Milo took the glass of cold white wine, though he was normally a Coke man. “Thanks. Um…can I help with anything?”
Ellie pushed him onto a stool. “You are so cute. Did I ever tell you that? I told Zaffer. Don’t do a thing. Just sit there and talk to me.”
The bottle of wine was half-empty, and Milo could tell where it had gone. “Okay.”
He watched her flit around the kitchen, lifting lids, peering into ovens. A tray of rolls waited to go in. Pillsbury crescent, his favorite. On top of the refrigerator he spied a chocolate cake on a glass plate, with white birthday candles just visible. She’d told Zaffer he was cute? You’d think a friend would pass that news along.
Ellie picked up a chef’s knife and started whacking celery on a cutting board, and he tensed. When no bloody fingers went flying, he sat back.
“So Milo, tell me.” She pointed the knife at him. “What do you eat at your house when you have company meals?”
Who’d have guessed a longer skirt could be more alluring than something thigh-high? “Pot roast, I guess. Macaroni and cheese. My Aunt Grace is the cook of the family, and my cousins. My mom’s more of an assembler.”
“Grace—is that your Uncle Paulie’s wife? So you’ve got cousins, too! You’re lucky, you know? All that family so close.”
Milo sipped his wine. He thought about the weeks after the funeral, all the visits from his aunt and cousins, and the neighbors, too, popping in with food, running errands. He supposed that from some angles, the Shoemakers were lucky. In a “Thank God your mother wasn’t in the car, too” way.
“I have an aunt in Pittsburgh, but we don’t see her much. I always wanted a big family. I must have read Cheaper by the Dozen ten times when I was little,” Ellie was saying.
Milo let her pour him another glass of wine so she wouldn’t have to drink it all herself. It was extraordinarily pleasant sitting here, with Ellie chattering and swishing around in that apron. Like a scene from Lassie, if Timmy’s mother had been a French maid. Of course, after Alf Farnon heard his number one exec was robbing him blind, this festive atmosphere would vanish faster than the wine in that bottle. Milo decided to wait for his private talk with Farnon until after dinner—for Ellie’s sake. It would be a pity to waste all that food.
The oven timer went off. Ellie took the roast out. Milo’s stomach rumbled.
“So tell me what’s happening with Pearce,” she said. “Has Zaffer checked those web sites where you can track down people’s finances? He said he was going to.”
“Not yet. We’re—”
The cell phone on the counter rang. She snatched it up. “That’s Daddy.”
It occurred to Milo that in the six weeks he’d worked at Wolverine, he had never seen Alf Farnon and his daughter together. Dinner should be interesting on several levels.
Her voice was rising. “But I’ve been cooking all day!.. you promised, you said…Lisa! Who the hell is Lisa?”
If there was any dinner. Milo turned and examined the cookbooks on the shelf behind him as though he’d come for that purpose. The American Heart Association had been mighty busy on the publishing front.
“So bring her! And guess who else is…Oh. Well. If it’s ‘really important’…don’t I sound like I understand? Happy—”
Milo turned back. Ellie was staring at her phone. “…goddamn birthday.” She untied her apron and dropped it on the floor. Stepped on it. “Board meeting,” she said. “It’ll go late.”
“Ellie, listen, Zaffer’s crazy about beef, let’s call him and—”
“He. Promised.” She swept the cutting board off the counter. Bang. Celery cubes hit Milo’s shoes. “He always does this and I’m sick of it. Sick of it!”
She grabbed the chef’s knife and hurled it. Not at him—toward the front of the house. He heard a dull thwack, and craned forward on his stool to peer down the hall. The knife handle quivered in the oak front door at eye-level, an inch of steel buried in the wood. If she’d aimed it on purpose it would have been a hell of a throw.
Ellie stood stock-still, her eyes huge, possibly sobered by the fate of the door. Milo moved his wineglass to safety. He turned off the ovens and the burners on the stove. Then he took her by the hand. “Stop it. Come sit down.”
She followed him docilely into the living room. The CD had ended. He sat her on the squashy sectional sofa and sank down beside her, keeping her hands in his. A year ago such wildness would have sent him running. But he knew things now about grief and rage he hadn’t wanted to learn. Maybe there was some use to knowing them.
“It’s a bad week for him,” he said soothingly. “He’d have been here if he could.”
He might not have spoken. “He wanted a son. Did you know that? He didn’t want a girl. He wanted a son.”
“Shh. It’s okay.”
Then she was sobbing as though her heart would crack apart and Milo was rubbing her bare back and leaning closer, as long as he was there, to smell her hair, and though it was the hair of a girl crazed with sadness it smelled like heaven and felt better. He wasn’t sure who started the kiss but neither one stopped and he didn’t worry about it, in fact he did not think at all.
Until her hands unbuttoned his shirt. His hands slipped the black dress down over her shoulders.
“Hang on.” Milo sat back. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I did. Keep going.” She put his hands back where they’d been.
“But—” He let out a breath. Pulled away.
He was a fool. He’d thought he was above all this desire stuff, keeping his fantasies to himself, no sweat. Milo the Pure. But when it came down to it he was just like every other guy. Not that this felt like any other girl. This girl was better, she was the best he’d known, but…it was too soon. Wasn’t it? She wasn’t thinking straight. They should wait. Date first. He was going to be her father’s EA.
He opened his mouth to explain this. But Ellie’s steady gaze, as though she was steeling herself for another rejection, unnerved him. Milo knew about loss. What he didn’t know was how to inflict it. How could he tell this girl that not only didn’t her own father want her (and part of him knew she was right, Farnon had wanted a son), but that Milo Shoemaker, voluntary celibate, didn’t want her either?
When he did.
He told a lesser truth. “I don’t have any protection. You know. On me.”
If he’d thought this would bring things to a halt, he could just think again. Ellie’s guardedness fled. The bossy manner he secretly liked rushed back.
“You do so.” She unbuckled his belt. Pulled it out of the belt loops with one smooth motion and dropped it on the carpet. He should stand up right now, this instant, and make his excuses…. Ellie pushed him against the cushions and leaned into him.
“You’re the survival expert,” she murmured. “Save me.”
***
Chapter 18
Afterward, Milo drove around till it got dark and all the writers’ cars had left his street, then took a shower and climbed into his reassuringly single bed. The urgency to report a corporate cheat and probable killer to Alf Farnon had lessened just a tad since sleeping with the guy’s daughter. Milo had left Ellie to clean up the kitchen. She’d left him…weak.
The next morning he woke from a coma-like sleep which no dreams had disturbed. Just like that, he put Ellie out of his mind. Today he must stay focused. He must find Alf Farnon and tell him there was an enemy in their midst, but it had never been Tim Shoemaker.
As soon as he crossed the lobby, he realized that getting Farnon alone would be harder than getting Leslie to stop talking. It was the last day before a four-day holiday weekend. As he passed the cafeteria he saw Harry Reinfelder guiding two strangers in business suits to a table. Preparations for the fireworks affected everyone. Depending on whether their department would be visited by dignitaries that day, people were running around with tense, worried faces (Maintenance, Security, Sales) or expectant, “it’s a party” faces (everyone else). There was
to be a plant tour for the railcar award committee and the board of directors before the fireworks exhibition on Sunday night. Zaffer would miss it, to his chagrin, as he had to join his family at their cottage in Jackson for their annual Fourth of July party. But Milo planned to tell Harry he was available to earn double-time.
The morning crawled by. Milo ran bogus errands with no sign of his quarry. Today he used the elevators—Ellie never took them. The juice lady in the cafeteria said she’d seen Farnon earlier, so at least he was in the building. In Payroll, Leslie had them so busy collating reports and stuffing them into burgundy faux-suede binders that J’azzmin was forced to perform a twenty-minute repair to a fingernail. Milo watched the clock.
Around 11:30, J’azzmin and Amber departed—they never worked through lunch. Ellie came in as they left.
She had to step around a bucket and mop the janitor had left outside their entrance. She handed Leslie a large coffee and a lemon poppy seed muffin. “From HR,” she explained. “Big staff meeting.”
She gave Milo a teasing smile, and it was all he could do to keep his eyes on his adding machine. Focus. She perched herself on a file cabinet, clearly settling in for a visit. Leslie contemplated the muffin. Milo could tell she was torn between banishing Ellie or letting her waste some of Payroll’s precious time. She compromised by handing Ellie a hole-punch and a stack of reports.
“Hey, get this,” Ellie said as she punched. “Betty just asked me if my dad was going to run for Congress. I said what Congress, and she said, the U.S. Congress, of course. Like I’m the idiot. I said I really couldn’t comment. That ought to fan the flames.”
Milo sneaked a look at her. Last night’s tears were nowhere in evidence. Her sleeveless shirt of red, white, and blue stripes over the denim skirt showed as much sun-kissed skin as was legal this early in the day. She swung her feet and the gold anklet glinted.
“Your father would make a terrific congressman,” Leslie said staunchly, eating with one hand and pecking at her keyboard with the other. “Meanwhile, some of us have deadlines to meet, missy. Milo, heads up!” She threw something small toward his desk.
Ellie stuck out a hand but managed only to deflect it. The object sailed over Milo’s head and plopped with disastrous accuracy into the janitor’s bucket.
“Oops,” Ellie said.
Milo rolled up his sleeve and stuck his hand into the dirty water. His fingers closed on something hard and oblong. “What is it?” It had a sand and brown camouflage pattern. He’d seen this before.
“Just my flash drive with all of last year’s overtime records, that’s all,” Leslie said. “They wanted it upstairs twenty minutes ago and it’s too big to email. Oh, for Pete’s sake.” She tossed a roll of paper towels to Ellie, who tore one off for Milo.
“Um—you have copies of this, right, Leslie?” Milo said. “Because this might be ruined.”
He expected her normal panic, but she didn’t seem perturbed. “It’s supposed to be waterproof. Shockproof, too. Let’s take a look.”
He dried off the flash drive and handed it over. Leslie stuck it in her computer. A few clicks and rows of numbers popped up on the screen. “Good as new.” She laughed at Milo’s surprise. “Don’t you have one? Your dad got a couple the same day I did, he said you’d love it for—” her smile faded “—Christmas. Oh, dear. He must never have gotten a chan—”
Milo cut her off before she could tear up. “Leslie. Are you saying he had a waterproof flash drive on him the night he drowned?”
The gold anklet went still.
Leslie nervously patted her hair. “I don’t know about on him, but he might have. That day of the holiday party, that was the day we got these. From the tank guy.”
“What tank guy?” Milo asked.
Leslie looked from him to Ellie, who was all serious attention now, and decided they were genuinely interested. “The sales rep. He came to see Ed Boyle and the Executive Committee, only they were all stuck in Denver at that fire equipment conference on account of a blizzard. Dick—the sales rep—he’d driven in from Chicago just for this meeting and was getting snippy with Karen upstairs because he said someone should have called to cancel—which was perfectly true—and Karen called down here in a panic. Wanted your dad to pretend he had something to do with tanks. Well, you know your dad—anything to help. Tim tells her, sure, bring him down to the conference room.”
She was in full flow now, flattered by their attention, report deadlines forgotten. She took a sip of coffee. “He got Dick all smoothed down. Told him we were assistant controllers—as if!—and Ed Boyle would want us to learn all about the tanks and report back. It’s not like anyone was getting any work done anyway—kind of like today. People kept roaming around to see what the caterers were putting out. I made Amber bring us cookies, they had—”
Ellie cleared her throat. Skip the cookies.
“Anyway, Dick gave us his whole PowerPoint and I must say, they make some lovely tanks, you could send a truckload of terrorists straight to hell before they knew what hit them. We asked so many questions Dick probably thought we were going to recommend a new assembly line. That’s when he gave us these flash drives. Enough for the whole committee. Here, you take this one, Milo….” Leslie rummaged through a drawer and produced a camo flash drive still in its package.
She passed it and the now-dry one to Ellie, who inspected them both before giving them to Milo. He took them with a hand that shook slightly.
“Are you all right, Milo?” Leslie asked. “You look…I don’t know. Peculiar.”
“No more peculiar than usual.” Ellie slid from her perch.
Milo tossed the drive in the air and caught it. “While you two figure out how I look I’ll just run this upstairs. Unless you want Mr. Pearce down here fetching it himself.”
Flip-flops pattered behind him.
“Wait up!” Ellie dragged him into the stairwell. “Waterproof!”
“I heard.”
“What if it said who he was meeting that night? Was it with his things, do you know?”
Milo did know, that’s what he couldn’t get over. He’d had that flash drive, and his father’s laptop case, ever since they’d been fished out of the quarry. The laptop was as dead as its owner; he’d thrown it away. The camo flash drive had been in the laptop case, not in a package, and he’d assumed it was equally shot. Though he didn’t remember throwing it out. His mother had stuck the canvas carrying case in the hallway closet under the twins’ gloves and mufflers, where it lay forgotten until Zaffer’s backpack strap broke as he was leaving Milo’s house in April. This, Milo remembered. His mother had given Tim’s case to Zaffer.
Ellie pounced on his hesitation. “You do know. Where is it?”
“With Zaffer.”
She gave him a shove. “Well, call him.”
Bossy girl. Milo took out his phone and pressed Zaffer’s number as though hypnotized, Ellie’s gaze on him. It took four rings for Zaffer to pick up.
“Hey! Where were you last night?” Zaffer said at once. “I called you three times. What did Farnon say? What happens next?”
“I’m still working on it, it’s crazy around here. Listen—remember that laptop bag my mom gave you? With all the pockets. Was there a flash drive in it?”
He could hear Zaffer’s sisters yelling in the background. He’d forgotten about their cottage.
“Yeah, there was.”
“Where is it?”
“Still in the bag, I guess. But it won’t work if it was in the quarry all that time. I’m coming!” he shouted. “Sorry.”
“That drive was military-issue. Waterproof. Where’s the bag?”
Zaffer’s whistle came plainly through the phone. Ellie clutched Milo’s arm. “At the pawn shop. In my box of stuff. But my dad’s closing up early tonight. Hold on—Sid’ll be there in the morning. I’ll tell him to put it under the register, you can pick it up.” The background yelling cut off, as though Zaffer had stepped into a closet. “Shoe. Can anyone he
ar you?”
Milo pressed the phone close to his ear and turned toward the window. “No.”
“This might be what Pearce robbed your house for, you know?”
It might be what he’d killed for. “I know. I gotta go,” Milo said, and disconnected.
Ellie was skipping around the little landing, hugging herself. “It’s in Monroe. We could get it right now!”
“Except we’re at work.” He steeled himself. “Ellie, that was my dad’s drive, it could have personal stuff on it…you know. I want to look at it by myself.”
“Oh.” The flash of hurt passed at once. “Well, sure. But if it’s anything to do with Pearce, or work—you’ll tell me, right? You promised I could help.”
Had he promised that? Probably. Milo was having trouble remembering who knew what, and who shouldn’t know anything. He’d heard once that football players at Notre Dame slept in a monastery the night before games. Now he understood why.
“I’ll call you.” He turned, but she caught his elbow.
“Really?”
She didn’t mean just about the drive. Milo squeezed her hand, then bounded up the stairs. Focus.
Up on seven, Farnon’s secretary didn’t know where he was.
“He’s staying flexible,” Margaret said apologetically, “lots of visitors in town. Do you want me to call you when I see him, Milo?”
“That would be great.” Milo wrote his cell number down. Margaret and he got along well. In a way, he reflected, he was doing her a favor. Once he unmasked Pearce, Margaret wouldn’t have to work with the slimeball anymore. This thought emboldened him to ask for Alf Farnon’s cell phone number. She didn’t even blink, just gave it to him. Did she know Milo had been tapped to be her counterpart over at Wolverine Rail?
Unaccounted For Page 17
