by Robin Lamont
“No, just procrastinating,” replied Kurt.
“Then here,” she handed him a towel to dry the dishes that she was rinsing and putting into the dish rack. “I forgot to tell you, I ran into that woman from the animal organization in the supermarket yesterday,” she said.
“Did you talk to her?”
“A little. I was already on the checkout line.”
“What did you talk about?”
“She wanted to know if I’d met Tyler.”
“And what did you say?”
“That I’d only met him once.”
“You never told me.”
Katherine shrugged. “It was very brief. He was over to pick up Heather. The weekend before the … incident. I was out back grinding cornmeal.” She caught her husband staring at her as if she’d done something wrong. “What he did, Kurt, was unforgiveable. But at the time, he seemed like a nice enough young man. We just chatted for a minute. He told me he grew up on a farm where his grandmother used to grind their own cornmeal. He took a real interest in it.”
“And that was it?”
“That was it. Heather came out and they left.”
“What the hell is that woman doing hanging around and asking questions?”
“I suppose she thinks that he’s still here in Half Moon.”
A bowl slipped from Kurt Buck’s wet fingers and shattered on the floor. The sudden noise frightened the older dog so badly that she hit her head on the table scrambling to get up and out of there. The younger one, Chipper, sensing unseen, imminent danger, began to bark.
“Goddammit,” cried Kurt angrily. He turned to Chipper and yelled, “Quiet! Quiet!”
Chipper did no such thing. Clearly the threat had intensified, and he had a duty to protect the household.
Katherine wiped her soapy hands on the seat of her jeans and went over to the excited dog to make him stop barking. He gave one more preemptive bark before falling silent.
“It’s just a bowl, Kurt,” admonished his wife. “No big deal. Go see if Rosie’s okay while I clean it up.”
He tossed the dishtowel on the counter, stepped over the mess on the floor, and disappeared into the living room. When he returned, Katherine was sweeping the pieces from a dustpan into the garbage. He sat on a kitchen chair and glowered as she went over the floor one more time for fragments she had missed.
She returned the dustpan to its hook on the back of the cellar door. “Is it bothering you that the police came out here about Tyler?”
“Sergeant Haydon’s a state trooper.”
“Okay. He’s investigating Tyler as a missing persons case, right?”
Kurt shrugged. “Why should it bother me? I told him what I knew.”
“Of course. But he did ask you about what you said at the farmers market. That if you saw Tyler again, you’d kill him.”
“For God’s sake, Katherine. I didn’t mean it in the literal sense. Sergeant Haydon understood that.”
“I’m sure he did. But maybe it bothers you that he might consider you a suspect or something.”
“They can suspect me all they want. I didn’t do anything.”
“Well, honey, it’s not like you didn’t do anything.”
“Okay, I punched the guy. Any man in my situation would’ve done that.” In fact, the scene played out in his mind over and over again: Heather half-conscious with a gauzy smile on her face, buttons on her blouse undone. And Jeffries, that scumbag drug pusher, stumbling around in Davidson’s field like he didn’t know where he was.
“Did you tell Sergeant Haydon about that?”
“It’s irrelevant, Kath. I punched him in the nose. That’s it. He walked away. I didn’t kill him.”
“Why are you being so snippy? You’ve been wandering around like a lost soul for the past two hours, coincidentally, from the time Sergeant Haydon left. And all I’m trying to do is find out what’s going on in your head. Maybe you’d feel better if you’d told him and gotten it off your chest.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he reluctantly acknowledged. Rosie padded in warily and thrust her head between Kurt’s knees. Absently, he began to stroke her ears. Finally, he said, “There’s something else. I’m worried about Heather. I think she might be doing drugs again.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Katherine sharply.
“She’s always up there on the computer.”
“And what seventeen-year-old isn’t?”
“Plus, she’s started wearing long sleeves. It’s too hot for that. Maybe it’s to hide track marks or something.”
Katherine came over to sit with her husband. “Oh, Kurt,” she consoled him. “I went up to see her before bed last night. She’s got poison ivy on her arms and doesn’t want the kids at school to see it. That’s why she’s wearing long sleeves.”
Her reassurances, however, rang hollow in her own ears. More than once, the same thought had crossed her mind. Twice in the last week, she found the farmers market cash box short. It wasn’t something she could swear to. It was just a feeling and a vague sense that Heather had taken money. She would have asked Kurt if he’d dipped into the box, but she didn’t want to hear him say no. There were other things she wasn’t sure she wanted to know either. Like why Kurt had withheld information from Sergeant Haydon. Perhaps a single punch wasn’t such a big deal. But she remembered the blood on his hands after he got Heather back into the house. Could one punch have done that?
* * *
“It’s not looking good,” Lucas said, drawing a deep breath.
Gordon steeled himself. “Shut the door.”
The lanky investigator elbowed the office door closed and took a seat across from his boss. “I went to see Tim’s roommate Chris again. Turns out he hasn’t really known Tim for all that long. They met last December through some mutual friends, and when he said he was looking for a roommate, Tim jumped at the chance.”
“Does Chris know what he’s doing with us?”
“Only that we’re into animal protection. He didn’t know Tim was undercover. But now with all the questions, I thought I should tell him.”
“What did he say?”
“He seemed surprised, a little worried. But I don’t know if it’s because he’s upset about Tim so much as he’s wondering if he needs to find a new roommate.”
“Go on.”
“I tracked down one of their mutual buddies, a guy named Patrick who works for an accounting firm here in D.C. He knew Tim from New York a couple of years ago. They used to work out together. He said he hadn’t heard much from Tim recently; he thought he was out in Minnesota.”
“He was,” Gordon confirmed. “That’s where he did the dairy job.”
“Where he got burned, right? They ever find out how?”
“Not as far as I know.”
Lucas pressed his lips together. “Well, Patrick told me that Tim was working as a paralegal in New York.
Gordon opened a manila file that was sitting on his desk and said, “Yes, that’s what he has on his resume. A law firm in Manhattan called Cromwell, Slate, and Bruckhaus.”
“Right,” Lucas affirmed. “So, I contacted them and talked to somebody in HR who confirmed that Tim was there as a paralegal. But she wouldn’t answer any more questions, said I’d have to talk to her supervisor who’s on vacation until the end of next week. To round things off, I decided to do a little digging. The firm does white collar crime and corporate merger stuff, big mergers. As a matter of fact, they were one of the firms that represented Monsanto in its merger with Bayer Pharmaceuticals. And by itself it may not mean anything, but then I found this.” Lucas pulled a folded piece of paper from his hip pocket and shot it across the desk. Gordon picked it up and read as Lucas continued, “It’s from a business journal about the merger and some of the companies that Bayer-Monsanto is interested in, in terms of expanding
their capabilities. Paragraph three.”
Gordon’s eyes moved down the paper until he saw it. He looked up and said, “Amaethon.”
“It could be coincidence,” Lucas said in half-hearted defense of his fellow investigator.
“That Amaethon is the subject of a take-over bid possibly being handled by Tim’s former employer?” Gordon asked skeptically. “I would say that’s quite a coincidence. And it makes me wonder about his sudden influx of cash before he went undercover.”
“You think the money came from Monsanto? Why would they pay Tim?”
“They’ve been known to hire people to infiltrate animal rights groups, keep tabs on them.”
Lucas looked at his boss with growing concern. “Nah, he wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe not at first. But as we’ve seen, money is an issue for Tim, especially if he’s got a drug habit. It’s possible that when he got the job at Amaethon, he saw an opportunity. They’d pay him a lot more money than we can to make sure if there was any animal abuse going on, neither we nor the USDA would find out about it. Bad publicity that could scuttle an important take-over bid.”
“That’s kinda hard to swallow,” replied Lucas in disbelief. “I mean, I thought Tim was a solid guy, genuine, you know? Maybe a little reckless and immature, but acting as what? A double agent or something?”
“Like I said, it’s happened before. And I’m just speculating, but if you put it together with the fact that Jude hasn’t gotten anything definitive from Tim, just promises to send video ….”
“Then why would he just up and disappear? They’d have to know that we’d be done with him. You’d think Monsanto would want to keep him embedded with us as an undercover.”
“No doubt they would. But Jude seemed to think that Tim was unraveling – the heroin, the young girlfriend. He might have been legitimately rattled over the testing or was feeling too isolated. There’s nothing to say that he didn’t cut out on us and Monsanto.”
Lucas scratched his head as if trying to scrape the idea from his brain. “Jude thinks the girl’s father might have something to do with this,” he finally offered.
“Like what?”
“Supposedly he threatened to kill Tim.”
“Murder? Because Tim was sleeping with his daughter?”
“Well, the smack, too.”
“You yourself said that she’s not a rookie user. On some level, her father has to know that.”
Lucas had run out of defenses and gave a little shrug.
“Jude doesn’t want to see the possibilities here,” said Gordon, shutting Tim’s file. “She doesn’t want to face up to the fact that he’s run out on us and might have been using her. After all, they were sleeping together.”
“Oh?” Lucas breathed. “How do you know?”
Gordon’s phone rang, and he picked it up. “Sure, put him through.” He hit the hold button, indicating with an eyebrow that he wanted to take the call in private. When Lucas got to the door, Gordon stopped him short, saying, “I’ve seen them together, and I know what Jude looks like after sex.”
Lucas closed the door behind him softly, hoping his boss hadn’t seen him recoil as if he’d been sucker-punched.
CHAPTER 14
When Heather left the school parking lot and turned off towards town, her mother stayed at least four cars behind. Guilt made Katherine feel twitchy, as though something were gnawing at her from inside. Hovering like this was exactly what they weren’t supposed to be doing. At their family session, the school psychologist suggested that as an only child, conceived after years of trying, their daughter might feel the pressure of being the “golden” girl. Her AP classes, her athletics. It’s a lot for a kid to handle, he said, and maybe she acted out with a foray into heroin as a way of testing the depth of their love if she were a “bad” girl. At this, Heather burst into hot, remorseful tears.
And after the heroin incident, she had seemed genuinely chastened. She was trying to be more helpful than usual around the house and at dinner would make perky small talk. But Katherine felt it all a bit fake. She’d reassured Kurt that the long sleeves didn’t mean anything, but she wasn’t entirely sure. There were a few afternoons when Heather had come home late, insisting that she had to stay and work on a group project, and on those days, her eyes looked dulled.
Then there was the money. Katherine could have miscounted what was in the cash box. God knows, she desperately wanted to believe that Heather recognized how dangerous heroin was and would never go down that road again. But after Heather left for school this morning, Katherine found she was missing a twenty from her wallet. It put her over the edge. That their daughter might be stealing and lying to them made her feel physically sick.
Which was why Katherine found herself tailing her daughter like some kind of private investigator. Heather had texted about grabbing a slice of pizza after school with her friends, and Katherine had texted back Okay. She loved her daughter with every breath of her being, but she had to know.
Her daughter drove like a solid citizen, obeying the speed limit, the stop signs, and signaling in plenty of time. And to Katherine’s chagrin, she went directly to town and found a parking place across from the kids’ favorite pizza place, even remembering to put money in the meter. She trotted across the street and went right in.
Katherine drove past and pulled over to the curb, feeling a rush of relief so intense it made her laugh out loud. Heather had told her the truth. I must be getting senile, she thought. Imagining things … going through my own midlife crisis watching my daughter grow up, soon to leave and begin her own life. With a mental apology to her daughter, Katherine took a last glance at the pizza parlor.
Suddenly, she froze.
Oh my God, was that him? Was that Tyler Jeffries?
She squinted at the young man who entered the pizza shop. She couldn’t be sure from here. She’d only met him face to face that one time, and before that from afar when the two of them were out in the cornfield, sampling the young ears. The person she just saw, he was the right height, curly brown hair. But would she swear in court that it was Jeffries?
If Heather was lying about not seeing him or knowing where he was, they were probably still doing drugs together. Katherine was so stunned she didn’t know what to do. Of all the possibilities that crossed her mind as she surveilled her daughter, connecting with Tyler Jeffries wasn’t one of them. She knew that she ought to march right in there and confront them both. But she couldn’t seem to move.
Finally, she pulled out into the street and continued driving, her mind reeling, her body taking her back home.
* * *
“That’s insane!” shouted Jude into the phone.
“Think about it,” said Lucas. “Do you remember how he used to ask so many questions about what operations we’d done and how we managed them. So bloody curious about how we got undercovers into places?”
“He was new. He wanted to learn.” She paced the hotel room, her hair still wet from the shower. It had soaked her t-shirt and in the air conditioning, made her back feel like ice. “Dammit, Lucas, he was going deep. We would have been put off if he hadn’t asked questions.”
“And what about the money?”
“I don’t know. There’s probably a rational explanation other than he was getting paid by Monsanto! What does Gordon say?” Jude jabbed at the buttons on the cooling system trying to turn it off; two days and she still couldn’t figure out how to work it.
“He’s the one who put this all together.”
“Put it together? What, do you both think this is some detective show?”
“Calm down.”
“You never liked Tim.”
“Oh my God, listen to yourself. You want a rational explanation? Here are the facts: Tim worked for a big law firm that does work for Monsanto, which is interested in Amaethon as an acquisition
. He comes to The Kinship and volunteers – pushes hard as I recall – to go undercover at the lab. Just before he leaves, he comes into a chunk of cash. Then the whole time he’s in Vermont he never really gives you anything usable; he only says he’s going to get video. He keeps you at arm’s length with, ‘Oh, I’ve got something big,’ but all he sends you are some inane pictures of a house he wants to fix up. And then just before the job is over, poof! He disappears.”
Jude pressed her fingers into her temples to stop the understanding that, like quickly-dividing, malignant cells, was growing with each breath. To no avail.
The tables had turned. The scammer had been scammed. The Kinship’s seasoned undercover investigator out-hustled. If it didn’t hurt so much, she would have laughed at the incredible irony that she was Tim’s mark all along. She wasn’t his handler, she was his means to install himself inside The Kinship and then see if Amaethon was on the up-and-up. Two birds with one stone. He made love to her, told her how important she was to him, he’d even pressed her for a more committed relationship. Worst of all, despite her protestations that she didn’t “do long term,” she had begun to consider it. You didn’t have to go that far, she wanted to scream at him. It wasn’t enough to get me in bed? Did you have to see me humiliated? At once, the hurt turned into a burning rage.
“You still there?” asked Lucas.
“I’m here,” she replied quietly.
“I’m sorry, Jude.”
“Sorry for what?” But the way he said it, she guessed. “Oh, so you know.”
“Yeah.”
“It was never going anyplace,” she insisted, more to defend herself against the shame eating at her than to convince Lucas. “It didn’t mean anything. Not really. It’s … it’s not what you think.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
Of course, it did matter to Jude what Lucas thought, but she was too deflated to correct him. “Does Gordon know?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Shit. What did he say?” That Lucas didn’t immediately respond told Jude she shouldn’t press. But she did. “What did he say, Lucas? How did he know?”