I was on my way downtown to set up a bank account for my fictious firm, so I’d spruced up my ankle length denim dress with a sequined t-shirt, but the thick braids around my head attracted attention. I didn’t think they were worse than the blue hair and spiky cuts on the kids, but I never had a mob mentality—my downfall, so to speak. No one could claim Magda had raised clones.
EG growled at a chubby kid who pointed at us, then kicked the shin of a black kid who laughed out loud—not an auspicious start.
I grabbed her jumper strap and leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Smile, say nice things, and maybe they’ll return the favor. Try, will you? The whole family may depend on your genius one day, and if you have no education, you’ll fail.”
Horrid thing to say to a normal nine-year-old, but EG wasn’t normal. She straightened her slouch and looked me in the eye. “Then go away. You don’t need to walk me in.”
It was like sending a babe off to her first day of kindergarten. There were tears in my eyes as EG marched bravely up the front steps all alone—the new kid in town. I knew what she was in for, and I prayed I’d done the right thing.
“Being a kid is lousy,” Nick grumbled, as tense and worried as I was.
“We’ll hire a tutor when we’re rich,” I assured him.
That possibility relieved both our guilts sufficiently to allow us to walk away.
~
Settling into the disgusting little contraptions that pass for desks in public schools, EG sat through all the boring rituals of opening day. She wasn’t familiar with the paperwork going around, but some kids had folders of it that had apparently been incorrectly completed and the teacher had to fill out. Half the class had to hunt down immunization records and needed reminders. The record-keeping grew tedious.
Giving up on the formalities, she helped herself to a social studies textbook from a shelf and began reading.
She’d learned American history on a high school level from books her government tutors had provided. She winced at this book’s outright propaganda on the negative effect of conservation on natural resources and the economy, then frowned as she tried to balance what she thought she knew about global warming against the book’s text. She wanted to ask questions, but the teacher finished homeroom duties and had moved on to dividing the class into reading groups.
EG scanned the book handed to her, sighed, and rolled her eyes. When called upon to read aloud to test her skill, she recited the entire last page from memory and began reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy for amusement. The teacher told her to sit down.
She did and immediately fell into the social studies book again. Engrossed in making her own calculations, she didn’t hear the teacher ask her to join her designated group.
A ruler whacked the plastic desktop. She looked up at the teacher with curiosity while all the kids in class laughed and stared.
“Just because you’ve had the privileged education others haven’t, doesn’t mean you can’t sit with the rest of us, Miss Maxmillion.” That’s how she pronounced it—without the “i” and the emphasis on million.
She might as well have said “Set your rich lily white ass in that chair over there.” The effect was the same. Everyone turned and stared.
Bravely ignoring the mocking smiles on the faces of her classmates, EG marched over to her reading group, clutching the social studies book to her chest. She would put up with this for a while because Ana asked her to and because she desperately wanted Ana to help her father.
The reply she’d sent to Mr. Hagan at the education office had bounced. Until she came up with a better plan, she’d have to rely on her sister.
But if any of these laughing bullies got in her face, she had a roll of quarters that would knock the smirk from their teeth.
~
With EG safe in class, I spent the morning arranging a bank account for my fictitious school and obtaining real paper checks to pay for the textbooks I ordered. I knew this was a long-term option and not likely to find my guy by Wednesday, but by this time I was curious enough to follow up on my own—especially if it had involved my grandfather.
The process of tracing the checks and credit card deposits from Edu-Pub was a distant chance at best, but it was all I had. Pao had no social security or visa number and his name didn’t turn up on any D.C. payroll tax rolls. He was obviously living in a cash-only underground or under an alias.
Returning home, I changed into shorts, rummaged in Mallard’s amazing pantry for peanut butter and crackers, then settled into my desk chair in front of the Whiz to see what news had turned up on Tex. Flexing my fingers, I fed in my password and downloaded new messages.
“Precisely what did you think you were doing this morning, Miss Devlin?” the intercom asked just as I was really getting organized.
Now that I was in front of the computer, I didn’t want to talk. It wasn’t midnight, and I didn’t like being dissed. “What I’m paid to do,” I responded, keying in a reply to an inquiry.
“You are paid to traipse all over town looking like an escapee from a space opera?”
He’d noticed my braids. I should preen. “Don’t question my methods, and I won’t question yours,” I replied—without preening. Just because the man had noticed my hair didn’t detract from the fact that he spied on me. That he knew what I looked like and I’d never seen him proved he had a camera somewhere. I thought I’d covered up his spying devices with Don Quixote. “I don’t have time to waste on useless interrogations. Did you want something?”
The intercom was silent, but I knew he was still there, trying to figure out how to respond to my rudeness. I get that reaction a lot.
“I prefer that you remain at your desk where you belong unless told otherwise.”
Oh, that took the cake. I flung back in the over-sized chair and sent the intercom a glare so sizzling that the wires should have fried. “Welcome to the twenty-first century. Women have equal rights these days.”
“I had wondered if you knew which century you were in.”
If that was a reference to my aging jumper or my Birkenstocks, I could appreciate his humor. That didn’t mean I had to respond to it. “I repeat, did you want something?”
“I do not want you risking your life in pursuit of Pao. He is extremely dangerous.”
I didn’t want to know that. A Cambodian businessman seemed harmless to me. One who might be funneling funds to radical fundamentalists on the other side of the world is iffy, but believe me—and I’ve had a lot of experience on the international scene—this kind of thing happens all the time. For all I knew, Pao was building a temple to himself over there.
“You have someone else who can set up the trap?” I asked in my most sarcastic tone.
I thought he might growl, but he apparently controlled his temper far better than I did.
“Your brother comes to mind.”
“You didn’t hire Nick. You hired me. Nick is out looking for a job so we have money to go elsewhere after you throw us out.”
I wouldn’t beg. I desperately wanted him to say we could stay as long as we needed, but vulnerability ain’t me.
“Who will look after the child in his absence if you are otherwise occupied?” he asked in an ominous tone that should have warned me what was coming.
“EG is in school. I’ll be here when she comes home. What do you care as long as I’m getting the job done?”
“Your sister is not in school.”
He clicked off, leaving me open-mouthed. I figured he did that on purpose to get in the last word. It’s a guy thing.
To hell with Pao. I had to know where EG was.
I rolled back the chair and ran up to EG’s room. Her school backpack was there, but she wasn’t. I checked all the other rooms upstairs, and she wasn’t in them either. I wasn’t about to attempt the third floor until forced.
Libraries were EG’s usual haunt, but she wasn’t in the one downstairs because that’s where I’d been. I tried not to panic, but when fear kicked i
n, I could be quite imaginative. I thought of her traipsing the streets of D.C. looking for the prison where they’d taken her dad. Or hiding under the desk of some police detective telling him how to do his job. They’d be locking her up in foster care if I didn’t find her. Once social services got their hooks in a kid like EG, they’d never give her back. In fact, they’d probably run us out of town.
Out of obvious places to look and growing more scared by the minute, I ran down and started a systematic search of the first floor. I scoured Grandfather’s old room and double-checked the library and parlor and the closet under the stairs. I ran down to the basement, but the kitchen was locked, so I couldn’t find Mallard for questioning. Running out of rooms, my heart pounding so hard I needed fresh air to breathe, I ran up the outside stairs to check the back yard.
I almost stumbled over EG sitting on the cool cellar steps leading up to the tiled patio. Long hair hiding her thin face, she was bent over some project at her feet. As I watched, Mallard came through a gate hidden behind the canopy of wisteria vine in the back corner of the yard. He was pushing a wheelbarrow.
They both noticed me at once. EG eyed me warily and said nothing.
Mallard rolled the wheelbarrow of dirt onto the patio, dusted off his grimy hands, and nodded. “Good day, Miss Devlin. I must start on dinner.”
He stepped around EG and attempted to brush past me, but I climbed up a step and leaned my shoulder against the stair wall, blocking his escape. “You could have told me she was here so I didn’t spend the last half hour scared out of my mind.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mallard said in that aloof British tone of his. “Miss Elizabeth is potting herbs. I’m sure there is nothing to fear in that activity.”
It occurred to me that Mallard didn’t know EG’s last name. Not that EG carried Tex’s since he and Magda were having an affair and not a marriage, but for the first time I realized no one but Nick and I knew her father was a United States senator in jail for murder. Unless Graham did. He knew everything. A virtual oracle was that man, or so he obviously thought.
“Miss Elizabeth is supposed to be in school,” I snapped.
EG had been watching for my reaction. Now she turned her head and stared into the yard as if I wasn’t there. We needed to talk, but that required privacy.
“Well, she isn’t in school.” Mallard looked me in the eye. “If you wish dinner, I suggest you let me pass.”
“Does this mean you’re feeding us tonight? Or do we have to break in and fix it ourselves again?”
He shuddered and visibly blanched. “Under no circumstances are you to ever touch the kitchen again.”
“Even if all we want is a cracker?” EG asked, showing interest in the conversation now that it had turned away from her.
“Perhaps for a cracker, if you ask permission,” Mallard agreed stiffly.
Knowing where this led, I didn’t step aside but let Mallard suffer a while longer.
“What about a banana?” EG asked innocently. “If I’m studying and need a banana, can I get that?” She observed Mallard through a curtain of straight inky hair.
“Ring for it,” Mallard replied crisply. “Now, if you will excuse me?”
I stepped aside as EG was asking, “What about a glass of warm milk before I go to bed? Should I ring for that?”
Mallard escaped without answering. EG stood up to follow, but I blocked the stairs.
I consulted my watch. “School isn’t out yet. What are you doing home?”
“Mallard needed herbs potted. It’s a botany lesson.”
“Then tell me what chemical components plants consist of.”
“Green things,” she said defiantly. “Chlorophyll.”
She pulled that out of her encyclopedic memory. She could probably pull out more, and I wouldn’t know if she was right or wrong. I just knew she needed a real education and not the fake home school thing she gets from books. Nick and I weren’t teachers, and books lie. She had to learn the people skills to question and know where to go to find answers.
“Why did you skip out?” I demanded.
“Because it was dumb,” she shouted, on the verge of tears. “I just asked how we could say our form of government represents everyone like the book says when everyone knows over half our population is female and minorities, but our government is ninety-percent white male! She sent me to the principal for disobedience when I told her the book was wrong.”
“And you walked out instead.” I knew the feeling. I just didn’t know how to counteract it. Brains disturbed the flow in classrooms geared for the average mentality.
Besides, I knew there were two sides to every story. I wouldn’t be one of those parents who blamed the schools for everything. As proud as I was of my kid sister, I knew EG applied her intelligence like a weapon, diverting any form of interaction straight to hell. Maybe textbooks lied, but arguing with the teacher didn’t fix the problem.
“Look, I know it’s hard, but couldn’t you just sit there and play dumb until I figure out what to do next? Graham yelled at me for not being here to know you skipped. How can I leave the house and find Pao if I’m worrying about you loose in the streets?”
“I’ll sit in the library all day and Mallard can verify I’m there. I promise, I won’t get in your way. Or better yet,” she said eagerly, “I can go out with you.”
She was breaking my heart, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I wanted to tell her that’s fine, we’d just muddle through until Magda arrived. But I didn’t want our mother swooping down and hauling EG off to a desert harem or whatever. And the best way to hold our mother off was to show that I was raising EG responsibly.
I could probably even fight Magda in the courts for custodianship if I could show I had a home—which Magda didn’t—and that I was providing EG’s education—which Magda did but in unconventional, non-court-approved ways.
Of course, if I couldn’t keep EG in school, I wasn’t any better than Magda.
“We’ll talk about this later,” I admonished, chickening out. Nick was a people person. Maybe he’d have some suggestions. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Can I help you work?”
I heard the plea and my heart desperately wanted to answer it, but I’d spent years getting my head together and was terrified of dividing and parceling out myself as I had before. It’s far easier to obsess over my work than over a life in which I had no control.
“Give me a report on the herbs you’re potting.” Then, sad to say, I walked off. Let’s face it. When up against an unfamiliar situation, we all react as we’ve been brought up. It takes an extra effort to stop and say wait a minute, how can I do this better? I didn’t have time for that effort, or so I told myself.
EG poked her fingers into the newly potted herbs and didn’t watch me go.
~
“Blackwell Johnson for you, Miss Devlin,” the intercom announced coolly as I sat at the library table with the Whiz whizzing across the Internet. “Line one.”
Mallard was the intercom voice, not Graham. Interesting. I studied the blinking lights on the fancy telephone until I had them figured out, then poked the button for line one. “Ana Devlin here.” Did this mean it had been Johnson and not Magda who had called last night after all?
“Miss Devlin. I’m just calling to see if all is well with you. We are untangling some of your grandfather’s accounts and have located some of his investments. Not many, I fear.”
“Glad to hear you’re looking out for us, Mr. Johnson. Shall I send Nick over to sign anything?”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll send you a report and you can decide your preferences. Mostly it’s stock in a small textbook company. How are you and Mr. Graham getting along?”
Textbook company? Was all this foofaraw with Mindy because Max wanted to buy cheap stock? “My grandfather owned stock in a textbook company?” I asked before answering his query. “Which one?”
I could almost see the
lawyer frowning over the phone. “Something called Education-Pub, I believe. I don’t have the file in front of me. Not a major investment by any means.”
Edu-Pub. Max had helped Mindy investigate textbook companies, and then he had bought stock in one? But it wasn’t publicly traded.
Blackwell didn’t give me time to ponder all the paths this opened up. “I understand there is some question about Mr. Graham’s connections to the senator who has been arrested for murder. Are you certain you are safe there?”
His phony concern shot the lid right off of my suspicion-ometer. “I have yet to meet Mr. Graham,” I answered with an air of carelessness. “For all I know, he’s not here at all. What do you know about him?”
“Not a thing, Miss Devlin,” the lawyer said smoothly. “Not a thing. Then you have no reporters at your door asking about Senator Hammond? That’s a relief.”
“I’ll be certain to call you if one shows up. I have no fondness for reporters.”
If I was the imaginative sort, I’d believe I felt his relief as he said his farewells.
Shouldn’t Johnson be more afraid of our pit-bull lawyer and the police right now instead of worrying about Graham and Tex? What on earth was he up to?
I pulled out my old Oracle file and ran a search for my grandfather’s and Blackwell Johnson’s names. And didn’t find either.
~
Nick showed up after EG went to bed. From the disgruntled look on his handsome puss, his day hadn’t been any better than mine.
“Oppenheimer refused the case?” I asked immediately.
“Men like that don’t refuse money.” He dropped into the wing chair, crossed his knees, and made a tent of his fingers over them. “He’s filing charges against Brashton’s law firm and recommends that we hire an unsavory agency he knows to go to St. Kitts and haul him back.”
I frowned. “He wants more money to hire this suspicious outfit.”
Evil Genius Page 12