Fool's Moon, page 24
Ophelia gave her a playful head-butt. “Okay, we get it. Scary pit bull. But that’s a good plan, too. We keep an eye on Ruby, and you keep an eye on everyone. Besides, like I always tell you, with that white fur you stick out in the dark like a sore paw.”
Leaving Zuki on guard, the two cats lightly leapt from the truck and trotted down the familiar cobbled path toward Luciana’s little house. The breeze from the nearby ocean was cool this night, and smelled like Ophelia remembered … like salt and fish and perfumy flowers. Too bad Ruby couldn’t live here instead of the son, she longingly thought. Then everything would be almost like it used to be.
Almost.
The light from the windows was bright, and she had to squint as she waited the couple of seconds for her feline eyes to adjust to the abundance of artificial light. She and Brandon crept through the edging of short, yellow and green bushes to reach the front window. They peered inside and were rewarded by the sight of Ruby and Luis … and, the son.
Ophelia gave a reflexive hiss. She’d like to see Zuki bite the son. Maybe twice!
Brandon nudged her. “Quiet,” he murmured, straining his fuzzy black ears toward the window glass. “Can you hear what they’re saying?”
She flicked her ears back and forth a couple of times. “Some of it. Boring stuff—sorry for your loss, valued employee, blah, blah—but nothing bad. But look at the son. He looks funny, doesn’t he?”
For, though he was looking serious and nodding, she could see him making little quick moves with his hands. Almost like a mouse with a piece of cheese worried that another mouse as going to steal it.
Her brother nodded. “I know what you mean. He wants them to leave, but he can’t say that to them.” He snickered a little and added, “If he had a tail, it would be flipping about worse than yours.”
Ophelia narrowed her green eyes and gave him a not-so-sisterly cuff that made him snicker even more. Her tail might be flipping just a little, but that was only because she was keeping the tree frogs in the bushes at bay. She wasn’t nervous.
The son, meanwhile, was pointing at a stack of empty cardboard boxes in the middle of the room. Next to them were a couple of larger boxes that Ophelia could see were filled with the housekeeper’s clothes. And Luciana’s pictures of people in long robes were off the walls and propped like they were real live humans sitting on the couch and chair.
“Do you think that the son is going to help put things in those boxes?” Ophelia whispered.
Brandon snorted. “I doubt it. That would mean he had to work, and he doesn’t like to do that. He likes to order around other humans, remember?”
As he said that, Ruby picked up a box and headed toward the small kitchen. The PAWN human took a box, too, and followed her. Not surprisingly, the only thing the son picked up was a bottle of water as he stared after them, like the three roosters did when waiting to spy a tasty bug to eat.
Brandon rested his chin on the window sill. “Maybe Ruby didn’t need us after all. None of the boxes are big enough for a human, and no one is doing anything interesting.”
“They just started,” Ophelia countered. “Something is bound to happen soon.”
As she said it, they both heard what sounded like music playing. The son reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a phone. He turned his back and whispered into it.
“I can’t hear what he’s saying,” Brandon murmured, stretching out his ears. “Can you?”
Ophelia flicked her ears again. “No. He’s too far away, and he’s whispering like a mouse. Wait, look!”
As they watched, he put away the phone and went over to where Ruby and Luis were packing. They exchanged a few words, some of which Ophelia heard—appointment, unavoidable, back soon—and then the son walked toward the door.
“Quick, hide,” Ophelia hissed.
The pair crouched in the bushes and watched him exit the little house. But rather than going to the big house, like they expected, the man instead walked over to the long black car parked beneath the open room. He climbed inside it and started it up.
Brandon and Ophelia exchanged confused glances as the car rushed down the driveway toward the gate, which was already opening. A moment later, the car was gone and the gate already closing, leaving them and the two humans—and Zuki, of course—alone at the house.
Ophelia blinked. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“As long as Zuki keeps watch.”
“I will,” came the pit bull’s soft howl.
“Pa-a-a-arty!” Ophelia yowled as they rushed toward the gate leading to the pool.
“Did you hear a cat?” Ruby asked, straightening from the slow cooker she was wrapping and looking toward the door.
Luis shook his head. “Probably a night bird of some sort. There aren’t many cats roaming around the neighborhood in this part of town.”
“Maybe I should check on Zuki, just to be sure. Last thing we need is for her to be chasing after a stray.”
Leaving Luis to keep packing up Luciana’s dishes, Ruby set her box of pots and pans aside and hurried out to the truck. She found the pit bull sitting obediently in the truck bed, her broad muzzle resting on the tailgate’s upper edge. From the dog’s relaxed manner, it was pretty obvious there were no cats on the prowl.
“Good girl,” Ruby told her. “For being such an excellent watch pup, you deserve a treat.”
She grinned as Zuki’s ears perked up at the magic word, treat. Going to the cab, she pulled out the dog supplies and poured part of a bottled water into the folding nylon water bowl. Carrying that and a couple of pieces of chicken jerky (the good stuff, made in the USA), she returned to the truck bed.
While Zuki snacked and drank, Ruby took a moment to gather her thoughts. Meeting Terrence Givens had been an uncomfortable experience, knowing as she did what Luciana thought of him. In person, however, he’d seemed a bit less, well, evil than she’d prepared herself for him to be.
His greeting to her had been polite if not solicitous, but he’d seemed genuine in his acceptance of her condolences regarding his mother. Fortunately, he’d not objected to her presence—at least, not aloud—though she could sense that he seemed on edge about something.
It had been immediately obvious, however, that he wasn’t the type to be enticed by a Tarot card reading. She’d been a bit disappointed not to be able to use her prearranged deck to shake him up a little. On the other hand, she was glad she wasn’t going to have to clobber him with the deck either, as Luis had facetiously suggested.
Luciana’s quarters turned out to be what looked like an old guest house. While nowhere near the level of vintage luxury that the main house boasted, it had similar touches with its arched windows and Mexican tile accents. And the comfortable apartment was larger than it looked: a combination living room/dining room, a kitchenette, and a separate bedroom and bathroom.
She wondered how often Luis had been there before. Had he been a regular visitor, at some point he likely would have encountered the black cats, and vice versa. But man and felines had all seemed to be strangers to each other. So chances were that Luciana had done most of the visiting.
She’d been a bit surprised to see that some of Luciana’s things had already been packed. Maybe the day staff had gotten started on it, she surmised. She was pretty sure good old Terrence hadn’t been the one boxing his housekeeper’s clothes and makeup.
She and Luis had barely gotten started with the rest of the packing when Givens took a cell call and then proceeded to leave. His excuse was that he needed to consult with a client who was having an emergency. Since she wasn’t sure exactly what sort of work he did, or what sort of clients he had, she couldn’t judge if his explanation was real or manufactured. What she did know was that it meant she could take off her ball cap … and she and Luis could sort through Luciana’s small world without the man’s cool blue eyes keeping watch.
Though Ruby had been amazed that Givens would leave her and Luis alone on his multi-million-dollar estate while he went gallivanting about elsewhere.
Not as big a deal as you might think, Luis assured her when she said as much. Let’s just say that I’m known on Palm Beach.
Pawnbroker to the rich and famous? she had asked, earning a shrug from him and an echoing Let’s just say that I know where a few of the financial bodies are buried.
Which statement had left her even more curious. But for the moment, what mattered was going through Luciana’s things to see if perhaps the housekeeper had left any clue as to why she’d suspected Givens of wrongdoing. Because if it turned out that the man did have a hand in his mother’s death, bringing him to justice could be one last favor she and Luis could do for both women.
Twenty-Two
Satisfied that Zuki was doing fine, Ruby walked back into the guest house to find that Luis had filled another box in her absence. Now he was starting on the upper kitchen cabinets.
“No cats to be seen, and Zuki is just chillin’,” she reported. “You holding up okay?”
“Another couple of boxes and I should be finished in here,” he replied, not quite answering her question.
She decided not to press it. After all, she barely knew the man, and it wasn’t her place to help him through the grieving process. Instead, changing the subject, she said, “I guess Luciana liked to cook. She sure had a bit of everything as far as pots and pans and gadgets.”
“Well, it’s not surprising. In Cuba, you can’t just run off to your local Williams Sonoma and pick yourself up a spiralizer when you want one. I think she decided to indulge her inner chef once she arrived here.”
Ruby looked at him, surprised. Somehow, she’d figured Luciana had been in South Florida most of her life. The way he’d put it, it sounded like she was a recent immigrant. “So how long was your aunt living here in the states?”
“Only a few years. I can give you the CliffsNotes version of the old family history, if you want to hear it?”
When Ruby nodded her interest, he said, “It started with my grandfather. He and my father escaped Cuba on a raft with eight other people back in the early 1970s. My father was five at the time, but they figured he was old enough to pull his own weight, so they took him along. Aunt Luciana, she was only two, maybe three years old, so she and my grandmother stayed behind on the island. And, miraculously, all ten of those refugees made it to US territorial waters and were rescued by the Coast Guard. They all applied for citizenship and were accepted.”
Ruby nodded. “That’s kind of how it was for my half sister. Her father came over on a raft, too.”
But even before she’d connected with Rosa, life in Florida had by default given Ruby some familiarity with the thorny laws regarding Cuban immigrants. She knew that, in the sixties, crossing the strait and reaching US waters had been enough. But in the nineties, things had gotten more complicated. The US government had compromised with the Castro regime to make immigration into the US harder, the result of which was the wet foot-dry foot law.
Despite its fanciful name, the policy was a dead serious reinterpretation that required Cuban immigrants to reach dry land before they’d be allowed to remain and apply for citizenship. Intercepted at sea—even in the shallows—and they’d be returned to Cuba. Unlike horseshoes and hand grenades, almost touching shore didn’t count.
But that stricter policy was recently rescinded by the previous president right before he left office.
Normalizing relations with Cuba, they had termed it. What it actually meant was that Cuban refugees trying to slip into the country without going through proper channels were now to be treated like any other illegal immigrants … meaning they were returned to their homeland if they were discovered.
Luis, meanwhile, had pulled down a mixing bowl and was wrapping it in brown paper. Adding it to the box, he resumed the story.
“My grandfather always thought he’d somehow get my grandmother and aunt out of Cuba and bring them here, but it didn’t work out that way. But then, some years ago, Aunt Lu managed to find a spot on a boat with some friends of the family who had decided to escape. That group wasn’t quite as lucky. They’d drifted north and were maybe twenty yards off Jupiter Island”—a township further up the coast from Palm Beach, Ruby knew—“and were racing the Coast Guard to shore when their boat overturned.”
“Oh no,” Ruby gasped. “Did everyone make it?”
“It was pretty much fifty-fifty. One guy drowned, and a couple more were pulled from the water by the Coast Guard and sent back to Havana. But Luciana and two others made it to shore, meaning they were home free. She met up with my parents in Cleveland, applied for citizenship, and then decided after her first winter there that she hated the cold. So, she came back down here to live and eventually found the job as housekeeper to Mrs. Givens.”
Ruby nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak over the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. Talk about a cruel irony. Luciana had fled a Communist regime and survived a treacherous water crossing, making it to freedom, only to die in a tragic accident in her adopted country.
Clearing her throat, she managed, “Why don’t I start on the bedroom while you finish here.”
Mood thoughtful, she grabbed three more empty boxes and a stack of the wrapping paper and went into the tiny bedroom. Though most of Luciana’s clothes were already packed, her personal items—statues, books, a rosary hanging on the wall—still remained to be boxed.
Ruby started with the books. A handful had already been pulled from the small bookshelf and dumped on the bed. Accounting textbooks, along with a CPA test prep workbook. Interesting. It appeared that Luciana had been studying for a career beyond her role as housekeeper. Maybe this was what Luis had referred to the other day when he’d mentioned that his aunt was supposed to have been at class the night she died.
She picked up the books one at a time and carefully shook each volume before boxing them. The antiques shop owner, Lana, had once told her that she’d always find at least one interesting item left between the pages in any box of books she bought. Sometimes, the original owners did it deliberately and for safekeeping, as with money. Other times, they simply used something as a makeshift bookmark—photos, news clippings, or even the electric bill. Either way, the items were forgotten and ended up the spoils of whomever got the books next.
The remainder of Luciana’s library filled two boxes and were an eclectic mix of Spanish-language novels and biographies, English-language self-help and business books, and a couple of Spanish-English dictionaries. The most exciting thing she found hidden in any of them, however, was a coupon for a free chicken sandwich like the one she’d eaten on the way over.
Ruby put that freebie aside for Luis and set the third box on the bed, ready to start filling it. And then she heard Luis’s voice from the kitchen.
“Ruby, come take a look at this.”
Something in his tone made her drop the collection of throw pillows she was holding and rush into the other room. Luis was standing beside the kitchen countertop where, alongside a collection of canned and boxed foods, a fat stack of cash now lay.
Ruby’s eyes widened and she leaned closer. “Wow! How much do you think is there?”
“It’s two thousand, seven hundred and forty-two dollars, mostly in hundreds. I found it stashed inside one of those big stainless steel coffee tumblers sitting behind a bunch of mugs.”
“Wow,” Ruby repeated. Lowering her voice, she went on. “Do you think the money … I mean, did she get it … you know, is it … ?”
Luis gave her a pitying look. “We’re talking less than three grand here. It’s not bribe money, and it’s darned sure not drug money. It’s emergency cash … like for when your paycheck’s late, or there’s a hurricane and all the ATMs are down. I do the exact same thing. Besides, that’s not what I wanted you to see.”
Among the packaged pasta and rice and other staples was a tall box of generic sugar frosted cereal. Reaching into the box, Luis pulled out a gallon-sized, zip-style plastic bag. Except the bag wasn’t filled with cereal.
As Ruby watched in surprise, he extracted a thick sheaf of letter-size paper that had been tightly stuffed into it.
“Now you can get all suspicious,” he told her as he shuffled through the pages and then handed them to her. “I can’t say for sure, but it looks to me like Aunt Lu had been doing a little auditing of Mrs. Givens’s accounts.”
Ruby took the papers which, at first glance, appeared to be photocopies of bank documents. “Auditing? Luciana?” she echoed. “How would she—?”
And then she recalled the textbooks she’d just packed. She knew a few immigrants who’d been degreed professionals back in their home countries. But because of language barriers or lack of U.S. accreditation, these former white collar workers had been forced to take blue collar jobs to pay the bills.
And, too many times, people made assumptions about their educational level because of that.
“Wait,” she persisted, giving him a wary look. “Any chance your aunt used to be an accountant back in Cuba?”
“Got it in one,” he said with a nod. “She did my books on the side for a while, just to keep her hand in. But before she could go for her CPA here, she needed to take some post grad hours and work on getting more fluent in English.”
“I bet it was pretty tough, trying to do that on top of being a housekeeper on an estate like this. She probably had to keep it secret so she wouldn’t be fired.”
“Actually, Aunt Lu told me that Mrs. Givens found out about her classes a couple of years ago. Instead of being mad, the old lady actual did a private scholarship thing for her, paying for her tuition and books.”
A little noblesse oblige on Mrs. Givens’s part, Ruby thought in approval as she took a closer look at the paperwork.
In addition to the copies of bank statements, she saw sections from ledgers, along with a couple of letters from what appeared to be charities. Accounting was definitely not her personal forte, so the columns of numbers were pretty well indecipherable to her. But someone—likely Luciana—had circled a number of large figures in red. And, interestingly, all those figures reflected negative sums.
