T
he private jet was wheels down at one o’clock in the afternoon. Within minutes, a waiting limousine whisked the two women to the Bank of Manhattan, where Sophie took from her safe deposit box the papers she needed to file a claim on the five-million-dollar life insurance policy she had waited all these years to collect. Their next stop was the Daley Funeral Home on Fifty-seventh Street.
Within an hour, with Toots at the helm, all of Walter’s final arrangements were taken care of. Walter Manchester was going to the big bank in the sky in a top-of-the-line spiffy bronze Springfield casket. The one-hour viewing with a closed casket was scheduled for seven o’clock. A five-minute service was set for seven the following morning, with interment at seven-thirty following the short ride to the cemetery. A florist on Fifty-first Street promised bookoo flowers to be delivered to the funeral home.
Sophie had to hand it to Toots, she knew how to pull it all together. “How come we aren’t embalming Walter?”
“Takes too long. Casket is closed. You said you wanted it done. This is how it gets
done.
Do you have a problem with any of this?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Okay. Then let’s hit Fifth Avenue. Our return flight is scheduled for nine tomorrow morning. We’re going to be seriously jet-lagged, but the sooner we put this behind us, the quicker you can get on with your life, Sophie. Unless you want to hang around here and have a pity party.”
Sophie thought about it. “I’m good with it all. Let’s shake it, girlfriend. I hear Saks calling my name.”
“Funny you should say that. I heard my name being called, too.”
Walter Manchester’s event went off without a hitch. Toots sang “Ave Maria,” a bit off-key, but Sophie didn’t seem to notice or care.
Toots wished she’d had just a little longer to prepare for the event, but considering the time constraints, she was satisfied. She dropped a yellow rose on top of the Springfield casket, said, “So long, Walter,” and stood back to watch as Sophie approached.
Sophie laid her rose next to Toots’s, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I don’t know where you’re going, Walter…gone, but I don’t think you and I will be meeting up…ah, later.”
Toots reached for Sophie’s arm. “Okay, we did it, and now we’re outta here. Listen to me, Sophie. Do not look back. This part of your life is over, and it was Walter’s loss. You’re a wonderful person. God put you on this earth for a reason, so don’t ever think you failed. Walter failed you. End of story.”
It was wheels up right on time. The two old friends landed at LAX at noon and were back in their bungalows in time for lunch.
“I like the way you do things, Toots. I could get used to this sort of lifestyle,” Sophie said as she looked at the room-service menu.
“You better get used to it, old girl, because you’re about to move into a higher tax bracket. What will you do with all that money?”
“I might take a trip in a rocket ship. You can do that now. It’s two hundred thousand dollars. Big-ticket stuff. I really don’t think I will live any differently than I do now. Though I am going to buy a house. With a huge yard. And I’m going to plant flowers. All those years of living in the concrete jungle, I think a house will be my only extravagance. And lots of flowers. Maybe I could buy a home in South Carolina. I could grow tobacco. I’m going to give a lot of it away, Toots. That’s a definite. I’ll invest some of it.”
“I’ll help you plant the garden.”
M
icky was awakened by a loud banging on his front door. He rolled over in bed to look at the alarm clock.
Fuck, who in the hell comes for a visit at three o’clock in the morning?
He crammed the pillow over his head, hoping to shut out the noise. When he saw it wasn’t about to let up, he called out, “Give me a minute, will ya?” He found the jeans he’d worn the day before lying in a heap on the floor. Reaching for them, he pulled them on as he stomped his way to the door, yelling, “All right already, I’m coming, dammit!”
Micky peered through the peephole, a frown building between his eyebrows before he opened the door. He didn’t recognize the man standing in front of him. Maybe his document pal sent someone to collect his money.
He yanked the door aside, preparing to tell the dressed-up dude to take a hike.
“Are you Michael Constantine?”
Michael Constantine.
“Depends on who wants to know. Who are you? What do you want?”
“James Wilson. Orange County arson investigator.”
Double shit fuck and hell. Play it cool.
Micky seethed. “So? I’m supposed to be impressed?”
Wilson stared at the weasel standing in front of him. “I don’t much care if you’re impressed or not. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”
“About what?” Micky stepped away from the door as he tried to put some distance between the investigator and himself in case he had to bolt.
“Do you drive a 1987 royal blue Corvette?”
“Yeah.” This wasn’t sounding good. He hadn’t had an accident. Why the hell was this dude asking him about his car? His gaze went to the coffee table, where he’d tossed his keys.
“I’d like to have a look at it.”
“You got a search warrant?”
“Do you really think I would come all the way out here at three o’clock in the morning without one?”
Micky took a step toward the door. He saw two patrol cars parked across the street. “Yeah, you can look at it. Give me a minute. It’s in my garage.”
“I’ll just follow you if you don’t mind.”
Play it cool, Micky, play it cool.
He hadn’t left anything in the car to link him to the fire. He’d left the gas can there, but a gas can was a gas can. Half the world owned gas cans.
Micky picked up his keys from the coffee table, motioned for the investigator to follow him through the kitchen to the door leading out to the garage. He flipped the lights on, tossed Mr. Big Shot arson investigator the keys. “Be my guest.”
Wilson took a radio from his pocket, spoke into it, then, two minutes later, four police officers joined him in the garage.
“What are they here for? What are you looking for? I didn’t do nothing.” Micky hated the fear he was hearing in his voice.
“Just let us do our job, Mr. Constantine. That’s another way of saying I don’t have to tell you anything.” He tapped the warrant in the breast pocket of his jacket. Micky felt like his guts were going to roar up through his throat and out his mouth.
For the next thirty minutes, investigators searched the trunk, they opened the hood to inspect the engine. They went through the glove compartment, looked underneath the seats. They went over the vehicle with a fine-tooth comb. When he saw Wilson go through the trunk a second time, he thought he would black out. Had he spilled gas? He tinkered with engines; gas could be explained away. What the hell were they looking for?
Mr. Arson Investigator dropped something inside a plastic bag. “Micky Constantine?”
“Yeah?”
The arson investigator said something to one of the patrol officers that he couldn’t hear. The officer nodded, then walked over to stand in front of him. “Mr. Constantine, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…” The cop clipped a pair of cuffs on his wrist before he finished reading him his Miranda rights.
“What’s the charge? Man, you ain’t got nothin’ on me. I’ll sue your ass off for false arrest.”
“Tell that to your attorney, Mr. Constantine. We found these,” Wilson said as he held up a plastic bag with a pack of matches from Carl’s Garage.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Since when is it a crime to have a pack of matches? Carl’s a friend,” Micky blustered.
“No, Mr. Constantine, having a pack of matches isn’t a crime. But when you find a pack of matches at the scene of a fire, matches from Carl’s Garage with your fingerprints all over them, that’s a crime.”
Son of a bitch!
He thought for sure the matches would burn in the fire!
This is all Rodwell Godfrey’s fault. When I find the son of a bitch, I’m going to slit his throat and watch him bleed like a stuck pig.
Then it hit him like a lightning bolt. He wasn’t going to find old Rag because his ass was going to be reclining in jail.
“I ain’t dressed, man, you gotta let me get some clothes.”
“Where you’re going, they will be providing you a very nice one-size-fits-all orange jumpsuit. Now move.” The officer who handcuffed him gave him a shove.
“Hey, watch it! That’s police brutality!”
“Of course it is.” The officer grinned.
An hour later, Micky was booked and fingerprinted in the Los Angeles County Jail.
They brought him to a room the size of a bathroom, where they left him until the sun came up. He had to pee and he wanted to know what they were gonna do with his Vette. A plainclothes officer entered the room.
“Micky Constantine, I’m Special Agent Brett Gaynor. I think you and I need to have a talk.”
“You FBI?”
“That’s correct. I would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Hey, I ain’t stupid. I’m supposed to get a phone call. I wanna call my lawyer.”
“And you will be able to do that, but not right now. First I have a few questions I want you to answer. You don’t want to answer them, fine. Let me say this, it would be to your benefit to tell me everything you know about Rodwell Godfrey.”
Son of a bitch, I should’ve known.
“I ain’t saying a word till I see a lawyer.”
Special Agent Brett Gaynor stood up and walked over to the door. Before leaving, he turned around. “Rodwell Godfrey has committed bank fraud. If you’re involved, you’re facing life in San Quentin. Last I heard, it wasn’t a day in the park.”
Micky Constantine proceeded to piss all over himself.
“H
enry Whitmore, I owe you and Sally dinner and a trip to the Bahamas,” Toots said, her face lighting up like a Roman candle.
“We’ll do that as soon as you return to Charleston.”
“Can I ask how you managed to do this? I was resigned to taking a ten-million-dollar loss. I can’t tell you what I’ve been through, Henry. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Actually, it was quite simple. It’s almost impossible to wipe out an electronic trail unless you’re with the CIA, and it’s my understanding they aren’t always successful. You had already told me that the money was transferred to the Bank of Bermuda on Grand Cayman. Fortunately, the banks in the islands are very professional. Given their location and the fact they are at an extremely high risk for hurricanes, their systems are controlled by satellite. The loss of power may appear to have closed the financial centers down, and I’m confident there are some who are unable to access their clients’ accounts, but not so with the Bank of Bermuda. Of course they’re running off generators now, but they are able to access accounts. I made a few phone calls and learned that your ten million dollars was transferred to an account in the name of Richard Allen Goodwin. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Toots thought for a moment. Richard Allen Goodwin. Abby’s boss. It had to be him. New name, same initials.
“No, that name doesn’t mean a thing to me, but the name Rodwell Archibald Godfrey does. He was the owner of
The Informer,
and I’m virtually certain that he’s the one who took my ten million dollars! I think I can guarantee they are one and the same.”
Henry chuckled. “Actually, Teresa, it was just a matter of time before the transaction was discovered. Whoever this man is, he’s not very smart. After I spoke to the president of the bank, he called Emmanuel Rodriguez at the Bank of Los Angeles, from which the money was transferred. After confirming the fraudulent origin of the money, the Bank of Bermuda has agreed to transfer it back to your stepson’s escrow account. It might even be there already.”
“No, he isn’t very smart. Listen, Henry, whatever you do, this information can’t be made public.”
“Teresa, there’s nothing I can do to prevent it from happening. Bank fraud is a federal offense. Your thief will be charged in federal court. Where the media go with it is beyond my control.”
“They have to find the man first before they can charge him, right? What happens if they can’t find him? If he gets wind that he’s about to get caught and disappears, then what happens?”
“Teresa, that’s the least of your problems. Getting your money back should be all that’s important. Let the authorities worry about catching and punishing the man who stole your money. If you plan on going through with the purchase of the paper, be sure you have a good lawyer and do it in person. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
“I appreciate the advice, Henry. Thank you again.”
Toots broke the connection and immediately dialed Sophie. “Can you come over right now. I’ll make some more coffee. We need to talk.”
“You got me just in time. I was about to hit the Jacuzzi. It better be important, Toots. I don’t get to do Jacuzzis very often.”
“Oh, shut up and get your ass over here.” Toots hung up the phone.
Five minutes later, wearing her red-and-blue-plaid robe, Sophie knocked on the slider before coming inside. “First I want a cup of coffee. You said you had coffee.”
Toots poured them each a cup and got the Half & Half from the refrigerator. “You’re not going to believe who I was just talking to on the phone.”
“George Clooney? Tom Hanks?”
Toots rolled her eyes. “You need to have sex with someone, Sophie. Henry Whitmore called. He found my ten million bucks! It’s being wired back to Chris’s escrow account as we speak. That’s the good news. Do you want to hear the bad news?”
“What could possibly be bad about recouping your ten million dollars?” Sophie asked before lighting up.
“Give me one of those.” Toots lit her cigarette. “It was wired to an account in the name of Richard Allen Goodwin.
Rag.
We were right, Sophie! Abby’s boss took my money and ran with it. The bad part is, if they find him, he’ll be charged with bank fraud, and Abby will find out what a sneak and a liar she has for a mother.”
“And if they don’t find him?”
“I don’t know. I’ll call Chris and ask him. He needs to hear the good news, too.” Toots called Chris immediately, repeating what she had told Sophie.
“So will they charge him if they can’t find him?” Toots asked, her voice irritated.
“Of course, they have to charge him if they can identify him as the person who defrauded the bank. But as of now, there is only circumstantial evidence that Rag is the person who pulled off the fraudulent transfer. What we know is that the initials on the account into which the money was transferred are the same as his initials. We know that Rag disappeared. That’s not enough to determine that this Goodwin and Rag are the same person. And if they can’t identify him as the hacker, and I seriously doubt that he was, then they may not have enough evidence to charge him or anyone else until they can connect the dots. But once they have enough evidence, he will be charged. It’s the law, Toots.
“I’m not sure if they have to name the person who got ripped off, though. It’s not an area of the law I know that much about. I suppose it’s possible that we might be able to keep your name out of it, at least for a little while. So, do you still plan to buy
The Informer?”
“Of course I do. I’m doing it as much for Abby as for myself. It’s win-win for both of us. You know how I love my tabloids. The first thing I want to do when the sale goes through is to remodel that entire building. I want
The Informer
to become a force to be reckoned with. I want people to beg for a job. I want customers to line up to buy our paper. I want my daughter to be happy.”
“I don’t know how you can do all that and at the same time remain anonymous.”
“I’ve already thought it through, Christopher. Rag was up to his ears in debt; the bank that held his mortgage is really the owner, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, nothing has changed. We pay off the loans, the bank sells us the paper, possibly at a discount, and we set up a corporation whose CEO wishes to remain anonymous. I’ll just work behind the scenes. If we all agree to keep our collective mouths shut, it should work. You’re the attorney. Make it happen, Christopher.”
“I know you want to make this work for Abby. I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any promises, Toots. As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you if I could recommend another attorney, a corporate attorney. He’s a friend, Toots, and he’s very good. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend him.”
“Abby said you told her there was a conflict of interest. I guess I shouldn’t have asked you to get involved with this, so yes, set up an appointment with your friend. Are you and Abby at odds over something, Chris? She didn’t seem happy when your name was mentioned at lunch. Did something happen I should know about?”
If you only knew, Toots.
“Yes. No. Sort of. We’re always at odds over something. That’s what usually happens when two know-it-alls butt heads. We’ll both get over it.”
“Of course you will. Do your best to arrange a meeting with your friend as soon as possible. I want to wind this up so I can get down to business.”
“I’ll get it set up right away. Just be careful, Toots. Now what are you and your quirky pals up to? Do you care to share any details, or is this NTK?”
“We buried Sophie’s husband, but you know that. Ida has another appointment with Dr. Sameer tomorrow. She’s actually been going without her latex gloves, can you believe it? Mavis is trundling along and determined to lose her weight. I think she will, too. She’s certainly motivated right now.”
“I don’t think I’ve met Ida yet. I’ll wait until she’s comfortable enough to shake my hand,” Chris said.
“That’s a good idea, I’ll tell her. She’s starting to set goals for herself. She’s even allowed me to schedule a manicure here at the hotel. That’s another thing I need to talk to you about, Chris. We can’t stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel forever. I was thinking about buying a house. Will your attorney be able to help me with that, too?”
“He’s a corporate attorney. But I know dozens of realtors who could show you around. Are you looking for something close to Abby?”
Toots thought about it. No. Abby needed her privacy. “Actually I was thinking about looking into purchasing Aaron Spelling’s mansion.”
Toots thought she heard Chris laughing. He probably thought she was joking, which she was. “Is that supposed to be funny? If I’m going to live this bicoastal life, Christopher, I plan on doing it in style. You know me, I never go halfway when I can go the whole way.”
“Do you realize what that palace is going for?”
“No, that’s why I need a realtor, to show me around. I was joking. But I do want something comparable. I’m sure Sophie, Mavis, and Ida will want to stay out here as long as they can. They love being close to Abby.”
“I’m sure they do. Let me call a friend of mine. I’ll give her your number if you don’t mind, and you can take it from there.”
“That should work. I really want to do this, Chris. Not a word to Abby. I’ll tell her myself at the right time. Christopher, your father would have been very proud of you. You’re a good man, just like he was.”
“That means a lot, coming from you, Toots. I know you don’t say that about just anyone. Gotta run. I’ve got a hot date with Hollywood’s next big star. I’ll give my realtor friend your number.”
“Thank you, Chris. We’ll be talking.” Toots was on a roll. “Pour us another cup of coffee, Sophie. I’m calling Abby.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Sophie saluted.
Toots held up her middle finger as Sophie burst into laughter.
Toots hit Abby’s number on her speed dial.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Do you ever not answer your phone on the first ring?”
“Are you kidding? I’m a reporter. Our cell phones are our lifelines to what could be the next front-page story. So, what’s up at the Pink Palace?”
“That’s why I called. I’m thinking about purchasing a house here, but I wanted to ask you how you would feel about having your mother living in such close proximity. I like the weather here. I’m thinking your godmothers might want to spend their winters here, too. So I wanted to ask, how would you feel if your old mom purchased a winter place here?”
“I would love it! You can help me finish my house, and I can help with yours. What about the house in Charleston? You’re not thinking of selling it, are you?”
“Never, Abby. That’s my real home. I’ll never leave Charleston for good. But I know how much you love it here. It would be wonderful to see each other more often and not just on holidays. I wanted to see how you felt. I don’t want you to think I’m invading your privacy.”
“Mom, you know me better than that. I’d love to be able to pop in and visit you a couple of times a week. Vice versa. Other than Chester, there are no men in my life.”
“I simply do not understand that. You’re as beautiful as those stars you write about. Speaking of stars, I just spoke to Chris. He said he had a hot date tonight with Hollywood’s next big star. He certainly is a ladies’ man.” Toots chuckled.
Abby felt like she’d been socked in the gut.
Hot date. Hollywood’s next big star.
She thought then about the early-morning call that had never materialized.
“Abby, are you there?”
“Uh…Chester just jumped the fence. I’ll call you later, Mom.”
“Good-bye, Abby.”