The Last Buskers of Summer

By C.B. Heinemann

When Gracie Ryan and her two misfit nephews, Alec and Eric, find themselves broke and wanted by the police on the streets of Europe, their troubles are just beginning. The three were on their way to perform at a music festival in France where, at the age of forty-two, Gracie hoped to jumpstart her musical career. During their flight over their money was stolen and the passenger sitting beside Grace died, leaving her a notebook containing dangerous information wanted by Simon Montfort, the psychopathic leader of an organization planning to murder leaders of foreign workers groups in Europe. the police suspect Gracie of being involved in the passenger's death while Montfort will do anything to get that notebook.

Following clues in the notebook, Gracie leaders her nephews--and Dora, an eccentric woman they meet who plays a mean flute--on a comic, dysfunctional, eye-opening journey through France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, where they perform on the streets to surivive. When she learns that she is pregnant, Gracie must make make the most important decisions of her life while on the run. As the police and Montfort close in, her situation spirals into catastrophe when she meets a charismatic older busker who holds the key to her future

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.B. Heinemann
• Release date: Apr 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781370342877

C.B. Heinemann

C.B. Heinemann has been performing, recording and touring with rock and Irish music groups for more than 30 years. The Washington Post said his songs are “...among the best coming from either side of the Atlantic,” and Dirty Linen called him a “virtuoso.” His short stories have appeared in Florida English, Berkeley Fiction Review, Cigale, Rathalla Review, Howl, Ascent, Lowestoft Chronicles, Outside In Literary Journal, Storyteller, One Million Stories, Whistling Fire, Danse Macabre, Battered Suitcase, Fate, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Cool Traveler, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Car & Travel. His stories have been featured in anthologies published by Florida English, One Million Stories, and Whereabouts.

Book preview

Foreword

Performers have been entertaining others on the streets since the beginning of human history, and you can see those performers, known as buskers, all over the world. Some people today may consider them to be little more than panhandlers, but many professional buskers work very hard at their craft and often prefer the freedom of performing on the streets, traveling around, and doing what they feel called to do without worrying about bookings, managers, and schedules.

I played on the streets once in a while when I was in my teens and early twenties, but when I traveled to Europe with my band, Dogs Among the Bushes, to play at the Lorient Interceltic Festival in France in the 1980s, we decided to stay in Europe as long as possible and support ourselves by busking. We quickly found ourselves welcomed into an ancient and fascinating underground culture where musicians, dancers, jugglers, magicians, and other street performers helped each other out in countless ways. One veteran busker told us that we made it onto the tail end of the good times for street performers. The sixties and seventies were absolutely brilliant, he said. It’s still pretty good in the eighties, but it’s not like it was. People are changing. Becoming more materialistic, more concerned with their cars and stereos and money. Before long you won’t see real buskers so much anymore.

He turned out to be right, but we had managed to join that world before the invisible network of connections began to fray. We made new friends every day, played music in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, England, and Ireland, and made enough money to survive. We also had many, many experiences that seemed to others when we described them later to stretch the limits of believability. We ourselves heard stories from other buskers that sounded a bit far fetched, but we had learned through personal experience that many strange things really did happen in that world.

While The Last Buskers of Summer is not quite autobiographical—the main characters are all fictional—many other characters are loosely based on real people, and much of the story, even the least likely sounding parts, are based on my own experiences, along with a few colorful stories and dark rumors of an underground conspiracy I heard from other buskers. It was hard work and a crazy life, but it was one of best times of my life. Buskers don’t choose busking as a career in order to make a lot of money or have a stable, comfortable existence. It is a calling, and I humbly dedicate this book to those who follow that calling and live that life because they simply must.

Chapter One

The Atlantic Express flight hurling Gracie Ryan and her nephews to London was one hour and twenty-seven minutes away from landing at Gatwick Airport before she finally scratched together the guts to open the letter her husband handed her at the boarding gate.

Gracie spent the first hours of the flight downing a series of miniature bottles of vodka she plucked from the drink carts. The woman beside her in the window seat hadn’t twitched in hours, but Gracie, once hailed by Sing Out Magazine as …a fiery-haired beauty out of a pre-Rafaelite painting, who sings like an angel and plays guitar like a demon, was too preoccupied with the problems destroying her life—and running away from them to return to the music world at age forty-one—to notice.

As she unfolded the lined white notebook paper her stomach plummeted all the way back to earth. I don’t think this will come as a surprise to you after all that’s happened lately the letter began. After the first two sentences, the rest was a blur.

I knew it—he’s dumping me, she whispered to herself, staring at the back slanted words written in black ink. Now that he knows about my diagnosis . . . no wonder he was so supportive of this trip. He wants to bail out . . . She caught her breath. . . . puts me on a goddamned plane, tosses me a goddamned letter . . . Emotion rose up through her body and tears squeezed through her eyes as she struggled to keep her voice down. As far as he’s concerned I’m already a goner . . . he’s already moved on with his life . . . he had some slut on the side for months . . . not that this is a surprise or anything. I’m glad of this. Yes, this is actually a relief. I haven’t been happy for years, and he’s a big part of that. So screw it. Screw it.

At that moment the young woman beside her slumped back with a high pitched gasp and shuddered.

Excuse me, are you all right? Gracie touched her arm. I’m sorry if you heard all that. Hello?

The woman didn’t move.

Hello? She leaned closer and pushed her shoulder. Hey, you’re not breathing.

Gracie lunged from her seat into the aisle. Something’s wrong—holy crap! She slammed her hand at the call button. This can’t be right—we’re stuck here—we can’t get out. We’re trapped.

Gracie’s nephew Alec turned around from the seat in front of her with a grin stuck on his face and his walnut brown hair released from its ponytail to tumble over his shoulders. Could you keep it down, Auntie Red? I’m trying to get some sleep and of course we’re trapped. Otherwise we’d be sucked out and flying around on our own.

Alec, I think there’s something really wrong with this woman.

She probably passed out from boredom after listening to you muttering to yourself. Come on, just chill out and go back to your crosswords.

I don’t do crosswords and don’t call me Auntie Red. I hate that dumb nickname. She felt the girl’s cheek with the palm of her hand. Alec, she’s . . . I don’t know—she might be dead or something!

That’s ridiculous. Look around—almost everyone is slumped down with their eyes closed. Are they all dead, too?

Forced outside her own problems, she stared at the lifeless form in the window seat, hoping she was imagining things. An elderly man on his way to the restroom paused to look for a moment before moving on.

The woman was pale and buxom, her eyes obscured by black eyeliner, her hair dyed black and jabbing out in spikes. She wore an AC-DC t-shirt and leather jacket―both, in Gracie’s opinion, a size too small for her―and her lips were already turning turquoise blue. Gracie had assumed that she was either asleep or too polite to trespass on her space, but at once realized that her discretion was involuntary. She felt the artery in the woman’s neck and punched again at the call button. Even the attendants are asleep.

Auntie—er, Gracie—come on, sit down and stop hyperventilating.

She sniffed at him Are you drunk again?

I don’t like flying.

Please, just go get somebody. Quick.

After swallowing hard on her nerves, Gracie knelt on her seat, jammed the woman’s seat back as far as it would go, and began pushing on her chest. Shivering with revulsion, she forced the lifeless mouth open with her fingers, placed her mouth against those cold lips, and exhaled a lungful of air into her. Gasping for breath herself, she pressed the girl’s chest again. People in the surrounding seats began to stir. A boy of about four peered over the seat two rows up.

She again felt for a pulse on the woman’s neck, but her hands shook so that she could barely keep them still. The pasta and chicken she ate an hour earlier rose in her throat, but she gulped it back along with her gum, clamped her eyes shut, and again forced air into the woman’s lungs. While every cell in her body howled in protest at touching a dead stranger, she pumped at the girl’s chest. At last, nausea ripped away her balance and she toppled into the aisle.

Did it work? Hey man, I didn’t know you did CPR.

Adrenalin gushed through Gracie’s bloodstream so furiously she felt her skin burn. Alec, why are you just standing there? Get some help!

A young male flight attendant in a bow tie, his eyes straining from their sockets, approached. What’s the matter? What happened?

How should I know? Gracie began to pant. Oh God, here it comes. Gracie’s legs turned to mush and she sank to the floor. I can’t breath.

We’ll see if we can get a doctor. The attendant looked around in confusion.

It’s all right, she’s got some kind of fear of flying thing. Alec hauled Gracie out of the aisle. Here, breathe slowly for one, two, three, now out one, two, three, four. Let’s get you back into your seat. The person with the real problem is in the window seat.

The attendant hurried down the aisle. Several people gathered around to see what was happening. After a few gasps of recycled cabin air, Gracie felt some strength return and screwed her eyes up at Alec’s face. I’ll bet she’s dead. Try waking her if you don’t believe me.

Alec felt the woman’s cheek. Damn, she’s already colder than the pasta we had for dinner. But she’s way too young to just die like this.

Did you talk to her at all? You usually flirt with every girl . . .

Not my type. She looks like a man-hater. I go more for girls into things like gardening. Looks like the only garden this girl would be into is where she’s pushing up daisies.

Alec!

Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. But, come on, I’m sure she’s just asleep or something.

Gracie looked down on the woman, her eyes filling with tears. ‘One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more—death thou shalt die.’

Are you actually praying?

John Donne, the poet, wrote that. I hope he’s right.

Must be some pal of yours from the sixties. Auntie, keep in mind that these are the eighties.

Yeah, so I keep hearing. Are you going to get some help?

I think someone is coming right now, said a woman with a thin blue airline blanket around her shoulders.

Three drowsy flight attendants arrived and Gracie got up and managed, between convulsive inhalations, to tell them what happened. A short balding man in a black sweatsuit appeared with a bag, announced that he was a doctor, and asked the other passengers to go back to their seats. He drew out a stethoscope, pressed it to the girl’s chest to listen, checked her pulse, and whispered to the attendants. After a flurry of glances and eyebrow raising, they summoned more attendants and converged on the girl—silent as cockroaches—huddled over her for a few moments, and, led by the doctor, dragged her to the back. Gracie expected alarms and announcements from the pilot, but her neighbor was carried away with barely a whisper.

The attendants pulled a curtain around the seats where the woman was deposited and then retreated to the galley to regain their in-flight composure. One of them—a short woman with scarlet lipstick and a bun of platinum hair pulled back so tight it made Gracie’s scalp hurt to look at it—glided over with a trembling chin and asked her not to mention anything about the incident to the other passengers. She then moved closer and touched Gracie on the arm. You’d be surprised how often this sort of thing happens.

Gracie felt a presence behind her. Ma’am, I need to have a few words with you.

She jerked her head around to see a large man stuffed so strenuously into a gray suit that his head looked like an overfilled water balloon. His grimace was meant to pass as a smile but didn’t, his black hair was as thick and curly as a poodle’s, and his forehead was glossy with perspiration. Gracie felt an immediate awareness of her hooked nose and turned up chin. She never could rid herself of self-consciousness about the inherited trait that earned her the nickname Witch Girl when she was little.

Gracie followed him into the galley, where coffee was brewing in chrome coffee machines. He turned and held up a badge. Air Marshal Gamez, ma’am. I need to ask a few questions.

Gamez’s tiny eyes stared with official intensity into Gracie’s from the surrounding flesh while she crumpled from free-floating guilt. Now what?

Speaking in a low voice, he asked if she knew the dead woman, if she had spoken to her, and if the woman had spoken to anyone. Gracie responded with a string of negatives.

So what you’re saying is that you never had any contact with her at all? Not in the airport?

Except when I tried to give her CPR. She shuddered at the memory. The stupid call buttons weren’t working, or at least nobody came. I pushed them so much I hurt my wrist. Oh God, the poor girl.

And to your knowledge nobody else had any contact with her?

Gracie thought for a second. Actually, she did get up to use the restroom earlier in the flight. I saw her talking with somebody while she waited to get in.

He leaned closer. Did you get a look at this person?

Just some guy. She paused. A little older, in his forties, maybe. Thinning red hair and glasses. I wasn’t really paying attention.

Anything else? Did you talk with her at all?

No. She didn’t seem in the mood for conversation. She seemed pissed off about something. After she got back from the restroom she went to sleep, or at least I thought she was sleeping A flight attendant brought her food but she didn’t wake up. I just put it on her tray—I didn’t want to bother her. Fresh tears began to pour from her eyes as realization sank in.

Gamez wrote in his notebook. We’re going to have to ask you not to leave the departure area after you get through customs and passport control. You’ll have to wait to be questioned by police.

Police? Hey, I just told you everything I know.

He wouldn’t look her in the eye. You were the last person to see her alive. Right now we’re treating this as a suspicious death.

Suspicious? What does that mean?

I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Before she could ask for his definition of inconvenience, he disappeared. She unwrapped another piece of gum, slid it into her mouth, and tottered up the aisle, grasping at the backs of the seats. When she reached her seat, she felt a wave of dizziness. I’m not sitting there again.

Alec had already gone back to sleep. Gracie noticed a notebook on the woman’s seat. I’d better give this to Gamez.

It was small and black, with a buckle coming around from the back that slid into a lock. Gracie opened it to the first page where she saw two columns of strange symbols with the headings King and Pope.

That’s strange, she muttered. Probably some game like Dungeons and Dragons. These entries look like runes.

The plane hit an air pocket and plunged up, down, and sideways, intensifying Gracie’s vertigo so that she nearly fainted. She lurched past her other nephew, Eric—a seminary student studying to become a priest—who slept through the ordeal hanging halfway into the aisle, his mouth wide open. Eric had inherited his aunt’s puff of red hair, and his school paste skin forced him to regard the sun as a mortal enemy.

Gracie made her way to an empty seat beside an older man who was asleep under an airline blanket, stuck the notebook into the pocket of the seat in front of her, and after burying her face in the airline pillow to cry with some semblance of privacy, opened two more miniature bottles of vodka to calm herself. When the rightful occupant returned from the rest room, Gracie had to return to her seat just as another bout of turbulence flung the plane like a plastic bag in the wind. She grasped the arms of the seat, holding on in existential terror. The lights flickered and went out while the pilot’s voice mumbled over the sound system. Each wobble of the plane intensified that shock of awareness that nothing but thin, freezing air stood between the bottom of the plane and the North Atlantic 35,000 feet below.

As she tried to relax her shoulders, Gracie wondered at the coincidence of finding death sitting beside her. She already suspected that running so far from home was a mistake, but suspicion had hardened into certainty. Her husband used it as an excuse to slink out of their admittedly flawed marriage, and although they didn’t suspect a thing and she didn’t want to tell them, her nephews had a very ill aunt on their hands, and neither of them was adept at handling anything more serious than a flat tire.

Gracie hoped to sink into a much-needed sleep, but it wasn’t to be. She sat staring out at the clouds as her brain dragged her into another replay of the last few weeks.

Her doctor was a young man fresh out of medical school who couldn’t hide his trembling fingers and darting eyes as Gracie described her symptoms. While the diagnostic possibilities unfolded in his mind, he tried to calm her as the list of medical tests she needed expanded into an encyclopedia. She wasn’t fooled by euphemisms like we’ll try to make you comfortable and it’s a long process. She knew exactly what they meant. The doctor’s attempts to be reassuring made her laugh out loud in spite of the circumstances, but his words stabbed with an emotional dagger. Not only had Gracie’s last hopes for having a child vanish forever, but the rest of her own life would be an increasingly difficult struggle at best.

Ray took the news too well, Gracie thought, and although he put on a sympathetic front, she could see that he was mentally calculating how her health problems could work to his advantage. Mustering the options she had left, Gracie took inventory of what was most important to her. Playing music remained the one pleasure in her life, so as she stood in that antiseptic examination room waiting for the final tests, she decided that she was going to do just that. Her two nephews, Alec and Eric, had been invited to play at a music festival in France, so she offered to go with them and was amazed when they agreed. She also hoped to fulfill a lifelong dream and go to Ireland. She didn’t know exactly what the future had in mind for her and didn’t want to know—not yet. Anyone who knew of her condition would attempt to prevent her from leaving, except Ray, and even Gracie wondered if she’d lost her mind.

With the bitterness of revelation shorn of wishful thinking, Gracie saw that she had been allowing parents, teachers, priests, supervisors, bosses, salesmen, counselors, doctors, agents, managers, boyfriends, peers, siblings, and a cheating spouse determine the course of her life since the day she was born, and had been brainwashed about how to live, what job she should have, what kind of man to marry, what kind of house she should buy, what to eat, what to wear, what music to listen to, what movies and television shows she should like, and what to think—socially, politically, artistically, and spiritually—for forty-one years.

The thought of her future transformed her into a middle-aged teenager, hot to rebel against anything anyone cared to throw at her. Gracie started smoking again, drank more, only ate food she liked regardless of how fattening it might be, and wore more jewelry. She knew those were futile attempts to twist herself from the teeth of an unimaginable aloneness that was about to swallow her, but she knew no other way. She could take no comfort in religion because she doubted that there was any kind of God, and if there was, she was denied any useful access to him, her, or it. Her disorder not only made her weaker—it catapulted her into a new mindset, and those universal fears of infirmity and death no longer rumbled in the back of Gracie’s consciousness. They screamed into her face every moment of every day. She wasn’t ready to tell anybody else, or even think the name of the disease let alone say it, because she was still trying to digest it herself. She wanted to spend the next two weeks pretending it didn’t exist.

The plane descended through a storm that shook the plane like a paint mixer, but finally landed at Gatwick Airport. While the rest of the passengers trickled out the forward exits, Gracie noticed several black limousines and a military vehicle parked beside the plane. Five British policeman trotted up the rear ramp, entered the cabin, and whispered to Gamez before picking up the body. They laid it on a gurney and rushed it into the military vehicle while a group of emergency medical people hurried in with another gurney. "Another dead body? What’s going on with this flight?

Alec sidled into the row opposite Gracie’s and held up a black camera case. Bad news, Gracie. See the slit on the bottom? Somebody ripped off our money. All of it. And now everybody’s gone but us. We should have gotten travelers checks like you said. We are totally screwed.

Oh my God, we’ve got to stop them! Somebody has our money!

Gracie raced to the front and told the crew that they had been robbed. A man working for Gatwick got on his walkie-talkie and informed security while another man announced to her that the police would do what they could, but they would have to report the theft to customs officials.

But, come on, somebody has our money—we’ve got to stop them.

Do you have anything to prove that any money found is actually yours?

She hesitated. No, not really.

Do you have credit cards?

No, I got rid of them months ago after . . .

Should have gotten travelers checks, ma’am. The thief can just claim that the cash belongs to him and there’s nothing we can do. Unless you have a list of the serial numbers on the bills.

I’ve got to find whoever took my money.

The three followed signs through a warren of corridors and into a crowded arrivals hall. Devastated, but determined not to lose her nerve, Gracie wiped her tears away with one sleeve of her jean jacket, pulled a bag of tobacco and rolling papers out of her pocket, twisted herself a cigarette, and fired it up. What do we do now? We’ll never get our money back, and they won’t let us in without it. And we can’t get home, thanks to that stupid cheapo airline policy of pay-as-you-go. But I’ve got to get home—I’ve got an important appointment with my doctor in three weeks. And there’s something else I ought to tell you guys. About Uncle Ray and me.

Sorry madam, but no smoking allowed in arrivals. Please keep moving. A young man in a suit snatched the cigarette from her lips, pivoted around, and hurried away, holding the cigarette between his fingers as if it were an angry scorpion.

I can’t believe you started smoking again, said Eric. Not only will it kill you someday, but it will wreck your voice.

Yeah, yeah. An idea elbowed its way into Gracie’s thoughts and she bent down to open her guitar case. We need money fast and this is our only chance. There are no cops around and I don’t see that Gamez guy anywhere. Let’s do it.

We can’t do this here. Eric glanced around. That’s crazy. And aren’t we already in some sort of trouble because of that girl?

Good thinking, auntie. Alec snatched his fiddle from its case, stuck the butt of it to his shoulder, grabbed his bow, and grinned. Come on, just a couple of reels or something. We might get enough for a bite to eat, at least.

We’ll get arrested, Eric protested. This is the worst . . .

Alec violated the sober hum of the arrivals hall by lifting his fiddle to his chin, twirling his bow, and slashing into an Irish reel, The Glass of Beer. His tall form topped by a black fedora commanded attention, even in an airport heaving with passengers. Three young women stopped to watch, so he leaned forward with a wink and let loose a flurry of notes that coaxed a smile from each of them.

Eric reluctantly dragged his accordion out of its case, squatted on his overstuffed backpack, yanked out the bellows, then crammed the ends together to roil into the tune with his brother while clots of his red hair poked up like ketchup-drenched french-fries.

Gracie pulled out her old Martin guitar and sliced into a juicy D chord. The tune was a lickity-split steeplechase of leaping, curlicue phrases and pulsing rhythms that echoed through the terminal. Their music lifted the atmosphere, and weary faces glanced over with growing smiles. A handful of passengers paused to listen, and a few tossed money into Alec’s hat and hurried on after he flung it onto the gleaming tile floor in front of them. Gracie felt a smile suffuse her own face as she swung into the rhythm. For a precious moment, the pure joy she once knew drove away the heartache ripping away at her spirit.

A group of young men in graffiti-splattered leather jackets pushed through the crowd. Their heads were shaved clean, and something about the hostility in those eyes convinced Gracie that they hadn’t come for the music.

One of the men was older and wearing a dark suit. He had white hair combed straight back and pale blue eyes that sizzled like burning fuses. He stepped up to Gracie, his face curled in rage. You clever little bitch of a traitor, I swear to God I’ll throttle you right here and now if you don’t give me what’s mine! In an instant he clamped his fingers around her throat and shut her windpipe.

Chapter Two

Whoa, hey, get your friggin’ hands off my aunt! "Alec clutched at the man’s arm, but several skinheads dragged him and Eric back.

Your aunt? The man in the suit sneered, then turned and spat on the floor. Is that who you’re pretending to be now? You’re older than I expected.

Gee, thanks, Gracie wheezed. I heard the British press was rude, but this is something . . .

Very funny, but the clock is ticking on you, little auntie. You boys better tell auntie Elsa that yours truly Simon Montfort wants what’s his, and he’s going to get it even if he has to kill her right out in the open!

Elsa? Gracie’s peripheral vision faded and she sank toward unconsciousness. Who the hell is that?

All right you lot, you’re under arrest! And put away those instruments.

A gang of officers in crisp blue uniforms emerged in unison on either side of Gracie, snatched her from their clearing, and swiftly pulled her arms back and placed handcuffs on her wrists. What the hell is all this? Gracie tried to shout. What did I do?

You’re under arrest for suspicion of murder.

Murder? Alec said. Aunt Gracie? Are you out of your minds?

Montfort and the men in leather jackets had already disappeared into a swarm of passengers while, without a word, the officers hustled her and her nephews into the bowels of the airport.

Why don’t you go after those guys? Gracie bleated through her cramped throat. That guy tried to kill me! We were robbed! I was choked . . .

Let’s see your passports, tickets, and any travelers checks you’ve got.

Don’t you get it? They might still be in the arrivals area. Why aren’t you going after them? What the hell are you doing to me?

Come on, now, hand them over. We haven’t got all day.

Alec and Eric turned over their passports, a few spare dollars, and Eric’s library card to an officer who shoved them into his trouser pocket. Gracie was still gasping so badly that she could only see lights flashing in her retinas. One officer dug around in her pockets and felt the notebook. What’s that?

Just a notebook.

No money? No credit cards? What about return tickets?

We flew Atlantic Express, so we don’t have return tickets, said Alec. And those other things, well, they were stolen. That’s why we . . .

Gracie tried to jerk her arm away from the officer who grasped it like it was a wriggling python. I can sell that damned wedding ring.

A gaunt-faced officer with bony hands pushed Gracie into an office not much larger than a closet. As you well know, a young woman died while sitting beside you on your flight. I wouldn’t care to be in your shoes, little lady.

Alec and Eric followed, and the three dropped onto orange plastic chairs. A tapping typewriter in a nearby office and stench of bureaucratic tedium coaxed Gracie’s headache into full blossom.

Well, well. You haven’t read any books on airport etiquette, have you? You are certainly an odd threesome.

A voice with a Masterpiece Theater accent broke into the silence. It was emitted by a customs officer with the merest fringe of hair and a face like a disgruntled cod. He sat down behind the cluttered desk and leafed through the confiscated passports after regarding the three disapprovingly through wire glasses splayed over the end of his nose. Alexander Horgan?

Alec sat up and belched. His fedora looked like it had been squashed onto his head by a falling brick.

You may remove your headgear and cease producing those disgusting noises now, Mister Horgan. He looked up and raised one eyebrow. Your customs form states that you are an international accounts manager?

Yeah. Alec shoved one hand down the front of his sweater, retrieved a small cigar, and held it between his fingers. So what about our money? What about that psycho who tried to strangle my aunt right under your noses?

Don’t you dare light that thing of yours. Eric Horgan, you are also an international accounts manager?

I am?

Eric was nearly a foot shorter and a year younger than Alec, and the mild face behind his freckles suggested impending sainthood. Alec had trouble keeping enough meat on his bones to hang clothes on, but Eric was cursed with a stubborn belt of pudge.

And you, Missus Ryan. He turned his gaze to Gracie with a rueful shake of the head. Please sit down. How did you end up in this sorry situation?

She squinted at the name tag on his uniform. Well, Inspector Watts, we got robbed on the plane, attacked by a bunch of skinheads who think I’m someone else, and then your officers put me in handcuffs and dragged us in here, that’s how.

Pull yourself together, madam. And put away that gum.

Where do you suggest I put it?

The officer sighed. I understand from the report I received that you are the aunt? He removed his glasses and looked her over. "That’s quite a