by Nupur Tustin
He found Ridgeway and the doorman waiting for him behind the reception desk.
“Hey,” Blake asked the doorman, “did anyone visit Reynolds today?”
“Except for you, no.”
“No visitors, you’re sure?”
“Yup. I’ve been here all day. Doing a double shift today.”
The two agents exchanged a glance.
“Any other entrance to this place?” Ridgeway asked. There had to be—unless either the doorman or one of Reynolds’ neighbors had killed him.
“Just the side door off of Putnam.” The doorman pointed. “Can’t picture visitors coming through there, though. It leads into a stairwell. Only people who use that door are repairmen, plumbers, people like that.”
“But if someone came in through that side door, you wouldn’t know, would you?” Ridgeway pressed.
“Sure I would.” The doorman was offended. “I always know when somethin’ needs fixin’.”
Sure you do, Blake thought.
“You have keys to that door?” Ridgeway continued to grill the guy. “You lock it?”
“Yes, sir.” The doorman nodded his grizzly head. “Every night.”
Every night. Great.
“Was Reynolds expecting any repairmen today?” Blake wanted to know.
“Nope. And before you ask, no one was.”
The doorman scrutinized his face. “What the heck is goin’ on? You have me call 911; your friend here grabs the phone and walks away before I can say a word.”
Blake looked at him. “Looks like someone came in through that side door—you know, the one that’s only locked at night—and broke into Reynolds’ apartment. He’s dead.”
The doorman paled; his jaw dropped.
“Oh, Christ!”
Annabelle was awake when Celine and Julia made it up to her room. Gloria, the head nurse, a slim woman in her late forties with tight red curls streaked with gray, ushered them into the room.
“You’re in luck. I just finished checking her vitals, so she’s still awake,” Gloria greeted them with a smile.
“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.” Annabelle pushed herself up against the bank of pillows behind her. Seeing the stricken look on Celine’s face, she smiled. “I was just teasing.” She patted the rocking chair near her bed. “Come, sit beside me.”
A bronze bust of Dirck stood on the plain white nightstand next to the hospital bed—one of the models Reynolds had left behind. It reminded Celine of the call they’d just received.
It was hard to believe Reynolds was gone—his life cut short by the General’s men.
Annabelle followed her gaze. “When’s he coming back?” she asked. “Have we decided where exactly we’re installing the works?”
The eager, yearning expression on her features brought a lump to Celine’s throat. She glanced at Julia. How were they going to break the awful news to Annabelle?
“Reynolds won’t be coming back, Annabelle.” Julia reached out and clasped the other woman’s slender palm.
Annabelle frowned, about to ask a question. Julia continued hurriedly, “I’m afraid he’s gone. Dead. We just heard the news.”
“He was murdered,” Celine said, seeing Annabelle struggling to take in the facts. “By the General, we think.”
“Why?” Annabelle’s lovely blue eyes crinkled. She lifted her face up to look at Julia. “I thought you told Bryan that Reynolds might have been working for the General.”
Julia had given Bryan a brief rundown of the poisoning attempt and their theory of why it had taken place. Celine hadn’t been sure of the wisdom of that course of action; Julia had agreed with her. But neither of them could deny Bryan was owed some kind of explanation.
“He was.” It was Celine who responded. “Tony Reynolds was working for the General. But apparently Tony was also willing to divulge what he knew about the theft to Penny. Who knows why?”
The sculptor had clearly risked his life trying to defy the General; Celine couldn’t understand why he’d done it. For the reward money? And how had the General found out?
Annabelle fell back against her pillows, weary. “I was really looking forward to seeing his pieces.” She closed her eyes. “Now that won’t happen.”
She sounded so crushed, Celine couldn’t bear it. She vowed to herself she’d do everything in her power to make sure Reynolds’ ideas for their winery came to fruition.
Placing her palm gently over Annabelle’s hand, she said: “We’ll find someone else. I promise you we will. We’re going to Boston tomorrow—Julia and I.” Blake had asked if they could come; figure out exactly what it was that Reynolds knew. And Penny had called shortly after urging the same thing.
Annabelle nodded feebly.
“We’d better go,” Julia said. “She looks tired. And we need to pack.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A refreshing blanket of climate-controlled air enveloped Blake as he stepped into the FBI’s headquarters in Chelsea. After the blazing heat outside, the temperate air was soothing, further easing the mild throbbing that still pulsed just behind his veins.
He’d managed to ward off a full-blown headache with an early morning shower, but its dull residue—the after-effect of finding Anthony Reynolds’ murdered body—still remained.
Blake’s mind had been churning since then, trying to understand the fatal turn of events that had blindsided him into losing the prime suspect in an attempted murder case. He’d entertained some doubts about the extent of Reynolds’ involvement in the affair. But that was beside the point.
How—in the hell—had he gotten it so wrong?
He strode across discreetly patterned marble floors and muted carpet into the elevator, punching the button before anyone else could join him. The turmoil of potential answers that offered themselves to his mind only made his gut clench in sickening dismay.
The elevator carried him, swiftly and silently, to his domain.
Ella glanced up as he opened the door, intelligent brown eyes gleaming behind her round spectacles. The sight of her was for once reassuring.
“Can we talk?” he asked, shutting the door to the anteroom.
“Breaking up with me?” she asked, her voice light, an eyebrow raised quizzically.
“What?”
Too late, Blake saw the amused smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. She was messing with him—at a time like this? An expression of sympathy replaced the twitch of humor the instant she saw his expression.
She pushed back her chair, coming around from behind her desk to touch his arm.
“I heard about Reynolds. I’m really sorry.”
“I can’t help feeling our conversation led to his demise.” He’d been unable to shake off the conviction that he was in some way responsible. “That meeting him provoked a deadly chain of events.”
It was the single thought that had emerged free from the tangle of ideas struggling for his attention.
“It could just be a coincidence, nothing more than that,” Ella reminded him, her hand still on his arm. “Reynolds was a womanizer, he could have offended a client, a former paramour. And if he had information about the heist—”
“Then the General killed him. But”—he looked down at Ella—“how could the General possibly have known about that? Reynolds left a message on Penny’s answering machine. No one knew about that. Not even Penny until practically the eleventh hour.”
Blake shook his head. Why had Reynolds been killed last evening? The timing of it bothered him.
He looked down at Ella again. “Mind if we continue this”—he tipped his head toward his office door, about to continue when she interrupted him.
“No, Blake.” The curling ends of her bob slapped her cheeks as she shook her head. “I’d love to toss ideas with you, but we don’t have time for that now.”
“Why not?” He glanced up at the clock on the wall above his office door, puzzled. “We have three hours until Celine and Julia get here.”
/> “I know.” Ella released her hold on his arm and returned to her desk. “But you need to head over to Cambridge.” She shuffled a few pieces of paper on her desk, found the one she was looking for and handed it to him. “Got a call from the Middlesex DA’s office.”
“Mariah Campari?” Blake read the name scrawled in the middle of the sheet in Ella’s characteristic large, round cursive.
“Assistant DA in charge of the case,” Ella explained. “She’s working with Cambridge PD and wants your statement. ASAP.”
Because he’d been the one to find Reynolds’ body and report it dead. The Massachusetts State Police detectives on the scene—called in by Cambridge PD—had let him go without comment last night, a courtesy to his status as a fellow law enforcement officer.
But Blake had known the request for a formal statement wouldn’t be long in coming. The questions about his presence there—as a special agent on the FBI’s prestigious art team—were inevitable.
He swiveled wordlessly around.
“Take the armored car,” Ella called after him as his hand reached for the doorknob.
Now why in hell would he do that? He twisted his head around, hand still on the knob, and regarded her, waiting for an answer.
“You have to go to the airport as well, remember?” His personal assistant peered at him, like an anxious wife trying to get through to a thickheaded spouse. Maybe he was being thickheaded, but he had no idea why a routine meeting with an ADA required the use of an armored car.
“We don’t know how long this will take,” Ella urged again, face pulled into an earnest expression. “You may not have time to get back here and then drive to the airport, Blake.”
“Fine.” He accepted her reasoning without argument.
Turning back around, he twisted the doorknob and strode out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Vince Soldi, Deputy Superintendent of the Cambridge Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Unit, rocked back on his chair and fixed a pair of dark baleful eyes on Blake, who sat across the cluttered, battle-scarred table in Soldi’s office.
Soldi, Blake had learned, would be overseeing the detectives on the case.
Mariah Campari, the Assistant DA in charge of the case, was conspicuous by her absence.
“Running late,” Soldi had informed Blake unapologetically when the special agent had shown up. He was a beefy, solidly built person with a balding egg-shaped head and a taut, full gut that spilled over his belt.
“How late are we talking?” Blake had glanced pointedly at his wristwatch. “I’m due at Boston-Logan in a couple of hours.”
Soldi smirked, revealing a set of perfectly shaped incisors. “Going somewhere, Special Agent.”
“Nope.” Blake settled into the uncomfortably hard and tiny seat of the chair Soldi’s office reserved for visitors. “Picking up a couple of colleagues.”
He figured that was an accurate description of the two women.
A few minutes of silence elapsed. Then Soldi rocked forward.
“I guess we can get this started,” he offered grudgingly. “I’ll fill Ms. Campari in when she decides to show up.”
Blake got the distinct impression that Ms. Campari was a high-and-mighty individual who enjoyed keeping people off-kilter. A die-hard feminist with a chip on her shoulder—the sort of person who, despite her achievements, saw male oppression lurking at every corner.
If that was the case, he was glad she wasn’t here. He didn’t have much patience with people like that. Much easier dealing with a beefy old curmudgeon like Soldi.
The Deputy Superintendent fished out a notebook from under the stack of papers on his desk, moistened a forefinger, and flipped page after page until he found one that was pristine.
“You found the body?” Soldi asked, making it seem like an accusation.
“Yup. I was in the vicinity.” Blake saw no reason to offer any more details until he was asked to.
“Any reason why?”
“Why?” Blake deliberately stalled. He was conducting an internal debate on how much to share.
“Why you happened to be in the vicinity, Special Agent?”
Soldi glared at him from under bushy gray-black eyebrows.
“You’re a member of the art team, Special Agent Markham. The victim was a sculptor. Is there a connection we should be aware of?”
In other words, was Reynolds a CI or involved in some hanky-panky the art team was investigating?
“No.” Blake decided to play it safe. “Mr. Reynolds was due at the Gardner Museum for an exhibition. When he didn’t arrive at the appointed hour, Ms. Hoskins, the Director of the museum, asked me to check in on him.”
Soldi accepted his response without comment. He flipped a few leaves on his notebook, found the page he was searching for, and studied the illegible notations on it.
“Doorman says you were there that afternoon.” Soldi looked up, his fleshy features impassive. “That have something to do with the Gardner exhibition as well?”
So Soldi was aware of that. Damn! Blake scrambled to put together a response that would pacify Soldi without necessitating the sharing of any more details than he was prepared to provide.
“No, it did not. Mr. Reynolds might have been a material witness in an attempted murder on the west coast. We received a request to follow up.”
Soldi nodded as if to indicate he understood. These things happened; all in a day’s work for a law enforcement agent. But his next words, casually uttered, pulled Blake up short. “And then shortly after you make contact with him, Mr. Reynolds turns up dead.”
“That’s been bothering me as well,” Blake confessed, drumming his fingers on the tiny section of Soldi’s desk that was available for the purpose. What exactly had he said to Reynolds that had made him take off the way he had?
Something he’d said must have compelled Reynolds to put in an urgent call to the Gardner. And then, before Reynolds could divulge the information he claimed to have, he’d been offed.
Why? To prevent him from blabbing to Penny?
Soldi’s gruff bass interrupted his musings.
“You say you questioned Reynolds about an attempted murder, Special Agent.”
Blake nodded, waiting for the question Soldi was attempting to frame.
“Did he say anything that suggested he might be more than a material witness? That he might be involved?”
“No, actually, based on what he said, it was fairly obvious he’d been—”
Blake’s train of thought jolted to a stop as abruptly as a car hitting a speed bump. His eyes widened involuntarily.
Framed.
He’d been about to say “framed.”
“Special Agent Markham?”
He turned to the older man. “I got the impression someone wanted Reynolds out of the way. That an innocent gesture was being made to look like something much worse.”
He pressed forward, shoulders hunched over Soldi’s cluttered desk, arms digging into the stack of papers and odds and ends on it.
“You interview a lot of guys, you begin to get a sense of when they’re lying, when they’re not, you know.”
“You sure do,” Soldi agreed.
“Reynolds seemed sincere, but”—Blake pushed himself back, exhaling heavily—“the pieces of evidence that could’ve backed up his story are missing. Didn’t know it at the time, of course. I asked him a simple question, and, based on his response, I gather he drew the same conclusion I’m forced to right now.
“Someone must’ve decided to kill two birds with one stone”—he was quoting Celine now, beginning to understand what the words meant—“Get rid of our victim in California and frame Reynolds for the act.”
Soldi stroked his fleshy chin thoughtfully.
“Special Agent Markham,” he rumbled after a moment’s silence. “I think you owe us a few more details. How about you start at the beginning and explain what this is about?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
T
he enormous gray-and-black sign welcoming them to Logan International Airport loomed up ahead. The bumper-to-bumper line of cars trickling under it on the single lane looping around to Arrivals offered a surreal view of the typical American cityscape—a sterile combination of concrete, metal, and glass devoid of either humans or nature.
Pretty creepy, if you allowed yourself to think about it, Blake reflected, looking through the windshield. Feeling a pair of eyes on him, he shifted his gaze to the left.
The agent chauffeuring the armored vehicle was looking inquiringly at him. Meeting Blake’s eyes, he tipped his chin at the sign. Under the welcome message, large letters inscribed within painted rectangles offered visitors a choice of four terminals.
“Terminal A,” Blake tersely informed the guy as they crawled toward the sign.
He glanced at his watch; Celine’s flight was landing just about now. With any luck, they’d make it before the women retrieved their luggage.
His meeting with Vince Soldi had taken longer than he’d expected and he’d divulged way more information to the Deputy Superintendent than he’d originally intended to. Blake wasn’t entirely happy about that development.
But he had to admit, as they finally passed under the sign, that voicing the tenuous theories snaking through his mind had helped to crystallize the primary facts of the case.
Someone—Blake hadn’t referred to him as the General; strictly speaking that was just a moniker for an individual who remained an unsub—was hell-bent on preventing the Gardner’s stolen artworks from surfacing.
He—or she, as Soldi had stolidly reminded Blake, making a vain attempt to be politically correct—was ready and willing to eliminate anyone who stood in the way.
The memory of the Deputy Superintendent’s solemn correction of his use of the masculine pronoun made Blake’s mouth twitch in amusement. Was it Assistant DA Mariah Campari who’d persuaded Soldi to the view that crime was an equal-opportunity, inclusive field?
But the evidence—Blake had felt compelled to point out—suggested a man at the helm. Not a woman.
And he appeared to have wanted to get rid of Reynolds all along.