​​​​​​​​​​​​"Replicas: Risk & Ruin" by Kat Simons

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Now, I’m fully aware that that particular call isn’t always welcome, and we could have a whole conversation about that. But in that moment, nothing had sounded sweeter.

When no gunshots went off, Dan and I scrambled to get the chairs and table out of the way, then eased the door open enough for Dan to shout, “We work here. We’re coming out slowly.”

No one shot us as we stepped back out into the lobby. I took that as a positive.

Six

The twins and their accomplice stood in the lobby with their hands raised, a couple of guns dropped on the floor a few feet from them, and four police officers standing arrayed in front of them, blocking the front door. Dan and I eased out with our hands up, and one of the cops, who’d been called to the Azur Regent before and knew us, broke away from the others to deal with us.

It took a few hours to get everything sorted. Give our statements. Get the three suspects out. And figure out what they’d been trying to get out of the ice machine.

Turned out they’d failed to get it, and the guy who’d gotten stuck in the machine had ended up with some severe cuts and a broken finger getting his hand back out of the machine. Which seemed a lot of trouble to go to only to get arrested.

What was inside the ice machine, though…

Made more sense after the cops found the hidden package.

It was cash. A lot of cash. Like, a lot of cash. I’m still not sure how they got that thick a wad of bills stuffed up into that ice machine. I also figured it would’ve taken a lot more to get the various parties involved to talk, but apparently, they wanted to lay blame, and I actually got to hear some of the confession this time.

The cash was there to pay for fake passports. A bunch of them. High quality, top of the line. Apparently, that’s what the twins did. They made the sort of passports that even modern scanners couldn’t pick out as fake. Dr. Angela Yergunson was an attending at a maternity hospital, and had learned a long time ago how to forge birth certificates. From there, it was apparently not a huge leap into forging passports. And there was a lot of money to be paid in that line of work.

Who knew.

I suppose, had I ever thought about it, it would have made sense.

The whole convoluted way of exchanging money for passports this time was the twin’s idea because the people they were dealing with were paranoid and didn’t want to be seen in the same place with Dr. Yergunson—they didn’t know she was a twin either. Turns out, the twins often ran the scam of appearing as a single person. This meant they could be in two places at once, without anyone noticing.

The ice machine repair man—who’s information the cops got from Tara, who’d come in in the middle of the night to deal with the fall out—was working for the buyers. So, twins were to bust the machine on their floor. That brought the repair guy in with the money, which he planted in the machine for them to get later. They were supposed to leave the finished passports in the same place for the repair guy when he returned the next day with the “part” needed to fix the machine.

No one the wiser that anything like an exchange had gone down. No one even getting a hint that something hinky had happened. All clean and above the board outwardly.

Except…

“You had to bring your stupid boyfriend into all this,” Dr. Yergunson hissed at her twin. Whose name was Charlene Rhodes, Charlene Yergunson before her marriage, which she hadn’t changed back after the divorce.

Turns out Charlene and Angela Yergunson had not intended on doing the mystery twin thing on this particular trip. They weren’t supposed to be meeting with their clients in person at all. That was the point of the ice machine exchange. Then the clients had called and demanded to see Angela, in person, here in New York, because Charlene’s boyfriend had tried to demand more money. So the sisters ended up having to do the twin thing.

Got a little hard to understand with them yelling at each other, while the cops were busy both taking notes and also trying to get them to calm down, so I’m not entirely sure why they felt the twin thing was necessary here. But I got the impression it was because their clients didn’t know there were two of them, and they decided it was safer to continue that way. Which meant pretending there was only one of them checked in here, too.

And Dr. Yergunson—Angela—blamed Charlene for screwing that up here by talking to me. So I got the impression they thought I’d figured them out and that’s how I caught Charlene’s boyfriend with his hand up the ice machine. Guess they hadn’t noticed I was wearing pajamas.

“You’re the one who’s always undercharging for our work,” Charlene shouted. “We could have been safely on a flight to the Belize by now if you had just let Nigel finish what he started.”

“Getting stuck in an ice machine, you mean? That thing he started?” Angela snarled. “Idiots.”

Dan and I stood behind the registration desk, sipping coffees from the breakroom’s single serve machine—since we couldn’t leave to get bodega coffees—and trying not to make too much noise so we could remain where we were, witnessing the drama. Everyone was gonna want to know what happened tomorrow. Or, well, actually later today. And we had a firsthand view of the chaos. And since Tara didn’t make us go away, and the only guns left belonged to cops who had them safely holstered, we stayed where we were, watching avidly.

With permission from Tara, we gave the cops the key for the Yergunson room. They found the stack of passports. And that would probably lead the police to the clients. If the Yergunson twins didn’t voluntarily give them up. Nigel, with his broken finger and the lacerations all over his hand, had been carted out to an ambulance by the EMTs, a cop escort in tow, so he’d missed out on all the sibling hissing and blame laying. Which he’d probably regret later, because by the time they sisters were led away, it looked like they’d both decided to lay the whole mess at Nigel’s door.

Be interesting to see how that worked out in the end.

The cop who’d ensured Dan and I didn’t get shot, Officer Brian Chin, finished taking our statements after the twins had been led away, while the crime scene people showed up to do what crime scene people did.

By the time all was said and done, Miguel had arrived for his shift, the cleaners were hovering around the lobby waiting for the full story, and I was back to falling asleep on my feet. I’d managed, roughly two whole hours of sleep, and once the adrenaline wore off, there wasn’t enough coffee in the hotel to keep my eyes open.

Tara sent me off to bed so I could sleep a little before my shift. She even offered to let me have the room again that night for free, to make up for the fact that my supposed night to finally get some sleep failed so spectacularly.

But I passed on the offer. I’d go back home that night. Becky had enough to worry about and I didn’t want to leave her without backup for a second night in a row. Plus, when I talked to her that afternoon, she said Lilith had slept, and so had she, and it looked like whatever deadly disease had been plaguing the baby, the baby had beat it, so everything was rosy again and what did I want for dinner.

Looked like we were going to go back to Becky’s obsessive cooking, which was a huge upgrade from her obsession with child medicine.

And after everything that had happened, I figured I stood as much of a chance of sleeping through the night at home, even if Lilith wasn’t better. Obviously, staying at the hotel hadn’t done much for my exhaustion.

But at least the ice machine got repaired.

So much for the quiet season.

Thank You

Thank you for reading Replicas Risk Ruin! I hope you enjoyed this latest mystery in the Percy James series. The Azur Regent really is an interesting place to work. Even in the quiet season!

As for poor old Becky… When I was a new mother, I found myself WebMDing all the dire illnesses for my kids, too. This was me. Becky was me. Although I don’t think I ever thought one of them had dengue fever. I can still fall victim to too much anxiety when my kids are sick and have to remind myself to get off the internet. Fortunately, my husband is as patient with me as Percy is with Becky. So to all you worrying parents trying not to lose your minds when your kids are sick, I see you. I hope you all have a patient Percy in your life. And I hope they only have to deal with mysteries in fiction!

If this is your first Percy James mystery, be sure to check out the other stories in the series. They were published in roughly chronological order, starting with Movies May Murder. And if you want to know what was up with Chuck Marzecki and Agnus Hosfelder, that story is in Cookies Can’t Crime.

For more on my various books (in all the various genres), you can check out my website and author store. If you’d like to stay up-to-date on my releases and get occasional free reads, cover reveals, and discounts to the store, you might consider joining my newsletter. You can also follow my author page at BookBub, on FaceBook, or at any of your favorite vendors. For social media, currently the easiest place to find me is Instagram.

Thanks again for reading Replicas Risk Ruin!

~Kat