The Booster Club Read online

  The Booster Club

  Angela M. Sanders

  Contents

  The Booster Club

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Afterword

  Note to Readers

  The Booster Club

  Angela M. Sanders

  Dedication

  To the people who taught me that right and wrong aren’t simply rules to learn, but decisions to consider day after day.

  * * *

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  1

  She’d be so glad to be through with all this. Claudine Dupin turned down a darkened side street, the slender bag with her tools snug across her back, her footsteps soundless. The last of the summer’s crickets chirped from velvet-napped lawns. By Thanksgiving, she’d be drinking vintage Bordeaux in Geneva. She’d have enough money to last the rest of her life. But tonight it was the same old boring grind: Break in, steal the goods as arranged. Oh, and try not to be too messy about it.

  Her dark hair was twisted tightly at the back of her head, and she was dressed all in black. Likely, no one would see her in the shadows of the trees, but if they did, she’d look like any thirty-something woman on her way to a dinner date.

  The house’s owner had instructed Claudine—working through Larry the Fence, as usual—that they’d be gone until midnight, and they’d set the alarm. The safe was upstairs in a bedroom. She was to steal the jewelry and only the jewelry. Larry would have explained to them that such a targeted theft wouldn’t look natural if there were other valuables lying around. Hopefully they’d stowed everything else away. Just a few months ago she’d had to leave a job hauling twenty pounds of sterling flatware. Larry was thrilled, but her shoulder had ached for days.

  She double-checked the address, then slipped up the driveway to disable the alarm. She rolled on a pair of gloves. A quick clip of her wire cutters ensured she’d be able to get the job done without a security outfit checking in.

  The French doors at the rear of the house were a cinch. A pug came bounding down the hall toward her, but didn’t even bark. Claudine knelt and scratched him behind the ears. So far, this was as easy a job as she’d ever done. She pulled a flashlight from her pack. The light’s focused beam passed over a white couch and mid-century furniture. The abstract painting dominating one wall of the living room was almost a duplicate to one she’d seen a few months before on a job a mile away. Probably used the same decorator. She wondered if they knew.

  She headed to the refrigerator. She wasn’t really hungry, but every client seemed to expect a “real” robbery, and for some reason that included eating and scattering wrappers everywhere. She sighed. She lifted a pint of ice cream from the freezer and scooped some into the garbage disposal before tossing the half-empty container on the floor. On second thought, she didn’t need the pug getting sick. She retrieved the carton and left it on its side on the faux-mod buffet. Better. She gave the dog a slice of lunchmeat and stuffed the rest down the disposal, too. She’d leave a few other wrappers in the hall.

  Upstairs, she found the safe where they’d said it would be. The wall safe was an old, square-front number that probably came with the house. It didn’t even have a combination wheel but operated with a key. She could pick the lock in a second, but on a hunch, she checked the top drawer of the nearby desk. Yep. People were dummies about security.

  She unlocked the safe and pushed aside papers to reach for the stacked velvet boxes. She cracked them open quickly to glance inside, then halted. The second box contained a Victorian parure in onyx glimmering with diamond chips, as rich and dark as a bottomless lake against its satin setting. Mourning jewelry, likely inherited. They were crazy to get rid of it. Sure, it didn’t go with their minimalist-everything decor, but so what? Tiffany necklaces were a dime a dozen. You didn’t often find treasures like this.

  People. She slipped the boxes into her pack and left the safe open to show that the job was done. After a half-hearted wander through the house looking for other easy-to-nab valuables, she petted the dog once again and let herself out the back door.

  Easy job. Uneventful. Easy money. Lord, she couldn’t wait for these to end.

  As she rounded the back of the house, car lights swung into the street, then filled the driveway. Claudine swore under her breath and flattened her back against the wall, just out of the beams’ path. The car idled, blocking the sidewalk. The driver wasn’t coming all the way into the driveway, but neither did he back out as if he were only using the driveway to turn around. A gray sedan. A Taurus, she thought. Not the kind of car the couple who owned the house would drive. The car’s engine cut, but its headlights remained on.

  Damn. He couldn’t see her. A moment passed, then another. She steadied her breathing to the calm meditation she’d studied. Think, Claudine. As she prepared to inch toward the rear, the car engine started again. The sedan backed into the street and disappeared.

  * * *

  An hour later, after occasional glances in the rearview mirror for the gray sedan, Claudine pulled her Honda Accord into the parking lot of the Villa Saint Nicholas retirement home. At any other retirement home, ten at night would have been too late to drop by. Not here. The Villa’s residents were just getting started.

  She pushed open the double glass doors to a hall of fake plants and worn linoleum squares. The stridently cheerful aroma of a supermarket air deodorizer wafted from the office.

  “Hey, Claudine,” a heavily tattooed man said from the office just off the hall. A thick book dangled from one hand. Gone With the Wind. Warren always did like a romantic potboiler. “Hank’s in the cafeteria.”

  “Thanks.”

  The cafeteria doubled as the Villa’s social room. Hank was just inside the door playing cards. At the sound of his daughter’s voice, he wheeled his wheelchair toward her. “Hi, honey. Just getting ready for a game of crazy eights with Bobby.” He waved at her all-black outfit. “You come off a job?”

  Claudine relaxed. Despite the dingy walls and institutional tables, the Villa felt like home and its residents family. “Yeah. Another insurance racket. Easy money.”

  “Why do you take those? You could do a lot better, you know. Like you used to.”

  She could explain that the thrill of pulling off a big heist had dissipated years ago, and that the money didn’t mean much. Unless it was really big money, big enough to put an end to the life completely.

  She lowered her voice. “I came tonight because I want to talk to you about something I’ve got planned. Something big.”

  “Hey, Deanie,” Bobby said from across the table, using Claudine’s childhood nickname. He tossed down a card. “Spades.” Since Bobby quit as a card shark, he seemed to have shrunk within his clothes to the size of a twelve-year-old. A twelve-year-old with white hair and a knack for pulling aces out of nowhere, that is.

  “Come join u
s,” Hank said, wheeling his chair to Bobby’s table.

  Claudine peered over her father’s shoulder. The theme song to Practical Hospital blared from the TV room across the hall, where the home’s oldest resident, Grady, watched reruns with his hearing aid turned off. “How much are you in for this time? You should know better than to play with Bobby.”

  Hank smiled patiently. “Oh, honey. I only play to keep Bobby’s brain working good. It’s easy to get senile around this place.”

  A redhead pulled up a chair and set her orthopedic cane next to her. As usual, she hiked up her dress to showcase her still remarkable legs and feet tucked into gold mules. She went by Gilda, but her birth certificate likely said differently.

  “Claudine, baby.” Gilda twirled a hennaed strand of hair. “Your father was telling us this hilarious story about one of his old gang, a box man.”

  “I wouldn’t call him one of my old gang. I mean, the guy only lasted one job.”

  “Hank said he spent the night in the house drilling out the safe’s hinges.” Gilda slapped her knee and guffawed. Bobby and Hank chortled with her.

  “Idiot.” Hank shook his head. “You should have seen the look on his face when he found the safe still as locked as ever. Some people are just too dumb for crime.”

  “Listen to this one. Maybe Claudine can figure it out,” Bobby said.

  They loved to give her crime puzzles. Comfort-wise, their rundown nursing home was no palace. Talking about old times seemed to be the one thing that kept them going. Besides, her father had trained her for this since she was old enough to walk. He used to lull her to sleep with Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe stories, pointing out how the criminal could have avoided getting caught.

  “So, we broke into this fancy house, right?” Bobby said.

  Claudine drew up a chair. “What were you doing on a break-in? I thought you stuck to cards.”

  “I was a lookout for my brother’s operation sometimes back in the fifties.”

  A tall, gaunt man wearing a priest’s collar and robes joined the group. “You must be Hank’s daughter,” he said and held out a hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Father Vincent.”

  “Nice to meet you.” What kind of crook was a man of the cloth?

  “Just arrived at the Villa last week. So far I’m really enjoying it. Great community.”

  “Not much of a card player, though,” Bobby said.

  “I’m better with cars. Mechanically minded,” Father Vincent said.

  Claudine nodded. He was either a driver, or he stole cars. Or both. “But you’ve kept your vestment.”

  “After so many years in skirts, I can’t give them up. So much more comfortable.”

  “I could lend you a couple of my old hostess skirts,” Gilda said.

  “Anyway,” Bobby said, “I was just telling Claudine a story. Seeing what she would do.” He laid his cards on the table to better gesture with his hands. “So, we broke into this fancy house, and they got a safe in the bedroom wall behind a portrait of a dog.”

  “What make?” Hank asked.

  “Cocker Spaniel.”

  Hank snorted.

  “Mosler 357. Dual combination,” Bobby said.

  Hank whistled. “A tough one.”

  “You knew there was something in it, right?” Gilda asked. Claudine didn’t know what Gilda’s background was, but suspected she might have been a small-time blackmailer. She’d worked in the clubs after World War II and no doubt picked up information certain husbands wouldn’t want shared.

  “Oh, sure. A contact at the bank told us the wife had just been to her safe deposit box that morning for her diamonds. There was a big shindig that week.”

  “How much time did you have?” Hank said.

  “About forty-five minutes. We had a tail on the husband, still at work, and one on the wife, getting her nails done.”

  “Two locks? Can’t be done,” Hank said. “No less than an hour to crack, and four hours minimum to peel.”

  “Unless—” Claudine cut in, “You said it was a bedroom wall, right?”

  Bobby nodded.

  “Standard two-by-four construction?”

  “She got it,” Bobby said with admiration. “You’re good. And that’s exactly what happened. My brother cut the safe right out of the wall. We spent the evening in the cellar at home cracking it.”

  Hank patted Claudine on the hand. “She’s the smart one in the bunch. Takes after her great-great-grandpa.”

  Claude Dupin was a famous jewel thief at the turn of the twentieth century in Paris, and her namesake. People said the fictional gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin, was inspired by him. Hank crowed about their shared blood, even if his own brand of housebreaking had been a tad less glamorous.

  “Maybe she can figure out what to do about Wanda’s kids,” Gilda said.

  “Wanda Rizzio?” Claudine asked. Wanda was a slip-and-fall artist a decade or so older than she with skill that would have made Buster Keaton envious. “Last I heard, she was in Sacramento.”

  “Came back to Carsonville last month. Got picked up down at the mall. Seems one of the security guards saw her spill her cola,” Bobby said.

  Part of Wanda’s ploy was to dump soda, then pretend to fall and break an arm. She’d show up later threatening to sue. Once she’d shown Claudine her impressive selection of neck braces and casts.

  “What about her kids?” Claudine said.

  Hank and Gilda looked at each other. “That’s the problem,” Gilda said. “On her way to be booked, Wanda fell. I mean, for real. Broke her arm, banged her head. They took her to the emergency room right away, but she didn’t make it.”

  “Died,” Hank said. “Almost like she couldn’t bear the shame of a real tumble.”

  “The kids—all four of them—were farmed out to foster families. But they couldn’t stand being apart, and they ran away. Their dad’s long gone. Larry the Fence says they’re living in a squat. He’s trying to get together a group to help them out.”

  Grady slumped in from the television room and took a chair.

  “Do they know how Wanda earned her paycheck?” Claudine said.

  “Larry says they’ve been sheltered. He’s surprised they had the gumption to buck social services.”

  Warren wandered in from his office, a finger holding his place in his novel. Six faces watched her expectantly. They wanted something from her.

  “What?” Claudine said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “We can’t do anything about the kids, honey,” Bobby said. “You know the rules. Besides, we’re all broke.”

  “No joke,” Father Vincent said. “That vow of poverty was a real buzz kill.”

  Claudine pursed her lips. Larry was not only a clearinghouse for stolen goods, he was a locus for information. If he said he’d get the word out to help Wanda’s kids, they could count on a tidy collection of money. “Money shouldn’t be a problem.” Even as she said it, she knew the kids needed a lot more than that.

  Putting Claudine’s thoughts into words, Gilda said, “The kids need a home.”

  “Why don’t you take them in here?”

  “What?” Grady said, fiddling with his hearing aid.

  “We don’t have the room,” Hank said.

  Not only that, the Villa Saint Nicholas didn’t need to draw attention to itself, as Claudine knew. Hosting a group of runaways was asking for trouble. “I’m no social worker. I’m sure Larry will figure something out.”

  Bobby tossed the deck of cards aside. “When your mother died, who was around to make sure you and André got to school?”

  “The community.” Her father answered before she could. “I owe a lot to you guys.”

  It was true. She told her schoolmates that Hank worked the graveyard shift, and that’s why Art Weinstein made breakfast and took her and André to school most mornings. Art was an embezzlement consultant, so his hours were flexible.

  “And didn’t I take you shopping for school clothes
?” Gilda asked.

  She had. Gilda had even buckled to Claudine’s insistence on blue jeans instead of skirts. They’d pick out Claudine’s wardrobe for the year, then send Mary Rose back to boost it for them.

  “Look how well you turned out. We got to look out for each other,” her father said.

  “Oh, guys,” Claudine said. “I’m grateful to you, I really am. But what am I supposed to do? Leave the Rizzio kids in my tiny apartment while I rob rich people?”

  “You don’t have to take them in, just help the folks Larry pulls together figure out what to do next,” Bobby said.

  They really knew how to pluck at the heartstrings. She was sorry, but it just wasn’t good timing, not with the Cabrini heist coming up. “I’ll kick in a couple hundred bucks, how’s that? I’m afraid that’s all I can do right now.”

  The residents’ disappointment was palpable. “What’d she say?” Grady asked.

  Father Vincent cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “No dice.”

  “Told you,” Gilda said.

  Claudine took her place behind her father’s wheelchair. She felt bad about the kids, and she’d contribute to Larry’s kitty, but that was all she could do. “Dad, can we go upstairs? It’s about the job I mentioned. The big one.”

  “Sure, Deanie. See you later, guys.”

  “Heard from André?” Claudine asked as the wheelchair rolled across linoleum, then lumpy carpet.

  “He’s in Mexico City. Got himself a job starring in a telenovela. Grady’s going to line it up for us on the computer this week.” He shook his head. “I wish your brother would use his skills for something more useful. Or at least come help you at the shop. He asked if you’d send him some Acqua di Parma, by the way. The cologne, not the aftershave.”

  “No problem.” The Scent Shoppe had been the family’s cover for three decades.

  Once they were in the elevator, Hank said, “Since you’re coming up, I got something to show you.”