Homecoming - Chapter 11 #2
He waved his thick folder in the air. “Oh, I’m just getting started, Master Matthew.” He cleared his throat. “I mean Mr. Caldwell.” He pulled out another sheet as he pushed through a creaky old wooden door.
Why were we going farther into this warehouse?
“Poppy likes pancakes over waffles.” He handed me her grocery list from last week.
How was that helpful?
“And her daughter loves chickie nuggies.”
Great. That was not useful at all. Each step into the warehouse grew darker and darker. I grabbed my sunglasses to pull them off.
“Keep the disguise on,” Nigel said. “It’s of the utmost importance to our covert operation. We should have a name for it, don’t you think?”
“Operation grocery list?”
“I don’t think that’s what this is about,” he said.
“Then why do you keep handing me grocery lists?”
“Patience, young one.”
Well, now he was just talking like Tanner. I was older than Tanner and I was definitely older than Nigel. “I can’t see anything with my sunglasses,” I said.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be there soon.”
“Where?”
He pulled out another sheet of paper and had no trouble reading it in the dark. “Poppy is a bad tipper. Sometimes only 5% at upscale restaurants.” He handed me the paper even though I couldn’t see it in the dark.
“That’s a bad quality, but nothing illegal.”
“It should be. I live off tips.”
“Do you?” Shoot, I didn’t know that. Should I have been tipping him for my baths?
“No. But they help me afford my third home.”
“Wait, you have three homes?”
“Don’t all houseboys?”
“I don’t know any other houseboys,” I said. But three houses seemed extreme. Hell, I only had one home.
“No? That’s good. I’m all you need. You can say it if you want. That I’m all you need.”
There was no way I was saying that.
He sighed and pushed through another squeaky door and hit a light switch.
I shielded my eyes. It was blinding even with my sunglasses on. I blinked until the white dots left my vision. “Nigel, why are we in an empty room?”
“A secure, empty-ish room.” He pointed to a table in the center of the room with a sheet draped over it.
Okay…
He handed me another paper. “Poppy Cannavaro is a plagiarizer. Her sophomore year in college she almost got expelled because she didn’t cite a quote correctly.”
“That’s great, but…how does it help me?”
“Plagiarism is punishable by guillotine, yes? We have her just where we want her.”
“No, Nigel. It’s not.”
“Oh. It used to be, I think. It’s been a few years, maybe.” He pulled out another sheet of paper from his folder, which still looked very full. “Her daughter’s father has joint custody. He sees her on Wednesdays and every other weekend.”
“Nigel, do you have anything useful in that folder?”
“It’s all useful. Poppy’s ex-husband also believes in spanking. Of children. How naughty, right?”
What was he even talking about? “Can I please just see it?”
“Fine. Here.” He handed me the whole folder.
I thumbed through a few pages. “Why are there so many grocery lists?”
“You asked me to talk to the help. Her chef was very unhelpful.”
I kept scanning through the documents. Searching for money laundering. Racketeering. Any white-collar crimes or something much worse. But…half of the documents were about her food preferences. I looked up at Nigel. “You really didn’t find anything?”
“I told you about the plagiarism. And the new player in town.”
“Nigel…”
“Wait. Do you hear something?” He cupped his hand to his ear.
“I swear if we get murdered in this warehouse…”
“No, not a person. Me thinks me hears a wonderful machine.” He pulled out a remote from his trench coat pocket and hit a button. Something whirred to life.
I turned to the table in the middle of the room with a sheet over it.
Nigel walked over to it and pulled off the sheet…revealing a printer that looked straight out of the 90s. It even had the little holes on the sides of the paper that needed to be ripped off.
“Oh, wait! Now what is this!?” Nigel said and clapped his hands. “Is that a…fax machine? Oh my, I know you don’t like those. But wait!” He pulled out the sheet of paper that had just printed. “What’s this? Evidence?”
I reached for it, but he pulled it back, almost tripping over his trench coat.
“But Master Matthew doesn’t believe that fax machines are a good source of communication. So I guess he doesn’t want what’s on this paper. He’ll have to make do with the trivial things in the folder I prepared.”
“Give it to me, Nigel.”
“Then say that fax machines are still on trend.” He lowered his sunglasses to stare at me, like he really wanted to soak this in.
I just stared at him. “Nigel, they’re really not.”
“Very well.” It looked like he was about to rip the sheet down the middle.
“Wait!”
He just stared at me. “Well then.”
I sighed. “Fax machines are on trend.”
“ And a reliable and quick way to communicate.”
I shook my head. “And a reliable and quick way to communicate.” But not as reliable and quick as freaking emails. I put my hand out.
“ And better than electronic texts,” he said.
“Are you referring to normal texting or is that something else?”
“The usual kind I think. On the cellular devices.”
I laughed, but he looked serious. I cleared my throat. “Fine. And better than electronic texts on cellular devices.”
“More secure too,” Nigel said. “So very secure.”
I really didn’t think that was true. Nigel said he didn’t want a paper trail. And he’d literally printed out thousands of papers and set up a weird fax machine in the center of an abandoned warehouse to print out more of them. “Yup,” I said. “More secure too. So very secure.”
He handed me the sheet of paper that he’d just faxed himself.
There was an image of Poppy Cannavaro putting a car bomb under a car. Nigel had circled the spot and labeled it. And a newspaper clipping was photocopied at the bottom about a young man who’d died in a car explosion.
“She’s a murderer ,” Nigel whispered.
I thought I’d be happy. This was exactly what I wanted.
But I wasn’t happy that an innocent man was dead.
Or that Poppy’s daughter would have to grow up without a mother.
I kept scanning the article. Wait, not an innocent man.
Apparently this guy was in the mafia too.
Why had Poppy blown up another mafia member?
“Thank goodness for faxes,” Nigel said. “Operation Murderer complete. I’d actually already named it, but I didn’t want to ruin the big reveal.”
This would get me out of my fake relationship with Poppy. It would keep Scarlett safe. But it would ruin another family in the process.
“I knew you’d be devastated when you found out fax machines are better than texts,” Nigel said as he pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose.
“It’s okay. We’re all wrong sometimes. But we must be going.
This warehouse has a rat infestation problem that gets significantly worse at dusk. Grab the fax machine for me, will you?”
“Sure.” I folded up the sheet of paper and slid it into my pocket.
“Oh I love the old models,” he said, tenderly caressing the machine. “They get all warm when they print. I’ll put it with me in the trunk to keep me warm on the way back home.”
“You can sit up front,” I said.
“I prefer the trunk.” He winked at me.
I had a lot of questions about that. But none of them mattered right now. I lifted up the overheated, bulky fax machine and followed Nigel out of the warehouse. The squeaking of rats growing louder with every step. If I got rabies, I was going to throw this thing at Nigel’s head.