While Willis called the girls to tell them about Vera, I called my new friend Lacy Kent, told her what happened, and asked if she’d keep an eye on the girls. ‘They’re all sixteen, and I trust them to not sneak guys over or anything, but I’d just feel better if there was someone there for back-up.’
‘No problem,’ Lacy said.
‘My mother-in-law is usually our back-up – stays in the house and drives the kids crazy. Or my next-door neighbor, Elena Luna, but she’s out of town too—’
‘E.J., it’s OK!’ Lacy assured me. ‘I promise I won’t take my son with me when I go check on them, either.’
‘Oh?’
‘He’s got a mad crush on Megan. Not that he thinks I know this or anything!’
I laughed with her and said, ‘Well, if you did know, you could warn him, but that’s what he gets for not telling you.’
‘Warn him?’
‘Megan’s as sweet as they come, but … let’s just say she’s a handful.’
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘I know I try,’ I said and we hung up. I took Willis’s phone from him. ‘Who am I talking to?’ I asked.
‘All of us,’ Bess said. ‘We’re on speaker.’
‘Hi, Mom!’ Megan.
‘Hi, Mom!’ Alicia.
‘OK, I just talked to Mrs Kent—’
‘Dex’s mother?’ Megan interrupted. ‘He’s really cute!’
‘And she’s going to come by occasionally and check on y’all, make sure everything is OK, so try not to trash the house, all right?’ I said, ignoring Megan’s need for a romantic entanglement.
‘Is she going to bring Dex with her?’ Megan asked.
‘There should be plenty of food in the refrigerator and freezer. I’m not sure how long we’re going to be gone—’
‘It’s OK, Mom,’ Bess said. ‘We can take care of ourselves.’
‘Bess, you know where the emergency Visa card is, right?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, ma’am—’
‘What emergency Visa card?’ Megan demanded. ‘We’ve had a Visa card hidden around here that I didn’t know about? Jeez, Bess, thanks for sharing—’
‘It has a low balance. I’m not saying how low, and Bess doesn’t know. And an emergency only includes two pizza deliveries of a reasonable amount of pizza. No parties!’
‘Damn,’ I heard Megan say in the background.
‘Don’t worry, Mom,’ Alicia said. ‘Bess and I will keep Megs in line.’
‘Yeah, y’all and what army?’ Megan shot back.
‘Stop!’ I said. ‘Don’t bother Mrs Luna if she gets home before we do—’
‘We know what she’ll be doing!’ Megan said and giggled, the other girls followed suit.
‘Maybe you’re not old enough to stay on your own—’
‘Mom!’ Three loud voices as one.
‘Just be good,’ I said and we said our goodbyes.
I turned to my husband. ‘When does the plane leave?’
‘We’ve got three hours before we need to be at the airport. Luna’s going to take us to the mall to buy what we’ll need in D.C. If we’re there for longer than two days, we’ll buy more,’ he said.
I looked at my husband and could tell he was freaking out. ‘Honey, you want to stay here and I’ll get you some things? You could make me a list—’
He shook his head. ‘No. There’s nothing I could do here. I’d just be in the way and do nothing but worry. At least at the mall I’ll have something to take my mind off this.’
‘The special agent who called said it was a through-and-through, doesn’t looked like much damage—’
‘Jesus, E.J.!’ he said, gritting his teeth and hissing at me. ‘She’s nearly eighty years old! God only knows what this will do to her! She could have a stroke, or go into a depression, become suicidal—’
‘Willis, stop,’ I said, putting my arms around him. ‘You’re going to drive yourself nuts. We can’t do anything until we get to D.C. So, come on, let’s go to the mall.’
He sighed and stood up. ‘Where’s Luna?’ he asked the world in general.
She appeared and we headed out of the main cop shop down to the mean streets of Houston, blood and fashion on our minds.
It was Saturday night and we were having a barbecue in honor of Eddie Luna. By the time we’d gotten home from Washington, D.C., Elena and Eddie were keeping house like an old married couple; although they’d been married for twenty-four years, only four of those had been together. I found it amazing that the two of them had kept the fire going all these years. I could only hope that Willis and I will have sustained such a bond over that great a time.
Elena and I had already made all the side dishes and the men, which is the way of suburbia, were dealing with the meat, tonight starring chicken and sausage. Elena and I sat on our deck, watching and giving an occasional opinion.
‘Have you heard anything about the Unger thing?’ I asked her.
She nodded. ‘Yeah. Mayfair called me, told me the whole story. Seems James and Elizabeth Unger, both with PhDs in biology, met when they both worked for a large pharmaceutical company. They got married and left the company to start their own. After three years they discovered what they thought was the cure to childhood leukemia, and they wanted desperately to market it, but they couldn’t go the conventional route because they’d already had a bankruptcy and their credit was in the toilet. Somebody told them about Andronikov, who had money to invest. He was more than a little interested, so he backed them. Over a million dollars’ worth.’
‘Jeez, just to get a pill produced?’ I asked.
‘Produced and to market. Seems like it’s an expensive endeavor. But before market, there are the tests.’ She stopped to take a swig of her Shiner Bach.
‘And?’ I encouraged.
‘Well, there’s the rub. They found out during the testing phase that it might cure leukemia, but it also caused brain tumors in rats.’
‘Jeez,’ I said, sipping my white wine. I’m off beer because of my new and improved body. ‘But Andronikov had put all this money in—’
‘And wanted more money out. Selling the drug as a cure for childhood leukemia would have made him a fortune. He told them to go ahead and manufacture the drug. James said no way. He wasn’t going to be responsible for giving children brain tumors. Duh.’
‘Yeah, duh. But Andronikov—’
‘Cajoled and then threatened, then kidnapped Elizabeth. To give them both credit, when Andronikov called James and told him he had Elizabeth, when she was able to speak to him briefly—’
‘Proof of life?’
‘Right. She told him to take the flash drive with all their data on it and run. The formula for the drug, their research, and the tests. And he did.’
‘And that’s where we came in,’ I finished up. ‘I’ve told Willis a thousand times that baby-shit yellow truck of his was going to get him in trouble. I’m sure the color is the reason James Unger put the satchel in our truck!’
‘I don’t know,’ Luna said. ‘With Smith and Jones following him, I don’t think he had much time to think. Anyway, the flash drive is history. Elizabeth destroyed it so no one else as greedy as Andronikov can get their hands on it.’
‘Any word on Mr Jones?’ I asked.
Luna shook her head. ‘I doubt if we’ll get him. And I’m not sure I want to. Let’s face it, he’s sort of the good guy in this thing.’
‘Yeah, he is,’ I agreed. ‘And if what he said about Mr Unger going off the roof being an accident is true—’
Luna shook her head. ‘Death during the commission of a felony,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to go looking for him.’
I heard another car pull up and Willis went through the gate to the driveway and came back holding a cloth bag loaded with edible goodies, followed by Vera. Her arm was in a sling, but somehow she’d managed to get that heavy-looking bag from her house to her car. She’s a little spitfire, that woman.
I got up and hugged her. She hates that. Which is why I do it, of course. ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m fine. Hello, Elena. You gonna introduce me to this nice-looking young man?’
And so she did, while I set out Vera’s offerings on the picnic table with the sides Luna and I had already made. Looking over the bounty, I figured if I had just a little bit of everything, I’d be OK. Maybe a little more of that strawberry pie – I mean, it was fruit, right? How bad could it be for me?
Vera joined Elena and I on the deck, and I pulled up another chair. Vera sat down, her face a frown. ‘They finally found Rachael Donley’s body,’ she said. ‘He put her in a dumpster at a building site that had been shut down. It took the trash people a little longer to empty it because they couldn’t get into the site.’ I touched her hand. ‘He strangled her. Old man like that. Rachael was young and fit, I just don’t see how he managed it. According to my FBI friend, Roni Sanchez, Gerald – I mean, Thomas – had no idea who she was until the convention. She’d told him before that she knew him from somewhere, but could never place him. On the bus on our way to D.C. she must have figured it out. And she asked him to meet her in the mezzanine the following night, told him she knew who he was and begged him to turn himself in – or else she would. Instead, he choked her to death and hid her body in a closet on the mezzanine, then came back in the middle of the night and moved her, using the staff elevator.’ Vera shook her head. ‘Vicious, just vicious. And to think, all that time I thought he was helping me to find her. Mind you, I never did trust that man.’
I decided to ignore that remark. ‘So how are your friends at church dealing with all this about Gerald?’ I asked.
‘Well, at first they were all aghast, but then something even worse – well, maybe not worse, but equally messy – came out.’
‘What?’ Luna and I both demanded.
‘I was right about Brother Joe. He’s a piss poor preacher for a good reason,’ she said, at which point she stopped for dramatic effect. Vera does like to enhance her stories just a bit.
‘And that would be …’ I prompted.
‘He’s not one!’ She grinned big. ‘He’s undercover DEA! Would you believe Angela Barrow and her husband Howard are great big meth dealers? It’s true! They run a whole ring or something—’
‘Why wasn’t I informed of this?’ Luna demanded.
Vera shrugged. ‘Maybe because it was on a need to know basis, and you, my dear, didn’t need to know?’
Luna stiffened, then relaxed. I’ve noticed she’d been a lot easier to get along with since Eddie’s been home. ‘Probably. Hell, there’s lots of things I don’t need to know.’
‘Y’all got your little problem all settled, the one that took you to Houston?’ Vera asked.
Luna told her all about that. Finally, the meat was done to the satisfaction of our men, so we called the kids and all gathered at the picnic table.
Somewhere during all the food shoveling into faces, Graham said, ‘Grandma, did Dad tell you about Alicia and me?’
‘Well, I think you’re both too young to be thinking the kinds of things y’all are thinking, that’s all I’m saying,’ Vera said.
‘Vera, how old were you when you got married?’ I asked with a grin.
‘Seventeen, but that’s not the point—’
Graham’s hands were in the air in a surrender pose. ‘Whoa, now! No one’s said anything about marriage!’
The look on Alicia’s face was enough to make me want to cry. Graham saw it, and recovered nicely. ‘I mean right now! We both have to finish school.’
She nodded and went back to her consumption of mass quantities of food.
Graham sighed. ‘So, did he ask you about me moving in with you?’
‘Of course. And the answer is yes. Wish you could move in now. I have a hard time with just one arm—’
‘Mama!’ Willis said. ‘Why didn’t you say so? Medicare has a day nurse thing, don’t they? If not, we’ll get you one.’
‘I don’t need a nurse—’
‘Nurse’s aide,’ I said.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. ‘Or I could stay here for a few days. I have a bag in my car.’
Just when I start to like the woman …