The Queen Con (The Golden Arrow Mysteries Book 2)
Page 18
“Can you describe him?”
“Not well. He was dressed in this black paramilitary jumpsuit thing, and he had a cape and a mask on—”
“Hold on. Hold on—he had a cape and a mask on?” This is the first time Ryan has spoken. “Like a real cape and a real mask?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” countered L. “Gold. Glittery. But not like those old Batman capes from the TV show that would have gotten in the way. Just enough for . . . I dunno, effect, I guess.” Only L would critique the fashion of a superhero’s cape.
The cape clinches it for me, though. “So, it was him,” I say.
L hesitates. “I . . . I hope not. I’m pretty sure this is the same person who tried to kill Mr. Casey thirty years ago.”
We let that bombshell settle for a few moments.
“What makes you say that?” Matteo asks, voice totally controlled.
“Okay, I told you that this was dicey. The voice. I’ve heard it before. Yeah, yeah, it’s been a hot minute, but it’s recognizable. Gravelly. Like he’s smoked seven packs a day or had throat surgery or something. He had it even when he was younger. I—I think it was a guy who used to work for Casey. DeWayne or something. I only met him a few times, but that voice.”
“What did he say tonight?”
“He said he’d been looking forward to meeting me and asked me if I enjoyed the refreshments. He questioned the goons that held my arms about if they’d seen me eat and drink the food at the party and then got really mad when they said they weren’t sure. I . . . panicked. I can’t tell you how I know it, but . . . this guy meant to hurt me. He wanted to talk first, but he definitely meant for me to be out of it enough not to remember much or fight back.”
My skin crawls.
Matteo sits back, fully serious Detective Kildaire now. “What did you do? Why did he expect you to be out of it?”
“I snapped that photo so that even if they killed me, maybe somehow someone would see that bastard’s face, and then I played dumb. Loopy. Started talking to one of the guards like he was the Golden Arrow. I tried not to play it up too much, not overdo it. The guy in the cape had me escorted back out, was yelling at everyone that they brought me in too early. I think they meant to give me more time for whatever was in the refreshments to work fully, but I pulled the old ‘pretend to be a potted plant’ thing and walked out of there.”
We all stared at him, baffled.
“You pretended to be a potted plant?” Ryan asked.
“Not literally. I ducked, covered, and walked out like I was any old schmo. I don’t think they thought I could move very fast on whatever was in those ‘refreshments.’ And I don’t know if it was in all the drinks or just the ones they gave to me. There’s no way to know how targeted this was. An entire party just to get to lil’ ole me seems excessive when I’m onstage two times a month at Hamburger Mary’s.”
“L, that was really brave to just walk out.” He’d been so cool, so calm . . . no hint of what had gone down.
L snorts. “It was self-preservation. Now. Hot-Lanta. I’d appreciate if you figure out who this guy is.”
Matteo’s gaze is in parts thoughtful and concerned. He draws in a deep breath through his nose and sits back in his chair. “Just to sum up: the guy who says he’s the Golden Arrow somehow allegedly arranged to have drugs slipped to you, requested a private meeting, wanted to talk, and then maybe beat you up for unknown reasons. You’ve heard him before and saw the same sort of placards at a party thirty years ago where someone tried to run over Casey Senior. We have a picture, but our suspect is wearing a cape and mask, and you have no idea about his current whereabouts.”
Even to me, it sounds jumbled. None of the threads line up.
Matteo states the obvious. “I’m not going to lie; it’s not a lot to go on.”
“I know.” Lawrence is dead serious.
A thought occurs to me. “DeWayne something? Could he be that ‘D’ in those journal pages you got?”
L’s eyes hood slightly. “Yeah, probably. He and Casey did business from time to time. It’s why I saw him in the office.”
So just coincidentally both “D” and “Stevie” have surfaced this week in L’s life. Hard to chalk up to random chance. Maybe the Golden Arrow knows something we don’t. Maybe the journal pages aren’t completely useless.
“And the other name in the journal, L . . . if you look at it, I think it says Stevie. Isn’t that the guy who came to your shop?”
At this, L literally clams up as his mouth snaps shut and his gaze goes to the door.
“Lawrence?” Matteo prods. “This is important. Could Stevie be involved in this? He and DeWayne had a meeting together with Casey. That’s more than coincidence, right?”
Lawrence’s eyes flash up, filled with such a range of emotion it almost takes my breath away. “Stevie would never be involved in tonight’s escapade. Or the OD. You need to leave him out of this.”
Whoa.
I’ve rarely seen L this worked up about anything, much less a thirty-year-lost friend.
Matteo seems to sense the same. “Okay, but, Lawrence, you knew this person a long time ago, right?”
L nods.
“And you aren’t in current contact?”
Hesitation, but ultimately, L gives a resigned shake of his head. “We haven’t talked for years. Not since . . . well, things went south shortly after Mr. Casey died.”
Matteo’s voice is gentle. “Then how can you be so sure he’s not involved?”
Lawrence closes his eyes once and then focuses on Matteo. “Because I know Stevie.”
I can tell Matteo is getting annoyed, but he navigates this well. “If this is connected to Casey Senior’s case, why have you not mentioned it before? Is there something that needs to be added to your testimony?”
Lawrence’s jaw clenches, and then his shoulders give ever so slightly. “There’s nothing much to tell, and it’s personal. It had nothing to do with Casey Senior. Stevie and I—we were involved. I’ve never said anything because his father never knew he was gay—couldn’t know he was gay. If I outed him—even now—it could ruin him. I never wanted that for him—back then he told me he was leaving that part of his life behind and never looking back. But I knew him and the kind of person he was back then. He wouldn’t need this sort of production or circus. He just wanted to live his life, and our relationship complicated things too much for him.”
The pain in L’s voice is raw. After all these years, it’s obvious L has never gotten over his feelings. It makes sense as to why L has been quiet about this too . . . L’s love isn’t something one earns lightly. And once you have it . . . well, apparently thirty years isn’t long enough to tarnish it.
Matteo is silent a long moment. “Okay, if he’s not connected now, could this Stevie help us find DeWayne, since he knew him? This is to find the person who allegedly tried to hurt you tonight. No one needs to know we reached out to him, or that we’ve made the connection. I promise we will be discreet.”
After the longest pause in history, Lawrence lets out a five-hundred-pound sigh. “Maybe.”
Victory. Matteo sits back. “So, do you remember Stevie’s last name?”
Lawrence gives a hollow laugh. “Stevie’s name is a hard one to forget.” He reaches down at my feet and plucks People off a stack and tosses it at Matteo.
It takes a long moment for the magazine cover to click with my brain. Copper skin, chocolate eyes, tousled curls.
I suck in a breath. “Stevie is Whalon Fox-Stevens?”
Ryan nearly falls off the couch. “Tech guru Whalon Fox-Stevens?”
L nods.
“People’s Most Eligible Bachelor, Whalon Fox-Stevens?” I ask, just to clarify that the world has, in fact, been turned on its head.
L tosses me a look.
Guess it’s not hard to figure out why Whalon might still be single, on that note, given L’s admissions tonight.
Matteo blinks rapidly, this twist unforeseen. �
�I, er, will reach out to his office and see if he’ll set up a meeting with us. I’ll let you know what turns up . . . given the background, would you like to be invited to the meeting?”
My heart lifts at the thought. Maybe Stevie has pined for L all these years, and that’s why he showed up at his shop last week. Maybe L and Stevie will get a second chance. I squint, something about his hair pulling at my memory. The show. I saw Stevie at the drag revue, right when I sat down with Ryan. He had come to see L, I was sure of it now; maybe my theory isn’t so far off.
But L’s face remains grim. “You work on your end; I’m going to work on mine.”
Both Ryan and I swivel to face L. “What does that mean, exactly?” Ryan asked. “L, you should let the professionals . . .”
“This is someone from my past. I’m going to do everything I can to figure out who it is. It’s personal. I already told you that I don’t know his last name, but someone in my old hood must. People talk. If DeWayne is the Golden Arrow, I’m going to find out about it.”
Matteo’s face doesn’t change. “As a part of this investigation, I’m going to have to ask you not to leave the area.”
My mind flashes back to a few months ago, when L went underground after receiving a threat. Truthfully, this is probably L’s best plan, if what he said was true. If the Golden Arrow is somehow out to get Lawrence . . . well, that changes everything.
“Oh, I’m not leaving the area,” Lawrence says, rising from the couch and heading to the door. “I’m just going somewhere they won’t talk to cops.”
And without another word, L walks out of the station.
“You realize that now we have no ride home, don’t you?”
Ryan is the first to speak. We’ve waited almost ten minutes to see if L will come back, but no dice.
Matteo takes a deep breath and stands. “I’ll take you two home; it’s late. Rideout will let me know as soon as he has the picture in hand, and I’m not going to bed until then anyhow.”
Ryan and I shuffle out of the room behind Matteo, and the impact of the evening hits me like a stack of comic books. The party, L’s story, the dire look in his eyes when he walked out that door. I may be exhausted, but now I’m vibrating with anxiety. Not the prize I’d been hoping to win tonight.
As much as I’d guessed—no, known—that the Golden Arrow story wasn’t over, this is a turn of events I’d never have predicted. Questions tumble around in my mind faster than an X-wing with a critical hit. I hold them in only as long as it takes for the three of us to wedge ourselves into Matteo’s pristine Prius.
“Why would the Golden Arrow go after Lawrence?” I ask at large. I operate best when I can either talk out the story problem or do something physical, like throw a ball against the wall—à la House, MD—or bike out the issue.
“He’s not the real Golden Arrow,” Ryan says from the back seat. After a beat he amends his statement with, “I don’t think so, at least.” And neither do I, truth be told. Daniel Kim fits every requirement, and this guy . . . doesn’t. Puzzle pieces of suspicion fall into place, and a picture forms. Ryan knows something, but what? Maybe I need to look into whether Ryan and Daniel know each other well . . . it’s possible Ryan is passing Daniel information, as much as I hate to think about Ryan lying to me.
“But why now? And why has Stevie suddenly shown back up, too?”
“We don’t know that he—if it is even the same D from the journal or the same person from Lawrence’s past—wanted to hurt Lawrence for certain. We are going pretty far out on a pretty thin limb here,” Matteo interjects before Ryan can reply.
I know he can sense the look I’m giving him in the dark.
“What? It’s true. All of this is hunch. All of it.” He means the whole Golden Arrow case at this point, and he’s not wrong.
For the second time in as many months, we’re hunting ghosts and whispers. Be that as it may, I secretly love it and feel a little salty that he’s dashed my questions with the cold water of fact.
“Yeah, okay, Beckett, you can just detective over there while I Richard Castle over here,” I say, unable to hide my surly side. I swear Matteo rolls his eyes, but I ignore him and choose to flounce instead. I turn in my seat so I’m facing more toward the back and Ryan.
“What we have to figure out,” Ryan continues as if he, too, is ignoring the elephant of missing facts in the room, “is why this someone is impersonating the Golden Arrow.” I gather the inflection is for Matteo’s benefit.
“And why he’s suddenly after Lawrence,” I agree. I’m stumped on the actual GA, so trying to come up with why an imposter would be impersonating him puts my writer skills to the test. I nibble on my lip for a moment, letting the story take me. What would I write if this were my villain? The theory that he’s somehow related to an existing bad guy seems most plausible. “Maybe this guy works for Muñez.”
Ryan sits up in the back seat; I can hear the swish of his jacket against the seat. “True. Like retribution for putting his boss in jail?”
I chew on that a moment.
Ryan speaks up in my silence. “Or . . . he has a grudge against L.”
I snort. “A thirty-year-old grudge? Against a person he met a few times?”
“All right fine, it’s unlikely. Maybe it’s related to the trial,” Ryan agrees.
“Why would they want to hurt Lawrence and dismiss the both of you if it has to do with the trial?” Matteo asks, his voice filled with exasperation. “That’s what I can’t figure out.”
“Oh, are you playing this game now?” I ask archly.
Under the flash of the overhead streetlights, I see the dark look he shoots me. I decide to play along instead of antagonizing him further. His brain is just as good at this game as mine. “Theory on the table is retribution,” I repeat.
Matteo shakes his head. “Why go after L instead of any one of us? Any one of us is ultimately more culpable and a better target. L may be the face of the story, but MG and I both have much more intrinsic testimony for the trial.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” Ryan intones.
“Yeah, gee thanks,” I toss in.
“I’m saying that they had an opportunity to have all three of you in that room. They chose L.”
“That is a good point,” I allow grudgingly.
“So, we’re back to, if this is a person from L’s past, why now?” Ryan sounds salty. “Why L, why now.”
“He knows something.” Matteo sounds so sure, I swivel to look at him.
“Knows what?” I ask, my left eye squinting.
Matteo shrugs. “Something. He may not even know what it is he knows that is important. It makes perfect sense. L says he knows the voice of the Golden Arrow—”
“Alleged Golden Arrow,” Ryan chimes in tartly from the back seat.
Matteo ignores him and continues on. “And if they want Lawrence, it must be because he knows something important to the case.”
“But you’ve asked him every question under the sun about that case. He’s been under oath. We know everything there is to know too.” Even my writer’s brain can’t keep up with this, and he sounds so sure. The student has become the teacher, I guess.
Matteo shakes his head. “Except we don’t. Someone tried to kill Casey the night of that party. Lawrence only just thought to mention it. And the whole DeWayne thing—”
“L said he’d met him three times, hardly something one would think of offhand,” I defend.
Matteo forges ahead. “We’re forgetting the half of a journal that’s still missing. Lawrence knows something, and someone doesn’t want him to reveal it. I believe it’s connected to this person, the alleged Golden Arrow—whomever he is—from L’s past.”
We all sit in silence, mulling that over.
“I feel a lot like Scully to your Mulder here, but there’s no proof that this guy is the Golden Arrow. Just because you believe it doesn’t make it true.”
“The truth is out there,” Ryan quips from the back.
No one has an answer to that.
“Okay, so we’re back to DeWayne being an imposter,” I say. “We’re still stuck on why.” I rub my head, suddenly tired. “Here’s a recap: Lawrence knows something, the Golden Arrow wants what he either has or knows, or wants to keep him silent. It either has to do with the trial or the current cases with the Queen of Hearts. And journal pages were delivered by the real Golden Arrow, presumably to incriminate DeWayne—a person Lawrence hardly knew—and possibly Whalon. Who, it turns out, is Lawrence’s teenage love and now a tech billionaire. This is so confusing it’s exhausting.”
Matteo slaps his hand to his head. I see the gleam of his eye in the streetlight near my house as he pulls to the curb and turns to face me in the car. I recognize that look. It is the look of catching the threads of a story. A good story. When I get that look, I lock myself in the laundry room of our house and don’t come out until I’ve poured my ideas out on a page in some form or another.
“What if we’re overcomplicating this? Assuming our current Golden Arrow is an imposter, there’s a simple explanation. What if he’s going by another name these days—one related to an Alice in Wonderland party thirty years ago?”
I got it in the same exact moment that Ryan did.
It makes sense. The person from L’s past, the person who is pretending to be the Golden Arrow now, the person anxious to silence the one person who could ID him? Why not masquerade as a vigilante hero while you’re secretly a drug lord?
We all speak together, a chill running down my spine.
“The Queen of Hearts.”
CHAPTER 18
The Genius lobby bustles more than usual when Ryan and I make our way out the front door after work on Monday. My car has returned to its state of not working, and I’m bumming a ride home with Ryan’s Uber so I can change before my movie meeting. Since our little mental breakthrough, I’ve been on pins and needles, waiting for an update from Matteo on the case. So far as I know, they have a meeting scheduled with Whalon Fox-Stevens for this week, and no one has heard word one from L. Meanwhile, the Golden Arrow has gone to ground again, and I feel like I’m living for the Twitter feed #goldenarrow, hoping for a hint of his next move. I’m so immersed in my thoughts, I narrowly avoid colliding with a woman just inside the foyer.