Read Online Totally Fishy (A Miller Sisters Mystery) by Gale Borger - Free Book Online

something. He always did want to be an ice cream salesman.
    Tom shook his head to clear it. The thought of murder made him uneasy. When the little grease ball, Ernesto had propositioned them they'd seen nothing but the money. They'd said yes before they knew what the job entailed.
    He thought of his mother. Crap. Mama thought they were doing fine and going on vacation. They were already a disgrace, so what the hell did it matter if he offed some people he had never met? Screw that, he thought. He'd be a rich disgrace, that's what he'd be. He just would not think about it.
    Tom picked up the key then dropped it in the envelope. The shower stopped in the bathroom and the door popped open. Mark hopped into the room and jiggled his hips. "I feel good! Bop, bodama-bop! So good, bump bump, so good, Bump bump!"
    Tom brushed by him on his way to the bathroom. "Save your energy, Mr. James Brown. You're going to need it."
    Mark did a little dance. "Not James, not Juan, not Paco, it's Mark–Mark, uh, whatever our last name will be. Hah! Good thing we are bilingual, eh, Tom ?"
    " Si , Mark. That's how we got the job. That and we both have a driver's license. Who knows, we may have to run over someone." He looked at the floor and sighed. "Let me get cleaned up and we'll go." The door closed behind him.
    Mark looked at the closed door. " Humph . What's gotten into him?"
    An hour later, the new and clean Mark and Tom stood in their doorway looking at the empty apartment. "So long, old life," Tom said, and closed the door.
    "Hello, new life. Mark pounded his way down the stairs and out of the building.
    They threw the remainder of their belongings in a dumpster and walked fifteen blocks before they found a taxi. "The old neighborhood just ain't what it used to be," Tom said, puffing from the exertion of the walk. "Taxi drivers won't even come in here."
    "What are you talking about? Taxi drivers aren't stupid. They never came into this neighborhood. Someday I want to live in a neighborhood where they have taxi drivers and pizza delivery."
    "We play our cards right, Mark, and we will."
    Finally, a taxi pulled up and they climbed in. Mark cleared his throat. "Airport," he said in his most professional voice, and off they went.
    The Lima airport proved to be an adventure in controlled chaos. With the construction finished, it was much easier to navigate, but this early in the evening had commuters and vacationers vying for position at ticket counters, baggage pick-up, and rental agencies. Tom and Mark fought their way through the crowds and sat in chairs near a bank of lockers and looked around to see if they had been followed.
    Thirty minutes passed before Mark leaned close to Tom's ear and whispered, "Looks clear to me, do you see anything?" Tom shook his head and they moved in.
    Inside the locker, they found two tagged bags and another large envelope containing their tickets, passports, American money, and driver's licenses tucked inside nylon wallets. They also found assorted credit cards and pictures of phony kids and relatives. They gathered their duffels, and headed for the gates.
    Once on the plane, they stored their bags and took their seats. They had three transfers between Lima and Chicago, and they went over how they would get from one plane to the next.
    "Damn cheapskate, couldn't book us a direct flight," Mark mumbled.
    "I'm sure he did it this way so we would be harder to trace. I know we have tickets, but do you think we should turn them in for others just in case the boss man has other plans, like stealing his money back?"
    Mark scratched his chin. "Uh yeah, I thought of that, but I got one better. Let's ditch the credit cards when we get there so he can't trace us through them. What if he claims we stole them later just to get us arrested and rip us off the money he owes us?"
    "Oh. I get it. Yeah, good idea, Mark, but the thing we really have to watch is spending too much of our cash. We may need it later, so we must to be