A Killing Sky (11 page)

Nicky, I'd like you to make copies of all this stuff and drop it by Ferrier's office. Don't talk to anybody. Just put it in an envelope and leave it for him. Great job. And thanks.”

“Where are
you
headed?”

“Richmond. To do a little surveillance on this Joseph woman and to track down a certain gossip reporter who used to work for Tor Drummond,” I said.

Ninety minutes later, I found Roberta Joseph's home address on the west end of Richmond. It turned out she lived in an apartment complex only a mile or so from the interstate. The brick-and-frame units were nicely set back from the road in a neighborhood of single-family dwellings. Brick walkways, the same color and texture as the bottom half of the buildings themselves, connected the various apartment units. Her building was the farthest in back and looked out on some woods and the corner of a small reservoir.

I parked where I could see her door and waited. A wreath of fresh-cut flowers hung from the door of unit 214. No sign of any activity. The morning newspaper was still rolled into its receptacle.

I made sure my .357 was tucked away beneath my jacket, climbed out of the truck, and went and knocked on the neighbors’ doors. Two were at home: a middle-aged guy with a beer belly rubbing sleep from his eyes and a steely-eyed seventy-something retiree watering the flowers on her front stoop. I explained who I was, but simply told them I was searching for a teenage runaway. I asked if they'd seen any suspicious activity or any strangers around the building in the last forty-eight hours, being careful not to mention any specific apartment numbers. Both shook their heads. They each took my card and promised to call me if they did.

I went back to the truck and watched and waited some more. About ten minutes later the door to apartment 214 opened and an attractive woman, about my age, with short blond hair stepped out to get the newspaper. She yawned and stretched for a moment, as she scanned the front page. Everything about her looked petite, even her feet and hands. She wore running pants and an unbuttoned man's shirt over a white tee. Didn't look like much of a kidnapper to me. She turned and went back inside.

I thought about it, climbed out of the truck, and rang her bell.

“Just a minute!” a woman's voice called from inside.

A few seconds later she opened the door.

“May I help you?”

“Mrs. Joseph?” I asked.

“Yes, I am.”

I gave her my card. “If you can spare a few moments, I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

She read the card, then searched my face a little doubtfully. “What's this about?”

“Just routine, I hope. I was trying to get some information on Second Millennium. I understand you're involved with the foundation?”

“Yes, of course. Has one of our kids gotten in trouble or something?”

I hedged a bit. “Possibly. May I come in?”

She looked at me cautiously for another moment. “Do you have any other type of identification?”

I produced my private investigator's registration complete with DMV mug shot. She examined it thoroughly before handing it back.

“All right,” she said. She stepped aside to open the door. “Just give me another minute. I need to go upstairs and finish helping my daughter get ready for work. We both leave for the hospital in a little while.”

Daughter? Could it be a ruse? Did she have Cartwright Drummond bound and gagged upstairs and was she planning to come back down with shotgun blazing? I searched her eyes for any duplicity. “Of course,” I said.

She led me into a living room, white walls and a cathedral ceiling. “Sit down, please. I'll only be a short while. My daughter has some… special needs.” She ascended an open stairwell to the second floor and disappeared down what appeared to be a hallway.

Special needs. I wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but I'd find out momentarily, I supposed. I sat down in a black rocking chair next to a contemporary sofa.

The room was fragrant with the smell of cleanser and quite bright. Two skylights let in sun overhead, which shone on several framed black-and-white photographs. They were mostly landscapes, but a few were of people. Since they were neither framed posters nor signed, I assumed Roberta Joseph was the photographer. A couple of the images showed a girl about my own daughter's age, quite different from her mother, if this was Roberta's daughter. The girl's hair was dark. She had a wide nose and pretty dark eyes. Her features made her appear Eastern European, and large blotches were visible on her skin. Something about her looked vaguely familiar, but I wasn't sure why.

Roberta Joseph reappeared at the top of the stairs. She wore clogs now, but they didn't seem to interfere with her coming down the steps.

“I'm sorry,” she said. She sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Now. What can I do to help you?”

“You said your daughter has special needs?”

“Yes. She's autistic, partially disabled, and mildly retarded. At least that's what all her testing shows. She rarely speaks.”

“And you said she works with you?”

“We both work at the hospital, yes. I'm a critical care nurse and Averil works in the cafeteria.”

“I see. Is this your daughter in the photos?”

“Yes.”

“You took the photos?”

“Uh-huh.”

“She has quite an expression, which the photographer seems to have captured perfectly.”

“Thank you,” she said, maybe surprised by the compliment. “You said you wanted to know something about Second Millennium?”

“Yes. Do you work for the foundation?”

“Yes, I do. I run most of it, actually. We're not that large.”

“And its purpose is?”

“We donate money to needy families for their children, mostly here in our community, and in a couple of other areas across Virginia.”

“How do you find out about these children?”

“Direct referrals. As I said, we're quite small. We're not a government agency. We've built up a small network of doctors and nurses in the area, and we also are sent names by some of the local churches. In fact, it's why I work as a nurse.”

“Who provides your funding?”

“Our donors prefer to remain anonymous,” she said.

She'd obviously been asked the question before. I

wondered how Toronto had made the connection to Drummond. Bank records? Maybe I didn't want to know. “Can you tell me where the foundation's office is?”

She shrugged. “That's no secret. It's here. I've turned a third bedroom into a small home office. We like to keep costs down so that the funds we have mostly go to benefit the children.”

“Do you use the Internet?”

“Sure.”

“Send much E-mail?”

“Some. Look, Mr. Pavlicek, I really would like to know what this is all about.”

“I'm trying to track down the source of some suspicious E-mail messages,” I told her.

“Messages? What kind of messages?”

“They've surfaced in an investigation involving a missing person,” I said. “They appear to have originated from your foundation's E-mail account.”

“What?”

“Who has access to your E-mail, besides you, Ms. Joseph?”

“Well, no one. Unless you count Averil, my daughter. She does send E-mails from time to time. Usually with my help. She has some friends she likes to correspond with. But I can't imagine why or how she would be sending the kind of messages you seem to be talking about.”

I glanced at the newspaper she had set on the coffee table. On the front page was a story about Cartwright Drummond's disappearance.

“Are you sure these E-mails are coming from my account?”

I wasn't sure of anything. But Toronto knew what he was doing. “They appear to be.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, “but I don't know anything about them.”

She didn't seem threatened by my questions. She seemed to be telling the truth. If Roberta Joseph truly knew nothing about the E-mails sent to Cartwright Drummond, and her daughter was as she described, it was improbable the messages had emanated from this home. Maybe whoever had sent them had hacked into her account and used the box as a conduit to funnel their rantings to Cartwright. Which meant we'd have a much harder time tracking the person down. But that still didn't explain Second Millennium's connection to Congressman Drummond.

“You mind if I take a look at your office?”

“Of course not.”

She led me from the living room around a corner, down a back hallway to what the building's architect had obviously meant to be a spare bedroom or small family room. The room was dim. She switched on an overhead light.

Lavish plants hung from the ceiling and ferns grew on the windowsill. A nondescript desk and chair, a large filing cabinet, a cork bulletin board with a map, and a personal computer. Otherwise, the office looked unremarkable.

“Any of your clients ever visit here?”

“The kids? No.”

If I'd still been a cop, I would've directed her not to touch a thing and gotten a team in to look for fingerprints. Maybe I could still get Ferrier to have that done. “Okay. Thanks very much,” I said.

She switched off the fight. I followed her back toward the living room. There was a thud on the stairs as we rounded a corner by the front hall, and I looked up to see an overweight young woman, with the same pretty hair and eyes I had seen in the photos on the wall, coming slowly down the steps. Her gait was slightly irregular, as if one leg were shorter than the other.

“Averil, I'd like you to meet our guest,” Roberta Joseph said.

The woman descending the stairs smiled through large white teeth and stared at me without saying a word. She reached the bottom of the steps and made her way to stand in front of us. Her skin didn't look as bad as in some of the pictures, but it was obviously abnormal.

“Pleased to meet you, Averil,” I said.

The girl said nothing. She just kept right on staring at me with that fixed smile.

“Averil loves meeting new people—don't you, honey?” Roberta Joseph said, taking her daughter's hand. “She understands a lot more than she's able to communicate verbally. We get along fine most of the time. She does excellent work at the hospital. She likes music and photography, even books.”

“Books?” I said.

Her mother nodded.

Averil's gaze never left me. What connections, I wondered, were being made in her mind? What was she seeing in my face, in my expression, that could cause her so much interest? But then I remembered why I was here.

“Well, thank you, Ms. Joseph. I'm sorry to have taken up so much of your time. It seems a computer hacker is using your screen name to send the E-mails. You might want to change your password.”

“Yes, absolutely. Will you be able to find this person?”

“Not easily, I'm afraid.”

Averil, her smile disappearing, was suddenly pointing to something on my jacket. For a second, I thought she'd noticed my gun, but then I followed her gaze to a spare pair of leather jesses I had tied in one of the loops on the front.

Averil kept pointing.

“My daughter seems fascinated with something on your clothing,” Roberta said.

“These …” I held them up for Averil to see. “These are called jesses, Averil.”

The young woman nodded slightly.

“I use them when I go hunting.”

Without inhibition she stepped forward and ran her fingers over the leather. Then she smiled.

“I apologize, Mr. Pavlicek. Averil's a little forward sometimes.”

“That's okay,” I said.

The girl stepped back.

“I'm sorry we couldn't be of more help to you,” Roberta said.

“I appreciate your time. Just one more question. It may have nothing to do with anything …”

“Of course.”

“Does the term ‘Secret Amphibian’ mean anything to you?”

“ ‘Secret Amphibian’? No. Why?”

“It was contained in one of the E-mails.”

Roberta Joseph shook her head and shrugged.

Averil rocked on her heels. “C-c-cake,” the girl said. Her smile had disappeared as she mouthed the words. Her voice was flat.

I looked to Roberta.

“Averil! You spoke. Good for you.”

“C-c-cake,” the girl repeated.

“Cake?” I said.

“I'm sure she's talking about the cake they baked yesterday at the cafeteria. Isn't that what you were doing when I came in to get you to come home last night, Averil? You were helping the assistant chef with a cake.”

The girl gave no indication that she understood her mother's question. She seemed to have forgotten I was there as well. She stared straight ahead, as if she were looking across some vast distance.

“Well,” I said, “thank you both again for your time.”

“It was our pleasure.” Roberta Joseph showed me to the door.

Averil stayed where she was, swaying slowly back and forth to some silent beat, her eyes suddenly closed.

Diane Lemminger worked at a cable TV news affiliate in Richmond, where she had managed to parlay the infamy from her affair with Congressman Drummond into a career as an on-air host. A development not without irony or precedent. The show, appropriately enough, was about politics and scandal and was called
Government Offense.

When I told the receptionist in the lobby what I wanted, she eyed me with disdain. Apparently, private investigators were pretty far down the social ladder from television personalities in her book. She closed the glass window to her partition and got on the horn to announce my presence to whatever powers there were. I took a seat on a shapely leather couch with a nice view of a fountain and a courtyard garden.

After a couple of phone calls, the receptionist slid her window open again.

“Someone will be with you shortly.” She smiled, then turned back to her obviously more important work. The partition slid closed with a dull
clump,
and I wondered vaguely if the glass was bulletproof.

I took in the plush surroundings. The cell phone in my pocket burst to life. I pulled it out, immediately recognizing the Caller ID number on the display screen.

“Hi, Bill.”

“Pavlicek, what in hell are you giving me now? We got a girl in a world of trouble, probably dead. We're trying to find her, or what's left of her, as soon as possible, not to mention the media all over our backs, and we've got you hiding her mother and her sister somewhere and sending me poetry.”

I looked around the lobby. The receptionist wore transcription earphones while she typed, but I lowered my voice anyway. “Pulled those E-mails off of Cartwright Drummond's laptop,” I said.

“You what?” He seemed to be fumbling with the phone for a couple of seconds. “You know, if Abercrombie finds out about this—”

“I think it's a dead end, for now at least. Looks like someone may have hacked in and used the E-mail account, but I've got an address and a room you guys need to dust for prints.”

“I want that laptop.
Now.
You hear me?”

Boy, did I hear him. Those digital cell phones get great reception. I had to pull the handpiece away from my ear to keep from suffering ear damage from the string of profanity zinging across the line. “You through?” I said when he finally stopped.

“No. But
you
may be.”

“I'll have Jake bring you the computer,” I said and pushed the button on the phone to break the connection. It immediately rang again, but I shut it off.

The receptionist hadn't looked up from her typing. I contemplated the fountain again, and the courtyard, and the fine Oriental carpet on the floor of the lobby. Maybe I should consider a change in career, I thought, set myself up as some sort of media expert like one of those ex-detectives plying the late-night talk shows. Maybe I needed a vacation.

Fifteen minutes later, a tall, good-looking young black man who said he was a production assistant ushered me past a couple of vacant sets, down a hall, and into Diane Lemminger's office, a softly lit rectangle, furnished à la Madonna—minus the bed, of course. A display on one wall showed several photos of Lemminger with various notable politicians she'd interviewed, including a certain curly-lipped former President of the United States.

“Diane's still in the studio,” the assistant said, “but she'll be through in just a minute.”

“Thank you.”

He bade me sit down in a canvas director's chair next to a chaise filled with oversized pillows and closed the door behind him as he left. Less than five seconds later, the same door opened and in stepped a tall, slender woman with brown hair swept back over her shoulders. Makeup caked her cheeks. She wore a red sweater top, a dark skirt, stockings, and pumps to go with her projected self-importance.

I'd never watched her news show, but she was easy to recognize from the photos on the wall. Not to mention that for a while there, her photo had been plastered all over every TV screen and supermarket tabloid in America. Her azure eyes assessed me with a look of mischief. Her pretty mouth dimpled to one side in a wry smile.

I stood up as she said, “You must be Mr. Pavlicek.”

Her slender fingers were moist.

“Sorry about the perspiration,” she said, wiping her hands with a tissue. “Always happens when I'm under the lights.” Her accent was smoothly Southern, not that different from Marcia's but with a deeper tone and an unmistakable hint of sultry. I caught an updraft of her perfume.

“So,” she said. She draped herself across the chaise. “You don't mind if I lie down, do you? I'm whupped. Please, sit.”

Sit, boy. Yes, ma'am.

I took my chair again as she eased onto her side with her head on one of the pillows, slipped off her shoes, and curled her legs under her in a feline motion. “You told the receptionist you're digging into Tor Drummond's background. Who are you working for, McCartney's campaign?” McCartney was Drummond's opponent in the upcoming election.

“No. I'm not working for any candidate.”

“Oh?” Her smile disappeared. “Who do you represent, then?”

“Others.”

She went right for the jugular. “These
others
must be really interested in Drummond for you to drive all the way down here from Charlottesville. Does this have anything to do with Cartwright Drummond's disappearance? It was our lead news item again last night.”

“That depends,” I said.

“Depends?”

“I understand you know Cartwright and Cassidy Drummond.”

“Of course. I used to see the two of them all the time.”

“Have you had any contact with Cartwright Drummond since your breakup with the congressman?”

“Yes. Cartwright contacted me last month, in fact. Would you believe it? She called me all the way from Japan.”

“What about?”

She surveyed me for several seconds without speaking. “I'm working on a story,” she said. “Have you heard of my show?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, don't get a chance to do much TV.”

“Ummm… too bad for you. Anyway, this story involves Tor Drummond. We've been doing a series of exposés on Virginia politicians regarding their ties to big business or special-interest groups, whatever. I've been saving Drummond for last.”

I'll bet you have, I thought. She seemed about ready to lick her chops. Part of the reason her affair with Drummond had come to light, according to the newspapers, had been their very heated breakup. Ms. Lemminger, apparently, had made quite a bit of noise. Looking at her now, I could believe it.

“And Cartwright wanted to talk with you about your story?”

“Yes. That's what she said.”

“How did she know about the piece?”

“Oh, that's easy. I sent out a letter several months ago to several of Drummond's supporters and confidants, offering to let any of them tell their side of the story.”

“Did any others take you up on it?” I asked.

She smiled again. “A few.”

“If you don't mind my saying so, Ms. Lemminger, some might accuse you of having a certain bias when it comes to Tor Drummond.”

“Absolutely. That's why people watch, isn't it? I think I have a good idea what people want.” Her eyes searched mine. She shifted slightly on the couch, revealing a little more leg. “Sometimes I have an especially good idea what people want.”

“Uh-huh. Who else responded to your letter?”

She decided to examine her nails. “I'm sorry. My sources must remain confidential.”

“But not Cartwright Drummond.”

“Well, the poor thing's in trouble, isn't she? She might even be dead.”

“That she might.”

“I don't think her troubles have anything to do with our conversation, if that's what you're implying,” she said. “The information we discussed was strictly background.”

“Background. What kind of background?”

She waved her hand at me as if to dismiss the gravity, if there were any, of the information. “I suppose if you want to learn that you'll just have to watch my show. We'll be taping in a couple of days. It'll air this weekend.” She uncoiled from her chaise, stood, and came around to the back of my chair.

“If Cartwright Drummond is still alive, she may not have until this weekend,” I said.

She leaned over so that she was almost speaking into my ear. “All right,” she said softly. “I'll give you a tidbit. Ever hear of a foundation called Second Millennium?”

I decided I better play dumb. “No. What's that?”

“It's just one of three or four foundations supported by Tor Drummond's money. The Drummond family has always been very philanthropic.”

“So?”

“I'm sorry,” she said, her voice lilting upward. “Can't tell you anymore.”

“Listen. You don't understand. This might be very important.” For a moment, I thought about telling her about the E-mails, but decided I'd better keep it to myself.

“I understand your concern. But I assure you, if I had anything I thought could help find Cartwright Drummond, I'd take it to the authorities.”

“Even if it meant losing your story?”

She said nothing. She stepped around in front of me, placed her hand on the arm of my chair, and bent down to look into my eyes. “Frank, you know, I'd really like to help you, but … “ Her fingers began to gently massage my wrist. The Chanel Number 5 went from trace to thick cloud.

I picked up her hand and put it back on the arm of the chair. “Maybe I should ask the cops to pay you a visit, then.”

“Oh, pooh. I told you, I don't think I can be of any help to them.”

“What about the rest of the Drummond family? They're under enough duress as it is. Running with some new scandal on the congressman now will only add to it.”

“I'm very sorry about that. I really am. But if I don't air these little tidbits, trust me, someone else will.”

“You seem to think television is more important than reality.”

“Reality?” She suddenly grunted in disgust, let go of the chair, and stood. “Let me tell you something about reality. About a young woman who works for a man she believes in, a man who represents all of her ideals about service, and justice, and doing what's right.” Her face grew red. “How she makes the stupid mistake of thinking she's in love with this man, but he uses her, and when she needs him the most, he turns his back on her and walks away.
That's
reality for you.”

“I see.” I rose from my seat, walked to the door, and pulled it open. “Thanks for your time, Ms. Lemminger and for the information.”

“You're entirely welcome. Anytime.”

“Maybe you'll finally get the story you're after, then.”

“Maybe you'll be part of it, Frank,” she said.