public image from Pixabay.com

This story is a 5 minute freewrite challenge posted by @mariannewest. My entry is a continuation to my previous story https://staging.busy.org/@blueeyes8960/finish-the-fiction-story-contest-week-36-bananafish where Susie unscrupulously tricked an elderly nursing home resident out of an heirloom intended for her granddaughter.

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Unexpected Consequences

Susie sat on the balcony overlooking the pool. It had been a week since she had walked off her job, in possession of old Mrs. Ellerton's diamond brooch. And why should she feel guilty? After all, the old bag had given it to her hadn't she? And she'd certainly earned it after listening to all those dull stories from the geriatric crowd.

Susie had went straight to the library that lucky day and gotten on the internet to research how to make a killing on this windfall. She certainly couldn't do the research at home. For one thing, her clunky old Windows 7 PC was slow and cantankerous, even though she was stealing the fast internet from the nerds next door. No, it wouldn't do for her old man, Ricky, to find out anything about this money making project. Her job wasn't the only thing she intended to ditch by way of Mrs. Ellerton's brooch.

The shocking information she found was that the diamond was a rare piece, commissioned in World War 2, yet disappearing and claimed as lost by a famous war criminal's wife. That pretty much fit in with the story that Ellerton had told her that day, while believing that Susie was her granddaughter. The broach was worth a pretty penny now and Susie had contacted a friend of hers in the pawn shop business to try and find a buyer.

A few days earlier, Susie had received a mysterious phone call telling her to pick up a packet at the local post office held in general delivery under her name. The packet had a plane ticket, a confirmation to a reservation at this hotel, 5 crisp $100 bills for travel expenses, and instructions to bring the brooch and await contact.

As Susie slugged back another beer and examined her chipped black nail polish, she thought about how happy she was going to be to get rid of the damned brooch. Nothing had went right since that day, except for the payday she was about to cash in on. In fact, it seemed as if the broach was bad luck, maybe even cursed. Now, somewhere in the back of her hazy brain a tiny alarm seemed to vibrate, she felt a chill run down her spine, and then the room phone rang.

About freaking time, she thought. She jumped for the phone and said "Hello, this is Susie." But there was no answer, only an ominous silence. A feeling of being watched came over her and she slowly lowered the phone to the cradle and looked around. Just now, it occurred to her that maybe it wasn't such a hot idea to travel half way round the world by herself. A red glow in the darkened room caught her eye. It was coming from the nightstand drawer. The drawer that contained the brooch....