I ripped the poster and painting off the wall, flung them on the bed, and took the spike heel of Nick’s shoe choice to the camera and pounded the lens into metal mush.
Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought I heard an explosive thump of something hard being flung upstairs. I wanted to believe I’d given the spook something serious to think about, but I had probably just pissed him off. I often have that effect.
I presented my back to Nick. “Zip it up.”
He did—without argument. Sometimes, it’s necessary to make a statement graphically.
Once my temper had settled enough so I could sit still, I let Nick perform his magic. He wrapped huge strands of my hair onto some kind of round platform, pinned it securely, worked other strands loose and twirled them into dangly waves with a curling iron. I didn’t spend any time admiring the sexy image he created. I tugged at the hairpiece thing to make certain no one could drag me around by it, and satisfied, I let Nick wrap my throat in a black velvet choker with a silver and onyx stud on it. Creative. I liked it.
I glanced at the clock on the mantel—quarter til seven. The reception started at seven.
Nick opened the door and held out his arm for me. I lingered to admire his attire. If Sean was the Pierce Brosnan James Bond, then Nick was the Roger Moore version. I patted his red silk pocket handkerchief. “You look like an ambassador. I’ll try not to ruin your career.”
“I remember now why I didn’t go into the diplomatic corps,” he replied, dragging me down the hall. “I have too much imagination.”
I would have laughed, but I was too scared. I stopped at the top of the stairs, spun around until I found the most likely location for a camera in the carved cornice, planted my hands on my hips, and glared. “If we somehow end up at the airport instead of the reception, I will personally return and set fire to the place with you in it.”
“Magda should have spanked you more often,” was all the reply I got.
I still had the hysterical need to laugh. It wasn’t as if we had a lot of choices at this juncture. Graham might buy plane tickets, but he wasn’t handing over a million dollars.
I had a dainty handbag containing as many dirty tricks as I could think of and boots that would put a hole through metal, and I still didn’t know the enemy. I’m a virtual assistant. I haven’t trained for cops and robbers or spooks and haunts. I shivered in my spike-heels.
Mallard opened the door and bowed us out, then donned a gray chauffeur’s cap and followed us. A silver-gray Phaeton waited illegally in the street, with half a dozen cars angrily hitting their horns as they maneuvered around it.
“Excellent means of catching a cab,” I said brightly, heading down the walk toward one stuck in the traffic jam behind the enormous car. “You’re a genius, Mallard.”
Torn between the gleaming magnificence of a chauffeured Phaeton and a dirty yellow cab bearing his dominatrix sister, Nick wavered. It was his choice, but I wasn’t taking any chances on ending up at the airport. I didn’t need his help. I’d managed on my own for years.
Nick’s long legs carried him down the street to the cab before it pulled into traffic. I tried not to show my relief as he opened the door and slammed in.
“When will you learn to trust?” he growled.
“When Mallard works for us and not Graham,” I countered.
The Phaeton rolled out behind the cab. I couldn’t imagine Mallard following an indistinguishable yellow cab if we wanted to elude him, but he knew where we were going. I didn’t mind having him along for backup.
“Did you locate Magda?” I asked quietly. For all I knew, cab drivers reported directly to Graham. Or to kidnappers. My paranoia had reached whole new levels.
“Patra said she talked to her in Switzerland last week, which doesn’t help. I couldn’t reach Tudor at school.”
Tudor is sixteen. The last I’d seen of him, he’d been a red-headed imp, but the latest reports indicated he’d probably corrupt the internet and reduce technology to the Dark Ages unless someone gave him something better to do. I knew networking, but he’d grown up with computers. His skills involved programming and hardware, far outmatching anything I could do, so I had no intention of being the nanny who kept his active mind occupied.
Not being able to reach Tudor was a given, but he always knew where everyone else was.
“I don’t know where Magda is working these days,” Nick continued. “I left a message on her voice and e-mail but she hasn’t replied.”
I nodded. That was typical Magda behavior and nothing suspicious. As long as all her chicks were well and accounted for, she let others tend them while she went about her business. I knew from personal experience the communication gap between the time a chick needed her, and her receiving the message and acting on it. The gap had been dangerously long upon occasion, or immediate on others.
If Nick told her EG had been kidnapped, she’d be on the next space ship from Mars if she had to, but first she had to pick up her damned voice mail. I never questioned my mother’s love for her children—just her priorities and parenting skills.
“All right. Then we’ll look for Tex first.” There had been a time when I had meant to use this reception to follow Pao, but right now, if I found him, I’d lock him up with Tex until I had questions answered. I just wish I had more suspects so I could lock them all up in one place.
“What are you going to say to Tex if you find him—‘hand over my sister’? That could be embarrassing given that we have no reason to believe he’s behind EG’s disappearance.” Nick brushed a lock of hair from his forehead and anxiously regarded the traffic jam in front of the reception hall. “What was that business about Max being murdered?”
“Graham says envelopes from Max’s office contained poison.” It’s a damned good thing I don’t do snail mail because I was the one using Max’s office these days.
I was trying really hard not to think about my grandfather because tears kept forming behind my eyes, and I just didn’t have time to cry. “I think Max was working with Mindy. Someone must have interfered with the envelopes before they were delivered.”
“Reggie?” Nick asked instantly. “So he could get his hands on the money?”
“And maybe because someone asked him to,” I agreed with a sigh of defeat. “Or blackmailed him into it.”
“Magda isn’t behind this, is she?” he asked gloomily.
“I’m thinking not. She’s more devious. Maybe we should split up when we get there. I’ll stand around as bait, waiting for the kidnapper to approach. You hide and follow them.”
“You don’t have EG’s passport or the money,” he pointed out.
“I’ll tell them they’re at the airport with the tickets. It’s not as if we could get paper tickets at this late date.” I was thinking aloud just to keep from imagining all the bad things that could happen—like what if they really didn’t care about tickets at the airport because they intended to kill us.
“This isn’t going to work, is it?” Nick asked glumly, apparently following a similar train of thought.
“It would if I could make sense of it, but I can’t. I assume that’s what they’re counting on. We’ll just have to wing it. It’s better than doing nothing.”
The traffic around the reception hall had come to a standstill. If we’d been in the Phaeton, the police would have ushered us into the lane that had been cleared for guests. The cabbie tried to argue his way in, but I saw no reason to make life difficult for the men in blue. We paid the driver and walked through the gates, flourishing our fake invites.
How had the kidnapper known we could get in? Or had they counted on us arranging invitations along with passports and tickets? They knew us damned well, if so.
Or they knew Graham. That possibility knotted my insides.
Maybe the kidnappers had counted on us getting invites by making a huge contribution to Rose’s campaign fund with our supposed millions. I’d flashed my passport all over D.C. in this past week and a hal
f, and called myself Maximillian today. It wouldn’t take much to discover I was one of the heirs to my grandfather’s fortune—especially in Reggie’s circles. Money would get us invitations to anywhere.
I knew presidential campaigns used a lot of dirty tricks, but kidnapping a kid to obtain campaign contributions would set new lows. I couldn’t find any logic in kidnapping EG at all—unless someone was after us and the money, and we were walking right into the trap.
I walked up the drive in my aggressive thigh-length mini-dress and do-me boots, trembling in fear. I deserved an Oscar.
If the kidnappers murdered Max, surely they knew Reggie had our money. Maybe Graham murdered Max and he was going to bump us off tonight and let Tex take the blame. Apparently, I could be real imaginative when I put my mind to it.
Men in pin-striped suits climbed out of limos with women in designer gowns. It wasn’t a white-tie affair, but men like Nick in tuxes are never out of place. Women in killer boots were totally wrong—unless they stood five-nine and sported silicon boobs. We’ve already established that’s not me. I dressed myself in attitude.
The security staff at the door studied me with suspicion but my dress didn’t leave room for so much as a splinter much less a weapon. They searched my purse and took my pepper spray, but left my roll of quarters, keys, and pick-handled comb. Silly men.
I saw Pao the instant we pushed our way past the reception line to the punch bowls.
Chapter Twenty-five
Ana questions Blackwell and finds a closet.
“Just stay right there and behave yourself, Elizabeth, and I’ll bring Senator Hammond to you as soon as he arrives.”
EG nibbled an apple from her backpack and tried to look as if she believed the suave old guy in a suit as he departed.
She’d been dumb. She hadn’t done anything this dumb since she was five and smoke-bombed kindergarten.
The door closed and the lock clicked behind her kidnapper. Dropping her innocent pose, EG narrowed her eyes and scanned the unadorned bedroom. They’d walked past caterers and harried office workers and men in suits to get here, so this must be a fairly public place. She hoped no one moved the book she’d dropped on the table when she realized her driver hadn’t taken her to Tex’s office as expected.
Silver Hair had told her that Tex was working on the reception, but he’d been so nervous he hadn’t even noticed when she’d dropped the book. Her suspicions had kicked in by then, and she figured she ought to leave a clue for Ana—just in case.
The guy in the limo at the school had said he was one of Tex’s aides. And she’d believed him. That’s how desperate she had been. Magda would kill her, if Ana didn’t first. They’d been taught from birth to ID strangers, but she hadn’t thought anyone in D.C. knew who she was except her family. The stranger had known she belonged to Tex. Only her family knew that.
She checked the window. It looked down on a parking lot filled with work vans. The historic old home had looked impressive from the front, but it was obvious it was more office building than residence. She was on the third floor and too far left of the portico to climb out.
There were people down there. Maybe they could hear her. She tried opening the small attic window but it was painted shut. She could try breaking it, but she doubted anyone would hear her from up here. The workers below were all yelling into cell phones or at each other and racing back and forth into the kitchen.
Maybe she was panicking over nothing. Maybe Tex really did know she was here. It seemed a very odd place to stash a kidnap victim. Maybe Tex was using her to bring Magda back to town. She didn’t think she’d told anyone but her father that she’d be out of school early. How else would they have known to come get her?
Except the limo hadn’t picked up Elsie. And it hadn’t been Boise with the Pierce-Arrow. She’d been dumb. She’d climbed into a car with a stranger just because he’d known who she was and who her father was.
Thinking hard, she patted the wall behind the bed, hoping for a hidden door. How had the guy in the suit known about her father unless he was actually from her father?
The e-mail to Tex’s office. She’d thought Tex would be the only one to see it. She really was losing it. School must have rotted her brain. Someone else in Tex’s office had seen her message, someone who meant to hurt him?
Her brain was revving into gear now and not liking what it thought. EG patted the wall faster, checked the baseboards, and scanned the floor and ceiling.
Finding nothing, she started looking for something with which to break glass.
~
“Circulate,” I murmured to Nick as we pushed toward the buffet where I’d seen Pao. “Find Tex.”
Oddly calm now that the enemy was in sight, I knew what I had to do. Pao had made it to my short list of potential kidnappers. Apparently, I was about to flaunt my recent discovery that I was no longer the normal one in the family.
Nick hadn’t spent the last week and a half focused on Pao. He didn’t see what I saw or know what I knew. He simply looked confused.
“I thought I was playing backup,” he protested. “Tex will be in a smoke-filled room somewhere. Are you staying here alone until I find him? That’s risky.”
“I’m in a roomful of people guarded by the Secret Service. I’ll grab plates for both of us at the buffet.”
Poor Nick still suffered under the illusion that I was the geeky sister who hid in basements. Okay, maybe I still was. But he hadn’t been with me when a warehouse blew up, or when I confronted Hagan and Tex’s wife. I had wells of stupidity I hadn’t plumbed yet. A double-pronged approach to my paranoia seemed like the perfect answer.
Nick gave my outfit a doubtful look, shrugged, and sauntered off, probably relieved to be rid of the embarrassment of my sartorially-impaired company.
Keeping an eye on Pao, I picked up a plate and randomly selected munchies that didn’t require much attention. Flowery radishes and curled celery might look cute, but I’ve had years of experience at buffet tables. Raw veggies were nasty without dip, and dip looked bad dripping off my limited cleavage. Anything piled in three layers was even worse to manipulate, particularly with wine in hand. I wasn’t born with the coordination of a juggler or the slight-of-hand of a magician. I claimed food I didn’t have to watch. Caviar on crackers works.
I studied the men to whom Pao spoke. I hadn’t spent much time pondering photographs of newsworthy figures, but I recognized a congressman here and there, and several of our distinguished representatives stopped to shake his hand. Pao might have shadowy connections, but in this million-dollar crowd, they knew a foreign attaché and fundraiser when they saw one.
I hadn’t been around Magda or her diplomatic cronies in ten years, but I recognized several of them circulating through the room. Other than adding a few pounds and a few more gray hairs, they hadn’t changed much. I had to wonder what they were doing here, if Magda might have sent them. I didn’t walk up and ask, especially if they spoke to Pao. None of them were high enough up the food chain to be important as far as I was aware.
I knew which of Magda’s circle were CIA, of course. Everyone did. They rotated regularly, but then, so did Magda. If my old friends noticed me, they didn’t let on. Amazing how small government circles are. I hadn’t thought I’d know anyone here, but many of these people could know about EG. And possibly her relation to Tex. Now I had to wonder if I was surrounded by friends or enemies. Goose flesh crawled up my bare arms.
Nibbling a lovely piece of French cheese and sipping a glass of white wine, I stayed out of Pao’s line of sight and kept my ears open.
It’s odd how the mind takes unexpected leaps and bounds when pressured. All the tiny cells of information from the past week and a half had suddenly coalesced into an amorphous pattern that didn’t quite make sense yet but was starting to take shape.
I noticed the candidate of the hour holding court in a far corner. Pao didn’t go near him, but men who stopped to speak to Rose spoke with each other, and the
same men often spoke to Pao. I couldn’t follow the network without knowing all the players, but it was obvious Pao was far more than a textbook salesman or a hotheaded Indonesian radical.
I circled closer. My boot heels added three inches to my height, and my stacked hair probably added another couple. For someone with social anxieties, I was pretty conspicuous. People looked at me. Only those people who got in my way got noticed in return though. I politely rebuffed a suit high on arrogance and another high on reefers. Drunks tend to be more tenacious, but then, my stilletos were metal. I felt no remorse for their cries of pain. I dodged their spilled drinks with finesse. I might look the part of Magda, but I am so not into this scene.
Because events had unfolded unpleasantly since my meeting with Hagan that afternoon, I kept an eye out for him, but it was EG’s textbook that I spotted first.
I almost spilled my wine trying to reach it. I stepped on toes, elbowed stout bellies, and almost kicked a waiter. He dodged out of my way to avoid mutilation.
Just as I reached the table in the corner, I realized if the bad guys were watching, they knew they had me, but I didn’t care. Setting my plate down, I flipped open the history text. Obviously, there were hundreds of thousands of these books out there, unless most of them had blown up with the warehouse. But there was no good reason for one to be here.
EG’s name was boldly scribbled inside. Most nine-year-olds were just learning script writing. EG practiced calligraphy. It was hers.
Did that mean she was here? In this house? Or was this some demented means of identifying me? If I’d come as my usual invisible self, that was a wise approach. I was likely the only person in the entire room who would inspect a textbook, so it was a certain means of recognition—to people who knew me. I didn’t want to believe kidnappers were that smart.
Evil Genius Page 29