“You okay?” Sheila asked, not because she cared but because the longer it took to get him out of there the more uncomfortable the other patrons would become and the more likely they were to leave and never come back.
“I’m fine,” he said and told her what he needed. She nodded and went down into the cellar. When she returned, they traded packages, and he slipped out the door into the bright spring sunlight.
• • •
Later that morning, Victoria knocked on Michael’s hotel room door. After making her verify her identity, he unlocked the door, stepped back and let her into the room. Drops of water glistened on his hair, so she knew he’d just gotten out of the shower. Late night or lazy son of a bitch, it was hard to say. Possibly both.
He had a towel wrapped around his waist but he didn’t seem self-conscious as he went over to the dresser, opened the top drawer and withdrew a pistol and magazine, then tossed them to her. She fielded them with thanks. He’d gotten her a Beretta, though she’d been half expecting him to come up with a Glock. She felt much better as she checked the action and slapped the clip in place. She’d packed her shoulder rig and as soon as she got back to her own room, she’d strap it on and then she’d be fully dressed again.
Unlike some people in the room. The towel was taut against his butt as he sauntered over to the chair in the corner and sat down. She tried very hard not to think about what was under the towel. She knew what was under the towel. The towel wasn’t helping her concentration any. It might in fact be easier to talk to him if he were naked. Then again maybe not.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked. He knew better but still he persisted. She ignored the query. He gave a half-smile and said, “You’ve been to see Morningside, haven’t you? The man couldn’t detect his way across town without a driver, why do you bother?”
“It’s not Morningside I go to see when I go to see Morningside.” Her cell phone rang before she could elaborate. Michael — like everyone else — was so accustomed to her being direct that it never occurred to them that she could be otherwise. A smile — smug, she was sure — curved her lips as she flipped the phone open and announced herself.
“Hey, Denise!” she said with real pleasure when she heard the other woman speak. She liked Denise and not just because she spilled things she wasn’t supposed to. “What’s up?” She listened silently for a while. Denise had to talk fast while no one was around to hear her. “That right? Interesting. Buy you a drink later? Okay, we’ll do it some other time. I’m only in town for a few days. Keep in touch.”
She hit the “off” button and grinned at Michael. “Denise Vanderveldt is the unit clerk in Morningside’s burglary squad. She’s the one I go to see when I go to see Morningside.”
“She sells out NYPD cases to people like you?” Michael said, as if there were some things even he wouldn’t do.
“She’s got a husband who took off with their life savings, a disabled kid, a widowed mother with Alzheimer’s and no pension, and an old boy’s network on the job that makes sure she stays exactly where she is. If she asked for help, they’d tell her to pull herself up by her bootstraps,” Victoria said, folding the phone closed and tucking it away. “She can use the money I give her. Besides, she thinks I do good work.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. Well, it had been something of a rant. “So what’d she tell you?”
“They’re nowhere near an arrest. They don’t even have a decent suspect,” she said. “But one of the investigators took a little peek into the priest’s personal life. Apparently he had a little trouble keeping his pants zipped.”
“A man of the cloth who slept around. There’s a shocking, shocking surprise.”
“He was scoring the housekeeper.”
“I’d be scoring Nadine, too.”
Victoria did not respond to this obvious attempt to provoke her. When sufficiently motivated, Michael was perfectly capable of monogamy. But he was also sufficiently attractive to bed any number of women, which she supposed he’d been doing in the years since the monogamy had worn off.
“All right. So the priest had affairs. And this information helps how?” He wasn’t as dumb as the question made him sound. He was just trying to get her to speculate. The information was extremely helpful because it gave another motive for the murder, other than the theft of the artifacts. Anything that meant Vlad might not be involved was welcome news to Victoria.
“The rumor is that he was also scoring Elene Angelus,” she said. According to reliable sources, the priest, unlike Michael, had not been sufficiently motivated for monogamy. Or chastity. Since Elene was dead, no one could ask her to respond to the rumors. In the absence of documentary proof the rumors remained unconfirmed but persistent enough for the investigators to take seriously. “If it’s true, that brings us to the husband,” she said. “Even if it wasn’t true but he thought it was, an affair could have been a motive for him.”
“Why the husband?” As if he didn’t know. “Maybe the housekeeper was jealous of the relationship between Elene and the priest and shot them both. The boy could have been collateral damage.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “This has all the hallmarks of an abusive husband,” she said. “He took the silver as a blind, so that everyone would think that theft was the true motive for the crime. He’s going to bury it in the backyard or something.”
“What have you got against husbands?”
That didn’t even rate a response.
He said, “I suppose you’re going to go torment him now. Give me ten more minutes and I’ll go with you. What’s our cover going to be?”
“How about I’m an old friend of Elene’s?” she suggested. “I haven’t seen her in a long time but I heard about her death and I wanted to pay my respects to the family.”
“The husband’s not going to break down and reveal intimate family secrets to you just because you’re an old friend,” he said, getting to his feet and walking over to the dresser where he started opening drawers and gathering a change of clothes.
“I just want to meet the man, get a sense of what he’s like. People always say, ‘He was such a nice guy, I can’t believe he murdered his wife,’ but the truth is, the red flags are always there. Always.”
“And you can see them, oh sensei,” Michael said, slamming a drawer with more vigor than necessary.
“That’s sabumnim,” she snapped. “Someday you will learn the difference between Korean and Japanese martial arts.”
“No, I won’t,” he said positively.
“I’ll be able to see the red flags,” she said, abandoning the sub-argument. It was possible to carry on any number of simultaneous arguments with him, supposing you had the energy. “If I see any red flags, we’ll know the husband is a good suspect.”
“I have the sneaking suspicion that you’ll invent the red flags,” he said, disappearing into the bathroom to get dressed. Always had to have the last word. She watched as he shut the door behind him, then heaved a sigh of relief. At least now she wouldn’t have to be thinking about that damned towel. Although somehow she wasn’t not thinking about the towel, was she?
Restlessly she got up and walked over to the window, looking out onto the city street twelve stories below. She used to find the amped-up energy exciting but the older she got the more she liked boredom. She had worked hard to get the life she had, one with routine and structure, a reason to get out of bed every morning. The school kept her mind and her body occupied. The small town where she lived was calm and peaceful, with enough cultural activities to mix it up. Her few close friends knew her only as a martial arts teacher. She wanted that life back. The reassuring familiarity of the days, one like the other, slipping past easily, not causing too much pain, not causing any regret. She could do it without thinking. Without feeling. Already she missed it, the smell of the dojang, the comforting knowledge that she alw
ays knew exactly what to do next and nothing would ever surprise her.
She turned as Michael came out of the bathroom, buttoning his shirt, unaware of her observation. The attraction struck her so unexpectedly she had to catch her breath. Every dumb thing she had ever done had come from wanting him.
Casually, he tucked his shirt into dress pants, all lean hips and flat belly, smoothly muscled chest and broad shoulders. A slight hitch in the effortless grace, as if sleep could no longer combat the fatigue. The lines on his face were deeper and there were more of them. A light sprinkle of gray in his hair, which she was sure he would have ruthlessly obscured had he known it was there. The grim set of his mouth, as if it had been a long time since happiness.
He was still fit and strong but she could see the difference the years had made. A lot of miles between then and now. Then he glanced up at her and the sadness smoothed away like he had put a mask over it. She wanted to say, It happened to me, why does it look like it happened to you?
She clenched her fingers into the material of the curtain, rough and heavy, real. For the space of a heartbeat she wanted to ask him why. The impulse passed, the way impulses always did. If she could just remember that, and not succumb.
She cleared her throat. “So what do you know about her?”
“Newspaper said Elene went to a Catholic school on the Upper East Side. Sacred Heart,” he said. “You’re about her age. Do you think you can fake that you went to high school with her?”
“You got any details?” she asked. She could fake anything given enough details. Or at least she used to —
“A few,” he said, and started filling her in as they headed out the door to the elevator. “You graduated in a class of something over 150, so if her husband doesn’t remember her talking about you — which I’m betting he won’t — it won’t seem too suspicious.”
He punched the down button and they waited for the car to arrive. When it did, he took her elbow and guided her in. She was tempted to perform a snake armlock on him but some men never learned no matter how often she taught them. Michael was one of these men. The doors closed as he reached for the lobby button.
“Apparently it was a typical parochial school with the nuns running the show.”
“I can reminisce about getting rapped on the knuckles with a ruler.”
“All girls.”
“So I’ll avoid mentioning how our friend Peter used to let the mice loose in science lab.”
“You haven’t done this in a long time.”
She gave him a glance. If he was worried about her ability to succeed why had he asked for her help in the first place?
“Well, maybe the fact that I’m older and wiser will turn out to be a good thing,” she said. Of course, maybe he was hoping she was still as reckless as she’d ever been.
Chapter 10
Michael had the address for the dead woman’s grieving husband, which Victoria was sure hadn’t been printed in the paper, but of course, he had other sources. They didn’t say anything to each other on the way up to the apartment.
She could hear voices murmuring behind the apartment door even before she raised her hand to knock. Obviously the grieving husband wasn’t alone. Company could be good because you were less likely to get grilled by a suspicious mark when there were other people around, but it could also be bad because you couldn’t talk to the mark as easily with a group of his best buddies sitting around, running interference.
She rapped loudly on the door. The sound of authority, something that couldn’t easily be avoided. Instinctive and instinctual, automatic despite the years that had passed. A little dizzy, she braced a palm against the doorframe. It had been a long time since her last project. And what she’d achieved then was a felony conviction. She took a deep breath.
“Try not to pass out,” Michael suggested helpfully.
She bit back a remark as the door swung open. A slender blonde man vibrating with intense energy glowered at them, waves of hostility emanating from him. Not exactly the picture of a grieving husband and father. Victoria forced herself not to take a step back from him.
“Mr. Angelus,” she said very respectfully, not wanting that hostility directed at her. She had enough to deal with as it was.
“Just a moment,” he said. Then: “May I tell him who you are?”
Her shoulders relaxed fractionally. At least he wasn’t the man they had come to see.
“I’m an old friend of Elene’s,” she said in a hushed voice, putting regret into her tone. “I’ve been out of touch and just heard the news.” Keep it short and sweet, she had to remind herself. In the past, she’d sometimes gotten carried away trying to lend verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative, and she’d been hard pressed to keep her story straight afterwards.
The vibrating blonde man looked over his shoulder into the room beyond, then back at them as if he didn’t quite know what to do.
“Who is it, Kevin?” a deep male voice called from the interior of the apartment.
The question made him relax. “Friends of Elene’s,” he responded, not taking his eyes from Victoria’s face. The intensity of his look creeped her out. Listen to your gut. How many times a day did she tell her students that? Still, she couldn’t listen to her gut and do her job, which was going to be a lot of comfort when it was her body Michael was standing over, shaking his head and saying, “That’s really too bad.”
He put his palm on the small of her back and the gesture, from a man who was selling her out, shouldn’t have been comforting and reassuring but it was. She’d have thought all those years of teaching self-preservation skills to others would have rubbed off on her. Apparently not.
“Invite them in.”
The man she figured — through a brilliant process of inductive reasoning — must be Kevin, dutifully said, “Please come in.” He unchained the door, then opened it just wide enough for them to squeeze through. This put Victoria and Michael into a tiny square foyer barely large enough for them to stand shoulder and shoulder. Kevin gestured toward the living room beyond, where Victoria could see a small circle of people sitting around a coffee table piled high with bottles of wine, boxes of pizza, and bowls of buffalo wings. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting to find here but it wasn’t quite this. She stepped into the room and flinched when she heard the door click shut and the snick of bolts shooting home.
Trapped. Her instinctive response flooded her veins with adrenaline and she tensed. Then Kevin crept up behind her and that would have resulted in a fracas except Michael yanked her forward, out of the creepy man’s range. Even so, she could feel Kevin’s erratic breath on the back of her neck. Her whole body stayed tense, ready to respond to danger. Michael seemed to think she was a little overstimulated because he kept his hand on her arm — effectively blocking her from using her gun hand — and maybe he was right. With a conscious effort, she dialed it back a notch.
“I’m Connie,” a tall man with a cluster of tight dark curls said, getting to his feet. “Short for Constantine.” He wiped his hand on his jeans and extended it toward her. He had warm brown eyes, an open and genuine look on his face. She could see the traces of tears on his cheeks, the reddened eyes. That didn’t mean anything. Murderous husbands often felt bad afterwards.
“I’m Vickie Fairfax,” she said, giving him a name not quite her own, taking his hand and shaking it, his grip firm and friendly. Then she touched Michael’s arm. “This is Mike.” If Connie noticed she didn’t specify who exactly Mike was and why he was present, he didn’t say so.
“Good to meet you, Vickie, Mike,” Connie said. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured with a hand. Some rustling ensued as his guests scooted around to make room for them. She sat on the itchy tweed sofa next to two women, almost immediately regretting her choice when she realized one hadn’t showered in a while and the
other had apparently dumped the entire contents of a bottle of perfume over her head.
Michael grabbed an uncomfortable-looking side chair that allowed him a good view of all the people in the room and had the advantage of not putting him in close proximity to anyone who smelled of anything.
As she glanced around, she could see the crowd wasn’t as large as she’d originally perceived. There was Kevin, the jumpy door-answerer, who turned out to be the Kevin Kirkpatrick of the Altar Society that the housekeeper had mentioned in their conversation with her; Connie, of course, the bereaved husband and father; the two women of indeterminate age but matronly aspect that she sat between; and a balding man of the same vintage. Coming out of the kitchen was a tall, slim redhead with a bottle of flavored water in her hand. She stopped short and narrowed her eyes when she caught sight of Victoria and Michael. Ah. Someone who disliked interlopers. That might be useful.
“Some of my friends from church,” Connie said, after making brief introductions. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“I’m fine,” Victoria said, glancing at Michael, who shook his head. She had a policy of never accepting food or drink from someone who might poison her, a policy she had developed in response to a project she’d once done with him.
Connie remained standing for a moment as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do next, as if the role of host had sustained him and without that prop, he wavered, uncertain. Then he crumpled onto the sofa next to her and put his head in his hands. He didn’t quite fit on the sofa and there was an awkward shuffling until one of the matronly women popped up and took a seat elsewhere.
The redhead narrowed her eyes at Victoria as if she’d somehow lured Connie to her side with promises of fantastic sexual favors.
Date with the Devil (Crimson Romance) Page 7