“Of course it’s relevant. You said Frank owed you; that’s the reason you’re here.”
“It was the reason I’m here,” Grace says. “But now, you’re here, which means I no longer need to take what Frank owes me, and instead, you and I can work out a deal.”
Mrs. Torelli squints in distrust. “What kind of deal?”
“Like I said, a finder’s fee. I show you where the safe is, and you cut me in on a percentage.”
“A percentage? How much of a percentage?”
“Fifty,” Grace says—fifty-fifty always a good place to start.
“Fifty percent!” Mrs. Torelli says, her hands flying with her words. “That’s not a finder’s fee. That’s half. Forget it.” She waves Grace away as if shooing a fly.
Grace smiles like it’s no big deal, then lifts the keys in the thin light and flips through them. Purposely, she chooses the wrong one and inserts it in the lock. She pulls it out, squints at it, then searches through the others.
Choosing the right one, she slides it smoothly into the keyhole and is about to turn it when Mrs. Torelli blurts, “Fine. Five percent.”
Grace gives a silent cheer and turns. “Fifty,” she says.
“It’s my money.”
“Technically, it’s only half your money.”
“Ten.”
Grace turns back to the door. “Good luck finding your money.” The key turns, and she pulls down on the handle.
“Twenty, but that’s my final offer.”
Grace considers it. She has no idea how much Frank has. It could be twenty grand, or it could be a hundred. Twenty percent of twenty grand isn’t a lot, but it would be enough to get her and Miles out of Orange County and, hopefully, would be enough to hold them over until she finds a job.
“Twenty-five,” she says, “and only because I’m being nice.”
Mrs. Torelli glowers at her, clearly not agreeing. “Fine,” she says. “Twenty-five.”
Grace pulls the key from the door and walks past Mrs. Torelli to Frank’s private bathroom.
“I already looked there,” Mrs. Torelli says. “It’s the first place I checked.”
Grace ignores her, and Mrs. Torelli’s heels clack on the floor behind her as she follows Grace in.
Grace figured out where Frank was keeping his money a month after she started working for him. He asked her to call a plumber for a clogged sink, and she told him she could probably fix it herself. As she snaked the drain with a coat hanger, he hovered beside her, making her curious.
Later that day, when Frank went to lunch, she returned to the bathroom and, just like she is doing now, lifted the lid to the tank of the toilet.
“Oh,” Mrs. Torelli says, peering over Grace’s shoulder.
Grace agrees. It is impressive: a solid cast-iron safe disguised as a toilet tank and bolted to the wall, making it impossible to steal.
“But how does he do his business?” Mrs. Torelli says.
“This is a commercial toilet,” Grace says. “The water supply comes directly from the wall.” She smiles to herself at the irony of her juvenile-hall vocational training being used to rip off her boss.
Mrs. Torelli looks at her curiously, probably wondering how Grace could possibly know such a thing, but she doesn’t ask. Instead she looks back at the safe and says, “Darn.”
“Problem?”
“I thought it would be a keypad,” Mrs. Torelli says. “You know, the kind where you enter numbers, like our safe at home. I know all Frank’s passcodes and passwords, but this is one of those old-fashioned dial kinds of locks.”
“So, you don’t have the combination?” Grace says as her insides light up like the Fourth of July.
11
HADLEY
“Well, open it,” Hadley says, wondering what Grace is waiting for.
The girl sets the lid to the tank aside so it is resting against the wall; then she straightens, a thin smile on her lips. And when Hadley realizes why she’s grinning, her blood boils and she starts to shake her head.
“Fifty percent,” Grace says.
“Absolutely not.” She really doesn’t like this girl. No wonder Frank wanted to fire her. She’s nothing but a low-down, scheming thief. “The deal was twenty-five, and even that’s a rip-off.”
“The deal was twenty-five to show you where the safe was,” Grace says. “Not to open it.”
“Screw you.”
“Look, Mrs. Torelli, I get that you’re upset. I would be too. But the fact of the matter is I have the combination and you don’t, and that puts you at a distinct disadvantage.”
Hadley feels like steam is blowing from her ears. She doesn’t get angry often. But this is her and Mattie’s future this girl is messing with.
“Twenty-five,” she says. “That was the deal.”
Grace looks at her calmly, her expression as relaxed as if they were discussing the weather, perhaps a bit sympathetic, as if to say, It looks like rain, and it’s all Hadley can do not to swat the look from her face.
“I could call the police,” she spits. “Tell them I caught you trying to rob us.”
Grace doesn’t laugh out loud, but Hadley hears her laughing.
“Fine,” Hadley huffs. “Thirty percent.”
“We’re not doing this again,” Grace says as she pulls her phone from her pocket to glance at the time. “Fifty percent. Take it or leave it.”
“You have someplace you need to be?”
“You could say that. So, what’s it gonna be?”
Hadley thinks of Mattie and Skipper at the hotel. She thinks of Frank. She thinks of the car loaded with their belongings. She thinks of how angry she is. All this while looking at Grace, who stands relaxed in front of her as if she hasn’t a care in the world. Which she doesn’t. If Hadley refuses, she’ll simply come back when Hadley is gone.
“Fine,” Hadley huffs again, though nothing about this is fine in the least.
Hadley feels Grace’s silent cheer, and never has she hated someone so much.
Grace spins the dial one way, then the other, and a moment later the lock falls into place, and Grace turns the lever and lifts open the door.
“Huh?” Hadley says.
Grace looks surprised as well, her hand frozen on the safe’s door and her mouth hanging open. She shakes her head and takes a step back, backing away as if the neatly stacked bundles of cash piled to the rim of the tank are a ticking time bomb and not the answer to her prayers.
“That’s a lot of money,” Hadley says as Grace continues to move away from it.
On top of the money and slightly to the left is a small handgun. Without thinking, Hadley snatches it up, whirls, and points it at Grace.
“Put the money in the bag,” she says, sounding like a bank robber in a B-rated movie.
Grace’s eyes move from the safe to the gun, then back to the safe, then back to the gun; then she lifts her eyes to Hadley’s and, with no protest at all, starts to fill the bag, and Hadley feels a small burst of pride. That will teach this girl to mess with her. Maybe she’ll throw the girl a bone, toss her a bundle of hundreds as a tip.
Hadley tries to keep count as Grace pulls the money from the tank, but it’s impossible. So instead, she wonders where it came from. Skimming is one thing, but this is more than the business makes in a year, and it’s not like Frank doesn’t spend. He spends plenty.