“What? Ridiculous.”
“—flunked a drug test?”
Ava sighed. “People usually assume the subject lied, not the test.”
“Exactly. We need to find the leak, plug the leak, and make sure something like that can’t happen again. All of which will take time. And meanwhile…”
“This sucks, Jan.”
“I know,” the rep replied quietly. “Again, I’m sorry. It’s not a punishment; it won’t cut into your sick leave or vacation time. It’s a literal paid vacation from us to you.”
“Well, golly, when you put it that way, I should be thankful.”
“Well, no,” Jan replied in a meek voice utterly unlike her normal briskly sarcastic tone. “Just that it won’t cost you anything.”
“You mean in terms of money,” Ava said flatly.
“Well. Yes.”
She sighed. “Anything else?”
“For now, no.”
“You’ll keep me posted.”
“I note that wasn’t a question—”
“Picked up on that, didja?”
“—and yes, absolutely, Ava. I will keep you posted.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Goodbye. And again, I’m v—”
Childish, she knew, but she couldn’t handle one more apology from Jan, and ended the call with a stab of her index finger.
Grounded.
Indefinitely.
Fuck.
Thirty-Four
Ava hopped off the Green Line at the Kenmore station and thought, not for the first time, that for a city whose streets were paved cow paths, it wasn’t that hard to navigate. Or maybe all pilots felt that way. Maybe any transit system was a piece of cake once you had to land at Nepal’s Lukla Airport. (Mountains + short runway + no lights × no air traffic controllers = brace for impact.)
It was a relief to be off the subway; she’d fumed from State to Cleveland Circle. But when she’d boarded after the meeting, she felt … not better, exactly, but less out of control and impulsive. Even better, it wasn’t hard to find Geniuscon; she followed the signs, several of which offered lectures she didn’t understand (EULER DIAGRAM YOUR DISJOINT SETS!), Solutions to problems she didn’t have (HOW TO ENUNCIATE WHEN YOU STILL HAVE DECIDUOUS TEETH), and programs she’d never heard of (EXTRAORDINARY DAVIDSON* FELLOWS CHECK-IN HERE!). Were there ordinary Davidson Fellows? Did they check in somewhere else?
Finding Tom and the little family he’d made wasn’t difficult, either.
(Family he made? Are you jealous?)
Well. Maybe. She’d been a family of one for close to a decade. By choice! Entirely by choice. It wasn’t like she lost a bet or was cursed by an evil fairy (“Never shalt thou marry or bring forth children; thou art condemned to Lean Cuisine and Cooking for One cookbooks! Forever! Ahhh-ha-ha-ha!”).
Anyway. Hannah, Tom, and Abe were clustered just outside the entrance leading to a hall that, she assumed, contained any number of genius inventions: time-traveling toilets, a gun that shot Twizzlers, maybe an app that knew to automatically swipe right when you were horny. (Well. Maybe not that last one.) Appropriately enough, the sign directly over Hannah’s head read, WE’RE NOT FAMOUS … YET.
“Ava!”
“Hi, Hannah. Hi, guys. Sorry to be late.”
“We’re running late, too.” Abe shook her hand. “So don’t fret.” He was wearing spotless jeans, sneakers, a dark blue T-shirt that read, I’M ONLY HERE BECAUSE THE SERVER IS DOWN, and a bemused expression. “Aren’t you a sight!”
“Yeah, I don’t know what that means.”
Tom, whose face had lit up (gratifying!) when he spotted her, picked up on her mood. “What’s happened? Are you all right? Did someone give you some trouble? Is that why you’re behind schedule?”
“Nothing like that. Turns out my fake drug test results got e-mailed to a few hundred people. I’m grounded while the IT department looks for the crack in the wall.”
“Well, shoot, that’s not fair,” Abe said, and she resisted the urge to throw her arms around him in sheer gratitude.
Hannah reached up and gave her hand a solemn pat. “I’m sorry you’re grounded.” To Tom: “So you were right about the cybersecurity issue.”
“How did you even—you’re weren’t supposed to be listening.”
“We’re all in the same hotel room, Uncle Tom.”
“It’s a suite!” he protested.
“Yes, one with exceptionally thin walls, with all the connecting doors wide open so I won’t fall down in the night if I need to pee.” She glanced up at Ava. “I did that once. Two years ago! I was just little then!”
“It probably seems like an eon ago, huh?”
“Well,” Hannah pouted, “it does.”
“On the upside, now you’ve got more time to spend with Tom.”
“Abe, you know you’re not subtle, right? You’re actually winking at us.”
“Something in my eye,” Abe replied. Then, shamelessly: “You two go off and have fun. We’re gonna go see about some supper, hopefully by way of several food trucks. I’ve been craving cotton candy with a tomato juice chaser all morning.”
“Ye gods. What is wrong with you?”
“Too many things to list just now, Captain. We’ll see you two later.”
“Bye, Uncle Tom. Bye, Ava!”
With that, Tom took her elbow while the rest of his family disappeared into the exhibition hall. “You’re truly all right? This must have been a blow.”
“Would’ve been a harder one if you hadn’t warned me. And I made time to take a meeting to get my mind serene. And just to get it on the record—”
“I’m not the killer, or the vandal, or the hacker.”
“Got it. Thanks. But now I—hey.” They’d been walking toward the street when Ava stopped, took another look, and—yep, she’d know that improbably red hair anywhere, a gorgeous mass that looked like grenadine syrup set on fire. “Becka?”
Becka turned, and the moment she saw Ava her eyes got big. She didn’t say anything or move as they approached. Frozen, the way India froze when he realized she’d bought a Christmas gift for him but he didn’t have one for her.
“Well, hey there. Tom, this is—”
“Flight Attendant Becka. She was helping your man G.B. on the flight to Boston. Hello again.”
“G.B. isn’t ‘my’ anything, unless it’s ‘my God, did you get caught in a rowing machine’? Nobody’s that ripped outside of slick magazines and action flicks. Well.” She gave him a critical up-and-down glance. “Besides you.”
“It’s far more efficient to have a muscle-to-fat ratio of seven percent, which puts me at a BMI of twenty-two point five, give or take.”
“Oh, sure. For the ratio. Very logical.”
“Well, it is,” he replied, sounding not unlike his niece. “And I make efficient use of the time in terms of transcribing and paperwork and the like.”
“Because of course you do.” Ava was trying to picture Tom squat thrusting or what have you while dryly dictating the autopsy of a guy who suffocated in a crate of tinsel. And failing. “Sounds totally normal. But we’re getting a smidge offtrack.”
“Yes, I agree. To return to the subject under discussion, your colleague, G.B., did seem exceptionally fit,” Tom said. “I’d wager his interior and superior venea cavae are pristine.”
“What a coincidence. That is exactly what I was thinking: pristine veins! But the topic under discussion was how we just now ran into Becka.” To Becka: “So! What’s up?”
“Nothing!”
Ava blinked and, when neither of them said anything, Becka elaborated. “I mean, my brother. He’s a teacher here. Gifted students. I’m not gifted. But I’m from Boston, so…” She tried a shrug, but it looked more like she was twitching her shoulders the way horses do to shoo flies. “Here I am.”
“Oh. Well, I’m not sure if you heard but I’m taking a couple of days off for personal—”
“Oh my God, did y
ou flunk another drug test?”
That gave her pause. “No, just the one. Which was a false positive. That was the only one I flunked. Except I didn’t, not really.”
“A number of false positives,” Tom added, because he thought he was being helpful. “Apparently, PCP hit twice.”
Ava forced brisk cheerfulness into her tone. “It shouldn’t take long to straighten out. I’m sure I’ll see you at work later in the month.”
“Yes! Okay!”
Jesus. She’s almost vibrating. That’s how badly she wants to get away from me. Or this conversation. Or both. Probably both. “Well, nice seeing you again.”
“Yes! Nice! Okay. Bye!”
They watched as she practically sprinted away, and Tom broke the silence with, “How well do you know her?”
“Barely. She just started less than a month ago.”
“Hmmm.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up. Let’s catch up to Hannah and Abe. And on the way, you can tell me which of my colleagues might have murdered my friend and then came back to wreck my life.”
“Your wish,” Tom replied, still watching Becka beat her not-at-all-suspicious hasty retreat.
Thirty-Five
“Govahment Centah!”
They were on the T’s Green Line,* on their way to meet Abe and Hannah. She liked Boston’s subways, especially the way the conductor blared the names of the stops (piercing by necessity; the car was a sea of bent heads and smartphones) over the PA system in a full-on Boston accent. She knew generalizing was lazy thinking at best, but she’d never run into someone with a Boston accent who at the least didn’t have a ton of common sense.
From the Baker family’s hotel, Ava would hop a train back to her own hotel, where she’d get some sleep and then … then she’d … um …
“So what’s our next move? Since we’re both on vacation?”
“Keep trying to reach Dennis. Do whatever research we can on Becka. See if this person left an IT trail. Eat garbage.”
“Pahk Street!”
She snorted and, as the train took a sharp curve, clutched the nearest pole but was thrown against his side anyway. This didn’t bother him at all, if the way he took her hand and held it was any indication. She was on board, too (no pun intended), if her accelerating pulse was any indication.
It’s holding hands on the subway, not a marriage proposal. All you know at this point is that he thinks holding your hand is less disgusting than clutching a subway pole anyone might have licked.
“You’re joining us for dinner.”
“Is this a date thing or a bodyguard thing or a just-being-polite thing?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. I.” Wow. Are you seriously having heart palpitations over this? Could you stop acting like you’re hard up? CALM. DOWN. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“Accepting a sincere invitation is the opposite of intruding.”
“Your niece and your—your Abe—might disagree.”
“Thank you.” He let out a sigh. “I do not know what to call him. And I never know how to introduce him.”
“Ahlington Station!”
“Yeah, I noticed. That’s not a criticism, though. I thought it was pretty cute.”
He groaned. “Exactly what a grown man wants to hear.”
“Adorkable?”
“I’m too old to be adorkable.”
“Nobody’s too old to be adorkable. That’s just a straight fact. You have to accept my wisdom on this issue because I’m decades older than you in maturity and life experience.”
“You’re barely five years older than I am.”
“But, again—decades mentally.”
“I’m reasonably certain that I, in fact, am older than you mentally.”
“I’ll put my Inver Hills Community College degree up against your lame-ass medical school—”
“Harvard.”
“Ha! Couldn’t get into Yale, huh? Well, number two tries harder. Also, I know you are, but what am I? See? You’ve got no comeback for that devastating riposte.”
“I concede.” Tom rubbed his scalp, and his mood shifted from playful to fretful in half a second. “Abe’s old enough to be my father, but he isn’t. He was a member of my sister’s family, but not mine. And it feels distinctly odd to introduce him as a friend. It seems wholly inadequate.”
“Cawpley!”
“Well, what does your father figure / best friend / in-law think?”
Tom shrugged.
Ah. You haven’t discussed it with him. Well, it’s a tricky subject. “Abe, I think you’re dreamy. Will you wear the other half of this best-friend necklace I bought from a mall kiosk?”
“I have … difficulty navigating social scenarios like this. I don’t always understand what’s appropriate. And when I ask, sometimes I make things worse.”
“You’re talking to someone who almost had a giggle fit at her own parents’ double funeral. Trust me—you’re fine.”
His smile was so warm she practically felt it. “You’re very kind.”
“Uh, no. No, I am not. I can present a number of witnesses who will back that up, if you need it.”
“I prefer to make up my own mind. And Abe and Hannah will not mind if you join us. Frankly, the addition of a non–family member could be helpful. I cannot bear the thought of another argument with Abe over the pullout sofa. I need very little sleep—”
“Plus, that hotel suite isn’t a luxurious morgue drawer. How could you possibly be expected to get any sleep?”
“—and he has arthritis! But he insists that I take the gigantic bed, which is ridiculous.”
“Oh, well. In that case, I’ll definitely come to dinner.” A Tom/Abe slapfight could be fun. “You wanna tag-team him? We could do that. Or Hannah could invent some kind of hypnotic that tastes like cotton candy and use it to drug him into avoiding pullout couches for the rest of his life. Hell, she probably wouldn’t even need the drug. She could just hypnotize him with her geniusness.”
“That’s not how hypnosis works. Or genius.”
“Oh, look at the hypnosis expert. You hypno-snobs are all the same.”
“Hynes Convention Centah!”
“What is happening right now? What are we talking about?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d just have to hypnotize you into forgetting.”
He laughed at her. “I don’t always understand you.”
“Noted.”
“Which is charming. But also out of character for me.”
“Aw.” She looked down at her fingers entwined with his. For some reason, it made her think of Dennis and Xenia, who were supposedly a couple but who hadn’t touched each other during the memorial. Where could he be? She hoped he’d fled and was sleeping it off somewhere, because the alternatives
(Is he dead?)
(Is he the killer?)
were awful. Worse, she wasn’t sure which one she wanted to be true.
“It’s none of my business, but I would like clarification. Earlier, you said you ‘needed a meeting to get your mind serene.’ Were you referring to a twelve-step meeting?”
“Sure. I needed one after my rep told me I was grounded. And Boston has lots. I went to one for AA because there wasn’t one for NA* until seven o’clock. But I’m not picky. It’s not the specifics—for me, anyway. It’s the ritual. It’s the Serenity Prayer and listening without judgment and talking without judgment and knowing everyone in the room gets it and maybe the cookies.”
“May I ask you a question about the Center City drug treatment facility?”
“Hazelden? Sure. Fire away.”
“What was the strangest—”
“Circus Day.”†
“I beg your pardon?”
“They had a Circus Day. And for some unfathomable reason, they didn’t warn—I mean tell—any of the patients. So picture any number of addicts in active recovery waking up one morning and going to breakfast and finding all the cooks are dressed like clowns. And seve
ral counselors. And the grounds people. And the gift shop people. For no reason that we could immediately surmise.”
Tom, she could see, was trying (and failing) not to laugh.
“Yeah, sure, yuk it up. But it freaked a few of us out. One of my roommates actually grabbed my arm and hissed, ‘Am I high right now?’”
“And?”
“I told her that I wasn’t sure the truth would make her feel better, and no, she wasn’t high.” Over Tom’s chuckles, she added, “I mean, I give them top marks for literally everything else, but that always seemed like a spectacular blunder to me. Freaking addicts out en masse is just a terrible idea. We’re in a treatment program, we’re already … oh, stop laughing.” But she smiled to remove the sting.
“I apologize. Truly. It’s just … it’s equal parts funny and appalling.”
“Yep, that sums it up perfectly.”
“I’m glad you got help,” he added.
“Yeah, me too. And the years have slowly rid me of my fear of counselors dressed as clowns running a T-group.”
“Courageous,” he said with a straight face.
“Anything else you want to know?”
“Just this,” he replied, and kissed her.
Thirty-Six
The first time hadn’t been a fluke powered by loneliness and booze; Dr. Tom Baker was an excellent kisser. Given his occasional verbal fumbling and general klutziness, this was an exhilarating surprise.
Oh my God that mouth THAT MOUTH. Oh, and he’s not trying to choke me with his tongue and he smells terrific, which is a good trick in a subway car, and even if nothing comes of this the day has been so strange that I will remember this kiss forever, even if I live to be an old lady, and how everything about it
“Kenmah Station!”
was perfect.
Tom pulled back, scanned her face, smiled. “That’s us.”
“Whuh?”
“Our stop.”
“You’re a really good kisser.”
“Thank you.” He stood and she realized he hadn’t let go of her hand, had taken it and kissed her and was leading her out, and following wasn’t really her style unless an ice cream truck was involved but what the fuck, it was that kind of day/week. The entrance to the hotel lobby was just a few steps, and they pushed past the revolving doors to be enveloped in the guilty
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