But Nick’s fancy lawyer wanted an enormous retainer to sue Brashton’s firm, so we wouldn’t be suing anyone soon. I was toying with plans to make the money, but there are only so many hours in the day.
Mallard waited at the front door with a sealed Priority Mail envelope in his hand.
“Isn’t it a federal crime to use the U. S. mail for ulterior purposes?” I studied the envelope with suspicion. What if Graham was a terrorist and that thing contained a bomb? Wasn’t that how innocent people got blown up—accepting packages from strangers?
“The envelopes are free and untraceable. There is nothing illegal in carrying one.” Mallard had his nose up in the air as he shoved it at me.
“Mind if I look for myself?” I handled the sealed package with care, delicately sniffing the air for any scent of gunpowder.
“It is not to be tampered with,” Mallard ordered sternly. “Here are your directions.”
He held out a printed sheet of paper. I wanted to examine it, run it through a fingerprint test, and test for the type of printer, but of course, I wasn’t a forensics expert and couldn’t do any of those. Besides, Mallard wouldn’t let it out of his grip.
The directions were so precise that they even told me what time the Metro train ran that I needed to take. I had about five minutes to reach the station. Cursing Mallard for not letting the paper go, I memorized Pao’s alias in the GSA: Ibrahim Nassar. Sounded like a New York cab driver.
“Graham said you’re supposed to eat the directions when I’m done. And I should watch to see you do,” I told Mallard after reading the message and losing the tug of war.
“You’ll miss the train.” Without blinking an eyelash, he stalked off.
Well, Graham better trust him, because I didn’t. At least I now knew where to find the local train station.
I dashed down to the Metro, and leaped in before the doors closed.
As the train clattered down the track, I tore open the sealed envelope.
~
Growing up, I had roller skated in palaces and played hopscotch on the marble tiles of government offices around the world. The GSA might sound mighty and officious, but it was a boring office building and did not light my fires.
Even the contents of the package I’d rifled held no surprises or anything to fear. It merely contained copies of the Edu-Pub financial statements.
I stopped at the L’Enfant post office—conveniently located in the underground shopping center of the Metro station near the GSA. I picked up a new envelope and sealed the statements inside. Delighted by the shopping center, I made a few more hasty purchases before I emerged.
At the GSA office, I handed my new picture ID to umpteen thousand increasingly officious military guards, passed the metal detector and several IQ tests to receive a visitor’s badge limiting my access to the reception desk specified in Graham’s detailed instructions. My orders were to leave the package at the desk, ask to use the restroom, and listen at the door until I heard Pao/Nassar respond to his page. According to Graham’s diagram, the restroom was just down the hall from Pao’s office, and I should be able to glimpse him as he passed by.
This was the ideal set-up for a hermit like me who preferred no direct confrontation. Graham had me pinpointed to a T.
Which was why I didn’t follow orders. I hate being categorized.
He’d given me too tight a schedule for any elaborate ruse, but I was creative. At the Metro center stores I’d purchased a pair of sunglasses, a sun hat, a man’s white T-shirt, and bright red lipstick.
I pulled on the huge shirt to disguise my habitual black, tied the blazer arms around my waist, pinned my braid under the hat so it’s color couldn’t be seen, smeared on the cherry lipstick, and donned the dark glasses before entering the reception area. With my lack of height, I looked about three years older than EG. The security guards gave me curious looks when they checked the age on my ID and made me take off the glasses. With Magda’s cheekbones and green cat eyes, my features are pretty identifiable, and they let me pass.
Returning the sunglasses to my nose, smacking a piece of chewing gum, I handed the envelope to the puzzled clerk at the front desk. “My dad said I’m to hand this directly to Mr. Nassar.”
“All packages must go through security,” the clerk intoned, as if the envelope hadn’t just gone through more security than Winston Churchill had seen through the entire war.
But security had been in Graham’s amazingly accurate instructions. No problem. I was supposed to simply agree, leave the envelope there, and go to the restroom.
Instead, I shrugged, said “Whatever,” and glanced around the lobby while they ran the envelope through their bomb-sniffing routine in the back.
“I’ve paged Mr. Nassar,” the clerk said, returning the envelope to me.
I could tell she was curious, but I just shrugged and continued smacking my gum, jiggling restlessly like any normal teenager with too much energy. I ought to have worn athletic shoes, but my sturdy sandals probably had the same effect. I didn’t know what I was trying to prove anyway, other than my obnoxiousness.
A heavyset man trundled down the hall a moment later. He was wearing a businessman’s gray suit and rumpled tie, but he in no way or form looked like the man in the photo. For one thing, he wasn’t Oriental.
There is some truth to the insult when one race accuses the other of all looking alike. If we look only at dominant features—skin color, hair texture, eyes, height—then most people of one race do look essentially alike. But I had grown up in a world where I had to identify strangers of different races all the time if I wanted to find my nanny or the chauffeur or recognize the hotel clerk who promised me a lollipop. I knew how to look beyond the obvious.
The obvious here said WASP government official. Behind the bulbous nose and narrow eyes I saw a muscular physique that screamed security. I’m not sure at all that I was relieved to see a white Nazi instead of an Oriental one.
“Mr. Hagan?” the secretary said in surprise at his approach.
Hagan? What had happened to Nassar?
He gave her a look of annoyance that should have blasted her to kingdom come. When she didn’t budge, he reached for my envelope. “Graham didn’t have a daughter,” he growled.
Daughter? Didn’t? What kind of scam had the spook used to get me in here? And how much danger was I in of being thrown into an interrogation room, never to be seen again? If I screamed bloody murder, would all those officious military men run to my aid?
“Are you Mr. Nassar?” I asked suspiciously, holding back the useless envelope.
“Nassar doesn’t work here anymore. And Graham’s dead. Give me that envelope.” He tore the packet from my hand.
Shit . Triple shit with raspberry ice cream on top. I needed to get the hell out of here, but running was way too suspicious. I stuck with the teenage disguise and shrugged. “My dad’s not dead. Just deranged. Like, all he talks about is this pub that sounds like a school. You ever heard of an Edu-Pub? Think that’s where teachers go to get drunk?”
The Hulk looked at me blankly. So much for that feeble effort. I wished I could think of an amazingly effective question to find out more from someone who apparently knew who Graham was, but I could manage fake teenager, not real spy.
I muttered the all-purpose teenage “whatever” again.
Glaring as if I were a mindless gnat and the secretary had been planted there just to keep him from swatting me, he scurried off with his prize.
“Is your father really Amadeus Graham?” the clerk whispered in a tone of near awe before I could slouch out.
I wasn’t entirely certain what I had intended to accomplish by this meeting, but it had never entered my head that anyone would recognize Graham’s name, or that it would even come up. Now two people recognized it. I lifted my naturally arched black eyebrows at the clerk and offered a grudging “yeah.”
“I thought he was dead, too,” she said, still in that note of awe. “Are you a stepdaughter? He
actually remarried?”
In her attempt to pry info out of me, she was supplying me with way more than I’d known before. Instead of running like the wind, I nervously bounced up and down, unwrapping a piece of gum. “Yeah, sort of. Howd’ya know him?”
“Didn’t you know he was once a presidential advisor?”
Shit, no. The man behind the voice was real. And important. Shivery scary. I poked the gum between my shiny red lips. “Nope. He’s just there, like, you know?” In my opinion, the chick was way too interested.
“What’s he doing now?” she whispered.
“My mom,” I replied rudely. “What’s it to you?”
She stiffened. “Well, give him my regards. Perhaps he’ll be happy to know that the senator who had him fired has just been arrested for murder.” She coldly swung to face her computer monitor and began typing.
Oh purgatory. The only senator I knew in danger of arrest was Tex. I couldn’t imagine why the arrest would affect Graham, but I knew what it would do to EG.
I dumped my disguise in a restroom at the Metro, ran for a train going the opposite direction of the house in case anyone followed me, hopped off at a crowded station, and caught a taxi home.
I was shaking with delayed reaction by the time I got there.
Chapter Eight
Ana investigates a thief, finds his wife, a cat, and a gym; EG sends a message.
Apparently stupidity only affects me after it’s over. I prayed Graham would return to his midnight routine so I had time to cool down and think over everything I’d just learned.
How would I tell EG about her father’s arrest?
Could Graham have any inkling of what I’d learned about him?
Before I slipped into the safe domain of the library to ponder my thoughts, I checked on the whereabouts of the house’s other inhabitants. Mallard was mangling chicken breasts with a hammer and deriving keen enjoyment from the blows. Not disturbing his depraved little world, I grabbed bread and jam from the pantry, then tiptoed up the stairs to check the bedrooms. I saw no sign that Nick and EG had returned from their school assignment.
I retreated to the library and made raspberry jam sandwiches. I wasn’t certain if I was sorry or relieved that no one was available to tell my story to, but I hated to have EG hearing about Tex from the media.
I spent the afternoon on my private Dell, avoiding the Whiz and its invisible umbilical cord to the dragon in his lair while I verified all I’d learned today.
It took only a few keystrokes to find the news stories on Tex’s arrest on suspicion of murder. They told me nothing new. Looked like I’d have to give Tex a higher priority, but not until I knew who was living in our attic.
If Amadeus Graham was known at the GSA, then he had to reside someplace online. I had already tested the usual places for birth certificates and property ownership and telephone numbers. The property evaluation office still showed the house in my grandfather’s name, but that wasn’t unusual. There really hadn’t been enough time to record the deed.
I entered Graham’s name into every search engine I could find. Any man whose name was known by the government ought to have files up the wazoo.
All I turned up was a Dr. Graham who lived in a town called Amadeus and a million and one references to the movie and the composer.
He’d erased himself. Not many people know how to do that. People who make up their identities prove their existence by deviously inserting their names on all the appropriate sites. I didn’t know of anyone who could or would do the opposite, make themselves invisible, except Graham. I even ran newspaper searches. Nothing. He’d removed the links. I needed to worm my way into the Washingon Post archives, but bypassing search engines was time consuming, and I was afraid he’d catch me at it. I’d have to find a library.
Would he know what I’d done at the GSA? What I had found out about him? He seemed to know everything else. Right this minute I didn’t know if I was more afraid of Graham or Pao.
According to the receptionist, the hormone-shivering voice in the attic had been married. He’d been fired by the government, on top levels if Tex had been involved. He existed. Or had the man upstairs usurped the name of the real Amadeus Graham—as he’d possibly usurped the moniker Oracle?
I suddenly found it more than coincidental and far into the realm of highly suspicious that the mystery man used the same screen name as my missing client. What did he know about my client? About me?
My client had been looking at textbook publishers. Graham had financial statements from a company that sounded as if it related to education. And publication, now that I thought about it. Pao sounded like pow. But none of that fit in with top hats and poison.
I needed to be checking on EG’s father, but I had this gut awful feeling that investigating Graham would take me to Tex’s arrest.
Frantically searching deeper, I kept sneezing. For some reason, an antihistamine run didn't rate high on my radar.
Now irritated as well as scared, I emptied the Kleenex box as I worked. I called up Senator Tex Hammond on-line and read the newsclips, starting with the most recent. The man the real Amadeus Graham had every right to despise—EG’s father—had been arrested for murder moments before I’d left for the GSA. I wouldn’t put it past the spook to have arranged the timing.
It seemed the police had found evidence that the good senator was being blackmailed by Mindy Carstairs for past indiscretions, including accepting illegal campaign contributions.
If any of this was true, Tex was going down big time, even if he got off on the murder charge. Tex had been elected on the family-values and no-political-ties platform. Since Tex had been married for the last fifteen years to the daughter of his state’s governor, EG’s existence alone testified to Tex’s lack of values. But that was politics. Everyone lied. None of it meant that liars were adulterers or murderers.
My concern was that our landlord may have had EG’s father arrested on a trumped-up charge to get even with him.
With no other avenue left to investigate, I ran a search on Mindy Carstairs, the purported blackmailer, to see how Tex and Graham might fit into her background.
I had to wade through umpteen million news websites and scandal sheets before I hit anything real—a social page photo of Araminta “Mindy” Carstairs marrying Reginald Brashton the Third.
I slumped in my chair and stared at the grainy picture with a nasty taste crawling up my throat. Our missing lawyer was slightly taller than his bride, with a proud smirk above his crooked tie. They both looked very young. Mindy looked a little pale, a little dowdy—even in veil and white dress. Neither of them were beauties, but that was Nick talking inside my head.
I scrolled down to the wedding announcement with the names of Mindy’s parents and copied it into a file. I didn’t know if I was brave enough to confront grieving parents, but the connection between Graham and Tex and my family had now left scary and entered the Twilight Zone.
My first thought was that spouses, especially ex-spouses, were primary suspects in murders. And with Reggie’s criminal record and lack of character, he ought to be right up there on the top of everyone’s suspect list. Except Reggie had sold our house to Graham and left on “vacation” weeks before Mindy’s death. He had an iron-clad alibi. Shit.
The niggling at the back of my mind made me open the old Oracle file again. I compiled years worth of documents into one, then ran a search for the words Mindy, Araminta, Carstairs, or Brashton.
I found one reference from nearly a year ago, an e-mail Oracle had forwarded to me from an A. Carstairs. She had forwarded a memo from a Bob Hagan on the education committee dismissing her concerns about the quality of textbooks produced by several publishers. Hagan had been the name of the man intercepting Graham’s envelope. Coincidence? I thought not.
A. Carstairs’ e-mail to my client Oracle was brief and a bit sarcastic, as if she knew Oracle well and their opinions on the memo’s contents were similar. I hadn’t paid much attention to it
at the time since all Oracle asked me to do was track down the boards of directors of the various publishers listed in the memo. I figured he wanted to send them a scathing letter or two, and I had done as requested and forgotten about it.
Textbooks. Envelopes, poison, top hats, and pow. No textbooks there, but now I wondered who the hell my Oracle was, what happened to him, and if A. Carstairs was Mindy.
And if my Oracle knew Mindy, and Tex knew Mindy, and Graham bought my house from Mindy’s ex, did Graham know Mindy? I was back full circle to Tex and Graham.
I sneezed again. It was impossible to think straight with my nose running down my throat. Ignoring my allergies, I started digging deeper into Senator Tex and preferably, his relationship to Graham and maybe Mindy Carstairs.
By mid-afternoon I hadn’t found anything pertinent, and I was turning over wastebaskets and shoving furniture from the wall, scouring the room for the wretched feline, without any more success than I was having researching our host. I was frustrated on so many levels that I could have punched walls. I couldn’t clear my head to get any work done until I’d at least eliminated the cat problem.
I might not be a genius, but I was smarter than any damned cat. Applying the old brain, I sneaked into Mallard’s pantry, located a can of tuna, and dumped the smelly stuff into a plastic bowl which I set near the sofa, leaving the library door partially open. Apparently, I had no problem confronting animals.
Now that I’d found a feasible solution to one of my many problems, I returned to work with a vengeance. Setting aside the Tex/Graham problem to clear my brain, I read through all the Pao and Edu-Pub files, organized the results, and almost had a pattern of action. I had no clue what to do if I caught him, but that minor complication could wait.
I turned my attention on Hagan, but GSA files aren’t easily hacked. I had pegged him as security but I couldn’t find him on any security lists. I did find a Bob Hagan listed as a minor lackey in the education division along with two gazillion other people.
Evil Genius Page 8