Get You Good

by Rhonda Bowen

  “I love her, she loves me.” Dean grabbed his head in his hands. “She would never do this.... Someone must have made her. She would never just leave like this.”

  “Have you tried calling her?” Sydney asked.

  “It just rings, then goes straight to voice mail,” Zelia answered.

  “When was the last time you talked to her?” JJ asked.

  Dean sniffled and rubbed his eyes. “Last night. We talked for about an hour. She wanted to know what time I was coming in today so we could have lunch together when she got off work.”

  Sydney looked over at Zelia. “Call her job and—”

  Dean shook his head. “She never came in.”

  Zelia rolled her eyes. “They said she quit last week. She hasn’t been there since last Friday.”

  So she had planned this. In fact, since Dean had been away since last week, technically Sheree could have been gone for days.

  “When you spoke to her last night, did you talk to her on the landline or her cell phone?” Sydney asked.

  Dean sniffled again. “Cell phone. There’ve been some problems with the landline. Sheree says sometimes it rings and she doesn’t hear it.”

  “What a coincidence,” Sydney said dryly.

  “She mentioned it on Tuesday evening when I spoke to her,” Dean said. “But she told me she was taking care of it with the phone company.”

  He wiped a hand across his nose. “She always took care of everything. Made sure I didn’t have to worry about buying the furniture or paying the bills. Once we put everything in our joint account, I knew I didn’t have to worry about anything.”

  The lightness in Sydney’s head increased and she began to have trouble breathing. Sydney looked over at JJ, and they exchanged the same panicked look.

  “What do you mean you put everything in your joint account?” JJ asked.

  “What do you think I mean?” Dean asked, seemingly irritated by the multiple questions. “I mean everything! She’s my wife. I’m her husband. We don’t keep anything from each other. She’s my partner on everything.”

  “Dean,” Sydney began trying to keep her voice calm. “Please tell me you didn’t put the money from the sale in your joint account.”

  “The sale?” Dean pulled away from Sydney and glared at her. “My life is falling apart. My wife is missing and you’re asking about the shop?”

  “Dean, sweetheart, just relax.” JJ squeezed his shoulder lightly. “She didn’t mean anything. She just wanted to make sure that you would be OK. We are all just concerned about you.”

  Dean looked at JJ, then back at Sydney, before looking down at his feet and sighing.

  “No,” he said. “The money from the sale is in the business account.”

  Sydney and JJ exchanged another relieved look and Sydney let out a breath she was holding.

  “I’m sorry, Dean,” Sydney said. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. I know how much you love—”

  “Oh hell no!”

  Zelia pursed her lips. “Guess Lissandra is here.”

  “Zelia, can you stay . . .” Sydney began.

  Zelia nodded, and Sydney got up from the floor and headed downstairs with JJ, leaving Zelia upstairs to comfort Dean.

  As they descended the stairs, they saw Lissandra stomp past them angrily into the kitchen.

  “Oh hell no!”

  Sydney and JJ finally caught up with her in the dining room.

  “She did this, didn’t she? That trick even took out the chandeliers!” Lissandra screeched. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh hell no.”

  “She took everything,” JJ said, her anger mounting as the reality set in. “Down to the freakin’ toilet-seat covers.”

  “Where she at?” Lissandra cracked her knuckles as she paced the floor. “Where that chick at? I’m about to rip her track-wearing head off. . . .”

  “We don’t know where she is. . . .”

  “I’ll find her,” Lissandra said angrily. “And when I do, I’ma bust her a—”

  “Shhh,” Sydney hissed at Lissandra. “Can you lower your voice? Dean is upstairs, and he still thinks that maybe something happened to Sheree and she’s the victim.”

  “That Negro better open his eyes,” Lissandra said. She shook her head. “I knew this was going to happen. I knew it, I knew it. I told him and Jackie that girl was trouble. . . .”

  “We need to call Jackie,” Sydney dug through her purse. “And we should call the police before Sheree gets too far.”

  But before she could reach her phone, it started ringing. It was Thomas.

  Sydney winced as she realized she had forgotten all about her meeting.

  “Hey, Thomas,” Sydney said, pre-empting the man. “I’m so sorry—I forgot about the meeting. I’m sort of in the middle of a family emergency.”

  “Sorry to hear,” Thomas said. “I hope it’s not too serious. Is something wrong with Jackie? One of your sisters?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Sydney said, not wanting to go into details until she was 100 percent sure of what had happened.

  “Oh,” Thomas paused. “Does that mean you and Dean had a chance to talk about what will happen with the closing costs for the sale now that he moved all the money?”

  Alarm bells began going off in Sydney’s head like crazy.

  “Moved what money?”

  “The money from the sale of Decadent,” Thomas said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He wrote a check for all of it to SV Records. I assumed that he told you. The check came to the bank yesterday.”

  The room began to spin before Sydney’s eyes.

  “Thomas, please tell me that you did not just say the money from Decadent has left the account,” Sydney said weakly.

  “All the money has left the account, Sydney. And I must say I am rather offended that none of you advised me beforehand that you were planning to make such a large monetary transaction before all the final details of the sale were complete. We still have some remaining expenses that we need to cover.”

  Sydney thought Thomas said more, but she never heard it as the phone slipped from her hand and she stared at her sisters.

  “She took the money.”

  “What money? ” JJ asked

  “From the sale.”

  JJ leaned against the wall as the color began to drain from her face. “How much.”

  Sydney choked on the words. “All of it.”

  Lissandra dropped her purse and screamed. “Oh hell no!”

  Chapter 16

  Five hundred thousand dollars.

  Every time Sydney thought about it she couldn’t breathe, and she had done nothing but think about it all day, hence the reason she was sitting in the couch in her living room with a paper bag in her hand.

  Once they had explained to Thomas what had happened with Sheree, he had called the bank and some other connections of his to find out if there was a way they could get the money back. But it was too late. Sheree had already moved the money out of the SV Records account she had created, divided it up into smaller amounts, and distributed it into other accounts. And that’s where the trail of bread crumbs pretty much ended. Beyond that point her transactions were so secure and totally unconnected to Dean that even Thomas, with all his rolodex of contacts, couldn’t find out any more.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, Thomas noted that it would be nearly impossible to charge Sheree with anything beyond check fraud since she was Dean’s wife. In order for things to get even that far, Dean would have to be willing to bring charges against his wife. And since last time Sydney checked Dean hadn’t progressed past believing in Sheree’s innocence, she didn’t see him pressing charges against his missing wife anytime soon.

  Sydney sighed and looked around at the living room of her house—a house that once belonged to her father, Leroy, but which now belonged to her and her sisters. Sydney realized that this was all she would probably have left after the dust cleared—one third of an old house just north of downtown Tor
onto. She reached for the paper bag again as she felt herself begin to hyperventilate.

  She had just managed to calm herself down when the front door opened. She shifted her eyes to see which of her sisters it was.

  “Hey.” JJ kicked off her shoes at the door and stepped down into the sunken living room.

  Sydney didn’t answer, only sighed. JJ echoed her sigh as she sank into the couch beside her sister, placing her head on Sydney’s shoulder.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Sydney said tiredly. She had spent all morning just trying to come to grips with the reality of their situation. She hadn’t gotten to the point of problem solving yet.

  “How’s Dean doing?” Sydney asked.

  “Not good,” JJ said, a worried edge creeping into her voice. “He wouldn’t leave the empty house, and when he finally did, we had to take him back to Mom’s and give him a sedative. When I left, he was asleep.”

  “Has anyone talked to Jackie yet?”

  “No. She’s still at the shop and Zelia’s busy taking care of Dean. So it’s going to be you.”

  Sydney closed her eyes. There it was again. That burden of being the oldest.

  “Where is Lissandra?” Sydney asked, even as the front door opened again.

  “I’m here,” Lissandra said with about as much enthusiasm as the rest of them felt. She dropped her keys on the table and added her shoes to the pile at the door before joining Sydney and JJ on the couch.

  “So my police friend called back.” She put her feet up on the coffee table.

  “And?”

  “And she basically said the same thing as Thomas. Since Sheree is Dean’s wife, it will be nearly impossible to charge her unless Dean grows some common sense. And even then, they might look at the whole thing as a domestic issue. Like all she did was move some of her money without telling her husband.”

  Sydney had been hoping for a ray of hope from the law enforcement corner. So far it hadn’t happened.

  JJ shook her head. “This is crazy. How can that woman clean out our brother, steal our family money from underneath us, and get away with it?”

  “Because they were married, there wasn’t a prenup, and everything we have technically belongs to Dean,” Sydney answered matter of factly.

  Sydney partly blamed herself for this. She should have gotten the money back from her share of Decadent sooner. She should have been more diligent about finding out who Sheree was. She should have made Dean put the money from the sale in a completely separate instrument, secured through the bank rather than in a regular account. But who was she kidding? If she had been in Dean’s place, she would have done things Sheree’s way, too.

  There was no point dwelling on what ifs. They couldn’t change the past. But Sydney wasn’t about to let the future run her over.

  “We’ve got to get Dean to press charges.”

  JJ sprung up like a jack-in-the-box at Sydney’s statement.

  “No way.” She shook her head so vigorously Sydney thought it might fall off. “He won’t do it and we shouldn’t force him. He can’t handle it. Not now.”

  “Who cares if he can handle it now,” Lissandra snapped. “The longer we wait, the lower the chance that we’re gonna get back our money. This is not just about the three fifty K from the store. That trick went on the run with our one fifty K also.”

  “She’s right,” Sydney said. “Plus what if this isn’t Sheree’s first time pulling a stunt like this? You can’t create multiple accounts, forge signatures, and disappear completely in less than a week unless you know how. And if that’s the case, then our chances of finding her drop even lower.”

  “Then let’s hire a private investigator or something,” JJ suggested.

  “Haven’t you been listening?” Lissandra countered. “We can’t afford jack.”

  “We could all pool together . . .”

  “We would still need Dean’s cooperation. He’s the one who knows the most about her and would have the info that could help us find her,” Sydney said.

  JJ looked at her two sisters a moment longer before slumping back into the chair, defeated.

  “I’m just worried about Dean,” she said quietly. “He’s not taking this well at all. I’m afraid . . .”

  She bit her lip.

  “I’m afraid he might not pull through this.”

  Sydney and Lissandra exchanged a look.

  “You don’t think he might . . . he wouldn’t try to hurt himself, would he?” Sydney asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” JJ answered. “I’ve never seen him like this. Not even after dad died.”

  Sydney got up off the couch. “We need to go see Mom,” she said.

  “Good luck,” Lissandra said, easing down farther in the chair.

  “Uh-uh,” Sydney said, grabbing her sister’s hand and pulling her up. “You’re coming with me. Both of you.”

  JJ headed for the coat closet as Lissandra whined.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes,” Sydney said, slipping on her winter jacket. “’Cause when Jackie hits the roof, there is no way I am dealing with that on my own.”

  Chapter 17

  Sydney read over the weekend schedule a third time without ever really seeing any of it. She finally put it down on her desk and sat back, rubbing her palms over her face.

  It was Thursday night. Almost a week had passed since the news of Sheree’s disappearance. But they were no closer to answers than they had been the morning the shocking news came to them. When they had told Jackie what happened, she had nearly had a heart attack. She had started feeling chest pains, and they had given her an aspirin and almost taken her to the hospital. After she had recovered, she’d called Thomas to find out exactly how much money had gone missing and then made a beeline to Dean’s side, where she had been ever since.

  Sydney wished she could have dropped everything as easily to deal with this latest catastrophe. However, when you weren’t your own boss, you didn’t have that freedom. Instead of being by her brother’s side, she had to be at the shop.

  The details of the transition had been finalized. Sydney and her staff had two weeks until Decadent as they knew it would close forever. There would be one week to get all their stuff out, and then that would be it. There would be job opportunities for the existing staff, but they would have to apply to the new management and they would be on the same level as anyone on the street looking for a job. As far as Sydney was concerned, it was like firing them.

  She personally would rather eat dirt than work for Something Sweet. But that was about as much as she knew when it came to what she would do next. With no savings, no job prospects, and nothing but misery wherever she turned, she had not been very motivated to think about what would happen when Decadent expired. She figured she still had time to work out the details. Until then, however, Sydney had to make her way in every morning and put on a smiling face as if her world wasn’t crashing down around her.

  Her cell phone rang and she picked it up. She sighed when she saw the name on the screen. Hayden had been calling her for days, but every time she let it go to voice mail. She didn’t want to talk to him. Not now. Not after his sister had ruined her brother’s life. She knew that once he got back from out of town she would have to face him. But she would worry about that then.

  A knock on the door distracted Sydney, pulling her from her thoughts.

  “Boss?” Mario stuck his head around the slightly ajar door.

  “Hey, Mario,” Sydney said, sitting forward. “Come in.”

  Mario came in briskly and stopped in front of Sydney’s desk, a serious expression on his face.

  “You wanted to know those of us who were interested in working here after the change, so you could put in a good word for us with Something Sweet.”

  Sydney nodded. “Are you interested?”

  “That’s the thing,” Mario said, tilting his head to the side. “I came to tell you that I’m with you, Syd. No
way am I working for those cats. My loyalty is to your old man.”

  Sydney smiled slightly. “That’s kind of you to say, Mario, but it’s a tough economy. We all need every opportunity we can get. If there’s a chance for you here after all this, you should take it. It won’t make you any less loyal to Decadent.”

  “I feel you, Syd, but I can’t do that. Your pops was like a dad to me. If he had never given me that job here when I was a kid, I woulda never made it to college. That degree, all my experience, I owe it to him. And I can’t turn my back on him now.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll work somewhere, but it won’t be here. I just wanted to let you know.”

  Sydney didn’t know why, but she felt her eyes moisten. She blinked the wetness away before it could embarrass her.

  “Thank you, Mario,” she said, her voice taking on an unusual softness. “It means a lot to hear you say that.”

  He nodded. “No problem.”

  He grinned. “Besides, your sister would probably kill me if I even considered working for them. And seeing that she’s finally feelin’ a brother, I’m tryin’ not to mess that up, you know what I’m saying?”

  Sydney smiled knowingly. “Yes, I know what you mean. She would definitely kill you.”

  Mario grinned and headed for the door. “Keep your head up, Syd. Everything’s gonna work according to God’s plan.”

  Sydney raised an eyebrow. “You’re a Christian?”

  Mario popped his collar. “No doubt.”

  She shook her head. “All these years and I didn’t even know that about you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That was your dad, too. And you know what, I’ve never regretted that decision. Not one day in my life.”

  Sydney nodded and considered him thoughtfully, seeing him in a whole new light.

  She suddenly sat up. “Wait, if you’re a Christian, how come you’re dating my sister?”

  He gave a little smile. “I have faith in her. Like I told you, Syd, she just needs a little direction. She’s gotten a little sidetracked during life. But she’ll find her way back.”

  Sydney didn’t know whether to admire or pity Mario. He had more faith in her sister than most.