by Susan Cox
He made a thoughtful grimace. “It’s possible.” He sipped his tea and carefully examined his slice of cake without adding anything.
“Please, Grandfather! You know Lichlyter is going to find out you own that hoof pick, and don’t you want to find out who killed Sergei?”
He smiled at me.
“What?”
“You are apparently not considering that I might have killed Sergei myself.”
I recalibrated again. “Oh. Right,” I said blankly. “It did occur to me when I saw your hoof pick.” He gave me an approving look. “Did you? Kill him, I mean.”
“No, my dear, I didn’t.” He pursed his lips and gave me a searching look. “I’ll have a word, Theophania, with one or two of our members and see if they feel comfortable talking to us.”
The “us” gave me a little bit of a glow, and I had to be content with that. I flopped down onto his sofa. “This has been a very weird day,” I said, and then remembered something I should tell him. “When I got here, The White Cliffs of Dover was on the floor.”
He lifted the painting, looking it over front and back, then opened the safe, glanced inside, and shifted a couple of things aside. He shut it again, replacing the painting much as I had.
“Is everything where it should be?”
He nodded. “Everything.” He bit his lip. “Do you remember the combination, Theophania?”
“I wrote it down and put it in my safe deposit box, but I don’t know it offhand.”
“It’s your Great Uncle Teddy’s investiture date. Can you remember that?”
“Um, not really.”
He gave me what I could only describe as a pitying look. “Let’s find something simpler for the time being. We’ll reset it to”—he hesitated—“the name of the magazine where you sold your first photograph.”
“How do you remember that?”
I got another look. “I don’t, Theophania, but I assume that you do?”
“Yes of course.” He stepped aside and I reset the electronic lock. “It’s—”
He stopped me with shake of his head and handed me the small agenda and gold pen he’d withdrawn from his pocket. I wrote down the name, he glanced at it, then ripped off the part of the page where I’d scribbled the name and tore it into small pieces before placing half the pieces in his pocket and burying the others in the soil of a large potted aspidistra. Obviously, I’d been cavalier all my life, just tossing things into the recycling.
He opened the front door and stared at it for a moment, in much the same way as Lichlyter had, and then down at the spotless front step. “How long had you been here before I arrived, Theophania?”
“Just a few minutes. Why?”
He smiled at me. “No special reason.”
After we finished our tea, I headed back to Aromas, handing over another small fortune in cab fare. It occurred to me that, while I couldn’t fly to Kiev, I had my own computer hacker; maybe Haruto could find out if anything was odd or wrong about St. Olga’s. If he found anything questionable, I could follow up with Gavin.
I telephoned him an hour later as I followed Lucy around the Gardens. I could hear Gar Wood yowling in the background.
“Haruto—seriously, doesn’t that cat ever shut up?”
“Says the owner of the worst-tempered dog in San Francisco.”
“Okay, fair point. Would you do a bit of research for me?”
“Sure, what d’you need?”
“It may involve getting into the financials of a nonprofit in Eastern Europe.”
“I can do that. If I find anything I’ll tell them I can break their firewall and they need better security.”
“I need you to find what you can about an orphanage in Kiev. That’s in Ukraine,” I added self-consciously. “It’s called St. Olga’s. Maybe start with their website, and see if that gives you any leads to information about their finances—maybe nonprofits over there have to report their donations to the government like here—the number of kids they have, news items from when they opened. And contact information—telephone numbers, e-mails; anything you can find.”
“Okay, that all?”
I thought for a minute. “No, one more thing. See if you can find anything about a priest dying in Kiev in the past couple of months.”
He nodded. “Interesting,” he drawled. “Okay, done and done. I’ll see what I can find tonight.”
I was at home when Haruto texted at five the next morning, saying to find him when I woke up. I left Lucy asleep on the bed, walked down the back staircase of the building—a second way out in case of earthquakes—and knocked on his back door.
“Jesus, Theo—what are you doing awake at this hour?” He was wearing a blue and white kimono jacket over jeans and tatami sandals. Gar Wood was pushing her head between his ankles, vocalizing as usual. Do all Siamese sound like crying babies? I don’t know how Haruto puts up with it.
“Hi, Gar,” I said, and gave her chin a token obeisance, after which she shut up and stalked away. “Can’t sleep. What’s up? Got any more of that?” I inhaled the coffee smell from the mug in his hand.
“Sure. Don’t tell Nat.” He poured coffee into another mug and handed it to me on his way to getting a carton of half-and-half from the fridge.
“So what’s up?” I said, blowing on my coffee.
“Come inside. I have something to show you.”
I’d slipped off my shoes and left them by the door. He’d never said anything about this little shoe-shedding ritual, but there was a small shoe rack by the door with his shoes on it, and a couple of pairs of sandals for guests, so it seemed only polite to follow his example. I liked his place; he shared my aesthetic, which is to say, there wasn’t much in it. We had never discussed religion, but I think he was a Buddhist. He had turned his smaller bedroom into a meditation space, with tatami mats and a noren curtain painted with mountains replacing the door. Almost the only furniture in the rest of his apartment were a large antique tansu chest against the wall opposite the fireplace, and a handful of legless chairs on the beautifully finished hardwood floors. He had done the refinishing here, and in my flat, in exchange for a break on the rent. I knew his second bedroom was full of blinking, high-tech equipment, but he kept the door closed, so nothing disturbed the serenity of the apartment.
He draped himself onto one of the chairs, put his coffee on the floor, and picked up his laptop. It looked almost miniature in his big hands. “I started by looking for a priest who’d died or disappeared, and I found two.”
That was a jolt. Truthfully, I hadn’t really expected him to find anything.
“Who were they?”
“I’m not sure how to pronounce it, but the first one, six months ago, was Yaroslaw Hryhorenko. He was in his eighties, and he died of pneumonia. He’d been parish priest at the same church for, like, fifty years; his death and funeral made the local papers.”
“Who was the other one?”
“His name was Artem Ponomarenko. Killed in a hit-and-run a couple of months ago. No witnesses; no one was ever charged.”
“Was he a parish priest, too?”
“Nope. He was secretary to the local bishop, which is a bigger deal than it sounds, apparently.”
“Wow. Poor Sergei.”
“No, his name was Artem.”
“I meant, I’m pretty sure he was the friend of a friend, and the friend’s name was Sergei.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead, too.”
“Okaaay. Anyway, they were the only two in the last year.”
“Right. What’s next?”
He grinned. “The first thing to know is that I’m good, really good, at breaking through firewalls.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
“The second thing to know is that I would never expect an orphanage, even one in Eastern Europe, to bury their data and bounce it all over the world with fake IP addresses.”
“Wow. Truly?”
“I got there in the end, but whoever d
id this has something to hide.”
“So what did you find out?”
“On the surface everything looks legit. Without mad skills”—he grinned at me again—“no one looking at it would have any idea things aren’t what they look like. They bank online. Money comes in; money goes out, and it’s spent on what you’d expect: food, the light bill, books, stuff like that.”
“But?”
“The accounts are phony. There’s no there, there.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. The orphanage exists; it must have bills to pay. Where’s the money going?”
“Still don’t know. And that’s not all. I’m not sure where the money’s coming from, either. That’s where things start bouncing around.” He shook his head. “It looks like simple bank transfers, but—it’s not.” He shrugged. “That’s all I can tell you. I’ll keep looking if you want. The only trouble is, if I haven’t already, it might set off a red flag somewhere. After a while, when I realized things weren’t kosher, I used a sniffer program to help me avoid notice, but before that…” He shrugged again. “Not sure.”
“Who would know how to set up something like this? I mean, is it the Pentagon, or some kid in his mum’s basement?”
“It took some serious skill, but I could do most of what I’ve seen so far. It could be one person.”
“Or a small government program? Like, I don’t know, a bunch of spies?”
“I suppose…”
And I knew how to find a bunch of spies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Hall of Justice on Bryant Street had a blocky, ominous look, or maybe that was just my guilty conscience. The immediate surroundings weren’t seedy, exactly, but a lot of uniformed police officers were coming and going, police patrol cars were parked on the street in significant numbers, and an assortment of rather shattered-looking people were wandering around outside. All of the nearby storefronts housed bail bond agents. The most prominent was Honest Eddie’s Bail Bonds. Good grief.
The other people waiting in line to go through the metal detectors seemed to be mostly family or lawyers visiting inmates at the jail on one of the upper floors. I had to empty my pockets to go through the metal detectors, but I was allowed to take my three-inch Swiss Army knife through the barricades and into the elevator. I kept my fingers around the knife in the pocket of my jeans, in case someone escaped from the jail and tried to take it from me. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone getting taken hostage. I was still defending myself against imaginary accusers when the elevator doors opened again, and Inspector Lichlyter was standing there waiting for me. It took me a second to recognize her without her red jacket.
She led me past what American crime dramas called the squad room. I looked around curiously, hoping for something less mundane than tidy desks, battered office chairs, and out-of-date computer monitors. Most of the desks were empty—I guessed their owners were all out solving crimes. She stopped briefly to pick up a tray holding a manila envelope and a file folder from one of her colleagues, scribbled something on the file folder, and ushered me down a hallway into a room just big enough for two chairs, facing each other across a narrow table.
The floor was carpeted, and the walls sprouted large, asymmetrical bulges and ridges covered in dark fabric. It had a weird dampening effect on sounds, which I suppose was the point. Our conversation was easy enough to hear, since we were only two feet apart, but everything else was muffled. Small noises, like closing the door, fell instantly into the abyss. It was also too warm in there and, unlike the larger room, felt oddly threatening.
“I won’t be recording our conversation, Ms.… Bogart,” she said, indicating a video camera on the wall in one corner of the room. “For now, the equipment is turned off, and you are just assisting me as a helpful member of the public.”
“Right. Okay,” I said. Perhaps she meant it to be calming.
She picked the file folder out of the tray and opened it in front of her, leaving the lumpy manila envelope in the tray.
“I understand Ms. Dermody was suing you on behalf of Mr. Gavin Melnik,” she said. I was surprised our conversation was apparently to be about Katrina and not Sergei, and tried not to look it.
“Right. Yes,” I said. I abandoned my knife to clasp both hands on the table in front of me. “It was a trip and fall lawsuit. The details were being handled by my insurance company.”
“I understand also that Mr. Melnik has dropped the lawsuit since Ms. Dermody’s death.”
“He told me. He said she had pressured him into suing me.”
“That seems strange. Why would she do that?”
“Katrina didn’t like me.”
“Is there any particular reason for that?”
I told her about Matthew and my adversarial role on the neighborhood association board, and my conviction that she’d sent Gavin Melnik to Aromas to make trouble for me.
“So there was some animosity between you and Ms. Dermody?”
“Not really.” I hesitated. “Perhaps on her side.”
She shifted some papers in the file folder. “Your grandfather moved to San Francisco with you?”
“A couple of months afterward.”
“He must be very protective of you,” she said pleasantly. She reached for the manila envelope and shook it gently.
To my absolute horror, the plastic bag containing Grandfather’s hoof pick landed on the table.
“We’ve identified this item, Ms.… Bogart.”
I felt the color drop from my face.
“Apparently, it’s a hoof pick,” she said. “People who ride horses often carry them, and as you can see, this one is also being used as a key ring. Do you ride, Ms.… Bogart?”
“I have in the past; I don’t anymore.”
“I imagine your childhood in England being full of ponies and horses, is that right?”
I nodded.
“And other members of your family probably ride horses, too.”
“My parents didn’t ride. My mother didn’t have the time, and my father never learned. They—”
She held up a hand. “But other family members. Your grandfather?”
I swallowed. “Yes; he’s a life-long rider. But he had, you know, grooms and people to take care of his horses. He wouldn’t need a hoof pick.” Another lie. All riders carry one.
“Odd that you didn’t recognize what it was when I asked you before.”
“It doesn’t look like a hoof pick,” I lied. “They’re usually more like small screwdrivers or large pocket knives, not that circle thing.”
“It’s neat, isn’t it?” She picked up the plastic bag and pressed it around the contours of the hoof pick. “Easy to slip into a pocket I would have thought, and, as you see, there are keys attached.” She raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“Is there—did you find fingerprints? I mean,” I added more firmly, “that would help you identify whoever handled it. Maybe it belongs to someone who isn’t the killer.” I wiped my hands on my jeans. “I mean, fingerprints would tell you who handled it, but not necessarily who the killer was.” Oh God, shut up.
“Yes, we’ve gotten that far, thank you,” she said dryly. To my surprise, she went on, “There are some partial prints of interest. We’re waiting on the identification now. It doesn’t take long if the prints are in our system.”
She put the hoof pick back into its envelope. “Thank you for coming in today, Ms.… Bogart.”
“That’s it?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Unless there’s something you’d like to add?”
I started to shake my head. “No. Yes—before I go—the fingers in Nat’s microwave. Did they belong to the body I found?”
“It looks that way,” she said. “At least, Father Wolf’s body is missing those parts of his hands. We’ll know for sure when the medical examiner has finished with him. The ends of the bones will be compared, the DNA matched, but for now I’m satisfied that they belong together.”
I wasn’t s
ure if that was good news or not.
“Some South American gangs mutilate priests in that way,” I said, as if I knew anything about South American gangs.
“So we’ve heard. We’re taking that into consideration, of course.” She returned the hoof pick into the envelope and showed me politely to the elevator.
What did she mean to accomplish by showing me the hoof pick again? If she meant to rattle me, mission accomplished. Was I a suspect? Was Grandfather?
I got on the wrong bus by mistake because I wasn’t paying attention to anything outside of my own head. By the time I got home, everything had changed, and not for the better.
When I walked into Aromas, Haruto stuffed his phone into his jeans. “Theo! Thank God! I was just calling you.”
“What’s happened?”
He gulped. “Davo’s been picked up by the police for questioning. Something about his fingerprints on a murder weapon. What the hell? He’d never do anything like that.”
“God, no, of course not.” I pulled out my own phone.
Haruto dragged a hand through his hair. “It was his stupid friends who got him into trouble for tagging.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“You know—spray painting graffiti on billboards and bridges, harmless shit, but his prints were in the system.”
My phone rang, and I picked up the call on autopilot. Nothing had ever sounded so good as Davie’s foghorn voice, and the relief threatened to knock my legs from under me. I grabbed hold of the counter.
“Davie! Where are you?” I looked at Haruto, who mouthed something I couldn’t decipher. “What’s happening? We have a very good lawyer, and I’ll call him right away.”
“Don’t worry, okay?” he said anxiously in my ear. “I dunno what this is all about, but Juvie isn’t so bad.” I could almost see him shrug. “One of my friends is there,” he added, as if I’d find that comforting. “They won’t let me leave with just anyone; if they can’t reach my dad, I’m stuck here ’til Monday.”
I bowed to his superior knowledge of the criminal justice system. It was already four o’clock. After making what I hoped were comforting promises, I hurriedly told Haruto what was happening and then telephoned my grandfather’s attorney, Adolphus Pratt, who promised to see Davie immediately. “He’s a minor and I can’t reach his father,” I told him. “Do we need a—a barrister? I mean I know they don’t call them that here, but a lawyer who specializes in criminal cases?”