Chapter Seven
The housekeeper of Moe, Chiara, picked up Clarity at Swankeye the next day, in a Chevrolet Spark, and drove her to the middle class home of Moe in Richmond West. The residential house was a renovated one floor home painted in a soft peach color, with a front porch, and a two car driveway. The three bedroom home was pet-friendly, and also had a pleasant s-curved, Florida tile adobe color roof. It rented for about two thousand dollars a month, which is what Moe was paying the person owning the home. It was about ten in the morning. Chiara picked up the poodle and spoke with Clarity on the front door mat of the home, which said Hey Sweetie, come in.
"Walk Quincy for twenty minutes," said Chiara. "Miss Alamy is with someone in her bedroom, a girl named Haley. She'll be finished around eleven thirty in the morning. Her flexibility instructor is coming this afternoon. I have to go do some errands."
Clarity walked the poodle of the old lady for about half an hour and came back to the lawn of the home. Chiara went to do some errands around ten thirty in the morning, driving the Chevrolet Spark parked on the driveway of the home. The two furniture men from Modali came ten minutes later, to deliver the swing to Moe.
Clarity had the remote of the swing in her vest. She had paid an additional one hundred dollars to the furniture salesman, so that Moe would not be informed that the swing worked with a remote. While Moe was taking care of Hayley in her bedroom, Clarity instructed the delivery guys to put the swing on the porch of Moe's home, facing the open street, and also facing a ten foot rubble container delivered the day before in front of Moe's lawn by the moving and storage company of Harvege. After about forty minutes, the swing was installed and ready to work.
"Thanks guys, take it easy," said Clarity. She gave the two men a generous tip of one hundred dollars, provided by Harvege.
At eleven thirty, Moe finished her audition, letting Hayley out of the bedroom. The girl, a cute supermarket cashier with long brown hair, beamed a smile, receiving a stack of five hundred dollars in twenty dollar bills, which paid for her time naked with the old lady.
"Come back next week, I'll show you a few more things." Hayley nodded and walked out of the home, leaving Clarity with Moe. The old lady took a good look at Clarity.
"Hi, you are here, taking care of Quincy?"
"Yes, Chiara left to do some errands."
"Would you like to try the audition next week, honey? Hayley will be there as well, she needs to pay for some of her college books, which are expensive. She did all right today. Got completely unclothed for me."
The look of Moe was so mischievous that Clarity began to understand the versatility of her talent and the tenacity of her personality. The old lady held on to her ideas, like a dog that did not let go of someone's pants. Moe persevered with everything she did, and that's how she got her way. Clarity looked at a framed photo on a sideboard, showing the poodle gnawing at the leg of a Domino's Pizza delivery person.
"I'll think about it," said Clarity.
"Think about it, sweetie."
"All right, you can go ahead and relax out on the porch, it's a nice day," said Clarity. "A furniture shop delivered the new swing. I'll feed Quincy."
"All right, good."
The old lady walked out into her terrace and sat on the new swing to read the newspaper. Clarity reached for a cane color pet bowl made by Mason Cash inside a kitchen cabinet, and placed it on the wood floor of the kitchen. She poured a good amount of Royal Canin dog food for adult poodles, and brought the small dog of Moe to the bowl. Leaving the dog to its lunch, she walked silently out of the kitchen, into the living room area. She reached for the inner pocket of her vest, laid out on a sofa, and took out the remote of the swing. She peeked into the lounge area, and saw Moe sitting on the swing, in the porch terrace, reading the pages of a local newspaper.
Forty feet away, there was a large ten foot long, eight foot high rubble container filled with cardboard boxes. The container had been brought the day before by the moving and storage company of Harvege. Officially, the company was recycling cardboard boxes from various neighborhoods, and it was stopping at Richmond West for a few days. The housekeeper of Moe had been informed of it, and Moe saw nothing unusual, ignoring the item came from Harvege.
Clarity looked at the remote knob, which looked like a traditional cooking timer. The intensity of the swing engine had been revved up to a possible ten, versus the previous six that Clarity had seen at the furniture store. She raised the level of the knob to one, and the swing began to sway gently. Moe swayed along, enjoyed the nice, swaying motion. Clarity raised the level of the knob to three, and the swing amplitude widened, going up slightly higher than before, before making its way down.
Moe kept with it, comfortable, but her eyes slightly more open, kind of surprised by the new pace of the swing. Sensing a good time, Clarity raised the knob to ten. The swing began moving up and down a lot more amplitude, raising Moe a good six feet in the back of the swing, before going back down and up again another six feet in the front of the swing. The old lady kept with the motion, and her eyes widened even more. After the third up and down motion, when the swing moved upwards and reached apex, Clarity turned the remote knob to ten, the kick and stop button mode, sending Moe out thirty feet in the air, towards the container.
The newspaper flew out of the old lady's hands, while Moe's body curled into a kind of fetal position, and turned around in the air. After an improbable kind of summersault that Clarity saw with her own eyes, the old lady landed feet first in the container with a loud thump, swallowed by several large cardboard boxes that covered all of her body.
"That should keep you there for a while," said Clarity.
Leaving the knob back in her vest, she moved to the bedroom of the old lady, closing the door behind her. She walked on the wood floor of the bedroom, rubbing her hands on the blue quilt of Moe, laid out on her bed. A camera tripod with a large camera on it was placed beside the door. The computer screen showed a photograph of Hayley naked on her back, and legs folded behind her head.
Harvege had told her to look for a poster tube inside the bedroom, where Moe kept the information regarding her safe deposit box at North Florida Bank. Inside the box, according to the Hendry and Collier boss, there was one million dollars, in money, in large bills, or in bonds, U.S. treasury bonds. Mannen wanted Clarity to get that money from Moe, the person who had told Di Laure to tell the feds that his former pilot was holding a large amount of bonds belonging to him. Those bonds had been recovered from Clarity and Flower by Tarrance for safekeeping, but a police officer alerted by Di Laure, had found them, on the pilot, at Milto 's, and taken them into custody, creating problems for Mannen, and for Clarity, because they had been stolen from a vault in New York. While Clarity was doing some work for him, Mannen was making calls to meat distributors, selling them on some of the ideas he was finding in Cocoanomics.
Clarity peeked inside the closet of the old lady, finding only clothes and shoes. There was no trace of a poster tube anywhere. She kept looking at the bedroom, raising her thinking to a more general level. She looked at the night table and found a book labeled Australian Business Principles on it. She grabbed the book and lifted the cover, reading the first sentence. You have two cows, business seems all right. You close the office and go to the bar for a beer to celebrate. She closed the book and noticed a bouquet arrangement of white and yellow flowers on the night table. Poster tube, mmmh.
There were eight or ten stems, with flowers blooming out of each stalk. One of them was green-colored, but felt different, like some type of metal. The stem was fake, the flower was fake as well, it was made of a soft plastic shaped as a flower. The stem was also thicker, nearly half an inch in diameter. She took out the fake stem from the vase, noticing an indenture, mid way. The inside of the stem was hollow, holding another tube inside, made of hard plastic. Carefully, she took the second tube out of the stem. The tube was about four inches long. It was a plastic hollow cylinder, covered with a rubber stop
per. She could see a sheet of paper rolled inside. She popped out the stopper and pulled out the sheet with her finger.
She unrolled the sheet and saw two on one side. One serial number, probably the number of the safe deposit box, had a three digit sequence, two seven eight, that was the number of the box. The other piece of information was a rectangular matrix with four pairs of columns and eight rows, one column labeled number, and the other access code, a total of thirty two, four digit numbers, each corresponding to a different access number provided by the bank vault access system of North Florida Bank in Miami. One of them was requested each time the customer wanted access to her vault deposit box at the bank. That's where Moe was keeping her 'under the bed' money, actual cash.
Clarity took out her smartphone, and made a photograph of the matrix and all the four digit numbers. She checked the picture, ensuring all the information could be read properly. She placed the sheet in the plastic tube, and also put the stopper on it. She inserted the tube into the stem and placed the fake flower and stem back in place, in the vase. She called Chiara, who was in a nearby supermarket, getting some food.
"There was a problem with the swing, Miss Moe is in a container on the street, she needs some assistance I think."
"I'll be there in a few minutes." Ten minutes later, the Chevy Spark parked on the driveway of Moe's home. Clarity walked towards the housekeeper.
"Where is she?" Asked Chiara.
"Over there." Chiara ran to the container and spoke into it.
"Miss Moe?"
"Yes, here Chiara, been trying to find my smartphone, I think I'm all right. Get me out."
Clarity called a cab and said goodbye to the housekeeper when the taxi stopped in front of Moe's home. Chiara was not tall enough to get inside the container. She was calling the local fire truck.
"The poodle is in the kitchen. Thank you for letting me do this. I'll get back to Miss Moe, if I go ahead with her offer."
Chiara nodded and placed a garden ladder on the container to rescue the old lady inside, while the cab of Clarity drove away.