Patchwork Peril (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mini-Mystery)

by Lois Winston

  “Come inside. I’ll explain everything.”

  SEVEN

  Sitting between Zack and me, Rosalie stared at the image of the real Jane Sherman on my laptop screen. “I knew it!” She slammed her good fist on my kitchen table, rattling the cups of coffee I’d poured for the three of us. “I told you she was up to no good. Why are we just sitting here? We need to call the police. I want her arrested. And I need to cancel my credit cards.”

  “Not yet,” said Zack. While Lucille showered, he’d taken Mephisto on a covert operation to spy on Jane. When I pulled out of Rosalie’s driveway, Zack and Mephisto were standing a few feet from my car. Since Jane had never met Zack nor seen Mephisto, a man walking a dog along Rosalie’s street would raise no suspicions.

  “Did she leave the house?” I asked.

  “Almost immediately after you pulled out of Rosalie’s driveway.”

  “Which means she’s probably off spending more of my money,” said Rosalie. “The only way to stop her is to cancel the credit cards.”

  “If you do that while she’s shopping, she’ll know you’re on to her,” said Zack. “We need time to discover what else she’s done.”

  “How?”

  “We’re going back to your house,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “To check your financial records.”

  The color drained from Rosalie’s face. “What if she’s already wiped me out?”

  “Let’s assess the damage first,” said Zack. “Then we’ll call the police.”

  I grabbed my laptop, and we drove Rosalie back to her home. “Where do we start?” she asked after we entered the empty house.

  “Can you access your bank and stock accounts online?” asked Zack.

  “Yes, but I rarely do. I prefer dealing with people, when it comes to money, not machines.”

  “Where do you keep all your files?” I asked.

  Rosalie directed me to the downstairs bedroom she used as her quilting room. “There’s a file cabinet in the closet. You’ll find everything in there.”

  “And your checkbook?”

  “Top center drawer of my desk.”

  “What about passwords?” asked Zack.

  “On a piece of paper tacked to the bulletin board above my desk.”

  I stifled a groan. I’d be giving Rosalie a lesson on Internet security in the near future—assuming Jane hadn’t already wiped her out, thus negating the need for any passwords.

  I placed my laptop on her dining room table and headed to the quilt room with Zack. Behind me I heard Rosalie sigh heavily and mutter under her breath. “I never should have let that woman in my home.”

  I felt like she’d plunged a dagger between my shoulder blades. “This is my fault,” I said to Zack. “If I hadn’t convinced Rosalie to give Jane a chance, none of this would have happened.”

  Zack stopped at the entrance to the quilt room, turned to face me, and placed his hands on my shoulders. “You’re forgetting that the hospital gave Jane Rosalie’s purse with her wallet, credit cards, and keys. Even if Rosalie refused Jane’s help after she was released from the hospital, Jane already had everything she needed to run her con while Rosalie was still lying unconscious in her hospital bed.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s supposed to make you realize this isn’t your fault. Besides, if it weren’t for you spotting Jane and Willow at the mall last night, their con would continue until they’d bled Rosalie dry.”

  “Then Rosalie has Patricia to thank, not me.”

  “Patricia?”

  “If she hadn’t given birth to the twins, we wouldn’t have gone to the mall. Chalk one up to the butterfly effect.”

  Zack shook his head and chuckled. Then he dropped his hands from my shoulders and headed for the closet.

  While he pulled file folders of bank, brokerage, and credit card accounts, I retrieved Rosalie’s checkbook and blank checks. Thumbing through each pad, checking the sequential numbering, I discovered random checks missing. “Twenty-two checks have been removed,” I told Zack as he gathered the files into his arms.

  I grabbed the sheet of paper with Rosalie’s passwords off the bulletin board. Not only had she left her passwords in plain sight, they were all very similar.

  Once we returned to the dining room Zack had no trouble logging onto Rosalie’s accounts. Unfortunately, neither had Jane. We quickly discovered that over the past week she’d siphoned off nearly seventy-five thousand dollars.

  “You’d think someone would have noticed the unusual activity and notified Rosalie,” I said.

  “They may have,” said Zack.

  “I never received any calls from the bank or my broker,” said Rosalie.

  “Jane may have intercepted the calls,” he said.

  Rosalie grew thoughtful. “Come to think of it, I can’t remember my phone ringing at all since coming home from the hospital.”

  “She may have had your calls forwarded to her cell phone.”

  I turned to Rosalie. “That would explain why you didn’t hear the phone ring when I called this morning.”

  She let out a string of expletives that shocked me. Except for the odd bull hockey, I’d never heard Rosalie utter so much as a damn. “Her phone is constantly ringing, and she’s always excusing herself to another room before answering the calls.”

  The woman had thought of everything. Zack was right. She and Willow were pros.

  Turning our attention to Rosalie’s credit card accounts, we searched until we found her Visa and American Express passwords. When Zack logged onto the accounts, we discovered Jane had charged over thirty thousand dollars at the mall over the last few days and had already racked up over five thousand dollars in charges so far today.

  Rosalie trembled with rage. “Now can we call the police?”

  Zack logged off the American Express website. “We need more,” he said.

  “What on earth for?” Angry tears gathered in Rosalie’s eyes.

  I patted her hand. “A good lawyer will argue that you gave her access to your credit cards and accounts.”

  “But I did no such thing!”

  “I know.”

  The tears began to spill down her cheeks. She bowed her head and covered her eyes with her good hand. “This is a nightmare. How do I get my money back? How do we make her pay for what she’s done?”

  I stood up and started pacing around the dining room. What else could we do to prove the phony Jane had committed fraud? Then it hit me. “Of course!”

  “What?” asked Rosalie.

  Could it be that simple? I raced upstairs to the bedroom Jane was using and rummaged through the closet and dresser drawers. Nothing. I knew her laptop had to be hidden somewhere. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. Not there, either. I finally found it when I removed the quilt and began systematically poking my arms under the mattress. Returning downstairs, I placed the laptop on the dining room table. “I’ll bet we’ll find all the proof we need right here.”

  Five minutes later Zack turned to Rosalie and said, “Now we call the police.”

  *

  Officers Harley and Fogarty arrived ten minutes later. “Don’t you need a search warrant?” I asked after we explained the situation but before showing them the files on Phony Jane’s computer. We certainly didn’t want Jane and Willow—or whoever they were—getting off on a technicality due to inadmissible evidence.

  “Not to take a look,” said Fogarty. “By entering Mrs. Schneider’s home under false pretenses, she’s forfeited her rights to privacy.”

  “If the computer files prove incriminating, we’ll need a warrant to remove the computer from the premises,” added Harley. “The detective from the fraud unit will execute one.”

  Both officers stood behind Zack, reading over his shoulder, as he opened one file after another and slowly scrolled through them.

  Harley whistled under his breath. “You’d think someone who’d devised such a
sophisticated scheme would password protect her computer.”

  “She did,” said Zack.

  My jaw dropped. “You hacked your way in? In less than five minutes? Do they teach that in photojournalism school or alphabet agency school?”

  He speared me with his standard I’m-not-a-spy look. “Neither. The average tech-savvy twelve-year-old would have gotten in sooner.”

  Right. Although it did make me wonder whether my own two sons had such skills. And if so, did I really want to know?

  After looking at only a few files, Harley placed a call to a Detective Vasquez in the Union County fraud unit. “You might want to clear your schedule for this one,” he said.

  As Zack had suggested, the phony Jane and her sidekick had a long history of pulling this particular con throughout the country—and Phony Jane had kept meticulous records.

  “So who is she, really?” I asked as we waited for the detective to arrive.

  “Not sure,” said Zack. “She’s got dozens of aliases, not to mention scores of stolen identities. She created a database to keep them all straight.”

  “They could be Roma,” suggested Fogarty.

  “What’s that?” asked Rosalie.

  “The politically correct name for gypsies. They’re cons have gotten more and more sophisticated over the last couple of decades.”

  “The fraud techs will be able to sift through everything and get to the truth,” said Harley.

  “I hope so,” she said. “I want those women locked away for the rest of their lives.”

  I was about to agree when Jane walked through the front door.

  EIGHT

  Jane immediately zeroed in on Harley and Fogarty. “Why are the police here?”

  Rosalie pointed a finger at her. “They’re here to arrest you. I knew you were up to something. Now I have proof. And so do they.”

  Jane’s gaze darted around the dining room, from Rosalie to me to Zack to the two officers. Then she zeroed in on the computer sitting in front of Zack. The color drained from her face. “Is that my computer?”

  “It certainly is,” said Rosalie, a smug expression filling her face. “And it’s all the proof the police need to lock you up for stealing from me. And apparently from a lot of other people.”

  “How dare you!” Jane strode across the room and made a grab for the laptop, but Fogarty beat her to it. In one swift move his massive hand slammed down the cover and scooped up the computer.

  “Step back,” he ordered her.

  “I will not! That’s private property. You have no right to take it.” She lunged at Fogarty and tried to wrestle the computer from his grip.

  Harley grabbed Jane’s arm in an attempt to pry her away from his partner, but Jane refused to budge. “Unless you want to add assaulting an officer to the charges that will be filed against you,” he finally said, “you’ll let go immediately.”

  Jane dropped her arms, stepped back, and switched tactics. She plastered a nervous smile on her face and waved a hand toward the computer. “This is all a huge misunderstanding,” she said.

  “Who are you?” demanded Rosalie.

  Jane turned to face Rosalie. With a sing-song lilt to her voice, as if speaking down to a small child, she said, “I’m your niece. Jane Sherman. You know that. And I’d never steal from you, Aunt Rosalie. You’re confused.”

  She then addressed Harley and Fogarty. “You remember how irrational she behaved the other night. This is just more of the same paranoid behavior. My aunt suffers from dementia.”

  “I do not!” said Rosalie.

  “How does that explain the files on your computer?” I asked. “The ones that prove you’re a con artist.”

  Jane laughed. “Con artist? Don’t be silly. That’s research. I’m writing a mystery novel.”

  Zack spoke for the first time. “Funny how there’s no evidence of a novel in progress anywhere on your computer.”

  “That’s because I’m still in the research stage. And who the hell are you?”

  Rosalie didn’t give Zack a chance to answer. “Why did you charge thousands of dollars to my credit cards and withdraw even more from my bank accounts? Was that also research for your book?”

  Jane sighed. “Don’t you remember, Aunt Rosalie? You gave me the credit cards to shop for you, and I withdrew the money to pay your hospital bills.”

  “Bull hockey! I did no such thing. And you’re not my niece.”

  “Of course, I am. I’ll show you my driver’s license if you don’t believe me.” Jane walked around the table to where Rosalie sat. She reached into her purse, but instead of pulling out her wallet, she withdrew a semi-automatic pistol and pointed it at Rosalie’s head.

  “Now this is what’s going to happen,” she said, her voice growing menacing. “No one moves until I say so.” With her left hand she latched onto Rosalie’s right arm, the one with the hand and wrist cast, and yanked her to her feet. The dining room chair toppled backwards and crashed to the floor.

  With the gun pressed against the back of Rosalie’s head, Jane dragged her into the living room. “Anastasia, take the computer from the cop.”

  I turned to Harley and Fogarty. “Do as she says,” said Harley. “We don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  “That’s right,” said Jane. “Listen to the smart cop, and no one gets hurt.”

  Fogarty began to hand me the laptop, but Zack reached for it. “I’ll do it.”

  “No!” Jane waved the gun at us. “I said Anastasia. Or I start shooting.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said to Zack as I took the computer.

  “That’s better,” said Jane. “Now bring the laptop to me. Nice and slow.”

  I walked into the living room toward Jane and Rosalie. Stopping about two feet in front of them, with both hands I held out the computer. “Here.”

  Unless Jane sprouted a third arm, she either had to release her grip on Rosalie or put down the gun. She kept the gun pressed against Rosalie’s head while she extended her left arm toward me. “Give it to me,” she said.

  As Jane took a step forward and reached for the computer, Rosalie swung her arm, slamming her cast hard onto Jane’s wrist. The gun flew from Jane’s hand, discharging as it smashed a porcelain table lamp, then ricocheted off the corner of the coffee table and skidded across the hardwood floor.

  She shoved Rosalie aside and lunged for the gun. As Jane sailed past me, I swung the computer and smacked her in the back of her head. She fell forward, hitting her head on the edge of the glass-topped coffee table. While Harley, and Fogarty rushed to subdue her, Zack retrieved the gun.

  Detective Vasquez pulled up to the front of the house as Harley and Fogarty were dragging a handcuffed, bloodied Jane, to their squad car.

  *

  “You could have gotten yourself killed,” I told Rosalie as we waited for Detective Vasquez and his crime scene techs to bag up Jane’s belongings.

  “Or all of us,” said Zack.

  “Harley and Fogarty would have put her down before that happened,” she said.

  “Put her down?” We live in a town with very little crime. I doubt Harley and Fogarty had ever fired their service revolvers other than during target practice. The thought of bullets flying across Rosalie’s living room sent shudders skittering up my spine.

  “That is what it’s called, isn’t it? Besides, someone had to do something. You were all just standing there.”

  “We were trying to keep her from putting a bullet through your skull,” said Zack.

  “And I appreciate that, but the situation called for action. So I took matters into my own hands and acted.”

  Rosalie was either the bravest woman I’d ever met or the most reckless. Either way, she was one feisty octogenarian.

  *

  Until we knew that the police had Willow in custody, I didn’t want Rosalie staying in her house. I suggested she spend the night in my home. With the boys still away, she could sleep in their room and wouldn’t have to share a room with Lu
cille. Rosalie immediately accepted my offer. I think she, too, was afraid Willow might come after her, seeking revenge.

  Harley and Fogarty stopped by after dinner to give us an update.

  “She refused to talk,” said Harley, “other than to demand a lawyer.”

  “And Willow?” I asked.

  “Behind bars as well,” said Fogarty, “and also not talking.

  “We were able to track her down using the other one’s cell phone,” said Harley. “They were sharing an apartment in Millburn.”

  “Do you have any idea who they are?” I asked.

  Harley nodded. “Turns out there are dozens of outstanding warrants from all over the country for those two. In a matter of minutes Vasquez had a hit from the FBI database.”

  “Jane’s real name is Virginia Mayer,” said Fogarty. “Willow’s her older sister Deborah.”

  “How did they get away with it for so long?” asked Zack. “You’d think the FBI would have notified hospitals across the country to be on the lookout for them.”

  “Especially Willow—Deborah,” I said. “She doesn’t exactly blend into the woodwork with that wild orange hair.”

  “According to Vasquez, Deborah Mayer is a master of disguise. They found all sorts of wigs and theatrical prosthetics in the apartment when they raided it. Every time the women moved to another part of the country, she’d changed her looks.”

  “And no one knew to keep an eye out for Virginia Mayer,” added Harley, “because she never applied for a job at the hospitals.”

  “You were right about them.” I said to Zack. “How did you know?”

  He shrugged. “Years of reading mysteries and thrillers on all those intercontinental plane rides.”

  Or years of working for Spies R Us? I might as well give up. He’d never come clean to me.

  “Jane—Virginia—was frighteningly good,” I said.

  “Good?” asked Rosalie. “There was nothing good about that woman.”

  “I mean in the way she’d perfected her act. She was totally convincing, prepared for every contingency. She never skipped a beat, never faltered. The woman had answers to questions before we even asked them. Like the pills. And the excuse about the dentist.”

  “She was drugging me,” said Rosalie, “no matter what she claims.”