by Jamie Quaid
He shot me a look I assumed was one of scorn, since I couldn’t really see him in the dark. Because I’d gone this far in baring my innards, I asked casually, “Have you ever heard of the Daughters of Saturn?”
“Sounds like a female band. Should I have heard of them?” The Mercedes purred like Milo, sliding up to a gate with a key card lock. Andre pushed in a card and the gate slid open.
No information there. I didn’t really want to explain. “Probably not. Just something I heard.”
I watched with interest as we drove behind what appeared to be an abandoned brick edifice with a loading dock. The blue neon lighting didn’t mar the buildings, so we weren’t in the Zone as I knew it, but the early-1900s industrial architecture was similar. Attached buildings without signs or lights or any indication of habitation occupied at least a city block. In the beam of his headlights I could see not grassy backyards, but lots paved with crumbling blacktop and gravel sprouting weeds.
Only this one building had a gate around the parking lot. Three stories tall, with boarded windows on the first floor and gaping emptiness above, the place didn’t scream security.
Andre drove the Mercedes up the loading ramp, opened a rusty, automatic overhead door, and pulled inside. After he turned off his headlights, a dim bulb illuminated the interior of what appeared to be a typical garage decorated with trash cans, snow shovels, and the kind of things garages stored. If this had once been a store, it had been out of business for a while. There was no inventory on the wooden shelves lining the walls. He’d found the perfect location to protect his pricey car.
“Why couldn’t we leave the boxes here?” I asked, wondering where “here” was.
“If Acme’s goons really are after them, I don’t want them anywhere around this place,” he said curtly, without explaining why.
He climbed out and I followed suit, gathering up Milo, my backpack, and the Vanderventer file while the garage door closed behind us. Andre took the heavy backpack and slung it over one shoulder as if it were a jacket. He opened a door at the far end, and we strolled into another storeroom. Boxes and barrels were scattered in disorganization around the walls and on metal shelving.
He continued to a door on an interior wall, guided by a pale night-light. Or at least, I assumed it was a night-light. It was hard to imagine electricity in a building that smelled as old and musty as this one. Maybe the light ran on battery power.
I almost turned around and refused to follow, when he disappeared down cellar stairs so dark I couldn’t see my fingers in front of my nose. Milo was peering out of my messenger bag with interest and not growling, so I sucked it up and set my heels on the first step. No spiderwebs tangled in my hair. No rodents squealed and ran. I found a rail and dared to touch it as I edged my way down in the dark.
“Are you a vampire who sees without light?” I asked, just to make certain Andre was still ahead somewhere.
“Sorry.” He flicked on another dim light that glowed softly along the stair treads. “I’m so used to the path, I don’t even notice.”
I still couldn’t find the source of the light, but at least I could see the stairs had an end ahead, and I could follow Andre’s graceful male stride downward. I was feeling way more dependent than I liked, but I desperately wanted to stay alive and graduate, and I didn’t want my beautiful new home contaminated by Cadillac gangsters.
We followed what appeared to be a dimly lit tunnel long enough to traverse a city block before we took more stairs going up.
“Does the Zone breed paranoia?” I asked, realizing that this tunnel was meant to conceal Andre’s movements, just as I’d used back alleys.
“We have security issues. You’ve thrown us into turmoil. We’ll need to develop a better plan once we settle your problem.”
There it was again, the ubiquitous we. “You’re running an underground organization? To do what?”
“Not underground. Right out in the open. And survival is our main agenda.”
At the top of the stairs, he used several keys to unlock a metal door. It swung open noiselessly, and he held it, waiting for me to precede him inside.
“Said the spider to the fly,” I muttered, clomping into what appeared to be a perfectly normal kitchen, one with granite countertops and shiny stainless steel appliances. The kind of kitchen I’d never had and never thought to have. “This your place?”
“I own it, if that’s what you’re asking.” Without more explanation, he led the way to more stairs.
Ah, so he was protecting his lair by not bringing the boxes here. I had to wonder if I wasn’t more dangerous than the boxes.
I don’t know a whole lot about architecture, but I was pretty sure the narrow back stairs we were taking were meant for servants and that only old buildings had them. And the layout reminded me of the Victorian boardinghouse I was supposed to be living in. I’d never seen Mrs. Bodine’s kitchen, but the placement seemed right.
My glimpse of the second floor didn’t look exactly like the floor I lived on. The wood was clean and polished, for instance. But the similarity was strong enough that I realized we were probably in a row house neighboring the one where I lived.
“Is this where you had the vacancy?” I asked. “In your house?”
“One of the second-story apartments is available,” he acknowledged. “I hadn’t realized Pearl’s tenant had permanently disappeared. Good detective work on your part,” he said grudgingly.
“Why are we continuing up if you have a vacant apartment?” I asked, starting to balk.
“There are beds upstairs. Desk, computer, kitchen stocked with food. How many more days of finals?”
This was almost Tuesday. My last final was Thursday. “Three.” I glanced longingly at the lovely wood glimpsed from the second-story landing, and wrinkled my nose in dismay at climbing to the third floor—where Andre lived? Or was that his place on the first floor? “I still have to leave the building to go to school. You can’t really hide me here.”
“We can play mind games with the bastards for three days. C’mon. I haven’t got all night.”
His impatience spurred me on. He wasn’t acting like a would-be lover, despite our earlier embrace. He opened a door at the top of the stairs and startled a gray-haired man who looked remarkably like Andre.
24
“Tina, my father, Julius. Dad, this is the Tina Clancy I’ve been telling you about.”
I shuffled files and bags until I could hold out a hand to shake. If this was what Andre would look like in thirty years, I approved. His father was slighter in stature, but he had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and just enough wrinkles around his eyes to look experienced and amused.
He bowed over my hand in a courtly manner while studying me as if I might be the secret to locked doors. Milo didn’t growl, so I trusted his instincts.
I still didn’t trust Andre. He hadn’t mentioned his father’s last name, and I was betting it wasn’t Legrande. He knew I’d snoop, and he didn’t want his past revealed.
“I apologize for the late intrusion, sir,” I said politely. “Andre thinks I need dragons to guard me.”
“I’m not a very good dragon,” Julius claimed, “but not too many people bother me here. No one will know I have a guest unless you tell them.”
Andre allowed a few more pleasantries, then, with his usual impatience, ushered me down the hall to my hideaway. Or prison, depending on how I decided to look at it. The accommodations were pleasant, but they weren’t home. I didn’t even have Milo’s litter box, although now that I’d learned my kitty was toilet-trained, I didn’t worry too much.
At that point, I was too tired to care much where I lay my head. Andre left with promises to have Cora bring some stuff from my apartment that I required. I showered and conked out.
• • •
I staggered out of bed in the first gray light of Tuesday dawn and hit the books for my noon exam, but I needed caffeine. Wearing last night’s leather capris and halter, I slipped
down the hall to the kitchen and found the pot already cooking. I filled a mug, and almost jumped out of my shoes when I turned around to find Julius in the doorway.
“I would fix you some breakfast, but I fear my cooking skills only extend to bowls of cereal,” he apologized.
Breakfast would be excellent. The greasy burger I’d consumed at the biker bar last night hadn’t helped my metabolism. My current situation was uncomfortable, but my peripatetic childhood had taught me how to make myself at home anywhere. “I can cook, if you have the groceries. What would you like?”
“I don’t suppose you can make omelets?” he asked wistfully.
“Easy.” I shrugged and checked his refrigerator—as Andre had promised, it was fully stocked.
Everything was too damned normal. I kept waiting for the sky to fall as we consumed a ham-and-cheese omelet and English muffins. I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the times I’d had a normal breakfast in a real home. I had been working toward that reality for a long time, but after recent events, I was pretty certain this was as close as I would ever come.
I returned to my books while Julius cleaned up the kitchen. He promised to look after Milo while I was busy. I almost felt sane buried in the mysteries of contracts and torts. Law made sense. I loved the balance and justice of it. I was determined to ace my tests and see what life looked like from the other side of school.
Before long, Cora arrived with clean clothing and the rest of my books. She came via the front door like a normal person, although she glanced around with curiosity. “Andre’s place?” she whispered as she handed over the bags.
“His father’s.” I’d already ascertained that Andre wasn’t anywhere around, and there didn’t appear to be a room for him.
She filed that information in her encyclopedic mind and nodded. “I thought I ought to tell you that Frank hacked the corporate spy logs yesterday. Ace’s main client is Acme Chemical, but they apparently do a good side business running investigations for some of the owners.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t suppose that includes names like MacNeill and Vanderventer?”
“It does.” She didn’t look surprised that I knew. “Your name appears in both files.”
I didn’t let the dangerous red rage build this time. I simply wished Senator Dane Vanderventer a pleasant dip in hell—fry his toes a little so he knew what torment felt like.
I hadn’t looked up the MacNeills because they hadn’t run over any kids lately, and I’d already damned poor Max, so I didn’t wish more trouble on them. Yet. They could be innocent parties for all I knew.
But it was a good bet that a car linked to Dane Vanderventer had run over those teenagers, and if he was prowling the Zone, then it was an even better bet that he’d sicced his thugs on me for reasons unknown. Did he know I was trying to track his limo?
Still, that didn’t explain the rapist who had wanted the boxes. Max’s boxes, presumably?
“There’s not a damned thing I can do about Ace or Acme at this point,” I admitted. “We have no proof that they’ve done anything wrong except hire thugs. I can’t confront Vanderventer about the kids if I want to take the bar exam. Beating up a senator will not get me through the ethics committee.”
Cora looked surprised that I’d even consider confronting him. “We just need to know who we’re dealing with so we can stay out of their way. You don’t have to do nothing, girl.”
Yeah, I did. I didn’t know why, but I fully intended to get in the faces of my nemeses one of these days. Just not today.
I thanked Cora and showed her out. I shoved my fury and Vanderventer out of my mind and got down to the nitty-gritty of law.
• • •
When it came time to head out for school, Andre reappeared up the back stairs. I could almost have gotten into this skull-and-crossbones stuff if I hadn’t been so nervous about graduating. In expectation of his arrival, I’d changed into a prim, straight sundress that now hit above my knees. My feet ached from wearing the spike heels all day yesterday, and Cora hadn’t brought over my sandals, so I lowered myself to a stodgy pair of kitten heels she’d chosen to go with the dress. I was hoping to maintain my lawyer cred for just a little while longer.
This time, I didn’t shiver so much when we crossed under the street—I’d finally worked out locations—to the Mercedes. No wonder he kept the car intact. No one would look for it inside an abandoned warehouse.
I kept my head firmly buried in the law test the rest of the day. I didn’t hear the news about Senator Dane Vanderventer being hospitalized for third-degree burns from a charcoal fire, until Andre hit me with his smart phone when I left the law building. He didn’t even wait until we were in the car.
“Two and two,” he said with a smirk, jogging toward the administrative parking lot where he’d parked illegally. “Cora told you about Vanderventer and Ace, didn’t she?”
I couldn’t read while running after him. Not until we were in the car and racing down the highway could I don my glasses and scan the screen.
Vanderventer had been cooking on his balcony when he’d apparently knocked over the portable grill, at nine o’clock in the morning.
No one grills in the morning.
I’d talked to Cora around nine.
I’d wished Vanderventer a cozy dip in hell.
I choked and flung the phone back at him.
“See something familiar?” Andre asked dryly, returning the phone to his pocket. “Not water pipes this time?”
“That’s ridiculous,” I asserted. “He was miles away. I cannot hurt someone miles away, far outside of the Zone. I will not take the blame for this, unless you just want to dump all the world’s problems on my shoulders.”
“Denial,” he taunted. “You’re excellent at denial. Go talk to your dead boyfriend and see what he says.”
I hadn’t even thought about Max while I was focusing on the test. I’d come out of the testing center feeling pretty damned good, and Andre was raining on my parade.
“Did you read the Vanderventer file?” I demanded, turning the tables. “What did you find? Anything to get angry about?”
“I used to work for Acme. So did my father. I already know who owns the plant and who’s responsible for the chemical spills and worse. I don’t need a damned bunch of paper to tell me who at Acme cuts cost corners, lies, cheats, and steals to cover their asses when accidents happen. Unless you’re rich and powerful enough to take down a senator and his cronies, there’s nothing you can do about it. And we don’t want to do anything about it, if they just leave us alone. So, no, I didn’t read the file, and no, I wasn’t angry enough to dump hot coals on Dane, although there have been times I’ve considered it.”
“You’re on a first-name basis with a senator?” I asked.
“We went to school together, and that’s all you need to know.” Andre swung the Mercedes off the interstate onto the exit leading to the harbor.
I could have done a whole lot with just that one statement if I’d had time, which I didn’t. I knew rich boys like Dane Vanderventer didn’t go to public school, for instance. Which meant Andre had either once been rich or had been a scholarship student at a ritzy school, making him fabulously intelligent. I was wagering on the latter.
“So you’re mad at me because you think I fried an old friend of yours?” I asked, sounding nonchalant. “Now who has weird ideas?”
“I’m missing yesterday’s deposit,” he said curtly, avoiding my question. “Since I know you didn’t have time to steal it, and I’m pretty certain the thugs didn’t manage it, being busy destroying Chesty’s, I’m guessing we have the invisible thief to blame, right?”
My happy mood was fading rapidly. I eyed him warily. “That’s my guess.”
“Do that funky thing you do and find the thief,” he ordered.
“You want him dead or alive?” I asked sarcastically.
“I don’t care how you find him. The insurance company refuses to cover another loss.
I’m tired of being ripped off. Just picture him caught.”
“You’re serious?” I stared at him, and he wasn’t laughing.
“There are a lot of people depending on me for their income. I’m dead serious. I take back what I was thinking yesterday. Let’s experiment.”
“Oh, well, sure, as long as I have the grand Andre’s permission.” I waved my hand airily. “Let’s visualize our grabby thief appearing with his hand stuck in a cash drawer.” Privately, I visualized Andre giving everyone raises, but the hand-in-a-cash-drawer idea appealed to me, so I invoked that thought, too. I didn’t like thieves who jeopardized my job.
• • •
Five minutes later, just as we turned down the back alley behind the abandoned storefronts, across from the Victorians, Andre’s phone rang. He halted the car, read the text, handed it to me, then began backing out.
Cght thef read the message from Bill. I hated text messages. They reminded me of Max’s bad spelling.
Andre obviously had no such problem. He gunned the car back to the Zone and parked in front of the bar and grill. It was after four, so the cash drawer should have been counted and the deposit prepared, but I hadn’t been there to do them.
I still wasn’t seriously believing my visualization had caught a thief at work until I walked into the bar—and saw a skinny, tattooed teenager with his hand stuck in the huge brass till of the oversize mechanical cash register.
He flickered out when he saw me. Flickered. He disappeared. I could see all the bottles and the shelf that he’d been standing in front of. He reappeared again when Bill shook him by the scruff of his collar. This was the little freak who’d been sneaking into my apartment, leaving clippings?
“I just walked away for a minute,” Bill said with disgust. “Do I call the cops?”
Andre shot me a glare of victory. “Not yet. Let’s get his story.”
I was suffering the nauseating sensation that this was all about me.
“Clancy, you have to let him go if we want to question him,” Andre said conversationally.
“What?” Bill and I both asked at once.