Take the Money: Romantic Suspense in Costa Rica (2 page)

“We’ll be right there.  Who’s calling?”

Julie was shaking so violently that she could barely end the call.  She saw no point in giving her name.  For a few moments she leaned against the lamp post, gathering the strength she needed to go on.  Her stomach tightened as she heard the shriek of sirens.  None of their life support systems would work now.  It was too late for Kevin.

She sneaked back through the streets and found her old Honda parked in the lot.  Surely the killer wouldn’t be looking for her yet.  She started the motor and glanced at the dashboard.  Ten o’clock.  Mom and Jed would probably be in bed already.

* * *

In the house where her mother lived with a man who was not Julie’s father, a single nightlight shone from the darkened house that sat back from the road, surrounded by a protective fortress of ancient trees.  It was not the house where she had been raised, and it meant nothing to her.  She knew, too, that a twenty-seven-year-old stepdaughter’s decision to come back and live at home wasn’t exactly what Jed Carrithers had in mind when he’d married her mom.  He’d be relieved to have her gone.  But where could she go?

Getting up the stairs without making a sound was tricky.  There was a place along the very edge where you had to put your feet, and you had to do it slowly.  Julie managed to get to the top, and from the gentle snoring of her stepfather she knew she’d pulled it off successfully.  Now, on to the back bedroom.  She’d have to have some light, but if she closed the door only a tiny sliver would beam out into the hall.  Hopefully, Mom wouldn’t wake up either.

First thing, she’d have to see what was in the green bag.  Her hands were still shaking and her tongue felt like cotton, but it was too risky to go to the bathroom for water.  She yanked on the zipper and held the bag under the dim light.

She turned the bag upside down and dumped its contents onto the bed.  Out came stacks of money held together with rubber bands.  What was it?  Kevin’s bank deposit?  He took in a few hundred a night, but certainly not this much.  The bills were worn and dirty, as though they’d been handled thousands of times.  The thicker stacks were twenties and the smaller stacks were hundreds.

Exactly how much money was here?  At least $60,000, maybe more.  She was too nervous to count it all, but obviously there was enough to take her a long way away.  She grabbed her passport out of the top drawer, then carefully opened her underwear drawer.  Whatever she took would have to go in the green bag.  She peeled off her dripping clothes and fished a pair of jeans from a hook in the closet, put on clean socks and hiking boots.  Layers were needed.  First, a gray T-shirt, next, a dark green sweatshirt, then her tan windbreaker with the hood.  What else?  Contact solution, back-up glasses.  Her small notebook where she kept her daily journal.  Pens. Pencils. Mouthwash, toothpaste, and cosmetics could be bought.  She was moving on high-octane. She had to get out before Mom woke up.  Should she leave a note?  Of course.  On the back of an envelope, she wrote:

Dear Mom: I’m OK, but I have to leave.  Not sure where I’m going, but I’ll try to stay in touch.  Try not to worry.  Love, Julie

Getting downstairs was not going to be easy.  Her boots and the backpack would increase her weight.  Sure enough, the floor moaned under her feet and a few creaks broke the gloomy silence.  Finally she was out the door, gasping for air, running to her car.  She turned the key in the ignition, careful not to turn on the lights.  The moon was hidden behind a strand of clouds, but there was enough light to get out the driveway.  She saw a white figure standing on the steps outside the door, then moving toward the car.

“Julie, what is it?  Where are you going?”  It was Mom in her flimsy nightgown.

She rolled down the window.  “Mom, listen.  There’s been an accident, and I’m afraid I’m in some kind of trouble.”

“What kind of accident?” Her mom’s voice was high, shaky, frantic.  Julie was glad she couldn’t see the expression on her face.  “Did you hit someone and hurt them?”

“I didn’t hurt anyone.  I was in a wreck and I’m afraid Kevin was killed.”

“Killed?  Oh my God.  But why are you here alone?  Where are the police?”

“Don’t worry, I know how to take care of myself.  But the police can’t know. Don’t call them, whatever you do.”  Julie inched the car forward.

Her mom reached out a hand and pulled at her coat.  “Baby, stop!” she cried out, her anguished tremolo tearing at Julie’s heart.  Unable to bear another moment of the pain she was causing, Julie gunned the motor.

“I love you,” Julie called into the rainy night.  “I’ll be just fine.”  Rocks cracked against her hubcaps as she flew across the gravel driveway, anxious to escape one of her mom’s emotional storms.

She had often regretted not inheriting her mother’s thick curly red hair, dark blue eyes, and fine Celtic features.  But never had she wanted her high-strung Irish temperament.  In contrast, Dad had been cool but brittle--like a porcelain plate that shattered when his risky schemes collapsed.

Julie pulled out onto Interstate 70 and headed east toward the Indianapolis airport.  From the moment she’d come out of the woods, she’d known she would have to go it alone. It was only now, as she sped along the smooth ribbon of highway, that her shoulders began to shake as loud wrenching sobs came from her throat. She tried to keep her eyes on the painted white strip along the rain-spattered pavement, but a vision of Kevin’s face and neck twisted in the agony of death blurred her vision.  Whatever he’d done for the money, he hadn’t deserved that.  Someday she’d find a way to make the killer pay for his heartless disregard for human life.  But there was a time for everything, and now it was time to go.

* * *

Julie joined the procession of cars gliding around the airport driveway like skaters in a roller rink.  She stopped a moment at the juncture where a decision had to be made, but the impatient blast of a horn compelled her to make a quick turn into the abyss of long-term parking.

  When would she be back and how long would it take them to tow her car away?  She felt a wave of sadness, as if she were abandoning an old friend, not a deteriorating hunk of metal.   The Honda had over 100,000 miles on it, the air conditioner was busted, and someone had yanked out the stereo the last time she was in New York.  The car was dented and rusted from years of being parked along the street.  Hard to believe she’d bought it back when she was a high falutin’-corporate-biggie engineer, and yet it had served her well and it was the only thing she truly owned. 

A thick fog forming in the cool damp air made it difficult to see her parking choices.  Headlights from behind cast circles of blinding light in the white mist.  She panicked for a minute, her heart thumping in her chest.  Was she being followed?  Of course not. How could anyone know she’d escaped?  She studied the few inches she could see in front of her and pulled into the first empty space, then waited to make sure the headlights in the car behind continued their search.  She sat for a moment with the lights off, trying to figure out what to do about the money.

The stacks of bills were cool to her touch, thick, inert.  She flipped them with her thumb like a deck of cards.  She took off her boots and lined them with bills.  Others she stuffed into various pockets in her pants and windbreaker.  She crammed a thick stack of $100’s into her small leather billfold, then stuck several in her right hand coat pocket.  Whatever was left she mixed in with her underwear, socks, and the few extra T-shirts she’d wadded into the bag.

Julie hesitated for a moment before leaving the car, drawing her hood over her head and pulling it tight so that her face was half-covered.  Should she risk waiting for the shuttle?  She longed for the company of strangers whose very presence might provide a margin of safety should she need one.  But taking the shuttle wouldn’t be smart.  It wasn’t that cold; she’d been through worse trekking through the mountains of Switzerland and the forests in Germany.  Get a move on, girl.  Time’s-a-wastin.’

She picked an entrance crowded with customers arriving for an outgoing flight and slipped inside the airport.  Six months ago she’d walked through these same corridors after getting off a plane from Prague, looking for safe harbor and a chance to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.  It had seemed then that there were still lots of choices before her.  Now those choices had narrowed considerably.  Realizing she had to pee, she headed for the nearest restroom.

“Pardon me, miss, but could you tell me what time it is?” 

Startled, Julie looked up to see a blonde woman in a beige velour leisure outfit whose smoothly coifed hair and elaborate politeness exuded an aura of comfortable suburban living.  Probably she was off for a mid-winter holiday with her stockbroker husband. In contrast Julie felt frazzled and disoriented. Somehow, while running, her watchstrap had come loose and she’d shoved it in her pocket. She reached down to retrieve it, and couple of hundred-dollar bills tumbled out onto the floor as she pulled out the watch.

“Dropped something, dear,” the woman said in a saccharin voice, watching silently as Julie snatched the bills from the ceramic tile littered with towels.

Julie’s throat constricted. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think this thing is working.”

“Well, never mind dear.  Sorry to have bothered you.”  The woman’s eyes drifted down, taking in Julie’s rain-streaked face, matted hair, grungy clothes, and brown boots.  Julie turned away as the woman walked out the door, and was dismayed at her image in the mirror.  It was one thing to look thin and voguish, but her cheeks were sallow with eyes burning in hollow sockets ringed by purple pouches.  Her lips were chewed, and her hair hung in damp straight strings.  She rutted through the bag and found a comb, an old eyeliner pencil, and a half-tube of lipstick.  She didn’t use rouge, considering it artificial and menopausal, but it seemed called for here--not so much to make her look glamorous--but simply to make her look alive.  If she looked too bedraggled she could fit some sort of suspicious profile.  She dotted her cheeks with the lipstick and rubbed it in.

The next choice was where to go.  She had already made up her mind it would have to be an international flight.  The porker in the red truck would be clueless in a foreign country.  Her college Spanish was passable.  That gave her a large geographical area to pick from--all of Latin America.

She stopped at American Airlines, noticing two Hispanic women in spirited conversation with the ticket clerk.  They seemed to be buying tickets.  She moved closer and discovered there was a flight leaving in one hour for San Jose, Costa Rica.  She took her place behind the two women, who were small and dark, gesticulating wildly.  She waited while they tried different credit cards.  It had always seemed strange that there were people who would purchase their tickets on any flight—much less to a foreign country—with only an hour to spare, but now she was one of those people.

The ticket clerk was a young, olive-skinned man with curly dark hair and soulful brown eyes that met hers with a passing flicker of skepticism when she asked to purchase a one-way ticket.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s not permitted. You must buy a round trip ticket.”

“Fine, whatever.”

“Are you traveling for business or pleasure?” he asked.

“Neither,” she said.  “My sister lives there, she’s ill.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  Does she live in San Jose?”

“Yes.  She’s a missionary. I’m very worried about her.”

A look of genuine concern showed in his face and he leaned forward.  “Don’t worry, the hospitals are excellent.”

“How about the doctors?”

“Costa Rican physicians are well trained.  We are a well-educated country.”

Julie noticed he pronounced it
Coasta Reeecan
and made a mental note never to say Costa Rica the way they did in the States.

“Of course,” she said.  “My sister thinks highly of everyone there.”

That seemed to please him.  He smiled and said, “I’ll need your passport and driver’s license.”

She handed them over, wishing there had been some way to use a fake ID.  But it was impossible to get into a foreign country without good credentials and she wasn’t connected with anyone who trafficked in forged passports. 

“How long are you planning to stay?”

She tried to look sad, as if picturing her non-existent sister languishing in the hospital.  “Not more than a month, I hope. But I’m not sure.”             

“I understand,” he said. “And how do you wish to pay?”

Julie looked over her shoulder. A white-haired couple stood behind her, waiting to check in. They wore the usual uniform of the Midwestern traveler: warm-up suits, tennis shoes--blatant earmarks of the elder-hostel crowd that would make them stand out as North Americans.  They were eyeing her with curiosity. “Cash.” she said, trying to keep her voice low.

“Cash?”

“Yes.  Is that a problem?”

“Of course not,” he said. “That will be $1,100.”

Julie took out her billfold and held it below the counter while she fished out eleven hundred dollars.  The bills looked like monopoly money.   God, what if they were counterfeit?  The clerk counted slowly and deliberately, his long black eyelashes blinking every few seconds, and she wondered if he wasn’t thinking the same thing. He checked the bills before taking the money and looked directly into her eyes, holding her gaze a bit longer than she felt was necessary.  He was making a note of her physical description, she was sure of it.  At last he handed her a ticket.  “Gate 17,” he said.  “To the right.”