Chapter 7 #2
He headed straight for the door but flashed a look over at Sapphire on his way out.
She gave us all a triumphant smile and followed him.
Pink and Blue jumped up with their glasses, one of them grabbing Purple’s and the other grabbing mine, and rushed over to the sink behind the bar and dumped them out.
“You didn’t want that, right?” Pink said as she set my empty glass in front of me. “I thought I read your face right, although you are excellent at hiding things.”
“It was horrible,” I agreed. “Thank you.”
“Why didn’t you take mine?” Gertie asked. “Now it’s just sitting here, smelling like someone plowed a field.”
“If we dumped yours out, he’d know that’s what we did,” Blue said. “Because he knows you’re not drinking yours.”
Gertie grabbed the edges of the table and pushed herself up. “What ever happened to common sense?”
She walked over to the sink, dumped the entire glass out, and left it in the sink.
“Problem solved,” she said as she sat back down. “Maybe that smell will clear out before Christ returns.”
The three Barbies looked a bit sheepish and Pink gave Ida Belle a curious look. “Did you actually like that?”
“Don’t know,” Ida Belle said. “Burned my taste buds off twenty years or so ago. Makes keeping a diet easy enough.”
“What do you think that was about?” I asked, inclining my head toward the door.
“Maybe he’s going to remind his wife who the head of the household is,” Ida Belle said.
Purple frowned. “I don’t know. Last time we were here, I overheard her complaining to him about having to live among strangers all the time. I got the impression she wasn’t keen on the whole retreat thing.”
“That’s probably true,” Ida Belle said. “Especially when the guest list includes women who look like you and the dress code is tight and clingy.”
“Man’s gotta make a living,” Gertie said. “You young folk might find him nice to look at, but that’s not going to pay the bills. It’d be a waste of space to keep all of this for just the two of them, although I can see why they might have the need for separate spaces with those personalities.”
I nodded. “I suppose teaching classes at a gym or rec center wouldn’t be nearly as profitable as doing your own thing, especially if you already own the facility and can rent it out like they do the cabins.”
“That’s true enough,” Pink said, “but if he really wanted to make bank, he’d have started a cult. The real money is in religion. Oh my God! I’m so sorry.”
“Ha!” Gertie said. “Got expensive art hanging like postage stamps in the Vatican. You ain’t wrong. Guess that’s what they call an ‘investment’ though.”
“It’s not really an investment unless it’s income-producing or you’re holding it to sell,” Purple said. “But ‘sell’ is the key word in that. It is, however, a common misconception.”
Ida Belle raised one eyebrow.
“I’m in commercial real estate sales,” she explained. “My father ran one of the biggest hedge funds in Atlanta before he passed. I could read a set of financials by first grade.”
Interesting, I thought. The Barbies were turning out to be so much different from my original assessment.
“You didn’t want to follow in his footsteps?” I asked.
“Absolutely not! That man worked himself into a heart attack by fifty-five. There’s too much life to live to go out that soon. I enjoy commercial real estate sales, and it satisfies my right and left brain requirements.”
Blue snorted. “She’s leaving out the part where she’s not a Realtor—which is how she makes it sound.
She buys the buildings, remodels them, then leases them out to businesses or turns them into condos.
She is fabulous with design, so she gets to indulge the artsy side of her personality while still making money. ”
Pink nodded. “Work you do because you want to is completely different than work you do because you have to. I love my job but not like she does.”
Purple blushed a bit. “I don’t like to tell people all that. I don’t want people to label me by my father’s accomplishments. The whole ‘trust fund’ thing really gets on my nerves. I make my own way.”
Ida Belle put her hand on Purple’s and gave it a squeeze. “That’s perfectly okay. You’re doing something you’re passionate about, and we’d all be better human beings if our life pursuits were our passions.”
“If they’re legal, sure,” Gertie said, and everyone laughed.
I smiled but the wheels were turning. Did Zion know about Purple’s portfolio?
Likely, she started her business with inheritance and if her father was that wealthy, then there would have been press surrounding his death.
Zion had our driver’s licenses. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to figure out that Purple was a high-net-worth individual with a lot of commercial real estate at her disposal.
Which put a completely different spin on the big discount Zion had offered the Barbies for this retreat. Maybe he was hoping to set up something with Purple. I wasn’t sure how that would work with Sapphire hanging around, but it let me know that Zion was probably still on the prowl.
There was no doubt in my mind that he’d take a look at my documents at first opportunity.
Maybe, if he’d managed to shed his wife, he was perusing them now.
I was really glad I’d struck up a conversation with the Barbies because I had a feeling we were definitely on the right track.
Now I just needed to figure out a way to have another conversation with Zion without Sapphire supervising.
After smoothies, we headed back to the cabin.
I’d already burned off the beef jerky and chips I’d had earlier and needed to hit Gertie’s stash before we all had to go stand by the lake and bend like rubber.
Plus, the habit was stifling hot and I was itching—quite literally—to rid myself of it for a bit.
The first thing I did when we went inside was check my backpack. Sure enough, the string I’d pulled through the clip was gone.
“He’s been here,” I said.
“Seriously!”
“Wow! He’s not wasting any time!”
Ida Belle and Gertie both spoke at once.
I yanked the habit over my head and sat down at the table to dig through the pile of snacks. “Did one of you eat the Oreos?”
They both shook their heads.
“Ha,” I said. “Then I guess Mr. Clean Eating took them because they’re gone.”
“He’s a con artist,” Ida Belle said. “But I still haven’t completely figured out his play. This whole yoga retreat thing can’t be a huge moneymaker. So why keep pushing that angle?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but if the Barbies overheard things properly, then he married Sapphire to get a hold of this place.”
“The Barbies?” Ida Belle asked.
I shrugged. “It seemed to fit. At first, anyway, but they’re definitely smarter than they want people to think.”
“They’re smarter than they want men to think,” Ida Belle said. “Shrewd saleswomen. I wonder just how much of a discount they got for this farce.”
“Enough to make Sapphire angry about letting out her family’s place to women I’m sure she considers skanks,” I said.
Gertie nodded. “If I were her, I’d be on my way out before Zion figures out how to finagle her out of her property.”
“It’s probably all in a trust,” Ida Belle said.
“Lots of times it’s set up so that a person is the beneficiary of the trust, but they have no ability to transfer assets to other people, even on death.
Rich people don’t like the idea of someone marrying their kids for the money and then divorcing them, and their assets leaving the family.
A trust also keeps potential murders down among the wealthy as the assets rarely shift to someone who isn’t blood. ”
“That’s grim,” I said.
“But an unfortunate reality,” Ida Belle said. “How did the Heberts have their attorney write up your fake trust?”
“I think it’s basically all within my control.”
“Good,” Ida Belle said. “I mean, not good if that was actually the case and you were really a naive nun, but good for getting Zion to bite.”
“You think he’d actually attempt to get me to make him my beneficiary and then kill a nun?” I asked.
I had a pretty low opinion of most people, but that was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
“He wouldn’t be the first,” Ida Belle said. “Well, maybe the first to kill a nun but only because most don’t have assets. And not that he’d be successful in this case, but you know what I mean. We still don’t know yet if he benefits from Eleanor’s death so all of this is speculation at this point.”
“Even if he benefits in some way, he didn’t kill her,” I said. “Not unless he can walk through walls.”
“He could have given her the drugs, though,” Gertie said. “He was there that day.”
“I thought you said he’d left earlier,” Ida Belle said.
“He did, but we didn’t follow him to the parking lot and watch him drive off, and even if we had, that wouldn’t have stopped him from returning, parking somewhere along the road in, and walking to Eleanor’s cabin.”
“We need to find out when Zion got back here,” I said.
“How the heck do we do that?” Gertie asked.
“Sapphire.”
Ida Belle and I answered at once.
“Oh, yeah. Let me handle that one,” Gertie said. “If there’s one thing I know it’s a high school setup for gossip.”
“Go for it. If you can keep Sapphire away long enough for me to plant more seeds with Zion, that would be great.”
“We don’t have much time to get information,” Gertie said. “And I’m still afraid Carter might show up with that goon in tow, especially if Mildred throws around those accusations to the cops.”
“Yeah, that thought has already crossed my mind,” I said. “But as long as he doesn’t see us, we’re good.”
“You think he’d recognize us?” Gertie asked.
I laughed. “In one second flat. But that idiot Calahan probably wouldn’t. I get the impression he’s not much of a critical thinker. Still, if they show up before this is over, we should definitely disappear.”
Gertie nodded. “And my plan for bugging Zion’s cabin?”
“It’s too risky,” Ida Belle said. “If we get caught then all this setup that Fortune has done is for nothing.”
I tapped my fingers on the table. “I know it’s risky, but I think I should. We’re running against the clock here and we can’t make this play a second time.”
“Agreed,” Gertie said. “Besides, there’s no way someone like Zion is going to catch Fortune. She could run circles around him in her sleep.”
“I’ll need a distraction,” I said. “When we’re not in a group, we’re at our cabins. So I have to have a way to get Zion and Sapphire out of their cabin, but not for an event I’m supposed to attend because it would look odd if I’m not there.”
“Leave it to me,” Gertie said. “I’ll just need my other bag from the secret compartment in the SUV.”
“Your other bag?” Ida Belle asked.
Gertie grinned. “That one doesn’t have food.”