Stay At Home Dead
Page 21
She nodded, oceans of sweat cascading down her chubby face. “And there’s something else you should know.”
I watched the girls, red-faced and exhausted, sitting next to each other on the metal bleachers, sucking down juice boxes, munching on cookies, and swinging their legs back and forth.
There were worse ways to spend a Saturday.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Seventy-three thousand bucks,” Belinda said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
She shifted her enormous body from one tree stump of a leg to the other.
“Mo’s missing,” Belinda said. “And he took seventy-three thousand dollars with him.”
2
“All of the summer and fall registration fees,” Belinda said. “Gone.”
The girls were now chasing one another, the parents were chatting, and Belinda and I were sitting on the bottom of the bleachers.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “He just walked away with that much in cash?”
“The bank accounts are empty,” she said. “They were full on Tuesday. Before he disappeared.”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“And I could be a ballerina,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “It ain’t a coincidence, Deuce.”
No, it probably wasn’t a coincidence. She was right about that.
“Don’t you guys have some sort of control in place for that kind of thing?” I asked. “I mean, with the accounts. Multiple signatures or something like that?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Last year, when Mo was reelected, he demanded full oversight. The board didn’t like it, but he said he’d walk without it. So they gave it to him.”
“Why did he want it?”
“No clue.”
I spied Carly attaching herself to Julianne’s leg. She was crying. Carly, not Julianne. Crying had become common after soccer games, the result of too much sugar and some physical exertion. It was less about being upset with something and more about it being time just to get on home.
“I want to hire you, Deuce,” she said. “We want to hire you. The board. To find him and the money. You and that little dwarf, or whatever he is.”
A smile formed on my lips. I wished Victor was there to hear her description of him.
“I’ll need to talk to Victor,” I told her. “The little dwarf. To make sure he’s okay with it.”
“You two got so much work you’re turning away business?”
As a matter of fact, we did. Or rather, Victor did. Since our initial escapade, people had been seeking us out left and right. My agreement with Victor allowed me the flexibility to work only when I wanted to. Fortunately, he’d been more than capable of handling most of the work and I’d been left alone to play Mr. Mom to Carly.
“No,” I said, attempting to be diplomatic. “But we don’t take anything on unless both of us agree.”
She thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
Then her stomach growled.
“There’s one other thing,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“We can’t pay you.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That’s gonna be a problem, Belinda. The little dwarf likes money. He tends to not work without it.”
“I mean, we can’t pay you up front,” she clarified. “Everything we got, he took. You find him and the money, we’ll pay you whatever we owe you.”
I knew Victor was going to have a coronary over that.
“I’ll talk to Victor and see what I can do,” I said, standing.
She pushed her girth up off the bleachers, wobbled for a minute, then steadied herself. She wiped a massive hand across her wet brow.
“Well, I hope you can do something, Deuce,” she said, a sour expression settling on her face. “Because that money? That’s all we got. It doesn’t come back, soccer don’t come back.”
“Really?”
“We are totally fee driven. Nothing in reserve. So unless you wanna foot the bill for uniforms and trophies and field space and insurance, and who the heck knows what else, we need that money.”
I glanced over at the remaining girls. Carly had detached herself from Julianne and was now playing some bastardized version of tag. They weren’t good at soccer, but I regularly espoused the virtues of team sports at a young age. They weren’t winning games, but I believed they were getting something out of playing.
“Why would he take the money, Belinda?” I asked.
“I got no idea,” she said, shaking her head. “I really don’t, Deuce. But we gotta have the money back. Now him?” She waved a hand in the air. “I couldn’t care less whether that weasel comes back.”
“Weasel?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know him all that well, do you?”
I shrugged. I knew him from around town and from soccer meetings. A little pompous, but other than that, I didn’t think much at all about him.
“No,” I admitted. “I guess not.”
“Weasel,” she said. “Pure weasel.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because that’s the way the good Lord made him,” she said, frowning. “Or Satan. Whichever.”
“So you aren’t surprised he took the money, then?” I asked.
“I’m a little surprised,” she said. “Because I didn’t think even he’d pull something like this. But you know what’s more surprising?”
I looked past her. Julianne now had Carly in her arms and was waving at me. I was ready to go home and be objectified.
“Uh, no. What’s more surprising?”
She hiked up her ill-f itting shorts and looked me dead in the eye.
“That no one’s killed that weasel yet.”
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Copyright © 2012 by Jeff Shelby
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