Mean Evergreen (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book Twelve)

by A W Hartoin

  “Absolutely and for the record, it’s what I would do,” said Hobbes.

  “What do we do if we find the phone?” Jake asked.

  “Plug it in, turn it on, and have it use your Wi-Fi,” I said.

  “That’s it?” Lisa asked.

  “We’ll do the rest.”

  “You really are doing the stuff the CID thinks,” said Lisa. “I wasn’t sure. It seemed so high tech.”

  “I don’t have to be high tech to know high-tech people,” I said. “Now we’ve got a plan.”

  I looked at Moe and he said, “Execute.”

  So we executed as fast as we could and in a Mercedes, that’s pretty damn fast.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We caught up with Madison just before crossing the border at Strasbourg. I wasn’t sure we would, since she had a good head start. But Moe and I jumped into the car and were zipping along the A8 in no time. We had a shot and I was feeling pretty good until I wasn’t.

  “Um…Moe?” I asked.

  “We’ll get her. Don’t worry,” he said with his moist eyes pinned to the road.

  “We left Grandma and Aaron at the school.”

  For a scary second, I thought he was going to slam it into reverse or do a U-turn. He did start doing deep breathing and announced we would be getting off at the next exit.

  “We can’t,” I said. “We’ll lose her.”

  “Then we’ll lose her. I’m not leaving Janine. She’s been left enough.”

  I’m not gonna lie. My heart seized up a little at that, but we were on a job.

  “I’ll fix it with her.”

  He growled and I got to work. It wasn’t easy. I had a feisty grandmother to contend with and one that had never seen Paris thanks to that grandfather of mine. I noticed that Grandad was getting lower on her list, not higher. Moe was looking good, tracking down Jake and not getting a scratch on the Mercedes in the process. I did everything I could to convince her that they should stay in Stuttgart, pack up, and get on the direct train tomorrow, but she wasn’t buying.

  I argued that all her products, i.e. Noxzema, were in the hotel and that woman did not want to be seen in the City of Lights without good skin and lipstick. We didn’t have time to go to the hotel.

  “What about all your clothes and your laptop?” Grandma asked. “You’ll look like a mess.”

  I didn’t care what I looked like and it was a good thing, too. The wind on the overpass had swirled my hair so bad I looked like a used Q-tip.

  “It’s fine. You can pack it up.”

  “I’m not missing out on the big get,” she said stubbornly.

  That’s when it came to me. “But what about Anton’s cat? We can’t leave the cat.”

  That did it. Vanity zero. Fat tuxedo for the win.

  “Alright, fine,” she said. “I will get that health certificate thing and pack up Aaron and Isolda.”

  “Isolda?” I asked.

  “You don’t think she wants to miss out, do you?”

  “Guess not. See you tomorrow.” I turned to Moe. “She’s saving the American meow from abandonment in a foreign country.”

  “You got lucky,” said Moe, still unhappy, but he whipped out a small black device and booted it up.

  “Radar detector?” I asked.

  “And so much more.”

  “Illegal?”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “If we get caught after everything else—”

  “What will happen? Nothing. You’ve got friends, remember,” said Moe.

  “I can’t think who. The CID wanted to know who intervened, but I have no idea. It wasn’t the FBI. They hate me hard right now. Mom said the agents I met were seething.”

  “Their own fault. They should’ve known not to test you.” Moe zigzagged through cars with ease and we got up to a good 160 KPH, blowing by everyone through the eighty zones that the Swabians were famous for. Flipping slowpokes. The speed limits opened up after we got out of the Baden-Württemberg region and Moe was truly enjoying himself.

  “They’ve gotten me to do things before,” I said.

  “When it was in your own best interest.”

  “You make me sound totally self-involved.”

  “When it comes to psycho serial killers you get to be,” he said.

  “I like you,” I said.

  He grinned. “Fats knew we’d be a good match. Have you talked to her lately?”

  “Texted before it all broke loose this morning. She’s good and getting jazzed about the five-month ultrasound.”

  “Ah, yes. Going to find out the sex.”

  “Don’t have to,” I said. “She’s sure it’s a girl.”

  “She was supposed to be a boy. We Licatas never like to be predictable,” he said. “Check the app. Let’s see how our girl is doing.”

  Madison was doing just fine, pointing like an arrow right at Paris, and we settled in for a long drive. I thought it would be boring, but Licatas didn’t do boring, either. We plotted out Uncle Moe’s memoir of Vietnam and I have to say that’s not usually my thing, but I was totally buying that book.

  An hour later, we saw Madison’s Kia and Moe pulled up behind her, leaving only a crappy Fiat between us.

  “We shouldn’t get so close,” I said.

  “She’s never going to spot us,” he said. “Leave the driving to the expert.”

  “Snotty.”

  “Cupcake.”

  “I will fight you,” I said.

  “Haven’t we just been talking about hand to hand in Vietnam?”

  “Never mind.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Moe.

  We drove over the Rhine river and directly into Strasbourg but not the picturesque part with the cathedral. We looped around in a big half-moon following signs for Paris.

  “Nothing to see here,” said Moe. “I was hoping to spot the spires at least.”

  “We’re not that close,” I said.

  “Maybe on the way back.”

  “I doubt we’re coming back.”

  “No?”

  “Everything we need is in Paris.”

  He smiled. “I bet a lot of people have thought that.”

  “Madison included,” I said.

  “Your phone is buzzing.”

  I checked the screen and it was Lisa. Even her texts came across as frantic, so I called her.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said.

  “You still have her?”

  “Right in front of us.”

  She took a ragged breath. “I should’ve come with you. I don’t know what I was thinking about.”

  “Your son, for starters,” I said. “It’s fine. I will handle it and Madison will be fine. Did you find the phone?”

  “We did. Well, Jake did. It wasn’t until we stripped the bed that Jake noticed some foam sticking out of the mattress. She’d cut a hole in it and the phone was in there.”

  “Did you plug it in?” I asked.

  “We had to find a cord that fit. It was dead and the service lapsed. I re-upped it about forty-five minutes ago. I should’ve called you before, but the MPs showed up.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “They want to know where you went?”

  “Did you tell them?” I asked.

  “Not a chance. What now?”

  “I’ll tell my guy and we’ll see what we can see. Thanks, Lisa.”

  I was about to hang up, but she asked, “What if he’s violent?”

  I glanced at Moe and found I wasn’t worried about that in the slightest. “We can handle Nadelbaum.”

  “I’m so worried. He could shoot you or Madison.”

  “We could shoot him and frankly that’s more likely,” I said.

  “Is it?”

  I thought about Richard Costilla as he tumbled backward down the stairs. “Google me,” I said.

  “I did. It’s mostly bikini shots.”

  “Most of those aren’t me.”

  “Really?”
r />   “I can handle myself and Moe can handle anything twice over,” I said.

  She took a breath and said, “Okay. Call me right away when something happens.”

  I promised her and called Novak immediately, but it wasn’t necessary and I should’ve known that.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “The burner?”

  “The second it got on the Wi-Fi and we’re in luck. He’s both a bastard and a cheap bastard.”

  “Still using his same burner?” I asked, giving Moe a thumbs-up.

  “It’s not a burner. Well, the first phone he used with Madison wasn’t. Looks like he changed to a burner after he stole the money. That one isn’t accessible, but the first phone is still live.”

  “Tell me he’s on it right now.”

  “He is not, but I’ve got all the data. The contract is under Sherwood Dankworth.”

  “You’re joking,” I said. “That is a terrible name.”

  “And fake, but with a sizable history. Sherwood’s been busy. It’s going to take a while to unravel this, but it looks like Nadelbaum, that is his real name, was running some kind of Ponzi scheme and may have taken a very wrong turn.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know how you wouldn’t want to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from Calpurnia Fibonacci?”

  “Dude is in trouble,” I said. “Who did he steal from?”

  “I’m not positive, but I think it was The Klinefeld Group.”

  I gasped. No joking. I really did. Moe glanced over. “Everything okay?”

  “I was a trade, a get out of jail free card,” I said.

  “Looks like it,” said Novak. “Nadelbaum was an employee of the group, a kind of contract player. He’d been with them for years, working in several capacities, including security and finance. He’s also a licensed pilot under the name Dankworth.”

  “He was one of the two men at the airport waiting for me.”

  “Reasonable to assume,” said Novak. “I have been poking around in his rancid little life and he’s got some computer skills, but I doubt he was the one who put the plants on Anton’s computer. My money is on his wingman. He’s based in Berlin. No name yet.”

  “Do you think Spidermonkey can…steal Lisa’s money back?” I asked.

  Novak chuckled. “He can do anything.”

  “I love you guys.”

  “You should, considering what you’ve put me through,” he said, suddenly very grumpy.

  “I am sorry about your head,” I said.

  “Not my head. My mother. So far, I’ve been soaked in some kind of medicinal bubble bath, had my hair trimmed, and got half my wardrobe thrown out.”

  “Which part of that is bad?”

  “All of it. Express sympathy or you may never see that money,” said Novak.

  “Your mother is evil and must be stopped,” I said.

  “And you will have dinner with her and tell her I’m a fabulous boyfriend.”

  “Er…”

  “This is still free if you do.”

  “I think I’d rather pay,” I said.

  He gave me my total cost.

  “What time’s dinner?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Swell.”

  I hung up and heaved a sigh. “Now I’m having dinner with Novak’s mother.”

  “I saw that coming from a mile away,” said Moe.

  “You should’ve shared that with me.”

  “And miss seeing your face? Never.”

  I wadded up my coat and leaned against the door. “You kinda suck.”

  “I’m awesome and you know it.”

  “Keep dreaming,” I said.

  “About Janine,” he said.

  “Stop it!”

  Moe laughed and put on classical music. “Go to sleep, cupcake. Four hours to go and then it’s back to detecting.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking I couldn’t possibly sleep with the image of Moe and Grandma smiling at each other imprinted in my brain, but I did and it was a good thing, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I woke up hours later when Moe gave me a hard jab in the hip and said, “Look at that. It’s the Seine.”

  “Exciting.” I sat up and yawned. “Are we there?”

  “I don’t know where there is,” Moe yawned with his whole body and I took a good look.

  “You should’ve woken me up,” I said. “You needed a break.”

  “I like driving and you like sleeping.”

  Not wrong there.

  “You look exhausted,” I said.

  “This is nothing. Remember that march I told you about?” Moe asked.

  “I’m trying to forget it.”

  “We all are.”

  Moe’s face grew more weary and I didn’t know what to say so I looked out ahead of us. There was Madison zipping along.

  “She never stopped?”

  “Once for gas, but you didn’t wake up,” he said. “She’s getting nervous though.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “The driving’s getting more erratic. She keeps changing lanes, speeding up and then slowing down.”

  “She’s probably exhausted.”

  He nodded. “She’s been on her phone, but not for long. I think she’s been trying to call Nadelbaum.”

  I searched for my phone and found it on the charger. “Thanks. I didn’t think of that.”

  “It’s been going off. Spidermonkey and Novak. I told them you were asleep.”

  “What did they find out?” I asked.

  Plenty was the answer. Nadelbaum had taken company funds from The Klinefeld Group and used it to pay off investors in his Ponzi scheme. There were still plenty of investors screaming bloody murder, but Nadelbaum wasn’t worried about them. He’d borrowed a large unspecified amount and guess what? The Klinefeld Group noticed. Promises were made and not kept. Nadelbaum had stolen Lisa’s money, but he didn’t use it to pay off his debt. It was still sitting in a bitcoin wallet.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What was the plan?”

  Moe shrugged. “They can’t tell. He kept giving The Klinefeld Group promises and working unpaid, flying them around and chauffeuring.”

  “While hatching a stupid plot to kidnap me.”

  “It could’ve worked. It would’ve worked if you hadn’t been you and Thooft had tied you up.”

  “He tried,” I said. “The cast was the problem.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t know that. Who would’ve thought an entire plot taken down by a cast?”

  “A lot of variables and Anton panicked.”

  “And Madison’s another variable,” said Moe as we exited the highway. “Where do you think we’re going?”

  “Beats me, but she clearly has a plan,” I said as we drove through a complicated set of streets to the Bastille area. We ended up on a wide avenue, watching Madison pull into a small parking garage across from a really cool church that I’d never seen before. It had the pre-revolution style I liked, all curves with a big dome and a red door.

  “We have to go in that church,” said Moe.

  “We have to park,” I said. “But we can’t go in there. She’s not that oblivious.”

  “I’ll wait a minute.” Moe waved other drivers around our car. “You get out and tail her, just in case she’s speedy. No fiking.”

  “No problem.” I got out and shivered at the cold. I’d gotten too used to my lovely heated seat. Moe drove into the parking garage and I dashed over to a clothing store to casually look in the window while I pulled my poofball hat down low.

  It took a few minutes, but Madison was out and moving down the street at a good clip. Her phone wasn’t out. She knew where she was going and I had to nearly break into a jog to keep up with her long legs while texting Moe our direction.

  After walking several blocks, we ended up in a residential area on a one-way street. There wasn’t much to recommend it, a couple of restaurants, one was shuttered, and a
small hotel. It was not touristy, but the buildings were old and a few had the typical Parisian ironwork on the small balconies.

  I thought Madison would go into the hotel, but she turned to a small set of wooden doors opposite. On second thought, they weren’t really small in a normal sense, only small for Paris with big brass knobs in the center of each door and encased in some nice stonework.

  Madison peered at a panel next to the door and I crossed the street to the hotel. They had their prices on a placard next to the door under a certificate of excellence from Tripadviser. I pretended to study it and texted my location to Moe while keeping a side-eye on Madison who had chosen a button and pushed it repeatedly. Nobody answered and she chose another button. This time someone answered and I could make out Madison asking in rudimentary French if they knew Sebastian Nadelbaum. Since she pushed another button, I guess the answer was no. There had to be a reason Madison was there and thought Nadelbaum would be, too, so I googled the address.

  “Oh, Madison,” I whispered.

  Moe arrived at my side and handed over my purse. “What’s she doing?”

  “Getting a wake-up call.”

  “I imagine so but give me the skinny.”

  I gestured with my head and said, “I think she thinks he has an apartment there.”

  “Spidermonkey didn’t mention any property,” said Moe.

  “It’s an Airbnb.”

  “That pretty little fool.”

  The pretty little fool kept pushing buttons until a woman dressed for a party came out. Madison chased her down the street, pelting her with questions and getting an irritated shake of the head before the woman dashed away. Madison stood on the sidewalk with her arms limp at her side.

  “Do you want to talk to her?” Moe asked.

  “Let’s see what she does,” I said and on cue, Madison took off with a purposeful walk and after a couple of turns, I knew where she was going.

  We were well into dusk when we walked into the square where the Bastille once stood. There were only some stones marking the perimeter to disappoint the unknowing tourist who expected a prison. There was also a metro stop and that’s where Madison was going. We followed her at a decent distance, but she never once looked back at us or at her surroundings. If Nadelbaum knew anything, he hadn’t taught it to her.

  The station was an outdoor one and super easy to access and see everything. Madison checked a map and then her phone. I was close enough to see her using a metro app, but I couldn’t tell what our destination was. She bought a ticket and we did too. I was getting closer and closer to her. I guess I just wanted to see if she would notice. In a way, I wanted it to be over so I could start asking questions and tell her mother we had her.