Hidden Agemda (Kate Diamond Adventure)

by Leighann Dobbs

  Kate consoled herself that she wasn’t exactly impersonating an FBI agent. She didn’t plan to show a fake badge or announce herself as FBI, but she hoped Smirnoff’s memory of her previous business would be enough. And looking the part couldn’t hurt.

  She shoved her unruly curly hair into a tight bun at the back of her head in order to look more serious, then grabbed her keys and headed out to her Toyota Corolla.

  Smirnoff’s business was located in the heart of Boston just off Commonwealth Avenue. Parking in the city was problematic, so Kate parked in a public lot and walked.

  The leaves had started to fall from the few stately trees that lined the street and Kate listened to them crunch underfoot as she walked, inhaling the heavy smell of diesel that permeated the city. She listened to the sounds of the traffic and watched birds flitter around on the sidewalk grabbing tiny crumbs and seeds as she walked past a beauty salon, Asian take-out, and a pizza place before turning the corner into the alley that housed the nondescript dry cleaners where Smirnoff did business from the back room.

  The bell over the door sounded as Kate opened it and she stepped inside the dimly lit shop, closing the door on the warm sun. An elderly woman stood behind the desk.

  “I want to see Smirnoff,” Kate said in her most official voice.

  The woman raised a brow. “You need dry cleaning?”

  “No. I have other business.”

  The woman looked over her shoulder toward the back of the store uncertainly. “He’s not in.”

  Kate pressed her lips together—what if he really wasn’t in? Then she remembered a strange phrase Mason had used when they’d come here before—a code phrase.

  “I have a fur coat with a ketchup stain.”

  The woman’s eyes went wide and she nodded, then gestured for Kate to go around the desk and follow her out back. Kate followed, resisting the urge to shout “Yes!” and pump her fists in the air. The woman led her through a hallway, down a set of stairs and through two rooms before stopping in front of a door, which she tapped on three times.

  “Come in.”

  The woman opened the door for Kate then turned and left. Kate went in.

  The room was dark and smelled of chemicals. Just like she remembered. Smirnoff sat at a table with photos and plastic cases arranged in front of him, a series of machines—Kate assumed for making fake passports and licenses—sat next to him. His brow creased as he recognized her.

  “Again?” His voice was gruff with just a touch of Eastern European accent.

  Kate wasn’t sure if she should feel flattered that he’d remembered—nearly two years had passed since her previous visit.

  “Yep.” Kate stood with her legs shoulder-width apart, staring him straight in the eye. “I have some questions.”

  Smirnoff answered by raising his left brow a fraction of an inch and Kate took that to mean she should ask.

  “Does the name Jon Nguyen mean anything to you?”

  Smirnoff’s breath hitched, his eyes widening. “That’s very bad business, very bad.”

  Kate narrowed her eyes. “But you know the name? You made the identity for him?”

  Smirnoff slapped his palm on the table and pushed himself up out of the chair, his six-foot-ten frame looming over Kate, his four-foot wide shoulders blocking the light from the lone bulb that hung from the ceiling behind him. “You people said I’d be protected … that you wouldn’t hurt my business. How many times must I answer?”

  Kate hoped he couldn’t hear her heart thudding against her chest. She knew he must have been talking about when they’d come before. Mason had assured him they wouldn’t let anyone know he’d given them up and they’d make sure the cops didn’t shut him down.

  She drew herself up to her full height, stepped forward, her face inches from his face … well, his chest, actually. She hoped her assumed FBI employment and fake confidence was scaring him because he sure as heck was scaring her.

  “Who did you make the Nguyen identity for? We won’t give you away.” Kate crossed her fingers behind her back. The FBI wouldn’t, would they?

  Smirnoff puffed out his cheeks, the smell of stale cigarettes and egg salad wafted past Kate making her nose wrinkle. He ran his hands through the curly ginger colored hair on top of his head.

  “I tell you, I don’t know the man’s name. I made him an excellent disguise. He was a young man when he started, and I made him old,” Smirnoff said proudly.

  “But you don’t know his name?”

  Smirnoff snorted. “In this business, you don’t ask for names.”

  Kate wasn’t about to give up. “What do you know about him? Where does he live? Can you describe him?”

  Smirnoff narrowed his eyes at her. “Well, I do have the picture.”

  “Picture? Let me see it.” Kate held her hand out and waited while Smirnoff pulled a squeaky drawer out from an old metal file cabinet. He thumbed through to a folder, opened it and pulled out a photo, which he handed to Kate.

  Kate stared at it. She didn’t recognize him, but at least she had something concrete to go on.

  “Thanks.” She turned and walked to the door.

  “It’s the same photo I gave to the other guy yesterday,” Smirnoff called after her.

  Kate froze in her tracks, her hand on the knob. She turned back around slowly, her eyebrows jamming together in confusion. “Other guy?”

  “Your partner.” Smirnoff waved his hand in the air. “Are you people stupid? Typical government … one side doesn’t know what the other is doing.”

  “Oh right. My partner. Yep. He was here yesterday?” Kate asked.

  Smirnoff nodded, an exasperated look on his face.

  Well, it’s good that now we both have a copy.” Kate turned back around, opened the door and ran for her car.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate gnawed on her bottom lip as she maneuvered her car through the congested Boston traffic.

  Partner?

  Was Smirnoff talking about Mason? He must have been. Ace Mason was the only person Kate had ever gone to see Smirnoff with. But why would the FBI detective be interested in Jon Nguyen?

  Surely, the FBI couldn’t be on the trail of the stolen ruby this fast—there was no way they could possibly know about what happened at the ice hotel. Kate felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Was she was losing her touch and the FBI was catching up to her on the trail of the ruby thief, or was something else going on that she didn’t know about?

  Either way she was determined to beat them and recover the ruby first … she had to show Max, the FBI and Ace Mason that she was as good … no, better … than they were.

  She whipped her car into the underground garage at the Ritzholdt Museum, pulled into her assigned parking spot and jumped out making a beeline for Gideon’s lab.

  Gideon was sitting in the middle of the lab, hunched over a beaker full of glowing purple liquid. Kate approached with caution.

  “Knock, knock.” She tapped on the corner of one of the tables. Daisy raised her head and let out an unenthusiastic woof.

  Gideon held his hand up and muttered something that sounded like, “Just a minute.”

  Kate took a seat and stared at the photo. Smirnoff had done a good job with the disguise. She never would have guessed the guy in the photo was the old man she’d met at the ice hotel, or that the old man had even been wearing a disguise. Finally, she heard the squeak of Gideon’s chair as he turned around to face her.

  “Sorry, I had to make sure I timed the additions of the ingredients precisely in order for the potion to come out right,” He said.

  “Potion?” Kate stared at the purple liquid. “What’s it do?”

  “Oh, it’s just a test.” Gideon waved dismissively in the direction of the potion. “What brings you here?”

  Kate tore her eyes from the glowing beaker, and held the picture out. “I need you to run this through the system and come up with a name.”

  Gideon took the photo. “Does he have s
omething to do with the ruby?”

  “I think so.” Kate told him how she had visited Smirnoff after her search for Nguyen came up empty. “Apparently, the FBI was there looking for this guy, too.”

  Gideon turned from the scanner where he was scanning the photo. “Really? Why would they be there?”

  “That’s what I was wondering. You don’t think they know about the ruby heist at the ice hotel, do you?”

  Gideon laughed. “No way. I don’t see how they could possibly know it was even stolen from there.” His face twisted into a scowl. “Unless they have someone on the inside here.”

  Kate’s heart pinched, she leaned toward him, lowering her voice even though no one else was in the lab. “Do you think someone here could be spying for them? Who?” Kate asked, her thoughts immediately turning to Mercedes LaChance.

  “Well, we are supposed to be sharing this information with them. We’re working together on this,” Gideon pointed out.

  Kate sighed. It was true, she’d forgotten the FBI was supposed to be tracking down the ruby and Kate was actually the one who was working on it under the radar. “But still, it seems like awfully fast work for them to have visited him yesterday,” Kate said.

  “True. We barely found out about it ourselves yesterday.” Gideon made a face. “And we both know how slow they are to react to information.”

  Kate felt a tingle of premonition dance up her spine. “I can’t help but feel there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

  Gideon moved over to his computer and tapped on the keyboard. “I’ll put a call into Max to see if he’s heard anything more about the ice hotel incident.”

  Kate’s heartbeat picked up at the mention of Max’s name and she leaped up out of her chair. “We should go up there right now.”

  Gideon looked up at her. “He’s in Belgium.”

  “Oh.” Kate deflated back into her seat.

  “I’m texting him right now. He’ll call when he can,” Gideon said.

  “Meanwhile, we just sit and wait for your program?” Kate wasn’t very good at sitting and waiting. “How long does it take?”

  Gideon shrugged. “Depends on how far it has to look. We might get lucky and it will find a match early or it could take hours.”

  Kate tapped her fingernail on the table. Hours? She didn’t know if she could wait hours.

  “Maybe I should go to my office and finish up some paperwork.” She pushed herself up from the chair, and started toward the door just as it whooshed open, revealing Mercedes LaChance on the other side. The two women sized each other up for a few uncomfortable seconds.

  Kate narrowed her eyes at Mercedes. “Have you been talking to the FBI?”

  “Oh, you mean that hunky Ace Mason?” Mercedes plastered a look of wide-eyed innocence on her face.

  Kate’s stomach twinged with something that felt an awful lot like jealousy. No, it couldn’t be jealousy … probably just the bean burrito she’d grabbed before she went to Smirnoff’s.

  “I am the museum liaison, so I talk to him a lot. But not recently.” Mercedes returned her narrow-eyed glare. “They’re on our side, you know.”

  “Right, I know that,” Kate said. “But you didn’t talk to them yesterday or tell them about the ruby?”

  “You mean that you stole a fake?” Mercedes slid her gaze over to the big red crystal that sat in the middle of the table.

  Kate flushed with anger—the small brunette sure did have a way of getting to her.

  Mercedes looked back to Kate, her lips curled in a smile, her eyes warmed, and for a split second, Kate thought the warmth might be genuine.

  “You don’t need to get touchy about it.” Mercedes laughed lightly and touched Kate on the arm in an almost friendly gesture. “There’s no way you could have known. And, no, I haven’t told the FBI yet.” She turned a quizzical eye to Gideon. “Should I hold off on telling them?”

  Gideon shrugged and looked at Kate.

  “I guess not, I mean we are supposed to be working with them.” Kate ground her teeth together. She had to share the information with them but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going to do all the work and the FBI would swoop in at the last minute and take all the credit.

  “Were you going somewhere?” Mercedes bent down to pet Daisy, who, Kate noticed grudgingly, had trotted over to greet her.

  Kate glared at the dog. Traitor. Then she looked back over at Mercedes who was staring up at her with her doe-brown eyes.

  “I was just goin—”

  Ding!

  “It found something.” Gideon bent over the computer, tapping on the keyboard.

  Kate rushed to his side, elbowing Mercedes out of the way to get closer to the computer whose screen showed the picture Kate had given Gideon side by side with a license. The man in the license was an exact match. Caleb Summers.

  “Caleb Summers,” Kate said. “Does that name ring a bell?”

  “No.” Gideon and Mercedes replied in unison.

  Kate made a face. “Let’s look through the database of gem thieves and con men. We need to find out just who he is and why he stole the ruby and, more importantly, where we can go to get it back.”

  Gideon, Kate and, much to Kate’s dismay, Mercedes, spent the next hour huddled over the computer. Daisy lay quietly on the floor at their feet. They searched every database and case file for the name Caleb Summers but came up empty.

  “I don’t get it.” Kate scrubbed her fingers through her hair. “How could an unknown pull off a heist like that? He doesn’t seem to have any experience or knowledge … unless he’s been very good at keeping his activities hidden.”

  “Maybe someone hired him,” Mercedes said.

  Gideon’s face lit up. “Of course! Why didn’t we think of that before?”

  Yeah, why didn’t we? Kate wondered as she watched Mercedes fold her arms over her chest with a satisfied smirk.

  “I’ll check his financials. If someone hired him, he might have had some unusual activity in his bank account,” Gideon said as he tapped away on the computer.

  Kate slid over to one of the other computers and started her own search into the background of Caleb Summers.

  “I can’t find anything unusual about him,” Kate said about twenty minutes later. “He’s just a struggling actor.”

  “Struggling?” Gideon’s forehead pleated as he stared at his computer.

  “That’s what it says here.” Kate pointed to her monitor.

  “Oh, really?” Gideon pointed to his own monitor. “Then why does he have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his bank account?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The money that appeared in Caleb Summers’ bank account had been a cash deposit. There was no way for Gideon to trace it, so Kate decided to go straight to the horse’s mouth. He lived in one of the less affluent sections of Boston, his twelve story high-rise apartment building loomed over Kate as she weaved her way around a child’s plastic big-wheel that had been left carelessly in the walkway.

  The main door to the building was propped open with a brick so Kate didn’t need to wait to be buzzed in, which was fine with her. Somehow, she felt like she’d have a better chance of actually talking to Summers if he didn’t have advance notice of her visit.

  The elevator was broken, so she walked up to the fifth floor. The stairway was dirty, the air heavy with the spicy aroma of dozens of tenants’ meals, the walls dotted with spurts of amateur graffiti. Kate was glad she brought her gun and a bottle of hand sanitizer.

  She emerged on the fifth floor and stopped to suck in some air, promised herself that she’d spend more time at the gym, then proceeded down the threadbare carpeting to apartment 512.

  Kate knocked and then cocked her ear toward the door to listen for movement inside. She didn’t hear any, so she knocked louder.

  “Mr. Summers?” She yelled through the door.

  No answer.

  She rapped her knuckles as hard as she could, but still no sounds from
inside and no one came to the door. Kate’s stomach sank—it appeared as if Caleb Summers wasn’t home, but she wasn’t one to waste a trip and she figured she might still find some answers inside his apartment.

  Kate glanced at the hallway on either side of her. It was empty, though surely someone must have heard her knocking and yelling—the walls were thin and she could hear muffled sounds of children crying and adults yelling. But no one came out to see why she was knocking so loudly, which was good. Kate didn’t need nosey neighbors interrupting her.

  She pulled her leather lock-pick case out of her coat pocket and zipped it open. She bent down to inspect the type of lock and select a tool from the kit. Pulling off her leather glove so she could feel the tool more easily, she inserted the pick into the keyhole and worked it back and forth, her heart jolting when one of the apartment doors on the other side of the hall was ripped open.

  Kate palmed the lock pick and stood back as if she was waiting for someone to answer the door. A short, dark-haired woman pulled a toddler down the hallway.

  “I don’t think he’s home,” she said as she brushed past Kate.

  “Oh, really?”

  “He said something about a trip,” She called over her shoulder. “I’ve been taking in his newspaper.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Kate called out as the woman disappeared into the stairwell.

  A trip?

  That could make it difficult to track him down. But it would give her more time to search his apartment. Kate put the pick back in, jiggled it around until she felt the satisfying click of the lock releasing, then opened the door and slipped in.

  Summers’ apartment was sparse, decorated with second-hand furniture and crates, plus one whopping sixty-inch big screen TV. Exactly what you might expect from a struggling actor who hadn’t had time to spend the extra hundred grand in his bank account yet.