by Jeannie Watt
“Not Ian?”
“Come on, Reggie.” Eden reached down and scooped up Brioche, who was still dancing at her feet. She cuddled the little dog close. “Is this the kind of thing Ian would do?”
“We didn’t think he’d do what he did with Vanessa, either.”
“Touché,” Eden said wearily, having already had that argument with herself. She stroked Brioche’s ears. Random act of vandalism. Scary, but unlikely to happen again…that was really easy to believe in her sister’s warm kitchen. How easy would it be to believe tomorrow, in her own house?
“Are the cops going to talk to him?”
“Maybe, maybe not. He said they’re short on manpower.”
Reggie took Eden by the arm and led her into the living room, where she maneuvered her onto the sofa and took a seat next to her. “You should stay here while we’re in France. I’ll feel better.”
“Actually, I might just get a big dog. That’s what the cop suggested.”
“You’re afraid of big dogs.”
“Well, only Fluffy, really. She kind of traumatized me. When you reach out to pet a dog named Fluffy, you don’t expect to be bitten.”
But she had been—fortunately, not badly enough to have to go to the emergency room. That was Justin’s thing. He was on a first-name basis with a couple of the doctors there. It’d been hell chasing their father down and getting a verbal for treatment when they were growing up. Finally, he’d started leaving a permission- to-treat note with Reggie and the problem had been solved.
“You could borrow Brioche while we’re gone.”
Eden’s shoulders slumped as reality set in. “I won’t be home enough to care for a dog. I’ll have to come up with something else. Like an alarm system or neighborhood watch.”
When Reggie reached out and hugged her, Eden let out a long shuddering breath and clung for a moment before easing away. She wasn’t a kid anymore. She was a woman who needed a bed for the night, and then she’d reevaluate the situation in the light of day.
And she might be a woman who needed to consult a security expert.
NICK BROUGHT GABE’S wallet back on laundry day—or rather laundry night. Three or four times a month, Nick showed up after work and helped Gabe haul his laundry to the coin washers in the basement. There was a laundry service for a cost, but so far Gabe had refused. It gave him a good excuse to spend an evening with Nick, who occasionally brought his own laundry.
“You found it,” Gabe said after Nick pulled the wallet out of his jacket pocket and set it on the table.
“Yeah,” Nick said, fixing him with the deadeye. “Aren’t you going to ask where?”
Gabe cleared his throat and reminded himself which one of them was the respected elder. “Where?” Acting had never been his forte, so he usually relied on grumpiness to get him through dicey situations.
“Apparently it was in a drawer.”
Gabe forced his forehead to wrinkle in surprise. “A drawer? How in the hell…? I put it on the counter. Lenny or someone must have…”
Nick’s mouth tightened briefly, telling Gabe that he wasn’t buying the Lenny defense.
“Or I may have put it there. Just to get it out of the way. I’m old. My memory…”
“Bull,” was all Nick said, and then he walked over to the laundry duffels Gabe had packed that afternoon, and hefted one in each hand.
They left the apartment and walked to the service elevator in silence. Down they went, and after the door slid open directly into the laundry facility, Nick led the way to the nearest washer and lifted the lid.
And still he didn’t say anything.
“What’s eating you?” Gabe asked. Was Nick ticked because of the wallet? If so then he needed to come right out and say it. But he didn’t, so Gabe decided to help him along. Clear the air. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “What’s bugging you? Grandfather, woman or job?”
He was hoping for woman, but suspected grandfather.
“It’s a case.”
Job. Hmm. “Drugs?” Of course it was drugs, since Nick was on that task force. But he was trying to initiate a conversation.
“Missing C.I., actually.”
Different kettle of fish, that. Gabe gave a small shrug. “Those guys go to ground all the time.”
Nick started dumping the bag of dark clothes into the washer while Gabe did the same with the light. His movements were slower than Nick’s, but he got the job done. “Not this one. He…it’s hard to explain. He was enough of a criminal that guys in the trade trusted him, but—” Nick shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say “—he wanted more out of the job than money.”
“What could he have gotten out of snitching?”
“He wanted to become an undercover cop.” Nick glanced over at Gabe then. “He was saving his money to go to POST training to become a real cop. It wouldn’t have happened, of course. Not with his background, but the kid had a goal. And he was likeable.”
“You sure he wasn’t playing you?” Confidential informants got their money and then often spent it on drugs—perpetuating the very thing that the police were trying to take down with the information the C.I.s sold them.
“Yeah.” Nick poured in some soap. “He was slick, but had this odd kind of sincerity about him. I liked him, and I don’t usually warm up to those guys.” Gabe took the box of soap from him. “He disappeared just before a big meeting that was going to help us break a case. Daphne isn’t taking it well.”
“Daphne doesn’t take anything well.” For a brief period of time, Gabe had tried to encourage Nick to see Daphne as something other than a partner, hoping to get his grandson out of his funk, but after a few hours in her company, he decided that Daphne was too much of a scary pain in the ass to have as a granddaughter-in-law. Or even to momentarily distract Nick.
Besides, it would have ruined a decent professional partnership. She and Nick worked well together.
“No. I mean she’s kind of broken up about it.” Nick fished change out of his pocket to feed the machine and dumped it on top of the washing machine.
“Ten to one the kid got scared and skipped.” Gabe reached out to take a few quarters.
“Damn, I hope so.” Nick actually sounded like he was kind of broken up about it, too.
“Must be a special kid,” Gabe muttered, even though he still didn’t believe for one moment that a snitch could be anyone special. He’d yet to meet one that wasn’t more than willing to play the ends against the middle whenever and wherever possible.
“Yeah,” Nick said.
“Let me know how this all works out,” Gabe said as they started back to the elevator to go upstairs and watch TV while the clothes washed.
“Sure thing, and in return, I have one favor to ask of you.”
“What’s that?”
“Next time we go somewhere, leave your wallet in the strong box. Okay?”
PATTY KNEW SOMETHING was up, but Eden hadn’t told her what had happened, thinking that at least one of them should be focused on the job at hand and not wondering if the window had yet to be replaced in her house, and how she was going to find the nerve to sleep there tonight. Reggie had offered her the spare room for as long as she needed, and Eden was thinking about taking her up on it for at least another couple nights.
“Lovely luncheon,” Patty said with deep satisfaction after the last guest had left and they began gathering linens, counting napkins, packing leftover food into coolers. “And I’ll have dinner tonight.” Eden always let Patty take home any unserved portions. “I was wondering…could I take home enough of this lasagna for two?” She spoke without looking at Eden.
“Sure.” There was only enough left for two. “Company tonight?” To Eden’s amazement, Patty blushed. “A date?”
“No, no, no,” she assured her. “Just company.”
All the same, company meant that Patty currently had a fuller social life than Eden did.
“Certainly. Take the lasagna. There
’s a couple extra crème brûlées, too. Just bring the dishes back.” As if Patty wouldn’t.
“Oh, that’s not necessary....” She smiled, but to herself, not at Eden. “All right. Thank you.”
Interesting, Eden thought as she dragged a cooler to the van, where Justin had just packed the display boxes.
“You know I’m going over to your place before I start work tonight,” he said.
“I didn’t know you had to work,” Eden answered in an undertone.
“Not at the Lake. Just a quick birthday cake.”
“How quick?”
“Sheet cake. A few roses. Some lettering.”
“Why don’t they go to a bakery?”
“Hey,” Justin said with mock disgust. “Because I do it better…and charge a lot more. We all know that the more you spend, the better the quality.”
“Well, that works, because I have my cooking lesson tonight. You can escort me home afterward and then go back to your baking.”
“Oh, yeah. The geezers.”
“Do you mean the elderly gentlemen?”
“That is exactly what I mean,” Justin said, smiling for the first time since he’d heard about the rock.
Once back at the kitchen they unpacked the van, and then, with less persuasion than usual, Patty allowed herself to be sent home with her containers of food. Justin did a quick inventory of the fridge contents and realized he was out of mint and raspberries for his umpteenth eleventh-hour cake.
“Do you need anything?” he asked as he headed out to Whole Foods.
“Nope. Lois is bringing the ingredients and the students.” Most of them, anyway. Eden wondered if Nick and Marcus were going to show up to chaperone their grandfathers again. “All I have to do is teach them how to make chili.”
“Good luck with that,” Justin said.
“It’s fun. You’ll be surprised.”
“No, I won’t,” he said. “Because I’m not coming out of my lair while they’re here.”
JUSTIN TREMONT’S BLUE Firebird was parked in front of the catering kitchen when Nick arrived for the class. He gave the sports car a quick once-over as he locked his vehicle, admiring the lines.
Purchased with drug money? Or financed to the hilt?
If all went well, he’d soon have the answer to that question.
Snooping around in financial records was not sanctioned in any way, shape or form, but getting a records search warrant was nigh impossible when the only tie was that Tremont worked for a hotel that had drug traffic, and he was part owner in a small business.
Small businesses were an excellent way to launder dirty money and, to Nick’s way of thinking, reason enough to look at the records. The judge he’d talked to informally disagreed. He told Nick it was not only a stretch, it was a huge stretch. There was no law against working a job and having a business.
Lois was helping Lenny out of the van when Nick walked around the rear end to where his grandfather was waiting.
“Did you see that car?” Gabe asked.
“Hard to miss, since I parked next to it,” Nick replied.
“I always wanted one of those.”
Well, if a Firebird came up in a police seizure auction, Nick would buy it for him—even if he couldn’t drive it legally. “Why didn’t you get one?”
“The women in my life said no. Said I’d drive too fast.”
“Would you?”
Gabe snorted in response as Lois led the way to the door. She tried to hold it open, but Lenny took over for her.
Nick’s gaze went to Eden the instant he walked into the kitchen, even though he’d told himself that he was going to ignore her as much as possible during the lesson so as not to encourage Gabe. There was simply something about her that drew the eye. And made it hold.
She smiled at the group in general as they traipsed in, and Nick could almost hear the old guys give a collective sigh, but something about her smile seemed more forced than last week.
Maybe teaching old guys was harder than she’d thought it would be. Maybe she hadn’t expected to be the subject of an impromptu geriatric matchmaking scheme.
Eden had just stepped up to the area where she gave her opening talk when the door opened again and Marcus came in. He quickly made his way to the far side of the group—far away from Nick, who smiled to himself. Grimly. He was going to find out exactly what Marcus was up to, and put a stop to it.
“Today we’re making chili,” Eden said, and everyone perked up.
Paul raised his hand. “What about heartburn?”
“We’re keeping the spice low and the fat lower. The fat is more of an enemy than spice. You guys do not have to give up tasty food because of heartburn.”
Lois held up her hands as all eyes turned her way. “I’ll inform the cook,” she said.
Nick knew that many of these men fended for themselves, using canned food because the cafeteria “slop” was so bland.
“First of all,” Eden continued, “you have to get a decent cut of meat. Nothing less than ground sirloin, which is low in fat. If your budget is tight, use less meat and more beans....”
Eden was smiling as she spoke, doing a decent job of captivating the older guys, but Nick couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
During the last lesson, she’d exuded personality. Tonight she seemed tense, almost walled off. But she kept smiling. And his grandfather and cronies kept smiling back as she extolled the virtue of prechopped onion and garlic, and the differences in canned tomatoes—crushed, diced and whole.
Lois had brought all the ingredients, which were divided into individual plastic containers that two people would share. Gabe pulled the lid off their container and started unloading ground sirloin, onions, garlic, tomatoes. The very stuff Eden had talked about. Nick got the ground meat out and opened the package.
“She said to cook the onion first,” Gabe snapped, taking out the plastic bag of chopped onion. “Weren’t you listening?”
“I’m just opening it.”
“Why aren’t we cutting the onion?” Gabe muttered as he set the bag on the counter and then went to the stove he was sharing with Paul and Hal. Tremont had two large stoves and there was room for two teams of two at each. Nick was glad that Marcus and Lenny were at the other stove.
“Ask Eden or Lois,” Nick suggested, eyeing the doors on the other side of the room. Faint music came out of one—Justin Tremont working, maybe? The other door was open and a computer was clearly visible. Nick wouldn’t be doing much during lessons with his target in such clear view. Now it became a matter of how to get back into the building after the lesson was over and Justin gone.
Nick looked back at the stove in time to see Gabe pour about half a gallon of oil into the pan to fry the onions. “Oops,” his grandfather said.
“Gabe…” Lois came out of nowhere, shaking her head. “She said two tablespoons. That’s two cups.”
Gabe gave a small, unrepentant snort.
“Uh, yeah.” Nick reached for the handle and sloppily poured oil back in the bottle, glad the pan wasn’t hot. Otherwise they would have had to deep-fry their onions.
The pan went back on the stove, and once the oil was heated, Gabe dumped the premeasured onions in and started stirring while Eden called directions from the other stove, where she was demonstrating with Lenny’s pan. Marcus was studying her, but not the way he studied Daphne.
Lois stayed at Gabe and Nick’s stove, overseeing the browning process, while Eden stayed at the other. Nick kept an eye on her, wondering if the computer in the reception area was networked to the one in the office. That computer he could get to.
“When the meat is done, we’ll stir in the tomatoes,” Eden called.
“Hey,” Nick said to Gabe. “I need to get something out of my car. Be right back.”
“What?”
“My phone,” he said.
“What is it with you guys and your phones? Can’t you live for two hours without it?” Gabe held up the premeasure
d bag of chili powder. “There’s not much here,” he said to Lois in an accusing tone.
“It’s strong,” the woman said drily.
Nick left the kitchen for the dimly lit reception area. He could hear Justin’s music through the wall as he approached the computer. It was turned off. Eden had her hands full, but he wasn’t going to turn it on. He’d come back as soon as he figured out a way in.
He’d just turned away to head to the door, when Eden joined him. “Why aren’t you cooking?” she asked.
“I forgot my cell and I’m expecting a call.”
“I see. I’m here for the same reason.” She walked over to the computer desk and pulled open a drawer to retrieve a phone. He was damned glad he hadn’t touched the thing. “Company phone. I leave it with my brother when I go home for the night.”
“Does he get a lot of business calls after hours?” Nick asked dubiously.
“No. He turns his own cell off so he can concentrate. If my sister or I have an emergency and need him, then we can call this phone. That way he doesn’t have to stop what he’s doing and screen calls.” She came to stand next to Nick in the doorway.
“Clever.”
She smiled, and again he had the strong feeling that she was putting up a front. She was so different from the last time he’d seen her. “Is everything all right?”
She flashed a startled look up at him. “Excuse me?”
“You just seem…subdued.”
She glanced away from him and over to the men, who were completing their assigned tasks in the kitchen with a bit more enthusiasm than during the first lesson. More confidence, perhaps. Lois moved from group to group, encouraging. When Eden looked back at Nick, she said, “Actually, I was going to ask for a bit of advice before you left.”
“Security advice?” What had Marcus done now?
Her mouth flattened into a straight line. “Someone threw a rock through my window the day before yesterday.”
Nick pulled his hands out of his pockets and barely refrained from saying, “No shit?” Instead he asked, “Do you know who did it?”
Eden shook her head. “I think it might be time for a security system. In fact, my sister will give me no peace until I get one. Could you offer any suggestions?”
