Garcia was gone from the room, and Cahill had left the deck. She was glad to get Rathers alone. She kneeled over the brown amoeba, poured the fizzy beverage into the middle of it, and dropped some towels on top of the puddle. “This works like a charm every time.”
He shuffled his feet as he stood over her. “I’ll have to remember that one. We have a lot of spills at home. Little kids. You know.”
She stood up and handed the empty bottle and towel roll to Rathers. “That should do it.”
“Uh … thank you.” Almost apologizing for his boss and the earlier scene, he added, “The Duntons have been without sleep since … since the news.”
“Ben, do you know anything about Lydia and those letters? Who has been wringing money out of the Duntons?”
Rathers seemed genuinely perplexed. “Letters?”
“When Lydia and her boyfriend broke in to the house—”
“Lydia lived there,” Rathers said defensively. “It wasn’t a break-in if it was her house.”
“When they entered the house on Thanksgiving weekend, they took some things, including a set of letters. Correspondence between the Duntons and someone asking for money.”
“The senator receives lots of requests from constituents,” said Rathers. “They want money for projects, for their causes.”
“They threatened to reveal something unless they were paid. Does that sound like someone asking him to vote for a piece of legislation?”
Rathers adjusted his grip on the bottle and the paper towels. “You need to get out of here.”
“What’s going on here, Benjamin?”
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head.
“We can protect you.”
He looked down at his feet.
“Who was over to the house last night?” she asked.
“What do you … what are you getting at?”
“Who was here late last night?”
“Why?”
“Under this roof, last night. Name them.”
“I was here. The senator and his wife. The two drivers.”
“Rose?”
“She’d left. She’s not a live-in.”
“Who else? What about the owners of the house?”
“They’re in Europe.”
“Was anyone else here late last night?”
He looked down again. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. What happened last night?”
She had to show him that she had enough information to do some damage. “A meeting was held here last night, in this very room. You were involved.”
“How would you know?” His gaze swiveled this way and that, finally landing on the windows.
Rathers was worried that the bureau was spying on them. Bernadette saw no good reason to ease his concerns, and in fact anticipated only good things resulting from that sort of paranoia. “We believe the murderer was one of those in attendance,” she said authoritatively. “He’s probably the one who’s been blackmailing the Duntons.”
He tore a sheet off the paper-towel roll and patted his forehead.
“If you withhold vital information and a third person is murdered, we could come after you. We will come after you. That’s a promise.”
Rathers started babbling. “Agent Saint Clare, you have to believe me. I’d like to help, but I don’t see how I can. I work for a man who … I work for a man of some rank and power. He lost his daughter … I can’t… I don’t know what I can do to help you … It’s out of my control… It’s … I don’t know.”
“What gave the senator the idea that we were investigating a coven?”
“I’d never heard that before in my life. That was news to me. You have got to believe me, Agent Saint Clare. I don’t know anything about witches and Satanists relative to this case. Relative to anything! And this whole blackmail thing!” He dropped the bottle and the towels on an end table. “Gotta get you out of here before the senator comes back down.”
“Ben, don’t force us to take you in for questioning.”
“But I don’t know anything!”
“I think you know more than—”
“That’s enough!” bellowed a voice behind Bernadette.
She turned and saw the senator, his face red with anger. “Sir,” she said. “This is—”
“This is outrageous,” he said, marching toward her. “I want you out of this house right now!”
“Senator, I’m sorry, but—”
“You bet you’re sorry.” He put a hand on her shoulder and started steering her to the door. “I just got off the phone with Washington.”
“I’ll see her out, sir.”
“Don’t say another word to her,” snarled Dunton.
Rathers walked her outside and to the truck, where Garcia was waiting behind the wheel and Cahill was sitting in back. Before Bernadette got in, she passed Rathers a card. “Call me.”
He didn’t say anything more, but slipped the card inside his pocket. Turned around and headed up the steps.
As Garcia steered the truck down the drive, Bernadette glanced at the front of the house. The drapes of a second-story window moved. Who was spying on whom?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
No one in the truck said a word until the closed gates of the gated community were in the rearview mirror. The first one to speak was Garcia, and he wasn’t happy.
“The next time you decide to pull a rabbit out of your ass, I’d appreciate some warning.”
Bernadette didn’t need to look in the backseat to know B.K. was squirming. The kid had no idea what had transpired in the house, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut while Garcia ranted.
“Sir, I’m sorry,” she said, keeping it formal for Cahill’s benefit. “I couldn’t let the senator kick us out before I asked those questions. I wish I’d had time to brief you first, but I didn’t.”
“And what was that bit with Carson parading around, his hand on his gun?”
“My brain fart,” she blurted.
B.K. leaned forward and stuck his head between the two front-seat passengers. “But I went along with it, sir.”
Bernadette cringed. Maybe he wasn’t smart enough.
“Close it, Carson!” snapped Garcia.
“Yes, sir,” said Cahill, falling back against the seat.
“What did you two think was going to happen in there? He’s a United States senator and I’m an agent of the federal government. Was he going to bump us off and dump us in a snowbank in the middle of the day?”
“I was just being cautious, sir,” she said. “When we spoke over the phone, you sounded guarded, and I was concerned.”
“I’m still alive and it’s all good,” said Garcia, steering the truck through downtown Walker. “Now tell me what happened this morning.”
“Cahill and I went to the tatt shop together. After we pressed him on it, the scumbag owner admitted that he recognized Lydia’s photo. Said he gave her that heart tatt on Christmas Eve.”
“What was she doing up here? Did he say?”
“Hunting for someone. She even asked to use his phone book, to look up an address or name,” said Bernadette.
“Who? Who’d she look up?”
“The guy didn’t know. Lydia did ask him where she could find cheap eats and a place to stay.”
Garcia braked for a red light and looked over at her. “Where did he send her?”
“He didn’t. Sounds like he wasn’t particularly helpful to her. On top of that, she couldn’t pay for the tattoo, so he kept her backpack and her mom’s jewelry. We arrested his ass, of course.”
“You should have seen the tackle Bern made,” added Cahill.
Bernadette offered Garcia a weak smile. “Yeah. You should have seen it.”
Garcia frowned. “Keep going.”
“The backpack was filled with letters.”
“The ones the boyfriend talked about, apparently.”
“Someone has been blackmailing the Duntons,” she said.
The lig
ht turned green, but Garcia kept his foot on the brake. The driver behind him honked, and he accelerated. “Blackmailing them over what?”
“We need to do more checking, sir,” said a small voice in the backseat.
“From reading them, it’s not entirely clear,” she said.
“Where are they?”
“Tuckert took them,” she said. “He’s so excited about the tests he’s gonna run, he’s peeing all over himself.”
“I’d like to look at them.”
“I took photos and sent them to my laptop. We’ll read them at the—” She cut herself off, not wanting B.K. to know where she was staying. “We can read them later.”
“You are really going to want to see those letters,” interjected Cahill. “We’re talking big bucks. One asked for a million.”
“Dunton doesn’t have that kind of money, does he?” asked Garcia.
“He’s got to be sitting on a fortune from his days as a developer,” she said. “Plus, remember her family is loaded.”
“The letters didn’t indicate what they were holding over him?” asked Garcia.
“The threats were very veiled.”
“Any clue where they were mailed from? Any envelopes with postal stamps?”
“Afraid not. Maybe Lydia trashed them during her travels, or maybe the Duntons didn’t keep them.”
“Why would the Duntons keep any of that around their place?” asked Garcia.
“In case they decided to report their blackmailers to the cops?” she guessed.
“It sure turned around and bit them on the ass,” said Garcia.
“Something bigger has been biting them on the ass over the years,” said Bernadette. “We’ve gotta find out what it was. It sent their daughter to Brule and then to Walker. Probably caused her death. Ashe’s death, too.”
“Anything in the writing indicate the connection to witches, pentagrams, any of that?”
“Nothing. If only the Duntons would cooperate and work with us. Put aside their feelings about the bureau.”
“Don’t hold your breath on that,” said Garcia. “While you were inside playing house with Rathers, I got a call from D.C. Dunton bitched to the bosses in Washington. Told them he wants us off the case because we’re incompetent.”
“Incompetent? Based on what?”
“Our lack of progress.”
“We’re making progress,” she protested. “What happened today was huge. Finding the bag and the letters was huge.”
“He claimed that the guy who stole Lydia’s stuff planted some shit in her bag in some sort of extortion plot—and that we’re falling for it.”
“That’s not even a good lie,” she said. “That’s lame.”
“The word of a United States senator against a thieving slime-ball who runs a tatt shop,” said Garcia. “Gee, who’re they gonna believe? We need more before we can force the Duntons to talk to us about this blackmail business.”
“Rathers knows something, but he’s afraid to open his mouth,” she said.
“Back up a minute. You’re a hundred percent certain about Rathers and the room where we had the meeting today. They’re the same man and the same room you saw—” Garcia stopped himself short, remembering that there was a third person in the cab.
Aware that Garcia was referring to her vision, Bernadette looked at her boss and nodded in affirmation. “Yeah. Absolutely certain.”
Cahill: “What are you two saying? I’m lost. Absolutely certain about what?”
“Carson, what did we talk about?” asked Bernadette.
The young agent recited: “Don’t ask questions. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. Maintain my inner calm. Go with the flow.”
Garcia frowned.
“I’m teaching Carson the art of FBI Zen,” she explained.
“Nice,” said Garcia.
“Sir,” said Cahill. “You just passed—”
“Stop talking,” said Garcia. “There’s my FBI Zen lesson for the day.”
“But you just passed my car, sir.”
“Next time, spit it out.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was too much traffic on the street to back up. Garcia went around the block and pulled up next to the Crown Victoria. The sun was already going down, and soon the afternoon would surrender to another long winter night. Before Cahill hopped out of the truck, they talked about the witches’ meeting later that evening. Cahill was charged with collecting some of the Minneapolis guys from their various hotels. They’d all meet in Walker with the sheriff’s crew before heading to the forest, where the full-moon ceremony was being held.
“Need me to pick you up, Bern?” he asked before closing the door.
“I’ll fetch her,” said Garcia.
“Right,” said B.K., and he went to his car.
Bernadette watched Cahill fiddling with the lock of his car door. It was giving him trouble. He dropped the keys, picked them up, and tried again. “Big goof.”
“His size came in handy this afternoon,” said Garcia.
Her eyes widened. “Hey. You said—”
“I didn’t mind the display of firepower,” Garcia conceded. “It was a good brain fart, actually. Dunton got the message not to screw with us, and at the same time we didn’t put enough agents on the property that he could get righteously indignant about it.”
“We’re walking a fine line here, aren’t we?”
“A fucking tightrope,” said Garcia, pulling away as the young agent finally got inside his sedan.
“Did you notice Carson didn’t ask where we were going?”
“Because it’s none of his concern,” Garcia said.
“I think he suspects,” she said. “For all we know, they all suspect. They’re all back at their hotels talking about us poolside.”
“If that’s the case, I hope they say only good things. ‘That Garcia. He sure must have an impressive—’”
“Stop,” she said.
At the outskirts of downtown Walker was a large grocery store. Garcia hung a left off the main drag and hung another left into the market’s parking lot. He pulled a fistful of bills out of his jacket pocket. “I’m gonna run inside and buy some meat. What do you feel like? Steaks? Chicken?”
“Anything that’ll fit on a grill.”
“Want to come with?”
“Go ahead,” she said. “I loathe grocery shopping almost as much as clothes shopping.”
“You are one weird woman.”
“No argument here. Look who I’m screwing.”
“I’ll leave the truck running,” he said with a grin, and jumped out of the cab.
While he was in the store, she fiddled with the heating vents and played with the radio. The only stations that were coming in clear were country and western and hard rock. Though she’d already visited his CD wallet, she picked it up again and started from the back. Discovered some music she’d missed during the drive up north. An Edith Piaf disc, followed by some Roy Orbison and Cowboy Junkies. Patsy Cline. The music from O Brother, Where Art Thou? and a CD put out by a band that hailed from Ecuador. She pulled out one disc and stared at it in disbelief. Cher’s Greatest Hits.
Individually, there was nothing wrong with the tunes, but they made for a strange, almost disturbing, collection. “And you call me weird,” she muttered.
Maybe it was their mutual weirdness that helped make them so comfortable with each other. At the same time, getting too comfortable worried her. Was she being set up for a big disappointment? What would happen to their relationship once they returned to the cities? Was it going to be like one of those summer flings that ended the minute the cabin was closed up? If so, maybe it was all for the better. Sleeping with the boss wasn’t going to make her life simpler or easier. On the other hand, he was so good in bed. She’d heard about men who managed to sleep-screw but figured they were a myth. She’d actually found such a lover. How could she let him go? It would be like turning her back on a unicorn.
By t
he time he returned to the truck, she had “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” blaring.
“I can explain that,” he said as he opened the back and set the groceries inside.
“I’m listening, Anthony,” she said, swaying to the music.
He climbed in and slammed the door. “Ah, fuck it. It isn’t worth it.”
She turned off the tunes. “What did you buy us for dinner?”
The Titan bumped out of the parking lot. “Chicken. Steak. Ground beef. Pork loins. Pork chops. Enough for a month.”
“We’d better not be here that long,” she grumbled. “I miss my junk.”
“Me, too,” he said, and turned onto the highway. As he drove, he pulled at the neck of his dress shirt. “I’m changing into jeans as soon as I get to the cabin.”
“Did the suit help your game?”
“Nothing could have helped my game with the Duntons,” said Garcia.
CHAPTER THIRTY
As soon as they got to the cabin, Bernadette set the laptop on the coffee table, pulled up the letters, and turned it over to Garcia to read while they sat on the couch.
“Veiled is right,” he said, shaking his head.
“I suppose in case they were read by a third party.” She pointed to the screen. “This one references his election.”
“Appears so,” said Garcia.
Your new status requires different terms. This is non-negotiable. A response is needed immediately. Any delay in payment will mean higher fees.
“Reads like a damn credit-card contract,” said Bernadette.
“If the Duntons made payments, there’s got to be a paper trail,” said Garcia. “Cash-withdrawal records from the bank. Transfer notices.”
She got up and walked back and forth between the table and the fireplace. “What did they have on him?”
“Lydia must have known what they were talking about,” said Garcia.
Bernadette tossed another log on the fire. “Maybe the girl had more letters on her but lost or destroyed them. Hid them somewhere.”
“Is that what took her to Brule and then to Walker? Did she confront the blackmailers and threaten to go to the police and that’s what got her killed?”
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