Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) (8 page)

“So you got him into the business?” I asked quietly.

Josh hunched forward, his eyes burning into mine. “That’s the thing. I’m not so sure he was in the business. Sure, he asked detailed questions, but so do reporters and some politicians. Doesn’t mean they’re pimping on the side or funneling drugs for the cartels.”

“Or laundering cash for their cronies,” I added.

Josh slumped back against the seat. “The gist of it is that I did share information with him which he could have used if he chose to. Contacts, methods, who was hot and who was floating under the radar at the moment. Channels, details on methods we didn’t have a way to detect or collect sufficient evidence on yet. He had it all — because I gave it to him, or close enough that he could figure it out. We were friends, Nora.”

I rested my hand on his. “I know. I married him, and I still don’t know what to believe about him.”

Josh exhaled heavily. “My career is screwed. My wife’s not going to take me back.” He stared out the window, his eyes vacant.

“Will you be prosecuted?” I murmured.

“Don’t know yet. My accounts came up clean. They haven’t been able to prove I profited financially from sharing information.” Josh snorted softly. “Because I have next to no money. My wife — well, she spent most of it while we were together, and she’ll get the rest in the divorce. FBI agents don’t get paid as much as you might expect. Certainly nothing like how well Skip was doing for himself.”

“Are they watching you?” I knew the answer, but I wanted confirmation from one of their own kind.

“Oh yeah. Here and there, not constant surveillance.”

“Me too. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t asked them to. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Josh gave me a funny little grin and dug in the pocket of his windbreaker. He laid a small black gadget, about the size of a cell phone with a stubby antenna protruding from one end, on the table and pushed it across. “Bug detector. It’ll find anything that’s transmitting radio frequency. Some bugs are voice activated, so they’re hard to find when they’re on stand-by mode, but they will ping every once in a while, sometimes as infrequently as every twenty minutes. You’ll have to be patient, but it’s a good one.”

I balanced the item in my hand. It was heavy for its size. “GPS? Cameras?”

“All of the above if they’re transmitting. It won’t work for cameras that collect video but don’t stream it. But then they’d have to come in and retrieve the data, and I doubt they’re using that kind of device with you.”

“Thanks. Do you need this back?” I asked.

Josh shook his head. “I have another one.”

In this swirling mess around Skip, the first thing I’d done, once I was willing to admit there might be some truth to what the FBI had told me, was pay cash for a bunch of throwaway cell phones. Josh had bought bug detectors. We were a paranoid pair. But the fact that he also was taking safety precautions meant I wasn’t delusional.

I had a gift for Josh as well. I pulled my copy of Lee Gomes’s contact list from my tote, pressed out the creases and laid the papers in front of him.

He took his time, skimming slowly. “Damn,” he finally whispered. “You know these guys?”

“Not personally, but I recognize some of the names.”

“I recognize almost all of them. If there’s a who’s who of who you don’t want to mess with, this is it.” The corner of Josh’s mouth curled up. “You’ll notice Skip’s name is
not
here.”

“He owns the property where I obtained this list,” I muttered.

“Damn.” Josh’s voice came out guttural this time, his fingertips white where they anchored the pages. “There’s a reason, then—” His words dwindled off, and his face drew into a concentrated scowl.

“Reason for what?” I prodded.

Josh sighed. “Skip was crazy about you — you know that, right? He was the happiest I’d ever seen him when you finally said yes. I know about your dad’s Alzheimer’s and your wanting to wait to accept Skip’s proposal until your dad was placed in a good facility. Skip got downright bubbly when it came to you. But a couple months ago, the next to the last time I met him for lunch, he handed me a card with a few addresses on it, said you’d probably end up at one of those places if anything happened to him. He asked me to check on you.”

I was finding it difficult to breathe. So Skip hadn’t just abandoned me. Because it had sure felt like it. For weeks and weeks and one measly gigantic bouquet of roses and—

Josh handed me a tidy white bundle — his handkerchief.

“And Mayfield?” I whispered from behind the soft cloth.

“First place on his list.”

I pawed through my bag, sniffing the whole while, and came up with a pen which I handed to Josh. “Draw me a diagram, please. You said it’s a who’s who. I want to know who reports to whom, who’s small potatoes, and who’s at the top of the chain. Everything you can give me.”

“Nora—” Josh’s voice held warning.

“Just do it,” I hissed.

It took him a good half hour. He covered the pages with arrowed lines linking names. Not a standard, tiered organizational chart — more like the web of a frenetic spider.

When he finished, he sat back and stared at me for a moment. Then he scrawled his new phone number on a napkin and tucked it into my palm. “Don’t be a stranger.” He squeezed my hand and eased out of the booth.

CHAPTER 10

I studied the connections Josh had made between the names on my list while sipping another mug of coffee. I also figured it’d be best if we weren’t seen leaving the restaurant at the same time in case he’d had a tail or was GPS-tracked. I wished I had a photographic memory because the lines were like a crazy roadmap.

A couple names surfaced — the same ones that had showed up most frequently when I’d scrolled through the emails Lee had sent. Like Thomas, I decided playing the odds was a good idea. More contact meant more knowledge of the situation — yes?

I knew a little something about organized crime myself. A little. The narrowest something. It was so negligible that I wasn’t willing to disclose it to Josh yet — or to my FBI watchers — since it was more likely to make me look guilty than not, but it was a start.

Truth is, I hadn’t even considered it important until I saw all the lines developing on the pages under Josh’s measured hand. My dad. It was ancient history which I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to know about. I couldn’t be sure even how much my mom knew — she tended to avoid unpleasantness by nature, a sort of willful ignorance of things she didn’t like.

I think I’d started putting the hints and suggestions together when I was in college. By then, it was past tense because my dad was already exhibiting signs of dementia and had taken an early retirement. I hated to think that my cleft palate and lip were what drove him to it in the first place — the need for money for all the surgeries his little girl required.

My dad had been an organizer and representative for the Bay Area’s Inlandboatmen’s Union, a branch of the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union. He’d worked his way up the ranks — fast — eventually becoming the regional director. As such, he’d had access to business leaders, politicians and many members of the social upper crust which, of course, thrilled my mother. But due to my dad’s good-humored kindness, he counted many of those people as friends as well.

Only some of them weren’t so friendly when they didn’t get what they wanted. I remembered hushed, late-night meetings in the den with large, foreboding men who arrived in Cadillacs and Mercedes and left their associates lurking in our driveway while they met with my dad. I would have been sent to bed hours earlier, but that didn’t stop me from making frequent bathroom visits and getting countless glasses of water so that I could peek at them or catch snippets of the conversations that wafted through the crack under the door.

One time, I was caught in the hall in my pink ruffled nightie, and the big man had whirled me up into his arms and scratched my cheek with his stubble. “Look what I found,” he’d bellowed. “Cutest little thing. She sure don’t take after you, Burl.”

My dad had pulled me out of the man’s grasp and hurried me back into my room. He’d tucked me in firmly with a strict warning to stay put and go to sleep, as if a six-year-old could make that happen on command.

But I’d heard the man’s name — Vince DiBella. And when I was home during spring break of my freshman year of college, I read about his death in the Chronicle, complete with a captioned picture. He’d been gunned down, his body half hanging out of a newer version of the Cadillac he’d driven to our house that night. My dad’s so-called friend.

It seemed as though organized crime works a lot like multilevel marketing. A whole layer of minions doing the dirtiest work who report to the next layer, etc. The money funneling upward with bigger and bigger cuts. The people at the bottom didn’t get much of the pie. I’m not saying Amway is in the same category as La Cosa Nostra, but you get my drift.

I wasn’t sure where my dad had fit in the structure, wasn’t sure it mattered anymore anyway. But if I wanted answers, I did know I needed to look up the chain, not down.

The rain had returned, thick and splatty, no longer frozen. I trotted across the parking lot and dove into the Volvo. One of my phones rang while I was wiping water from my face and hands. I found the right one in my bag.

“Yeah?” I panted.

“I need to make the handoff today.” It was the washed-out voice of Susanna White.

“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to give my mind a chance to catch up.

“I’m almost to Portland. Where are you?” Her words were nearly obliterated by the roar of traffic in the background.

“Salem,” I answered.

“I thought you — aren’t you in Washington?”

“Yes. I just had an errand today. I’m heading home now.”

“We’ll wait for you at the McDonald’s off the Jantzen Beach exit. You know it?”

I knew I’d seen that sign on the way down. I draped the map over the steering wheel and flipped it around until the Columbia River was at the top of the page. “I can find it.”

“I gotta be out of here by 1:30.” Susanna aimed a phlegmy cough directly into the receiver.

I flinched and jerked the phone away from my ear. When I returned to the line, it was already dead.

I checked my watch. I’d have to speed if I wanted to find out what this woman had that had belonged to Skip. It was as though I’d signed up for a missing husband scavenger hunt. Not exactly fun and games.

oOo

Even McDonald’s decorates for Christmas. The big plastic Ronald McDonald statue guarding the entrance had a fake pine wreath around his neck in clashing contrast to his clown face. It had one of those motion sensor devices, and from somewhere hidden in the plastic needles, a tinny music box started playing “Jingle Bells” accompanied by flashing lights every time someone walked by, which was constantly. I’d been inside the restaurant for all of two seconds and I already hated it.

What would Susanna White look like? Ronald McDonald didn’t provide the shelter I’d been hoping for in order to observe unnoticed, so I scooted over to the ketchup and straw station, pretended I was loading up on napkins, and cautiously glanced around.

The place was packed. Harried adults and whining children, everyone frazzled from last minute gift shopping at the nearby mall. I was looking for a woman alone, like me, and there just weren’t any. At a minimum, people were in pairs — an adult with a child, two adults together — and most were in full clans with a couple adults and several children. Maybe Susanna had been delayed, or maybe she’d given up waiting for me.

I felt a short tug on my jacket hem and looked down. A little girl — pale skin, large light brown eyes and an absolutely flat, deadpan expression — no expression at all really, the blankest little face I’d ever seen. She turned and walked away, toward a table where a skinny, frizzled woman sat. The woman nodded at me once and returned her gaze to the steaming Styrofoam cup she clutched in both hands.

The bottom fell out of my lungs — Susanna White. She did not look promising.

Her hair was so blonde, it was actually white. Not bleached, either, but naturally colorless. Her eyes were a washed-out blue, and her lips bloodless and chapped. Her hands looked much older than the rest of her, blue veins pushing the thin skin up in ridges. A box of cigarettes lay on the tabletop, and I got the impression the coffee was a poor substitute for the nicotine hit she really needed.

The girl had returned to the seat opposite the woman, perched in front of the remains of a Happy Meal. I needed to be able to watch Susanna’s face during the coming conversation, so I sat next to the girl, across from Susanna.

It wasn’t a pretty sight. Her pupils were too large for the bright florescent lighting. Our little table unit, all bolted together underneath as though the patrons might walk off with the chairs if they weren’t attached, shook from the nervous bouncing of her knees.

It was hard to judge her age — younger than me, though. I was pretty sure she’d spent most of her life on the streets.

“Susanna,” I said, “thank you for calling me.”

“This here’s Juliet’s girl.” Susanna coughed, a repeat of the deep, mucous-rich rattle I’d heard on the phone.

I glanced down at the little girl, but she sat staring straight ahead, sucking ketchup off a French fry.

“Juliet died couple years back — heroin,” Susanna continued. “I told her that stuff was no good, couldn’t trust Billy to keep it clean. I been taking care of her this whole time.” She tipped her head toward the little girl. “But I can’t anymore. You understand.”

“No,” I whispered. “I don’t.”

Susanna took a cigarette out of the pack, crimped it between the first and second fingers of her left hand. She chewed on her lip for a second, no doubt longing for the taste of the tobacco, then turned back to me. “Juliet’s my sister, see? God knows she slept with a lot of men, but this one’s Skip’s.” Again a nod in the little girl’s direction.

Blood rushed in my ears, and Susanna’s face swirled at the end of a long tunnel. Christmas lights flashed, and “Jingle Bells” blared, distorting into the swirl. I panted for a black hole — something to cover me, hide me, bury me forever.

“She started out as one of his couriers, see? Juliet always did get whatever guy she wanted.” Susanna dropped the cigarette and fished in the purse on the seat beside her. She came up with a small bottle of hand sanitizer and squirted some into her palm. “See, I have plans,” she continued as she smeared the clear jelly. “I can’t be tied down anymore.”

I’d regained enough muscle control to nod. Keep her talking. Maybe this would all go away.

Susanna turned and gazed out the window, her hands near her face. Then she cupped a hand over her mouth, and her tongue darted out, licking her palm.

I nearly gasped aloud. My mind snapped out of the funk, all my senses on keen alert.

Her eyes darted over to me and recognition hardened them, but she got one more lick in anyway. One more measly dose of nerve-steadying alcohol. In that moment, I knew the child could not stay with this woman, regardless of her lineage.

“You want money,” I said. Underneath the table, I twined my hands through my purse strap into tight fists.

“A couple years of food and clothing and schooling,” Susanna mumbled.

I doubted the child had been pampered. Given how Susanna cared for herself, I recoiled at the idea of what she might think was appropriate for a child. The little girl was an unwanted appendage.

“I don’t have cash.” It was a lie — I actually did have cash, quite a bit stashed in the mansion’s basement. But this negotiation with Susanna needed to be final, once for all, and if I gave her money she’d likely come back for more when it ran out.

I disengaged my fingers from the strap and plunged a hand inside my purse, rooting around, finally feeling the heavy bauble in the bottom. My wedding ring. A massive emerald surrounded by diamonds. It was too big for me and had become an appendage in its own right. It had been on the window ledge in the kitchen for a few weeks, but I got tired of looking at it. I didn’t know how much it was worth — probably in the neighborhood of seventy-five thousand dollars. It wasn’t a good idea to leave something like that lying around, so I’d tossed it into my purse.

I plunked it on the table and watched Susanna’s eyes light up. Almost involuntarily, she stretched out a hand to touch it, then quickly withdrew. Even at pawn value, the ring was worth what many couples paid for legal adoptions. And pawning it would provide a record, whereas cash was untraceable. If she broke her end of the bargain, it might be a little leverage I could fall back on.

I hated negotiating in front of the child, but I couldn’t risk subtlety with this woman. “Conditions,” I said. “If you take this, the deal is done. You never, ever return or make any claim on the girl. We shall never see or contact each other again.”

Susanna licked her lips, her eyes flicking between me and the ring. She never once looked at the girl.

“Is it fake?” she blurted.

“What do you think?” I gritted through clenched teeth.

I held my breath until she nodded. She snatched the ring up along with her cigarettes, grabbed her purse, and walked quickly out the door.

One good thing about fast food restaurants is all the windows. I watched Susanna crawl into a battered Toyota pickup. When she turned toward the exit, I got a good look at her license plate. I recited the number to myself until I found paper and pen to write it down. Insurance. And good riddance.

I sat there, a buzzing numb echo caroming around inside my head, while the little girl finished her French fries.