Free Barbara Silkstone - Wendy Darlin 04 - Miami Mummies by Barbara Silkstone

appointment to discuss Leech’s financial planning with Mr. James. Would we like to set a day and time?
    I took Brad’s card and promised to call.
    Leech and I left the gallery moving slower than two senile snails nonchalantly checking out a nest of tiny cameras and low-placed button-bulbs that could only be security laser beams crossing the doorway and aimed to the back of the exhibit.
    We stood mute in the elevator as it dropped us fifty-one floors to the main lobby. Leech grabbed my elbow and guided me to the revolving door.
    My breath hissed from my body. A tire going flat had nothing on me. “Now what?” came out of my mouth with the last of the hiss.
    “Let’s scram to my apartment. There’s something I have to do.”
    Cool. I was about to see how a real burglar plots. I hoped this was an Ocean’s Eleven thingie. I imagined myself as Julia Roberts as we trotted down Brickell Avenue to the public parking garage.

Chapter Twelve
    Leech’s apartment was no George Clooney pad. A red plush sofa dominated the center of the living room. The walls were a funky shade of orchid, the drapes a flame-stitch combo of crimson and purple. All in all, the place made my eyes ache.
    My burglary coach rummaged through his video collection and pulled out a DVD. Entrapment . “Now watch this. Study it carefully.”
    “I know this flick by heart.”
    He put his finger to his lips. “Hush…”
    So I hushed figuring he was the expert and I was here to learn.
    Leech fast-forwarded to the scenes where Catherine Zeta Jones wiggles her body seductively under practice red string and then under real laser beams. He leaned forward engrossed in every detail. I was running out of my world famous patience. If I didn’t need his skills so badly and he wasn’t the man who knew too much I’d dump his happy ass.
    Ten minutes of the actress’s bumps and grinds and I elbowed Leech. “What am I supposed to learn from this?”
    “Huh?” He looked surprised to see me. “Oh… forgot you were here. This wasn’t for you. It’s for me.”
    I smacked him in the head. “Focus! We just wasted twenty minutes.”
    “Nah… I’m thinking on all eight gears. Got us a plan. We’re going to do a snatch and grab. I’ll stand at the door. You grab the statue, pitch it to me, and then wiggle-back under the lasers just like Catherine did in the flick.”
    I gulped. Laser beam security. “Why don’t you do the worm through the laser rays? You’re the pro.”
    His look was a total putdown. “Lady, you hired me to run this caper so let me do my thing. If there are lasers, you’re smaller and a better fit. Plus someone has to stand guard for the guards. Either that or we can drop from the roof into the skylight and dangle over the statue.”
    Belly wiggling across the floor was a much better plan. He was the pro; I was the client with a promise. I pulled the thumb-cam off my finger and popped the dot-recorder in my White Rabbit watch, then played the video of the gallery against Leech’s orchid wall. It was grainy but I could see the laser light buttons on the bronco’s podium. Responder buttons stuck in the ceiling and appeared to point to the gallery entrance creating a crosshatch of beams.
    “You’re going to need a cat suit and a mask cause they’ll have that room on video tape.”
    “Kit and I are going to Calligraphy and Cat-Scans to get me one.”
    “You mean Lady Merlot’s. It’s part of the Calligraphy mini-mall. Make sure you buy a tight slippery suit. No leather. You got some fast floor maneuvers to perform. You see how she wiggled and pumped from her waist? You gotta get that wave-action going in and coming out.”
    Rather than strangle the idiot, I left his apartment with red and purple swirls super-imposed on my brain. My Ralph Lauren sunglasses added to the surreal haze created by spending an hour in his pad surrounded by the cacophony of colors. We agreed to meet at just before midnight in the alley behind North by