Belinda looked at her broken front door and then over at the duffel bag.
“Fine,” she said. “But if you’re going to drink, you’re going to do it right.”
She strode to the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink. She grabbed a full three litre jug labelled vinegar and pounded it down in front of Bev.
“You want me to drink vinegar and weird vinegar at that? What is it; apple cider vinegar?”
“It’s whiskey. I just keep it in the jug, so I don’t get tempted.”
“But why keep it at all? I mean, I’m seriously grateful and would be even more grateful if you could get me a glass; but why keep booze in your house?”
Her older sister looked embarrassed. “It’s just a thing I need to do. I look at that jug everyday and say ‘no’ and then shut the cupboard door.” She handed her sister a glass.
Bev filled the glass up halfway and looked at the drink.
“Yes,” she said and downed the entire drink.
Chapter Eight
“Thanks for your offer, Don, but I just can’t take on anymore work.”
“Look Helen, I always appreciate the effort you go to on my behalf, and I think I’ve shown that financially by the way of bonuses on several occasions. Your reluctance over this request is quite surprising. Are you, in a round about way, asking for more money?”
“No Don, nothing like that. It’s a staffing issue.”
“Heah; I thought your boys were hungry? Come on Helen, what’s going on? I thought we were pals. Don’t tell me you’re working for my competition!”
Helen lit another cigarette. She did not want to get on Don’s bad side.
“Look, my number one guy, Serafino, got himself killed up in Seattle. I’ve got Schluter and Vazi in my state, but they’re stuck in LA trying to get access to a witness. That only leaves me Tony, and he is far too green to persuade one of your gamblers to pay up. Like I said, staffing issues.”
“Man, sorry to hear about Serafino. I’ll have to send Carmen a card. So the boys are in LA. Is it for that Senator bribery thing; the one with the talkative escort?”
“Yeah, yeah. You think a politician would know better than to pillow talk about who he bribed, who he killed, yada yada; but at least he has a lot of money to throw at the resolution to the problem.”
There was silence as Don contemplated his next move.
“What about you Helen? I know you haven’t been hands on for a number of years, but this is a big one. The guy is into us for nearly half a million.”
“Damn Don. How did that happen?”
“He’s a counter, Helen. We didn’t twig onto him for months. Different disguises. Really good ones too. Actually, it was a woman disguised as a man. Something else we didn’t catch until recently either.”
Helen thought about it. She could rough up a woman and make a nice commission in the process.
“A woman? How did you find out?” she asked.
“She started drinking and propositioned the waiter. He accepted and they went to her room and man, was he surprised that she was not the man he expected her to be; if that makes sense. Unfortunately, the waiter did not come forward with this information for a few days. You know Helen, we drill it into our people if you come across anybody at the tables attempting to conceal their identity; even if they’re not winning big, report it to security. Needless to say, once we got all the information we could out of the waiter, we handled him locally.
“We also reviewed the video from the pit and noticed she only played for thirty minutes tops then went back to her room. Of course, she won quickly and won big. I started to wonder, has she been in my establishments before? Because she had an excellent disguise; she looked like a mini Jake Gyllenhaal, I thought that was a lot of effort for just the one night of gambling.”
Although she was listening, Helen was wondering if Don Baum was losing it. In the olden days a card counter would have been spotted quickly regardless if they were wearing a disguise or not. Mind you, Don had a lot of casinos; some legal, most not.
Don continued, “Initially, we went back six months and made a list of all men who had stayed in my hotels for one night. We then looked at the footage outside their hotel room door and eliminated all the men that didn’t fit the general physical description.
“It was tough slogging, Helen. Even narrowing down the parameters left me with hundreds of possibilities. I nearly gave up, so I reviewed the tape from the night of the waiter incident yet again. This time, I noticed a few things; one, she always kept time to the music with her left hand and two, she was sitting at the seventh spot on the right at the seventh blackjack table. Knowing that gamblers are a superstitious bunch, I made some assumptions.
“When I went back through the tapes in the different casinos, I looked for a small male gambler who won quickly, won big, tapped in time to the music and sat at the seventh spot at the seventh table.”
Helen was tired. She wanted to shout get on with it; but Don ‘the bomb’ had thrown a lot of subcontracting work her way and this promised to be a well-paying job. She lit another cigarette and settled in.
“I found him; I mean her. I found her over two dozen times in the past five years. Even though she usually rented a room for the night, her identification documents were first rate forgeries. When we tabulated her winnings if was just shy of five hundred grand. So you can see my motivation to find this woman and have her return my money.”
“Okay Don, I’ll do it. Now, when did she leave Reno, and do you know for sure she’s headed my way?”
“I’m not sure exactly when she left but she checked out of one of my hotels about two weeks ago.”
“She’s got a two-week head start?” Helen groaned. “And the reason you think she’s headed to Eureka? My Eureka, not yours?”
“The only thing the waiter told us of value; she said, “I’m getting out of this zoo and heading to my own; the oldest zoo in California!”
“That’s my Eureka for sure. Anything else? I mean, I’ve got nothing to go on other than a small women who can count cards. Don, honestly, I would have known about her if she gambled locally disguised or not. We don’t have much in the way of gambling establishments here that I don’t know about.”
“There was one other thing everyone agreed upon; that is, everyone who was around her the night she got drunk,” Don said.
“Yes?”
“She could sing really well.”
***
He had a very simple plan “A”. He would drive to Eureka, look up all the pubs that hosted karaoke, then visit them until he found Miss Beverly Nichols. If this plan was not successful, then he would spend the rest of the evening visiting cemeteries.
“Perhaps I should be switching Plan A with Plan B?” Sean asked himself as he drove. Sean was enjoying himself. He missed the smell of the ocean, but the inland portion of the drive had it’s own kind of beauty. He was entering a National Forest and it was spectacular.
“Miss Beverly Nichols,” he rehearsed, “You are in serious trouble. The FBI are tracking you down like a dog with a bone for mail fraud, murder and kidnapping. With such serious charges as these, you should come with me to Los Angeles and visit my cousin Surinder. He is a number one criminal lawyer.”
This was the part where Sean was conflicted. He happened to be liking Miss Beverly Nichols just as he would his own sister. But he also wanted to turn her in for a reward. His Grandmother deserved a computer after all.
***
“I didn’t mean to freak you out, Jamal. I just thought it was a situational romance. You know, like what happens in Seattle, stays in Seattle?”
Jamal had pulled over to the side of the road and was busy inspecting his fingernails. He had never been in this position before. It was embarrassing. He had always been able to maintain an emotional distance from his coworkers. In particular the women he worked with, who were usually his conquests. The office ‘romance’ would end when Jamal got bored; they would transfer out
, someone new would transfer in and the cycle would repeat itself.
Hailey had gotten under his skin and now she was telling him it was just temporary? That was hurtful. The more she talked; the worse Jamal felt.
“Surely you’ve had one or two short office romances? I saw the way you were flirting with Lisa. That ended abruptly.”
“It wasn’t a thing,” Jamal whined. This was the first time he had been dumped. It felt horrible. Suddenly Jamal was rocked with a thought. Is this the way those women felt after I dumped them? He felt a few tears roll down his cheeks.
“Oh good lord,” Hailey said as she pressed her fingers to her forehead and shook her head.
***
“If I was on a teeter totter, I’d probably slide off it like an otter! I’d land on the ground on my cute little fanny and how you figured out where I worked is quite uncanny!”
In spite of herself, Belinda was enjoying drunk Bev who had woken up and was drinking again. And singing crazy songs she kept making up.
Belinda told her sister, “I took your phone, looked under your contacts and found the one that said work. I then used the reverse directory. Simple.”
“You know who will be bankrupt soon, will be this considerate company, because I only worked not even a month and they gave me all their money. Plus probably other people’s too,” Bev sang.
“You didn’t rhyme. Why?”
Bev scratched her nose. “Have you ever noticed how drinking makes your nose itchy? No? Well, Gary told me that his palms were itchy, so he knew he was going to come into money. That’s how he met Helen he said. Right here in little ole Eureka!”
Belinda was making notes. The drunker Bev got, the more she rambled on.
As of yet, none of her ramblings involved a dead guy, but she was at least mentioning money now.
Through her on-line research, Belinda had discovered that Bev worked for the collection agency for one month and had been fired Wednesday for showing up drunk with the wrong vehicle. The woman Belinda talked to in Seattle could not figure out how Bev ‘repossessed’ a Hyundai Elantra instead of a Dodge one-ton truck.
“In her defence,” the Bailiff said, “They were both white.”
Bev seemed to be finished with the singing and rambling and had now descended into self pity.
“You know Bell, I always lose everything. Everything I care about is gone. My home…”
Belinda was trying to concentrate on the computer. “Bev, you have lived in a series of motels since you were fifteen. What home did you lose?”
“The one I wanted!” Bev cried. “It was so cool. It had a great big metal sculpture of a crab outside it and stars on the ceiling.”
“That was the planetarium in Vancouver British Columbia. Grandma and Grandpa took us there when we were eight.”
Bev sighed dramatically. “You know what I mean. Boyfriends faded away like mists in a beautiful dream. I miss Gary the most. He was perfect.”
Her older Sister frowned. “Who is this Gary? Where does he live?”
Surprisingly Bev gave her a truthful answer. “Gary Chorney; he’s a dreamboat. I met him at the Tipsy Leprechaun in Seattle. You should really go there, Bell, their hot wings are hot! Like seriously spicy.”
“Get back to Gary.”
“He can sing! We were a hit and won the karaoke contest. I’ve got a coupon for a free appetizer on ladies night. Seriously Belinda, we should go.”
“Definitely Bev, I so want to drive ten hours one way for free hot wings.”
“I know! Right?” Bev was happy again now that she was thinking about Gary; Gary of the blue eyes and lean frame. “He gave me that flamingo that I put in Angel’s birdcage. Such a nice man.”
Belinda looked over at the cage and saw the flamingo toy. She was going to go get it, but her computer search yielded an entry for Gary Chorney, Senior Loss Prevention Officer, Mansion Decorating Discounts. That company name was familiar. Belinda checked another window on her screen. Sure enough, Vincent Millar was the owner of Mansion Decorating Discounts.
Belinda searched through Bev’s mail and found the flyer that had Suzanne Turcotte written on one side and turned it over to read Bev’s note. It read, “This is all so phony.”
Originally Belinda disregarded the note as just an observation that Bev had scrawled regarding the contest or her life in general, but now Belinda gave it some serious consideration. This Suzanne woman was the personal assistant to the owner of the big box store and the current love of Bev’s life was the loss prevention officer. The guy responsible to stop stealing.
What did all this have to do with a charity? Could the charity be phony?
“Say Bev…Bev, don’t fall asleep on me now. Where did you get this flyer?”
“Suzanne gave it to me just before I kidnapped her.”
“Wake up! What do you mean you kidnapped her?”
Bev said sleepily, “With my handcuffs. I handcuffed her to a pipe, but I had to get some makeup at your house. She had to look all beat up to get the ransom from her boss.”
Bev opened both eyes and looked around the living room, but she wasn’t really seeing anything. “My life is a series of losses,” she said dramatically as she returned to her earlier theme. “I lose everything. I lost my handcuffs and I lost my noodles when that guy broke into my car. I just can’t catch a break. Maybe I’ll go see Belinda and she can help me. She’s got her life together.”
Belinda shook Bev by the shoulder, but she was passed out.
“I am Belinda you idiot. Your older sister by nine minutes. And I seriously do not have my life together. I may be sober, but I have my vices that may be catching up to me sooner than later.”
Outside, a large panelled truck pulled up in front of Belinda’s townhouse.
***
Friday afternoon, Carmen broke the sad news to her children. Eight-year-old Nella shrugged. “So Father’s dead. So instead of seeing him once in a blue moon, now we won’t see him forever. Big deal.”
She spun on her sparkly sneakers and walked away from her mother.
Carmen whispered to herself, “I can’t even…” and marched to the fireplace mantle for validation that they had been a family. Lined up chronologically were the family photos. As Carmen looked at them, she realized that Serafino had just been making memories for the camera; not for the family. These photos documented his rare appearances at family events. Sure, they looked happy, but the reality was that all her children had the same cavalier reaction.
Her older boys, Aldo and Santo had taken the news of their Dad’s death with a shrug. Carmen’s third child, Tulio, turned to them and said, “Like we didn’t see that coming” and his older brothers paused their video game and high-fived Tulio. Soon Carmen could hear the pew pew pew of the video game.
She needed to leave their house.
“Thanks for fitting me in,” she said Luna about twenty minutes later. “I talked to the priest; the funeral will be next Saturday so I think a mini-facial would be fine.” Carmen looked at her nails. “Steely gray for the nails? What do you think?”
The Esthetician could barely process the news of Serafino’s death. She kept up a good patter with Carmen but inside, Luna was deeply disappointed. She had taken many notes on Carmen’s previous visit and really thought she could land herself a better paying job through blackmail. When Carmen finally took a breath, Luna asked her, “What about your late husband’s business enterprises? Will you be able to take care of the kids without his income?”
Carmen laughed. “And then some! Honey I’ll be heading the family business now. In fact, I’m looking for an employee. Someone who can keep their mouth shut. Are you interested?”
“Would I have to beat somebody up?”
“This is a different business enterprise. All cash. Actually, lots and lots of cash. We have so much of it, we’re practically stuffing it in our pillows. Besides counting, I need someone to open bank accounts and make deposits under the ten-thousand-dollar limit. You in?”
Luna didn’t care what Carmen was paying; Luna could easily augment her wage. In another life, she had assisted a magician and learned quite a few of his sleight of hand card tricks.
“Yes, I’d be happy to lend you a hand. When would you like me to start?”
“How about tonight; you can meet my husband’s cousin Tony. He’s a really nice guy, but not the brightest crayon in the box, if you know what I mean.”
Wonderful, thought Luna, another opportunity to defraud Carmen.
She smiled at her client and soon to be employer.
“Let’s just freshen up your hair color as well, shall we? You do want to be known as the smoking hot widow, don’t you?”
Chapter Nine
The phone rang.
“Hello?” she said tentatively.
“Is this Suzanne Turcotte?”
“Yes. Who is this, please?”
“This is Hailey Peterson. I’m a special agent with the FBI. Where are you?”
“I can’t really talk right now.” Suzanne lowered her voice to a whisper, “Call me back later. I have to go.”
Suzanne disconnected and threw her phone across the floor.
“Oh my god, the FBI! What have I done?”
For the past two weeks she had felt like she was in a dream. If she wasn’t at home eating pizza, she was handcuffed to a pipe singing opera. The acoustics were amazing.
But now she was rudely awakened to the severity of her situation. How did the FBI get involved? She specifically told Vincent not to contact the police or anyone else. What was she supposed to do now? Her flight or fight response had kicked in. She chose flight.
Damn that redhead.
***
“She hung up on me; can you believe it?” Hailey asked Jamal.
They were finally back in Eureka. Even though they were off duty, Hailey wanted to go to the office to review the latest reports. She was exhausted though; Jamal had pouted and whined the whole way home.
“Well maybe the kidnapper was coming back into the room,” Jamal suggested.
Eating Cupcakes in a Cemetery Page 7