No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Probably wasn’t playing with his own money,” he sighed. I suddenly felt even more like a complete idiot. Without saying a word, Bosco seemed to convey his disappointment in me. And then I suffered a pang of conscience, thinking maybe I was being overly sensitive. Bosco removed all doubt with his next comment. “Was it yours?”

  “Of course not!”

  “How do you know?” When I hesitated, he jumped on it. “It’s a legitimate question, Dori. We’re trying to figure out when the guy started ripping you off.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling confused. Maybe Bosco really was trying to help me, and I was reacting because I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “When did you first realize there was money missing?”

  “Saturday.”

  “The day after he left?” Bosco whistled, leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. “The mark of a professional. What was the sign to you that you had been taken to the cleaners?”

  “The cleaners,” I repeated.

  “No, it’s an expression,” he responded. “Where were you when you found out your money was gone?”

  “At the cleaners,” I said again. “I was picking up my suits and my credit card wouldn’t work. It was maxed out. Somehow, I used up a $5,000 credit limit between Friday at the grocery store and Saturday at the cleaners. When I tried another card, the same thing happened. Then I went to my bank because my debit card wasn’t working. My bank said the account had been closed out by my new husband. They told me we had been sharing the account for three weeks, that I had come in with him and signed the paperwork. Only it wasn’t me, Bosco.”

  “Of course it wasn’t you. He had an accomplice. What about that 401K? How did that get cashed out?”

  “Supposedly I asked for it to be rolled over to my new account at my new job, only I don’t have a new job. Bosco, everything was done to hit me on Saturday. Doesn’t that take a lot of coordination?”

  “And experience. The average person doesn’t know how to do it. Financial professionals normally help people transfer that many accounts, but usually it’s to make a better return on investments, not to rob someone blind.”

  “I guess I’m lucky you know what you’re doing. I don’t know what I’d do if you couldn’t help me.” I rose, intending to refresh our coffee mugs.

  “Say that again.”

  “Oh, come on, Bosco. Haven’t you made your point? I screwed up….”

  “No, Dori. Say what you just said again.” Bosco had a funny look on his face.

  “I guess I’m lucky you know what you’re doing. I don’t know what I’d do if you couldn’t help me.” As I repeated the words, Bosco closed his eyes, as if in pain. “Are you okay?”

  “This is all about me,” he moaned. “Son of a….”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That case I took on in Somalia, this is payback.” My ex-husband looked like he was in absolute agony.

  “Let me see if I understand this. You’re telling me that George was hired to steal everything from me?”

  “Yup,” Bosco agreed through clenched teeth. “To punish me for catching the bad guys who stole from Feed the World.”

  “But I’m broke!” I cried. “I have no money!”

  “Babe…”

  “What am I going to do?” It all sunk in. George had never loved me. He wasn’t just a con man. He wasn’t just a rat. He was a man who deliberately stole all my money to punish my ex-husband. I was a pawn in a very ugly game. That meeting in Pleasant Bay was no accident. George staged it, to reel me in.

  One look at my ex-husband made my heart sink even further into the depths of despair. Bosco looked like a guy who just landed in a vat of quick-drying cement and was counting down the final minutes until he was ensconced forever in his final resting place. The expression on his face told me all hope was lost. The realization settled over me like black thunder clouds just before the skies broke apart. That’s when I burst into loud, wet, body-shaking sobs, howling like some wild animal into the oncoming storm.

  Chapter Three —

  “Dori,” Bosco said gently, putting his arms around me as I stood there numbly, “we’ll get the guy. We’ll figure out a way to get the money back for you.”

  “But how? This was all planned out,” I sobbed, “right down to the seduction! He never cared about me! It was all a sham!”

  Hysteria was beginning to cripple me, to bring me to my knees. In only minutes, I went from being a foolish woman who was conned by a self-serving Don Juan to a woman manipulated by a powerful group of criminals out to get her ex-husband because of his career choices.

  “What if it’s not over?” I asked him, between chattering teeth. “What if they came after me to draw you in? Because they knew I would turn to you and you would come to my rescue.”

  “Tell me about the first time you two met. You went to Pleasant Bay with your girlfriends,” Bosco prodded gently.

  “Yes,” I said, thinking back to the trip eight months ago. I had been lured by the promise of a girl’s weekend at a luxury retreat with my college roommate, Millicent Fournier, and her circle of friends from New York. There were supposed to be four of us sharing two rooms, but the idea of a chick retreat with spa treatments grew more enticing as word spread. Tony Liselli, another former schoolmate from Pantheon College, wanted to join us and she had a friend who was happy to share the cost of the room with her. Mary Findlay, another Pantheon pal, wanted to join us and Joyce Yamaguchi agreed to come along, to share Mary’s room. Next thing we knew, the list grew and there were ten of us, sharing five rooms.

  “How did George wind up there that weekend?” Bosco wanted to know. I explained. One of the New York women, Tatiana Stevanovich, was dating George at the time we met. He had decided to surprise her at the Oceania Resort, appearing out of nowhere as we sat at our special dinner in a private dining room on the first evening.

  I had never met Tati before. She was Millicent’s new neighbor at the Collins, someone who heard about the weekend and asked if she could join the group. When Tati introduced George Peterson, she called him her special friend. George sat down between Tati and me. He seemed determined to fit into our group, directing his bright smiles around the table of females. As the evening wore on, Tati grew belligerent, chiding George for being weak and unmanly, accusing him of failing to satisfy her in bed. By eight o’clock, George finally had enough and said good night, his machismo battered by her relentless assaults. Another ten minutes of tirade kept Tati busy, regaling us with stories of George’s failures. I reached my limit and finally excused myself.

  “Where are you going?” Tati demanded as I rose from the table.

  “See you all tomorrow,” I said to the group as a whole, avoiding a confrontation with the argumentative woman.

  “I asked you where you are going!” Tatiana’s words were slurred. She was getting sloppy. All the more reason to pretend a hearing deficiency. I got as far as the door of the private dining room before a hand landed on my shoulder. “You will never have him!”

  I shook off the drunken attack, sidestepping her poorly-aimed blows, but that only seemed to invigorate her. She came at me head-on, so I took her by the hands and pulled her into me, before I turned her around, stuck a knee out, and she tumbled to the carpeted floor. That’s the benefit of having brothers. You learn to protect yourself from the unexpected lunge with a few choice moves.

  “I don’t know what your problem is, but get over it,” I warned her, leaning down. She looked up at me with unfocused blue eyes as big as saucers, and for a brief moment, I thought saw surprise in her returning gaze. “I’m not interested in you or your boyfriend. Now leave me alone!”

  “He is mine,” she mumbled into the carpet as she collapsed in a soggy heap. I thought back to that meeting all those months ago. It was still an emotional tornado in my mind, coming on the heels of the finalization of the end of my marriage to Bosco, the beginning of what I thought was a promising romance, and the start of the expansi
on of Dynamic Productions into a company poised to head into the next decade as a regional success story.

  “Bosco?” I looked across the table at the man now taking frantic notes on his tablet. “I don’t think this is about Somalia. I think it’s more personal than that.”

  “Leave the judgments to me, Dori,” he replied, barely looking up from his scribbles. “I’m the forensic expert here.”

  “But it was me George ripped off, and I don’t think he did it to get at you,” I tried to explain. Bosco put up a hand, cutting me off mid-sentence.

  “You concentrate on getting packed. How do you feel about renting the house fully furnished?”

  “Just leave everything here?” The thought of other people using the furniture we had collected over the last twenty years left me feeling disgruntled and dismayed.

  “We’ll get more rent if it’s fully furnished. We can do it as corporate housing. It’s not like we’re inviting a group of frat boys in. More likely, it will be a family on temporary assignment. We can limit it to six months.”

  “Three,” I shot back.

  “Three, with the option to rent for another three, in case we don’t get your money back and the mortgage straightened out right away. It’s the right thing, Dori.”

  “It might be the right thing, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it.” My hands on the table, I examined my bare fingers. I hadn’t worn a ring since the day Bosco and I met for the last time at the mediator’s office, where we agreed the marriage was too damaged to be fixed and that we had exhausted all avenues to repair it. Two days later, I signed the divorce papers and dropped them off at Bosco’s apartment. My rings went into the safe deposit box at the bank.

  “Look, Dori, I know this isn’t easy for you. I get that. But you have to admit that with all your money gone, you don’t have a lot of options. We’ll make the best of a bad situation, babe. We’ll make it work.”

  “Is that even possible?” I wondered. “What are we going to tell people, that I ran back to you because I’m broke, because George is a con artist? Everyone will think I’m an idiot.”

  “We’ll tell them we decided to give our marriage another try.”

  “How will that solve anything?” I wondered. “What happens when I get my money back and I can leave? People will think I’m a fickle flake, unable to make up my mind whether I want to be married or not. They still think I kicked you out!”

  “You don’t need to make it sound like my apartment is Leavenworth, for God’s sake! I’m not planning to hold you prisoner and you’re not moving in as punishment!” he growled. “Besides, what do you care what people think about us? You didn’t care much what people thought when Lover Boy moved in!”

  “Do not throw that in my face, Bosco, or we will have nothing more to say to each other.” I stood up quickly and walked away, unable to deal with his taunts. In the kitchen, I put my empty mug in the sink, crossed to the back door, and went out into the darkness of the moonless night, the tears stinging my cheeks. I sat down on the steps of the deck, feeling that big ache that was the hole in my heart. Everything started falling apart when Kevin died, and it didn’t seem like it would ever go back to happily after.

  I heard footsteps coming my way. With a gulp, I tried to pull all that heartache back inside, but it was too late. I buried my head in my hands, not wanting to deal with Bosco’s cutting words.

  “Dori,” he said softly, sinking down beside me. “I was out of line. I apologize.”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak. My emotions were too close to the surface, too sharp to not wound me if I let go.

  “We’ll get through this,” he continued. “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”

  “But, Bosco,” I responded, “how do we explain the fact that you’re not moving into the house with me? Don’t you see how ridiculous it all sounds, that I gave up the house I’ve lived in for almost fifteen years because we want to give our marriage another go?”

  “We tell them there’s still too much of Kevin there,” Bosco replied. “Too many memories we can’t bear to face.”

  There was something in his voice that caught me unaware, something poignant and honest. I looked at him, in the faint glow from the open kitchen door. I could see the crow’s feet now etched at the corners of those eyes I had loved for so long, and I saw a glimmer of Bosco’s truth.

  “Is that how you really feel about this place?” I asked in the quiet of the night. I remembered the night several weeks after we buried our son. Bosco sat on the deck, overlooking the backyard, now empty of the soccer net that had been a fixture in the warmer months. He had packed up all of Kevin’s sports gear and donated it to a local kids charity a week after we left the emergency room without our son

  “We should move,” he insisted that night. “Make a fresh start.”

  “But this is our home,” I had told him at the time. “We belong here.”

  “Not any more,” was all he said. He raised the subject several more times before we finally separated. I had no intention of leaving the memories behind. And now, thanks to this mess, it looked as if I would have no choice. I heard Bosco let out a big sigh, before he cleared his throat.

  “For me, this place is a constant reminder of what we lost,” he said, his voice uneven. “When I look at the backyard, I can only think that Kevin will never grow up, never go to college or take a wife or have kids of his own. If I stayed here, it would have been the end of me.”

  “Oh.” There was a thick, sharp pain in my throat as I heard those words.

  “That’s not how you feel,” Bosco said matter-of-factly. I shook my head.

  “No. To me, this is where I still feel him, and I’m afraid that if I leave here, he’ll finally be gone from me.”

  “You’re holding onto the shadows, Dori, in the hope of finding sunlight someday. You can’t force the sun to shine.”

  “What does that mean? I’m wrong for missing my little boy? I’m wrong for wanting to believe in life?”

  “Maybe you wanted to believe George’s lies because you wanted to believe you could find happiness again. Maybe you didn’t look hard enough at what he really was because you didn’t think you would be able to continue with him if you saw what he really was. You can’t just go through the motions, pretending to be happy.”

  “So?” I sat up, offended at Bosco’s judgment. “I should spend the rest of my life being miserable because Kevin died and you left me?”

  “I didn’t leave you, Dori. And no, I don’t want you to be miserable without Kevin.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t leave me? You moved out!” Suddenly, my head was filled with a dark, whirring sound, and it dawned on me that I was hearing my ex-husband deny that he chose to end our marriage.

  “I told you it was too painful for me to live here.”

  “And I told you that it was too painful for me to leave.”

  “I did what I had to do to survive and it looks like you did the same. Only now we don’t really have a choice. This house is just about all you have left, Dori, and we need to protect it.”

  “Bosco, I don’t want to sell it. Whatever happens, I don’t want to do that.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said gently, kissing the top of my head. “I should head out.”

  “You have to go?” I kept my head nestled into his shoulder, not wanting to leave that little bit of comfort. “Can’t you stay? I’ll make up the bed in….”

  “No. You’re welcome to stay with me.” He cut me off, knowing that I would offer him Kevin’s room. “Why don’t you pack a few things? We’ll come back tomorrow for your clothes.”

  I was torn. A part of me wanted to stay, thinking that it might be the last time I ever slept in this house, but the rest of me wanted to be with Bosco tonight. At least I knew I could count on him not to rob me blind. If I stayed here, I would think about George and how he took everything from me.

  “Bosco, if he got a second mortgage on my house, how am I
ever going to pay that off? Especially since I didn’t marry him? Can the bank hold me responsible?”

  Chapter Four —

  “We’ll have to wait and see, babe. It depends on how vigorously they checked his story out, especially since you weren’t present when he applied for the second mortgage, and especially since you’re not married to the bastard.”

  “He got it online.”

  “He impersonated you?”

  “He forged the paperwork.”

  “How much did he get?” Bosco wanted to know.

  “Over two hundred thousand.”

  “Hmmph,” he grunted, lost in thought.

  “What do you think?” I was desperate for some little grain of hope.

  “What I think is you should go pack your suitcase.” He gave me a hand up and walked me back into the kitchen. “Rather dark out here. How long has the spotlight been out?”

  “A while,” I admitted.

  “George didn’t know how to change a damn bulb?” Bosco was annoyed. “I’ll get the ladder out and take care of it while I’m waiting for you. Boy, the guy really was a loser. Not even changing a light bulb….”

  I left him muttering to an imaginary audience about George’s many failings. In my bedroom, I took my overnight case, tucked in some slacks, dressy sandals, and a blouse for work tomorrow, threw on some jewelry, picked out underwear, and reached for my butterfly nightie. My hand paused, hovering above my lingerie drawer. I knew how much Bosco loved it and I didn’t want to torment him with empty promises. After all, we were still divorced, still divided. I settled on a pair of bright pink shortie pajamas, thinking that I hadn’t even worn them while I was with George. They were almost too safe, but tonight, I just needed to sleep. I took my toiletries case and loaded it up in the bathroom, grabbing my toothbrush, body lotion, shampoo, conditioner, and my moisturizer.

  “Almost done?” Bosco poked his head in. “We’re coming back tomorrow.”

  “I know. And yes, I’m ready.”

  We headed out to his car, a 2006 silver Taurus. He tucked my case in the back and slid into the driver’s seat beside me.