Page 124 of Past Due

“When I got back from Lake Charles, she was waiting at the house. I was shocked to see her there. I never in a million years thought she would actually come to Houston.” My mother sighed. “And she was so agitated. She kept pacing and fidgeting and I could tell she was on something. It wasn’t just the drugs, though. She wasn’t right.” Mom touched her head. “She was losing it. She kept talking about a syndicate and a conspiracy and a shipping container.” Mom shook her head. “I don’t know. None of it made sense.”

I noticed Besian’s pensive stare and wondered what he knew about a syndicate and a conspiracy. I suspected Adrienne wasn’t as paranoid and crazy as Mom thought.

“She told me we had to get out of Houston, but I didn’t want to leave. My whole life is there. I didn’t want to be part of whatever scam she was running.”

“How did she take that?”

“Not well,” Mom said. “She ranted and screamed and said I was a liar who had tricked her into believing I cared about her. I did care about her, but not the way she cared about me. It was insane. Just absolutely batshit.” Mom placed her hands on the table and sighed. “I had to get the money to pay the loan sharks from Louisiana, and Adrienne wouldn’t give me five fucking minutes to do what needed to be done. So, I told her to come with me to your place. I knew that I could get into your accounts that way.”

Besian glared at my mother, and I silently pleaded with him not to say a word. He turned back toward the window, and I turned my attention back to my mother.

“She was wandering through your house while I was in your office using your computer to access your accounts,” Mom said, her voice tightening with anxiety. “She started screaming all of a sudden, yelling that I was one of them and had set her up. I left the office to see what the hell she was screaming about and found her in the living room with your bulletin board in her hand. She was waving it around and slapping something on it.”

My face turned beet red as I anticipated what she was about to say. I gulped nervously and avoided Besian’s curious stare. “My vision board?”

“Is that what it was? With all the photos and magazine pages?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that explains why you had that article about him tacked onto it,” my mother said, revealing my embarrassing secret. “Adrienne kept poking the magazine page with Besian’s face on it. It was some write up about him and his businesses, but she was focused on his name. She screamed that he was one of them and part of the conspiracy so that meant I was part of the conspiracy and I was setting her up.”

I couldn’t believe how so many unconnected strands of my life, my mother’s and Besian’s had come together into such a nightmarish tangle of coincidence. Nothing Adrienne believed to be a conspiracy was true. It was all happenstance, but in her twisted and sick mind, it made sense in the worst way possible.

“I tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t stop yelling. She charged me, and we started fighting. I mean—knock down, drag out, hair pulling, punching, scratching fighting. One of us hit the table, and my purse fell on the floor. She had me on the ground, pinned. Her hands were on my neck. She was choking me.”

I could see the purple-green fingertip bruises on my mother’s neck, proving what she described was true.

“I saw my Kimber on the floor. I grabbed it, and I shot her.” My mother dropped her head into her hands and started to cry. “I shot her again, and she fell onto the floor onto her face. There was blood and brain bits everywhere.” She sobbed, nearly hysterical. “I just laid there on the floor, shaking, covered in her blood. It was storming outside, and there was a bolt of lightning and thunder. The electricity popped off, and it scared me. It made me get up and look at what I had done.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I cleaned up as best as I could. I went back to my house. Showered. Cleaned the bathroom. Broke down the gun into pieces. Put my clothes and the gun in a bag. I drove down out to La Porte and out toward Galveston. I stopped every now and then and threw pieces of the gun out into the water. Hit Galveston and took the San Luis Pass and Bluewater Highway to Surfside. I tossed the rest of the gun as I drove, right out in the Gulf and Christmas Bay. When I got to Surfside, I found an empty beach house and used the grill outside to burn my clothes. Threw the ashes in different trash cans.”

My mother’s detailed description of the way she had destroyed the evidence shocked me. She was so matter-of-fact about it.

“I got back in my car and kept driving until I realized I was in Brownsville of all places.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “I went into one of those money store places and wired the money I had borrowed from you to the loan shark’s account like he told me. I sold my car to a buy-here-pay-here place and dumped my phone. I grabbed a bus ticket to San Antonio. I paid a guy at the San Antonio terminal to bring me here. I figured I could hide here for a few days, but then I read about the raid on the MC and then a few days ago I read about Spider’s accident. I didn’t know what to do. I finally decided I had to reach out to you.”

“I’m glad you did, Mom.” Even though we were now mired in her shit show, I truly was relieved we had made contact. “We’ll figure this out, Mom.” I glanced at Besian, desperate for his help. “Right?”

“Is that everything, Kim?” he asked brusquely. “Or is there more? We can’t help you if we don’t know everything.”

“There’s one more thing,” she admitted and stood up from the banquette. “I took something from Adrienne.”

Besian’s eyes narrowed. “What did you take?”

She picked up her purse from the stained, ripped couch that folded out into a bed. She reached in and retrieved a fat envelope that she handed to him. He took it from her, and I expected him to pull out a stack of cash. When it was just folded paperwork, I frowned. “What is it, B?”

He unfolded the paper and skimmed the print. His eyes went wide. “It’s a bill of lading for a shipping container that left Greece and is coming into Houston tomorrow.”

My jaw dropped. “The missing crypto wallets?”

“I would bet my life on it,” he murmured, flipping through the paperwork.

“Does that help?” my mother asked hopefully.

“Kim, this is your golden ticket,” Besian replied. “If you have demands, make them now.”

“I want out of Texas,” she said immediately. “Out of the US,” she clarified. “I want to live somewhere warm with a beautiful beach. Somewhere safe that Marley can visit,” she added. “Somewhere my grandkids can play and be happy.”

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