Bernie’s Suitcases…
“What’s the big emergency?” Laura asked as she burst through the door.
She stopped short at the sight of us. Our misery must have shown. Laura took us straight to her wine cellar and pulled two bottles of her best stuff. Even with a wine glass in hand and having slugged down my second drink, I saw no way out. Doom beckoned. I was sure of it. “Bernie’s screwed Sharleen, straight from the grave.”
“There’s money everywhere. Millions,” Sharleen blurted. “And we don’t know where it came from… but I could be rich.”
Laura’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly.
Her Botox was giving out. Gallows humor. I stifled my need to chuckle.
“We’ve gone to the banks. It’s really there and we’re hoping you can figure out how it got there,” Sharleen said without stopping to breathe.
I gulped a mouthful of red wine and showed Laura Bernie’s books and then the computer printouts listing the other accounts with balances and the bank receipts which concurred with the print outs. Sharleen kept jumping in with blather that didn’t add anything. Which made matters worse. So, I appealed to her vanity and sent her into the kitchen to make sugar cookies. (Sharleen made sugar cookies worth dying for.) That got her out of our hair.
Laura never said a word while she studied the documents and then got on the computer. Twenty minutes or so went by before she yelled, “I want to see everything Bernie took on vacation.”
Sharleen stuck her head out of the kitchen, “Like his suitcases?”
“Well yes… But, they’ve already been searched. Did he take a brief case? A gym bag? Anything like that?”
Sharleen blinked twice before answering. “I don’t think so.”
“Sharleen, I need you to think hard.” Laura voice cut the air.
“I really don’t think he did.”
You were on your way to Vegas. Right?”
“Yes,”
“You go there every year?”
Sharleen bobbed her head again, perplexed.
“Have you unpacked your suitcases yet?”
“No.”
“Great.”
We raced up the stairs into Sharleen’s second bedroom. Sure enough, two ravaged suitcases sat in the corner. Laura picked up the first, set it on the bed and opened it. After rummaging through it, she grunted, disappointed, put it back and went on to the next one. Nothing. Then, like a spy, she checked the suitcase itself, feeling around the shredded lining and such. Also nothing. Puzzled, she ran her fingers through her hair.
“Do you always drive to Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go search the car.”
We raced downstairs and searched the car, every crack and crevasse, including under the hood and wheel wells. Laura even tried to pull the inside panels off the car doors. We didn’t unearth anything but a couple of coins and a nasty, 100 year-old piece of beef jerky.
“I was so sure we would find something,” Laura said to no one in particular as we walked back in to Sharleen’s living room. Laura turned, lost in thought, and crossed her legs, striking “the Thinker” pose like she did when really perplexed.
Not knowing what to do and not wanting to interrupt Laura’s thoughts, I sank onto the couch. Sharleen followed suit. And so we all sat, like toys on a shelf, as the minutes clicked by in silence. Sharleen gnawed her finger. I stared at the ceiling, while Laura’s mind raced.
“Oh good Lord, my cookies…” Sharleen dashed away.
Laura cast a wary glance my way. “Let’s try Bernie’s office, in the Bird House.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Drugs.”
Fuck. But that would explain the money. We tore Bernie’s office apart and found nothing but used tissues, dirt, and dust. The man was a pig. Sharleen’s cookies saved the day. After eating four, I begged and everyone agreed to go for Mexican food. The night called for Joe T’s.
We sat on the patio, nestled in a small nook, surrounded by sweeping palms. Throughout the meal, Laura continued to puzzle, asking Sharleen questions, throwing out ideas. All were dashed to the ground as an unconcerned Sharleen crumbled tortilla chips and fed them to the birds fluttering around our table, begging, like eager little puppies.
Laura refused to be distracted, saying, “Millions don’t just appear. They come from somewhere. And money leaves a trail.”
The evening ended, no answers found. We went to our separate homes.
At 2:17 a.m. my phone rang.
“Get over here. I think I’ve found something… something horrible.” Sharleen slammed down the phone.
Laura and I pulled up to Sharleen’s at the same time. Cuss words, big, vile ones sprang to mind. As usual, Laura showed up looking old Hollywood-ish, wearing a silk nightgown paired with matching bathrobe and slippers. I checked out myself and groaned. But, I looked normal. Like most divorced people, I slept in an old University of Texas t-shirt and boxer shorts – not attractive, but comfortable. I felt like yelling at her, “it’s not a competition.” Good grief, it was over 80 degrees outside. Laura needed to get a life.
“Nice hair,” Laura said to me while we waited for Sharleen to open the door.
“Bite me,” I said. I’d glanced at my hair in the review mirror, on the way over. So okay, my hair screamed disaster, wrapped, lopsided and springing leaks, in a bun-type-wad on the top of my head… but what did anyone expect at this hour of the morning?
“Nobody, and I mean nobody, outside of old black and white Hollywood movies, wears silk nightgowns anymore.” I tried to straighten my dilapidated bun.
“I do,” Laura said, without a glance my way.
The door swung open. Sharleen stood there looking wild-eyed, almost crazy. “I think this is really bad…. If it’s what I think it is.” Tears filled her eyes. “Follow me.”
“Show us what you found.” Laura grabbed Sharleen’s hand and squeezed.
Sharleen led us to the Bird House. We followed in silence. Distress radiated from her.
“Go into the bathroom.”
Confused, Laura and I looked at each other.
“Together?” I asked, being claustrophobic and the bathroom being very, very small.
“Yes.”
“Gut it up,” Laura said, sounding stressed herself.
I growled and stepped in. Laura squeezed beside me. Still outside, Sharleen shut the door.
“Now turn out the light.”
“You’re kidding me.” The walls closed in limiting oxygen levels. I started to hyperventilate.
“Just do it.”
Laura flipped the switch. Darkness surrounded us except for two tiny holes, one in the ceiling and one in the wall, right below a picture of, what else, birds.
I bent down, bumping into Laura and peered through the hole. I saw Sharleen peering back.
“Well, hello,” I said.
“You can see me. I wasn’t sure.” She slumped; her voice caught and seemed to drown in a wave of despair. “Do you see the light in the ceiling?”
“Yep.”
“Then it is what I thought.” Her voice caught, then a strangled sob, animal-like, let loose. She crumpled to the floor, wailing.
I pushed past Laura to Sharleen, to fresh air, and tried to console her. I couldn’t imagine what was happening but Sharleen was hysterical. She cried as if she had just seen her child killed before her eyes. There was no comforting her.
“I don’t get it.” I said, feeling lost. “Was Bernie watching people pee?”
“Worse.”
I couldn’t think of anything worse.
Laura stiffened and walked around the corner. “How do you get to the attic?”
“You have to go through the birds. The pull-down stairs are in the back, behind the cages, where the bird feed’s stored. If you look, you’ll see it.” Her words, barely audible, seemed to destroy her.
Laura backed out of the room.
“What’s going on?”
Sharleen just shook her head as tears crashed down.
Questions reeled through my brain, finding no answer. Not knowing drove me crazy, but I knew better than to push Sharleen right now. She looked close to a nervous breakdown. Not that I knew what that looked like, but I figured it had to look close to this. Frustrated and frightened, I sat there, holding her, and prayed Laura would hurry back.
“Kathy, come here.” Laura’s voice demanded like God from above.
I disentangled myself from Sharleen, went, found and climbed the stairs while the birds squawked alarm. A single, 100-watt bulb hung from a wire in the center of the attic. Thin sheets of plywood, haphazardly laid and nailed to the wood rafters, floored the place, giving and groaning as I stepped across them. The Bird House attic wasn’t finished out, nor did it promise hidden treasures like the main house’s attic did. Like Bernie’s office below, it screamed un-kept manhole.
I hunched over. Not enough room to stand. I crept toward to Laura who, in her silk nightgown, squatted over something on the left side of the attic.
“Look here. Tell me what you see.” Laura glared at me.
I grimaced, having not brought my reading glasses. Eerie shadows cast wide and deep from the lone bulb, hiding what seemed to be boxes, equipment with wires running to and fro in an amateurish fashion. Again, so male. I moved left, trying to shed more light on the thing, but it was too dark.
“I can’t tell what it is.”
“Get close… Really look at this. It’s important.” The intensity in Laura’s voice meant I had no choice.
I groaned and tried to squat on the slat of board that crisscrossed the rafters by the thing. My balance faltered. Visions of falling through the roof and landing in Sharleen’s lap flashed before my eyes. Grabbing wildly, I landed on a box one slat over and saved myself.
“You okay?” Laura asked.
“Yes. Just giving you my best bull-in-a-china-shop routine.” I tried to smile but I’d rammed my knee into a rafter and killed it. Now it thundered like two hundred running buffalo. I glanced down looking for, and expecting, blood. Instead, I saw the contraption had slid aside revealing the light from the bathroom below.
All thoughts of my crippled knee faded when I hunkered down to look. I could see… not much. I leaned down further to press my eye against the hole. My foot kicked a stack of old, dusty cardboard shoe boxes over. Photos and cash spilled everywhere. Cussing, I turned to pick up the mess. My eye caught sight of… of… oh my God. And there were thousands of them.
Ten minutes later, when Laura and I reappeared downstairs, I’m sure our strained expressions spoke volumes. Laura chewed on the inside of her cheek, a common mannerism imperceptible to most, but Sharleen knew her. Knew something bad hung, guillotine-like, in the air. I followed, sickened by all I had seen. I couldn’t look Sharleen in the face. I didn’t – couldn’t think of what to say. Luckily, I didn’t have to say anything. The broken look on her face said she already knew.
“You want to get out of here?” Laura’s words were so soft they floated.
Alerted, jerked out of my own traumatic reverie, I watched Laura switch into full protective mode, desperate not to hurt Sharleen any further. Her face contorted, jaw muscles grinding. Laura lived and operated under rules, which kicked in for the hurt and wounded. First do no harm, and never, ever kick someone when they’re down. Something bad… really, really bad happened.
Defeated, Sharleen slumped. I grabbed a box of tissues as I walked out of the Bird House, going back to the main house.
Laura found a teapot and fired up the stove.
Time hung dead, unmoving. Tension built as I listened to our breathing.
With a deep breath, Laura said, “I found cameras and video equipment.”
A strangled sob escaped Sharleen’s mouth. She looked so ashamed. Laura took another deep breath. “Plus, a bunch of thumb drives… pictures… more cash…. Lots more cash… and, believe it or not, a credit card machine.”
“Damn.” I exhaled.
“What do you mean? Sharleen asked.
“It’s going to take me a day or two… but I will sort through the stuff and see how bad it is.” Laura paused. “I need you both to not talk about this to anyone. At least not until we know what we are dealing with.”