by Jennie Marts
She hoped Edna wasn’t having trouble hearing her. She could make out bits of conversation as they hurried down the hall. A man’s voice mixed with Edna’s shrill one.
As the voices cut in and out, she picked up bits of conversation with words like “service” and “lots of money” and “is this how you treat your customers.” She clearly thought she heard the word ‘penis’ but knew that couldn’t be right, and her brain tried to decipher what other word it could have been. Venus? Pianist?
That couldn’t be right. Why would her grandmother be talking about a piano player or another planet? Then again, why would she be talking about a penis?
Sunny nudged her side. “Donde esta? Seriously?”
Zoey laughed. A nervous giggle. “I panicked. It just popped out. Then I had to go with it.”
She turned up the tiny earpiece and spoke toward it again. “Abort plan. We are heading to the garage. Got what we needed. Get out of there.”
They slowed their pace and calmly pushed through the door and out in to the foyer. Sunny pressed the button to the elevator.
A commotion drew her attention, and Zoey turned to see Maggie and Edna being led through the doors by two large men. The men both wore black suits but their biceps bulged, drawing the fabric tight against their muscled arms.
“This is an outrage!” Edna bellowed. “I have rights! Take your hands off of me. I’m reporting you for elderly abuse.” Her face was flushed with anger. She was either really into character or her grandmother was seriously pissed off.
“I’m not abusing you, ma’am,” one of the men said to Edna. “I’m simply escorting you out of the firm. And asking that you not return.”
“What’s wrong? Is the Buckingham money not good enough for you?” Her head only came up to the taller man’s chest, and she tipped her chin up to glare at him. “I’ve been saving this money since Nixon was in office! Probably before you were even born.”
“That very well could be, ma’am,” he replied, his voice dull and monotone. It was obvious he wasn’t letting one little old lady shake his nerve. “But it doesn’t matter how much money you have or how long you’ve been saving it, you can’t come into someone’s business and call the CEO a penis-face.”
Oh, Lord. She had used that word.
Edna huffed. “I’m eighty-two years old—I can do whatever I damn well please.”
“Not here you can’t.”
They moved closer to where Zoey and Sunny stood. Zoey tucked her head into her chin and studied the floor. The elevator dinged, and she stepped on, head down, shoulders hunched and backed into the far corner of the elevator.
She snuck a glance at the men as they deposited Edna and Maggie into the elevator. She didn’t recognize either of them. But she recognized the glint of steel under his jacket when one raised his arm to hold the elevator door for Maggie.
Why did he have a gun?
Who were these guys? They were acting like financial advisor bouncers—since when did Cavelli Commerce have security? And what in the world would they need it for?
Something felt really wrong here.
She would have to think all of this through later. In precise detail. With lists and a chart. Possible even create a spreadsheet.
But for now she just wanted to get back to the van. Wanted to get away from Cavelli Commerce to where she felt safe.
And where she could take this silly itchy wig off.
Maggie and Edna stood next to her and Sunny in the elevator. Maggie wore an expression of humiliation, and Edna’s shoulders shook with indignation.
“I belong to the Red Hat Society, and I’ll be telling all of my friends to not invest their money here,” Edna called as the elevator doors slid shut.
They had discussed the possibility of cameras in the elevator, so Zoey pressed the button for the parking garage and feigned indifference at the old lady panting with exertion. Her cleaning bucket bumped against her leg as she dared a glance at the others.
They all stood perfectly still, the canned music playing softly in the background, but Zoey caught a look pass between Sunny and Maggie. The corner of Sunny’s mouth twitched as she obviously tried not to laugh. She pressed her lips tightly together and looked at the ceiling. Anywhere but at Edna.
After what seemed like about an hour, the elevator doors slid open and Edna hobbled out, her back bent over her cane. Maggie followed behind. Following the plan, Sunny and Zoey stayed on and rode down one more floor then raced back up the stairs.
Zoey slowly pushed open the door to the parking garage’s main level. She could see Edna and Maggie getting into Cassie’s van. She spoke in a loud whisper, hoping the earpiece picked up her voice, even in the concrete stairwell.
She could certainly hear Edna complaining about the way her girdle was pinching her. “We’re over by the door. Look to your right, and you’ll be able to see us.”
She saw Edna’s head swivel to the right and point at the door. She waved. “Have Cassie drive over and get us, just in case there are cameras watching the garage. Especially now that security has seen us.”
“Roger that. We’re on our way.” Her grandmother’s voice took on a tone that crossed between a spy and a truck driver. Zoey fully expected to hear her say “ten-four, good buddy” next.
Relief poured through her as Cassie pulled the van up to the door, and she and Sunny slid into the back seat. Maggie slammed the door shut, and Cassie gunned the engine as she pulled out of the parking garage.
No one spoke for a few minutes as Cassie maneuvered the complicated streets of downtown Denver.
Merging onto the highway, Cassie turned her head. “Well, how did it go?”
Zoey looked from her grandmother, to Maggie, to Sunny, and they all dissolved into hysterical giggles.
Sunny grabbed her chest and tried to catch her breath. “Oh. My. Gosh. That was so much fun. And so scary. I was sure we were going to get caught. Especially when Zoey’s coworker walked in and looked right at her.” She grinned at Zoey. “Good thing you went with that awesome Spanish accent.”
“Spanish accent?” Edna gave her a disapproving look. “Now, honey, with that wig’s hair color and your skin tone, you’d have been better off going with a Russian accent, or Polish even. You need to think these things through.”
Zoey laughed. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I’m not even sure what ‘donde estas’ means. It just popped out. I certainly wasn’t planning on affecting any kind of accent.” She looked pointedly at her grandmother. “I can assure you that I’m not in the CIA.”
Edna huffed. “Well, not with that attitude anyway.”
Cassie switched lanes and passed a red compact car. “And by the way, I think ‘donde estas’ means ‘where are you?’ Which doesn’t seem like the appropriate phrase if she was standing in front of you.”
Zoey laughed. “No. It wasn’t the appropriate phrase for anything. And I didn’t even say it to her. I mumbled it to the desk I was dusting.”
“Who cares about the accent? Or the dusting,” Maggie said. “Did you accomplish the mission? Oh shit. Now I’m sounding like Miss CIA.” She ducked sideways to avoid a swat from Edna. “Did you get the flash drive?”
Zoey checked her pockets and pulled out the drives and the comical high-heeled stapler. “We found four of them in his desk. We won’t really know if they’re the right ones until I can get them in a computer and see what’s on them.”
“You can put them in here for now.” Edna held out her giant handbag, and Zoey dropped the flash drives and the stapler inside. “You can use my laptop when we get back to the house.”
“Thanks. Mrs. Buckingham.” Zoey dissolved into a fit of giggles, and the others joined in.
All except Cassie. “Wait. Who’s Mrs. Buckingham? Like the palace?”
“That was the alias the CIA extraordinaire decided to go with,” Maggie explained between hoots of laughter. “She even called a guy a wanker.”
“That’s not all she called a guy,” Zoey sai
d. “Grandma, did you really call Salvatore Cavelli a penis-face?”
Edna grinned. “Not to his face. The coward wouldn’t come out of his office. I said it to his secretary after she called the goons in.”
Zoey’s expression sobered. “Yeah, that was weird. I don’t remember seeing those guys around before. Granted, I didn’t work directly with the Cavellis or in the executive offices, but why would a financial advisor firm need muscled and armed security?”
“Armed?” Sunny asked.
“Yeah, I saw a gun holstered on his hip when he held the door of the elevator.”
“I saw that too,” Maggie said. “And I noticed the dark-haired one had a tattoo on his wrist. It looked like an eagle or something with some numbers. Like kind of a bad-ass eagle though. Maybe military. Could be the numbers were his platoon or squadron or whatever.”
Cassie pulled a small notebook with a pen attached from a basket on the floor of the van. “Here. Try to draw it while it’s fresh in your memory. It could be nothing, but maybe we could have Jake look into it. See if it means anything.”
“Good idea.” Maggie took the notebook and flipped to a blank page. “And I thought the same thing as Zoey. I saw a couple of other guys that looked more like goons than your typical finance guys. Most of the stock brokers I know don’t carry guns and they sure don’t have their hugely muscled thighs and forearms busting through the fabric of their suits.”
“Maybe they’ve beefed up their security since the money-laundering scandal,” Sunny suggested.
“And maybe there’s more going on at Cavelli Commerce that we first imagined,” Cassie said.
Zoey scratched at the wig where it rested against her ear. “More than money-laundering, beefy security guys, assaulting their employees in the middle of the night, and murder?”
“Yeah, more than that.”
But did she really want to find out how much more?
Chapter Eight
Zoey was surprised to see Scooter sitting on the front stoop when they returned to Edna’s. “What are you doing here?”
Scooter shrugged. “Didn’t have anything else to do. And I wanted to see how Operation Undercover turned out. Plus I was hungry.”
“It turned out great,” Edna said as she opened the front door, and they all trooped in. “We think we got what we were looking for. And I think there’s some leftover pizza in the fridge. Help yourself.” She grabbed the cookie jar from the counter and set it in the middle of the table. “Johnny must still be at this doctor’s appointment. Let me just get the dogs.”
Crossing the kitchen, she lifted the gate in the laundry room door. Havoc and Bruiser burst into the room in a doggy frenzy trying to simultaneously find someone to pet them and look for spare crumbs on the floor.
Zoey pulled off her wig and dropped it on the table. It looked like a cross between a French poodle and rodent roadkill. She sat down, and Bruiser jumped into her lap and sniffed at the wig. Maybe she thought it was someone she knew.
The door between the house and the garage opened and Johnny walked in, without the crutches. Instead he wore a dark blue boot around the bottom portion of his leg and foot. “What’d I miss? You all look like you just stepped off the stage at the community theatre.” His eyes twinkled with mischief. “Or maybe you amateur detectives were up to an undercover mission.”
The women all seemed to simultaneously find something else in the kitchen to look at.
“Hold on. That was a joke.” His eyes darkened. “Edna, what kind of funny business did you talk these girls in to?”
“Meee?” Edna asked. “Why does everyone always assume the funny business is caused by me?”
“Because it usually is.” John pulled out a chair and gestured for his wife to take a seat. “Why don’t you all sit down? I’ll put on a pot of coffee, and you can tell me all about it. Starting with what Shaggy is doing with his head in my refrigerator. Was he part of this? Did he drive you around in the Mystery Van?”
“No,” Cassie piped up as she dropped into a chair at the table and reached for a cookie. “The Mystery Van was mine. All Shaggy—er, I mean Scooter—did was help with our costumes.”
“Well you all certainly look different. I almost didn’t recognize Zoey. That’s quite a get-up,” he said.
“You should have seen her with the wig on—she looked like a totally different person,” Sunny said and nudged Zoey with her elbow. “And her Spanish accent was great.”
“We needed to get into Zoey’s firm to have a look around without anyone recognizing her,” Edna explained. “Scooter did our makeup, and we had to make sure we all looked different. He did a great job with Zoey, but the hard part was trying to make me look like an old lady.”
Maggie arched an eyebrow at her. “Yes—that was the hardest part.”
Zoey pointed at Edna’s bag. “Can I get the flash drives from your purse and borrow your laptop, Grandma? I want to check out these files to see if we got the right ones. You all can fill Johnny in while I dig through them.”
An hour later, the coffee pot was empty, the story had been told, and Zoey had come up empty with the flash drives.
She groaned in frustration as she looked at the others sitting around the table. “All that work and there’s nothing here. Two of these drives are completely blank. One has his monthly reports on it and the one shaped like a frog has something to do with an online video game he’s playing. I’ve searched the one with the reports three times and can’t find anything that would be deemed incriminating or evidence.”
Edna patted her hand. “I’m sorry, honey. I was hoping we’d found it.”
Zoey’s cell phone buzzed, and her heart leapt as she saw the message was from Mac. Was her heart racing because she hoped it was news about Teddy or just because the message was from the handsome police officer?
She opened the message.
Are you still resting?
She grimaced and typed a message back. No, I’m up. Sitting in the kitchen with the book club.
Edna poked her. “What’s that face for? Does he have news?”
“No. I just feel bad because he thinks I’ve been taking a nap this whole afternoon.”
“Well, I’ve seen you close your eyes several times this afternoon.”
“You mean when I blinked? I don’t think a blink counts as a nap.”
Edna shrugged. “Depends on how long you blink.”
The phone buzzed again. I got the mug shot of Louchenza. Sending it along. Take a look at it and try to think if you’ve seen this guy before or how he could be connected to the Cavellis.
She opened the picture and stared at the photo of the doughy-faced man. I’m sorry but I’ve never seen him before. I wish I were better help.
No problem. Just watch your back and stay at Edna’s.
Any word on Teddy?
No- sorry. I’ll text you if I hear anything. Stay safe.
Stay safe. Good plan. She somehow thought that sneaking into Cavelli Commerce amidst armed security and wearing a disguise would not fit Mac’s criteria of safety. Thanks. You too.
“Mac sent me a picture of the guy from last night.” She passed the phone around the table. “Anybody recognize him?”
The book club studied the picture, but none of them had seen him before.
Scooter plopped back into his chair, steam rising from the triangle of pizza on his plate. He tilted his head to peer at the screen. “Hey, I know that dude. That’s Jimmy Two-Fingers.”
“How do you know Jimmy Two-Fingers?” Zoey asked.
“Um—well, I can tell you he’s not a regular at the community theatre.” He eyed Zoey. “How do you know him?”
“He broke into my apartment last night to try to kill me.”
“Dude. Why? What’d you do to piss him off?”
“Nothing. I don’t even know him.”
He shook his head. “That’s weird. Did they catch him?”
“Somebody did. With a bullet. He’s dead.”
&n
bsp; “No way.”
“Way.”
“That totally sucks.”
Zoey nodded. “Yeah, it does suck. Especially because I have no idea why he’d want to hurt me. It would really help me out if could tell me what you know about him.”
Scooter took a bite of pizza and chewed thoughtfully.
“Look, it doesn’t matter what you tell me,” Zoey assured him. “There’s no judgement.”
He gave her a sideways glance. “No judgement?”
“Nope. None. Nada.” She really needed to let up on her Spanish terms.
“Well—let’s just say that besides my talents as a ‘master of disguise’—I also have a degree in Herbology.”
“Herbology? I don’t get it.”
Edna sighed. “Don’t you ever watch television? I think he means he’s a grower.”
“What’s a grower?”
“He grows marijuana. You know—pot. Ganja. Weed. Mary Jane. Wacky tobaccy.”
“Yes—I know what marijuana is. Remember, I grew up on a hippy compound.” She arched an eyebrow at her grandmother. “But I’m surprised you know so much about it.”
Maggie reached over and pulled a piece of pepperoni off Scooter’s pizza. “Really? Because we’ve stopped being surprised by anything your grandmother does.”
“Look—you can learn a lot if you pay attention,” Edna said. “Besides what I learn from cable, I’m also an informed voter, and I did my research when they wanted to legalize it in Colorado. Especially when they wanted to open a recreational shop here in Pleasant Valley.”
“Okay, okay. No one’s questioning your knowledge of marijuana,” Zoey said, then turned to Scooter. “But what does you being a grower have to do with Jimmy Two-Fingers? Was he a grower, too?”
“No way, dude. He was all muscle. Like your granny said, weed’s legal in Colorado now, and there’s bucketloads of money to be made in the industry. And now that they opened the rec shop here, you’d be surprised by how much weed-traffic runs in this little town. And guys that run that much weed make a ton of dough and need a lot of muscle.”
