“I’m trying to find Hooker. These are my friends Rosa and Felicia.”

“Have you gone to the police?” Suzanne asked.

“No. Hooker and I are sort of wanted for multiple counts of murder. Oscar, Spanky’s spotter, Hooker’s security guy…and they’ve probably added Ray by now.”

“That’s ridiculous. Ray isn’t dead,” Suzanne said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, Ray’s with me. You want to see him?”

Felicia, Rosa, and I got back into the Camry, rolled the windows down, and followed the black limo to Suzanne’s condo. We valet-parked the car and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. All the time, I was dying to jump up and down and yell and be embarrassingly excited because I’d found Ray. Since I hadn’t a clue as to what was going on, and I didn’t want to screw anything up, I just kept my lips pressed tight together and my hands balled into fists at my side and tried to look calm.

“It’s just a temporary rental until I get everything straightened out,” Suzanne said, plugging her key into the lock. “Still, it’s not bad, and it’s got a great view.”

The condo stretched across the back of the building with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the ocean. The décor was modern, mostly white with touches of pastel. The kitchen was high tech and looked totally unused.

“Where’s Itsy Poo?” I asked Suzanne.

“She goes to play group on Tuesdays. And then she gets a whirlpool bath and a pedicure.”

Beans was pressed into my leg as if he understood pedicure and didn’t think a lot of it.

Suzanne set the stone crabs on the kitchen counter. “Follow me, ladies, and I’ll show you what pissed-off mothers do for fun.”

We all marched into the bedroom, which was about half the size of a football field. Her bed was one of those four-poster things, draped in white gauze. The carpet was white. The woods were pale. The upholstered pieces were white. The curtains were drawn, and I thought this was probably to keep the sun out so she didn’t go snow blind.

“This unit has his and hers bathrooms,” Suzanne said. “My bathroom is through the door to the right. And his bathroom is in here.”

Suzanne took a key off the dresser, unlocked the door to his bathroom, and stepped back. Ray was prisoner in the little room, still dressed in the clothes he’d worn to the beach meeting. He was tethered with an elaborate system of clunky chains that wrapped around the toilet and the pipes under the sink. His hands were free to do whatever he needed to do, but he didn’t have enough chain to do what he really wanted to do…which was to choke Suzanne. He had a pillow and a quilt, a stack of magazines, and a tray with leftovers from takeout.

“Now you’re all accomplices to kidnapping,” Ray said. “If you don’t get me out of here, you’re all going to jail for the rest of your lives.”

“What did he do?” Felicia asked. “He cheat on you?”

“No. He’s my brother-in-law,” Suzanne said. “He rudely killed my husband before I had the chance to do it myself. And now he’s planning to swindle my kids out of their inheritance.”

“You have no proof,” Ray said.

“It’s always a mistake to mess with a mother,” Suzanne said.

“So this is where Ray went after he talked to Hooker and me,” I said.

“It was easy,” Suzanne said. “I told him I wanted to talk to him in private about transferring the boat over to him. He came up here. I hit him with a blast from a stun gun, trussed him up, and I was in business. I guess the moron never told anyone he was coming here.”

“Ask her about the chip,” Ray said to Suzanne.

“Shut up.”

“Ask her!”

“What about the chip?” I said to Suzanne.

“Ray and Oscar have a product in R and D that’s worth a lot of money. They didn’t realize I knew about it, but I keep my ears open.

“I knew it was ready for sale, and I knew Oscar was using it on the cars. It got him a championship, but more than that, it was a flashy way to demonstrate the technology to prospective buyers. I was willing to be the good corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I was even willing to be the good ex-corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I’m not willing to be the widow who sits by and watches the slime-bag brother rape the company.” Suzanne’s frozen eyebrows narrowed ever so slightly. “So I had to bring Ray in for questioning, right, Ray?”

Ray gave her the death glare. And Suzanne ignored it.

“And now the prototype has disappeared, and Ray doesn’t want to tell me where it’s wandered off to,” Suzanne said.

“I told you where the chip is,” Ray said. “Jesus, why don’t you just ask her?”

Suzanne kept her eyes on Ray. “Ray has this insultingly ridiculous story he’s constructed about the product disappearance. His contention is that you and Hooker have it. And it gets even better. He claims you got this particular product by stealing a car hauler. The same hauler that was supposed to carry Oscar back to Mexico.”

“Are you talking about the gizmo in the gearshift knob?” I asked her.

Suzanne turned to me, mouth dropped open, eyes as wide as they’d go on Botox. “I thought he was lying. The story was insane. I mean, who would believe something like that? Don’t tell me it’s true!”

“It’s true,” I said.

Suzanne tipped her head back and gave a whoop of laughter. She looked over at Beans. “I guess the tooth marks in Oscar make sense to me now. You should give him an extra dog biscuit for that one.”

“He thought Mr. Dead Guy was a big chew toy,” Felicia said. “He’s just a puppy inside.”

“So where’s the circuit board?” Suzanne asked. “Do you have it?”

“Not exactly. But I know where it is.”

“And it’s safe? You can get it for me?”

“Yes.”

Suzanne gave a sigh of relief. “You can’t imagine how much time and money went into the making of that thing. It’s my sons’ future.”

“So it wasn’t about the boat?”

“Not entirely. The boat was just part of it. By the time Ray’s executorship ran out, there wouldn’t have been anything left of the company. Ray would have stripped every asset from it.”

Ray didn’t say anything. They’d obviously had this conversation before and it didn’t end well for Ray.

“There are a couple things I don’t understand,” I said to Suzanne. “I know the value of traction control in a race car, but I get the feeling this is bigger than just rigging a contest. Why is this one little circuit board so important?”

“The technology has the potential for wide use,” Suzanne said. “Everything on that tiny circuit card is exclusive to Huevo. The concept, the programming, the wireless technology, and the battery composite are all straight out of development and have never before been seen…anywhere. If the circuit board fell into the wrong hands, it could eventually be unraveled and the technology could be stolen. The battery alone is worth hundreds of millions. The wireless technology will revolutionize the aircraft industry.”

“So you wanted to get it back just so it wouldn’t get duplicated?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Suzanne said. “Idiot Oscar amused himself by producing a microprocessor that could easily be embedded in an engine and regulate engine speed. It was illegal and made use of the new battery and wireless technology, but it was a simple program, and it self-destructed each week when given the signal. At the same time, Oscar had established a partnership with a technology broker.”

“Anthony Miranda?”

“Yes. Miranda has an overseas client who is willing to pay top dollar. Unfortunately, some of that technology could have been used in very bad ways by Miranda’s client. I would have stepped in sooner, but I didn’t know that part of it until I got to Florida.

“Anyway, a prototype circuit board had been produced for Miranda. It was programmed to demonstrate the wireless technology that could be used in aircraft. So genius Oscar brought two different circuit boards to Florida and somehow managed to put the wrong circuit board in the sixty-nine car.”