Sixteen
What was she going to do with this girl? Edie was furious. Embarrassed. She didn’t like that her friends were witnessing how she lacked control over her own family. “Your hi is not accepted,” she said sternly. “I expressly told you to butt out.”
“I’m sorry, Nana, but this is the most interesting thing that has ever happened to this family. How can you ask me to butt out?”
“How did you even find me?” Edie demanded. “You were in the shower when I left.”
Marcy rolled her eyes. “You have the family location app on your phone, remember? You should turn that off.”
Irene groaned with exasperation and fell onto the couch. Joan walked back into the kitchen, probably so that she wouldn’t say something she would regret. And Frances looked on with fascination.
Edie’s fury with Marcy ratcheted. For one, she didn’t know she had that location thing on, and two, she didn’t know how to turn it off.
“What part of stay out of it do you not understand?” She put her hands on Marcy’s shoulders and tried to turn her toward the door, but Marcy resisted.
“Marcy, go home to Nashville. I want you as far from here as possible. This is none of your business, and right now, you’re a huge complication. Just go.”
“I don’t understand why it’s such a big secret,” Marcy argued. “I already know most of it.”
Edie was going to lose her mind. Right here, right now. They would cart her off in an ambulance before the night was over. “I’m allowed to have secrets from you. Just because you want to know doesn’t mean you have a right to know. This is my life, Marcy, and you are not invited—do you understand?”
“Not really,” Marcy said. The girl could be stubborn, but this was a new level, even for her.
“We need our privacy. It’s not just me who needs privacy—my friends have their reasons, too.”
“Right,” Marcy said. “I heard a little bit about that.”
Edie could feel a scream gaining strength in her lungs. “If you don’t stop following me, I’ll make sure you never see another dime of money from this family again. Does that get your attention?”
Judging by the surprise on Marcy’s face, it did. She turned and went to the door. She opened it, looked back, then walked out the door without a word.
“Money talks,” Irene said.
Edie waited until she could see Marcy’s car moving down the street before she turned back to her friends. “This is a complication. She’s not going to let it go—she’s as stubborn as I am.”
“Yikes, that bad? Not good,” Joan remarked.
“What do you want to do?” Frances asked.
What Edie wanted to do was a get a drink, ask them about their lives and what had happened to them after they so abruptly disbanded.
And then she wanted to go home, and get in her own bed, and think of new ways to spend Simon’s money.
But more than all of that, she wanted to take that little worm, Rocco Vitali, out of commission.
His machinations felt like a slap in her face.
Weirdly, Marcy’s stubbornness was just making her resolve that much stronger.
Like she had something to prove to her granddaughter.
And if there was one thing about Edith Smith that had remained constant since the dawn of time, it was that when she got hold of a bone, she did not let go.
“Let’s get to work,” Edie said. “The sooner we do this, the better.”
Frances smiled. “Looks like we’re planning a heist, ladies! I’ll get the snacks.”
“And the wine,” Irene said. “God help me if it’s not good wine, I won’t sleep for a week. You didn’t get the box shit like you used to, did you, Joanie?”
“Of course not,” Joan said, appearing from the kitchen and sounding offended. “But the Piggly Wiggly isn’t exactly offering the country’s best.”
While they settled in, Edie took a computer and several manila files out of her tote bag. She and Irene argued a little about leaving a paper trail, but in the end, Edie had copies of her notes for everyone. Everyone reached for their eyeglasses and put them on, ready to go.
Frances served wine in jam jars—the only sort of glass the rental seemed to have—while Edie handed out the folders.
“I’m doing this for Marcy, by the way,” she explained.
“The mark I have is the man who took her for every dime she has. I won’t stop until I have his balls hanging from the imaginary hitch on my car.
His name is Rocco Vitali, and he owns Roc V Crypto. ”
“I know that name. Why do I know that name?” Frances asked, her brow furrowing.
“He’s Vincent Vitali’s grandson.” The name had rung a bell with Edie, too. She’d looked it up and discovered why.
“No,” Frances said, shaking her head as she rummaged in her bag. “I remember now—I’ve seen the ads on TV for his crypto whatever.”
“Wait a minute,” Irene said. “I know that name—but not from TV. I don’t even own a TV.”
“Really?” Joan asked. “How do you live like that? And who is this guy?”
“I didn’t remember him at first, either,” Edie said. “But when I started digging into this little shit’s background, it all came back to me. Vincent Vitali owned that dive casino on the Jersey Shore.”
“Vinny’s,” Joan said, recalling now. “Highly original name,” she added with a roll of her eyes.
“That’s right,” Frances said. “We planned to take that jewelry on display. I remember now—Vitali is the guy who had a museum in his casino dedicated to the Rat Pack, right? Like he had Sammy Davis Jr.’s tuxedo and Dean Martin’s ring or something. He was really into it.”
“Weirdly obsessed,” Edie said.
“But we didn’t take the jewelry,” Frances said. “I can’t remember why.”
“Because he sniffed us out,” Irene said. “He caught me and Edie in the ladies’ bathroom and suggested some of the things he and his cronies would do to us if he found us in his sleazy establishment again.”
“Right,” Joan said, remembering now. “Did we ever figure out how he caught on to us?”
“No,” Irene said. “Although I suspect it had something to do with the keys I had made. The hardware store was just down the street. I think the owner clued him in—he looked to be made of the same oily substance as Vincent Vitali.”
“We were lucky,” Frances said. “To think of all the heists we did, we were only made a couple of times. Not counting Edie turning us in.”
They would never let it go. “Can we please stop saying I turned you in? Anyway. Vincent Vitali was shut down by the Jersey gaming commission. A couple of years later, he bought and remodeled the Pelican Casino in Vegas. He moved everything from Jersey to Vegas, including all the Rat Pack memorabilia, and get this … the antique safe he’d had in Vinny’s.
He was very proud of that safe and bragged it was impossible to break, that they didn’t make safes like that now.
He said he’d had the best in the business try to break it and no one could. ”
“Who is the best in the business?” Joan asked curiously. “How would you even know the best in the safecracking business? Do they have an association or something?”
“It’s complete bullshit,” Edie said. “He died last year—mysterious fall from the balcony, by the way—and left the whole kit and caboodle to his grandson, that equally sleazy little worm, Rocco Vitali.”
“Wait a minute,” Frances said, removing her glasses. “How does Marcy know his grandson?”
“College,” Edie said. “They both attended Vanderbilt.”
“Vincent Vitali’s grandson went to college in Tennessee?” Joan asked. “That’s a choice coming from New Jersey.”
“From what I’ve been able to gather, the boy was already in trouble on the East Coast. My guess is Grandpa sent him to Tennessee, safe from the Jersey authorities. And while he was there, he developed a little Ponzi scheme using crypto and roped all his rich friends into it.”
“Crypto,” Joan repeated. “I do not get crypto.”
“Me, either,” Frances agreed.
“Make that three of us,” Irene said.
“I figured you’d all say that. In fact, that’s how this weasel operates—he makes it sound complex, so even the savviest investor may not pick up on the scheme. I brought a little primer.” She pulled up a PowerPoint presentation on her computer.
Irene gasped as the graphics began to dance around the screen before settling into a presentation. “You did that, Edie?”
“Lord, no,” Edie scoffed. “I downloaded it off the internet, and even that took an hour to figure out how to do. All right, so here is how he made it work. Like a regular Ponzi scheme, he had a pie-in-the-sky deal, and in the beginning, he made sure investors got some great returns. Of course, that money was coming from other new investors. When Marcy gave him her inheritance because of this promised enormous windfall, he used that to pay investors who had come before her.”
“Where was this kid getting all these investors?” Irene asked.
“Vanderbilt students and alum. He probably had some of his family’s cronies buying in.
Anyway, he ran this scam, but eventually he ran out of investors because, of course, there was nothing there to invest in, and savvy people figured it out.
He couldn’t pay those double and triple returns, and people tried to pull their money out, and there was a run on deposits because they had figured out by then nothing was there …
but he’d already made off with most of the money. ”
The four of them sat silently, pondering. Joan spoke first. “She lost everything?”
Edie nodded. “She even took out credit card debt.”
“Oh my God, never take out credit card loans,” Irene muttered. “And this kid, what did he end up with?”
“Who knows?” Edie said. “I’m sure he skimmed as much as he could. Marcy said in addition to her investments, she got hit with monthly trading and deposit fees. I bet that went right into his pocket, too.”
“He didn’t get caught?” Joan asked.
Edie snorted. “Not in this state. I tried to bring it to the attention of the authorities, but the kid is smart—he’s a big campaign contributor and the people he hurt were no one that politicians care about.”
“What a prick,” Frances said. “Do we know anything about his other victims?”