by Donn Taylor
Before I could answer, Mara’s cell phone rang again. Without taking her eyes from the road, she handed the phone to me in the backseat.
When I answered, Cindy’s voice bubbled with excitement. “Wonderful news, Daddy, you won’t believe it, and I hardly do though I know it’s true, but I’ve had the hardest time getting hold of you. I rang the house and kept getting a recording that your line was out of service, and it took me forever to remember where I’d put your Professor Thorn’s cell phone number …”
“Cindy, there’s something I have to tell you—”
“And I have something wonderful to tell you, Daddy.” There was no stopping her as she gushed on. “It’s about our suspension. You remember that CIRCA was looking into it? Well, they ended up defending us and told the university they’d take it to court for violating our constitutional rights to free speech and due process, and you know what happened?”
I tried again. “Cindy, I have to—”
Her verbal express train raced through all warning signals. “The administration gave up. They wiped out our suspensions and reprimands and gave us full reinstatement. And that’s not all. They’re giving us protection while our papers are distributed, and they’re going to talk with CIRCA about the illegal parts of the university ‘speech code.’”
I gave in. “That’s wonderful, Cindy. I’m proud of you for standing by your guns, and I’m proud of you for winning. But I have some bad news. Our house burned down tonight.”
She sucked in her breath and the phone grew silent.
I wondered if she’d fainted. “Cindy?”
“Yes, Daddy?” Her voice was weak. “Are ... are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, ignoring the still-burning sensation on the backs of my hands and ears. “Dr. Sheldon and Mara Thorn were with me, and we all got out okay. But the house and everything in it is lost. Total loss.” I didn’t remember until later that I hadn’t mentioned Cynthia Starlington’s being there.
Another silence while Cindy digested that information. Then she said, “I’m glad you’re okay, Daddy. How did it happen?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” I said, assuaging my conscience with that weasel word entirely. “One moment everything was fine and the next moment fire was everywhere. All we could do was run.” That much was true, at any rate.
“We lost everything ... ” Her voice began softly, then strengthened with resolution. “But you’re all right. That’s the important thing …” She paused a moment. “And about your pictures of Mother—I’ll have mine copied for you …”
She was so much like Faith, then, thinking of someone else first.
“Thank you, Cindy,” I said. “You’re most thoughtful.”
“But Daddy, what about those awful rumors on TV? Do you have any news?”
The question stabbed at my heart. “I’m afraid not, Cindy. We’re working on them, but we don’t have anything concrete.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Daddy. I won’t ever believe a word of them.”
My heart melted. “Thank you, sweetie. That’s all that matters. I’m really glad about your good news. You enjoy that, and I’ll take care of things around here.”
I spoke brave words, but Cindy’s believing in me was far from being all that mattered. My job and my reputation mattered, Mara’s job and reputation and her freedom mattered, and it mattered that someone wanted both of us dead. It looked like I was doing a lousy job of taking care of things.
Mara asked, “That was Cindy? How did she take it?”
“Like a champion,” I said. “Not a word of regret about her things that burned.” Cindy’s suspension was a family matter, so I’d never mentioned it to Mara or Dr. Sheldon.
“That other phone call,” Dr. Sheldon boomed. “Don’t keep us waiting.”
In retrospect, I’ve wondered how all three of us managed to focus on that problem. We’d come very near to being burned alive, and I had lost my home and the accumulated memorabilia from twenty years of a wonderful marriage. In many ways, I was still in shock. But instead of descending into self-pity, we all returned to concentrate on the question of why someone wanted to murder us. In my case, it had been drilled into me in Special Ops to turn off my emotions, regardless of tragedy, and complete the mission. Mara had much the same training in her military experience, and Dr. Sheldon must have reverted to similar discipline from his Korean War days.
In response to his question, I repeated Leonard Morley’s explanation of the Dustin Industries scam, culminating in his naming Steven Drisko and Guido Stefano as co-owners of the parent company in Toronto. I concluded by saying that I wouldn’t be surprised to find Gordon Samstag wrapped up in it somewhere.
Mara nodded. “Samstag has his fingers in a lot of pies. Not surprising if some are hot.”
“Guido Stefano?” Dr. Sheldon said. “He was Brill Drisko’s boss in Vegas.”
At long last, the name fell into place in my mind. I knew I’d heard it recently, but I couldn’t bring it up until Dr. Sheldon mentioned it.
“Stefano’s involvement gives you the tie-in you’ve been looking for,” he continued. “You’d wondered why mob hoodlums would be interested in you, but Stefano is supposed to have mob connections.”
Dr. Sheldon put his hand to his brow. His body was tiring, but his mind stayed as determined as ever to fight through to a conclusion. “Samstag and Drisko both have problems. The government is investigating Samstag for that rocket failure, and your friend Morley says Drisko is defrauding the government. That’s double trouble for Overton University. It’s heavily invested—too heavily invested—in Drisko’s company’s stock. It has a lot invested in Samstag’s companies, too, but there’s more variety there. Failure of one of Samstag’s companies wouldn’t be catastrophic.”
He surveyed Mara and me through now-drooping eyelids.
We hung on every word.
“It’s different with Drisko,” he said. “Five years ago, I was faculty representative to the trustees when they almost came to blows over that. Some said we should buy a little of Drisko’s stock but keep the college portfolio diversified. Others said Drisko’s management was driving the stock up so fast we’d be foolish not to buy a lot of it and ride it up. In the end, we bought so much that the college would either get rich or go bankrupt.”
He sighed. “Last week I’d have said we were rich. Now it looks like we’re broke.”
Mara frowned. “That must be why Mitra Fortier said we’d all lose our jobs. Robert Lee put her onto the Dustin Industries fraud. She must have been looking for a good way to handle it when she asked Press and me for help.”
“There’s no good way to handle it,” Dr. Sheldon said. “If you blow the whistle, the college goes under, and you all lose your jobs. If you don’t, a fraud against the taxpayers goes unpunished.”
That silenced us for a while. Mara and I already faced loss of our jobs, but the thought of all our colleagues losing theirs was too terrible to contemplate.
“Maybe it’s not an either-or,” I said. “If we can buy a little time—say, about three months—maybe the college can sell enough Overton Technologies stock to avoid disaster.”
Mara’s jaw tightened. “Don’t forget our personal disaster. Those people tried to kill us.”
“Maybe we can negotiate that, too,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Steven Drisko.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Mara said. “That’s gambling with our lives.”
“I’m only gambling with mine. You two stay clear.”
Mara was too kind to point out the flaw in my logic. I’d meant that only I would be at risk when I met with Drisko, but she surely knew that afterwards we’d both remain vulnerable.
Dr. Sheldon’s head tilted forward as he dropped into sleep. Mara shifted into “Drive” and headed toward the Assisted Living Center. She said nothing, but her expression showed what she thought of my proposal. That told me I had to get something started before she could argue me out of it. Fortunatel
y, I still had Mara’s phone.
I didn’t remember Steven Drisko’s phone number, but I remembered putting Brill’s personal card in my wallet. I found it now and dialed her number. It was past nine o’clock, so Steven Drisko should be at home.
Brill answered in her brusque showgirl’s voice.
“This is Preston Barclay,” I said, “May I speak—”
Her gasp cut me off.
That should have warned me, but I began again. “This is Preston Barclay. I’d like to speak to Steven if I could.”
“He’s ... he’s not here at the moment.” She sounded confused, and I thought she might be inventing the scenario as she went along. “He should be back in about an hour if you’d care to call back.” I could hear her breathing as she waited for my response.
“Isn’t that kind of late?” I asked.
“Not for us.” Her voice gained confidence. “We never turn in before midnight.”
“I’ll call back,” I said and rang off.
“Another tryst?” Mara asked.
“You’re trysting my words,” I said. Even from the back seat I could see the quirk of her lips that meant she was teasing.
“Don’t look now,” Mara said, “but that dark car is following us again.”
It was all I could do to keep from turning and looking out the back window. Instead, I eased out of my seatbelt and slid into a position where I could look past Mara into the driver’s mirror. The car was a full block behind, but definitely trailing us on the nearly deserted streets.
Mara drove as if nothing unusual was happening, and we arrived at the Assisted Living Facility without incident. Dr. Sheldon woke up when the car stopped. I took a quick look around as we got him into his wheelchair, but I didn’t see the dark car. Its driver was doing a professional job.
Once in his room, Dr. Sheldon waved us away and said he could manage. We conceded the point and headed back to the car.
“What’s this about calling Drisko back?” Mara asked.
“I’m not going to phone,” I said. “I’ll see him in person if you’ll lend me your car.”
“I’ll drive you,” she said as she pulled out of the parking lot. Her chin tilted up the now-familiar fraction of an inch that said argument was useless. “What will you tell Drisko the Wunderkind when you find him?”
The truthful answer would have been, “I’ll think of something,” but that would never pass muster with Mara. So I said, “The first order is our safety. I’ll try to bluff him into calling off the dogs— convince him I have documentary proof of his fraud that will be delivered to the FBI if anything happens to you or me.”
“And if he’s not the one who’s putting them onto us?”
“He has to be. He’s the only one we know who has mob connections.”
“And if someone like Gordon Samstag also has mob connections?”
She had me there. “Then I guess we continue our career as targets. But my other objective is to buy time for the college to sell off its stock in Overton Technologies. With Dr. Sheldon’s help, maybe I can convince President Cantwell to make the sale. In any case, we have to act on the information we have instead of sitting on our ... benches and wishing we had more.”
She threw me a quick smile. “You almost colored outside the lines then, Cupcake. But don’t worry about that now. There’s a dark car following us again. A different one this time.”
I checked the outside mirror on my side. Our shadow this time was an SUV rather than a sedan. But as I watched, another dark car turned out of a parking lot and struck the driver’s-side fender of the SUV. As near as I could tell from the reduced-size image in the mirror, the impact only brought the two vehicles’ fenders together. Not the kind of collision that crushed passenger compartments and caused dire injuries, but enough to create a nuisance for both drivers.
A wave of gratitude swept over me, and I thanked Providence. Maybe God was working in this world, even if He was a little bit late.
Those drivers’ attention would be taken up with themselves, so I turned and watched the scene directly through the rear window. Occupants piled out of both vehicles to survey the damage. Each vehicle disgorged at least two men, and I couldn’t tell where the fifth man came from. Two men, one from each car, gestured vigorously and seemed to be quarreling, while the other three seemed to be watching our departure. That was about all I could see before Mara turned a corner and headed west toward the river.
“Where to now, Sherlock?” she asked.
“Turn left after you cross the river,” I said. “We’re going to pay Steven Drisko a visit.”
CHAPTER 38
The Drisko estate lay a mile or two southwest of the city proper but within the city limits. Mara’s left turn put us on the highway that ran by it. I needn’t have worried about finding the right place. Behind the roadside ditch, a white board fence marked off acreage tended with care, though now marked by streaky drifts of snow turned into ice. Soon afterward, red brick gateposts marked a paved and lighted snow-free driveway leading perhaps a hundred yards uphill to an impressive ranch-style house. Light showed from the house in a single window.
“What now, General Barclay?” Mara asked. “Do we go straight in or do you have another plan?”
She stopped the car while I hesitated. Truth to tell, I was having qualms about my plan. “Brill said Drisko would be home in an hour,” I said, “and it’s only been thirty minutes. I want to be sure he’s there. The last thing I want is another brush with Brill.”
“Why not?” Mara teased. “She might brush some lipstick onto another tooth.”
“She did not leave any lipstick,” I said. “She only stunk up my suit collar with her perfume.”
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’” Mara quoted. At least she got the “methinks” in the right place, which few people do.
I ignored her. “Pull in over there, and we’ll watch for him to return.” I pointed to the dark hulk of an abandoned filling station across the road from Drisko’s estate. It must have rankled the Wunderkind for that unsightly ruin to mar the view from his house.
It looked like a good place to wait, though it was pitch black beyond our headlight beams. Mara drove carefully through scattered debris around the hulks of abandoned pumps, circled the station, and parked behind it.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “If we can’t see the road, we won’t know when Drisko comes home.”
“Two cars followed us earlier tonight,” she explained. “We don’t know what happened to one, and the other crew won’t let that fender-bender stop them. There’s no use taking chances.”
She pointed toward the western side of the filling station, the side away from town. “We can watch from over there without getting caught in anyone’s headlights.”
She switched off the ignition, and sudden darkness hid everything. Then Mara opened her door, and the interior lights came on. I followed her lead and exited my side of the car, shutting the door with as little noise as I could. Darkness closed in like a velvet curtain.
We picked our way carefully around the western side of the station to its front corner. As Mara said, the station would shield us from the lights of cars approaching from town.
It did not protect us from the cold. The temperature held below freezing, aggravated now by what would have been a gentle breeze in warmer seasons. We both snugged the collars of our topcoats close and left our ungloved hands in our pockets. At that moment, I would have traded a fortune for a hat. Mara, standing close beside me in the dark, must have had similar feelings.
She asked instead, “What if Drisko is already home?”
I checked the illuminated dial of my watch. Still twenty-five minutes left in the hour Brill had cited.
“We’ll wait twenty-five minutes,” I said. “If he hasn’t come by then, I’ll go in anyway. If he’s here, I’ll talk to him, and if he isn’t, I’ll try to jar something out of Brill.”
“Or vice versa.”
When
I didn’t reply, she changed the subject. “Press, you don’t act like a man whose house has just burned. Most people would sit around moaning about it, but you’re charging ahead as if nothing had happened.”
“I’m just numb,” I said. “I don’t feel like any of this is real. Besides, you don’t act like a woman who’d barely escaped being burned alive.”
“It doesn’t seem real to me, either,” she said, “but we both keep doing the things that have to be done.”
“About the fire,” I said, now whispering. “Every second in that house brought greater risk, yet you remembered Dr. Sheldon’s computer, and you brought out his wheelchair and our topcoats ... ”
“I had time to think while you were ... uh ... motivating Cynthia. I made my own mental checklist—computer, wheelchair, coats.”
Admiration flowed through me. “You even thought to have the keys in your hand so you could unlock the car.”
“I wasn’t all virtuous. I dumped Cynthia’s ocelot-collared coat on the floor. May the Lord forgive me.”
“She’ll never miss it,” I said. “She left her shoes behind, too.”
Mara laughed softly. “Along with that designer shirt she bought for you. It looked nice and comfortable, Press. And really mod. You’d have enjoyed wearing it.”
“Like I’d enjoy a dog collar,” I said.
“So you finally realized that,” Mara said.
“That brings us back to the fantasy thing,” I said. “Maybe Mitra wasn’t as different from me as I thought.”
“I wish Drisko would hurry,” Mara whispered. “It’s getting colder.”
“Use me for a windbreak,” I said.
I squared my back against the drift of frigid air. Mara took a position to the leeward of me and about a foot away.
“That helps,” she said. “From now on, I’ll keep a scarf in the car, just in case.”
By this time, my night vision had fully adapted, and I could see her face as more than just a dark form. My internal orchestra had shut down. Silence enveloped us, sealing us off as if we two were a separate nation. Perhaps a separate planet.