Brainstorm (17 page)

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re the one person in this world I’ve always
been able to trust – even though I was deceiving you in the worst way – I could
always depend on you.”

If Bizzarro Land was an actual place, I’d swear that I
was in it. “If you sent Ferdy out, how would we leave?”

“There’s another car out back,” she said. “I can leave
him a note saying we went for a drive to talk. We can ditch it somewhere, then
take a bus wherever we want and get another car. By the time Ferdy figures out
something’s up, we’ll be gone!”

I pictured the two of us on a bus, carrying that amount
of money. It was almost comical. “Harley,” I said, “you can’t run forever.
Don’t you watch TV? People always get caught.
Always!”

“I
won’t!
Listen, I put up with these guys for all these years, listened to them, cooked
for them, got beat up by one of them – but then, after all that, I stole their
stinking money right out from under their noses! Audrey, we can do this!”

I got up and went to my purse. “I need a pill,” I said. I
rooted around, removed items from my bag and then put them all back. Rubbing my
forehead, I turned to Harley. “I left one of my medications at home. What am I
going to do?”

“What kind? Maybe I have something.”

I shook my head. “It’s a prescription. For stress. I
need
it Harley. There’s an
over-the-counter product I could substitute to take the edge off, but hell, I’m
sure you’re not going to drive me to a pharmacy.”

“I can’t send Ferdy in the shape he’s in, but I’ll go for
you.” She pulled a sheet of paper and a pen from a drawer and handed them to
me. “You write down the name. I’ll go and be back in a jiff. Are you okay till
I get back? I didn’t mean to cause you so much stress, Aud. Everything will be
fine. I swear.”

“What if someone recognizes you?”

“No one is looking for me – they’re looking for Ferdy.
Besides, you’re the only one who’s seen my hair like this,” she said.

I wrote St. John’s Wort on the paper. “Aren’t you afraid
I’ll run away while you’re gone?” I asked, wanting desperately to change the
subject.

“There’s nothing around here for miles, Kiddo. Nowhere to
go. I’ve got the keys to both cars, your cell, and there’s no land line in the
house, so…”

“Okay, I get it; I’m going back to bed. But Harley, we’re
not done talking about this.”

“And I’m not done trying to convince you to run away with
me.” She winked. “Now go ahead and lay down. I’ll be right back.” She closed
the door behind her just as my phone vibrated.

It was a text from Jack:
Local police think they have your location narrowed down. Do you know
if F. or H. has access to a weapon?

I typed back:
Don’t
know. How long ‘til they come?

It seemed like a lifetime before he answered:
A couple of hours
.
Where are you now?

Me
: In a bedroom.
Harley just went out to the store. She should be back before then.

Jack
: Stay in the
room. The police have your new photo. You’ll be okay. I love you.

Me
: I love you too,
Jack. I’ll do my best.

When Harley got back, I would look at the receipt, which
would give me the name and location of the pharmacy. I could pass that
information along to Jack; maybe it would help the police find me faster. I
went back to my bag, took out my bottle of happy pills, and swallowed one.

So, Harley was not concerned that I’d run while she was
gone. What she didn’t understand, was that I couldn’t have anyway; I was
working with police to locate
her
.
And now Ferdy. The police needed me to stay with them, here, or anywhere else
they went, until they were caught. I felt like one of those double agents I’d
seen on TV, and hoped I was up to the task.

As I waited for Harley, I wondered how much Danny Stearns
knew; how much contact he’d had with the others over the years. It might not
have been safe for him to be in touch. But among thieves, would it ever be
smart
not
to be touch? It seemed that
thieves did trust each other, at least initially, maybe during the planning and
execution stages of a crime. But once that was over, how many times had I seen
on TV, where one crook shot the other to eliminate having to divvy up the
spoils? And here was Harley, who was planning on dumping the last man standing.
That wouldn’t have boded well for me if I had decided to run with her.

Harley returned, thankfully before I’d heard Ferdy moving
around. “Here you go,” she said, as she tossed the bag onto the bed.

“Thank you! How much? I’m happy to pay you for it,” I
said, as I headed for the bathroom. I took out the medicine but there was no
receipt in the bag. Harley had gotten rid of it. Shit. I had to give her credit
for that move. I opened the box and dropped it into the wicker trash basket,
opened the bottle, and turned on the water at the sink. After a few seconds, I
turned off the water and popped the top back on the bottle, in case she was
listening at the door.

“The last thing I need is a couple of bucks from you!”
she whispered, as I came back out. “Weren’t you listening to me before? I have
all the money we will ever need. Come outside. I want to tell you my plans.”
She led me through the sliders and we walked down the deserted beach, but
stopped dead in our tracks, as from inside the house came a loud bang! And
thundering voices yelled, “Get on the ground! Get on the ground
now
!”

“Come on!” she whispered. She grabbed my hand and pulled
me along at a dead run, and I wondered how she thought she could avoid being
seen, without so much as a beach umbrella to hide behind.

“What are you doing?” I yelled. “They’re going to see us!
Harley! Stop! This is no good!”

“We can’t stop,” she said, “they’re still in the house!
Ferdy won’t even tell them I was here. He loves me!”

A police cruiser started up and headed toward us, its
wheels throwing sand in all directions. “Oh, God,” Harley cried. “This can’t be
how it ends; not after all my planning, all my work.” She turned and ran toward
the ocean.

“Harley,
no!”
I
yelled, as I ran after her, but visions of the dream I’d had of being pulled
into the water stopped me; I could feel salt water rising in my throat, as my
mind screamed,
don’t go in!
I fell to
the sand and watched as she continued on - now knee deep in the water, now
waist deep, and then, toppled by a breaking wave, she disappeared. The officer
stopped his patrol car, jumped out, and ran into the ocean after her.

He pulled her up and they scuffled, flailed in the water,
and I heard Harley choking, heard the officer yell for her to stop fighting
him, and finally, finally, he dragged her out. She collapsed on the sand,
coughing, vomiting up seawater. Two other officers approached on the run. One
assisted his dripping brother-in-blue get Harley into the back of his vehicle.
The other approached me. “Audrey Dory?” I nodded. “Come with me, please.”

“Gladly.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I guess.” I looked up the beach to where Ferdy was
standing next to one of the other patrol cars; the one carrying Harley pulled
up to it and parked alongside. By the looks of it, the officer standing with
Ferdy was reading him his rights.

When I reached the house, both Harley and Ferdy were
watching me, and I was sure, wondering why I hadn’t been cuffed, as they had
been. But then I saw reality hit in Harley’s eyes, and she yelled from inside
the car, “Audrey? What did you do?”

I wiped tears from my face and turned to the police
officer. “I know where the money from the bank robbery is.”

“Show me.”

“Harley said it was in three suitcases. You just have to
find those.”

As the patrol cars pulled away, I followed the officer
into the beautiful beach house and watched, as he pulled on Latex gloves and
began rooting through closets and looking under beds. He carefully moved
furniture and opened doors until he found the three pieces in the fourth
bedroom. He put them on the bed and tried to open them, but they were locked,
and the locks had keypads for which he had no codes. “Well,” he said, “we’ll
get the prints off the bags and then have someone break the locks. Until then,
we can’t be sure what’s inside.”

“Try 5-0-9-5.” I said. “Those are the last four digits of
my agency’s phone number. We used it for everything – our security system,
passwords, literally everything, because Harley’s so bad with numbers, she
could never remember more than one.”

He turned the suitcase on its side, punched in the
numbers, and the lock popped.

“Well,” he smiled, “you called that one.”

Inside the bag was money. Bundles and bundles of money.
“Bingo,” he said. He closed it back up and pulled out his phone. “I need to get
a crime scene unit over here. And tell the Feds the money’s here. Tell ‘em to
come get it.” Then he turned to me. “A helicopter will be landing shortly to
take you to the airport. You don’t need another 8-hour drive back to LAX before
you start your trip home. Now if you’ll excuse me.” I listened, as he
instructed two officers to start “bagging” as soon as the ETs had done their
work. “There’s a lot more than money to confiscate,” he told them.

That’s right, I thought. Ferdy had disguises here that
would tie him to this place, and in turn to the robbery, and maybe even Tony’s
plane crash. I called Jack on my Mata Hari phone, and he picked up right away.
“Audrey?”

“It’s me – I am so glad to hear your voice.” I started to
cry, as the tension began to leave my body. “It’s all over. Harley and Ferdy are
in custody and Jack – we have the money!”

“The
money!”
he
shouted. “Now it’s my turn to cry. Are you kidding me? They had it with them?
All of it?”

“Not they –
Harley
– she’s the one who took it from my office. Can you believe that?”

“How? When?”

“Didn’t have time to ask her.”

“Wait ‘til Carl hears that,” he laughed.

“And Ferdy!” I said. “He’s been driving all over the
country with it, and probably still has no idea!”

“Come home to me,” Jack said, suddenly serious.

“A helicopter is on its way to take me to LAX. Not sure
yet how long it will take me to get home.”

“I’ll be waiting for my punk rocker,” he laughed.

“I’m hoping Lisa can fix me.”

The helicopter I’d heard in the distance rapidly drew
near and landed, its rotors blowing sand with a mighty force. The pilot helped
me board and I stowed my duffle behind my seat. “Buckle up,” he said, and I
watched the beach house, which was now surrounded by flashing lights, disappear
as we flew away.

I thanked the officer who escorted me from the airport
helipad to the security line; he handed me a ticket, just as Jack said he
would.

“It’ll be good to get home,” I smiled. We shook hands and
he went on his way.

I woke up back in Philly, having at last slept soundly,
and later, when I landed in Syracuse, I spotted Jack right away and ran to him.
“Don’t ask me to wait,” he said, as he pulled the ring box out of his pocket.
“Will you put this on now? Will you say yes?”

I threw my arms around him. “Yes, yes, yes!” And I held
out my left hand.

He slipped the ring on my finger; it was more beautiful
than I’d remembered. “I love it,” I said, as tears made their way down my face.
“And I love you.”

I turned at the sound of applause, and realized that our
impromptu engagement had attracted a small group of spectators. I curtsied and
Jack took a bow, then to cap off the performance, we kissed.

On the ride back to my apartment, I filled Jack in on what
had taken place at the airport and the beach house, and how Harley had told me
that she was the one who’d taken the money.

Jack said, “After all you did for that little shit. When
I think of how she covered up for those thugs – honestly, that’s an alliance I
would not have expected. It’s not how I thought this would turn out.”

“That’s because Harley was such a pitiful figure, to me
anyway, at least after I found out how badly Carl treated her. And she always
made such a point of telling me how much she appreciated my friendship and the
help I gave her, I mean, I never would have suspected her.”

“Well at least your reputation is still intact in the
world of advertising. Have you thought about reopening your agency?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to need some income, and fast.
And honestly, the amount of billing I’ve lost will be hard to replace, especially
in time to keep the agency afloat.”

“You may have to put it off anyway,” he said. “Stearns’
trial has started. You’ll be heading to Rochester before long.”

I felt like banging my head on the dashboard. You know, I
could probably avoid the whole thing if I let Dr. Steele put me in the nut
house for a while.”

“Maybe. Or they could just postpone the trial till you
got out. But I think you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for being. I
think the woman I know and love would want this thing behind her for all time,
and not want to take even the smallest chance of Danny Stearns going free on
some technicality. She’d want the tightest possible case against him.”

“Me, right?” I smiled.

“Of course you. And then life can go back to normal.”

“I don’t even know what normal is any more.”

“Well, to start your journey towards it, why not move in
with me?”

“Really?”

“I was thinking we could go to my place; stay there for a
while. Your landlord thinks you’re out of town anyway, so why not?”

“I don’t have much with me.”

“We can go to your place and pick up whatever you need in
a couple of days. What do you say?”

“Actually, that sounds really good. After all, we’re
engaged and I’ve never even seen your place. Maybe I’ll pick up some clues to
the inner you,” I teased. “You know, if your apartment is full of taxidermy, or
if there’s a pool table in the living room, mirrors on the bedroom ceiling,
that kind of thing.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Actually, Jack,” I said, “the fact that I’ve never been
to your home points up the fact that we haven’t known each other that long. Are
we rushing into this marriage?”

“We aren’t rushing. We’re in love.”

We drove to Tipp Hill and pulled into the driveway of a
huge brick home that looked to be a circa 1800 colonial, not far from the zoo,
and across from the arboretum. “Which floor do you live on?” I asked, knowing
that many older homes in this area had been converted into two-families.

“Both,” he said, “I own it.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. We entered through a side door
and I wandered through room after room, in awe of the original pocket doors,
woodwork, wide-plank hardwood floors, a butler’s pantry, two fireplaces, and
high ceilings. “Jack,” I said, “this is spectacular!”

“Thanks. I did most of the restoration myself. There’s
still more to be done upstairs.”

“I can’t wait to see the rest!” We climbed the stairs and
he pointed the way to a bedroom that had been fully restored. “So stately,” I
said. “Looks like a bedroom Lincoln would have slept in.” A four-poster bed
dominated the room. “It’s just beautiful. So different than the tiny spaces I
spend most of my time in.”

“Reflects the inner me,” he laughed.

“Show me your room.” He pointed again, indicating we
needed to go to the other end of the hall. The room was enormous. “I didn’t
realize these homes had such large bedrooms,” I said, feeling a little
unsettled.

“I knocked down a wall between two smaller ones,” he
said.

A cherry four-poster stood in the center of the space,
with a chest of drawers against one wall and a highboy against another, both in
the same rich wood. He’d managed to keep a sense of the bygone era, without the
fussiness that can accompany that décor. Royal blues and burgundies on the bed
and walls fairly screamed the fact that a man slept in this room; his service
weapon, holstered and hung on a chair, fortified that.

“My whole apartment could fit in here!” I said, “I love
the color palette. I’m really impressed!”

“So was I, when the decorator got done,” he laughed. “I
did the construction, the woodworking, the windows, and all that, but I’m no
good with color. I thank the Lord every day that I wear a uniform to work, so I
don’t have to think about it.”

“Do we get to sleep in here?”

“We do. I’ll go down and lock up. Help yourself to a bath
or a shower. Unwind.”

“I’ll go with you and get a clean pair of pajamas out of
my duffle.”

“Oh,” he smiled, “you won’t be needing those tonight.”