Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) (15 page)

CHAPTER 18

Waiting is horrid. It’s like parasites scrabbling around under your skin, their itchy legs sending compulsive spasms coursing through your veins. The only tactic I’d ever found even remotely effective to combat the frantic urgency of waiting was enforced busyness. Fortunately, Clarice also applied this approach in her own life.

She’d spent the day baking. So when we declared Bodie and Thomas well enough to fend for themselves and released them to return to the bunkhouse, they left with huge grins on their faces and tubs packed full of chocolate chip, cranberry cashew and orange sour cream pinwheel cookies to share with the other boys.

Dwayne was feeling sufficiently recovered to be irritable and irritating. So much so that Clarice sent me in with his dinner tray because she was exasperated beyond words. Walt had dropped by earlier in the day to redo the wound dressing and had also taken the opportunity to inform Dwayne that his whiskey-making way of life would no longer be tolerated, at least not on Mayfield property.

But there was steely glint behind the cataracts in Dwayne’s eyes, and the cracked stock of his trusty shotgun poked out from under the bed, so I assumed Walt had also prevailed upon him to stick around in the role of guard.

“You get rid of the FBI?” Dwayne rasped when I carefully settled the food tray across his lap.

I grinned at him. “Yep.”

“You’d trade a professionally trained security detail for a washed-up mountain man like me?”

I nodded. “With the added bonus of more freedom of movement.” Of all people, I figured he would understand that benefit.

Dwayne tucked the napkin into the neckband of his t-shirt and pursed his lips. “You’re like me. We got the same priorities. Some day, I’ll tell you a story.” He winked and stuffed a forkful of roast beef into his mouth.

Clarice and I took the girls and a load of foodstuffs with us to the Gonzales’s house and cooked and cleaned until well past midnight. CeCe was giddy with the excitement of her daddy coming home and showed us where the Christmas decorations were stashed. Emmie sat, enthralled, with the box of ornaments and carefully unwrapped each one. We strung them from ribbons across the living room picture windows since we didn’t have the tools or daylight necessary to procure a real tree.

The next day, Des insisted on driving Hank and Sidonie and the babies home in his official sheriff’s department Jeep. Hank was swaddled into the front passenger seat, and Sidonie accompanied the twins in their car carriers in the back. We welcomed them, saw that they were comfortable, returned CeCe to her family, then left them to a quiet afternoon of naps.

I had only a brief moment of semi-privacy with Hank, but I squeezed his hand and told him he should consider himself fired from the freight terminal for the time being, but that I was working on another avenue of employment for him. A flash of worry shot through his eyes, but he was too exhausted to ask questions.

Then the torture of waiting began in earnest, alleviated only by the boys’ writing assignments which I struggled over — trying to evaluate the compositions in a fair and unbiased manner when they revealed the torn experiences of their young lives and their fanciful imaginations for lives they didn’t have — and the pile of knit hats which grew rapidly under my restless fingers.

The giant cogs of the legal process are so massive and inert that it takes forever for them to groan into action. I also faced the trepidation of knowing that once they do start, they’re next to impossible to stop, and their grinding crush would obliterate whatever was in their path.

oOo

Two days later, one of my phones rang and I recognized Tarq’s new number in the caller ID.

“Done,” he growled. “Posted the notice this morning.”

“Yourself?” Surprise pitched my voice up an octave.

“Wanted to get the lay of the land and the measure of the man.” Tarq coughed, harsh and phlegmy. “Not favorable.”

I grunted in agreement.

“Busy place,” he continued. “Had informative conversations with a couple drivers and dock workers before I headed into the office. Does the FBI know about Skip’s involvement with the terminal?”

“They haven’t mentioned it, but I also don’t think they’ve been entirely forthcoming with me.”

Tarq started to chuckle, but broke into coughing again.

Inspiration struck, and I blurted, “What are you doing for Christmas? Want to come hang out with a bunch of kids and a few adults — misfits all around?”

“You’re not worried about my corrupting influence?” Tarq wheezed.

“I assume you can behave yourself when the occasion calls for it.”

“I’ll think about it.”

I had barely set that phone down when another one of my phones rang.

“An irate Lee Gomes just left my office,” Des said.

Wow. He hadn’t wasted any time. I held my breath. I could think of several reasons why Lee Gomes might be irate.

“He wants Tarq disbarred. Not sure what he thought I could do about it,” Des continued. “But since you’re Tarq’s most recent client, I’d like to know why I got yelled at.”

I exhaled — so it wasn’t about my break-in or earlier unsanctioned prowling. I had confidence Tarq had covered all the necessary legal bases during his visit.

“Just a business matter,” I said. “Lee Gomes, as representative of the freight terminal, received a twenty-day notice of eviction for cause today.”

“You own the freight terminal?” I could hear the frown in Des’s voice.

“Skip owns the property and building. Under California law, with no pre-nup—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Des muttered. “What’s the cause?”

“I’ll refer the rest of your questions to my lawyer.” I cringed. My tone had come out more snooty than I’d intended.

Des breathed into my ear for a full minute. “Does this have to do with Hank? I’m going to catch the boys who shot him, Nora.”

“I know,” I murmured. “That incident was a symptom. I’m going after the disease.”

“But you had the FBI pull out of Mayfield.”

Des is no slouch. I rubbed my temple and waited for him to put more pieces together. When I knew what he knew — or what he was willing to tell me that he knew —  then I’d decide what else I should tell him.

“They’re still watching you, you know,” he finally added.

Why was I not surprised? Matt Jarvis was a crafty agent, and therefore most likely a good one too. If Des had been informed about it, then the secondary surveillance probably extended beyond the additional bug Matt had planted on the station wagon.

“Yep,” I whispered. “There are just some things I can do that they can’t. They have to follow rigidly-defined procedures, make sure all the evidence they collect will stand up in court, whereas I — I get to shake stuff loose.”

“And Tarq signed on for this?” Des kept muttering, answering his own question, “’Course he would. He’s always loved a good brawl. Do you have a gun?”

My mouth fell open. “Uh, there’s a shotgun in the house.” I didn’t add that it was in a condition that might be more dangerous to the person firing it than to whatever it was aimed at. I also had no idea if it was legally registered. Maybe, just like Dwayne, it was grandfathered in to our current situation.

“Not good enough. Get a handgun, learn how to use it, and don’t tell me about it. Carrying concealed without a license is going to be the least of your worries.” He hung up without giving me a chance to argue — or to ask where I might be able to purchase a gun and take target practice on short notice.

So, we — Tarq and I — had riled up Lee Gomes. I hadn’t thought it would be hard to do, but I was pleased at the promptness of his reaction. He must have hopped in his vehicle and headed straight to Des’s office the moment Tarq left the terminal.

I wanted Gomes to erupt — and become incautious in the process. He didn’t strike me as a particularly temperate man. I was looking forward to the summons and hearing.

I got two rounds of a lovely heathered blue yarn knit on Eli’s striped hat before another phone — my original phone — rang. The phone I kept with me in case Skip’s kidnappers decided to ask for ransom.

But the call came from a number already programmed into the contact list — my nosy, case-managing agent himself, Matt Jarvis. I inhaled deeply and held the air in my lungs for a long minute, listening to the urgent, repetitive buzz and reminding myself to keep quiet and noncommittal.

Matt could speculate all he wanted, but I needed to be careful not to give him more traceable information. By going after our common goal with our separate methods, we had the best shot at unraveling Skip’s criminal network. Matt wouldn’t agree with my plans, of course, but that was his problem, not mine.

I dug my fingers into the yummy alpaca yarn, hoping to benefit from its calming properties, and held the phone to my ear with my other hand. “Hello?”

“Have you heard from Skip in the past couple days?” Matt’s words were clipped.

Heard? Technically, no. I hadn’t heard my husband’s voice in over a month. I had a momentary flash of panic that I might not recognize it if I did hear it. How quickly does one forget the timbre of a loved-one’s voice?

There are other forms of communication, though, and Matt had sat right in front of it at the kitchen table. “You’d know if I had,” I muttered.

“I just got your wiretap warrant extended for another thirty days,” Matt admitted. “The judge agrees that our new information justifies invading your privacy a little while longer.”

“New information?” I squeaked.

“You’re sure you haven’t heard from him?”

“Matt!” I slammed my knitting on the table and broke one of the bamboo needles. The splintered end scraped my palm. “Ow, ow,” I moaned and pressed my hand to my mouth.

“Nora?”

“Just tell me,” I said through gritted teeth.

“We’re eighty-two percent sure he’s alive and that he’s in Texas,” Matt said in a rush. “He was videotaped entering an establishment that was already under surveillance for other reasons. The office down there didn’t know who he was before then, but they ran his image through facial recognition software and came up with a match compared to his passport, driver’s license and several photos we got from the San Francisco Chronicle’s society pages and Turbo-Tidy’s corporate website. I’ve seen the video myself, Nora. It’s him.”

“Eighty-two percent?”

“I’m completely convinced. But the software gives a match probability number. Anything over about sixty-five percent is considered really good.”

“What kind of establishment? Where?” I was hyperventilating.

“A pawn shop. San Antonio.” Matt’s voice turned calm, soothing. “Do you know anyone in San Antonio, Nora? Does Skip have connections there?”

“I don’t — I can’t,” I whimpered. “No. I have to think—”

The problem was that the only person who readily came to mind as possibly needing a pawn shop was Susanna White. My wedding ring wouldn’t be any use to her until it was converted into cash. Her image — the guilty slurping of hand sanitizer — and the betrayal she represented blotted everything else from my mind. My thoughts had no reigns to grab hold of.

“I’m coming over,” Matt said. “I shouldn’t have dropped this on you over the phone.”

“No,” I blurted and forced myself to take a deep breath. “No. I’m fine.” I kept my tone even. “I just need time to run through my memories. I’ll call his mother too. Maybe there’s something in their family history, some reason—”

“Nora?” Matt’s voice carried warning. “Have you been playing with Turbo-Tidy’s accounts again?”

“What?” I’m embarrassed to say I screeched again, startled by his sudden change of topic.

“While you’re doing your thinking, take a look. There’s been activity in the past couple days. But don’t touch them. I mean it. We need to follow the money trail, and if you mess with it this time, you’ll be arrested. My supervisors don’t have a sense of humor or irony about this stuff.”

“But you do,” I murmured.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“Yep.” I hung up on him.

CHAPTER 19

I forced myself to wait an hour, hoping some semblance of reason would return to my addled brain and giving myself the opportunity to sort through my rattled emotions.

Clarice prepared a massive dinner — she was clearly in the warm-up stages for Christmas. And Emmie read me a couple Aesop’s fables from a book CeCe had left behind for her. Somewhere along the path of her disrupted childhood, she’d learned enough phonetics to sound out the majority of the words. And she was persistent, her face scrunched into a determined scowl. I just hugged her tightly on my lap and let her struggle through without undo assistance. She was a smart little girl. Of course she was.

Then I quarantined myself in the attic with my piles of stolen paperwork and two laptops and Skip’s notebook pages and Lee Gomes’s contact list. The answers were here somewhere. The more times I looked over this stuff, the better my odds of finding that one thing — the key to the whole shebang.

Maybe.

I taped the Polaroid image to the corner of my monitor as motivation, even though I didn’t know if I could trust my husband or not.

I hadn’t really let myself think about his possible death. I’d acknowledged it academically, but never tried to deal with it emotionally. Turns out that was a good move, considering the fact that he wasn’t dead. At least now I didn’t have to try to reverse the grieving process.

Mostly, I was mad.

Mad at Skip for deceiving me — the degree to which he’d done so still to be determined. Mad at Matt for telling me truths I didn’t want to hear. Mad at Des for being such an amicable, understanding sort of guy.

I was even mad at Tarq for serving the eviction notice himself and making the legal process personal. He could have stayed remote, just doing the lawyerly job of producing and filing documents. That’s what process servers were for — they’re the ones who got paid to knock on people’s doors at the risk of their limbs and dignity. Tarq just wasn’t in a condition to be taking on a challenge like that, especially not on Lee Gomes’s turf.

I dug in and found that Matt’s remark about activity in the Turbo-Tidy accounts had been an understatement. I’d just assumed that once I’d emptied them, they’d stay empty. Word about Skip’s demise and/or defection must have spread rapidly through his network of shady clients. They wouldn’t have — at least shouldn’t have — deposited even more funds with their fugitive money launderer.

I sat there staring at numbers in the seven figures in five different accounts. Either Skip had collected new clients who didn’t know he was unreliable, or—

I chewed my lip, processing my other idea. Maybe the money was supposed to be for me. Skip knew I’d made the funds disappear earlier, and he’d approved — that’s what the roses had been for.

But he couldn’t have known for sure what I’d done with the money, unless he’d been in a position to watch the mad flurry of transactions while they were occurring. That thought took my breath away. Maybe he did know that I’d filtered his to-be-laundered money through charities around the globe, and that the donations were now being put to very good use in the hands of conscientious administrators who served a whole host of orphanages and women’s and children’s health programs.

Even if Skip did know about the zig-zaggy transaction trails, he couldn’t have known that I’d siphoned off a small portion of that money and had arranged for it to be forwarded to me in the form of cash hidden in bags of wood pellets and driven across the Canadian border. If the deal in Mumbai came through, I’d be getting another installment in the near future. These exchanges were strictly off the books, in currency and hard resources, and certainly not handled through banks. In other words, I’d done some money laundering of my own.

Robin Hood style, perhaps, but there it was. Money laundering. It seemed to be a family trait, along with having my line between right and wrong drawn in quicksand and sinking fast.

Still gawking at the exorbitant numbers in the accounts, I dialed Loretta Sheldon, Skip’s mother.

Last I knew, Skip had enrolled her at the Serenity Springs Spa, possibly to give her something else to do besides making a spectacle of herself at our wedding, but more likely to give her yet another chance to dry out. I hoped she’d completed the program. Even better, I hoped she was still there, safe in the protective environment of group therapy sessions and mineral baths.

“Darling! How good to hear from you.” Loretta sounded stronger, more present than last time I’d spoken with her — the time when I’d failed to mention that her son was missing. “Are you still in Cozumel? How’s Skip?”

First things first — I needed to know how much she could handle. After confirming that she was indeed still ensconced at Serenity Springs — “At least until after the holidays, honey. You know how it is, temptation to drink at parties and such. I’ll just stay here and sedately toast the other inmates with fruit juice” — I breathed a sigh of relief and grinned at the dry sense of humor I’d never suspected lay hidden inside the ditzy lush of a woman I’d only met a few times.

“Loretta, are you sitting down?” I asked.

“I’m in the pool, darling.”

“With your phone?” I sputtered.

“It’s heated. Feels marvelous. Fantastic treatment for my nerves, you know,” Loretta chirped.

“Could you get out, please? Wrap in a robe and sit down. I need to talk to you.” My voice change irritated me. It had immediately switched to syrupy with thinly veiled impatience — the way exhausted mothers speak to their belligerent toddlers. I had to pinch myself to remember I was addressing my mother-in-law.

However, scraping noises and splashy shuffling in the background let me know Loretta was following my instructions.

“All right,” she huffed. “Spill it. Tell me the worst now. What’s he done?”

My mouth dropped open in surprise — why would she think Skip was at fault? Oh — probably because I was the one calling her. Was it common for daughters-in-law to call their mothers-in-law to complain about their offspring?

I sketched in the basics for her, barely drawing breath for fear she’d stop me before I got to the point of reassuring her that Skip was certainly alive — at least as of a few days ago.

“One thing’s certain,” Loretta announced. “That little girl isn’t his. He never loved any woman before you. I know that for a fact because you were the only one he ever introduced me to. It’s quite a risk, you know, introducing the woman you love to your alcoholic mother.” Loretta inhaled sharply and rattled on, “Oldest ploy in the book to get money out of a man — claim you have his child. I know how it works, honey.”

“What about San Antonio?” I asked.

“Absolute blank, darling.”

“Has the FBI contacted you?”

“Of course not.” Loretta snorted. “Oh, wait.” Her voice brightened as though she had suddenly sat up straight on the edge of a lounge chair. “Do you think they would spy on me undercover? Because there is this new patient, admitted a few days ago. I can’t figure out what his problem is — you know we all have our problems, and the first thing we do is identify them publicly, part of the therapy.”

Loretta paused, her mouth making little clicky sounds. “He’s in my session, and he said he’s an alcoholic, but he isn’t. I know the signs, and he surely isn’t. I thought maybe heroin or something that he was embarrassed to admit, but his body’s perfect. I checked him out the other day in his Speedo. Not a track mark anywhere. Just lots of curly black chest hair and white teeth and long, strong fingers. He’s the proverbial tall, dark and handsome, and he’s taken quite a shine to me even though he’s younger. Do you think they would mind if we fooled around a bit? I don’t want to get kicked out, but well — you know. I’ve been such a good girl this whole time—” She giggled.

“Loretta!” I barked.

“Oh, I know. I shouldn’t.” She sighed.

The problem was, the newcomer didn’t sound like FBI to me. Did federal agents wear Speedos? I hoped not. I certainly wasn’t an expert on undercover operations, but he sounded like the mob.

I didn’t want to be paranoid, but what better way to find the man who stole your family’s money than to torture his mother?

“What’s his name?” I tore a corner off the nearest page and poised my pencil.

“Marco something.”

I dropped my voice to a husky whisper. “Your assignment is to find out his last name and details like his age, history, parents’ names. But whatever tricks you use, don’t be alone with him — ever. Can you do that?”

“Ooooo,” Loretta squealed softly. “Darling, it’s so cloak and dagger. Of course, I can,” she whispered back. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I rocked back and forth in my cramped, cross-legged position on the floor, trying to control my rising doubts about encouraging a woman who clearly wasn’t all there to enter the fray — my fray, my problem, and her son’s. Loretta had been completely unfazed by the fact that the FBI was investigating Skip or that he’d disappeared without a trace until the grapefruit basket and pawn shop video surfaced. She was either an amazing woman or a crazy one. And her track record with sobriety stints was pitiful.

But I couldn’t help grinning. Maybe Marco — whoever he was — was the one who needed to run for his life. Poor soul. Because if he really was innocent, there was no way he’d survive being bombarded by Loretta’s clumsy feminine wiles.

I pressed Matt’s speed dial button. I had no idea if he had family or not, but I liked to picture him off cutting down a Christmas tree with his kids.

At the voice mail beep, I said, “No scoop on San Antonio yet. But do you have an agent keeping an eye on Skip’s mom at the detox spa center? If his name’s not Marco Something, then that fellow probably deserves at least a cursory investigation.”

I sniffed and considered just how annoying I was going to sound, but I added to the message anyway. “If you do decide to insert an agent, you might want to make it a woman, preferably with at least some knowledge of addiction because Loretta swears she can pick out the fakes. Not that I would presume to tell you how to do your job or anything.” I clicked off before bursting out laughing.

Ahh, I needed that. Just a little levity. I was starting to take everything too seriously.

But my smile disappeared when I caught sight of the list Clarice and I had compiled from Skip’s notebook — the clients he still owed money to. I’d only met Numero Tres — Giuseppe Ricardo Solano, otherwise known as Joe — so far. Which meant eight seriously bad dudes were still lurking on the gloomy fringes of my problem. Eight commanders of criminal networks who would like their money back and who might be interested in exacting revenge for the inconvenience I’d caused them.

“Step into the light, boys,” I muttered.

I wondered if Skip knew how closely the FBI was hounding him. Was the pawn shop visit caught on camera a slip-up or intentional? At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past him.

I had no way to warn him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to even if I could. It might be safer for him to be arrested. Was he being forced into this evasive action? Maybe he was an unwilling participant in the whole scheme.

Actually, that last idea was the one thing I could not convince myself of. Skip was a planner. He’d know what he was doing.

I ran a finger along the edge of his Polaroid, wishing I could read what he was thinking behind that squint into the lens.

Who’d taken the picture? I gasped and leaned closer. There was a long, narrow shadow across the dead grass. The bend of the silhouette’s cocked elbow — held at a right angle to his, or her, body as he, or she, peered through the viewfinder — covered the bare toes on Skip’s right foot.

All it meant was that the picture was taken either shortly after sunrise or before sunset, when the sun was low and shadows were most distorted. But it was a person. Skip was not alone.

Kidnapper or friend?

I’d have to give Matt the picture. Maybe it held clues I couldn’t discern.