A Small Fortune (5 page)

Jonathon and I met within days of my mother’s death. I’d gone into her bank, Pacific Savings and Trust, to sign the paperwork concerning her accounts. My eyes ached from crying. I was officially alone in the world. No family to speak of. I’d broken up with my boyfriend only one month before—a move I found myself regretting in the days leading up to my mother’s funeral. The man hadn’t been right for me, I knew this, but he’d had three brothers and two sisters and I liked them all, better than I liked the boyfriend, and I couldn’t stop thinking how nice it would have been to have them gathered around me during the holidays. To have them gathered around me in the bank.

I signed everything after a blurry-eyed, cursory read. The sight of my mother’s jagged signature was enough to throw me into another round of weeping. My vision was hazy, my eyes too tired to see. I was distracted, unable to shake the odd feeling that someone was watching me. I thought it was my mother looking down from the great beyond, trying to get my attention, advise me on playing a market I had no interest in—and, according to her lawyer, she hadn’t been very good at playing herself. But as I rubbed my achy eyes, I noticed out of the corner a man in a dark gray suit. He massaged his temple at regular intervals as if soothing the thoughts inside his head. He shuffled papers unconvincingly. When I stood to leave, he stepped out from behind a long desk and introduced himself as the president of the bank. He told me how sorry he was for my loss. He’d known my mother, Gilion, only slightly, of course, but he wanted me to know that he’d always looked forward to her jaunty personality and all the conversations they’d had about the market. My mother
had
been jaunty, a word I never attached to her before that moment. She was jaunty and bighearted and full of intense, motherly love; and without warning, a greedy, savage cancer had ripped her away.

Jonathon and I were married four months later in a small ceremony in the backyard of the Victorian we’d bought for its history, adopting all the families who’d lived there over the centuries as if they’d been our own. It was summer, everything in bloom, the air filled with jasmine and honeysuckle, the bold red Canna lilies trumpeting along the south side of a house so snowy white that my dress would appear sallow in the photographs. Jonathon was an only child like me. An orphan, too. There’d been no family to encourage us to take our time. No one to suggest we get to know one another better before committing. No one asked if we were sure this was what we truly wanted. Friends, both his and mine, were overjoyed that we’d found someone of our own. Someone who was kind and decent and knew how to make a living. Someone who would keep us from being alone.

I leap for the door. My heart bangs so loudly inside my ears I can barely hear what’s being said. But I’m sure it’s Jonathon out there, the frequency of his voice unmistakable after eighteen years of marriage, his signature throat clearing as obvious to me as a red flag waving in a crowd of white. My insides freeze. What the hell is going on?

Benicio picks up the tray of food and brings it to the bed.

“It’s Jonathon!” I say. Maybe he really can take their guns the way he’d taken the robber’s in the bank.

Benicio sips his coffee.

“Did you hear me?”

“
Pero concordamos
,” Jonathon says, or something like this.

“Come here!” I say. “Tell me what he’s saying.”

Benicio crosses the room and sets his ear to the door.

“
Pero concordamos
.” There it is again.

“What does that mean?”

Benicio holds a finger to his lips.

The conversation continues in Spanish, a detail that for the moment takes a backseat to the fact that Jonathon is in this house, right here, right now. Another man does most of the talking. After a minute the conversation stops.

“What did they say?” I ask.

“Why don’t we sit down and have something to eat first?”

“What? Tell me what they’re saying!” I jimmy the doorknob. “Jonathon!” I can no longer contain myself and pummel my fists into the door. This is all about to end. I can already feel myself in his arms, the stubble of his chin against my forehead, the familiar smell of his aftershave drifting on his breath.

“Jonathon!” I regret not screaming earlier to let him know I’m safe. He might not even know I’m there.

Benicio strolls back to the bed and sits. He takes a bite of pastry.

Silence. The voices are gone. There’s only the clang of what sounds like an iron gate, and after that a car motor growing more distant. “Jonathon!” I cry. “I’m here! Get me out!”

“Please,” Benicio says. “You need to eat something.”

I rush to the window and peer outside. There’s nothing but banana trees and palms and wily grass and a hillside in the near distance. Down below a dry riverbed trickles a weak stream. Chickens peck along its bank.

I march back and stand above Benicio with fists on my hips. The sun has fully risen, and his eyes light up like a cat’s. “That was my husband. I’m sure it was his voice.”

Benicio chews and nods without looking at me.

I grab my hair at the roots and pace a wide circle, avoiding the broken glass from Isabel. My mind is rusty cogs, straining to function, my thoughts slowly, painfully slipping into place. Jonathon hasn’t studied Spanish since high school. We had this conversation when Oliver took Japanese last year.

I stop in the middle of the room and turn to Benicio. “Tell me everything you heard.”

A small smirk rises in the corner of his mouth. Perhaps it would be bigger without the swelling in his cheek. Or perhaps it wouldn’t appear like a smirk at all. It could be a look of pity gone lopsided with pain. “Please,” he says, patting the space next to him.

What choice do I have? He knows a hell of a lot more than I do. I take a deep breath and resign myself to sit.

He hands me a blue mug full of coffee. “It’ll taste terrible once it’s cold.” His fingers linger beneath mine. They’re warm and surprisingly soft for a gardener’s. Our eyes lock, and something electrical passes between us. I shove it aside. It doesn’t mean anything. This isn’t the time or place. But the circuitry between us zaps me again. I turn to the window and gulp my coffee.

“These pastries are from the French baker here in town,” he says.

“Goddamnit!” I turn to face him. “Tell me what they said!”

“All right. We can eat and talk at the same time.”

It’s like hanging off the side of a cliff, suspended between one reality and another. I glance at the apricot Danishes, the congealed layer of sugar on top. My mind may be wrapped in an agonizing mix of confusion and fear, but my body is desperate for food. That first bite of pastry is the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. I wash it down with the strong coffee. I bite the pastry like a dog.

“How well do you know your husband?” Benicio asks.

I stop chewing. Jonathon is a smart man. But high school Spanish? If I go by the unbroken rhythm in his speech, I’d have to say he sounds fluent. Is such a thing even possible? I swallow a lump of apricot that nearly chokes me. “What kind of question is that?”

Benicio shrugs.

I swallow again, feeling a wedge in my throat. “We’ve been married for eighteen years.”

“Long time.” He takes another bite.

“Yes.”

“But that’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your husband is not who you think he is.”

Dread wraps like a worm around the pastry in my stomach. Jonathon has gotten himself into some kind of trouble. The bank. Investments. The news arriving on his BlackBerry, thrown across the room.

“You’re pretty presumptuous about two people you don’t even know.” Heat rises to my temples. I take another bite and chew furiously on one side of my mouth.

“I see the look in your eye,” he says. “Something has occurred to you.”

I plop my mug and the rest of my pastry onto the tray and cross back to the window. It must be eighty degrees, but the breeze in my wet hair makes me shiver.

“Whatever is going on here has nothing to do with my husband,” I say, even as my mind races through all the strange things he’s done lately. This could be exactly what Benicio wants. For me to make connections where none exist.

There has to be an explanation. I snatch up an unused zip tie from the floor and fasten my hair into a ponytail, a small gesture that makes me feel more organized, more in control. I return to the window and speak as if to someone outside. “You’re playing a mind game with me. Or maybe I’m playing one with myself. Maybe I just imagined the voice belonged to my husband.” I turn to Benicio. “Is that bruise on your face even real? Or did you let them do that, tie you up, hit you in the face, just to gain my trust or some such shit?”

He nods at the floor. “That was your husband outside. You weren’t mistaken.”

“You’ve never even read Joella Lundstrum, have you?”

He leans back and places his hands on his knees. “Alice Brown single-handedly brings an entire corporation to justice.”

“You could have read that on the back cover.”

“’And the men who hold high places will be the first to come to their knees.’” A quote I recognize from the middle of the book. “Are we really going to argue about this now?” he asks.

“My husband doesn’t speak Spanish. And even if he did, why would I still be in here if he’d already given them what they wanted? Come on. What’s the plan? Shoot me, rape me, cut off my head, or all of the above?”

Benicio sets his cup down and crosses to me, slowly, stopping only inches away. “Your husband has been here before.”

“What?”

“He’s been coming here for years. As recently as two months ago.”

“You’re lying.”

“Where did he tell you he was going at the end of January? A business trip?”

“He’s president of a bank,” I say, my voice breaking at the realization. “Of course he takes business trips.”

“The end of January. Where did he tell you he was going?”

I feel faint. The American Bankers Association in Vegas. But maybe they already knew this about him, that he’d been out of town, and now Benicio’s trying to convince me that Jonathon had actually come down here instead.

I regain my footing. “What does
pero con
-something mean?”

Benicio draws a long breath.

“Jonathon, if it
was
Jonathon, kept saying that.”

“He was making sure that Leon hadn’t hurt you.”

This sounds so right to my ears that my body loosens with relief. Even if Jonathon really is mixed up in something, and I’m not fully convinced this is the case, but if he is he’s come here to negotiate. He wants to know I’m all right. He’s working to get me out.

“What I mean is, his exact words to Leon were, ‘We agreed last week that you wouldn’t hurt her.’”

Maybe something is lost in translation.

“He also mentioned something about going to Switzerland.”

Switzerland.

Benicio grips my arms to keep me from slumping to the floor.

The warm clothes in Jonathon’s suitcase. Perfect for Switzerland this time of year. Is Oliver going, too? Or is he being held somewhere like me?

“Listen to me,” Benicio whispers.

I take a small step back. He follows with a step forward, still supporting my weight. Then something crosses his face. It seems to throw him off from the words he intends to say. He searches my eyes. “I don’t understand how a husband could do this to his wife,” he says.

I hang there a moment longer thinking of how unusually relaxed Jonathon was the morning we left. A man headed off on a vacation. It doesn’t make sense. I struggle free and grip the iron bars. “Get away from me. You’re making this whole thing up. That’s not what he said out there.”

“Listen.” His voice is a deep whisper. “I tried to stop them from taking you. That’s why they put me in here.”

I squint and jiggle my head trying to make sense of what he’s saying. “I was in your car, Benicio. You kidnapped me.”

“My aunt and uncle own the condo you’re staying in. Leon is their son. He told me your husband needed to find you. It was an emergency. When he gave me the keys to his car, your husband was standing outside the condo door looking half out of his mind. This is why I picked you up. They fooled me the same as they fooled you. And when I realized what was happening, when they pulled you from the car, I tried to make them stop, but the next thing I knew they put the same cloth over my face, and when I woke I was tied to a chair like you.”

“Why didn’t they just grab me themselves? Why send you?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m not stupid,” I say, but the irony of my words hangs in the air. Oh but I am, just look at how easily I’ve been fooled.

“Leon has been trying to get me to join the family business for years. No matter how this looks, he cares about me. He wants me to do well, have a big family, all that.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“The last thing I want is to join the family business.”

“Right. Still not following.”

“He thought if he made me an accomplice to kidnapping he could blackmail me to do what he wanted, and someday, when I was living this great life, I’d be thanking him for it. I know. It’s impossible to believe that this is what people do when they care about you. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”