She had spent over a year stalking her father by the time she finally approached him. “Can you imagine,” she said, “after all this time, he said he wanted to get to know me.” Wrentham was sounding like less of a rotten, philandering dad. When he refused to simply write her a check, she devised the plan to steal and sell the formula that her mother had been telling her about since Emma was a little girl.
“The formula. God, I heard about that so many times I thought everyone’s father had a formula. I knew what a formula was when most kids my age still thought it was something you gave to babies.” She took a deep breath and went on. “Last summer I contrived to meet Garland Bleimeister,” she said. “It wasn’t hard.”
She said she’d zeroed in on Wrentham’s weak-willed employee, a sweet, malleable boy with a few addictions of his own—food and poker. She convinced Garland to steal the formula.
“He’d already been doing it. Sort of.”
For the past three years whenever Garland took the professor’s produce to market, he also stashed a couple of contraband containers of the pest repellent.
“He sold a concentrated solution for a hundred dollars a jug out of the back of his car.”
“To consumers?” I asked.
“No. To one person. I don’t know who. The buyer diluted and repackaged it. Garland didn’t think my father would ever find out.”
“And it wasn’t much of a leap to go from stealing a few jugs to stealing the formula,” I said.
She nodded.
“He would use part of the money to pay off his gambling debts and he thought we’d use the rest to go away. I just didn’t plan on things turning out the way they did.”
“Were you really going to go away with him?” I asked.
She let out a sigh. “I honestly don’t know.”
When Garland didn’t show up for their Thursday dinner meeting, Emma thought he’d gotten cold feet, and she resolved to go through with the plan herself. She didn’t know he was already dead, and the buyers didn’t know Garland had a partner until Emma contacted them.
“Then I saw the paper with the news that Garland’s body had been found. Once I realized they’d killed him I just wanted out of here, but I needed to make sure there was no way for them to connect me to him. I didn’t care about the formula. I could go back to my father anytime—as long as I was alive. I tried to make people think Jamal was Garland’s partner.” It was the first time she looked or sounded contrite. “I just needed to check Garland’s bag. He had said you probably still had it and I wanted to make sure there was nothing in it that connected me to him.”
“So was the magic formula in there?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Garland had it on a flash drive. He kept it with him always. Maybe deep down he knew it was the only thing that kept me sticking around.”
“So you didn’t even have the flash drive and were going to try to make a deal?” Her expression barely changed, as if to say, yeah, so?
“Did you take the bag and toss it in the sarcophagus?”
“No. I was going to go back to the convention center for it, but I got nervous. I started to wonder if Garland had talked to you about me. That’s why I called you and pretended to be Cindy. To check you out and see what you knew.”
“I’m the least of your problems. You do know these people probably also killed a janitor at the convention center.”
“Okay,” Lucy said. She stood up and slapped her hands on her thighs. “Now we call the cops. Killer shoes, killer apps. These I get. Real killers, no.”
“Let’s just hear the rest of Emma’s story,” I said. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
“I’m scared. Now the people we approached keep contacting me.”
“You’ve still never met them?”
She shook her head. She insisted she didn’t know their real names either. They went by Mr. and Mrs. Rose.
“How did you and Garland hook up with them?”
“He said he met the man at some market where he used to bring the produce. They want the formula bad and want to meet me.”
“Just don’t go,” Lucy said. “There’s a concept. Don’t go into the deserted building. Don’t go into the woods at night. Don’t open the door when the scary guy is coming up the stairs. It’s simple.”
“You don’t understand. What am I supposed to do—never open the door again? They know who I am now.”
“How’d they find you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.… Maybe there was something in Garland’s bag. Who knows? I got a text. I thought it was from Gar. It was his number.”
So whoever it was had Garland’s phone. I called Stancik and got plugged into his voice mail. Then I called the precinct to see if anyone knew where he was.
The desk sergeant said he was in New Jersey chasing down a lead; after that he was heading to some fancy-schmancy party in Westchester. “Stan’s probably leaving us to start a private security company for rich people.”
“Is Labidou with him?” He was. That meant it wasn’t purely a social call.
“Emma, where are you supposed to meet Mr. and Mrs. Rose?”
She showed me the address. “Looks like we’re all going to the same garden party.”
“Okay if I join you?” J. C. asked.
“Sure. You can remind us to watch our backs.”
Fifty-seven
It was a tight fit in the Jeep with me, Lucy, Emma, J. C., and Spade and Archer. One sharp turn and I could skewer a passenger.
“Someone rest your hand on that thing so it doesn’t flop around too much,” I said.
“I’ll do it,” J. C. said. “I feel naked going into a questionable situation without my iron bar anyway.” It was rare to hear from a woman who missed her weapon.
A phone rang, and three women fumbled in their bags. I stuck to the driving. The party had started without us, but with as many guests as Jean Moffitt invited I didn’t think we’d be noticed or reprimanded if we arrived fashionably late.
The phone kept ringing. It was mine. Lucy retrieved it from my bag, pushed Answer, and held it to my ear so I could keep driving.
“I just landed.”
I’d almost forgotten about Wrentham. I got off the phone and said nothing to the others but Lucy remembered that he was flying into the Westchester airport.
“Okay. We have to make a stop and we’re gonna need to make room for another passenger back there.” The airport was thirty minutes away as long as I didn’t make a wrong turn. Lucy quietly reset the GPS.
We stopped for gas and a much-needed pee break. Emma and I made an uneasy truce and positioned Spade and Archer on the roof of the Jeep while the others went to the restroom. We wedged an old fleece jacket that I kept in the car for emergencies underneath the piece to keep the noise level down and to prevent the sculpture from bending. Then we threw a tarp over the whole thing and attached it with bungee cords.
“I hope this works. I’d hate for it to fly off on the highway when it’s not even paid for.”
“Why do you have so many of these things?” Emma asked, holding one of the cords as if it were a snake.
“After duct tape, a bungee cord is the single most useful thing you can buy for a dollar. Sometimes two for a dollar. C’mon, get in the car. There’s something I have to tell you.”
Fifteen minutes later J. C. and Lucy emerged from the service station bathroom newly primped. J. C.’s black sweatshirt was loosely thrown over her shoulders and an unnecessary but fashionable belt hung around her slim waist over a white cotton tank top that they’d just bought, three to a pack, in the mini-mart. Her lips were slightly pinker than they’d been before.
“Is that what you two have been doing? Shopping and playing with makeup? Jeez, I could have used some help here.”
“Where’s Emma?”
I pointed to the median, where Emma was balanced on a concrete block clutching an unlit highway light.
“How’d she get over there?” Lucy asked.
“I activated the ejector seat. Whaddaya think? She ran off when I told her we were picking up her father at the airport. I don’t know where she thought she was going, but she realized pretty quickly there was nowhere to go. She’s on foot, on the highway, and now she’s paralyzed with fear and can’t move.
“All right,” I said. “There’s not that much traffic. One of us just has to bring her back.” But the service station was around a slight turn and that made it dangerous and difficult to see oncoming traffic for more than a few seconds—especially if the vehicle was doing more than sixty, which was a good bet on this road at this hour. J. C. would have volunteered if I’d let her, but I wasn’t about to.
“Hey,” Lucy said, “I just met the girl. I like to save my infrequent acts of heroism for people I’ve known more than forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll go. There’s something else you can do.” I looked around the service station for traffic cones but didn’t see any. Improvising, I unwound Lucy’s long red scarf and handed it to her. “See that tree right near the curve in the road? Stand on something and tie this to the highest branch you can reach. I don’t need them to stop, but people will slow down a bit when they see it. At least I hope they do. But don’t stay there. You’ll get killed.”
“Great, if one of them hits me, that’ll really slow things down for you.”
“Not necessary. I’ll go get her after the first car that slows down and sees me.”
Lucy ran to the far end of the service area. She didn’t give herself enough credit for bravery. She clambered over a large tree of heaven ailanthus and attached the scarf. She gave me the high sign. Two cars passed, but only the first had slowed down. Not good.
“What can I do?” J. C. said. I was running low on ideas.
“In my truck I’ve got a big yellow lantern.” I told her to go down to the end of the service area where Lucy was still waiting for more instructions. “Just click it on and off a lot so drivers will know something’s up. I don’t need that much time.”
“You mean like Morse code?”
“Do you know anybody who really knows Morse code? Besides, even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to read it going seventy miles an hour. Just flash it a bunch of times. Wait a minute. I have a better idea.” I ran to the Jeep, drove to the end of the service area, and backed the car over to the side of the road as close as I dared to the highway. I put the hazard lights on. Between the red scarf, the hazard lights, and J. C.’s faux Morse code, anyone who didn’t slow down would have had to be crazy.
I ran back to the spot opposite Emma and waited for my chance. Yes, there was honking and some name calling, but it only lasted a few minutes. I bolted into the road and yanked Emma back to the service area. Lucy drove the car back to our end of the parking lot.
Fifty-eight
“Gee, Emma, we’re going north, not south. Get in the car.” She did as she was told. We crawled down to the on-ramp and got there just in time to see Lucy’s silk scarf fluttering in the breeze and ultimately flying away like a giant bird.
“You owe me big-time.”
“That was a five-dollar purchased-on-the-street-from-a-Senegalese-guy scarf and you know it.”
Lucy and J. C. were an impromptu tag team, explaining to Emma that no matter what her father had done, she should at least hear him out. I didn’t know if it was working on her, but the brainwashing was getting to me.
“Okay,” I said. “I know you both have Emma’s best interests at heart, but she’s a big girl. Apart from the fact that she did just run into traffic—which is a major no-no at any age, by the way—she’s a grown woman. She knows adults make mistakes. She’s even made a few herself recently. If he can forgive her, maybe she can forgive him. Maybe they can patch things up, but it’s up to them, not us. So, lay off.”
“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “Really. I’ve never met women like you before. You’re amazing. You’re so normal.”
We rode in silence for the rest of the way, until we reached airport arrivals. When we pulled up to an attractive, older man with a thick mustache and longish gray hair Emma burst into tears. She jumped out of the car and ran to hug him.
“I can definitely see the appeal,” Lucy said, watching the reunion from inside the Jeep. “We still need to confirm the private plane business, but I hope she tells him how amazing we are. The normal part will be harder to sell.”
J. C. leaned forward from the backseat. “I don’t disagree with you, dear.”
* * *
Wrentham and Emma squeezed into the backseat and we resumed the drive to Jean Moffitt’s. The iron gates guarding her home opened automatically, revealing a small table manned by uniformed staff to welcome guests.
“I think I own that jacket,” Lucy said, looking at a parking attendant.
“You do. I just tried it on and it made me look like a busboy. That’s why I borrowed this one instead.”
“Please don’t tie that one to a tree. I didn’t pay for it myself, but it would have been very expensive if I had.”
Valet parking gave me a ticket and a map of the gardens and grounds. An official greeter, also in black pants and a white jacket, looked for our names on his clipboard. I was listed with two guests, but Lucy exercised some of her famous charm and it didn’t matter that I showed up with four. Wrentham, Emma, and J. C. showed them IDs, and they took our names.
“Has a Mr. Stancik arrived?” I asked.
Another quick perusal of the guest list. “I don’t see him on my list—oh, wait, there he is. A last-minute addition. He hasn’t arrived yet, madam.”
I asked about Reiger and Shepard, and they were both in attendance. Our group walked a few steps onto the terrace and we were surrounded by offers of food and drink.
“We are perfectly safe,” I said. “This is a huge party. All we have to do now is stick together and smoke out Mr. Rose. The police are on their way. Just don’t go off anywhere on your own.” I scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Turning around, I realized J. C. and I were already on our own. Lucy had followed a tray of hors d’oeuvres to a massive buffet overlooking a large pond. Emma and her father had disappeared.
“You did tell them we were perfectly safe,” J. C. said.
“And they listened to me? I was trying to make them feel better. We’re on a ninety-acre estate. Someone could die here and not be found for years.”
J. C. promised to stick close and we set out to find Kristi Reynolds, who might lead us to Scott Reiger, who I’d recognize but J. C. wouldn’t. “Look for a salmon-colored shirt,” I said, “he’s been wearing them all week. It has his company name on the breast pocket, SlugFest.”
Guests spilled over from the sunrooms to the terraces to at least three different levels of the property. The area was almost as crowded as the convention center had been. Spotlights surrounded what the map called the Great Pond, and their reflections glittered in the water like the phosphorescence you sometimes see on the beaches in the Caribbean.
“Ms. Holliday.” It was Jensen. “Mrs. Moffitt would like to welcome you and your guest personally.” I had a feeling he’d said that two hundred and fifty times that evening, but I didn’t care—he made it sound genuine and it was classy. He led us through a gaggle of people clustered around Mrs. M.’s chair, and we shook the papery hand and exchanged a few generic pleasantries.
“Tell me about your guest. Do we have the honor of meeting the famous artist herself?” J. C. did look artsy in her gussied-up sweat suit. I said no and left her to explain who she was. I took my drink to the fringes of the terrace, looking for the SlugFest man and the Bambi-no couple, when I felt something squarish and hard pressing into my back. I stiffened.
“Okay, where’s your badge?” Rolanda Knox playfully jabbed me a second time with her cell phone.
“That’s hysterical. You’re lucky I didn’t swing around and knock you off this terrace.”
“Are you surprised?” She entwined two fingers on her right hand. “Mrs. M. and I are l
ike this. It’s my third year.”
I hadn’t expected to see Rolanda at the party but I wasn’t unhappy about it. “I’m glad you’re here. They’re here,” I said.
“Who—poltergeists?”
“All of them. The vandals, the blackmailers, the killers.”
“You left out the cyborgs, the Visigoths, and the Sharks and the Jets.”
“They may be here, too, I’ll have to get back to you on them. I just arrived.”
I gave Rolanda the shorthand version of the previous three hours and told her to keep her eyes peeled for Stancik and Labidou, who should have already been there. Off to one side I saw Scott Reiger and Kristi Reynolds locked in conversation. If Rolanda and I hadn’t heard them going at it the previous night, we might have thought they were getting on, but we’d heard the vicious things she could say with a smile. Lucy swung by with two glasses of something.
“Hello, hello. Take this. Sorry, I would have brought three if I had known.” She looked up into Rolanda’s face and the breezy demeanor evaporated.
“It’s okay,” Rolanda said. “You don’t need a badge for this party.”
“We’re watching Scott Reiger,” I said. “He’s one of the two guys I think could be our man. Out of nowhere he comes up with a perfect pest repellent? Not a scientist—not even a gardener. Remarkable.”
“Two years ago that sleazebag was hawking fat-burner pills eventually banned by the FDA,” Rolanda said.
“How do you know?”
“I overheard one of those girls in the ugly pink shirts. She also told her friend that Reiger asked her if she wanted to come into the convention center after hours to make a few extra bucks.”
“Sex?” Lucy asked.
“That’s what the kid thought, but Reiger said it was something else. She thought it sounded fishy, so she passed.”
Two people had pushed the cart that we thought had held Garland’s body. Was Reiger in on it with Kristi? One of his employees? Or was it Shepard and his wife? The long-suffering Lorraine?
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