A couple of weeks ago Otis had given up and shaved all the gray off his head. In my opinion, this actually made him look younger and more badass, but I figured it was a small surrender for him. Now he massaged the top of his head. Winced. Taken off guard by the bareness, I could tell.
In the beginning, when he told me he’d make us the good bodyguard we were about to need, Otis underestimated the scope of that job description. And the magnitude of the disasters in store for us. I knew this for a fact because none of us had a clue about that back then. Good thing too.
Tom and I sensed we’d “probably need a little protection for a while.” We’d witnessed how big lucky money could capture the twisted imagination of anyone who could spell M-o-n-d-o—even if they had to copy it off a ticket. But back then we believed those folks would wander off soon and forget the whole thing.
Naive-R-Us.
We were clueless babies about the dogged persistence five hundred million before-tax dollars inspires. We pointed to people who’d been way richer than us for generations and lived their normal, wealthy lives unthreatened. My research on former lottery winners was disconcerting, however. A jumbo jackpot could trash your life over a weekend. Or end it. And we didn’t foresee the bigger, smarter, more competent killers in the wings. We knew better now. Tom and I couldn’t envision life without Otis.
“Allie, a couple days ago, I made fun of you for suggesting our sniper might shoot their sniper.”
Why does everything come out of left field?
Because it never left. Get used to it
Our Sniper versus Their Sniper? We’d both mocked me. I swallowed hard. Didn’t help. The molten heaviness in me was dread and hopelessness about the dread. Unflappability was never my strong suit. The day they covered that, I must have been out practicing how to be cute and sassy.
“Yeah, Otis, that sniper/sniper thing. I heard how dumb it was and took it back.”
“Now it’s not looking so dumb.”
“Because everything’s changed. Since—” I counted. “Since Saturday?”
No kidding? Only Saturday? If I kept a diary—which, note to self, I definitely should—Saturday, Sunday, and Monday would get a whole extra month of pages. The shocking conclusion of the Epoch of Tito was at least a decade ago in whimpering dog years.
“Yeah. A lot’s changed, Allie. Since then.”
“Otis?”
“Allie. Things are not ramping down the way we thought they might.”
“No. Duh.” Bitterness. I heard it. Sarcasm too. “You think there’s somebody out there with a nuclear agenda?”
“Yeah, maybe, but I’m not worried about that right this minute.”
“Sorry. It’s just—I’m scared, Otis.” My voice wavered. “Sorry. Damn.”
“Everybody cries, Allie. It’s how you can tell somebody’s alive in there. And scared is a sign of intelligence. This ain’t easy. You’re doin’ fine.” His voice was a hug. Otis was talented at that.
Back to the sniper conversation at hand. And the new T&A case now on the front burner.
I got up and poured us more coffee and we carried the mugs to the couch that offered the best view onto the decks. The morning had layers. A layer of freshly washed blue, high above, then a lower layer of puffy white clouds, and under them, the gray-green of deep-cold water. The whole thing was sprinkled with hundreds of bonehead gulls. Being gulls. I breathed that in. My panic backed off.
“You’re talking about Shadow Man, Otis. I’d be fine with him. That was him at the back of my mind when I asked my stupid sniper question. He’d be our first choice, wouldn’t he? Since I guess Batman isn’t real. But you have got to tell me his name. He made fun of me when I called him—that.”
“Ah, Allie. He kinda enjoys you calling him ‘that.’ He likes you. And Tom. He doesn’t show a lot of—You could ask him yourself, but I suggest you think twice—”
Ah, Shadow Man. Another mysterious, fit stranger. In black ripstop.
“He’s a sniper too.”
Otis was retired from at least three careers, and he’d accumulated many interesting friends. Understatement. I used to be a part-time librarian. My only friend from that career was Lorretta Coates who worried all the time and cried a lot.
“Otis? I thought he was the tech genius. You told me he was an expert in ‘the new domain of intelligence.’ I assumed that meant hacker. Hacker and sniper don’t mix. Do they?”
“He’s a lot of things. The training for what he did—in the Navy and after? It’s intense and multi-intimidating. Sniper isn’t his main skill. Not anymore at least. None of us from back then are as young as we used to be. He’s older than me—he sure doesn’t look it—He mostly makes his money with his hacker skills now.”
Hacker skills. A man who could make your security system unlock all its doors and let all your money run free. Set your house to eavesdropping on you. Move freely in the “domain” I pictured as a scene out of Ready Player One. Shadow Man had out-hacked that brand of hacker for us last time.
I nodded as if I knew all about it. Otis forged on.
“You’ve seen what he can do. Savant with it, Allie. Nobody gets how it works for him. Not even him. But he’s versatile and that’s critical for us. We don’t know what all our sniper can do. He shot Tito up close, no problem. We know he’s skilled with a blade—”
We both flashed back to Tom’s pale horror.
“So we’ll need our guy’s knowledge and expertise, all of it. I don’t think he could outshoot the—the new guy for the big distances. I’m counting on him not needing to do that. I’m not expecting, ‘O.K. Corral at two thousand paces.’ But your ‘Shadow Man’ can tell us a lot. Maybe outthink the dude when the time comes. He’s high-test, high-caliber, Allie. We need him now. Plus, he can help us with the Patti case.”
For one mean second, I got a kick out of “The Patti Case.”
Re: Shadow Man? Let me go on the record here: I’m not as brave or as smart as I’d like to be, but I’m an excellent judge of hot and, from what I’d glimpsed of him—under the cover of moonlit darkness, out of the corner of one eye—Shadow Man was hot. Fit. Buff. Black. Radiating “takes no prisoners.”
However, the cruel-eyed-dark-and-handsome impression he’d made on me last summer was mostly fabricated by me because I’d never snagged a good look at him. A professional vanisher. Shadows 24/7. “Shadow Man” fit him fine for now. My address book was overrun with aliases these days. No biggie.
“You’re head of security, Otis. I’m with you. Tom will be too. Did you talk to him? Is he available? Is he coming? Is he here?”
“He’s willing. He’s in the neighborhood. I probably should have checked with you and Tom before—He doesn’t come cheap you know.”
“Cheap has never been our game, Otis, and you know it. Light up the bat signal.”
Chapter Forty
What with one thing and another, I’d never given Patti and Steve’s mansion any serious consideration once they’d moved out of their old one—which was our new one—and into their new one which had been “the old one” of many well-to-do Clevelanders, quite a few of whom were now residing in Lake View Cemetery.
Casa Patti was on display from Lake Shore, of course. It’s tough to camouflage a twelve-thousand-square-foot fortress. From my quick, drive-by impression, it was another one of the upscale crowd lining the north side of Lake Shore Boulevard. Set well back from the street behind appropriately embellished gates, on the inevitable aesthetically-pleasing landscape. End of story.
Until we picked up our new case, I certainly never expected to go inside that one.
Right after Otis and I broke off the waffle-fest so he could get Shadow Man going, I went upstairs to tell Tom about our shadowy new plan. Right after Tom succeeded in luring me back into bed with my clothes on—“My specialty,” he murmured, getting all deft with the shirt butt
ons—my phone buzzed.
The screen said, “Jay.” He needed a ringtone.
I said, “Tom, it’s only Jay.”
Tom said, “Don’t answer that.”
I said, “Keep working on my shirt. This will only take a minute.”
I needed to hear what Jay was planning at Patti’s Place. Also, I hoped to deftly grill him about what went on at Atelier 24 last night. Tom wasn’t the only deft one. I was aiming to pry every scrap of the info I wanted out of Jay, hang up in five minutes or less, and get straight back to Tom.
Too bad.
Jay was full speed ahead and all business this morning. “Allie? Are you up? Are you dressed?
Yes. No. More or less. Less all the time—
“What do you need, Jay?”
“You. I want to swing by and pick you up so you can take a look at the Stone place. Get a jump on this thing.”
He didn’t hear Lee Ann think
Damn
but Tom did. He stopped with the shirt.
Jay breezed on. “We can’t take Tom over there. He’s a dead giveaway because he’s…him. But anybody sees you going in, you could pass as a design consultant. Wear something sorta design-y. No worries. Patricia and Monica are the only ones there now. You don’t have to fool them.”
“Give me a little direction on ‘design-y.’ Pretend you’re gay.”
He paused and I imagined him mentally reviewing what he’d seen of my wardrobe, pained by my questionable fashion sense.
“I don’t suppose you have leather pants?”
“No. For more reasons than you have time for right now.”
“Jeans, then, maybe? Distressed could be good. Not too distressed. Boots. Surely you have a good pair of boots. After all, you’re with—” Another pause while he mentally assessed everything he and Margo didn’t know about the fiscal details of my relationship with Tom.
He abandoned protocol.
“Allie. You’re a woman who can definitely afford good boots. And a woman who can afford good boots knows her boots. That’s the law. I figure you’ve got a pair. Or five.
“Margo told me about the great shawl she gave you for the chaise. You know the shawl. She loves that chaise as much as you and I do. I bet that shawl would be a nice fashion-y touch. I’ll show you how to tie it when you get in the van I’m going to pick you up in. If you like.”
Oh yeah. I knew that shawl. Intimately. Remembered its silky farewell caress, as it slid over Tom and me on its way to the floor last night, abandoned in the heat wave of the moment. How the glow from the lamp had burnished Tom’s shoulders as the silken fabric fell slowly, soundlessly away. How deliciously Tom’s I’d been in that moment.
This memory made me want to grab a time machine, ride it three and a half minutes into the past and not answer Jay’s call. But this was our case. The one I’d jumped on. Tom’s bare hand was lying quiet on my bare front. I picked it up and gently kissed it goodbye.
* * *
I stopped by the kitchen to apprise Otis of the outing. He said, “I know. Jay called me before he called you. You’re covered.”
“Thanks, Otis.” As I turned to go, I noticed someone, not anyone from our usual detail, sitting at the island.
Cup of Otis’s coffee. Thousand-yard stare—Holy Shadow Man!
Sitting at our kitchen island. In full daylight. As if he weren’t an enigma wrapped in my one million unanswered questions. Although I’d been trained to avert my eyes from his covertness, this morning I didn’t bother to pretend I wasn’t staring at him.
He looked to me like a well-toned black man with smooth-chiseled features, close-cut graying hair, and a semi-fierce expression. A skim coat of gray stubble on his jaw. He was the guy from a war movie, having his morning coffee and assessing opportunity and risk. Every minute of every day. A little older than Otis. A little fitter than anyone in Bratenahl this morning. Sleek, black pants and a standard-issue white T-shirt. Well-worn gray sweatshirt. “Navy” on the back.
Black and white and “Seal” all over.
In spite of the general intimidation of his bearing, our history of him always disappearing, and me not having the nerve to follow up, I was no way backing off this time. I was going to look right at him. Talk to him too.
“You’re back. Or still here. Whatever. I’m glad.”
“I’m your semi-permanent fixture.”
“Does that mean we’ll see more of you?” I was picturing pizza on the deck on the 4th of July. Eggnog at Christmas. Shadow Man carving our turkey—
“Not really. It means I’m on your payroll. If Otis needs me, I’m here.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah. We are. We’re okay.”
He stood up. One smooth motion, as if his body was the servant of his indomitable will. He could even set a coffee mug down with authority. “Those are excellent boots, Alice Jane,” he said.
Gone again.
* * *
Ten minutes later I climbed into Jay’s nondescript van. I assumed the weather was too barbaric for his insouciantly decorated bug. I was wearing my favorite jeans, black turtleneck, and the LL Bean jacket I’d copycatted off Lisa Cole before we were deadly enemies for eighteen hours and then back to friends again. It was rated “warmest” and “to –35 degrees.” Lisa’s coat was a TV reporter’s professional khaki. Mine was the unruly “Cayenne.” The color that broadcasts “Sizzlin’!” I’d described it to Tom, as I kissed him goodbye. He appreciated knowing my coat was trying to hit on him, but he’d given up on me for now.
My excellent boots were plenty expensive enough. $598 at Saks, and there was sales tax too. Not as overpriced as “Ms. Mad-Spiked,” but these were leather combat boots. Born to kick butt. Not what Jay had envisioned, I didn’t think. But Shadow Man said they were excellent. He understood the lay of the land. I climbed in and scooped up the sample books occupying my seat.
“And the look you’re going for is?”
“Take no prisoners.”
He nodded. “Shawl didn’t work for you?”
“Too big.”
Too still smoldering.
“I need to be me, Jay. I distress my jeans by eating Otis’s waffles.”
“Always be you, Allie. The boots are awesome. ‘Kick-ass’ comes to mind. Literally.”
Yup. That’s the consensus.
The gate house was empty. Since the thirties, from the look of it. We called the mansion. Monica answered, very crisp. Buzzed us through.
If I thought I was about to get a good look at the approach to the house, I was wrong. With the warming earth, the no-longer-freezing water temps, the melting snow, and the dying wind, conditions had hit the mysterious dew point for one of Lake Erie’s “localized weather events.” Visibility on the boulevard was fine. By the time Jay got us half-way down the long, shrub-lined drive, I couldn’t make out the shrubs anymore. Patricia’s mansion was up to its venerable ass in dense fog.
Jay parked as close to the front steps as he could without scraping off a fender. Through the soupy mist I could barely make out the baronial front door and the feeble glow of the bronzed light fixture above it.
If this were an airport, it would be closed by now.
Alrighty.
I hopped out with our sample books. As I turned to nudge my door shut, a slight movement in the way back of the van snagged my attention. Adam was wedged in there. He wiggled his fingers at me. Thank you, Otis Johnson. My phone vibrated and a text message from Adam with a number in it popped up. “I’ll be out here. Call me if anything seems off.”
Chapter Forty-One
“Off?” As in spooky? Freaky? Cold as an icy finger on the back of my neck? Check. Check. Check.
Everything about the place felt off. I thought it had probably been at least slightly out of sorts since October of 1929. Monica, our reliable off-duty police
officer, sensibly layered in warm sweaters, could have played the role of The Homicidal Housekeeper in that environment. Dour and dangerous. Her hair was dark and her eyes were too, but then she smiled and the friendly version snuck out. She was waiting for Jay and me in the hand-carved entry hall, on a large expensive rug. The rug reminded me of our former mansion. Last summer I couldn’t imagine anything over-the-top fancier than that place. Clearly a failure of my newbie-riche imagination.
Wooden nymphs peered at us from a swirling pattern of vines and flowers carved out of the polished columns like they were hoping they’d found the escape route. Their expressions were sad but composed. Maybe they were waiting for someone to break an evil spell and set them free.
Sorry, ladies.
The grand staircase, also embellished up the wazoo, loomed behind Monica. Foggy daylight illuminated a giant many-paned stained-glass window at the top of the stairs. Barely enough to bring out the reds in a pattern that appeared to feature bloodstains.
Monica responded to the look on my face. “It’s not this bad all the time. The fog—”
“Yeah. And the low wattage. And the chill. And the eyes of those ladies in the carvings. Is the furnace broken?”
“No. It’s going. Set to sixty-five and killing itself trying to get up that high. The heating guy showed up at the crack of dawn, and took a look, but he needed a part, so he left. He’s out there somewhere, I suppose. Stuck maybe.” She waved toward the blank whiteness pressing silently against the sidelights of the door. “I expect to die here.”
I was good with Monica. We were on the same semi-hysterical wavelength, but we had it contained. I had another thought: Heating guy?
I believed the heating guy was last seen drinking coffee in our kitchen. But then he didn’t really need to fix the furnace. He had other fish to fry.
“I’ll just keep my coat on, Monica. It’s rated for thirty-five below.”
I turned to Jay who was wearing the expression I could feel on my face. He and Monica and I were a matched set.
The Devil's Own Game Page 21
