Evil Genius

by Rice, Patricia

  “Sounds good to me,” Nick said cheerfully, reducing his long stride to meet our smaller ones, his earlier resentment apparently appeased. “What, exactly, are we celebrating?”

  “I’m celebrating finding Pao and our extended stay in our new home.”

  Nick agreeably whooped in mock exuberation. He hadn’t been willing to celebrate my triumph earlier. Something was up.

  EG slanted a suspicious look at me. “The Spook says we can stay? We must have something he wants.”

  “Yeah, me,” I agreed, breaking out in a smile that probably shocked anyone who knew me. I shoved open the door to the gelato parlor.

  “Or both of us,” Nicholas countered in a tone more worried than proud.

  We stopped a few yards short of the counter. “He wants you to gamble?” I asked first.

  Nick shook his blond head and tightened his tie. For the first time, I noticed he was wearing a normal business suit. He would blend right into the crowd over at the GSA.

  “They let Senator Tex out on bail this afternoon,” he said.

  That couldn’t be the announcement he’d intended to make, but before he could continue, EG let out a whoop of delight. “He’s innocent! They’ll see.”

  Seeing that look on her face was worth celebrating, but I wasn’t getting the connection here. “And?” I prodded.

  “I thought we might learn a little something about Tex if we got closer to him,” Nicholas admitted with a hint of sheepishness.

  “You’re helping my father?” EG’s eyes went round in astonishment. “You mean it?”

  With mixed emotions, I watched the two of them. Nick had looks and dignity and that lofty British accent, but he wasn’t much of a father figure. Still, EG was looking at him as if he’d just created the world. She needed people in her life she could trust and rely on.

  I waited to see what Nick didn’t want Graham to find out.

  “I’ve been seeing someone on the senator’s staff. He mentioned an opening, and let’s face it,” Nick shrugged, “there aren’t too many people applying for Tex’s staff. I got the job.”

  EG and I shouted war whoops and whopped him on the back until he flushed. Graham was bound to find that out if he didn’t already know it, but it was good news anyway.

  “They said I was highly qualified for diplomatic circles,” he said, as if we were doubting his abilities.

  “Except for the homosexuality thing,” I pointed out, not that I was doubting his diplomacy. “Don’t they frown on hiring politically incorrect people who are easily blackmailed?” I proceeded to the gelato counter and ordered the raspberry. I didn’t want to discourage Nick’s initiative, but diplomatic circles were where we’d grown up, and no one had ever said Nick belonged there despite all his spit and polish.

  “It doesn’t matter at staff level. Besides, it’s not as if I’m trying to hide anything—except from Tex.” Grinning, Nick ordered blackberry and mint together, with chocolate sprinkles on top. “We’re celebrating, remember? Let’s not be stingy about it.”

  Encouraged by Nick’s selection, EG ordered a vanilla and strawberry striped concoction that couldn’t possibly be as good as gelato, then ordered chocolate and whipped cream on top of it. The proprietor, obviously no purist, beamed in delight.

  While we ate our ices out of Graham’s hearing, I explained everything I had learned today, carefully eliminating any mention of exploding buildings for EG’s sake. We raised our cones in toast to our extended stay in our new home, and then Nick regaled us with tales of interviewing for Tex’s office. EG wasn’t quite as forthcoming about her school day, but she did manage to admit that it wasn’t dumb.

  “School clothes!” I remembered aloud. “You need matching cell phones and backpacks.”

  I barely noticed clothes, but technology fascinated me. Some of those backpacks had been quite a striking design, all aluminum, with wheels that looked as if they’d carry a pup tent.

  “Our sister needs educating,” Nick confided to EG. “Now that we’ve ruined your dinner, I think celebrating ought to include clothes. Come on, let’s go.”

  Jumping up as happily as any nine-year-old, EG ran for the front door. I did not follow.

  “Take my credit card, and I’ll return to work.” I probably sounded a little stiff. I’m not of much use on a shopping expedition, but I’d kind of been enjoying our mutual celebration. I didn’t want it to break up so quickly, even if I had been the one to mention shopping. I hadn’t meant right now.

  EG returned to glare at me. “Are you going to fill balloons on Friday looking like that?” she demanded, and I knew I was outvoted.

  I know how to say shit in every language from Afghani to Zulu. I put my expertise to the test as they dragged me into a taxi to the mall. The Pakistani driver threw me an alarmed look when I reached his part of the alphabet.

  The first shop we encountered was a hair salon adorned in shopping bags of pink tissue paper. I shivered in horror as Nick stopped at the door. The salon stank of chemical scents that didn’t induce me to come within thirty yards of it. “Don’t even think about it,” I warned him.

  He looked at my heavy braids, sighed as if he’d just lost his best friend, and gallantly trudged on.

  “Bookstore!” EG cried, grabbing Nick’s hand and trying to tug him inside.

  I was already half way there when he marched determinedly past the entrance. “Nope. Books are for everyday. Clothes are for celebrating. EG needs clothes.”

  “Tyrant,” I muttered, but he was right. If she was going to fit into school, she had to dress appropriately. Maybe then she wouldn’t turn out like me. I’m not saying normality is the only way to go. I just wanted her to have choices.

  EG obediently headed for a Kids Gap store. Nick tapped her on the shoulder and shook his head. She gaped, looked at me, and marched ever onward.

  I had a sinking feeling I wasn’t going to like this.

  With the look of a man marching off to war, Nick steered us into Nordstroms.

  I knew palaces existed. I’d been inside several. I preferred all that marble on Roman palazzos where it belonged, though. I tried not to gape and blink like a rube as the glaring lights and glass and perfume hit me all at once. I started backing toward the entrance, but Nick caught my elbow and dragged me onward.

  “Lands End,” I muttered. “I can handle catalogs. I don’t need this.” I needed an oxygen mask to get past the perfume counter. I flinched as a skeletal model in filmy black aimed a sprayer at me. They may as well have taken me into Dark World and introduced me to vampires.

  Nick made some magic sign with his hand, and she backed off, confirming my evil fantasy. “You want to deal with EG’s school?” he demanded, striding determinedly toward a display of misshapen manikins wearing enough wool for several sheep. “You want to cow lawyers like Oppenheimer and Johnson? You want the Spook to treat you with respect?”

  “Respect?” I stumbled and came to a halt in front of row upon row of pastel suits. “You want me to gag here or wait until I try something on?”

  “Right. Mata Hari it is, then.” He dragged me deeper into the store, up and down escalators and through glittering rows of glass cases until I wasn’t certain if we were still on earth or had reached another planet. EG peeled off at a manikin modeling kids clothes. He’d corrupted her to the point she could shop for herself. I was horrified.

  He finally found a sea of denim and leather, and I relaxed. Black. I like black. I’m too short to look good in jeans, but denim has a certain earthy appeal. I looked for a new jumper. Nick shoved a black knit dress in front of me. I couldn’t even figure out how to put it on, much less when I should wear it. The skirt looked as if it had been split up to the crotch.

  “I am not Magda,” I informed him, locating a garment rack of corduroy. It might have been August in D.C. , but it was winter in Nordstroms.

  “You are the heir to millions. Act like it.” He started grabbing things from the racks that I wouldn’t touch with surgical gl
oves.

  I ignored Nick to poke through the racks of clothes I could relate to. I’ll never look like a model. I prefer invisibility. I found a sale rack of long beige cotton summer dresses and contemplated those. For EG, I might manage beige and sleeveless. For one night, maybe.

  Nick rolled his eyes and dragged me toward the dressing room. “You have cheekbones to die for, legs that could drive a man mad, a figure that can wear anything, and you are not wearing one of those shapeless pillowcases.”

  Nick never talked to me like that. I was so shocked that I let him shove me toward the dressing rooms where a saleslady was waiting with his selections. Before I knew what hit me, I was stuck in a mirrored closet with clothes that would make me look like a dwarf Magda clone, while a genial goblin outside kept asking if she could bring me anything else. This wasn’t quite as bad as exploding warehouses, but it was close enough to scare me.

  This was celebrating? What? A millenium of female oppression?

  I was having flashbacks to Magda’s magical closet. Now there was a closet a kid could get lost in and never be found. I know, I’d done it. My therapists licked their chops over my childhood adoration of dark, safe closets.

  I poked through the selection with the distaste with which one treats raw meat. I tried to think in terms of EG’s school gig, even if chances were good that I wasn’t attending. The faster I bought something, the faster I could escape was the theory I was operating on. I kind of liked the embroidered black halter and capris outfit, but the halter was some slippery substance that molded to me like a second skin, and the pants were a clingy knit that had to be drycleaned. And neither were suitable for the sister of a genius attending a snobby private school.

  Gingerly, I pulled out a black and white floaty thing. It had flounces on the hem and layers of gauze. Was Nick out of his mind? It was a damned good thing for him that clerks didn’t see him as female enough to come back here or I’d strangle him.

  But unless I wanted to wear the red, three-button suit with knee length straight skirt, I saw nothing else suitable. The floaty thing had no sleeves and a flimsy halter neckline. I had this sudden image of me wearing it in front of one Graham’s cameras, and I smirked.

  I tried it on. Personally, I thought it looked like a Gateway computer logo on silk, which gave me a certain fondness for it. The skirt had several layers that fell at different lengths and at weird angles so I wouldn’t blame anyone for mistaking me for a black-and-white fairy, although wings might be required. It was freakish, and so was I. Why not?

  I carried out the one dress and shoved it at the hovering clerk. “I’ll take this one.”

  “Did the others fit?” Nick asked, inspecting a little black dress that he would never fit into.

  “I like this one,” I said stubbornly. “Let’s go find EG.”

  Nick winked at the saleslady. “Get the others. She’ll take them, and this, too.” He threw the tiny little dress across the counter. “Direct us to the shoe department, please.” ~

  “It’s my credit card.” I was still furious as we carried sacks full of ridiculously expensive clothing out of the mall and waited for our taxi at nine that night. “I’ll never wear this stuff in ten million years. I don’t even have a closet.”

  “If you wouldn’t insist on living in an office, you’d have a closet. I’ll hire someone to move in a wardrobe.”

  “We don’t have that right,” I argued. “We could be living in the street next week.”

  “Did I, or did I not, win enough for us to live on comfortably for the next year if we so decided?” he asked loftily, helping EG to climb into the taxi beside me. He took the front seat where I couldn’t punch him.

  “We need that money to bring Brashton back. I’ll return all this tomorrow.”

  “Then I’ll have to return mine,” EG said equitably. “If you can’t keep your celebration clothes, neither can I. It’s not as if I want to look like a Barbie doll anyway.”

  That shut me up. She’d actually bought clothes that weren’t all black for a change. Admittedly, they tended toward the punk rocker image and not Barbie, but she looked cute in red leather, especially with all that black hair hanging over the matching jacket. Nick had even persuaded her to buy a beret.

  “We’re corrupting her.” I collapsed against the back seat, too exhausted to argue more. We’d held a celebratory feast in the food court and shopped until we dropped. Admittedly, it had been kind of fun sampling all the atrocious fast foods we hadn’t known growing up. Who knew pizza came with pineapple on it? And they could have closed down the Brookstone store with me in it, and I would have died happy.

  “It was fun,” EG agreed, saying aloud what I’d been thinking. “I like this celebration thing. We should do it more often.”

  We’d made her happy. It felt good to feel good. I caved. “We’ll celebrate with fireworks when we get our house back, and buy the gelato stand with our millions.”

  It felt fantastic to have family to share the good feelings with.

  My mind traveled to the wounded widower sitting alone in his dusty attic with only computer screens for company. I knew better than to feel sorry for him, but the image haunted me anyway.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ana converses with Graham and Blackwell, visits the school, and meets Tex.

  Like everything else in this world, celebrations have their upsides and downsides. Sitting in the library on Wednesday morning with EG off to school and Nick off to his new job in Tex’s office, I had plenty of silence in which to ruminate. I was wearing my new dryclean-only stretch capris with my old Grateful Dead T-shirt. The combination eased my conscience and soothed my soul. I tried waving my ankles to see if I could make Graham gasp, but Don Quixote still covered the painting I figured hid the camera. Maybe uncovering it would ease my moroseness.

  It was all very well to celebrate. It was quite another to wake up next morning and realize one must still locate a possible terrorist and a murderer along with a larcenous lawyer—while living in a house with a spy. My Atlanta basement was starting to look appealing again.

  My correspondent had forwarded the addresses to Friday night’s guest list, but Pao’s invitation had gone to the Cambodian embassy.

  It would be really convenient if I could combine the burning of Edu-Pub and the murder of Tex’s assistant by implicating Pao in both. I was all for efficiency, and the combination and timing was suspicious.

  I clicked through my e-mails to see if anyone had found a means of getting me into the passenger lists of local limo and taxi rentals. I didn’t hold out much hope for that one. For all I knew, Pao was riding with the ambassador from Cambodia. Graham was giving me another irrelevant assignment he figured I’d fail. I was determined to stuff it up his nose.

  My checks to both Edu-Pub and Pao’s foundation had cleared my fake school bank account. I went online to read the photo image of the back of the check. Bingo! As I’d suspected, they shared the same bank account. Money laundering, here we come.

  Then I ran through the list of Rose’s campaign contributors. Every right-wing, liberal-bashing religious conservative in the country had contributed. Surely the good senator didn’t know Edu-Pub funneled their cash into the same account with Pao’s fanatical Islamic fundamentalist group, but he was on the board for crying out loud! He ought to know.

  The my-God-is-better-than-your-God mentality always fascinated me. I briefly considered creating mockups of Rose’s fundraising invitations and sending them to the guys over in Indonesia, but even if they all showed up and sat down and talked it out with Rose’s right-wing guests, it was a waste of time unless terror and mayhem were my goal.

  I wasn’t that bored.

  Why would an Islamic Pao contribute to a Christian Rose? Why would Rose be on the board of Edu-Pub? To heck with oil and water. The pair were more like fertilizer and fuel oil. And why did I think Tex played into this scenario?

  Out of frustration, I ran a thorough search on Tex.

  Marrie
d the governor’s daughter fifteen years ago while a member of the Texas House of Representatives. Ran for U. S. House of Representatives ten years ago and lost. My interest picked up when I ran across a newspaper article from that year. The governor’s daughter went home to papa after that debacle. Tex had a sore loser for a wife.

  But the president at the time was another good ol’ Texas boy, and he appointed Tex ambassador to Spain. I didn’t have to count backward far to remember where Magda was living that year. EG was born in Barcelona.

  That was the year I’d walked out on Magda and my siblings. I stared at the monitor and wished my head were a computer so I could compute all the probabilities and improbabilities.

  “I thought you were researching limos,” a dry voice commented from the intercom.

  “I thought you only chatted at midnight,” I countered with irritation at the interruption. “Up early this morning, are we?”

  He ignored the repartee. “If you cannot complete your task, then you are of no further use to me. You may begin searching for other accommodations.”

  I was just annoyed enough to think Stick it up your ass, spyboy, but not stupid enough to say it. “A—I have applied all available resources to the search and I’m waiting for the results. B—the only other direct method involves disguising myself as a taxi driver and infiltrating their offices, and I figure you’ll yell at me if I do. C—This is only Wednesday and you gave me until Friday. D—there are other means of achieving your goal besides the transportation route.”

  “And I’ll have you tied and gagged if you choose those.” The voice never lost its dry inflection. “You will not go to the fundraiser. You will attend Elizabeth’s school festivity Friday night. You have been investigating Mindy Carstairs. Mind explaining why?”

  That stopped me in my tracks. I’d tried to keep my Tex and Mindy research to my old Dell so the snoop wouldn’t notice, but I couldn’t resist using the Whiz’s marvelous spy network to crack police files. Graham didn’t ask about Tex. He asked about Mindy.