Lis came in handy. Lis pointed out the three boys. I can only assume that Jones identified Virk as an employee of SPD, as you have him in cuffs. You or your men got him out of the SUV that had been following us. Once you search the SUV, his house, and maybe his locker in SPD, you will probably find a twenty-two rifle that matches the bullet I gave you. Then you’ll have Virk on attempted murder.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill you, just scare you; you even said that yourself,” Virk protested.

  “Yes, but I wanted to see if you’d admit to taking the shot. Thank you for doing that in front of twelve cops. Olga, I’ll put twenty dollars in your commissary account if you answer one question for me. I can get the answer out of him, but I find him a distasteful little man. So I’d prefer to hear it from you. Did you invite Kai Benoit to Saranac on Wednesday night in the hopes I’d see him and associate him with the escort ring?”

  “Thirty bucks.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Yes, I wanted you to go after Benoit and Vitale. My girls at the hotel told me they’d seen you nosing around the same night Vitale’s men’s club meets. I was hoping that if you connected the dots, you’d see those two as the ringleaders. Giving us enough time to escape.”

  “And stealing all the money from your fellow escorts along the way.”

  “How did you know? Did Marta tell you at the Riverview?”

  “No, I have no idea who Marta is, but I assume she is your lieutenant who didn’t get on the bus. Either she didn’t like your plan, or she was afraid you’d be caught, or she just didn’t want to rob the two escorts you assigned her to.”

  “What are you talking about, Laura? Who was robbed?” asked Annette.

  “All of the escorts were robbed by Olga and her managers. Later when you search them, you’ll find large sums of cash on each of them; Olga will have the biggest wad. If SPD managed to catch any of the escorts that remained. You will find them cashless. The managers held all of the money, probably never did any of the work, and tonight just took all the cash and sauntered out the door. They might have been great managers, Olga, but they were terrible actresses. Not one showed the least concern that the people keeping them in bondage would arrive to take them back.”

  “Alright, Officers, let’s get these women cuffed and down to the station. Annette, I think you are going to want to bring Virk to Chief Harris. Laura, Anais, and Amy, I will be here around ten am to get formal statements from each of you.”

  They each left with their prisoners in tow. Leaving Lis, Lucy, Willow, Anais, and Amy staring at Jones. Seemingly forgotten by his wife, once she had her prisoner. He no longer looked hateful or angry, merely tired. I walked him to the front door. As he was leaving, he said. “I quite like the fire department; it’s nice to be helping people instead of arresting them.”

  “Good, I’m glad, Ben. Goodnight.”

  Then as Lis, Lucy, and Willow were preparing to leave, I said. “Willow, thank you so much for driving the bus tonight; it was so helpful being able to go to each and every bar and observe just what was happening. They might have all gotten away if it wasn’t for you. Lucy, Lis, we might never have figured out the mole without your help and your yearbooks. Take tomorrow off and go somewhere fun.”

  “Thanks, Laura, we will.”

  Then the three of them were out the door as Anais was preparing to leave.

  “I’ll be here at ten sharp to give my statement. As you have just given your employees the day off, I take it that means you are opening your own store, Laura. Try to act professionally and open on time.”

  “Yes, yes, Anais, anything you say.”

  “That was fun, Laura. Just like Clue. Well, I better get to bed; it’ll be breakfast time before you know it.”

  “Do you want me to help you cook something now so you can sleep in the morning?”

  “No, thanks, Laura. I’ll wake up early anyways. I might as well make it fresh.”

  “I don’t know how they will have room for anything anyways after all the food they packed away today at the barbecue. Goodnight, Amy.”

  Then I went back to my room and opened the laptop. I had lots of notes to add to Obsidian, but the most important one was about one of my major shortcomings. I almost let the entire leadership of the ring escape and, in fact, aided in their escape. All because of my intense dislike and distrust of religion and its practitioners. I’m not going to change my views; I genuinely think religions harm more people than they help, but I will recognize my own biases and try not to act on them.

  I climbed into bed and grabbed the book from my nightstand. Another week and the old eidetic memory hasn’t returned, so it’s time to reread my fourth favorite book, ‘Good Omens.’