Rest in Pieces (21 page)

“Holy shit.” Haley’s eyes were huge.

“I’m so proud.” Monica smiled and then it froze on her face. “Fuck.”

I glanced down. The box was filled with gold coins, and a black velvet bag sat right on top. I reached inside and grabbed the bag. I pulled the drawstring at the top apart and poured the contents into my palm. A shower of diamonds spilled out. I did a quick count. One hundred and thirty two diamonds in a black velvet bag. Daman’s diamonds.

Oh, crap.

What in the hell had Molly been into?

Chapter 17

“How long will the unhandy trust fund family be out of town?” I sat back in my chair at the kitchen table and stared at the bundles of cash stacked up around the safety deposit box full of gold.

“Until spring. They claim the winters here are too much.” Haley shook her head. “Tomorrow it’s supposed to get up to the seventies, but whatever.”

“I love it when you think rich people are weird, too.” Monica patted her arm.

“I vote we leave this here until we figure out what’s going on.” Absently, I started picking gold coins out and stacking them. They were heavier than you’d think and definitely not those ridiculous gold dollars you get at the post office when you plug in a twenty for a book of stamps and get gold dollars as change. When the machine had spit out the gold dollars, Max that thought we were rich. I still hadn’t told him that they had absolutely no gold in them.

“Think I should tell Ben about all of this?” I placed the stacked coins on the table. The gold was shiny. I knew real gold didn’t tarnish, but I was having a hard time convincing myself this was real gold.

Monica shook her head. “No. Think about it. He’s been to your house and your house is now bugged. Put two and two together and you get that he might be the person who planted the bugs.”

I didn’t want to believe it, but I’d thought of that myself. He claims to have this longstanding crush on me, but doesn’t call me in the six months that David’s been gone? I may be a sucker, but I wasn’t born yesterday. “I can’t tell him.”

I pulled out three more coins and stacked them. The box was so over filled that the space I’d made was quickly taken over by falling coins. For a split second before the other coins had slid down to cover the bottom of the box, I’d seen a scrap of white. Since the box was gunmetal gray, there must be something at the bottom.

“I think there’s something on the bottom. Help me move these out of the way.” I grabbed a handful of coins and dumped them on the table. I grabbed another and dumped it on the table.

Monica and Haley shoved coins out of the way. At the bottom of the box was a white legal envelop bulging to over an inch thick. I picked it up and pulled back the flap. Inside were five little navy blue bound books that looked a lot like passports. I upended the envelope and the contents spilled out on the table. Five passports landed in a heap.

“Look.” Haley picked up something black that had been under the envelope/ “It’s an old cell phone.”

She flipped it open. “It’s dead.”

Monica took it from her. “It’s a Motorola Razor. This is old school, back when phones didn’t do much of anything but call people.”

“Why would she have an old cell phone? Especially with all of this money.” Haley shook her head. “She didn’t use this phone. She had an iPhone.”

“This phone has no sim card. It’s hard to track.” Monica set it down and reached around me and picking up the passport on top. She flipped it open. “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.” She held the passport up so that we could see it. “Meet Jessica Lynne Martin.”

Molly’s smiling face stared back at me from a passport with a different name.

I grabbed the other passports, opened them, and lined them up on the table. Each one held a picture of Molly with a different name.

“Are y’all thinking what I’m thinking?” Monica looked at me and then Haley. “Molly was a spy.”

I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous. She was the kindergarten teacher at Bee Creek Elementary. When did she do her spying? Weekends and spring break?”

Now that I thought about it, maybe she could be a part–time spy. I looked down at the diamonds, gold and money on the table. Clearly, part–time spying paid well.

I continued to shake my head. “Molly was a rule follower—well, except for her blatant use of glitter in violation of the district’s strict no glitter policy. Other than that, she followed every rule and obeyed every traffic law. She led a really boring life.”

“Sleeper agent?” Haley sounded like she thought that was as ridiculous as it sounded.

“What about a thief? Maybe she stole all of this?” I was grasping at straws. “That sort of fits.”

“Do you really believe that she was a thief? I saw her run back into Don Julio’s a couple of weeks ago because she’d miscalculated the tip and went to leave more money.” Monica exhaled long and slow. “What does this have to do with her pregnancy? Maybe the father gave her all of this for the baby?”

I grabbed a handful of gold coins and held them up. “Because her baby daddy wanted to pay her off with gold coins?”

Monica nodded. “Okay, that’s pretty stupid, but I can’t help thinking that the pregnancy had something to do with this. Maybe she found out she was pregnant and tried to get out of her life of crime.” She pointed to the table. “And this is the retirement plan?”

“Maybe.” Actually, that was just as logical as anything else we’d come up with.

“Blackmail?” Haley picked up one of the stacks of hundreds. “Maybe she was blackmailing someone?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t explain the multiple passports.”

It hit me and I didn’t want to say it out loud. “Drugs. That’s the only thing that makes sense. She had the chemistry set in the garage—she was making designer drugs. That explains the money and the passports. Maybe she wanted out after she found out that she was pregnant, and she was murdered because once you’re in that’s the only way out.”

“Drugs just seems so contrary to her personality. She didn’t even drink. Then again, maybe she was smarter than to use the stuff she was making.” Haley rubbed the muscles at the back of her neck. “That also explains Daman’s interest and possible bugging of our houses. That explains how his diamonds were found in her safety deposit box. Maybe they were in it together? She made the drugs and he distributes.”

It was a lot for Haley to even think of incriminating her friend.

I didn’t want to believe it. Having gotten to know Daman a little bit better, he seemed like such a nice guy. I liked him and wanted to know him better. The drug lording didn’t fit with what I knew of him personally, but I’d learned many times that people often had two faces. Take David. I’d had no idea he had a girlfriend or that he was capable of stealing and running away with her.

“Where do we go from here?” I looked at Monica and then Haley. “Ideas? Anyone?”

“It would have been so much easier if Molly had left us a note in one of these boxes that said, ‘if I’m dead and you find this, blank is the killer.’ I can’t imagine there was a line of people wanting to kill Molly, but then again, I wouldn’t have taken her for a drug maker either.” Monica watched the stacks of cash like she half expected them to get up and walk away. “Think the money is real? It could be counterfeit or something.”

“I have no idea. How do you even tell?” I picked up a stack.

Haley picked up a bundle and thumbed through it. “They seem to be non sequential. I don’t know if that matters.”

“Do we take a hundred dollars and try to buy something? What if it’s marked? Or what if the people who bugged our houses are tracking the serial numbers. I don’t want to get caught with stolen or counterfeit money.” Molly was into something bad and it had gotten her killed. Any sane person would stop, but no one had ever accused me of having an overabundance of sanity.

“I’ve got an idea.” Haley ripped off the white wrapper from around the bundle she was holding and pulled out a single hundred dollar bill. “I’ll take this to my husband’s office and trade it out for one of the hundreds in the daily deposit. If it’s fake, the bank will call.”

Monica shook her head. “If the serial numbers are being tracked, it will lead back to you. We need a way that if the bill does raise red flags, it can’t be tracked back to us, but that we can still track it.”

“Banks are out and so are convenience stores—surveillance cameras. We can’t just go use it at the grocery story because even out here, who pays for things in hundreds? Everything is credit or debit these days. We need to spend this some place that handles large amounts of cash so the hundred would go unnoticed, but that we can still keep track of the bill.” I couldn’t think of a single place to spend it.

I did think of casually dropping it outside of Salina Atan’s door, but if she spent it and was arrested, it wouldn’t be hard to connect her to me. It was almost worth it, but more than likely Molly’s death was linked to this money. I wasn’t willing to die even to have Salina arrested.

“I’ve never had such a hard time figuring out a way to spending money.” Monica sat back and waved a stack of hundreds around. “A food truck?”

“True they don’t have cameras and probably do a pretty good cash business, but how many people pay with hundreds, besides, how would we track it? We need to know if the people who bugged our houses are looking for this money.” Every single way I could think of to get rid of the money, but still track it would be linked back to us.

Haley pointed to the money. “What about this…a donation to the Salvation Army? A girl I went to summer camp with a million years ago is married to the bank manager where funds for the Salvation Army Central Texas are deposited—”

“Do you have any contact with her via the internet or your home or cell phones?” Monica was good. She was a thinker.

“Only Christmas cards through the mail. I send her one every year and she sends me one. They live in Waco. We could drop the hundred in one of the red barrels and I drop by her house in a couple of weeks. That way the contact is face–to–face.” Haley brightened.

“You still send Christmas cards through the mail?” Monica glanced at me. “Why do we like her again?”

“I’m more appalled by her willingness to gyp the Salvation Army out of a hundred dollars.” Really, it was appalling. True, it was sneaky and would probably work, but it was still appalling.

Haley rolled her eyes. “Like I don’t donate thousands to them every year.” She bit her bottom lip. “What do you think?”

Monica shrugged. “I’ll do the drop off if you want. There’s a red barrel down the street from my office. Wait,” she put a hand up, “I’m out of the office tomorrow at a conference. I’ll have my assistant drop it for me.”

“I don’t know. It sounds risky and complicated. I’d hate for this to get us killed. Let’s just sit on it for a while.” Nothing made sense. “I wish we could see what’s on that phone. Molly had to have been using it. It doesn’t seem possible that she held onto it for no reason.”

“Let’s dump out all of the gold and see if Molly left us a power cord.” Monica scooped out handfuls of gold onto the table. “Think about it. She had a secret phone, wouldn’t she have a secret cable to charge it? If she left it out, someone’s going to ask why she has this old phone cord.”

Monica was always on top of things.

I grabbed a handful and sure enough, a black charger sat at the bottom of the safety deposit box. Haley picked it up and plugged it in the wall. She shoved the charger end into the bottom of the phone. After about a minute, it lit up. Now, we were onto something.

We all stared at the tiny screen.

“Check the call log.” I pointed to the option.

Haley used the arrow buttons to scroll to the call log. It felt like she was on an old–fashioned computer dialup that took forever to load. Man, today’s touch screens were so much better.

She clicked on the call log. There was nothing.

“Try voicemail.” Monica leaned over Haley’s shoulder.

Haley pulled up voicemail. Nothing again.

“Who has a phone, but no voicemail?” Monica shook her head like it made no damn sense.

“Look in email.” I pointed to the option.

Haley pushed the arrow buttons a bunch of times. Email came up.

“Finally.” Haley nodded at all of the email. She selected the first one.

It was from [email protected]. The title was blank. The body of the email said, “Mustang Ridges.”

“My name? Why is my name in an email on Molly’s secret phone?” I looked at Monica in case she had any ideas.

She hunched her shoulders. “No clue.”

Haley clicked on the next email. It was from the same person and had no title either. The body of this email read, “Jonathan Swerling.”

“Who’s that?” Haley clicked on the next email. “It looks like all of the email are from the same person.”

The body of this email read, “Alicia Mangris–Fuentes.”

One–by–one, Haley pulled up all seventeen emails and every single one of them had a different name.

Haley grabbed the envelope that had held the passports and wrote down the names.

“Why would Molly have emails with random names? And why is your name on this list?”

“I don’t understand. This doesn’t make any sense. Who are all of these people?” This took creepy to a whole new level.

Monica grabbed the envelope. “I’m on it. Not the list—the finding out about the people on the list.”

She stood, “Does Trust Fund Baby have a computer?”

“I don’t know, I guess. Who doesn’t have one these days?” Haley pointed to a hallway on the other side of the living room. “The study is down that hallway. Check in there.”

Monica disappeared down the hallway.

Haley and I stood to follow her.

I gestured to the windows behind the kitchen table. “Should we leave all of this lying around? Even with the blinds closed, it feels weird.”

“I agree. I’ll take care of it.” Haley headed to a red and black striped room that could only be the dining room. She opened a white lacquered buffet and pulled something black out. She waved it at me as she walked back to the kitchen table. “Tablecloth.”

“Who besides a practicing satanic priest has a black tablecloth?” I looked around. “There’s not an altar with a dead chicken on it in the bedroom, is there?”