Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) (14 page)

Clarice pulled out a notepad and pencil and began tallying, calling out new names as she came across them. An hour later, we had a list of twenty-seven potentially disgruntled former clients of Skip’s. Clarice ranked them by the number of transactions noted in the journal.

“The names at the bottom of the list — can you tell if their accounts were cleared, if their funds were returned?” I asked. “I expect they would get their, well, deposits — for lack of a better term — back, but in smaller chunks over time. Do you see a pattern?”

Clarice swiped the hat off her head as if her brain was in immediate need of oxygen and bent over the photocopied pages of the journal. I wondered how she used to think at all, suffocating under the bouffant wig. She ticked pencil marks next to entries and flipped quickly through the pages.

Her soft grunts increased in frequency and excitement. I kept glancing over at her while trying to keep the truck at a steady 70 mph rumble in the slow lane. We sure didn’t need the attention of a patrol cop just now, but Clarice was making noises like she might explode.

“Ha! Simple!” She tossed the pages onto the seat between us with a fierce smile on her face.

“Care to elaborate?” I swerved back between the lane lines and renewed my grip on the steering wheel. Was it my imagination or was the pickup developing a tendency to veer right?

“He used Roman numerals, nothing less than X or ten, and I’m guessing that’s ten thousand.”

“Peanuts,” I muttered.

“I was only looking at the small accounts, remember? But the answers to your questions are yes, yes and yes. I need a spreadsheet to make sense of it all, but yes, some of the accounts look as though they’re closed. He has this little symbol — see this?” Clarice waved a page under my nose with her finger angled toward a black dot. “Looks like this marks the final payment to a client.”

I bit my lip. “Could you count the black dots, please? I want to know just how many accounts weren’t resolved before I had my little fling.”

“How many enemies we made, you mean.”

“That too,” I whispered.

Clarice took her time, checking and double-checking. I tried to enjoy the scenery — greens and more greens even though the deciduous trees’ limbs were bare. They weren’t kidding when they named Washington the Evergreen State. White frost lingered on the grass in the shadows cast by the trees.

Semi-trucks barreled past us. I was having trouble keeping the pickup at the speed limit. The tired old girl just didn’t have the ooomph — maybe she was only good for short sprints. So we hunkered in the slow lane and watched interstate commerce zip by. The log trucks gave me chills, their grills like gaping maws in the rearview mirror. When they pulled around us, they buffeted us with that same sweet, sappy odor that Dill had brought to my attention, although probably not as strongly as the sawdust haulers he favored.

“Eighteen,” Clarice announced. “That leaves nine active accounts.”

A much more manageable number.

“But they’re the biggies,” Clarice continued, extinguishing my momentary flicker of encouragement. “I can’t do all this in my head. When — if — we stop, I’ll crack open a spreadsheet and total the damage.”

The next couple hours passed slowly, too slowly, mainly due to the fact that I was wrestling more and more with the steering wheel. The alignment problem had not been my imagination. Not a surprise considering the kind of terrain the old girl regularly traversed.

“Overheating?” Clarice asked as I pulled into the parking lot of a Denny’s restaurant just off the first Bellingham exit.

“Don’t even think that. She has enough problems as it is.”

“She?”

“Bertha. Or Maude. I’m trying to decide.”

“Not Gisele?”

“That sounds too much like something agile and nimble. No, I was going more for inert and stubborn.”

“I take it we’re early?”

“My behind’s numb, and I need breakfast.”

“’Bout time.” Clarice popped open her door and rolled off the seat.

CHAPTER 18

We weren’t the only ones who wanted served-all-day breakfast when it was actually nearing noon. We had to wait ten minutes for a booth still greasy with the fingerprints of the previous patrons. The place was packed with retirees sipping bottomless coffee and truckers inhaling mounds of pancakes — the kind of people who either don’t need to or can’t afford to observe proper mealtimes. And now I was in that category too, for both reasons.

Like a couple of workaholics, Clarice and I set up our laptops back to back — me on my own and Clarice on Skip’s — and ducked behind the screens. We clicked away in silence except for placing our orders when the waitress, a wan twenty-year-old in orthopedic shoes who smelled faintly of cigarettes, finally made an appearance. I was going to need the fortification of an entire side of bacon.

Clarice rose, fetched a carafe from the serving staff’s supply station and refilled our mugs. On the way back, she topped off mugs at several other tables. She returned with her hands full of single serving sized sealed plastic cups of cream and dumped them on the table. “Eat hearty.”

“Do I have to tip you?”

“A little gratuity wouldn’t hurt.” She plopped onto the end of the seat and propelled herself into the middle of the slick vinyl. “Just needed a dose of reality and caffeine before I showed you this.” She spun her laptop around. “Bad guys one through nine, in order of the current value of their business dealings with Skip.”

I leaned closer, my hands clamped on the edge of the table. Eye-popping numbers. My heart raced — the identical reaction I’d had to seeing the totals in Skip’s secret bank accounts. These amounts were in the same ballpark.

I forced myself to inhale before I passed out. “Let’s get beyond the nicknames. I’ll take it from the top. If you’ll start at the bottom?”

“The Nose. Charming,” Clarice muttered. Her silver hair actually glinted under the Tiffany replica stained glass pendant lamp that hung over our table, kind of like those multicolored fiber optic novelty sculpture things that show up at white elephant gift exchanges.

“You look good, you know,” I said.

My comment barely warranted a glance over the laptop screen. “Huh,” Clarice grunted, but her eyes sparkled a little.

“Don’t work too hard, now,” the waitress said as she plunked down our plates.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Clarice said as she doused her waffle with warm maple syrup. “Nigh unto impossible.”

The waitress stared at Clarice as if she was speaking a foreign language.

“This looks great,” I said. “Thank you.”

The waitress started as if she’d been in a trance, took the hint and whisked down the aisle.

I stuffed half an over-easy egg into my mouth and returned to the keyboard. We had to work hard — and fast. As if our lives depended on it, because they probably did. We were researching criminals in need of money laundering services. Not your typical lunch at the office away from the office.

By the time my three plates and mug were empty — I’d hardly noticed I was eating — I’d narrowed down Numero Uno’s identity to a few possibilities. I was pretty sure Numero Dos was one of two people. Tres was a little more overt, probably a drug cartel boss I’d actually read about in the papers. He seemed like the type to leave the unsubtle hint of a disembodied finger.

Clarice had Siete, Ocho and Nueve nailed down. I checked my watch. The middle of the group would have to wait.

“Gotta go,” I said, laying a couple crisp twenties from my ATM raid the other day on the table. “This ought to cover it since the waitress won’t be back with our bill for a week.”

We packed our things and fled, smiling guiltily at the clumps of people waiting restlessly in the restaurant’s small foyer. I’m not sure I could have scarfed my food any faster, though.

Butterflies or the consequence of the reams of grease I’d consumed? Regardless, the hard knot in my stomach grew bigger the closer we got to the rendezvous point.

Clarice peered at the driving instructions and barked commands. Turned out the location I’d selected was the site of two fast food establishments of the non-playland variety and a green space rest stop next to the freeway.

I parked facing a row of battered picnic tables, a few spaces away from an empty minivan with two training wheel equipped bicycles strapped to the liftgate. It was far too cold for enjoyable outdoor dining. A semi-truck sat idling at the far end of the parking lot, its exhaust brownish-gray.

Wind gusts whipped a couple paper food wrappers around the pickup, and one got stuck in a windshield wiper. It crinkled against the glass for a few seconds before escaping.

“We drove four hours for this?” Clarice grumbled.

I craned my neck around and didn’t see a single person not in a moving vehicle zipping down the freeway. “Not too many witnesses.” Of course, the staff and customers in the taco and sub sandwich joints might glance out the windows, but I had to count on their being hungry or busy enough to not be curious.

Clarice shivered. “How long?”

I checked my watch. Then I pulled one of the prepaid phones from my tote and checked it for messages, but there were none. I shook my head. “Depends on customs.”

Clarice’s lips pinched into a tight bundle of wrinkles, but she spared me a comment.

A white, unmarked step van with British Columbia plates puttered along the access road, the turn signal blinking conscientiously. At the sight of the wide brown face of the man behind the wheel, my tension — well, most of it — slipped away. I hopped out of the pickup and waved.

He parked next to us, on the side away from the minivan. His door slammed, and I met him at the back of the step van.

“Any trouble?”

“Nora.” A huge smile creased his face, and he engulfed me in a bear hug. “First things first. Are you all right?” He held me by the shoulders at arm’s length and studied me.

His black hair was streaked with more gray than last time I’d seen him, but the black eyes were the same — intense and worried.

“I’m going to take the Fifth on that,” I whispered, “as I’m sure you know by my request.” I blinked back welling tears. “But is it ever good to see you.” I gave him another squeeze around his sturdy midsection.

Art Williams, in spite of his commonplace English name, is a First Nations elder. He directs social services for the collection of tribes in his jurisdiction. I first met him in Prince George while investigating a range of health initiatives the tribes were starting to implement. I was hoping to share their successful measures with medical facilities Skip’s foundation supports in Africa. I came away from those few days with a whole host of great ideas and a friend for life in Art. He worked tirelessly to help his people — and now, to help me.

“Well, if it isn’t Clarice.” Art grabbed Clarice for a bear hug too, which she tolerated stiffly. He cast one extra glance over the top of her head, where her hair used to be, but maintained remarkable stoicism.

Then he turned back to me. “I will want answers,” he said in a low voice, “but I understand time is of the essence. With regard to your enquiry — only the usual list of complacent questions at the border and a quick peek at the cargo. But I don’t know if my ticker could survive that again.” He patted his chest with one hand and unlatched the roll-up rear door of the step van with the other. “Our Women’s and Children’s Relief Fund is going to support a free vision and dental clinic with part of your donation. We have yet to figure out what to do with the rest.” He shook his head. “The grand total, of what showed up in all our accounts, blew our minds, Nora.”

I grinned. “My pleasure — and Skip’s.”

Art climbed into the back of the van and hefted a plastic bag. “Bucket brigade style? They’re forty pounds apiece.” He set the bag into my waiting arms.

Clarice unlatched the pickup’s tailgate and tipped her upper half over it, wriggling and scrambling with her legs in the air. She would have been horrified if she knew how ridiculous she looked, so I struggled to suppress my giggling. She certainly wouldn’t have appreciated a boost. Besides, I had my hands full. She finally scootched her belly and then her hips onto the truck bed and pushed up onto her knees.

“You’re really getting the hang of this country living thing,” I said.

“Shut up.” She grabbed my bag, dropped it with a surprised ooof, then pushed it up against the cab. “Get a move on, girl.”

I shifted into autopilot and lost count of the bags I transferred. In fact, I purposely tried to disengage my brain from my body so I didn’t get so many stop-you’re-killing-me signals. I doubted my poor, underused muscles would let me walk tomorrow.

Somewhere mid-stream, the minivan family strolled out of the taco joint, clambered into their vehicle and drove off without giving us a second glance. Several other travelers took brief respites in the parking lot too, but none seemed to take particular notice of us. Maybe black market deals were a common occurrence. Maybe people knew better than to ask.

Art took care of strapping our load, for which I was grateful. The piled layers of bags blocked all but the top few inches of the cab’s rear window. Bertha’s back tires bulged, and I didn’t have much faith in the integrity of her shock absorbers.

Art shared a skeptical look with me. “Good luck. Drive slow.”

“That part won’t be difficult.” I leaned closer to him. “I know this—” I waved a hand toward the overburdened pickup, “—what I asked of you, is illegal. Thank you,” I whispered.

Art slipped a warm hand under my elbow. “Only for you, Nora, given your extreme circumstances. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Promise you’ll stay in touch?”

I nodded.

“It’ll be dark in another hour — hour and a half.” Clarice announced.

Art squeezed my arm. “Go. Text me when you’re safely home. I won’t be able to sleep until you do.”

I laid a hand on his cheek. “You’re a good man, Art Williams.”

“Don’t I know it.” He smiled again, but the expression didn’t erase the worry from his eyes.