The Schuyler House
Page 19
“It all sounds totally insane to me. Why did you guys take such crazy risks? I mean, what on earth made you do it?” Alex asks.
“I don’t know what made us do it,” I say seriously. “I mean, the money was nice, but none of us really needed it. Sarah has some financial problems, but, as Todd mentioned, they were more a symptom of the burglaries—her ex dug them into debt. As you can tell by the loot we just recovered, I never even spent most of share. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I guess it was the thrill that enticed me. That, and maybe the appeal of trying to solve a puzzle…how to find a small crack through which we could slither and grab the art.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t see the appeal.” She laughs. “So, what are you going to do with all the money?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say honestly. “I need some time to think about it.” I wish I could give her a better answer, but I don’t have one, and she doesn’t push the point.
We drive in silence for a little while before Alex asks, “So, did you ever try to find out what became of the pieces that you handed off to Olivier? I know you said that you don’t know what he did with them, but you must have been a little curious about where they ended up.”
“Believe it or not, no, I didn’t. I completely threw myself into scripting the heists, but once the art was handed off, it was out of sight, out of mind for me, and I turned all my attention to the next heist in the pipeline. For me, it was all about the plotting and planning side of it. And, since we’re on the topic, I never saw any news stories reporting the return of any of the pieces that we stole, and I don’t know if any of them were ever recovered. I know that Sarah tried to find out what happened to the pieces we stole from the billionaire in Texas, but I don’t think she was able to find out much about what ultimately happened to them.”
* * *
It’s late when we finally cross into the District, and Alex turns to me. “I’d love for you to stay at my place tonight, but it would make me nervous to have all that cash just lying around.”
I smile back at her. “I understand. I’ll buy one of those big metal safes tomorrow, I promise.”
Alex pulls up in front of my apartment and double-parks her truck so she can help me haul the backpacks full of cash and my bag of clothes up to my apartment. Once the cash is safely inside my apartment, I pull Alex into my arms and give her a quick kiss on the lips. “Thanks again for going to Vermont with me.”
“You’re welcome, Mattie. It certainly was an adventure. I had fun!” She pauses, and I sense that she has more on her mind, but she reaches for the door. “I should probably go,” she says reluctantly. “My truck is double-parked. See you at the office tomorrow? Oh, and don’t forget, we’re supposed to have dinner tomorrow night with Karen and Meg.”
“Yep, I remember dinner. Looking forward to it. See you in the morning,” I say before giving her one last kiss as she heads out the door. If Alex’s friends have expressed surprise that she is dating a woman after being married to a man, she’s never mentioned it to me. Like her, her friends are pretty laid-back, and my guess is that they just roll with the punches—if Alex is happy, who are they to question it?
After Alex leaves, I pick up the two backpacks and carry them over to the kitchen counter. I make sure the window shutters are closed and slowly unload the cash and pile it up on the kitchen island. When I’m done, I just stare at it.
It was true what I told Alex, I don’t know what I am going to do with it. My financial future is far from certain at this point so, for now, I just want to hold on to the money so that I have some sort of a nest egg. Deep down inside, I hope with my whole heart that Alex and I have a future together, but I want to take things slowly and not put too much pressure on her. Maybe, someday, she and I can find something to do with the money together.
I finally snap out of my daydream and try to think of the best place to hide the money until I can buy a safe the next day. Putting it under the mattress seems a little too cliché and will probably be the first place a crook would look if they were to break in to my apartment. Finally, for lack of a better idea, I bury half of it under my dirty clothes in the hamper in the bathroom and jam the rest of it in my freezer.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I get up early the next day and head to the office. Unsurprisingly, Alex is already there. I poke my head into her office. “Morning, early bird. Trying to catch up after I dragged you to Vermont for three days?”
Alex looks up at me and gives me a broad smile. “Good morning. Yep, feeling a little behind, but as I said last night, I am really glad that I went along.”
“Me too,” I say softly before wandering over to my desk and flipping on my computer.
Sometime in the early afternoon, my grumbling stomach finally causes me to lift my head from my computer and take a break. I grab a veggie wrap from the food truck that is always parked outside the office and then take Uber up to Home Depot so I can buy a safe.
Home Depot has a larger selection of safes than I expected—they’ve got about fifty sizes, most of which claim to be fireproof, bulletproof, waterproof, you name it, and half of which appear to be for gun storage. I settle on one that is about three feet high and can be bolted to the floor. The thing weighs a ton, so I arrange for Home Depot to deliver it to my apartment between five and seven o’clock that evening. Alex and I are not scheduled to meet Karen and Meg for dinner until seven thirty, so the timing should work out well.
Alex is out at a worksite when I get back to the office, so I drop her a text to tell her that I have to run home after work but that I’ll meet her at Nora’s, the restaurant where we are meeting Karen and Meg.
The delivery guys show up with my safe at 5:03 p.m., and while they unpack it, I ramble on about how excited I am to have a place to store the letters my grandfather wrote home during WWII. It’s my very lame attempt to allay any suspicions that they might have about what I plan to store in the safe. I ask them to place the safe in my bedroom closet, and they tell me that I have to hire a handyman to actually bolt the thing to the floor. I make a mental note to ask my elderly neighbor for the name of the handyman she uses. After the delivery guys leave, I gather up the cash from my hamper and my freezer and load it all in the safe.
* * *
I get to Nora’s a little before seven thirty. I’m the first one there, so I grab a seat at the bar and order a glass of white wine. Alex, Karen, and Meg all appear a few minutes later, and we follow the hostess to our table.
After we order, Karen turns to Alex. “Soooo, how was your little getaway to Vermont?” she asks with a wicked grin.
“It was…great!” Alex gives me a knowing smile.
“You two are such little lovebirds,” Karen crows. “So, what did you do…and you can spare me the details on the sex you had! I haven’t touched a man since Doug and I broke up!”
Alex and I both laugh. “We visited a few of my friends,” I respond cautiously.
“And we did a little hiking,” Alex adds innocently as she grabs my hand under the table and squeezes it.
Three Months Later
Eventually, I start working at Hemlock full-time. I still primarily work on the finances, but I also start to get involved with more aspects of the business. I even enroll in a few landscape design and horticultural classes at George Washington University to expand my knowledge of plants and trees and other landscape-y things.
One night after work, Alex and I decide to have dinner at Coppi’s, the cozy, wood-fired pizza place where we had our first unofficial date. The restaurant is unusually quiet, but it’s a summer weeknight so I guess that’s to be expected. Congress is out of session and the rest of DC has likely fled to the beach. The hostess leads us to one of the few booths, and we decide to share a large Margherita pizza.
Alex reaches for my hands after we order. “So, I’ve been thinking.” She looks at me tenderly. “What would you think about moving in with me?”
I look back at her and feel an almos
t overwhelming rush of emotion. It takes me a minute to find my voice. “Really?”
“Yes, really. I want to share my life with you, Mattie.”
“Nothing would make me happier,” I say finally. My eyes are moist, and I dab them with my napkin.
Alex and I promptly order a bottle of champagne. It doesn’t really go with pizza, but we don’t care. We’ve got something wonderful to celebrate.
* * *
Alex agrees reluctantly to let me bring my safe full of cash to her house when I move in. Every week or so, I take a small amount of cash out of the safe and deposit it into the Hatshepsut checking account. I only deposit a little bit at a time because I’m very conscious of the Bank Secrecy Act which requires banks to report any cash transaction of ten thousand dollars or more to the IRS. Basically, if you deposit more than ten thousand dollars in cash at a bank (and the key here is cash), the bank will ask you for identification because they have to file some form with the IRS to report the deposit. The law was established to catch people trying to launder money (which I guess technically includes me). And the IRS isn’t totally stupid, they make banks report deposits that even look fishy—a person purposely trying to skirt the law by making multiple deposits of $9,999 or even two $5,000 deposits made in one day, for example.
So, because of this law, it’s going to take me a very, very long time to move all the money out of the safe and into the Hatshepsut account for safer keeping. But I plan to keep at it until the safe is empty.
Regardless, I plan to save most of the money, although I am not totally averse to spending some of it here and there. In fact, I just booked Alex and me on a two-week vacation with some fancy outdoor adventure company. According to their colorful brochure, we’ll hike, bike, and kayak through a bunch of National Parks but stay in nice hotels at night. I really want to take Alex on a bike trip through Tuscany, but I guess that will have to wait for another day. For now, I need to stay stateside.
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