Chapter 18
August 21
Frito was barking like crazy.
Vanna could hear him through her closed bedroom door and Granny’s. Just hysterical barking. Then she heard a thump that had her sitting up straight in her bed. Granny had to be up by now, with all this noise going on. Still, Vanna swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. She pushed her feet into her slippers, then left her room, just in time to hear glass shattering downstairs.
Granny swung her door open, and Frito bolted down the hallway and the steps, barking like he’d caught a scent and wouldn’t rest until he found it. There was somebody downstairs. Vanna was about to head down the stairs when Granny came up beside her.
“Why don’t you wait up here,” she said, then stopped when Granny brandished the hand holding a narrow can with a spray nozzle.
Okay, Granny was coming with her.
They eased down the first few stairs, Vanna having no clue what they might be walking into. But then Frito’s barking turned into a growl, and a man’s voice shouted, “Shoot that mutt!”
“Oh, hell no!” Granny pushed past Vanna and took the last few steps.
Vanna hurried down behind her, both of them coming to a halt the moment they saw two men in the dining room. They were standing near a window, a pile of glass on the floor. Frito had one hemmed up in the corner as the dog stood in front of the man, snarling like he was ready to pounce and sink his teeth into him at any minute. That was the man holding the gun. The other guy, presumably the one who’d yelled for Frito to be shot, was closer to the opening of the kitchen, a ski mask on his face as he turned to see them.
What the hell was going on?
Granny didn’t wait for an answer to the question Vanna hadn’t even asked. She went straight at the man with the gun with a guttural cry. She aimed that can of pepper spray and started a steady stream of the liquid.
“Fuck! I’m gettin’ outta here!” Ski Mask Guy turned to run toward the window Vanna now realized was pushed halfway up.
Her Mace was in her purse, which was too far away to get at this moment, but there was the pretty coral-colored vase she’d bought from HomeGoods on the table right next to where she stood. Grabbing it, she threw it with as much strength as she could muster. It smacked Ski Mask Guy in the back, and he fell to the floor.
The guy with the gun howled in pain as Frito finally sank his teeth into his shin, and Granny stood right up on him, spraying him directly in the face. The gun was still in his now-limp hand even though his eyes were shut and he’d lifted his free arm to shield his face from Granny’s onslaught. But Vanna wasn’t gonna feel better until the gun was out of his hand completely, so she ran toward him and picked up one of her dining room chairs. She slammed the chair down on his arm, and the gun skittered across the floor.
“Stupid bitch!” Ski Mask Guy yelled as he came up behind her and wrapped his arm around her neck. But before he could get her in the choke hold he was aiming for, Vanna elbowed him in the gut as hard as she could. As he tried to catch his breath, she turned and pressed a thumb deep into his eye until he jerked back so hard that he fell, this time going straight through her glass-top dining room table.
“Call 911!” she yelled to Granny, who was turning from one of the intruders to the other, her pepper spray aimed and ready to fire again. “Go into the kitchen and get the cordless phone, Granny!”
“You do it!” Granny shot back. “I’m the one with the weapon here.”
Vanna looked back at Ski Mask Guy, who had rolled over onto his side, moaning in pain as blood dripped from down the back of his neck. Granny was right: she was the only one of them who had a weapon, so Vanna looked in the other direction, where she recalled the other guy’s gun had slid across the floor.
“Get this mutt off of me!” the man who had backed into a corner—his hands still pressed to his eyes, Frito still holding on to his leg—cried.
“Fuck! I told you to shoot them all, man!” Ski Mask Guy yelled from the floor.
Vanna hurriedly took the few steps until she picked up the gun; then she aimed it at Ski Mask Guy. “Don’t move,” she said. “I’ll shoot you right there, and you’ll bleed a hell of a lot more.”
“Yo! What’s wrong with you people?” he yelled again, this time because he tried to roll over onto his hands and knees, but both pressed into the shards of glass on the floor.
Now he was on his back again, screaming in agony, and Vanna wondered who the hell these two were and why it seemed like they didn’t have a lick of sense.
She eased her way farther into the kitchen, still keeping her gun aimed in Ski Mask Guy’s direction. She found the only landline phone in the house—a cordless that sat on the island—and picked it up. Her fingers couldn’t press 911 fast enough.
Sixteen minutes later, she and Granny were still in their same positions. Frito had finally let that guy’s leg go, but he stayed right in front of him, giving him a glare that said he’d take another chunk out of him if he dared to move. When her front door flew open, five to six officers filed into the house, guns drawn.
“Get down on the floor!”
“Drop the gun!”
“Get down!”
They all yelled, and when Vanna and Granny didn’t move at first, they did when the officers grew closer, putting the guns in their face. Granny dropped the pepper spray, and Frito turned to bark at the next person he thought was endangering his owner. Vanna dropped the gun she was holding.
“This isn’t my gun!” she shouted. “It was theirs, but he dropped it, so I picked it up.”
The officer closest to her shouted again, “Get your hands up!”
Frito went full on hysterical—or beyond that, because Vanna would swear the dog had barked more in this last half hour than he had his entire life. She moved quickly and picked him up. The last thing she wanted was for these cops to shoot her grandmother’s dog. Because one thing she knew for sure about some police officers: if they had no qualms shooting an unarmed man, they wouldn’t think twice about shooting a feisty dog.
“Hands up!” the officer yelled again, and this time, Vanna held up her free hand.
“My attorney is Jovani Kincaid. I’d like to call him right now before this goes any further!” she shouted back.
“That won’t be necessary,” a familiar male voice said, and she looked around the goofy officer who was standing in front of her to see Detective Beaumont.
The next few minutes were a flurry of activity. So many things were going on at once. Both intruders had been cuffed and were now sitting on the floor in her dining room. Paramedics had arrived and were looking at the wound on Ski Mask Guy’s head. They removed the ski mask, and Vanna gasped.
“That’s the guy that was in the car,” she said, and Beaumont turned his attention away from Granny, who was giving her account of what happened.
“What did you just say?” Beaumont asked.
He’d made her and Granny move from the dining room to sit on the sectional in the living room. And had watched her walk every step of the way from where, at that point, he’d stood behind her. She wore tiny boy shorts and a tank top, which was her nightwear and not an outfit for general consumption. But this was beyond her control, something she also knew Beaumont was loving.
“That guy over there is the same one I told you was sitting in that ugly brown car up the street last week,” she said.
Beaumont’s response was a curse, and she frowned. “You know who he is, don’t you?”
“Mrs. Carlson, I’m trying to get your grandmother’s statement,” he told her. “I’ll talk to you in just a moment.”
“You’ll talk to me now!” Vanna yelled, not giving a damn who heard her. “They broke into my house tonight, Detective. They had a gun, and now they’re both sitting in my dining room, being seen by paramedics like Granny and I were wrong for defending ourselves and our home.”
“I didn’t say you were wrong,” Beaumont told her. “I just want to get all your details while they’re still fresh.”
“The detail I need you to pay attention to is that the guy over there with that big gash in the back of his head was sitting in a car at the corner of my street just last week. He stared at me and I stared right back at him. But it was like he knew me, knew who I was, and now where I lived. And I think you know who he is.” She’d bet money on that.
Detective Parish entered the room with a grim look on his face. “He’s William Baylor, the cage shift supervisor at Lennox Casino,” he said, his tone edged with something like fury. “He worked with your husband.”
She sucked in a breath and blew it out in release. “So this is about that damn armored-truck robbery again. I swear, I can’t catch a break.”
“If you’d just calm down,” Beaumont said. “I’m going to get your statements, and then we’ll move on.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Vanna shouted. “You’re not the one who just faced two intruders—one with a gun—in the middle of the night.”
“Mrs. Carlson—” Beaumont began, frowning at her.
Parish rolled his eyes and said, “Will just gave a full confession about him and his cousin, Cordell, breaking in here to look for the rest of the money from that robbery back in June.”
Beaumont’s gaze returned to hers. “And why would they think it was here?” he asked. “Because they had knowledge of those bags being in your basement, wanted to see if their money was in them.”
Vanna wanted to know if there’d been any money found in those bags. Both Beaumont and Parish had made a big show of making sure she knew they’d found them in her basement, but that’s all they told her about it. Had there been money in them? And again, how the hell did those bags get there?
“You wanna tell us where you hid the money, Vanna?” Beaumont asked. “Or do you want to wait to see if either of these dumbasses will make bail. Because they’re not finished with this. The missing money is a huge incentive to go all the way in order to find it.”
Vanna doubted go all the way meant what the detective was trying to imply where these guys—Will and Cordell—were concerned. If they really thought the money was in her house, why not just break in to get it after they’d seen her leave the house? How much sense did it make to wait until the middle of the night to break in when they knew people were in there? And why hadn’t that goofball Cordell shot Frito when Will directed him to? One thing she knew for certain was that if you pulled a gun out, you’d better be prepared to use it. Cordell, apparently, was not.
“Don’t try to scare me,” she said, even though fear had definitely become part of her daily diet these days. “I know my rights, and I know how this scene will play out. Now that you have a few more players in this game, you’ll learn the truth, and you can get out of my life.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Parish said. “For all we know, this could’ve been the result of them asking for the money and you refusing to give it to them.”
“Or you can get your head out of your ass,” Granny snapped.
“Shhh,” Vanna told her. The last thing she needed was for either of them to get the bright idea to arrest her grandmother. That would be the moment Vanna really did something worth getting arrested for. “We’re not saying another word until our attorney gets here.”
When they’d been moved into the living room, she’d asked for her phone to call Jovani, and while she suspected that was the last thing Beaumont wanted her to do, there were too many other cops present for him to ignore her request a second time. With a frown, Parish turned and walked away from them. He went to join the other officers who had gone out onto her deck, checking the dining room window that was open because they probably suspected the same as she had—that it was the way the intruders had entered her house.
Beaumont gave her one last long, lingering look before he walked away as well. Granny leaned in and whispered, “I ain’t got no attorney.”
“You do if I do,” Vanna said.
“Yeah, but Aden only paid for you.”
“Then I’ll pay for you if need be.” Vanna sighed heavily, wishing none of this was needed. Wishing she’d never married Caleb. Wishing that Granny hadn’t mentioned Aden’s name.
“You sure you don’t want to stay at a hotel tonight, Vanna?” Jovani asked two hours later, when the police and those two men had finally left her house.
“I’m not leaving my home because of this nonsense. I shouldn’t even be involved in any of this.” It wasn’t the first time she’d said this tonight, or that she’d thought it in the last couple of weeks. But her words seemed to fall on deaf ears.
“I know how you’re feeling, and I promise you we’ll get to the bottom of this. William Baylor and Cordell Smith were the last two in the robbery scheme that the cops were looking for. With them in custody now, they should be able to get a better picture of this case. A picture that doesn’t involve you,” he said.
“But what about those money bags?” Granny asked. She was still sitting on the sectional, this time with Frito asleep in her lap.
“They didn’t find your fingerprints on those bags. And they received street-camera footage from the area where Elliot Joble died. The license plate on that black SUV doesn’t match the one on your rental car. I just found that out late this afternoon and was going to call you with the developments tomorrow.”
“I’m so sorry I had to call you at this time of night. I hope I didn’t disturb your wife,” she said. “But this news is definitely a relief.”
“My wife’s at home eating pistachio ice cream with iced oatmeal cookies crunched up inside of it. If my baby is anything like her, she’s laid back, enjoying the midnight snack.” He chuckled, and for the first time tonight, Vanna cracked a smile.
“Still, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. You did nothing wrong, and we’re going to prove that,” he said. “Now, I want you and Granny to lock up tight and get some rest.”
She stood and walked him to the door. “We will. And thanks again.”
“Stop thanking me and stop apologizing to me; I’m doing my job, Vanna,” he said. Then he tilted his head as he continued to stare at her. “I’m also looking out for a woman one of my really good friends cares about deeply.”
Oh no, she was not going there with him. Aden was not a topic of discussion she wished to have tonight. Not with Jovani or anyone else.
“That’s not fair, you already told me I can’t thank you again,” she said, and gave Jovani another smile.
He chuckled. “That’s right. You catch on quick. Lock these doors and those windows. And tomorrow see about getting an alarm system installed. Aden probably has someone you can call since he just had one installed at the gym and the storefront for the shop.”
“I think I’ll be able to find someone. Google is my friend,” she joked.
He grinned. “Good night, Vanna.”
“Good night, Jovani.”
Later, when Vanna finally climbed into her bed, the clock on her nightstand read 3:47 a.m. After Jovani left, she and Granny walked around the entire house, making sure every window was locked. The dining room was in shambles, and those cops from the crime lab had made a mess too, with their fingerprint dust and other nonsense. But the cleanup would have to wait.
She, Granny, and Frito went upstairs at the same time. Vanna said she was going to take a shower. Granny said she wanted one too. When Vanna emerged from her bathroom, it was to find Granny dressed in a clean nightgown in her bed and Frito lying beside her.
“You two look way too comfortable,” she said as she trekked across the floor and went to her side of the bed to climb in.
“Your bed is bigger than the one in that other room,” Granny said.
“My room is bigger than that other one,” Vanna replied. “But if you want, we can get you a new bed. That’s only a full size in there. I think a queen will fit.”
“That might be nice,” Granny said, and turned over on her side to snuggle under the blankets. Frito followed suit, tucking his body right up against her back.
Since when did she say this dog could sleep with her? She didn’t mind Granny so much. There’d been way too many occasions to count when she’d climbed into her grandmother’s bed, which included times in her late teens. There was nothing like the comfort of sleeping with Granny, and tonight she needed that—just as Granny did, apparently.
But it was when the lights were out and she lay in the dark, listening to Granny’s soft breathing and Frito’s congested snore, that thoughts of Aden returned. They always came to her at night, when her defenses were down and there was nothing else happening to keep her mind off him. It had only been two days since their argument on Monday night. Two days since he’d texted or called her. Two days that she hadn’t texted or called him.
She didn’t know what to say to him or how to say it. Should she apologize for even considering that he could be framing her? Probably. Would he want to hear it? She wasn’t sure, and truthfully, she just didn’t feel like dealing with that right now. Because while Aden might not be the one framing her, somebody certainly had been, and she still didn’t know why.
Aden brought a lot with him, just as she knew she brought a lot to the table as well. Maybe their past was just too much to overcome. Maybe Caleb and what he was to both of them would always be an obstacle, even after Caleb’s death. And maybe it was just too soon to be thinking this seriously about any of this. It wasn’t like she and Aden were in a deep relationship, like they were in love or something. Two weeks of really good sex, good conversation, shared memories, common goals and interests—that’s all. She could get over that.
But something Jovani had said before he left rang true in her mind: Aden probably did know someone who could install a security system. And if they were on speaking terms right now, he would’ve probably already called that person to handle it for her. It didn’t occur to her until this very moment how good it had felt to have someone—other than Granny—taking care of her for a change.