by Sylvie Kurtz
“I sure hate losing out on your touch with engines.”
“No saying I can’t still tune a bike for a friend.”
Mike smiled and punched him on the shoulder. “Let me buy you a beer.”
Though Ace wanted to get back to Rory to make sure she was holding up, there was no way he could refuse Mike’s invitation. Not after this show of confidence in him. One beer turned into three, and before he knew it, almost two hours had gone by. Just in case Rory hadn’t given up on dinner, he stopped by a chicken shack and picked up a couple of meals.
When he got back to Felicia’s apartment, the place smelled of sugar and peanut butter and chocolate. Cookies were spread over the small counter separating the kitchen and living room, over the stovetop and over the kitchen table. Hannah slept, oblivious in her portable crib. Rory was busy with a spatula, removing cookies from the baking sheet to the counter beside the stove. It was the picture of domestic bliss gone ballistic.
Ace dropped the chicken dinners on the coffee table in the living room and strode to the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” Her hair, up in a ponytail, flounced as she jabbed the spatula at the baking sheet.
“Trying to start a cookie factory?”
She dumped the empty cookie sheet and the spatula in the sink crowded with bowls. “Felicia has a wheat allergy.”
“So?”
“I used to bake these cookies for her. The recipe came with the electric bill years ago. Monster cookies they’re called. They taste good enough so that her friends never realized there isn’t an ounce of flour in them.”
She was baking for her dead sister. Ace swore. “Rory—”
She ignored him and opened one of the lower cabinets, then another and another. “When you were a kid, what noise do you remember falling asleep to?”
He frowned. Was she on another one of her senseless jags? “I don’t know. Traffic.” Gang brawls. Gunfire.
“I’d go to my friend Sara’s house or my friend Amy’s house overnight sometimes.”
When? he wondered. When her parents were home? When they were away? No, not when they were away, he decided. She would have stayed home for Felicia.
“What I remember was their parents arguing. Not once in a while, but every single time I went over. Sara and Amy both said that was normal. I used to think I was so lucky, because, when my parents were home, they would laugh. I don’t know about what, but they would always laugh. That’s the music I’d fall asleep to.”
Ace leaned against the refrigerator. Where was she going with this? “It’s a good memory.”
She nodded, agreeing. “Except they would always leave. The next day or the next week or the next month. And then all that was left was the grandfather clock in the entry hall. It felt so, I don’t know, lonesome.” She shrugged and shucked off the strawberry-shaped oven mitt. “At first Felicia cried when they left. Then she acted as if she didn’t care. Then she rebelled. But the cookies, that was the one thing—” Her voice hitched. “Every single time they left, my mother would take me aside and her goodbye always ended with, ‘Take care of your sister.’ And I’d bake because it made me feel like I was doing something.”
He wanted to wring her parents’ necks. “They shouldn’t have expected so much. You were just a kid. Didn’t you have a sitter or nanny or something?”
“It’s not the same.” Hanging on to the cupboard’s brass handle, she shook her head and sent her ponytail in a frenzied whirl. “When I was twenty-one, I left. My parents had decided to retire. They were going to be home. And it felt really good not to have all of Felicia’s baggage hanging around my neck.”
His hands tightened around his biceps. Then they went and died and dumped the mess right back into her lap. “Rory, you’re not responsible for the choices your sister made.” How could he get that message through her thick skull?
“Just like you’re not responsible for Bianca?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
Standing on tiptoes, she reached for a high cupboard, sketching nice curves against the denim of her jeans and the cotton of her sweater. Don’t look at her chest. He snagged a cookie from the closest counter and bit into it. Oatmeal. Peanut butter. Chocolate. Not bad.
“Of course it is.” She moved past him to the corner cabinet, wafting the scent of chocolate and sugar and her own sweet cinnamon. “You watch out for your sister because it’s your responsibility.”
“Felicia is over twenty-one. She’s an adult. She’s responsible for her own choices. Bianca’s still a kid.”
“When I left, I told her that if she didn’t come with me, I was washing my hands of her.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I never came to see her. Not even after the baby. Sending checks isn’t the same as being there when someone needs you.”
When Rory ran out of cupboards, she attacked the pantry. That’s when he noticed her body shaking. He chewed down a curse. She was killing him.
“What are you looking for?”
“A cookie tin.”
She closed the narrow pantry door and for a moment leaned her forehead against it. He thought she was going to cry. But she didn’t. Sniffing, she jerked her head up and reached for the garbage can under the sink. With the efficiency of a disaster clean-up crew, she proceeded to sweep the cookies into the can.
“Hey!” Ace pushed himself off the fridge and yanked the can out of her hands. “What are you doing?”
“Shoot, shoot, shoot!” She smacked both her hands on the counter and hunched over as if breathing was difficult. Then she looked up at him and part of him bled at the utter despair in her eyes. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
He let the can drop and took her in his arms. He brushed the stray strands of hair plastered to her cheek and tilted her face toward his. He wanted to lie to her, but knew she’d see right through him. “We can’t be sure until we find her, but yeah, probably.”
She sagged in his arms. He held the weight of her sadness, but he wasn’t going to let her fall apart. Not now. The Rory he knew and loved was tough, gutsy—persistent. She needed to fight this injustice as much as he did. He’d do exactly what Falconer had asked him to do—get her to use her strengths. “If you want to find her and make it count, then I need your help.”
She blinked at him, pushing away, shutting him out. Her back stiffened. Her neck bowed. Her shoulders hiked up. A medieval castle with its thick walls and moat had nothing on Rory when it came to mounting defenses. “You don’t need me.”
No, he didn’t. She complicated his life to the nth degree. Whatever information she’d dig up was either already on file or one question away. Getting the answers he needed was easier without her to watch over and protect.
But the thing of it was that in the past few days he’d learned to look for that red hair and the spirit that went with it. There was something about Rory that was as luring as meth was to a junkie. But he wasn’t going there. Couldn’t afford to.
He eyed her laptop propped against the lime armchair in the living room. “Can you get real-estate information with that computer of yours?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “Real-estate transactions are public record.”
He knew what it was like to feel powerless, how it could suck you in until dark was one kick away from swallowing you up. “Okay, then. Let’s play connect-the-dots.”
MEANWHILE, in a small room at the task force command center, a surveillance tape flashed onto a monitor. Paying scant attention to the two men huddled by the warehouse entrance, the DEA agent added mayonnaise to his sub sandwich. If he was going to be stuck doing this pissant work, then he’d make it as enjoyable as he could. He’d given the DEA his best years and this was how they rewarded him? Just because of a bum leg, they had him wasting his days watching scum spew their sewer drivel. His brain wasn’t broken, for Pete’s sake. He snapped open the bag of chips and sorted through the crisp potato slices, looking for the folded ones.
“Keep an eye out for that guy.” The voice was scratchy and hard to understand. Not that they ever said anything worth listening to.
The other man’s sling blinded the camera’s night lens for a moment. “No, man, he’s cool. Tank checked him out.”
“Something about him doesn’t smell right.”
The agent snorted as he reached for the can of soda at his feet. “Maybe if you took a bath once in a while, you wouldn’t stink so much.”
“Just say the word and I’ll take care of him.”
“What about the chick he hangs with?”
“Pain-in-the-butt sister of Mike’s old lady. She’s asking questions and getting no answers.” Laughter.
The agent tugged on the deli paper holding his sub and inched it closer to his lap. “Oh, yeah, real comedians.”
“Make sure she can’t sniff a trail. Have Tank tap her line and sweep her place.”
“What about Mike’s guy?”
“I’ll keep an eye on him. Find out where he’s coming from. Give me something to squeeze him with.”
The agent chomped on the thin slices of roast beef piled high on the sourdough roll. “Wish you’d all squeeze each other to oblivion.”
“Tank’ll find what you need.”
“Good man, Tank,” the agent mocked. A glob of mayonnaise plopped onto his lap. Swearing, he reached for a napkin to dab at the mess. The tape rolled on.
A FAT COPPER MOON, slung low in the sky, gave off enough light to look as if a spotlight illuminated the town common. Ace wanted to be out there, hunting. Instead he was in Felicia’s apartment, feeding Felicia’s daughter, watching Felicia’s sister for signs of a meltdown.
Something big was brewing. Deacon was spending a lot of time with Taz. The alphabet-soup task force was abuzz about a shipment of pseudoephedrine arriving from California via China. Ace was determined to find the cook site before gung-ho agents bent on snagging a collar of this magnitude swarmed and ended up tripping over each other’s feet. Taz and his supplier would use the chaos to slip through and set up shop some place new. That could not happen. Not on his watch.
Deacon was nothing but a glorified dispatcher. His job was to round up gang members to act as runners and arrange deliveries. Ace had done a couple of small runs to prove his loyalty to the club. To put an end to this corridor, Taz was the key.
He’d followed Taz home from work after his first day at the printing press. He’d expected him to go to the trailer he listed as his official address. With a day job, Taz did his cooking at night. Yet none of the agents tailing him over the past year had managed to make the cook site. Tonight wasn’t going to be Ace’s lucky night, either. Taz had simply ridden up the hill from the industrial complex where he ran his printing press to a residential neighborhood with a gated complex of duplexes that had a pool and a tennis court and a clubhouse. Too respectable for someone like Taz, even if he made enough money to support a city.
Ace had driven past the complex and parked down the road in the parking lot of a trailhead. He’d hiked up the trail until he reached a small hill overlooking the complex. Under the cover of trees, he’d set up surveillance. Taz had done nothing more complicated than fry himself a couple of burgers, slump into a cushy recliner and flick through cable channels while he knocked down a beer. Maybe he was waiting for the shipment of pseudoephedrine to arrive before he cooked up the next batch.
Ace had wanted to stay, but needed to check on Rory. He’d found her bouncing Hannah on one knee as she attempted to type on her laptop. A new printer spewed out a ream of paper. Maps, spread out all over the living room, surrounded her. Since he wouldn’t share his files with her, she was building her own. He was ready to sign a petition to ban P.I. books from publication. He tried to derail her gluttony for information with a request.
Rory’s fingers pecked like mad hens on the computer keyboard, and though she was working her way through the web at a speed that would impress anyone else, frustration knocked through him like an engine in need of a valve job. He put Hannah into her high chair and tried to entice her to eat a slice of pear. “Anything yet?”
Rory didn’t look up from the screen. “35B Lilac Road is deeded to a Gamma Corporation.”
“Can you find something about who owns it?”
“I’ll try.”
Hannah played with the piece of pear, squishing it, gumming it, flattening it against the tray of her high chair.
“What’s Taz’s real name?” Rory asked.
“John Tassler, Jr.”
“A John Alan Tassler, Sr., and Irene Tassler appear on the board of the Gamma Corporation.” Rory shook her head. “And you guys didn’t know this place existed?”
“His father’s properties are on file. I wasn’t aware of this one.” Hannah bit into another slice of pear he offered her, nipping his finger with her sharp new lower incisor. “Ouch,” he said, and Hannah laughed, dribbling pear mush into his palm.
“But if he has use of the place, wouldn’t it be wise to watch his movements from there?”
“It’s not his legal address.”
“But he goes there.”
“It’s probably watched—just not all the time.” They only had so many men to keep tabs on all of the players. Hannah refused his next offering of pear, shaking her head from side to side. He reached for the wet washcloth on the counter and braced for battle.
Rory kept typing. “Were his parents there?”
Hannah squawked at his efforts to clean her face and hands. “Their official residence is in Nashua. Kingsley’s checking up on their whereabouts for me.”
Rory’s fingers stilled on the keys and she frowned up at him. “Kingsley? If you have Sebastian’s computer wizard scouring for answers, why am I wasting my time like this?”
He threw Hannah’s dinner-encrusted bib in the sink. “Because with Kingsley, there’s a time delay. He has to vet everything through Falconer and I want answers now.”
The fighting light was back in Rory’s eyes. But for some reason, that didn’t bring him any comfort. It was the wall, he decided. He wanted the fighting light without the Do Not Enter wall she’d put up.
Rory tapped her fingers impatiently against the edge of the coffee table. “Tell me about the businesses in the industrial park where Taz’s business is.”
“They’ve been checked.”
“Humor me.”
He picked up Hannah from the high chair and set her down on the pink and white quilt. He chose a busy box from the laundry basket of toys next to her crib. She batted it away.
“The park has a candle factory, a bio-tech company, a catalog company’s mail order center, Taz’s printing press and a sewer treatment plant.” From which emanated a slow whomp-whomp like the baritone of a mutant frog. By the end of the day, he’d been ready to find the damn frog and strangle it into silence.
“Give me names.” Pencil poised over a legal pad, she waited.
As he listed the companies, he offered Hannah a blue mirror that looked like a ship’s porthole. Her interest lasted less than two seconds. “Across the sewer plant’s sludge pond there’s an overgrown field and beyond that a barn where it looks like three or four horses share a corral.”
The smell of sour apples from the candle factory had competed with that of the printing chemicals, horse farm manure pile and the sludge pond, creating a vile environment that surely violated EPA standards. Nobody could tell if meth was cooked there.
“You think the drug factory is down there? Hidden in the industrial park?” Rory asked as if he’d spoken out loud.
As he sorted through the toy basket, Hannah, using a surprisingly strong grip, pulled herself up with handfuls of his T-shirt and skin to accomplish the feat. “No. Taz’s business—the whole industrial complex, for that matter—has been raided twice and there’s nothing there except what should be there.”
“No secret passage to a basement?”
He laughed as Hannah cruised around him, using hair and clothes
for handholds. “No, these guys know their business.”
Rory swiveled in her chair and looked at him. “So, what now?”
“Let’s play six-degrees-of-separation.”
She tilted her head. “Okay. How?”
Her hair was wild with curls and he wanted to run his fingers through it, press his nose against it, inhale that strangely endearing scent of cinnamon. Instead, he contented himself with Hannah’s chokehold around his neck. “We know this address isn’t Taz’s legal address, but a house owned by his father’s corporation. Let’s see what else the Tassler family owns.”
She flexed her fingers and set them loose on the keys once more. He admired the way she met life head-on. “Senior owns the printing press building. The mother owns a cabin on Lake Winnipesaukee. They have a house in Nashua, a condo in Florida and another one in Arizona. His sister, Tamlyn Paradis, and her husband own a home in Massachusetts and a beach house in Maine.”
Nothing he already didn’t know. “Do the same for Deacon and Mike.”
“What’s Deacon’s full name?”
Blubbering nonsense words, Hannah pulled at his lip. “Preston Duberry.”
Rory entered the name in the search engine. “How did he get Deacon out of that?”
“Because he’s the guy you confess your sins to and hope to God he doesn’t catch you in a lie.”
Her fingers stuttered on the keys and her head snapped up. Too late he remembered about Felicia’s necklace hanging around the neck of Deacon’s girlfriend. “I didn’t—”
She waved him away. “No, it’s okay. Tell me about methamphetamines. How are they manufactured?”
Hannah plopped into his lap and started pulling at the bandana in his jeans pocket. “Why?”
Rory shrugged. “The more I know, the more I can tell if the dots we’re trying to connect are making a solid line or just leading us nowhere.”
“You want to know about meth. I’ll tell you about meth.” He rose, leaving Hannah to amuse herself with his bandana. Barely able to contain the caustic brew just the thought of meth caused him, he paced the small space between the living room and Hannah’s crib.