Kiss and Tell (4 page)

A tiny woman bounced off an oyster-colored sofa and bellowed, “What took you so long?”

Ah . . . the weather . . . some of the therapy people were late. I'm sorry,” Myra sputtered at the aggressive little woman with big hair. “Are you Ms. Overton? We were . . . expecting . . . Pauline at the clubhouse said Ms. Overton was a stroke victim. You . . . ah . . . are we at the wrong house?” Her grip on Lady's leash was so tight, the golden dog tried her best to back up. Ted and Espinosa closed ranks so there was nowhere for Lady to go.

The little woman boomed again. “Oh, don't pay any attention to that. I didn't have a stroke, I just wanted to move over here to Queen's Ridge, so I had Tressie lie. This is Tressie,” Ms. Overton said, pointing to the woman who had opened the door.

“I don't understand,” Myra said.

“I think I understand, Myra,” Annie said as she took a step forward. “You're Kat from Gmail, aren't you?”

“Took you long enough to figure it out, now, didn't it? Who are you? I was expecting the Vigilantes, not the geriatric patrol. I know what they look like, I've seen pictures, and the Vigilantes are
young.
You're
OLD.
I need young along with piss and vinegar, not warm milk and Bengay.”

Lady reared back and howled.

“Oh shit!” Ted swore under his breath. “Those are fighting words.”

“No shit,” Espinosa growled.

Evidently, Lady thought they were fighting words, too. She balked, jerked free of Myra's hold on her, and raced to the door and lay down. She took turns growling and whimpering.

Annie, her eyes narrowed, opened her purse, and faster than lightning, was next to the little woman and had a gun pointed at her head. “Just goes to show,
nothing is as it seems.
Right, Ms. Overton?”

“Oh my God, that's a gun! She has a gun! A real gun! Do something,” Dennis squealed.

“Shut the hell up, Dennis,” Ted said, his eyes glued to Annie and the gun in her hand.

Before the others knew what was happening Myra had her arm around the maid's neck in a hammerlock and her knee in her back.

“Espinosa!” Maggie shrilled.

“I'm getting it! I got it! This will look great on the community bulletin board.”

“Is she going to shoot? Is it loaded? Oh my God, what if it goes off?” Dennis sagged against the sofa, his face as white as the falling snow outside. “Gee whiz, I never saw a real gun up close before. Holy cow!”

“Talk!” Annie bellowed. “Otherwise, I am going to shoot up this place, five rounds, then I'm going to blow out your brains and hang your body from the flagpole in the common ground.”

“Oh shit!” Ted said again.

“All right! All right!” Sara Overton said. “You made your point.”

“Apologize. Right now!” Myra ordered.

“For what?” the little lady queried.

Annie cocked the hammer.

“Oh, you mean about the
OLD
comment I mentioned?”

“And . . .”

“The warm milk and Bengay? Okay, okay, I'm sorry. Now put that silly gun away. We all know you aren't going to shoot up my house or me. That's just . . . ridiculous.”

“Oh shit,” Ted said for the third time, as Annie shoved Ms. Overton onto the couch and fired off three rounds, shredding two club chairs, the coffee table, and a hutch filled with what looked like fine crystal. “I hope you're insured,” Annie drawled.

“I am, and you'll do,” the old lady said, cackling. “It's not the first time I've been wrong. I like your style. In my day, we called it moxie.”

Annie blew on the end of the smoking gun and grinned. “I don't think we're interested, right, Myra?”

Myra, her ears ringing, nodded.

“Oh my God, what if someone comes and sees all this?” Dennis wailed as he flapped his arms like a bird in preparation for flight.

“Then Ms. Overton will have some explaining to do.” Maggie grinned.

“Do you have a license to carry that gun?” Dennis bleated. Annie eyed him with such disdain that Dennis buried his face in a pillow, his whole body shaking.

Lady pranced into the room, looked around, and sniffed before she sat down next to Myra. Obviously she wouldn't be doing any more therapy and was smart enough to know it. Myra scratched her behind the ears to show things were right-side up. Messy but right-side up.

Annie shoved the gun back into her purse. She dusted her hands dramatically. “I think we've wasted enough of our valuable time here. We'll bill you, Ms. Overton.”

“What? You're just going to walk out of here after you . . . you destroyed my living room.
I'm
the one who should be billing
you
. You're way too old to be PMSing, so let's all just sit down over a nice cup of coffee and discuss this like intelligent people.”

“There's nothing intelligent about people wanting help who deal in riddles and don't have the guts to sign their name to their e-mails,” Dennis West said, getting up on wobbly legs.

“And who might you be, you little whippersnapper? And the rest of you, who are you?”

Dennis rushed forward. He leaned over so that he was eyeball to eyeball with the little woman, who was wearing too much cheek blush. “I'm a Pulitzer Prize winner, that's who I am. I work for the
Washington Post,
these are my colleagues, we are going to do a number on you, and I will earn another Pulitzer, that's who I am.”

“Ballsy, that's for sure. I like that. You'll do, whatever your name is. And I can personally guarantee you a second Pulitzer after you hear what I have to say.”

“Maggie Spitzer,” Maggie said.

“Ted Robinson.”

“Joseph Espinosa.”

“I recognize all your names except for the whippersnapper. I read the
Post
religiously. Now, this is what I suggest. We start over and pretend nothing happened. We adjourn to the dining room and have some coffee. I love coffee, and Tressie makes unbelievable coffee. Tressie, by the way, is my only friend in the whole world, my housekeeper, my pretend nurse, and my
confidante.
She doesn't talk much, but that's okay. She's also my eyes and ears as to what goes on outside my front door. In case you're wondering why that is, it is because I like to keep a low profile. I just want us to be clear on that. Are we?”

Everyone in the room nodded as they followed the little woman, who was skipping ahead, to the dining room.

Tressie poured coffee into fine bone china cups and handed them around the table. Silver cream and sugar pitchers were then passed around. The silver spoons were to be envied. Obviously, Sara Overton liked and owned fine things. Tressie returned to the kitchen and came back with a colorful Christmas plate piled high with fat sugar cookies that she passed around. Within minutes, they were all gone.

“Can we get on with it? It's past noon, and the weather doesn't look like it's going to get any better,” Annie grumbled.

“Fine, fine! I was just trying to be hospitable. Where to start?”

“Try the beginning,” Annie snapped. “Don't make me pull out my gun again. I only have two rounds left.”

“Yes, well, you might have young reflexes, but, like most
old
people, you have no patience,” Sara Overton snapped in return. “I do understand, but first I have a question. Why did you bring these reporters here?”

“So we can nail your skinny ass to the wall if you brought us here under false pretenses. You are taking up our time, lady. Our time is valuable. Other people need our services, so let's just say they are our insurance. Now get to the point!” Annie literally bellowed.

Lady, liking the sound of Annie's agitation, barked loud and long before she started to howl.

“I'm going to tell you a story. You need to hear the story; otherwise, none of what I'm going to tell you will make sense. What I mean by that is, why I need you now. Not just me but hundreds, maybe thousands of people are going to need you. If you want to get all antsy and superior, go right ahead.”

Myra reached for her pearls. “We're listening, Ms. Overton.”

“For starters, that's not really my name, but that's immaterial at this point.”

“You use an alias?” Dennis West squawked. “What, are you some kind of criminal?”

“Yes and yes, Son: I use an alias, and yes, I am a criminal.
Was
a criminal. But I gave up my wicked ways a long time ago. I even made restitution, so rest easy on all of that.”

“Your story, Ms. whatever your name is,” Myra said gently.

“A long time ago . . . forty or so years ago . . .”

S
ara Overton had everyone's attention, and she played to it. She looked like a precocious squirrel making faces as she let her memory go back to what she considered
her story
and the reason she was now playing to the audience she had requested.

“Actually, it's more like fifty years if you're counting, and I stopped doing that a long time ago. I was an orphan, as was Tressie, who is a little younger than I am. We had a third friend at the orphanage, a boy named Billy Bailey. My name was Marie Palmer and Tressie was Sally Dumont. None of us knew if those were really our names or just the names someone had assigned to us. We were taken care of—we had plenty of food, clean clothes, and beds to sleep in. And, believe it or not, we got a bath every single day. There were no tuck-ins at night, no hugs, no kisses. None of the things all kids secretly wish for. We had rules, we had school, and we had playtimes. And books, of course. The three of us were readers, and to this day, Tressie and I read constantly. Mostly trash, I'm sorry to say. Billy liked to read about the world, about government, how to build things, educational things. He was obsessed even back then with money and what a person could do if they were wealthy. He promised Tressie and me that someday we'd live in mansions with swimming pools and have so much money that we wouldn't know what to do with it all. Of course, we didn't really believe him, but it was fun to pretend, and Billy could weave the most exciting stories about what our lives would be like in the future. We wanted to believe, and maybe we did for a while.

“Somehow or other the three of us banded together. We were so tuned in to one another we knew what the other was thinking before they could give voice to the thought.

“Billy was two years older than I and four years older than Tressie, so that made him our leader if you will. He looked out for us and made sure none of the other kids bullied us or anything like that. Not that they did, but he still took care of us; he was our protector in every sense of the word. We felt safe with him, we really did. We seemed to know instinctively that as long as we were with him, nothing bad was going to happen to us.

“Just before Billy's eighteenth birthday, he said he was going to leave and strike out on his own. He asked me to go with him. He had no intention of taking Tressie. I suppose that was because she was just thirteen and . . . she wasn't . . .
quick,
if you know what I mean. I wanted to go with him, but not without Tressie, and he agreed to take the two of us. We left after breakfast on the day before he turned eighteen. We didn't have much to take with us, just a few clothes, our rosaries, and our catechism books. Billy left his behind, but Tressie and I took ours. Billy stole the money Sister Helen had gotten from the bank to pay the workmen, and that's all we had. It was the first time that any of us had ever held any money in our hands.

“We lived wherever we could, washed up in gas-station rest-rooms. It wasn't much of a life, and Tressie and I wanted to go back, but then Billy got the idea to try panhandling. We were quite successful ; he was the older brother taking care of his two little sisters. People gave generously. We moved around a lot so no one would turn us in to the authorities. We lived in a number of different cities as we slowly worked our way south and east toward New York City.

“Eventually, we found a ratty apartment in Scranton that had a real bathtub. We thought we had died and gone to heaven. By day we panhandled and by night we were burglars. We broke into businesses, homes, stole whatever we could carry. Then we'd fence it. Billy kept our money, gave us an allowance, and bought us decent clothes. We eventually got a better apartment and learned to cook to save on money. This went on for three years.

“I was eighteen when Billy said he wanted to move to New York since the pickings were better there than in Scranton. When we got there, however, we only stayed in Manhattan long enough to get bus money to take us on to Washington, D.C. Billy said that staying in New York could get us caught and that Tressie would be sent back to the orphanage. Actually, we moved to Virginia and worked, if you want to call it that, in the District. Billy bought us scooters—secondhand, of course—tinkered with them, and that's how we traveled back and forth.

“Then, a year and a half later, Billy said he'd go ahead of us to New York, get the lay of the land, and make arrangements for Tressie and me to follow. Tressie was of age by then, and he said no one would be looking for us. He left money for us and told us to lie low till he got back. There was a pay phone out on the street, and he called every night at eight o'clock and reported in.

“That worked fine until the tenth day, when the building we were living in caught on fire. The fire trucks knocked out the phone booth on the street, and our building was nothing but ashes the next day. Tressie and I escaped with just the clothes on our backs, our purses, and the money Billy left for us, most of which had been spent. We panicked. The only thing we knew how to do was rob and steal and panhandle. Tressie said we should go to the Salvation Army and ask for help. So we did, and they did help us. They got both of us jobs in a nursing home of sorts. They even found us a rooming house. For the first time in our lives, Tressie and I knew what it was like to be what we thought of as normal. We went to work, cashed our paychecks, paid our room rent, paid for our food, and saved the rest of our money. We even made a few friends. And we never saw Billy again.

“The patients at the nursing home adored Tressie. There was this one elderly lady, a grandmother type, who was bedridden. Tressie was assigned to her. I always helped, but because of my diminutive stature, I couldn't move the patients. Tressie did all that. I had to stand on a stool. I would comb and brush Mrs. Meredith's hair, put a little rouge on her cheeks. She really liked that. She said she wanted to look her best in case someone came to visit her. No one ever did. I guess you could say Tressie and I were her family. On her birthday, we even bought a bottle of perfume for her at the drugstore. She was so moved, she cried.

“Mrs. Meredith died in her sleep a year and a half after we started to work at the nursing home. No one was more surprised than Tressie and me when this lawyer showed up at the nursing home and asked to see us. We almost ran away, thinking that somehow the police had found out what we used to do. But by the time we got to the door, our floor person caught us and took us to the conference room. Long story short, Mrs. Meredith had left Tressie and me her house, her brokerage account, her car, and all the furniture in her house. The house and car were paid for. Neither one of us knew how to drive, but we learned.

The brokerage account had fifty thousand dollars in it. Back then, that was a fortune. Tressie and I talked and decided to take half of the money and donate it to different charities as a way to make up for what we had stolen when we were with Billy. And we started to feel good about ourselves.

“We continued working at the nursing home, and the same thing happened twice more. Patients left us what they had in their wills. Nothing on the scale of what Mrs. Meredith had left us, just a simple kindness. We weren't set for life, but we were quite comfortable.

“Flash forward. We stayed at the nursing home for ten years until it was sold, and new management took over. Tressie and I didn't like how they were all about the money and not patient care. We tried anonymously to blow the whistle on them, but no one paid any attention. We quit and decided to go into business for ourselves. We even changed our names. That was Tress's idea, and I went along with it. I suppose that she realized how it was important that Billy not be able to identify us should we become successful and well-known.

“We cleaned out Mrs. Meredith's garage to provide workspace and, using most of our funds, started making medical welcome packets for people going into nursing homes, hospitals, and therapy facilities. The Salvation Army people helped us and even got us customers. Before we knew it, we were making so much money that we couldn't count it all. Perhaps you've heard of our company. It's called WELMED.”

“WELMED is
YOU!
” Annie exclaimed. “I own stock in your company.”

“That's nice to know. And no doubt you like that handsome dividend we pay you every quarter.”

“I do! I do!” Annie said, excitement ringing in her voice.

“This is when the people at the Salvation Army who were helping us explained that we needed financial help—lawyers, accountants, financial planners. We did all that.

“Tressie said, and I agreed, that we wanted to remain private, so we never gave interviews, never allowed our pictures to be taken because always in the back of our minds was the fear that someone, somewhere, would remember us, and we'd go to jail. And we didn't want anything to happen to the company we'd worked so hard to build. When the lawyers took our company public, Tressie and I went to Europe. To this day, as hard as it may be for you to believe, no one knows who we were or are. Our lawyers at the Quinn Law Firm talk for us.”

“So you're rich!” Dennis said. “There are a lot of people out there who are rich but who don't send anonymous e-mails threatening doom and gloom. What is it you want?”

“Just you hold your horses, sonny. I'm getting to it.” Sara looked at Dennis with a critical eye, then smiled. “You know, Son, I'm thinking if I'd ever had a grandson, he'd probably be your age and maybe even look like you. If I have any regrets, that's it, not having children and grandchildren.”

Dennis, softhearted mush that he was, backed up, and before he knew what he was saying, said, “I'm available. I mean, I don't have grandparents anymore. If you need a stand-in, I'm yours.” Damn, did he just say that? Obviously, he had, from the way everyone was looking at him.

“Well, now, that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, young man. How would you feel about having Tressie as an aunt? Aunt Tressie.”

Dennis decided since he'd put his big toe in his mouth, he might as well shove his whole foot in. “I'd be honored . . . Granny.”

The little old lady cackled happily. “Then, grandson, it's official. You're all witnesses. You are now my grandson and Tress's nephew. At some point when all this is settled and put to bed we can celebrate. Is that okay with you?”

“Well, sure. Whatever you want. My other granny never let me argue with her. She said she was always right. Are you always right?”

“Most of the time. Tressie and I have made our share of mistakes. We don't talk about them, though, because we like to think we're perfect.”

“I guess that works for me. So, Granny, can we speed this up? I'm really getting hungry,” Dennis grumbled. “And look outside. We have to drive home in this weather.”

“Oh, to be that young again and to have to live with no patience. All right, grandson, spoil my day for me. Now be quiet and listen to your granny and aunt.”

Dennis shut up after receiving a glare from his idol, Ted.

“Our financial people invested a ton of our money with this financial wizard who enabled Tressie and me to move out here to this complex. We were getting a 20-percent annual return on our money. My financial people were over the moon, as were we. Since we did not really need it, we donated that 20 percent to every worthy charity we could think of and even started up a few of our own. And to this day, we donate handsomely to the Salvation Army and their people who made all of this possible.”

“I'm not following you,” Annie said. “Why do you need us?”

“Because the person our people invested with turned out to be Billy Bailey, known to the entire world as Emanuel Macklin. And his entire operation is all one big Ponzi scheme. I want you to stop him. In his tracks. We've seen the signs, the cracks; we've heard the disgruntled investors. At first, Tressie and I weren't sure, but then we did our own checking, and, sure enough, it's Billy. We immediately pulled all our money, which was well over 100 million dollars, out of his hands. That started a bit of a panic. We're safe now, but there are thousands who aren't.”

The room was quiet, jaws dropped, and eyes gaped in stunned surprise.

Annie had her cell phone in hand and was hitting her speed dial. She got up and walked into the kitchen so the others couldn't hear what she was saying. “Just say yes or no, Connor. Did you invest any of my money with Emanuel Macklin? How much? When?” Annie swayed as she fought to ward off a wave of dizziness. “Okay. I'm glad to hear that it is a very recent investment and we're no more than even. At least we haven't lost any money. Anyway, I'm giving you five minutes to clean it out. FIVE damn minutes. Otherwise, you are going to be mowing your own lawn, and your seventh wife will be doing her own nails, compliments of Walgreens' nail-polish department. Oh, and you'll be on the unemployment line. The minute you finish that, check with Bert and see where they have Babylon's profits going. If it's Macklin, pull it all out. Five minutes, Connor.”

Annie's second call was to Charles, where she repeated everything she'd just said to her financial guru and gave instructions that he was to give to Myra's financial people.

Somehow, Annie managed to stumble back to her chair. She looked at Myra, and said, “I called Charles. I just got out, and so will you. I hope that you have not been invested with this guy for very long.” She looked over at the little lady with the big see-through hair, and smiled sickly.

“Good for you, ladies. I'm glad I could help.”

“Hold on here a minute,” Maggie said, wagging her hand in the air. “Are you saying all these years that you never saw any pictures of Manny Macklin? You never put two and two together? I'm finding that hard to believe.”

“Why, dear? Tressie and I had people taking care of things for us, people we trusted. I rarely if ever read the financial section of the newspapers. Manny Macklin, if I did see the name, didn't ring any bells with either Tressie or me. Now, if it had been Billy Bailey, then yes, we would have known. Tressie and I are readers, not television watchers. The name Emanuel Macklin or Manny Macklin meant nothing to us. We knew someone named Billy Bailey, someone who had taken care of us for more than a decade, both inside and outside an orphanage. The other thing is, Billy does not now look anything like he did back then. Today he is chubby and has a full head of white hair and a full white beard. The media say he is a double for Santa Claus himself. If I had passed him on the street, I would not have recognized him. Time and age. . . .” Ms. Overton said, letting what she didn't say hang in the air.