Beware False Profits Part 20

Reuben Belcore-known simply as Rube-liked tacos. Five minutes of stand up conversation in the Victorian had convinced us we could have a more productive and comfortable talk at the parsonage. My offer of a home-cooked meal, even if it consisted of leftovers, helped Rube make the leap from suspicious to merely watchful.

He followed us in a rusted pickup truck that had seen a decade of use. The camper that fit over the truck bed had met with misfortune on the trip from Boston and he'd had to sc.r.a.p it. I told him this was actually good fortune since eventually the mishap had brought him to us when he needed a place to sleep. But our connection wasn't pure coincidence. As he scarfed tacos, accompanied by fruit salad and two of Junie's fabulous brownies, he told us why he had installed himself in the Victorian.

"You kept showing up." He nodded to me, too busy eating to spare his pointer. "You were with the lady who took Joey's place as fortune-teller-"

"You know about that?"

"I heard about Mayday! when I got to town. I heard Joey told fortunes. He was always good at that. Once I was in the joint waiting for my trial, and he told me I'd get off and I did."

"The joint?"

"Just a misunderstanding."

I thought about everything I'd learned about Creative Construction. "Work-related misunderstanding?"

"They're always work-related."

My gaze locked with Lucy's.

Rube went on. "So I saw you with that new fortune-teller-"

"My mother," I explained. Junie and the girls were still out shopping.

"Then the next day I saw you with Joey's wife, when I was watching their house. He knows how to pick 'em, doesn't he?"

That was a question best left unanswered. "So you saw me with Maura?"

"Right, but you didn't see me because I didn't want you to. When you left I decided to follow, just to see if maybe you had some important connection to him. You went over to Bunting Street, and when you left the old house, I went inside, just to see what was up."

"And you got inside how?"

He laughed. "You're kidding, right? You think those locks are secure? You know what a b.u.mp key is?"

"It's a key that'll let you into almost any house you want to get into," Lucy said. "I bought a set on eBay last week. But go on."

He looked pleased, as if he'd found a coconspirator. "When I got in I saw the note you left your contractor. I liked the house. I decided if I stayed there, maybe I'd find out more about Joey, and I figured you'd never catch on. And it was more comfortable than sleeping in my truck."

"What about all the work you did?" Lucy asked. "Great work, by the way."

"I'm no criminal. Maybe I let myself in and that wasn't strictly legal, but I figured I owed you for giving me a place to stay. Besides, I could tell you needed the help. Those other guys never showed up. And at night I didn't have anything better to do. I had my truck, I had my tools..." He shrugged in finale.

"Until today we thought they were doing the work."

"I was going to leave you a note before I left for good, telling you not to pay them. Baboons!"

I got the drift if not the precise translation. "Amen."

So now we knew why Rube had chosen our Victorian, but we still didn't know why he was here in Emerald Springs. Before I could ask, he ate his last brownie, dusted off his hands, and finished his third cup of coffee.

"Tell me what you know about Joey." He leaned across the table. His eyes were as black as olives, and they gave absolutely nothing away.

"You have to go first, so I'll know what to tell you."

He chewed the inside of his lip, as if considering. "It's not a good story."

I was sorry I had to hear it, because I didn't want anything to ruin my opinion of Joe Wagner. Discovering Joe was a part-time drag queen was campy and exotic, but entirely harmless. I didn't want to find out he was also a criminal.

Rube took my silence for permission. "I guess you have to know. But it doesn't put me and my brothers in a very good light."

I felt marginally more optimistic. "Go ahead and get it off your chest, Rube. Maybe you'll feel better."

"My father Jake's been married a lot. He's not so easy to live with, if you know what I mean? Wives died or divorced him. I kind of lost count."

"My mother's been married five times," I said.

He seemed to appreciate the comparison. "Something must be wrong in the Belcore gene department, but Pops only has boys, not a girl in the bunch. An even dozen. We didn't all grow up in the same house. Some of us lived with Pops, some lived with our mothers. But n.o.body moved too far away. So we spent a lot of time together, got to know each other. And one thing we all knew? Pops didn't have much patience, and what he had he saved for Joey, the baby."

"That's tough."

"Yeah, we all thought so. Now I can understand. Joey's mother was sort of the love of Pop's life. She was young and a real looker. And smart? Too smart for Joey's good, because she figured out early that living with Pops wasn't what she wanted. So she took off and left Joey and Pops behind. Joey was smart like her. I had a reading problem so I barely finished high school. Simeon? He had a social problem, if you know what I mean. He wanted something, he took it."

Simeon probably wasn't having much luck taking what he wanted in Leavenworth, but I nodded.

"Anyway, everybody but Joey had a problem or an excuse. Some of us are just lazy good-for-nothings. Or were, I ought to say. We improve with age, like good Chianti, huh? Anyway, Joey didn't need to improve. Straight As, good on the football field, responsible, you name it. He got a scholars.h.i.+p to college and decided he'd study business. Pops started talking about letting Joey take over the company when he retired."

I could see how this might upset the others, who had probably paid their dues in Creative Construction the old-fas.h.i.+oned way. Knowing that someday Joe was just going to waltz in clutching his college degree and start ordering them around? The situation had all the earmarks of a disaster.

"So is that what happened? Your father retired and Joe took over?"

"The summer after Joey finished his third year, Pops got sick. Cancer, if you want to know. The doctor said he didn't have much of a chance of beating it, and he'd probably pa.s.s away quick. Everybody was all broke up. Maybe Pops wasn't the best father, but he was all we had. Then Simeon reminded us that when Pops was six feet under, Joey would be lording it over us. He said he'd seen a will, and Pops was leaving everything to Joey. Of course Joey was supposed to keep all our interests in mind, but what good would that do? Joey didn't like something? Out we'd go."

He looked longingly at his empty coffee cup, so I got up to pour him another, glad I'd made a big pot. I offered a re-fill to Lucy, but she shook her head. She was clearly enthralled.

"I think anybody would feel upset with that situation," she said. "And your father probably never intended for Joey to take over while he was so young and inexperienced."

Rube took a long sip, then he licked his lips. "Here's the rest. Quick and clean. We set Joey up for a fall. It wasn't hard because he was so green and so honest himself. We s.h.i.+fted some figures here, emptied a bank account there. Joey was working in our office that summer. We fixed the books to show profits we never made, then we fixed them some more to look like Joey had skimmed all the excess into his own pockets. Simeon did most of the work. He knew how to make things happen." He sighed. "Somebody should have paid attention to that. It got him in big trouble later."

"Go on," I encouraged.

"When we showed Joey what we'd found, he denied it, of course. But what could he do? How could he insist he was innocent? All the proof was right there. So we told him we would make it go away because he was our brother, and we had to protect him. But we told him he had to leave for good, that we couldn't trust him anymore around the company or the family, and if he stayed in Boston, we'd be obliged to tell Pops what he had done and our poor dying Pops would be obliged to turn him in to save everything he had worked so hard to build. Joey was young, and he fell for it."

"You mean Joe didn't know he'd been set up?"

"Not then. I'd guess he's figured it out by now, wouldn't you?"

I guessed he had. "What about your father?"

"They did some long-shot operation, and he came through fine and dandy. You can imagine we got worried about then. See, we'd thought Pops would die before any of this came to light. But we went ahead and stuck with the story we invented. We told him Joey just disappeared, and n.o.body knew where he'd gone."

"And he believed that?"

"About that time we were bidding on some jobs against another firm that was connected, if you know what I mean. We told Pops we thought maybe they'd messed with Joey or took him as a warning that we should back off. We pretended like we did everything to find him. Pops was recovering, and he didn't have the strength to go looking himself. He finally accepted that Joey was gone. For years we thought Joey would come back and rat us out, but he never did. Pops still misses him terrible. He went on to marry and have one more son, but he's never forgotten Joey."

I thought about everything Nan had told me this afternoon. The Belcore family was some piece of work. Maybe Joe was lucky to have escaped-although I doubted he felt that way.

"What about Joe's mother?" Lucy asked. "Are they in touch? Could Joe be with her?"

"For a long time n.o.body knew where she'd gone. But she's the reason I knew something had happened to Joey after I traced him here. When that fellow at the food bank announced Joey was with his dying mother? See, when we decided we had to find him, we were finally able to track his mother down. She's living on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale with a new husband and kids, healthy as a horse, and hasn't heard from Joey since the day she walked out."

Lucy was full of questions. "If Joe has figured out by now that his own brothers framed him, why hasn't he gone home to tell your father?"

But I thought I knew. Joe was ashamed. Ashamed that he had let his brothers get the better of him. Ashamed that he had abandoned his dying father to keep from being arrested. Maybe even ashamed that he had never figured out how to make things right again. He's the most responsible person I've ever met. Something like this would eat away at Joe Wagner, but it wouldn't necessarily spur him to act irresponsibly.

"I bet Joe decided there was nothing to be gained by exposing you and your brothers and breaking your father's heart all over again," I said.

Rube hung his head a moment. "That's what I think, too."

"So why are you here?"

"We had a family meeting two years ago. We knew we couldn't go on like this. Pops is getting old, and he deserves to end his life with Joey beside him. At the very least he deserves to know what happened, and what we did. And we need to tell Joey we're sorry. It's weighing us down."

"And everybody agreed to this?"

"Simeon couldn't be there. At the meeting, I mean. Dan thought maybe we should just keep going like we had been, to keep from hurting Pops even more. But the rest thought it was time to end the lies, so we started looking for Joey. He did a good job of hiding himself. He changed his name, moved out of New England. It took awhile, but we finally got the lead we needed, and my brothers sent me to talk to him and see if I could bring him home."

"Your timing sucks," Lucy said.

"Tell me about it." He looked at me. "Tell me about Joey."

So I did. I told him everything I knew about Joe, about how much he was loved and admired in Emerald Springs, about his work at the food bank and what a good father he was to Tyler. Then, without mentioning the particulars of the p.u.s.s.ycat Club, I told him the rest.

I was just getting to that possible siting of Joe at Mayday!, a siting I now thought I understood, when the side door opened and my girls came running in, followed by their grandmother. I hadn't heard the car drive up.

Junie walked in, took one look at Rube, and grinned. "You found him!" Then she frowned. "Or maybe not."

"Is this the man you saw in the tent at Mayday!?" I asked.

She nodded. "But he's not your Joe, is he?"

I had noticed from the beginning that Rube sounded almost exactly like his brother when he spoke. Between that and my own reaction when I first saw him, I had already guessed that Rube was the man Junie and Teddy had identified as Joe. When he mentioned seeing me at Mayday! with Junie, I'd been almost sure.

Now my emotions were mixed. I was glad Joe hadn't been at Mayday! when Hazel died, because that put him farther down the list of suspects. But now there was no proof that Joe Wagner-or rather Joe Belcore-was still alive.

"Do you have to go back to Boston anytime soon?" Lucy asked Rube.

"I'm not going back until I know where my brother is."

She looked at me, and I nodded, sure what she was going to say next. "Will you keep working on the house while you're here?" she asked him. "We'll make it worth your while."

"You trust me after everything I told you?"

I answered. "Aren't you the same man who's been working for us for free?" I held up my hand when he tried to speak. "The man who decided he had to right a very old wrong and came here to do it?"

"We've changed. All of us...most of us. I know I have. I won't let you down."

Junie put her hand over her heart. She hadn't heard much of the story, but she had heard enough. "I love happy endings."

And so did I. Unfortunately this wasn't an ending. It was just another curve in the road. I hoped someday Joe Wagner could sit in this kitchen and shout "the end" to enthusiastic applause. But at this point, I was afraid that was a long shot.

14.

By Thursday morning whatever bug I'd harbored had been squashed by Junie's herbs or my own determination. I was no longer limping, and Ed was still speaking to me. I felt so lucky I considered buying a lottery ticket at the grocery store checkout, but I spent the money on a candy bar and enjoyed the immediate reward.

I was vacuuming cat hair off the sofa, one of the more futile jobs in the universe, when the telephone rang. It was Teddy's teacher.

Determined to hold on to my good mood, I took the phone in the kitchen and flipped on the burner under the teakettle.

"I have a feeling this is about Cinderella," I said.

Miss Hollins's voice did not warm at my conciliatory tone. "Did you give Teddy permission to drop out of the play?"

"Absolutely not. Why, did she ask to?"

"She didn't ask. She insisted."

I could have told Teddy this was not a woman who responded kindly to orders. I wished my daughter had asked me, but of course, I had told her she had to handle this on her own. I winced.

I got down my favorite mug. Clearly I was going to need newborn lambs frolicking in an English meadow to get me through the conversation. "Did she say why?"

"She refuses."

"I don't know either, but my mother-in-law suggested that perhaps some of the other little girls are jealous, and they're giving Teddy a hard time. Do you think there might be something to that?"

"I don't let students in my cla.s.sroom behave that way."

Now this was the Jennifer Hollins I remembered, the brand-new teacher with a chip on her shoulder. Before I could think of a response that wouldn't get my daughter into deeper trouble, I heard her sigh.

"At least I try not to," she said in a softer voice.

"n.o.body expects you to be everywhere. But that's just one guess. Do you have any?"