Full Auntie Body

By J.B. Barrett

Part II of the Auntie Dote Chronicles
New York was a hard habit to break. Aurora was trying, but when the money stopped flowing the relapse was inevitable. She was not the same person who had left eighteen months earlier. Now there was Tania the sultry widow and her platonic toy boy, Mateo. Together with what was left of her trustee, she had to follow the money right to its source and pray the ice cream man did not find her first. What kind of a monster craves ice cream in New York's icy winter?

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.B. Barrett
• Release date: Jul 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005304898

Book preview

Full Auntie Body

Part II of the Auntie Dote Chronicles

© J.B. Barrett

2020

I

Are you ready?

She nodded and he opened the door. A blast of icy air pushed them back, daring them to step outside. They had no choice; it was four in the morning at the airport and they had just landed. She heard him gasp as the cold air filled their lungs like a thousand shards of ice. He tried to say something but just coughed instead.

Welcome to New York, she said, a cloud of vapor billowing from her mouth.

He glanced at her, eyes watering. She had warned him about the cold, but one thing was to be told about it and another was to feel it in the flesh. It did not help that just ten hours earlier they had taken off from the sweltering tropical summer. By the time they climbed into a cab he was shivering under his coat, and once in the car she held him to her side as they approached the glittering Manhattan skyline.

The sidewalks were empty as they emerged from the tunnel and made their way to midtown. Mateo had his face stuck to the window, watching the scenery in silence. She did not interrupt his reverie, remembering her own first time in New York City so many years ago. That odd feeling of familiarity born of countless movies and TV shows. It was a magic moment and a dose of reality all in one, seeing all which the cameras showed and other things that stayed out of frame.

The cab dropped them off at the Oasis, a discreet five-star on the West Side with views over Central Park. She had reserved two suites. Mateo and her made an eye-pleasing couple but did not share bed. It mattered little, he was still the best prop for the modern single woman in a man's world. All the appearances, none of the mess.

He called her Tania. That was the name on her travel documents. Tania Toledo was a sultry rich widow with no known vices except being American. That was all he needed to know, for his own good.

They had met in Brazil, at the Art Museum in Sao Paulo, where she was on sojourn for some beauty enhancement work. In the museum, the paintings were not mounted on the walls but hung from the ceiling, filling the entire space. One painting in particular made her stop, a portrait of two young girls holding hands, one in a pink lace dress and the other in blue. Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers (Pink and Blue) by Auguste Renoir. It was not what she considered a pretty painting, but it grabbed her nonetheless.

As she stood there entranced, a guy strolled