Fifteen
Frances was beginning to be truly annoyed with this Wilma Thinstone thing.
No one seemed to get the joke, which meant no one thought it was unreasonable that she would have been assigned a name like Wilma and kept it all these years.
She liked to think she looked hipper than that.
In her head, she was a cool old lady, like Diane Keaton. Not a Wilma.
When she used the name to rent an Airbnb in Hunterville, the woman renting it acted as if she was talking to a doddering old woman on the other end of the line. But she bought that Wilma wanted to pay cash because she didn’t “trust the computer.”
“Why are you complaining?” Joan asked. “It worked, didn’t it? We have a rental now.”
They had decided on an Airbnb after Frances said she wasn’t willing to talk about a big bad heist while seated on hay bales, no matter how cute and festive the setting.
Edie said they couldn’t talk at her house unless they wanted to be arrested.
“And it can’t be just anywhere in Hunterville because everyone knows me. ”
After some discussion of basic requirements, they found the house. It was across town from where Edie said her friends would be (meaning, Frances quickly figured, the wrong side of the tracks).
“How many bedrooms?” Irene asked.
“Three,” Joan confirmed.
“Well … Joan and I can share,” Irene said.
That drew Frances’s attention. She and Joan could share? Because Irene hadn’t been too keen to share with Frances in Florida, or on the way to Colorado, or even here in Tennessee at the roadside motel.
“As long as I have room for my wigs,” Joan said, without looking up from her phone.
Frances was seriously beginning to wonder what was going on with those two. She remembered that there had been occasions in the past when she’d wondered the same. They would seem so close at times, and at other times, cool, indifferent. Like they’d only just met.
Whatever. The most important thing in the moment was that she had a bed and an ice pack.
So, Wilma Thinstone rented the house while they were still in the gazebo, then she and Joan and Irene hiked out the back of Edie’s spectacular property, reversing the way Marcy had brought them in.
Edie went to her house to speak to her granddaughter.
It was all very taxing on Frances, and she was beginning to worry about her stamina.
The same stamina she’d bragged about on the way from Colorado.
She could feel herself getting weaker. New Boobs Sue would have a field day with her on the pickleball court now without a hair moving out of place.
Mostly, she was relieved no one had seemed to notice how she flagged every day.
The rental wasn’t bad—a standard little ranch house, furnished almost exclusively by IKEA.
“Not a cockroach in sight,” Joan said. “Let’s make a list of food and drink, and I’ll go shop.”
While Joan was out, Frances and Irene settled into the rooms. “Remember that place Edie and I lived after I got booted off the family property?” Frances asked.
Irene had to think. “That walk-up with the pervy guy across the hall?” She laughed. “Long Island, man. We had some good times there, didn’t we?”
Unbidden tears suddenly sprang to Frances’s eyes.
She turned her back so that Irene wouldn’t ridicule her sentimentality.
“We did,” she managed to say. Damn it, she was not generally so dewy-eyed.
Maybe it was the prospect of death looming large, but she couldn’t help but feel tenderhearted about those four young women left entirely on their own.
They didn’t care that the terrible apartment had no hot water and a crack in the window that let in the coldest winter air.
That was where they decided to carry on with their thievery.
They had no sense. Just an unflagging belief in themselves.
Joan was an artist, and a model. She’d been trying to break into theater and had managed to snag some minor roles, which gave her access to costumes.
Irene was taking a class at the community college, learning about “computing.” At the time, none of them really knew what that was.
Frances had been nursing a broken heart and feeling directionless and alone, but at least she still had money from the sale of her mother’s antique emerald jewelry box.
And Edie had been on a quest to find a sugar daddy.
She found him, all right—the first of many.
The abuse with that one came a little later.
And the heist of his expensive watch collection a little later after that.
“I miss those days,” Frances said. “Do you?”
“In a way,” Irene said. “But I also remember being sick of ramen and beans and being cold all the time.”
“But we had each other,” Frances said wistfully.
“Don’t tell me you’ve turned into one of those sentimental grandmas with a Hallmark Channel addiction,” Irene said.
“Okay, I won’t tell you that.” She smiled. But she couldn’t quite rid herself of the longing for that time.
They heard Joan coming through the kitchen door and went to meet her. She had two bags of groceries. She’d bought legal pads and pens, too.
Edie finally arrived at dusk, coming in through the back door, wearing a large sun hat, even larger sunglasses, and carrying an enormous tote bag. She whipped off the sun hat and gave her hair a shake as she looked around. “This place stinks.”
“I’m sorry, Highness,” Frances said.
“What did you say to my granddaughter?”
“What?”
Edie hoisted her bag onto the kitchen table. “She said she knew we were thieves.”
“Oh.” Frances glanced at Joan and Irene, who had conveniently busied themselves with bustling around the kitchen. “What did you say?”
“What could I say? That she was being ridiculous. That of course we weren’t. I then invited her to imagine how that could possibly be, if she could picture any one of us old broads shimmying up a tree or down a drain spout. And guess what? She couldn’t.”
“We never shimmed up trees or down drain spouts,” Frances said.
“I know, Franny, but she doesn’t. All she knows about heists comes from the movie Ocean’s Eleven where eleven men do all sorts of physical feats.”
“Did you take the opportunity to tell her that we were much better than a bunch of dudes?” Irene asked. “And smarter, too, because we had to be.”
“That would have defeated the purpose of lying about it to begin with. I told her we weren’t anything but friends. And you’re missing the point—you guys told my granddaughter what we did! How could you?”
“It’s better than telling the FBI,” Irene said, folding her arms.
“I never told the FBI!” Edie shot back. “Simon did!”
“And we didn’t tell Marcy we were thieves,” Frances said. “We would never.”
“She overheard us,” Joan said. “Because someone here runs her mouth.” She pointed at Frances.
Frances threw up her hands. “I’m sorry already. I had no idea that anyone would be listening! When was the last time anyone listened to you, I ask?” she demanded, looking around at them.
No one said a word.
“My point exactly,” Frances said.
“I just …” Edie sighed to the ceiling. “Marcy is lovely. She’s …
she’s wonderful. She’s my favorite,” she said, her eyes suddenly shining with tears.
“And she’s far too good for this sort of thing and I don’t want her near it.
I don’t want any of my kids near it. They are the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t want to fuck it up with my past suddenly showing up. ”
“Aww, Edie,” Irene said. “Don’t worry. We’re not recruiting.”
Edie sniffed. “Did you have kids, Irene?”
Irene shook her head. “A rolling stone gathers no moss. I can’t stand kids anyway.” She seemed to realize how that sounded and shifted uneasily. “The little ones, I’m talking. Really little. I mean, your granddaughter seems very nice.”
“Stop talking,” Joan murmured.
“My granddaughter is na?ve. What about you, Joan?” Edie asked.
“What about me?” Joan asked. “I was never going to get married, and I didn’t know you could manage to get kids in any way but the standard route until I was too old to have them.
I’ve been taking care of my mom the last decade or so.
Or she’s taking care of me—I’m not sure.
And I’m running a medicinal marijuana farm and learning about mushrooms.”
Edie laughed.
“It’s not a joke,” Joan said. “Unfortunately, my choices in life were not great after everything that happened. Speaking of which … just what happened back then, anyway? You keep saying you didn’t do it. I’ve been waiting all these years to know the truth.”
Edie pulled out a kitchen chair and sat. She looked exhausted.
Joan took a seat next to her. “It’s only fair that we know, Edie. I want to be able to trust you. All I know is that one minute we were planning a big get, and the next, we were running for our lives. I lost half of the money I’d saved just because I was afraid to use my real name to retrieve it.”
“I’m really sorry, Joan,” Edie said. “I have agonized for years about what happened, but what can I say? I made the mistake of falling in love. Frances is right—I wanted better for myself.”
“Better than what, exactly?” Frances asked. “What was wrong with what we had?”
Edie looked at her like she was talking gibberish. “What we had? We didn’t have anything, Frances. A tenuous existence at best. How long do you think we could have kept it up?”
Frances blinked. “I guess I thought forever,” she muttered. She’d been idealistic, sure, but she could remember assuming they’d be together all their lives.
“Wait a minute, Edie,” Joan said. “You fell in love and committed the cardinal sin of telling our secret? You couldn’t have bowed out of our gang without turning on us?”
“I never turned on you. What happened is that I ran out of time. And for the record, we were made.”
“What? How?” Irene demanded.
“Remember when Simon caught Frances with the Cézanne at the party?”
They all nodded. Frances remembered they’d even laughed about it afterward.
“He started asking questions after that. How did I know you all? Where did we go when we went away for the weekend?” She glanced at the floor and shook her head.
“I made things up, but he was suspicious. He hadn’t wanted that party to begin with, and he hadn’t wanted to invite my friends.
But I thought … I thought I had soothed it over, and it wasn’t that big of a deal.
” She drew an unsteady breath. “Then he found the Pahlavi brooch from the Ramsbury estate heist. And he knew.”
Silence filled the small kitchen.
“The brooch,” Frances repeated. Edie had taken the jewelry haul to their fencer in New York. “But why did you have—”
“They were reporting four women near the estate that night of the Ramsbury heist with a flat tire and … and he figured it out.”
“No way,” Irene said flatly. “He couldn’t have pinned that on us. We were dressed as nuns!”
“Yes,” Edie said. “One small Asian nun, one tall Black nun, two white nuns.”
Something, a creak, caught Frances’s attention, and she turned toward the windows. Was someone out there?
“Look,” Edie continued, “he made us. And he … he made an anonymous phone call to the FBI about it. I barely had time to warn you! And when I told you, we had that hellacious fight, and I never got to explain. You weren’t caught, thank God, but if you want me to say I regret what I chose, you will be disappointed.
I regret how it all went down, but I don’t regret choosing him.
If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have my family.
I wouldn’t have my children and my grandchildren. That’s all I’m going to say.”
“It’s not all I’m going to say—” Irene started, but Frances suddenly threw a hand up to stop her from speaking, then put a finger to her lips. She pointed to the window.
The four of them stilled, their instincts, honed in their twenties, kicking in.
They could hear it, too—the creak of wood under the weight of something larger than a dog.
Irene reached for the wall and turned the single kitchen light off, then slipped down the hall to cover the bedroom windows.
Joan signaled she would take the back door.
Frances and Edie crept carefully to the living room and the front door.
The years melted away, and the four of them moved into familiar roles.
They knew how to work together, to move quietly and quickly.
Edie carefully unplugged a lamp and held it up, ready to strike.
She put her back to the wall between the door and the window and nodded at Frances.
Frances reached for the door handle, her hand resting on it. They listened.
They heard it again, this time just on the other side of the door. Frances yanked the door open, and Edie leapt into the opening, lamp raised. On the other side of the door, Marcy yelped.
Edie lowered the lamp and grabbed her granddaughter by the wrist, yanking her inside. Frances shut the door, then rose up on her tiptoes to look out. She couldn’t see anyone else on the street. “Clear,” she said.
“Clear,” Irene added, walking in from the hall.
“Clear,” Joan said, joining them in the living room.
The four of them stared at Marcy. Marcy smiled meekly and said, “Hi.”