Crystal Ball

by Laney Kay

  After I left, I headed over to my parents’ house. My mom had asked me to make her some snacks for her book club, so I dropped off some of my bread and butter pickles and cheese straws. Fortunately, she wasn’t home so I didn’t have to hear about how inappropriately I was dressed and how a little lipstick wouldn’t kill me.

  I also saw a note for me thanking me for the food and telling me that she and dad expected to see Luke and me again sometime soon. Crap. My mom’s goal in life has been to harass me until I finally give up and become some well-dressed, proper socialite type, but so far I’ve been a constant disappointment. And it’s much worse now that I’m divorced. Before, I was a disappointment, but at least I had a husband, so I know she’s not going to rest until she’s gotten me married off again.

  I dropped off some leftover blueberry muffins at my dad’s office so he could enjoy them without my mother yelling at him about his cholesterol. Then I went to the grocery store and picked up food for the week and some steaks and big baking potatoes for tonight.

  Finally, I made it home, let the dogs out, and put all of the groceries away. It was only about two o’clock, so I had plenty of time to cook. I made a huge pot of jambalaya, Lola’s favorite chicken enchiladas, and some vegetable soup and cornbread. I made a batch of blueberry scones, biscuits, and a couple dozen red velvet cupcakes, since Luke had requested them and I know Lola loves them almost as much as Harrison. While everything was cooling, I texted Lola to tell her to stop by to pick up her dinners for the week because I’d been running around all day and didn’t feel like going back out.

  She texted back that she was almost done in court and would be by as soon as she was done. I was actually dozing on the sofa when Lola came by about a half hour later. She let herself in, moved Monroe over, kicked off her shoes, and collapsed on the sofa with a sigh of relief. “Damn, I’m glad today’s over. My entire day was one shitstorm after another.”

  I sat up and patted her leg. “Unusual shitstorms, or the usual shitstorms?”

  “The usual. Nothing interesting.” She put her feet on the coffee table and I asked her if she’d like a drink.

  “Please.”

  “You want some tea?”

  “Not unless it’s a Long Island Iced one.”

  I laughed. As I got up, I playfully tugged her hair. “How about some bourbon? I could make you a Kentucky Mule.” She nodded enthusiastically, and I headed into the kitchen.

  I made the drink with some ginger beer, fresh squeezed lime juice, and bourbon, put it over ice, and brought it out to her. She smiled in appreciation as I bent over to hand it to her.

  As I went to straighten back up, she shot up and grabbed the top of my tank and pulled it down. “Nice hickey, Daisy,” she smirked.

  I rolled my eyes and sat down. “Ha, ha, thanks.” I pulled my shirt a little higher and tried to ignore her. Of course she wouldn’t leave me alone.

  She reached over and pulled up the leg of my shorts, “Hmm, and your inner thighs look a little chapped.” I smacked her hand away. “What happened there? I’m guessing a friction burn of some sort? Beard burn, maybe? Nice.” She bobbled her eyebrows at me and winked.

  I crossed my arms and stared at her and asked her if she was done. She shook her head and grinned at me. “Nope. I’ll bet you have some nice fingerprint bruises in a few places, too. Let me guess, hips, tits, and butt maybe? Let me see.”

  I had to laugh. She is so ridiculous. “Okay, hands off, Buttercup. Yes, I’m a little ‘banged up,’ haha, but we had a great weekend and if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think Luke is in any better shape than I am.” She smiled and looked at me and grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back, and we smiled at each other.

  “You know how happy I am that you’re doing so well. And we all love Luke and the fact that he’s so obviously crazy about you.”

  I nodded. “I know. He’s a great guy. I’m really lucky. And you know I always love you, crazy girl.”

  She snorted. “Obviously. I mean, come on, what’s not to love? I’m damned delightful.”

  “You are.”

  We both laughed and we sat there for a few minutes, petting the dogs, and chatting about nothing important.

  After a while, I got up to frost the now cooled cupcakes and light the grill and Lola went to her car to get the cooler and clean covered dishes from last week’s meals. I asked her if she’d like to stay and eat steaks tonight with us, and she said she’d love to. We put her food for the week in those containers and stuck them all on the bottom shelf in my fridge so she could grab them when she left. I took out the steaks and cut my ribeye in half to share with her. I put some seasoning on the meat, rubbed the potatoes in olive oil and salt and wrapped them in tinfoil, and went outside to put them on the grill. She changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt she keeps in my guest room and sat down at my little dining table with her feet in the opposite chair to keep me company while I made a salad.

  There was a knock at the front door. Lola stood up and padded to the door to open it for Luke. She went to hug him, but he was covered in paint and sawdust, so she settled for quick whack on his hip as he came through the door. He had a duffle in his hand and came over to give me a quick peck on the forehead. “Mind if I take a quick shower and then I’ll come help with dinner?”

  I smiled up at him. “Of course.” He ruffled my hair and headed down the hall.

  As he disappeared toward my room, Lola winked at me. “Watch this.” She called down the hall. “Hey Luke, you need any help with that shower since Daisy is busy with dinner?”

  He pretended like he didn’t hear her, but I did hear the lock on my door click as he closed it. We both started laughing. “I guess he still hasn’t completely recovered from your question at the pool. He’s probably afraid he’ll be taking his shower, minding his own business, and you’ll pop into the bathroom with a tape measure.”

  She bobbled her eyebrows and laughed at the thought. “That’s right, Luke. Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

  He was back in about ten minutes, all squeaky clean with damp hair. “What can I do?”

  I pointed to the fridge. “Go grab a beer and sit and relax with us until the steaks need to go on.” He got his drink, sat in the chair at the end of the table, put his feet up next to Lola’s, and took out his phone to show us a picture of Laura’s new window seat, which was beautiful.

  I finished the salad and asked Luke to go check the grill to see how the potatoes were doing and to see if it was time to put on the steaks. As he disappeared onto the back deck, Lola turned to me. “So how was the interview with Bella?”

  “You were right. She was absolutely delightful and I was really impressed by the work she does. You might want to take a look to see if you’re interested in donating.” Lola took down a couple of glasses and grabbed a bottle of wine to open. I went to my office to get my laptop so I could show her some of the video we’d shot today, plus the pictures and videos Bella had given me of what they were doing in Belize. I called over my shoulder. “She said the three of us should get together for coffee and I said we’d love to.”

  As I came back into the kitchen, Lola put two glasses of wine on the table. “Sounds great to me. She’s a lot of fun and I’d like to get to know her better.”

  I had just sat down at the table and Lola and I had started scrolling through the photos when Luke came back in the kitchen to tell us the potatoes were looking good and that he’d put the steaks on in a few minutes. He washed his hands as he curiously looked over at us. “What are y’all looking at?”

  “It’s pictures from my story today.” I looked over at him. “Remember, it’s that lady who’s rebuilding an orphanage and two water treatment plants in Belize?” He came to look over my shoulder as I clicked rapidly through the pictures. “Hey Luke, I know you’ve built stuff like water treatment plants in your previous life. Check out this location.” I laughed as I showed him the lot located right by the beach. “A beachfront water treatment p
lant. That tells you how cheap you can get land there.”

  He laughed and agreed that no one could afford that in the States. I flipped through the pictures of the fundraising event at the beach. Lola commented on one bathing suit that she said she’d seen in Vogue and said it cost over a thousand dollars, which completely freaked me out. We came to the ground breaking ceremony picture. “These are the local muckety-mucks, you know, the town mayor, the bank president, some local fancy people, blah, blah, blah…” I started to click to the next picture, but Luke suddenly grabbed my arm. “Stop. Who did you say these people are?”

  He leaned over my shoulder so he was closer to the screen but he still had ahold of my arm. In fact, he was squeezing me so tightly that it hurt, so I put my hand on his so he’d stop. He immediately let go, but I looked at his face and he looked pale and his jaw was clenched as he stared at the screen. I started to worry something was very wrong. “Luke, are you okay?”

  He ignored my question and pointed at the screen. “Can you blow this up?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.” I zoomed in on the picture so that you could see the people’s faces. The hardhats and sunglasses made it hard to make out details. Luke looked like he was about to fall over and Lola and I exchanged a look. I stood up, pushed him down in my seat, and went to get him a glass of water. “Luke are you okay? Do you need a doctor or something?”

  He ignored me, grabbed the mouse himself, and stared at the picture. “Are there any more pictures of these people?”

  I was confused and worried. What the hell was going on? “Uh, yeah. Keep clicking and you’ll see them at a charity event.” When he reached the one of the bitchy woman and her husband, Luke stopped scrolling and immediately enlarged the picture. He leaned forward and whistled long and low. “Son of a bitch. I can’t believe it.”

  Lola and I looked at each other. She shrugged at me, and I pointed to the picture. “I thought she looked familiar, but I finally realized it’s because she looks like a trashy, overly tan, overly botoxed and filled, Gwyneth Paltrow.”

  He leaned back in his seat, staring at the picture. “She does look like a totally overdone version of Gwyneth Paltrow, but that’s not why she looks familiar.” He started smiling, then grinning, and then laughing. He stood up and grabbed me and pulled me up against him and kissed me and then whirled me around the kitchen, then grabbed Lola, too, and started hugging us both off our feet. By this time, we were all laughing, but we were very confused, and finally Lola asked him what the hell was going on.

  He turned back toward the computer. “Daisy, do you remember who Bella said these people are?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure about the last name, but Bella said they were some fancy couple named Glynn and Nickolai, and she said that Glynn was bitchy and only in it for the publicity and she didn’t know the husband, but he was doing something with the construction projects.”

  Luke snorted. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He pointed to the people in turn. “Try Glenda Mathis and Nick Watson. My ex-wife, my ex-business partner, and current fugitives from the US government.” He nodded with a self-satisfied look on his face and grabbed me and kissed me again, hard. “She looks familiar because you knew her in college. Daisy, you actually found those assholes.”

  Lola and I stood there with our mouths open and stared at the pictures. Now that he said it, even though I hadn’t seen her in years, I could totally recognize Glenda, even though Lola didn’t. Neither Lola nor I had ever seen Nick, so Luke went on the FBI’s website and pulled up their pictures so we could confirm that it was actually them. It was. I couldn’t believe it. “Have y’all ever had any leads on their whereabouts before?”

  He scratched his chin as he thought. “Right after it happened, the money trail disappeared after the money went from the Cayman Islands and then to Brazil or Argentina, I can’t remember exactly where, and they knew they’d crossed the border into Mexico. That was really it. There had been rumors over the years that they had been seen in Costa Rico or Belize, but nothing was ever confirmed.”

  He threw up his arms and let out a whoop. “We’ve confirmed it now. Hot damn! Now that we know where they are, maybe we can make their lives as fun as they made mine for all those years.”

  We all sat back down and watched as Luke flipped through the rest of the pictures, but there were no more pictures of Glenda and Nick. Lola sat there quietly, lost in thought. Finally, she looked over at us. “Okay, here’s the little bit I know about extradition. The good news is that I’m 99.9% sure that we have extradition agreements with Belize and I‘m pretty sure I remember seeing a few cases where the Belize folks sent some rich American assholes back to the States so they could go to prison. However, I do see some potential problems in this case. First, since the hurricane, I’ll bet everything is such a mess that it will be super difficult to get anything done, especially because extradition is a bureaucratic, paperwork-intensive nightmare on a good day. Also, if these are prominent people in the country, the local police and courts may be happy to take a little money to tip them off. They might just end up getting ‘lost’ or ‘escaping’ while in custody or while being transported.” She rolled her eyes. “Then they’ll just disappear again.” She looked at both of us. “We’ve got to figure out a way that they won’t see us coming and they can’t bribe their way out of trouble.”

  Luke nodded as he considered what she said. “You’re right. I’ve got the number of the FBI agent I dealt with in New Orleans and I’ll ask him what he thinks about all this.” Lola and I agreed that was a great idea. “Email me those pictures and I’ll send them over to Agent Prince as soon as I talk to him.”

  He grabbed his phone from his back pocket, flipped through his contacts, and dialed Agent Steve Prince. Agent Prince apparently wasn’t answering, because Luke left him a message. “Hey Agent Prince, Luke Mathis here. Thought you might want to know that I just ran across Glenda and Nick in Belize, and I wondered what we should do about it.” He left his callback number, sent the pictures to Prince’s email, hung up, winked at both of us, and went to grab his beer and then he took the steaks out of the fridge.

  He was grinning from ear to ear as he took the steaks to the patio. My three dogs followed him, also very happy, mostly about the thought of steak. Okay, Diego was happy about steak and beer, but bottom line, everyone was happy.

  Lola and I looked at each other, amazed at what had just happened. “Holy shit.” Lola took a big swig of wine. “I can’t believe he actually found them.”

  I got up to grab the bottle of wine and brought it back over to the table. I topped us both off and sat down. “Do you think they’ll be able to get them back to the States?”

  Lola shrugged. “I really don’t know. I know some of these cases have dragged on for years, and I know that sometimes the outcome wasn’t in favor of our government.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’d hate for Luke to go through all that and then they just get away with it.”

  I agreed. “No shit. Letting them get away would be worse than never finding them, at all.” We looked outside to see Luke talking animatedly on the phone with someone. As we watched, he hung up the phone and came inside.

  He kissed me on top of the head and threw himself in the chair next to me. “I called Lou, our old accountant, to tell him what’s going on.” he took a sip of his beer and smiled. “He was hollering like a crazy man, he was so excited, and told me to keep him posted about what we decided to do.”

  “I can’t imagine how you must feel, realizing that you finally know where they are.” I bumped his shoulder with mine and smiled at him.

  “It doesn’t feel real. This has been going on for years, and I can’t believe that I finally have a chance to give those jackasses the justice they deserve.” He shook his head. “It’s been a long time coming.”

  Lola and I exchanged a worried look, and Lola leaned forward to get Luke’s attention. “Luke, let me know as soon as you hear from your FBI buddy. I have a couple of friends in the State
Department and Daisy’s dad knows people all over the world in various law enforcement agencies, so we can figure something out.”

  Luke smiled at Lola appreciatively. “Look Lola, I know that there are a lot of potential problems here, and I’m not naïve that this may not work out.” He grabbed my hand, flashed me a quick grin and raised my hand to kiss my knuckles. “I just want to see what our options are, and if there’s any way to make Glenda’s and Nick’s lives a little less pleasant in the long run, it’s all good to me.” I smiled back at him and squeezed his hand in return. He grabbed his beer and went back outside to tend the steaks, and Lola and I started setting the table.

  We had a wonderful dinner and took the dogs to walk afterwards, talking about everything except the situation with Glenda and Nick. We agreed that we’d worry about it after Luke had talked to his FBI buddy and we had an idea of what we were looking at. When we got back, Lola grabbed her food for the week, hugged us both, and went home.

  As soon as she left, I convinced Luke to take a bath with me so he could relax. I filled my tub with lavender bubbles, lit a bunch of candles, got us each a red velvet cupcake, and put it on a tray on the shelf next to the tub. I brushed my teeth, undressed, got in the tub, and called Luke to come on in.

  When he came in, it took him a minute for his eyes to adjust, but once he did, I saw him smile and he pulled his shirt off and came over to the side of the tub. I smiled up at him and told him that the water was nice and he should join me. We were smiling at each other, and he stood up, unbuttoned his shorts, and they dropped to the floor. He kicked them out of the way, and I could see he was already getting excited and I could feel my heartbeat speed up. He climbed into the tub and sat down facing me with my legs draped over his. “This feels really nice, Daisy.”

  Uh, yeah. I smiled at him and handed him a cupcake, telling him I was saving mine for later. He settled back against the side of the tub and took a huge bite, making ridiculous groaning noises and saying how good it was. I was laughing and rolled my eyes. “Mathis, nothing tastes that good.”