Ninja Soccer Moms

by Jennifer Apodaca

  “Got it!” Grandpa said. “All I need now is the account number.”

  Janie pointed to the account number she’d written down on the pad of paper and Grandpa typed it in.

  We all waited, leaning forward to watch the screen. The account popped open.

  “Well lookie here,” Grandpa said.

  We all stared at the balance for the SCOLE account.

  Janie grabbed the calculator and did the math. Then she looked up at me. “There’s sixteen thousand dollars missing!”

  3

  Dang, I was getting pretty good at this PI stuff. “Janie, I think we have him.” We had proof that sixteen thousand dollars was missing from the SCOLE account, and Chad was the only one with access to that account.

  Janie kept staring at the computer. She shook her head. “He was sure no one would check. Sure that he’d get away with it.”

  I looked down at her. Janie had reason to be bitter. While we had both been soccer moms, the difference between us was that Janie truly liked what she was doing. She enjoyed the organizing behind the scenes.

  I hid there from a bad marriage. Somehow I thought I could make up to my sons for a dad that was never around by being a supermom.

  Once I faced up to reality, I had fled the soccer-mom life without a look back. But for Janie, having that life ripped away from her had really hurt her. I knew how much of the real work Janie did behind the scenes, and when she was thrown out of soccer, Chad had simply found others to do the work and still make him look good. Then he stole money. And no one knew, or if they knew, they didn’t care just as long as he kept bringing home the championships.

  “Sam,” Grandpa broke in, “you can’t exactly walk into the police station with your stolen disk and hacked-in bank account.”

  “We could take it to the newspapers,” Janie suggested.

  We wouldn’t have to tell them where we got the information. Still, I made a face at the idea of going to the papers. So far, my experience with the press hadn’t been real encouraging. But I did know a certain cop I could probably take this to. He would get the right people on it. “I have an idea.”

  Grandpa picked the papers he had printed out of the tray and looked at me. “Vance?”

  I smiled. Detective Logan Vance and I had a past. We tangled over another murder in town, but once I discovered Vance’s secret life, which he didn’t want any of his fellow cops to know about, I managed to get more cooperation from him. Vance didn’t exactly like me, but he would listen.

  Or shoot me.

  But I was betting I could get him to listen and get an investigation started on Chad. “I’ll stop by the station tomorrow morning and talk to him. I’ll tell him that a client of mine has information that Chad Tuggle is embezzling from SCOLE.”

  “Really?” Janie brushed her hair off her face, her hazel eyes brightening with hope.

  Nodding, I said, “I’ll call Gabe and clear it with him tonight. Then after I see Vance in the morning, I’ll call you, Janie. All right?”

  “Thank you, Sam. Thank you for believing me.” Janie stood, her face shifting into seriousness. “And Sam, be careful. Stay away from Chad, all right?”

  A warning tickled the back of my throat and skittered down my spine. Gabe had warned me to be careful, too. But I knew Chad. I looked out the sliding glass door to where the boys were playing with Ali, then back to Janie. “Do you think Chad’s dangerous?”

  She took a breath. “Probably not. But he’s just so sure he can do anything and get away with it.”

  Fair enough. I nodded and walked Janie to her car. When I came back inside, the kids were coming in the sliding glass door from the backyard.

  “Mom, what was Janie doing here?” Joel bounced in with the gawky energy of twelve-year-olds who were all arms and legs.

  TJ strolled in with Ali. “I told you, Mom’s on a case.” At fourteen, TJ pretty much knew everything. Then his handsome face tightened. “Ugh, Janie wasn’t here for your dating service, was she?”

  “Dating services are for losers,” Joel announced. “Being a PI is much better. Gabe is mega cool.”

  Speaking of Gabe, I headed for the phone to call him about Janie’s case. “TJ, what makes you think I’m on a case?”

  TJ leaned his tall, slender frame back against the counter. “ ’Cause you were all huddled with Grandpa on the computer.”

  I smiled at my smart son. “Pretty observant, TJ.” Picking up the phone to call Gabe, I spotted Ali with her slim German shepherd nose pressed into the seam of the refrigerator.

  “Some guard dog you are, you big lush.” Gabe had brought Ali to us when we were being threatened a while back. Turns out she’d been tossed out of the police dog program for stealing beer. She’d also saved my life more than once. We all adored her.

  Ali barked.

  “Later, Ali.” I dialed Gabe’s number while trying to think up something resembling dinner in my mind. “How about grilled cheese for dinner?”

  Joel looked up from the bag of potato chips he had his hand in. “With fried potatoes? The kind Grandpa makes?”

  Grandpa shut down his computer. “Joel, you wash the potatoes and I’ll slice them.”

  Gabe’s phone rang four times in my ear, and then the answering machine picked up. I wondered where he was. “Hey, it’s me,” I said into his machine. Then I did a quick outline of finding the money missing from the soccer account and told him I was going to see Vance in the morning to get an investigation started. Hanging up, I stared at the phone for a minute. Had he taken his mother somewhere?

  And what did his mother think of me?

  The morning brought rain. Fat drops beat down on the windshield of my T-bird as I headed to the sheriff’s station on my way to work. Gabe hadn’t called me back last night, which probably meant he was okay with what I was doing.

  At least, that was the theory I was going with this morning.

  To the beat of the rain, I planned what I’d say to Detective Vance. Something like, I have a client with direct knowledge of Chad Tuggle embezzling from SCOLE. Yeah, that sounded . . . I snapped my head around to look through the rain at the doughnut shop on the edge of the Stater Bros. shopping center.

  There was a green Ford Taurus covered in antennas. Detective Vance’s car.

  I pulled the T-bird into the double-yellow center divider and put my left blinker on. Vance was at the doughnut shop. This would be so much easier than trying to get him at the sheriff’s station. When the traffic cleared, I turned in and parked my car next to the green Taurus.

  I got out, pulled the hood of my long black raincoat up, and dashed for the door. Inside the doughnut shop was warm and yeasty.

  Vance sat at the four-topped table made with twin rectangles hooked together and four chairs set into the unit. He had his little red notebook in front of him and a tired frown on his face.

  When he looked up and saw me, his frown deepened. “Shaw. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.”

  Not exactly the opening I was hoping for. “Morning, Vance. What are you doing here?” He had a large coffee but no doughnuts.

  “It’s a doughnut shop, I’m a cop. Where else would I be?”

  Slipping off my raincoat, I made a face at him. “Get up on the wrong side of the bed, Vance?” Without an invitation, I tossed my coat on the chair closest to the window overlooking the street and sat down across from him. The smell of all those lovely doughnuts made my mouth water. I detected the scent of chocolate swirling above the yeast smell. What could one little chocolate buttermilk doughnut hurt? I looked down. I had on low-cut jeans and a tight red top with gathers at the bust line. One doughnut and I’d have a roll over the top of my jeans. Damn.

  Vance snapped his notebook shut, picked up his coffee, and leaned back in the seat to study me.

  I tried not to squirm and studied Vance right back. His sun-god looks were a little wilted. His close-cut sandy blond hair lay flat. No dimples decorated his square face, and his swimmer shoulders
were slumped as if he were tired. I thought about asking him if he were all right, then decided to just get it over with. “I have something to ask you.”

  “Really?” He pulled the lid off his coffee and drank a good quarter of the large cup.

  “I have this client.”

  His gaze met mine over the rim of his cup. “A dating service client?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, eyeing his coffee and thinking I should get some. “Anyway, she has information on her ex-husband. We know it’s true, but we don’t have any evidence. I need you to start an investigation.”

  “You working for the sheriff’s office now? Giving orders?”

  Lord, he was in a bad mood. “Look, Vance, this is serious. This guy has been embezzling money from the Soccer Club of Lake Elsinore. It’s called SCOLE for short. That means he’s stealing money from all the parents who pay fees for their kids to play. It’s not right.”

  Vance snapped forward in his chair and thumped his coffee down. “That right? And who is this client of yours?”

  “Uh, that’s confidential. Will you look into this for me?”

  His light brown eyes sharpened, ripping away the tired look. “What’s the name of this ex-husband?”

  Suddenly I had a bad feeling. A really bad feeling. My stomach got a hot pain, like a stone from a fire pit fell in there. Sweat prickled my back and underarms. Vance wasn’t reacting like I expected. He was a robbery /homicide detective. I’d thought for sure he’d tell me to file a report or something. I hadn’t even used my knowledge of his secret life to pressure him. “Vance, what’s going on?”

  “Shaw, what’s the name of the ex-husband embezzling money?”

  I knew I’d stepped in it. Somehow, I was in over my head. “Uh, it’s Chad Tuggle. He’s the head coach for SCOLE. He’s sort of a hero in town.” I stopped talking. Vance’s face hardened.

  “Well, now he’s sort of dead.”

  “Dead?” The hot stone rolled in my gut, churning the cup of coffee and yogurt I’d had for breakfast. “But he can’t be dead, I just . . .” Shut up! I screamed in my head.

  “You just what?” He lowered his voice to a seductively smooth coaxing tone.

  I’d just walked into a disaster, that’s what I’d done. Damn. “Uh, look, you’re obviously having a bad morning. Look at you,” I stood up, “you’re tired. Probably you were up all night with this—” My words froze when Vance grabbed my wrist.

  “Sit. Down.”

  I sat. My brain wasn’t working properly, so obeying was easier than arguing.

  “I want to know everything. I’ve already talked to Dara, and she told me all about your spat with Chad. Were you and Chad dating?”

  “What? You know better than that. I’m dating Gabe.”

  “Then why were you in Chad’s office yesterday morning?” Vance pulled out a Bic pen and flipped open his notebook. “Start from the beginning.”

  I couldn’t even grasp Chad being dead. Blinking, I tried to think. Dead. And Vance is a homicide cop. “Chad was murdered? Where?” Suddenly, the doughnut shop heated, and I had trouble taking a full breath. Tiny black spots danced in front of my eyes. Chad’s office was a diagonal line across the parking lot. Vance was here. “Oh, Lord.” I leaned forward, putting my hands flat on the cool, smooth surface of the table. “Was he murdered in his office?”

  “Hmm, you seem to have a lot of knowledge for not even knowing he was dead.” He wrote in the notebook.

  “Stop it!” The words echoed in the shop. There were no other customers, but the little TV the owners watched in the back went silent. Great, my trauma was better than what was on TV.

  And what about Chad? Yeah, sure, he wasn’t a shining example of manhood, but dead? He didn’t deserve to be dead.

  “So Janie Tuggle came to you about her ex-husband. Why? She had evidence that Chad was stealing from SCOLE? Or just suspicions? Is that why you went to his office yesterday?”

  God, what did I do? “I, uh, have you told Janie yet?”

  “She’s next.” For a second, Vance’s eyes lost focus and drifted out the window.

  The dutiful, factual Vance was stalling. Any other time, I’d call him on it. But not for this. I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to tell Janie her ex-husband was dead. And the kids! Mark and Kelly would be devastated. “Wait,” I had another thought. “You said Dara already told you I saw Chad yesterday. So you notified his girlfriend, but not his ex-wife and kids?”

  Vance pulled his lips thin. “She found him, Shaw. Last night around ten. He wasn’t at home, so Dara went by work and found him.” His whole face grimaced. “It wasn’t pretty.”

  I closed my eyes. “How?”

  “Looks like he had his head bashed in with something heavy.”

  I couldn’t answer. Instead I concentrated on breathing and trying to still the nausea. “I’ll go with you to tell Janie.”

  “First, you tell me what you were doing in Chad’s office yesterday. I want all of it.”

  The way this worked, whenever I did a little investigation, it was under Gabe’s license, so technically, Janie was a client of Pulizzi’s Security and Investigations. There were rules and confidentiality stuff. “Tell you what, let me follow you to Janie’s and I’ll explain it there.” Which would give me a chance to call Gabe on my cell from the car.

  “No. Now.” He stared at me.

  With no way out, I told him part of the truth. I could fill in the rest later. “I went there to talk about insurance and we got to talking about bookkeeping software. Chad showed me his software for his insurance agency.”

  “Go on.” He lifted his gaze from his notebook and waved his hand at me.

  “That’s it, really.”

  “Not what Dara says, Shaw.”

  The vision of Dara walking in right after I’d been caught in the paper shredder, then zapped Chad with the whipped cream, slammed into my head. This was not a good thing. “My blouse got caught in Chad’s paper shredder while Chad was in the little kitchen making me hot chocolate. He ran out holding the whipped cream. He helped me get out of the machine and he got the impression that I was . . . available. I sprayed him with whipped cream.”

  Vance stared into my eyes, then slowly lowered his gaze. “Well, I wonder how he got that impression.”

  I wished I’d left my raincoat on. My red blouse was pretty low cut. Even tired, Vance looked good. His shimmery gray dress shirt was rolled up over his tanned forearms, but that made him look boat-casual, not cheesy or sloppy. I wondered if Vance thought he was better than I was. I lifted my chin. “He never tried that stuff when I was a soccer mom for his teams. Men are dogs. Just because I’ve updated my look doesn’t mean I want every mouth-breathing male groping me.”

  “Maybe you weren’t advertising the goods then, Shaw.”

  God, why did men think it was all about them? I changed the subject. “Are we done?”

  “I couldn’t get that lucky. Now tell me what you going to Chad’s office has to do with Janie coming to you about Chad embezzling? What information does Janie have exactly?”

  “Janie didn’t have any evidence. Just that Chad had money to do things for the kids, but hadn’t even paid her off for the house yet after the divorce. Janie lives in a trailer. It was just conjecture and I was going to check into it for her. I went to Chad’s office to sort of re-establish contact with him.”

  “So you really didn’t want insurance?”

  I stared at his coffee. “Can’t afford it.”

  “Fine,” he snapped the notebook shut. “Let’s go get this over with.” He stood up.

  I looked at him, surprised. “You believe me?”

  He looked down at me. “Not a chance.”

  While Vance explained to Janie the procedure of holding Chad’s body until they had all the evidence they needed, I held Janie’s hand and focused on the small living room of her mobile home. The gold carpet and fake wood paneling faded into the background with bright floral throw pillows, baskets of silk f
lowers, and a couple of pretty blanket throws. The old nineteen-inch TV set had framed pictures of the kids on top. Janie had painted a cheap wicker hope chest a clean white with green scalloped trim, then topped it with scented candles and books to use as a coffee table. I admired Janie’s talent of making the run-down mobile home feel cozy and inviting.

  Vance’s voice cut through my thoughts. “I have a few standard questions.”

  I looked at Vance sitting across from Janie and me in a white wicker chair with a cushion that matched the green couch. His tone hardened just enough to put me on guard.

  He asked Janie, “When was the last time you saw Chad?”

  “I guess that’d be when he dropped Mark and Kelly off Sunday morning.”

  “Okay, today is Thursday, so that’s four days ago.” He made a note. “Do you know of anyone Chad might have had problems with? Anyone who might harm him?”

  Silence.

  I looked at Janie.

  She shook her head. “You mean someone who would kill Chad? No. Sure, there were rivalries with other cities over the soccer championship and stuff. But no one would kill him.”

  “Mrs. Tuggle, how long have you and your ex-husband been divorced?” Vance shifted his gaze around the mobile home. “I mean, it must be pretty hard for you now, trying to make it.”

  I snapped my head up. What the hell was Vance doing?

  Janie answered in a soft voice. “We’ve been divorced about a year.”

  Vance wrote something in his notebook then looked up. “Now about paperwork . . . Do you know if Chad had life insurance or that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  I was surprised at that. Since Chad had let the health insurance on the kids lapse, it seemed odd that he would keep paying on life insurance.

  “Right. So do you know who the beneficiary of his life insurance policy is?”

  Uh-oh. I didn’t like where these questions were going.

  “I am the beneficiary, Detective, since the kids are minors. We’ve had the policy for years.”

  “I see. And Chad kept paying the premiums after the divorce?”