The Actress (Rita Farmer Mysteries Book 1) by Sims Elizabeth

Author:Sims, Elizabeth [Sims, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Spruce Park Press
Published: 2013-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

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The next morning the three met in town at the bank Maria Helena had named. She watched as Rowe wrote out directions for a wire transfer from his Fenco account. She would not agree to half now, half later. "All now," she said coolly, as if certain her luck had finally changed.

Rowe found himself helplessly charmed by this child racketeer. The money, though a huge chunk out of his budget for this job, was all right. If he didn't spend it here and now, he might lose Tenaway entirely. Raimundo struggled to manage his shock that Rowe would hand over so much money to a little girl.

When the bank manager showed her the new balance in her account, they went to a café. The manager looked after them as they went out. Rowe had slipped him two hundred to keep his thoughts to himself. Rowe and Raimundo wore clean clothes and Raimundo had on a newer, city-type straw hat. At the café they ordered the sweet, boiling-hot coffee Brazilians love, bread, and soft white cheese that Raimundo said was a local specialty. It tasted good, but Rowe only took two bites; he was too keyed up.

Maria Helena spoke at length about Richard Tenaway, in Portuguese. The words poured out; she did not want to hesitate to find English ones, she explained through Raimundo.

Her story was as simple and heartbreaking as the landscape of Minas Gerais on a foggy morning.

"I am smart but this man, he made me stupid," she began, and Rowe saw that, for her, that was the alpha and the omega of it.

Tenaway, last summer, had found her through the seedy conduits of the town's after-hours taverns. He had wanted a new U.S. passport, and she agreed to supply it, for three thousand dollars.

Her method for American passports, which were next to impossible to forge from scratch, was to zero in on a tourist who resembled her client, and who planned to stay in Brazil for at least a week. She would get a look at the tourist's passport, briefly stealing it if need be to make a quick photocopy. She was good at lifting wallets from day bags, and she had an arrangement with maids at certain hotels. But she would return the passport so it wouldn't be missed. She would go to her studio and fabricate a replica of it that would fool neither a customs officer nor any government's computer system. That was not the point; once the replica was exchanged for the real—during another secret visit—the tourist would believe he had his passport up until the moment he tried to use it.

Meanwhile, the original, perfect passport would have been used by Maria Helena's client, then destroyed once past the border. This method guaranteed smooth transit for the client. But all this spying and thieving were risky. She was beginning to use some of the rough boys of Ouro Prêto to help her. But that was risky too.

When she delivered Tenaway's new passport to him, he rejected it—the owner of the passport was not nearly as handsome as he.

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