“Tomorrow? I ….”
“Is that a problem?”
“What? Oh. No. It is not a problem.” Claire recovered quickly and assured me that she would be there the next morning waiting for us. I bid her goodnight and hung up the phone. I needed to spend a little time with my boys before they went off to bed and dinner really needed to happen quickly.
30
It’s Not Over Till the Brit Runs
I slept fitfully that night. I kept seeing the face of that little boy in the bank as his mother collapsed in her own blood. When I could finally shake that image, I dreamt of Joan Crawford pointing an AR-15 at the four of us condemning us to death for our crimes. Finally, I dreamt of sweet little Mia, dressed in her party best, hands folded and eyes closed as we passed by her final resting place to pay our respects. I woke up haunted by the vision of her angelic face as the top of the coffin was closed on her forever.
When I woke, I said a quick prayer of strength for Laura. I wanted to call her and see how Mia was but a part of me was afraid to. The night before something bad had happened to Mia and I kind of didn't want to find out what. I decided that if it were really bad, Laura would have called me and then pulled myself out of bed and hit the shower.
I finished showering and dressing in less than twenty minutes and had just enough time to kiss the boys before they left for school. I had come to terms with my mother in law living with us and even accepted the fact that her presence had made my new life possible. I did miss some of the old routine but quite frankly I'd become somewhat afraid to be alone with my kids after all the seizures I'd been having.
An hour after the boys left, I headed to the bus stop to catch the bus to Claire’s house. Becca was meeting me there at half past nine and I didn’t want to be late. We needed to put forth a united front if I wanted to walk out of there with Laura’s money too. Claire seemed a little put off by our request to come by this morning and that had me worried.
The bus dropped me off down the block from Claire’s house at a quarter after nine. The air held a distinct chill but the sun was bright as I walked the rest of the way to my destination.
When I reached Claire’s place, Becca already waited there leaning up against her old Chrysler Sebring, arms folded across her chest. From a distance, she appeared to be lounging in the bright sun but as I got closer to her, I saw something in her expression that worried me. I glanced up at Claire’s house. There was an eerie sense of empty silence surrounding it. Something wasn’t quite right.
Jogging the rest of the way to where Becca stood, a feeling of panic began to settle over me. Becca scowled and there were tears glistening on her cheeks.
“What’s wrong Becca? Did you talk to Laura? Did something happen to Mia?”
Becca kicked at the ground sending a spray of pebbles rolling across the asphalt. “She’s gone.” Her voice broke and tears of anger filled her eyes as she kicked the ground again. Slamming a hand down on the hood of her car, she cried out, “Damn it, Susie! She’s gone!”
Dread filled the pit of my stomach as I asked, “Who’s gone? Mia?” I fought against the image of little Mia from my dreams the night before.
“No! Claire! Claire is gone!”
“Oh.” The dread rose up out of my stomach and spread through every cell of my body. “Gone like she went to the mall or the grocery store or something?”
“No.” Becca’s voice lost all emotion. “Gone like the house is empty and she has left the country.”
“That’s not possible.” My voice sounded small, even to me.
“Oh, it’s very possible. Go see for yourself.” She motioned up the walkway to the expansive front porch.
“All right, I will. You must be making a mistake. Why would she leave? How could she leave so quickly? No, there must be some mistake.” I talked mostly to myself all the way up the walk, hoping to convince myself of what I knew in my heart couldn't possibly be true.
Climbing the porch steps slowly I made my way over to the window to the right of the door. As I peered into what had been the formal dining room expecting to see Claire’s beautiful antique dining room set, I sucked in a breath as I viewed the completely empty room.
“What the hell?” The memory of a loud crash in the background while Claire and I were on the phone the night before returned to me and I cursed out loud. Moving quickly to the next window about ten feet down the porch, I looked at what should have been the family room where we always had our meetings. That room too stood stark and bare.
I made my way along the wraparound porch, stopping to look into each window and finding each room to be completely empty. How did Claire manage to pack up her entire home and leave in less than eighteen hours?
When I reached the back door, I turned and saw Becca standing behind me. “I told you she was gone,” she said in the same flat, empty voice.
“Where? How? What about our money? She had it all.” I kicked the wall and slammed my fist down on the porch rail for emphasis. “I wonder.” I reached over and turned the knob on the back door, praying it would be unlocked. I inhaled sharply as I pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold.
“Where are you going, Susie? You can’t go in there. It’s trespassing.” Becca called after me.
“Screw trespassing! She stole our money!” The irony of that actually made me chuckle. The thief stealing from the thieves.
I ran through the house, my footsteps echoing through the empty structure. I went straight to the secret door. I stomped down on the plank in the floor that released the latch and yanked the door open. Running down the steps, I flipped the light switch on to illuminate the weapons storage room.
Just like the upstairs, the small store room was empty. Empty except for a single brown, cardboard box sitting on the counter against the back wall.
“Becca, look.” I pointed to the box. “Claire left us something.”
“How do you know it’s for us?” she whispered.
“Who else knows about this room?” I stood by the counter inspecting the simple cardboard container.
“What do you think is in it?” Becca asked just over my left shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
“It could be a bomb.” Becca sounded scared and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I don’t think it’s a bomb. Claire's a thief, not a terrorist!”
“How do we know? I mean, there was so much about her we didn’t know for so long. For years we were convinced she was just a military wife and she turned out to be an international thief. Why not a terrorist?” I could hear the bitterness in her tone that echoed my own feelings toward Claire at that moment.
“I am sure she was—is—a lot of things but I truly doubt that she is a terrorist. She would have blown up the banks instead of robbing them. Now, let’s see what she left us.”
I slid the box across the counter so that it sat in front of me. The flaps were folded in on each other but not secured. I slowly reached up and ran my hand across the tip of the box. Slightly taken in by Becca’s fears, I half expected to hear a ticking clock inside the container.
Popping open one of the flaps, I opened the box and peered inside. I could see several bundles of currency in neat piles at the bottom of the carton. A piece of paper was folded in half and placed on top of them. I removed the paper from the box and opened it.
“What?” Becca asked. “What is it?”
“It’s our money. And a letter from Claire.”
“Our money? Oh, thank God! What does the letter say?”
Hello Ladies,
I am sorry to have missed you this morning but I am certain that you will find this carton quickly. In light of the events of yesterday’s job, I felt it was in my best interest to leave Virginia Beach as quickly as possible. Please give Laura my love and let her know how sorry I am about her daughter. I wish you all the best. Take care of yourselves.
Claire.
“Son of a bitch,” I murmured under my breath. “She left. That
crazy bitch left us here to take the rap.”
“What rap? Are we going to get caught? Is that why she left? Did she turn us in?” She began to sound hysterical.
“Relax, Becca. No one turned us in. Claire got scared because of her history and left town. That’s all. Nothing to worry about, really.” I hoped I sounded more convinced than I felt. I still didn’t know if Joan had done anything. “Let’s just take the money and get out of here. Can you give me a ride home?”
I grabbed the carton and headed over to the stairs. When I looked over my shoulder, Becca stood by the counter looking at me.
“Are you coming?” I asked. The sudden urge to get the hell out of that house overwhelmed me. “Come on, Becca, let’s go! We need to go see Laura.”
“I’m coming. I’m coming.” She crossed the space between us quickly and followed me up the steps. I dropped the trap door down over the storage room and we left the house the same way we came in.
When we were settled in Becca’s car and had driven a good two miles towards Laura’s house, Becca finally spoke again. “I can’t believe she left us.” She sounded bewildered and it surprised me. Claire was a criminal and an obvious mastermind at disappearing when the heat got too unbearable.
“Well, she’s gone. At least she left us this.” I patted the cardboard box in my lap.
“Yeah. I guess so.” She fell silent then and didn’t say another word until we pulled up in front of Laura’s house.
“Oh God, no,” we said at the same time.
Parked in front of Laura’s cottage style ranch home was a police car, an ambulance and a large black van with the words MEDICAL EXAMINER on the side. Mia.
“Why didn’t she call me?” I whispered as the tears started falling unchecked.
“Not Mia! Poor Laura!” Becca wailed as she openly began bawling.
“I have to see Laura.” Suddenly the box in my lap didn’t seem very important. Neither did Claire leaving or any of the events of the past twenty-four hours. I had to get to Laura. I jumped from the car leaving the carton on the floor. Not only would Laura not be interested in its contents but I didn’t want to have to explain the same contents to the cops and other officials inside the house. Becca followed me as I ran across the lawn and up the front steps to the small porch at the front door. Without even bothering to knock, I barged through the front door calling out to my friend.
“Laura? Where are you? Laura!” I headed straight to the living room following muted voices that were coming from that direction.
When I entered the room, Laura jumped up from the sofa where she sat beside her husband clinging to his hand. Her face was streaked with tears, her hair clung to her face, matted and tangled and she still had on the same clothes she’d worn the day before. It looked like she had been up all night.
“Oh, Susie! She’s gone! Mia’s gone!” She sobbed as I pushed my way through the small crowd of government employees gathered in her living room. Hugging her, we sobbed into each other’s shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Laura! Why didn’t you call me?”
“I tried!” She gasped between sobs. “You didn’t answer your phone! I called at least a half dozen times this morning.”
“We went to see Claire.” Becca had entered the room and joined us, wrapping her arms around both Laura and me.
Laura looked up. “Is Claire here too?” she asked.
Becca and I looked at each other. “Uh, no,” I replied. “She, um, she wasn’t available today. We had no idea about Mia! What happened?”
One of the cops stepped forward. “Excuse me, ma’am?” He tapped Laura on the shoulder.
“What?” She spoke between sniffs as she wiped at her red eyes with the back of her hand.
“The medical examiner is ready. We need you to sign a couple of forms to release the bo…” I shot him a hard look over Laura’s shoulder. He grimaced but changed his words immediately. “I mean… your daughter, please.”
I could tell that the officer tried to be sensitive and I appreciated his effort. Being married to a cop has taught me that over time they all become desensitized to death, even when it involved a child, but Laura was so distraught it seemed he couldn’t help but try and be gentle.
She stepped to aside and followed the officer to Mia’s room. In less than five minutes she returned, crying again and sat in the recliner that faced away from the door. The stretcher that followed her explained her choice of seats. The tiny little body of Mia, covered from head to toe in a black vinyl bag passed by the living room and headed toward the front door. An array of medical personnel surrounded her almost protectively, each one with a hand on her small frame.
Fresh tears fell from my eyes and I didn’t even try to hide them. Becca sobbed loudly next to me, unable to speak as she motioned toward the stretcher leaving the house.
I went to Laura, knelt down by her chair and held her close as she cried. Becca joined me and together we held Laura for what could have been hours while she mourned the loss of her daughter.
31
When Life Isn’t Fair
The day of Mia’s funeral dawned clear and cold. The bright blue sky didn’t have a single cloud in it and the sun shone brightly even at six in the morning. Mia’s favorite place had been the beach so Laura asked us all to meet her at the ocean front before the nine o’clock service at the church. I had told her about Claire’s flying the coop the night before when I went to her house to give her a third of the money.
“What do I want that for?” She had cried. “Mia’s gone! It’s not going to bring her back! I don’t want it. Give it away, donate it to the church, but get it out of my house.”
“Are you sure?” I had asked. “You could use it to pay for the funeral?”
“It’s blood money. I don’t want anything to do with it. We will manage on our own.”
“Blood money?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes! I shot that woman and now Mia is dead. Don’t you see? Her death is my punishment for what we have done! We stole money that wasn’t ours, Susie! We terrorized people and we broke the law. What the hell were we thinking, letting Claire talk us into that! For the rest of my life I will pay for those sins.”
“No, Laura. Mia was sick,” I said. “The kind of sick that started long before we began our little venture. She was sick, Laura! It’s not your fault!”
“I still don’t want it. Just take it away, Susie.” She had been adamant so I did what she asked. When I left her house, I stopped at the catholic church hosting today’s services and dropped it all into the collection box next to the altar.
As I stood on the beach, clutching my heavy wool coat against the bitter wind of winter in Virginia Beach, I wondered what sort of God would take a little girl away from her mother but let me live when I should have died. It just wasn’t fair. Not that I would have preferred to die but heck, at least I have lived a little. Mia had barely gotten started!
I arrived at the beach first that morning and as I stood in the whipping wind waiting for Becca and Laura to arrive, I cried.
The last couple of years had been so damned hard. Losing my job, fighting to make ends meet, the accident, Andy working so many hours he could barely stand up some days. Robbing banks was supposed to set us free. Free us from the struggles to put food on the table and the heartache of job loss, foreclosure, debt collectors and poverty. Instead, we were bound by fear. Fear of being found out, fear of the consequences of breaking the law and fear of being poor again.
As I looked out on the raw energy of the ocean as the waves crashed along the shoreline, I felt a new kind of peace. I stood there reveling in the beauty and power of the ocean until I heard my two friends approaching behind me.
Becca had an arm around Laura and I could see that they had both been crying again too. When they reached the place where I stood, we huddled together against the wind.
“Thank you,” Laura said. “Thank you both for coming here. Thank you for being my friends. It’s nice to know that
no matter what happens in our lives we always have each other.”
“You will always have us Laura. We love you,” I said. The wind picked up suddenly whipping sand around so hard it stung against our cold, chapped faces. We huddled closer, hiding our faces in the center of our huddle. When I didn’t think I could take another second of it, the wind stopped completely. The sand settled and everything went still. I would swear that even the waves stopped crashing for just a moment.
Laura turned to face the water and spoke quietly. “For the rest of my days, this is where I will go to feel the presence of my daughter. I know that even from the other side, she will love the beach. I wanted to come here to say goodbye but knew I couldn’t do it alone. I appreciate both of you braving the wind and cold to be here with me.”
“Whatever you need Laura, I am here for you.” I responded just as quietly.
“Me too,” Becca said.
Laura dropped to her knees and raised her face to the sky. Grabbing handfuls of sand, she lifted her fists and let the sand run through her fingers while yelled at the sky begging God to forgive her for what she had done and pleading with him to tell her why he took her baby.
Finally, she stood up and wiped her wet eyes with her coat sleeve. We stood quietly for a bit watching the water until the wind started to pick up again. Forty minutes after Laura and Becca had arrived, we left.
From the beach we drove to the funeral home. The rest of the day passed in a blur as I watched my best friend bid her baby girl goodbye for the last time. Something in Laura’s eyes—something reminiscent of that day at the bank worried me. The emptiness and disconnectedness were like warning signs screaming at me to do something but I was at a loss.
When Becca and I left her house at the end of the day I took with me a feeling of dread. A feeling that had become a regular part of my days as of late. I asked Laura one last time if she needed anything but she shook her head without even looking at me. We left but I took with me the pit that had formed deep in my gut.
The Heist Page 19
