Scare Crow

  While office workers shuffled through the hallway, I advanced to door 10E without fear and with my head held high.

  There was no name on the door, but I didn’t doubt myself. I had read correctly on the golden plaque downstairs.

  I turned the knob and let myself into what looked like a small waiting room, except that there were no chairs, no front desk or assistant. I made my way across the blood-red carpet and opened the next door.

  A beast of a man sat behind a small cheap oak desk. He was wearing a suit that looked like it had fit him three sizes ago. His hair was buzz-cut into a lopsided geometric form, something that would have been all the rage in the eighties. Clearly, this accountant for the underworld was still living in the past.

  Although Henry Grimes hadn’t seemed surprised to see the door open without a knock, his expression turned quizzical as he peered over his paperwork and saw that I was the one who had opened it.

  I took a seat in front of him. “My name is Emily Sheppard,” I announced, having practiced this meeting so many times in my head. “I was sent here by someone named Carly.”

  Henry Grimes leaned back in his chair, lacing his sausage fingers over a well-fed belly.

  This reminded me of my own basketball belly, and I tugged at the edge of my poncho to ensure that my own belly remained hidden. I felt as though Henry and I had met before, as if I had seen him somewhere. There was definitely something familiar about him, though I couldn’t figure it out.

  “Bill Sheppard’s sister,” he said, as though he were trying to convince himself of this. “Carly did mention that you would be coming to see me. But that was a long time ago. A few months at least.”

  I took the angel pendant off my neck and placed it in front of him. “I need access to the money my brother left me.”

  He immediately flipped the angel over and looked at the code under it, and then he smiled, a genuine, wholehearted smile. He had obviously seen this pendant before.

  “When Bill told me about his plan to inscribe your inheritance onto this cheap piece of hardware, I honestly thought it would never come back. He must have known you well enough to know that you would hold on to it without knowing what its true meaning was.”

  Of course I had held on to it. It was the last thing Bill had given me before he died. I held on to it as though Bill were trapped somewhere in it, like a genie in a bottle.

  This man had met, had conversed, and had laughed with Bill … I had to tighten every muscle of my face to keep my emotions at bay.

  Henry wrote numbers down on a piece of paper. “I can’t get the money for you.” He gave me back the angel pendant and held his other hand up before I could start shouting all the vicious names that were bouncing around my head. I couldn’t handle any more spikes in the road.

  “The codes that your brother had inscribed on your necklace are mine. He made sure that, as an additional safeguard, you would have to come through me in order to get the bank account numbers.” He handed me the piece of paper. The numbers on it looked like the account numbers the bank manager had shown me some time ago.

  “You wouldn’t be able to get the money without these numbers,” Henry explained, though I had already figured this out.

  I took a calming breath and considered the information. “You said that this was an additional safeguard. Meaning there is more than one safeguard?”

  “There was always the risk that someone else would try to have your money moved without your knowledge. You do realize how much money is at stake here?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  “Bill set up the account so that you and only you would be able to have it unlocked.”

  He waited.

  I looked up at the sky. “I have to go to the Cayman Islands myself, don’t I?”

  “If you want your money.” He laughed, not knowing what a spectacular inconvenience it would be for this pregnant lady to board a plane to the tropics.

  I sighed.

  “Your brother was very fond of you, Emily. And I was very fond of your brother. If there were any other way, I would have found it for you. Consider this a vacation.”

  “A vacation,” I whispered to myself, unsure if I was going to cry or laugh.

  I got up from my chair in a daze, but as I grabbed the door handle, I realized that I had forgotten something crucial. While I had practiced this moment many times in my head, this part I hadn’t really figured out yet. But having met Henry Grimes, my next move was clear. I turned around and opened my mouth.

  “I won’t tell anyone you were ever here,” he said before I could ask him.

  I closed the door and said a little prayer as I walked across the carpet through the empty waiting room. If everything he had said was true and he had cared for my brother, then I had to trust him. But if he had lied, then I had very little time to act.

  I waited for the elevator and saw two men—the shady clients Henry must have actually been waiting for—go into his office.

  When the elevator doors opened, Frances jumped out with a crazed expression. I dragged her by the arm back into the elevator. Unfortunately, I dragged us into an elevator that was going up instead of down.

  “Did you already meet the accountant?” she asked me when we were finally alone and on our way down.

  “He couldn’t get the money,” I whispered, which seemed appropriate even if there was no one else who could hear us. “But there’s still a way for me to get it.”

  As the doors opened and more people got on, she watched me, taking this in.

  Frances left me outside to go fetch the car, sprinting. She’d had to park two blocks down.

  I stood in the cold, rubbing my hands together under my poncho and jumping from one foot to the other. The frigid Callister weather was inhumane. Maybe a trip to the islands wouldn’t be so bad after all. When the baby kicked me as I was thinking this, I took it as a sign that we needed to go.

  I was trying to keep warm by getting my mind working, figuring out how I was going to pay for this trip and how I was going to tell Griff about what I had been up to. He had left me this morning for a day of interviews with the media and potential sponsors. I had to pretend I was too sick to go with him. It took me a while to convince him to go without me.

  I turned to face the building, afraid that I was going to see Henry having changed his mind and coming after me. I also didn’t know how much time I had if he broke his so-called promise and alerted Carly and Spider to my calling. I didn’t know if Spider would even care, given that Carly had tried to give me all of Cameron’s money anyway, which was probably ten times more than what Bill had achieved in his short life.

  While I was busy working my brain, I hadn’t noticed that someone had been watching me from the entrance of Henry’s building. She was holding on to the door as people shoved past her, her eyes fixed on me. I was in a trance as I saw her, unable to move. At first her expression was that of disbelief, as was mine. Could it really be her, or was I imagining this?

  She broke the spell and moved toward me. This wasn’t just happening in slow motion … Carly was moving slowly, every step seeking validation.

  A gust of wind twirled around us, grabbing my poncho with it. Her eyes went down to my rounded and now exposed belly, and she stopped. I managed to pull my poncho back down, but the damage was already done.

  I had expected the anger, the hate, the murderous glare at this new revelation. But what I saw scared me even more. Carly’s eyes were hungry, as if she had been starved, deprived from birth. And the blood rushed from my face.

  I took one small step back, as if I were trying to charm a cobra out of a bite. Carly just stared back.

  I turned around and walked away, desperately seeking Frances’s car.

  Carly came to grab me by the shoulder.

  “Is this true? Are you pregnant?”

  I glared back and held my head high because I was Emily Sheppard.

  She reached her hand over. “And it’s Cameron’s.”

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; “Stay away from me,” I hollered over the wind and took a step back.

  Carly’s expression was one of surprise, and she pulled her hand away as if getting burned.

  I started walking as fast as my belly would allow in the direction I thought I had seen Frances go. I turned onto the first street, realizing it was just an alleyway where garbage collected, a dead end. After a few seconds of freedom, Carly came running after me. I could have screamed bloody murder, but there was no one left around to hear me over the wind. So I spun around to face her.

  “Don’t you think you’ve done enough to me? You, Spider, don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?”

  I could tell that Carly wanted to say something. Yet nothing came out of her mouth.

  “Just let me be, Carly. I’ve moved on. Let us be. You’ll never have to worry about us again.” I clenched my teeth as a tear unwillingly escaped. I immediately swiped at it, as though it too had betrayed me.

  Carly grabbed her forehead with two fingers as if I were giving her a migraine, and her eyes went from my covered stomach to my face.

  “Please,” I begged.

  Then she took a piece of paper from her pocket and gave it to me. “This is my number. We need to talk, but not here. Not like this.”

  I had no answer.

  She grabbed my hand. “Promise me you’ll call me the minute you get home!”

  My eyes were round. “Okay.”

  I started to peddle back, keeping my eyes on her until I reached the main street again.

  Frances’s car pulled up, and I hopped in before she had even fully stopped.

  “Go. Go! Now!” I shouted before Carly could see who was in the car with me. The less she knew, the better.

  Frances stepped on the gas, and we peeled.

  “Was that who I think it was?” she asked me.

  I cracked the window and let Carly’s number fly in the wind. “Can you lend me some money?”

  “Sure,” she said, too slowly. “What’s going on?”

  “To answer your first question, yes, that was Carly. And what’s going on is that I need to go to the Cayman Islands. That’s where the money is, and it won’t be released unless I go there myself. In person.”

  “Does Carly know that—”

  “She knows now. And soon enough, the rest of her world will also know that I’m pregnant.”

  While Frances considered this information, I wished she would drive faster. “I don’t have a lot of time before they all come for me.”

  “Of course, I’ll lend you the money, but I need a bit of time to make arrangements,” she said, gripping the wheel.

  “What kind of arrangements do you need to make?”

  “I think I’m coming with you,” she said with hesitation. Then she turned to me and smiled. “I’m not going to let a pregnant lady fly by herself.”

  While I really didn’t want or need any company, there was no time for disagreements. Plus Frances was lending me the money. How could I refuse her company?

  “How much time do you need?” I wondered.

  She considered this and shot a glance at the phone on the console before answering. “A couple hours?”

  I sighed. “Okay. Drop me off at home, and I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  After Frances left me on the curb, I shot into the house and went digging for my passport. Griff was still out, and I was extremely grateful for this. What I was about to do, I knew he wouldn’t just disapprove; he would try to stop me from moving forward. But I just couldn’t stop.

  I ripped a page from my notebook and stared at it for a while. I put the tip of the pen to the paper.

  “I’m going to the Cayman Islands to seek the fortune that my brother left me so that I can start a pharmaceuticals black-market business, take over the underworld, and make everyone who ever hurt me pay. And this after I promised you that I was over all of this revenge stuff. Oh, and Spider now knows that I’m pregnant and will now be coming after me with everything he’s got.”

  This was the truth. This was what I had promised Griff I would always tell him. The truth.

  But the truth wasn’t what I wrote.

  “My Mom is really sick.” (True, in a sense.) “She’s in the hospital.” (Not true, even though it should be.) “I have to go see her.” (Definitely not true.) “I’ll call you as soon as I get there.” (If by there, I meant Cayman Islands, then yes, this was true. Though I wasn’t looking forward to that phone call.)

  I placed the note on his pillow.

  Before heading back out the door, I left Joseph a quick, simple note to take care of Meatball and grabbed the envelope of cash Maria and Darlene had left me. Two hundred bucks was all that was left.

  I had a few precious minutes before meeting Frances at the airport. I used them to go see my big ball of meat. Meatball was still under heavy drugs, snoring in a corner of the veterinary clinic. I had brought the yellow comforter from my bed so that he’d have something that smelled like us when he awoke.

  Even though he had no idea, I hugged him as though it were the last time I would ever see him. I rubbed under his chin. I rubbed behind his ears. Even though he had no idea.

  I was distracted. And driving through an airport when distracted was a really bad idea. The million one-way lanes that led in circles, the million parking lots—green P, red P, blue P—for each and every damn terminal! After going around in circles, expending a ridiculous amount of the fuel I couldn’t afford, and now running very late, I finally pulled up to a lot only to realize I was in the airport staff parking lot.

  Frances had booked us on a flight at noon. It was already eleven o’clock, and I hadn’t even checked in or gone through security.

  A car pulled up behind me, so that I couldn’t back out. I got out of the car, smiled, and waddled over. After a sob story of forgetting my parking pass and being very late for work, I got into the parking lot using the card of the maintenance guy behind me and scored a quick ride on his buggy to Terminal 3. Frances practically lifted me off my feet to drag me to the Cayman Airways’ check-in desk.

  “Make sure you hide your belly,” she whispered to me as I was pulling my passport out. “They won’t let you on if they know how far along your pregnancy is.”

  After a suspicious glance from security at my bulge, we barely made our flight.

  While I sighed with relief as the plane took off, Frances was digging her fingernails into the arms of her seat. Apparently, self-assured Frances was a nervous flier. There were a lot of things that I had learned about Frances in the short time we had spent together.

  “That man who came out of your apartment, was he your boyfriend?” I wondered in a whisper.

  “I guess.”

  “He seems a little old for you.”

  “He’s been kind to me.”

  “Do you have many of these kind boyfriends?”

  She had no response.

  When I had gone into Frances’s apartment, one thing had struck me: how very lovely and impersonal it was. It looked like a hotel suite. There were no pictures of her. And no pictures of her child. The fact that Daniel didn’t live with her was not because she didn’t care for him; it was because she didn’t want him in her world.

  “You’re too beautiful to be doing what you’re doing,” I told her.

  With wistful eyes, Frances watched the stewardess pass us with a drink cart. “What else am I going to do, Emily? I barely graduated from high school. All I have to offer is something nice to look at.”

  “Is that all you do? Give them something nice to look at? Or is it more than that?” The term escort with benefits seemed a little more appropriate for the circumstances.

  “The kind of guys whom I have to hang around with are not interested in playing house with me. At least I get paid for doing something I’m good at. Whatever money I get, I send to Daniel. For a time when I will have absolutely nothing else to offer.”

  “Or for a time when you come back to your son in a body bag.”


  “You play the cards that have been handed to you. Daniel’s better off without me in his life. At least he’ll never have to worry about money like I have.”

  It was hard for me to imagine that a beautiful girl like Frances could think so little of herself.

  “What happened to the money my brother left you?”

  Her lips stretched thin. “Gone.”

  “How?”

  The second flight attendant came up with a drink cart. Frances ordered a double vodka.

  “What happened to the money?” I asked her again.

  “I suppose one can call it a business deal gone bad.”

  “You mean someone took the money from you. One of your kind boyfriends?” I regretted saying this as soon as the words came out of my mouth.

  Frances took one small sip of her drink as though testing it, and then brought the plastic glass back to her lips, downing the rest of her double vodka in one gulp. It didn’t matter how she had lost the money. The fact was that it was gone and that she needed to prostitute herself to keep food on the table. I was a self-righteous rich girl.

  The flight was only about four hours. As the plane prepared for landing, I turned to Frances. “This money. It should be yours and Daniel’s. Not mine. You know I would give it all to you if I could. Right?”

  Frances smirked as she straightened her back and pulled on her blouse to get the travel wrinkles out. “Of course. I understand—”

  “I’m not finished. I can’t give you all of the money right now. But I can split it with you and with Daniel. You can each have a third of whatever money Bill left behind. I’ll take the other third. I don’t know how much that will be, but whatever I do take, I will pay you back as soon as I possibly can.” I knew Bill would have probably wanted me to keep at least some of the money, but I knew I could make my own. I wouldn’t need it forever. Frances would.

  She frowned. “Why would you ever do that? You barely know me or my son.”

  I waited for her to look at me before answering. “I don’t know what it’s like to have a real family. I lost it all when Bill died. But Daniel is Bill’s son; he has some of Bill in him. That makes us family.” While Frances went quiet, I chuckled. “Don’t worry. I won’t show up uninvited to your Christmas dinner or Easter-egg hunt. But I just want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, you’re part of my family.”