“I’m assuming she’s going full-out Miami,” I said.
Scarlet was wearing a tangerine-colored spandex bodysuit with bell-bottom legs and sleeves, and it had a sweetheart neckline that was obviously meant to display massive cleavage—if you happened to have massive cleavage. Scarlet’s cleavage was somewhere around her belly button, so it wasn’t quite the same effect. Her hair was from the Shakira collection and trailed down her back in frosty curls. If you saw her from the neck up and from the back, she was a dead ringer.
A couple of people took pictures as they walked by, and I gave up and took my shoes off right there in the lobby.
“Where have you girls been?” Scarlet asked. “I woke up and found your note, and then it took me all this time to get ready and you still weren’t back.”
“We got kidnapped,” Kate said. “Kind of. It was a weird afternoon.”
“Do I smell funnel cakes?” Scarlet asked, narrowing her eyes at me.
“That’s where the kidnapper took us,” I said. “It wasn’t our choice.”
“Hmmph,” Scarlet said. “Well, I guess if you didn’t have a choice, you didn’t have a choice. That’s a real nice jacket. I saw one just like it while I was walking down to see the sights. This nice man was selling them out of the back of his trunk. It was a real good price too. Twenty bucks. Almost bought one, but he said some skank had just bought the last one in my size.”
“Twenty bucks?” I said. “I paid a hundred.”
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” Scarlet said. “What’s the plan. Dinner? Drinks? Dancing? I learned how to floss and I want to give it a try.”
“I need to call Nick and fill him in,” I said. “I’m uneasy knowing Vince was here, especially if Angelica is being followed. Whoever was trailing her could’ve latched on to Vince.”
“And I’ll call Savage and see what he can find out about whoever visited Carmen in prison,” Kate said. “And I can get him to start doing a trace on his cell phone to see what tower was pinged last.”
“Y’all can do all that at dinner,” Scarlet said. “I’m starving and I didn’t get all dressed up for nothing. If we eat in the hotel restaurant maybe you can see if anyone recognizes Vince. I thought you said he met Angelica here.”
“Good idea,” I said. I looked down at the three of us, Kate in red, me in yellow, and Scarlet in tangerine, and thought we looked like we belonged on top of Carmen Miranda’s head. Kate must’ve had the same thought because she just closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Whatever happens on this night,” Kate said. “Please don’t take any pictures.”
I smiled tightly and I ushered Scarlet toward the dining room. It was at the front of the hotel on the first level, and it overlooked the beach.
I didn’t actually have a picture of Vince by himself, so I texted my mother and asked if she could send me one. This, of course, led to a couple thousand texts of her asking me if I’d found out anything.
The waiter seated us out on the balcony in a dark corner, but Scarlet wasn’t having any of that.
“No, young man,” she said. “We’ll take that table right there. I can’t read the menu in the dark. Besides, I like how my earrings sparkle under this light.”
The maître d’ took it in stride and seated us directly in the center of the balcony, under a cacophony of twinkle lights, that did, indeed, make Scarlet’s earrings look like disco balls.
“At least it’s quiet out here,” Kate said.
“Order me something to drink and something that involves a lot of cheese for an appetizer,” I told Scarlet. “I’m going to call Nick.” I saw the gleeful look in her eye and figured it was worth a reminder. “Nothing alcoholic to drink for me.”
“People used to drink all the time when they were pregnant back in the old days, and it never hurt anybody. That was a generation that went off to war and knew how to defend their liberty. Women stopped drinking and now look what we’ve got—stunted men in suspenders with beards who drink coffee all day and watch porn because they don’t know how to flirt with women in real life. I say it’s time to take a stand and bring back the greatest generation.”
“Maybe you should write a letter to your congressman,” I told her. “They