Popped Off (6 page)

Authors: Jeffrey Allen

BOOK: Popped Off

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I spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon doing my dad chores—laundry, dishes, cleaning, paying bills, and yard work. Even though our friends liked to kid me about how easy I had it, I was pretty good at managing the household. Julianne would even admit it, if she had to. I didn’t just lie around the house, eating ice cream and napping. I didn’t want Julianne coming home and feeling like she had more to do in the evenings, so I made sure the house was in shape when she got home.

Unless I’d needed a nap.

But as I was working my way through my to-do list, I couldn’t get my mind off Moises Huber and the money. He was accused of stealing nearly six hundred thousand dollars. That wasn’t twenty bucks out of someone’s wallet. That was the kind of money that got you sent to prison. And no matter how sneaky he thought he might’ve been, there was no way for that amount of money to go missing and people not to take notice. He had to know it wouldn’t take long for people to connect him to it, particularly when he had access to it.

It made no sense. If he was dumb, he never would’ve been in the positions he’d been in to manage the money in the first place. So I didn’t buy the idea that he was just stupid. If you were going to blatantly steal money from right under someone’s nose, there was usually one big reason.

Desperation.

After I put the final load of laundry away, I still had a little time before I needed to pick up Carly at camp. I sat down at the kitchen table with a Diet Pepsi and the e-mail printouts Victor gave me.

There were about thirty pages in the stack, with multiple e-mails on each page. I put the total number of e-mails to read at somewhere near a hundred. Most were innocuous and didn’t tell me much. Confirmations of soccer games, church events, receipts for bill payments. Nothing that raised a red flag. And that really wasn’t surprising. I figured he didn’t use his personal e-mail address for work-related business, especially since it pertained to finances.

I was about ready to throw them in the trash when something on the next-to-last page caught my attention.

The e-mail was from an Elliott Huber.

Hey, cuz! the e-mail read. Looking forward to seeing you this week. I signed you up for the weekend tourney. I covered your buy-in with my employee discount. Hope you’re ready!

The e-mail address was eHuber@comriventertain. com.

I grabbed my laptop and used Google to search the domain name in the e-mail address. It came back as Comanche River Entertainment. There was a link to the main Web site. I knew the name but clicked on the link, anyway.

The Comanche River Resort and Casino was one of a group of casinos near the northern Texas–southern Oklahoma border. Massive billboards advertising it dotted the Dallas landscape, offering gambling and entertainment only ninety minutes away. Comanche River was one of the biggest. It boasted a massive casino and a hotel, along with a theater that regularly hosted top-name country music acts. They billed themselves as a resort. I’d been there once, having made a Saturday night trip up with my poker buddies. It was truly a mammoth place.

I perused the Web site for a few minutes, seeing if the name Elliott Huber popped up anywhere. I didn’t have any luck. All I could find were generic contact addresses.

But I did have another idea.

The Web site worked hard to bring visitors to the casino and the hotel. It advertised specials everywhere. I punched in Friday night, and it came back with a great bargain rate for a night at the hotel.

I hesitated for a moment. Julianne didn’t like it when I mixed business with pleasure, but I was thinking that a night away might be conducive to Operation Baby Making. A little dinner, a little gambling, and a lot of time in the hotel room.

And if I managed to run into any member of the Huber family, well, that would just be a bonus.

I patted myself on the back as I made the reservation.

I picked up Carly from camp, and we returned home. She wasn’t singing a Jesus song or trying to convert me, so the day was a success as far as I was concerned. She scampered up to her room, babbling something about playing with her dolls. I was pretty good at playing, but I still hadn’t figured out the elaborate world she had created with her plethora of dolls.

When I was halfway through tenderizing chicken breasts for the grill, Julianne hustled into the kitchen, hugging two large pieces of white poster board.

She tossed her purse and briefcase on the table but held on to the poster board. “Okay. We’re ready.”

“Okay. Good. Ready for what?”

“Phase two.”

“I thought we were already on to phase two. Speaking of which, I—”

“Oh. Fine,” she said. “Phase three. Where’s Carly?”

“Upstairs.”

“Excellent.” She laid the poster board across the kitchen table. “Here.”

Both posters were covered with printouts. Dates, percentages, initials, multiple colors.

“What’s all this?”

“Phase three.”

I looked at her blankly.

She let out an exasperated breath. “Okay. These charts are going to help us get pregnant.”

I set down the wooden mallet I was pounding the chicken with. “Charts? What? Do we lie on those things or something?”

“I’ve calendared the next sixty days,” she said, ignoring me and pointing to the dates. “You’ll see the next two months are accounted for.”

“Because we didn’t have a regular calendar?”

“Now, the days in black, we can ignore those. We won’t be having sex on those days.”

There were an awful lot of black dates. “Excuse me?”

She looked at me. “I won’t be ovulating. There’s no point.”

“No point?”

“You know what I mean.” She turned back to the charts. “Now, stay with me. The red days are iffy. We can have sex on some of those days, even though the likelihood of conception is low.”

I scanned the posters. “What does green mean?”

“Green means sex,” she said. “Those are my optimal days for conception. You can look forward to multiple encounters on those days.”

Multiple encounters sounded good. I made a mental note to list green as my new favorite color.

“What do the initials stand for?” I asked. “BBT? CM?”

“Things I need to start charting. Basal body temperature. Cervical mucus.”

“Cervical what?” Those were two words I never thought I’d hear spoken in the same sentence. I didn’t think mucus even existed in any lower body cavity.

She dismissed me. “It’s irrelevant. At least for you.”

I scanned the calendars again. “A couple of these green days are during the workweek. . . .”

“I’m a partner. I can be flexible with my hours.”

“Or we can do it in your office,” I said, winking.

“Yes, absolutely,” she said, nodding. “I had Marsha calendar these days on my schedule. We’ll work out the locations this weekend.”

Marsha was her newest assistant. I wondered what that conversation had sounded like.

“You’ll notice the numbers written in the corner of each day,” Julianne continued. “Those are the percentages.”

“Percentages?”

“Percentages that I might conceive,” she said. “Obviously, they are highest on the green days.”

“Obviously.”

“You see the pink and blue dots?”

Each green day had either a blue or pink dot strategically positioned in the middle of the box. “Yes.”

“They indicate the baby’s gender.”

“What?”

“Some days are better for conceiving boys and vice versa.”

“Are we aiming for one or the other?”

She shook her head. “Not really. But it’s good to know.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.” She continued to study the charts.

“Did you get any work done today?”

“You don’t think this was work?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you just did.”

“I meant . . . legal work. As in related to your job.”

She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “Please. I excel at multitasking. This took only a few hours.”

“Okay. What if I want to have sex on a black day?” I asked.

“Negative,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no point, and we don’t want your sperm count dropping.”

“No. That would be terrible.” I paused. “But there are so many . . .”

She must have noticed the expression on my face. “Don’t worry. With all of this planning, I’m confident we’ll be pregnant in a month. Maybe two. Then we can have sex whenever you want.”

I wasn’t convinced.

“I know all of this may seem a bit . . . premeditated.”

“A bit?”

“But I plan to excite you with new lingerie and other pleasant surprises.” She tapped the poster board. “You won’t be bored.”

I was beginning to think I’d need a lot of new surprises to counterbalance the black days that loomed large on the calendar.

“Oh! I almost forgot.” She shook her head. “No masturbation.”

“Jules?”

“We want your sperm count as high as possible at all times.”

“Jules?”

“Just for a couple of months, Deuce.”

“Jules!”

Her head snapped up in my direction. “What?”

I started to say something sarcastic, something about charts and graphs and premeditation.

But I held my tongue.

She’d gone through a lot of trouble to put this together. No matter how insane I thought it was, this was Julianne. This was her way. This was her telling me how much she wanted a baby.

I walked over and put my arms around her and kissed her cheek. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Whatever you say. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“I know.”

I laughed and kissed her again. “I know you know. I’m just telling you. And I don’t need lingerie or anything else to get excited. You excite me.”

“So you don’t want lingerie?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I didn’t think so.”

I kissed her again, this time on the lips. I wasn’t lying. I didn’t need anything to excite me. Julianne still lit my flame, more so now than the day I met her. She was all I needed.

She pulled back and poked me in the chest with her index finger. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are. I will abide by the calendar. I won’t try to seduce you on black days.”

She snuggled into me for a minute. “Not what I meant, but that’s good to know.”

“Oh. What did you mean?”

“No masturbation.”

That evening was a black evening, so after dinner we spent the rest of the night playing board games with Carly before turning in. I refrained from making any jokes because I feared she might take a green day away from me.

When we crawled into bed, I told her about going to Comanche River.

“And don’t worry,” I said. “I already consulted the chart. It’s a green night.”

She smiled. “That sounds . . . nice. Your parents will watch Carly?”

“Of course.”

She pressed into me, her legs entwined with mine. “Then I look forward to a green night with you away from home.”

We switched off the lights, and I fought off the guilt about having another motive in going. I rationalized it by telling myself that I probably wouldn’t find anything while we were there, that it really would be just about me and her.

I tossed and turned, trying to convince myself.

Julianne was out the door the next morning, just as I was stumbling down to the kitchen. I sat at the table, waiting for the coffeepot to refill—Julianne always emptied an entire one before leaving for the office—and for my eyes to unglue. The laptop was still on the table from the night before, and I pulled up my e-mail.

The usual junk mail was in the folder, but there was also an e-mail from Belinda.

Something else is missing. Can you give me a call when you get this?

She’d sent the e-mail just after midnight.

I wondered what she could’ve discovered in the middle of the night that necessitated the e-mail.

Carly rushed downstairs hugging about sixteen dolls and stuffed animals, complaining that she was already hungry. I set her up at the table with toast and a glass of milk, then grabbed my cell and dialed Belinda’s number.

“You got the e-mail?” she answered.

“Good morning, Belinda.”

“Oh, right. Good morning. You got the e-mail?”

“Yep.”

“When can you meet me?”

“Uh, I dunno. Meet you where?”

“You know the field house out at Lake Park?”

“The stone building in the middle of the complex?”

“That’s the one.”

I checked the clock. “An hour or so?”

“Okay. I’ll meet you there.”

“Wait. Can’t you just tell me?”

The line buzzed. “I think you just need to see it. I’ll meet you there in an hour.” She hung up.

I set the phone down and sighed. I hadn’t planned on a trip to the soccer fields. I was hoping for a nice leisurely morning at the pool, with a little grocery shopping mixed in.

But, hey, plans change.

It beat going into an office or not getting to spend the day with my daughter. I needed to keep the complaining to myself.

Carly finished her breakfast and put on a tank top and shorts while I finished my coffee and tossed on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I ran a brush through my hair and met Carly back in the kitchen.

“We’re going to the soccer field, okay?” I told her.

“Do we have a game today?”

“No.”

“Practice?”

“Nope. I need to go see Miss Belinda about something. It won’t take long, and then we can come back and swim. It’s going to be hot.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s always hot, Daddy.”

“I know. You wanna take anything with us?”

She dashed up the stairs. She was at the stage where she always had to take a backpack full of stuff with her wherever she went. Stuffed animals, books, crayons, it didn’t matter. She needed to have a bagful of things before she’d leave the house.

She bounced back into the kitchen, her pink Hello Kitty backpack strapped across her shoulders. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Got everything?”

“Yes. White kitty, a coloring book, and my bottle of water. From last night.”

“Perfect.”

We climbed into the van and headed across town. I wasn’t used to morning traffic in Rose Petal, because we rarely had to head out into it. But we hit every light as it turned red, and ended up being ten minutes later than I’d planned.

Lake Park was an expansive athletic complex on the east side of town. It housed eight soccer fields, two football fields, and two baseball diamonds. The older kids played their games out there, so we had yet to have to fight the weekend crowds to get in and out of the complex. I wasn’t looking forward to those Saturday mornings.

The field house was in the middle of the soccer fields, a medium-sized stone building that housed a snack bar on two sides, some bathrooms on another, and I didn’t know what on the other. The referees always hung out there on hot days, so I’d always assumed it housed a locker room or something similar.

Belinda paced back and forth in front of the door on the mystery side like a waddling walrus. She stopped as soon as she saw us.

“Sorry,” I said. “Traffic was bad.”

She nodded. “Always is coming this way.”

I put my hands on my hips. “So. Why are we here?”

She pulled open the door behind her and waved us in.

It was a large concrete-floored room, maybe twenty-five feet by twenty-five feet. A long folding table rested against the far wall, a group of folding chairs lined up next to it. The rest of the room was empty, and the air was stagnant and warm.

I spun in a slow circle. “Uh, okay.”

“We pay to use this space,” Belinda said. “We have to rent it from the city every season, even though we already pay exorbitant fees to use the fields.”

“Daddy, it’s hot in here,” Carly complained.

“We won’t be here long,” I told her. I looked at Belinda. “Right?”

“During the season, we keep a bunch of stuff out here,” Belinda continued. “Cones, jerseys, extra whistles, coolers. Stuff we might need on Saturdays. The officials will change in here, too.”

“Okay.”

“Daddy, it’s
really
hot in here.”

“I know, kiddo. Give me just a minute.”

She sighed and plopped down on the concrete.

“But near the end of the season, we start clearing it out,” Belinda said. “Cleaning it up.”

I sighed, frustrated that we weren’t getting to the point. “Okay.”

“You have a team mom?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sandy Yook. She’s awesome.”

“She grab your trophies for you?”

“Yep.”

Belinda nodded. “She comes here to get them.”

“In here?”

“Yeah. We have them delivered here. It’s the largest storage space we have access to.”

I wasn’t getting it. “Okay. Good to know.”

“The trophies were delivered last week,” Belinda said.

“To where?”

She laughed. “To here.”

“Seriously?”

“Thirteen hundred trophies, Deuce,” she said. “A box for every team, a trophy for every kid in the Rose Petal soccer program.”

I knew that. It was recreational soccer. No standings or records. Every kid got to play. And every kid got a trophy.

“You know for sure they were delivered?” I asked.

She nodded. “I met the delivery guy here the Saturday before last. Took him an hour to unload them all. The only empty space in here was where that table was set up.” She pointed at the table against the wall. “All thirteen hundred trophies. Boxed up and divided by age group and division.”

“What are you telling me, Belinda?” I asked. “That they were stolen?”

She laughed. “Well, yeah. But guess what?”

I sighed again. I was tired of guessing. “I don’t want to guess.”

“Guess who’s the only person with a key to this room?”

I thought for a moment. “Moises Huber?”

She nodded slowly. “That’s right.”