One Was a Soldier

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “Don’t you worry he’s going to bolt again?” Clare asked.

  Russ glanced away from the road for a second. His mouth tipped up at one corner. “That sounds like something I’d say.” He faced forward again. “No, I don’t. First, even if he originally planned to get ahold of the money, he knows that’s not going to happen now. If he disappears, I’ll blow the whistle on him. His best bet is to do just as he said, help us out in the hope that returning the loot will squeak him past any damaging questions.”

  “And second?”

  “Second, the man’s a cop. I think he’s probably a good one. Were you watching him when we were laying out the investigation? He wanted in. He wants to break this case as bad as we do. More.”

  “Do you think he’s hoping it’ll give him a lead on Tally’s murder?”

  “Clare…”

  “I don’t want to fight with you. Honestly, I don’t. I just want you to admit—”

  “That I should have ignored the evidence and the ME’s report and kept the case open?”

  “I’d settle for you keeping your mind open!” She looked out the window at the orange sodium lights of the Super Kmart. “I have a personal stake in this.”

  “She knocked you down, sprained your ankle—and gave you an infected gash in your back, remember that? Then you met her once a week for an hour with a bunch of other people. How on God’s green earth does that translate into a personal stake?”

  “She was one of us.” Clare’s voice was low. “I can’t just turn my back on her.”

  “Look. I understand that. I meet a guy who served in Nam, I feel a spark of connection with him. It doesn’t matter if we have nothing in common. It doesn’t matter that we’re old and gray now. He was there, and I was there, and we remember.”

  She turned toward him. Looked at his hands, big and steady on the wheel, his forearms exposed where he’d rolled his flannel shirt up.

  “But here’s the thing. That connection doesn’t overshadow the ones I’ve made with people I’ve lived with and worked with and served with.” He glanced at her. “We’re supposed to be getting married in a week. You need to decide which connection is more important. The one with your brothers in arms? Or the one with your husband?”

  “So I should support you, no matter how I feel? Pretend I think you’re right?”

  “No. You should respect my professional judgment and realize that I only rejected your point of view after careful consideration.” He flicked on his signal and turned onto the street whose name they had copied out of the phone book.

  We’re supposed to get married. Was he having second thoughts? Linda never critiqued his investigations. Linda never called him names. Linda never, ever slammed out of his office, swearing she was going to prove him wrong. God. Clare hadn’t even been married yet, and she was already a failure at being Mrs. Van Alstyne.

  “We’re here.” Russ pulled into one of Fort Henry’s small condo complexes, the sort of place where couples commuting to Albany or singles with good jobs in Glens Falls touched down until they’d saved up the down payment for a house. “Will you take the lead? Since you’ve already met him?”

  “Of course.” She half-expected Dragojesich to be out on a Friday night, so when the door opened moments after she rang the bell, the sight of him filling the entryway knocked her opening line out of her head.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “Mr. Dragojesich? I don’t know if you remember me, but I met you at the BWI Opperman party at the end of August. I was with Tally McNabb?”

  His forehead creased, then cleared. “The major! Who likes Canadian Club!” He looked past her to Russ. “And the boyfriend, right?”

  “Fiancé,” Russ said.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Tally, if we could.”

  “Oh, cripes, that was you at her funeral, wasn’t it? Yeah, sure, come on in.” He stepped back to let them pass. “She was such a sweet girl. Give you the shirt off her back.” He ushered them into his living room and snapped off the television. “Can I get you something? Sit down, sit down.”

  “Nothing, thanks,” Russ said as Clare perched on a chair wide enough to pass as a love seat.

  “Mr. Dragojesich—”

  “Call me Drago.” He took the opposite seat. Dressed in a Syracuse Orange sweatshirt, he resembled a black-haired, black-browed snowplow. There was enough room on the chair for Russ to sit down next to her. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? A small whisky?”

  Clare thought of the pills in her coat pocket and swallowed her desire for a drink. “No, thank you. You were in Iraq the same time Tally was, is that right?”

  “Yeah, sure, during her second tour. She hadda spend a lot of time at Balad, setting up some finance thing. That was where we staged out of. She would hang out with the crew, ’cause her husband worked with us. We became buds.”

  “How about Wyler McNabb? Were you friends with him as well?”

  Drago’s face crunched in thought. “Not really. I mean, I got nothing against him, but Wyler was more of a party kind of guy. He liked to live large. Me, I like it nice and peaceful. Do my work, come home to my babies.”

  She could feel, rather than see, Russ’s eyebrows rise.

  “You haven’t seen ’em yet.” Drago whistled. “Hey, my puppies!” Clare heard yipping and the scrabble of nails, and then three toy poodles bounded into the living room. They leaped onto Drago’s lap—he could have fit several more—and the big man crooned to them, lifting the whole pack in his hands. “Who’s Daddy’s good girl? Is it you? Is it you?”

  Check your assumptions at the door, Clare reminded herself.

  “We’re trying to track a shipment McNabb would have made from Balad back to the States.” Russ’s voice was as coplike as ever.

  “Anything more specific?” Drago let the dogs down on the floor. They immediately scuttled over and began exploring Russ’s boots. “Wyler was in charge of ordering matériel. He was usually pretty accurate, but he did overestimate at times.”

  Russ reached down and scratched a tiny head. “This would have been a pallet, maybe a couple meters square, shrink-wrapped. It would have been marked for transit beyond your Plattsburgh depot.”

  “The bedding!” Drago nodded. “It’s gotta be the bedding. Everything else stayed in Plattsburgh.”

  Clare and Russ looked at each other.

  “It was a big, dumb mistake. We got sent a load of the sheets they order for the resort. They’re all fancy and stuff, Egyptian cotton and a zillion thread count.” His eyes, which had been lit with pleasure at being able to answer their questions, clouded over. “What’s this got to do with Tally? We kept it on the q.t. so’s not to get the clerk on the other side of the operation in trouble. But Tally couldn’tuv been responsible. She didn’t work for BWI until this summer.”

  “Drago”—Clare tried to keep her voice neutral—“do you have any idea of the final destination of the, um, sheets?”

  He looked at her as if she were cracked. “Where do you think they went? The resort.”

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15

  “I don’t like this,” Lyle said.

  Russ didn’t pause in his march up the stone steps from the parking lot to the Algonquin Waters Spa and Resort. There wasn’t a leaf to be seen on the stairs or the flower beds beside them. The staff probably vacuumed them up when no one was looking. “There’s nothing illegal in stopping by the resort to give our regards to the manager. We’re off duty.”

  “Who are you kidding? If we’re not made as plainclothes thirty seconds after we hit the lobby, I’ll eat my shorts. I bet you’re even carrying under that coat.”

  Russ glanced down at his navy jacket. “Can you tell?”

  Lyle made a noise.

  “How ’bout you?”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “You?” Russ looked across Lyle to where Quentan Nichols climbed in lockstep with the two Millers Kill police.

  “I always carry. I figure it�
��s like an American Express card. Don’t leave home without it.”

  Lyle was right. With phone instructions to look “well dressed, but casual,” they had all turned out in coats and ties. Too dressed up to be end-of-the-season golfers, not spiffy enough to be businessmen.

  “And him. I don’t see why he’s gotta be here. You don’t think they’ll remember his face?”

  “I’m not trying to sneak us in, Lyle. We just need to not be here in our official capacity. Now can it.” They crossed the portico, Russ and Nichols smiling at the bellhops and the valets, Lyle scowling.

  Inside, Russ steered them to the far edge of the reception desk, the one closest to the door leading into the offices. A quick glance reassured him that Ethan Stoner’s child bride wasn’t working this morning. No loud greetings of “Hi there, Chief Van Alstyne.” He leaned on the gleaming rosewood counter. “Good morning. I’d like to speak to Barbara LeBlanc, please.”

  The young woman across from him looked at the three of them, stricken. “Is there anything wrong, sir?”

  “No. We just want to speak to her. If she’s in.” He had assumed she would be. Saturday at 9:00 A.M. had to be one of the busiest times of the week.

  The girl looked doubtful. “May I say who’s asking?”

  Lyle sidled up to the counter and gave her a smile to charm the birds out of the trees. “Just tell her Lyle MacAuley’s back. With a … special request.”

  “Oh!” The girl blinked rapidly. “I’ll go get her right away.” She vanished through the door.

  Russ glanced at his second in command. “It never gets old for you, does it?”

  “Nope.”

  Barbara LeBlanc emerged from the office, her expression half welcoming, half wary. “Deputy Chief MacAuley? And—” Her gaze slid past Russ to Nichols. “Good heavens.”

  Russ stepped forward. “Can we talk in private, Ms. LeBlanc?”

  The manager nodded, her eyes still on Nichols. She led the way back into her office. She was in a silk blouse and form-fitting skirt, just like the last time they had been here, and just like the last time, Lyle kept his eyes on her posterior, jerking his gaze up to a respectable height a scant second before she turned and gestured for them to seat themselves.

  “First,” Russ said, “let me explain that when Chief Warrant Officer Nichols was here at the end of August, he was working as an undercover investigator.” That was sort of true.

  “But—”

  “I know. We hadn’t been notified by the army.” Definitely true. “We’ve sorted out the mix-up. We’re here because we’re assisting with the inquiry in an informal capacity.”

  “What does that mean?”

  What did it mean? He was a terrible liar. He was getting spun in his own gobbledygook.

  “Chief Nichols hasn’t yet been authorized to involve civilian law enforcement.” Lyle propped an arm against the edge of LeBlanc’s desk and leaned closer. “I always thought we had it bad. You can imagine what army bureaucracy is like.” He smiled. “He thinks there may be contraband, stolen from the U.S. Army, hidden right here in your hotel.”

  Barbara LeBlanc shook her head. “Impossible.”

  “I know, I know. He wanted to come in here with a warrant and a bunch of MPs.” Before the expression of horror could settle on the manager’s face, Lyle went on. “Now, the chief and I know BWI Opperman is the largest employer in town. We want to handle things discreetly.”

  LeBlanc nodded. She gave Russ a look of melting gratitude.

  “So what we’d like to do is this. You allow us behind the scenes in the basement. We’ll take a quiet, low-key look around the shipping dock and the storage areas and that big corridor.”

  “Broadway.”

  “Broadway, right. If we find anything, we’ll consult with you about the best way to deal with it without kicking up a fuss and scaring off the trade. If we don’t find anything”—he shrugged—“no one’s the wiser.”

  Three minutes later, Barbara LeBlanc was opening the heavy door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY that divided the hotel into above and below stairs.

  “He’s good,” Nichols said to Russ.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I have to get back to reception,” LeBlanc said, “but if you need me for anything, you have my cell number.” More specifically, Lyle had her number. He ran a finger along one bushy eyebrow as she shut the door behind her, leaving them in the spottily lit concrete corridor.

  “Let’s start with the shipping dock and work inward,” Russ said.

  So they began the job of pushing and pulling and lifting and opening every box, carton, canister, and cart they could find. Russ discarded his jacket in the first five minutes and his tie in the next five. They cleared the shipping dock quickly. Its echoing, oil-stained interior had a few piles of boxes and several heaping laundry carts, but the efficient staff had obviously been moving goods in and out of the area as soon as they arrived.

  The storage rooms were fast work as well—they were smaller spaces with industrial shelving up to the ceiling. Two were for the kitchen, stacked with ten-gallon jugs of mayonnaise and garbage cans loaded with cornmeal and flour. Three more looked like the staging room Russ had seen last summer—towers of toilet paper and tubloads of shampoo.

  “Anything?” Russ emerged from the last supply closet with the smell of Lysol clogging his nose.

  “Nothing.” Lyle sounded personally offended.

  They all gazed down the length of Broadway. It ran from one end of the hotel to another. Empty, it would have been as wide as a two-lane road, but the stacks and shelves and dollies crowding either side narrowed it to a concrete gulch just wide enough for a golf cart or a loader.

  Nichols put his hands on his hips and whistled. “Looks like the Federal Depository in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

  “Why’n the hell didn’t we bring more help?” Lyle asked.

  Russ didn’t point out that his deputy hadn’t even wanted Nichols along. He thought for a moment. “Would they have wanted it nearer to the employee entrance, or farther away?”

  “I think they’d have to load it wherever there was room.” Nichols gestured toward a teetering jumble of gilt-painted chairs, some with cracked legs, some missing seats. “This is like a bad combination of your gramma’s attic and Home Depot.”

  “Okay, then. Lyle, you and Quentan start up at this end. The left side. I’ll take the far end and yell if I need help moving anything. We’ll meet in the middle.”

  “About the time I’m due to retire,” Lyle said.

  Russ suspected his deputy was right, but he didn’t say anything. He hiked down the corridor and got to work.

  Boxes and cartons and bundles strapped to pallets. Vacuum cleaners and lamps and pillows in plastic. Russ looked into and behind and around everything, wondering if the money had been broken down into briefcase-sized packages, wondering if it had gone missing between Plattsburgh and the resort and they were barking up the wrong tree, wondering why he was spending his Saturday here, in a place he loathed, instead of looking at properties with Clare, wondering where she was, what she was doing, what she was wearing—

  “Russ! Get up here.” Lyle’s shout snapped him out of his reverie. Jesus H. Mud-Wrestling Christ. Love was making him soft in the head.

  He trotted back up the corridor. “Look at this.” Nichols pointed to a narrow door set into the corridor. It must have swung inward, because boxes marked LATEX PAINT and H-455 AC FILTERS were stacked tight on either side.

  “Locked?”

  “Uh-huh. Deputy Chief MacAuley is on the phone with the manager right now.”

  “She’s coming down with the keys.” MacAuley stepped back within hearing range, snapping his phone shut.

  Within minutes, they heard the brisk tap-tap-tap of LeBlanc’s heels. She had pulled her chatelaine off her waistband and was flipping through the keys and cards. “Oh.” She stopped when she saw where they were. “I’m afraid that’s just the alcohol lockup. The wine cellar, if you will.” She he
ld up a key. “Do you want to look anyway?”

  “Yeah.” Russ tried to keep the doubt out of his voice.

  She opened the door. It was, as promised, stacked with crates of booze and racks of bottles. No shrink-wrapped pallet. No stacks of cling-sealed money.

  Russ walked away as the manager resealed the room. He listened with half an ear to Lyle, asking her about other rooms, asking her where a bookkeeper or a construction worker might go with no questions asked.

  “I’m sorry,” LeBlanc said, “there’s really no order to the storage in this area. It’s just shove it in where you can. If it was important to be able to access something quickly, it would have been unpacked and put somewhere else. The garage, or the tool shed, or the power plant—this is a big complex.”

  Important to be able to access something quickly. McNabb delivered a pallet here. He’d want to be able to find it again, no matter what outdated appliances or busted furniture got stacked on top or in front of it. So how would you mark it? Not on the floor. People would notice. Nothing right by the thing—it might get moved. He looked up, to the shadowy space above the hanging fluorescent lights. Cement blocks rose smooth and unmarked to where massive I-beams transected a dim, unfinished ceiling. Pipes and conduits and electrical wires, barely visible but there, open for fast repairs. Hard to reach, unless you were authorized to work in the area, but—he made a tossing motion, as if he had a ball in his hand. You could throw something.

  He spotted it. A length of bright orange twine, the stuff you could pick up at any sporting goods store. Each end was tied to what looked to be, in the half-light, a stack of heavy-duty washers. A homemade bolo. Curled around a cold water pipe, hanging a few inches off either side. You’d never notice it unless you were looking straight up—and who would be staring past the lights instead of getting in and out as fast as possible?