Even if I had spent more time ripping them off than getting to know any of them.
The nice thing about the Kappa house being the farthest sorority from main campus was our secluded lot. No one saw as I changed out of my T-shirt and pants and into a skirt and blouse, complete with an annoying pair of old-lady panty hose I’d snuck into my purse. If my dad’s lessons had taught me anything at all, it was that the proper appearance did at least 85 percent of the work. And old ladies freaking loved panty hose.
*
Dad had been asking me for more favors than ever since I relocated to Florida, thanks to the abundance of gullible, rich elderly people. The drive to this particular job didn’t take long. Twenty minutes or so after leaving campus my GPS said I’d arrived, and a street lined with sprawling faux-brick estates welcomed me to the neighborhood.
Less than three years to go, I thought as I pulled into the driveway and shut off the car, taking a few minutes to clear my head. I’d be done with school, have a degree, and be able to get a real job; I would finally be able to refuse the “work” my dad tossed my direction.
The ever-present worry that I didn’t know how to live any other way tried to wriggle past my defenses, but I swiped it away. I could figure it out. Just because a duck had never seen water didn’t mean it couldn’t swim. Just because I’d grown up stealing didn’t mean I couldn’t be honest.
It took the space of a few deep breaths to twist my hair into a knot at the nape of my neck and dig my fake FBI credentials from the glove compartment. I slipped them into my jacket pocket and climbed out of my high-end Toyota, which I drove on purpose so as not to intimidate potential marks. Plus, FBI agents didn’t drive Beamers like the one Dad had sent me to Whitman in.
The driveway had been recently repoured, and flowering bushes and plants lined the pathway to the massive double front doors. The house was the kind of structure that only rich people in Florida managed to build—more than one story, with an exterior cut to look like brick instead of the stucco that was more appropriate for the environment down here.
All of these huge, sprawling houses and sprawling lawns felt foreign to me. The extra space felt wasteful after living in Manhattan. Some people hated it—the crush of humanity, the never being alone, the constant noise—but after growing up that way, the opposite felt wrong.
An impressively long and loud ding-dong sounded when I pressed the bell. I fixed a friendly but professional smile on my lips and a look of appropriate sympathy in my eyes. My father had stolen over ten million dollars from this woman earlier in the week, but she had another fifty squirreled away in accounts to which she’d retained her access. I was here to change that.
Two years ago the light briefcase would have been slippery in my sweating palm, but today I had no nerves. What had started as an eight-year-old girl playing a game had turned into a job at some point—and into my lifestyle as well as my father’s.
The door opened, revealing a tidy African-American woman in an old-fashioned black-and-white maid’s uniform. “Afternoon. Can I help you?”
She gave me a tight smile that said she hated her life, one that relaxed the slight knot at the base of my neck. It meant she had no love for her employer, which worked in my favor.
I pulled the badge out of my pocket as though I’d been doing it for years. “I’m Special Agent Cooley with the FBI. I’d like to speak with . . .” I checked a blank notepad on the back of my badge. “Miss Daisy Brown, if she’s available.”
“Miss Brown is relaxing right now. Can I tell her what this is about?”
“I’m afraid I need to speak with her directly, but you can tell her I’m with the white-collar crime division.”
“She ain’t gonna know what that means.”
“It means we investigate fraud. Like the kind run by questionable accountants who steal money from hardworking ladies such as yourself,” I replied dryly.
She eyed me for a few more seconds before opening the door wider and inviting me into the foyer. Step one—get into the house.
“I’ll tell Miss Brown you’re here. It might be a few minutes. Can I get you something to drink?”
The acid in her tone made me think the beverage would be mostly spit, so I shook my head. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”
The maid left me alone in the foyer. The lack of warmth, or even an invitation to sit, made me wonder why my father had chosen this particular mark and how he’d managed to wrangle the first ten million out of her hands. The house was rattier on the inside than out—the walls had some cracks that needed to be repaired, the wooden floors could use a buff and stain, and the paisley carpet on the stairs was worn thin in the middle. It all added up to the assumption that the mark had money, but she didn’t like to spend it.