by Maia Ross
“Irma,” I said, my eyes narrowed. “I’ll come to your thing. But tomorrow, I want to go out for wings and beer.”
She put a hand on her chest as if she was about to demand a fainting couch. “What kind...of wings?”
“Chicken.”
“Oh. I see. Well, at least it’s a lean protein.”
“What kind of wings did you think I was talking about? Swan wings? Penguin?” But I was grinning.
“After the half-marathon this Sunday.”
“I’m going to hold you to that. You need to spoil yourself more.” I added, “Speaking of the marathon, you’ve still got your wearable on, don’t you?”
She glanced at her wrist. The gadget I’d strapped on to her last week looked like a plain old piece of jewellery, a medium-sized opal on a nice silver chain.
“Isn’t everything you wear a wearable?”
“No.”
“Alrighty. And what is this thing doing again?”
“My friend the Brain—”
She started to laugh. “What?”
“The Brain. Good friend. Your wearable is essentially a fitness tracker, but they’re trying to implement them in a less functional-looking way, which is why it’s shaped like jewellery instead of a Fitbit or whatever. It tracks your body temperature, heart rate, stuff like that.”
“No GPS, right?”
I took a sharp inhale. “And a teeny tiny super small GPS. They need it to correlate distance and calories burned and heart rate and all that stuff from your runs.” When I saw the horror on her face, I put up a hand. “It’s a closed beta test, my friend is managing it, and you’ve been assigned a number, not a name, so you’re completely anonymized. No one other than me could ever figure out where you are. And I’ll never ever look.”
“If someone hacks into that and comes and assassinates me, I’m holding you responsible.”
“Seems only fair.”
“Excellent. So, we’re all set for tonight?”
I thought about the reading I was doing. I’d covered the basics, and I couldn’t progress much on Julian’s specific problem until I met with Medicil. Sneaking away for a few hours tonight wouldn’t really hurt anything. “All right, but how,” I swallowed, “are we getting there?”
She smiled. “Stu is picking us up in his truck.”
“Oh.” Instantly, I felt better. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”
I turned back to my computer and Irma left stealthily, as was her way. I tried not to let it rattle me.
Twelve—Irma
“You look wonderful, dear.”
Violet shot me her lovely shy-girl smile. Her simple but elegant dress hugged her curves, and her strappy sandals looked divine. I went back to my apartment and wrangled a red pashmina off a hanger and found an unopened tube of my favourite red lipstick. Then I slipped a telescoping baton into my clutch. Just for fun, really.
“Here,” I said, coming back out.
Her face lit up. “Thanks, Irma.” She flung the wrap around her shoulders and slicked the lipstick on her mouth. Her hair was down, with a lovely natural wave. “How do I look?”
“Smashing. Were you able to get any work done?”
She nodded, but her expression was guarded. “Yeah. On my own. But Medicil is working with the Beaver Island police force. I was able to get some generic information out of the account manager I was talking to, but he put me on hold at one point, and when he came back he said he couldn’t help me anymore.”
“Bugger.”
“Pretty much.”
“Can you do anything on your own? I’m worried about what will happen if someone like Snookie gets wind of Julian being hauled into the police station. He has to protect his reputation.”
She scrunched up her face. “I understand. Let me noodle on it.”
Stu honked, and we locked up. Stu, being himself, immediately wolf-whistled when we stepped outside.
“Why, thank you,” I said. Mother always told me to accept compliments when they were given, and that’s exactly what I always did.
The ride to the Club was a bit more sluggish than I would have preferred, but we were running early, so I was able to restrain myself from commenting on Stu’s driving. Instead, I focused on all the things that were niggling at me. First I thought about Jake Tapper, the man who’d called Charlotte the other day and left a message saying he wanted to talk about Scooter’s unfortunate brush with death. Mr. Tapper worked at the Club, and I’d left him several messages so far, with no reply. I smiled. I was distinctly looking forward to chatting with him tonight.
I was also thrilled I’d been able to get Violet to leave her room, and I spent a little time feeling smug about it. If she went home still pale as an Irish albino, I would have failed to convince her of the wonders of the outdoors and the importance of vitamin sea. She worked too hard. And I was worried about her. Plus, I knew what a woman haunted by secrets looked like, and she had the look. It was part of the reason I was trying to keep her busy.
And really, the Orange Blossom Special dinner was one of the highlights of the summer. People would be coming in on boats from all over: Toronto, New York state, all those small towns that hugged Lake Ontario’s shoreline. Tonight was a sit-down meal in the main ballroom, then dancing. Many of the islanders would be here, along with a fair number of visitors. It would be lovely if she met a few nice young people.
Stu’s old Ford pickup groaned as it turned down the main road to the Club.
“Are you going to change when we get there?” Violet asked him.
He laughed, a booming noise that filled up the cab of the truck. “I’m just the designated driver,” he said with a smile.
She looked from him to me. “Seriously?”
He snorted. “It’s a little too fancified for me, darlin’. I’m gonna go fishing.” He tilted his head toward the back of the truck, where his equipment was fastidiously tied down. Stu detested my private club, always muttering under his breath about how the dress code stifled his creativity. Today, his creativity consisted of a T-shirt stamped with a smiling cartoon shark asking, Be My Chum? and a Moses-length beard that rested on his chest. He had great fishing where his cottage was located, but he liked to drop a lure off the ninth hole at the Club every once in a while, just because. Stu didn’t ask for much, and it wasn’t hurting anyone, so I periodically facilitated his infiltration of the grounds.
“That’s too bad,” Violet said, her mouth downturned.
“You’ll have more fun without me,” he said, in a tone that implied such a thing was actually impossible.
We neared the gate. Stu pulled up just outside the range of the speaker.
The intercom squawked.
“I’m sorry,” Stu drawled in an I’m not sorry at all voice, “I can’t hear you.”
I could swear I heard a sigh coming from the intercom. They had video as well, of course, and they were familiar with Stu’s truck. It was silent for a moment, then the intricate hand-wrought gates of the Club slowly opened.
Stu grinned and rolled in.
Stu snuck over to the golf course, and I dropped Violet off at our table with a drink and her laptop computer before making my way to the back, where the administrative offices were. I wanted to find the mysterious Mr. Jake Tapper.
On my way, I passed islanders wearing an array of cutting-edge fashion; cocktail dresses, high heels as thin as wine glass stems, bespoke suits for the men. Cleavage was ripe with jewels, cocktails were clasped in hands that glittered.
The discreetly outfitted Club security staff mingled with the crowd. It was going to be a night of beady eyeballs on necklines and assets. Of course, some of those designer duds had been bought on credit and a few of the jewels were fake. Appearances are sometimes the biggest lie of all.
I bumped into Bahar Karimi, the Club’s brainy CFO. She was three years older than I, and kept her grey matter busy by doing the books for a few islanders like myself in her spare time. Discreetly, of course. I was trying to get Stu
to work with her, but so far I’d had zero luck convincing him. I worried his money was buried in the backyard in a sock.
“How are you, Irma?” she asked, her cheeks dimpling in a smile. Her hair was jet black and pulled into a stylish bun. Her green dress draped beautifully over her figure, and her smile lit up her whole face.
“I’m lovely, thank you, Bahar. Do you know which club manager is on duty tonight?”
“Imogene,” she said. “But she’s dealing with a problem on one of the docks right now. I don’t think she’ll be back until after dinner.”
“Drat. Is anyone else left in the admin offices? I’m looking for one of the staff members.”
She shook her head. “The office is closed up, and everyone has gone home. I’m the last one out. Imogene is the only one who can help, unfortunately. Everything okay?”
I pressed my lips together, thinking. “Yes, thanks.”
She turned to leave, then stopped. “How’s Charlotte doing? I’m worried about her.”
“She’s doing the best she can, the poor thing. There’s no change in Scooter’s condition yet. Have you talked to her?” I made sure not to tense up when Bahar reached forward and put her hand on my arm. Civilians tended to find that insulting. Really, I was just making sure she wasn’t trying to kill me.
“I meet with her every month at her estate. She does have the best tea. The last few times…she seemed a little…off. Like she wasn’t feeling well.”
How interesting. I tucked the thought away for later. “I wonder if her ankylosing spondylitis is worse. She might be due for an infusion.”
Infusions…
IV infusions she got at the clinic every month. Like clockwork.
“Thanks,” Bahar said, looking relieved. “Thank goodness the fundraiser is this weekend, so she can relax a bit once that’s done.” She smiled and walked past me.
I tried to work out a kink in one of my shoulders, watching the hallway traffic pass me by. Drat. I’d really wanted to track down this Tapper fellow. I was itching to know why he’d called Charlotte. It was my only lead so far.
Behind me, a throat cleared. Each and every one of the muscles in my body tensed. Adrenaline flew through my veins. It was such a small noise, one I hadn’t heard in years. Maybe I was wrong.
I shifted my weight to my toes and turned, ready for anything. But I wasn’t wrong. “Boris Andropov,” I said sweetly, greeting a sixty-something gentleman with green eyes, a much smaller beard than Stu’s, and excellent knife skills. I tried not to let the worry that had spiked somewhere around my spleen show in my face. What on earth was Boris Andropov doing in my sleepy little island town? Was this how things were going to be from now on? I was on my own, without any intel or backup? I tried to keep a pleasant expression on my face even as worry surged through me.
“Priyatno mi e da te vidya otnovo,” he answered me in Bulgarian; So nice to see you again. He clasped my fingers and gave me a gentlemanly kiss on the back of my hand.
“Zashto blagodarya.” I smiled; Why, thank you, then kissed him on each cheek. He always did smell nice.
“What brings you to town?” I asked, wiping any emotion out of my voice.
He smiled broadly. “My nephew is summering here. He asked me to come and visit, and here I am.”
“How wonderful,” I murmured while thinking, How terrible.
“I hear you have retired,” he said, with the flat tone of someone whose life had depended on giving nothing away. I wondered, again, how he managed to speak such excellent English. The Bulgarian secret service really must have had excellent linguistics coaches.
“I have,” I said easily, slipping my hand over his arm, the rest of me tense and ready to ward off a stab at my liver. “Buy me a drink?”
He laughed.
“Are you on duty?”
He shook his head. “Like yourself, I am at the end of my career. I came to enjoy the band. I hear they are excellent.” He pivoted, directing us toward the bar. I swept the room as we entered, and he did the same. Old habits.
Boris held my chair out for me, and I tried not to show my annoyance with the bar stools, which were so high they were a tad difficult for me to get settled on, especially in this outfit, a tea-length Chanel dress I’d picked up in New York in the sixties.
“A gin and tonic for the lady,” Boris said.
“The gentleman will have the thirty-year-old Lagavulin, neat,” I added, and she stepped away to make our drinks. “How’ve you been?”
He took a moment to think about my question. That was something I’d always liked about him—he was a contemplative man, a nice man, even if he’d spent part of his life in service to a despotic communist regime.
“I am well,” he said finally, nodding his thanks to the bartender when she deposited our drinks.
“Good.” We clinked glasses and sat in a comfortable silence, almost like old friends. He had tried to kill me once in the early nineties after the wall had come down, but that had been a confusing time for all of us. And he didn’t seem to want to try again, so I took that as a good sign. I let my adrenaline stand down a little.
“How are you enjoying the island?” I asked as April Van Oot elbowed up to the bar beside us, wearing a sparkly red dress that hugged her curves. She wobbled on her high heels and shot me a smile. “Hello, dear,” I said to the psychiatrist.
“Hiya, Irma,” she said, grinning in response, looking from me to Boris and giving me a knowing look. She turned back to the bar and flagged down the bartender.
“I have been fishing, if you can believe it,” Boris said to me.
“Fishing? Where?”
“In Frenchman’s Bay. I fish for a time, and I go hiking in the woods. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt, no less. So, fishing and walking.”
“Walking is excellent for the cardiovascular system,” I said. April collected her signature drink—a black velvet—finger-waved at me, and was swept away by the island’s head librarian, Agnes O’Muffin, who started regaling her with photos of her last trip to Tuktoyaktuk. April mouthed help at me, but there was no way to save her. Agnes was a merciless old lady, and I meant that as a compliment.
Boris picked up his drink with his right hand but set it down. The highball glasses at the Club were unusually heavy, and he had an injury to his right hand that interfered with his ability to grasp things. Which sounded like a lot of information for me to have about someone I hadn’t seen in years, unless you were aware I was the one who’d given him that particular injury. That’s what you get for trying to kill me, I’m afraid. In any case, he was a lefty, so it all turned out fine.
He palmed the glass in his other hand and took a contented sip.
I took a moment to study him. We hadn’t seen each other in ages, twenty years, maybe? He did good work, which is how he’d almost gotten me. Tonight he was wearing a navy suit that brought out the flecks of blue in his green eyes. His hair was grey but full and expertly coiffed. His face had laugh lines and a smattering of wrinkles, but they suited him. I searched my memory for a hint of what he was up to these days. Hadn’t I heard a while back that he’d moved into precious gems?
My stomach tightened.
If that intel was correct, he’d only deal with high-end jewellery, I was sure of it, the type they sold at Renée’s. A coincidence? I didn’t believe in them. But if Boris was doing as well for himself as it seemed, would he risk all that to knock over a jewellery store on an island few people had even heard of?
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said.
I met his eyes. I wondered if I could trust him. Right now the Bad Irma was going a bit potty, frankly. Don’t be silly, she whispered. You can’t trust anyone. But maybe that wasn’t true anymore? I trusted people. Not a lot of them, to be sure, but they existed. Some of them were even still alive.
“Where are you staying?” I asked abruptly. I wasn’t sure exactly where that question had come from, but in my experience, most of my outbursts came from my instincts and paid off eventua
lly. Of course, Violet sometimes claimed they were terrifying, but really, you can’t have everything.
“My nephew is renting a house on the other side of the island.”
“Whereabouts?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.
“Red Fox Run,” he said, naming one of the two island gated neighbourhoods, which I personally didn’t approve of. Who intentionally wanted to be locked in a prison? I’d spent some time in a few, and let me tell you, some countries have no manners at all when it comes to incarceration.
“How do you feel about the security at Fox Fun?”
Boris snickered. “The security guard at the gate is, how do you say, a rent-a-cop?”
I nodded.
“She is quite nice, friendly, which of course, is a mistake. But I don’t like to focus on civilian security. They are all utterly unaware of the real state of the world, don’t you agree?”
“I do.” After sipping my drink, I asked, “Who are you working for these days?”
He adjusted his expertly-folded pocket square slightly. “PettiFleur International.”
“How interesting. I’m not familiar with them.” I tried to hide the way my hand had tightened around my glass. It was, indeed, an international company. An international, high-end jewellery company with a reputation for colouring outside the lines.
He put his hand on the bar and reached out to rest it on top of mine. I tried not to think about how good it felt there. He was a handsome man; we were both retired from active duty. It was something to think about. If he hadn’t been involved with the heist at Renée’s, that is. I really didn’t think it would be appropriate to keep company with someone who’d helped blast Scooter into a coma.
“Gemstones,” he said, withdrawing his hand.
“Oh, how interesting.”
His smile curved around his glass as he took a long sip. I took a look at the spot where his pulse was located in his neck. It was thumping merrily along. Was he hiding something? Or just happy to see me?
“Do you sell anything at Renée’s?”