Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 04 - Miami Mummies by Barbara Silkstone Read Free Book Online Page B

throat. One of the nail-techs covered his ears and scurried into the facial room.
    Queening-out, Kit waltzed toward me, his hand held high over his head. I reached up, grabbed his fingers, did a little pirouette, and yowled the next lines.
    We hit the chorus together but the drag-queen supreme had to finish solo when I choked on a Sera and fell giggling into his arms.
    “You look like road kill and smell worse.” He examined my nails, his voice going down two octaves. “You just had a mani and a pedi.”
    “I need something a wee bit more special.”
    “How about a daisy on each pinky and a diamond in the center?”
    “You know me better than that. I said something special.”
    He raised his perfectly arched eyebrows. “Oh, oh.”
    “If a person wanted to burglarize a gallery in an office lobby at the tippy top of a Miami high-rise, whom would she contact?”
    “Would this person be anyone we know?”
    I shot him a shut-your-mouth-honey grin. “I’m just saying… Do you know a trustworthy burglar?”
    He put his hands over his eyes, peeked out and said… “What tall building?”
    “The North by Northwest Financial Center.”
    “Oh cookie… can’t you… I mean this person aim lower? That’s almost the tallest building in Miami.”
    “She anticipates a few challenges.”
    “I don’t think this person should get involved.”
    “It’s an obligation. This person needs to recover something that’s been stolen. She needs to catch a thief.”
    “I don’t know crooks. I’m an honest queen. I might know rumors. You met one of those rumors at my Fourth of July party. Archie Leech?”
    The name sounded familiar. My mental mug shots pulled up a handsome black dude with dreadlocks. “Tall, thin, good looking? Braids to his butt?”
    “That’s him. Leech was arrested for cat burglary. I think it was an art gallery heist. He bragged about getting off but he was dead guilty. The dude gets his jollies climbing tall buildings.”
    “Buildering! That’s the kind of dude I need… I mean this person needs. I’m not telling you what she’s after or who it’s for. It’s a humanitarian caper.”
    Kit gave me a lifted eyebrow. “It always is with you… I mean this person.” He put his arm around me.
    “Think of it as the opposite of re-gifting. It’s re-thefting,” I said.
    “Leech usually does street performances for the after-work crowd. Acrobatic stunts like jumping over cars and climbing the outside walls of buildings. His troop is called The Birds. They work for tips. We can probably find him down on Biscayne Boulevard.”
    “You sure about him? Works for tips? The kind of thief I was thinking about was more like Ocean’s Eleven. George Clooney cool, not so much panhandler.”
    “It’s not like I have a list of robbers in my perfectly coifed head. By the way, like my highlights?”
    His sun-streaks always made me a tinge envious.
    He patted my noggin. “We’ll head over to Biscayne. If he’s there, it’s meant to be. Use your instincts, they’re almost always wrong. Do the opposite of what your gut tells you. And please inform this person no outside climbing jobs. That’s a freakin’ tall building and I look dreadful in wake black.”
    He didn’t have to warn me. High on my list of phobias—after holes in fabric and getting my face wet—was heights. I make Mel Brooks in High Anxiety look like the Flying Wallendas. But a promise made is a promise kept. I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, an elephant’s faithful one hundred percent. Horton and Dr. Seuss would be proud of me. I was babbling in rhyme.
    Kit grabbed an unlined suede sport coat that screamed Armani, looped his arm in mine, and we were out of the salon after a short delay for air kisses he exchanged with a tone-on-tone redhead entering as we exited.
    We crossed against the light and were on our way to find a mountain-scaling low-life. “Your friend might consider an insider snatch and grab. I could be the distraction.