My husband knew what was wrong with me. He always did. He held my hand before and after the hysterectomy brought on by years of endometriosis. The pain. The bleeding. The heartbreak. He’d been there at my side when I mourned our unborn children after three miscarriages. He’d never stopped loving me, even though I couldn’t give him the children we’d dreamed of when we first married.
“We could still adopt. It’s not too late.”
I looked into his long-lashed eyes and felt enormously better. They held no resentment, no rancor. He’d never blamed me.
“I know. But honey, I’m forty-one. And you’re forty. Do you think we have the stamina?”
The three-year-old cherub started throwing a tantrum on the floor. She pummeled the floor with her fists and feet, and her shrieks felt like needles in my brain.
A small smile escaped me, breaking the tension.
Quinn laughed and took another bite of his salad. “Ruby’s enough for me these days,” he said, covering a burp. He hadn’t even broken out his antibacterial wipes, and he was completely unaware of the germs that could progress from teenaged hands to his food. I chalked it up to the stress of the day and his preoccupation with my state of mind. “Eat up, honey. Your burger’s getting cold,” he said.
I unwrapped my burger and took a huge bite. It tasted divine. “Thanks, baby. You’re the best.”
His big smile revealed even white teeth. “I know.”
I scarfed down my entire meal in five minutes. We returned to the van and headed back to the hotel. This time Quinn drove more sedately. We passed through the fancy wrought iron gates and rolled onto a nearly empty parking lot. Practically everyone from the bird show had checked out, leaving the place empty. The next event wasn’t scheduled for a few days, and I imagined the exhausted hotel staff could use a few days to catch up. No white truck roared across the lot when we headed inside. We hurried up to our room without seeing a soul.
The minute we closed the door, I flopped onto the bed on my back and groaned. “What the hell do those bozos want from my mother?”
Ruby squawked from her cage, excited to see us after being left alone for the afternoon. I found it hard to believe it had been just that morning that Tiramisu gave her the sham psychic reading.
Quinn plopped down beside me and closed his eyes. “It makes no sense at all.”
I turned on my elbow and faced him. “Money.”
He opened his eyes. “What?”
“Aren’t most crimes based on greed? Money?”
Quinn nodded. “Or for revenge. Or to silence a witness. Or…”
“Money,” I said.
“How much did Raoul actually leave Thelma? Do you know?”
I kicked off my shoes and sat up, massaging my foot. “He put a good amount into his 401K for his whole career. I think he said twelve percent. But they didn’t touch it until this year when he got sick and had to retire. ”
Quinn sat up. “They probably have at least a million in that account. He worked a good job for what, forty years? Putting all that into the account would really add up. But to survive another thirty or forty years in this economy, you’d need a million. At least.”
“Really? Wow.”
Ruby rocked on her perch and squawked. “Ruby’s hungry. Gimme cookies.”
Quinn groaned. “Oh, damn. I’ve gotta feed poor Ruby.”
I rolled off the bed and shuffled toward the cage. “I’ll do it, hon. You relax.”
Ruby met me at the cage door, eager for the seeds I poured into her dish. I refilled her water bottle and watched her peck at her dinner. “Good girl, Ruby.”
She stopped eating for a moment, jumped up on her perch, and cocked her head at me. “Good girl.” She twittered and chirped some more, then hopped onto the floor of the cage and sat still. Her eyes closed. Her beak pointed skyward. And she screeched so loud I nearly fell over.
“You’re… not… Ramona!”
Quinn jumped up and joined me, staring into the cage. “What’d she say?”
I didn’t have to answer, for Ruby repeated the words, this time even louder.
“You’re not Ramona!”
Chapter 17
“What the hell?” Quinn scratched his head and wandered back to the bed. I followed him and sat in a daze.
“Hildegarde said those freaks called my mom Ramona. Remember?”
Quinn shook his head and nervously combed his hair with his fingers. “I don’t get it. Your mom’s been speaking through Ruby, and vice versa, right? That’s hard enough to swallow.” He hopped up and walked toward the fireplace to turn on the gas fire. It crackled blue and yellow flames, filling the room with a bit of comfort. Quinn leaned against the fireplace mantel and studied the fire. “So what the hell is this? Someone else getting in on the act? How many people are in my poor bird’s brain, anyway?”
I curled sideways on the bed and bunched a pillow under my arm to get comfortable. My brain whirred. “I think we’re still seeing life through my mother’s eyes. Or ears. Or brain. I think somebody said those words to Thelma. The creeps probably just discovered she’s not Ramona.”
He practically shouted. “This is nuts, Marcella! Who the hell is Ramona?”
I chewed on a nail and stared at nothing, tucking my feet behind me. “I don’t know. A case of mistaken identity, I guess.”
“So the guys really weren’t after your mother, or her supposed money?”
“Maybe. But something else keeps gnawing at me. Something that happened just before Thelma was taken.”
“What?” He came back to the bed and lay behind me, encircling me with his arms.
“Tiramisu. That whole debacle. The way he sought us out. Kept asking about money. About Thelma. Wanted to know about my stepfather.”
“What?”
I rolled over to face him. “Yeah. During the reading, he said he was getting vibes from Ruby that had to do with money.”
Quinn shot me a look that said I was crazy.
“No. Really. That’s what he said. First he acted surprised that mom’s name was Thelma. Almost like he thought I was lying.” I sat up. “Then he asked me if anyone had died recently, and I mentioned Raoul. That’s when he wrapped up the reading and practically pushed us out of the room. It was like he was fishing for something he never got from me. Or Ruby.”
Quinn frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Me neither. But it might be worth checking out Tiramisu. If he was digging for information about Thelma, he could be involved in her kidnapping.”
Quinn uttered a strangled chuckle.
“What’s so funny?”
He shook his head as if he didn’t want to tell me, but finally burst out with the truth. “I just keep thinking of those losers with your mother. My God, I’ll bet she’s driving them crazy.”
I pictured her chipping at them with her acerbic tongue. “I hope so,” I said. “I hope she drives them so crazy they drop her by the side of the road and she calls us in five minutes.” I looked at the phone, willing it to ring.
Quinn watched the phone, too. “Wait a minute. If she really was kidnapped, doesn’t it mean someone should be calling us for a ransom?”
My brain flew in circles. “Would they know to call here, at the hotel?”
“Sure. She’d give them the room number. Or your cell number.”
“I guess you’re right. But then why didn’t McCann tell us to stay by the phone?”
“Maybe he doesn’t believe us. Or maybe he thinks she’s been taken for another reason.”
I scowled at him. “Like what? Some kind of cult sacrifice?”
He turned green. “No. But if there wasn’t any ransom note or if no one’s contacted us, they might not treat it like an actual kidnapping.”
“In all the movies about kidnappers, they set up phone tracing devices in the family’s homes. Why didn’t they do that for my mother?”
“Maybe ‘cause she’s not rich? Or at least she’s not supposed to be.”
&nbs
p; “What do you mean?” I said.
“We told them she lived on social security. We didn’t tell them about Raoul’s retirement money, did we?”
“No. McCann didn’t ask. And I didn’t even think about it. Everyone has retirement money. And it couldn’t be enough to kidnap someone. Could it?” I shook my head. “Isn’t the FBI supposed to handle these cases? They might have asked more relevant questions.”
“Does the FBI have offices up here in the sticks?”
“I doubt it. I’m sure the locals are supposed to call them in when something like this happens.” I ducked my head into Quinn’s chest, held onto him, and started to shake uncontrollably. “I can’t take much more.”
Quinn hugged me until I stopped shivering, patting my hair and murmuring comforting words in my ear. It dawned on me that I might have completely lost it if it weren’t for his constancy. We rolled apart and sighed. He reached over me, grabbed the remote, and clicked on the television. “You okay now?”
I smiled and squeezed his hand. “I think so. Thank you.”
“Maybe Thelma made the news. Let’s see.”
He clicked around the cable channels until he found a local news show. I slid out of my jeans and climbed under the covers. He did the same and slid close to me. I needed his solid presence to help me through this. Although we’d joked about my mother and her annoying ways, I couldn’t stop the horrible images that paraded across my brain. I saw her bound in a chair, bloodied, with her head hanging to her chest. I saw a menacing villain with a knife raised over her head. I saw spiders. Lots of spiders. Because that’s the worst torture I could imagine.
What did they want from her? Were they really looking for someone else? Was it all a horrible mistake? What would they do now that they realized she wasn’t Ramona? Would she be killed?
I dropped into a light sleep, but woke each time a commercial came on and the volume shot to ear piercing levels. At ten o’clock I got up to go to the bathroom, and came back to find the newscaster talking about world news. None of it was good.
A brief report about the Putnam Hospital “incident” flashed across the screen, with a pan of the hospital entrance, followed by a fuzzy video of the two men in scrubs who’d taken my mother. My stomach flipped and rolled. I snuggled close to Quinn. He snored like a lumberjack, but it comforted me. My eyes blinked, felt very heavy, and blinked again.
“An anonymous tip has come in from a source in the Federal Reserve.” I sat up to watch, trying to shake off sleep. The exotic looking very serious Asian newscaster continued. “Currency has been identified that’s been tracked to the biggest unsolved bank heist in the history of our country.” A grainy photo of a bank flashed onto the screen. I relaxed and laid back down, reaching for the remote on the other side of Quinn. This wasn’t about my mother.
“Three suspects were involved in the infamous Green Valley First National Bank Heist. Lester Peters, a twenty-year-old Brinks employee, died in the shootout in 1965. Sidney Blount, a bank employee, was captured and imprisoned. Released in 1999, Blount wrote a book about the heist in which he claimed the third member of their team absconded with the loot.”
A familiar face appeared in a box to the right of the newscaster’s head. I sat bolt upright and shook Quinn’s shoulder. “Quinn. Look.” He didn’t stir.
The distinctive mug of Earl Tiramisu filled the screen. Younger. Thinner. But definitely Tiramisu.
“The third member of the team, Ramona Mendoza, disappeared. She’s suspected to have died after being wounded during the shootout, but her body was never found. Mendoza, aged twenty-one, was the first woman to be hired as a Brink’s truck driver.”
A crackled sepia image of a young brown-skinned woman with angular cheekbones and almond shaped eyes appeared below the photo of Blount. I stared at the image, vaguely stirred by the beautiful face. What was it about the eyes? Something seemed familiar, but my tired brain couldn’t pin it down. Quinn rolled over and snored even louder. I shut off the television and fell asleep to a collage of bizarre images that haunted me until morning.
Chapter 18
Quinn still lay dead to the world when I woke at seven. I looked at his strong yet innocent face and ran my fingers through his beautiful hair, staring at him. He didn’t stir, but continued to drool on his pillow. I drew the sheet over his muscled shoulder and kissed his cheek.
In seconds, a bolt zapped through me and I remembered my mother’s plight. I ran to the phone to check for messages.
Nothing. The red light wasn’t lit, nor was it blinking. I picked up the receiver and put it down again. Nothing had changed.
Flashes of dreams filled my brain when I showered and brushed my teeth. The dark almond-shaped eyes of Ramona Mendoza kept popping into my mind’s eye, along with the young face of Tiramisu.
I needed to get my laptop booted up and start searching for more details about the Green Valley bank heist. Was Tiramisu really Sidney Blount? And had Ramona been his partner who absconded with the money? Was she still alive? Had she successfully hidden for all these years, and more importantly, did she still have the loot?
And why did Tiramisu—Blount—think my mother was Ramona?
My bangs were almost dry when it hit me.
The only reason anyone would be suspected of being Ramona, or knowing Ramona, was if the bills they’d been spending were somehow related to the heist.
But how was that possible? We’d never known anyone remotely related to criminals, as far as I knew. The worst encounter I’d ever had with crime was when I was caught at age fifteen with a bottle of wine in the baseball park with senior Barry Lebowski minutes before I would have been deflowered. I thought I was in love. He’d been in lust. And the whole experience had been horrible. He knew nothing of foreplay, I didn’t even know what a condom was, and we’d almost gone all the way, except for that cop who found us. I never drank Manishevitz sweet Concord wine again. Of course that was before I’d fallen for Sky Lissoneau, but that’s another story for another day.
I grabbed my makeup and started to apply a thin line of pale brown eyeliner.
Maybe my mother’s money came from a grocery store? The person before her might have passed the “hot” bills, and she took them in change. Then the next time she bought something, or put money back in the bank, the bills triggered an alarm inside the FBI or whoever was tracking it. How Tiramisu had inside knowledge of such things evaded me. Unless he had a relative in the FBI or Federal Reserve? Or maybe he bribed someone?
A thought struck me. Was he still in the hotel? If he’d left, that would make his involvement all the more suspicious.
I slid my cell phone out of my purse, closed the bathroom door, and dialed the concierge.
“Cromwell here. How may I assist you this morning?”
“Hi, Cromwell. It’s Marcella Hollister.”
“Why, Mrs. Hollister, good morning. How are you holding up?”
“Not too well.” I wondered if he knew about my mother, but I didn’t have to wait a second for my answer.
“The police told me about your plight. I’m very sorry.”
“They did?” Feeling slightly off guard, I hesitated. “Er. Thank you. It’s been difficult.”
“I’m certain it has. If there’s anything I can do…” His voice rose in a question at the end of the sentence.
“Thanks. Actually, I was wondering if Mr. Tiramisu was still in the hotel. I need to ask him something.”
“Oh, dear. No, I’m sorry to say Mr. Tiramisu checked out yesterday. Around noon.”
Just after our reading.
I thanked him and hung up. Questions burned through my mind like a California wildfire, but I still hadn’t finished getting ready, so I turned to the awful reflection in the mirror. I cringed at the mess that stared back at me.
I applied and blotted some pale pink lipstick and dabbed a little concealer beneath my eyes. The reflection improved slightly.
In the corner of the suite by the giant bed, I picked up th
e jeans I’d thrown onto the floor the night before. They still looked clean, so I folded them and was going to slide them into a drawer when something dropped to the floor.
The silver stud I’d found in my mother’s hospital bed glittered at my feet. I bent over to pick it up. In the light of the morning, it was easy to make out the shape of a bear head. I flipped it over and noticed some markings on the back. Even though I squinted, I couldn’t see what it said. I rummaged in my purse, found my drugstore reading glasses, and put them on.
Near the window in the living area, I rotated it and read the tiny markings on the back. RLN,’09.
I wondered if it was an artist’s signature, or a manufacturer’s initials. I examined it further. The silver design was well done, with plenty of detail that showed up even better when I actually used my glasses.
I didn’t mean to speak aloud, but the words came out anyway when I whistled in admiration. “It’s a real piece of art.”
Quinn’s froggy voice came from the bed. “You bet she is.”
I turned to find him staring at me. “Ha! Flatterer.”
“No. It’s true. You’re gorgeous, honey.”
“Oh, stop it.” I padded over to the bed and showed him the earring, giving him my glasses.
He frowned at the pink speckled frames. “Good thing I’m man enough to wear these.”
I chuckled and slid them onto his face, then handed him the earring. “Here. Look at this.”
He looked down his nose and studied the bear head. “Wow. It’s pretty intricate. Is it real silver?”
I nodded, getting excited. “I think so. And I’ll bet we could find out who the jeweler is. See the initials? It’s dated ‘09, so maybe the artist is still around.” I pushed down the lurking suspicion that the earring could have belonged to one of my mother’s nurses.
“Good idea.” His stomach growled. “But let’s get breakfast before we start traipsing all over the mountains. I need pancakes. Warm syrup. And lots of bacon.”
I grabbed his face between my hands and kissed his mouth. He looked so cute with my ladies glasses on his nose. “I have so much to tell you!” I wanted to tell him all in one breath about Tiramisu and the woman with the familiar eyes, about the bank heist and the theories that whirred through my mind. But I controlled myself, knowing a careful conversation with him might shed light on an angle I’d missed. “Hurry up and shower and let’s have breakfast downstairs. It’ll be faster.”
Tall Pines Mysteries: A Mystery/Suspense Boxed Set Page 9
