Hogtied: Mingo McCloud, #7 Read online

  Book Seven

  ~ Mingo McCloud Series ~

  HOGTIED

  AJ Llewellyn

  Hogtied: AJ Llewellyn: Mingo McCloud Series: Book Seven.

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  Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  ASIN: B08QYY5NS2

  Editor: Meg Amor

  Cover Artist: Anoula

  Published in the United States of America

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This e-book contains adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. The author’s e-books are defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase.

  It’s wedding bells in Waikiki! Can Mingo and Francois finally get hitched without a…um…hitch?

  Of course not! Mingo McCloud, Honolulu’s hottest forensic accountant—okay, okay, he’s Honolulu’s only forensic accountant—attracts drama just getting out of bed in the morning.

  On the day he plans to make an honest man out of Francois, everything goes wrong.

  Mingo’s Best Person, his BFF Leilani Squires, goes missing, and so does her dog. Not only that, but somebody has just sent the happy couple a wedding gift that is not only ugly, but illegal and could land them both in the pokey…

  And oh yeah, Benny Leonard wants to hire Mingo for an explosive new murder case. Today.

  As a security expert, Francois is irate that his lover has accepted an art piece, the ugliest one anybody ever saw, that is the center of a huge international scandal. Just who is the culprit who sent it? Who wants to see Mingo and Francois in stripes so badly? Is it Mingo’s ex, Kaolin Grace? Francois is determined to solve the mystery and get Mingo down that gardenia-strewn aisle if he must hogtie him to do it.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  A. J. Llewellyn

  Other Books by A.J. Llewellyn

  Dedication

  With love to my faithful readers who have been

  so patient waiting for this book. Sorry it took so

  long, but thank you for loving Mingo and Francois

  and nudging me about them.

  A lot.

  Love,

  A.J.

  Friday, January 22, 2021

  Chapter One

  “I give up, Mingo. What the heck is it?” My fiancé and soon-to-be-husband, Francois, looked appalled at the disgusting piece of art I’d just extracted from mountains of packing material. As wedding gifts went, it was, as my mother would call it, a real lulu.

  “Ugly, isn’t it?” I propped it on the entrance table in our hallway but knew I couldn’t keep it there. It was too damned…creepy. It would make me jump every time I walked past it.

  “Is that a real bird sticking out of it?” Francois bent to look at the poor creature in closer detail.

  “A bird? I was thinking maybe an old vampire with a repulsive nose,” I confessed.

  “It has a beak, Mingo. How could you not tell it’s a beak? And it’s got wings.”

  “You’re right. And it’s weird that its neck is twisted at that odd angle.”

  Francois gave me an incredulous look. “Its neck is broken. What the hell kind of wedding gift is this?”

  I picked up a pile of salad plates from another packing box. The 1930s vintage Wallace China dishware with a surfer girl motif was a family heirloom. I had never been allowed to eat from these plates growing up, but they were going to be the highlight of my wedding today. The plates had to go on the tables and none of my fabulous helpers had arrived yet. I tried not to panic, then glanced at the weird art piece again.

  And almost screamed. That bird was glaring at me. He gave new definition to angry birds. Or was he just old? He looked a bit moth-eaten.

  “Who gave us this monstrosity?” Francois asked.

  I picked up the paperwork. “I’ll check. “

  He snatched the pages from my fingers. “You didn’t look before you picked it up?”

  “I was a little distracted. I’m getting married today!”

  Francois’s expression softened and he grinned at me. “Is that so?”

  I nodded eagerly.

  His gaze flew to the dishes. “Wow, they really are pretty. Jeez, I hope nobody breaks one. I’d hate to see what your mom does if they do.”

  “We’ll ban alcohol,” I suggested.

  “Like hell we will. I plan on getting toasted today.” Francois glanced back at the sculpture. The entire piece wasn’t my cup of tea, for sure. The huge, abstract canvas featured a series of squares in varying shades of an unappealing color that could only be described as poop. Jutting out of the middle of it was the mangled bird with an odd-looking wingspan. It took me a moment to realize the animal might be real, and that its neck might really have been broken.

  “Mingo.” Francois’s tone took on an edge of panic. “I think it’s an eagle. Holy crud. I think it’s a bald eagle.”

  I gulped. “You mean a real eagle?”

  “It’s illegal to own anything like this.” Francois was totally freaked out now. “Who hates you enough to do this to us?”

  “Me? Why do they have to hate me and not you? Why am I to blame?”

  “It was sent to you. Not me.”

  “Well, when I got the message, I called the shipping clerk, and he said the sender wanted it to be a surprise. I thought it was sweet. I didn’t really investigate it. They seemed more interested in my identity when I picked it up.”

  Francois took a deep breath. “Of course, they wanted your identity. You just got us into a boatload of trouble. Who the heck would give us a felonious wedding gift?”

  “Could anyone hate me that much?” I bleated, thinking back to a few of my more hostile cases. Dang. Maybe several people.

  “You don’t suppose it could be your psycho ex, do you?” Francois skewered me with a penetrating glare.

  I wasn’t sure Kaolin Grace was a true psychopath, but then again… Would he do something like this? Where was he these days anyway? “Shhh,” I said in jokey desperation. “You’re not supposed to look gift horses in the mouth.”

  “A gift horse? Is that what it is?” Francois squinted. “That’s one hell of an ugly-ass horse.” He flicked through the wad of pages I’d collected from the shipping company. “Who the hell is Jeffrey Toomac?”

  I stared at him. “He sent it? Are you sure?”

  He fixed me with a cold stare. “According to the notes he did. You didn’t invite this maniac to our wedding, did you?”

  “I don’t think so.” I scratched my scalp. This conversation was giving me hives.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I’m almost certain I didn’t. “

  “Almost? Oh, Mingo.” Francois shook his head.

  Sweat beaded on my top lip. Francois could interrogate a man and elicit the kind of terror I
was experiencing now. I hadn’t invited Jeffrey, had I? I’d gone a bit overboard with the invitations once wedding gifts started arriving at our house a few weeks ago. I wanted more. More! I’d become the most covetous idiot I’d ever met.

  Francois wouldn’t drop it. “So why did he send you this nightmare to celebrate the happiest day of your life?”

  “No idea.” Am I having a heart attack? I put a hand to my chest. Breathe, Mingo. Breathe. The odd thing about the gift was why Jeffrey Toomac had sent us anything at all. I hadn’t invited him to the wedding. I was certain of it now because I checked my list on my cell phone.

  We’d received some wonderful things, and some world-class oddities. The strangest one so far had been a stuffed and mounted baby crocodile from one of Francois’s former Green Beret buddies. It was supposed to be some private joke according to Francois. It involved sending the small eyesore to each man from his former team once they got married. I didn’t get the joke, and he claimed not to get it either. We’d put the poor creature in the hall closet because it was too icky to contemplate. The strangled eagle beat it by miles, but I was grateful that most of our gifts were lovely, traditional ones.

  The eagle had been a pain in the ass from the get-go. I’d been notified by HDOA—Hawaii Department of Agriculture—at Honolulu Harbor that I was required to collect the packing crate in person, and sign for it. When I received the initial e-mail, I thought the HDOA was strange but then I’d also ignored the bit about the sender wanting to keep the gift a surprise.

  I had a bad feeling now about all of this. I cringed just thinking about—

  “Jeffrey Toomac.” Francois spat the words out. “And how do you know this lunatic?” His eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits.

  “He’s an old college buddy. We were at the University of Oregon together.” I swallowed again. Why was my mouth so dry? Memories of being kicked out of our fraternity because of him, and my three-day punishment flickered to the front of my mind. I’d fought to get myself reinstated and had gone through a personal hell that involved a lot of housecleaning and shoe polishing. Oh, how had I forgotten it all? I’d allowed it to slip into the back, abandoned room in my mind where horrible things remained, locked away in an imaginary vault. It all came whooshing back faster than I could block it.

  “Go on.”

  “Okay. Um. Well, we interned together at the same accounting firm in Portland. He went on to work in New York, and I moved to Los Angeles for a while, then I came back to Honolulu.”

  “And you stayed in touch?”

  “No.” My thoughts raced. Not only had I not invited Jeffrey to our wedding, I didn’t think I’d even mentioned it to him. Damn. It was all Facebook’s fault. He’d sent me a friend request out of the blue a few months ago. He’d gone on to click “like” on every single one of my posts no matter how random, but I had no idea how he’d found my home address to send me this…this…atrocity.

  “Why couldn’t he give us a coffee maker like everyone else?” Francois griped. It was true. We’d received six different types, so far. One of them appeared to have been used, judging by the loose, damp coffee grounds we found at the bottom of it.

  I should have supervised Francois’s handling of our wedding registry at C.S. Wo and Sons. Thanks to him, we’d also received three La-Z-Boy recliners, five pancake molds in the Star Wars motif, and three Oenophiles, which I thought were sex toys at first. They turned out to be wine openers, much to my immense disappointment.

  He studied the paperwork I’d signed in triplicate at the shipping office, and a deep scowl appeared on his face.

  “No frowning. It’s our big day,” I reminded him.

  “There’s something fishy about this gift, Mingo.”

  “No. I don’t see a fish. I see an eagle with extra feathers glued to it.”

  Our teenage son, Ferric wandered into the room chomping an apple. He reeled back in horror the moment he saw the art piece. “Boy, somebody hates you, Dad.”

  “Mingo. Holy cow. Did you see this note you signed?” Francois’s voice rose. “This mixed-media art definitely has a stuffed bald eagle on it. Those are real feathers.”

  “We got an illegal eagle?” Ferric seemed strangely thrilled.

  I peered around Francois’s arm to study the page. “Really?”

  “There’s a minimum of a $100,000 fine for owning a single bald eagle feather. My God. How many are on here?” Francois counted them and his beautiful black face turned ashen.

  “Are we in big trouble?” I asked, anxious that nothing mar our special day. We’d postponed our nuptials four times. My mother and Ferric would go berserk if something went wrong again.

  “You’re an idiot.” Francois ran a hand over his face. “I’ve counted sixteen feathers so far. And that’s just on top.”

  I gaped at him. That put the fine at over a million dollars. Still, I was pissed. “Did you just call me an idiot?”

  He glared at me. “If the feather fits, darling, wear it.”

  “I—I—”

  “Are you two fighting?” Ferric looked stunned. “You never fight. And you’d better be getting married today. I heard Dr. Wendy say on the radio that couples who don’t argue don’t have emotionally intimate relationships. So, I’m glad you two are sort of normal.”

  “Sort of?” Francois arched a brow at Ferric.

  Our son balled his free fist and waved it around like a lethal weapon. “I’m sick of our family living in sin. And—” Ferric paused dramatically— “Everyone else’s parents in my class are straight. You’re the only gay people they know. They need you to get married. They have to come to your wedding to prove that they’re gay-friendly. Hundreds of Facebook and Instagram accounts hang in the balance. You. Cannot. Fight. Today.”

  Ferric said this with such emotion it almost broke my heart. A part of me however, also wanted to laugh. Trust a teenager to think that other people’s social networking updates relied upon my saying, “I do.”

  With all the dignity I could muster, I said, “Your father called me an idiot.”

  “I fucking love you.” Francois sounded exasperated. “I know you were in a hurry, but why didn’t you read the fine print? You’re an accountant. A forensic accountant—in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I know.” I was getting depressed now.

  Another exasperated look in my direction and he said, “I bet even though it says Jeffrey Toomer sent this, it’s really the work of that freak Kaolin Grace.”

  “Toomac. And no, no,” I said, though, the thought had crossed my mind.

  His eyes took on a feral glint. “Where is Kaolin these days?”

  “No idea. I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

  Francois studied the pages. “Didn’t you notice that there’s an IRS lien on this thing?”

  My head started spinning. “Um… There is?” Boy, he’s right. I am an idiot.

  “I think your alleged friend just dropped a bomb in your lap. Who is this Jeffrey Toomer?”

  “Toomac. I told you. We went to college together.”

  Francois looked thunderous. “I prefer Toomer. This guy is like a tumor on my soul. Is this a revenge thing?”

  Um. Possibly. If I told Francois what happened in college, he might never marry me.

  “I’ve seen his name on Facebook, Dad. I think he’s stalking you.” Ferric spat an apple seed into his hand. “He clicks like on everything you post. For months now.”

  Thanks, Ferric! “Yeah, I noticed that too.”

  Francois sighed. “You post the dumbest stuff, and he clicks like? Oh, Mingo. He’s been setting you up all this time.”

  “I post dumb stuff?” Man, I spent almost an hour a day finding cool things to share on Facebook. Benny Leonard, a criminal defense attorney who employed me often, had told me I needed a web presence to be relevant. Right now, I wanted to make my real presence felt, in a relevant way, with my foot, all over his ass.

  “Aw. I can’t be mad at you, Mingo.” Francois’s face tu
rned all goopy. “You signed the papers as Mingo Aumary. You’ve already decided to take my name.”

  I hesitated. Boy, I must have been half asleep when I signed them. I’d driven into Honolulu to pick up our pastries from Kamehameha Bakery early in the morning and swung by the shipping depot near the Aloha Tower to collect Jeffrey’s gift. I had no intention of changing my name. I’d been in a rush to get back to our home in Haleiwa, on Oahu’s North Shore. I blamed the two donuts I scarfed on the way home. Pure sugar. Yeah. Blame the donuts. Everybody knows you act like a crazy person when you eat sugar. Anxiety flooded my system. Was it as hard for my female friends to give up their names when they got hogtied? Er, I mean, married?

  Francois threw an arm around me and dropped a kiss on my lips. He gave me a pat on the head, like one might console a kid who’d eaten all the cookies and become sick afterward. “I’m gonna go call this Toomer guy who sent this horrible gift. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.” Francois stomped off to his office.

  Ferric nibbled on the core of his apple. “So, can I post an update to my Facebook account that we’re getting married in six hours?”

  Six hours? Yikes. In that time, Mom and I had to finish preparing the wedding luau, which we were doing with Mele, wife of Leilani Squires, my best friend, and my Best Person for my trip down the aisle. Mele hadn’t arrived yet, but I hadn’t panicked about it.

  Until now.

  Come to think of it, my Best Person hadn’t showed up either. And she hadn’t returned my calls.

  “Well, can I post it?” Ferric looked worried.

  “Of course,” I said. Why had Jeffrey sent the weird gift? Wait. Didn’t bad things happen in threes?

  “Excellent. I took a photo of Dad kissing you. I left the strangled bird out of it.” He showed me the photo. “I’m posting this online.”

  I glanced over at the bald eagle again. How could somebody do this to a living creature and pass it off as art? It reminded me of a Dutch artist, whose cat died, and he stuffed it and turned it into a ceiling fan. Or maybe it was a helicopter. “Okay. I guess I have to get married now since it’s all over Facebook.”