Delaney looked around the living room, hands fisted by her sides as Grant opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. She leaned over an easy chair to peek behind it. “Do you think they took anything else?”
He came into the room and sank down on the sofa. Lines formed on his forehead and she noticed he looked more exhausted now than he had the night they’d met. Even his voice sounded tired.
“Elaine, there’s a slight possibility I might know who took it, but I’m not sure if that’s good news or bad,” Grant said.
“Tell me.”
He clasped his hands and steepled his fingers. “My mother sometimes has a tendency to . . . help herself to things that aren’t hers.”
“Your mother?”
“Maybe. If she dropped off the cake and saw that bag, well, it’s possible she took it.”
“Then you need to call her. Right now, and tell her to bring it back. I’d do it myself but she has my phone.” She couldn’t keep the sharp edge from her voice, and why should she try?
He pulled his from his pocket and dialed, staring at Delaney the whole time.
This was crazy. How could Donna think she could just take that money without getting caught? That was the first, and most important, question. Delaney’s next question was whether or not Donna had looked inside and had found the wallet full of identification. It was stuffed down deep, underneath all the money, but that would make two people in Bell Harbor who knew who she was. Delaney sat down and squeezed her hands together between her knees. No matter what, this was bad.
“Voice mail,” he said, then left a message. “Mom. It’s Grant. I need to talk to you right now. Elaine’s backpack is missing and I have to wonder if you know something about that. Call me immediately.”
He dialed again as Delaney waited, her stomach doing the cha-cha-cha.
“Carl, it’s Grant. If you’ve seen Mom, call me. Actually, call me if you haven’t seen her either. Just . . . call me. It’s very important.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket. “God, Elaine, I’m sorry. Maybe I’m wrong and it wasn’t her. You’re right about that back door. We should probably call the police.”
“No!” The word was half shout, half squawk, followed by a hiccup. “No, let’s not call them until we’ve talked to your mom. I mean, if it was her, you don’t want the police involved, do you?”
“No, of course not, but mostly I don’t want your money to be stolen either. How much was in there?”
She tried to swallow down the next hiccup. “Around forty thousand.”
“Dollars?” Now his voice was a half shout, half squawk. “You were driving around with forty thousand dollars? My God, I knew it was a lot, but I had no idea it was that much. Why would you travel around with that kind of cash? That’s crazy. Why not just use a debit card?”
Delaney pressed her thumbnail against her lip. No easy answer there. She’d wanted to use cash so no reporters could track her down by credit card use, but she couldn’t very well explain that to him. Or the fact that she’d had no idea how long she’d be away from Beverly Hills. People lived modestly in this town, but where she was from, forty thousand dollars would last about three months. “I told you, I took all my money out of the bank when I left Be—um, Miami. Cash just seemed . . . easiest.”
She needed to pull herself together before she accidentally told him all of it, but she was frantic to get that money back. First, because she needed it, and second, because of all the things that could go wrong if Donna discovered who she really was. The media would have a feeding frenzy and this whole clusterfuck would end up as another episode of Pop Rocks. It wouldn’t just be her life that would be impacted, but Grant’s too. His whole family could be dragged in, just like hers had been dragged into the video scandal.
Grant leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He sounded as if he might be hyperventilating just a little. She certainly was.
“All right,” he said breathlessly. “Let’s head over to my mom’s house. Maybe she’s there, or the bag is, or both. Unless you want to call the police, I don’t know what else to do.”
Carl met them at the door wearing his blue fuzzy bathrobe. “Why, hello. May I interest you in a sloe—”
“No, Carl. Thanks,” Grant said, shouldering his way past. “Where’s Mom?”
Carl opened the door wider and Delaney stepped in too, her legs quaking in distress. Her backpack was not going to be here. She could already feel it.
“Your mother?” Carl glanced at his watch. “Right about now she could be flat on her back with cucumber slices over her eyes.”
“What?” Grant’s frown was fierce.
“She’s on her way to a—a whataya call it—a beauty spa with your aunt Tina. You know, one of those places where you take a bath in mud and come out looking ten years younger. Hope she soaks in there for a while.” He snickered and pulled a can of Bud Light from his pocket, cracking it open with one hand.