Too Many Crooks Spoil the Plot

by Sarah Osborne

  Lurleen rushed up to her, hugged her, and settled onto the stool beside her. We chose a dark corner, close enough to be of help if needed and far enough away to be unobtrusive. The conversation lasted an hour, through two more martinis each, and got more and more raucous by the end. A couple of men tried to hit on the girls, something that made Dan clutch his Coke. I wondered how much information Lurleen was actually getting in the midst of so much laughter.

  A lot as it turned out.

  Lurleen and Kathleen left first. We paid our tab and found Lurleen outside the bar waving at Kathleen as she drove away in her sky-blue Lamborghini, top down.

  “Wow,” Dan said.

  “Merci, Dan,” Lurleen said. “I always try to look my best.”

  Dan blushed. “I was talking about the car, but you look hot too.”

  This time Lurleen blushed, and not with pleasure. “Okay, so I am just your cheval qui travaille.”

  “No, I don’t see you as my workhorse,” Dan said, trying hard to get his foot out of his mouth. “I see you as a beautiful, good-hearted, very smart woman.”

  “All right then. I forgive you. Now, Detective Garrett, do you want to hear what I’ve learned?”

  “I’m all ears, but let’s go someplace a little more private.” We headed for a coffee shop across the street and found a spot outside, away from people.

  I made a quick call to Eddie. The kids were fine, playing Lurleen’s Notre Dame Chutes and Ladders. I could hear a certain weariness in Eddie’s tone.

  “We’ll be home soon. I promise.”

  “I will cut to the chase,” Lurleen said. “Isn’t that how you men like it?”

  Mason nodded. “I may ask you for some more detail, but start with the high points.”

  “Well, a big power shake-up is going on at Sandler’s as Barry suspected. Top-level management are under fire for some mishaps with security and finances. It started with an attempted computer hacking regarding the new product.” Lurleen gave a meaningful look in Mason’s direction. “It was Kathleen who called the Cyber Crimes Unit and got Detective Schmidt involved. Her grandfather was furious—he didn’t want some cop he didn’t know getting into Sandler’s business. When Schmidt got killed, Sandler Senior said he was handling the internal situation and he wanted her to stay out of it. Kathleen didn’t like that. It was as much her company as his. She suspected someone high up might be involved in corporate espionage. Kathleen claims she doesn’t know who it is.”

  “Do you think she’s lying?” Mason asked.

  “I don’t know,” Lurleen said. “She’s usually pretty tight-lipped about the company—got that from Sandler Senior. I’m not sure if she was spinning me a story or just so worried she had to vent.”

  I jumped in. “You said she was a straight arrow. Did something change your mind?”

  “I’m not sure. I really don’t know her all that well, yet she was willing to tell me everything. Apparently the company is in some financial trouble. Hard to believe with all the Sandler Sodas people drink worldwide, but that seems to be the situation. Someone may be skimming off the top or intent on destroying the company from within. Needless to say everyone is on edge. Internal security is doing all they can. And they’ve brought in people from outside. Unnamed people from unnamed agencies. How is that for intrigue!”

  “It’s good for intrigue but a little short on IDs,” Mason said. “Did she mention anyone she suspected besides the ones we know about?”

  “She recognized Ellie’s name as someone who flirted with corporate husbands and got sacked because of it. She knew Ellie was close with Billy Joe and that he was up to no good—as usual. I mentioned a few other people, including Marie Vanderling. She said Marie moved along the top level of the corporate ladder and gathered information to be used to her best advantage.”

  “You mean like using it to blackmail people?” I asked.

  “She never said that exactly, but she was worried about Marie’s disappearance. Not so much for her safety, but Kathleen wondered if she’d left with a lot of secrets and money. And then there was another name I mentioned.” Lurleen paused.

  I knew what she was about to say. “You asked about Tommy, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did she say?”

  Lurleen was silent for a moment, sipping her coffee. She glanced around to make sure no one was within hearing range, but the other tables were empty. “Kathleen said she’d heard Tommy’s name from time to time and met him once or twice. He got called in whenever there were sensitive personnel matters at the firm. He was good at being discreet and good at getting people to leave of their own accord. Sandler’s has managed to keep a low profile in terms of scandals thanks in large part to your brother, Ditie.”

  That didn’t sound too incriminating. “So maybe he’s one of the good guys here,” I said. “Involved in finding out who’s doing what with this corporate espionage idea. Searching for a memory card perhaps. The way we are.”

  Dan looked at Mason and then at me. “Memory card? What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a theory Eddie and I came up with. We don’t have any proof that it exists, but it would explain everything, including Ellie’s behavior. Charlie Flack and Billy Joe Sandler wanted something from her. Something very valuable and small enough to fit in the compartment of the Transformer. Given Charlie Flack’s background in new product development, it makes sense they could be trying to get information about Sandler’s next big product. A memory card could contain all the information they needed to sell to the highest bidder.”

  “A miniSD. Easily hidden,” Dan said. “It might be exactly what we’re looking for. But why get the kids involved?”

  “Ellie couldn’t keep it with her,” I said. “She couldn’t leave it in her terrible apartment. In her mind, it would be safe with the kids. They wouldn’t know they had anything of value—she wouldn’t tell them obviously. The Transformer might have been the first plan. And then when Ellie got greedy, she came up with something better.”

  “Or worse,” Lurleen said.

  “We’ve searched every place Ellie has been,” Dan said.

  “We haven’t searched the kids,” I said.

  “We have to get back to them,” Lurleen said. “I’m having a bad feeling.”

  I grabbed my cell phone and called Eddie again. “We’re fine,” she assured me. “But if you’re done, I could use some help.”

  “On our way,” I said.

  Dan and Lurleen jumped into her Citroën. I wasn’t sure how Dan fit his large frame into that tiny car, but he managed it. We were seconds behind in Mason’s Jaguar.

  When we arrived at the house fifteen minutes later, no one greeted us. No one came to the door when Mason rang. He used his key, entered, and found the alarm still on. He turned it off and then started yelling.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The house was silent. Dan entered right behind Mason. He motioned for us to stay back. Lurleen and I stood by the opened front door. After a few seconds that felt like hours we heard a noise from the basement. Both Dan and Mason drew their guns.

  “Outside,” Mason shouted at us. “And stay down.”

  Lurleen and I backed up. We crouched on the porch beside the door where we could see everything but run if we had to.

  Footsteps pounded up the basement stairs and no one breathed. Then we heard Eddie’s voice.

  “We’re all right,” she said, as she popped her head out from behind the basement door, a pistol in her right hand. “I had to make sure it was you. Someone tried to break in five minutes ago. Did you see anyone on the road?”

  “No one,” Mason said. “But we came the back way. Did you see who it was?”

  “Later,” Eddie said, motioning to the children.

  Lucie was holding on tightly to Jason’s right hand, and Eddie had an iron grip on J
ason’s left. I ran up to them and squeezed Lucie’s free hand. I put an arm around her. She was trembling.

  We gathered in the kitchen. I watched Mason as he scanned the backyard through the kitchen windows. Eddie hadn’t let go of Jason, and I held on to Lucie. We sat at one end of the wooden table. Lucie looked stricken. Jason was chattering away to Dan.

  “We heard the bad men,” he said. “They pounded on the door and Eddie said be quiet as mice and I was. But I had my cape, so I wanted to go get them. But Eddie said no and made us hide in the basement like hide-and-seek. And Lucie said be quiet. So we hid and then you came.” Jason ran out of breath and stopped to gulp air. “I can help you get them, Uncle Dan.”

  “I know you can,” Dan said. “But you did the right thing. Whatever Eddie says do, you do. Eddie is the top commander—you got that?”

  Jason nodded. “Yes, boss.” He gave Dan a mock salute, and I had a tiny sinking feeling. Was my innocent little boy getting a bit cheeky? My boy. That word again.

  I took Lucie over to the sink and asked if she wanted a drink of water. She looked pale. “Did you see anything?” I asked her.

  Lucie shook her head. “We heard someone knocking. Miss Eddie told us to stand by the door near the basement, out of sight. She told me to go to the basement and lock the door if anyone tried to break in.”

  Lucie started to shiver and I knelt down beside her. “You don’t have to tell me anymore right now if you don’t want to.”

  “I want to tell you. The knocking got really loud. I peeked out and saw Miss Eddie walk closer to the door. She had something in her hand. I think it was a gun. The knocking stopped. Eddie waited and then she came back to us. We went to the basement.” Lucie paused. “I wish Miss Eddie had been there to protect my mom.”

  I knelt down beside her. “I do too,” I said. Lucie hugged me long and hard—like a little girl desperate for a safe place to be.

  Dan was on his feet. “We must have interrupted them. Why didn’t they break into the house? Especially if they thought the house was empty.”

  “I saw them through the leaded glass,” Eddie said. “Not clearly enough to identify them. But I wouldn’t rule out that they saw me and maybe what I was carrying. I stayed long enough to see them move away from the door. Then I went for the kids.”

  “You take the front yard,” Mason said to Dan. “I’ll take the back. We’ll see if any of the neighbors saw anything. Be discreet—we’re not on duty—just checking on our neighborhood.”

  While they were gone I asked Lucie to help me and Eddie with dinner. Lurleen offered to take Jason upstairs to play. Of all of us, Jason was the one who seemed to be the least concerned about what had happened. He lived in a world of good guys defeating bad guys, so a real-world adventure didn’t faze him.

  “You are strong for a girl,” he said to Eddie. “Like Wonder Woman. And I was Superman, right, Ms. Eddie?”

  “You were indeed.” She gave him a peck on the cheek, and he scooted off happily with Lurleen. “Miss Eddie is as strong as you,” he said to her.

  She smiled. “We’ll have to find a name for her. I’m Femme Merveilleuse. She can be . . .”

  “Grandma Merveilleuse,” Jason said.

  “I heard that,” Eddie called, “and I accept.”

  I asked Lucie what she might like to eat for dinner, and she said she wasn’t hungry.

  “It was pretty scary, wasn’t it, honey?”

  Lucie nodded. “Like when the bad men came to our house. They didn’t knock. They just came in, and they got madder and madder at my mom.” Lucie started to cry. “William grabbed my mom’s arm. ‘Don’t play around with us,’ he said. ‘You’ll regret it.’ And my mom said she wasn’t playing. What they wanted took time to get. She was working on it. If only I’d told someone, I could have protected her.”

  “Lucie, none of this is your fault. None of it. Your mom got involved with some bad people. There was nothing you could do.” I held her and let her sob. When she was done, I took her to the bathroom and washed her face with a wet towel. She washed her hands, and we went back to the kitchen to help Eddie.

  “I think we’ll keep it simple,” Eddie said. “Do you have a good pasta recipe?”

  “I have a great pasta recipe,” I said, “if you have artichoke hearts, angel hair, and pine nuts.”

  Eddie pulled jars and pasta from her walk-in pantry. “Good,” she said. “You and Lucie work on the main dish, and I’ll handle the salad. I’ve got some homemade sourdough rolls in the freezer. I’ll get them out.”

  “You make your own sourdough?” I asked. “I’ve never mastered that.”

  “Then we’ll have a good time, the three of us. I have starter left over. I got it when I did a bread-baking class in California. My husband loved to spoil me with trips to exotic places for cooking classes.”

  “Does it make you sad,” Lucie asked, “that he died?”

  Eddie sat at the table for a moment and motioned Lucie over to her. She pulled a chair out beside her, and Lucie sat down. “It used to make me sad all the time,” she said. “I’d cry and cry. Then a little bit at a time, it got better. I’d remember all the fun we had together. And remembering that made me smile. Now I only get sad every once in a while. Mostly I think about how much I loved him, and how he would be glad to know I was happy. And I am happy, Lucie. You will be too one day. Not right now, but one day.”

  Lucie nodded. Her lower lip quivered, but she managed a tiny smile.

  “Now let’s get this dinner together before the boys get back,” Eddie said.

  The men were back before we had quite finished. “No one saw anything,” Dan said. “You saw two men?”

  Eddie nodded. “It was two people for sure. I couldn’t see them well enough to identify them through the frosted glass. And, of course, I have no idea if someone else was waiting in the car.”

  We finished up the pasta, stirring the tomatoes, olives, pine nuts, and artichoke hearts in with the angel hair. “Yum,” Mason said, leaning over me, so he could see what I was doing. Eddie had the salad on the table and was taking the rolls out of the oven as Lurleen and Jason rushed into the room.

  “I thought I smelled something delicious,” Lurleen said. “And I thought Jason and I better hurry before Dan managed to eat it all.”

  “I’m not sure I’m the one with the biggest appetite around here,” he said to Lurleen.

  “Let’s not argue about eating,” Eddie said. “Let’s enjoy the food before it gets cold.”

  Despite Lucie’s claim she wasn’t hungry, she helped herself to seconds on pasta. Between mouthfuls, we talked about everything except the attempted break-in. For dessert we had ice cream and chocolate sauce.

  “You kids need to stay here for a while,” Mason said. “My mom never makes food like this when it’s just the two of us.”

  “That isn’t true, and you know it,” Eddie said. “For that statement, you are on KP duty.”

  Dan and Lurleen offered to help while I took the kids upstairs to get them ready for bed. I decided the kids would sleep with me that night. We’d all sleep a little easier.

  I urged Jason out of his cape.

  “I need it,” he said, “in the night. For the bad men.”

  “Look, we’ll put it right here on the bedpost, where you can grab it. And I think we’ll sleep with a night light—that okay with you two?”

  “I’m no baby,” Jason said. “Mommy says night lights are for little boys. I’m big now.”

  “You are. I think the night light is for me.”

  “You scared of the dark, Aunt Di?” Jason asked.

  “No, but I’d like to see where the two of you are, just for tonight.”

  I tucked both of them into bed. “You sleep with your locket, Lucie? Or shall I put it on my nightstand?”

  Lucie fingered it tenderly. “I don’t like t
o take it off, ever. It’s the last thing Mommy gave to me. Right before—you know—right before we came to stay with you.”

  “Really? I thought you had it for years.”

  “Mommy said I wasn’t old enough and then suddenly she changed her mind.”

  Something clicked in my brain.

  “Lucie, may I look at your locket for a minute?” I unfastened it from her neck, opened it up to the pictures inside, and gently poked around the edges. Her father’s picture came loose, and I pried it away from the locket. Behind it was a tiny, flat object. Shiny. What I imagined a memory card might look like.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I held the tiny object between my thumb and index finger and studied it. Could this really be what everyone was searching for? I think I half expected it to talk to me. Lucie and Jason stared at me wide eyed.

  “You broke Lucie’s necklace,” Jason said indignantly. “Careful! Careful! Careful!”

  I could hear Ellie admonishing him, and it made me want to cry. I also wanted to shake her. How could she have put her children at risk in this way?

  “The necklace is fine. See, Jason?” I closed it up and showed him. “We’ve found something really important and I have to show it to Detective Garrett. Is that all right with you, Lucie?”

  “Yes. But what is it?”

  “This little object may have a lot of information on it. It might solve the mystery of what happened to your mother.”

  “It will say who hurt her?” Lucie asked.

  “Probably not. But it might tell us why they hurt her.”

  Jason stayed very still during this conversation. He grabbed a piece of the sheet, rubbed it against his cheek. “I want my mommy,” he said. Lucie and I hugged him tight.

  “It’s time to do something,” I said and stood up. “We’ll all go downstairs, give this to Detective Garrett, and have some hot chocolate. How does that sound?”

  “Okay,” Jason said and took my hand. “Can I give it to ’tective Garrett?”

  I glanced over at Lucie. “Okay with you, Luce? After all, it was found in your locket.”