Dawn Stewardson (10 page)

“Next Saturday,” he said.

“What about next Saturday?”

“The boys all play on the local twelve-and-under baseball team. And next Saturday the coaches are taking the team camping. They’ll leave in the morning and won’t be back until Sunday evening, so I could come into the city and stay with a friend of mine. You and I could…have a date.”

“Oh,” she murmured, both her flush and her murderous expression fading.

She didn’t say one thing more, though. When he couldn’t stand the suspense a second longer, he asked, “Is that a yes, oh, or a no, oh?” He suddenly wanted her to say yes more than he could remember ever wanting anything.

“Ahh…it’s a yes,” she finally murmured. “It’s a definite yes.”

“Good.”

His blood pounding, he was just about to lean forward and kiss her when she said, “There’s only one minor thing.”

He froze. Something in her voice told him it was actually a major thing. And that he wasn’t going to like it at all.

“The gallery that handles my sister’s paintings is mounting an exhibit of her recent ones, and the opening is next Saturday evening. There’s a champagne reception and we’ll have to at least put in an appearance.”

Clearing his throat uneasily, he said, “I assume your parents will be there? And your brother?”

Lauren gave him an anxious smile. “I expect there’ll be a few uncles, aunts and cousins, as well.”

While Sully was still searching for the right words to explain why his going to Marisa Van Slyke’s exhibit opening was out of the question, a police cruiser arrived—even though it was only about eleven-thirty. So he and Lauren went into the lounge with the officer and spent the next half hour answering questions about the car theft.

Not much of Sully’s attention, though, was really on the subject of Lauren’s Mercedes. He was far more concerned with thinking his way through the predicament he’d gotten into.

He’d made the decision to ask her out against his better judgment. But the minute she said yes, he’d felt such an incredible rush that he knew he absolutely had to see her again. He strongly suspected, though, that if he refused to go to the opening their relationship would be toast.

Despite that, there was no conceivable way he intended to meet her family, particularly not en masse, as soon as next Saturday. Which meant he had to come up with an idea for wangling his way out of going to that opening without wangling his way entirely out of Lauren’s life.

He still hadn’t thought of a plan by the time they walked the officer back to his cruiser. As the car pulled away and he and Lauren turned toward the lodge, Billy the Kid hollered, “Hey, Sully?”

He glanced over and saw that all five boys were sitting on the grass outside the garage.

“We’re just takin’ a lunch break,” Billy yelled, waving an apple at him. “So don’t think we’ve stopped workin’.”

“Okay,” he called. “But if you get tired, I want you to quit and finish up tomorrow.”

B
ILLY WATCHED
S
ULLY
and Lauren walking back to the lodge. He was still shaking inside, but not so bad now. Not now he knew that cop must have just been the one who was coming to talk to Lauren.

When he’d first seen a cruiser drive in, though, he’d been so scared he’d almost started crying like a baby. He’d been sure the cop had come to take him away, even though he didn’t think copying a file could be exactly the same as stealing it—’cuz the real file was still right there in Mr. Ludendorf’s office.

All he’d put on Sully’s desk was the copies, stuck inside the big envelope he’d grabbed. But he was still real, real glad to see that cop leave.

“Billy?” Freckles said. “Whadda you think? Are we gonna get away with it?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, nodding firmly.

“But Sully’s gonna be real suspicious when he sees all that stuff. So why’d you copy the whole file? You said you was just gonna find out that guy’s name. And tell Sully that Mr. Ludendorf phoned to tell him.”

Billy nodded again, casually tossing away the rest of his apple. The way his stomach felt, if he ate another bite he’d hurl for sure.

“Right,” he said. “That’s what I was gonna do. But lots of times private eyes have to change their plans, and that’s what happened to me. When I started lookin’ at that file, I could tell there was stuff there…. I’m not exactly sure what, but I know there’s somethin’ real funny about it. And maybe Sully can figure it out.”

Terry sniffed hard and swiped at his eyes. Tony gave him a threatening look that said crying would get him smacked.

“But what’s gonna happen,” Hoops said, “when Sully asks us who dropped that file off?”

“We just gotta all stick to the story,” Billy told him. “We just gotta all say we never saw the guy before.”

W
HEN THE SCREEN DOOR
closed behind Sully and Lauren, the warm smile she gave him made him decide to forget about her sister’s exhibit until later. After all, he had an entire week to come up with an avoidance strategy, but no more than three hours before that limo would arrive to take her home.

He was just going to suggest making lunch when his office phone began to ring.

“Whoever it is,” he said, “will call back.”

“It might be Ben Ludendorf,” she pointed out. “Maybe he’s talked to his client again.”

Reaching for her hand, Sully started for the phone. She was right. It might be Ben, so he’d better answer. But she wouldn’t be here much longer, and he didn’t like the idea of not having her right with him every second she was.

They made it to his office by the fifth ring, and Sully grabbed the receiver. It wasn’t Ben, though. It was Joe Perkins, one of the boys’ baseball coaches, with instructions about what they should bring along for the campout the following weekend.

Sully grabbed a pad, made a couple of notes, then got off the line as quickly as he could. When he put down the receiver, his gaze came to rest on a large brown envelope sitting in the center of his desk—a note in childish handwriting clipped to it. He picked up the envelope and read:

“Somebody must have come by while we were at the lake,” he said, passing Lauren the note. Then he opened the envelope. Inside were a dozen or so photocopied pages.

“What is this?” he muttered, pulling them out and gazing at the top one.

“What?” Lauren asked, moving closer.

“It’s a copy of my title to Eagles Roost.”

“Did you ask someone for it?”

He shook his head. “And I don’t have the slightest idea who’d have brought it. Or why.” He turned his attention to another sheet in the little pile.

It was a copy of the first page of a bank book, showing the account number and telling him it was with a bank in Newcomb. He shifted the papers so Lauren could see what he was looking at.

“Newcomb,” he told her, “is about thirty miles from North Head.”

The next sheet was the bank book’s second page, which revealed the account had been opened back in February, with a deposit of ten thousand dollars. That was the only transaction posted.

He moved those sheets to the bottom of the pile and looked at the next one. It, he could tell from the faint outline of torn edges, was a copy of a scrap of paper roughly five inches square. There was a single name written on it—
Leroy.

“Do you know who Leroy is?” Lauren asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said, staring at it and thinking he only knew one Leroy. Then he turned to the next page—a copy of some rough handwritten notes—and decided they’d been written by the same person who’d scribbled the name Leroy.

“Do you recognize the writing?” Lauren said.

“No. And I don’t recognize the name Dirk Blackstone, either.” Whoever Blackstone was, though, his name was scrawled across the top of the page and underlined several times.

“But look,” he added, his gaze drifting downward and his finger moving to where “Eagles Roost” was written. An arrow pointed from that to where his own name and phone number appeared amid a jumble of single words. None of the words meant anything to him except one—
cash
. Ben Ludendorf had said his client was prepared to pay cash.

“Sully? What’s this all about?”

“I’m not sure,” he muttered again. Then he turned to the final page and was.

Solving part of the mystery

T
HE FINAL PAGE
had been photocopied from a sheet of Ben Ludendorf’s letterhead. It was a handwritten memo—in the same writing as the rough notes.

“Well, I’ll be…” Sully muttered, skimming what it said.

He handed the memo to Lauren. “Ben’s a oneman show. He doesn’t even have an assistant, so all this handwriting has to be his—unless somebody’s been stealing his letterhead, which can’t be too likely.”

Lauren gazed at the page for a moment, then said, “Memo to file. Okay, then if the original of this is in one of his files, does that mean the rest of what we’ve got here was copied from the same place?”

“I guess we can’t assume that for sure. But it’s a logical conclusion, isn’t it.”

“I’d say so. But whether everything came from the same file or not, somebody obviously copied all this for you. And if Ben wouldn’t tell you Dirk Blackstone’s name, then who wanted you to know it?”

He merely shook his head.

“Wanted you to know it badly enough to… Sully, we’re standing here looking at stolen goods, aren’t we?”

“Well, I guess you could put it that way. But it’s a little late to worry now, after we’ve already looked at everything.”

Lauren nodded. “And since we’ve already looked, we might as well try to figure things out. For starters, we know this Dirk Blackstone is the man who wanted to buy Eagles Roost last fall.”

“Who still wants to,” Sully corrected her. “But only if he can have it all.”

Lauren slowly pushed her hair back from her face, taking Sully’s mind off the photocopies for a moment. She looked as beautiful as she did puzzled. “May I look at all the pages?” she said. He handed them to her, then watched her flip slowly through them. When she gazed up at him again, her expression was thoughtful.

“Do you have any idea how all these bits are related?” she asked.

“No, but I think they have to be. Somebody’s trying to tell me something.”

“There are things missing, though,” she said, looking through the papers again. “Why isn’t there at least a phone number for Blackstone?”

Shaking his head, Sully picked up Billy’s note once more.
Some man none of us new brot you this.
Rereading that started him wondering if the man none of the boys knew could be a figment of Billy’s imagination.

The thought was unsettling, because even though he hoped it wasn’t Billy who’d copied this stuff, he couldn’t rule out the possibility.

He didn’t know how Billy would have come up with the idea, but his junior Sherlock Holmes was always getting carried away with crazy schemes. This, though…

Boy, if Billy was responsible for this, he’d gone far beyond kid stunts. Breaking into someone’s office was well into the criminal range.

Anxiously rubbing his jaw, he started trying to figure out the best way of getting at the truth—and the best way of handling things if Billy had actually crossed that far over the line. But he’d establish whether the boy had been involved later, after Lauren was gone.

“Even though the kids didn’t know the man who brought the envelope,” she said, “they’ll be able to give you a description.”

“Right, they will.” Assuming there’d actually been a man.

“And maybe you’ll know who he is.”

Sully nodded. “But let’s not worry about that right now. First, let’s try to put together the pieces we’ve got here.” He moved the copy of his title to one side and spread the rest of the photocopies across his desk. Then he stood staring down at them, hoping they’d add up to something that made sense.

When they didn’t cooperate, he said, “Okay. Aside from Ben’s memo to himself, we’ve got a bank account in Newcomb, with ten thousand dollars in it, some rough notes that don’t seem to say much, and this
Leroy
clue.”

“Clue,” Lauren repeated. “Then that name does mean something to you?”

“Well, I might be shooting in the dark, but remember that problem I had? That kid who robbed the bank in North Head back in January?”

“Yes, you mentioned it and there were details about it in my file. But…wait, that boy’s name was Leroy, wasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. Leroy Korelenko.”

“And you think this name Ben jotted down refers to
that
Leroy?”

“I don’t think it’s something we should rule out, because Leroy’s not a common name around here. But Leroy Korelenko is a fifteen-year-old kid from a welfare family, and Dirk Blackstone is someone with enough money to pay cash for Eagles Roost. So it’s hard to imagine what the connection could be.”

“Well…” Lauren said.

“Well what?”

“Sully, I’m not much of a detective, but I know something you don’t.”

He waited.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, because what happens at the Foundation board meetings is confidential. But under the circumstances…”

“Yes?” he pressed, his adrenaline starting to pump.

“I’m probably really reaching, but what if when this Blackstone wanted to buy Eagles Roost last year, he wanted it awfully badly? Badly enough that, when you said you wouldn’t sell, he decided he’d try to make you.”

“How?”

Lauren slowly shrugged. “It’s not very hard to get information about most things. He could easily have learned where your funding came from. And who the Foundation’s board members are.”

“And?”

“And so…oh, probably this is absurd, but what if Blackstone tried to force you to sell by manipulating things so you lost your funding?”

“Manipulating what things?” Sully demanded, his adrenaline pumping harder now.

“Well, this is the part I really shouldn’t be telling you. If anyone ever finds out I breached confidentiality…”

“No one’s going to find out from me.”

She hesitated, then said, “All right. One of our board members is a man named Hunter Clifton. And it was basically because of Hunter that your funding was cut off.”

Hunter Clifton. Sully mentally filed away the name, guiltily recalling all those murderous thoughts he’d had about Lauren—when some guy named Hunter Clifton was actually the cause of his problem.

“You see,” she went on, “Hunter is a vice president of a bank, and the bank in North Head is one of its branches. And he was so upset that one of
your
boys had the audacity to rob one of
his
banks, that he convinced the other board members there must be serious problems at Eagles Roost—that you had no control over your kids, so your funding shouldn’t be continued.

“At the time, I thought it was merely a coincidence that bank was one of Hunter’s, but now…”

“But now,” Sully said slowly, “you’re wondering if Blackstone set up the robbery, after he learned one of the bank vice presidents sat on your board.”

“Exactly. He’d have been hoping that if one of your kids robbed the bank Hunter would have a fit, which is exactly what happened.”

“So maybe Blackstone, or Ben Ludendorf on Blackstone’s behalf,” Sully muttered, anger coiling in his chest, “approached Leroy and paid him to commit the robbery—figuring a fifteen-year-old could never pull off something like that without getting caught.”

“And knowing that when he did, it would reflect badly on your program.”

Sully stood, trying to decide whether they were actually on to something. “It’s a neat little theory,” he said at last.

“Yes. That’s the problem, though, isn’t it. It’s pure theory.”

She was right, of course. They might be completely off base. Then again, they might not.

He considered things for another minute and finally said, “You know, I can’t see how you got the idea you’re not much of a detective. I think you might make a good one, because this theory of yours is definitely worth checking out.”

“Really?” Lauren murmured, giving him a pleased-looking smile. “Checking out how?”

“Well, I didn’t have much chance to talk to Leroy after the police picked him up. I went to see him in his holding cell but he wouldn’t say two words. Then, when I got back to the lodge, I had a call from his caseworker—basically telling me that since Leroy wouldn’t be back here it would be better if I just steered clear and let her handle things.”

“But you think you should try talking to him now?”

Sully nodded. “
Something
made him rob that bank. So I’ll pay him a visit next week and try to find out what. He’s in a juvenile facility just north of Utica, only a couple of hours from here.”

When he finished speaking he simply gazed at Lauren, thinking they didn’t have much time before her limo arrived. So maybe, now that he had a plan of action, they should forget about this for the moment. And focus on each other.

Before he could suggest that, though, she was picking up the bank book copies and saying, “What about this ten thousand dollars? Where does it fit in?”

Reluctantly, Sully forced his mind back to the subject at hand. “The date of that deposit,” he said, staring at it, “is about a month after the robbery took place.”

“Which means what? Payment to Ben Ludendorf for recruiting Leroy? You know him, Sully. Is he the type who’d get involved in a scheme like that?”

He shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t know him very well. But if the money’s his, why would he have opened a separate account with it? Over in Newcomb? If it isn’t his, though, then whose is it?”

“I could find out,” Lauren said.

“Oh?”

“Piece of cake.”

He waited for her to explain, thinking of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line about the rich being different. He knew how much success he’d have if he walked into a bank and tried to get information about someone else’s account.

“My brother knows people whose business is finding out just about anything. So all I have to do is get him to put me in touch with one of those people, and we’ve as good as got the name of who opened that account.”

“He’d do that? Put you in touch, I mean?”

“He might not like the idea. But if I say I’ll have to find someone on my own if he doesn’t help me out, that’ll do the trick.”

“Then I think you should talk to him, because I really don’t know whether Ben’s crooked or not. He isn’t the sharpest lawyer in the state, but I’ve never heard he has a reputation for shady dealings.”

“I think,” Lauren murmured, “the sort of possibility we’re talking about goes well beyond shady.”

Sully grimaced. “I don’t always have the greatest way with words.”

“Oh, sometimes you do very nicely,” Lauren said, smiling at him.

This time Sully didn’t let the moment pass. He rested his fingers beneath her chin, tilted her face up to the perfect angle, and kissed her.

It was nice to have Lauren Van Slyke in his corner. But he had to admit it was even nicer to have her in his arms. He had no idea what the future held, but he’d worry about that later…like next weekend, when her entire family was trying to figure out what she was doing with him at the art gallery, all because he hadn’t been able to get out of going to the opening.

He’d cross those bridges when he got to them, he thought—then he let himself get completely lost in Lauren’s kiss.

A
S
S
ULLY TURNED
off the highway leading to Utica, onto the road that would take them to the Gravesville Juvenile Correctional Institution, he glanced across the van at Billy.

The boy’s face was pale, and he seemed almost as frightened as he had when he’d first admitted to photocopying Ben’s file.

He caught Sully looking at him and tried to smile. He couldn’t pull it off, though, and finally said, “Sully? Maybe I could just wait in the van while you go talk to Leroy, huh? I mean, they probably don’t want to bother givin’ me a tour and all.”

“They don’t mind. I told you, when I called they said they’d be glad to show you around.”

Billy swallowed hard and turned to stare out the side window. Sully thought he might be crying and hoped he actually was. Sometimes, there was a lot to be said for scaring a kid silly. And letting Billy see the sort of place he could end up in if he kept doing stupid things would scare the devil out of him.

Sully just hoped it would be enough to scare him straight. Billy was basically a good kid, but you didn’t have to be bad to end up in jail. Being foolish and unlucky was often reason enough. That was something he knew from experience.

He focused on the road again, still not certain he was handling this situation the best possible way. Under different circumstances, he’d have taken Billy and the twins straight to Ben Ludendorf and made them confess their sins. Then, he and Ben could have worked out a punishment they both felt comfortable with.

But he didn’t want Ben knowing that file had been copied just yet—not until he determined if Ben had some sins of his own to confess. So he’d temporarily put the public confession idea on hold and settled for giving all five boys one of his best fire-and-brimstone lectures.

Hopefully, between that, having their privileges suspended, and being assigned extra chores, they’d think long and hard the next time they were tempted to do something they knew was wrong.

Of course, he hadn’t suspended
all
their privileges. He was still letting them go camping on the weekend. And even though he’d tried rationalizing to himself that he had to—because it was a team thing—he knew if he didn’t have plans to see Lauren he’d have kept them home.

He smiled to himself, realizing she’d slipped into his thoughts yet again. It was only Tuesday, but since she’d left on Saturday he must have thought about her six million times. And picked up the phone to call her six hundred times. Partly because he couldn’t help worrying about that threat; partly just because he wanted to hear her voice.

He hadn’t called, though. She’d said she’d call him—as soon as she found out who that bank account in Newcomb belonged to. Besides, he didn’t want to seem
too
interested in her.