Loyalty (7 page)

“Sorry to interrupt,” Fina said, and studied the bird in question.
Rooster? Hen? What does fowl have to do with the powder room?
she thought.

“Fina, I didn’t expect to see you.” Mark squeezed past the painter and gave her a peck on the cheek.

“I’m really sorry to just show up, but I was wondering if you have a few minutes. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

“Of course. I need to take a look downstairs. Come with me.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “What happened to your face?”

Fina waved her hand. “It’s fine. No biggie.”

He led her to a staircase, and she followed him down.

The house was like Rand’s in that the lower level was actually on the same level as the backyard. She could see a tennis court and pool out back, and a small army of men moving earth in the hot sun. Fina trailed behind Mark as he gave her the tour: a small kitchen, home gym, changing room, hair salon, meditation room, and family room. He took a seat in one of the large recliners in the screening room and gestured for her to sit next to him.

“Any word on Melanie?” he asked.

“Nope, but things are heating up for Rand. The police have searched his house and boat.”

“Pain in the ass cops. I’ve been asking around, but nothing’s come up.”

“I’ve been asking around, too, and apparently I’ve pissed someone off.” Fina touched her hand to her scratched face. “I was jumped the other night and told to mind my own business.”

“That’s what happened to your face,” Mark stated rather than asked. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Nah, I’m fine, but any guesses who might be responsible?”

Mark leaned back into the seat and put his arms on the armrests. He caressed the leather. “Italian leather. I had it flown in special from Milan.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Mark gestured toward Fina’s face. “Nobody comes to mind. Since we talked, I’ve put out some feelers, but I haven’t heard anything. If my poking around set this in motion . . .” Mark gripped the armrests.

“I’m sure that’s not what happened. I’m just trying to cover all the bases.” Fina stood up and looked around the room. “Furnished basements bring back a lot of memories.”

In high school, Fina, her brothers, and all their friends were a tribe of nomads moving from one rec room to another, drinking, getting high, and hooking up. They were like street peddlers: If a parent got wise to their activities, they just packed up and moved to the next location. Mark was often a part of these gatherings.

“Don’t remind me. My kids better not do that.” Mark stood up.

“Good luck with that,” Fina said, and followed him out of the room.

He walked her out to her car and stood in the open door as she got in. “I’m going to talk to some more people,” he said. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to dig up some useful information.”

“Thanks, Mark. I appreciate it.”

Fina started her car. Before turning out of the driveway, she looked in her rearview mirror. Mark stood on the flagstone patio, his hands deep in his pockets, watching her leave.

Fina got chicken nuggets at a drive-thru and sat in the parking lot eating her lunch. She called Haley and left a message on her voice mail. Dante’s claim about seeing her at the club was not good. Haley didn’t do particularly well around booze and bad people; her impulse control and decision-making skills were poor to nonexistent under the best of circumstances. Fina needed to get a handle on the situation, pronto.

Milloy wasn’t picking up, either, nor was Cristian. She was dialing Rand when her phone beeped. Her phone company contact had tracked down the mystery number from Melanie’s kitchen, but it was going to cost her double. Did Fina still want it?

“Yes, I want it. Goddamnit, Shirley. I hate it when you screw me like this.” Fina sucked on her diet soda.

“Oh honey, it’s not me, it’s the marketplace.”

“Fine. What’s the address?”

The number was a business listing in Framingham for Zyxco, Inc. Fina popped the last nugget in her mouth, plugged the address into her GPS, and headed west.

It only took her fifteen minutes to find the right street, but another ten to find the actual office park. The low-slung buildings made of brick and concrete hugged the swell of the small hills on which they sat. There were intermittent signs that gave little hint to the business conducted inside; Sharwin Associates, TBK United, American Metrics. The building numbers weren’t sequential, but after a few minutes of searching, Fina found herself in the parking lot farthest from the road in front of a building with the number matching Zyxco.

This building was two stories and seemed to have five separate entrances. A machine shop anchored one end of the complex, with large garage doors open to a two-story bay full of machinery and sweaty men. An outside area demarcated by a chain-link fence was crammed with an assortment of machines and parts.

Fina pulled her car into a space so she was facing the entrance. Her cell earpiece provided a good cover if anyone wondered why she was hanging around, and she pulled a map out of the glove compartment to complete the look. Fina scanned the numbers painted on the awnings. There was no sign for Zyxco under the awning matching the number; instead, the door with the correct number said
MODE ACCESSORIES
in black letters.

Fina trained her gaze on that door and sat and waited. Most people didn’t realize that the average private investigator spends an inordinate amount of time sitting around, watching and waiting. You couldn’t read or do a crossword or even talk on the phone when you were on surveillance. You had to focus on the absence of action and hope that something would relieve the boredom. Fina didn’t plan to sit there all day, but she wanted to gather a little more information before she made a move.

The sum total of her two-hour surveillance: The machine shop was loud, and she needed to pee like a racehorse.

Fina had two accountants in her life: one handled her money, and the other, Hal Boyd, investigated other people’s money on her behalf. On the drive back into the city, Fina called Hal and asked him to dig up everything he could on Zyxco and Mode Accessories. In addition to being a top-notch researcher highly adept at ferreting out obscure data in the public domain, Hal also favored a loose interpretation of the law. So really, every domain was Hal’s domain.

After hanging up with Hal, Fina made a new round of phone calls to Risa and other friends of Melanie, but no one had heard a word from her. She dialed another number and waited for an answer.

“Menendez.”

“How about I buy you a drink?” Fina asked.

“It’s a little early, don’t you think?”

“Well, I need to talk to you so I was trying to sweeten the deal.”

“There are better ways to sweeten the deal.”

“I agree, but I’m a little preoccupied right now. How about a rain check on that, and I’ll buy you a beer in the meantime.”

“I’ll take the rain check and an ice-cream cone. Meet me at Scoops.”

In the city, Fina wedged her car into a space on a side street near the Fenway and walked the few blocks to Scoops. Getting ice cream might seem like a distraction from the case, but those kinds of “distractions” were the bread and butter of any investigation. Fina had to court each person she met, and the courting took a variety of forms—a cup of coffee while admiring a clown statue collection, a nightcap in a hotel bar, a hand carrying in groceries. Expecting to get information without these interactions was like expecting to get lucky without buying a girl dinner. There were no guarantees either way, but shrimp cocktail and a steak increased the odds.

The streets were cluttered with young people carrying musical instruments and boxes bursting at the seams. It was that magical time in Boston—moving-out day, the mass exodus of students from the urban campuses. Some adults were thrown into the mix, hustling in their khakis and golf shirts, capris and sweater sets. The men’s faces glistened with sweat as they hauled their kids’ stuff, and the women guarded the cars. The labor of having kids never really ended.

Scoops was freezing inside; goose bumps rose on Fina’s bare arms. Cristian was second in line wearing an untucked shirt that fell over his gun.

“What do you want?” he asked Fina when she stepped into line next to him.

“A cone with two scoops of salted caramel and jimmies.”

Cristian studied the flavors on the chalkboard mounted above their heads. “Nobody has normal ice cream anymore.”

“That’s not true.” Fina pointed at the board. “There’s chocolate chip and butter pecan. Pistachio.”

“But those flavors are the minority. The rest is cardamom and honey lavender and rosemary Meyer lemon. They’re trying to make my ice cream gourmet.”

“You sound like an old man.”

“I feel like an old man,” Cristian grumbled, and gestured for Fina to give her order to the teenager behind the counter.

“What happened to your face?” he asked. They watched the skinny girl’s biceps flex as she dug into the freezer.

“There was a thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

“The kind of thing where I seemed to have pissed someone off.”

“Hard to believe,” Cristian said.

They took their cones outside and started down Mass Ave toward Commonwealth. On the grassy mall in the center of Commonwealth, they found a bench and sat.

“What do you want to know?” Cristian asked after taking a lick of pistachio.

“I’m looking for a girl named Brianna who hangs out at Crystal a lot.”

“Oh, well, in that case . . . I thought you were going to ask me to find a guy named Michael who lives in Southie.”

Fina punched his leg. “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.” She licked a couple of jimmies from the web between her thumb and finger. “I’m going to Crystal tonight, but in the meantime, I thought it was worth a shot.”

“Next you’re going to tell me that I know everything that goes on in this town.”

Fina grinned. “We both know that’s a lie.”

“Is this Brianna involved in anything in particular?”

“I don’t know, but she knows Dante Trimonti, so prostitution is always an option.”

“Why are you interested in her?”

“She may have some information.”

Cristian gestured at an unkempt man shuffling toward them, pushing an empty baby stroller. “That homeless guy may have some information. Doesn’t mean I’m going to spend a lot of time trying to get it.”

Fina let some salt granules rest on her tongue for a moment. “Between you and me, she has a connection to Haley.”

“Haley? And that has a connection to Melanie’s disappearance?”

“I have no idea.”

Cristian looked at her.

“Really, I have no idea. I’m just trying to figure it out and find Melanie. All I can do is follow the leads.”

“And what happens if the leads lead back to Rand?”

“They won’t.”

The homeless man trudged by, mumbling to himself.

“I have a buddy in vice,” Cristian said. “I’ll ask, but if you’re onto something, you need to let me know.”

Fina bit into her cone and chewed.

“You’re not talking because you’re not going to tell me?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I don’t want to lie to you.”

Cristian looked annoyed and tossed his balled-up napkins into the trash can next to the bench.

Fina shrugged. “Don’t feel bad. I lie to everyone at some point.”

Cristian stood up. “Even yourself, I’m betting.”

Fina frowned and avoided his gaze. “I’ll be in touch.”

“See ya.” Cristian walked away, and Fina followed his progress to the traffic light. He jaywalked and disappeared into the crowd.

Bev hated visiting the main office, but it couldn’t be avoided. Before she gave her potential business partner a tour, she needed to make sure that everything was as it should be. In all her years of business, Bev’s only partner had been Chester. If she needed capital, she got it from him and his enterprises, and he always offered sound strategic advice. That’s the way she liked it; keep it in the family. Things were much less complicated that way, and you didn’t have to suffer through the tedious process of courting and posturing, like a deb on her daddy’s arm looking for the right suitor.

But with Chester incapacitated, Bev was running out of resources. An infusion of cash would enable her to expand the business and regain some stability. The Prospect, as she called him, had visited the Back Bay office, and they’d shared a couple of meals as they discussed terms. During the next meeting, he was going to see the real guts of the operation, and Bev had to be sure that he liked what he saw.

She pulled out a set of keys and opened a heavy steel door next to a dumpster. Inside, a long hallway loomed in both directions. Bev walked left and unlocked the second door with a different key. She was deposited in a stairwell that led both up and down.

Bev climbed the stairs slowly, slightly winded from the exertion. Connor was probably right; she wasn’t taking very good care of herself. But really, if she needed to soothe herself with a sticky bun, that’s just the way it was.

At the top of the stairs, she pushed through a heavy fire door. The buzz of activity stilled as she entered the room. After a moment, the eight women sitting at desks wearing headsets resumed their conversations, and Bev circled the space. Everything looked neat and tidy, including the girls. Nobody ever saw them, but Bev was a strong believer in the notion of dressing for success. Sloppy sweatpants and flip-flops fostered a level of insouciance that was subtly conveyed to the clients. Bev’s standards were also a means of sifting out the unsuitable girls. If they balked at wearing pants that didn’t have an elastic waistband, she knew they weren’t right for her.

She paused behind one of the girls.

“I think you’ll really enjoy Lydia. She has a degree in European history,” the booker said. She listened for a moment. “That’s right. Five feet eight and long hair.”

Bev finished her lap of the room.

Two flights down, she pushed through another heavy door into the basement. The space was double the size of the upstairs since it spread under the office next door. Bev walked by two empty photo studios and another room that had video equipment. The rest was sectioned off into areas the size of small bedrooms and overlooked by a control room with windows. The “bedrooms” each had a queen-size bed made up with a satin duvet and pillows and a fake window with the curtains drawn. The third and fourth rooms were in use, with attractive young women on display. A blonde was wearing an X-rated cheerleader’s outfit and brushing her hair. A brunette in the room next door was topless, wearing only a thong.

Bev stood in the darkened control room and listened as a woman conveyed instructions through a microphone to the two girls.

“He wants you to put your hair in pigtails,” she told the blonde. Bev walked up to the glass and watched the girl part her long hair and begin to gather it into pigtails.

Bev closed her eyes and swallowed the bitter taste that was forming in her mouth. She knew that the girls of Prestige also did what their clients requested, but there was something undignified about taking orders from someone sitting in front of his computer at home. You never knew who was on the other end; it could be a horny twelve-year-old in Akron or a used-car salesman in Berlin. The equal opportunity of Gratify bothered Bev, but it was lucrative, so she tolerated it.

After conferring for a few minutes with the woman manning the mike, Bev climbed up the stairs and left the way she came in. The heat felt like a relief after the cold, recycled air in the building. She squinted in the sunlight before getting into her car, where she pulled a small bottle of hand sanitizer out of the glove compartment. She squirted the gel on both hands and rubbed vigorously.

Fina left another message for Haley, this one a mix of pleading and irritation, and tried to tamp down her anxiety regarding her niece. Even Fina didn’t relish associating with people like Dante, and she had a gun and a hell of a lot more experience than Haley. The fifteen-year-old was at a decided disadvantage.

According to Rand’s secretary, he was hunkered down at Carl and Elaine’s house, so Fina made that her next stop. She entered through the kitchen door and grabbed a bottle of water from one of the two large Sub-Zero fridges. Fina needed to ease into family interactions, and the kitchen was always a good place to start.

She was shoveling a handful of corn chips into her mouth when Elaine and her newest slave came into the room.

“What are you doing here?” her mother said by way of greeting. “What are you eating?”

“Hi, Mom. Nice to see you, too.” Fina leaned against the island. “I’m Fina. Elaine and Carl’s daughter,” she said to the Latina dressed in a maid’s uniform. The woman smiled meekly and nodded.

“Don’t distract her, Fina. She has work to do.”

Fina snorted and washed her hands in the sink.

“What are you wearing?” Elaine asked, her eyes boring holes into Fina’s outfit.

Fina sighed. “Pants, a shirt, shoes. I got everything at Nordstrom. You should be proud, Mom; it cost a fortune.”

“You’re a girl, Josefina. I cannot understand why you won’t dress like one.”

“What? This isn’t
Little House on the Prairie
.” She looked at her mother. “This is how women dress nowadays, even the ones who wore pink tutus when they were little.”

Elaine pointed a finger at Fina. “Don’t.”

Mother and daughter glared at each other. The maid busied herself at the sink; she didn’t need a strong command of the English language to understand this was not a happy moment.

“Is Rand here?” Fina asked, blinking to end the staring contest.

“He’s in your father’s office. Why haven’t you found Melanie yet?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mom. I haven’t been applying myself maybe?”

“The lip. It’s always the lip with you.”

“Well, it’s a stupid question!”

“You’re never going to find a husband if you keep this up.”

“I don’t want a husband, Mom,” Fina said, and chugged the rest of the water.

“What are you saying?”

“What do you mean, what am I saying?”

“Is this your way of telling me you’re a lesbian?”

“You’d love that. Just one more way I’ve disappointed you.” Fina screwed the top on the empty water bottle and tossed it into the recycling bin.

Carl walked into the kitchen and eyed the two women. “Don’t you two start.”

“She says she’s a lesbian,” Elaine said, folding her arms across her chest.

“She’s not a lesbian, Laney.” Carl stared at Fina. “She’s a pain in the ass. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to Rand.”

“He’s in my office.”

Fina strode out of the kitchen and wandered through the downstairs of her parents’ house. She knew where to find the kitchen, media room/family room, and Carl’s office, but the rest was a blur. Carl and Elaine bought a new house every few years to reflect their ever-increasing wealth, and Fina had never lived in the current one. She knew her father’s office was at the opposite end of the house from the kitchen where Elaine spent a lot of her time; he was no fool.

The office had a high coffered ceiling and a wall of windows that looked out on a pond and the woods beyond it. Carl’s large glass desk faced the door, and two angular leather couches with stainless steel frames completed the U-shape. Over the desk hung a canvas splattered thick with yellow and black paint. Apparently, Carl was in a postmodernist phase.

Fina paused at the door and watched Rand. He was sitting on one of the couches, his cell phone in one hand. He rubbed his eyes with the other.

“How are you holding up?” she asked as she walked into the room.

“I feel like shit. Tell me you have good news.”

“I’m making progress.” Fina perched on the armrest of the couch. The stainless steel dug into her butt. “Do you know where Haley is?”

“No, why?”

“I don’t get how you don’t know where your kid is,” Fina said.

“She’s fifteen, Fina, not five!”

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know her whereabouts.”

Rand stood up and walked over to the windows overlooking the backyard. He faced Fina. “As soon as you have a kid, you can critique my parenting.”

“I am so tired of that argument. You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent, but common sense would suggest that you should know where your daughter is spending her time.”

“Why do you need to talk to her?”

“I just need to ask her a few questions.”

“Tell me what they are, and I’ll ask her.”

“No, Rand.” Fina shook her head. “That’s not how this works.”

“What difference does it make who asks the questions?”

“It makes a big difference, and as an attorney, you know that. If you hear from her, tell her I need to talk to her right away.”

“I thought you were on my side.”

Fina stood up and strode over to him. “I am on your side. I’m doing everything I can to find Melanie. Don’t make it more difficult than it already is.”

Rand glared at her, then looked back out the window. He leaned his forehead against the glass. “Sorry. This is making me crazy.”

Fina squeezed his shoulder. “I know. That’s why you have to trust me.”

“Where the hell is she, Fina?” He looked at her.

“I’m going to find Melanie, but this laissez-faire parenting”—she held up a hand to silence him—“that you seem to think works, isn’t working in this situation.”

Rand punched a button on his phone and held it up to his ear. Fina heard ringing and then Haley in a singsong voice asking the caller to leave a message.

“Haley, it’s Dad. You need to call Aunt Fina, ASAP. Seriously. No more screwing around. She’s trying to find Mom, and we need to help her. Love you. Bye.” He ended the call. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

Rand sat back down on the couch with his elbows resting on his knees.

“Are you familiar with a company called Zyxco?” Fina asked.

Rand was silent for a moment. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“How about Mode Accessories?”

He shrugged. “Nope.”

“If you think of anything related to those names, let me know.”

Rand nodded.

“Any word from the police?” she asked.

“Pitney is riding my ass, just barely staying on the right side of the law. She thinks I killed Melanie and dumped her over the side of the boat.”

“What’s your alleged motive?”

“Who knows? She can weave all kinds of stories—a potential divorce, money issues, an affair.”

“Are you having an affair?”

“No, of course not.”

Fina looked at him.

“I’m not having an affair! I’m no saint, but I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“All right, all right. I had to ask.”

Fina left the room. She found her way to the front door and made her escape.

That night Fina recruited Milloy again to accompany her to Crystal. She worried that on her own she would appear cougarlike, an impression to be avoided at all costs. They parted company inside, and Fina marched straight upstairs to the VIP section. A beefy bodyguard stopped her, but not before her eyes met Dante’s. His posture stiffened and he grimaced, but he recovered quickly. She smiled and mouthed
Brianna
.