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 piecesâthe 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 guysâbut 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 someoneâBethanie, I supposeâwhat 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 listâall 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
W
hen 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 herâto 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 arrestâunsuccessfully.
Mr. Larsen sinks to his chair. “That's why DeLong took her, isn't it? He thinks Bethanie cheated him.”
“He thinks
you
cheated him, but he probably knows you used Bethanie to do it,” I say, and yeah, I probably sound more than a little judgmental now. “I'm guessing you have to move so often because DeLong isn't the first person you cheated. What I can't figure out is how you do it.”
“DeLong ran these private parties in Atlanta, illegal casinos. I always took E with me,” he explains, forgetting to use Bethanie's alias. I guess he figures it's pointless now. “We had a system of signals so we could communicate. She'd count cards when I played blackjack, and figured the probability of cards played versus cards in the deck when I played poker.”
“DeLong let her join the games?” Lana asks.
“No, she sat off to the side of my table. It was easier when she was younger. People just figured I was too lazy to find a babysitter, and she'd bring some toy and pretend to play when she was really watching the cards.”
“So you've been running this hustle long before Atlanta,” I say. “And as soon as someone started to catch on to your scam, you had to leave town.”
“It got harder to pull off as E got older. I told players she was younger than she really was, or made up excuses like she had an illness that required constant supervision. When she was a kid, she was really into it, like we had this secret mission between us. I thought she liked the cards, and hanging out with me.”
“She thought that was the only way you'd pay attention to her,” I say, “so she probably did enjoy it at first. At some point, she just wanted to be a regular girl who went to the same school long enough to make friends, have a boyfriend, go on a date.”
“You right, I see it now. Her being mad at me was probably what made her less careful with the signals. DeLong figured it out one night. It was the first time we'd ever been caught outright. I'd always managed to get out of town before anyone put two and two together.”
“What did DeLong do when he found out?” Lana asks.
“He let us go that night, saying I had two days to give him back every cent I ever cheated him of. Thought I'd caught a lucky break and started to take my usual steps to get us out of town before his deadline, but he'd been watching us, knew our routines. The next morning, before we could leave town, E went for a run.”
“I never knew she was a runner,” I say, though I don't know why since it's the least important thing he's said so far. There's so much I didn't know about Bethanie, and now I'm finding I knew even less than I thought.
“Oh yeah, she got awards and medals in track and field at a couple of those schools. Running was her favorite thing, until that morning. Now she never runs.”
So those awards in her room weren't only for math bowls.
“What happened that morning?” Falcone asks. He's relaxed enough that his hand is no longer hovering near his holster.
“One of DeLong's men grabbed her.”
Mrs. Larsen lets out a little sound, maybe the sound of guilt for letting her husband use Bethanie for years, and the whole feeling in the room changes. I remember Bethanie's words:
You don't know nothing about me or where I come from. I can tell you nowâI'm never going back.
Mr. Larsen must sense the change, too, because he's quick to add, “DeLong didn't hurt her, just held her for a day to let me know he meant business.”
“You mean he didn't physically harm her,” Lana says, looking over at me. “She must have been terrified.”
“Soon as he released her, I went straight to the cops, offered to testify against him in exchange for witness protection.”
Mr. Larsen says this like it should pardon him from everything else he did. What I'm hoping will happen is Lana will go upside his head with the collapsible baton she keeps hidden in an ankle holster.
But the baton stays hidden, and Lana just says, “If you were suddenly so concerned for your daughter's well-being, why didn't you follow through with the testimony and take the protection?”
“I thought we could hide ourselves with all that lottery money.”
“We could have,” Mrs. Larsen finally speaks, “if you hadn't started gambling again. You know these crime families have eyes all over the place, in all the casinos.”
I look at Lana. So do the police.
“I don't think the Family had eyes in the casinos,” I say. “They probably figured you needed your gambling fix but weren't crazy enough to try that, which is why Cole was looking for you at racetracks and OTB windows.”
“Why he need to look for me anywhere if he's been watching the house?”
“True,” I say, stumped when I was on such a roll. I hate that.
Lana says, “That doesn't matter now. He's kidnapped her again and this time it isn't just to send a message. Chanti, I think you're right about the ransom,” Lana says.
“But why does Cole want Bethanie to teach him card games?” I ask.
“If you're right about where they might be right now, maybe he plans to fill his time waiting for his orders from DeLong by making money the way Larsen did. Or he thinks by pushing this poker and math thing with Bethanie, he'll get her to open up about it, admit she helped her father cheat DeLong.”
“Why does he need to do that? Her father just said they already know he did.”
“Cole is trying to get made quickly in the Family, but we know he's a rookie. You didn't get the feeling Cole could hurt Bethanie. Maybe this is more difficult for him than he imagined. Maybe he needs confirmation, to hear the evidence for himself.”
“Justification before he ...” I can't even finish the thought.
“Maybe it
is
just the ransom theory, Chanti,” Lana says, remembering she isn't talking to a cop no matter how good a detective I am.
“So why hasn't he contacted me to make his demands?” Mr. Larsen asks.
“It's all the more reason we need to get moving with our plan. Chanti still has Bethanie's trust, though we believe it may now become more difficult to communicate with her because Cole is growing suspicious,” Lana explains. “Bethanie doesn't know I'm a cop, but she's aware Chanti helped the police bring down that burglary ring. She's probably told Cole that Chanti is a bit of a snoop.”
“No one DeLong would send out to get me would be afraid of a little girl.”
“Probably not, but he won't take the chance that Bethanie will inadvertently give Chanti clues about where they are. He'll probably prevent any more contact between them. Lucky for us, Chanti already has a good idea where they are. We're going to follow her hunch since it's the best lead we have. We're going to Las Vegas, hopefully to bring your daughter home.”