“Oh, excuse me, old man, it’s such a crush, isn’t it?” Nick’s fruitiest British accent drifted toward us, followed by “Oh, my, do that again,” in a lascivious tone. Humanity suddenly surged around us as manly men backed out of his way.
“There you are, Jeeves, old fellow. Lead on, I feel positively faint.” Nick draped his arm over Mallard’s broad shoulders and surreptitiously shoved us faster out the door.
A gray suit hustled to halt us before we could push past the cops guarding the exit. I dodged his steely gaze and hastily sought a distraction to get us out of here. I really didn’t want to have to answer any questions right now—probably because I wasn’t the one with the answers. Machiavelli was, and he waited back at the mansion, safe from hoi polloi.
Without warning, Sean muttered near my ear, “You’re gonna owe me for this.” I could smell the subtle scent of his spicy aftershave and see the bristles of his five o’clock shadow as he pushed off the wall.
I had no idea how he’d managed to navigate the crowd, and no time to question as he pointed at the window on the opposite side of the room.
“Look, he’s getting away! Catch him!”
Gray suit glanced away. The cops surged around us. Mallard and Nick shoved from behind. EG and I popped from the library like eggs from a bird.
Well, there were more representative metaphors, but I’ve already overused my favorite swear word.
With Mallard running offense in front and Nick handling defense behind, we shoved past the crowd in the corridor in the opposite direction of the front exit. I knew this tactic and didn’t hesitate in their choice of objective. We hit the servants’ hall running.
Mallard had drawn the Phaeton under the old-fashioned portico in the rear of the house. I had no idea if this was still a driveway or the kitchen garden. I merely dived into the back seat after EG when Mallard opened the door, while Nick took the front.
The back seat wasn’t empty.
“To the airport?” a pleasantly warm male voice inquired. A diamond cufflink winked as he handed me my purse.
Shock hit me. I smacked the roof looking for a light switch so I could see the mystery man, but this was an antique car and not a modern limousine. My next reaction was to grab for the door and escape as Mallard guided the enormous vehicle past—rosebushes? Definitely not a place to jump out. Tearing my astonished gaze from the window to the silhouette of the man in the seat across from us, I narrowed my eyes against the darkness.
“Graham?”
“An admirer,” he corrected. “That was an amazing performance. Although your rashness should be condemned, I congratulate you on your efficiency and quick thinking under pressure.”
I could actually hear the admiration in his voice. It went down amazingly well. Few people offered appreciation for my somewhat obscure and often inappropriate abilities.
Walled off by glass, Nick hadn’t realized anything was wrong. I could see him leaning out the front window, directing Mallard past whatever obstructions remained in the backyard. I prayed they were heading for a gate and not a crash.
Beside me, EG caught my hand but wisely remained silent. If this was Graham, we were cruising for a showdown, despite the flattery.
His warm, very human voice didn’t have the mechanical quality of the intercom. He called himself an admirer. And the way he said it had elicited shivers up and down my spine and to other places best not mentioned in front of impressionable nine-year-olds. I inhaled the spicy male scent of him and wished wistfully for a man I could trust, but who could trust a man who wouldn’t admit his identity?
We had three airplane tickets waiting for us at the airport. I had my passport back if Mystery Man hadn’t removed it from my purse. If we could snag EG’s passport, we could get the hell out of D.C. before everyone from the FBI to Homeland Security came down on us, asking questions we couldn’t answer.
EG’s fingers squeezed mine, and I slipped off my frightened cloud and back to earth as I remembered our reason for being here in the first place.
EG needed her father. Tex had just risked his life and his reputation rescuing her.
I wanted to go back to being the sane one in our family. Not the brilliant one or the gay one or the eccentric one or any of those other appellations attached to my weird and wonderful half siblings. I am invisible, unostentatious Anastasia, the family doormat.
Not anymore, a small voice inside my head said. Much as I wanted to go back, I couldn’t. I had family now, and responsibilities. And a mystery man who admired my performance. I was feeling very, very visible. “Why did they kill Max?” I asked in resignation.
A stranger would have no idea what I was talking about. The man in the diamond cufflinks didn’t hesitate. “He knew too much and had too much power.” The velvet voice continued without inflection. “As did Tex. Max persuaded Tex to make a report to Congress, and the textbook cartel found that unacceptable. Any evidence of wrongdoing will be destroyed by now. Computers are being wiped as we speak. Hagan and Pao will go to jail for the murder of Mindy Carstairs. The best lawyers in the country will look after them to be certain there is no mention of the textbook matter. It’s over. There is nothing further that can be done here. The car is at your disposal. Mallard believes he is taking you home, but he can be dissuaded elsewise.”
He waited silently for my decision.
I was suffering the exhaustion of the introverted after immersion in too much socializing. I was so totally depleted that I would crawl under a rock if I could. I was coming down from my adrenaline high so fast that a crash was inevitable. I wanted to go home, to my computers and my silent clients.
To my grandfather’s mansion and The Whiz. My eyes teared up in desperate desire for the security of a real home.
If this was Graham, was he offering to take us there? Or throwing us out?
The broad-shouldered silhouette looked mightily like the one I’d seen upstairs against the background of computer monitors. Who else would be in the Phaeton with Mallard?
I needed time to mourn my grandfather, a man who had tried to help me and had turned to me in his dying moments. That last frantic e-mail must have been a warning. He must have known Pao was a killer. Johnson had said Top Hat was the cartel. The cartel doctored textbooks and hired Hagan as muscle and Pao as their financial finagler. And Diamond Man was saying we couldn’t stop a cartel so dangerous it had killed two people and kidnapped a child.
I’d found EG and helped find Max’s killer, but I’d still not saved the inheritance he’d intended for us. Revenge didn’t warm me any.
I wanted the house, a stable home for EG, a haven for our siblings. A refuge for Nick when he needed it, as he surely would given his penchant for drama and bad lovers.
Max’s will had offered all of that. I’d missed my family these last lonely years. As a man who’d driven off his only daughter, had Max understood what the house would mean to us? Tears sprang to my eyes as I crushed EG’s fingers in my own.
I might still be Anastasia the Doormat to my family, but I’d proved that I could hold my own against Magda or school officials or government hacks. I’d captured a murderer—I thought. I needed to find out just what the hell I had done tonight.
“EG needs a home of her own,” I replied, not as boldly as I would have liked, to Diamond Man’s offer to take us to the airport. “She needs a family, not a boarding school.”
“My dad thinks I look like Magda,” EG said quietly.
“Did he tell you that?” I asked, curious about how Tex had found her.
“No, I just know it,” she said with the same firmness she used to tell us our grandfather wouldn’t be in D.C. to greet us. At least this was a positive message. Who was I to argue?
“Who kidnapped you?” I asked, aware of the stranger listening.
“I didn’t know until I saw him in the library with the gun,” she admitted.
Hagan had been the only library occupant with a gun.
“When he came and got me,”
she continued, “I asked if my dad had sent him, and he said yes. I knew Tex couldn’t come himself. I thought maybe he was waiting in the car.”
I glanced across at the stranger, waiting for him to question this.
But the stranger merely waited for EG to continue her story, not interrupting or interfering in any way. That didn’t sound like Graham. But if it looks like a skunk and smells like a skunk, did it matter if it didn’t act like a skunk? Maybe he was rabid.
I recognized the defense mechanism kicking in. I was trying to disassociate myself from hoping that this man could be more than an outsider.
“You followed a stranger?” I finally asked in incredulity. Hadn’t Magda taught her better than that? No, Magda had taught her that strangers were all around her, and she should use them.
As I’d been using Graham and Sean.
She shrugged her small shoulders. “I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I thought it was because of my dad, but later, I figured it was because he didn’t care who I was. He wanted you. And I knew once you found me, it would be okay.”
I wanted to sink down in the cushy leather seat, cover my eyes, and make the world go away. She trusted her instincts. She trusted me. How reliable were either of us?
“Hagan locked you upstairs? Why?” I wasn’t about to argue with EG’s confidence that everything would be all right once I showed up. I had worked at assuming an invincible attitude for the sake of the kids. I didn’t think EG actually believed it. The kid was too smart for that.
The kid knew things I didn’t.
“I think he wanted people to believe my dad was guilty of kidnapping, so he set it up to frame him and to get at you.” She had the grace to look guilty as she admitted. “I used your computer to send him an e-mail. He must have traced it.”
And I’d compounded his fear by showing up in his office this morning. I couldn’t berate EG for doing something stupid if I’d done the same.
“Hagan wanted the hard drive with Mindy’s report on it,” the stranger offered. “His pal in Tex’s office tried to get it this afternoon, but the drive had been replaced. They must have assumed you were the one who took it and panicked. Hagan couldn’t get at you, so he settled for Elizabeth when her message arrived at the office.”
“Who are you?” I demanded again. The question worked whether he was Graham or not. Who in hell did he think he was?
“A believer in democracy and free enterprise,” he said with a sexy resolve that made me shiver with need and want to reach over and slap him for his evasiveness at the same time.
But I was too wiped to slap anyone. “Democracy and free enterprise—as opposed to Senator Rose and his textbook monopoly?” I hazarded. The amorphous shape of the plot formed a sharper picture, although I still couldn’t identify it. I had a strong suspicion Hagan and his pal were only bit players in a bigger production. The argument between Pao and O’Reilly proved there were connections within connections.
“There is no evidence that Senator Rose is aware of his investments as anything more than a stock portfolio,” he chided my ignorance. “Should he become president, he would have to divest his interest in them.”
That wasn’t an answer. Why did I think the stranger had an answer? Why should I care? Magda was the one who dabbled in politics, not me. Had Max died because of politics?
I reverted to my main concern. “But Rose hires goons who think it’s okay to kidnap kids to trade for what he wants?”
“You’re the one who mentioned Rose, not me,” he answered without reproof. “Hagan was intent on framing Senator Hammond for the kidnapping as well as the murder of Miss Carstairs. The Carstairs report would have cost Hagan his job and undermined all the work of putting together the cartel.”
That made a great deal of sense. Some shady senators had cooked up a monopoly, bribed a government lackey to recommend their products, and Hagan would have been the sacrificial turkey if the plot went down when Mindy’s report hit Congress. Pao had used the whole illicit scheme to harbor his money-laundering. Had Hagan known that?
“Pao and Hagan gave each other alibis for Mindy’s death,” I argued. “Did Hagan or Pao murder Mindy?”
“I assume the police will sort that out with forensic evidence, although providing an alibi is more Pao’s style than murder. Pao is a financier. He is the one who set up the dirty web of Edu-Pub. Hagan was decorated in Vietnam and released from service with a psychological discharge which prevented him from working in higher office. His bank account received a large deposit last week. It’s quite possible someone convinced him that Max and Ms. Carstairs were not only a threat to his job, but to national security.”
I tried inhaling that and choked. “Bad textbooks are a matter of national security?”
“Some spiders weave large webs,” he answered enigmatically as the Phaeton rolled to a stop in front of the mansion. “You have rooted out the murderers. Your job is done. The plane tickets remain at your disposal. I bid you good evening.”
The back door opened and Nick stuck his hand in to help us out.
In the light of a streetlamp, I caught the flash of a diamond against the stranger’s starched cuff before Nick hauled me to my feet.
EG scrambled out after me, slamming the car door, and the Phaeton glided away—leaving us in front of grandfather’s mansion.
Home, or was it?
Chapter Twenty-eight
Ana waits for Graham and finds a home.
Given my agitated state of mind, I figured Nick would be much better at calming EG than me. I left them alone and proceeded directly to the third floor. All the doors were closed and the hall lights were out. Not even the cat came to greet me.
I opened the door to the computer room. The monitors played their eerie pictures of the house interior and exterior. One screen monitored the front door of the reception hall we’d just left. Its drive was still lined with police cars. Another showed scrolling texts and websites I didn’t recognize. No one sat in the big chair in front of the screens.
Convinced I had the conniving—not crippled—spider this time, I returned to the staircase and sat down on the top step to wait—which left me with entirely too much time to think.
Johnson had said Graham had been in a mental institution. Did I really want to sit here and wait for him? Yep. I did.
Except I’m better at researching than sitting still. I wanted to go down to the Whiz and run Hagan’s profile, find his connection to the other congressmen in the cartel’s board. Leave it to Graham to come up with a word that sounded like a conspiracy instead of a good old-fashioned greedy monopoly. They’d doctored textbooks, produced crap for next to nothing, and sold them for a fortune to school districts across the country after bribing government officials to recommend them. Looked like a nice profit-maker to me.
Why the greedmongers wasted time twisting history to make rich people look good and unions and environmentalists look bad were questions a psychiatrist would have to answer.
My thoughts were more practical. I hoped the cops had enough evidence to nail Hagan for murder because I really didn’t want to have to report EG’s kidnapping. No more cops and robbers, sleuths and superheroes. I just wanted to know if we had the weekend to move out or if we could stay so I could register EG at the alternative school for the gifted on Monday.
Now that EG had found a father, I knew we wouldn’t be going back to Atlanta. I was okay with that.
I wasn’t okay with a mysterious stranger living in the same house with me. So I waited.
I didn’t know where Mallard had taken the car or his passenger, who had to be a walking, talking Graham—a man whose voice alone was dangerous to my libido without considering the whole package. A man Mallard had denied knowing, the liar. Mallard had been here for decades and if Max had been Graham’s mentor, he knew him as well as he knew my grandfather. Military attache to an ambassador, my foot and eye. Mallard was retired CIA, or I’d eat my boot.
I listened but didn’t hear anyone return. As
far as I was aware, the Victorian had no drive or place to park a Phaeton, so I supposed they had to walk back from whatever garage it was parked in. I heard Nick and EG murmuring for a while, then the lights went out in their rooms. I sat in the dark, beginning to wonder if I was an idiot. Maybe if I opened all the doors up here, I’d find Graham safely in his bed.
A security light along the baseboard lit in the upper hall behind me, and the door to the computer room opened.
“You might as well come in,” Graham’s mechanical voice intoned.
Maybe he wasn’t just an invalid. Maybe he was a robot. Maybe he had one of those larynx implants.
Maybe he was a bloody liar trying to make a fool of me. Which wouldn’t be very hard to do, given how much I wanted diamond man to be Graham.
There was no way diamond man could have got past me unless he wore a cloak of invisibility.
I stalked down the hall and leaned against the doorjamb, cocking my hip at an angle and crossing my arms to push up my breasts in a Madga pose. Still wearing my stilettoes and thigh-high little black dress, and backlit by the hall light, I assumed I was woman enough for him.
Graham turned his chair to face me. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I thought I saw his hands freeze on the chair arms, and felt the lust factor soar to palpable. If I’d thought for certain he was Diamond Man, I’d have sashayed in and kissed him until his chair spun.
I could see his silhouette against the monitors. Lights from the multiple screens lit his wrist. No diamond. No cuff. He was wearing a short sleeved black T-shirt, and I could see the glitter of his gold watch on a fairly muscular forearm. We were back to Robot Man.
I focused on his face now that I knew Graham had, indeed, been injured in 9/11. Was that a scar shadowing the side of his jaw instead of just the result of flickering light and good bones?
“Explain the cartel.” I hadn’t known what I would say until I said it. Sometimes, my subconscious works in mysterious ways.
“You didn’t accept the plane tickets,” he intoned in disapproval.
Evil Genius Page 33