Yesterday's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller (17 page)

Even if she’d retired from jewel thievery, she’d probably still want to keep in shape. Once a gym rat, always a gym rat. I didn’t have much else to go on.

I visited six CrossFit gyms in the East Bay. I showed photoshopped photos of Viv and described her, based on my personal time with her. If she looked anything like her pictures in the media, they would have already turned her in for the reward. I struck out, but at least my mind snooping let me know for sure that no one I talked to was lying.

I checked my stock app every five minutes. Nothing. No trades of CDBX.

My ToodleDo alarm sounded. I was late to my first Romanian lesson.

I know, how much could I learn with a few lessons? But maybe I could recognize some words. Maybe if I got used to how the language sounded, I could memorize longer stretches. Grandmasters can memorize a chessboard, as long as it is a real game, in seconds. I just needed some structure to hang my memory on.

Arriving at her trailer-park residence, I explained to Ms. Ibanescu that I only needed to recognize Romanian. I didn’t want to speak it, write it, or read it.

She was a babushka, right down to the head scarf. She squinted at me. “Only recognize?” She talked like Viviana. Good. I’d come to the right place.

“That’s right. I want to understand what I hear on the radio.”

She thought that was silly. <
Silly man but look nice.
> I was paying a premium, so she went along, but she insisted I at least learn how to spell the words I recognized. “So can take notes.”

After the lesson, in which I learned how to understand phrases such as “My name is Imanuela” and “You are a silly man,” I sat in my car looking at my tablet. The seconds ticked down and the stock market closed for the day.

CDBX was still at one cent per share. At least it hadn’t gone down. I didn’t even know if that was possible. In any case, I was broke.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The next day, I put my financial concerns aside. I spent my time burning shoe leather searching for Viviana at fitness gyms. With few phone calls coming in, Peggy convinced me to let her assist in the field. I warned her that at Beckman Investigations, assistants didn’t earn any more than secretaries.

Gyms crowded the Bay Area, and we were hitting them all. And striking out.

I had just followed Peggy into Armageddon CrossFit, in Los Pulgas Hills, when the thoughts hit me:

<
Ahm nevoya something something alpinism mao.
>

It didn’t matter what it meant, it was Romanian—from my lessons, I recognized the sound of that language. It came from behind me. My heart jumped.

I made a huge blunder. I turned around, stopped the door from closing, and poked my head out. I shouldn’t have let her see me. Stupid, stupid.

Viviana looked like someone in a haunted house after a monster pops out of a closet. <
Is Beckman. No. La nay ba.
> She had just pulled into the gravel parking lot in an antique Porsche 911 and shut off the engine. Based on the perfect “O” her mouth made and the raised eyebrows, each of those thoughts ended with an exclamation mark.

She looked different. Without hearing those thoughts, I wouldn’t have recognized her. She had red hair and had altered her face somehow—plastic surgery? That would explain the small bandage on her nose. She was less striking than before. That woman was a chameleon. No wonder no one had found her.

She stared at me. Was she thinking the game was over? Maybe she was happy to stop running. All my work had paid off.

But new thoughts reached me. <
Du te something ah each? Du te something ah each?
> “Du te” meant go. Was she deciding? Go or stay, go or stay?

How could I put her at ease? If she left, I’d never catch her—back to square one. Here she was, ten feet away.

I waved, smiled, and held my breath. How do you put “your secret’s safe with me” into a gesture? I mimed zipping my lips closed, but maybe in Eastern Europe that means “Can I borrow your lipstick?”

Why hadn’t I just waited inside? When she came in, I could have, what, grabbed her? Too bad I’d never thought ahead to what I’d do after I located her.

Peggy came out behind me. “What’s going on?
”

“We found her.” I kept the idiotic smile on my face and tilted my head toward the Porsche.

Viviana looked down at her dashboard. <
Du te. Du te.
> She’d chosen. Go. The starter motor kicked on, but the engine didn’t catch. What do you expect with a forty-year-old sports car?

I ran over and squatted down by her window. “Viviana, wait. Trust me! Let me talk to you.”

The engine caught, the wheels spun, and she backed up, shooting into the street. A cloud of dust blew over me, and an angry motorist slammed on his brakes and leaned on his horn.

I ran to my car and yelled for Peggy. “Get in!”

Peggy dashed over, stumbling once in her high heels, and jumped into the passenger seat. “Are you sure that was Viviana? She looked different.”

“Keep an eye on her. We’re going to chase her.”

“Good idea. We’ll catch up to the Porsche with this zippy Yaris.”

“Yeah, well I left my Ferrari at home. And it’s not an issue of speed.”

“Right. Good attitude, boss.”

I followed in Viviana’s trail. “Which way did she turn up there?”

“Left.”

We got to the intersection and looked left. The sports car disappeared around a curve a half-mile away. I accelerated into the turn and understood why Consumer Reports had said the Yaris handled like a Tilt-a-Whirl.

We barely held on to the road around one last curve and came to a straightaway. No sign of her. I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. “She was so close. We can’t give up. Where would you go if you were her?”

“Well, she’d pretty much have to turn down this road here on the right. This one,
this one, this one!
”

I slammed on the brakes, and the car slewed to a stop. I backed up and made the turn. Good thing no one was behind us. The roads were narrow and windy, perfect for a Porsche, despite what I’d said.

“I’ve been here before.” Peggy braced herself against the dashboard as the road turned and dipped. “She has go here and through a little town to get to the freeway.”

As we entered the town, we came to a small park.

“Stop! There she is.” Peggy pointed to a line of cars across the valley. The park lay between us and Viviana.

She was in a traffic jam. Morning rush hour on the road to the freeway.

“We could just cut across the park.” Peggy had a twinkle in her eye.

“No way.” A wide set of stairs made with railroad ties headed down to a field.

“Sure. Down the stairs. Don’t you watch the movies?”

If I did nothing, all would be lost. I looked around. No police. I gritted my teeth, drove across the sidewalk, and let one front wheel drop over the first stair. The side of the car banged onto the ground.

Peggy’s smile disappeared. She put her hand on my forearm. “I, um—”

“Right. Faster.” I stomped down on the accelerator. We were at an angle to the stairs, so the motion threw us back and forth as well as up and down with each step. My head cracked repeatedly into the window as if we were sitting in a giant’s paint shaker.
Ow, ow, ow.

“Is she still stuck?” It came out like “Is-s-sh-e-sta-i-ill-st-ah-ah-ka?” The rear wheel went over the last step.

“Yes. She’s barely moved.”

After the stairs, a paved walkway led us across the park. I honked at an elderly woman who blocked our way over a narrow bridge. Road hog. Peggy leaned out her window, watching the wheels. “You’ve got about two inches to spare on this side.”

A barrier pole blocked our exit onto the street, but a detour through some struggling new plants got us back into legal territory. We dropped over the curb and were soon up to the traffic jam. Five cars separated us from Viviana. The jam wasn’t moving.

I pulled the emergency brake. “Stay here.”

“Will do, boss. Great idea.”

I jumped out and closed the distance to Viviana’s car, catching her frustrated thoughts. <
La nay ba.
> I’d have to ask Ms. Ibanescu what that meant.

Viviana must have caught sight of me in her side view mirror. She stuck her head out, looked back, then gunned the engine and pulled out onto the shoulder. I should have parked there to block her in.

I sprinted back to my Yaris, jumped in, and did the same.

Viviana had gotten a good head start, but I was pulling out all the stops and catching up to her. Then a woman jerked her tiny Kia Kilowatt onto the shoulder in front of me and I slammed on the brakes. I couldn’t go around her.

She got out of her car. “You think you’re more important than us?” She put her hands on her hips.

I leaned out my window. “I’m a detective. I’m chasing someone.”

“Oh, right. Ha. Nice try. You think your time is more valuable than mine, don’t you? You can cut ahead of me. You’re too good to wait in line with everyone else.”

I got out and stood up, looking past the woman. I watched Viviana squeeze around a car accident and onto the freeway. She zoomed off, soon out of sight.

My tormentor nodded. “Nothing to say for yourself, huh?” <
Asshole.
>

I got back into the car. Steam rose from the hood.

Peggy gave me a punch on the shoulder. “That was fun, right?”

I put my forehead on the steering wheel. “What was fun? The part where she got away?”

“I liked the part where we drove down the stairs.” She chuckled.

I turned to her. “You mean because you told me what to do, and I did it?”

Peggy was really laughing now. “No, because I was just joking. Like ‘Ha ha, let’s drive down the stairs like in the movies.’ I didn’t think you’d do it.”

I smiled but felt like crying.

* * *

Viviana sat on her balcony in the afternoon sunshine. She sipped strong coffee and ate
papanash
with sweet cow cheese. Well, she could never go to that gym again. How had Beckman found her? The FBI and thousands of paparazzi were after her, yet he pops up. Interesting fellow. Should she have talked with him? Let him get in the car?

Too bad about the gym. It had been the perfect place to work on her rope and wall climbing. She could find another, but it would be too risky since Beckman must have found her by checking gyms
.

Her workouts kept her sane. They distracted her from her compulsion. Her urge to go on a job. Do a heist.

She should get another car, but she liked her Porsche. Just like her old one. And she should have fixed that starting problem.
Prost.
Stupid.

But the fake plates had paid off. Now she’d have to buy another set.

Her house she’d keep. The landlord usually rented out houses to marijuana growers who didn’t have permits, so everything was under the table. He didn’t even ask for her name. On the other hand, the rent was high.

Uncle Zaharia was close by—she could feel it—but she wasn’t having any luck finding him. If she could trust Beckman to keep her secrets, could he help? She gazed at the empty chair beside her. She pictured Eric in it, sharing her brunch.
Am lonely.

Viviana opened her laptop and read through the news. Such an amazing thing, this internet. She could never have imagined it.

The energy catastrophe was getting worse. The Burgan field in Kuwait was the latest to become infected, and experts now believed ecoterrorists were poisoning fields with genetically engineered bacteria.

In addition to rolling blackouts, new electric meters would soon restrict electricity usage by individual users. Zaza could fix this situation. She knew he could.

She smiled at CNC’s daily feature: “Where in the World is Viviana Petrescu?” Each day brought new false leads. Yesterday, someone reported spotting her in San Diego at a Scientology meeting. This was good. Would Beckman’s sighting show up in tomorrow’s column?

She looked at her fingertips. They wouldn’t match her immigration fingerprints from 1972. The time machine had apparently turned her into a mirror image of her old self. She touched the old gunshot wound that was now on her left side.
Was really possible?
They’d certainly taken her prints at the hospital.

Eying the newspaper folded on the table, she shook her head. Why couldn’t she throw it away? She snatched it up and turned to the society pages.
De ce sunt eu atât de slab-voit?
Why am I so weak-willed?

The society pages were a catalog for jewel thieves—people did not realize that? The society women loved to display their jewelry. It was as if they wanted someone to steal it.

No. She slapped her hand on the table. No more heists. She didn’t need the money. She was set for a long time.