Evil Genius

by Rice, Patricia

  I didn’t think I liked the way this was heading. “I remember my grandfather as a loving man who bounced me on his knee.”

  “Oh, Max adored you. You could barely talk when I got in an argument with him and called him an oracle of Mammon. From that day forward, you called him Oracle. He loved it.”

  Magda didn’t even notice that I almost fell out of my seat. The cogs in my head were whirring so erratically that I barely caught her next words.

  “You were the apple of his eye, the next brilliant generation of Maximillian who would take over the world since I was such a severe disappointment.” Magda nibbled at her toast as if she wasn’t answering all the questions I’d begged for her to answer over the years.

  “Did he stay in touch with you? Ever ask after us?” I asked, trying not to put too much of my hope into the question.

  Magda waved her hand dismissively. “Of course he did. If he’d had some way of pulling our strings, he would have. Be grateful I kept you out of his hands, but be assured he knew everything we did.”

  I was still digesting the “oracle” bit and flying high on mixed hope and despair and didn’t want to hear the downside of her tale. I might have been communicating with my grandfather before his death. If so, he really had cared. He’d help me get my fledgling business off the ground. I wanted him to be a superhero. Or had he been manipulating me? “Let me keep thinking of him like a helpful old man, all right? Sometimes, the fairy tales are better.”

  Magda eyed me through witchy green eyes and disregarded my plea. “Like me, Brody wouldn’t let Max pull his strings. To acquire the weapons he needed, Brody became embroiled with several terrorist groups. There will always be people who think they know what is best for others, and the destruction of authority is their goal. It’s kind of like marriage in a way.”

  She’d had me hooked until she hit me with that comparison. My tea went down the wrong way and I choked. “Marriage?” I spluttered, dabbing at my mouth with a napkin.

  “Girls spend their youth dreaming of the prince who will sweep them off their feet and the wonderful wedding where they’ll be queen for a day. They never think about waking up the day after the wedding to a man with a stubbly beard and body odor and a world where they have to get up and fry the bacon.”

  I spluttered some more, but that was muffled laughter. Magda had certainly arranged it so I never suffered from marriage delusions. She smiled approvingly and waited for me to recover.

  By the time I’d washed my coughs down with water, I had grasped her meaning. “Terrorists only dream of the destruction of authority and haven’t planned the morning after. Got it. Men are always big on competition and lacking in detail.”

  “Or vision. I loved your father, but he loved getting his way more than he loved us.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” I insisted, although that was half a lie. I was desperate to hear about my father, but not through the filter of my mother’s vivid imagination. “Tell me more about Max.”

  Magda waved a dismissive hand. “Daddy was Old World. Brody was New. Your father had the brains to overthrow the government, but not the vision to see that terrorists create anarchy, not equality. Your grandfather wasn’t involved in Brody’s assassination.” She drained her teacup and gazed ruefully at the dregs. “I was.”

  “You killed my father?” I shouted, despite my best struggle to avoid conflict. I preferred thinking that Brody had been the love of her life, and she’d run off because she couldn’t live without him. Even a hard case like me can have a few romantic fantasies.

  “And Graham’s father,” she added reflectively. “They were in it together.”

  “Magda, crawl back to your sheik’s tent,” the candelabra said with distinct disgruntlement. “You’d think you would have outgrown the drama queen tendencies by now.”

  “Oh shut up, Day. You were eight years old and more annoying than EG when it happened. What do you know?”

  Day? Amadeus. Deus. Day. God. I shook my head and staggered up from the table. I didn’t want to hear any more of this. This is the reason I preferred my insular world. The big wide one that my mother, and apparently Graham, inhabited was much too scary. Or—as Graham insinuated—my mother was spinning fairy tales again. Magda did have a tendency to overdramatize. Her tales often made Grimm’s look like children’s books. Could she have made up the part about my calling Max Oracle? Shouldn’t I remember it?

  I didn’t remember my father’s death.

  “How do you think Max spent all these years since you left?” the candelabra scolded as I walked out.

  “I gave him lots of little Maximillians to follow in his footsteps, didn’t I?” Magda responded in her usual insensible fashion.

  One can see why I learned to avoid asking questions and relied on documentation for my answers. Asking questions of Magda was akin to banging my head against a brick wall because it felt so good when I stopped.

  I wanted to return and shout, “Every time I thought those kids were old enough to take care of each other so I could leave, you had another one! And that was for Max’s benefit?” But I’d resolved that argument before EG was born, and obviously, it hadn’t got me far.

  Sick to my stomach, I retreated to the Cobalt Whiz and called up the website of Pao’s fundamentalist organization. What in hell made people think they knew it all?

  I didn’t know it all. Neither did Graham or my mother. No one way was ever the right way for everyone or there would be no individuality. I wanted no part of their quarrel. I had a job to do, and that’s all I would do.

  Ignoring my own argument, I shut down the Pao file and opened my Oracle file. Could these messages really have come from my grandfather?

  A tear wet my cheek as I read the courtly, old-fashioned phrases. My grandfather. All these years we’d forgotten about him, but he hadn’t forgotten us. Regardless of what Magda claimed, I believed he loved us enough to watch over us. I wanted to put my head down on the table and sob.

  Except envelopes-poison-tophat-pow suddenly took on new and alarming meaning.

  ~

  I spent the morning hunting for an apartment. I would get the hell out of Dodge entirely, but I’d come to the interesting conclusion that my mother had never returned to D.C. because she had been afraid of being arrested. If I lived here, she wouldn’t push her luck by visiting often.

  I’d probably continue going after Reggie and our money so my siblings would be able to find their own way as I had. But I didn’t want any part of Graham or Magda or my grandfather and the manipulative world they lived in. I didn’t like the pieces of the puzzle that were falling into place. I was circling the wagons to protect my family first.

  After working through my Oracle file, I was positive my disappearing client had been my grandfather. Now that I had my mother’s clue, I could look at the other evidence as more than coincidence. The dates matched. Mindy and textbooks matched.

  If “pow” translated as “Pao,” I wanted EG out of that house where Max might have been killed. Poison his note had read.

  I was devastated in so many ways that I was amazed I was still functioning. I’d been working with my grandfather. He’d reached out to me in the last years of his life. Why hadn’t he identified himself? I would have come running if he’d only asked.

  Tears running down my cheeks as they had half the morning while I worked, I rubbed briskly at them and strode down the street keeping an eye out for For Rent signs.

  To hell with Pao. With murder and Graham and the treacherous Reggie, I had far more on my plate than I could possibly solve. So I stayed with what I could do—find a home for EG.

  I stopped at the pub for lunch and to peruse the classifieds. And maybe I stopped there in hopes of a human connection to slow my gyrating thoughts. Not that I believed Sean O’Herlihy was just a common working class man interested in me as a woman, because I didn’t believe that for a second. But he at least came attached to a male body and not a candelabra.

  He
didn’t disappoint. It took a while for my hamburger to arrive. When it did, it came accompanied by Sean wearing a hardhat and looking like every woman’s wet dream.

  He slid into the booth across from me. “We meet again. Blown up any more buildings?” He threw the hat on the bench beside him, revealing a head of thick black curls damp with sweat.

  “Did it ever occur to you that Brody was a terrorist?” I muttered through my hamburger.

  I had grown up with the idea that my father was a hero, killed in the line of duty, so to speak. I knew tens of thousands of Irishmen idolized him. And like EG, I’d preferred the fairy tale and hadn’t thought beyond childish hero-worship.

  Sean raised his eyebrows and signaled the bartender before turning the full blaze of his blue eyes on me. “People are only terrorists if they work for the enemy. If they’re on our side, they’re heroes.”

  “And here I thought I was cynical.” But I suppose he spoke the truth. We always like to think our country is right, and we’re marching off to a just war, but then so did the Crusaders and the Nazis and all the other men who marched off to war.

  “Women always think the world’s problems can be solved by talking,” he scoffed. “Very few men are granted the gift of gab. Your father was one of the few. He accomplished a great deal of good in his time.”

  “By talking.” I didn’t see the point here.

  “By talking,” he agreed, “and amassing arms to defend himself should the talking fall through, as it often does when injustice prevails and frustration builds.”

  “Because men are assholes who’d rather blow each other up instead of compromise.” I tore off a bite of hamburger. I’d lost my father and my grandfather and possibly the home that should have been mine because of violence. The world wasn’t pretty.

  “Well, you can take your mother’s methods, if you prefer. Women can accomplish a lot behind the scenes.”

  My head jerked up. He knew my mother, too? “Ummhmmm,” I murmured through my mouthful. Anything else would have been blasphemous.

  “Don’t sound so doubtful. World peace isn’t achieved by armies. It’s the people behind the scenes talking reason to people of power who are the unsung heroes.”

  I was milkshake to his straw. He was sucking me in, and I couldn’t resist. Magda blew up her husband to achieve peace, and in her own strange way was now doing so by vamping men in power? Yeah, I could just about buy that. My mother was that warped. “Right, and you’re CIA and know that for a fact,” I said with as much scorn as my milkshake spine could manage.

  I’m an introvert. I don’t ask questions willingly. But I listen. And put things together. And irritate the answers out of people. Sean wasn’t falling for the ploy, though. He continued on his own wavelength—which seemed designed to teach me my history but was just making me wonder more about his.

  “In a way, your father and Pao had similar goals, just different religions. They represent fundamentalist minorities attempting to force their governments to recognize their beliefs.”

  “Which is why this country keeps religion out of government,” I said caustically. “Don’t tell me Magda blew Brody up over religion. She doesn’t have any.”

  Sean snorted. “Brody was still idealistic enough to have principles. He uncovered a dangerous cell of blackmarket dealers and had turned them in to the authorities. They killed him, not your mother, although she may have said something when she shouldn’t that revealed his identity to the wrong people.”

  And carried the guilt with her into exile. Or to chase his assassins? She was capable of both. “So you’re saying there are millions of people who believe Pao is a hero, like Brody.”

  He shrugged. “No one achieves that kind of power on their own. It’s like money. They buy and trade with others who have it.” His beer arrived, and he sat back to swig it.

  “Like Paul Rose,” I guessed, hoping to keep him talking.

  “All politicians buy and trade power. As long as we expect them to buy their seats through campaign contributions, our government is owned by the wealthy and powerful.”

  Sean knew about Pao and Rose. He was either in cahoots with Graham, or a spy for the feds, and I wanted no part of his political propaganda. But as mentioned, curiosity was my besetting sin. “Was the Edu-Pub arson to cover up money laundering?” I asked flat out.

  “My guess is that someone was getting too close to whatever was happening in there,” he agreed with a pointed look at me.

  I hadn’t been close to anything except that damned building, and if he couldn’t give me any better than that, then he didn’t know more either. Big pictures were as fuzzy as hell. Until men started seeing the crisp details of little pictures, they’d never get it. Someone had almost killed me. That was as crisp as it got.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I already understood he wouldn’t answer questions that weren’t on his agenda. He was just too pretty to dismiss though. Sean gave me some inkling of what Magda must have felt when she met my father, only I was far older and wiser than she had been at the time.

  “My father admired yours,” Sean admitted. “I was brought up on tales of his heroism. I don’t want Brody’s daughter hurt. There’s a reason your grandfather didn’t invite you or your siblings to stay with him.”

  “Graham.” I suspected with Sean, it all came back to Graham. And now I had a better understanding of why. Graham knew Max. And Max may have been murdered. I wanted to believe Graham was there to revenge his death, but I’m an optimist when it comes to my home.

  “You’re quick,” Sean said with admiration. “You’re your father’s daughter, without a doubt.”

  “No, I’m not, not in the way you mean.” I stood up and left a ten on the table. “I believe in live and let live. My father believed in killing.”

  “Don’t go,” he protested. “I’ve given you the wrong impression. Stay and let me buy you a beer.”

  Despite his political agenda, I was beginning to like Sean a little too much. Therapeutic sex with a stranger was one thing, but getting involved was quite another. Magda used men, not me. “I don’t like beer, and you gave me exactly the right impression. See you around.”

  I had second and third thoughts about leaving, but I had to pick EG up at school, and I certainly didn’t need a Brody admirer messing with my libido. If there were conspiracies lurking beneath the grime of D.C. ’s political world, I didn’t need to hear about them. If my best client was actually Max, protecting me by keeping me happily employed and out of D.C. , I’d be wise to trust his judgment. It was time to pull back. Graham could find Pao on his own. Sean could spy on Graham some other way. Magda could go back where she belonged. Civilization had survived without me this long. I’m sure it could struggle on another few thousand years.

  If the house was dangerous, Graham could have it. My one and only goal had just become keeping EG safe and happy.

  ~

  A mile-long, shiny champagne-colored car with a fortune’s worth of nickel-plated grill waited at the front of the school when I arrived by Metro. The sleek machine so obviously belonged in a museum that it could only be the infamous Pierce-Arrow.

  Normally, I am not an obnoxious person. I treasure my invisibility. If I had a religion, I would choose Quaker. But that was me. And that car was for EG. Maybe we couldn’t have Max’s house, but EG ought to have a limo and a rich dad, just like her sister.

  I looked up at the tier of steps from the school, heard the bell ring, and with a smirk, leaned against the waxed fender, crossed my arms, and waited.

  It had been a rough day, and I got my jollies where I could find them. I mean, how many times can a girl hear her mother say she killed her father? Not killed, assassinated. Add that to the prior night’s threatening message, Sean’s knowledge of Pao, and my new fear about Max’s death, and my sense of humor needed something outrageous as a restorative.

  The chauffeur climbed out of the driver’s seat. “Don’t lean on the car,” he said coldly.

&
nbsp; I cast him a provocative smile. “The Senator won’t mind. My sister and Elsie go to school together. We could use a ride home.”

  The driver was an old black guy with tight grizzled curls and a proud carriage that said he’d worked for the senator for a long time and held some degree of authority. Heck, for all I knew, he was a bodyguard. I was feeling just reckless enough not to care.

  “Don’t lean on the car,” he repeated stonily.

  “How will I make an impression if I don’t lean on the car?” I asked with honesty. “If I stand next to it, I’ll look like I’m asking for a ride. And I’m not.”

  “You just did,” he said with blinding logic.

  “Nope. I demanded it. As if I owned this car. It puts the Phaeton I used to ride in to shame.”

  “You rode a Phaeton? Where?”

  Men are so easy. “Manchester, England.” That was the truth, too. At least, I think it was a Phaeton. We didn’t stay there long, and I was pretty young. I’d heard of the Phaeton anyway.

  “Why are you talking to her, Boy?” Darling Elsie ran down the walk in a twirl of pink skirts and hand-painted plastic sandals.

  “Boy?” I asked, lifting my eyebrows at the chauffeur.

  The creases in his black face deepened as he smiled. “For Boise. I’m from Idaho. My mama never thought about nicknames.”

  I grinned. Keeping an eye out for EG in the throng of chattering students, I faced down the little pink cow. “This is a free country, darling. Mr. Boise may speak with anyone he likes.”

  “Well, he can’t like you. My mama says I’m not to talk to cheap tramps.”

  Elsie was starting to look as much like a cow as her name suggested. Who named their kids after cows in the first place? I needed to meet this poor kid’s mother. But not today. I’d had enough for today.

  “What about expensive tramps?” I asked, taking up EG’s ploy. It seemed to work pretty well on fifth-graders. Elsie looked confounded.

  Fortunately for Elsie, EG strode down the stairs about then, her eyes wide in inquiry. She wasn’t slumped over and dragging her feet as she had been the other day. Maybe she’d had a better day than I had.