Chapter 6 #2
Helen glanced down, where her purse rested in her lap. She unzipped it and peered inside, looking both perplexed and relieved as she closed it again. “Don’t mention it,” she said in a shaky voice. She looked a little uneasy when Vero extended a hand to help her up and ushered her out the door.
When she was alone, Vero sagged against the wall, hoping Helen was too mortified to mention their horrible exchange.
It hadn’t been Vero’s finest moment, but at least no one would see it.
She could hardly risk being caught on camera in Costco, much less holding a woman’s purse hostage in a public restroom.
She took her phone out of her pocket and pulled up a search bar, Googling her own name, searching for any updates in her case, anything to suggest that a warrant had been served.
She didn’t imagine the cops would initiate a full-blown Rambo-style manhunt for a college dropout who’d supposedly made off with her sorority’s treasury fund, but she didn’t want to take any chances either.
If her face was going to be plastered all over the news, she wanted only two things: for them to use a decent photo (preferably a cute selfie from her Instagram account and not the one on her driver’s license) and to have a head start out of town before her family saw the headlines.
This was the one safe, private place where she could check the news before she left the bank to return to Ramón’s apartment.
She sagged with relief when she didn’t find any new media hits.
Then, with a pained sigh, she deleted every one of her social media accounts.
All the “friends” and the “likes”… they were all bullshit anyway.
And they would only make it easier for people to find her.
The news stations would choose the picture that cast her in whatever light made the best story, and people would see what they wanted to see, no matter what photo they chose.
She put her phone away, dreading the thought of leaving the bathroom.
She hoped Helen hadn’t said anything to anyone.
That Terence wasn’t waiting for Vero in the hall.
The last thing she needed was to get fired before she had a chance at a promotion.
It would be just her luck if Terence started suspecting her all because of a wrestling match over a tampon.
This whole investigation of hers was taking too damn long. The thief should have slipped up by now. They should have made some critical misstep that Terence would have spotted on his security footage.
Unless…
Vero stiffened as she thought back to the conversations she’d had with Terence since she’d been hired: his observations during his visit to the bank last night, his offhand comment about wanting to upgrade his house, and the fact that he had a vault key…
What if the thief wasn’t working in front of the cameras? What if he’d been working behind them all along?
Ramón’s truck was in his parking space when Vero returned from the movie theater on Saturday.
It had been her first afternoon off since she’d started at the bank, and as much as she would rather have spent it shopping at the outlet mall in Leesburg, she was leery of spending too much time in crowded public spaces, especially ones so close to the Maryland state line.
Instead, she’d opted for a double feature in a dark theater, where no one was likely to recognize her.
Between staying late at work and her “date” with Darren, she had managed to avoid her cousin all week. Ramón hadn’t seemed to notice, probably because he’d been too preoccupied with his overdue taxes to even ask why she’d been coming home late. But tonight, it seemed her streak of luck had run out.
She opened the door to his apartment and peeked inside.
Ramón was in the kitchen, unpacking bags of groceries.
Which meant he probably planned to cook a tragically inedible meal for them, during which he would grill her about when she would return to school and how long she was planning to stay on his couch.
She backed silently out of the door.
“Good, you’re home,” he called out before she could shut it. Busted. “You’re just in time. Grab some silverware and set the table.”
Vero knew that tone. It was the fatherly one he’d used with her since he was twelve, whenever he felt like his whopping three and a half years of maturity over her warranted a lecture.
Resigned to her fate, she slunk inside, stripped off her sweatshirt, and dropped her purse on the couch.
With a sigh, she helped him unpack the last of the groceries, a hodgepodge of ingredients he probably had no idea what to do with.
Ramón’s mother had taught him how to cook, but that didn’t mean he’d liked it.
When it had been Ramón and Javi’s turn on Wednesday nights, it always became a contest to see who could mess it up worse, because in their adolescent boy-brains, they thought if they overcooked the meat and burned the vegetables enough, they might be excused from their weekly meal prep duties.
But Aunt Gloria had proved to be more stubborn than the two of them combined.
She’d made them sit at that kitchen table until they’d finished every bite.
To this day, Ramón’s greatest culinary success had been Kraft Mac & Cheese with hot dogs in it instead of on the side.
Vero did a quick analysis of the contents of the grocery bags. She reached for the cutting board, a knife, and a peeler, and put Ramón to work chopping.
“Thanks for your help with those tax forms,” he said as he started on the carrots and onions. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s not like I had anything better to do.” She wasn’t about to tell him she’d taken a job.
“Yeah, we should talk about that.”
“About what?” she asked as she drizzled oil into a frying pan.
“You said you needed a break for a few days. It’s been more than a week. You’re going to fall behind in your classes.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Whatever is going on with your sorority sisters can’t be more important than your degree. If they’re bothering you so much, why not just move back into the dorms?”
“It’s not that simple. I just need a little more time.” She dumped a slab of ground beef into the sizzling pan.
“How much time are we talking?”
“I don’t know, Ramón! I didn’t realize your crappy couch would be such a hot property. Maybe you should list it on Airbnb. You might make some money.”
That shut him up. “You talked to Javi?” he asked as she oversalted the meat.
“I ran into him last night.”
“He didn’t mention you two spoke.”
“And you didn’t mention he lived here.”
Ramón set down his knife. “Vero—” He was interrupted by a loud knock on the door. They stared at each other across the narrow width of his kitchen before he moved to see who it was. “You might want to make a little extra,” he said over his shoulder.
“Why? Are you expecting company?” She tossed her spatula into the pan. If he had invited Javi to dinner, she was leaving. They could burn it themselves.
She froze as Ramón opened the door.
“Hey, Norma.”
Vero felt herself pale. Oh god. What was her mother doing here?
She looked around her for another way out, but the apartment was two stories up and there were no windows in the kitchen.
Maybe she could climb inside the oven. She’d rather be cooked alive than endure the dinner conversation that was coming.
She was going to kill her cousin. Slowly.
She was going to pluck out his toenails and put hot sauce in his eyes.
She was going to tell his mother about the time when he was sixteen, when he snuck out his bedroom window and let Tracy Lippett give him a blow job behind the bushes in his back yard.
Or the time he and Javi told Aunt Gloria they were spending the night at Markie Billburg’s house and they drove to a party in Ocean City, got drunk, were kicked out of a strip club, and woke up the next morning under the boardwalk.
They came home and told Aunt Gloria they’d both caught the flu, but they were really too hungover to go to school.
“Mom!” Vero pasted on a smile as her mother came into the kitchen.
Norma handed her a foil-covered plate that smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, and Vero resisted the urge to peek at it.
Her mother was a tiny whirlwind. A five-foot-two-inch wrecking ball of unfiltered honesty and brutal determination.
She was unstoppable, like the Terminator, if the Terminator gave the best hugs and made the world’s most delicious tres leches cake.
“What a surprise. What are you doing here?” Vero glared at Ramón over her mother’s shoulder as they hugged.
Ramón responded by setting the table for three.
“I couldn’t reach you. When I called your cousin to see if he’d heard from you, he told me you were here. Why aren’t you in school?” she asked, getting straight down to business.
“Well… you see… there was this situation that came up.”
“What situation?”
Ramón raised an eyebrow, just as eager for her explanation.
This was going to require some very strategic evasion.
“A… mold incident,” Vero said as her mother came around her to sniff at what was cooking on the stove, “in one of the academic buildings. You know, the really terrible kind where they have to cancel classes to remediate it. Our professors gave us a few days off, so I thought I’d come and visit my favorite cousin.
” She smiled innocently at Ramón. Vero’s mother wasn’t exceptionally competent when it came to Google.
She would probably never know if Vero was lying, unless her cousin ratted her out.
He narrowed his eyes at her. Vero gave him a quick, desperate shake of her head. Before he could open his mouth to question her lie, Norma asked, “Vero, what’s going on here?”