This sounded like a load of bullshit to me. I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but somehow I heard myself speaking out. “The police and the courts don’t care about Scientology rules,” I said. “You can’t just kill someone and have no consequences.”
“But I didn’t kill her,” Brian said. “She is responsible for her own death. She died because the toxic substances in her body dulled her awareness and blocked her mental alertness so that she slipped under the water and drowned.”
He walked over to the counter, grabbed a long sharp knife, and brought it over to my chair. I panicked. My entire body trembled and my teeth chattered uncontrollably. Was he going to stab us? But didn’t he say he wasn’t going to kill us? And why would he stab us when he had a gun?
“I didn’t kill Mirabel and I’m not going to kill you, but your spirits are trapped—tied up as tightly as your arms are right now. I can free your arms but only you can free your spirits,” he said, slicing through a piece of the rope on my arms and unwinding the rest of it. He threw the knife on the table then ran for the front door and was gone.
I quickly freed Lacey and Angelica, gave them each a quick hug, then grabbed my cell phone. But I remembered the Scientologists had it tapped. They probably had Lacey’s tapped as well. “I guess we’ll have to find an uncompromised phone to call the police,” I said.
“No, wait,” Lacey said, as we all rubbed our wrists to restore circulation. “If we call the police, Dad and Judith will find out all about this and they’ll bring charges against you for having Angelica here and especially for exposing her to this dangerous maniac.”
“But he pulled a gun on us and destroyed your mother’s new will,” I said. “We have to report him.”
“Wait,” she said. She ran to the front window and looked out. “He’s gone. Let’s take a walk outside, get some air and think about this.”
A strange suggestion perhaps under the circumstances, but the outdoors always helps me clear my mind. The day had cleared and the sun was shining, so I couldn’t see any reason not to take a short walk before we called the police and all hell broke loose.
We stumbled out and onto the short path from my house to Settler’s Park. The trees and bushes were a mosaic of yellows, browns, and golds. I looked up at the red rocks at the top of the trail and felt my inner-self click into alignment.
“Let’s walk up the path to that big tree,” Lacey said, pointing to a tree about fifty yards away. When we got there, she looked around carefully. “I wanted to be somewhere where we could be sure we could talk freely,” she said with a smile.
“You look happy,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Brian only thinks he destroyed the will,” she said.
“I know,” Angelica agreed with a grin. “Can you believe it?”
“That wasn’t it?” I asked.
“Being the topnotch lawyer that he was, Grandad had Mom sign two copies of her will. He may have been forgetful, but he was still a pro. Both copies were exactly the same, both signed and witnessed. The other one is in my car. We may not be able to prove the Scientologists murdered Mom, but at least we can keep them from inheriting. I’m going to take that will directly to our lawyer.
Angelica frowned and held her hand up in front of Lacey’s face. “No, wait. Don’t take it to the lawyer yet. Let’s at least take another day to be sure we want this new will to take the place of the other one.”
“We need to have the new will where it is safe,” Lacey said. “And surely you don’t want the Scientologists to inherit after what just happened.” She sounded exasperated. “If we don’t turn in the new will, the Scientologists win.”
I was watching Angelica. She looked hopeless, like she had slammed into a wall. “But if we do turn it in, Judith wins,” she said, “Dad will get all the money and she’ll marry him. Judith is a nasty rotten woman. I don’t want her and Dad to have any more of Mom’s money than they’re already getting.” Angelica dropped to the ground, sobbing.
Lacey and I immediately sat down and put our arms around her as she cried out the pent up grief, anxiety and stress that must have been building inside her. This little girl had been so centered and so strong for so long that I had been expecting a breakdown at some point. Even Indigo children have their limits.
Lacey rubbed Angelica’s back with a soothing motion. “It’s all right, Angelica,” she said. “I won’t take the will to a lawyer yet. What’s one more day? You and I can talk it through tomorrow when you’re feeling better. Come on, let’s go home.”
We stayed on the ground for one more group hug, then got up and walked slowly back down the path to my house.
Chapter 37
As soon as Lacey and Angelica left, I headed over to the Verizon store to see what I could do about getting my phone untapped. Oops—they said the tap couldn’t be stopped by doing anything to my phone. Apparently, the way someone taps a cell phone is by intercepting the signals the phone is sending out. As long as the person tapping it has my phone number they can keep listening to my conversations. It’s illegal, of course, but that’s a different issue.
My best solution was to buy a prepaid personal cell phone with a new number. I figured it would be only temporary until the Townes family mess was cleared up. Most of my usual business calls were unlikely to be of any interest to Brian, so I would only give the new number to a few people like Lacey, Angelica, and Pablo.
I took the new phone out to my car, where I called both Pablo and Lacey from the new number and left voicemail messages telling them to use that number to reach me. In Lacey’s message, I reminded her that my old number was tapped. But Pablo didn’t know any of that, so I just said I was having some problems with my phone and he should use this new one for now.
It was dark by then and the air had a chilly rawness from all the rain that had fallen earlier in the day. I couldn’t wait to get home to my warm cozy house. Once I got there and closed and locked the door behind me, I realized I was too exhausted to think or talk to anyone. I turned off both cell phones, gulped down some soup, and collapsed into bed. Nothing kept me awake that night—not spooky dreams, not worries about Gramma, not Brian’s evil actions, not anxiety over Angelica and Lacey’s safety. I slept that deep healing sleep that sometimes follows a traumatic day.
Tuesday morning dawned sunny and breezy, which matched my energy level when I woke up. The cold front that had brought Monday’s rain to the Front Range and snow to the high country had moved on with the help of some gusty winds. I had clients scheduled back to back until midafternoon so I hustled off to my office.
For most of the day I forced myself to put Gramma’s plight and the Townes’ family issues out of my mind so I could give my clients the attention they deserved. At 3:00 when the last one left, I grabbed my usual apple and yogurt for a late lunch, fixed a cup of tea, sat at my desk and turned on my new phone to check messages. The first one was from Lacey sent at 9:00 a.m. She sounded uncharacteristically cool and collected.
“Hey, Cleo, smart thinking about the new phone number. Hope you’ve recovered from yesterday. Angelica and I still haven’t told anyone about what happened or about the new will. She wanted to stay home from school so we could work out what to do about the will, but I convinced her that she needed to go to school because there was no good way to explain her staying home. So I dropped her off there and I’m on my way to my yoga class. Talk to you later.”
I was encouraged that Lacey was taking such a deliberate approach. And this on top of her finessing Brian by having a secret second copy of Mirabel’s will. Maybe I had misjudged her ability to remain in control in a crisis.
But it turned out to be the proverbial calm before the storm.
Before I got to Lacey’s next message, there was one from Pablo confirming what we’d found on the internet about the difficulty of prosecuting eBay art fraud. “Sorry babe, but what I’m hearing is that it’s tough to regulate commerce when the seller can be anywhere in the world and so can the buyer,” h
e said. “That means it’s not clear what regulatory body has jurisdiction. It looks like it would take years to get any resolution. I’ll keep looking for the seller and we can try to go after them but it’s not going to help Martha’s need for cash right away.”
Disappointing, but pretty much what I expected to hear. I clicked on to the next message, sent at 1:30 pm. Lacey had reverted to her hysterical self. “Omigod, Cleo,” she shrieked. “Angelica’s school just called here to the house to ask if we’d picked her up early from school. They said she’s not in class and no one has seen her since lunch.” Her voice took on an angry tone as she continued. “Shane isn’t answering his phone and I haven’t been able to reach Dad or Judith either. What if they took her out to send her away to school like they threatened to do?” She paused, and then said exasperatedly, “But if they’d done that, wouldn’t they be here packing her things? She’s not with you, is she? Have you heard from her? Do you have any idea where she is? Call me!”
I called her, but it went right to voice mail. I left a message saying I hadn’t heard from Angelica or anyone else in her family.
I didn’t have any more messages on that voicemail, so I checked my old phone and listened to a few messages from clients—nothing urgent. Then I sat back to think about what to do next.
Would Derrick and/or Judith take Angelica out of school without telling the school staff? Probably not. With a sigh, I reflected on Angelica’s propensity for unconventional independent action. She had probably left on her own for some reason. But where would she go? I didn’t know her well enough to even make a list of possibilities. The school and Lacey and probably Derrick and Judith, and maybe even Shane were already looking for her. I was worried about her but what could I add to the search? I couldn’t think of anything at the moment. And I really needed to use my time and energy to find a way to help Gramma.
What I really wanted to do was call my good friend Elisa and have her help me brainstorm ideas for getting the money Gramma needed. But I knew if I called her, I’d have to tell her about what happened with Brian and she’d be all over me about how she’d warned me about the dangers of helping Lacey and Angelica, and how I should back off before something worse happened. I didn’t want to hear that lecture, because Lacey and Angelica still needed my help and support.
I also knew Elisa would push me to tell Pablo or the Boulder police about Brian pulling a gun on us and burning Mirabel’s new will. But Lacey was right that I would get myself in trouble by admitting that I had been at least partly responsible for getting Angelica into a life-threatening situation. And Brian didn’t hurt us or manage to destroy the only copy of the will, so in the end there was no serious harm done. Of course Elisa would point out that Brian had tapped my phone, threatened us with a gun, tied us up and destroyed what he thought was the only copy of the will. And she’d be right that all of that was illegal and wrong.
The more I thought about it, the less sure I was about what to do about Brian. If he was capable of doing what he did, who knew what else he might do? I shuddered. Could he be responsible for Angelica’s disappearance? Should the authorities be alerted?
I sat there holding my phone and feeling more and more stuck. I needed to talk to someone who could help me figure all this out. Pablo was the obvious choice to talk this over with, but I couldn’t call and tell him about Brian. I’d get even more of a lecture than I’d gotten from Elisa, plus Brian would probably be arrested and the whole thing would become a public matter. Lacey and Angelica would be questioned by the police, Derrick would be informed, and I’d be in big trouble.
I told myself that if I thought it would help Angelica, I’d be willing to talk to the police about Brian, but I couldn’t see any reason why he’d be involved in her disappearance. He’d let us all go yesterday, so why would he turn around and grab Angelica today?
“Yo, Cleo. You’re stuck in the channel. Can’t walk home from here. Might as well hit the surf.” I looked up to see Tyler riding some invisible wave back and forth across the room.
“Tyler! What are you talking about? Do you mean I should tell the police about Brian?”
“No, that current is pushing you out into waves out of your range. You need to take the next one in.”
“What’s the next one? What should I do?”
“When the wave pulls you forward, stand up and keep your balance. Don’t get blinded by the spray,” he said as he surfed up to the ceiling and disappeared.
“No, wait,” I yelled. “I don’t understand. You need to explain.”
But of course he didn’t reply.
I sank back in my chair, closed my eyes and tried to make some sense of Tyler’s cryptic advice. He had talked about balance and not getting blinded by the spray. Maybe he was telling me not to let the Townes family problems get in the way of thinking about how to get the money Gramma needed. Maybe Gramma’s situation was the wave pulling me forward—it was already Tuesday afternoon and I needed to confirm with the Shady Terrace staff by the end of the week that Gramma would be buying in.
But what to do? I didn’t see any wave to ride. As my thoughts went round and round, I kept ending up at the same place. For some reason, Faye wasn’t taking Gramma’s situation seriously and wasn’t doing as much as she could to help.
Was this because she was ripping off Gramma by not telling me the truth about how many paintings she’d sold and for what prices? Should I try to follow up on Shane’s allegations? And what about Pablo’s thought that Faye might be somehow involved in the eBay fraud? I’d always liked Faye and trusted her, but people in desperate financial situations sometimes act rashly. If Shane was right and Faye had been taking more money than she should have been from the gallery, she very well might also have been defrauding Gramma.
I was startled out of my deliberations by my phone ringing. The ID said Faye calling. Wow—like somehow she tapped into my thoughts. Or maybe Tyler somehow got her to call. “Hey, Cleo,” she said when I picked up, “I had some new ideas about how to raise money for your grandmother. Can you take a break and come over to the gallery for a few minutes?”
Perfect. It was 4:30. I closed up my office and walked over to the gallery. I would listen to her ideas, which would hopefully be good ones. But I’d also be watching for any signs that she wasn’t being honest. If I needed to I could always confront her with Shane’s email evidence and see what she had to say.
Chapter 38
When I got to the gallery, Faye was with a customer, so I wandered over to Pablo’s exhibit to see whether he’d sold any more pieces. In addition to the four I already knew about, I was excited to find another three red “sold” stickers. I was thinking to myself that there was no way Faye could lie about the prices these works had sold for, which meant Pablo would definitely get his fair share of the money from these sales.
Whoa! Why was I even thinking Faye would rip Pablo off? I realized that I was accepting Shane’s view of Faye without giving her a chance to defend herself. Since I’d known Faye forever, and I’d only recently met Shane, why would I take his word as the truth?
I noticed Faye and her customer heading for the front door. As soon as the woman left, Faye locked the door behind her and put up the “closed” sign. I felt a wave of apprehension. Did I really want to have this discussion with Faye about Gramma’s money right here with just the two of us locked in to her gallery? But I took a deep breath and told myself I was way over-generalizing from yesterday’s encounter with Brian. Why would I be nervous about talking to Faye?
As if to further quell my doubts, Faye approached me with a big smile. She looked stunning as usual. Today she wore a chic short grey cashmere dress over lacy black tights and high-heeled suede boots. Her jewelry—silver and turquoise necklace and earrings—looked to be handcrafted and expensive. I mused that for someone who was having financial problems, she was certainly keeping up appearances.
“Here’s something to be happy about,” she said. “Pablo’s work is selling well. Look
at all those red stickers.” Then she lost the smile and sighed as she looked around the gallery. “It’s been a hard day. Let’s go to the back room and have a glass of wine while we talk.” She beckoned me to follow her.
As I walked behind her, my new phone rang. Only Lacey and Pablo had that number, which meant the call was important. “I’ll be right there,” I said, stopping and pulling out my phone. “Just let me quickly get this call.”
It was Pablo. I walked back over to his exhibit as I answered. “Hey, I’m standing here in Faye’s gallery looking at all your red stickers,” I said. “Very exciting.”
There was a long silence. Then he began to speak slowly and carefully. “Cleo, I’m hoping you haven’t talked to Faye about the eBay fraud. Just answer yes or no whether you have or not. Don’t say anything else.”
“No,” I said.
“Good,” he said quietly. “Now I need to give you some information and you need to listen carefully. It’s very important that you stay calm and don’t react to anything I say. Got that?”
“Okay,” I said in my very calmest therapist voice, as I walked away from his exhibit to get where Faye couldn’t hear me so easily.
“I found out more about the eBay fraud after I left you that message earlier,” he said. “Now remember not to react when I tell you this. It looks very likely that the eBay seller TheBestArt4U is Faye Whitton.”
Too Far Under Page 25
