Chapter 11

As the cars moved away, the two mothers stepped away from the window. Both just shook their heads.

"What did you think?" Jill asked.

"The same thing you thought: How could our boys ever get so lucky! Those girls are utter dreams!" Slowly shaking her head Mel continued, "Can you think of a single thing a guy could possibly want in a girl that those two don't already have in abundance?"

Then with a little giggle Jill asked, "Did you happen to notice the monogram in Tasha's coat?"

Mel's eyes beetled and she slowly shook her head.

"I'll bet you a nickel it's like Tanya's: NCB ... for Natasha Corcoran Brewster."

"You're kidding!"

"The hell I am. I saw Tanya's. It's TCB for Tatiana Corcoran Barnes."

Just then the phone rang and Jill, being closer, picked it up.

There was a female voice on the other end, a voice that Jill had never heard before. "Is this Mrs. Barnes or Mrs. Brewster?"

"I'm Jill Barnes," was the reply. For a change, she didn't correct the caller with regard to her marital status. On the other hand she had no idea who the caller was.

"This is Caitlin Corcoran. I'm Tanya and Tasha's mother, and I'm so happy to be speaking to you at last!" There was a momentary pause and then Caitie continued, "We owe you both a huge apology."

"Apology?" Jill nearly screamed. "What apology? After buying our sons the most magnificent clothing any of us have ever seen?"

"No," Caitie replied softly, "for costing you both your jobs ... and for even getting screwed out of your paychecks for time already worked." Then to Jill's utter amazement, Caitie told her to the penny exactly how much the two had had coming to them.

"But how could you possibly know that?" Jill exclaimed. "The only records are in a padlocked club."

"That's not quite true," Caitie replied. "It seems that Jumbo Jones kept very comprehensive records on his computer."

"But his records were lost," Jill retorted. "It was in the local paper, The Herald-Leader. They recovered his computer, but the whole hard drive had been very professionally scrubbed. There was no recovery possible."

"That's true, too," Caitie conceded, "unless a copy of the drive had been made before it was erased."

"Are you saying... ?"

"I'm not saying anything," Caitie replied. "We were talking about money ... and stuff."

"What stuff?"

"Like where you're going to live. Like what are you going to be doing. That sort of stuff."

Jill was stunned. But when Caitie Corcoran had identified herself she held the receiver so Mel could listen to the conversation too. The two women looked at one another and just shook their heads in bewilderment.

After a long pause Jill replied, "We're going to live right here. And on Monday, Mel and I are going to see about getting waitressing jobs."

Now there was a pause at the Corcoran end. "Before you do that, could you do me a favor?"

"Sure. What?"

"Your bank has an ATM just a short distance away. Would you and Mrs. Brewster mind going over and checking your balances? Then call me back." Caitie gave Jill her phone number in New York City and then hung up before Jill could respond.

The two women stared at the dead receiver and both rolled their eyes. Long-distance telephone charges were not in their budget. For that matter, there was no money to cover items that were in their budget.

"The boys got four suits, two coats, and formal wear," Mel pointed out. We can scrape up the money. Besides, we just paid the phone bill so we have nearly a month to earn the money to cover the call."

With that the two put on warm coats. A glance outside showed that it was snowing hard by then. But off they trudged to the branch bank.

The branch had an ATM lobby that was accessible 24/7. Jill inserted her ATM card, punched in her PIN and requested her account balance. The machine made its usual noises and then spat out a small card with the information. Jill took it and moved away for Mel to repeat the process but didn't even glance at the card in her hand.

Mel went through the same steps, but when the machine produced the information, she did look at it. When she did, she felt her knees buckle and she just sank down to sit on the cold terrazzo floor while still looking at the card.

Seeing what happened to her friend, Jill did the same thing. And sank down to the floor beside Mel. "What's yours say?" she gasped.

"A ... a ... a hundred thousand and six dollars and 77 cents," Mel murmured. "How about you?"

"I beat you," Jill giggled. "I have $100,007.25. I'm richer than you are."

The girls just continued to sit on the cold floor staring at the cards in their hands.

"Want to see if it's real?" Mel asked.

Jill just nodded.

Mel got slowly to her feet and then with trepidation activated the ATM again, but this time she asked for $300, the most cash the machine was allowed to provide in a single transaction. Instantly it started to spew out the cash. After she collected it, she looked at the receipt and giggled, "Well, I sure didn't have a six-figure bank balance for long."

Jill repeated the process and then the girls walked home feeling much better than they had when they left their home.

"I guess we can afford that call to New York," Mel commented with a giggle.

Returning to their duplex, they scarcely noticed that the snow had begun to stick on the street and the sidewalk. In a few minutes they were back in their home and on the phone. Caitie picked up on the first ring.

"All right, Mrs. Corcoran—"

"It's Caitie, please!"

"All right ... Caitie. Now what gives? How did $100,000 get into each of our accounts?" Jill demanded.

"Because I put it there," Caitie declared. "How else do you think it got there?"

"But how?" Jill insisted. "You have to know the transit code and our account numbers."

"Not too hard when we own the dumb bank." Caitie paused for a moment and then explained, "That's not strictly true. We don't really own the bank. We own the holding company that owns the bank that owns your little bank." Again there was a pause. "And frankly, it was a real pain in the butt to have to go through so many intermediaries to get a couple of stupid numbers. And that's why we put so little money in your accounts: Since yours is such a small bank, we didn't want to get much beyond the FDIC guarantees.

"And for that matter, could you open accounts in the biggest bank in town? That's ours, too, and we can trust it to handle substantially larger balances."

Jill heard Caitie's last words but let them go by. "Anyway, you asked us to call, so I'm calling. What can we do for you?"

There was a pause before Caitie replied. "You could do me a huge favor."

"Which is... ?"

What followed came out in a rush of words. It was clear to Jill that whatever it was, Caitie found it very embarrassing. "Could you move out to the Farm? Please?"

"The farm? Do you mean Bluegrass Farm?"

"That's the only one we own, so yes."

"But why?" Jill replied, totally puzzled and confused.

"All our plans are going awry," Caitie explained. "The fact is that the rescue and adoption of Tanya and Tasha happened on the fly. We had no time for adequate planning or preparation. I had just delivered so we thought it would be better for them to be down there for a while.

"But now Jessie Johnson, who's been a mother to them, is expecting a baby of her own!" Caitie paused for a moment and then continued, "She and Dan have been married for so long and have been apart so much of the time with him in the Rangers. She thought a pregnancy could never happen, but it did, and she's ecstatic. But it's not fair for her to have to look after our kids, too.

"I would come down myself, but I'm expecting again, too, and my OB is here. In fact, she's about one minute away across our footbridge."

"Footbridge?" Jill exclaimed. "What footbridge?"

"The one that connects our two apartments, 40-floors up. And aside from being the finest OB/GYN in the world, if you can believe it, she's back at the hospital developing an additional specialty in pediatrics. And it's just so neat! She did such a beautiful job circumcising Billy, and she was in labor at the time, too."

Suspecting something was odd, Jill asked, "And where did all this happen?"

"On my kitchen floor," Caitie replied casually. "And Dorie was giving me forty kinds of hell because I didn't deliver fast enough — it took almost three minutes — while she was about to burst. It was all she could do to hold Susie in." Again, she paused.

Then she added, "But it's really nice. Don't you think it's nicer when the boy is older than the girl? And Billy is almost a full three minutes older. Since I had just delivered myself, it was a near thing trying to catch Susie before she bounced on the floor."

"Bounced on the floor? Wasn't she on a cot ... or something?"

"Of course not! We were both on a heavy-gauge polyethylene tarp." Then Caitie mused, "Try as we might, we're always spilling some of the afterbirth, or packing material or whatever, on the floor, and the tarp cleans up easily."

Jill and Mel exchanged looks while both were rolling their eyes.

"Anyway, would you be willing to move out to the farm? We know your boys will be spending the night there with the girls, and it would be a real hoot for them to find their mothers out there waiting for them tomorrow morning."

Jill looked at Mel with a question in her eyes.

"We have some money now, so why not?" Mel replied to the unspoken question.

"We'll do it," Jill replied to Caitie. "But what now?"

"Two things," Caitie replied. "First of all, a new rental car will be delivered to your home tonight. In its clapped-out condition, I'm not sure your car could even reach the Farm. Beyond that, though, its tires are nearly bald, and the rental car will come with new ice tires. There's no telling how much snow you're going to get tonight or what the condition the roads will be like tomorrow morning.

"Second, I'm back to the question I asked earlier: You've both agreed to move out to the farm, but what do you want to do?" Again Caitie paused, then continued, "Oh, yeah ... One more thing: money is not — I repeat, not — a problem. When you open your accounts at the new bank, they'll be funded from here. The bank already has its instructions; they're just waiting for you two to go in and sign some cards.

"Jessie says she told you about my mission in life: trying to keep the love of my life from being buried under mountains of money. And with about a hundred billion, that produces an income in the five to ten billion dollar a year range. And that's in the range of 100 to 200 million dollars a week! So on the positive side, maybe you girls could help me unload some of it. Do either of you have any ideas?"

The two women looked at each other glassy-eyed. They were stunned by the numbers.

Then Mel took the receiver, introduced herself — to that point Jill had been doing all the talking — and said very diffidently, "This is Mel Brewster. Could ... could we do something with The Girl Spot? The word is that the estate administrator is trying to unload it fast."

"Terrific idea!" Caitie exclaimed. Then she paused and said, "Have you ever heard of the law firm of Braxton, Barrett & Clay?"

"No," Mel replied, "but that doesn't mean anything. For fairly obvious reasons, Jill and I don't know of any law firms."

"Well, some of our companies have used the firm," Caitie continued, "and they speak very highly of a young lawyer there named Tom Brady." She then proceeded to give them the firm's telephone number, as well as Brady's home phone and cellphone numbers. "Call him right now. He's unmarried and seems to spend all of his time lawyering. Tell him you want to acquire The Girl Spot immediately."

"There's one more thing," Mel added. "The kids who work there — including all the talent — were stiffed out of their paychecks for the last two weeks. Would you mind, Mrs. Corcoran—"

"It's Caitie, dammit!"

"Would you mind, Caitie, if I used some of the money you've just given me to pay them for time already worked?"

"Of course not! Great idea." Caitie paused again and then said, "You and Jill hired and trained all the talent, didn't you?"

Mel acknowledged that they did.

"Well, I've never seen The Girl Spot, of course, but doesn't it need some work? Assuming that it does, why don't you put the whole staff on the payroll beginning right now? From what we've heard, it's a very good operation and has a very fine staff. Since those people won't have any trouble finding other jobs, the only way you can be sure to keep them together is to start paying them."

"Does that apply to Sam Kramer, too? He's been the general manager, and he's really good. And I know he's married with a family and really needs the money."

"Of course! Why don't you call him right after you call Tom Brady? He probably knows the wait staff, bartenders and cooks far better than you two do anyway." Caitie then read off the amounts owed to each staff member.

The pair agreed on that course of action and then Caitie asked Jill about her plans.

Jill replied, "Caitie, do you mind if I wait a bit before I answer? I have some ideas, but they haven't really jelled in my mind yet."

And that's the way it was left.