The Fox's Choice

by M A Simonetti

  With any luck, my money would be returned to my account within hours. And I could pay Fred and meet the rent on the garage. And the other bills I had pending. It couldn’t happen soon enough.

  I took Las Virgenes Road back to Malibu- a lovely drive during the day through the canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains. At night, however, it is a narrow, dark road that requires a driver’s concentration. Richard returned phone calls while I paid attention. He returned quite a few which reminded me that he had more clients than just me. I made a mental note to do something nice for him when this was all over. Dinner at the Saddle Peak Lodge with Jorjana and Franklin perhaps. Nothing says thank you like a mixed plate of trout, emu and elk. I knew Franklin, at least, would love it. He might even bring his own meat to grill. I wondered if the chef knew how to prepare horned oryx.

  I found myself smiling at the thought. Not so much about Franklin and his game meats but the idea of dining out with Richard and Franklin and Jorjana. It had been a long time- years- since I’d had someone to take out. I’d been divorced over ten years and since then had been mostly dateless. My relationship with Stan Sanchez was composed of finding time between my social schedule and his job and four kids. Stan’s salary as a cop with child support payments did not allow him a lot of flexibility for fine dining. We ate at my house a lot. Among other things, Stan was a great cook.

  “Keith may have some answers,” Richard said. “There’s a search team looking for him and his buddies outside of Twain Harte. They have to cover a lot of territory. The guys are out of cell phone range.”

  I remembered Keith mentioning a backpacking trip when we had lunch at the country club.

  “How do you know this?”

  Richard answered the question, unlike Jim who never seemed to have an answer that he could share.

  “Stan is keeping me informed. Unofficially.”

  “Stan? My Stan?”

  “I thought that was over,” Richard said more sharply than necessary.

  “It is. I’m surprised that he even cares.”

  “He still cares, Alana. Do you?”

  Did I? I thought about it for a nanosecond. I did care about Stan. He was handsome, funny and good company. But his friends were cops who lived in the Valley and mine were the upper crust of Malibu society. Neither of us fit into the other’s world. And then there were his kids. All four of them.

  “It’s over. His job and his kids will always come first. I don’t want to be sixth in line for anyone.”

  “You shouldn’t have to, Alana.”

  I didn’t intend to. Something told me I wouldn’t have to either.

  We reached the light at Pepperdine University and Pacific Coast highway. I turned left and headed south on PCH. Traffic was light- about the only time it ever is on PCH. We passed the shopping center where Ralph’s is located and stopped at the road that takes you to Malibu Beach Road. My street.

  “Do you want to go home?” Richard asked. “I can call John and have him pick me up.”

  “No worries,” I said. “The drive will help me clear my head.”

  “There is a lot to sort out, isn’t there? You promise to go straight home though? Rusty’s guys are still watching your house, right?”

  The stoplight was still red so I picked up my phone. I opened the app to the security cameras that Rusty installed all over my house. I showed the footage to Richard.

  “See? They are outside. I will be fine.”

  “I guess I can trust you to drive alone from my house to yours,” Richard chuckled.

  “Seriously. How much trouble can I get into?”

  I was about to find out.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  There were fewer cops at Richards house when we drove up. No helicopters circled overhead. No news van clogging the road. Crime scene tape stretched across the entrance to the driveway. The Fury was bathed in floodlights.

  “They’re going to be here all night,” Richard sighed. “Let me out here, I’ll walk the rest of the way to the house.”

  I waited until the cop standing guard cleared him. I made a three point turn and headed down the hill towards town. There was a whole baked chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy in the fridge at my house and I couldn’t wait to get to them.

  I was back at the stoplight by the Ralph’s shopping center when my phone rang. The area code was 530.

  Redding.

  The light turned green. I let the phone ring and turned into the parking lot. I set the brake. Turned off the car. The phone went silent. I picked it up and scrolled through my recent calls. This 530 number was different from the 530 number that Bambi used. I wondered if her family was calling me for some reason. I wasted no time in wondering how they got my number. My certainty that I had privacy was forever erased. I decided the least I could do was return the call.

  I pushed the call back symbol. The phone was answered on the first ring.

  “I have to see you. Don’t tell no one.”

  I felt the blood drain from my head.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Bambi.”

  “But you’re dead.”

  “That’s my sister. The SOB killed my sister.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I like to think that I can think on my feet. Like the time the duchess stripped off all of her clothes and went skinny-dipping in Jorjana’s koi pond during the cheese course at a dinner party. In that instance, I diverted the attention of everyone at the party by knocking over a tray of glassware. But thinking on your feet requires a certain amount of energy and energy was something I was out of when Bambi came back from the dead.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  I didn’t completely ignore the little voice warning me that this wasn’t a good idea. In my defense, I thought that I would get my hands on her and then call the cops. Or Richard. Or Jim. Or Rusty. Or even the cops. Whoever picked up their phone first.

  “Where are you?” she asked in return.

  I had enough sense to ignore that.

  “You need to talk to the cops.”

  “I’ve got the evidence to prove that Keith killed my son and my sister. Do you want it or not? If not, I’m going to Mexico before that SOB kills me too.”

  “Keith didn’t kill Zane,” I said. “He was at a party in San Francisco that night.”

  “Ya never heard of private planes? How stupid are you?”

  That gave me pause. It would take a plane less than an hour to fly from the Bay Area to any one of several small airports in LA. Or from a small airport near Twain Harte. It was possible for Keith to be in two places almost at once.

  “I don’t have all night for this bullshit,” Bambi said. “You want the evidence or not?”

  “Why me? If you have the evidence, go to the authorities.”

  “Yeah, right. And they’ll throw my ass in jail. I was there, remember?”

  “But what if I go with you?”

  “And do what?”

  “I can recommend a good attorney.”

  “OK, fine. You don’t want it. I’m outta here. But if Keith gets away with this, you can kiss your money good-bye.”

  “Wait.”

  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see what she had. Maybe Keith had an accomplice. Like a hacker friend of Zane’s. Who maybe was with Denice and her guys. You didn’t need a lot of energy to see this story had a lot of players. I was clear on one thing. I wanted to see my money again.

  “Where are you?”

  I picked Bambi up at the Malibu Pier. Late night diners straggled out from Malibu Farms to their cars. There was no mistaking Bambi. Dressed in leggings and an oversized T-shirt she looked like a housekeeper arriving for the late shift.

  She hopped in the car without so much as a hello. She barely looked at me.

  “I’ve got the address,” she said. “Doesn’t this thing have a GPS?”

  “No, it was built in 1948,” I said.

  “Jesus. I hope you didn’t pay a lot for this piece of sh
it.”

  I refrained from telling Bambi the piece of shit she rode in was worth about two hundred grand.

  “Why do you need a GPS?” I asked. “Don’t you have the evidence with you?”

  “How stupid do you think I am?” she asked indignantly. “I had it stashed where Keith won’t find it.”

  That made sense as much as anything had up to that point.

  “I know Malibu like the back of my hand,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  She named a coffee shop off PCH near Topanga Canyon. I wondered aloud why she would stash evidence in a coffee shop.

  “A friend of mine works there. She put it in her locker.”

  “What exactly do you have?”

  “Plenty. I’ve got copies of deposits.”

  “Which proves what?”

  “Which proves that he paid for Zane’s school and the rent on the house.”

  I didn’t say anything but I wondered if I was on a fool’s errand.

  “Keith paid for Zane to go to school,” Bambi said. “He paid the tuition, paid his rent and gave him spending money.”

  “Why?”

  “So Zane could hack into bank accounts and steal people’s money.”

  I weighed this claim of hers against Jim’s evidence that Keith was financially solid and well-respected. Bambi seemed to sense my skepticism.

  “You know Keith really hates you, don’t you?”

  No, I did not. I’d only met the guy once.

  “Keith hates you because old man Bennett thought you were the queen or something. He was sick of hearing how great you were all the time.”

  “So he stole my money to hurt me?”

  “No, he owes guys a lot of money.”

  “It’s my understanding that he is very successful.”

  “Yeah, but he’s got this fancy bitch that he has to keep happy. He owes money to all the wrong kind of guys.”

  I remembered the stunning redhead in the photo. And I knew from my own experiences how shady the world of real estate could be. It could be tempting to borrow money from the wrong sources and be caught short when the payments came due.

  My phone vibrated then. A text from Richard “Where r u?”

  “Who’s that?” Bambi looked startled.

  “It’s… a friend,” I lied. “I’ll call him back later. Why did Keith kill Zane?”

  “It was an accident,” Bambi said. “They got into a fight.”

  “And you saw it?”

  “I heard it,” she said. “I was in the bedroom keeping an eye on you.”

  “Did Keith know you were there?”

  I finally felt like I was getting the whole story. I had a million questions starting with why she drugged me and how her sister ended up dead in Malibu. Unfortunately, we’d reached our destination.

  “Yeah, he…hey, park over there.”

  A space miraculously opened up and I pulled in. The coffee shop was located in a tiny strip mall along with a dry cleaner and a pet store. The other shops were closed but the coffee shop had all its lights on and looked very busy.

  Bambi paused after I shut the car off. She looked all around the parking lot and then into the coffee shop. She glanced at my phone. Then she looked at me. She was not the most attractive woman I have ever seen but she wasn’t ugly. She could use a decent hair cut and a facial. She had the kind of tiny figure that made her look much younger than her thirty-something years. Whatever gave her pause passed. She smiled at me and put her hand on my arm.

  “Thanks for comin’ to get me. I know it’s hard to believe out but Keith’s a really smart guy and he’s desperate. Let’s go get the stuff.”

  I followed her to the door. She opened it and waved me ahead. I thought that was very gracious of her. I stepped inside.

  The coffee shop was one of those artsy places that does everything in its power to not look like Starbucks. The floors were linoleum, the walls lined with planks. Booths on either side, tables in the middle. It was larger than it looked from the outside and it was full of people drinking coffee and staring at their phones. At the far end of the room baristas poured and steamed and yelled out names as they pounded out coffee orders. The clientele was mostly young and desperately hip. I was the oldest person in the place.

  Except for a woman seated at a table in the middle of the room. She had shoulder length curly hair and she wore a jersey wrap dress in a colorful print. I knew her handbag carried a gun and a badge. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her.

  The young hip crowd was surprised to see me too. I spotted the three guys who were not professional athletes. Two young women, one Asian, one not. On second look, the baristas sported very short hair and suspicious bulges under their aprons.

  The place was full of FBI agents.

  Bambi stepped behind me and got very close. Too close. I felt something hard push against my back.

  This time it wasn’t a hypodermic needle.

  This time it was a gun.

  “Somebody’s meetin’ me here,” Bambi whispered in my ear. “I’m gonna do my business with them and then you are gonna give me the keys to your car. Keep your mouth shut or I swear I’ll kill you.”

  Richard Lafferty is the third person on my speed dial because I have a knack for getting into trouble. The kind of trouble that occasionally finds me with a gun pointed at my back. Because of this, Jorjana gave me self-defense classes for Christmas. I am now the proud owner of a diploma that states that I can defend myself.

  I winked at the woman in the jersey dress. In a nanosecond, I shifted my weight to my left leg, bent my right leg and kicked back as hard as a donkey unloading on a cowboy. My foot crashed into Bambi’s knee. I heard something crack. I dove to the left, away from the gun. Bambi fell to the floor and the gun skittered away. I crawled as fast as a lizard under a booth and I stayed put.

  For once in my life, I let the authorities take charge.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I’ll bet anything that gun was the one used to kill Zane and Brandi,” Denice said.

  We stood outside the coffee shop amidst the police cruisers and unmarked cars clogging the parking lot. An ambulance filled with cops and Bambi with a broken knee inched its way to the street. The news helicopters were yet to arrive. One news van drove past slowly, looking for a story.

  I was looking for answers myself. The facts and lies were so tightly interwoven that I barely knew where to start asking questions. I opted to start near the end and work backwards.

  “Why did Bambi contact me again?” I asked Denice.

  “She needed to get here in time,” Denice said. “I put a hard stop on how long I would wait for her. And she needed to escape. She’s not that bright. She didn’t think it through.”

  “She could have just stolen a car,” I said.

  “Not in her skill set,” Denice said. “She’s a con artist. She knows how to manipulate people to do what she wants. She knew you wanted your money so she used that to get you to drive her here.”

  “She wouldn’t have gotten far,” I noted. “There aren’t that many 1948 Jags on the road.”

  “She didn’t know what car you would drive.”

  “She was smart enough to follow my money.”

  “She followed the money until landed in Hong Kong. Zane used the same patterns and the same passwords as he did with earlier scams. But he changed everything with that last transfer. That’s when Brandi got desperate. She mucked up finding someone to help her out. She not only told me where she was, she told me where the money was. She deserves to go to jail just for making hackers look stupid.”

  “That’s an odd thing for an FBI agent to say,” I said.

  Denice looked startled, then she laughed.

  “I’m not an FBI agent.”

  She held pulled the badge out of her bag and handed it to me. It was suspiciously light.

  “But you said…”

  “I said that they were on it and held up a badge,” Denice said. “You cam
e to your own conclusions.”

  “Who are you then?”

  “I’m one of Jim’s guys. So are they.”

  Denice pointed back to the coffeehouse. The three non-athletes, the two girls and the burly baristas sat at tables talking with real cops.

  “This coffee shop closes at five,” Denice said. “We’ve rented the place out every night this week. The plan was to set a trap and lure the thief here. Brandi made the whole setup easy.”

  “Bambi made it sound like she suggested where to meet.”

  “Bambi is a liar, Alana. You were played but good.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Richard arrived in an SUV driven by a York valet who had a hand-written note from Jorjana expressing how relieved she was that I was safe.

  Richard drove my car back to my house. I was completely spent.

  He started with a lecture. Of course.

  “Jesus Christ, Alana! If I had a dollar for every time someone held a gun to your head.”

  “It was to my back which was why I got away. A gun to the head is another matter entirely.”

  “You know what I mean. What the hell were you thinking?”

  It was a good question. I wished I had the answer.

  “Why didn’t you call me as soon as you heard from Bambi?”

  I explained the best I could. How I thought I was returning a call to a bereaved family. How taken aback I was to learn that Bambi was alive. How desperately I wanted Keith brought to justice. Richard stopped me there.

  “They found Keith. Out in the middle of nowhere with five of his buddies and a bad case of poison ivy. He’s been with those guys since he left Sacramento yesterday. He didn’t kill Brandi.”

  “When did you find out it was Brandi that was dead?”

  “As soon as I got home. The coJimer identified her by her fingerprints. Then I heard about Keith. I tried calling you at home.”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t there.”

  “There’s more. Keith didn’t kill Zane or Brandi but he isn’t completely innocent. Apparently he got a case of guilt along with the poison ivy. He admitted that he paid for Zane’s schooling and the rent on the house.”

  “Why would he do that?”