Annie Seymour 01 - Sacred Cows

by Karen E. Olson

  “What time’s your flight?” Matt called across the street.

  She didn’t answer him, just opened the door and climbed in, giving Matt a little wave of her hand, sort of like the Queen Mother.

  “Jesus, Sarah, don’t go.” But his words were lost as she started the engine and took off.

  Matt turned back in the direction of Wooster Street. I pulled up from my crouch behind the stairs, uncertain whether to follow him or follow her.

  But as I emerged from my hiding spot, someone else made my decision for me.

  “You’re not getting away this time,” the rough voice whispered in my ear as he held my arms behind me and pushed me out onto the sidewalk. I felt something prick me just under my chin, and I tensed. He had a goddamned knife.

  I managed to catch his profile and recognized Nicholas Curtin. He must have been waiting here for me to come home. And here I was, offering myself to him on a silver platter. Shit.

  “So Albert fucked up and you have to take over?” I asked loudly, with much more bravado than I felt. I’d seen this guy’s eyes in the car, and I knew he was capable of much more than Albert.

  He stopped, and I almost fell over, but then felt myself being shoved into a car. But this one I knew. It was my mother’s Mercedes.

  “We’re not taking your car?” I asked as he pushed me across the seat, over the stick shift, and into the driver’s side.

  The door slammed, and the knife gleamed in his hand. “You didn’t even see me while you watched them, did you? Some reporter you are.”

  Jesus. He had a point. But it was no use crying over spilled milk now, I was seriously screwed and I had no clue how to get myself out of this. I glanced around the square and didn’t see anyone waiting to rescue me. Paula had told me to stay put, so no one knew I was driving my mother’s car, no one knew I’d decided to come home. They’d find me in a ditch somewhere, stabbed like Allison, and Dick Whitfield would get my job.

  “Start the car,” he ordered. I could feel the knife under my right ear.

  I started the car, I’d left the key in it, and eased away from the curb.

  I had to do something. I couldn’t just be a sitting duck and make this easy for him. Anger surged through me.

  Taking my chances, I leaned quickly to my left, away from the knife, slammed my foot onto the accelerator, twisted the steering wheel, and as the car lurched forward, the force of the movement pushed us both back into our seats. The knife skittered somewhere and I heard Nicholas Curtin yell, “You fucking bitch!”

  I didn’t take my foot off the accelerator, instead gave it even more gas.

  I heard the scraping of metal against sculpture as we skidded past the statue of Christopher Columbus and into the park, slamming headfirst into the Mooster Street cow. The airbags exploded and sucker-punched me, pushing me back into the seat, my face raw where the bag met my left eye and cheek.

  I sat, stunned, for what seemed an eternity but was only a second or two, before the door swung open and a glaring light blinded me.

  “Are you okay in there?” I heard a voice through the bullhorn. “This is the FBI.”

  So they were there. Someone punctured my airbag and I fell to the ground before being lifted back up. I saw Nicholas Curtin being pulled out of his side of the car. The spotlight made Nicholas’s face look like a comic book character, his eyes wide, his mouth open. In seconds, three FBI agents had dragged him off somewhere.

  “You okay?” Paula’s voice was heaven-sent.

  I bit back tears of relief. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” I felt my face.

  “You’ve got a serious burn on your cheek,” Paula said softly. “But at least that’s all.”

  I blinked at her. “How the hell did you get here? Didn’t you see him grab me?”

  Paula shook her head. “We were on the opposite side of the park, figuring out our strategy. I happened to glance across the park and saw him push you into the car. I wish it hadn’t gotten that far, I’m sorry.”

  I was sorry, too, but was just happy that they were there after all. “So you didn’t see Albert Webber?”

  Paula shook her head. “Did you?”

  “Only Curtin. But it’s funny, Sarah Lewis, you know, Melissa Peabody’s roommate, well, she was driving a white Toyota. Like the one I was in with Webber and Curtin.”

  “Could it have been the same car?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me. The other car had a dent in the passenger side, but I couldn’t see if this one did.”

  I was brushing dirt off the dreadful slacks and then realized what I was doing and stopped. “Sarah was with that guy who left me the note. They were on the sidewalk. I think they were the ones who attacked me that night.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I recognized their voices.”

  “Are you sure? Why would they attack you?”

  “Beats me.” I thought about my conversations with Sarah: First she’d been so reluctant to talk to me; then that day on the street she was actually eager to tell me how Melissa wanted out of the escort service. I’d seen her in a white Toyota before, too, and now she was driving it. But damn, I still couldn’t connect the dots.

  “There’s got to be something there,” I said after I filled Paula in.

  Paula took my arm. “Come on. Why don’t you let us figure it out? We need to concentrate on what happened at Sleeping Giant today, and what happened right now.”

  Another thought dawned on me. “How the hell am I going to explain to my mother that I crashed her car into a cow?”

  We stared at it. Pieces of cow sat on top of the hood of the Mercedes, which, while it did not suffer much front end damage because of its sturdy German craftmanship, was scratched all to hell. The head of the cow stared up at us from the ground, its pathetic pizzas invisible in the shadows.

  “You killed it,” Paula said softly, and I snickered a little, even though it wasn’t really funny.

  PAULA HAD A COUPLE of FBI agents check out my apartment before she took me up there. My laundry bag and purse were on the sofa. I rummaged through the purse, found the gun and my pepper spray. The money I had in my wallet was still there.

  “How did these get here?”

  Paula shook her head. “No idea.”

  But as she was answering, I saw the note on the kitchen table.

  Your mother called me. I brought your things back for you but am checking on some stuff so I can’t stick around. I’ll see you later. Vinny.

  “He’s got a crush on you,” Paula teased.

  “He’s got a fiancée.” But I couldn’t keep my face from growing hot, and Paula saw me blush.

  “Your mother told me about him.”

  Jesus, she might as well put up a fucking billboard on the Q bridge. “He’s engaged,” I repeated. “End of story.”

  The red eye on my answering machine was blinking, and I hit it to keep this conversation from going any further.

  “Sorry to have to break our date, Ms. Seymour, but I’m indisposed.” Mark Torrey’s voice echoed in my small apartment, and my fists clenched. “You shouldn’t have tricked Albert with those tapes, and I’m disappointed, of course, with the turn of events with Nicholas. But you can’t win them all, can you?”

  CHAPTER 24

  Are you okay?” Paula was asking.

  I turned to her and finally allowed myself to breathe. “How the hell does he know? This all just happened. How does he know? Where the fuck is he?”

  Paula went to my cupboard and found the brandy, poured me half a glass, thought better of it, and filled the glass even more. She handed it to me, and I took a deep swallow.

  She hadn’t said a word, and her eyebrows were furrowed together the way they get when she’s deep in thought. Finally she asked, “Besides Melissa’s roommate and her boyfriend and Nicholas, did you see anyone else out there tonight? Besides us, I mean.”

  “No.” I drank a little more of the brandy and felt a warm rush through my body. I wanted to get drunk and go to sl
eep for three days.

  But it didn’t seem like Paula thought that was a good idea because she kept talking. “Tell me again what happened when you saw Melissa’s roommate.”

  I took a deep breath and related everything I’d seen and heard.

  Paula shook her head. “I don’t think it sounds like anything except a lovers’ quarrel.”

  “But what if it was those two who mugged me that night?”

  “Are you sure, absolutely sure that it was?”

  I closed my eyes and thought about it, but now that I couldn’t hear their voices, I just wasn’t as sure. Maybe I wanted it to be them, maybe my ears had been playing tricks on me. I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know.”

  “Listen, I need to get back to the office. It’s going to be a long night with Nicholas Curtin. I hope he’ll be able to point us in Torrey’s direction.” She glanced at my answering machine. “I need to take that tape. We might be able to find something on it that could help us.”

  I nodded and watched her pull the tape out. “If you get another call, call me on my cell.” She patted the phone where it sat clipped to her belt. “Anytime,” she added as she opened the door. “Oh, by the way,” she said, pausing, “I’ll be here at eight-thirty to take you to the bank to get Hickey’s tapes.”

  I glanced at the clock. Nine P.M. How had it gotten so late? I nodded. “Sure, okay.”

  “I’ll have a cop downstairs all night,” she added, like it was an afterthought but I knew better. “Just in case.”

  Because Albert was still out there and I could still be in danger. She didn’t have to spell it out for me. But thinking about the cop, I wondered where Tom was.

  And thinking about Tom made me realize I didn’t want to be alone. After Paula left, I locked the deadbolt and put the chain on the door, turning off the bright overhead light and keeping on the smaller lamp on the end table. I was almost done with the brandy and was about to get a refill when the buzzer made me jump about fifteen feet.

  I glanced out the window and saw a familiar figure on the stoop. I pushed the button to let him in and was just unlocking the door when he got to the landing.

  “Jesus, you look like hell,” Vinny said when he walked in.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I growled. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, you don’t get to stay.” Despite my tone, he must have seen how relieved I was to see him.

  Vinny put his fingers under my chin and lifted my face toward him. “You okay?” he asked softly.

  I didn’t want to do it, but the tears spilled down my cheeks before I could stop them, and he pulled me to him, his arms around me. I felt his lips on my hair, and I lifted my face to kiss him. To hell with Rosie.

  We stood like that for what seemed like forever but was probably only about five minutes. I struggled to stop the tears and finally stepped back, keeping him at arm’s length. “No,” I said, “I’m fine now, I really am.” But I wasn’t completely sure about that.

  “What happened out there?”

  “Nicholas Curtin ambushed me while I was watching Sarah and David Best’s roommate have a fight. He had a knife, I crashed my mom’s car into the cow. End of story.” The waterworks were going to start again if I wasn’t careful. I took another drink of brandy, hoping the booze would keep me in line.

  “Sarah?”

  “Melissa Peabody’s roommate, Sarah Lewis.”

  “She was here?”

  I shrugged, not sure where he was going with this. “She was near Wooster Street. They were fighting.” I paused. “You know, I think they were the two who mugged me that night.”

  Vinny was nodding. “They might have been.”

  I had started heading for the kitchen for another refill, but I stopped and stared at him. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” Vinny ran a hand through his hair, and the shadows under his eyes told me he was tired. “I spent all day on the computer. Following Mark Torrey’s money. At least as far as I could get,” he added.

  I waited, uncertain where this was leading.

  “What exactly were they fighting about?” he asked.

  I struggled to remember. It wasn’t that long ago, but so much had happened to me today that everything was starting to get mixed up. The brandy probably wasn’t helping. “I don’t know, really. But it sounded like she was going somewhere, he said something about what time was her flight.”

  Vinny’s eyes grew wide. “A flight? You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  He started for the door. “I have to go.”

  This was unacceptable. I had been abducted twice in one day. I wasn’t about to be abandoned, too. “Where are you going?”

  “You’ll be okay,” he said absently as he opened the door.

  I put my arm across the doorway. “If you’re leaving, then I’m coming with you.”

  A smile slid across his face, and his eyes twinkled. “Come on, Annie. You must feel like crap.”

  “Because I look like crap?” I was aware that my voice was getting louder. Pretty soon those neighbors of mine would complain about the noise. But I didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t going to stay there all by myself, even if there was a cop downstairs. Vinny, for some odd reason, made me feel safe. I didn’t want to lose that feeling right now.

  “You can’t come with me,” he said, but I could see he was wavering.

  “There’s something about Sarah, isn’t there, that you know,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Vinny pulled my arm away from the open doorway and gently shut the door, obviously aware that my voice was carrying. “I found a bank account with her name on it,” he said. “There are a lot of bank accounts, Torrey has been shifting the money from one to another until it’s out of sight. Torrey had accounts in Melissa Peabody’s name, too, and Allison Sanders’s, Albert Webber’s, Nicholas Curtin’s, and a couple of others.”

  “No shit?”

  Vinny nodded. “No shit.”

  “So the money he bilked from my mother is gone?”

  “Hopefully we can still find it,” he said, but I could see he wasn’t that optimistic.

  Something was nagging at me. “But what about Lundgren? He was really pissed when I asked him about that and put it in the story. And my mother said something about how Lundgren might be connected.”

  “From what I’ve been able to piece together from the tapes that Hickey made, Torrey embezzled from Lundgren, and they found out about it after he started working for the city. But instead of turning him in, they bribed him by helping him set up McGee with the idea that some of McGee’s money would find its way into their pockets. Lundgren knew what Torrey was capable of and that he’d go the distance. His contacts at City Hall got him in good with the high rollers in the city. He’s a smooth guy, he’s a lawyer, and everyone trusted him, especially after the first year when all the investors made money. Then he started skimming, like he was supposed to.”

  “But he didn’t give Lundgren what they wanted, did he?”

  Vinny smiled. “Give the girl a gold star.”

  “So everyone’s been looking for this guy.” I paused. It was almost too much to take in at once. “He used Sarah’s name on an account, too?” I struggled to remember if Sarah had told me she’d had contact with Torrey, but all I came up with was that she’d talked on the phone to him a couple of times. Maybe it was more than that, though, and suddenly her blush slammed into my brain, the blush she’d had when she was talking about him. Dammit, that was it. Did Mark Torrey fuck every Yalie this month? “Do you think she knows?”

  Vinny’s smile turned into a grin. “I think she’s going to meet him. I think she knows where he is.”

  I wanted to go with him. Call me crazy, but I wanted to confront her, see if she really was the one who’d mugged me, find out why. And if she did know where Torrey was, well, I wanted to find him, too.

  “You have to let me come along,” I said firmly.

  “I don’t think so,” Vinny said
, his hand on the doorknob again.

  “Yes, you do. Because I know where her dorm room is, and you don’t.” I wasn’t exactly sure that he didn’t know, he might have been to her room after Melissa’s body was found, but figured I’d throw that out there and see where it landed.

  And to my surprise, he paused. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, you can come.”

  I grabbed my bag off the floor and was out the door before he could change his mind. But I hadn’t remembered about the cop downstairs, who scowled at us when we came down. “Where are you going?” he demanded. “You’re supposed to stay here.”

  “I don’t remember anyone saying that,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said, flustered, pulling out a cell phone. “I have to call about this.”

  I wondered if we shouldn’t tell Paula where we were going, just in case. After my adventures today, I wanted as many people as possible to know my whereabouts. But I could tell from Vinny’s stiff posture that he wouldn’t buy into this plan. He had a vested interest in finding Mark Torrey himself: a big wad of cash at the end of this roller-coaster ride from my mother’s law firm. Having the FBI and the cops involved could only make his job harder. Kind of like the way I felt about Dick Whitfield stepping on my toes.

  So I was sympathetic, but torn in my loyalty to my friend, the FBI agent who could kick the bad guy’s ass, and to Vinny, who could also kick his ass while looking damned sexy at the same time.

  Like any other woman would, I opted for the guy over my friend. Stupid, yeah, but it could be more interesting in the long run.

  “Listen,” I said to the cop, whose name tag labeled him as Morrison, “I’ll call Paula from the road and let her know what’s up. That way you won’t get into trouble.”

  And before he could say anything, we were in Vinny’s Ford Explorer and peeling away from the curb in front of my building.

  We were halfway to Yale when my phone rang. I checked the number and saw it was Paula. I made a mental note to say something about Morrison to Tom; obviously he wasn’t trustworthy.