Funny Money

by Traci DePree

  “That’s Joe Tucker, isn’t it?” Georgia was asking of Joe.

  Kate nodded, still speechless. Finally she managed, “I had no idea he was a dancer.”

  “Well, he looks like a perfect candidate to me.” Georgia was on her feet.

  “He has a date,” Evelyn cautioned, drawing her sister’s attention back to their table as she pointed to Joe’s partner.

  Georgia shrugged. “I’m just going to say hello.” She tugged Kate to her feet. “Kate, come with me. We’ll see if that other fellow will dance with Evelyn too.”

  Kate was mortified. “You’re going to ask my mailman to be in your dance competition?”

  Georgia clapped her hands together as she grinned. “It’s perfect. We can kill two birds as it were.”

  She looked at her sister meaningfully, and Evelyn rose to her feet. She tugged her blouse down and touched her blue hair as if to make sure every strand was in place. The long-bearded man lifted curious eyes.

  “Are you sure?” she said, her brows coming together in doubt.

  “If he can dance, let’s give him a whirl.” Georgia marched across the floor to the other table, almost knocking over several couples in the process. Kate and Evelyn followed at a more cautious pace.

  Georgia waited, tapping her foot as she stood on the side. Then she followed as Kate took them to Joe’s table. He sipped a glass of water and leaned toward his dance partner in conversation. Kate wondered who the pretty woman could be.

  He lifted his head and recognition lit his face. “Kate. What are you doing here?”

  “I...uh.” She had no idea how to answer the question.

  “Hello, Joe.” Georgia stuck a hand out to Joe.

  Joe said hello, then acknowledged Evelyn, who stood behind Kate.

  “You were cutting a mean rug out there,” Georgia said.

  The woman didn’t waste time, did she? Joe’s partner smirked at the comment.

  “Oh...uh.” Joe cleared his throat and sat back in his seat. “This is my sister Marie. She lives here in Pine Ridge.” He motioned to his dance partner, then to their friends across the table. “And you know Fish and his friend Angel Martins.”

  On the word friend, Evelyn’s shoulders drooped.

  “So...,” Marie said, her pale green eyes on Georgia, “it’s nice of you to say hello.” An awkward silence fell.

  Finally Georgia pinned her gaze on Joe and said, “Would you like to dance?”

  His bushy white eyebrows shot up, and he turned to Kate. She hated being in the midst of an ambush, but she had to admit it was a bit fun to watch Joe squirm. Kate shrugged as if in answer to an unspoken question. Then he turned to his sister, whose face took on a full grin.

  “It’s fine with me,” Marie said. “How often do I get to see my seventy-year-old brother out with a new girl?”

  Joe shot her a “Watch it, Sis!” look as he got to his feet and led Georgia to the floor.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” Fish said to Kate.

  Whenever Kate had talked to the mailman before, she was usually staring at his long beard; she hadn’t noticed what penetrating eyes he had.

  “I don’t usually come here,” Kate said with a smile.

  “You’re a dancer too, Mrs. Hanlon?” Marie asked.

  “She’s excellent,” Evelyn said. “She and Pastor Hanlon are participating in a dance competition with us.”

  Kate felt a blush heat her face. “Well, that’s kind of you, Evelyn. I wouldn’t say we’re excellent, but we do enjoy ourselves. Well, I enjoy myself, and Paul humors me.”

  Joe and Georgia returned to the table. Joe had an oddly pleased expression on his face. He sat next to Fish and said something into his ear. The bearded mailman smiled at Evelyn, then turned to Joe before whispering something. Georgia nodded enthusiastically.

  Then she said, “Joe’s going to do it!”

  Kate couldn’t believe her ears. “How did you manage that?”

  Joe cut in. “It’s one of those things I’ve always secretly wanted to do. And Fish here just agreed to be your partner too, Evelyn.”

  “Really?” Evelyn pulled a hand over her mouth, and for a moment Kate thought she might cry.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Amy and Jake met Kate for lunch on Tuesday at the Country Diner after their daily visit with Tim. The young woman seemed subdued, watching her son’s every move.

  Jake scooted into the seat alongside his mother. He began coughing and wheezing almost as soon as he was seated. He held a small hand over his mouth, and Amy patted him firmly on the back, but when the bout wouldn’t cease, she got out his asthma inhaler and placed it on his mouth. He closed his eyes and breathed in the medicated puff.

  “He’s been sick again,” she said. She stroked his hair. “Last night he was up a good three hours.”

  Jake puckered his lips in obvious frustration.

  “Have you heard anything more on Tim’s case?” Kate asked in a low voice.

  Amy opened her mouth as if to speak, but then LuAnne came up to the table. The heavyset woman smiled at Jake.

  “Hey, buddy,” she said, bending down to meet his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  The sympathy was more than the boy could bear. Tears burst from him, and he covered his face with his hands. Amy pulled him into a hug.

  LuAnne stood upright and mouthed “I’m sorry” to Amy. The young mother smiled as she shook her head.

  Then she mouthed back “He’ll be okay” before stating, “Two root beers for us. And let’s get Jake some chicken nuggets.” Then she ordered a Reuben with Thousand Island dressing for herself.

  “I’ll take the same,” Kate said, offering a gentle smile before LuAnne left to place the order.

  “He misses Tim.” Amy closed her eyes. “When we went to see him this morning, he was beside himself. Jail is hard on Tim. He was pacing the cell like one of those animals at the zoo. It scared Jake. I worry about both of them, Kate.” Tears glistened on her cheeks. “This is tearing us apart.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wish we’d never moved here,” Amy said.

  Kate felt her pain. Being alone in a new place, feeling watched, judged. She was trying so hard to be brave. A lot of people would have given up a long time ago if they’d been in the same situation.

  “I’m sorry about all of this,” Kate repeated. “It’s not fair, is it?”

  Amy blew out a breath. “We thought everything would be so good. Tim had gotten a great job with the kind of health coverage Jake needed, even though we have to drive farther for treatments. Eventually we wanted to move to Memphis, closer to my parents and my sister, where there’s a good cystic fibrosis hospital. We thought we’d found a church where people actually cared about us.”

  “People do care about you.” Kate reached across the table and touched her hand.

  “So who went to all the trouble to set up this print shop? If people care about us, why do so many of them refuse to look me in the eye when I’m walking down the street? Even my neighbor has stopped talking to me. She won’t let her son play with Jake anymore either.” Amy shook her head. “If they have their way, we’ll be relocated near a federal prison or living our life without Tim in it at all.”

  TIM WAS SITTING ON HIS COT, looking weary and defeated, when Kate and Paul went to see him later that same day. At first Kate wondered if he’d been eating, then she realized it was deep, invasive depression that weighed down his shoulders.

  “Have you seen Jake?” It was the first question out of his mouth.

  “I saw him at lunch,” Kate said.

  “Is he better? He was coughing so much. I worry about him.”

  “He’s struggling with all of this,” Kate said, “but he’ll be okay. He’s a determined little boy.”

  Tim got up and started pacing. When he turned his back, Kate saw that his shoulder blades pushed at the fabric of his orange jumpsuit, accentuating his bony form.

  “I have to get out of here,” he said
. “I have to.” Then he turned to Kate, shaking his head. “Someone is framing me. Whoever it is, they know exactly what will put me away for a long time, and they’re setting it up. I promise you, I did not rent that storage facility or set up a print shop.”

  “But they said that your fingerprints were found on some of the items there,” Kate mentioned. “Amy even admitted that some of the items could’ve been yours.”

  “I can’t explain it,” he said. “But I promise you, that signature on the lease, it isn’t mine.”

  “We have to prove that,” Paul said.

  “The authorities should have a list of what they seized to your lawyer either today or tomorrow,” Kate said. “There’s bound to be something in there that points to someone else, someone other than you.”

  Tim sat roughly on the lone chair in the cell and raked a hand through his greasy hair.

  “Out of curiosity,” Kate said, “did you ever hire Bud or Buck Lovelace to work on your computer?”

  She’d toyed with the idea ever since she’d learned of the Lovelace’s ability in the IT field. Someone knowledgeable would be able to disable the anticounterfeit devices on Tim’s scanner and upload the incriminating evidence, given the right opportunity.

  “As a matter of fact, I did. A coworker at the bank told me about them. How did you know about that?”

  “Conjecture,” Kate said.

  “Well, I had this virus that kept popping up ads on my screen. I couldn’t work at all, and none of my virus software could touch it.” He looked from Kate to Paul. “Do you think they could’ve set me up?”

  “How long ago was this?” Paul asked.

  “Oh, maybe a month ago, or a little longer.”

  “It doesn’t seem likely,” Kate said. “But at least it’s something.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kate turned the car up the winding dirt road to the Lovelace house the next day. The small home was buried in the hills north of Copper Mill. Rusted machinery was littered here and there in the woods like a graveyard for past technology. The yard surrounding the house contained a chicken coop and several outbuildings with tired-looking facades. Chickens pecked at the ground like living lawn ornaments.

  Two immense black Labs came bounding out as Kate pulled the car to a stop alongside the largest of the sheds, not sure if she should get out. The dogs barked at her, but their wagging tails belied their true gregarious dispositions.

  Climbing out, Kate soothed, “Nice dogs.” She patted them on their heads, their long tongues hanging out of their mouths as they tried to lick her hand.

  Kate gazed across the lawn. Two new-looking vehicles were parked closer to the house, and a strange sound emanated from the larger shed. She shushed the dogs as she listened to a ka-chunk ka-chunk coming from behind the double doors.

  A man came out of the house then. At first he looked to be in his forties, but when he came closer, Kate realized it was Bud, Millie’s eldest son. He looked distinctly like his father. In his midtwenties, Bud was balding, and his belly hung over his belt as if he were seven months pregnant. He wore thick black-rimmed glasses and squinted when he spoke.

  “Dutch! Tillie!” he yelled at the dogs. “Get back.”

  “They’re okay,” Kate said, offering a friendly smile despite the trepidation in her gut. She crossed the yard to where he stood. “We’ve made friends. Haven’t we?” She looked at the dogs.

  The young man tapped his foot, and Kate realized he was waiting.

  Why did her pulse pick up in his presence? She imagined him purposely framing Tim Lourdes, placing clue after clue that would separate the father from the little boy who needed him so.

  “What you need Mrs. Hanlon? You lookin’ for Ma? She’s at work.”

  Across the yard were two shiny vehicles. The Prowler sat low to the ground, with vintage yet chic lines. The Mercedes was boxy, though equally impressive.

  “Can I ask you a few questions, Bud?” Kate asked.

  “Uh...I’m kind of busy.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward the small house, where the porch looked as if it would break loose at any given moment.

  “You run a computer business from your home, right?” Kate wasn’t about to let the man off quite so easily.

  He nodded, interest growing in his eyes. “Is that why you came? You need a computer worked on?”

  “And your brother works with you?”

  He watched her for a minute before nodding. “He does. It’s a good arrangement. Pays the bills, so to speak.”

  Kate wondered what kind of bills the brothers could have, living with their parents as they did.

  She smiled, trying to get a facial expression out of him, but his look went blank. “Listen, like I said, I’m kind of busy right now. I don’t have time to shoot the breeze.”

  At that moment, Kate saw the resemblance between him and his mother.

  “I came to ask about Tim Lourdes’ computer. You worked on it, right?”

  Bud’s face darkened, and his brow furrowed above his eyes.

  “I heard about what that guy did,” he said.

  “What he’s accused of doing,” Kate couldn’t help but correct him. “He hasn’t been convicted of anything.”

  “Well, the Secret Service has already questioned us, and I know enough about it to know that I don’t need to be getting involved in a federal case.” He took a step toward her. The dogs took it as a signal because they started growling at Kate.

  “I’m not here to cause any trouble,” Kate assured. She could still hear that faint sound coming from the faded white shed.

  “Like I said, I don’t have time for this.” Then he said good-bye and made his way back toward the house.

  With their master gone, the dogs again became docile, walking quietly at her side, occasionally giving her hand a lick as she returned to her car. “Thanks a lot,” she whispered to the animals.

  She figured the noise from that outbuilding held some sort of clue. The shed leaned south. It was missing half its shingles, and the glass was broken out of the four-paned window on the end. The ka-chunk ka-chunk grew louder.

  Kate studied the building from her spot by her car. There were no other doors that she could see, save the double-wide doors at the front. The windows in the building were too high up to see through. One of the dogs tried to jump up on her, and Kate scolded him to get down. Then she heard footsteps.

  Quickly she got into her car and started the engine. She could see the doorknob of the shed’s door turning. So she backed up and pulled out of the driveway.

  As she made her way down the gravel road, she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Buck, who watched her departure.

  One thought resounded within her. The sound she’d heard, that ka-chunk ka-chunk, could easily have been that of a printing press. But then surely the Secret Service agents would have checked it out, wouldn’t they? Something wasn’t adding up.

  KATE HAD BARELY SLEPT. That ka-chunk sound had reverberated in her dreams. When Paul came to breakfast the next morning, she must’ve looked tired, because he said, “What’s wrong?” as he bent to kiss her good morning, then took the chair next to her at the oak table.

  “Bad dreams.” She shook her head. “It’s this counterfeiting thing.”

  He reached for a bag of granola and poured a portion into his bowl, followed by a spoonful of brown sugar.

  “I went to see Millie’s sons yesterday.” She reached for the cereal and helped herself to a bowl, adding milk but no sugar.

  Kate had gotten in late the night before, having gone from the Lovelaces’ to Pine Ridge to run errands, then to choir practice, so she hadn’t had a chance to talk to her husband.

  Paul nodded, then ate a spoonful of the granola. “What did you find out?”

  “It wasn’t so much what I found out as what I heard.”

  “And that was...?”

  “There was a noise coming from one of their sheds. Paul. It sounded kind of like a printing press.”

 
; “I don’t know, Kate. It’s really hard to imagine that Millie could be in on something like that.” He set his spoon in his bowl.

  “If the Lovelace boys are involved, I can assume that Millie knows nothing about it. But I’m sorry to say that there are more and more clues that suggest her sons might be guilty,” Kate went on. “Millie’s sons both work from home and are computer experts. They’re rarely seen in town. They live in a remote area where it’s easy to go undetected. They never go on vacation, then wham, they surprise their folks with an expensive trip to Disney World. They buy expensive new cars. They had the opportunity to put incriminating evidence on Tim Lourdes’ computer. Buck has a new mystery girlfriend—and a woman’s been spotted passing counterfeit bills. Then yesterday I hear the printing-presslike sound coming from one of their sheds.”

  “Those clues are compelling. But still, everything you just listed is circumstantial. Just be careful, honey. Unless the Secret Service agents find the Lovelace boys’ fingerprints on some of those bills, there’s no hard evidence.” Paul shook his head.

  Kate understood his reservations. After all, the Lovelaces were long-standing members of the community. Buck and Bud had graduated from Copper Mill High School, had lived in Copper Mill their whole lives. Millie would be devastated if her sons were involved in illegal activities.

  “If they haven’t done anything wrong, the evidence will reveal that,” Kate assured. “The Secret Service did question them.”

  “I know.” Paul sat back. “But I also know it was Tim Lourdes that they arrested, not Bud and Buck.”

  THE BRISTOL WAS CLOSED to customers when Kate made her way there the next morning, though the Hamilton Springs Hotel was open as usual for the Fourth of July holiday. Red, white and blue banners hung over the entrance. When Renee had called with the latest rumor—that counterfeits had surfaced at the swank establishment—Kate decided to see if she could find out any more information for herself.