The Infamous Frankie Lorde 1, page 10
I had to think about this for a second. There had been so many. And what seemed stupid to me might not be all that stupid to someone else. Case in point, Ollie’s obsession with cars.
“Um…can I choose two?” I asked finally.
“Sure,” Ollie said.
“One guy we conned in England spent a small fortune on custom armored suits—for his guinea pigs,” I said, remembering the tiny creatures wearing the heavy outfits.
“No way!” Ollie said, laughing.
“Yup,” I said. “You should’ve heard the noise they made running around the chateau. You think hamster wheels keep people up at night? This was on a whole other level.”
“Man,” Ollie said. “Well, I can’t imagine anything dumber than that.”
“I have three words for you,” I said, building the suspense with a big pause. “Gold. Toilet. Paper.”
Ollie’s mouth dropped open and remained there as he processed what I’d said.
“For real?” he asked when he’d finally regained his voice. “Like, dudes wipe their butts with it?”
“They might as well be using hundred-dollar bills every time they go to the bathroom,” I said, smiling at the look on Ollie’s face.
“Well, when you waste your money on things like that, don’t you sort of deserve to be robbed?” he asked with a shake of his head.
“Totally,” I agreed. “I like to think I’m doing them a favor. Like a cautionary tale, if you will. Buy stupid stuff, lose stupid stuff.”
“You’re saving them from themselves,” Ollie put in. “In a way, you’re actually a hero.”
“I knew I liked you for a reason,” I said, giving him a wink and letting out a little laugh.
We fell silent again as I continued to read through articles and features on Christian Miles. After ten more minutes, I pushed back my chair and stretched my arms over my head.
“I’ll keep looking for stuff online, but I think we’re better off just waiting until we’re inside to see everything he’s got,” I said. “How does tomorrow look for you? After school, say around three? It’ll give us enough time to look around before I have to be home.”
Ollie blinked at me incredulously.
“You’re talking tomorrow tomorrow?” he asked, sounding dazed.
I nodded like I didn’t understand the confusion.
“As in, we go home, sleep, wake up, and it’s tomorrow tomorrow?” he asked.
“Is there another definition of tomorrow that I’m not aware of?” I said to no one in particular.
Ollie sat down hard in a nearby chair.
“Isn’t that like…fast?” he asked.
“No time like the present,” I said. When I saw the frozen look on his face, I softened. “Look, you’ve been a big help so far, but you don’t have to go any further with this. Not everyone’s meant for this sort of thing.”
“No,” he said shakily, then sat up straighter in his seat. “I said I was in and I’m in. I just thought there’d be more…prep? Like, don’t you need to teach me how to climb through windows and pick locks? Isn’t there some crazy gymnastics routine I have to practice so I can get through the maze of infrared lights that will trip his alarms?”
Now it was my turn to look at him blankly.
“You want to learn gymnastics?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.
Ollie let out an exasperated sigh. “Well, aren’t there tricks I need to be able to do to get to the gold? Like, all that ninja stuff they do in those Ocean’s Eleven movies?”
“Can you do a backbend?” I asked slowly.
“No,” he said.
“Then what makes you think you can learn gymnastics well enough to do some ninja routine?”
“I don’t know!” Ollie exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air and causing the few people in the library to turn around and stare. “I just thought maybe I could learn.”
“If you want to learn gymnastics, take a class. I think you could get PE credit for it at school,” I said as an afterthought. “If you want to be a thief, you need to use the skills you already have.”
Ollie paused as he took this in.
“But I don’t have any skills,” he said finally.
I gave him a sly smile as I walked over to him and placed my hand on his shoulder.
“Trust me, you have just the skills we need for tomorrow,” I said, and clapped him hard on the back before walking away.
“Should I be scared?” Ollie called after me. When I didn’t answer, he added, “I feel like I should be scared. Frankie? Frankie!”
Entry Twenty-Two
I love playing dress-up.
There, I said it.
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve taken any chance I have to transform into someone else. It isn’t because I didn’t like being me. If I weren’t me all the time already, I’d probably want to be me.
No. I like playing dress-up because it’s exhilarating to step into someone else’s shoes. When you put on a costume, you can do anything. Be anyone. A zookeeper. A princess. A witch with magical powers. A rich debutante. They’re all at your fingertips as long as you have the right tools.
This is probably the one thing Ollie and I have in common. We’re both natural-born performers.
Only, whereas Ollie’s in it for the fame and attention, I’m in it for the thrill. There’s something about taking on another personality, crafting a life that’s so unlike your own that it stretches the limits of your imagination, that is the ultimate high. And who’s to say that you aren’t really Hilda, the Swedish exchange student visiting her aunt in the States for the first time? No one. Well, except for maybe your dad and partner, who knows that you’re actually Frankie, the girl who doesn’t even like eating Swedish meatballs and has only seen Sweden on a map.
But to the majority of the world at large, I can be Hilda if I want to.
That is, if the situation calls for a Swedish exchange student.
Becoming someone else—even for a short time—is one of the best parts about the job. I know it sounds crazy, but in a weird way, it’s what makes me, me.
And I could tell it was the same for Ollie. That’s why I knew he’d be perfect for phase one of my plan.
“So this is what a cop’s house looks like,” Ollie said after I’d pulled open our front door after school the next day.
“Detective,” I corrected again, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I cringed a little anytime someone said the word cop now. Like it was a bad word or something. “And yeah. Is it everything you expected and more?”
“Eh,” Ollie said, shrugging. “Not quite broody enough. And shouldn’t we be in black-and-white?”
“I’ll get right on that,” I said, noting his reference to the old-school noir films. “In the meantime, I have something for you that you might like even better.”
“Oh, goody!” Ollie said, clapping his hands together gleefully as he followed me up the stairs.
“Ta-dah!” I called out, and threw open my bedroom door grandly.
Ollie’s grin slid from his face as he stepped inside slowly.
“Wow,” he said with zero enthusiasm. “It’s a girl’s bedroom. However will I contain myself.”
“This is where the magic happens,” I explained, expecting a little more fanfare at the reveal.
Ollie raised his eyebrow at me skeptically.
“This is where phase one of our plan begins,” I said with a smile. “Right here. In this room.”
“Okay,” Ollie said, sounding a little more interested than before but displaying none of the excitement I was feeling.
I quickly moved over to the bed and picked up the two outfits I’d laid out as soon as I’d gotten home. Without saying anything else, I turned around and held them up for him to see.
“Oh, wow. Okay,” Ollie said after he’d had a chance to recover. “Gray isn’t really my color—I tend to go for more…splashy shades? Fuchsia, turquoise, colors that have more than one syllable in them. And no offense, but I don’t think anyone can pull off the jumpsuit look, except for maybe Queen Bey, but it was sweet of you to think of me—”
“These are our disguises,” I said, cutting him off. “We’re going into Miles’s posing as high-end watch cleaners. These are our uniforms.”
“Ohhhhhh,” Ollie said, finally getting it. “So we’re supposed to look drab!”
“Not drab,” I countered, a little annoyed he was trying to chime in on anything involving the con. “The point is to fade into the background. Not stand out.”
Ollie grabbed the jumpsuit out of my waiting hand and looked at it with what could only be described as thinly veiled revulsion.
“Well, we certainly won’t stand out in this,” he said under his breath.
“Oh, calm down,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You can change back into your ultrafab clothes when we’re done.”
“Are you sure this is going to be enough for them to believe we’re professional watch cleaners?” Ollie said doubtfully. “No offense, but won’t you just look like a kid dressing up in her mom’s clothes?”
I gave him a look that told him I was offended.
“Not when I’m done getting ready,” I said. “Remember, Ollie, this isn’t my first time at the rodeo.”
It was clear I was reminding him that he was the novice here. After that, he shut up.
“Now, I’m about to show you something that only one other person in the entire world has ever seen,” I said, taking a few steps away from Ollie. I suddenly felt shy but forced myself to push forward through the awkwardness.
Ollie looked just as nervous as I felt, and he began to fidget with the material of his new uniform while training his eyes on the ground.
“You don’t have to, really—” he began.
“This,” I said, unlocking the bolts on my trunk, “is my thieves’ tool kit.”
Ollie raised his eyes slowly until they were trained on the now fully exposed red trunk in front of him. His eyes widened as he took a tentative step toward it.
“Oh!” he exclaimed as he saw what was stashed inside. He looked back at me as if asking for permission to go further. I nodded encouragingly.
Kneeling beside him on the floor, I began to take things out gingerly. There were dozens of wigs. Short blond ones. Long dark ones. Mousy brown ones. Every type of hairstyle a person could want. And they were high-quality, too. There’s no point in wearing a disguise if people can tell it’s a disguise.
Below the wigs was my makeup kit. It held everything from foundation, eye makeup, and lipstick to prosthetics and special molding clay to completely change a person’s appearance.
There were bags of jewelry, some of it costume, while other pieces were real—and real expensive. Those, I’d picked up at different jobs along the way and only wore when the occasion called for it.
Tucked down at the bottom were outfits folded neatly and stored inside individual clear bags, each labeled with a code word so I could find it easily. But if I was being honest, I didn’t really need the labels. As soon as I saw each bag I knew exactly what the outfit looked like and when I’d worn it.
It was rare that I’d wear a job outfit twice. This wasn’t for the same reason that wealthy or famous people never repeat clothes. My reasoning was that each con was so unique it truly called for its own cover. But there was also the fact that memory is a funny thing. Almost anything can trigger a person’s memory, and the last thing you want is for a shirt or dress to lead your mark back to you.
So outfits went into the vault, personas were finely crafted, and nothing was used that was a reflection of the real me.
Every thief has a tool kit and this was mine.
“What’s in that?” Ollie asked when we’d reached the red-velvet-covered bottom, only to reveal an even more elaborate black box inside. It wasn’t crude like a tackle box or something a handyman would keep. It also wasn’t anything girly like a jewelry box. It was bigger than a bread box, black and sleek with different designs carved all over it. It managed to look both modern and ancient at the same time and it was one of my most prized possessions.
“This is my treasure box,” I said, picking it up and holding it lovingly. “It’s where I hide my most important things.”
I slid a hand along the outside and felt its coolness against my fingertips.
“What kinds of things?” Ollie asked, sounding mesmerized.
I looked at him with mischief in my eyes.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I said, and placed it back in the bottom of the trunk.
Ollie opened his mouth in an objection, but I held up my hand to stop him.
“A thief has to have some secrets,” I explained, like the conversation was over. “Now, let’s get moving. We’ve got a job to do.”
Entry Twenty-Three
Our transformation from middle school students to professional watch cleaners took all of forty-five minutes, but the result was drastic. After adding some wrinkles to both of our faces to age us a bit, we both chose wigs—mine was a black shoulder-length bob; Ollie went a few shades lighter with hair that grazed his shoulders. Accessories are key to rounding out any good costume, so I threw on a pair of oversized nerd glasses and a dainty nose ring, then tossed Ollie a hat that read TIME AFTER TIME.
Time After Time was the name of our fictional watch-cleaning company. Our logo consisted of the name superimposed on the face of a watch. I’d come up with the name myself but had created the logo using Photoshop and a stock image of an expensive watch I’d found online. Then I’d sent the logo over to a company at the mall that would place any logo or photo on just about anything you could think of.
Within an hour, I had Ollie’s hat, a dozen fake business cards, and two patches that I affixed to our so-called drab gray uniforms—which were bought in cash, I might add, at a uniform supply store. They were originally meant to be hospital scrubs or janitorial staff gear, I think, but with a few minor changes, they’d become our watch cleaning company’s uniform of choice.
All in all, it had been pretty easy.
Once we’d slipped on our jumpsuits, we stood in front of my floor-length mirror and admired our work.
“Not bad,” I said, nodding.
“Are you kidding?” Ollie said. “We look like totally different people. I don’t even think my mom would recognize me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said, looking at him with a more critical eye.
There were things he’d need to learn if he was going to continue conning in the future. Like, changing his posture when he took on a different persona. Because the way he stood there—hand on his hip like he was constantly waiting for someone, chin tilted down so he could give you a bit of side-eye, tapping his toes to the sound of an unheard beat—was so utterly Ollie that it would be easy for anyone who knew him to figure out it was him underneath the wig and makeup.
I made a mental note to have him work on that later. When we didn’t have a house to break into.
It took us a half hour to get out to Miles’s estate—partly because he lived in an area of town called Back Country, which all the megamillionaires called home, and partly because we had to take public transportation to get there.
And the bus only went so far into the boonies before we found ourselves having to walk the rest of the way. Which in our heavy jumpsuits and accompanying watch-cleaning gear proved more difficult than we’d expected.
“Tell me again why we couldn’t just Uber?” Ollie asked, the sweat on his brow threatening to remove all the makeup I’d meticulously applied earlier.
“Duh,” I said. “Do you really want to leave a detailed map of your whereabouts today, on one of the most-used apps in the world? I think not.”
“Right,” Ollie said with a sigh.
After a few more minutes, he groaned and said, “Please tell me we’re almost there. I’m begging you.”
“We’re almost there,” I answered automatically.
I would’ve said it even if it weren’t true, just to get Ollie to stop complaining. But in this case, I wasn’t lying.
Up ahead of us, I could see a tiny booth, the size of a shed, coming into view. It was like a mirage in the desert and at first I had to blink to make sure it wasn’t going to disappear on me.
But a look at my burner phone—I’d grabbed two prepaid cell phones at the mall when I’d picked up our other gear so that Ollie and I could stay in constant communication at Miles’s house—confirmed we were indeed coming up on the home of Christian Miles, billionaire real estate mogul.
“Oh, thank God,” Ollie let out as he practically gasped for air. “Do you have a Gatorade or something? A PowerBar? I think I need electrolytes. I feel like I just ran a marathon.”
I rolled my eyes and handed him a water from my watch-cleaning bag.
“How about you let me do all the talking here?” I suggested. “You can be like…my silent partner. It’ll be a part of your cover.”
I waited for the pushback from Ollie, expecting him to complain about his lack of a speaking role in our plan, but he just nodded.
“Good,” he said between breaths, “idea.”
“Great,” I said in a low voice as we got closer to the security gate. “Now, be cool.”
“Cool,” he puffed out. “Right.”
“Can I help you?” a man asked as he stepped out from his spot inside the security booth.
The guy wore what looked like a perma-frown and immediately crossed his arms over his chest, forcing his muscles to protrude even farther from his body. The stance was meant to be intimidating, and I had to admit, it was working.
“Yeah,” I said in a bored-sounding voice a few octaves below my own. “We’re here to clean Mr. Miles’s watches? We should be on the list.”
The security guard raised his eyebrow, then slowly went back to his booth, returning with a clipboard of papers.
