Chris took a deep breath. “No, you didn’t misunderstand me, Toots. It’s just like I said. Rodriguez explained that as soon as the money was deposited in my escrow account, before he could inform me so that I could transfer the money to
The Informer’s
bank account, it was gone. After some investigation, he managed to ascertain that it had been transferred to another bank, the Bank of Bermuda. In the Cayman Islands. Since I did not authorize the transfer, someone obviously hacked into the account and arranged to remove the money.”
Chris hated giving his stepmom such ugly news her first night in town, but it couldn’t be helped. He paused to give Toots time to come to terms with what he’d just told her.
Toots thought she was going to faint. “The bank is insured. They had my money in the account; if someone took it, that means they have to replace it. If someone hacked into their bank, that is not my problem. I want my money! Do not tell me the bank is going to fight me.” Her hands started to shake so badly she felt like she was Katharine Hepburn during her final stages of dealing with Parkinson’s. “Chris, these things only happen in the movies. There has to be some kind of mistake.”
“That’s what I said, but it’s not the case. I trust Emmanuel, I’ve dealt with him on many occasions, and if he says the money isn’t there, it isn’t there.”
Toots refused to accept Chris’s explanation. It was simply too stupid even to consider—ten million dollars of her money gone, just like that. “The bank has to be liable for it, doesn’t it?” Chris’s dour expression was all she needed to see to know that the bank was
not
liable. Toots took a deep breath. “Then we need to find out who took it. Isn’t there a paper trail we can follow? And what about the ownership of
The Informer?
Who’s going to oversee the day-to-day operations? There has to be someone at the helm. We both know a tabloid doesn’t run itself.”
Toots lost it then as she screamed at her stepson. “What the hell am I supposed to do, roll over and play dead? I want my goddamn money, and somebody better come up with it. The police! Did you call the police, the FBI? Hell, call in the CIA while you’re at it.” Toots wound down like a pricked balloon as the tears started to roll down her cheeks, and she started wringing her hands in despair and frustration.
Chris wished the floor would open up and swallow him. He hated it when women cried, because it made him feel inadequate. Especially now, because he was the person responsible for making his beloved stepmother cry. He put his arms around her, a clumsy gesture, and did his best to console her. “I’m going to do my best to make this right. Right now, this minute, we’re going to consider this a blip on our radar screen. Just so you know, there is no paper trail. There is a trail, but it’s an electronic one. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to hack into a bank’s computer system. Any savvy computer geek can do it. Stealing ten million dollars takes a bit more skill than your average hacker has, so someone really good was involved. I have a friend of a friend who knows everything there is to know about hacking into any system. He could hack into the CIA’s computer if he wanted to, but he has no desire to go to the federal pen. The only way to contact him is by e-mail. Just to be on the safe side, I sent him a quick message from my cell phone on the drive over. If anyone can help us, he’s the one.”
On the edge of the sofa, Toots could hardly get the words past her trembling lips. “What did he say? Promise him anything, Chris. Well, within reason you can promise him anything.”
Chris pulled out his cell phone, punched in a few numbers and letters before answering Toots. “He hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”
“What about Abby? Does she know or suspect anything?” Toots hiccuped. This could really blow her plans to hell and back. She’d just lost ten million dollars and she was worrying about her daughter finding out how stupid she had been. Toots sighed as she wiped at her eyes.
“No, but it’s only a matter of time before she figures it out. She is your daughter, Toots. How long do you think it will take?”
Toots shrugged. “We can’t let that happen even if it means I have to pay out another ten million dollars to buy the paper. She’ll never forgive me for deceiving her if she finds out, so we can’t let that happen. No mother worth her salt, regardless of her intentions, wants her daughter to know said mother is devious, an old fool who got snookered in a business deal.”
Chris shook his head. “I won’t let that happen, Toots, but there is no way I will let you fork out another ten million dollars. That’s damn near blackmail.”
“Then what do you suggest I do?” Toots stood and began to pace in front of the fireplace. She fired up another cigarette. She’d always thought she was smart, one step ahead of everyone else, and here she was behind the proverbial eight ball, and she didn’t like the feeling, not one damn little bit. And she was fighting mad.
“As much as you don’t want to hear this, for now we wait. I don’t want to do anything until I hear from my friend. The paper is covered for the next week at least. You know those stories go to press days, sometimes weeks, ahead of schedule.”
“And if Abby finds out,” Toots asked. “Then what?”
“That’s a good question, Toots, but one I’m afraid I can’t answer.”
M
ichael “Micky” Constantine opened the locker for the umpteenth time. He peered inside—empty. He hadn’t made a mistake. The envelope containing the new identity papers for Rag was definitely gone, along with the envelope of cash that should have been left in its place. He stuck his hand inside the metal square again, feeling both sides, the back, and even running his hand along the top. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch!
Fifty grand. Gone. He’d kill the slimy bastard when he found whoever it was that took his money. No one put one over on Micky Constantine and got away with it. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one watched him, he adjusted the Glock stuffed in his waistband. If he saw the son of a bitch, he’d blow his ass away right here in the middle of Los Angeles International Airport. He corrected his thought; at least he’d make the son of a bitch think he’d blow him away. He wasn’t
that
stupid. His boss, the big man, would have him tarred and feathered for sure if he pulled a stunt like that. But Micky was gonna make damn sure his boss didn’t find out. Besides
the corrupter,
the dude who made all their phony documents, they were the only two people who knew of Rag’s new identity, and he knew that neither of them had taken his money. That left only old Rag.
Slamming the locker door shut, Micky jerked the key out of the lock and placed it in his hip pocket. He glanced at his watch, a knockoff of a Rolex that was so good he’d almost pawned it for ten grand. He hustled outside to his Corvette, which he’d left in short-term parking. Once inside the car, he zoomed through the parking lot, zigzagging his way out of the airport. He needed to think about his next move, needed to plan everything out to the last detail. Rodwell Godfrey thought he’d pulled one over on him. He laughed, raised the volume on the CD player, jamming to Marilyn Manson’s latest. When he reached the interstate, he stomped down on the gas, the odometer jumping to one hundred miles per hour in less than a minute. He glanced in his rearview mirror, making sure no cops were on his ass, then jerked from the left lane to the right lane several times before slowing down. Man, he loved the power beneath the hood. In his spare time, he tinkered with cars, loved the smell of fuel and oil. His dream was to sponsor a NASCAR driver. He could see it all now, his name displayed in bright red letters,
MICKY CONSTANTINE.
Someday, but not today. Now he had to concentrate on finding Rag. When he did, he’d make him regret he’d ever laid eyes on Micky.
Rodwell Archibald Godfrey, now Richard Allen Goodwin, couldn’t keep the shit-eating grin off his face. He smiled at the passengers as they formed a line in front of customs. He slung the leather carry-on personalized with his old and new initials from one shoulder to the other. Using his real initials had been a stretch, but he convinced himself this was necessary since he owned too many monogrammed possessions that he refused to part with. He’d invested thousands through the years and saw no reason to toss them now. He was in another country, where no one knew about him or of his past.
Ripping off
The Informer’s
buyer had been easy. Almost too easy. He knew enough about computers and their systems to set up an account here in George Town in the Cayman Islands under his new name. From there he’d used a top-flight hacker who owed him a favor for keeping his name out of a nasty divorce action and had him hack the lawyer’s escrow account before the money could be transferred to
The Informer’s
account. The hacker had the money deposited in the Goodwin account in the Bank of Bermuda in the Cayman Islands. It was like taking candy from a baby.
Rag,
Richard,
was sure the hacker had covered his tracks. And there he was in the sunny Cayman Islands with ten million dollars, plus the fifty thousand he had
forgotten
to leave in the locker where he’d arranged to pick up his new documents. He’d been impressed with the excellent quality of his documents. Driver’s license, birth certificate, passport, credit card, and a social security card all in his new name. He’d had his age listed as forty-eight, knocking off a few years. Why not? He was a free man, and he could do anything his heart desired. He could certainly afford anything; price didn’t matter. He felt so powerful he thought he was going to black out.
Richard
had made reservations in Grand Cayman at the Westin Casuarina Resort. Though not as luxurious as he would have liked, it would do until he made other plans. At least he had requested the presidential suite. Tomorrow he would introduce himself to the president of the Bank of Bermuda. When they saw his balance, he just knew he would be treated like royalty, certainly not the down-and-out tabloid owner of his past.
Yes, Richard Allen Goodwin
thought as he moved through customs, life was good.
And he was just getting started.
F
or the first time in years, Toots didn’t feel like eating her morning bowl of Froot Loops. Sitting on the terrace overlooking the colorful plant-filled lawn and watching the sunrise was so peaceful. She loved hearing the various birds as they cawed to one another, just like back home. But the early-morning magic wasn’t working that morning. She wondered if it would ever work for her again. At that moment, all she wanted was an excuse to crawl back under the covers and forget her conversation with Chris.
Never a quitter, Toots squared her shoulders as she lit her fifth cigarette, and it was only six in the morning, which meant it was nine at home, so five smokes was right on her daily schedule. She’d barely slept a wink, and she knew it showed on her face. She had showered and dressed in a bright yellow skirt and orange blouse, hoping the sunshiny colors would brighten her dull mood, but as yet, they hadn’t done a damn thing but depress her. Sophie, Mavis, and Ida, or so she hoped for the latter, were due for breakfast at seven. Toots wanted to remain cheerful and positive for her friends, who were all going through crises of their own. More than anything, she didn’t want them to discover she’d been taken for a fool. An old widow fooled by some computer-savvy jerk who was laughing at her. All the way to the bank.
Well, she might be old, but she sure as hell wasn’t a fossil, and she was a widow many times over, so what? Maybe she wasn’t as computer-savvy as some, but she could maneuver her way around a laptop as well as anyone else her age. What she couldn’t tolerate was the thought of some schmuck like Tod, or whatever the hell his name was, laughing at her behind her back. That was incomprehensible and damn well unacceptable. Call it pride or an old woman getting pissed to the teeth. Either way, she intended to find out who was behind the loss of her ten million dollars, and
when
she did find out, she was personally going to make his life a living hell. There was the money factor, for sure, but in her heart of hearts she knew it truly wasn’t about the money, even though it was about the money. It wasn’t even the fact that she could very well lose the opportunity to run her own tabloid, although that was going to sting big-time. It was Abby. As a mother, she would do whatever it took, albeit on the sly or not, to make sure Abby was happy. And working elsewhere just wasn’t going to cut it for her daughter. So, as her mother, the sucker who’d paid triple what the paper was worth, she intended to do something about it.
A light tap on the patio window jarred her from further plotting the downfall of her newfound yet unknown enemy.
Sophie, wearing her old plaid robe, stood inside Toots’s bungalow with a mug of coffee in her hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. She slid the patio door closed. “You didn’t lock your door. What if I was some pervert just waiting to jump your bones?”
Toots blinked. After Chris had left, she’d been so upset she apparently forgot to lock up. “Like some pervert is going to attack an old lady,” Toots grumbled. “Get real.”
Sophie lit her cigarette and gave Toots the evil eye before she even took a sip of coffee. “I’ve known you too long not to know when there’s a problem. So, do you want to tell me, or do I have to drag it out of you as usual? I’d rather you just spit it out because Mavis will be here any minute, and Ida’s supposed to grace us with her presence this morning. If we’re to have a smidgen of privacy, it’s now or later. The choice is yours. The easy way or the hard way.” She stubbed out her cigarette and reached for another.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re nosy, and you smoke too much?” Toots asked before reaching for another cigarette. Number six. She might smoke the entire carton before the day was over. She was too old to give a good rat’s ass what was good for her or not. She’d smoked since she was in high school, when it was all the rage. Before all those terrible warnings were on the boxes. Didn’t matter, because Toots had no plans to quit anytime in the near future. They could bury her with a carton tucked under her arm and a cigarette hanging from her lips. She visualized the scene and laughed. She’d try and remember to have that added to her will. Sort of like Leland and his fifty-thousand-dollar bottle of scotch and his damn string band.
“You have on more than one occasion. Stop trying to change the subject. Either you want to discuss what’s eating at you, or you don’t.” Sophie stared at her until Toots squirmed in her cushioned chair.
Toots glanced over her shoulder. “If I tell you, you have to swear on Abby’s life you won’t tell a soul. Not even Mavis or Ida. No one. This has to stay between us.”
“I can keep a secret, Toots. You of all people should know that. How long was I married to Walter before you found out he was knocking me around?”
Toots nodded. “Of course I know that, it’s just that this is…shameful. I’m almost too embarrassed to admit what a fool I was. Am.”
A smile as wide as a football field lit up Sophie’s thin face. “You had a one-night stand?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, that’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t want to end up with a damned STD. You always revert to sex. Why is that, Sophie?”
“You sound like Ida. Truthfully, I haven’t had a decent lay since I was in my forties. Do the math. And don’t you dare repeat what I just said.”
Toots couldn’t help but laugh. Crazy-ass Sophie, truly her best friend in the world minus Mavis and sometimes Ida, always had the power to put a smile on her face no matter what the situation.
“See? You’re smiling, so it can’t be all that bad. Now spit it out before the girls arrive.”
“I thought the deal with the paper had gone through. I signed the papers Chris faxed, sent all the proper paperwork to Henry at my bank in Charleston. Henry wired the funds to the bank here, and it was supposed to be a done deal.” Toots sighed, suddenly feeling each and every one of her sixty-five years. “Last night Chris told me the money for the sale of
The Informer
had been transferred to an account in the Cayman Islands. Someone ripped me off for ten million bucks, and I do not own the paper.”
“Holy shit! What are you going to do, Toots? Isn’t that where rich people have offshore accounts so they don’t have to pay taxes on them?” Sophie lit up again.
“I’m not sure, something like that. But the kicker is, whoever took the money from Chris’s escrow account had to know that the money for the purchase of
The Informer
was supposed to arrive yesterday. The money no sooner arrived than it was gone. I have to think that whoever arranged the disappearance knew about what was going down with
The Informer.
The money is simply gone. Chris is working on finding out who our thief is, but my biggest concern is Abby. What if she finds this out? What will she think of her old mom then?”
“Toots, you worry too much. Even if Abby does manage to find out somehow, what’s the big deal? So her mom owns the paper she works for. So what? Is the world going to come to an end. I don’t think so. End of story.
“Assuming Abby does find out, if she doesn’t want to work for you, she gets a job elsewhere. Again, end of story. I’d be more concerned with finding out the whos and whys. Abby loves you, no matter what, Toots. You should know that. You didn’t raise a stupid kid.”
“I know, but I did raise her to be self-reliant and independent, and that’s the problem. If she thought I’d purchased
The Informer
just so she could keep her job, she’d do whatever she had to just to prove to herself that she could make it on her own without help from me or anyone else.”
Sophie smiled. “Sounds like she’s as stubborn as her mother.”
“True.”
“So what are we going to do about this besides wait around for Chris to discover the culprit?” Sophie rubbed the palms of her hands together. “This could be fun, you know, kind of like Angela Lansbury on
Murder, She Wrote.
Looks like we’ve got a genuine mystery to solve. I recall an e-mail from someone saying she needed some excitement in her life. If this isn’t excitement, I don’t know what is. Other than a decent roll in the hay, of course. Which, at this late date in my life, the odds of ever happening are slim to none.”
Toots swallowed hard as she remembered how antsy she had been and how she wanted to stir up some trouble. Being ripped off to the tune of ten million dollars definitely fell into the category of trouble. Now all she had to do was smooth it out. She had Sophie’s support. Toots loved that Sophie had said
we.
Maybe she could get through this without Abby discovering what a sneaky mother she was. Maybe this is just the kind of distraction she needed, though she wasn’t sure what she needed to be distracted from. Either way, she had a problem, a big problem. One way or another, she had to resolve it.
“If Abby wasn’t involved, I’d welcome the challenge.” Toots stood up, took both of their cups, and went into the kitchen, Sophie following her. Deciding Sophie had a point, a spark of an idea started to form. “What would you say if I asked you to help set a trap for this…rip-off artist? It would have to remain between the two of us. I don’t want Ida or Mavis to get involved. We both know they aren’t made of the same stuff we are. They’re too…ah…delicate. If either one of them ever had any gusto, it’s gone now.” Toots smiled, thinking Ida was anything but delicate. What she was, was a griping, complaining germophobe with extreme jealousy issues. Not to mention a king-size pain in the ass. And Mavis was simply too sweet to taint with this scandal.
Sophie refilled their cups from the Krups coffeemaker. “I’d say yes, and when do we get started?”
“Soon, maybe tomorrow. Today we need to focus on getting Ida to the shrink and Mavis to the gym just as we planned. Chris said if he learned anything new, he would call me on my cell. I need some downtime to think, too.”
“Think all you want, but the bottom line is, you’ve been ripped off for ten million bucks. If you weren’t so gung ho on keeping this from Abby, I’d say let’s go to the police or the feds. I bet the FBI would find it interesting to know someone stole your money and transferred it to a bank in another country. That’s a crime,” Sophie said virtuously.
“If it comes down to that, I suppose I won’t have a choice. Fortunately, I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, so recovering the ten million dollars isn’t life or death for me, but it is for the lowlife who had the nerve to steal from me. Did I ever tell you how much I dislike a thief? A thief and a liar usually go hand in hand.” Toots turned her back to Sophie, who sat on one of the barstools at the kitchen’s island.
“When Ida and Mavis get here, let’s just try to act normal, like nothing is out of the ordinary. I’ve got to fix something for them to eat besides Froot Loops.” Toots opened and closed several cabinets, removing three boxes of cereal along with a five-pound bag of sugar. From the refrigerator she took whole milk, fat-free milk, English muffins, butter, strawberry jam, and a grapefruit, placing them on the counter next to the stove.
“I hope Mavis doesn’t go gaga over the jam and butter. I made sure to have plenty of Special K and fat-free milk on hand. I want her to get some of that weight off before she goes back to Maine. Just think how surprised her neighbors will be when they see the new Mavis.”
Glad for the change of subject, feeling more upbeat than she had an hour ago, Toots took three pink bowls from the cabinet and spoons from the drawer, placing them on the counter next to the cereal. Taking a serrated knife, she cut the muffins in half and put them in the stainless-steel toaster next to the Wolf range. “That’s it for breakfast. I hope no one was expecting eggs Benedict or French toast. I’ve never been one to waste time in the kitchen.”
A loud rap on the door sent Sophie scurrying. “I’m coming,” she called out.
Toots started a fresh pot of coffee. She’d need mega-doses of caffeine to get through whatever the day held in store for her and the others.
She heard Ida crying and Coco yapping in Mavis’s arms as they entered the bungalow. Toots sighed. For one very long minute, she wished she was back in Charleston. She just knew it was going to be a
very
long and
very
tiring day.