“So he stood me up and didn’t call.” Stella thought for a moment. “It could be worse.”
“It might be worse,” I said. Then I plunged into a description of what had happened to her Aunt Gennie, without telling her it was her aunt. And I talked about Laura, again without mentioning any names. Stella’s rigid posture made me sad. “Did you invest any money with him?”
“I did,” Stella said; the words came out from between clenched teeth.
I sighed not wanting to go on. “Have you received your latest statement?”
Stella reddened, this time not from the scotch. “I don’t know. I’m not that good with investments. I trusted Dave and Terry to take care of things for me. I’ll see what I can find.”
“Bring your laptop too, please. We’re going to need it.”
When Stella came back with the statements, she’d changed into jeans and a long-sleeved, loose-fitting shirt. She handed me a couple of statements and her laptop. As I worked, she sipped her scotch.
I typed in her account number and got an error message, just as I had when I’d typed in Gennie’s. I started the tedious process of comparing the numbers on the statement to the numbers on the fund’s website. I felt that grim line settling in on my mouth again. Stella just watched.
I finally looked up. “These numbers don’t match the fund’s numbers. Stella, Bubbles was stealing from you.”
Instead of looking furious, she just looked sad.
“I have to call CJ. He thinks this is a fluke. That someone set Bubbles and Terry up.”
Stella looked up hopefully. “CJ’s right. That must be what happened.”
“Why hasn’t Bubbles called you, then?” It sounded harsh, but I couldn’t believe that someone had set up an elaborate scheme and hacked into Bubbles’s computer system and that neither Bubbles nor Terry had caught it. “Why’d he leave town?”
I called CJ and got his voice mail. I laid out my case again. One statement could have been a fluke, but two made that less likely. I thought about the two wives I’d overheard at the garage sale on Saturday. They’d talked about their husbands investing with Bubbles. It had sounded like they lived on Fitch.
“Want to go to a party?” I asked Stella.
She threw me a look like I’d lost my mind.
“The promotion party at Gillganins will be the perfect place to find a lot of military people who might have invested with Bubbles.”
CHAPTER 32
We walked into a packed Gillganins. I’d changed into a sparkly top and designer jeans. Beer was on the house, paid for by the new colonel selects. I waved to Laura across the crowd, and she lifted her glass in acknowledgment. Stella and I fought our way to the bar for a beer. After we were served, we leaned our backs against the bar, studying the crowd.
“Some part of me hoped Bubbles would be holding court at a table in a corner, that everything I’ve been thinking this afternoon was wrong,” I said.
“We’re not going to find anything out by standing here. Let’s mingle.”
I asked a couple of people I knew if they’d seen Bubbles. The third time I asked, a man, still in his uniform with eagles on his epaulets, turned.
“Bubbles isn’t here. He should be. I made the boy what he is today.” The man’s beer breath wafted over me. He threw an arm around Stella and me and pulled us into his group. “They’re asking for Bubbles,” he told the group. “Did I ever tell you how Bubbles got his call sign?” he asked them.
From their looks, I’m pretty sure they’d heard the story more than once, but since he was their senior officer, they felt obliged to listen again.
“Dave was a second luey and wanted to be a test engineer on a flight crew.” The guy still clung to Stella and me. We were more or less holding him up. When he swayed, so did we. “Everyone who wants to be on a flight crew has to go in the high altitude chamber so they know the signs of oxygen deprivation in flight.”
The guy unwrapped his arm from around Stella’s shoulder to take a drink of his beer. He barely missed sloshing it all over her when he put his arm back. “Dave got nitrogen bubbles in his blood while he was in the chamber. Almost died. That’s when I gave him the call sign ‘Bubbles.’” He threw his head back and laughed. Most of the crowd joined in. Stella and I looked at each other. All those years I’d believed the swimming pool story. Bubbles must have wanted people to believe that version.
But he’d lived with a daily reminder that he’d almost died. Cop humor could be morbid, but this was right up there. I tried to duck under the colonel’s arm, but he tightened his grip.
“Don’t you worry,” he said to me. “I took care of that boy even after his dream of being on a flight crew died. I got him into the space career field. Made sure he got his dream job in England, a peach of a special-duty assignment. And when he was going to be deployed to Iraq, I made sure he knew how to set up an IED and spot one from a good safe distance so he’d make it out alive.”
“Bubbles has a way with fire,” one of the other guys said.
I froze. “He knows how to make incendiary devices?” I tried hard to keep my voice casual and hoped the colonel didn’t know about what had happened in Ellington.
“Of course.” He pointed at the crowd. “Bubbles is a genius, not only with IEDs but also with investing. Best returns I’ve ever had. You all can thank me.” The group nodded.
This time I did manage to slip out of his grasp. Stella followed suit. The colonel swayed a bit, and someone pulled out a chair for him. “Forty percent is a damn good return on an investment.”
I wanted to smack my hand to my forehead. I never understood people who fell for financial schemes. It should be obvious that if one guy could make forty percent in the market, everyone else should be able to do the same. Forty percent profit was way more than Bubbles had shown on Gennie’s and Stella’s statements. Their statements showed a small profit, not a large one.
I’d love to get my hands on the colonel’s statements, but I didn’t see any way that was going to happen. I guessed one of two things: either the colonel’s profit was only on paper, or he had wanted to cash in part of the profit. In that case, Bubbles would had to have pulled money from other accounts or done something even more desperate, like steal and sell a painting.
In some ways, people that went to garage sales were the same. They too wanted something for nothing. Everyone loved a good “I paid fifty cents for this, and it’s worth fifty thousand dollars” story. But at least at a garage sale, the playing field was level.
I mingled in the crowd, working Bubbles and their investments into the conversation under the guise that I’d been thinking about investing with him. Bubbles had convinced some of the guys to take out loans to invest with him. Most of them hadn’t shown the same profit margins as the colonel had. I wondered how many he’d stolen money from, if anyone had figured it out, or if one of them had killed Terry. Maybe they’d left the frame around his neck as a threat to Bubbles. Or maybe they were trying to frame him. While it looked likely that Bubbles killed Terry, I still had my suspicions about Gennie.
An hour and a half later, I met up with Stella again. She’d heard similar stories. We took off. When we pulled up to the apartment, we could see a man sitting in the shadows on the porch.
Stella grabbed my arm. “It’s Bubbles.”
I peered as the figure stood. “It’s CJ. He told me he’d come by with news.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Stella said. “I’m too tired, and I’ve had too much to drink. Whatever you find out tonight isn’t going to make any difference in my life.”
We walked up to CJ together. Stella looked so sad I gave her a hug.
“What was all that about?” CJ asked as Stella went into her apartment.
“Bubbles was supposed to pick her up for a date, and he never did. But even worse, he stole from her, too,” I said as I climbed the stairs to my apartment.
We settled on the couch, knees almost touching. “Now do you believe me?�
��
“Because Bubbles stood Stella up? No.” He rubbed his face. “But I do know that Bubbles didn’t show up for a meeting he was supposed to be at on base this afternoon. But it still isn’t proof.”
“His neighbor told me she was watching his cat because he’d left on a business trip for the next few days. What about the piece of camouflage I found in the woods?”
“All it tells us is that someone at some point was in the woods wearing camouflage. We didn’t find anything else out there.”
I filled him in on what I’d found out at the promotion party.
“It sounds damning,” CJ admitted. “But again, it’s not proof.”
I filled him in about Bubbles being good with fire.
“So are half the guys in the military. It doesn’t mean he set the fires.”
“But he could have. Did Jett get hold of you?” I asked.
CJ nodded after a pause.
“Maybe he and Bubbles knew the same people.”
CJ just shrugged.
“What about the message that was left on Bubbles’s home phone? Did anything come of that?” I wasn’t sure CJ would answer me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Bubbles told me someone left a threatening message on his home phone. That he told you and you were going to run a trace.”
CJ narrowed his eyes. “First I’ve heard of it.”
“Bubbles is telling a lot of lies.”
“He is, but lying isn’t a crime. There’s still the threats against him and Terry.”
“Wait.” I ran over to my computer and fired it up. I carried it back to the couch and set it on the trunk I used as a coffee table. “I have photographs of the notes Terry got and the one from Bubbles’s house.” I showed them to CJ one by one, our heads nearly touching. My heart pounded a little harder.
“They all look like they’re written by the same person,” CJ said.
“I know, but look at the condition. The ones Terry received were creased or smudged from being stuck in the door or on a windshield.”
“How did you get these?” CJ asked and not with a happy “wow, you’ve solved my case” tone.
“I got Terry’s notes from Anna. And I snapped the other one when I was at Bubbles’s house. The two Bubbles claims he received are pristine, like they’d just come out of a file folder. CJ, Bubbles wrote these. No one saw the note on Bubbles’s windshield. We just believed what he said was true. But it should have been wrinkled or dirty if it was tucked under the wipers. You saw his truck. He rarely washes that thing.”
CJ studied the pictures, a pulse beating on his temple. “Bubbles had no way of knowing that you or Stella would find the photo.”
“It doesn’t matter; if we hadn’t, he would just have called it in himself when he got home.”
CJ nodded. “I’ll do what I can to track him down. It doesn’t mean he killed Terry, but he has some explaining to do.”
He stood and headed for the door. I took a deep breath. “Wait, CJ. There’s something else.” I fiddled with my hands, feeling shy all of a sudden. “I’ve been foolish. Stupid.” I managed to look up at CJ. “Charles James Hooker, I think we should try again. To be together.”
CJ met my eyes. I smiled at him.
“I can’t, Sarah. I’m seeing someone.” He turned and left.
CHAPTER 33
At nine on Thursday morning, I headed to the one place I always went when I felt blue—DiNapoli’s. Even though they weren’t officially open, I knew they’d be there doing prep work. The door wasn’t locked, so I went in without knocking. Rosalie looked up and dropped the rag she was scrubbing tables with.
“Angelo, we need coffee.”
“Coffee?” Angelo turned from the stove and saw me. He lowered the flame under the pot he was cooking something garlicky-smelling in, washed his hands, and filled three mugs with coffee. He loaded a tray with the mugs and some cookies and set it on the table Rosalie had just cleaned. I flopped in a chair while they sat across from me, pushing coffee and cookies toward me.
They watched me with concerned expressions as I sipped the coffee. I took a cookie but ended up crumbling it.
“CJ’s seeing someone,” I said. “I thought I was done with Seth and ready to go back to him. But he’s seeing someone.”
Angelo frowned and folded his arms over his chest—a sure sign he was mad, but I wasn’t sure if it was directed at CJ or me. Rosalie reached across and patted my hand.
“I shouldn’t be surprised. CJ’s a great guy. I’m the one who told him we needed to see other people. I didn’t think about how I’d feel if he did.” I took another gulp of my coffee. It was strong, unlike the sweeter stuff I usually drank. “And when I think about it, maybe I told him I wanted him back because Seth is mad at me.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth. “Oh, no. What if I’m one of those women who can’t be without a man?”
Rosalie patted my hand again. “You’ve been through a lot, Sarah. And you didn’t rush into a relationship with Seth. If anything, you’ve kept him at arm’s length.”
“So I’m a tease.”
“No. You were giving yourself space to work things out.” Rosalie pushed back her chair. “But it isn’t fair to CJ if you went to him because of Seth.” She headed back to the kitchen.
Was I doing that? I was so confused. I’d spent half the night trying to puzzle it out. Obviously, that hadn’t worked.
“Did you know that when I was growing up in Cambridge there wasn’t a single dandelion on MIT’s lawn,” Angelo said.
I shook my head to indicate I didn’t know anything about the history of dandelions at MIT.
“We were so poor my mom went over to MIT to dig the dandelions up for our dinner.” He stood. “I’ve gotta get back to my marinara sauce. Eat a cookie. You’ll feel better.”
I finished my coffee and ate a cookie. Angelo told me stories for one reason, to remind me that my life wasn’t so bad. I smiled. It was time to quit feeling sorry for myself and get some work done.
At ten o’clock, I sat across from Missy Tucker in a beat-up recliner that looked like she’d used it as a punching bag. Most of the things in her house didn’t look much better, even though it was a Cape with dormers in pricy Concord. Missy seemed run-down too and a lot older than Gennie. But she still looked strong enough to throw a few punches. I just hoped they wouldn’t be aimed at me if she didn’t buy my story about being a freelance writer.
I whipped out a recorder, with Missy’s permission. Her eyes glowed as she regaled me with stories of the early days of female cage fighting. It was surprisingly entertaining.
“I read you were the only one who ever knocked out Gennie ‘the Jawbreaker’ Elder.” I watched her closely.
She nodded, sending her salt-and-pepper hair flying around her ears.
“There were rumors the fight was thrown,” I said.
“It’s nonsense,” she said a bit too quickly, her voice louder.
“Did you know Terry McQueen, her agent at the time? He was murdered in Ellington just last week.”
“Of course, I knew him.” She shifted in her seat as if the springs had all started popping out at once. “I read about his murder. Terrible way to die.”
That at least sounded sincere. “Do you know anything about the falling-out they had?”
“Happens all the time.” Missy’s voice rose again as she said it. “Why are you asking me all these questions about Jawbreaker? I thought you wanted to know about my career.”
“Her last fight is coming up, and you were the only one to knock her out. It’s a great story.” At least all of that was true.
Missy stood. “We’re done.”
I sat in a booth at Dunkin’ Donuts, waiting for Gennie. Two cups of coffee sat on the table. I’d barely touched mine. Since I’d left Missy’s house, I’d put together a pretty good scenario, in my head, that said Gennie had killed Terry. But with Carol’s arrest, I couldn’t sit around wondering if Gennie might be involve
d, I had to find out.
“Sarah, what was so urgent that you needed to meet me?” Gennie asked as she sat down across from me. She was dressed in a black skirt and a white button-down shirt. She even had on black tights and red pumps. Gennie studied me for a minute. “Something on your mind?”
“Yes. The paintings. I know you and Carol know each other. I can’t figure out why both of you are lying about them. She’s in trouble, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to help her.”
“You saw the paintings in my closet?”
“Yes. The paintings from Carol’s shop.”
Gennie sipped her coffee, studying me over the cup. “I hope you’re good at keeping secrets.”
“I earned a merit badge in Brownies for secret keeping.”
“I’m opening an art studio in Dorchestah.”
I almost fell out of the booth. “I thought you were opening a mixed martial arts training facility to keep kids off the street.”
“That’s what I wanted you to think. What I wanted everyone to think. But fighting’s difficult. It’s hard on the body. Painting allows people to express themselves.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I’m trying to keep it quiet until after my last fight. I have to keep up my tough girl image.”
“What’s Carol got to do with this?” I drank some of my coffee.
“I always loved art as a kid. When Carol opened her shop, I dropped by. I’ve been taking private lessons from her ever since. I swore her to secrecy.”
“She’s very good at keeping secrets too, apparently,” I said. “Your name doesn’t even show up in her client records.” I finished my coffee and worried about what other secrets Carol was keeping from me. “There’s more.”
Gennie raised her eyebrows at me.
“I know you threw your first fight. I’m guessing Terry talked you into it somehow.”
Gennie looked down. I waited. She finally raised her head and met my eyes. “You’re right. I did throw it.”
“And Terry was involved.”
“He talked me into it. I was young, in love.” Gennie shook her head. “He filled my head with nonsense about how everyone did it and we could make a lot of money. Afterward we argued when I refused to do it again. He’d made a small fortune off that fight and wanted more. He threatened me.”
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