The Heist

by Carolyn LaRoche

“A problem bigger than Laura shooting a young mother?” she snapped.

  Laura moaned in agony.

  “Becca?” I turned to look at her over the seat. “Why don’t you take Laura in the house and let her pull herself together in the bathroom? Leave the guns here, Claire and I will bring them in.”

  “Good idea, Susie.” Becca nodded her agreement as she turned to Laura and put an arm around her. “Come on, honey, let’s go in the house.”

  Becca opened the back door and stepped out of the car. She waited as Laura followed her and then walked her to the house, an arm around the other woman’s waist.

  When they made it in through the door and into Claire’s kitchen, I spoke again. “Claire, that woman I ran into on the steps? She was my neighbor. A woman named Joan Crawford.”

  “So? You had your mask on. You didn’t stop and chat with her did you?”

  “No. I didn’t. But…”

  “But, what?” she demanded.

  “She recognized me.”

  “She recognized you?” I could hear the fear in her voice. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. She said my name.”

  “Holy shit, Susie! Did you respond when she said it?”

  “Of course not! But I know she knows. She saw my knee.”

  “Your knee? What does your knee have to do with anything?”

  I pulled up my Lucy dress and showed her the bandage. “On the way over here, I fell on the front walk of my house. Joan was outside. She saw me fall. She knew I scraped up my knee pretty bad. As soon as she saw my bandage, she whispered my name.”

  “This is not good. This is not good at all,” Claire whispered to herself as she closed her eyes and leaned back against the head rest. “And then Laura went and shot that woman. Now there is forensic evidence and an eyewitness to the crime.”

  “Forensic evidence? What do you mean?” Now it was my turn to be surprised.

  “The bullet. If—when—they find it—and they will find it—it becomes forensic evidence against us. If we get arrested they will search my house, find the weapons and match the bullet to Laura’s gun.”

  “And if Joan goes to the cops and tells them about me, they connect all the dots and they will search your house. Who can say she hasn’t already gone to Andy? Oh crap! I am in so much trouble.” I sagged against the door, shaking my head.

  “No!” Claire slapped the seat beside her. “We will be okay. Just don’t talk to anyone. Joan didn’t actually see you and you didn’t confirm your identity so she has no real proof, just a suspicion, right?”

  “Right, I guess. So, what do we do?”

  “Nothing. We do absolutely nothing, If no one says a word, they have nothing to go on. We just have to act like nothing ever happened. Let’s go inside and talk to Laura and Becca. There has to be total agreement that no one talks.”

  We left the car in the garage. I carried the weapons into the house while Claire secured the doors and shouldered the duffel bags of cash.

  27

  Cover Story

  “Come on, Laura! You must stop. We need to talk.” Becca pleaded with her over and over. “We have to figure out what to do!”

  As Claire and I entered her house we could hear Laura still crying and Becca pleading with her to stop.

  “She really needs to pull herself together,” Claire muttered. I could hear the aggravation and frustration in her words. Claire was a professional, she didn’t know what to do with an amateur who fell to pieces.

  I followed Claire to her sitting room and placed the firearms I carried onto a sofa table close to the hatch for the underground storage room.

  Becca paced the floor, twisting her hands. Her Lucy mask hung down her back and her curly hair had the wild look of someone constantly running their hands through it.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Becca kept repeating, over and over again. Her body shook uncontrollably.

  “Get it together, would you,?” Claire walked over to the secret latch and popped the door to the underground room open. Grabbing the guns I had left on the table, she took the steps down into the storage room mumbling about useless amateurs.

  Leaving Becca to pace and Laura to cry, I followed Claire into the underground space. She rapidly unloaded the stack of pistols and stowed the guns in their designated spots in the glass cases. She dumped the ammunition in a plastic shoe box and snapped the cover on it. She turned to the duffel bags she had removed from her shoulder and tossed onto a separate stainless steel counter top.

  “Claire?” I called to her from my position on the steps.

  “We need to get the costumes stowed down here as quickly as possible. I will count out the cash and get that locked up as well. We aren’t going to be able to spend any of it for a while. We have to wait for things to calm down a bit.”

  Thoughts of Lawrence the debt collector passed through my mind. I didn’t want to sit on the cash, I wanted to buy back my home and pay off my other debts.

  “For how long do you think?”

  “I don’t know. A month. Maybe more.”

  “I don’t want to wait a month. My home is going into foreclosure. I need the money now.”

  Claire slammed both palms down on the cool metal tabletop and turned to face me, anger flushing her cheeks a bright red. “Well, you can thank your friend Laura for that!” she said coldly. She turned back to the table and began stacking the money to count it.

  Obviously, she needed some time alone so I returned to the main level of the house and approached Laura.

  “Laura?” I said gently. “Laura, you need to pull yourself together right now!” I used the firm, no nonsense voice I always pulled out for the boys to try and get her to focus.

  She turned to face me, her tear streaked cheeks and red eyes on a background of pale skin thick with anguish. “What did I do?” she whispered.

  “I don’t have a freaking clue, Laura! What did you do? Why did you do it?” I snapped, anger and fear escalating quickly into uncontrollable rage. My head still throbbed from the seizure I had on the way home. “We had a real good thing going! We were getting the money to help Mia! What the hell were you thinking?” I had to work hard to resist the urge to slap her.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t mean to shoot anyone! I wasn’t thinking of hurting anyone!”

  “Then why did you pull the damned trigger?” Claire demanded from behind me. She had quietly returned to the main floor and behind my right shoulder.

  “I don’t know!” Laura wailed. “I heard Susie call out and I turned around to see what was wrong. And the gun just went off!”

  “Oh, right! It just went off by itself!” Becca snapped. She had suddenly stopped pacing and stared at Laura.

  “It did!” Laura cried. “Why would I want to hurt anyone?” She collapsed to her knees, burying her face in her hands. “What have I done? I have to do something!”

  “What? What can you do?” Claire demanded. “There is nothing you can do! It’s done! You shot that woman and her little….” Her voice trailed off as she saw the look of horror on Becca’s face. Claire was about to say what we had all been thinking. That innocent little child witnessed his mother being shot and maybe die because of us.

  I stepped in between Becca and Claire. We were falling apart. I had to do something to keep us all from completely unraveling. “I think we should turn on the news.”

  “What? Why?” Becca asked.

  “We need to see what is happening. Find out what the cops know. See if that woman… is … going to be all right. Find out if they know who we are.”

  Laura waved a hand blindly in the air. “No. It’s not necessary. I have to turn myself in. I’ll go to the police. Don’t worry, I won’t give any of you up. I promise.”

  “NO!” Claire jumped to her feet. “Absolutely not! You can’t go to the police. They will figure it out. Susie’s husband is a cop, for God’s sake! He knows who her friends are! You don’t think they will have us pegged in abo
ut ten seconds!”

  “I won’t tell them! I swear I won’t!”

  “Aren’t you listening to anything I am saying?” Claire stepped in close, nose to nose with Laura. Her words were clipped and her tone harsh. “You won’t have to tell them! They will figure it out!”

  “Laura?” I stepped between her and Claire again. “Think about Mia. If you turn yourself in they are gonna lock you up. She needs you, Laura. She needs you to take care of her. How will you do that from prison? We need to work together on this. You have to pull yourself together.”

  I could hear the growing frustration in my voice. For me, frustration came fear and the inability to control the events in my life. Laura’s actions were out of my control but they had so much influence on how the rest of my life played out that I was becoming terrified that she couldn’t handle what had happened. If she went to the police we were all going down. Claire knew it too.

  “We are so screwed,” Becca muttered.

  Obviously so did Becca.

  “No! We are not screwed!” Claire insisted with enough emotion for all of us. “If we just stick together and keep our mouths shut, we will be fine! I think we should do what Susie suggested and turn on the television and see what the reporters are saying.”

  We all moved toward the sitting area. Once Laura settled in on one end of the sofa, I sat on the opposite end. Suddenly I had little desire to be anywhere near my best friend. She might be a murderer and I wasn’t exactly sure how to process that information just yet.

  I found myself wondering how much money we had managed to get.

  “Claire?” I called her name quietly.

  “What?” Her muffled response came back from the corner where she was adjusting the television and looking for the local cable news network.

  “How much cash did we end up with?”

  Laura started crying again. Becca shot me a dirty look. Claire just shrugged her shoulders as she replied, “We each made twenty thousand.”

  Her tone was indifferent but I could tell that she was pleased.

  Becca's expression changed quickly. “Twenty thousand? That’s a whole lot of money.”

  “Too bad we can’t spend any of it.”

  “What do you mean, Susie?” Laura turned to look at me. “I need that money for Mia.”

  Claire rose suddenly and glared at the other woman. “Well, Laura, if not for you, we wouldn’t have to wait.”

  Laura just stared back at her, eyes unseeing as she repeated herself. “I need that money. I need it for Mia.”

  “Well, I needed it to pay off my back mortgage payments but now I won’t be able to do that either.” My harsh tone wounded Laura but I just didn’t seem to care. I had just broken a dozen major laws, put my marriage and my family at risk, and apparently it was all for nothing.

  Laura collapsed against the back of the couch she sat on. Her face went completely blank. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered over and over. Shock seemed to be taking over but at least she had stopped crying finally.

  “There! Found it!” Claire was jubilant as she settled in a chair near the television set to watch the breaking news alert.

  “Oh look!” Becca exclaimed. “There we are! There’s the bank! What are they saying?”

  “Shhh! I can’t hear!” Claire snapped.

  Claire grabbed the remote control off an end table and turned the volume way up. A flashback of our first day sitting around this room together eating shortcake and drinking tea and planning our big heist hit me. We were so damned naïve to think that we could get away with robbing a bank. It never even occurred to me that so many things could go wrong. We should have known something would happen. I turned my focus back to the television to see what the reporters had to say.

  “A local bank was robbed today. Four woman dressed as Lucy Ricardo took a Bank of Virginia by storm this morning.” A close up of Claire, in full Lucy gear, appeared in the center of the television screen.

  Four pairs of eyes stared intently at the television screen as a video of the four us rushing into the old brick building. The footage was grainy at best and nearly impossible to see any detail but it showed four women wearing masks. As I watched the clip intently, I found myself feeling pretty impressed. The four of us moved like a well-oiled machine, taking up our positions and executing the plan exactly the way we had discussed. We were convincing enough to look like we were all professionals.

  And then they fast forwarded to the part where Laura fired her weapon. The muzzle flash lit up the tape briefly before the Hispanic woman collapsed to the floor. Laura let out a strangled sob as the rest of gasped out loud as the gun went off.

  The clip suddenly disappeared and a live view of the bank took its place. An attractive woman dressed in a navy skirt and white blouse with a matching navy jacket appeared on the screen.

  “Good afternoon Hampton Roads! I’m Tyesha Baxter. I’m here live at the scene of the most recent bank robbery in Virginia Beach. As you can see…” She gestured widely behind her, sweeping most of the space of the television screen. “As you can see, emergency medical personnel are on scene. A woman has been shot inside the bank during the crime and the security officer on sight suffered a mild heart attack. I have not been allowed inside the building but apparently a young mother took a bullet to one of her lungs while holding the hand of her toddler.”

  Laura was still crying. “Turn it off! I can’t stand it!” She managed to blurt out between sobs.

  “No,” Claire said. “Leave it on. We need to know what they know.”

  “Please!” Laura wailed. “I can’t take it anymore!”

  “Shhh!” I commanded before Claire had the chance.

  Laura buried her head in her hands and turned to face the back of the sofa. She continued to cry but the cushion muffled the sound.

  “Several sources have revealed to me that the woman who has been shot is still alive but that her condition is precarious at this time. Wait! It looks like the EMT's are wheeling her out now. Let me see if I can get in close enough to ask someone how she is!”

  The camera showed the reporter pushing her way through the crowds until she was right up beside the ambulance. When the two EMT’s pushing the stretcher reached the bus as well, Tyesha Baxter shoved the microphone in the face of the one closest to her.

  “How is the victim doing? Will she survive?”

  The EMT shoved the microphone away but Tyesha was not deterred. She disappeared around the front of the ambulance and reappeared on the other side where she shoved the microphone into the other EMT's face.

  “What can you tell me about the victim? Will she be all right?”

  The second EMT turned on Tyesha and snapped, “I don’t know! She’s lost a lot of blood! If you keep shoving that mic into our faces, we will never get her to the hospital and she will die! Now get the hell outta my way!”

  The camera showed the exaggeratedly shocked expression of Tyesha Baxter for just a brief second before the experienced reporter secured her neutral expression once again. “I can see we won’t be getting any information just yet! We will check back in from the hospital when I get the chance to speak to someone who actually knows something! Back to you in the studio, Bob!” The reporter shot an annoyed look at the second EMT. I couldn’t be sure but I think he flipped her the bird in return. The cameraman panned the stretcher quickly, allowing for a glimpse of the woman Laura had shot. Her pale skin and blood-soaked clothing brought a rush of bile to my mouth.

  As the camera scanned the crowds behind Tyesha, I caught a glimpse of the little curly—headed boy the woman had been trying to protect and then I lost it. Running for the bathroom, I held my hands over my mouth to try and prevent the vomit from getting all over Claire’s house. By the time I knelt bent over the toilet bowl heaving for all I was worth, I couldn’t see through the tears pouring over my cheeks.

  What had we done?

  28

  Schizophrenic Behaviors

  By the time I
finished heaving, the tears had subsided somewhat as well. I flushed the toilet and leaned over the sink to splash cold water on my face. A familiar ache behind my left eye had settled in and I knew it was the beginning of another brain splitting headache. I had to think about getting home soon, before a seizure fired up.

  Leaving the bathroom, I clicked the light switch to the off position and turn to head back to the family room. As I did so, I nearly walked headlong into Claire.

  She eyed me suspiciously. “You okay, Susie?”

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Yeah, I guess so.” My voice sounded weak but steady. “It was just, you know, seeing that little boy. I’m good now though. What’s up?”

  “We have to get Laura to pull herself together. She’s a mess.” Claire was all business, not a shred of compassion in her voice. “She’s gonna bring us all down, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Claire? She shot someone today. You did notice that, didn’t you? I am not so sure she is gonna just bounce back from this you know.”

  “Well, she has to! I am not going down for her stupidity! She should have kept her finger off the damned trigger. What the hell was she thinking?” Claire’s voice had gotten considerably louder with each sentence. I held a finger to my mouth, telling her to be quiet. Laura and Becca could probably hear every word. Claire's outburst wouldn't help the situation any.

  “Oh, so what? Let them hear me. I don’t care! I come from a long line of professionals and not one of them has ever gotten caught. I will not be the one to destroy my family’s legacy.” Claire’s face had turned a dark shade of red. She was so hot with anger, I could almost see steam rising from her ears.

  “Will you stop, Claire!” I yelled right back. “Laura will be fine. She just has to work through what happened! Give her the opportunity to pull herself together and then she can go on and act like nothing ever happened. I never took you for being such a cold-hearted bitch.”

  “You may think I am bitch but if I were you, I would start thinking about covering your own ass as well, Mrs. I’m Married to a Cop!”