Rolan flipped his hand in the air. “Bother the invoice. We have enough literature to fill the shelved-wall of the library. Sixty-five feet by twenty feet, that was the order.”
“Sorry to dash, but we must supervise the placement. Starting at the fireplace and working to the windows, we’ll create a warm to cool color scheme. You are going to love it!” Rolan flicked Marni on her right shoulder. “See you in a bit!”
They were off to do their book colorizing. I grieved for the authors, current and deceased, whose books were now sold by weight and color, not content.
***
The day before the wedding, Marni and I were sitting in the backyard, if you can call eight acres of landscaped terrain a backyard. We were drinking vodka tonics with crescents of Bahamian limes perched on the lips of our glasses. The temperature was in the mid 70s, and all was semi-right with the world.
Her dark eyes held a sadness I couldn’t fathom. “Last week I went into the village to pick up some things for Hook. When I came out of the shop, a couple of nice looking young guys were admiring my Vette.” Hook had bought Marni a classic red Corvette to contrast with her black Ferrari.
She continued, “One of the guys turned to me and said ‘what do you do for a living?’ I felt really crumby for a minute. But then, I sucked it up and got behind the wheel. It’s not so bad being taken care of.”
I chewed on my guilt for bringing Hook into her life. She was never going to grow up. She had become a bird with a bent wing living in a tight but posh cage.
My hostess continued, “Speaking of being taken care of, if anything bad should ever happen to me, promise me you’ll take care of Hook.”
“That’s a weird request. Is there something you want to share with me? Are you terminally ill?”
She looked hurt. “I thought you would understand. When you really love somebody, you can’t help wondering what would happen to him if you died. There’s nothing sadder than a widower. They’re so lost. I want to know Hook will be in good hands.”
The obligation of caring for Hook was a burden I didn’t want to assume.
Marni continued, “You’ve got this whole nurturing thing going on. I wouldn’t want to leave him with someone I didn’t know… some stranger.”
“You’re not going anywhere so it’s moot.” I didn’t want to say what I was thinking – that he was a total ass and not worth a diddy of my time.
I changed the subject. “When does your mom get here? It will be great to see her again. I’ll bet she’s so excited.”
Squirming, Marni said, “I didn’t invite my mom. She’d be uncomfortable around Hook’s friends.”
My face registered surprise. “But your mom is a lovely lady. She gets along with everyone. Besides you’ll break her heart if you exclude her.”
“I’ll send a video. Hook bought her a fabulous home theater. She’ll be able to sit back in Mexico and feel like she was right here.”
I thought of sweet Treanna. The child was finding her identity as surely as Marni was losing hers.
Chapter Five
The following afternoon I joined fifty or so of Hook’s closest Fortune 500 friends and their wives in the garden adjacent to the rolling lawn behind his mansion. The couple-to-be arrived in a helicopter with the Hook logo emblazoned on the tail. Jaxbee was at the controls. The man had a thing for dramatic entrances.
It had rained earlier in the day, exciting the garden flowers into vivid colors. Monarch butterflies played tag among the roses that lined the stone path to the mediation grove where the Hooks would be wed.
Three violinists and a harpist began to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major as Marni walked down the lane on Hook’s arm. She wore a vintage Janice Wainright dress in a shade of rose that complemented her Latina coloring, her hair held back on one side with her grandmother’s antique silver barrette.
Mayor Dugan officiated. A slender man in his early forties, he was as bald as a nectarine. When he spoke he sounded like Henry Fonda. The couple faced each other and exchanged vows. That is Marni vowed, but Hook repeated the required words. I wanted to see love in his eyes as he pledged himself to her. Instead, I could swear he was doing a head count, looking for faces in the crowd.
Jaxbee stood next to me. The little pilot was wearing a pale blue pants suit with a satin collar. Her blonde curls were pinned at the top of her head.
“Do you think he loves her?” she whispered.
“I hope so.”
Every guest looked vaguely familiar. I’d seen each of their pictures at least once in Vanity Fair. Hunky waiters circulated with champagne and canapés. They wore black slacks and crisp, white shirts with the Hook logo on the right side point of their collars. Each server had his hair slicked back with gobs of pomade. The effect was very Gatsby.
Jaxbee shook her head. “Some shindig. You could feed an entire village in Namibia for what this cost.”
“Have you been to Namibia?”
“Um… Peace Corps.”
“You’ve been around for someone your age.”
“I’m twenty-two.” She corrected her posture.
“How did you land your job with Hook? He must have a lot of confidence in you to rely on someone so young.”
A waiter passed a try of canapés. Holding my camera in my left hand, I grabbed a cracker with a fluffy cream topping.
“Right place. Right time,” Jaxbee said. “Hook pays extremely well. I’m saving up to start my own medical airlift. My dream is to offer emergency flights to the poor in the Caribbean.”
At that moment, Marni threw her bouquet – a photo op that sent me into typical Wendy-klutziness. Forgetting I had the frothy cracker in my right hand, I brought what I thought was my camera to my eye, smashing a large dollop of cream onto my eyebrow where it hung suspended before falling into my eye. The more I batted my lashes the worse it became.
Jaxbee got the giggles. She caught the blob in her napkin right after it avalanched to my chin. We scrambled to a wrought iron bench, and laughed until we were both breathless.
Marni and Hook strolled toward us. She was clinging to his arm and looking up at him.
“I told Charlie you’ve agreed to take care of him if something ever happens to me.”
I fought to control the anger surging through me, but I felt my face redden. “I did no such thing.” The joy was sucked out of the day. I walked into the house, then into the library and settled into a porter’s chair near the fireplace. After a few minutes, I fell asleep.
I woke around midnight. Hans told me the Hooks left on their extended honeymoon. There was a note from Marni on the bed in the princess room.
Wendy,
I asked one favor. You denied me. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.
Marni Hook
That was okay with me. I was so disgusted with her self-absorbed, gold-digging ways. Her mother was such a good woman, the mother who wasn’t even invited to the wedding. The more I thought about that, the less I cared if I ever talked to Marni again. But I still felt a twinge of guilt about introducing her to Hook.
Chapter Six
I grabbed my ringing cell from the corner of my desk. It was Marni. Five months had gone by without a word. I had no desire to talk to her, but I couldn’t stay mad when I heard the hysteria in her voice. “Hook says we have to leave right away. There’s something very wrong. I don’t know what, but I wanted you to know. I’ll have to call you. You won’t be able to reach me. He crushed my cell phone… under his heel.”
“Marni, what is it? Is he hurting you?”
“No. We’re taking off in the Predator right now. He wouldn’t even let me pack a bag. Something bad is coming down.” The line went dead.
The television was on mute. I spotted Hook’s picture flashing across the screen. The news crawl read, Charles Hook eludes arrest – Offices of Hook International in Manhattan and Miami raided earlier today by the FBI and SEC.
Irrationally, I ignored what Marni just said and rang her cell phone a dozen
times. I looked up her emergency contact numbers and called her mother. She had seen the headlines, but knew even less than I did. “Help my daughter,” she sobbed.
I tried every number, every connection I had. Nothing. Hook had disappeared. The Internet blinked little boxes of bad news: Billions in Bilked Bucks Disappear Overnight. Charles Hook Vanishes. Suspected of largest Ponzi scheme in history.
***
It had been three months since Hook’s vanishing act. Time flies when you’re struggling to pay bills on a commission-only income in a soft real estate market. I was working twenty hours a day and didn’t have time to worry about Marni, but I did every time I heard Hook’s name.
Hook was a regular on the Internet news services. Former friends and co-workers were having a ball quoting his selfish one-liners. His swindle was estimated to have pulled in hundreds of billions of dollars. Everyone interviewed claimed to have sensed something was crooked about him from the beginning. The Hindsight Club was working overtime.
Yahoo carried a story on Hook’s possible connection to a series of thefts of rare artwork and antiquities. Rare Egyptian Antiquities Missing the headline read. Ponzi king Charles Hook is believed to be behind a series of thefts spanning a period of ten years.
My thoughts slipped back to his antiquities room in the Hampton mansion and maybe on the Predator. Where there’s rumor there can be facts, in this case artifacts.
My phone rang. It was Marni calling from the yacht.
“Where are you? I can get you help. Just tell me where the Predator is,” I said.
“If I knew, I couldn’t tell you. They might put Hook in jail. There are people who want him dead. I love him.”
“You did nothing wrong. Let me tell someone. They’ll rescue you.”
“I don’t need saving I just need… a friend. Girl talk. What are people saying about me? Have you heard from my mother?”
There were a dozen similar calls in the next six weeks. I really didn’t want to stay in touch with her. She had made her own bed, but I felt guilty about putting her and Hook together… And she sounded so lonely. Our conversations were rushed as though the connection would be broken at any second. With each call her voice sounded more depressed.
“How’s the office?”
“Everyone’s fine. They send their love. How can I help you? Tell me.”
“Just do what I asked you before. Take care of Hook if something happens to me.” She clicked off.
Chapter Seven
I was thinking about Marni’s last words and wondering if she was in true danger, having a premonition, or just being her usual melodramatic self when I heard the doorbell.
My eye to the peephole, I saw a guy who looked like Johnny Depp dressed in a cheesy brown suit. I opened the door a crack but kept my finger on the alarm panic button.
“Wendy Darlin, I’m Special Agent Roger Jolley with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. I’d like a few minutes of your time.”
Securities? This had to be Croc related. Marni crossed my mind. Or maybe Hook related.
Agent Jolley showed me his credentials, and I let him into my house and my world.
“Show me your gun,” I said.
“We don’t use weapons. We outsmart the crooks.”
I wasn’t impressed. “No gun?”
“I’m the James Bond of bonds, and I’m investigating Marni Kimble Hook for her part in a major swindling operation with her notorious husband Charles Hook.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I think you’re aiding and abetting them.”
My blood pressure shot through my blond roots. “Look, Mr. Bond-”
He raised an eyebrow. “Jolley, Roger Jolley.”
“Whatever… I rarely lose my temper, but you’re out of line. I’m a chronic do-gooder. I never do bad.”
“You haven’t offered me a seat.”
“Offer you a seat? I’m about to throw you out on your ear!”
He walked over to the couch and plonked his butt down then put an irritating smile on his smug face.
In the ten seconds I’d known him, he had managed to piss me off royally. What was this gumshoe bookkeeper up to? Dressed in a brown suit, with a brown tie and wearing brown wing tips, he had brown hair and those Johnny Depp eyes.
I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I silently took the armchair across from him. Rustling through his brown briefcase, he pulled out a file. “I’ve connected the dots between you and Marni Kimble. She’s a key part of Hook’s international swindle and his collection of stolen artifacts.”
“Marni Kimble worked for me as a real estate agent. She’s no more a crook than I am.”
He pointed his finger at me. “That’s probably true. You can be charged with receiving funds you knew or should reasonably have known were tainted, not to mention the stolen artifacts.”
I wanted to punch his snippy mouth. “I never received any money from Hook. And I had no idea he was running a Ponzi scheme.”
“Dumb can be a defense. Stupidity in the first degree is not a crime.”
“I’m calling my lawyer.”
He put his hands up, palms facing me. “Calm down.”
I jumped up. “Calm down? Don’t tell me to calm down after you come in here with all these outrageous accusations about me being a part of his swindling and… stolen artifacts? What the hell are you talking about?” That Internet story I skimmed must have had some truth in it, but how could this bozo think I had something to do with artifacts or the Ponzi?
“While our team was looking for Hook on the 30th floor of his building in Manhattan, his people were loading a van with antiquities in his private underground parking garage. The truck got away. As a big time real estate agent, you have access to a lot of vacant homes with big garages – garages where the truck could be stashed.”
I damn sure wasn’t going to dignify that idiotic conclusion with an answer. I crossed my arms, compressed my lips, and tapped my foot to let him know the interview was over. Of course, he was too much of a cement-head to pick up on it.
“That pirate has his own museum on wheels somewhere in the states.”
“Can’t you see I’m done listening to your baseless, insulting, and moronic accusations?”
He pulled some papers out of a file and smiled smugly. “You and the Hooks have been in constant phone communication for weeks.”
That slammed me hard. My head felt light. I sat down. Innocent phone calls from Marni were about to hang me. I should have known better than to have anything to do with her after she attached herself to that slime-ball. No good deed goes unpunished.
“Wendy, you know how those optical illusion pictures work? It looks like a crazy pattern, but if you relax your eyes you see a three dimensional object rise from it? All I had to do was step back, relax, and I knew the players in this game. You’re in this with Marni and Hook.”
“This is outrageous. You’re just fishing. If you had something on me you’d be arresting me. But that’s not going to happen because there’s nothing to get on me.”
Special, not in my opinion, Agent Roger Jolley tucked his tie into his jacket, and his infuriating, supercilious smile got even more so. He paused for effect. “There’s an even stronger link between you and Hook. He has offshore accounts on Nevis Island in the Caribbean and makes frequent contact with someone on that island at a place called Nevisland, somebody named Peter Payne. Does that name mean anything to you, Wendy?”
I gulped so loud my ears rattled. “Peter Payne!”
Jolley looked jolly. He’d hit a nerve. “You and Payne are lovers.”
“You idiot, Peter Payne was my first love. We were high school sweethearts, not lovers. I haven’t seen him in almost twenty-five years. You say he’s on an island? Nevis Island?”
“I’m going to get this bastard.” Reaching into the file, he pulled out a fistful of receipts and shoved them at me. “While Hook was drinking $1,950 bottles of 2003 Screaming Eagle Cabernet at the
Solitaire in Manhattan, Mr. George Smitty was leaping from the balcony of his high-rise retirement condo in Miami. Smitty and many thousands of hardworking people were destroyed at the hands of your associate. Thirty-two billion dollars. I’m going to find what’s left of the fortune and return it.”
Peter was alive and living on an island was the only thought that made it through clearly.
Special Agent Jerk tapped me on the arm. “Are you listening? Hook used a tsunami of hedge funds to pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. People lost their pensions, their savings, and in some cases their homes.”
“If they hadn’t been greedy in the first place–”
“That’s not your call,” he snapped.
“I think it’s time for you to leave.”
“That hot breath you feel on your neck… that’s me.”
As I escorted Jolley out the door and clicked the deadbolt, my cell phone rang.
I grabbed it on the second ring.
It was Marni. “Wendy, I’m really scared. Help me.” The connection broke. She was gone.
Chapter Eight
I fretted every day about Marni, but with no way to contact her, all I could do was wait and hope for another call that let me know she was just being Marni – bubble-headed, gold-digging, melodramatic Marni. And hope equally hard that I didn’t get a call from that long-eyelashed doofus Special, only to himself, Agent Jolley. What had that foolish Marni gotten herself into… with my help?
When caller ID showed unknown on a Sunday morning almost a month later, I quivered as I answered. I was shocked to hear Hook’s irritating voice. “Wendy,” he cleared his throat. He was curt, the connection garbled. “Marni’s dying. She’s asking for you.”
My knees buckled. I braced myself against the kitchen counter. “What… are you saying? Was she in an accident? What hospital is she in?”
“She’s not in the hospital. It’s too late for that. She’s on the Predator.”
“Let me talk to her,” I demanded, my mind racing.
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