“LilRedRyder is your mom. I’ll let your limited imagination figure out why she chose that. So, Sport, you’re got some homework to do before 8. You have to read all the previous chats to get up to speed.
******************************
Turns out the previous chats had been flirtatious, but mostly polite. The guy obviously knew how to take his time and not scare somebody off. They had only texted, but BaBeeBoy69 was pushing to video-chat. My mother had protested that she didn’t want her face to show, and the pervert had told her about using the preview button to check that nothing above the neck was going to show. He said he was even more scared to have his face online. I bet THAT statement was definitely true.
He told mom he wanted to see her so he knew it was a real person that was trying to help him. See, that was his angle, that he was so socially shy around girls that he needed an older woman who understood someone younger and wouldn’t judge. I could relate.
And so, he had hit on Mom’s weakness-she loved to help people and that’s why she was so caught up in the goody two-shoes stuff in town and at the church (which was where she was now).
Dad came back to my room and said: “Showtime!”
I said, “I’m ready.”
“That’s why most criminals get caught,” he said. “They’re stupid like you. If you video-chat and your mother sees those posters on your wall, what is she going to say: ‘Hey, they’re set up just like Eric’s’ or ‘What the fuck?'”
I looked behind me. He was right, and I hadn’t thought of that.
“Come down cellar into our ‘command center’ that I’ve set up.”
The command center turned out to be a corner of his home office where he had set up a card table with a tablecloth and a rug/tapestry thingy hung on the wall behind it. He also handed me a T-shirt showing a peace sign with an apple pie background and the word “Pie-ce” written in tie-dyed colors.
“All donated by BaBeeBoy69. He told us this was his on-air setup. So, what’s good enough for him… Plus, if there’s any of him floating around the internet that you mother might have hunted up, this will mesh. Get it?”
I got it more than I liked it. I was hating ambushing Mom like this, but I didn’t know what else to do.
When I logged on, there was a message already:
LilRedRyder: I’m here.
I wrote back:
BaBeeBoy69: Sorry I’m a little late.
LilRedRyder: Trouble?
BaBeeBoy69: No. My mom had me doing some chores.
LilRedRyder: How old is your mom?
I looked at my father, and he said, “We learn in law enforcement that the best lies are the ones with the most truth in them. Tell the truth about everything that doesn’t give your identity away.”
BaBeeBoy69: She’s 39.
LilRedRyder: Hmmm. That’s how old I am.
BaBeeBoy69: Strange.
LilRedRyder: Strange? You don’t think of me like your mother do you? Does that make you uncomfortable?
BaBeeBoy69: I meant strange like coincidental.
LilRedRyder: Oh. OK. That’s good
BaBeeBoy69: Do you have kids?
When there was a pause, my father gave my neck a squeeze and said, “Don’t blow this.” Then came an answer: