Bubbles Ablaze Read Free Page B

us.
    We waited until the rumbling stopped and the falling rocks settled down. Both of us coughed with violent urgency, vainly trying to clear our lungs. Still, we were alive and that was enough for me.
    â€œYou still with me, Bubbles?” Stiletto pulled me to him tighter.
    I nodded into his chest. “I’m breathing.”
    â€œYou know,” he began, after a particularly nasty hacking fit, “it may sound dramatic, but I think someone is trying to kill us.”
    â€œKill us? Get out of here.”
    â€œI’d love to.” He flashed me a smart-ass smile. “Seriously, look at the facts. First we get called to a deserted coal mine on a hoax, I’m knocked unconscious and thrown in a coal car. Then the car activates and hurls us into this pit where we find a dead body and there’s an explosion.”
    I tried to unstick a few lashes that had gotten plastered together with mascara and dust.
    â€œWhat I’ve been trying to figure out,” he continued, “is who. I mean, off the top of my head I can name five people who’d want to do me in, from Slobodan Milosevic to a couple of wise guys from the Bronx. None of them would think of calling me to Pennsylvania coal country and none of them would want to harm you.”
    He pulled me tighter. “Bubbles. Someone wanted us to die . . . together.”
    I ran over my list of enemies, which, unlike Stiletto’s, failed to include the dictator of a small European country. Aside from the occasional client whose eyebrows I had overwaxed, there was my ex-husband, Dan the Man, his wife, Wendy, and somepeople I had ticked off by misspelling their names in newspaper articles.
    That brought me full circle to Stinky and that didn’t make much sense. Stinky and I had hit the dance floor a few times at his wedding to Roxanne and shared cleanup duty during holiday dinners. Unless he was seriously ticked that I had washed fewer plates than he had, I couldn’t conceive of why he’d want to blow me up. Plus, how could he have known about Stiletto?
    â€œI can’t believe Stinky would try to kill us,” I said. “We danced the Hokey Pokey. Twice.”
    Stiletto held me at arm’s length. “Stinky? Who the hell is Stinky?”
    I filled in the details about my cousin’s husband and finding his locked Lexus at the coal mine.
    â€œLexus, eh. He must be doing pretty well if he’s driving a Lexus,” Stiletto said. “That is, if you’re into sedans. Maybe he’s joined the coal country Cosa Nostra and been dealing coke. That would explain the explosion and the fancy car.”
    Being from Lehigh, a steel town on the Jersey border, I knew the coke he was talking about, and it wasn’t the kind people snort up their noses. That was Stiletto’s idea of a clever pun.
    â€œWe can talk about this later,” I said. “Let’s find a way out.”
    There was barely enough room to move. Stiletto’s headlight was still operating, so we could see that we had been blocked in by the explosion. Stiletto started clearing rocks away on his side and I started to look for a passageway.
    â€œStinky’s a map geek,” I said, running my hands along the crevice wall. “He spends his days charting underground tunnels for miners. He might enjoy playing practical pranks, but he’s incapable of hurting someone intentionally, much less hooking up with organized crime.”
    â€œThat’s what Angela Gambino said.”
    Cool air flitted over my fingertips. “Who’s she?”
    â€œThe cousin of John Gotti’s wife. And you know who he was.”
    I was almost positive John Gotti ran a pizza parlor inAllentown, but I didn’t say so. Instead I said, “I think I found a way out. Fresh air.”
    Stiletto inhaled a few times. “You’re right. I can smell it.”
    I extended my three-inch nails along the rock wall behind me. Sure enough, the