“You came back.” He looked inordinately pleased to see me.
My hormones did a little shimmy presaging an impromptu can-can.
“I didn’t come back for you,” I retorted.
“For Paddy’s mouth-watering stew?” he suggested, his baby blues laughing.
Since the stew seemed to be made of last week’s leftovers, he had me there. On some subconscious level, I’d been hoping to run into him again. I am capable of normal conversation when called upon, and the spook had left me hungry for company. Of course, if Amadeus Graham was dead, he really was a spook, wasn’t he?
“Do they serve anything edible?” I tried the cornbread that had arrived with the stew. Dry.
“The beer and the hamburgers.” He ordered both, then returned his movie star gaze to me. “Hi, I’m Sean O’Herlihy.” He held out a calloused hand.
I didn’t take it. I had cornbread in my right hand, and I took another nibble while I inspected him more thoroughly. The friendlier he was, the more suspicious I became. Paranoia wasn’t a total waste of time. Sometimes people are out to get you.
“Hello, Sean. Come here often?” I didn’t bother introducing myself.
“When I can.” He dropped the handshake idea. “You’re Ana, aren’t you? Mallard’s told us all about you.”
Mallard knew damned well we’d inherited the house. His friends probably did, too. A working man could easily fool himself into seeing money written all over me.
“Discussing our situation must make for uproarious dinner conversation,” I acknowledged coolly.
“Mallard carries loyalty to his employer to old-fashioned lengths.” Unaffected by my coolness, Sean stretched his muscled arms along the back of the booth, providing good exposure for his sculpted chest. “He’s having the devil of a time trying to decide if his loyalty is to Maximillian’s heirs or the new owner. Quite a quandary, isn’t it?”
Sean had the prettiest long lashes I’d ever seen on a man, even better than Nick's. I was striving not to fall for his muscled pose. “Mallard worked for my grandfather, not us. He’s free to make his own choices.” I hated having our private business the subject of barroom talk, but there was little I could do about it. I shrugged it off and tried not to choke on my drool.
He leaned forward in a confidential manner. “Mallard said Graham never leaves the third floor. Have you ever met him?”
Shoot, and I really liked this guy. He was good looking, friendly, Irish, and he seemed to be enjoying the view. I’m not hard to look at, but guys seldom get past the attitude. This one didn’t seem fazed—for good reason. He was spying on Graham or whoever resided in our attic. I didn’t rat on clients, even if they really weren’t who they said they were.
“Nope, can’t say I have.” I dabbed my mouth with the linen napkin and opened my bill. Sticking a ten between the vinyl covers, I slid out of the booth. “Good to meet you, Sean. See you around.”
I walked out, leaving him looking stunned. Guess not too many women ignored his pretty face, glib tongue, and six-pack abs.
Not too many women had Magda for a mother. I thanked the heavens for giving me a mother who had taught me all I needed to know about men. Magda was a piece of work, but her love affairs had taught me not to trust men who lie, cheat, or steal—which basically means there wasn’t a man alive who could be trusted. Life was so much simpler once I accepted that premise.
When I got back to the house, I ran upstairs to change into cooler shorts and a croptop. Either Mallard or the spook was energy conscious and kept the air-conditioning to a minimum. Or maybe this big old house didn’t cool easily.
After the morning I’d had, I didn’t know if it was the braids hurting my head or my thoughts. I couldn’t take out my brain, so I unpinned the braids. I didn’t bother brushing them out, which left my hair crinkly. It wasn’t as if I cared how I looked.
I was already regretting not accepting Sean’s masculine interest for some recreational sex, but my prickly exterior protects my equally prickly principles. All my life I’d watched Magda use people, especially men, and I simply couldn’t treat others in ways I wouldn’t want to be treated. The line gets pretty fine sometimes, so it’s easier to just back off.
Remarkably enough, my life actually had meaning at the moment. Beyond EG’s needs, Max and Mindy had come to life for me. They were real people, ones whose lives were cut off too short, and I had a driving need to know more about them.
I’d learned my grandfather was a man who moved in upper social circles and could find positions for friends in congressional offices. He was concerned about textbooks. And maybe he was concerned about Magda. Or had Mrs. Carstairs just been polite about that? It didn’t matter, Max was now very real in my mind, and I ached to know him better.
But knowing more about my grandfather as family wasn’t as important as knowing why Max had been helping Mindy investigate textbooks. I had to read the lawyers’ files on Tex and see if they had run across this strange connection with books. Which oddly enough, led me back to Graham’s pursuits of Pao at Edu-Pub, although I was still backing money-laundering as Pao’s gambit.
During my research last night, I’d run across a fascinating website selling a newsletter of information on money-laundering. A credit card order later, I sat down to study my first issue of Money Laundering Alert. It was a real eye-opener. I might nab Pao and Reggie with this stuff. This was more fun than all my clients stacked together.
~
Hearing Ana downstairs, EG hastily closed up her e-mail account in the upstairs laptop and prayed her sister wouldn’t notice it.
Quite a few of the e-mails she’d sent the other night had bounced back as no longer valid or not accepting e-mail from unknown screen names. She’d attempted to locate new addresses and tried several. Most of the e-mails that had gone through had been ignored.
One had been answered with an enigmatic Who are you and why do you want to know?
She’d checked, and that screen name belonged to a Robert Hagan who had given an award to Tex for his valuable work on some education committee.
Mindy Carstairs had worked as liaison from Tex’s office with the same education committee. EG’s instinct told her that her new correspondent had responded to her e-mail for a reason. Maybe he was Mindy’s boyfriend, except boyfriends and family members weren’t likely to believe Tex innocent and wouldn’t be interested in helping him. Boyfriends and family members were the most likely murder suspects.
She started a research folder on a Robert Hall Hagan and hid it in Ana’s computer files. If Ana didn’t have time to help Tex, then EG would have to do it on her own.
~
Later that evening, after I’d sent EG off to bed, Nick appeared in the library where I was coloring in the details of my virtual school. Setting up credit cards for fictitious entities is more difficult these days, but the web is full of people willing to accept anything for a price.
With a dramatic flick of his wrist, Nick dropped a nice fat cashier’s check across the table in front of me and announced, “I kept the change for spending money.”
My eyes grew as round as the zeroes on the check. “I knew you were good, but this is outrageous,” I said with sincere admiration, but I refrained from joyously hugging him. He wouldn’t understand if I did. Sensing hesitation in his usual jovial attitude, I asked, “Did they ride you out of the casino on a spear?”
He made a graceful descent to the wing chair and examined his nails. “Not precisely, no. It was all very gentlemanly, even if Indians don’t wear tuxes. I’m not welcome back, though. You had best make it last.”
Nick hated to be seen as any less than a gentleman. He was embarrassed, and I hated that we’d used his talents for shady purposes. He was entitled to his own prickly principles. Just because we lived near Monaco for a year and gambling was the only education he found useful didn’t mean he shouldn’t move on.
And here I was, encouraging him. I grimaced and pushed the check around on the polished
surface of the table with the tip of my finger.
“I thought you’d be ecstatic,” he complained. Nick’s far more sensitive than I am. Even though he appeared totally self-absorbed, he’d noticed my silence.
“I am ecstatic, about the money. I’m just worried about you. If we find our millions, what do you want to do with your share?”
His eyebrows rose, and he crossed his hands across his ascot. “It can’t buy me love now, can it?”
I’m not good at emotional admissions. I would have liked to say he had my love, but I figured that wasn’t what he had in mind. “What has love got Magda?” I asked instead. “Too many kids and no home. Why don’t you think about the kind of jobs you like to do best?”
He quirked one eyebrow. “There are nasty words for people who get paid for that.”
I ignored his sexual innuendo. “I guess we need to start a family bank account with this money. It more than covers Oppenheimer, the tab on my credit card, and tickets to St. Kitts.”
“What will you do with Brashton if you find him?” Nick asked, shrugging off my awe.
“Hold him at gunpoint and force him to write out a check for the missing money?” Hell if I knew. Did criminal law extend to St. Kitts? I suspected it didn’t or Brashton wouldn’t have moved there. I’d already checked the dates—Reggie had sailed in mid-July. His ex-wife had died two weeks later. No wonder the police weren’t asking about him. I couldn’t find any record of Graham’s purchase of the house, but my guess was that Reggie had sailed as soon as he had Graham’s money in hand.
“A check won’t get the house back,” Nick intruded upon my thoughts.
As if I needed reminding. I wanted this house. I had no idea how many millions it had cost. Could we salvage enough of the stolen money to buy it back? With our background, obtaining a mortgage wasn’t likely. “That’s Oppenheimer’s alley,” I suggested. “Let’s find Brashton first. We could start with filing a police report and asking how the law works.”
We should have done that sooner, but we’re kind of used to operating outside the law, for various reasons. It seldom occurred to us that the law might occasionally be on our side. Of course, one would expect Brashton’s law firm to be hunting him down before we filed a crime report and sued, but I wasn’t relying on that happening.
“Why don’t I go down to St. Kitts and wait for Brashton,” Nick suggested. “Maybe I can persuade him to sign over the stolen assets while we’re waiting for the police to show up.”
Nick can be very persuasive in his own way, but that didn’t sound like much of a plan.
“Maybe all the police have to do is call their buddies down there to pick him up.” I knew that was a crock, but I didn’t want Nick abandoning me just yet. I was on a quest outside my realm of knowledge, and Nick was kind of like having a girlfriend I could talk to.
“I’ll pack and be ready to fly down there at a moment’s notice.” With the stride of a confident man, Nick walked out.
To my utter delight, the spook did not come on at midnight to question my visit to the Carstairs. I must have exceeded the reach of a dead man’s network.
~
I got up Sunday morning in a panic, wondering if I had until Wednesday to finalize my search for Pao or if we’d be out on our ears Tuesday evening.
I really needed to uncover our host’s background. Maybe I could blackmail him into letting us stay. I needed a starting place. I hadn’t had time to run a thorough title search on the house. There had to be papers somewhere.
Stepping out of my shower with my head crammed with paranoid thoughts, I hoped the mirror over the vanity didn’t conceal any spying eyes.
For a Victorian, this old house had a surprising number of bathrooms. Mallard had one in his basement suite. There was a gaudy half-bath with the original gold faucets for guests just off the first floor foyer. My grandfather had a marble whirlpool and shower installed off the downstairs salon where he’d made his bed in his final years. I had no inkling of what was on the third floor besides the gym, but on the second, there seemed to be a full bath between every two rooms. Living in the occasional Third World country where we were lucky to have privies, a bath for each of us was untold luxury.
I usually took a day off on Sundays to pick up groceries and do house cleaning, but we had Mallard for that now, even if he wouldn’t cook for us. I had way too many tasks piling up to take off much time. I was curious about how to detect bugs and wanted to check surveillance equipment websites. And I needed to see if any more information had come in on Tex’s case.
Now that I had a delivery site, I could order textbooks, but I couldn’t follow up on the trap for Pao until I had a real bank account. I wanted checks as well as credit cards to go into Edu-Pub’s coffers so I could trace all available financial paths.
Sundays are a bad day to call the police about embezzlement, but I did it anyway. They took notes, answered my queries negatively, and gave me the overall impression that chasing runaway lawyers wasn’t high on their to-do list unless I could prove Reggie had been in town when Mindy died. Otherwise, they had their hooks in Tex and considered their job done.
They gave me the phone number for the state bar to report the theft of Max’s estate. I suggested they verify Reggie’s alibi, but they got irritated when I told them how to do their job.
Maybe I should have tried the FBI. If I dug deep enough, Brashton was sure to be guilty of something the feds might be interested in. Or the IRS, for certain. But I suspected retrieving our money and politely returning it to us wouldn’t be the priority of either. It was a criminal shame that this country was more interested in protecting crooks than victims, but I was used to looking out for myself.
Despite the pressure, I took a few hours off that afternoon so we could play tourist with EG. The kid deserved an outing before school started. She’d read everything she could get her hands on about her father’s arrest and probably researched more online, but she’d been amazingly quiet about it. That should have worried me, but I already had enough fears without adding more. I wanted to pretend we were all normal for a few hours.
The cordoning off of Congressional Hill for Homeland security purposes set my paranoid hackles on edge, but EG pretended she wasn’t interested in the Capitol Building. We dragged her into the Smithsonian instead, and the dinosaurs finally caught her attention. She had an armful of books and was chattering like a normal kid by the time we returned home.
Mallard had apparently returned during our absence. He greeted us at the door with his usual disapproving expression. “We dine at regular hours in this house. Dinner was at seven. It is after eight.”
As if we’d known he intended to feed us. “Just stick it in the fridge.” I breezed past him carrying sacks of posters I’d bought with malice aforethought. I dumped them across the horsehair sofa in the parlor so I could sort through them. “We’ll eat it for lunch tomorrow. We had chili dogs on the mall.”
“Garlic.” Nick sniffed the aroma drifting through the house. “Italian?” he asked, dropping his arm over Mallard’s shoulders. “Lead on, my good man. I can always sample your fare.”
I didn’t think that was the response Mallard expected, but if he thought scolding us would put us in our places, he didn’t know Magda as well as I thought. Chips off the old princess, all of us. Insults, threats, and innuendo flit right past us and out the door.
EG dropped her haul in the middle of the genuine antique Persian carpet in the front room and sat down to choose her evening’s reading material. Between Nick’s magazines, my posters, and all our combined shopping—including a giant dragon kite—the formal front room looked like a nest inhabited by eccentric magpies.
Mallard stiffened at the disaster area the formal room had transformed into within minutes of our arrival, but Nick dragged him past the doorway, chatting of an Italian bistro he’d eaten at in some byway in San Remo.
Gazing at the colorful scene, I experienced an unusual swell of happiness at this normal famil
y Sunday evening in a normal family home. I scratched behind the ear of a bronze spaniel andiron, and just let the moment happen. Home. Amazing concept. Maybe I’d try it this time.
“There are three messages for you,” the lamp intoned, interrupting my pleasant reverie. “In the future, I would rather you not give out this number.”
Properly shot down and dropped back to earth, I didn’t bother explaining I didn’t know the number to give it out. I knew of only two people who might track it down: our mother and Blackwell Johnson, the lawyer. I didn’t think either would call on a Sunday to tell us we were good little kiddies. If the number remained unchanged since my grandfather’s death—and how the spook might manage that led down any number of interesting trails—I assumed Magda would call it because it was in her address book.
I picked up a Don Quixote poster and headed for the library. Given my suspicion of our landlord’s prying habits, covering up spybots with the mad Spaniard seemed perfectly logical to me.
EG gaped as I strode blithely past without picking up the phone. “Aren’t you going to ask who called?”
“I don’t recommend it.”
I left her to run after Nick. Let him deal with Magda if he wished.
If the Princess intended to come after EG, I thought grimly, she’d damned well better do it now—before I got used to having a family again.
Chapter Ten
EG skips school and Ana owns stock.
On Monday, Nick and I walked EG to the nearby elementary school. I’d persuaded her to wear her long hair in pigtails by telling her she needed a disguise. She’d even allowed me to trim her bangs, although I’d done a ragged job of it. Wearing her uniform and backpack, she almost blended in with the other kids streaming down the sidewalk and leaping out of schoolbuses.
Unfortunately, Nick and I were more noticeable, so people still stared. Nick was heading to the bank to deposit his weekend winnings, then over to Oppenheimer’s with his retainer, so he wore a dashing sport coat of raw silk with a lovely burnt orange ascot and cream silk slacks. The exotic threads around a D.C. public school caused quite a stir.
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