Even Money

by Stephanie Caffrey

  “That must be nice,” he muttered back.

  “So what can we find out about Esther Vanden-what’s-her-name?” I asked.

  “Vandenhoovel,” he corrected.

  “Is that Dutch?” I asked.

  “No, I think it’s Japanese,” he said, his face stonier than Mount Rushmore.

  “Smart ass. We’ve got her address. You up for a field trip?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not today. I’ve got to get to court. Testifying in a divorce battle.”

  “Aha,” I said. “That would explain the coat and tie.” Mike almost always wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and tie, which made him look like a Bible salesman.

  “Well, your loss,” I said. “I’m going to go see what Mrs. Vandenhoovel has to do with my investment guru and why he’s driving her car.”

  I fussed over some paperwork for a few minutes, and then Mike left for court. I was feeling lazy and unmotivated, but then I remembered that my bouncer-friend Carlos owed me a favor. He would come with me, and I wouldn’t even have to pay him.

  Carlos answered on the second ring. As usual, he pretended to be annoyed that I was bothering him. It was his way of showing affection.

  “Yeah, all right,” he said grudgingly. “I suppose you want me to pick you up?”

  I actually hadn’t thought about it, but a good idea was a good idea. “Of course. You’re a better driver anyways,” I said, trying to sweet-talk him.

  “Whatever,” he said, seeing right through me. “This will make us even, though, right?” he asked.

  “Not by a long shot,” I said, chuckling. “Just get your ass over here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Carlos picked me up in his black Mustang GT and revved the engine with unnecessary vigor as we pulled away. He had a thing for keeping the car in first gear as long as possible, which meant we went from zero to twenty in about a tenth of a second and then had to brace ourselves for the neck-breaking shift into second gear. I had gotten used to his driving by now, although that didn’t make it any more pleasant to drive with him. Over the last several months, he’d helped me out a dozen or so times, tailing people or just coming along for some extra muscle, which he had in spades. By day he was a business student working on an MBA, but by night he was a bouncer at Cougar’s, a job he held for the sole purpose of being able to look at naked women, myself included, into the wee hours. He’d had a thing for me ever since he started working there, and I can’t say I minded his attention. He was about five-nine and two hundred pounds of ripped muscle, with dancing, dark eyes that were never shy about lingering on certain parts of my anatomy. It was a miracle we’d only slept together once.

  “So what’s the job?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the engine’s roar.

  I waited until he was in third gear to respond. “Not exactly sure,” I said, gripping the door handle. “We’re going down to Henderson, so pull into the right lane,” I said.

  We took Fremont Street out of downtown and angled our way south and west through town, avoiding the freeway that paralleled our route. Neither of us was in any hurry.

  “Lunch is included in this little venture, I assume?” he asked.

  I patted his thigh. “If you’re buying.”

  He sighed loudly, but he knew I had the upper hand. A week earlier, his on-again, off-again girlfriend had grown suspicious about the two of us. A jealous piece of work, she’d called to confront me, but instead of ratting him out, I had delivered an Oscar-caliber performance, even going so far as to suggest that I found Carlos revolting. Since he liked the girl, for some reason, he owed me. Big time.

  “And then we’re square?” he asked.

  “Depends on where lunch is. If you want McDonald’s, no way. Gotta do better than that.” Suddenly the thought of McDonald’s filled me with an unwholesome desire for a steamed white bread bun, a processed cheese slice, and a perfect rectangle of unnaturally bronzed fish patty, with an extra squirt of full-fat tartar sauce.

  “On the other hand,” I muttered, “maybe McDonald’s would be perfect.”

  I filled Carlos in on the way, hoping he’d withhold judgment until we found out a little more information. I was sorely disappointed.

  “Raven, I’d give you even money that’s a total scam,” he said, his eyes never leaving the road.

  “I thought you might say that,” I said, “but I’ve already got a couple thousand out of it.”

  “Of course you did,” Carlos said, sounding profoundly unimpressed. “They lull you to sleep, calm all your nerves, and dull you into thinking everything’s okay. That’s when they pounce.”

  “And you’re such an expert on this because…?”

  He smiled. “I read things. I’m a man of the world.”

  I stifled a snigger and looked out the window at the strip mall hell we’d driven into. Nothing but auto parts stores, dental offices, tax prep shops, and fast food joints as far as the eye could see.

  “You think you’re a real player, don’t you?” I asked. I knew Carlos had ambition. He owned an apartment building or two, despite still paying for school and working as a bouncer, and he’d made it clear to me that he wanted to own half of Las Vegas by the time he was done. But right now, he was still a bouncer driving a five-year-old Mustang.

  He shrugged. “Half of success is mental,” he said, pointing at his head, which was sporting a baby blue LA Dodgers cap tilted slightly to the side. “You gotta believe you’re a player if you want to be a player,” he said, sounding like a low-rent self-help guru.

  “Wait,” I said, sarcastically. “Can you repeat that so I can write it down? It’s so profound I don’t want to forget it. You’ve got to believe you’re a…”

  Carlos grimaced, not enjoying my sense of humor. “Ha ha, Raven. I’m just saying your little investment stinks. Isn’t that why you’re bringing me along today? So I can look at the books?”

  “Actually, I was just bored,” I said, only half lying. “But if we find some books, you’re more than free to look them over. You’re the CPA, after all.”

  He coughed. “I’m not a CPA. I just have a business degree. I should have my MBA in a year or so, though.”

  “And then what?” I asked. “No more graveyard shift as a bouncer?”

  He smiled. “No, it’s all going to be private jets and corporate suites from then on.”

  “In your dreams,” I muttered. We were pulling into Esther Vandenhoovel’s neighborhood, so I pointed for Carlos to take a right-hand turn.

  He sensed we were getting close, so he slowed the car down. I was scanning the addresses on the mailboxes, squinting so hard that it hurt.

  “I need glasses,” I announced.

  “No way,” Carlos said firmly. “You don’t have the right face for it. Gotta go with contacts.”

  I frowned. “Wait, I don’t have the right face for glasses? What the hell does that even mean?”

  He laughed. “It always amazes me when women don’t understand their own beauty. Anyway, your glasses would cover up your cheekbones which are your best feature. So it’s totally unacceptable.”

  I was only half listening since I was focusing on the house numbers. “Here we are. We can talk about my cheekbones later.”

  Carlos frowned. “The guy lives here?” he asked skeptically. We had pulled up to a lime green ranch house on a quiet suburban street. Its driveway was badly cracked, and the tiled roof looked like it needed repair, but it wasn’t in terrible shape.

  “What’s wrong with this place?” I protested. “According to you, it’s all a scam. Why can’t a scam artist live in a nice little house like this?”

  “Just not what I was expecting. Usually these guys live in gated communities and drive Bentleys and Ferraris. That’s why they do it, after all,” he explained.

  “You mean they like the high life too much?” I asked.

  “They need it,” he said, undoing his seat belt. “The toys, the money, the respect of their friends. Usually they start o
ut OK, but then something doesn’t go quite right for them. The market turns, or their idea fizzles. But they have a Plan B which is to just steal the money. And some of them are very good at it.”

  I got out of the car and checked the mailbox. Esther Vandenhoovel had a subscription to Senior Living and received countless catalogs hawking home decorations and trinkets.

  I thought for a moment. “I wonder if she even knows he’s using her car. Maybe she’s getting scammed by him, too.”

  “So this isn’t his house?” Carlos asked.

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “You were right on that score. The only information I have on this guy is that he was driving a car registered to the owner of this house, one Esther L. Vandenhoovel. It could be his mom or aunt or something. I have no idea.”

  Carlos squinted up at the sky. “You don’t even know his name?”

  I shrugged. “It’s Aaron. Or that’s what he tells people.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Carlos said.

  I was a little reluctant to just ring the bell and ask a complete stranger why Aaron was driving her car, but I hadn’t planned out a good lie nor any pretext for why we were asking. Still, I was pretty good with elderly people, and I figured I could make something up on the fly. The key thing was to leave no traces. I didn’t want Aaron to know I was asking around about him.

  I rang the bell, and we waited. And waited. I rang again. We both looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Maybe she’s out back,” Carlos said.

  I shrugged again. “Worth a try.” The fall weather had graced Las Vegas with a temperate day and clear skies, the kind that might draw a person outside to enjoy a cup of tea, a digestive biscuit, and the latest issue of Senior Living.

  We made our way over the crushed rock landscaping and headed into the backyard. I was kicking myself for not bringing my clipboard with me. My PI instructor had drilled it into us over and over. If you’re carrying a clipboard, you look like you’re on official business of some kind, which means nobody asks any questions about what you’re doing. The last thing a person wants to do is to talk to someone carrying a clipboard. I stored one in my car, but we had taken Carlos’s car, and therefore, we now found ourselves clipboardless, or essentially naked. Right now we just looked like a couple of people snooping around someone’s yard—people who didn’t belong there. Luckily, the street was empty, and I didn’t sense any activity from the house next door.

  Esther’s backyard was worse than the front. There was an old wheelbarrow rusting away next to a dilapidated metal shed which looked so rickety that the next desert breeze, no matter how faint, would send it crashing down into a pile of rust and rivets. Esther must be a widow, and her husband had died a long time ago. The shed and the wheelbarrow were a man’s things, and they’d been neglected for a long time. And her mailbox contained mail only for her. No trace of the lingering vestiges of another life.

  “Check that out,” Carlos said, pointing at a corner window. There was clearly a light on inside.

  “Probably a bedroom,” I said, judging from the location in the rear corner of the house. “Think someone’s home? Maybe she’s hard of hearing and didn’t hear us ring.”

  He pursed his lips. “This is your show, Raven. Tell me what you want to do.”

  “Let’s try the back door,” I said, heading in that direction. There was no doorbell, so I pulled open the screen door and gave the inner door a solid rap, rap, rap. The door moved inward ever so slightly on my third rap.

  “Huh,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “I think it’s open,” I said. “It moved a little when I knocked.”

  “Well, try it!” he whispered. “What the hell are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?”

  I pressed down on the latch, and sure enough, it gave way. I half expected it to betray our presence with a loud and creaky squeak, but it was mercifully silent as I pushed it inward into Esther Vandenhoovel’s kitchen. A familiar tingle of excitement ran through me as I took a step inside. Even though it was just an old lady’s house, there was something delightfully naughty about trespassing and snooping. I hadn’t anticipated liking this part of the job, but I had to admit that I did.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Carlos noticed it before I did.

  “This is so weird,” he said.

  “I know, but…why?” There was something weird, all right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The kitchen was a museum piece right out of the 1950s, the kind of June Cleaver, cookie-cutter frame-up that Nixon had bragged about in his visits with the Soviets. Except that the cabinets were faded, and the countertops were worn down and cracking at the seams. And no bald-headed Soviet premier was standing there looking enraged.

  “This kitchen hasn’t been used in a while,” he said, running his finger along the Formica countertop. He held it up, revealing a dark smudge of grimy film on his fingertip.

  “Or cleaned,” I said, grossed out. I wasn’t exactly a neat freak, but kitchens were sacrosanct. “That’s just gross,” I whispered.

  “I don’t think we need to whisper,” Carlos said, poking his head into the next room. It seemed likely that no one had been living in the house. But then why was the light on in the bedroom?

  I walked towards the other end of the house and found a small bedroom with a perfectly made bed. It had a musty smell, as though the air hadn’t circulated in weeks, or months. I backed away and rejoined Carlos in the kitchen.

  “Nothing back there,” I said. “You going to check the other bedroom?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  I joined Carlos as he made his way across the room towards what we assumed was the other bedroom. We assumed wrong.

  Carlos halted at the door and then pulled me back with him.

  I looked at him questioningly.

  His face told me that something was very wrong, but I hadn’t been able to sneak a peek inside the room.

  “There’s a dude in there,” he whispered. He pointed to his ears. “He’s got earbuds in and is listening to loud music, so he has no idea we’re here.”

  “What’s he doing?” I asked, my heart racing.

  “He’s hunched over a giant table. There are lots and lots of papers. That’s all I saw.”

  I slid past Carlos and took a peek for myself. He had been accurate in his description, except he’d failed to mention the presence of what appeared to be an iguana in a large aquarium lit with a bright light. He’d also neglected to mention the scissors on the table. The man appeared to be in his twenties, with a backwards baseball cap and a kind of singsongy way of moving back and forth between different stacks of papers, probably his own little private dance he’d developed in response to the music. His back was to us, hunched over his work. The man seemed energized by the work, the way I imagined a chemist would feel in a lab full of beakers and Bunsen burners.

  There was a computer on a small desk in the corner, and papers were strewn everywhere. The room had a large portable table set up where the man was working. Next to it was a hodgepodge of little coffee tables, TV trays, and desks shanghaied into duty from other parts of the house. Three or four calculators were lying haphazardly on the tables. Apart from the portable worktable, the biggest thing in the room was a massive office-style copy machine in the far corner. It gave off a faint hum that was nearly drowned out by the music from the man’s earbuds.

  “What’s he doing?” Carlos whispered.

  “Hell if I know,” I said, withdrawing from the doorway. I didn’t know what to do. The guy was clearly ensconced in his work, and I was dying to know what the heck he was doing with all the papers and the calculator. Not to mention the scissors.

  “This could be the brains of the operation right here,” Carlos said. “This guy could be stealing from one guy to pay another guy. Or maybe he’s creating fake investment statements or something like that. You want to take a video?”

  I paused to think about it. “Not right
now. I think I want to come back here on my own time when he’s not around. Then I can piece together what he’s doing. Right now it’s just a bunch of papers we’re looking at from a distance. A video won’t be very helpful.”

  Carlos nodded. “Then let’s go get some lunch. We can come back and have our run of the place some other time.”

  I liked the idea. I took one last peek, and then Carlos and I retraced our steps and snuck out the kitchen door, making sure it made as little noise as possible. Not that the earbud guy could have heard it.

  Carlos and I threw around a few ideas, finally settling on my favorite brewpub, the Gordon Biersch Brewing Company just off the Strip. It was far enough away that it wasn’t exclusively a touristy joint, and they had a Reuben sandwich that came with a decadent dipping sauce. Snooping around had made me hungry.

  Carlos ordered himself a salad, which naturally I ribbed him about.

  “Gotta stay trim for the girlfriend, eh?”

  He shrugged, pretending not to be embarrassed. “More protein this way. The salad has about a pound of chicken on it. No carbs, too, so you can eat more.” He smiled and then flexed his pectoral muscles, which jumped back and forth under his tight shirt like a pair of angry salmon trapped inside. “Gotta keep them happy, you know,” he said, very satisfied with himself.

  I rolled my eyes, not wanting to admit that his prodigious musculature was not exactly off-putting.

  “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  “We?”

  “I just assumed you’d want some more help. Are you finished with me? Just remember we’re even now, after this lunch,” he said. It was his unsubtle way of telling me he expected to be paid at his usual, exorbitant rate.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’m gonna go back when that weird guy isn’t there.” I realized that probably meant breaking into a house at night, in which case I’d definitely want Carlos along for the ride. But I wasn’t going to beg. “I suppose you could come along,” I said breezily. It was a little game we played. He would try to press me for more money, and I would pretend I didn’t really need him. I didn’t—it was true—but then again, he’d saved my hide on more than one occasion.