Red Curtains

by Leanna Sain

  “Oh, my God! This isn’t play-money!”

  My legs turned rubbery, and I sank quickly to the floor, sitting there in a shocked heap, amidst a small, counterfeit fortune.

  It took a while, but the reality of it finally penetrated my foggy brain. “Counterfeit! Someone’s printing counterfeit money. Where’d you find this? In the trash? Oh, God! Did anybody see you? Please tell me no one saw you take it. If the people who printed this know you have it, you’re dead meat, Lily. They won’t take a chance of you telling someone.”

  I expected a response, a retort, justification…something, but I might as well have not been in the room for all the reaction I got. She stood like a mannequin in front of her window, seemingly deaf and dumb. Her silence made me angry. Didn’t she realize the danger she’d put herself in? She’d stumbled onto evidence pointing to a significant counterfeiting operation. What was wrong with her? She might not be scared, but I was. Actually jittery with it.

  “Lily,” I tried to speak more calmly than I felt, but my voice still shook. “I’m no expert, but I am an artist. I know high quality stuff when I see it. These people even used paper that feels right. And the color’s perfect. The only wrong thing that I can see is there’s a very slight misalignment—a printing plate malfunction, most likely. Other than that, you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who wouldn’t believe these were anything other than real hundred dollar bills. They’re obviously test-sheets; rejects that were never meant for circulation. Someone used a Sharpie to make sure of that.” I touched the big, black, diagonal lines drawn across each rectangle. “More than likely, whoever printed these will have tweaked their process by now, and will be able to produce sheet after sheet of perfect bills.”

  Lily finally turned from the window. Maybe it was the light—or lack of it—but I swear she looked older, the wrinkles deeper, her face more drawn. She was scared. It was obvious. And here I was reading her the riot act.

  “Okay,” I said gently, patting the floor beside me. “Let’s talk.”

  “Oh, no, Lily…are you sure?”

  She nodded once, her jaw set stubbornly. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m not stupid. There’s no mistaking that face, not when you see it on signs everywhere you look.”

  “But, but…Mark Spencer? Why would he do something like this? He’s the police commissioner—has been for years—and he’s even running for re-election!”

  “How should I know? Ran out of campaign money? Someone’s blackmailing him? Greed? Who knows?”

  “But why didn’t you report it?”

  She gave me a “how-dumb-can-you-be?” look. “I didn’t report it because he is the commissioner. I mean, what can you do when the good guys are really the bad guys? That’s one of the reasons. The other is that no one will take a homeless person seriously. They think we’re all crazy.” She sighed and sat quietly, deep in thought. “Don’t you see? With him involved, I didn’t know who I could trust. Didn’t want to end up in the river with the other homeless people.”

  I gasped. “What?! You don’t think there’s a connection with that, do you?”

  She shrugged. “Very next day they pulled the last guy out. Just saying.”

  The possibility scared me to death, and I found myself gnawing my thumbnail, a habit I thought I’d finally kicked. Apparently not. I sat on my hands to keep from doing further damage and stared at her. “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she shook her head, sadly. “I just don’t know.”

  ****

  I exited Panera with a large sack and two drinks. Lily wouldn’t enter the restaurant to eat with me, so I was bringing it out to her. “I got us some soup to go with our sandwiches. Warm us up inside.”

  She nodded eagerly. I could tell she was hungry and wondered if she ever ate anything besides cans of Campbell’s. Maybe I’d ask her someday, but not now.

  We found a bench and I doled out napkins, spoons, and a bowl of soup along with a sandwich for each of us, we ate like cavemen for a while; with only an occasional crunch or slurp punctuating the steady hum of traffic. It was only when the last bit of soup was scraped from the cardboard bowls and the final swallow of sweet tea sucked through our straws that we leaned back and breathed a big sigh, at exactly the same time, almost as if we’d rehearsed it. We laughed when our eyes met.

  I started gathering up the trash, stuffing it into the bag, then held it out for Lily to add hers. “I don’t know about you, but that hit the spot. I’ll be able to think better now.”

  “Thank you for lunch. It’s been a long time since I ate that well.”

  I hopped up and deposited the bag of trash in a nearby can and smiled at her. “No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.” I didn’t add that it was just a tiny fraction of what I felt I owed her after my recent epiphany. There was enough of my shyness still in there, that I couldn’t bare my soul to her yet. I’d just have to show her instead. “Now…we need to figure out what to do…how to handle this thing you’ve stumbled into.” I glanced meaningfully at her cart; the black plastic bag once again buried somewhere in its depths. “It doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies to think about your cargo, if you know what I mean.”

  She nodded and rose to join me, grasping the cart’s handles firmly. “Me, either. High blood pressure? Yes. A stomach ulcer? Probably, but definitely not warm fuzzies.”

  We’d taken about three steps when someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Miss?”

  Turning in surprise, I faced a broad expanse of black and red plaid flannel. I tilted my chin upward, but that movement had me squinting directly into the sun, unable to see anything, but blinding light.

  “Oh, gosh! Sorry!” I heard a deep voice say, before a hand turned me away from the brightness. “Better?”

  Once I was out of the glare, and I’d blinked a few times to get rid of the dark spots in my vision, I could see that the flannel shirt belonged to an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous hunk of a guy.

  His eyes widened and he gasped, “You!”

  Oh, no! It was the guy I’d crashed into at school yesterday—the Adonis—and he was even better looking up close. I mean…imagine the combination of the five best looking men you know and multiply it by a hundred! His thick, dark brown hair was cut almost military short, which might’ve been an attempt to control the curliness. Even as short as it was, I could see it was trying to show its natural tendency. His eyes were a warm, delicious brown—like chocolate—and his smile revealed a set of beautifully even teeth. All in all, he knocked my socks off, and all I could do was nod in answer to his question because my tongue was too tied up in knots to do anything else.

  Not so, Lily. “What?” she demanded belligerently. Her gruff voice sounded even rougher than usual. I wanted to scream the same question back at her. What?!

  His movie-star smile faded a little at her nasty tone. He glanced between the two of us, his expression, uncertain. “Uh…sorry. My name is Jonas Holmes.” He reached into his shirt pocket and handed us both a card. “I’m a reporter for the Savannah Tribune, and in light of the three men they’ve recently pulled out of the river, I’m doing an investigative article on the plight of the homeless in Savannah. Do you think I—”

  “We have nothing to say to you,” Lily cut him off.

  I turned to face her, my eyes wide and pleading, my hand gripping her arm. “What are you doing?” I kept a forced smile on my face, murmuring in my best ventriloquist imitation, barely moving my lips.

  She shook her head, her mouth in a tight line, back ramrod stiff, arms folded under her breasts. She was trying to look severe and disapproving. She’d evidently forgotten about her hat. It was pretty much impossible to look stern wearing a hat like that. Her attempt was foiled before she even started, but that didn’t stop her from trying. At least the hat provided some comic relief from the rest of her demeanor.

  I turned back to the reporter, and gave him an apologetic smile. I couldn’t speak to him yet. I was still too tongue-tied, but
I help up a finger that silently asked him to give us a moment.

  At his nod, I clasped her arm tighter. “Let’s talk in private, shall we?” I murmured as calmly as possible. The serene demeanor was a lot harder to pull off than you’d think. What I wanted to do was shake her until her eyes popped out like champagne corks. It was only by using supreme effort that I was able to keep my fake smile in place until I’d dragged her a few feet away. Turning to face her with my back toward him, I shouted a whisper, “You mind telling me what you’re doing??”

  “I don’t want to be in his article,” she spoke through stiff lips. “I don’t want to draw any attention to myself.”

  “Seriously?” I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. My recent epiphany was the only thing helping me keep myself together. “You don’t want to draw attention to yourself?” I repeated her words so maybe she’d hear them. “Have you looked in the mirror lately?” I gave a derisive snort. “Great! Now you’ve got me sounding like Chandler Bing!”

  “Who?”

  “You know…Chandler…from Friends reruns? Oh, never mind. Lily, your hat screams, “Look at me! Look at me!” and you’re worried about calling attention to yourself? If that’s your aim, you need to lose the hat. It’s defeating the purpose; definitely drawing more looks than any newspaper article ever could.”

  She beetled her eyebrows and glared at me, arms crossed even tighter.

  I tried another tactic. “Okay, listen. Maybe he can help us.”

  Her glare grew darker. “You just think he’s cute, is all.”

  That gave me pause. Was she right? Did I just want to help him because he was the hottest thing I’d seen in a long time and he actually talked to me? Probably, but I didn’t think it would help my cause to tell her that, so I forged ahead, ignoring the accusation.

  “Look, you know we can’t go to the police with what you found, right?” I glanced pointedly at her cart. “Now, listen. He’s an in-ves-ti-ga-tive reporter.” I drew the syllables out slowly, then paused, giving her a minute, hoping she’d put it together on her own.

  She didn’t.

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Don’t you see? We can give him something to investigate. It won’t be about the homeless—well, not totally, anyway—but it’ll definitely be worth reporting. If this story gets out in the paper where every person in Savannah—including the tourists—can read it in black and white, the police will have to pay attention, arrest the guilty parties, and thus, stop the counterfeiting. Granted, it’s kind of a round-about way, but at least we’ll achieve our purpose, which is shutting it down. And…” I added quickly when I saw her mouth open, thinking she was about to voice some protest. “…if Spencer’s operation is connected with these homeless guys ending up in the river, well, it’s sure to come out in any subsequent investigation, and that’ll stop too.”

  She was no longer glaring at me, which I took for a good sign. “Well, what do you say? Can we work together with him?”

  “We’ll catch Mark Spencer?”

  “I haven’t exactly got that part worked out yet. In case you haven’t realized it, I’m making this up as I go, but I’m pretty sure it’ll bring him down. At the very least, he won’t be re-elected commissioner. I doubt Savannahians will take kindly to learning that not only was a major counterfeiting operation going on right under the commissioner’s nose, but that he was in charge of it. Stuff like that doesn’t get you re-elected; it gets you in jail.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to where Jonas waited, wearing an uncertain look on his face. “Can we tell him yes?”

  She gave me a long look before answering, “Yes.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jonas

  I was getting nowhere fast, and I was ready to give up. What was the problem anyway? Was I wearing an invisible, “Don’t talk to me” sign? Jeez! Talk about a dead end! It was time to cut my losses, and come up with another plan. This one obviously wasn’t working. For all the good I’d done so far, I might as well be back at my desk tapping out another brilliant article about the latest bank robbery or home invasion or gang fight or…or…just fill in the blank with the headline of choice. My shoulders slumped with discouragement and I sighed, feeling beaten, practically incapacitated.

  Heading through Chippewa Square, on the way to where I’d parked my car, I spotted a possible contact and decided to give it one last shot. Couldn’t hurt, right? The man was obviously homeless…dirty, clothes tattered and shabby, the typical metal cart stuffed with plastic bags pulled up next to the end of the bench where he sat hunched over a notebook, writing as if his life depended on it. Maybe I’d luck up, and this guy would actually talk to me.

  The flicker of hope fizzled as soon as I got near enough to see what the man was doing. A double-page spread of indecipherable scribbles told me what I needed to know. I’d get no help from this one, either. I stared at the man, fuming…mad at everyone and everything. I was even angry at the dappled sunlight dancing around me on the sidewalk. How dare it look so happy? I raked a hand through my hair, frustrated beyond belief, then turned on my heel, muttering to myself as I continued on the way to my car. A flash of color in my peripheral caught my attention; a casual glance became a double-take that had me veering around the statue, pausing in front of a bronze plaque, pretending to read it, trying not to gawk.

  A young, dark haired girl, wearing a blazing red sweatshirt, sat on a bench, nearly shoulder to shoulder with an elderly woman who was wearing an obscenely bright pink and green hat, practically capable of retinal burning. But it wasn’t the colors that grabbed my attention—okay…maybe initially that’s what did it, but what kept me staring was something entirely different. The older woman was homeless. If ragtag clothing and weird hat didn’t give her away, that two-wheeled metal cart sitting beside her sure did, but that wasn’t why I stared, either. No, it was because that homeless lady was talking—having an actual conversation—with the slim girl in the sweatshirt…who obviously wasn’t homeless.

  It was hard to stay calm and unobtrusive when what I wanted to do was jump up and down, whooping and waving my arms in a victory dance. Though outwardly cool, my heart was pumping like a steam locomotive, making me feel like I’d just run the Rock and Roll Marathon. See…? I mentally sashayed, punching my cynical, glass-half-empty self in the shoulder…it is possible to get them to talk. Here’s proof in living color, and boy, did I ever mean color!

  They were eating something—apples, from the looks of it—a companionable snack between friends. Were they friends? They both seemed pretty relaxed. Their body language had an open, friendly feeling, but how had it happened? How had that girl broken through the wall when I couldn’t? I wished I could hear what they were saying, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by moving any closer.

  I eyed the girl, fighting a touch of jealousy. She looked familiar. I’d seen her somewhere before…and recently. Where? It wouldn’t come to me. Maybe later.

  What was her secret, anyway? What did she have that I didn’t? Maybe I’d learn something useful if I just watched her a while. Yes, that’s what I’d do…watch and learn.

  ****

  The girl was an artist—the drawing pad in her hand gave that part away. I’d be willing to bet she was a SCAD student, though she looked too young to be in college. Slender, graceful…like a wood nymph or a fairy. Not big as a minute, as my dad would say. Maybe she looked older up close. Was that the SCAD insignia on her sweatshirt? It was. Okay, so…yes, she was probably a student there, but that still didn’t answer the burning question: how had she broken through the invisible barrier I’d been encountering everywhere I’d turned? Guess I needed to keep on watching.

  Uh-oh…they stopped. I ducked into a doorway so they wouldn’t notice me. Peeking around the corner, I could see the young girl leaning against a stair railing, holding her sketch pad across her left arm. Her right hand held a pencil that swept broad, sure strokes across the page, supposedly capturing her subject in black and white, but
I couldn’t tell for sure from where I stood.

  Wait a minute! What was the old woman doing? She’d pulled out a sparkly bag and was reaching into it, pulling out a handful of whatever was inside. Now she was…sprinkling it around a parking meter?

  Huh?

  I fidgeted, waiting impatiently for them to move on, curious to see what that stuff was. It was several minutes before they moved down the street, allowing me the chance to vacate my hiding place. I approached the parking meter and stared.

  Um…yeah.

  Guess it was safe to say that more than just the old lady’s hat was weird.

  ****

  I was sitting inside Panera, spooning thick chowder into my mouth as quickly as possible. Sunlight poured through the window, painting a warm, yellow band across my table. My speedy eating had a two-fold cause. One…I was famished. The only thing I’d had for breakfast was an oatmeal bar and a cup of coffee as I headed out the door, and two…I wanted to make sure I finished my meal before my targets finished theirs. On the other side of the glass, two heads were bent over their own lunch; one glossy brown, the other capped in lurid colors that would look right at home in an LSD hallucination.

  I broke off a hunk of bread, soaking up the remnants of my soup, then popped it into my mouth, chewing slowly, staring at the two outside. I couldn’t help it. The longer I watched, the more it piqued my interest. What a mismatched pair! What on earth had brought these two together? All my stalking still hadn’t answered that question. I’d been around enough affluent folks in my life to be pretty good at judging who came from money and who just wanted people to think they came from money. The girl was in the first category, and as a general rule, there wasn’t a lot of intermingling between her group and the homeless. So…there must be a very good reason for them to be together, but what could it be? My writer’s curiosity trekked down several unlikely paths, rejecting each one and returning to contemplate some more.

  The girl had been drawing the older woman. Could that be it? Maybe a class assignment? Possible. I studied her profile, her animated expression. She didn’t look like she was being forced to do something she didn’t want to do. On the contrary, she was enjoying herself, and…wow! Now that I could see her better—her profile rather than a back view—she really was a pretty little thing. She—