I climbed in the car and started the engine, but as we approached the white van, it became clear the cab was empty. Just another white van, I thought. The city was filled with them.
We hadn’t gone a block when I stopped at a light and Cody thumbed at a café. “We should have met him there. It’s closer, and I’m hungry.”
“They don’t have organic food. Besides, it’s too close to the police station.” It was probably a cop hangout, even on a Saturday.
“What’s wrong with that?”
I spent enough time being stared at by officers, and it was worse now that rumors were beginning to leak about my relationship with Shannon. Though I didn’t consult on all his cases, I had to wonder how long the captain would let us work together. “I’d rather eat organic.”
“Ah.”
Maybe I also wanted more space between me and the white van. I was getting paranoid. Ace had said he didn’t know the people in the van outside my store yesterday, that they were likely waiting for someone. Maybe he’d been right.
As if my thoughts had conjured up the man, I spotted Ace’s damaged BMW outside the café Cody had indicated. Perhaps working his police contacts, I thought, since he’d been at the station that morning. Was that him silhouetted in the window at a table with two others? Probably old partners from when he’d been on the force. Even as I caught that glimpse, two of the shadowed figures arose.
The traffic light turned green, and I pushed on the gas. “Anyway, I need to check on Tawnia. If it’s still busy, I’ll have to stay at the shop. Destiny isn’t going to be a perfect angel all day.”
“No? I thought angel was her job description.” His voice had gone all soft, and I knew he’d been smitten like the rest of us.
I pulled into an empty parking place outside my shop, glad to see that Tawnia’s car was nowhere in sight. The fact that there were plenty of available spots told me customers had gone elsewhere, so Randa and Thera wouldn’t need me right away. There was also no white van in sight, and the tightness in my chest vanished. We hurried across the street to Smokey’s.
We’d already received our orders—turkey pot pie for me and beef stew for Cody—when Winston Drewmore arrived at the restaurant, which for some reason seemed larger to me today without Russo taking up space.
I could see Winston was a little surprised that we’d gone ahead without him, so after waving him over I said casually, “As you can see, we take food seriously around here. Probably because I never know when I’m going to be called in on a case.”
“Ha,” Cody said. “You’ve always been this way, from what I hear.”
Winston looked at Cody and then at me. “Does, uh, your bodyguard always eat with you?”
Oh, that’s right. Winston and JoAnna Hamilton believed Cody was my bodyguard. “Well, he’s worked with me for so long,” I hedged.
Winston waited and finally I met Cody’s gaze. “I’m going over to the next table to discuss a few things with Winston.” Good thing it was between rush times, or we’d be stuck at the same table, and Winston would never tell me what I wanted to know.
As I moved away, Cody nodded without appearing concerned, but the line between his eyes deepened. I wasn’t worried. I could handle Winston.
A waitress I didn’t know came to take Winton’s order of a roast beef sandwich with fried zucchini instead of regular fries. Winston glanced over his shoulder at Cody before beginning. “Sorry about that little scene, but I wanted to get you alone to tell you that Ralph called me.”
“He did?”
He nodded, his seriousness making him appear older than my first impression of him. “Just now when I was on my way over. Said he was with a friend.” He frowned, marring the smoothness of his skin. “That’s odd because Ralph doesn’t have friends, not that I’ve ever seen. His life is his work. He never does anything or goes anywhere else—except the movies. Anyway, I told him about the break-in and asked about the computer drive with the backup program files he took from the safe. He said to meet him at the theater at five to get it. He has the files but says they aren’t safe with him.”
Five gave us an hour. Not much time to plan a strategy. “That’s a relief. But why didn’t you tell him to go to the police station? They could protect him.”
“I did. He said the guy he’s with told him it wasn’t safe. That someone was watching.” Winston’s puzzlement shifted to a scowl, which was more attractive—more real—than his usual ready smile. “For all I know, those men from last night have him and are telling him what to say. You know, so that I’ll go down there.”
“Maybe, but why would they need you?” The way it came out wasn’t exactly complimentary, and that Winston didn’t take offense said a lot for him.
“Exactly. That’s the only reason I haven’t called that detective boyfriend of yours. Still, I need to tell someone, and since JoAnna hired you, I thought you could help me get Ralph and the backup drive somewhere safe.”
“Where?” The only place secure was the police station.
“That’s what I’m not sure about. My safe-deposit box would be best for the computer drive because it’s so close and almost impossible to get into in a short period of time, but the bank is closed on Saturdays. The only other safe option is to take both Ralph and the drive to our building in Washington. The guards are always on duty there.”
“Have you told Ms. Hamilton?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. She’ll be relieved to know her brother is okay—and that he has the backup.” He gave me a grin that was a ghost of his usual smile. “Guess if Ralph’s okay, you’re not really on the case anymore.”
“That’s okay. I’m glad he’s safe. Did he say anything about the other backup? The rigged one he made for Russo?”
“Only that he believed it was safe, but it was better not to depend on it because it wasn’t in his hands at the moment. Guess he stashed it somewhere. Probably to keep the two separate.”
The waitress arrived with his sandwich, and as she served him, I scooped up a couple bites of pot pie. Now that it had cooled a bit, the taste was even better.
“Uh, Autumn,” Winston said, as the waitress left. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but what’s with the gloves?”
“It’s an imprint thing,” I said, waving a hand as nonchalantly as I could. So what if I looked stupid wearing gloves in warm weather? It wasn’t like he was telling me anything new.
He crunched his forehead and said, “Okaaay. Well, no matter. Seems to be going on a lot. My cousin was wearing some like those today. Yesterday, too.” His easy smile was back as he took a huge bite of one of his sandwich halves.
Ah, yes, his cousin. I remembered the dainty pair from Hamilton’s house last night and how she’d slipped them into a drawer. That’s what I must have remembered when Easton Godfrey mentioned gloves earlier today. I had wondered about them. JoAnna Hamilton didn’t read imprints and she didn’t seem the gardening type. Not even rich people like her wore dress gloves these days, though if I’d seen her cousin Maribel—Winston’s grandmother—wearing them with her peach dress, I probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.
“Must be kind of strange working with your grandmother’s cousin,” I said. “She seems like a nice woman—your grandmother, that is. Kind.”
He smiled. “She is. She raised me, and she was always there. Always. She’s given me stability. It hasn’t been easy for her on her own, but she’d do anything for me. Of course I always knew I’d eventually work for JoAnna.”
“What about your own mother?” I wouldn’t have asked the question if he hadn’t opened the subject. I knew he was Maribel Hamilton’s grandson, and thus a first cousin a couple times removed from JoAnna Hamilton, but that was the only thing he’d told us about his personal life.
He shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell. My grandmother married right out of high school, and when her husband died, she pretty much focused on their daughter—my mother—but she ended up dying the year after I was born from the same gen
etic disease that took my grandfather. She wasn’t even twenty.”
A terrible story. “I’m sorry.” I knew what it was to mourn the woman who’d given me birth, a woman I’d never known.
Again the shrug. “I’ve had it better than most orphans.” He cracked a smile. “But for the record, I don’t have the genetic disease.”
I was glad for Maribel’s sake. Losing a husband and a daughter was bad enough. “Your father?”
“Not in the picture.” His smile vanished, so I guessed it was a sore spot with him. Maybe he’d been abandoned when his mother had been sick. Or perhaps the man had come looking for money after his son became successful with Hamilton’s company. It wasn’t my place to ask.
“Drewmore was my grandmother’s married name,” he added. “She reverted back to Hamilton when I was a teen, but I kept it.”
“What about JoAnna? I supposed she sort of helped out.” Though once I thought about it, I couldn’t imagine the woman doing anything motherly.
“Oh, we didn’t live together when I was young. Grandmother and I had a house in New York, and we saw JoAnna when we lived there, but my grandmother . . . well, when I was about ten she became a little disoriented.”
Disoriented, yes, I could see that applying very aptly to Maribel Hamilton. I could also imagine her being loving and focused on raising a child.
“It was the city environment, I believe,” Winston continued. “Eventually JoAnna bought the house in Lake Oswego, and Grandmother and I stayed there. It was a good life for a boy. Growing up on the lake, I mean. After that, it was college and the company. JoAnna and I’d take turns visiting Grandmother on the weekends when the business was in New York. We finally moved the entire company here to some family land across the Washington border. That’s worked out a lot better for us. We didn’t like leaving my grandmother alone with the housekeeper. So what about you? What’s your story?”
Though he’d shared his background, I wasn’t sure enough of his innocence to tell him how Tawnia and I had been separated by the doctor who delivered us, given to different adoptive families. How as an adult Tawnia had moved from state to state and job to job, feeling compelled, and how the collapse of the bridge that stole Winter’s life had finally brought us together. People always thought that part amazing, but it was only a matter of time until fate allowed us to meet.
“Oh, there’s nothing much more than what you already know,” I told Winston. “Nothing exciting. Well, besides the imprints, that is. I started reading those when my dad died. Guess it was the trauma. It’s kept me busy.”
“I’ll bet.”
I let a few seconds of silence pass before I added, “I guess I should tell you why I called you here.” I forked in another large bite of pot pie, hoping it wasn’t my last.
His smile was infectious. “Not just because you wanted to see me, huh?” He shook his head. “Sorry, it’s a joke. Bad timing for it, right? With my company teetering on the edge. So why did you call?” He glanced at his phone to check the time.
I knew he was worried about meeting Shatlock, and we still had to figure out how to do that safely. I wasn’t going to let Winston show up alone at the meeting place.
I swallowed my food and reached down for my bag, removing Tawnia’s pad and flipping it to the drawing of him and Frank O’Donald. “I need you to explain this.”
He paled, the grin leaking from his face. Still, he braved it through. “What exactly are you asking?”
His response was more proof that he wasn’t only a young, pretty face. JoAnna Hamilton had groomed him well. Don’t volunteer anything. Find out first what question is being asked. It hurt my heart a little seeing this side of him because I suspected he didn’t come to it naturally, just as I hadn’t always expected the worst from people.
This time I was glad to oblige his question, since I obviously wasn’t getting information out of him the other way. I didn’t even care if Shannon and Paige got mad. The drawing wasn’t official evidence. My sister had provided it, and that made me responsible.
“I want to know what you were doing with Frank O’Donald this morning. If I recall correctly, you don’t know him personally.”
“I didn’t say that.” His eyes didn’t quite meet mine. “I have met with Frank O’Donald several times, in fact. I’ve known him for months, but JoAnna doesn’t know that. My business with Frank has nothing to do with any of this. He’s not involved—at least not in the way you think.”
“Oh?” I cast a regretful glance at my abandoned fork. We’d have to go soon, if we were going to meet Hamilton’s brother. “And what do I think?”
“That I’m selling her out. The company.”
“It did cross my mind.”
“It’s not like that. Frank and I are friends. Our relationship is strictly personal.”
Could Winston be so blind?
“No,” I said. “Men like Frank O’Donald don’t have friends. To him, people are divided into three categories: enemies, people he uses, and family. Some are all three. But he doesn’t have friends. You might think he does, but that would be a mistake. He’s like Nicholas Russo. I don’t know how O’Donald fits into this, but he is using you, probably to get control over your company.”
“You’re wrong. It’s not like that.” His blue eyes held a hint of pleading.
“Then what’s it like, huh?” I pressed. “I’m listening. Do you attend the same country club? Do you play tennis together? Oh, wait, he’s from New York. Maybe you attended charity benefits together before your company moved its headquarters here. Maybe he donates money to starving children in Africa—money he makes from dealing drugs at our children’s schools.”
Winston pushed back his plate, his food unfinished. “It’s not something you’d understand.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I leaned forward. Behind Winston, Cody had finished eating and was staring at us, his body alert.
“I know you’re adopted,” Winston said, “but you had two loving parents. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up not knowing.”
I spread both gloved hands on the table. “Don’t I? I met my birth father for the first time five months ago. In fact, I was investigating him in regards to a young girl’s disappearance. Now what does not growing up with parents have to do with Frank O’Donald?”
“Because,” he said with a sigh. “Frank O’Donald is my father.”
Chapter 17
“Your father?” I shook my head. “No. He’s too old.” Mid-sixties, I’d heard someone say. “You’re what—twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“So he’d have been nearing forty when you were born. Your mother was too young for a guy like that. Not even twenty you said.”
He shrugged and didn’t meet my eyes. “Nevertheless, he’s my father. He didn’t know, though. I wrote to him six months ago when I found my real birth certificate at the house. I contacted him. We had a blood test, and he is my father.”
“So now he wants to be part of your life?” I meant it sarcastically, but because of my own experience with Cody, it came out as a real question.
“Yes, he does.” A hint of a smile played on Winston’s lips.
“Does your grandmother and Ms. Hamilton know about him?”
“You mean do they know he’s my father? Yes. I told JoAnna just before we signed the contract with Russo, and then my grandmother later that same day. But I didn’t tell either of them that I’d been to see him several times, or that he knows I’m his son.”
I grabbed my fork and took two more bites of pie. Eating helped me think; things were becoming clearer already. “So this is why you two didn’t want me reading the imprints on Russo’s contract.”
He nodded. “I’d left my briefcase after we signed, and when I went back to get it, I heard Russo saying something about you to one of his guys. They shut up quick when they saw me. Anyway, JoAnna and I did some asking around, and we followed you yesterday to see what you were like.” He sighed. “She was real
ly worried. If Russo knows I’m O’Donald’s son, it might change everything.”
“Why? You’d think he’d be happy to make financial gains through a competitor’s son.”
“You’d think.” Winston stared down at his sandwich. “There seems to be some kind of feud between them, but I haven’t been able to get any information about it.”
“It might be connected with a shooting about six years ago. You hear anything about that?”
“No. Anyway, I thought JoAnna might withdraw from the contract altogether once I told her about you, but we really have no choice if we want to save the business.”
Something wasn’t adding up again. “What aren’t you telling me?”
This time he met my gaze without wavering. “I’ve told you everything. I don’t want JoAnna’s business—our business—to fail, but I won’t be denied a relationship with my father. I want to know him.”
Pity swept through me. Couldn’t he understand that nothing good would come from being the son of a mobster? I only hoped the man already had an heir, or Winston might find himself forced into the business, where I doubted he’d last long—that is if Maribel and JoAnna had managed to instill any kind of morality during his formative years.
“After learning about the connection between you and O’Donald,” I said slowly, “people might think it wasn’t coincidence that someone broke into your lab when they did—exactly when your cousin wasn’t supposed to be there. As though someone wanted the information stolen, and wanted to pretend to be going along with some master plan, but didn’t want to risk Ralph’s life.”
Winston shook his head. “I see where you’re going. Absolutely not. I might have mentioned the lab to Frank, but I didn’t tell him to break in or give him any codes. Even if I didn’t value my own career, I would never do that to JoAnna.”
I wanted to believe him.
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