A Penny Earned, page 6
A slow walkthrough of the house checking closets and doors yielded no unwanted company. Fred exited the home to collect his wife and to begin setting up shop. The air mattress, along with his wife’s luggage, came inside the home and went up the stairs to the main bedroom.
“I’ll work on getting this blown up,” Penny said, watching Fred bring in the card table and two folding chairs.
“Roger that,” he replied, leaving her alone to complete her task while he headed for the woods to add fuel to the generator.
It didn’t take Fred long to top off the tank. He made it to the house just as a sprinkle of rain began. Thinking better of it, sleeping downstairs where the fireplace was might be a better idea to which Penny agreed. He dragged the half-inflated mattress down the stairs to make a resting spot for them for the night.
Creaks and groans came from the old wood frame of the home. Penny continued to work on the air mattress and Fred started a fire in the large fireplace. Sparks ignited in the shreds of kindling, lighting the room. Slowly he added a log, followed by another until a soft heat eased its way into the space. The smell of dust and years of bug poop faded into the background, slowly replaced by the smell of the wood burning. He stood in front of the fireplace, staring into the flames.
“Penny for your thoughts,” His wife asked him.
“Just watching the fire?”
“Fred, can I ask you about your childhood?” she ventured, adjusting the mattress and adding a fitted sheet.
“Not much to tell,” he said. “I grew up in both homes, the one I live in, and the one my parents have. Summers were spent in New Haven with my grandparents, and Pop-Pop, that’s what we called grandad, loved to sail. He taught me how, along with fishing.”
“Ah, I was wondering,” she said, adding a flat sheet to the mattress.
He half turned, asking over his shoulder, “And your childhood?”
“Nothing remarkable,” she said. “My father is a lawyer, worked on a lot of civil rights stuff and civil liberties cases before running for office, then getting elected. Funny thing is, he never put his face on any of the campaign posters, just his name. He was elected based on the name of Jerry van Cardin. At his swearing in is when most people found out he was black.”
Fred turned to face her. “How did that impact your childhood?”
“My father is an amazing lawyer and an even better statesman,” she said. “My mother is a superb librarian. My fondest memories as a child were the story times she would do at our local library when she was the children’s librarian. She actually made a Nine and Three Quarters platform in the children’s library section. There was a mural of the train disappearing into the wall. It made me want to tell stories and have these grand adventures.”
Penny’s face lit up as she spoke. For a flash of a second, he envisioned the face of their daughter, sitting and listening to him tell stories. He was smiling as he walked over, took a seat on the floor and crossed his legs, lotus style.
“My dad loved the actual adventures,” Fred said. “One Spring Break, I kid you not, we flew to Nepal of all places. I was amazed by the sights, sounds, and smells of it all. I saw these kids playing with a bunch of straw baskets, so I went over. Hey, they were kids, I was a kid, kidding is universal right?”
She shook her head no. The things she’d learned about children in other cultures didn’t always jibe with the things she knew about children in her own. Those kids were trained to be hunters and predators− the primary focus being on survival.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Fred said. “One of the baskets had a cobra in it, and the kid threatened me with a deadly snake if I didn’t give him my money. I didn’t have any money, so I had to give up my shoes.”
“And what lesson did you learn from that, Dr. Quartermaine?”
“I learned that kids are assholes,” he said, laughing. “From that point forward, if I ever saw a kid, no matter how old I was, my mind registered the kid was up to no good and planning to steal my shoes.”
They both burst into laughter. The chuckles eased off, leaving them staring deeply into each other’s eyes. A moment had arrived to talk, and Penny eased into it.
She lowered her gaze when she asked her husband, “Are you scared about this child, about us?”
“Of course,” he replied without a moment of hesitation. “I can’t think of any person in their right mind who wouldn’t be terrified of the idea of being responsible for a helpless little creature. I’m not afraid to do it, but yes, it scares me a bit.”
Penny wanted to know, “And being married to me. Does that scare you a bit as well?”
“Hell yeah,” he said, chuckling again. “You know, and let me see if I can get this out of my head in the right order without stepping on my dick. There’s a saying, if you find a penny heads down, you’re supposed to flip it over so the next person who comes across it earns the good windfall. If you pick up the penny tail side up, you will have bad luck.”
Her eyes grew wide at his effort to sidestep the toe crunch on his member, but he’d failed. Penny, trying not to allow her hackles to rise to an unredeemable level, straightened her back. She stated, monitoring the tone and inflection of her voice, “I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean, Fred!”
“It means we walked into all of this ass backwards, and we are being hit left and right with a slew of misfortunate events,” he said, giving her that smile. She knew that smile. Fred Quartermaine was providing the same damned smile which got her pregnant and made her forget to take her birth control.
“Still unclear,” she replied, unwillingly smiling at him while waiting for the sexy punch line.
“It means, my wife, my lover, the mother of my soon-to-be child,” he said, leaning forward, reaching for her, “I’m going to have to flip your ass over and try all of it again. I am going to start here...kiss here, stroke here, and work my way around the rest until fortune finds favor in us.”
“Fortune does favor the bold,” she replied, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair.
“And I’m feeling bold as hell,” he said, pulling Penny onto the air mattress. He began with a slow kiss that ended in a passionate connection. Fred didn’t hold back as he made love to his wife, bringing them to a lusty finish, leaving them both covered in sweat and breathing hard.
The embers from the fire offered a soft glow to the room as he held her close. He provided a kiss to the top of her head, pulling her frame into his. He knew what she needed to hear from him and he didn’t hesitate to provide.
“I’m not scared to love you,” Fred confessed. “I’m not scared to raise a family with you and to tackle what comes next for us. Penny, I am all in.”
“Good, because I’m putting away my running shoes to settle in and settle down,” she told him. “I want a life with you, Sunday rides in the Riveria, boats rides on Saturday and estate sales whenever the mood hits. It will be a good life.”
“The mood has already hit,” he offered, allowing his head to sink into the pillow. In seconds, he was out like a light, leaving Penny to stare into the fireplace, watching the flames until her eyes also grew heavy.
HIS ARMS FELT HEAVY. As a matter of inquiry, he mentally assessed his entire body, noticing the weight of his whole being, and immediately concluding that something, was indeed wrong. A groan eased from between his lips as he attempted to turn over, expecting to hear the complaint from the air mattress or Penny. He got neither.
The air in the mattress was no longer inflating the sleep apparatus. During the night, the air eased out of a slit in the mattress, leaving them on the floor. Fred felt his lip which also felt wrong. He grouched at the discomfort waking Penny.
She turned to look at his face, the sleep in her eyes ebbing away as she looked at his mouth, noticing a big difference. Her finger reached out to touch his upper lip, making her husband flinch.
“What in the hell?” Fred said, touching the swollen upper lip. “I know something didn’t bite me; we had the house sprayed.”
Penny was sitting up and looking about at the flattened air mattress, but then she froze. Her hand went to Fred’s arm, the eyes growing wide. She held up a finger to her own lips, asking him to be quiet as they both listened. It wasn’t what they heard, but what they smelled.
Fred jumped to his feet. The 9mm he retrieved from his boots sitting nearby, holding it low. He waved for Penny to come to his side. Protectively, he pushed her behind him. When he looked back to offer instructions, he spotted the poker iron in between her hands. He arched his eyebrows in approval with a head nod.
Step by step, they made their way to the kitchen where the smell of coffee filled the air. Fred didn’t do electric coffee makers, so it wasn’t as if he or Penny had set it before going to bed. Someone was in the house.
He raised the weapon, coming around the corner, prepared to squeeze off a round, if need be, to protect himself and his woman. However, the heroic action came to a quick stop when he spotted the large frame of Cotter Wihlborg. Fred sighed in relief, but also concern.
“How did you get in the house?” Fred asked.
“Easy. I pressed really hard on the lock in the sunroom, and it gave way,” Cotter told them. “I came to see about finding the gold.”
“What gold?”
“The gold Sellers stole some years back. It was a bunch of gold bullion in a shipment to Ft. Knox that was lifted by some clever thieves and was never found,” Cotter told them. “Years ago, when I was first contracted, one of the things I was sent to find was the missing bullion −never did, and I can find a flea on a dog with mange.”
“Okay, too early for that kind of analogy and imagery,” Fred said, turning to look at Penny. The color seemed to drain from her face, then a God-awful sound came from her gut as she took off at a sprint to the downstairs water closet.
The sound of her retching made Fred make a start for the direction, but Cotter grabbed his arm. He shook his head no, poured a cup of coffee, and passed it to him. Fred thanked him, his eyes venturing back to the hallway where Penny had run.
“How far along is she?” Cotter inquired.
“A couple of months,” Fred answered. “Shouldn’t I go check on her?”
“Nope,” Cotter said. “There will be a lot of that, then just as it starts, it stops. When it stops, they eat the house. I hope you make decent money, or at least we can find what that snake Sellers did with the gold from the heist.”
“What heist, and why are you here again?”
“The gold is in the house,” Cotter said. “This is where the paths lead, but I never could find it. Meaning, it is here in this house, but where is the question? Its location and disguise will be clever. Sellers was cunning. Philoneus, not so much. He was simply a dumbass who found a means to bilk people out of money. The two of them together were sickening, but that gold is in this house.”
Fred half heard most of what Cotter said. His focus was on Penny. Cotter could see the concern.
He said to Fred, “Listen, you’re just at the start of this thing. Choose where you’re going to stick your nose, so you have some balance. If you run in there now, holding her hair every damn time she pukes, she’s gonna want you there to hold her hair every time she pukes. The one time you don’t come a runnin’ is the one thing she will hold over your head for the rest of your days.”
“You say that with authority and conviction. I assume you had a similar experience?”
“It wasn’t hair holding, but deer gutting,” Cotter said. “My wife, Judy, took down a buck. He was a big fucker, and I helped. I helped get it on the rack, roped it up, and processed it. The next time, she got what looked like a fawn...hell, at first, I thought she shot a dog, and I didn’t offer to help. Lord, I had to accept an assignment across country to avoid her wrath.”
Fred’s head was cocked to one side. “You’re telling me all this, why?”
“Men need to have man talk. You know, share ideas, fears, experiences. We never talk about the fears. We skirt around them, and we end up with high blood pressure from holding in all the shit we should’ve shared with another dude during guy talk,” Cotter said, grabbing eggs from the fridge.
“Am I supposed to confide in you? I don’t even know you, and again, why are you here?”
“A pool,” Cotter said. “I want a heated pool. You know, the in-ground kind with one of them greenhouse covered rooms around it, so I can swim all year and stay fit. Hey, what’s up with your lip?”
“I don’t know. I think this is what happens when you wake up in an alternate universe,” Fred said. “Why are you here to get a heated pool?”
“No, Dr. Nerd Man, I am here to find the gold and split it with you so I can get my share and have me an in-ground heated pool installed and swim year-round to keep all this sexy,” Cotter said.
“What gold!?”
“The gold that Sellers contracted a bunch of hit men to steal,” Cotter said. “He double crossed them, stole all the money, then disappeared. Years later, he showed up here in this house, putting down money, which he said he’d earned from some other Incan shit he found in Central America and sold. Then he started building this house. Hey, what is up with your lip? Does it hurt?”
Cotter scrambled the eggs, pulled hot biscuits from the oven, and produced a jar of jam that wasn’t in the home when they’d returned. There was also a tray of freshly crisped bacon which he placed on a couple of napkin sheets to drain before Penny returned to the kitchen. On a paper plate, Cotter passed Penny a biscuit with a pat of butter and a bit of jam.
“Coffee on that stomach ain’t gonna work,” he told her.
“Probably not,” she said. “Cotter, why are you here?”
“Sellers hid a bunch of gold years ago, and I think it’s in this house,” he said. “I want to help you find it and split the money with you so I can get an inground heated pool inside of one of those greenhouse kinds of enclosures. Then, I can swim year-round and maintain my sexy for my Judy.”
“What gold?” Penny asked.
“Sellers stole the gold from a Wells Fargo shipment headed to Ft. Knox in the 80s, but bullions are hard to fence, you know. So, he hid them. Years later, I was contracted to see if I could find the bullion, and all roads led here. I had no access to the house, but I do now, and the gold is here. I’ll help you find it and you’ll give me enough to get my pool built so I can swim all year.”
Fred pulled old ice cubes from the freezer, placing the items in a napkin and pressing the coolness to his lip in an effort to stop the throb. He didn’t understand any of this and simply wanted to go home. The expression on his face said everything that his swollen lip couldn’t utter.
Cotter read his body language. “I am here because Sellers, again, was an asshole. However, I learned how the man thought. Just as I was close to breaking the codes of his little cryptic messages, the bastard got bit buy a relative and died.”
Penny said, “Didn’t he get bit by a snake...oh, I get it.”
Fred pulled the ice away from his mouth, “Why do you think we can’t figure it out on our own?”
“The house is empty, and you haven’t found it,” Cotter said. “It’s not just about the clues. Sellers was twisted. I mean dark closet kind of twisted. Some of the parties I heard they had here were damn near Caligulan, complete with hamsters. However, it’s not just his cryptic messages. It’s a puzzle. To find the gold, you have to solve the puzzle.”
“What puzzle?” Fred asked, becoming annoyed.
“Okay, around this house are six things that don’t belong together, you know, like the thing on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other,” Cotter said. “Individually, the items appear to be random. However, when you begin to put the items together, they will form a pattern, a meaning, a collective. We have to put the pieces together.”
“We can do that without you,” Fred said again.
“You have book smarts,” Cotter said. “Sellers and Philoneus grew up as hustlers. To beat a hustler, you have to think like one or be one yourself. No offense, Dr. Fred, but if I wanted to know the mating rituals of the pygmy shrew, you’d be my guy. I just want a pool. This is easy. You don’t even want to get me started on what I had to do to get another house and move out of that sod shack my wife built with the living roof that caved in...Jesus. The nightmares.”
Fred picked up a piece of bacon. “Now I’m invested in this nonsense and want to know why you were living in a sod house built by your wife and what you had to do to get another home. Wait, did you build the other home?”
Cotter smiled, a thing he should never do, as Fred shrank back. “God Lord, man, you look like a man who just ate the last cupcake at the bake sale. Stop smiling; you’re scaring my wife.”
Penny shuddered, “I’m okay, but I too want to know.”
“I didn’t build the house; it was gifted to me when I went into Los Angeles to rescue the Fer de Lance’s son from a bunch of human traffickers in a ship. I said I’d do it, and a Blakemore gave me a house.”
“Blakemore, as in...Texas,” Penny asked.
“As in Texas,” Cotter said. “Listen, I make good at my job, but I hate my job. I want to retire, teach some classes, and spend time with my kids. I put away every penny I can so when the time comes, we are okay. A pool is a luxury, and I want it for me and my family. This is a win-win.”
Fred saw it. He understood where the man was coming from. Instead of fighting against what was coming anyway, he simply said, “The walls are closing in.”
Penny added, “If these walls could talk.”
Leaving Cotter to speak the obvious, “Yeah, but which walls? The house is built around the original home owned by Frank James.”
If a lightbulb could be heard turning on, the room became illuminated with a myriad of ideas. Then Fred thought about his assistant. This is usually where she’d walk in the room to point out a detail he’d missed. A crooked smile formed on his mouth when he tried to smile through the swollen lips.
“Test the walls for powder,” Fred said.
