With Jeri dead, I was a suspect, which is the way it works. It’s often the husband or boyfriend, although the boyfriend rarely has occasion to murder a presidential candidate and several others while doing away with the girlfriend. Reinhart’s and Wexel’s deaths were a shroud of mist over everything.
With Allie dead, Sarah was a suspect, which is also the way it works, although Reinhart was a good-sized wrench in that theory as well. I was beginning to like him better for all the muddy water he was churning up. If I’d still had his hand I might have shaken it. The FBI went through Sarah’s apartment with combs and shop vacs as Ma thought they might, but Ma’s details held up.
I stayed with Sarah that night and we comforted each other. She tried to study but had to give it up. We didn’t eat a lot. We watched a movie that barely made it as far as our retinas. By nine p.m. we were back in bed, still close, clinging to each other, and I finally went to sleep, so tired that I didn’t even dream.
At ten p.m. the following evening we walked into the Green Room. Ma was there, alone at a table, working on a glass of wine with the glow of a cell phone on her face. She glanced up when we came in, then went back to her phone.
As directed, Sarah and I sat in back, thirty feet from her. I went to the bar. It was O’Roarke’s night off. The barkeep was a woman, Ella Glover, twenty-eight, dark hair, good-looking, maybe fifteen pounds overweight, which is nothing in this day and age. She smiled, said hi. She’d been working there for eight months. I brought back a Tequila Sunrise for Sarah, a Wicked Ale for myself. We sat where we could keep an eye on the entrance and talked quietly.
Twenty minutes later, Ma came over and sat at our table.
“I think we’re okay,” she said. “If anyone comes in and gives us a second look, let’s meet tomorrow at the Fireside Lounge in the Peppermill, ten p.m., same as tonight.”
Then Ma dropped the bomb: Mary Odermann had boarded a flight late that afternoon in Vegas, headed for Orly Airport in France with a change of flights in Denver. For a woman who’d died two years ago, Mary really got around.
“Already gone,” I said, thinking that Mercedes SUV was going to end up in a Vegas chop shop.
“But not forgotten.”
“So now I’ve got to go to France,” I said. “Or wherever she goes once she gets there.”
“You and me both, bucko,” Ma said. “And me,” Sarah put in.
Ma looked at her. “Not sure about you, hon. I appreciate the thought, but it’s gonna be a pretty rough trip. In and out, fast as we can get it done.”
“I loved Jeri, too. I can help. Not with . . . with whatever you’re going to do, but finding her, maybe following her if we have to.”
Ma looked at her, finally nodded. “It’ll take some doin’. First thing, none of us can go under our own names, so we’ll need fake IDs, passports, credit cards, the whole nine yards, and that’ll take time and money. I know a guy, which’ll help. We can cut the time down, but that’ll mean the money will go up. A lot.”
“Whatever it takes,” I said.
“You and I can go as mother and son,” Ma said without batting an eye. “I still don’t think Sarah should go. I want you to think it over. Seriously think it over. Both of you. What we’re talkin’ about here is murder, even if I don’t see it that way, down in my bones.”
“Not murder,” I said. “Justice.”
“You’re not gonna get the authorities to back you on that. We do this quietly and do it right, or we end up in prison for a very long time. And you”—she looked at me—“are a special problem.”
“My forte, Ma.”
She smiled, not something she’d done lately. “Half the people in the country know your face. You’ll need a damn good disguise and it’ll have to be on your passport, driver’s license, everything.”
“Whatever it takes,” I said again.
Ma shrugged. “Money. That’s what it’ll take. Maybe more than you can afford. And,” she said, reaching into a big purse, “we’ll need these.” She hauled out three inexpensive cell phones.
She handed one to me, one to Sarah. “Burners. Anonymous, can’t be traced to you or to anyone. All they are is a number, not a name, and I paid for ’em with cash, three different Walmarts. This is how we’ll contact each other while we’re doing this thing.”
She handed out prepaid phone cards, good for three months. We scratched off silver coatings, input numbers, and got our phones up and running. We traded numbers and put them into our contact lists, without names. I was “A,” Ma was “B,” Sarah was “C.” Sneaky, but that wasn’t the end of it.
“If your phone rings,” Ma said, “answer it with ‘hi,’ nothing else. Wait until one of us identifies himself before saying anything more than that. That way if any of us loses a phone or has it stolen or confiscated, none of us gets caught.”
“Spooky,” Sarah said.
“Yep,” Ma said. “As of now, we’re off the grid. We’re goin’ black, people. And you—” she looked at me. “You’re gonna need that beard like I said, so don’t shave.”
Six days after Jeri was pulled out of the mineshaft, she was cremated. That was not a good day for me. It wasn’t a good day for any of us. Jeri’s mother was at the service, and her brother Ron and his wife, Brittany. And Ma, Sarah, me, and two dozen others. I got up and said a few words in a broken voice, and Ma said something, and then Ron.
When it was over, Ron and I got together with Ma and figured out what to do with Jeri’s house. Ron wanted me to have it—if I wanted it. He said I had made Jeri happier in the two months we were together than he’d ever seen her. He didn’t want to profit from her death. He had cosigned on the loan when she bought the place. All he wanted was for the new mortgage to be in my name alone.
Ma got her lawyer on it, a wiry, gray-haired old guy by the name of Haldan Matz. I gave him power of attorney to sell the house on Ralston Street and purchase Jeri’s house, work out the financing, appraisal, and the title stuff, hire a realtor for the Ralston house, set up automatic payments on Jeri’s place. I didn’t have the heart or the time to do it. For thirty-five hundred dollars, Haldan and his staff handled all that mind-numbing detail. All I did was take everything I wanted out of the Ralston house and pile it into a U-Haul, stash it in storage. There wasn’t a lot of stuff, but I kept the couch with the odor of mom’s bulldog, Brutus, forever embedded in its fibers. It was the world’s most uncomfortable couch, but it had history. I thought maybe I’d ship it to Mom in Hawaii, get back at her for naming me Mortimer and sending me all those anti-IRS books. The Ralston house also had history, but its time had come. In its place I would have something closer to Jeri, a house with a real office and a home gym where, in July, she’d tossed me around like a sack of rice—how could I let that go to someone who wouldn’t appreciate it like I would? It also had a real kitchen and an almost-new king-size bed, not used nearly enough.
We didn’t tell Ron we knew who’d murdered Jeri. If we had, he would’ve wanted in on what was going to happen to Julia and I didn’t want him to put his life on the line like that. I didn’t want Sarah’s life on that line either, but she refused to back down. She’d lost both Jeri and Allie. Allie had been cremated a day after Jeri. Ma, Sarah, and I had driven down to Aunt Alice’s house in San Francisco for the memorial service. Aunt Alice in a peasant blouse and an ankle-length tie-dyed broomstick skirt was everything Sarah had described when we were in Tonopah. She and I got along like old friends. And I met Dylan and his girlfriend of two years, Karen, and Sarah’s parents, Barb and Gerald, back from Hong Kong and Taiwan where they’d been on another buying trip. Ravi couldn’t make it. He was off playing Navy, but his two kids and his wife, Debbie, were there. We had a lot of wine and good eats, but I can’t say it was a happy occasion.
Ma’s guy, Ernie Saladin, aka “Doc,” short for “Documents,” came through. The “paper” was superb, better than first-rate. We had passports, MasterCards and Visas, driver’s licenses, Costco cards, AAA, social security card
s, a few others. I even had a Best Buy card with credit for purchases on it. Our passports had been stamped in several places and had a slightly worn look. It took ten days and cost thirty-six thousand dollars and took some underhanded money shuffling to keep it from the IRS, but I knew how to keep the IRS in the dark since I knew what did and didn’t work.
Doc was based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ma had overnighted a thumb drive to him with high-resolution photos of us. I was older. My hair was almost white, cut in a modified flat top, a style that had gone out of style decades ago, but I was an old codger and it suited me. I had the start of a beard. I had deep wrinkles at the corners of my eyes, bags under my eyes, glasses with heavy black frames and an actual prescription in case anyone looked through them. The glasses gave my eyes fits, but Ma said nonprescription eyeglasses are a dead giveaway. I only had to wear them for photos and going through customs, things like that, so a short-lived eye-watering blurry world was worth it. I had a nonprescription second pair stashed in my carry-on bag. And I had a big mole below my left eye to one side that pulled a person’s eyes off the centerline of my face, keeping their eyes off my nose and lips. I wore a three-piece Salvation Army suit and a truly ugly tie, things I’d never worn while working for Uncle’s Gestapo—well, an ugly tie was standard with the IRS so there’s that. I wasn’t Ma’s son, either. I was her husband, sixty-two years old. We were Mr. and Mrs. Stephen T. Brewer. T for Thomas. Ma was Martha, but I called her Marti.
And through it all, Ma tracked Mary Odermann’s credit card into Paris and into restaurants and museums and bars and clothing stores. And, most especially, into Hotel L. Empire, and a few days later, into Boutique Hotel Konfidentiel on Rue de l’Arbre where it looked as if she’d settled in.
And then, seventeen days after Jeri was killed, we were ready to go.
“Marti” and I flew out together as husbands and wives often do. We flew out of San Francisco. Sarah drove to Las Vegas and was on a flight that left a day later. Sarah was Ashley Gilley. All of us were going to Paris for pleasure, not business. What that pleasure was, I didn’t specify and neither did Ma, but it wasn’t sightseeing.
The flights were long but uneventful. The food was marginal, as airline food has become. Customs in France was no problem. The officials weren’t even rude, which was a surprise. Steve and Marti sailed on through, caught a shuttle into Paris proper, and settled in at Boutique Hotel Konfidentiel. Ashley arrived a day later and got a room not far away at a hotel called France Louvre on Rue de Rivoli.
We met at noon in the lobby of the Konfidentiel the day after Sarah arrived and made plans. Ma was still able to track “Mary’s” credit card, so we knew Julia was still around. Asking the hotel staff for her room number didn’t seem like a splendid idea given what we were there to do, so we began the process of stalking.
Ma and I hung around the lobby of the Konfidentiel. I was an old guy who read newspapers, mostly The Connexion, which was in English. In French, I might’ve held the damn thing upside down. I also thumbed through magazines. Ma moved around some, into the hotel’s restaurants and the gift shop, keeping a sharp eye out. Julia, of course, wasn’t going to look at all like the wife of a murdered presidential candidate so we had to give women a close look without appearing to do so.
Sarah had been to Julia’s house in Reno, asking for water, so she wore a curly black hairpiece that spilled halfway down her back, dark glasses, bright red lipstick, sandals, a long black skirt, an ivory shirt, and a lightweight navy blue jacket. She circulated more widely, outside the hotel and into nearby shops and restaurants that Julia had frequented. She didn’t stray far, but she covered some likely ground.
It took only two days.
At three thirty of the second day, Ma watched as Julia came off an elevator—a lift—strolled through the lobby and out the door without a word to anyone. She was a blond with bouffant hair under a wide-brim hat, sunglasses, a tight-lipped, standoffish look that didn’t invite conversation.
Ma got on the phone. Sarah answered with “hi,” and Ma said, “Yellow dress, cream sweater, big hat, front door.” At the door she looked out and said, “West on Rue Saint Honoré,” and Sarah said, “Got it.” Julia didn’t make it sixty yards from the hotel before Sarah was on her tail.
Ma’s job was to ride the elevator up with Julia once she made it back to the hotel. She settled into a chair in the lobby beside me to wait. She didn’t fidget, tap her foot, anything; like a spider waiting for meat, she just waited. I felt more like a black mamba, wanting to strike, to sink in poison-filled fangs.
Sarah followed Julia from fifty to a hundred yards back. They went west on Rue Saint Honoré to Rue du Louvre, then to Rue de Rivoli, south to the Louvre. Julia didn’t go into the museum. She kept on to the Seine, then along the Quai du Louvre, turned north again on Rue du Pont Neuf where she sat at a tiny outside table and took her time with an espresso as people passed by on the sidewalk. Then she wandered north on Pont Neuf, pausing to examine colorful clothing in shop windows, entered a few of them, came out of one with a bag that held a newly purchased something, and finally reached Rue Saint Honoré again where she turned a corner onto Rue de l’Arbre and headed back to the Konfidentiel.
Sarah phoned it in.
I saw Julia come in. I wanted to kill her then and there, but that wasn’t the plan. My fingers tingled as the woman who’d murdered Jeri crossed the lobby, paused for half a minute at the main desk, then continued on to the elevators where Ma was standing, looking at a row of illuminated numbers that indicated on which floor the elevator cage was at the moment.
Julia hit a button for a different elevator. When the door opened, Ma got on with her. Ma was old, harmless, overweight, an old woman in a hairdo that had gone out of style twenty years ago. Ma didn’t say anything to her. She let Julia hit a button for a floor—fifth floor—and Ma smiled, then stood at the back of the cage and watched the numbers change.
When the door opened, Ma followed Julia out then stumbled slightly and dropped her purse. She bent over stiffly and picked it up, then slowly ambled down the hallway behind Julia. Julia opened the door to room 508, and just like that, we had her.
There wasn’t any point in delaying. We knew right where Julia was, and we didn’t want to become fixtures in the place. We had a job to do and we were either going to do it or we weren’t.
I was ready, I knew what to do, but cold sweat formed under my armpits all the same. Now it felt different. Now it was real. This might be justice, but it was also murder. I was not a murderer, at least not yet. Suddenly I wondered if I could do this.
Then I saw Jeri again in the back of that SUV, heard the blast of Julia’s Glock, saw the impossible spray of Jeri’s brains on the back of that front seat, and I was ready again, feeling the sick fury deep in my chest, gripping my heart.
My phone chirped. I answered. Ma said, “Five,” and hung up. I got on an elevator and took it to the fifth floor. Ma was waiting by the elevator when I came out. We walked down the hallway and she pointed wordlessly to room 508.
“You okay?” she asked.
I pressed my teeth together hard to keep them from chattering. “Yes,” I hissed.
“Close your eyes,” Ma said. “Visualize those first few seconds one more time.” Lord, she was tough. We’d talked it over, discussed how to do it. If I didn’t do it, Ma probably would. At least she would try. I gave it a moment, eyes closed, then nodded to her.
Ma gave me a small towel from her purse. I wrapped it around my fist to make a kind of boxing glove. I stood to one side of the door, out of sight of the peephole.
Ma knocked softly. “Mademoiselle?”
A kind of grunt came from within.
“Mademoiselle Odermann?” She spoke English with a heavy French accent. “I have a bill from a shop on Rue Saint Honoré. They say the charge slip was not properly signed.”
That had to work. If it didn’t, we might never get a chance like this again.
But it did. The door clicked, op
ened an inch, and I hit it with the meat of my shoulder, not too hard, not hard enough to make a lot of noise, but it knocked Julia a few feet into the room. I went in fast, no thought now, just working on what I’d visualized a hundred times in the past two weeks. Before she could cry out I hit her in the solar plexus, a kind of uppercut that paralyzed her breathing, not too hard, but hard enough. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened like a fish, but she couldn’t make a sound. She spun away, tried to run, and I grabbed her from behind, pinned her arms at her sides, lifted her off her feet and carried her into the room.
Ma shut the door behind us, then went past me and stripped the duvet off the bed, spread it out on the floor.
Julia writhed in my arms, but she still couldn’t breathe. A hit like I’d given her would make her feel like she was drowning. She wouldn’t be able to get air for nearly a full minute.
I stretched her out on the floor on the edge of the cover, then held her arms at her sides as I rolled her into the duvet with her head out, swaddling her in a cocoon, trapping her arms. I rolled her twice and left her faceup, straddled her, and looked into her eyes—vicious, evil eyes, devil’s eyes—the eyes of a black widow spider.
“You killed Jeri,” I said quietly. “You murdered my love.”
She tried to cry out, but couldn’t make a sound. Ma got a plastic bag from her purse and handed it to me. I pulled it over Julia’s head, twisted the open end around Julia’s neck, and held it there.
Then we waited.
Julia squirmed. The thin plastic huffed in and out a little. She made muffled animal noises.
At first I felt sick, then elated. Finally I felt nothing.
Julia struggled, tried to kick, but the duvet had her wrapped like a spider might wrap a fly. I sat on her as she rocked from side to side, but it didn’t take long before her squirming grew less intense.
“You got her?” Ma said. Her voice was hard, not a tremor in it. Her eyes were like shiny black stones in her face.
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