Friends and Foes

by Laina Turner

  She shrugged. “Sally told me when she came to pick up Bailey from school. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a great idea.”

  Ahh, that made sense. Sally wasn’t one for keeping things quiet.

  “We’ll see. There’s not much to do here tonight. Just a few returned books to shelve.”

  “I’ll take care of them, don’t you worry. Now just run along,” she said, shooing me to the door.

  “Have a good night, Arlene,” I said, slipping my light gray spring jacket over my arms and belting it. I gave her a little wave and stepped out the door. I could have walked to the bank, but decided to drive instead. I wanted a clean getaway in case Derek laughed me out of his office. Plus, it tended to get chilly when the sun went down. It was that time of year, where there was a huge swing in temperature from day to night.

  When I walked in the bank, Derek peered out the door of his office and waved me in. I had called him earlier to make sure he’d be there, so he was expecting me.

  “Hi, Trixie, you’re looking good, as always.” We went to high school together. He was a couple years older than me, so we hadn’t been friends, but I’d always thought he was a good guy.

  “Thanks, Derek. How are Diane and the boys?”

  “Good, good. Now, what brings you in to see me?” Derek leaned back in his chair, running his hand through his hair. I was inexplicably nervous to tell him what I wanted. What if he laughed at me and told me I was ridiculous? I’d never be able to come in this bank again.

  I went into a lengthy explanation about the idea Sally and I had, and how I needed start-up money without putting everything I had in jeopardy. I spoke fast, and it all came out in a rush. “So, do you think I’m crazy?” I asked when I’d finished, holding my breath for his response.

  “Not at all. I think the idea is a good one. This town could use a place like that. I know Diane would love it. I’m sure a lot of people would. Now, do you have a business plan?”

  I mentally kicked myself. I had been so excited about the idea, I didn’t even think about business 101. A business plan. Even I knew that, but it hadn’t crossed my mind.

  “Well, no. Sally and I were just talking, and this idea came up. Before we went too far down the planning road, I thought I would explore my options to see if it was even possible,” I said, hoping it sounded like a plausible excuse and not one I just made up on the spot.

  “Okay.” He nodded as if that made sense, and I started to relax a little. “Let me pull up your accounts,” he said, sitting upright in his chair and typing on his computer keyboard. “You said Cody’s college fund and your IRA?”

  I nodded. “They should be easy to recognize. They’re the only ones that have money.” I thought my comment was funny, but Derek didn’t even crack a smile. A few more seconds went by, and the tapping of his fingers on the keyboard started to drive me a little nuts.

  “I see Cody’s college fund has a balance of just over twenty-five thousand dollars, but your IRA has a balance of less than one thousand dollars,” he said, and looked up at me as all the blood drained from my face and my heart started racing. I felt like he had just caught me lying, when I knew I’d regularly contributed the max to that account for the last ten years. The account was twenty years old, and I’d always put something away.

  “That can’t be right. My dad opened that for me when I got my first job out of college, and I make deposits weekly from my paycheck. I mean, they’re small deposits, but I’ve been doing it since I got my first full-time job.”

  Derek frowned. “That’s what it shows here. What did your last statement say?”

  I racked my brain, trying to remember when I last saw a statement. I never paid attention to them, thinking it would be a long time before I needed the money. If I was being honest, I rarely even opened them. I just threw them right in the trash.

  I shrugged, feeling stupid and irresponsible.

  “It shows here that over the course of the last six months, there have been several withdrawals.”

  “By whom? I’ve never taken a withdrawal from that account.”

  “Hmm, that’s interesting. It shows you wrote these checks against the account. You do know there is a penalty with the IRS on early withdrawals?”

  I didn’t know, but that was the least of my concerns. I didn’t even know I could write checks against this account. I felt sick.

  “Do you keep a copy of those checks? I would like to see them.”

  “I can print out a scanned copy,” he said, and hit a few keys. “Just a second. Let me go get them off the printer.”

  As he left the room, my mind whirled. I didn’t even want to consider the possibilities of what had happened to this money. But I had a hunch. I just hoped I was wrong. Derek walked back in and set the print out down in front of me.

  “It has your signature, Trixie.” He frowned. “You seem surprised. Did you not write these?”

  I knew I didn’t write them. The question was, who had? I looked down at the paper, and my suspicions were confirmed. I would know that signature anywhere. My ex-husband, Jared, had signed these checks and ripped away the stability of my retirement, and possibly ended any possibility of fulfilling my dream along with it. I was going to kill him.

  “It wasn’t you who signed them?” Derek asked.

  I shook my head. “No, but I know who did. Listen, Derek, I’ll call you later. I need to take care of something.”

  I left the bank and drove right to Jared’s house. It’s a good thing I didn’t pass any cops, as I wasn’t even paying attention to the speed limit, and I’m sure I was speeding. I pulled into his driveway and saw his truck parked in front of the garage. I was glad Cody was still at baseball practice, so he wasn’t around. This wasn’t going to be pretty, and we both tried not to argue in front of Cody. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been so furious at Jared, and he’d done plenty to piss me off in the past.

  I knocked on the door and then rang the doorbell, shifting my weight back and forth on my feet as I waited for him to answer. A few seconds later, I rang the doorbell again, and the door was flung open. Jared looked shocked to see me standing there. I never showed up at his house unannounced.

  “It’s you. Is something wrong with Cody?” he immediately asked.

  “No. Nothing is wrong with Cody. I need to talk to you.” I pushed past him to walk into the living room. It was a mess. Dirty plates on the table, pop cans all over. About what I’d expect. He always felt I should be the one to clean up after him. He’d been an only child whose mother had doted on him and waited on him hand and foot. When we’d married, he’d expected the same from me. Clearly, he didn’t have anyone cleaning up after him now. I was shaking with anger, and Jared picked up on it.

  “Is something wrong with you?”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” I said, ignoring his question to ask one of my own.

  “Find out what, Trix?” he said. A confused expression came over his face.

  “That you were stealing from me!” I said, my voice rising on each word. I wished I had something to throw at him.

  “What a minute. What the hell are you talking about? I have never taken anything from you!”

  My eyes narrowed, and I just stared at him, wondering if I was more mad that he did it in the first place, or that he thought I was so stupid I would believe his denials. Either way was insulting. He was lucky I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail, or he would so be dead right now.

  “Don’t act stupid, Jared. I know you’ve been writing checks against my IRA account. What I don’t know is how you did it. I didn’t even know I could do that.” There was a pause, and I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. I had known him for too long. I knew when he was trying to figure out a plausible excuse to spin the situation, so it didn’t seem so bad.

  Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t as naïve as I had been when we first got married, and he could no longer fool me.

  “Derek showed me the p
roof at the bank.” There was no talking his way out of this one, and he must have finally realized it because his body went soft and he hung his head, sighing deeply. He looked back up at me with a defeated expression, probably hoping I’d feel sorry for him. I didn’t, and I wouldn’t.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say,” he said, as if an apology would make it better.

  “Why would you steal from me?”

  “I owed some guys money, and—”

  “Dammit, Jared. You told me you weren’t doing that anymore,” I interrupted. One of Jared’s downfalls was a pretty serious gambling problem. It started out small but had grown through the years. A few times during our marriage he’d gotten in deep with the wrong people. The kind who threatened bodily harm when you didn’t pay up. Something that, before being faced with the situation personally, I thought was made up for books and movies. I hoped he wasn’t in that deep this time.

  “I just had a slip-up. I thought I had good information. It just didn’t pan out.”

  “Whatever. Don’t you know by now it never does?”

  “Well . . .”

  “How did you even know there were checks to that account?”

  “I remembered seeing them come in the mail a long time ago, and you told me to just throw them in the junk drawer.”

  “So you broke into my house hoping to find they were still there?”

  “I didn’t break into your house,” he snapped. “I came by with Cody to get a change of clothes when you weren’t home. It’s not like I knocked your door down.”

  I just stared at him. Did he just say that? Did it not occur to him it was still an invasion of my privacy? “Jared, you went into my house and took something that wasn’t yours. Behind my back. Why didn’t you just ask if you needed money?”

  “I thought I could put it all back before you noticed.”

  As if that made things better. What was wrong with him? Part of me felt sorry for him. He’d been so sheltered and spoiled by his mother that he’d never really grown up. He never thought about the consequences of his actions.

  Chapter 3

  “What’s going on? Why did I need to rush over here?” Sally asked, out of breath and dressed in workout gear. I had called her as she was on her way to Pilates, but she said she was more than happy to skip and come over.

  “You won’t believe this!” I said, topping up my wine and pouring a glass for Sally.

  “What? Derek said you couldn’t get the money? That’s okay. We can figure out something else.”

  “Oh. No. I could get the money. That is, if there was any money to get,” I said sarcastically and took a large gulp of my wine. I was still having a hard time comprehending that Jared had done this to me.

  “I don’t follow,” she said, and sat at the table across from me.

  “There was money in my IRA account. At one time. Until my wonderful ex-husband decided he would take it upon himself to relieve me of my savings.”

  Sally’s eyes grew wide. “No. You mean . . . ?”

  “He cleaned me out. Gambling debts. We aren’t even married anymore, and I’m still paying the price for him.”

  “Oh, Trixie. I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

  “I don’t know. Buy me a winning lottery ticket?”

  “Have you confronted him?”

  “Yeah, and true to form, he tried lying his way out of it, until he realized it wasn’t going to be possible. Then he just said he was hoping I wouldn’t notice until he could put the money back in there. Which if it hadn’t been for this, I probably wouldn’t have. Noticed, that is. He’ll never be able to pay me back.”

  “What do you mean, he won’t pay you back? You have to make him.”

  I just looked at her and raised my eyebrows. “He doesn’t have any money. That’s why he stole mine. It’s the same issue we’ve always had. The one I thought I left behind when we divorced.” I sighed. “Not only does this dash the dream of opening a business, but I worked years to put money into that retirement account. Now I’m starting all over from the beginning.”

  “This doesn’t mean the end of our dream, Trixie. It just means being a little more creative with how to get the money.”

  “Sometimes, Sally, you’re just way too optimistic. I can’t use what money I do have on top of what I’ve lost.”

  “You’re being too glass-half-empty right now. There are worse things that could happen.”

  I started to make a sharp retort, but the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway grabbed my attention. “Is that Cora?” I asked, twisting in my chair to look outside.

  “Yup. Maybe she can help me talk some sense into you!”

  “You are not going to believe this,” Cora said, repeating my sentiment from just a few minutes ago. She walked through the door of the kitchen, dropping her purse on the floor and draping her light green, spring coat over the back of the chair as she sat down. I poured her a glass of Moscato and pushed it in front of her. We watched as she took one long sip, then two, before setting the glass back down. She sighed, picked up the glass, and took one more drink. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d had a bad day.

  Sally and I just sat there waiting for her to tell us what was going on.

  “I got canned,” she finally said.

  “What?” I exclaimed, refilling her glass.

  “Yep. I am now in the ranks of the unemployed. I don’t think I’ve ever been unemployed before. Not since I started working at sixteen.”

  “Don’t tell me they fired you?” Sally asked. “I thought you got along great with everyone.”

  “Technically, I was laid off due to slow economic conditions and a restructuring of the company, but I don’t have a job, regardless of how it came about.”

  “Forgive me for what I’m about to say, but do you really even care?” I said, not wanting to upset her more. But she’d been as unhappy at her job lately as I had been in mine. “You’ve been saying for a long time that you’re bored.”

  Cora sighed again. “Am I sad to lose the job itself? Not really. It stopped challenging me creatively a long time ago. But I’m freaked out because I don’t have a back-up plan. I’ve never lost a job before. Without a direct deposit going into my checking account each week, I’m not sure how I’m going to pay my bills. My shoe shopping has always gotten in the way of saving for a rainy day.” She drained her glass again and slid it back over to me for a refill.

  “Then let’s figure out what you want to do,” said Sally. “You’ve got a lot of marketable skills. A lot more than I do. Finding you a new job should be a snap.”

  “What’s with all this optimism, Sally?” I asked, somewhat joking, but also somewhat serious.

  She was on a positivity roll. Even for her.

  “Did I ever tell you about my grandmother?” Cora asked, changing the subject.

  “Just that she lived in California and you used to visit her during the summer,” I said. “Why?”

  “When she died a few years ago, she left me a chunk of cash I’ve never touched. I forgot about it and left it for a rainy day. Well, I think it’s finally raining.”

  Sally looked up at her. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “Yes, I am. I want to be your third partner, if you’ll have me.”

  “Cora, that’s awesome news. Of course we want you, don’t we, Trixie?”

  “I couldn’t think of anything I’d like more. But I have bad news of my own,” I said, and proceeded to fill Cora in on my ex-husband’s thieving.

  “Oh my God, Trixie, I’m so sorry.”

  “So even though we’d love to have you as our third partner, there won’t be a partnership. You and Sally should go ahead, though. Even though I think you’re both a little crazy to put your savings at such a risk.”

  “We’re not doing it without you, Trixie,” Sally said.

  “I second that,” said Cora. “We just need to figure out a plan.”

  “Unless it’s a plan to kill my
ex and not get caught—which still wouldn’t get us money—I’m not sure there are many options. I don’t have what I don’t have.” I tried to be matter of fact, but I was more upset than I let on. Against my better judgment, I had allowed myself to get excited about this, and the let-down was affecting me more than I wanted it to. “Enough about this depressing stuff. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Tom is driving me crazy, as usual,” Sally said.

  “What’s he doing now?” I asked.

  “We had everything settled and ready to sign at the lawyer’s today, and at the last minute, he wants to make a change. It’s the third time he’s done this, waited until the last minute, then the whole process has to stop and start all over.”

  “Do you think he’s having second thoughts, and this is his way to stall?” I said. “Maybe he’s realized his blonde bimbo isn’t all she’s cracked up to be.”

  “Ha!” Sally snorted. “Too bad if he has. That ship has sailed. I just want to get the damn papers signed and move on.”

  “You know guys, they don’t always know when to give up,” Cora said.

  “Good point. I just can’t believe Sylvia isn’t also pressing him to get this divorce finalized. She has him on a tight leash,” Sally said. “Lord knows why, but it seems she doesn’t want to lose him.”

  “Men! I’m so over them,” said Cora.

  “Don’t tell me you and Andrew are on the outs again,” I said.

  “As of right now? Total outage. We broke up for good this time. Last night. I hadn’t had a chance to tell you guys.”

  “Oh, honey, what happened?” I asked. Andrew and Cora had been dating for a few months, and Cora really liked him, but it had been rocky. Cora had caught him a couple times talking to other girls in a way she didn’t feel was appropriate for people who were in a committed relationship, but he said she was overreacting, and she’d let it slide.

  “Just more of the same. He seems to think commitment means it’s okay to go flirt with other girls after a few drinks, or to flirt with them on Facebook.”

  “See, I’m right. Facebook is the devil,” I said, looking at Sally.