Or we’ll be victims, I thought. I could tell Barack thought the same thing, but he wasn’t willing to say it. Neither of us was. We didn’t know what kind of a mess we were getting into, or how deep the roots of the conspiracy went. But make no mistake: there was a conspiracy, all right.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t found ourselves in strange waters and persevered before. Barack had battled the Clinton machine to capture the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2008. Together, we’d fought our way to the White House against a Republican Party that called Barack every bad name in the book. We were out in the middle of the sea right now, in uncharted waters, with no lifejackets. We were paddling with our hands and feet to stay alive. We didn’t know which direction to swim, because we didn’t know where land was. And yet it all felt very familiar. Still, I had to wonder: with this much chum in the water, how soon before we drew the attention of the sharks?
25
As I stepped into the gas station, the bells on the door handle jingled. The clerk on duty had a handheld plastic fan blowing in her face. She stared at me for a beat, and then went back to watching the fan.
I made a beeline for the men’s room and did my business. As I dried my hands, I read the descriptions of the various papa-stoppers for sale in the restroom vending machine. The big metal case on the wall promised all variety of sensual seductions, from glow-in-the-dark rubbers to studded Tinglers (“for her pleasure”). Take your pick. Just three quarters apiece. I had three quarters, but I wasn’t going to blow them on a Tingler.
Outside the restroom, there was a pay phone. It was the fifth gas station we’d stopped at looking for one. I was beginning to think it would have been easier to contact the police via carrier pigeon. I fingered the rosary around my wrist and prayed to Mary that the phone wasn’t out of service.
I inserted the coins. When the third quarter clunked down, I heard the dial tone. Who says Jesus doesn’t answer small prayers? All you have to do is ask His mother.
I dialed the main police number. No sense tying up 911. Alvin didn’t need EMTs. He needed a forensic pathologist.
A woman answered: “Wilmington PD.”
“I’d like to report an overdose. A death.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want the address?”
“Hold on, let me get a pencil,” she said with a sigh. “Okay, you said someone overdosed? Heroin, pills…?”
“There was a bottle of pills. I didn’t read it.”
“Is the victim breathing?”
“He’s dead. I already told you—he’s dead. So, no, he’s not breathing. Dead men don’t breathe.”
“What’s your name?”
“Joe…Tingler.”
“Okay, Joe. Are you with the victim now?”
“He’s back at his apartment.”
“The victim’s apartment?”
“Yeah, the dead guy. His name is Alvin Harrison. He lives at the Brandywine Hills Apartments. Number twenty-three.”
“Okay. Where are you now, Joe?”
I hung up. Stay on the phone too long, and they can trace the call. Heck, the name of the gas station probably showed up on her caller ID. I figured she’d send a unit to Alvin’s apartment first. They might check up on the gas station caller later, but “Joe Tingler” would be on the road by then.
I returned to the car.
“It’s done,” I said.
“Did you get my protein bar?” Barack asked.
I fumbled for the health bar I’d purchased inside the mini-mart.
Barack accepted it with a skeptical look. “Hmm.”
“Hmm what?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just—this protein blend is pretty low quality. Look at the label. Hydrolyzed collagen? That won’t give you a full spectrum of amino acids.”
“So what are you saying? Did I just waste four dollars on a candy bar?”
Sensing my irritation, Barack unwrapped the bar and took a bite. If the taste bothered him, he was careful to hide it. “Is something bothering you, Joe?”
“You mean, besides the mounting body count?”
“Fair enough.”
“Here’s a crazy idea that just popped into my head: maybe we have it wrong. He was a sixty-something guy, on the verge of retirement, right? Let’s say he found something out about Amtrak—they’ve been cutting corners on passenger safety. That would also explain why he was on his way to see me. He was a whistleblower, and I was the only person he could trust. He had a bunch of documents, so he packed them up and carried them with him. But someone knew. Someone up high. They killed him, then made it look like an overdose.”
“Corporate espionage.”
“Why not?”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s just too far-fetched,” Barack said. “And this is coming from someone who knows state secrets that would scare Ellen straight.” He paused, but neither Steve nor I laughed. “It was a joke. Sexual orientation is biological in nature, determined by your DNA, meaning it would be impossible to—”
“I get it,” I said.
“Do you really think Finn was a whistleblower?”
I sighed. “No. It’s just some fantasy. What’s really bothering me is what I’m going to do if I find out Finn wasn’t some innocent victim. Marked bills, a gym bag filled with who knows what…I keep telling myself that there’s a man’s reputation on the line, but maybe that man isn’t Finn. Maybe that man is me. What happens if I find out Finn wasn’t a good guy? What does that say about me?”
Before Barack could answer, my phone started buzzing.
It was Grace. She was sobbing.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Two men just showed up with a warrant. They’re going through the house right now.”
“Cops?”
“No,” she said. “DEA.”
26
The Donnellys’ home was located in Riverside, one of the roughest neighborhoods in Wilmington. Finn and Darlene had purchased the house in the early seventies, in what was then a post-war community of Irish immigrants. After the nearby Eastlake projects closed, its residents—and problems—spilled over into Riverside. Most of their Irish Catholic neighbors packed up and headed to the suburbs. Not the Donnellys. That wasn’t Finn’s style.
By the time I arrived, the DEA had already split. The woman and child who’d been staying at the Donnellys’ house were also long gone, spooked off by the break-in earlier in the week.
“How long will you be staying in town?” I asked Grace. She was busy stuffing clothes back into a dresser. There was no sense folding them. Everything was headed for the Goodwill, she told me.
“I’ll be in Wilmington the next week or so, while we get Dad’s affairs settled. All the bills paid up. Aunt Jessop and I were cleaning the house, getting it in shape so we could list it—and then the DEA came through here and trashed everything. I sent her back to the hotel for now.”
“I’m sorry you have to deal with this. Did they take anything?”
She shook her head. “I know you used to be a lawyer. I couldn’t get ahold of the family’s attorney, so I just thought…I’m sorry to drag you into this. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“You did the right thing.”
“I don’t understand. What would the Drug Enforcement Agency want with my father?”
I’d read over the warrant already. The Donnellys’ address was indeed listed as the target. The property to be seized, however, was simply listed as anything “illegal to be possessed” or “material evidence to be used in a subsequent criminal prosecution.” Boilerplate text. Still, I recognized the judge who’d signed off on it. The document appeared legit.
“Let’s head into the living room,” I said. “We need to talk.”
She offered me something to drink—water, tea, coffee? Barack and Steve were wa
iting down the street in the Escalade. They could wait a little longer.
“Warm milk, if you have it,” I said.
I took a seat on the couch. She joined me a few minutes later.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the milk. I took a sip—a small one, just to judge how hot it was. Instead, I found myself doing my best not to gag. It was the perfect temperature. Not too cold, not too hot. Something was off, though. “Is this…skim?” I asked.
“Almond milk,” she said. “Is that all right?”
I forced a smile. “Perfect.”
I set the mug on the side table. In as plain terms as I could, I explained to her what the police had found in her father’s pocket. She listened to me, stone-faced, as I told her there was more—a map, with my address on it. That my working theory was that Finn may have had a drug problem and needed my help. I didn’t believe for a second that Finn actually did drugs, but what else did the evidence point to?
I didn’t say anything about the carpet with the possible blood stains. I stuck to the known facts. And I most definitely didn’t say anything about my other theory: foul play. I didn’t want her to lose herself down the same mad road I was on. Not until I knew for sure. Hope was one thing; false hope was another.
“What do the police believe?” she asked.
“You’d have to ask them,” I said.
“They didn’t tell me any of this.”
“Think back to when they talked to you. Did they take a statement?”
She shook her head. “The only cop I’ve spoken to is Detective Caprese.”
“Capriotti?”
“That’s it. Detective Capriotti.”
I sighed. “It may be my fault.”
Her eyes went wide.
“Not what happened to your father, but why they’ve kept you in the dark. The part about my address made it to the Secret Service somehow, and I told them to keep a lid on it. I knew the kind of headlines it would generate. I wanted your family to be able to say goodbye without fighting off reporters left and right. I thought the police would at least ask you about any substance abuse in your father’s past.”
“They may have talked to my aunt,” she conceded.
I rubbed my forehead. Trying to work out the kinks in my brain.
“There wasn’t any, you know. Any substance abuse in his past,” Grace said. “He never even took a—”
“—drink. I know.” I placed a hand on her shoulder. “This has to be a shock.”
“It doesn’t feel real.”
And it never will, I thought. You just learn to live with the feeling.
We stared across the room at the barren walls. When Finn had rented out the house, he’d apparently pulled everything down. All their paintings. There were still a few personal things left, like a metal train on the mantel.
Grace caught me eyeing it.
“Dad was the third railroad worker in our family. The first conductor. It was his life.” She wiped a tear away. “I thought sometimes that he would have been happier with a son, because a boy might have been more into trains. It sounds silly, because I know it’s not true.”
“He was so excited to have a child, especially a daughter. He told me that himself. He called you his little miracle.”
She laughed. “That’s because it took them twenty years of trying.”
“Practice makes perfect.”
The edge of her lips curled up. “When I was thirteen, he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, ‘Anything, so long as it doesn’t have to do with effing trains.’ I was a little rebellious.”
“Just a tad.”
“I was thirteen, but I could see the future. Trains were on their way out. They’d been on their way out since the first Model T rolled off the assembly line. I wasn’t going to jump on board a sinking ship.”
Then she excused herself, and I thought about what she’d said. America had been built with trains. That was a long time ago. The steam train was a relic. Passenger light rail was the future. Or at least it should have been. Every year, fewer and fewer people were on board with the dream. High-speed trains worked in Europe and Japan, but America was a different beast. Without government funding, passenger trains were money-losers. What Americans didn’t realize was that without government funding, so were highways and any other form of transportation, public or private.
When she returned from the bathroom, I thanked her for the almond milk that I hadn’t touched. She walked me to the door. “Before I leave, I was wondering, did the cops return a duffel bag to you? It might have been with your father’s stuff at the motel. A waitress down at the Waffle Depot mentioned it to me, and it’s been bugging me ever since. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Grace shook her head. “Dad had a suitcase at the motel, but that was it. Haven’t seen a duffel bag around here, either. If it was his, it’s missing, just like his watch.”
“His pocket watch?”
She nodded. “The police didn’t find it at the scene of the accident. He never went anywhere without it. We assumed it had been stolen out of his room. It could have been in the duffel bag.” She shrugged. “Maybe the duffel bag was stolen, and the watch was in there?”
“Maybe,” I said. I didn’t want to say any more. “Listen, I should be going. I’ll see if I can figure out the deal with the warrant. In the meantime, stay with your aunt at the hotel, if you can. This house has already been broken into once—”
Through the window slats, I could see a woman walking up the driveway. She had a fine figure, but that’s not the first thing I noticed. What really caught my eye was her waist-length blond hair, pulled back into a ponytail, swinging behind her as she approached the door.
27
I pushed Grace up against the wall, behind the door.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I shushed her with a finger to my lips. How the woman out front had slipped past Barack, I had no idea. Surely he would have recognized her from the Heart of Wilmington. This time, she was wearing a bit more than a towel—a white pantsuit and stiletto heels. But it was her.
The woman’s heels click-clacked on the steps, and the doorbell rang.
Grace and I stood silent, flattened against the wall.
The doorbell rang again.
I looked around for something that I could use as a weapon. No coat rack, no umbrella stand, nothing. I removed one of my sandals. I wasn’t planning to attack the woman—I’d never hit a woman in my life—but I had to be ready if she went on the offensive. She’d broken into the motel room. If she tried breaking into the Donnellys’ home…
The doorbell rang again. She wasn’t giving up.
“See what she wants,” I whispered to Grace.
“I don’t understand—”
“Just open the door. I won’t let anything bad happen.” I raised my sandal with both hands, ready to swing it like a baseball bat.
Grace undid the deadbolt and opened the door a crack. “Can I help you?”
The woman’s voice was low and muffled, and I couldn’t make out a word. Whoever she was, she wasn’t selling Girl Scout cookies. They only sell them January through March.
“Come in,” Grace said, opening the door wide and pinning me against the wall.
The woman stepped inside. I couldn’t see her, but I could smell her. The cloying scent of strawberries and bananas filled the room. I recognized her perfume as one I’d bought for Jill many years back. She never wore it, thank God.
Grace started to close the door, and the woman removed her coat. She turned to look for a coat rack and instead came face to face with me—a man with a raised sandal, prepared to swing away.
She hurled her suit jacket. It caught me right in the face and everything went dark. I dropped my sandal, scrambling to pull off the jacket, but I wasn’t fast enough. The woman started be
ating me like a piñata. I threw up my hands, shielding my face. Grace was shouting something I couldn’t understand. I pulled away the suit jacket just in time to see the pointed heel of a black stiletto coming at me. It cracked me on the cheekbone. Remarkably, I stood my ground, bracing myself against the wall. One more whack of that heel and I knew I’d be licked for sure.
“You again!” the woman said. She lowered her heel, but didn’t put it back on. Not yet.
Grace stepped between us and handed me a business card. “This is Abbey.”
I read the card. “Abbey Todd. Corporate Risk Investigator, Delmar Investigations. Medical claims, property claims…and life insurance claims.”
28
I pressed the package of frozen vegetables to my face. The chill went down to the bone. She’d gotten me good. Too bad I couldn’t ice my wounded ego.
We were sitting on opposite sides of the couch, a wide gulf between us. My almond milk sat untouched on the table next to me.
“Perhaps it would be best if Mr. Biden and I talked in private,” Abbey said.
“I’m not leaving you two alone,” Grace said. “Not until somebody tells me what that”—and here she pointed to the door—“was all about.”
“Mistaken identity,” I said.
“Who were you going to hit with your shoe?” Grace asked.
“It’s complicated.”
Abbey glanced over at me. “It’s not very complicated, is it, Mr. Biden? Would you like me to leave so you can explain to Ms. Donnelly what you were doing at her father’s motel room the night of the funeral?”
“What’s she talking about, Joe?”
I sighed. “I didn’t want to get into this—not today—but we might as well. I don’t believe what happened to your father was an accident. I don’t believe that he in any way voluntarily stepped onto those tracks, high or otherwise. I believe he may have been—What I mean to say is, I believe something…untoward may have happened to him.”
Grace threw her hands over her mouth.
Hope Never Dies Page 12