The Devil's Own Game

by Annie Hogsett

  “You all get what this means, right? You’d have to be blind—Crap. Sorry, Tom. Never mind. We all know who has the—the what do we call it?—‘the means, the motive, and the evil’ to send a message by killing a guy who could be mistaken for you, Tom. I’ll tell you who. Mr. Handcrafted Vodka, that’s who. Mr. Fucking Tito. He’s back.”

  She swept us with a satisfied smile. “‘Catch Fucking Tito.’ That’s our next case. The T&A needs to meet. I’ll cook. It’ll be pasta fagioli this time. Warm everybody up.”

  Margo was getting dangerously energized by the possibility of a new case. Jumping into her leading role: Den Mother of the T&A. I was less than gung ho. We’d tried to catch Tito once already. Major fail. And I had news I was sure would bring her down. And set her off again.

  “Margo.”

  “Margo, what?”

  Although I was certainly not going to ask any awkward questions about anybody’s love life this morning, I could tell Tony had sketched in a few of the events of the past two days for her. Not all. He’d left out the “murder message” part, and the woman bouncing at me now hadn’t heard about Gloria either.

  She’d heard the lump of lead in my throat, though.

  “Allie. Something bad.”

  “Yes. The woman who pretended to be blind and brought me the note at the museum—”

  “The woman in the Indian outfit?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s dead. He killed her too?”

  “It looks that way. Probably his associate—”

  “That fucking sniper?”

  Margo swore a lot when she was about to cry too.

  I noticed Tony fidgeting in his chair. Steering around what Margo had and had not heard from him was getting to be a navigational challenge for all of us. Officer Anthony Valerio needed to man up and admit they were an item. So he and I could compare notes on how to contain the Margo detonations. He was almost family.

  “You found her?”

  “Yes. Yesterday afternoon. Her name was Gloria. She was—She wasn’t a bad person, Margo. She was an actor. They tricked her. She thought it was a prank.”

  “Bastards. And you think this will scare me off.”

  “Margo.” Tom’s expression conceded the contest. Hands up. I surrender. “We wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Thanks, Tom. We’re good then. I’m outta here. I need to strategize. No worries. I got this.

  Behind her back, Tony rolled his eyes.

  I rolled mine right back. Coward.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “We could close all the blinds.”

  Paranoia was back. Every square foot of our seven thousand darling, hospitable feet, plus the half acre or so of decks, patios, pool, hot tub, piney woods, lawn, and beach—all of it—was ground zero for me this afternoon.

  The real estate agent who believed “Stunning below-window cabinets open the kitchen to the lake view” was a fabulous selling point wasn’t standing at our sink today. I wanted our stunning views shut down for the duration. It didn’t help that Otis, Tom, and I were having our strategy session in the kitchen.

  Double-crossed and cranky, the me who longed to be home free and happy was crying on the inside and sulking on the outside. I’d been kidding myself. The lull in the action of “Tito’s Revenge” was a fifteen-minute intermission. Not enough time for a decent box of popcorn.

  Tito’s return was as inevitable as a rock falling off a cliff. He was crazy-furious with us for screwing up his master heist last summer. His monstrous message Wednesday night was a preview of what he had in mind for us.

  Kip was dead. Gloria was dead. What next? Who next?

  My request for full-house-window-blind-deployment got turned down flat. Otis and Tom both ganged up on my chicken-heart. I hadn’t expected that from Tom.

  “Cut me a little slack, you guys. We’ve never had a sniper before.”

  Otis answered my whining with sniper logic. “Allie, don’t kid yourself. He’s been ‘our sniper’ for a while. Could have been around for weeks, observing every inch of this house not hidden by trees and other obstructions. From so far away you wouldn’t believe. These guys don’t play.

  “I feel strangely uncomforted, Otis. Do we think he used his scope to watch me undress?”

  “Allie.”

  “Tom? You too? I’d have expected you—”

  “To what? Be obsessed with how somebody might say, ‘Poor Tom. He didn’t see it coming?’”

  “I’m sorry Tom. I—”

  “Allie. I’m not dismissing your fears—”

  My pride was ruffled now. “Well. It’s not fear. Exactly—”

  No, you pathetic baby. It’s blubbering, wet-your-pants terror. Alice Jane’s a baby. Alice Jane’s a Ba—

  I kicked her out. Lee Ann had a knack for showing up when I needed her least.

  My phobia about being spied on was a holdover from nights my little-kid-self had to walk all alone past the dark, cold, rubbernecking windows of our old house on my way to bed. A truck out on the highway would moan or a wind-stirred branch scrape skeletal fingers along the glass. I never knew when my brother Justin, the future preacher, would pop up, yelling, and bang on the windows to send me screaming up the stairs in my footie pj’s. Lee Ann mocked me back then too.

  I shouldered them both out of my head. All grown up now.

  “You’re right. I’m scared. I need to get used to it again.”

  Tom sighed. “We’re all scared, Allie. It’s a side effect of brains. But here’s a twist. If our sniper weren’t a smart, well-trained, precision-oriented sniper, he might have shot me already, by mistake. And I would be dead instead of Kip. The only consolation I can think of is Tito’s scheme, whatever it is, would be dead too.”

  “So we’re lucky he’s good at his job?”

  “I guess I’m lucky he’s not careless. The bad luck was all Kip’s Wednesday night. Whatever he was up to, he didn’t deserve that.”

  “So we can’t do anything to make us more secure.” Small whine.

  “Never said that, Allie. There’s plenty. I’m staffing up right now.”

  Otis had a plan. Until today our pair of security guys worked eight-hour shifts. Two at a time in the control room, watching monitors. Our floodlights—tastefully concealed—were installed outside last fall. We’d only tried them once. If not for the pine trees, the house, and the lake—and, of course, the other houses—you could have landed a 737. Anybody breaking our perimeter would set off an alarm and if the guard in the security room didn’t like what he saw on the monitors, he or she would hit the lights.

  They referred to the setup as “Bambi Cam.” Two guards, around the clock seemed silly this winter. Overkill. Until now. The good old days.

  Going forward, we’d have two extra guards on each of the shifts. Along with the duo in the security room, there’d be one in the gatehouse and one free-range on the grounds. With a dog. I was jazzed about the dog.

  Otis couldn’t flat out steal all his man- or woman-power from the Cleveland Police Department, but he could woo some ex-cop security guards he’d known with a fine opportunity. He was running their work histories every which way. I wouldn’t want to try to sneak even a minor shoplifting charge past Otis.

  Fortunately, I’d never been caught. Except by old righteous Justin. He’d scared me straight when I was fifteen or so, after he’d started walking his pain-in-the-ass path of righteousness. No doubt, I owed him one. Or Lee Ann, Miss Oil Slick Smith, did.

  “Oh, hell. Get over it, Allie. It wasn’t a Mercedes, or anything.”

  * * *

  Early Friday evening, a new gate guy arrived at the front door with the mail. I was waiting for him under the cover of gathering shadows in our foyer, watching night fall onto our woodsy front yard, smothering the dreariness of the day.

  He waved
his bundle at me.

  In the light from the rustic hobbit-lantern, I could see it was the usual straight-to-recycling flyers and the daily brochure exclaiming, “Yes! Viking is still offering both river and ocean cruises!”

  For a few heartbeats I indulged myself in imagining that at this very moment, on this very night, a person with the means to buy a ticket—me—might be standing by a polished railing in the embrace of the sexy, handsome blind man she loves—Thomas Bennington III. A warm breeze, tangles up her carefree hair as a blood-orange slice of sun vanishes into the sea. That breeze also brings her the seductive aromas from the “Chow-down-because-you-sure-enough-paid-an-arm-and-a-leg-for-it” complementary buffet.

  I won’t lie. Every part of this fantasy made my knees weak with yearning.

  I opened the door. Gate guy was grinning ear to ear.

  “Ms. Harper, you’ve got an admirer.” He held up a small envelope, put it to his nose, and then waved it in the air. “Mmm Mmm.”

  A sharp, venomous sting in my chest.

  “Oh. Hey. Put that down, will you? The floor is fine.”

  The grin vanished. He laid the letter on the stone of the foyer. “What is it?”

  I inched closer. I could read the name in elegant script above the address.

  Alice Jane Harper

  My heart slipped sideways.

  “It’s 1872, ‘One of the world’s most expensive colognes.’”

  The smell of terror.

  “The man we’re supposed to be looking out for? It’s from him?”

  My stomach churned. My worst memory wore that fragrance.

  I choked on the answer. “Yes. Tito—Tito Ricci. Not his real name.”

  Tom burst out of the kitchen, moving swiftly along the path we all kept uncluttered for him. Molecules of that pricey cologne must have reached him two rooms away. Blind Spidey didn’t need more than one or two. His arms were around me the second before I started crying.

  I burrowed into the front of his shirt, as if he could keep us both safe in there, and sobbed. “He hates us, Tom. He wants us dead.”

  “He hates me, Allie. It’s me he wants—”

  “Same difference. Couldn’t we box up the damn money and mail it to him?”

  “Hey,” He was rocking me as if the gate guy and the envelope were a hundred miles away. “Shh. Shh. We’re here. We’re safe. We’re going to fix this.”

  I roused myself to make a disparaging remark, but he cut it off with another “Shhhh.”

  To the guy he said, “Can you get Otis? Tell him we need the crime scene folks to open this envelope.” He frowned for a second. “And bring a bowl or a lid or something from the kitchen to trap that stink.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  10:45 p.m.

  The envelope had left the building.

  Once the shock wore off, I was willing to bet the only weapon in there was a fragrance overdose and a nasty note. At that moment, cooling our heels, awaiting the arrival of a fresh threat or cruel jibe, we were as safe we’d ever be.

  Ironically, our “competent sniper” talk had cheered me up. Helped me see the logic. Tito had no plans to kill us tonight. He’d wait. Make us cringe and beg. Sooner or later, he’d be targeting Tom’s money. Then he’d do his damnedest to make sure we died in a scenario that would pay off his rage in full. Right now, tonight, he was satisfied to wound us, jerk us around, watch us suffer. Send us scary notes. He was obsessed with his game. We all said so.

  I posed my next question. “And what game do we think that is?”

  Since Tom and Otis had signed me onto their view that hiding was stupid and pointless, we were hanging out in the breakfast nook off our kitchen. First of all, it was not remotely “a nook.” More of a fancy English greenhouse with grand aspirations. Lots of old-world flavor, not as Tudor-tastic as the house, but not so Victorian as to be out of step.

  It connected to the lake side of the kitchen like a pleasant sunroom or perhaps a small, tasteful wedding chapel. Made of glass. A windowed cupola on top. Ceiling fan. No steeple. In spite of my optimism that we’d survive till morning, I wasn’t perfectly relaxed. People who live in glass houses should not piss off snipers.

  The former owners left us the nook’s furniture when they moved on up to a bigger house, which, I’d heard the wife tell our real estate agent—when she thought I wasn’t listening—was “much, much nicer.” Maybe she dreamed she’d find fulfillment in another couple thousand square feet. With a grander pedigree. I could have warned her about the creepy factor of those venerable piles, but I didn’t like her much.

  The bronzed-wicker arrangement in our glass house was “Upscale Twenty-first Century Porch.” Pottery Barn, my guess. Breakfast set, a seating area populated with a couch and comfy chairs, and—in keeping with the all glass/all the time décor—a glass-topped coffee table. In days of peace and warm weather, our view of decks, pool, lawn, and lake would be dazzling. Tonight, I had no use for it.

  At least we’d all scored Coronas. With limes. Tostitos too. Also, Otis’s homemade salsa. Plus, I could verify how alive Tom was. How warm and breathing. His arm was around my shoulders. The lights were low as they’d go. In the glinting blackness of the glass the three of us looked tired and vulnerable. Kinda like sitting ducks.

  Stop it, Alice Jane.

  I closed my eyes and felt a slow, steady pulse on the spot where Tom’s wrist lay against my arm. Vital signs.

  Otis knocked my lulled state of mind down a notch by saying, “It’s different this time.”

  I opened my eyes.

  Tom shook his head. “Otis. You said that last time.”

  “Yeah, well. A lot of the guys who went after you in your first summer were yahoos. But last summer was stage-one different. Unrelated incidents connected by a plan and a person we couldn’t see. Tito, behind the scenes. And last time, it didn’t feel as personal. I don’t pretend to understand everything that’s shifted, but this is different.”

  I wished I could see Otis’s face better so could read it. I gave up, leaned more into Tom, and let the beer sink in. Closed my eyes back. The last traces of 1872 had dispersed. We’d let the front door stand open for a while—under guard—until the windy night blew it way. I could breathe again.

  Otis was pursuing his “Tito is different this time” theory.

  “Last summer was systematically vicious, but not emotional. When he killed, it was kinda surgical. Strategic. Cold. He had a plan and he worked it. Somebody got in his way? He’d take them out. Plenty awful, but not over-the-top angry, like he looks to be now.

  I opened my eyes. “Except for—” I threw in.

  “Yeah, Allie. Him. That last one he killed before he took off in July. Let’s forget for a second it was murder. It was dumb. And Tito was smart. Right up to that last day.

  I shivered. Tom rubbed my arm. First aid for frostbite of the heart.

  Otis kept going. “Made no sense to wipe out that level of asset. Once-in-a-lifetime genius hacker capabilities? And we know that the dude and Tito were perfect for each other. Batman and Robin on the dark side. Two rotten peas in a nasty pod.

  “Based on what you told us, Allie, Tito lost it in the moment. Bad timing. That protégé of his would be even more valuable to him now. Everything fell apart for him. Heavy losses. The millions he’d planned to get from you. The money from his very efficient scrapper/drug ring. And the one guy who could have helped him pick up the pieces and get back on track? Dead because Tito lost it. He’s probably extra pissed at you guys about that.”

  “But we didn’t—That’s not—”

  “Logical, Allie?” He rested his case. “And here we are. Stage Two.”

  I sat with that. “The opposite of logical, Otis.”

  “Yep. Tito is back. And this time he’s not the clever dude. He’s burning mad enough to go out of control. Working a plan t
hat’s already kinda stupid-elaborate. Look, Tom. If he wanted your money, all he’d have to do is get to Allie, am I right.”

  “Yes, Otis. You are.”

  “Ow, Otis.”

  Otis blew by my dismay. “And if he’d started back in January when we were relieved and careless. He’d could have her by now. Given how she—Allie, you know you tend to go a little bit—”

  “Stir crazy? Off the rails?” I closed my eyes back, slunk deeper into my chair. This line of inquiry sucked.

  “No future in beating yourself up.” I heard him help himself to a handful of the chips. A pause for crunching. A swallow of beer. I wasn’t Blind Spidey, but I was practicing. Otis clunked the beer bottle down. I judged it to be empty. “We’re clear who we’re dealing with. But we don’t have a clue what he’s going to do next. Because—”

  “If you’re right, Otis,” I followed his line of thinking to the scariest conclusion I could come up with. It fit. “He’s got no logical plan about that either.”

  “We’re guessing, but that works,” Tom agreed. “He wants to mess with us. Terrorize us. Threaten us. Demand the money—I can’t see exactly what his demands will be. But I—we—have a lot to lose. I don’t like this any more than you do, Allie. But I’m not delusional. We’re both logical targets because he’s angry about everything that didn’t work out last time. Especially his dead hacker. He’s bringing it straight to us.

  “That’s bad enough. But here’s maybe the most disturbing thing. He led off with this—I don’t know how to refer to it—this surrogate murder, maybe? What Margo said. ‘He killed a human being as a fucking message.’ Looks like it was designed to make it a bigger statement than merely ‘Oh look, Tom. Be very afraid.’”

  I knew what he meant.

  For the Benefit of All the People Forever.