DO WAH DIDDY...DIE 

(aka I LOVE LUCI – WHEN I DON'T WANT TO KILL HER)

 Chapter One

An ancient radio was scratching out a Sousa march when Fern Smith unlocked the door of the seedy hotel room and found Donald posing in front of the cracked mirror with an AK-47 held at a military angle across his chest and a bandana knotted around his mostly bald head. He had a long, thin neck that merged into plump jowls, making his head an uncertain rectangle with the wispy remains of his hair trailing around three sides. A hang-dog expression adorned the fourth side. His puny shoulders were jaunty and self-satisfaction gleamed from close-set eyes as he regarded the speckled image in the sub-standard mirror. Because Donald was neither tall nor short—though he could appear either, depending on where he belted his pants across his beer belly—his attempt at Rambo made her wince.

She pushed the door closed with her shoulder and dumped the sacks she carried onto the lumpy surface of the slightly less than double bed. She snapped off the radio, her voice breaking flatly into the sudden silence, "I still think we should have bought the Uzi."

Donald froze like a deer in headlights, then spun to face her. He quickly grabbed the bandana and stuffed it in his back pocket, then produced a wide, hopeful smile as he peered up at her, exposing the gap where his plates didn't meet his gums.

Fern was a tall woman, narrow everywhere but the hips, with stooped shoulders and long arms that made her look like a caricatured bird of prey. Her hair, as wispy as Donald's, was drawn up in an off-center bun. Her narrow mouth, having long ago given in to the force of gravity, sagged on either side of her pointed chin.

"Teddy said—"

"I'm sure what Teddy said had nothing to do with the price." Fern's expression gave no quarter. "If you hadn't let Artie lay out the hit—"

Donald tenderly deposited the AK-47 on the dresser top, retrieved the bandana from his pocket and used it to return its surface to a high gloss. "His tab, his call."

Fern's sigh was silent, but it ruffled the back of what was left of Donald's hair as she reached around him to pick up a photograph of the target. She studied the face, feeling a shiver run down her spine when she made contact with the woman's green gaze. There was something about her eyes, something deep in the mysterious green slits barely visible beneath drooping lids, that made Fern nervous. She tossed the picture down beside the gun.

"His way overdue tab, don't you mean?"

With a triumphant look, Donald pointed at something behind her. She turned and examined the beat up shoe box sitting on the table. With some reluctance she lifted the lid and found neat rows of—

"Ones?" She grabbed a handful and flipped through them with practiced ease. "This is his down payment? A shoe box full of dollar bills?"

"At least it’s real."

Fern tossed down the bills with a snort of disgust. "And the rest of it?"

"When the job's done." She raised a skeptical brow. He tried to trump her raise with a whined, "He's good for it," but his voice lacked the conviction. They'd both known Arthur Maxwell for too long.

A stray bit of sun found its way through a spot on the dirty window and fell across the AK-47. Fern gave another soundless sigh. A pity he'd fallen for it. There was no persuading him to take the cute little Uzi once he'd made up his mind. He was the bopper—the hit man—so he got to choose the gun. It was even possible he knew what he was doing. It hadn't been that long since their retirement.

She watched him hitch his pants up over his sagging belly, then swagger to the bruised cooler stashed in the corner of the room, his knee joints popping with each step.

Then again . . .

"And when we're doing time—" she began.

"We done time before." He extracted a cold one, popped the top and took a noisy swig. At least he hadn't used his teeth. With their financial hopes riding on an AK-47, they couldn't afford to replace his lousy plates.

Fern crossed her arms. "Not in this state."

He had to think about that for a moment as he mentally ran down the list of places they had done time. "Do you good to make new friends."

He sank into a sagging armchair and gave her a hopeful look.

"We got enough trouble with your old friends."

Donald scowled. "Don't start on Artie again—"

"I ain't stopped—" She shook her head. "You shoulda popped him the first time he poked his face in the door."

Why did Donald put up with him? What was the deal with men and their crib mates? Just because they pissed in the same pot, they had to be friends for life? Only bright spot, Artie didn't pop up that often because he was usually in stir making new friends. She'd feel more comfortable about the whole hit if she could just figure out why Artie wanted the Seymour woman out of the way so bad he was willing to pay them to do it. Artie had made not paying his own way his life's work.

"I don't like it. Too much that can go wrong."

"It's not what I'd choose," Donald admitted. "But there's logic to it. Really," he insisted when she arched her brows again. "Drive-by isn't what I'd choose myself. But then, I've always liked the high ground." He took another noisy drink, before adding, "I've had time to think and it's not as bad as it seems. First place, there's your element of surprise. Look how good the St. Valentines Day massacre worked." He directed a triumphant look at Fern. "Taking someone out with a bang is a fine, old tradition."

He had to be joking, but a cursory examination proved her wrong.

"Come on, Fern. We can do this. You drive the car. I'll point the gun. It's what we do—"

"It's what we did—"

"When it's over, we're rolling in scratch."

The look in his eyes was one she was sadly familiar with. A mixture of calculated entreaty and seedy charm, liberally mixed with greed. She was too old to stop giving in to him—or to stop trusting his well-honed survival instinct. She sighed, trailing her finger the length of the AK-47. It was cool and smooth—like she used to be.

Hadn't she always done everything she could to avoid the dreary anonymity her parents had settled for? Their walk-up apartment in Dayton wasn't a mirror of her parents' suburban hell in Jersey, but there were similarities when she let herself see them. Bingo at McDonald's instead of bridge at the country club. The occasional bus tour with other down-and-out senior citizens instead of summers at the seaside. Her parents had never lived wild or gone somewhere exotic. They had always been smugly content with the mainland U.S.

"Enough to go to Disney World."

Her parents had never been to Disney World. Damn the boy, he knew she wanted to go to Disneyland more than anything. She wanted her picture taken with Mickey Mouse in front of that castle more than she wanted to quit taking stupid hormones.

"Ain't she a beauty, Fernie?" Donald said.

She sighed. If they had to shoot the hell out of some woman to do it—

"It's not an Uzi, but I suppose it'll get the job done," she conceded reluctantly.

"And then some." He mimed rapid firing.

She turned, pushing her worries to the back burner. From one of the sacks she'd dumped on the bed, she extracted two pairs of joke glasses—the Groucho Marx kind with dark frames, large noses, and mustaches attached. One pair she handed to Donald, the other she put on, adjusting the fit. Then she took a large muffelatta out of another sack.

"Get me a beer, will you?" she asked.

Donald put his glasses on, also adjusted their fit, and bent over the cooler, his pants sliding down to display his hairy butt crack.

Fern did a quick right turn from the sight and spread their lunch out on the rickety table. Donald sat down in front of his half of the sandwich.

"What's this?" Donald handed her the beer and, with a suspicious look, examined the offering, a huge half round of crusty bread layered with spicy meats and cheeses and topped with a tangy olive dressing.

"Muffelatta." Her mouth formed the unfamiliar words with the satisfaction of knowing this was another thing her parents had probably never done.

"Smells good." He took a huge bite, chewed a couple of times, then said, thickly through the remains of the bite, "Is good."

Fern studied her sandwich with satisfaction.

"What about wheels?" she asked, before biting down.

"We'll pick a car up right before we head for the airport."

It was a peculiarity of Donald's, this waiting for the last minute to pick up a car. The three times he'd secured wheels early, he'd done jail time. He also had a pair of black, thong underwear he wore, but Fern tried not to think about that. There were some parts of her middle-class upbringing she couldn't shed, no matter how far she got from it.

She watched him chew for a moment, then asked, "Do you think we could steal something, well, foreign this time?"

Donald had strong feelings about driving American cars, but he got to pick the gun. Time for turn-about.

He looked up. She looked at the AK-47. It lay on the dresser, still gleaming dully in that stray bit of sun.

His struggle with the idea of making even a minor adjustment in his MO was written on his face in large, block letters. With a timing honed through long years together, she raised one brow. He grinned.

"Sure, Fernie, whatever you want." He bit deeply into his almost decimated sandwich. His gaze strayed longingly to her half of the sandwich.

With only a moment's hesitation, she shoved it towards him. His appetite was always keen before a kill.

Chapter Two

Mickey Ross was not a happy man.

He'd just come off a two-day stake out and had the rumpled suit and unshaven chin to prove it. He was tired. He was cranky. And he wasn't home in bed having that dream where the cover girl for Sports Illustrated was rubbing sun tan lotion into his back.

He looked at where he didn't want to be, but the waiting area of the New Orleans International Airport didn't fade to something more pleasing. Nor did the stuffed pig dangling at the end of his arm vanish into the nightmare realm where it belonged.

Mickey glared down at it. Bad enough for a cop to be keeping company with any pig, but this pig, well, if it's lurid pink and purple surface was any indication, it had never been a beauty. Time had rubbed away the fluff from its surface and left one sorry, black eye hanging crookedly by a single thread over the patchy remains of a black grin on its square snout. Its tattered ensemble began and ended with a limp ribbon knotted around a fat neck.

In an effort to distance himself from his ratty companion, Mickey held it by the tatty end of the ribbon and twirled it with more than a hint of vindictiveness.

In between twirls, he pondered the unkind fate that had landed him in this fix. If Eddie hadn't suddenly, and inexplicably, decided to end sixty years of bachelorhood, he wouldn't be waiting for a damn flower girl for the damn wedding, with only a stuffed pig for an introduction. Who flew in a little girl for a geriatric wedding anyway? New Orleans was full of little girls who'd probably love tossing petals. But no, they had to import one, then pick a total stranger to collect her—with an obnoxious pig as the icebreaker. Convenient that Eddie had discovered pressing business in Mandeville tonight.

The least that bastard could have done was warn him about the old ladies. How could he send him into battle, into a minefield of weirdness, without even a warning. A mine field that had kept going off in his face no matter what he did, a horror—except for the one small oasis of sanity known as Miss Gracie, who had saved him from the stuffed dragon, but not the pig.

He just wished he knew where Eddie's Unabelle—was that a name to make a guy flinch?—fit in with the Seymours? She didn't seem to be a relative. She was just—there, like a black hole. He sure as hell hoped the lights were on in her upper story for Eddie or he'd learn there were worse things than a lonely retirement.

A stir at the gate, quickly became arrival as passengers filtered off the plane. With the end in sight, Mickey straightened in hope.

That's when it occurred to his weary brain that a stuffed pig might be a less than adequate introduction to the kid. What had possessed the parents to entrust their kid to the uncertain care of three batty old ladies? Uneasily he studied each small, whining arrival, wondering which one was his. A security guard loomed up on one side and he quickly produced his badge.

The case against Eddie just kept building.

A woman emerged from the breezeway and paused to get her bearings. Mickey straightened in an utter and complete, moment-of-silence, respect for the best legs he'd ever been privileged to lay eyes upon.

The cop part of him was vaguely aware she was in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, almost of a height with him and the possessor of a slender build. Her hair was dark and cut short around a face made interesting by its square jaw and straight, dark brows. Mouth was nice, too. Full and lush and lined in red.

He briefly left off admiring her legs to contemplate her mouth, but his attention was quickly drawn lower when the legs went into motion. Brief appearances by her thighs, between the slash of her dark skirt, had him tugging at a suddenly too tight tie. It took him a few seconds to realize she didn't intend to pass him by, that she'd stopped right in front of him.

With extreme reluctance, he dragged his gaze back to eye level. Her head was angled slightly, her gaze directed toward the pig with a seriousness it didn't deserve. Just for a moment, something in the angle of her jaw had him wondering if he'd met her, but he quickly dismissed the notion. A guy couldn't forget those legs.

His gaze drifted down again, but he flashed back to attention when she stepped closer, her nose bare inches from his, her lashes lifting with lust building slowness to reveal emerald green depths.

His tie tightened to near strangulation levels, but he couldn't move, let alone do something about it. Green eyes were always trouble for him. Too bad proximity and hormones took the edge off caution. If his partner, Delaney were here, he'd recognize the signs of Mickey on the verge of falling in lust again. But Delaney wasn't here. The lucky bastard was in bed.

Carpe Diem. Mickey knew his smile was his best opening gambit and produced it with practiced ease. "Hello."

Luci studied the smile, recognized the confidence and the intent behind it. She'd met smiles like this one. Smiles that were confident of their charm. Smiles that expected weak knees and a cessation of rational thought. Luckily she had a built-in immune system to utterly charming smiles and rarely indulged in rational thought anyway. It went with being a Seymour, though her knees, just for a moment, signaled a willingness to depart from the norm. She reminded herself she was the result of a departure from the norm and said, "That's my pig."

This deviation from the opening pass widened his admittedly wonderful blue eyes and erased the smile. Luci took a moment to admire those eyes while the struggle to understand played in them.

"Your—pig?" he finally managed.

His voice was also wonderful, despite a certain strangled quality. Husky, it had a nice mix of bass and baritone. Confusion gave him a little boy quality to which even a Seymour couldn't be completely immune. Perhaps it was a side effect of her non-Seymour parentage. According to her mother—when her mother could be persuaded to talk about Luci's paternity—there were several annoying things she'd picked up from her father. It was, in fact, a moment of rare, though limited, openness about that paternity that had prompted her visit to New Orleans. The wedding was the perfect cover, since she wasn't ready to admit to her family she was father hunting.

The telegram from Boudreaux, her aunts' man, had provided assurance that they did understand she was coming, but it had been typically sparse on details, which probably explained the pig. Only her aunts would have kept it, remembered it and produced it in lieu of identification. She studied it fondly, noted the tightening ribbon, and looked up to tell him, "You're choking him."

Mickey gave this comment the lack of attention it deserved. "I don't think—"

Her straight brows rose in surprise. "Then it's time you started."

"But—" He shook his head, trying to punch through tired to comprehension. "This can't be your pig. You're not a little girl!"

"I used to be. But I got over it."

Her punctuating smile invited him to get over it, too. The slow widening of her straight, red mouth launched a feeling not unlike the plunge of a roller coaster. He wanted to get over it. Really he did, but—

"—your aunts—" Mickey tried again, faint but pursuing.

"—probably liked the way the pig looked with your gun."

He clapped his hand protectively over his weapon. "I'm a cop."

Luci had already figured that out, but she attempted to look enlightened. It wouldn’t do to drive him to violence when he had the hardware to do something about it. She smiled. "A cop. Who's not afraid to pack a pig. I like that." She held out her hand. "I promise I am Luci Seymour."

Warily, Mickey took her hand. He didn't shake it. He couldn't. All he could do was stare into her green gaze as want did a quick crawl up his mid-section. "Ross. Mickey Ross."

"Ross. That would put you on the bridegroom's side of the church." Her smile was pleased-to-meet-him, but the fluorescent lighting and her dropping lids turned her eyes bedroom soft.

"Eddie's my uncle," Mickey admitted, through a suddenly dry throat.

Assessment entered her gaze, which then did an unnerving up and down.

"What?" he asked, trying not to sound as defensive as he felt since it wasn't exactly PC to object to something he routinely did.

"Ever since I got the invitation, I've been wondering what kind of man would marry Unabelle. Are you and Eddie—"

"No! We're not at all alike. In any way. Except we're both cops. But that's it." Unbidden, the image of his uncle's fiancé rose in his mind. Faint. Indistinct, but somehow there.

"I guess that answers my next question."

"What?"

"Has Unabelle changed?" Her eyes sparked with amusement. "I can't wait to see her again."

Mickey shuddered. "Yes," he said, positively. "You can."

Her smile started slow, then spread across her face. Mickey had to smile back. It was almost a moral imperative.

A PA announcement crackled rudely. She stepped back the same time he did. Mickey gestured down the terminal. "Uh, we need to go this way."

"Sure." With an agreeable air, she turned. As she passed, men turned to stare. Some ran into pillars.

Mickey loosened his tie, gave a silent whistle of appreciation, then started after her, the pig bouncing unnoticed against his leg.

#

Fern was tense as the Yugo they'd lifted passed slowly through the arrival underpass of the airport. It was a grim place. Way too many cops around and the thick, humid air stank of gasoline fumes and something Fern couldn't identify, but made her think of lingering death. She just wished it didn't make her think of her own.

"Pull in there," Donald directed.

He pointed to an empty space against the curb. She did as he asked with a sigh of relief at the temporary respite from driving the unfamiliar car. It might have been a mistake to steal foreign, she admitted to herself, though she wasn't ready to admit it to Donald just yet. Not only was the interior of the Yugo cramped, but the pedals were so small she was having trouble hitting them with her orthopedic shoes. The controls were opposite what she was used to and labeled with tiny, blurred symbols.

She mentally reviewed her gear shift changes, in between keeping an uneasy eye on the two police officers aiding an attractive blonde who had locked her keys in her car. Only a shuttle bus and a couple of cabs loitered in the area. They were too exposed, she noted uneasily, but Donald was too busy getting his rocks off on his new toy to notice.

She had a very bad feeling about this.

#

"So, how are you related to Unabelle?" Mickey asked, breaking a silence that had ruled for most of the length of the terminal.

Luci looked at him, brows lifting in surprise. "I'm not. She's one of the aunts' debs."

"Debs?" Mickey looked, a puzzled frown putting tiny lines between his well defined brows.

"Debutantes." She waited a moment, but understanding still didn't make an appearance. "Didn't you know they're matchmakers?"

"Matchmakers?" He stopped. "For real?"

"For real. For years." Luci grinned. "They specialize in the—hard to launch young ladies. And back it up with a guarantee."

"Guarantee?" Comprehension was beginning to break in his eyes in little blue sparks. Very attractive blue sparks.

"They don't quit until the deb is walking down the aisle. No matter how long it takes." She hesitated a beat to smooth the giggles out of her voice. "Unabelle's been . . . a challenge. That's why she's the last debutante."

Mickey didn't try to hold back his chuckle. "How long—"

"Long as I can remember. That's one reason I had to come and see who—" Her laughter rich voice made his pulse thunder and the quick flash of her mischievous gaze was a minor lightning strike to his already eager libido.

Mickey tugged at his tie again, this time undoing the knot and the top button of his white shirt. It didn't help. He lengthened his stride, forcing Luci to recalibrate hers to keep up. That didn’t help either. What he needed was a cold shower. A long, cold shower—which just plain wasn't possible in the doggiest of the dog days of August.

"And," he said as he swallowed dryly. "Your other reason?"

"Reason?"

Luci's eyes widened in surprise and a hint of alarm, activating Mickey's cop instincts. It was almost as good as a cold shower. If gasoline could almost put out a fire.

"You came to the wedding?" he prompted.

Luci's lashes swept down like a ladies fan. "It's been a long time and I was feeling nostalgic."

He wasn't buying, but was too polite to do more than look skeptical as he turned her toward the baggage claim sign.

As they descended, thanks to the kind offices of the escalator, Luci studied Mickey obliquely. Pretty enough to be a calendar pin-up, he was lean, with shoulders just the right amount of broad, and a body just the right height to create symmetry. His cleanly honed face was both reassuring and dangerous. The shadow of beard was sexy on his obviously stubborn chin, though she suspected the growth wasn't a calculated effect, but a temporary set back. The crisp cut of his light brown hair hinted at a clean-cut personality and his tired blue eyes suggested he'd just come off a long stint of something—which probably explained the touch of irritability. Though even the strong and the well rested had tough going in the Seymour zone.

She stole another peek and got caught. He tugged nervously at his now, wildly askew tie.

"What?" Another flare of irritation erased the weary in his eyes.

"Excuse me?" She arched one brow, punctuating the question with another discreetly admiring perusal of his assets. Red crept out from under his chin and up his face. Dang, the boy was cute.

"Nothing." He stopped by the luggage carousel and looked at the jumble of people and bags. He was too tired to do the bell boy thing if she had more than one bag. "Here comes the bags. Should I get a cart—"

"Why don't we wait until we see if it's here. My luggage likes to take side trips to Raratonga or Katmandu."

"Okay." He watched a bag circle, then said, "if it does come—"

"Well, will you look at that. There they are!"

Mickey was starting to suspect that she didn't react to things the way normal people did. Her sincere delight at the sight of her luggage attracted almost as much attention as the pig and her legs. And did she have to bend over them like lost children just found?

An . . . unease filtered through tired and lust with distant words of caution. Green eyes, great legs and, a very nice ass—she was presenting it so he took a good look before going to get a cart—were a temptation with a capital "T." But trouble started with a "T," too. If he had any doubts about the wisdom of steering clear, he had only to think of her aunts.

Insanity did run in families. No question it was running amok in hers.

#

"Donald." Fern grabbed Donald's arm and pointed as Luci Seymour came out the doors, walking next to a luggage cart. Perched on the two suitcases was a large pig, made lurid by the artificial light. She shuddered. "Someone should put that thing out of its misery."