Authors: Linda Howard
Remembering that the bank in
“Just a moment, I’ll switch you to Mrs. Pearson.”
After several moments, there was a click and a pleasant voice said, “This is Janet Pearson. How may I help you?”
“My name is Andrea Butts,” Drea said, wincing as she used the hated name. One way or another, she was ditching that name, forever. “I have an account with you, and I’d like to close it out.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Butts. Is there a problem, or—”
“No, nothing like that, but I’m moving out of the area.”
“I see. We hate to lose you as a customer, but life happens, doesn’t it? If you’ll come in, in person, I’ll take care of the paperwork for you.”
“I’ll be there sometime tomorrow afternoon,” Drea said, estimating her travel time and hoping she was at least in the ballpark. “The thing is, it’s a large amount, and I want the bulk of it in cash.”
There was a small silence, then Mrs. Pearson said, “Do you have your account number?”
Drea recited it, and she could hear computer keys clicking as Mrs. Pearson pulled up her account information. After another, longer pause, Mrs. Pearson said, “Ms. Butts, for your own safety, I really, really don’t recommend taking this amount in cash.”
“I understand the difficulty,” Drea said. “That doesn’t change the fact that I need this in cash, and I’m calling ahead of time so you can have that much available.”
Mrs. Pearson sighed. “I’m very sorry, but we can’t even order this much cash until we’ve verified your identity.”
Drea struggled for patience, but she’d been on the receiving end of rudeness too many times for her to start snapping at someone who was just doing her job and had to follow bank policy. She couldn’t, however, hold back her own sigh. “I understand. As I said, I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. That’s too late to get the money, isn’t it?”
“Actually, it’s too early. We’re a small bank, and we order our cash supply from the Federal Reserve just once a week. The head cashier places the order on Wednesday, so our order just went in yesterday. She won’t order again until next Wednesday.”
Drea wanted to beat her head against the steering wheel. “She can’t make a special order, as this is such a large sum?”
“She’d have to have special authorization, I’m sure.”
Rapidly she assessed the situation. “How long after she places the order does it take for you to receive the cash? The next day?”
Mrs. Pearson hesitated again. “I’d be glad to discuss this with you in person, but I really don’t like to give out that information over the phone.”
Again, she couldn’t fault the woman, who didn’t know her from Adam’s house cat; for all she knew, Drea was planning to rob the place and was trying to find out when they’d have the most cash available.
Things were not working out the way she’d planned. Instead of getting the cash and disappearing, it looked as if she’d have to hang around Grissom for at least a week. Grissom was a small town, and from what she remembered had only one tiny motel, which would make finding her incredibly easy.
She could limit her vulnerability, though, by staying, say, within a hundred miles but moving around and never staying more than one night in each place. This was turning out to be a pain in the ass, but if she wanted to break the paper trail she had to do it somewhere, and she’d prefer sooner rather than later.
“I understand,” she said. “I know this is a problem. I’ll be there sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“I hope we can work something out,” said Mrs. Pearson, which Drea thought was probably bank-talk for I hope you come to your senses.
She made it to the bank the next day about twenty minutes before closing; she had miscalculated how long the drive would take her so she’d had to get up at four that morning and drive hard all day long. She was tired, a little punch-drunk from three days of driving, and definitely frazzled. Her hair was a curly mess because she hadn’t had time that morning to use the blow-dryer to straighten out the permed-in curls, but at least with curls she more resembled the photo on her driver’s license. She couldn’t imagine what a mess it would be if the bank didn’t believe she was who she said she was. How could she prove her identity? Get a letter or something from Rafael? Yeah, right.
As it happened, her bedraggled appearance worked in her favor. Mrs. Pearson turned out to look like a fugitive from the old Dynasty television show, but her eyes were kind and her big-shouldered power suit was buttoned over a motherly heart. By that time Drea had worked up a sob story to use, involving an abusive ex-husband who had been stalking her, but the story was useless. The bank manager’s mother had died overnight; he had left for
God in heaven, Drea thought despairingly, why couldn’t she have gotten an account at a large national bank that probably got cash every day, or several times a day, rather than this podunk bank in a podunk town of not-quite three thousand residents?
She could drive to a larger town, maybe
As this was now late on Friday afternoon, the earliest she could set up an account would be the following Monday. Even if she then transferred the funds immediately, they wouldn’t be posted, probably, until late that day. So it would be Tuesday before she could request cash, and the bank might or might not be able to get in that much the same day. On the safe side, she had to figure the following Wednesday would be the earliest she could get the money from another bank, whereas it would take her two days longer, the next Friday, to get the money here.
Two days longer, weighed against the greater danger. Neither choice looked great, but they were the only two choices she had. The only better possibility was if the bank manager’s mother was buried this weekend and he came back to work on Monday, which she doubted would happen.
“I suppose I’ll be staying for a few days,” she said with a thin, exhausted smile. “Can you recommend the motel, or should I go to the next town?”
SHE WOULD NEED three things, Simon thought: cash, a car, and a cell phone. As smart as she was, she probably had a secret bank account somewhere nearby, so he’d assume she had the cash. A car, though; where would she get a car? Not in
Not a new-car dealership, either; she’d try to fly under the radar, which meant a used car, fairly good condition but nothing spectacular.
He hacked into the DMV to get a copy of her
He hit pay dirt on Monday, and a hundred bucks later had the make and model of the car, plus the tag number. New Jersey issued two tags, one for the front bumper and one for the back, and some unscrupulous individuals made money by stealing just the front tag and selling them to people who wanted a tag on the rear, just to avoid being pulled over for having no tag at all, and who weren’t intending to stay in New Jersey. It was amazing how many people passed through
A cell phone, though, was more problematic. She could buy a prepaid cell phone and keep her name out of the system. Damn it, that was probably a dead end.
That left the IRS.
He was like everyone else; he didn’t like to fuck with the IRS, but the taxman was the only way he could find where Drea had sent the money. Any currency transaction involving ten thousand dollars or more triggered a report to the IRS, which was why he moved his own money in increments, and all of it to an offshore destination. Handling money was a hell of a lot of work.
The IRS, however, had a really pissy computer system, which was good luck for him and really bad news for Drea.
On Tuesday, he learned that she had transferred her two million dollars to a bank in
IF BOREDOM WAS LETHAL, DREA THOUGHT, THEN SHE wouldn’t live long enough to get her money. She’d left her hometown and eventually worked her way to
It wasn’t the people. The people were generally nice, if not nosy. And even though her life in New York hadn’t been all glamour and excitement and an endless round of parties—Rafael wasn’t one of the Beautiful People, unless there was a subgenre of Beautiful Thugs—and she’d spent a lot of time in her room, at least it had been an extremely comfortable room. She hadn’t gone to the theater or movies, but there was always pay-per-view on the television. She didn’t have even that in the tiny, dingy room she got that Friday night at the tiny, dingy Grissom Motel, which lived down to its unimaginative name. And she couldn’t go to a movie, because Grissom didn’t have a movie theater—or much of anything else.
There was a small café, and one fast-food restaurant staffed by bored teenagers. For shopping, there was the hardware store, the feed store, the farm-supply store, and a dollar store. For a wider selection, the citizens drove to a neighboring town thirty miles away, which had a Wal-Mart. Big whoop.
She could remember when going to Wal-Mart had been a big deal to her, because that was where she’d bought most of her clothes. If she’d managed to scrape together enough money to buy something at Sears, she was as proud of it as if she’d gotten it at
And here she was again, wearing Wal-Mart clothes. The difference was that she had two million bucks in the bank, and she knew that soon she could wear anything she wanted. In the meantime, living in the boondocks again was driving her nuts. Maybe she hadn’t done much when she’d been in
Nerves ate at her; she felt as if the waiting was scraping her skin raw. After one night in Grissom she checked out of the motel and drove thirty miles to the town that boasted a strip mall, but on second thought kept going, to the next town down the road. The extra distance from Grissom would make it just that much more difficult for anyone to find her.
The next day, she checked out of that motel, and drove some more.
She did that for the next three nights. Living out of a cheap suitcase, not bothering to unpack because she was spending just one night in each place, bothered her on some bone-deep level. Every decision she’d made since the day she’d left home, such as it was, had been made with her eye on one goal, which was to have money, security, and a home. She had money now, even if she couldn’t get it yet. A home? She was afraid to stay in one place long enough to unpack her suitcase. She’d had somewhere to stay, but it wasn’t hers, a place where she belonged and could let her guard down. Maybe “home” and “security” actually meant the same thing—in any case, she knew she hadn’t found it yet.
She was holding her breath, waiting to start living.
On Wednesday she found herself driving in a wide, meandering circle around Grissom, as if she were circling a drain. There was nothing to see except miles and miles of flat land, green with the summer crops, and the wide blue bowl of sky overhead. Traffic was sparse, because I-70 was a long way to the north, and down here in farm country the only people driving around were the people who lived here—and not many did.