Taken (21 page)

Charlotte didn’t drop her gaze. “I think you do.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Why did you come here? Johnny died years ago, along with the rest of them. I don’t want to talk about the past.”

“I’m here because I suspect someone is looking for the
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other watches. And the last time I saw Nate’s watch, you were putting it down your blouse. It was at Nate’s birthday party, remember? You were joking that he had so many presents he had to give you something.”

Two bright spots of red burned on her cheeks. “Nate retrieved the watch later,” Elizabeth said, with a touch of the acidic spark she’d never bothered to hide when she was younger, when she was stripping onstage with the rest of them.

Charlotte wasn’t sure she believed her, but for the moment she would go along. “Do you know what happened to the watch after he went to prison?”

“I have no idea. Maybe he gave it to his sister, Janine.

She seemed to have everything else of his. Of course, she’s dead now, died about five years ago, lung cancer.

She couldn’t stop smoking.”

Charlotte was sorry to hear that. She’d always liked Janine. “What about one of his other sisters? You knew Nate pretty well. If he was going to give that watch to someone for safekeeping, who would he have given it to?

Dana?”

“God, no! He didn’t trust Dana for a second. She might have thought he did, though. Just because he slept with her didn’t mean he couldn’t see her for the conniv-ing bitch she was.”

Charlotte had forgotten that there was no love lost between the two women. They’d often fallen for the same man, and Nate had been one of those men.

“Are you trying to find the money, Charlie? After all these years? Do you think it still exists?”

Charlotte frowned, not liking the light in Elizabeth’s eyes. Not for the first time she wondered just where Elizabeth had acquired her wealth. Had it all come from her
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husband’s side? Or had she somehow gotten her hands on the coins? “I’m not looking for money. I’m trying to protect my family,” she said. “My granddaughter got involved with a con man who was after Johnny’s watch. I suspect he’s looking for the coins, and he may be working with someone else.”

“Well, if he already has Johnny’s watch, what are you worried about?”

Charlotte hesitated. She couldn’t tell Elizabeth the truth. She didn’t trust her. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on. We all have pasts we’d like to protect. If someone discovers the money, who knows what else they’ll dig up?”

“Certainly not the spoils of other robberies,” Elizabeth said, looking Charlie straight in the eye. “You and Dana made sure of that, didn’t you?”

“Your husband is still alive. Do you want him to know just how involved you were with Nate before he went to prison?” Charlotte countered.

“I don’t think you’re worried about me at all,” Elizabeth replied. “I think you’re worried about yourself.

Everyone always wondered how the men got away from the mint so quickly, so easily. They disappeared as if into thin air. If they hadn’t been stupid enough to show their faces to those witnesses, they might have gotten away with it. But they were too famous for their own good.”

“I’m not sure what you’re accusing me of,” Charlotte said sharply. “But I can assure you that I had nothing to do with that robbery.”

“Oh, you can assure me all you want,” Elizabeth said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I won’t believe you.

You may have grown a conscience, but you didn’t have one back then. In fact, I always thought you had the
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money. Or Dana did. How else could she finance three nightclubs? She wasn’t that good a stripper.”

“Dana owns three nightclubs? I thought she just owned Deception.”

Elizabeth smiled. “She owns a new club south of Market and another one off Broadway. She’s very wealthy now.” Elizabeth paused. “We all made it, didn’t we? Who would have thought the three of us could climb out of that dark club and make something of our lives? Not that Dana went far.”

“So you really don’t have Nate’s watch?”

“I really don’t.” Elizabeth paused. “Is it the watch you want — or the map?”

“The map?” Charlotte echoed, unable to keep a nervous twinge from her voice. She cleared her throat.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nate used to talk a lot after sex. He said Dominic’s brother had drawn him a map and it was going to make them all a lot of money. I laughed about it. Asked him to show it to me. But of course he couldn’t.”

“I don’t know anything about a map.”

“You wouldn’t tell me if you did. Why are you here, Charlie?”

“I wanted to warn you that if you have the watch, you should be careful.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Then I’ll leave,” Charlotte said, getting to her feet.

“Unless you can tell me who else might have the watch.”

“Maybe you’re walking down the wrong side of the street, Charlie. We were the bad girls those boys had for fun. There were good girls, you know, one for each of them. And Nate had one in particular.”

Charlotte started, Elizabeth’s words bringing back an
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old memory. They’d stopped at the flower shop down the street from St. Basil’s. Nate had run inside. He came out blushing like a schoolboy. Johnny teased him about Anne Marie. Nate said it wasn’t funny. Her parents hated him.

He’d never get a girl like that.

“You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?” Elizabeth asked. “I can see it on your face.”

“No, I can’t remember,” she lied. “It was so long ago.

I should be going. Thanks for seeing me.”

“Of course.”

“Be careful, Elizabeth. Even though you don’t have Nate’s watch, someone might think you do. And we both saw firsthand what greed can do to men.”

“And to women,” Elizabeth added. “I’m always careful, Charlie. That’s the one thing I learned from you and Dana — how to protect myself. I might have learned that lesson better than either of you.” She waved her hand toward the front door. “I’ll see you out.”

Charlotte would have liked more time to get her thoughts together before she spoke to Kayla again, but when she got home she found her granddaughter waiting on her doorstep, looking more than a little determined and quite a bit annoyed.

“I didn’t know you were coming over, Kayla,” Charlotte said quickly, cheerfully, trying to pretend this was just a social call. Kayla was having none of it.

“We need to talk — again,” Kayla said. “And this time you’re going to tell me what you didn’t tell me the last time.”

Charlotte set down her purse and walked into the kitchen. She took a bottle of bourbon off the shelf, filled two glasses with ice, and poured in liquor to the brim.

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She handed one to Kayla and walked into the living room.

“Am I going to need this?” Kayla asked.

“I think so.” Charlotte sat down in the armchair while Kayla took a seat on the couch. Her granddaughter set her drink on the coffee table. Charlotte took a long, reinforc-ing sip of courage.

“You’re scaring me, Grandma,” Kayla said. “I’ve never seen you drink like this in the middle of the day.

You have to talk to me. Whatever you’re holding inside is obviously eating you up. I know a lot more today than I knew yesterday, a lot you could have told me that you didn’t, like that Johnny Blandino, your old boyfriend, was a thief and a murderer, and he served time in Alcatraz.”

One of her biggest fears had just come true. Her granddaughter knew Johnny’s true story. All these years Charlotte had tried to hide the truth from her family, and now to hear it said in such a bald, blunt fashion was shocking. Her heart began to beat too fast. She took another sip of bourbon.

“Grandma,” Kayla said again, her eyes expressing both impatience and concern. “What’s going on? Why is the watch important? And is there more than one watch?

If so, who has the others?”

She caught her breath again at the questions. Kayla knew so much already. “All right, it’s true — everything you just said about Johnny.”

“And the watches? There is more than one watch, isn’t there?”

“Johnny and his friends each had a watch. I don’t know what happened to the others. I assume they were passed down within the families.”

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“Do they connect to a missing treasure of coins stolen from the U.S. Mint?”

Charlotte cleared her throat. She really did not want to discuss that last robbery. “I don’t know where the coins are, Kayla, or even if they still exist.” At least that much was completely true.

“Grandma, please, you can’t keep beating around the bush,” Kayla said firmly. “My house was broken into last night.”

“No!” Charlotte gasped.

“Yes. Someone was searching for something, but nothing was taken, not even cash I had in my dresser drawer.

What would they be looking for?”

She stared at her granddaughter for a long moment, searching her face for signs of harm. She had never meant to put Kayla in danger. “Are you all right? You weren’t hurt?”

“No, I wasn’t there at the time. I came home and found the place trashed.”

“You can’t stay in the house. You’d better move in here, or go to your mother’s place.”

“I think it’s safer to stay where I am, since whoever searched it has already been there. Besides, Mom has her own life with her second family. We barely speak.”

“I know she still loves you in her own way,” Charlotte said firmly.

“When it’s convenient. It’s okay, Grandma. I’ve given up trying to make her into the mother I want, and I suspect she’s given up on changing me into the daughter she wants.”

It saddened Charlotte to hear the bitterness in Kayla’s voice when she spoke of her mother, but that was an es-TA K E N

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trangement that would take years to undo. “I don’t think that’s true,” she said, “but we’ll leave it for another time.”

“Good, because I have more to tell you. I saw Evan today.”

Charlotte felt her heart drop. “What happened? Did he try to hurt you?”

“No, in fact, he was smiling, mocking me and Nick.

He said something about the game not being over yet. If you know what the game is, you really need to tell me, because I think I could get into a whole lot of trouble trying to find out on my own.”

Charlotte nodded, knowing it was time to put more cards on the table. “All right. I’ll tell you what I know. As I mentioned before, Johnny was my first love, and deep down he was a good man, but he made some mistakes in his life. You have to understand that he had a rough childhood. His father killed himself when Johnny was only eight years old. He hanged himself in the master bedroom with a belt. They found him there.”

“That’s horrible,” Kayla whispered.

“It was,” Charlotte said. “Johnny’s mother had her hands full with five children to raise, and Johnny was the only boy. He needed a father. He didn’t have one. He turned to his friends for comfort. They didn’t turn out to be good people.”

“They turned out to be a gang of criminals,” Kayla said brusquely. “That’s public record, Grandma. I don’t know why you didn’t just tell me before.”

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I want you to understand that it wasn’t as sordid as it looks now. Yes, Johnny did some bad things. But he didn’t do the worst of it. Two guards were killed during the robbery, but that was Frankie’s fault. Frankie was always excitable. He got
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nervous. He panicked. He used the gun when he didn’t need to. It was supposed to be clean, safe, simple.”

“Is that what Johnny told you?”

“Yes.”

“Grandma, how could you believe him? He had just robbed the U.S. Mint. There’s nothing clean, safe, or simple about that.”

Charlotte frowned, not getting the reaction she wanted. “Are you going to listen, or are you going to judge?”

Kayla sat back on the couch and folded her arms. “I’m going to listen.”

“I know I’ve told you that my parents were strict and very religious, but I want you to know the whole story of my past, so you can understand where I was coming from. I grew up in a small farming town. I wasn’t allowed to date. I couldn’t wear makeup or have my friends over.

All I was allowed to do was go to school and to church and occasionally help out at my father’s grocery store. I wanted more — a lot more. So I rebelled.” She took another drink, then continued.

“After high school, I ran away to San Francisco. I wanted to be a dancer. I was good, but it was harder than I thought.” She paused, remembering those wild and crazy days of living for a dream. “To make a long story short, I did whatever I could to get bit parts onstage, and I worked odd jobs. I met Johnny when I was twenty-one years old. I thought he was the handsomest man I’d ever seen. He had money, and he treated me well, and I was tired of being poor and struggling to make ends meet, to find a hot meal. It wasn’t like that,” Charlotte added quickly, seeing the distaste on Kayla’s face. “I didn’t sell myself to Johnny. I was in love. Johnny was, too. But he
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traveled a lot. I didn’t know what he was doing at the time. I didn’t ask questions. I think deep down inside, I knew he was doing things that were wrong. Then again, so was I. When the money got tight, I met someone who told me where I could make more cash. All I had to do was take off my top. She said I had great assets and I could use them.”

“Oh, Grandma,” Kayla murmured.

Disappointment once again flashed in Kayla’s eyes.

Charlotte squared her shoulders and continued. “I was desperate. I couldn’t pay the rent. I couldn’t go home. My parents had made it clear that I was dead to them. So I took a job stripping at a club on Broadway. It was hard the first time. I was shy. Embarrassed. But then I concentrated on the dancing part. I lost myself in the music. I didn’t look at the audience. I went inside of myself and performed. I was a different person on the stage. I wasn’t Charlotte anymore; I was ‘Sweet Charlie.’ And Sweet Charlie was sexy and very popular.” She drew in another deep breath and let it out. “When Johnny came into the bar, he treated me like a queen. In fact, he wanted me to quit. He said I was too good for the joint, as he called it.