A Pepsi took the edge off, and having the office to myself went a long way toward restoring my equilibrium. I sank into my chair and looked around, appreciating the peace, even though the scent of coffee lingered. No Kendall, no Gigi, no clients. Perfect. I’d become somewhat reconciled to Gigi in the months since she’d been foisted on me—she had decent computer skills, and clients tended to like her—but I missed my solitude and missed the simplicity of my undecorated, uncoffeed office. As I drained the Pepsi and clanged the can into my trash can, the fax machine beeped and began to spit paper.
Reaching for the first page, I realized Fiona had come through: It was a list of Czarina Catering clients. I skimmed it, not expecting to recognize any of the names. I trailed a finger down the page: ENT Bank, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Emmons, SAIC … I flipped the page and kept reading. Emily Stevens, Tanner Industries … I was about to pitch the list into the trash when two names I recognized caught my eye: Dellert House and Trevor Anthony.
28
Half an hour later I walked through the doors of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church looking for Aaron Wong. I’d brought his brother’s belongings with me. I knew the church administrative offices, including Dan’s, were to the left, so I headed right, toward the sanctuary. I’d be just as happy not to have to talk to Dan. I peered into the church, dimly lit by the snowy sky showcased by massive picture windows behind the altar, but saw no one. Rows of empty pews lined either side of a central aisle, and the brassy pipes of a serious organ glimmered to my right. I sometimes heard the organ playing when I jogged past the church on a Sunday morning, and the glorious music almost tempted me in to the service. Almost.
Stairs led downward across from the sanctuary, and I descended, finding myself in a hall lined with meeting rooms, a nursery, and Sunday school classrooms. One room had a bright yellow ark on a table with wooden animal pairs marching toward it. My mind flashed on my mother reading me the story of Noah’s Ark when I was really little—three?—from the fat board-book kids’ Bible that had been one of my childhood treasures. I had an impression of her frizzy light brown hair falling across her face, me clutching my blankie, her finger underscoring the words as she read. “Two of every kind of animal boarded the boat…”
I didn’t have many memories of my mother doing anything maternal—braiding my hair, kissing me good night, spritzing Bactine on skinned knees—and I couldn’t place the memory. Had we been at Grandy and Gramps’ house in Washington? Or had it happened earlier than that? I shook it off, uncomfortable with it. I left the Sunday school room and traipsed down a long hall, following the faint sound of hip-hop music. I found Aaron scrubbing an oven in a kitchen attached to a community gathering area, singing along with the radio.
“Aaron?”
He jumped at the sound of my voice, bumping his head. He backed out of the oven, rubbing the sore spot. “Charlie. What are you doing here? Did you find something?” He looked past me as if expecting to see his brother standing there.
“No, but I checked at Dellert House, and they gave me this.” I passed him the bag with Nate’s clothes and wallet. “He left them behind. I’ve got your stuff in the car,” I added.
Aaron held the bag gingerly, turning it over in his soapy hands. Setting the bag on the counter, he rinsed his hands in the sink. His back was stiff.
“It’s only clothes,” I said, “and a wallet.”
Aaron turned to face me, his dark eyes grave. “That’s not good.”
I shrugged. “Hard to know. His military ID’s in there, along with a photo of a girl named Alisha.”
“Alisha? Doesn’t mean anything to me. He must have met her at basic.” He sorted through the bag’s contents quickly, holding the wallet for a moment before opening it.
“There was also a phone number for Czarina Catering,” I said as he studied Alisha’s photo. “Do you know the business?”
“No. Do you think she might know where he is?” He indicated the photo.
“It’s possible,” I said.
He flung the wallet at the counter, where it hit a canister and ricocheted to the floor. “It’s a stupid idea. We have no way of finding her—no last name, we don’t know where she’s from. Stupid!”
I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed but didn’t say anything.
Footsteps warned of Dan’s approach a split second before he appeared in the doorway. “Aaron, I thought we might grab some lunch—” He caught sight of me. “Charlie.” He stepped forward until he was standing inches in front of me, his height and bulk blocking Aaron and the kitchen from view. I stared determinedly at the eye-level button on his black clerical shirt.
Dan said, “I’m sorry about what I said last night. It was uncalled for and none of my business. Forgive me?”
I felt his eyes on me, and I looked up to find his blue gaze fixed on my face. He looked like my forgiveness really mattered to him. I heaved a put-upon sigh. “Of course. You weren’t entirely wrong. I can be a little … sharp, on occasion.”
“On occasion?”
He cocked an eyebrow, and I socked his arm, the feeling of oppression that had weighed me down since last night lifting.
“Why don’t we all go to lunch?” he suggested, looking around to include Aaron in the invitation. “We can run over to Zio’s if the snow’s not too bad.”
“I don’t think so, thanks,” Aaron said. “I think I need to call my mom.” Clutching Nate’s wallet, he slipped from the room.
Dan watched him go, concern in his eyes, and I explained about finding Nate’s stuff at Dellert House. “That’s not the worst of it,” I added. I told him about Roger Nutt being a Czarina client and what Dmitri had said about being forced to become a courier of fake IDs.
“Let’s talk upstairs,” Dan said, leading the way up a back flight of stairs to a hallway near his office. The secretary’s desk was deserted, and I figured she was at lunch. Grabbing a snow shovel leaning against the door leading from the office area to the front parking area, he handed another to me.
“I liked the lunch idea better,” I grumbled, following him out into the snowy day. What the hell—my pumps were already wet, and I could change shoes at home when we were done. Since the temperature hovered only slightly below thirty, the snow was wet and heavy, and I felt the pull in my shoulder muscles as I scooped a shovelful from the walkway and heaved it aside. Dan worked beside me, his strong arms and back shifting easily triple the snow I was. “Does the church pay you extra for snow-clearing duties?” I asked, blowing on my cold fingers.
“I think this falls under ‘other duties as assigned,’” he said with a grin. The physical labor agreed with him; he looked more relaxed after a few minutes of heaving snow around. I leaned on my shovel and watched him. “So,” he said, nudging the last clumps of snow off the walk, “let me get this straight. You suspect Roger Nutt is the mastermind behind this identity theft ring, or whatever you want to call it, because he hired Czarina Catering to cater a party for him last August?”
“It fits,” I insisted, hearing doubt in his voice. “His job gives him the perfect opportunity to find—or hide—people looking for new identities.”
“I don’t know Roger well,” Dan said, “but he’s got a good rep in the nonprofit community, and we’ve collaborated to find work for a couple of the Dellert House boys. Are you going to give his name to the police?”
I kicked at a snow clod and watched it disintegrate in a puff of white. “I don’t know. As you point out, all I have right now is suspicions. I can’t see the police being able to do anything with the information. I need something more concrete before I talk to them. Trevor Anthony was a customer, too; I can’t forget that.”
“Who’s he?”
“A skater with a grudge against Dmitri and Dara. A twenty-something punk with an ego as pronounced as his abs.”
“So what’s your next step?”
My phone rang, and I held up a finger to Dan, spotting Gigi’s number. “What’s up, Gigi?”
“She’s
gone!” Gigi cried, her Georgia accent heavily evident, as it always was when she got emotional.
“Irena?” I sighed heavily. “Oh, well, she’s a grown wom—”
“She stole my Hummer!”
Oops.
“She’s been hounding me and hounding me all day to go out and look for Dmitri. I explained that that’s what you were doing, but she kept insisting. I went upstairs for a moment, and when I came down, she was gone. I couldn’t believe it at first, and I searched the whole house for her. I went outside, thinking she might have gone for a walk—she was that stir-crazy—and that’s when I noticed my Hummer was gone.” She sounded close to tears.
“Did you leave the keys in the car?”
“In my purse. She went through my purse,” Gigi said, sounding almost more affronted by this invasion of her privacy than by the car theft.
“Did you call the police?”
“No, I called you.”
“Okay. I’ll get hold of Montgomery and tell the police to be on the lookout for your Hummer. Did she give you any hint of where she might be going? Where she might look for Dmitri?”
“Nothing,” Gigi wailed.
A thought came to me. “Hey, aren’t you going out with Roger Nutt tonight?”
“Yes, to José Muldoon’s, but—”
“I’ll be at your house in an hour. No, make it two. Don’t go anywhere.”
“As if I could.”
I hung up and met Dan’s inquiring gaze. “There’s more than one way to skin a skunk.”
29
I passed on lunch, went home to change into warm socks and waterproofed boots, scooped up some equipment I preferred to keep at home rather than in the office, and headed back out. The snow had tapered off, and the sun fought with a thinning layer of clouds. If it came out strongly for a couple of hours, I might get away without having to shovel my walks and driveway. Of course, if it melted the snow and we had a hard freeze tonight, the roads would be an ice rink.
Speaking of which … I pointed the car south on I-25 and headed for the World Arena, intending to have a chat with Trevor Anthony. I’d reached him on his cell, and he’d told me he could spare a few minutes from his practice with Angel. They were practicing in the World Arena proper, rather than the Ice Hall, in preparation for Nationals, which started on Tuesday. “You didn’t find Dmitri, did you?” he’d asked, clearly hoping the answer would be “No,” or “Yes, at the morgue.”
The World Arena is a large event venue, on another scale completely from the Ice Hall. Tiered rows of seats descended toward the ice, which looked somehow more remote and grander than the Olympic rink at the Ice Hall, even though it was the same size. I knew Colorado College played its hockey games here to near-capacity crowds of eight thousand or so, but I’d only ever been here for a ZZ Top concert. Somehow, standing at an unmanned entrance that led from the concourse to the seating areas, I felt the excitement of Nationals in the air. Coaches called to skaters on the ice, and a handful of spectators—reporters? parents? friends?—sprinkled the auditorium. The air crackled with tension, and I couldn’t begin to imagine how it would feel to the skaters on Tuesday when the competition kicked off.
The stale smell of the ice hit me as I started down the steep steps from the concourse to the rink, a totally different scent than the marijuana fumes that had pervaded the place during the ZZ Top event. A chr-chr-chr sound attracted my attention to the far end of the rink, where a man worked on a Zamboni. Several skaters twirled and glided and jumped on the ice, but I had no trouble picking out Trevor and Angel as I drew level with the rink. He wore what looked like runners’ leggings topped by a thin shirt that showed every line of his abs and bulge of his pecs. Her blond hair floated behind them—okay, angel-like—as they zipped around the rink. They did some sort of crossover thingy and then she was floating above him, held aloft by his one hand, her arms outstretched in a “look, Ma, no hands” sort of way. As I watched, his front skate stuttered and he lurched. Angel teetered and fell toward the ice, arms and legs flailing. Trevor recovered enough to throw his arms around her waist and haul her almost upright so she landed awkwardly on one foot before sprawling on the ice.
“Damn it, Angel,” Trevor said, jumping over her to avoid running into her, and coming to a halt. “Your center of gravity wasn’t—”
She burst into tears, clearly shaken by the near catastrophe.
“Hey, you tripped, man,” another skater said, sliding to a stop and helping Angel up. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
She tested her weight on her ankle. “I think so. I’ll have some ugly bruises.” She tried a laugh, but it was thin. “Trevor, let’s try it again from—”
“The damn ice is too rough,” Trevor snarled. “I’m through until they get the Zamboni fixed.” He said it loud enough for the mechanic to hear, but the man made no response. Without another word to his partner, he zipped toward the gate, noticing me when he was halfway across the ice. Immediately, a smile erased the scowl. “Hi, PI lady,” he said, changing direction to intercept me. “Come to watch the next Olympic pairs gold medalists in training?” He tossed his head to fling golden hair off his brow. The look in his blue eyes implied I’d come to watch him.
“I’m working, actually,” I said, “although I enjoy watching the skating more than I thought I would. Looks like Angel took a hard fall.”
“She’s tough,” he said dismissively. “So, you’re still looking for Dmitri? Let’s face it—he ran off because he couldn’t take the pressure. Let him stay lost. Like I told you before, I’ve got no idea where he—”
“Actually, I wanted to ask about the party that Dmitri’s company catered for you last August,” I said.
He stopped sliding his feet back and forth and frowned. “What? Hey, do private dicks moonlight as bill collectors? The cocktail shrimp were off—some of my friends got sick—and the mini cheesecakes were soggy. I’m not paying ano—”
“I’m not here about your bill,” I said, taken aback. “What was the party for? Where’d you have it? Did anything unusual happen?”
“Oh.” He calmed down, passing a hand over his hair. “It was for my twenty-fifth birthday. My folks wanted me to celebrate in style, so they set it up and sent me a check to cover it. They were on an Alaskan cruise.”
He’d cashed the check, spent half of the money on a big-screen TV or a weekend at Steamboat, and screwed Czarina Catering on the bill. What a charmer.
“We did it at my loft downtown,” he said. “Two hundred of my closest friends. Hey, you want an invitation to my next party?”
I pulled my hand back from the railing when he laid his on top of it. “Did anything out of the ordinary happen?”
“Not unless you count half a dozen people tossing their cookies,” he said, grinning as if there were something engaging about drunks throwing up.
“Was Dmitri there?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, not even trying to hide a triumphant smirk. “He was there. He had to work. Poor Dmitri.” He gave a theatrical sigh. “He bartended all night. I don’t think he even got a break to visit the john.”
It was clear Trevor Anthony got off on the memory of putting Dmitri in his place, of making him work while his friends partied. Trevor might take second place on the ice, but he was determined to show himself as Dmitri’s superior off it. It seemed clear Dmitri hadn’t had much of an opportunity to steal financial data at Trevor’s place, not with Trevor keeping an eye on him to gloat. I couldn’t quite see the shallow, spiteful Trevor as the mastermind behind the fake ID ring, anyway. What wanted criminal or terrorist would feel comfortable dealing with this overgrown frat boy?
“Why do you want to know about my party?” Trevor asked. “What’s it got to do with Dmitri?”
“Come on, Trev,” someone yelled from across the rink.
“I’m thinking about having a party”—yeah, when I made a profit of more than thirty-two cents a month with Swift Investigations—“and I wanted to know if you were satisfied
with the job they did.”
He looked unsure, but his friend called again, and Trevor said, “Okay. Well, send me an invitation.”
Before he could skate away, I said, “You told Kendall that you thought Dmitri was splitting with Dara. What made you think that?”
He gestured to the rink. “They’re not here, are they?” His tone was flip, but a watchful look came into his eyes.
“No,” I conceded. I played to his vanity. “Come on, Trevor. You’re smart enough to pick up on things that other people would overlook. What do you know?”
Glancing sideways to make sure no one was within hearing distance, he leaned close enough that I felt his breath on my ear and smelled the damp sweat on his skin. I fought the urge to pull back as he whispered, “Let’s just say I overheard him making reservations to the Cayman Islands. One-way reservations—and it’s not like there’s a lot of ice-skating in the Caymans, you know?” With a wink, he spun and skated hard toward the other side of the rink before I could ask if he’d managed to overhear a departure date.
I pondered Trevor’s claim as I climbed back to concourse level. I figured “overheard” was Trevor-speak for “eavesdropped on.” I had no trouble envisioning the jealous Trevor listening in on Dmitri’s conversations and figured he was right about Dmitri making plane reservations. However, a trip to the Caymans might merely be a vacation, not a permanent move. Maybe the ticket was one-way because Dmitri didn’t know how long he wanted to stay. It was wishful thinking on Trevor’s part, I decided, that made him assume Dmitri was abandoning competitive skating for a surf-and-sun lifestyle in the Caribbean.
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