Hadley & Grace

by Redfearn, Suzanne

  She looks at the light switch to Grace’s right, easily within reach, then thinks of the gap in time between the first sound and the second.

  “Why are you here?” she repeats.

  “I wanted to check on the uniforms,” Grace says. “I think the order might have been shorted.”

  Hadley looks at her watch. “At ten o’clock on a Friday?”

  Grace shifts her weight, and that’s when Hadley notices the bag over her shoulder, a large striped thing, deflated and frayed.

  She cocks her head; then a smile spreads across her face. “You’re here to steal from Frank.”

  10

  GRACE

  Frank’s wife is smiling and accusing Grace of being a thief.

  The two options of how to respond tick quickly through her brain: Deny it and make up a more viable lie, or Make a break for it.

  The first is impossible. Mrs. Torelli is not going to believe anything Grace says. She can think of absolutely no plausible explanation for why she’s here. The second is equally impossible. The keys are still lost somewhere on the floor, and Miles is locked in the car. All this processes lightning fast as Mrs. Torelli continues to look at her with that bizarre grin.

  Finally, after a long minute with no revelation, Grace surprises herself by blurting out the truth: “I came to get what Frank owes me.”

  Mrs. Torelli tilts her head.

  Grace has only met Mrs. Torelli a couple of times. She’s not the kind of woman to get involved in her husband’s business. Tall, elegant, and impossibly beautiful, she’s the kind of woman who spends her days getting her nails manicured and ordering the help around, not meddling in the inner workings of parking garages and asphalt. Even now, at ten o’clock on a Friday, in the dingy hallway of an industrial building, she looks like a million bucks—her makeup freshly applied, her hair twisted in an elegant knot like a queen’s, and her outfit probably worth more than Grace earns in a month—tailored slacks, a black silk shirt, and beige stiletto heels with pointy toes.

  “He owes you?” she says.

  Grace explains what happened with Jerry, embarrassed to confess what a fool she was in believing Frank would actually honor his word and give her a commission.

  “Sounds like Frank,” Mrs. Torelli says when she finishes. “It also explains why he was going to fire you.”

  Grace flinches. Though she suspected that was the case, having it confirmed still strikes like a blow. For three months, she has worked her butt off for Frank Torelli, going above and beyond because she felt she owed it to Mary for calling in the favor to get her the job.

  “So you know where the safe is?” Mrs. Torelli says.

  The question catches Grace off guard, and she looks at Mrs. Torelli curiously, taking in the clothes, the makeup, and the intensity with which she is looking at Grace. “That’s why you’re here?” she says as she realizes it. “You’re here for the money?”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  An icy shudder tingles Grace’s spine. She has never been a big believer in coincidence. Her grandmother used to say moments like this were straight up God messing with mortals, which is exactly how it feels.

  And Grace wants nothing to do with it.

  “Yeah, well, good luck with that.” She squats down to resume looking for the keys.

  She finds them a few feet away and snatches them up as Mrs. Torelli steps in front of her, the tips of her shoes directly beneath Grace’s nose. “You know where it is?” she repeats.

  Grace stands slowly as the new choices of how to answer spin: Deny it and leave with nothing, or Admit it and possibly get what Frank owes me, but end up with my fate tied to Mrs. Torelli’s. The third option is out of her mouth before she has fully considered it. “I might,” she says, her blood growing warm with the brilliance of it.

  “You might?” Mrs. Torelli says.

  “I might,” Grace repeats brightly. “And for a finder’s fee, I might be able to show you where it is.”

  “A finder’s fee?”

  “Yeah,” Grace says. “Like a commission.”

  It’s a complete stroke of genius. Without breaking the law or the vow she made to the judge who showed her leniency when she was nineteen, she can walk away from this with enough money to give her and Miles a fresh start.

  “How much does Frank owe you?” Mrs. Torelli says.

  “That’s not really relevant,” Grace answers, her insides lit up.

  “Of course it’s relevant. You said Frank owed you; that’s the reason you’re here.”

  “It was the reason I’m here,” Grace says. “But now, you’re here, which means I no longer need to take what Frank owes me, and instead, you and I can work out a deal.”

  Mrs. Torelli squints in distrust. “What kind of deal?”

  “Like I said, a finder’s fee. I show you where the safe is, and you cut me in on a percentage.”

  “A percentage? How much of a percentage?”

  “Fifty,” Grace says—fifty-fifty always a good place to start.

  “Fifty percent!” Mrs. Torelli says, her hands flying with her words. “That’s not a finder’s fee. That’s half. Forget it.” She waves Grace away as if shooing a fly.

  Grace smiles like it’s no big deal, then lifts the keys in the thin light and flips through them. Purposely, she chooses the wrong one and inserts it in the lock. She pulls it out, squints at it, then searches through the others.

  Choosing the right one, she slides it smoothly into the keyhole and is about to turn it when Mrs. Torelli blurts, “Fine. Five percent.”

  Grace gives a silent cheer and turns. “Fifty,” she says.

  “It’s my money.”

  “Technically, it’s only half your money.”

  “Ten.”

  Grace turns back to the door. “Good luck finding your money.” The key turns, and she pulls down on the handle.

  “Twenty, but that’s my final offer.”

  Grace considers it. She has no idea how much Frank has. It could be twenty grand, or it could be a hundred. Twenty percent of twenty grand isn’t a lot, but it would be enough to get her and Miles out of Orange County and, hopefully, would be enough to hold them over until she finds a job.

  “Twenty-five,” she says, “and only because I’m being nice.”

  Mrs. Torelli glowers at her, clearly not agreeing. “Fine,” she says. “Twenty-five.”

  Grace pulls the key from the door and walks past Mrs. Torelli to Frank’s private bathroom.

  “I already looked there,” Mrs. Torelli says. “It’s the first place I checked.”

  Grace ignores her, and Mrs. Torelli’s heels clack on the floor behind her as she follows Grace in.

  Grace figured out where Frank was keeping his money a month after she started working for him. He asked her to call a plumber for a clogged sink, and she told him she could probably fix it herself. As she snaked the drain with a coat hanger, he hovered beside her, making her curious.

  Later that day, when Frank went to lunch, she returned to the bathroom and, just like she is doing now, lifted the lid to the tank of the toilet.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Torelli says, peering over Grace’s shoulder.

  Grace agrees. It is impressive: a solid cast-iron safe disguised as a toilet tank and bolted to the wall, making it impossible to steal.

  “But how does he do his business?” Mrs. Torelli says.

  “This is a commercial toilet,” Grace says. “The water supply comes directly from the wall.” She smiles to herself at the irony of her juvenile-hall vocational training being used to rip off her boss.

  Mrs. Torelli looks at her curiously, probably wondering how Grace could possibly know such a thing, but she doesn’t ask. Instead she looks back at the safe and says, “Darn.”

  “Problem?”

  “I thought it would be a keypad,” Mrs. Torelli says. “You know, the kind where you enter numbers, like our safe at home. I know all Frank’s passcodes and passwords, but this is one of those old-fashioned dial k
inds of locks.”

  “So, you don’t have the combination?” Grace says as her insides light up like the Fourth of July.

  11

  HADLEY

  “Well, open it,” Hadley says, wondering what Grace is waiting for.

  The girl sets the lid to the tank aside so it is resting against the wall; then she straightens, a thin smile on her lips. And when Hadley realizes why she’s grinning, her blood boils and she starts to shake her head.

  “Fifty percent,” Grace says.

  “Absolutely not.” She really doesn’t like this girl. No wonder Frank wanted to fire her. She’s nothing but a low-down, scheming thief. “The deal was twenty-five, and even that’s a rip-off.”

  “The deal was twenty-five to show you where the safe was,” Grace says. “Not to open it.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Look, Mrs. Torelli, I get that you’re upset. I would be too. But the fact of the matter is I have the combination and you don’t, and that puts you at a distinct disadvantage.”

  Hadley feels like steam is blowing from her ears. She doesn’t get angry often. But this is her and Mattie’s future this girl is messing with.

  “Twenty-five,” she says. “That was the deal.”

  Grace looks at her calmly, her expression as relaxed as if they were discussing the weather, perhaps a bit sympathetic, as if to say, It looks like rain, and it’s all Hadley can do not to swat the look from her face.

  “I could call the police,” she spits. “Tell them I caught you trying to rob us.”

  Grace doesn’t laugh out loud, but Hadley hears her laughing.

  “Fine,” Hadley huffs. “Thirty percent.”

  “We’re not doing this again,” Grace says as she pulls her phone from her pocket to glance at the time. “Fifty percent. Take it or leave it.”

  “You have someplace you need to be?”

  “You could say that. So, what’s it gonna be?”

  Hadley thinks of Mattie and Skipper at the hotel. She thinks of Frank. She thinks of the car loaded with their belongings. She thinks of how angry she is. All this while looking at Grace, who stands relaxed in front of her as if she hasn’t a care in the world. Which she doesn’t. If Hadley refuses, she’ll simply come back when Hadley is gone.

  “Fine,” Hadley huffs again, though nothing about this is fine in the least.

  Hadley feels Grace’s silent cheer, and never has she hated someone so much.

  Grace spins the dial one way, then the other, and a moment later the lock falls into place, and Grace turns the lever and lifts open the door.

  “Huh?” Hadley says.

  Grace looks surprised as well, her hand frozen on the safe’s door and her mouth hanging open. She shakes her head and takes a step back, backing away as if the neatly stacked bundles of cash piled to the rim of the tank are a ticking time bomb and not the answer to her prayers.

  “That’s a lot of money,” Hadley says as Grace continues to move away from it.

  On top of the money and slightly to the left is a small handgun. Without thinking, Hadley snatches it up, whirls, and points it at Grace.

  “Put the money in the bag,” she says, sounding like a bank robber in a B-rated movie.

  Grace’s eyes move from the safe to the gun, then back to the safe, then back to the gun; then she lifts her eyes to Hadley’s and, with no protest at all, starts to fill the bag, and Hadley feels a small burst of pride. That will teach this girl to mess with her. Maybe she’ll throw the girl a bone, toss her a bundle of hundreds as a tip.

  Hadley tries to keep count as Grace pulls the money from the tank, but it’s impossible. So instead, she wonders where it came from. Skimming is one thing, but this is more than the business makes in a year, and it’s not like Frank doesn’t spend. He spends plenty.

  Before Hadley can puzzle it out, Grace is done, the bag so full the last bundles are stuffed in the outer pockets.

  “Hand it over,” Hadley says, holding out her left hand while keeping the gun trained on Grace with her right.

  Grace rolls her eyes, shakes her head like Hadley’s an idiot, then hoists the bag onto her shoulder and walks toward the door.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” Hadley says, following her with the gun.

  Grace turns and, without an ounce of fear, snatches the gun from Hadley’s hand and jams it into the diaper bag. The butt sticks up through the bundles of cash.

  “Next time, check the safety,” she says, and she turns again for the door.

  Before she can take a step, Hadley lunges and gets hold of one of the straps of the bag, spinning Grace around with so much force she nearly yanks her off her feet. With catlike reflexes, Grace recovers and grabs hold of the other strap.

  Money flies everywhere as they pull against each other, threads popping as the bag stretches between them.

  Hadley wishes she had thought to change her shoes. The Jimmy Choos slip on the slick tiles and make it impossible to get traction. The good news is Hadley outweighs Grace by at least fifty pounds. Finally an advantage to being fat. Loading up with everything she has, she puts all her weight into a final colossal pull, only realizing her mistake after it’s too late, when she is already flying backward, the bag flying with her and money tumbling everywhere.

  Her shoulder slams into the wall first; then she crumbles to the floor, her ankle twisting painfully beneath her.

  Grace picks up the gun, then begins to collect the money. And all Hadley can do is watch as her and Mattie’s future is gathered up in front of her.

  Her chin quivers as she thinks of Mattie in the car and the hope in her voice when she asked if they were going back. Now it is only a few short hours later, and already, before they’ve even begun, she has failed.

  When Grace is done collecting the money, she closes the safe and puts the lid back on the tank.

  At the door, she stops. “I was actually trying to be fair,” she says. “Offering to share. I could have just waited for you to leave, then taken it all.”

  “The money isn’t yours,” Hadley spits, the words trembling with her misery and rage.

  Grace pats the bag. “It is now.”

  She opens the door, starts to walk through, then stops. She shakes her head, then looks up at the ceiling as if thinking about something.

  When she turns back, there’s a look of irritation on her face.

  “What?” Hadley snarls, pain shooting through her ankle.

  Grace sighs heavily and walks back to where she is. She squats down. “Put your arm around my shoulder. Come on, I’ll help you up.”

  12

  GRACE

  Grace helps Mrs. Torelli out the back door, then locks it behind them. As they hobble toward her SUV, parked in the loading zone, her ears strain for the sound of Miles crying, and she is relieved to hear nothing but night noises and the slight rustling of the wind.

  The diaper bag clunks against her thigh, heavy and bloated with far more money than Grace ever could have imagined. She tries not to think about it. She came to get what Frank owed her, but he didn’t owe her this much—not even close.

  The problem is she’s not sure what to do about it. Leave it? Give it to Mrs. Torelli?

  The woman pulled a gun on her. If the situation had been reversed, Grace knows that Mrs. Torelli wouldn’t have hesitated to take all the money and leave her with nothing.

  Beside her, Mrs. Torelli hops on her bare left foot, her heels held in her free hand.

  Grace stops.

  “What?” Mrs. Torelli says. “You planning on stealing my car now?”

  Grace sighs through her nose. She didn’t steal anything. She made a deal, and just like her deadbeat husband, Mrs. Torelli tried to renege on it. But this is a lot of money. Her brain spins as she tries to figure out the right thing to do.

  Mrs. Torelli unwraps her arm from Grace’s shoulder. “I’ve got it from here.”

  “You’re not going to be able to drive,” Grace says.

  “I’ll be fine.” As
if to prove it, Mrs. Torelli takes a step that nearly buckles her; then she takes another and ends up on the ground, her face twisted in pain as she hugs her injured leg to her chest.

  “Like I said,” Grace says, “you’re not going to be able to drive.”

  Mrs. Torelli glares. “I hate you.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not exactly on my Christmas list either.”

  Mrs. Torelli’s face drops, and though she’s at least ten years older than Grace, at the moment, sitting barefoot on the pavement, holding her leg, she looks like an oversize toddler whose favorite toy has been broken.

  “Come on,” Grace says, crouching beside her. “Upsy-daisy. I’ll drive you where you need to go.”

  Mrs. Torelli doesn’t move; instead she continues to hold her leg and look hopeless.

  “Look, Mrs. Torelli, you don’t have a lot of options here. Either you let me help you, or you call an Uber and invite someone to pick you up at a crime scene.”

  Mrs. Torelli tilts her head, then tilts it the other way, her eyes narrowing before growing wide, as if she’s just realized she might be in trouble for what she’s done. Then she looks at the ground, shakes her head, and starts to cry.

  Crap.

  “Why?” Mrs. Torelli mumbles through her tears as her head continues to shake.

  “Why what?” Grace says, losing patience. Miles is in the car, and now that things are what they are, she really wants to get as far away from this place as possible.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “I have no idea,” Grace says, thinking she should have just left her on the bathroom floor. She’s about to tell Mrs. Torelli to forget it when the woman pushes onto her haunches and holds out her arms. With great effort, Grace lifts her to her feet, then helps her the rest of the way to the SUV.

  A minute later, they are parked beside her Honda.

  Grace nearly cries with relief when she finds Miles exactly as she left him, peacefully asleep in his car seat.

  She carries it to the SUV.

  “You brought your baby to a robbery?” Mrs. Torelli says as Grace straps him in behind her.

  “You wore stilettos to a robbery?” Grace shoots back. Then she slams the door and walks back to the Honda.