“They took the money from the fake bottom in the suitcase,” Elliot said. “All of it. Damn it, that’s half our stash.” Elliot slammed his fist on the table, eying Minerva and Andrew. “Five hundred grand. Gone. Just like that.”
“You idiot. I told you not to put it there,” Minerva said. “But do you listen to me?”
“Who talked?” Elliot glared at Minerva and Andrew.
Minerva glared right back. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
“Look, nobody waltzed in here and got that money out of a false bottomed suitcase,” Elliot snapped. “They knew where it was. We weren’t gone long enough for them to search the place.” Elliot pointed his gaze at Andrew. “Andrew, did you tell anyone where it was?”
“You never told me where it was. Who would I tell?”
“What about Sonya?”
“She’s in the Bahamas.”
Elliot glared at him. “Are you sure?”
“She’s working there. You set it up.”
“You want a bourbon?” Minerva asked, slumped in the chair.
“Bourbon? Bourbon? Our freaking money is gone and you’re talking about bourbon?”
“Well, I need one.”
“Did you call Lambert to tell him you were gonna be late?” Elliot asked. “You’ve got to work. You can’t go there smelling like liquor.”
After Minerva called Lambert, she poured herself a soothing cup of tea and sat at the table, her hand twisting the napkin in her lap.
“You can’t go in too late either,” Elliot told her. “You’ve got a reputation to uphold.”
“I can’t believe they stole half our money,” Minerva said. “What are we going to do?”
Elliot shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve got to think.” He was the one who always had to come up with solutions. It would be nice if he had some help for a change. He stood a better chance at winning a hundred million dollar lottery.
“We’ve been living really low—no luxuries. You won’t even let me get a manicure,” Minerva whined. “Why would anyone think we had money stashed away? Nobody here knows us. Or do they? Is our cover blown? What did we do to make people think we had money?”
They both looked at Andrew. “You been talking, boy?” Elliot asked.
Andrew leaned back in his chair. Elliot pressed a hand to his chest and held him in place. “Not me. Not a word. I don’t know anyone here to talk to. If Barbara had known we had money, she wouldn’t have loaned me that hundred bucks. And I do all my socializing in Norfolk,” he admitted. “They don’t know where I live, and you don’t give me enough money to flash around.”
“Barbara loaned you a hundred bucks?” was the only thing Elliot picked up on.
Andrew looked sheepish. “I just needed a little spending money, Daddy. You’re so tightfisted. I never have any to spend.”
“Don’t you understand we’re trying to build up our stash so we can retire? When we get to Mexico we can live like rich folks, but not now. It blows our cover. You have food on the table and a roof over your head, don’t you? What more do you need?”
“I’m tired of this work,” Minerva cut in. “Ever since you got involved in that investment scam, everything has gone downhill. You never should have invested our savings.”
“I didn’t lose it on purpose. It was a mistake anyone coulda made.”
“I’m getting too old for this scam. It gives me the creeps when that man touches me.”
“I had to do things with women I’d rather not,” Elliot complained. “You think I liked having to suck up to crones? They get bitchy and like to tell me what to do. You know I don’t like that, but I had to suck it up for the benefit of the family. We all have to do our part.”
“But, Elliot…”
“You’ve had a good life up ’til now. You’ve never had to work. It’s time you did your part and quit complaining. I didn’t complain when I had to pull the hours for thirty years, did I?”
“All right. Working is better than listening to you grumble.”
Andrew just looked at him as if he thought going to bed with women was okay in his book. Some of them were, but he wasn’t going to let Minerva know.
Elliot pierced Andrew with a glare. “You got it easy, boy,” he said. “You don’t have to lift a finger. When’s the last time you talked to Sonya?” Sonya was in the Bahamas as a companion for some really rich guy. They should make a killing off him.
“A week ago.”
“How did she say it was going? She close to getting that money yet?”
“She said the old coot was coming around. But she has to work slowly. She can’t do much with his family getting in the way. She expects to have something after Christmas,” Andrew said. “His family is going oversees for the holidays and she’ll have him to herself. She’s going to work on him good before they come back.”
Elliot nodded. “She should do okay.” Although he reserved judgment on Sonya. She wasn’t as malleable as Minerva and Andrew.
“But, Daddy, I don’t like my women….”
“Boy, you do what you have ta do to make ends meet. It’s a tough world out here,” he bemoaned. “Just because you don’t have to work doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t. And now that the economy’s shot to hell and folks have lost so much money, they’re tightfisted as hell.”
“But with half our money gone, we still won’t have enough to retire on,” Minerva said, wringing her hands. “And we can’t keep doing this. We almost got caught the last time. That woman put up a fuss. She was spying on us. I still wonder if she talked to anybody. My face is the one on the security cameras.”
“With all that makeup and sunshades, your own mama wouldn’ve recognized you under that big floppy hat.”
“But still, Elliot, my signature is on record at the bank,” Minerva pointed out.
“I know, I know. But they’ve got no evidence that she didn’t cash out the CDs herself. If somebody was coming after us, they would’ve done it by now. Just let me think,” Elliot said. “The mark you have now is rich as sin. He made a mint and he saved plenty. Thirty-five years in the Navy. Retired as an Admiral. Then he worked high up in some corporation for eighteen years. Maybe we can get enough out of him to make up the difference. His family is clear across the country. They don’t know what’s going on here.”
“I don’t know, Elliot. We’ve always gotten a certain amount and no more. We can’t get too greedy. That was your rule. Rich people have resources.”
“That was because the people we usually go after didn’t have but so much. The mark you have now is ten times as wealthy as the others.”
“Could be ten times as dangerous, too.” Minerva stood. “I have to go in to work. Elliot, you’ve got to come up with something. I can’t make up the difference in what we lost. And I’ll say it again. I’m getting tired of scamming people. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. Everything’s going wrong. I can feel something out of kilter in my bones.”
“Your bones? Bunch of nonsense, woman. You listen here. Just quit your griping, right now,” Elliot snapped, hitting the tabletop. “It’s nothing but this damp weather messing with your arthritis. I’m tired of your bitching and moaning every single time you have a job to do. Nothing’s going to happen. You work on getting that money and we’ll be out of the country before his family knows what hit him. Let’s aim for leaving here right after Christmas—New Year’s, latest.”
Minerva’s mouth trembled in anger, but she knew better than to sass him. “Well, are you going to drop me off at work or are you going to let me drive the car?”
“I’ll take you.”
As Elliot drove to Lambert’s place, he pondered the robbery. It had to have been someone who knew them and about the money. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have found that stash. A regular thief wouldn’t have thought to look in that false bottomed suitcase. They had a pile of old quilts and boxes over it.
“The only person I can come up with is Sonya,” Elliot said. “For all we know, So
nya could’ve already robbed that old guy and come back here for our money. We can’t tell where she is. Either that or she never went there in the first place. For all we know, she coulda been here waiting for her chance to grab the suitcase.”
“You really think Andrew would do that to us?”
“A woman can turn a man’s head, Minerva. Give ’em what he wants. Andrew goes to Norfolk nearly every night. What if he’s meeting up with Sonya there?” he asked.
“Oh, Elliot.”
“She coulda found out about your grandma’s trust fund he’s coming into at forty. Could even be planning to snatch him away from us. He doesn’t need us to get it.” Elliot parked in Lambert’s yard.
Minerva’s hand hovered over the handle. “We’ve got to stop her.”
“I’ll come up with something,” Elliot said.
“You need to put the money we have left in a safety deposit box, Elliot. We can’t afford to lose it.”
“They won’t find it. I’ve already moved it to a place nobody will get to it.”
“You said that the last time.”
After he dropped Minerva off, he headed to the ferry. He couldn’t just let it go. Not that much money. He was going to hire his buddy in Norfolk to retrieve the money and find out if Sonya was here. That guy knew people for a hundred miles. Didn’t anybody just walk off the street and choose his house. Not when they coulda hit somebody like Barbara or some of the rich islanders like that Jordan Ellis fellow who was loaded for sure.
Elliot drove an eight-year-old car. His house was a rental. He didn’t work, nor did his son. Somebody was at the house most of the time. They lived like paupers. Yet, somebody had chosen his place.
Someone was watching their house, damn it. He’d have to give this guy a ten percent finder’s fee. He hated like hell to give up that much. But if he got his stash back, it was worth it.
Then, too, he wouldn’t put it past one of Minerva’s good-for-nothing brothers to have stolen it. Never seen such a sorry bunch of men. He could put all four of their brains together and it still wouldn’t make up a whole one. Andrew was more like them than him. Minerva must have been fooling around. No way that boy came from his seed.
But Elliot wasn’t going to gripe. Andrew was coming into five million, enough for them to live off for the rest of their lives. Right now they needed enough to live off until Andrew turned forty.
He passed Barbara’s place and shook his head. If Andrew had a lick of sense…Elliot’s pressure shot up just thinking about how that boy messed up with Barbara. If that boy had played his cards right, the two of them could have married, and Elliot and Minerva would have been on easy street living in her house. That place was big enough for all four of them. He’d even manage the shop and money for her while she did the work and they wouldn’t have to move. He didn’t want to move to Mexico. They were having all kinds of trouble over there, but they couldn’t afford to live large here.
Elliot sighed, looking at that new Cadillac parked under the carport, and pressed the gas pedal of his own ancient sedan.
Even he knew Barbara was too much woman for Andrew. He should have played the single man and courted her himself. He could have gotten rid of Minerva and married Barbara, and the two of them could be living in that house right now. And he’d have none of these worries.
Lips crimped together, Elliot made his way to the dock and waited in the ferry line.
When Harper left Hughes’s place, he drove directly to Robert Freelander’s house. At twenty-seven, Robert owned a tiny two-bedroom cottage on inner island property. After obtaining a degree from Norfolk State, he got a nursing job at a hospital in Norfolk.
His car was in the yard, and Harper rang the doorbell several times before it was answered. He’d been in bed.
“Sheriff?” Robert wiped his bloodshot eyes and drew his hands through his mussed hair.
“I have some questions about Sarah Rhodes.”
Robert swiped a hand across his face and moved back. “Come on in.”
“Late night?”
“I worked the night shift—twelve hours.” He sunk into the leather sofa. “It was a tough night. Under-staffed. The usual. What about Sarah?”
“When was the last time you saw Sarah?”
“The week before she disappeared. I give her a ride to work when I work the night shift and her car’s in the shop. She doesn’t live that far from the hospital.”
“Your number was the last one she dialed.”
“I’m not surprised. She called that week asking if I could give her a ride, but I was working the day shift.”
“Did you socialize with her?”
“No, I met her through Ben at the bar. They were dating. And I started giving her rides when she needed them and our schedules jibed.”
“Were she and Ben still dating?”
“They broke up a while back, but she still hung out at the bar sometimes.”
“Who else gave her rides?”
“Don’t know. I guess anyone going in her direction.”
“Who can I call to verify your schedule for that day?”
Robert gave him the information and Harper left for the school gym to meet with the teens.
Most of the department employees volunteered time with the kids, and the secretary was taking roll when he got there. One kid was missing.
Mrs. Claxton and Lisa’s mother were setting out snacks the church offered each month. Harper didn’t know how Naomi Claxton did it. If it was a cause worth its salt, she volunteered. He hadn’t asked for snacks for the kids, but as soon as she found out about the program, she stepped up to the plate.
“I don’t know why we have to come here every month. This ain’t doing no good. This is a bunch of shi…garbage.” Harper didn’t allow the kids to curse in his presence.
One of the kids was more out of sorts than usual. Sly’s father, uncle, and older brother got caught robbing a bank three years ago. They got twenty years each. His twenty-four-year-old brother would spend his life in prison. There were four children in that family. Sly’s brother was the one at Hampton. Harper wanted to turn the outcome for Sly and his sister as well, but ultimately that decision was theirs.
“What happened?” he asked Sly.
Sly slumped in his seat. “I did everything you told me and I still didn’t make the basketball team. I won’t even qualify for a scholarship.”
“I’m taking a chance on you. I believe in you. But even more importantly, you’ve got to believe in yourself. Sly, I’m proud of you for working hard to make the team.”
Sly slumped again. “For what? I didn’t make it.”
“If it’s that important to you, try again next season,” he said. “What’s your next step?”
Sly blew out a frustrated breath. “Reevaluate. But I wanted to make it this year.”
“What’s the next step after you reevaluate?” Harper asked.
“Come up with an alternate plan. I know all that junk, but I have to wait out a whole year.”
“For that team, but that’s not the only team.”
“It’s the only one that counts,” Sly said.
Harper understood his need to look good in front of everyone.
“Let’s give Sly applause for trying.”
Embarrassed, Sly ducked his head. But as everyone clapped, Harper could tell his words were sinking in. Harper wanted the kids to know that even if they failed, they’d made progress by just trying. They weren’t going to succeed at everything, but they still had to try.
After the meeting Harper would talk to Sly about alternatives and his next step toward his goals.
The meeting lasted two hours, and at the end, Mrs. Claxton talked to the kids about their Christmas program.
On Sunday, Barbara was getting ready to leave church when Naomi flagged her down. She’d tucked her salt-and-pepper hair under a hat that was much more subdued than Dorsey’s choice would have been.
“I’m sorry you missed the meeting.”
> “Me, too. I’ll try to attend the next one,” Barbara said.
“Well, we’ll have one in a couple of weeks. It will be the last one before Christmas. People are getting busy preparing for the holidays. I’ve got a million cookies to bake.”
“I didn’t know people actually baked cookies anymore.”
“Oh, yes. My grandchildren look forward to it. My children, too. Well, I won’t hold you. I’m going to dig up some more information for you. I’m a pack rat and save everything, but when it’s time to find something, I can’t put my hands on it. When I do find it, I’ll bring it by.”
“More information on the Rochester family?” Barbara knew they were some of the original islanders who arrived in 1617.
“Yes, they’re your family, of course.”
“My family?”
“Of course. Didn’t you know? I’ve been the town’s historian for many years and I have all kinds of information. My sister, Anna, had some things, too. I’m going by her old house and I’ll see what I can find there.”
“If you need any help, let me know,” Barbara offered, wondering if what Naomi said was true.
Barbara didn’t give anyone details about her background. How was Naomi going to dig up information about her when she really didn’t know who she was? But Barbara wouldn’t deny or confirm her identity just in case Naomi was searching for information.
“No rush,” Barbara said. “Like you said, the holidays are almost here.”
“I’ll find it when I least expect to. Don’t worry; it will eventually come to me.”
She started to leave, then came back. “Oh, don’t forget you’re working on the Thanksgiving food baskets with me.”
“I am?” This was the first Barbara had heard of any Thanksgiving baskets.
“For the seniors and the families who need them. You’re supposed to help us put them together Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. Harper is one of the delivery drivers. It’s an all-day affair for us.”
“I see.”
“I’ll get with you later on the details.”
With a parting greeting, Naomi left.
Was the woman senile or wily? Barbara didn’t remember offering to do baskets, although she’d gladly participate. She’d mark it on her calendar at home. She better start attending meetings so that she could control what she volunteered for.
Island of Deceit Page 9
