“Can’t say exactly. When you been in my trade for as long as I have ...”
“You mean hustling?”
“I like to call it entrepreneuring. Anyway, I’ve been around enough cons to get a sense of it. I never met this boy, I only know his name is Cole, but the way he pulled my daughter into his confidence so quick made me worried.”
“Well, that brings us to why we’re here. It isn’t exactly for the reason you think, I’m afraid,” Falcone says. “We came about your daughter.”
“She oughtta be here by now. She stayed the weekend with a school friend of hers while we were up in the mountains taking in the scenery.”
“You mean the poker tables, don’t you?” says Mrs. Larsen. “Boringest place I ever been to. Didn’t even have nowhere to shop, did they, Josephine?”
I’m wondering who Josephine could be until I hear the person they’ve been calling Molly, the maid, answer in agreement. I knew that was a fake name, just like Tiny and the Larsens.
“Truth is, we starting to get worried ’cause she’s a couple hours late,” says Mr. Larsen. “But soon as she gets home, we’ll all go with y’all wherever we need to go to get that protective custody. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder.”
“We get to keep the lottery money, right?” Mrs. Larsen asks.
I can’t stand waiting in that foyer another minute listening to the Larsens and their belief that Bethanie is coming through the door any minute, so I come out of hiding. Mrs. Larsen sees me first.
“Chantal, where you come from? This here is the girl Bethanie stayed with over the weekend. Did Bethanie go upstairs without even coming in to see us? These kids and their manners,” she says to Lana.
Lana looks at me and I shake my head. I should be the one to tell them, at least that’s what I thought when I stepped into the living room. But now I can’t make the words come. They’re all just staring at me, waiting, expecting some explanation, but then I see in Mrs. Larsen’s eyes that she is slowly figuring out something is wrong. Mr. Larsen is, too, and stands up as if that will make everything clear to him. Lana takes over and I’m relieved.
“Please, sit down. Unfortunately, you were right to suspect this young man. We think he was the driver of that silver Porsche and that he was indeed watching your house, probably for some time.”
“I knew we should have hired some real protection ’stead of your cousin Tiny,” Mrs. Larsen says. “Always so cheap. A real bodyguard would have noticed somebody casing us all that time.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Larsen, that’s not all of it,” Lana says, and pauses a second before she continues. “We believe your daughter has left town with him.”
“Lord have mercy,” both Larsens say at the same time.
“The good news is we believe she’s well, and in fact, she may have gone with him willingly.”
“Why would she do that?” Mrs. Larsen asks.
Now it really is my turn to speak up.
“If I could take a look around, mainly in her room, I might find some clues to where Bethanie might be.”
“You won’t be looking around nowhere. Why you need clues to tell me my child spent the whole weekend with you?” Mrs. Larsen says, each word getting higher pitched than the one before it, reminding me of Squeak.
“Because she didn’t really stay with me over the weekend. I was just ... I covered for her because she wanted to be with Cole.”
“You helped this boy kidnap my child?” Mrs. Larsen looks at me like she might come over and strangle me where I stand, and I almost can’t blame her.
I can tell Lana is trying to figure out if she should blow her cover even more than she already has just by being here as a cop and not undercover, and let them know she’s also my mother.
“We sent her over to your place thinking you might talk some sense into her about this boy, and you help him steal her away from us?”
I don’t know any other way to say it than to just say it, so I do. “She was going with him whether I helped or not. She was always saying she never got to be a regular girl, always on lockdown, never having a boyfriend, because ... well, she said you were very overprotective, Mr. Larsen. She never told me why, and once I figured out you won the Powerball, I thought it was about your money.”
Mr. Larsen looks stunned. “You knew about the money?”
“Not because she told me. I figured it out myself. She was always protective of you, too, even when I tried to get her to tell me what was going on. Then I realized this goes back to long before the money came along. I mean, she’ll be seventeen in a couple of days and never had a boyfriend or even a real date, but with her looks, boys are always coming on to her. My experience—my mother’s line of work—made me suspect your being so guarded over Bethanie had something to do with what you did for a living, which I also knew had nothing to do with the oil business.”
“What all this got to do with you helping my child’s kidnapper? Shouldn’t we be out looking for them? I ain’t got time to listen to this child tell me what I did wrong as a parent.”
“What Chanti is trying to say will make sense in a minute, but it’s important.”
“What you know about her?” Mrs. Larsen asks Lana. “She’s just some girl over at that rich school on a scholarship. Here I thought I was protecting Bethanie from the wrong element and I’m sending her right into the wolves.”
“I know her because she’s my daughter.”
“What the hell is going on?” Mr. Larsen asks. “Nothing I heard so far makes a damn bit of sense.”
Lana gives the Larsens a quick rundown on how I got to be involved in their case, and ends by telling them to trust me because I’m a good detective, too, even if no one’s paying me for the job. So I finish what I was trying to tell them.
“You had Bethanie on such a tight leash, overprotective was an understatement. I know from Lana’s work that usually only cops and criminals are that paranoid. I knew you weren’t a cop, and I didn’t get the feeling you were a criminal, either, but you probably associated with some. Then when I suggested Cole was after your money, you seemed relieved. That meant you were afraid he was capable of much worse than being a con artist. I connected that with your gambling habit and I figured you owed some scary people a lot of money, and probably on the regular. When I learned about Lana’s case, I just put it all together. There were lots of other clues, but that doesn’t matter now.”
Both Larsens look deflated. Before they were angry and ready to kick butt—mine, Cole’s. Now they look angry and scared.
“So she went away with this boy to get back at me for protecting her?”
“Some of it to get back at you, but a lot of it because she’s in love.”
“What’s a girl who never been on a date know about love?” Mr. Larsen asks.
His wife gives him an answer. “That’s why she fell so easy. We did wrong, keeping her apart from things every girl should have.”
“It was wrong that I lied and covered for her, but I did it for what I thought was a good reason. She was going to be with him anyway, but at least I’d be in contact with her. I never guessed she’d run off with him.”
“You spoke to her today?” Mrs. Larsen asks.
“I did, and at this point I think she has no idea Cole was sent by the Boss. She actually sounded very happy when we spoke.”
“But now we’re working against a clock,” Lana says. “I’m surprised he hasn’t contacted you yet. Chanti thinks he may have told her some Romeo and Juliet story to make her leave with him, but that he really has kidnapped her. He wants something in return for her.”
“What—money?”
“I have a few theories on that. Money to pay back the Boss what you owe him, plus a lot of interest. Your word that you won’t testify against the Boss. Or maybe he wants to force you to testify so the Boss goes to jail and he takes over the Family.”
“A punk kid like that? He could never take over the Family because—”
Mrs. Larsen cut
s her husband off. “We’ll do it, give him the money, turn ourselves in to the cops. I’ll trade myself for her, whatever we need to do.”
“You might have to do all of the above at some point but right now I just need you to let me walk through the house,” I say. And without waiting for an answer, I leave the room.
Chapter 25
I’m only in the next room and can hear them. Everything is starting to sink in for the Larsens and they sound angry again.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t believe Bethanie would go with some boy she don’t half know unless she was forced,” Mr. Larsen is saying.
“Chanti tells me that Cole can be quite charming,” Lana says. “She sensed something was off about Cole the first time she met him, but even now she doesn’t think he’ll hurt your daughter.”
“How would she know what he’ll do? And why the hell is she touring my house when we should be out looking for my kid?”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to explain. Chanti has a theory about where Bethanie and Cole might be, and it’s a good one,” Lana says, defending me. “It’s the strongest lead we have right now. She wants to find your daughter, too.”
“Well, that’s very touching but I still don’t understand why we just sitting here while she traipses all over my house. For that matter, I don’t even understand why a child, the very child who helped Bethanie in whatever game she’s playing, is even here.” Each of Mrs. Larsen’s words sound a little more frantic than the last, and I wonder if my being here is such a good idea.
“Believe me, I’m so angry with my daughter for her part in this that I might help you teach her a lesson, but right now, we need to find your child, and Chanti is our best chance for that.”
“How? She ain’t but a child herself.”
“She has the gift of observation. Chanti sees things in people or places that most of us miss. It’s a big part of detective work, and even though she’s a kid, she’s good at it. Plus, she knows Bethanie. You know how girls are at this age. Mom is the enemy. They don’t want us to know anything about their very important lives.”
I imagine Mrs. Larsen smiles a little at that last comment. I wish I was as good at this part as Lana is. There’s more to being a detective than observing everything. You have to know how to be comfortable around people, make them believe you understand what they feel, make them trust you and give up secrets. It’s the part I’m still trying to learn.
Lana sees an opening and keeps going. “I bet you there are mothers up and down this street who wish they knew more about what’s going on in their daughters’ lives, and not because they haven’t tried. God knows we try.”
“I do try. She just won’t let me in. I see now how little I know about that girl these days.”
“That’s what Chantal gives us.”
“Well, I guess that makes sense.”
“Did Bethanie tell you Chantal helped us take down a burglary ring at school last month? I think she’ll be a big help to us finding your daughter.”
I don’t hear what is said next because there’s nothing in the dining room or den that gives any clues about Bethanie. I go upstairs to her room because there must be something there that might confirm Bethanie and Cole went to Las Vegas. I’ve only ever been in her room twice and never because she invited me in. Both times her mother told me to go up and both times Bethanie seemed angry at her mother for letting me invade. She was always trying to hide something. So far I’ve figured out her secrets in bits and pieces—the lottery money, her family not being who they say they are, her father being on the run from both the bad guys and the good guys—but I’m pretty sure I still don’t know everything.
She never hid her romance with Cole from me like she did all the other secrets. Either she had nothing to hide, or by the time Cole came along she knew a lot more about my gift, as Lana calls it, and decided it was better to let me think she was telling me everything. Mrs. Larsen said she already looked through Bethanie’s room and didn’t find anything strange. That’s not a surprise. Most moms don’t know everything even when they think they do. I even manage to keep a few secrets from supercop Lana. In Bethanie’s case, her parents are completely clueless, almost like they don’t even know their daughter, much less her secrets.
I should be able to find clues her mother would never find in a million years but will jump out at me, lit up in neon. She would never bring Cole up here, even when her parents were away over the weekend, since Molly and Tiny live here. Tiny may not be very good at surveillance, but he would scare any guy off, maybe even one sent to kill a witness for his boss. When they were together while I was covering for them, it was not in this room. But that isn’t the kind of clue I’m looking for.
There aren’t too many books on her bookshelf, and the few there are all math books, books about probability and statistics. I knew she was a math genius but it’s weird that she’d have all these books because she never seemed to like math very much. I figured it was something she came by naturally, like the way I can see things other people can’t. I open one of the books and it has a bunch of sticky notes in handwriting that doesn’t belong to Bethanie. Probably a man’s handwriting. The notes look a lot like homework assignments, telling someone—Bethanie, I suppose—what to study. I put it back on the shelf. One book seems really out of place, a big book of fairy tales that she probably had since she was a little kid. Unlike the math books, it looks ancient and worn.
I take it off the shelf, put it on the table and let it fall open on its own. There I find a list in Bethanie’s handwriting. It looks like a bucket list—all the things people want to do before they die. At the top of the sheet, she’s written: Things I Want to Do Before I’m Too Old for It to Matter.
1. buy an Easy-Bake oven (That one is checked off.)
2. ride a roller coaster
3. have a sleepover
4. stay somewhere long enough to make friends I can invite to a sleepover
5. be the popular girl at school
6. have a birthday party with people other than my parents present
7. go to the circus
8. learn to ride a bike
9. kiss a boy
10. fall in love (That one is checked off, too.)
I was wrong. It isn’t like a bucket list, it’s the reverse of it. Almost everything on it is ordinary, things most girls have done long before they’re about to turn seventeen. It’s more like a list of things to do to create a life you haven’t had a chance to live yet, and it tells me so much more about Bethanie than she could tell me herself.
Chapter 26
When I return to the living room, everyone looks eager to see me, even the Larsens. The last few minutes must have been tense in here, even if no one said a word.
“Find anything?” Lana asks.
“No, not really. But I was wondering something, Mr. Larsen. I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve had to outrun some bad debts.”
“I don’t need a child judging my ways right now.”
“Believe me, I’m not judging,” I say, which is a little bit of a lie. “Do you move around a lot?”
“I wouldn’t say a lot... .”
“How many times would you say Bethanie has been the new girl at school?”
I really didn’t need his answer, because I already know it was a lot of times. When Bethanie and I started at Langdon, we began in the eleventh grade at a school where everyone is required to start in ninth. I was completely stressed about being the new girl. Bethanie didn’t like the concept either, but she adapted more quickly than I did. She even started hanging with the It Girl before I squashed her Langdon career with a little detective work. Now I realize Bethanie was a pro at being the new girl.
“This time was going to be different,” Mr. Larsen says, answering my question without really answering. “We had the money, no one knew where we were. She was going to start and finish a school year in the same school like she always wanted. She was to be at that fancy Langdon
Prep until she graduated.”
“One thing Bethanie told me about the time she’s been spending with Cole seemed weird to me. He kept asking her to teach him how to play poker, and how she might use her math genius to win at cards. Then I notice she has all these books upstairs about probability and statistics, little notes stuck on the pages showing her what to study.”
“You think that’s what this boy wants from her—to help him cheat DeLong at his own card games?”
“Interesting theory. You left the notes in those books, Mr. Larsen. Why?”
“I’m starting to feel like I’m being interrogated,” he says to Lana. “Why don’t you go find my child and take this girl out of here. She ain’t nothing but an accomplice to this boy Cole.”
“Where are you going with this, Chanti?” Lana asks.
“Did DeLong find out you were cheating him and using Bethanie to do it?”
“You must be crazy... .”
“The police think DeLong was after you before you left Atlanta because you didn’t make good on your sports bets, and that he’s after you now to keep you from testifying. And all that’s true, but there’s more to it than that.”
“Get this girl out of my sight before you have to arrest me for something other than fleeing the law,” Mr. Larsen says as he jumps from his chair.
Lana jumps up at the same time and looks at Falcone, who’s been standing between the Larsens and the foyer entrance the whole time. He instinctively moves his hand to his sidearm.
“Don’t be stupid, Larsen,” Lana warns. “Two more detective cars have rolled up since we got here, and I expect a couple of US Marshals have joined them by now.”
I take a look out the window and see that Lana is right about the backup. Not only have they arrived, but they have Tiny facedown on the lawn trying to cuff him. From the looks of it, he’s resisting arrest—unsuccessfully.
Mr. Larsen sinks to his chair. “That’s why DeLong took her, isn’t it? He thinks Bethanie cheated him.”
Creeping with the Enemy Page 17
