Annie on the Lam: A Christmas Caper

by Jennifer Archer

  “I’m not trying to—”

  “It’s not a way to prove something to yourself, either. You may be angry with your father—”

  “I never said that.”

  “You don’t have to. It’s obvious, and if I’d been kept in the dark all my life about something I deserved to know, I’d be angry, too. But, here’s the deal. I’m not sure where to take you, and I’m not even sure the airport’s an option. Willis didn’t buy one word I said. If I were him, I’d be checking the airports for you.” Joe exhaled noisily. “He’ll probably be paying my mother a visit and questioning Dino again, so we can’t go to either of them. In fact, I’m going to tell my mom to stay with a friend of the family for a while.”

  “I’m so sorry I got you involved in this. Now your family…” Annie closed her eyes. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to help me anymore. All I ask is that you don’t go to the police for a while. At least give me some time to look through the files.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting that I was involved in this long before I ever met you?”

  She hadn’t forgotten. And the irony of that still didn’t escape her, either.

  “I’m not going to leave you on your own, Annie. Especially not now, not that I ever would have.” Joe turned on the engine and slowly eased away from the curb. “Randy Willis was part of that task force I told you about, the one I was working with to catch Reno.”

  “You’re kidding?” Annie shuddered as warm air blowing from the vents up front found its way back to her.

  “He didn’t like me because I’d worked undercover to target some dirty cops.”

  “If Willis was honest, why would that bother him?”

  “He wasn’t the only one on the force it bothered. Some cops believe you stand up for each other, cover for each other, no matter what. They have it out for any officer who goes against that.”

  “Do you think Willis’s association with Harry might be involved with what happened to Emma Billings?”

  “It might be a long shot but, yeah, that’s crossed my mind.”

  As they moved along the road, Annie watched the city lights pass through the window. After a long stretch of silence, she said, “You think I could sit up now?”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Thank you. I feel like a fugitive.”

  “Maybe that’s because you are,” he said dryly.

  Her laugh sounded jittery. “Wait’ll I tell my friend Sara. She’ll never believe it.”

  “Don’t make light of this, Annie. The repercussions you might face for stealing those files are no small thing. Neither is the fact that I’m aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

  Annie felt a slow sinking sensation in her chest. “I prefer the word ‘borrowed’, if you don’t mind. I borrowed Harry’s files. I’ll gladly give them back after I have the information I need. Anyway, I’d rather not think about possible repercussions.”

  “We have to think about them. Look, if we do find something on Landau, it might at least put you in a better position. What we need is some place out of the way where we can hole up until we work all this out.”

  “My aunt Tess has a house in the Catskills. It belonged to one of her old boyfriends. He left it to her in his will.”

  “He died?”

  “He was a really old old boyfriend. Especially considering that my aunt was only about thirty-five at the time.”

  “Hmmm.” Joe met her gaze in the rearview mirror and his brows lifted.

  “You’d have to know my aunt. It’s not how it sounds. She really cared for him.”

  “They always do.”

  Annie scowled at him. “Anyway, I know where she hides a spare key. I think her place is about a three-and-a half or four-hour drive from here.”

  “In these conditions, a four-hour drive might be more like six or seven. But if we get started now, maybe we can beat the worst of the blizzard.”

  “The name of the town is Pinesborough.”

  “We’ll stop along the way for a map.”

  The vehicle ahead of them fishtailed. “You think your car can handle it?”

  “This old beauty?” Joe glanced back at her. “I’d bet money on her. Besides, I have tire chains in the trunk if it gets too bad. We’ll give it a shot. I can’t think of a better idea, can you?”

  “No. Aunt Tess didn’t have any other old boyfriends from around here as far as I know.” She leaned forward, settled both forearms along the top of the front seat. “Joe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said tensely.

  “Why not?” she asked, baffled that he’d be uncomfortable with her gratitude. “Like I said, I can’t imagine what would’ve happened to me if you hadn’t been hanging around outside Landau’s. Or if you hadn’t been willing to help me.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “meeting up with you last night might’ve been the best stroke of luck I’ve had in awhile myself.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Morning sunlight strained through the gray, moody gloom. Joe stopped at a gas station that doubled as a convenience store and bought fuel, strong coffee and stale Danish. Then he stood in an ancient phone booth out front and dialed Dino’s number, keeping an eye on his GTO. Beyond the frosty windows, Annie ate her make-do breakfast.

  “Hey,” Joe said when his cousin answered. Holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder, he shoved both hands into his coat pockets and shivered. “I’m in a bind. Would you call Ma for me and fill her in? Don’t scare her, just say enough to make her cautious.” He briefly explained the situation and clued Dino in on what to expect. More questions from police officers, the possibility of being followed. “It’s too tied-in to be a fluke,” he finished, thinking aloud more than confiding in his cousin. “If what Anne Macy suspects is true, Willis is making drug deals with Harry Landau.”

  “And with Harry being Reno’s nephew…” Dino gave a low whistle. “Man, oh man. I see what you mean.”

  “Yeah, pretty damn cozy, isn’t it? Unless my memory’s playing tricks on me, Willis was at both of those raids last year where dope and money disappeared afterward.”

  “So you think he was skimming?”

  “It’s starting to look that way. And when he heard I’d uncovered differences in the reports, he decided to shut me up before I dug deeper.”

  “By making it look like you were the cop with a hand in the pot, instead of him.” Dino whistled again. “You think he might’ve had something to do with shutting up the Billings woman, too?”

  “Could be.” Joe pulled his hands from his pockets, rubbed them together, trying to generate warmth. “I better get back on the road. Take Ma to stay with Ed Simms and don’t let her give you ‘no’ for an answer, okay? And fill Ed in for me. I tried him a second ago but only got his machine. I’ll call him again later.”

  “You got it.”

  “And would you stop by my place and pick up Mac?”

  Dino groaned. “I was sorta hopin’ you’d forget about that little smart-ass. He doesn’t like me.”

  “It’ll just be for a few days, at most.”

  “Fine, but I’m warning you, if that sarcastic pile of feathers bad-mouths me I’m gonna open his cage and let the cat in.”

  Laughing, Joe told his cousin goodbye and broke the connection. Next, he called Steve O’Malley, hoping his ex-partner might be persuaded to do some digging on Willis and Prine from the inside. When he didn’t get an answer, he called the station and, without revealing his identity, learned that O’Malley wouldn’t be back for three days.

  As Joe walked to the car, he remembered Steve mentioning that he and Kathy might have an early Christmas with her family in Boston. He hoped Kathy hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. Recently, her cancer had come out of remission. Though she’d been holding her own, Joe knew that could change in the space of a day.

  He knocked on Annie’s window and she rolled it down. “Your turn,” he said.

/>   “How did your mom feel about going to stay with friends?”

  “Didn’t talk to her. I called Dino and told him to tell her.”

  “Chicken,” Annie teased.

  “If I called her, she’d ask so many questions we wouldn’t get back on the road until after dark.”

  Annie opened the door and climbed out. As Joe followed her toward the pay phone, she glanced back at him. “You can wait in the car where it’s warm. I’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll feel better out here with you.” He looked over his shoulder at the road.

  Annie paused halfway to the phone booth. “Are we being followed?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t say. Pays to be careful, though.” He knew she’d be too nervous to sleep if he told her he suspected they’d been tailed since leaving the apartment. Joe thought he’d ditched whoever it was before he’d taken the exit, but he wasn’t going to assume.

  Turning, Annie proceeded to the pay phone, stepped inside, lifted the receiver and looked back at him. “Your car is ten steps away. I don’t need a babysitter. I’m a big girl.”

  The stubborn tilt of her head made him smile. “Concentrating on my driving would be a damn sight easier for me if you weren’t.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But he could see that she was only being coy. She understood his insinuation. Grasping her free hand, Joe turned it up and dropped a few quarters onto her palm. “Just dial, Sweet Tea.”

  Several seconds later, Annie argued with her father while Joe shifted awkwardly beside her. No doubt Milford Macy was upset with him for not convincing Annie to fly home. But things had changed since their phone call last night. Willis and Prine had entered the picture. Besides, the old man should’ve known better. Annie might’ve been easy for her father to manipulate in the past, but finding out the truth about her mother’s death had obviously spurred a rebellion in her.

  “We’ll be safely hidden at Aunt Tess’s,” Annie said into the phone. “Daddy…” She sighed. “I’m not trying to punish you. Not that you wouldn’t deserve it.” Another sigh. “Just keep an eye out. I doubt they’d send anyone there, but we’re dealing with Harry Landau and possibly his unc—I know you can take care of yourself, and guess what? So can I.” She took the receiver away from her ear, and with her lips pursed, held it in the air for several seconds so that Joe could hear Macy’s agitated voice. Pressing it to her ear again, Annie said, “The man I’m with used to be a policeman. A detective. What better bodyguard could I possibly find?” Raising her gaze skyward, she handed the receiver to Joe. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Well, damn. How did Macy expect him to talk about anything with Annie standing beside him listening? He took the phone. Drew a breath. Held it then exhaled. “Hello, sir. This is Joe Brady.”

  “I thought we agreed you’d put my daughter on a plane?” the old man hissed.

  “I suggested that, sir.” Joe avoided Annie’s stare. “It seems she isn’t interested in going home. And I’m not sure it’s a good idea, anyway. Those men she told you about will probably be expecting her to try to catch a flight somewhere.”

  Annie crossed her arms, tapped the toe of her boot against the snow-covered sidewalk.

  “Our deal still stands,” Macy said after a long hesitation. “Just keep her safe until I can decide what to do to help the two of you.”

  Joe swallowed, turned away from Annie. All he needed was for her clueless, know-it-all bigwig father to stick his nose in where it didn’t belong and make things worse. “You don’t need to worry about it, sir. I can handle this.”

  “I can’t just sit back and do nothing. I’m worried sick. Keep me informed or I’m coming up there.”

  “No need for that.”

  “I still don’t want her knowing anything about our arrangement. She’s upset with me enough as it is. There’s no reason she should ever find out. Your job is just to keep her safe and continue to tell her you’re sticking with her because of your past dealings with Reno.”

  “I am.”

  “Good job making that look like a coincidence, by the way. Just leave out the part about the bonus I’m paying you.” He released a noisy breath. “The check’s here waiting for you, Brady. Have her home safely before Christmas and it’s yours.”

  Joe’s stomach clenched at the thought of continuing to deceive Annie. From the start, he had been wary of Milford Macy’s intentions in hiring him. And now that he was getting to know Annie better, her father’s deceptive method of trying to keep her out of trouble was starting to really chafe him.

  But a troubling new possibility had entered Joe’s mind. If Annie found out what he and her old man had been up to behind her back, she might just get angry enough to take off on her own. And Joe couldn’t let that happen.

  HARRY LANDAU DABBED blood off his face with a warm, damp towel as he made his way into the bedroom to answer the telephone. “Talk to me,” he said into the receiver, irritated by the interruption in his routine almost as much as by the razor nick on his chin.

  The caller coughed repeatedly, then said, “I had a message you’d called.”

  “Thought you should know that Willis paid a visit to the cab driver. You might know the guy. He’s an ex-cop name of Brady.”

  Silence emanated from the other end of the line, then, “Damn.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that. Is he trouble?”

  “Maybe.” The caller blew his nose.

  “You have a cold or something?”

  “A big one.” He coughed again. “How’d the woman end up in Brady’s cab?”

  “Like I said, he was parked right outside the building when I chased her out.”

  “If I know him, that was no coincidence.”

  Harry applied more pressure to the cut. “Whether or not he was in on this from the beginning, Willis thinks Brady’s helping her now. She wasn’t at his place when they dropped by, but she might’ve been earlier. Brady took off shortly after Willis and Prine left. Willis thought he might lead them to her but the morons lost him in traffic.”

  “With Brady involved, things just got a lot more complicated for everyone. Me most of all.”

  Harry pulled the towel away from his chin, checked in the mirror over his dresser and saw that the bleeding had stopped.

  “You sure those files are worth all this trouble, Landau? Could anyone really find anything incriminating in them?”

  “If they knew what to look for. Anne Macy works days at a bank. I don’t know if she has the brains to put it all together, but she was suspicious enough that she took the files. That’s enough to make me worry.” Harry still couldn’t figure out why she was so bent on getting him into trouble just because he’d tried to have a little fun with her.

  The caller sighed long and deep. “This sucks. I wasn’t expecting—”

  “Don’t worry,” Harry said, “Willis will find her.”

  “Tell him not to hurt her. Or Brady, either. I don’t want to be involved in anything else like that again, understand? He just needs to scare her enough that she’ll back off.”

  Harry stared at the red nick on his chin and felt his mouth go dry. He doubted this guy would be as eager for leniency toward the charming Miss Macy if he knew what was really at stake. She’d carried more away in that briefcase than a few expertly doctored documents. In fact, Harry wasn’t worried about those at all. The prospect that she might discover what he’d hidden in the lining of the case, though, terrified him. He had considered it to be his personal insurance policy should disaster strike.

  Instead, it just might be the disaster.

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, sparse traffic moved slowly along the snow-packed highway. Joe tried the headlights, found that the reflection off all the white snow only made visibility worse and turned them off again.

  Annie had spent the last couple of hours shuffling through Harry’s files and talking nonstop in an effort to keep Joe awake. He refused to let her take a turn at the wheel. S
ince she had little experience driving on ice, she didn’t argue.

  “Everything adds up,” she said. “The register reports and expense receipts, the deposits, my notes. I don’t understand it.”

  “I’m sure Landau has a lot of experience in creative accounting.”

  Frustrated, she closed the briefcase and glanced out the window. “I hope they don’t close the road.”

  “I’m surprised they haven’t already. If this doesn’t let up soon, we’ll look for a motel.”

  “We’ll be lucky to find a vacancy. This four-hour drive has turned into a marathon.”

  Despite the treacherous weather, she felt more at ease now that she and Joe were partners of sorts. Before, as far as she’d known, he had just been a stranger helping a woman in trouble. But after hearing his connection with Reno and his suspicions about Willis, she knew he, too, had a stake in nailing Harry Landau. A bigger one than she did, actually.

  She set the case in the back seat. “It’s funny how things happen, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Willis. Harry and Reno. Us. The way we’re both tied to them in different ways. Any one of a hundred or more cabs could’ve been at the right place at the right time last night, but it was yours. Do you believe in karma?”

  He remained focused on the road ahead. “You mean that something in the universe might’ve thrown us together for a reason?”

  “Exactly.”

  “No.” He shifted in the seat and kept his gaze focused on the road.

  Leaning against her door, Annie studied him. When he wasn’t smiling—which was often—he had a hardness about him, a cynical set to his jaw, the demeanor of someone who’d fought his way out of tough times more than once. She wondered what he would think of the world she had grown up in, her privileged background.

  Watching him, she compared him to the men in her past. Annie couldn’t imagine Joe wearing cuff links and doubted he owned any. She’d bet Harry’s briefcase that he had never played nine holes of golf in his life, much less eighteen, and probably didn’t know a birdie from a bogie. Joe would undoubtedly consider it a crime to spend a hundred dollars on a bottle of wine, and when she really thought about it, she wasn’t so sure she disagreed.