Her mind was still working to process what was happening, but fear had kicked in and adrenaline production had doubled. She scrambled to her feet and shook off Birdie’s grip.
“GO! GO! I GOT IT!”
Disappearing down the hatch, the two could see the bedroom was already filling with smoke. The house was a dried out tinderbox just waiting for the spark that would release it from existence. Sam was first into the hallway just as the creaking plaster overhead gave way to a flaming ball of debris in front of them. The fire had made quick work of the ceiling and it was beginning to collapse around them. Birdie slammed into Sam’s back as she rushed into the hallway through the smoke and blazing shrapnel. She pulled Sam back into the bedroom by the back of her shirt and slammed the door. Sam tightened her grip on the book and ran to the closest window, trying to pry it open. Birdie took the other window just as they realized they had long since been painted shut.
“DAMNDAMNDAMN!”
Sam began pacing back and forth muttering to herself, not sure what to do next. The ceiling was hidden behind a blanket of smoke almost a foot thick and black circles were beginning to form where the fire might break through at any minute. The two were choking on the thin air and soot that had eaten the oxygen from the room. Sam could tell her thought process had slowed and she was getting tired in spite of the adrenalin rush.
Birdie had been tearing around the room and finally picked up an occasional chair from the corner, launching it full force at one window. The chair bounced off the glass and landed awkwardly on the floor, losing part of a leg. Face tight with fear and determination, Birdie picked up the chair and swung it again, this time connecting with the sweet spot. The window gave way in jagged pieces falling away from the smoke that was now pouring through the break.
Birdie stuck her head through the serrated hole and gulped deep breaths of fresh air. Sam, still clutching the book for dear life had slid down a wall to the right of Birdie and was rubbing her eyes with the back of her wrist. Her contacts weren’t going to forgive her for this assault. Picking up the broken chair leg, Birdie brandished it like a sword and began trying to stab the glass teeth still standing between the burning house and freedom. Her hand slipped and a red gash on the inside of her forearm yawned open.
“FACK!” Birdie bit back her pain and held her arm in front of her with her free hand. “Gimme the pillowcase, Sam!”
Shocked by the sight of blood, Sam crawled toward the bed and pulled one of the pillows to the floor. Book in one hand, she tried shaking the pillow free from its case with the other.
“TWO HANDS SAM!”
She dropped the book and wrestled the case from its stuffing. She threw the cloth to Birdie just as the ceiling next to the door gave way.
Birdie snatched the pillowcase and quickly wrapped her arm, tucking the loose ends back under themselves. Hoping it would hold until she got back to the loft and was able to properly triage herself. Growing up with six brothers, she was no stranger to cuts and bruises.
Sam grabbed the book and stared at the fire as it spread into the room. Hungry for the air flowing in through the window, it stretched long fingers towards the girls.
Birdie snatched a vase from the bureau and unceremoniously dumped dead flowers and stale water on the floor. In Sam’s frightened state, her OCD was running wild. She couldn’t help but cringe at the thought of the water damaging Lena’s hardwoods. She snapped back to reality and watched as Birdie shoved her hand inside the blue ceramic vase.
Using the vessel like a glove, she ran its hard surface around the shark’s mouth of glass protruding inward from the window frame. Three quick passes cleared sufficient glass to allow for an exit. She dropped the vase to the floor. In a single fluid motion Birdie pulled the quilt from Lena’s bed and draped it out the window.
Both arms still clamped around the book, Sam headed toward the window and freedom. Birdie spun around and grabbed Sam. Taking the book from her, she threw it outside onto the grass. Immediately, she pushed Sam through the window. Landing with a thud, Sam looked up in time to see Birdie come through headfirst after her, with the fire burning brightly in the bedroom behind.
Sam rolled and began trying to find the book through her swollen, watery eyes. It had fallen open a few feet from the window and folded pages were blowing across the yard in a slow tumble. Disoriented, Sam climbed to her feet and began snatching up papers in a crouched run. Birdie grabbed the book and began scooped up sheets like scattered trash, crumpling them in her hand as she went.
Still dazed, Sam was pulled into a run by Birdie’s tight grip. The two crossed the grass and ducked through the hedges at the back of the property. Making their way through neighboring yards, they ran to the adjacent block, where the car was parked. A crowd was starting to gather in front of Lena’s small cottage. From the safety of the car, the two could hear the crash of the roof as it caved in. Flames leapt above the treetops as the whine of emergency vehicle sirens approached.
CHAPTER 27
“You burned her house down?” Grace was agog.
“Yup. It was old anyway.” Birdie stirred her tea, staring into its depths.
“So, you’re wanted for arson now? I thought we were drawing the line at unlawful entry.” Mary Jane’s eyes darted between Sam and Birdie.
Sam busied herself arranging and rearranging silverware, “It was an accident. We found the papers and somehow the candle got knocked over. Turns out, Lena’s house didn’t have much asbestos.”
Mary Jane sat back against the booth’s padded vinyl and looked up at the pendulum light over the table. “What the hell are we gonna do now? Did anyone see you?”
Tanya appeared with her usual armload of goodies and began passing out plates of the smoky-sweet breakfast feast.
“Ok, what’s up? Ya’ll look tenser ‘n a yard dog shittin’ a shingle nail.” She perched on the edge of the booth next to Grace. “Spill it.”
“Well,” Mary Jane’s eyes wandered, trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth, “Starsky and Hutch over here burned down Lena’s house.”
“Well, shit,” Tanya sighed, “I thought it was somethin’ serious!”
“We’re pretty sure no one saw us and it wasn’t intentional!” Sam added.
“Long as you weren’t seen and there wasn’t an accelerant.” she paused, “There wasn’t an accelerant, was there?”
Sam stared at her wide-eyed and put her palms out in a “What-do-you-think?” gesture.
“You’re fine then. Nothin’ to worry your pretty heads about. The first house I burned down was my Aunt Lila’s. I left a flat iron on top of a plastic shower cap. I think that’s when the ladies in my family started to add it up that something was different about me. Most boys that age don’t play with flat irons and makeup.”
“I’m sorry,” Grace chewed her scrambled eggs slowly, “Did you say ‘first house’?”
“I’ve burned down enough to know what the arson investigators catch and what’ll slide right on by. You’re fine. Just don’t go ‘round bragging about it.”
Birdie grinned, “I knew I liked you Tanya.”
Tanya stood, kissed the top of Birdie’s head and turned back to the table, “Yell if you need me, I gotta make my rounds.” With that, she was off.
“Ok, so what did you find?” Mary Jane asked.
“Financials. Pages from a second set of books to be exact. Fedya’s books with notations about account numbers.”
Grace gasped.
“Yeah, looks like they’ve been busy blokes, and Lena fingered ‘em.” Birdie was plowing through her waffles. “Also, from the looks of her bed, seems as though she was shaggin’ someone.”
“Didn’t her diary mention someone she was interested in?”
“You’re right! She wrote a little about the guy Joe she was getting information from. Do you think it could be him?”
“Who knows, nothing would surprise me at this point.” Grace looked frazzled.
“Can we go back to th
e ledger pages for a sec?” Mary Jane cut in “Is there enough in them to really give you a fix on something, or are you just guessing?”
“Well, it’s pretty clear that Lena was recording pertinent info in a cryptic manner. Not so with ol’ Fedya. His books have detailed entries and clear labels according to what accounts are what. In fact, it looks like there’s a good chunk of money that comes into the Pussycat from several unspecified sources, and I do mean GOOD CHUNK.” Sam paused, feeling slightly redeemed, “After the money leaves the club, a portion of it goes into a bank account here, but a majority of it is deposited into banks . . . guess where?”
“Caymans?”
“Moscow.”
“‘Fackin’ ‘ead slapper, eh?”
Sam stared at the puddle of condensation pooling around the base of her water glass. “But how he’s getting that money out of the country and into those accounts . . . that, my dear ladies, remains a mystery.”
Grace was dumbstruck “What are we talking about here? Tens of millions?”
“Hundreds of millions.” Sam prodded her glass with the tip of the dull table knife, watching the trail of moisture on the Formica.
Mary Jane leaned in, lowering her voice, “The club doesn’t make that kind of money, where’s it coming from?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m pretty sure it’s not from bake sales.”
“We need to be really, really careful. I’ve got a bad feeling we may not want to press this issue.” The blood had drained from Grace’s face and the dark rings her eye makeup had left around her blue-green eyes made her look frail.
Birdie plucked the makeup wipes from her purse and handed them to Grace as she motioned to Tanya.
“Two coffees to go and a couple a’ pastries, if you’d be so kind.”
“Got it. Anyone else?”
“You leaving already, Bird?” Mary Jane looked surprised.
“Nope.” She took one of the wipes from Grace and began to strip the layers of makeup from her skin, revealing her girlish freckles.
As Tanya returned with the order, Birdie rolled her hair up in a French twist and secured it with a clip from her bag. Picking up the box of pastries and coffee, she headed out the front door.
Tanya and the girls watched Birdie march across the parking lot, past the bus stop at the curb, across the street and into the parking lot of a vacated insurance agency. She bent down slightly to look into the window of a dark-colored sedan as she approached the driver’s side window. Her face was obscured by the shadows, but they could see her head bob as if in conversation. She passed the box and coffees through the window and gave a little wave as she turned and headed back toward the restaurant.
“Shit.” Sam couldn’t believe she’d missed their tail again. She was beginning to have a whole new respect for Birdie’s street-smart ways. She could be brash, but that girl had eyes in the back of her head and the reflexes of a cat.
“How the hell did she see them way over there in the dark?”
Tanya stood as Birdie came through the glass plate doors headed along the brown and orange patterned carpet toward the booth.
“Nice work, Red.” Tanya gave her a smile of respect from one sly mother to another.
Birdie slid back into the booth as casually as if she’d been returning from the bathroom.
“I just thought if we’re gonna be here a while, those blokes might like a little something to help them stay awake.”
CHAPTER 28
Sam called Amanda from a pay phone. Amanda drove to a convenience store outside the community gates and called her back from the same.
“Sorry for the inconvenience of paranoia, Amanda, but it looks like this is running a little deeper than we thought.”
“No problem. We heard about the fire, what happened?”
Sam recounted the story in as much detail as possible.
“Oh my Gosh! I’m so glad you and Birdie are okay! Don’t worry about the house, my parents seem just as happy to collect the insurance check, as they would have been going through the hassle of selling the property. Did the diary burn?”
“No, it’s in a safe place. I’m so sorry we destroyed all Lena’s things though. I just can’t apologize enough. Birdie and I both feel terrible.”
“Don’t worry about it for a minute. Alexandra made sure we got the diary and that’s all that counts.”
“You are such a sweetheart, Amanda. Please let us know if there’s ever anything we can do to repay you for what was lost.”
Sam could hear the smile in Amanda’s voice, “You’re doin’ it, Sam.”
“By the way, did Lena ever mention someone she was seeing? Maybe someone named Joe?”
“Hmmm,” she paused, “Maybe once, but she didn’t call him by name. She said she’d met a guy who was everything she’d ever dreamed of but that there were complications that made it impossible for them to be together. I pressed her about it thinking maybe he was married or something, but she wouldn’t budge. This was several weeks ago when she was home. After she left I never heard another word about him. Honestly, I’d forgotten all about it.”
“That’s still helpful. If you think of anything else please let one of us know. We’re gonna have to try and track this guy down, and we’re having trouble figuring out where to start. It looks like . . .” Sam hesitated, “Oh hell, it looks like he may have spent the night with her before she died.”
“Do you think this Joe may have had something to do with her murder?” Amanda sounded distressed, though hopeful at the prospect of finding a suspect.
“At this point we don’t know much. I just can’t believe Lena would have fallen for someone so dangerously duplicitous. She had a way of reading people that would put most intuitives to shame. The rest of us have dated our share of idiots, but not Lena, her head and heart always seemed to work in tandem.”
“True. Well, take care of yourself and keep me posted. I’ll let you know if anything comes up at this end. I have to get back to the house before they notice I’ve gone.”
“Okay, take care babe. We’ll be in touch.”
They disconnected. Sam stood between the plastic windbreaks of the booth for a few moments while she collected her thoughts.
CHAPTER 29
Mary Jane’s major at Georgia Tech had been computer science, although she had taken a few advanced placement courses typically reserved for master’s level students. She’d aced Applied Cryptography and Information Security Strategies with the hope she’d be able to complete her master’s degree in information security. Hacking into systems had always been a matter of logic for her. Growing up a latchkey kid with a keyboard and monitor for a babysitter left her plenty of time to hone her skills. She’d gotten caught trying to break the code on a large banking enterprise when she was fifteen, not because she needed the money but because she’d always taken security measures as a personal test of her abilities.
Wearing a Laura Ashley-esque smock from JC Penney’s and a forlorn look, she’d managed to talk the authorities into believing it was an accidental breech. They gave her a slap on the wrist and a stern warning that if she were caught again she wouldn’t be so lucky. Her record was expunged when she turned eighteen and off to college she went.
Grace and Birdie would glaze over when she and Sam would cross swords in their never-ending Mac vs. PC debate. Neither would concede to the other and neither would date outside her platform, which was nice, because it meant they never fell for the same guy.
She depressed the button on a remote-controlled keychain pinned to her bulletin board. The signal from the small button activated a power strip, housing all the cables to her various hard drives and peripherals. The hum of fans and motors that Mary Jane once found so comforting, filled the room. The monitor coughed and sprang to life, casting a cool blue light on Mary Jane’s face as she waited patiently for her old friend to finish waking up.
Since her mother’s death months ago, she had only been on the computer a handful of t
imes. Sitting in her Herman Miller desk chair, she flashed to all the twilight evenings her mother had said “Take a break from that and come sit with me a while.” She was always too busy, thinking she’d sit with her mom later. Later, somehow, became never.
Always full of love and encouragement, her mom had been her biggest fan. She never scolded Mary Jane for long hours at the machine, but occasionally Mary Jane would catch a fleeting glimpse of the hurt in her eyes. She’d proudly boast to her fellow church members and friends back in Jacksonville about Mary Jane’s success at Tech. She loved making her mom proud and wanted desperately to get a good job and make enough so her mom could retire. It was easy for Mary Jane to earn high marks, or write a clever program, but it was harder for her to give of herself. She had become attached to the black and white world of computer science where there’s no variable for gray areas like the fickle moods of humans.
After her mother’s death, Mary Jane had tried to “get back in the ergonomic chair,” but she couldn’t. She’d found herself unable to focus her attention. Her thoughts were consumed with what she might be missing in life, and this finally caused her to take leave from her course of study, at least temporarily. It wasn’t so much her desire to engage, rather her desire to observe that lead her to the mercurial world of the Pink Pussycat.
The hard drive pinged, telling Mary Jane that it was ready for the binary conversation to begin. She slid the paper napkin with the series of account numbers she’d scribbled on it toward her, pulling it into the blue light of the monitor.
She took a deep breath and began to type.
CHAPTER 30
On the drive to Mary Jane’s apartment, Sam turned the thought of Joe over and over in her mind like thumbs turn a worry stone. Lena never went out with men she met in the club and she wasn’t a party girl. The grocery store? A bookstore? A coffee shop? They were all plausible, but Sam just couldn’t picture Lena meeting someone like that without telling the group.
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