The Spider Thief (7 page)

The sounds and smells of the shadowed brick apartment building grated on him. He leaned over the chipped handrail and peered straight down three stories to the dark lot below, where his car sat parked.

Something had gone wrong up in the mountains; that was obvious. Ash was acting irrational, even worse than usual. At least Cleo was there with him, as bizarre as that was. He couldn’t wait to see her again, when they got to town. Catch up on life since the old days.

If Ash stuck around that long. Big if. Mauricio glanced at his watch. He’d have to pick up a different car and be ready to go by morning. There was probably a used car lot still open where he could find something cheap. But it just wouldn’t be as nice as this one. He gave the car a long last look.

DMT came outside through the apartment door, looking troubled. “Let me have your phone, dawg.” When Mauricio held it out, DMT took it and tucked it in his pocket.

“You need to make a call or something? Because I’ve got to take off, get some dinner,” Mauricio said. “You tell Prez I’ll call him later, get the money for the car.”

DMT folded his big arms. “Boss jus’ called. Says I ain’t suppose to let you out my sight.”

Mauricio tried to laugh it off, then realized he wasn’t kidding. Suddenly, the chipped handrail felt like prison bars in his hands. The low-rent apartment building around him transformed from kitschy to gulag.

“Hey, come on,” Mauricio said, his voice less than steady. “That supposed to be some kind of threat or something?”

“Pssh, I hope not.” DMT shook his big head. “I like you, man.”

Storm

Night fell while they waited in traffic, and the storm dumped rain, but there was no sign of the green pickup. Ash inched the Galaxie to the next exit off the highway. As they splashed along night-blackened roads, he kept a watchful eye ahead for flooding. The wipers slammed back and forth across the windshield, pushing around an endless stream of water.

“So tell me about the
señora
,” Cleo said. The dashboard lights hinted at the soft curves of her face, but Ash couldn’t read her expression.

“Well. Mauricio wants to just settle down, right? Have a ‘normal’ job, whatever that means. He’s got this crazy idea about the two of us buying this old hotel in Arizona.”

“You’re right,” she deadpanned. “Hotel management usually appeals to the insane.”

“Whatever. This cleaning lady who works there, her husband and son were in trouble. She hired a coyote to smuggle them into the States. But the coyote decides to double his money and hold them for ransom. If she doesn’t pay, she’ll never see them again.” A lump rose in Ash’s throat.

Cleo nodded, watching him.

“It was just
wrong
.” He cleared his throat. “So Mauricio and me, we decided to take on the coyote.”

“You couldn’t just call the police?”

He gave her a sour look. “Please.”

She held up her hands in surrender.

“So anyway, the setup goes like this: Mauricio goes into the bar dressed up like a migrant worker. He sits next to the coyote and starts crying into his beer. I mean, just absolutely sobbing.”

“Mauricio?” A half-smile crept across her face. “Our Mauricio?”

“Well, he’s half Colombian. He can pass for a Mexican.”

“I guess, but what, he’s an actor now?”

“Hey, film school paid off. Anyway, he gets out this lottery ticket. Powerball. Sixty-seven million dollars.”

“A real lottery ticket?”

Ash held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor. A real, honest-to-God Powerball ticket, printed with the winning numbers. And Mauricio’s bawling up a storm, saying he’s an illegal, so he can’t cash it.” He gave Cleo a sly look. “It’s Arizona, you know. And he’s crying about how cruel life is, he gets this winning ticket and he can’t cash it.”

She stared at him. “So it’s not a winning ticket.”

“That’s where I come in. I go up to the bar, overhearing this, and tell him he’s a liar, no way is that ticket a winner. I make a big scene, get out my phone, threaten to call the lottery. The phone number’s printed right on the ticket. So guess what the coyote does?”

“He calls the number,” Cleo said.

“Everybody in the bar calls the number. And I’m watching the coyote’s eyes, under the brim of his hat, as he hears the recording read off the winning numbers, the ones right there on Mauricio’s ticket. Sixty-seven million dollars. His eyes light up, and at that exact moment, I pull out my wallet, slam down a thousand in cash on the bar. ‘I’ll buy that ticket,’ I tell him.”

Cleo nodded thoughtfully. “So the coyote isn’t going to let you buy that ticket.”

“Exactly. He says he’ll give Mauricio
two
grand. I say four. He says ten. We go back and forth, this guy’s yelling at Mauricio in Spanish, ‘Don’t sell it to the gringo.’ People start getting hostile—it’s going to get ugly. Mauricio flips open a lighter, says he’s going to burn the ticket before he gets killed in this bar. He wants to see his wife and kids again. Whole place goes dead silent.”

She leaned forward in her seat, listening. The wipers slapped out a rhythm on the windshield. “And?”

“And Mauricio sells the ticket to the coyote for twenty grand in cash.” Ash couldn’t keep the grin off of his face. “Seriously, I expected maybe five, ten at the most. Guy had a duffel bag with twenty gees.”

She blinked. “You could’ve been killed.”

“Well, maybe if we stuck around. Mauricio drops a couple hundred on the bar, buys a round for the house, and we take off. Give the
señora
ten grand to ransom her family back, a couple more to move them out of town, and we kept the rest. Went to Vegas.”

“What about the ticket?” Cleo said.

“It’s for the
next
week’s drawing.” Ash tried to hide his pride, but failed. “I figured out, when you buy a ticket, you can pick any numbers you want. So I bought a new ticket with the current jackpot numbers. Unless you pay close attention to the date, you don’t notice it.”

She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, my God. That is so illegal.”

“Nope. It’s actually a perfectly legal ticket. Just worthless, is all. And what tickles me is that the
señora
paid off the coyote with his own money.”

Cleo chuckled, on and off, the rest of the way to her mom’s house.

Nobody was home. Her mom was in Atlanta, she said, on a consulting job. Ash was just thankful that the driveway was paved, not dirt, because he didn’t want to try to push the Galaxie through mud.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the pine-covered mountainside. The house hadn’t changed much. With the giant apple tree out front and the white-painted wood porch, it really looked like someone’s parents’ house. Out front, the wagon wheel was still set in the ground, full of overgrown rose bushes. Ash parked beside it.

Cleo got out of the car and gasped, her breath steaming. Pulling her jacket up over her head, she ran for the front door.

Ash got out to follow her. The ice-water rain drenched him instantly, plastering his hair down over his eyes, weighing down his clothes. Moolah bolted ahead of him, leaving him to slog alone through the ankle-deep runoff. Hard rain stung his bare arms.

Cleo stood under the shelter of the front awning, teeth chattering as she sorted through her keys. She got the door open and urged Moolah inside. Ash came in last, just in time for the dog to shake off a cold spray of water. Cleo shut the door, cutting off the noise of the rain and trapping them in lukewarm darkness. She flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.

“Damn it,” she whispered. Her teeth chattered.

“Here.” Ash pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. She clung to him, shivering.

Then she shrieked and jumped back, making Ash’s heart leap into his throat. Lightning flashed again, revealing Moolah slunk down on his haunches, looking miserable.

“Your dog has a very cold nose,” she whispered.

“Well.” He shrugged. “At least you know he’s healthy.”

*

Hours later, they sat by the wood stove in the corner of the living room. It looked like a museum piece on a pedestal, a sculpture in hot black iron. The scent of wood smoke calmed Ash’s nerves, as did the steaming mugs of coffee and the soft glow of candles. “Honestly, you didn’t have to make coffee on the wood stove,” Ash said. “Your mom’s Taster’s Choice would’ve been fine.”

“I only serve that to my enemies.” Cleo leaned back into the couch across from him, wrapped in a heavy quilt, sipping her coffee.

“So does that mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”

She didn’t answer at first. “You could’ve sent a postcard. At any point in the last few years. Even an email. ‘Hey, Cleo, remember me? We used to be totally in love, until I ran off one night without saying goodbye. Just wanted to let you know I’m still alive.’”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, well.” She stared into her coffee. “I did spend a lot of time hating you.”

“But if you still hated me, you wouldn’t have saved my life on the highway back there.”

Cleo shrugged. “Don’t read too much into it. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, I think it does. And you know it.”

Her eyes revealed nothing. “I would’ve done it for anyone.”

“Even cold, heartless me, apparently.”

“Even you.” She set her mug down. “So what kind of name is Moolah, anyway? African or something?”

“No. Moolah.” Ash rubbed his fingers together. “You know, dinero, cashola, greenbacks.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “You named your dog after money?”

“Sure. Watch this.” Ash shrugged his blanket aside and stood up. The wad of hundred-dollar bills in his pocket was still damp, but he had no doubt the dog could sniff them out. “Moolah!” He patted his hand on his leg.

The dog, dozing in front of the wood stove, perked his head up, then came trotting over.

Ash rubbed his head. “Good boy. Moolah, show me the money!”

The dog sniffed around the room, his nose working furiously. He put his forepaws up on the arm of the couch and nosed Cleo’s limp jacket. He let out a clipped bark.

Ash grinned. “Got any cash in that pocket?”

She reached into her damp jacket and pulled out a crumpled ten-dollar bill. She held it up.

He called Moolah over and fed him a treat. “Good boy!” He gave the dog a brisk rub. “Works every time. This mutt’s a genius.”

She looked skeptical. “I imagine he might know to look in jacket pockets.”

“Sure. But this pooch can sniff out cash anywhere. He’s found it in nightclubs, back seats of cars, so many places, I don’t even know. The day I taught him that trick, he found a fifty in a gutter outside a Laundromat. I spent it on a bone-in rib eye and split it with him.”

She shook her head. “Only you, Ash. Seriously.”

“Weird, though.” He pulled the wad of hundreds out of his pocket. “I reckoned he’d home in on this first.” He held the money down in front of Moolah’s nose, but the dog turned away. Not interested.

Mauricio’s words popped into his head.
There’s something wrong with the money
.

“So tell me about your curse,” Cleo said, interrupting his thoughts. She stared off into the shadows across the room, where her dad’s bird-watching books were stacked up next to a glass case of hawk feathers. “You said the curse was on you. What did you mean by that?”

Ash pocketed the cash and sank back into his seat, feeling a dark mood settling on him. “Not a lot to say. I found this gold spider statue when I was a kid.”

“The one that you said Andres was after.”

“Turns out that way, yeah. It was a gold spider statue with emerald eyes. And I swear to you, that thing’s eyes lit up like they were on fire. It was
evil.
” Ash hated the way his voice trembled when he said it, but he pushed on. “It was cursed. And I knew right then that I’d woken it up, and I’d pay for that. And I have. Ever since that night, when people get too close to me, they tend to die.”

She stared at him, not saying a word. He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not.

“Makes long-term relationships a little dicey,” he added.

“This same gold spider Andres is looking for? You found it when?”

“Fifth grade.” Ash debated how much to tell her at once. “There’s a lot more to that story, but the short and sweet is that my parents sort of got rid of it. Then after that, things were calm for a while, aside from the usual teen angst and all that high school nonsense.”

“It wasn’t all nonsense.”

In his mind’s eye, he had a glimpse of her on prom night, beautiful, looking up at him with such earnest intensity, one gloved hand on his arm. He pushed that thought aside, with all its attached bittersweet angst. There was too much pain attached to it. Because that was the night of the fire.

He hadn’t seen his home burn, he’d only seen the aftermath. The smoking ruins. The funeral for his parents, and then another one for Cleo’s dad. Being the sheriff and the first one at the scene of the fire, he’d run inside to try to save them.

But he never made it back out.

“I know I’m cursed. I can’t prove it, but I know it.” He drank the remains of his cold coffee, wishing he had something a little stronger. “So if I’m a bit of a wanderer these days, it’s not because I don’t care, let’s just put it that way. Mostly I don’t want anybody else dying in my proximity.”

“What about Mauricio? By that rationale, aren’t you worried he’ll die, too, if he hangs around you?”

“I’ve warned him. But he doesn’t believe in the curse. Not any more than you do.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Ash, you really think some kind of curse is the only possible explanation?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t we ask my parents?” He regretted saying it the moment it came out of his mouth. Her father had died in that fire, too. It wasn’t just his pain alone. But if he’d hurt her, she didn’t show it.

“Andres set that fire,” she said quietly.

“The same Andres? No. That’s impossible.”

“He was here. That night. Years ago.”

Her words were plain enough, but Ash struggled to sift the meaning out of them. “Wait. Are you honestly trying to tell me that
Andres
was behind all that, that he set the fire that killed them?”