The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel

by Michael Yudov

  “Hi.” Small sniff.

  “Hi. Sleep much?”

  “No. I keep thinking, I can’t stop. It won’t let me sleep, but I’m so tired. How do I manage Jeffry?”

  “The same way we all do Therese. The best we can. Sometimes that’s not so good, but there’s not much you can do about it. Sometimes you can rise above it, and carry on. It depends on the person.”

  “What about me? How will I do it? I can’t stop.”

  For the first time since entering the room, I looked at her face. “You? I think you’re a ‘rise above it’ kind of person. You can stop. All you have to do is want to. You wouldn’t have agreed to come if you didn’t think you could help.”

  More light sniffs. She blew her nose softly with a handful of tissues. “It’s’ easy for you, you were a professional secret agent.”

  “You’ve been listening to things that don’t have any relevance here. Besides, that was a long time ago. What I do now is much more normal. And secure. I don’t want to think about the past any more than you want to think about John, and I manage Okay.”

  She took in a deep shuddering breathe and let it out fast and raggedly. “I wasn’t thinking what you think I was thinking, you know.”

  Here was the crux of the issue. “What do know about what I’m thinking?”

  “You believe that I’m just thinking about John, how he’s gone for good now, and about all the things I’ve lost because of that. That is an awful experience, but it is not why I’m crying.” Ah, the opening. The part where I ask what it is she is crying about. I obliged.

  “Then why?”

  “Because I see now that I didn’t love him. Not the way he wanted me to. I’m so selfish, I always think of me first.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second, so if you want to tell me the truth, I’ll listen. Otherwise, we both have work to do.”

  She stared at me in an odd way. “How do you know what I say is the truth or not?”

  Now there were some shades of indignation in her tone.

  “Nobody can reach the heights you have, in the world of ballet, without self-sacrifice. Lots of it, too. You can’t be selfish and self-sacrificing as well. So, it’s something else.” I felt like getting going so I didn’t leave it there. “Maybe you’re suffering more from the realization that you don’t feel all the hurt that you think you should. Maybe, you’ve discovered that you weren’t as in love with John Dawson as you thought you were.”

  She continued to stare at me for a few moments, then her whole attitude changed. She peeled back the covers to reveal a fully clothed woman and hopped out of bed on the side opposite where I was sitting. Her voice had returned to normal, and she even seemed a bit angry now. “My clothes are all a mess; I have to change. I’ll be out in five minutes, Okay?”

  “Okay.” I tried once more. “You have the right to feel however you want, you know. Just try to keep it confined to the indoors, and we’ll be fine. I’ll be in the living room when you’re ready.”

  “Yes, mais oui, only be a woman when it suits a man.” She had turned away from me and was taking off her blouse. I took that as my cue.

  I came out of the bedroom to find Godsen and Westwood ready to roll and grinning. I looked around the room, but nothing had changed.

  “Is there something I missed?” I directed my question to both of them in general, which seemed to produce even more subdued amusement. Westwood answered me first.

  “There might be. There just might be, yup.” Then she grinned from ear to ear and sat down to make some notes in her small notebook that she kept in her purse. Well, purse may be the wrong way to put it. Westwood carried a medium-sized woman’s’ handbag, but it contained more materiel than ‘purse stuff’.

  I turned to Godsen and held my hands up in a shrug. “What did I miss?”

  Godsen just made a face of uncomprehending tolerance, and continued what she was doing, turning her back to me while she did it. Selecting papers that were then placed in the briefcase she was taking to the meeting with Schnorrer.

  I thought about this for a minute or five while we waited for Therese. It had to have something to do with the group dynamics, for sure, but what? Then it struck me, and I didn’t believe how I hadn’t seen it before this. Therese. It centred around her, and I wasn’t totally sure, but I think she was falling fast with nothing to grab onto when I entered the picture, and I’d protected her since then. Had she grabbed onto me? Rebound. She was falling for me. For all the wrong reasons, and during the time when she should be resting and recovering from her loss.

  We’d changed that for her though. We’d brought her on a mission, making things harder for her just by being in unfamiliar surroundings. I thought about it, and rejected it. It wasn’t me, it was something deeper. Maybe related to what we were doing. Therese claimed that she had no knowledge of the issue that had killed her fiancé. Other than the few words she’d given us from the lips of John. Which had been cryptic at best. ‘We’ve made it baby. I hit the big one this time.’ What was that? We knew he was onto something with the Crassberg deal. The deal had to have more underneath the surface than we could guess at just yet. Then there was the call from Ted in the middle of the night, three days before John’s murder. Therese swore she didn’t remember what John had said on his side of the conversation. She’d been sleeping. The records showed that the call had lasted for over an hour. Eighty-nine minutes, to be exact. I thought that would have been enough to wake her, even if she kept going back to sleep, but no. She insisted that she slept through the whole thing. Then, when she had been asked if she would come to Switzerland to help identify Ted for us, she’d said yes pretty quickly.

  What if it was Ted that was occupying her thoughts, not me. What if she was in love with him, even if it was only in her mind, and not his as well? And what if it was in his mind as well as hers? I was beginning to get a headache.

  Then Therese came out of the bedroom. She did look like an angel. In this case an angel with a burgundy leather jacket with wide lapels, tapered at the hips, probably custom made, and jeans and sneakers. A plain white shirt with no pockets finished off the look. I noticed that her sneakers were Nike Airs, a good choice of shoe in my estimation. She was carrying a rather large purse in matching burgundy.

  She walked over to me and opened the purse for a few seconds, showing me the contents. My HP Palmtop was in there. Good thinking on her part. I nodded my agreement.

  We were all ready to roll. Everyone activated their comm units, and a quick test showed us that there were no problems. From here on in, until the meeting was over, there would be constant communications between all four of us.

  I hadn’t picked up the second car yet, so Godsen and Westwood would ride with us to the bank. We would drop them around the corner and then find a parking spot as close to the front door as possible, and wait outside the bank while the meeting took place. We gathered the troops and departed.

  ~

  Chapter Twenty-One

  W

  hile we drove over to the bank, everyone was quiet, thinking personal thoughts. The clouds had thickened and turned dark during the day, indicating a coming rainfall. I had the driver side window down about an inch or so, and just that much gave me the smell of rain in the air. Something to look forward to.

  In one of the numerous streets that we took on our route to the bank I spotted a record shop. I glanced in the rear view mirror, and saw that I had plenty of room. Cutting across three lanes of traffic on the one-way street, I pulled into a tight parking spot at the corner, stopping with a small screech of brakes. Before anyone could react or protest, I opened my door and said, “Be right back.”, and ran the few doors back to the record shop.

  A bell tinkled as I pushed the door open. A girl of about fifteen or sixteen with several nose rings and one lip ring was reading a magazine behind the counter. I had no time for browsing. I used the international language of music.

  “Beatles?”

  The girl looke
d me over laconically, and then deciding I was Okay for an old fart, came out from behind the counter to show me the way to the Beatles’ location among the racks and racks of CD’s.

  “You are American?”

  I answered that one automatically. “No, Canadian.”

  “That is much better than American.” She didn’t bat an eye or change her expression. It was just like a statement of fact, like the sky is blue. Why not?

  “I think so too.”

  She smiled at that and shook her dyed black hair out of her eyes. It seemed longer in the front than the back, somehow reminding me of a sheepdog. She had a tie-dyed tank-top on that stopped about two or three inches above her navel, leaving too little to the imagination. The black bell-bottom jeans barely had a grip on her hips, and she wore no shoes. Her face was small and oval, and despite the mess of nose and lip rings, it was easy to see that she would be a knock-out in about five or ten years.

  We stopped in front of one of the racks, and she showed me the Beatles’ section. Europe always made me laugh. There was a copy of every Beatle album ever released, right up to date with the new Anthologies One, Two, and Three.

  I quickly picked out the White Album, Get Back, Revolver, Help!, and Abbey Road, then we headed back to the cash counter. Beside the counter was a rack of the top ten new releases. ZZ TOP caught my eye, and I grabbed it. RYTHMEEN. That was new.

  “When did this come out?” I held up the CD.

  “Ah. You like this, yes? It is… umm, like old ZZ, yes? Hard and Blue. They say that in the promo papers. It came, I think yesterday.”

  "I’ll take this too.” Great. A new ZZ Top album. Just what I needed to pass the time.

  When the girl rang it in I saw that she had a name tattooed on the back of her right shoulder, Greta, in a Gothic style script.

  “Is Greta your name?”

  “No, it is the name of my lover. She is the only light that shines for me in this world. So I make a tattoo. Do you like it?” I had to be honest, I did. It was done in a lovely rose colour, and stopped at the name alone, no embellishments.

  “Yes, I do. I think that maybe Greta is a very lucky young woman.”

  She had accepted my francs and was making change, printing the receipt, and bagging the CD.

  “You see. I know that Canadian is better. More free. You don’t make judges on these things. It’s only life.”

  “Judgements.”

  “Judgements?”

  “That’s it.”

  She smiled again, “Thank you.” Then handed me my purchase.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Anita.”

  “Anita, you have the right attitude. Enjoy your life, young lady.” Then I was out the door and back at the van. The whole thing had taken about four minutes.

  Therese was in the passenger seat, and remained quiet. Godsen and Westwood were in the back, and Godsen couldn’t help but ask.

  “What in the hell was all that?”

  “Just a surveillance necessity.” I slipped my purchases into the pocket low down on my door. Then I checked the traffic over my shoulder, pulled out into the street and gunned it to catch the light at the corner before it changed from orange to red. I made it with time to spare. Just.

  Fifteen minutes later I pulled over to the curb and stopped. Godsen and I eyed each other in the rear-view mirror.

  “Around the corner, to the left.” She nodded back at me, staying quiet. “Are you ready?” I wanted her to say something, so I could ‘suss’ her out. Her state of mind, her action plan, as it was laid out in her memory. According to plan. About twenty, twenty-five seconds ticked by, then she looked me straight in the eye.

  “I’ll be fine. If anything crazy starts, you’ll hear it go down, and Evie’s going in with me.”

  I turned around in my seat to face Westwood. “You suitably attired?” She knew what I meant.

  “After this morning, I’m playing hardball. Not only am I suitably attired, I’m over-attired, but I don’t have a single standard-load shell on my person.” There was a cold glint in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. She was getting pumped for this in case it went bad. I had a feeling she may have been carrying ‘explosive-tip rounds with Teflon-coat jackets, but I didn’t want to get too personal. Also, these guys were supposed to be clean, right?

  “Okay. Just checking.” I hit the auto-lock switch for them to open the side door easily. They both got out and walked around the back of the van to the sidewalk, then headed for the corner. I pulled out immediately, and beat the light again, turning the corner before they did. There was still almost an hour of banking yet to go before they closed up shop, so the bank should have customers milling about, going in and out. Safe. Right.

  I spied a parking spot exactly in front of the bank but across the street. Since this was a dual carriageway, unless I was willing to jump the median, I’d have to run the whole block and then do a left, a right, another right, with at least one set of lights, maybe more. It wouldn’t be there by the time I got back. I took a quick look at the median. It was only concrete about eight inches high close to the intersection. After that it opened up into a planted flowered centre. There were no cars coming from the opposite side.

  “Hold on tight, honey.” I whipped the wheel to the right, and caught the median where it was still concrete. I almost didn’t slow down, but then at the last second, I came to a stop, I could feel the wheels resting against the concrete. Then gave it some gas. The low-end torque on this thing was amazing. We crossed the median in a flash and hardly felt it. I pulled the van to the left, effectively driving the wrong way on the street, and then pulled a hard right U-turn and slipped us into the empty parking slot in one smooth move. Sometimes I impressed even myself.

  Godsen and Westwood came around the corner just in time to see us park. Therese had a big grin on her face. It seemed that she liked action. Who knew?

  “Well, shall we get settled a bit?” I half-stood and made my way to the back, stretching out my legs and focusing on Godsen’s transmission at the same time. She was still coming in loud and clear as they climbed the few steps to the front door of the bank. As they approached the main door, it was held open for them by a bank security man. I mean he had a uniform and all, right, but why would a security man be opening doors for customers? Maybe I was too suspicious, but that was better than being dead.

  I pulled the binoculars out of the lidded enclosure beside the ashtray, where I’d put them earlier. I started scanning the bank, bringing it into focus. The windows were tinted, and reflected a large amount of the sunlight striking them. I dug around in the door pocket and pulled out a small case. Opening it, I selected the appropriate filter and slipped it onto the lenses of the binoculars. With a little fussing I was able to cut through the glare. I didn’t see any clients in the bank. I checked my watch, fifty-five minutes of banking hours left, in a Swiss bank, and no clients? Not twice in one day. I turned on my ‘transmission module’, and got on the comm with Godsen.

  “Ronnie, it’s me. Acknowledge reception. Over.”

  There was a small cough, covered with her hand, indicating that she had received me and we were on-line.

  “Ronnie, is there anyone in the bank doing business besides you and Evie?”

  The answer came back, quietly, with a short delay. “Yes.”

  I was scanning the windows as we talked and I couldn’t see anyone except her and Evie. Unless, yes, there was a side counter around the corner that was out of my line of sight.

  “Are they at a counter around the corner that I probably can’t see from my spot? Over.”

  Again, the quiet, “Yes.”

  “Okay, sorry. I’m just being paranoid. Over”

  Again, the quiet, “Yes.”

  Thanks so much for your support. I kept watching the bank, slumped down in the back seat.

  The comm feed started to become more active, and I got down to the business of listening. Therese knew what her job was, and she’d bee
n scanning the street on both sides for pedestrians, or people getting out of cars. If Ted Dawson tried to get into his bank in the next fort five minutes or so, she’d spot him. I let that part of my thoughts go, leaving it in Therese’s hands. I trusted her to spot him. After that, it would be my job to bring him in alive. Preferably without any marks on him. That might end up being his call, though. It was one of the bridges that would be crossed when we came to it.

  I concentrated on the action inside the bank.

  “Madame, may I be of assistance in any way?” This must be one of the flunkies. His tone was fawning.

  “Yes, you may, if you have access to the manager, Herr Schnorrer. I am Ms. Godsen, and this is my associate, Ms. Westwood. We represent Herr Schnorrer’s last meeting of the day. In fact, we are supposed to be talking with Herr Schnorrer at this very minute, having passed the appointment hour searching for someone who could show us the way to Herr Schnorrer’s office, and announce us. Now.”

  “Why certainly Ms. Godsen. My name is Urs Reinvil, I am the Personal Assistant to Herr Schnorrer. I’ll take you to his office myself. Please let me advise him that you’re here, and on the way up. I will return in a moment.” I checked the building over once again. It was small, less than twenty-five metres of street front, and only two stories tall. I checked all of the windows I could see on the top floor, but they were all conveniently drawn with drapes of high quality, completely opaque.

  “Ronnie, it’s me. The upstairs is visually out-of-range. Rely on voice-comms only. Repeat, Voice-comms only. Please respond to reception of this communique.”

  Over the noise on the street, and the beginning of a spate of static over the link, he heard a gentle “cough-cough”. Received and understood.

  I switched off my ‘transmitter module’ and turned over on one elbow to face Therese. “I’m going to walk down to the corner to see if there’s any visual contact points on that side. I’m also going to switch on your broadcast capability. That means that you can call for a suspected or confirmed identification of Ted, or you can call for any reason that you see fit to include in the ‘important’ category. Anyone gets close to the van, just let me know. When you call, just speak normally to me, as you would right now. It’s just like being next to me. Say ‘Mobile to Rover’. Okay? You’re ‘Mobile’, and I’ll be ‘Rover’. Now, I’ll try to keep you in sight at all times, and I’ll be back in just a few minutes. Can you do that?”