Scare Crow (30 page)

CHAPTER 17: EMILY

BROKEN PROMISES

Frances and I pulled up to a gray skyscraper in the core of downtown. It was a busy
street, with no parking in sight. We were blocking traffic, and cars were honking
behind us. I rushed out of the car, and Frances took off in search of par
king.

Joseph had found Frances pretty quickly for me. Like half an hour quickly. I’d waited
for Griff to come back from his celebrations and sneaked out as soon as he had conked
out on his mattress, which was about two minutes after he had come through the door
with the rest of the drunken
clan.

Frances lived in a ritzy apartment building downtown. The doorman looked at me a little
strangely as I walked to the stairs—then again, my walk was more of a waddle these
days. After several unanswered knocks on Frances’s door, I sank to the ground and
rested against her door, ready to wait as long as it
took.

When her door opened, I rolled back like a beach ball, my head hitting her welcome
mat, my legs splayed in the air, like Humpty Dumpty falling off his
wall.

I peered up at Frances, who was in a silk ki
mono.

“E
mily?”

I rolled back up and brushed myself off while Frances recovered from the shock. There
was an old man in a suit standing behind her. If disease had a face, it was his; he
was ugly but looked harmless en
ough.

“My sister,” she stammered to
him.

He kissed her on the cheek, keeping his eye on me, or rather on my nonblonde sisterly
hair color. As soon as he was out of sight down the hall, her charmed grin left her
lips, and she dragged me into her apartment, slamming the
door.

“Did anyone see you come
here?”

“I need your
help.”

I pulled my poncho aside, revealing my secret b
elly.

Frances brought her hand to her m
outh.

After I handed her the mostly erased business card that Carly had given me and asking
for her help in finding the underworld accountant, she had hesit
ated.

“Emily,” she started, “the baby. I
s it—”

“It’s mine,” I said sternly. “All mine. Are you going to help me or
not?”

As the blood left her face, she sat down on the arm of her ivory chaise and grabbed
one of the whisky glasses sitting on the coffee t
able.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” she said over the rim of her g
lass.

I took a chance sitting on the fragile glass coffee table and reached for her
arm.

“Do you remember asking me if Bill had left me any money? Well, it turns out he has
left me all of it. This accountant can help me get the m
oney.”

She was still shaking her head and looked at my face and at my stomach until her gaze
turned to empty s
pace.

****

Twenty-four hours later, I had a name, an address, and a ride down
town.

A northern gust was blowing people away, but I was steady on my feet. I held my poncho
tight to my body and ran into the building. There was a manned information kiosk in
the middle of the lobby that I ignored. I walked up to the golden plaque on the wall
and looked for the name I had been searching for so long: Henry Grimes. He was on
the eighth f
loor.

I spun on my heels and waited for Frances. She had insisted on coming in with me.
“Emmy,” she had said, “this man that you are going to see manages money for the biggest
drug dealers, murderers in the country. You are pregnant, and you are not going in
there by your
self.”

And so I was waiting. People in business suits were filtering by me and cramming into
the elevators. I was wringing my hands, feeling how close I was to retribution and
to my fre
edom.

I took another look around. No Fra
nces.

There was a large clock on the wall. I watched as the seconds ticked away, each one
feeling like a lifetime. I started to tread toward the elevators like a mosquito to
a porch l
ight.

I couldn’t wait for Frances to get there. I couldn’t wait for anyone else, for anything
else.

I got stuffed into the elevator with the rest of the traffic and was luckily the first
to get
off.

Goose bumps ran up and down my arms; I wasn’t sure if it was because of the excitement
or because the eighth floor reminded me of a school hallway. The plastered walls,
the wooden arches, brought back memories of getting run over by girls who were prettier,
smarter, more popular than me. Part of me wanted to scurry through and find an empty
bathroom stall, any spot to hide. But that part of me had been slowly getting snuffed
out in these last few months. And now it was gone. I wasn’t that nervous, insulated
target anymore. My name was Emily Sheppard. My brother had been Bill Sheppard, once
king of the underworld. I was going to be a mother. I was carrying Cameron’s child—Cameron,
who had also been king of the underworld. Now I was going to take a piece of the world
for myself and my c
hild.

While office workers shuffled through the hallway, I advanced to door 10E without
fear and with my head held
high.

There was no name on the door, but I didn’t doubt myself. I had read correctly on
the golden plaque downst
airs.

I turned the knob and let myself into what looked like a small waiting room, except
that there were no chairs, no front desk or assistant. I made my way across the blood-red
carpet and opened the next
door.

A beast of a man sat behind a small cheap oak desk. He was wearing a suit that looked
like it had fit him three sizes ago. His hair was buzz-cut into a lopsided geometric
form, something that would have been all the rage in the eighties. Clearly, this accountant
for the underworld was still living in the
past.

Although Henry Grimes hadn’t seemed surprised to see the door open without a knock,
his expression turned quizzical as he peered over his paperwork and saw that I was
the one who had opene
d it.

I took a seat in front of him. “My name is Emily Sheppard,” I announced, having practiced
this meeting so many times in my head. “I was sent here by someone named C
arly.”

Henry Grimes leaned back in his chair, lacing his sausage fingers over a well-fed
b
elly.

This reminded me of my own basketball belly, and I tugged at the edge of my poncho
to ensure that my own belly remained hidden. I felt as though Henry and I had met
before, as if I had seen him somewhere. There was definitely something familiar about
him, though I couldn’t figure it
out.

“Bill Sheppard’s sister,” he said, as though he were trying to convince himself of
this. “Carly did mention that you would be coming to see me. But that was a long time
ago. A few months at l
east.”

I took the angel pendant off my neck and placed it in front of him. “I need access
to the money my brother lef
t me.”

He immediately flipped the angel over and looked at the code under it, and then he
smiled, a genuine, wholehearted smile. He had obviously seen this pendant be
fore.

“When Bill told me about his plan to inscribe your inheritance onto this cheap piece
of hardware, I honestly thought it would never come back. He must have known you well
enough to know that you would hold on to it without knowing what its true meaning
was.”

Of course I had held on to it. It was the last thing Bill had given me before he died.
I held on to it as though Bill were trapped somewhere in it, like a genie in a bo
ttle.

This man had met, had conversed, and had laughed with Bill … I had to tighten every
muscle of my face to keep my emotions at
bay.

Henry wrote numbers down on a piece of paper. “I can’t get the money for you.” He
gave me back the angel pendant and held his other hand up before I could start shouting
all the vicious names that were bouncing around my head. I couldn’t handle any more
spikes in the
road.

“The codes that your brother had inscribed on your necklace are mine. He made sure
that, as an additional safeguard, you would have to come through me in order to get
the bank account numbers.” He handed me the piece of paper. The numbers on it looked
like the account numbers the bank manager had shown me some time
ago.

“You wouldn’t be able to get the money without these numbers,” Henry explained, though
I had already figured this
out.

I took a calming breath and considered the information. “You said that this was an
additional safeguard. Meaning there is more than one safeg
uard?”

“There was always the risk that someone else would try to have your money moved without
your knowledge. You do realize how much money is at stake
here?”

“Sure,
sure.”

“Bill set up the account so that you and only you would be able to have it unlo
cked.”

He wa
ited.

I looked up at the sky. “I have to go to the Cayman Islands myself, don
’t I?”

“If you want your money.” He laughed, not knowing what a spectacular inconvenience
it would be for this pregnant lady to board a plane to the tro
pics.

I si
ghed.

“Your brother was very fond of you, Emily. And I was very fond of your brother. If
there were any other way, I would have found it for you. Consider this a vaca
tion.”

“A vacation,” I whispered to myself, unsure if I was going to cry or l
augh.

I got up from my chair in a daze, but as I grabbed the door handle, I realized that
I had forgotten something crucial. While I had practiced this moment many times in
my head, this part I hadn’t really figured out yet. But having met Henry Grimes, my
next move was clear. I turned around and opened my m
outh.

“I won’t tell anyone you were ever here,” he said before I could ask
him.

I closed the door and said a little prayer as I walked across the carpet through the
empty waiting room. If everything he had said was true and he had cared for my brother,
then I had to trust him. But if he had lied, then I had very little time to
act.

I waited for the elevator and saw two men—the shady clients Henry must have actually
been waiting for—go into his of
fice.

When the elevator doors opened, Frances jumped out with a crazed expression. I dragged
her by the arm back into the elevator. Unfortunately, I dragged us into an elevator
that was going up instead of
down.

“Did you already meet the accountant?” she asked me when we were finally alone and
on our way
down.

“He couldn’t get the money,” I whispered, which seemed appropriate even if there was
no one else who could hear us. “But there’s still a way for me to ge
t it.”

As the doors opened and more people got on, she watched me, taking thi
s in.

Frances left me outside to go fetch the car, sprinting. She’d had to park two blocks
down.

I stood in the cold, rubbing my hands together under my poncho and jumping from one
foot to the other. The frigid Callister weather was inhumane. Maybe a trip to the
islands wouldn’t be so bad after all. When the baby kicked me as I was thinking this,
I took it as a sign that we needed t
o go.

I was trying to keep warm by getting my mind working, figuring out how I was going
to pay for this trip and how I was going to tell Griff about what I had been up to.
He had left me this morning for a day of interviews with the media and potential sponsors.
I had to pretend I was too sick to go with him. It took me a while to convince him
to go withou
t me.

I turned to face the building, afraid that I was going to see Henry having changed
his mind and coming after me. I also didn’t know how much time I had if he broke his
so-called promise and alerted Carly and Spider to my calling. I didn’t know if Spider
would even care, given that Carly had tried to give me all of Cameron’s money anyway,
which was probably ten times more than what Bill had achieved in his short
life.

While I was busy working my brain, I hadn’t noticed that someone had been watching
me from the entrance of Henry’s building. She was holding on to the door as people
shoved past her, her eyes fixed on me. I was in a trance as I saw her, unable to move.
At first her expression was that of disbelief, as was mine. Could it really be her,
or was I imagining
this?

She broke the spell and moved toward me. This wasn’t just happening in slow motion …
Carly was moving slowly, every step seeking valida
tion.

A gust of wind twirled around us, grabbing my poncho with it. Her eyes went down to
my rounded and now exposed belly, and she stopped. I managed to pull my poncho back
down, but the damage was already
done.

I had expected the anger, the hate, the murderous glare at this new revelation. But
what I saw scared me even more. Carly’s eyes were hungry, as if she had been starved,
deprived from birth. And the blood rushed from my
face.

I took one small step back, as if I were trying to charm a cobra out of a bite. Carly
just stared
back.

I turned around and walked away, desperately seeking Frances’s
car.

Carly came to grab me by the shou
lder.