He raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not saying I do. Or anyone I know does. Just that I can’t talk to you about this case.”
Except to tell me why he couldn’t talk to me about it. Which I would pick apart later, no doubt as I stared at the fan when I was supposed to be sleeping.
But for now…focus, Nichelle.
“If you didn’t come here to tell me anything, you couldn’t possibly have thought I was going to tell you something. So that leaves me wondering what’s up. I mean, you’re good company and all, but I have Charlie breathing down my neck, a blogger who’s after my head on a platter, and the publisher gunning for Bob—and possibly me, since I told him off this afternoon.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He’s trying to push Bob out. Today he used my stuff as ammo. Pissed me off.”
Kyle nodded. “That’s my girl. All work and no time for play.” His eyes softened.
Uh-oh. Not that kind. “How’s it going with Bonnie? I’ve heard you mention her a couple of times this week. Any sparks?”
He rolled his eyes so fast I couldn’t swear it wasn’t my imagination. “She’s okay. Really smart, which I like, and pretty. We’re going rock climbing this weekend.”
“That sounds fun.” And normal. It occurred to me that Joey and I didn’t do much but eat and have sex. No complaints, but variety could be good.
“She’s a little brainy to be into stuff like that—you’re more the adventurous type, really—but she seemed game when I asked, so we’ll give it a shot.”
“I’m glad. I want you to be happy.”
“Are you happy?” The half-octave drop in his tone told me the three words were loaded.
“I am.” I looked straight into his eyes and spoke with no reservation. “I don’t want you to be hurt by that, but I need you to know where things stand. I am happy. I am in a relationship. I am your friend. I don’t want to lose you as a friend, but I don’t want our friendship to jeopardize what I’ve found, either.”
He scanned my face for a good minute after I stopped talking, then slumped back in his chair. “I do have to tell you something.”
I felt my brow furrow and leaned forward. “What’s wrong?”
He heaved a sigh big enough to put the big bad wolf to shame. “It’s about your boyfriend.”
Oh.
Shit.
I closed my eyes for a long second, trying to keep my face blank. No showing fear until I knew what he’d found.
“Why would you need to talk to me about that, exactly?” I put on my best offended tone. “Running a background on your competition seems low, Kyle. I thought better of you than that.”
He bristled. “For your information, I wasn’t doing any such thing. I knew last time I saw him here that I’d seen him before. I just couldn’t remember where.”
Double shit.
I held his gaze, but didn’t say a word.
He shrugged. “I tried to blow it off—not like there aren’t a hundred guys who look like him, right?”
I happened to think Joey was pretty extraordinary in the looks department, but perhaps this wasn’t the best time to share that. I nodded.
“But then I ran across this surveillance photo. I’m as sure as I can be that your guy is in it.”
Damn. I managed to avoid flinching by focusing on “sure as I can be.” That wasn’t proof.
“Why on Earth would the ATF have a surveillance photo of him?” I asked. The words sounded cold and distant, even to me.
“You tell me.”
“I’m thinking that’s not the way this conversation is going to go.”
He slammed one hand down on the table and leaned forward. “This guy isn’t who you think he is.”
“Says who? You have a grainy photo as evidence.”
“As one piece of evidence.”
Shit, shit, shit. “Along with what? Google Earth images of a car that might be his?”
“Nothing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not in the mood for games tonight.”
“Not trying to play one. I mean, I couldn’t find anything else. Not even a speeding ticket. It makes no sense.”
“I call bullshit, Kyle. How would you even know what to search for?”
“I had fingerprints.” The words dropped like rocks.
“Kyle. Tell me you didn’t.”
He shrugged. “I want you safe more than I want you happy with me. I pulled the files from the shooting in June,” he said. “Ran the prints. There were some in the living room that didn’t turn up as yours, your mom’s or mine. The RPD guys all wore gloves—but I don’t even have to ask if he’d been at your house earlier in the week. In the living room. The far corner of the couch, near the lamp table. Right?”
I had nothing for that. I blinked slowly. I’d had actual nightmares about learning something about Joey I didn’t want to know. Kyle as special guest host for this horror show come to life was just a bonus that showed God’s sense of humor.
I nodded. “So?”
“So like I said, I ran the prints and he’s a ghost in the system. Nobody is that clean.”
“You came here to tell me he doesn’t have a criminal record?” I wasn’t sure what the hell to make of that, but Kyle was the wrong person to discuss my confusion with.
“How much do you know about him?”
“As much as I should.” It occurred to me that if Kyle’s search had turned up a last name, he knew something I didn’t, but I couldn’t think of a tactful way to ask, so I filed that away for later.
“What does he do for a living?”
“Transportation,” I blurted the first thing that came to mind, knowing an “I don’t know” would just make Kyle more curious. Joey mentioned friends in the transportation industry the first time I’d met him. It fit. Kind of.
“Never met a trucker who wears Armani on his days off. And he doesn’t have a Class C license. ”
“He’s not a driver, you dork,” I said. “There are other jobs in transportation besides that.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I’m not helping you with this, because I’m more than slightly offended that you’re looking.”
“Nichelle, the guy could be dangerous. Why does he keep turning up at crime scenes? I know you’ll never tell me, but I’m pretty goddamned sure he’s responsible for the other body they hauled off from Fauquier in June. Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”
“Choose words carefully” flashed in sapphire neon behind my eyelids with every blink. Don’t raise suspicion, but don’t tell him anything he doesn’t know. Simple.
Not.
Convince him I’d be safe. That was the exit ramp.
I smiled. “I’m well aware of what I’m getting into.” Okay, no. I was as aware as I wanted to be. “He’s not a bad guy, Kyle. Truly.” Not to me.
Kyle searched my face for a long minute, then dropped his chin onto his hand and sighed.
“The photo…” He stopped, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “It was from the file I’m working on the Caccione family. He is not a good guy, Nicey.”
I folded my hands in my lap. “I like him, Kyle. More than I’ve liked anyone since…” I threw my hands up. “In a long time. I work around criminals ninety hours a week—my asshole radar is pretty good. I just don’t get that vibe from him.”
“Promise me you’ll watch yourself. Call me if you need me.”
“Always.”
The conversation faded to wallflower-awkward silence.
I cleared my throat. “So…how ’bout them Cowboys?”
He laughed. “Having a good year, aren’t they? I miss watching football with you.”
“Your eardrums don’t.”
&nb
sp; “True. You know the players can’t actually hear you through the television.”
“That’s your opinion.”
His eyes turned sober. “You’ll be careful? I can think of all kinds of reasons the mob would be interested in you, and most of them aren’t any kind of romantic.”
“He is not the mob.” Not when he was with me.
“Who gets to be our age and hasn’t ever had a ticket?” he asked.
“What if the computer ran the prints wrong?”
“Not terribly likely.”
“Yes, Kyle, computers are fail-proof.” I rolled my eyes.
Computers. Tipping my hand on one little thing was a small price to pay to change this particular subject.
“Speaking of computers and records,” I drained the rest of my soda and put the glass on the table, “have you guys noticed that Maynard is conspicuously unsearchable online?”
Kyle’s eyes crinkled at the corners with a grin. “We’re trying to figure out how. And why. You have a theory?”
“You going to share yours?”
“Come on, Nichelle. We’re not your competition.”
“Sharing information about a big story I have in the works almost always comes back to bite me in the ass, no matter whether it’s the cops or people in my own newsroom,” I said. “I’ve been burned enough to be pretty shy.”
“What if you could help the investigation? Your job is to report on it, not do it yourself, right?”
True. And doing it myself generally gets me in trouble. His face held up under careful scrutiny for ulterior motive.
“Not a word to anyone,” I said. “Anyone. Not Aaron, not Landers, not your boss, not your priest. Certainly not Charlie.” I cut him a warning look. “Or Bonnie.”
“In the vault.” He raised his right hand. “On my grandmother’s grave.”
Wow. Kyle’s grandmother’s funeral was one of a handful of times I’d seen him cry, and we’d been through a lot together, once upon a time.
I nodded. “Jenna’s husband is a professional hacker, and he’s on it. But it’s bizarre. He’s been cleared from every major search engine, but not from individual sites. A search of the NIH turns up a ton of hits. A search of our servers brought up several articles and the big society piece on his retirement.”
Kyle’s fingers moved to stroke the bristles of his auburn goatee. “Huh.”
“It’s all got something to do with whatever he was researching.”
Kyle nodded. “We figure the same thing. We just don’t know what. There are no records. Most of the folders in his file drawers were empty.”
“Stolen?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he really didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing.”
“I take it you’ve been to his office?”
“Yep. Stem to stern, we searched. The girl who works at the desk had a fit, hollering about HIPPA and how we couldn’t touch patient files without a warrant. But there wasn’t anything in them, anyway.”
“How many files we talking about?” My fingers worked at my hair, twisting it into knots.
“A hundred? Not too many.”
So small trials.
“What do you mean there was nothing in the files?” I asked.
“I mean nothing. File folders. No papers inside.”
“Who was the receptionist?”
“I think she’s the nurse, too. It’s a small office for a guy who was supposed to be such a big shot.”
That fit. If I was following the right trail, the doc had wanted to keep what he was doing quiet. The big question was still why. And what. Oy.
Kyle watched my fingers loop my hair faster and faster. He poked my shoulder. “Something is rattling around in your head making you worry your hair like that.”
I nodded. “Tom Ellinger wanted Maynard to treat his wife. Because he thought Maynard could cure her.”
Kyle closed his eyes. “You are not about to tell me this dead doctor might have discovered a cure for cancer. Are you on something?”
I spread my hands. “You have a better theory? Because I know exactly how crazy this sounds, but everything anyone has found so far sure in hell seems to point that way.”
Kyle closed his eyes, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Holy. Shit.”
“Indeed.”
“You can’t print this.”
“I’d get myself laughed right out of the business for printing it now,” I said. “Which is why I don’t want anyone else knowing about it until I can dig up some more information. I mean, if it’s true, it’s not just the story of the year. It’s the story of the…century. The millennium. Can you imagine?”
He shook his head. “But why keep it a secret?”
“Um. I’d say his murder shows he had a good reason.”
Kyle took a long swallow of soda and nodded. “Indeed.”
21.
Fair warning
I sent Kyle off with a heartfelt well-wish for his date with Bonnie that made him smile, then reached for a bottle of wine and a corkscrew on my way to a hot bath and possibly bed shortly thereafter. If there’s been a longer week in the history of the world, I wasn’t there for it.
My BlackBerry started twittering the theme from Peter Pan before I got the foil off the bottle and I contemplated ignoring it for a full ten seconds.
My scanner was relatively silent, so it would be more in-depth than normal Friday night work. Not interested. But I reached for the phone anyway.
There’s an inherent wiring short in my brain that would make it explode if I ignored a ringing phone. Not an altogether bad quality for a reporter, I suppose.
Joey.
I grinned. Him, I found positively enchanting.
“Hey there.” I put the phone to my ear and opened the bottle.
“Hey yourself,” he said. “Busy day?”
“You could say that.” I pulled a glass from the rack and poured it half full of Moscato, padding toward the couch. “How about you?”
“Same. But I was thinking about you and I wanted to say hi.”
Butterflies took off low in my stomach. I swallowed a sip of the wine. “Hi.”
“I take it from the level of vague in your copy today that you’re working this weekend?”
“Probably. Though I’m really trying to not work tonight.”
“I wish I could join you.”
Kyle’s words floated through my head and my gut twisted. “Lots going on?”
“Boring stuff.” Joey’s tone was dismissive, but there was an undercurrent of our unspoken don’t-ask-don’t-tell in it, too.
“Mine too.”
“I doubt that. Anything new?”
“Eh. Same old, same old. Trying to save the world. Got my first subpoena.”
“Witnessing things can lead to that.” I could hear the laugh in his voice.
“Yeah, yeah, they tried to kill me, nobody else was there. Blah blah.” I laughed. “Like I don’t have enough to do. This story has more twists than a party size bag of pretzels. And Kyle is dating a forensic scientist who says someone’s dragging their feet on the autopsies. Which also doesn’t fit. The whole thing stinks.”
“Really now?” He didn’t even try to keep the interest out of his tone. “When did that happen?”
He wasn’t talking about the murders. I laid it on thicker. “Sometime between Labor Day and this week. We haven’t talked much. He seems to really like her, and I know she’s had her eye on him for a while.”
“Well. Good for him.”
I listened hard. Reservation, yes. But was that excitement I heard? I could hope.
“I’m happy for him.” I let the words fall slowly.
“I’m glad to hear that.” The war
mth in his voice could’ve melted Antarctica. Score.
I smiled. “I’ll see you soon?”
“Next week? I’ll make time to get down there,” he said. “Right now I should go back in.”
I didn’t want to know in where. “There’s a hot tub calling my name.”
“Damn, now I really wish I was there,” he said.
“Me too.”
I clicked off the call and stared at the almost-finished Norman Rockwell on my coffee table, snapping a few of the five thousand tiny pieces into place and wishing the puzzles in my head would come together. But maybe Kyle dating would resolve the corner of the Joey puzzle that was wrapped up in jealousy. And maybe clearing my head would help me see a few pieces of the Maynard mess differently. I fit the last bit of the bottom corner in and took the wine to the bathtub.
By the time the water chilled a second time, I’d managed to turn the shouting questions in my head down to a dull roar. They were almost quiet as I fell asleep, Eunice floating through my thoughts for some reason I wasn’t awake enough to place.
Shoving a mug under the coffeemaker, I yanked my hair back into a ponytail before dawn Saturday, as grateful for my first good night’s sleep in a week as I was annoyed at having it pre-empted by a locker room drug bust at a sprawling suburban high school.
I parked near the field house a half-hour later, joining a small knot of reporters on the track as the first rays of dawn painted the bleachers on the far side of the field pink-orange.
“What? No special pass inside today?”
Charlie rolled her eyes as her cameraman waved at me, flipping her perfect blonde bob and tapping a foot as she pointed out shots she wanted for her piece.
“He asked for you, too,” I said when he stepped away to get the footage. “Not my fault you chose to stay outside.”
“Losing the story is my fault for being sane? I know no one who would have gone into that building, except you.”
“People might have died.”
“Someone did. And whatever you’re up to with keeping the gunman out of jail, you should know that when I figure it out, you’ll be lucky if you don’t get lynched. I know you traded White a sickeningly sweet PR piece for that. The woman’s family knows it, too. You’re too goody-goody for any motive short of some misguided bleeding heart crap, but I’m warning you: you won’t look good when I get through with this.”
Cover Shot (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery Book 5) Page 18