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“No.”
“Do you want to call the police? They can probably pick her up before the Chicago flight leaves. That’s an awfully large amount of money to steal.”
“Callum, I…” Tears well in my eyes, and I choke out the words, “Maybe she’s really in a bad way and needs the money. She’s my mother, and I ought to be able to help her when she needs assistance.”
Weston pulls back and has an angry expression on his face. “Petra, I understand that you might want to be sensitive to her problems, but the fact is, she stole cards and a lot of money from you, then disappeared in the night like a common criminal. She’s committed ID theft, forgery, and who-knows-what-all else. She isn’t worth your pity if she acts like that. And besides, the credit card company won’t make you pay for what she fraudulently charged on your card, but they will want to press charges even if you don’t.”
I have to think about that for a moment, but Weston keeps talking. “Remember, she said she recently sold an expensive property in Chicago, so she shouldn’t be flat broke. It just doesn’t make sense. I’d call the police, but it’s not up to me.” He shifts his gaze down and then up straight into my eyes, “She wanted me to give her money last night too, but she refuses tohelp herself by looking for a job. Nothing about her words or her actions adds up, and she certainly doesn’t appear to be a devoted mother who cares about the welfare of her daughter.”
I realize I can’t let this go. So I slip out of Callum’s embrace and pull my phone from my pocket. I shore up my conviction and, before I can talk myself out of it, dial 911.
“What is your emergency?” I hear immediately.
“Um, well, my scumbag mother just stole fifty thousand dollars from me as well as my bank card and my credit card, and now she’s apparently at the Indianapolis airport waiting to get on a flight.”
We have a conversation about this, and the entire time I feel the clock ticking. She could get on that plane any minute and lose herself anywhere. She could be going back to Chicago where she may or may not actually have a place to live, or she could be going to connect to a flight out of the country. I try to convey the urgency to the 911 operator, but she has the questions she needs to ask, and I need to give a full description of my mom’s appearance, only I have no idea what she’s wearing. Finally, the 911 lady says the magic words, “We have officers dispatched to pick her up at the airport now, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” I breathe out and crumple into a chair. Callum brings me a steaming cup of coffee, a toasted bagel, and a bowl of fresh fruit.
Now we wait.
A couple of tension-filled hours later, two police officers show up at the door. Callum finally had to get to work, so it’s just Weston and me left to deal with the cops.
Their expressions are grim.
“Ms. Feeney?” one asks me.
“Yes. Please come in.” When they are inside and the door is closed, I ask, “Did you arrest her?”
“I’m sorry ma’am. The Uber driver definitely dropped her off at the airport. But we searched the facility with the help of airport security, and no one matching her description was waiting for her reserved flight to Chicago. The ticket she bought in your name was used, however, and we finally determined that she found an earlier flight than the one she was booked on and apparently flew standby at the last minute before we even showed up. No one we spoke to remembered her, but it’s busy today, and the airline employees at the ticket counters change all the time.”
“So, now what?” I ask with a sigh.
“We have no jurisdiction to arrest her outside of Indiana, and about all we can do is issue an arrest warrant. But we don’t know what state she may have fled to or if she even left in the first place. She hasn’t committed a violent crime, so another state is unlikely to extradite her if they even spend any time at all looking for her. So, I’m sorry to say, she’s probably going to get away with it.”
I nod my head and feel myself starting to shake. Once again, I feel the strength of Weston as he closes in on me to offer support. I realize then just how much I miss Callum. I’m so thankful for them and feel whole when we’re all three together. I’m not sure what that says about me.
Looking at the officers, I say, “Thank you for trying. I guess I better get to work and earn back all of the money I just lost. I wish I’d already bought the CD I expected to invest in, but I’m receiving another lump royalty paycheck soon and planned on buying it then so the money would be safe. Hah. Live and learn.”
“If it’s any consolation, Ms. Feeney, she faces arrest if she shows up in Indiana again. The charges are serious, even if they aren’t violent.”
“You’ll have to find her first,” Weston grumbles.
Suddenly, another horrible thought crosses my mind. I did manage to take one thing of value with me when I left home. My prized possession in fact. “Excuse me a second,” I say and dash up the stairs. Opening my closet, I see the specially made box that normally sat on the shelf is also missing. My heart breaks with this new development. With hot tears pouring down my face, I find Weston and the officers and tell them, “She also stole my first edition collection of Winnie the Pooh books that I’ve had since I was a baby. They’re very valuable, and they’re… gone.” I look at Weston and ask, “How could she?”
One thing authorsare quite good at is research. And I decide to do some sleuthing since the police aren’t likely to find her and arrest her. The first thing I do is look into our old condo and see if she still has it and lied about it or if she really did sell it after all. What I discover makes me confused… and ill. Not only did she sell it, but she did it under very questionable circumstances. It turns out that the property wasin my name,and my mother was just on the title as custodian. When I reached the age of twenty-one, the property was supposed to be all mine, but she somehow got around that and claimed full ownership for herself. Apparently, she’s been acting fraudulently for years. No wonder she didn’t want to be around me. She was ripping me off!
But now I need to figure out how the property came to be in my name in the first place. I seriously doubt it was out of her deep sense of generosity. If the property belonged to her, why would she have put it in my name to begin with?
As quickly as possible, I report the stolen books to every pawn broker, estate buyer, and rare book dealer I can locate. It takes forever, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the one thingI’ve cherished my whole life be ripped away from me by my greedy, shithead mother. This is the last straw.
I’ve never been clear about how the Pooh books came to be in my possession because my mother’s story changed a few times. Once, she absentmindedly said they were from my godmother. As a tiny girl, I thought that meant I had a fairy godmother, and that tickled me. When I asked her later why I’d never been able to see my fairy godmother, she laughed at me and asked where I’d gotten such a silly notion. She said they were a gift toherfrom her parents, and she gave them to me. When I was older, I asked where her parents were and why I’d never met them. I wanted to know more about how they got the beautiful books and if they knew how to find more. This time she skirted the issue of her absent parents and said, “The books didn’t come from them. I found them at an estate sale, so quit bugging me.”
One thing I knew for sure was that the cover of the special box that housed the collection was an intricate design that bore my name on it—not hers. Another thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t believe my mother. And I loved those books.
Twenty-Eight
Callum
