“Tony. That works. I could believe it myself. But wait. Do they know who the call was from? Because I know for sure it wasn’t Tom. Or me.”
“You don’t listen much, do you?
“Please, Tony. I don’t want specifics. Just…I’m a little…scared. Does the number…point to anybody besides us?”
“Not hardly. It was a burner. That’s pay-as-you-go—”
“Yeah, I know what a burner is.” No help for me there. “But when the DNA comes in, I’ll be off the hook. You can swab my cheek.”
He choked on something that sounded like a laugh. “Don’t go overboard trusting the DNA to save you. DNA isn’t for sure until it’s for sure.”
“But for some unknown reason you don’t think it was me? Us?”
“No. I’m working another theory.”
“Which is?”
“Not for you. Not yet.”
“What about Bob Clark?”
“What about him?”
“Does he think I did it?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. He likes you.”
“Did anybody check him for scratches?’
“Of course not. What an odd question. He was with me last night. I thought you were friends.”
“Sorry. I don’t know why, I—sorry. That was rude of me. We were. We are. I’m having a hard time trusting anybody these days. And now I need to dig up another suspect for this murder. Besides me.”
“No, Allie. Listen to me. You stay away. Far away. From all this. No digging! When I have an answer, I’ll get in touch. But remember, if they bring you in for questioning…”
“What? Oh. Lawyer up.”
“Yeah.”
Then he sighed so heavily it sounded like a gale was buffeting his phone around. “And, Allie? There’s one more thing.”
I winced. My sleuth skills were getting honed. I could tell this wasn’t going to be anything I would enjoy. “What? What thing?”
“Sammy R had an accident. Hit-and-run on that red scooter of his. In the crosswalk up by Joe’s.”
I shivered and my eyes prickled, but my voice was matter-of-fact. “So now Sammy’s dead too.”
Eight.
“Dead? No. No. He’s in the hospital all banged up. Dopey from the painkillers and pretty muddled. Pissed off. Not telling us anything. No surprise. That seems to be his M.O.
“The scooter was trashed, but he’ll live. I got somebody watching him. I don’t know how whoever it was got onto him. But I should have stayed clear. Or been smarter. No way it’s not connected to…everything else. I’ve replayed it a thousand times, but—Tell Dr. Bennington. This one’s on me.”
He was gone. No goodbye.
I stood for a minute, pressing the phone to my chest. Blinking. The news that grumpy old Sammy R was alive and still keeping his mouth shut just about knocked me over. All the tears I’d been about to shed for a poor old dead guy went ahead and ran down my face. All happy.
Good news, Sammy R. The Big Bad Mondo is going to buy you a brand new red scooter.
Anonymously, of course.
Chapter Forty-four
Bob Clark never called. Not Friday. Not Saturday. Not Sunday morning. That made me wonder. Had Tony Valerio made sure Bob never got my message? Did Bob not want to talk to me and if not, why not? What was I supposed to believe now?
At least Tony hadn’t killed Sammy, and I didn’t believe he’d tried. His guilt about the accident sounded authentic. Tom and I decided not to blame him for some possible misstep that might have gotten a guy merely run over—small potatoes, from our current perspective—and to keep both him and Bob on our “maybe trusted” list.
I had never considered “triage” as a word for sorting through the people who were most likely to help you and least likely to grab you, steal your money, and then kill you. But now we were picking our allies based on the direness of our need and the likelihood of their being able to save us. At the moment, we only had the two and we needed them both. We had Margo, of course. And Skip. And each other. But, as far as I knew, none of us had guns and Tasers.
I liked Tony. And surely a stone-cold killer wouldn’t make jokes about my bad hair. Unless, of course, it served his purposes. Nefarious purposes. Why did I assume I was the only one who ever played the cute smartass out of pure nefariousness? And, why, exactly, had I thought we should handle some of the crime-solving on our own? I answered my own question. We were desperate. Triage again.
Plus, if all that wasn’t enough new and disturbing information for one weekend, on Saturday I did get one call—which I’d answered “Bob?” again and was wrong about again. It was Ivy Martin this time. She sounded neither happy nor relieved. “Ms. Harper. They found her.”
“Oh. That’s good news.” Or not.
“Yes. It’s good that at least we know where she is.”
“Where is she? Where has she been?”
“Her identification was mixed up. And her body was moved.”
“From where to where?”
“As far as we’ve been able to determine, someone took her out of our…temporary storage area and moved her and her paperwork to—I’m sorry to be so blunt, Ms. Harper but I promised to tell you. Although this is nothing you’ll ever share with Rune.”
“That’s okay, Ivy. Can I call you Ivy? And would you please call me Allie? I trust you to tell me the truth. And you can trust me to not go ballistic about whatever the truth turns out to be.”
“I know, Allie. Thank you. You’ve been patient about all this. I’m sorry though and very upset. What happened is irregular and I don’t see any way it’s not, at the very least, malicious.”
She paused, gathering her resolve, I imagined. “And more likely criminal. Her body was moved to an unused janitor’s room, Allie. The room is in the lowest level of the building and very…chilly, so no one…noticed until yesterday. She’s with the ME now, but the autopsy will be compromised, I’m afraid. The police are involved. At least, when everything is over, you’ll have her remains for a service, though, I’d suggest…”
She stopped herself. Ivy Martin was done suggesting. She had kept up her end of the bargain. I thanked her again, hung up, and gave Tom the news. We agreed that our fact-finding mission at McCauley Road Hospital had given us more evidence for something we already knew.
Murder was all over the place.
***
If anything could have made me gloomier than our current murder/danger situation, here it was. As Tom and I were trying to figure out how Diana had hooked up with my despicable ex, it hit me that the one person on the planet who might be able to answer that question was my despicable ex.
I groaned. An authentic groan, chock full of pain and despair.
“Allie? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Tom, dammit. Double dammit. I’m going to have to call D.B.”
It was a short, insulting, and ultimately frightening conversation.
“It’s me. We have to talk. How about we skip your snotty remarks and my snotty rejoinders. The sooner we can hang up, the sooner we’ll both be happier. This is important, so just listen. How did Diana get to be your client? Did you find her? Or did she find you? And how?”
“May I talk now?”
“Oh, just…don’t—Yes. Please.”
“She found me. What makes you think I know how—?”
“Cut it out, Duane. I get it. You’d still like to squeeze a couple of bucks or some skimpy satisfaction out of all this. Give it up. Protect yourself. You’re the expert at that. Diana was murdered. Somebody shoved her off the hotel into Euclid Avenue. You think the Mondo is good news, you should count the bodies that go with it. Five hundred-fifty million dollars is not even worth a dollar if you’re dead, D.B.” And burning in hell, I added to myself for my own gratification. “Just tell me and I’ll go away.”
/>
“Oh, all right. I’m surprised you haven’t heard, you being a librarian and all. There’s this thing called the Internet….”
“We’re cutting to the chase, D.B.”
“Fine. There’s a website. Address is www.MondoSecrets.com. You should go there. You’re famous. And I’m there as your ‘former spouse, senior partner at—’”
“—‘the venerable Cleveland law firm of Gallagher, Gallagher & Barnes.’ I bet they were thrilled.” That had to sting. Ha.
“I’ve told you what I know, like you asked. Go take a look. You’ll love it.”
He hung up.
I used my phone to access the site which had not been formatted to look good on a small screen. Or on any screen. “Down and dirty” would be overgenerous. The background was black. The font was mostly comic sans, in garish red and yellow, a random assortment of sizes. Hard to read but much too clear.
Photos of our houses, embedded Google Maps to pinpoint the locations. Shots of us ducking in and out of the rental cars, the Marriott, the Wyndham. Bios. Lies. A head shot of Diana, including her hope that she and Tom would be able to “mend their differences and rediscover their love.”
The stock phrase “my privacy has been violated” came to life and punched me in the gut. Tom and me. Us. On display in this sinister, smelly online rathole. The specter of Ulysses A. Grant was back. This is the Age of In-fo-mation, baby. Didn’ anyone tell you that?
As I scrolled through, I gave Tom the bare bones of what was there. Read him what Diana had said. I didn’t mention the fuzzy shot of us in the Marriott ballroom or the one of us leaving Wendy’s with Rune. I could spare him that, but I was sure he interpreted my silence as the choking ball of rage it was.
“Who are these people, Tom? How do they have time for…for this…this garbage?”
He put his arm around me and didn’t mention that I was shivering. “Take a breath, Allie. We needed to know. Now we do. I think you should call Valerio back and make sure the police have all that information. It may help them. I’ll get in touch with a student of mine who spent more time online than on English 186. She’s a genius at all that. Maybe she can find out where it comes from. Maybe even shut it down. Can’t hurt.”
“If we find them, can I pour Pepsi in their hard drives?”
Chapter Forty-five
Sunday, August 30
My brain was a whirlpool of fear, outrage, and useless speculation. This one. That one. Someone. All? It was Dr. Seuss on meth. Plus now there was the extra-added wretchedness of knowing Creepy Eye was out there with a camera, tracking us all over the World Wide Bleeping Web. It made me dizzy.
I had to ask myself to “step away from the vortex, ma’am.” So I did. Today I had somewhere better to go. It was Sunday at last.
Rock Hall Day.
If I wasn’t talking with Bob, at least I had Marie on my side. She had actually picked up Rune from Elaine herself and delivered him to us, bright and early, at the Wyndham. I could see that she was bubbling over with a bunch of good Marie-style admonitions that neither Rune nor Tom had the attention span for just then. I dragged her down to the restaurant for breakfast and some girl talk while the boys ordered up room service.
It was Marie’s day off and she was attired in the Marie Clark version of casual. It was more like business casual. Serious business. Her jeans looked like they’d maybe been ironed, or at least pulled out of the dryer immediately after the buzzer went off. Neither of those things had ever happened to a pair of jeans of mine. But all in all, Marie looked more relaxed than usual. She even agreed to let me pay for her oatmeal and tea without an undue amount of fuss.
I’d loaded up on pecan waffles and sausage patties, plus fruit compote and juice at the buffet and I was trying to appear less greedy by minimizing the amount of food on my plate as quickly as possible. I let Marie do most of the talking while I chewed like a chipmunk and looked as solemn as I could while doing that.
I figured Marie to be probably five years younger than me, but she had a lot more authority. Maybe it was the clout of all those reservations she had about letting Tom and me take Rune anywhere.
“I can’t say I think this is a good idea.”
Oh, really. I chewed some more, nodded responsibly, and arranged my face for maximum trustworthiness.
She regarded me with those very professional blue eyes.
“I understand that Tom is competent for a visually impaired person. But I don’t see how he could do much to protect Rune in case of something unexpected happening.”
I didn’t bother to explain about Tom’s sixth sense, or his beeping marksmanship, for that matter. I figured none of it would cut much ice with Marie. The responsibility was all on me and I was happy to claim it.
“Marie, Tom is a lot more competent than you might believe. But you can count on me to watch over Rune. Today or any day.”
Marie nodded and spooned up some oatmeal. She hadn’t used any of the brown sugar that came with it. I was surprised she hadn’t picked the raisins out. She still seemed less than convinced but she sighed and twitched her trim shoulders in what passed for a Marie shrug.
“I promised, Allie. Now it’s up to you. Stay alert. And don’t forget you’ve been a target yourself. And might be again. Watch out for yourself while you’re at it.” Another sigh, this one all resignation. “I’m counting on some of the unfortunate attention cooling down.”
Well, “unfortunate attention” was one way to describe six murders and an attempted kidnapping. I returned the sigh with interest, to demonstrate my commitment. “Me, too, Marie. Thanks.” I offered a small, comradely grin. “I won’t make you sorry.”
She nodded but her expression was still troubled. “I know you mean well, Allie. And that Tom does, too. Bob and I have talked about this. One minute, there you were. Fine. Ordinary. Not in a bad way. Normal, I guess you’d say. Then the next moment, the jackpot. All that money put you into the spotlight. Bigger than life. Very, very exposed to dangerous individuals.”
I smiled to myself. “Dangerous individuals.” That was just so Bob. I pictured the two of them shaking their golden heads over our plight. Bob might be too busy to talk to me, but at least he still cared. I tuned back into the truth Marie was telling me. “You don’t have the experience that rich people have to protect themselves.”
Margo had said that same thing. About six times.
Pay attention, Allie.
“You weren’t prepared. How could you have been? I’m not sure you are now. Even after everything that’s happened. Be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
She stood up. No preamble. No segue. “Thanks for breakfast. It was nice to see you. Take care.”
“Geez, Marie. That wasn’t breakfast. You didn’t even sprinkle on your brown sugar.”
She regarded me over her shoulder without saying anything, as if my parting comment were an unforgivable frivolity which reinforced all her serious, serious doubts about me. Then she left and the clouds rolled back from my sunny day.
Chapter Forty-six
As part of its permanent “Legends of Rock & Roll” collection, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum displays a “glove of Michael Jackson.” I’m certain Michael had more than the one glove, but the Rock Hall has an authentic one of those. And Rune wanted to see it. Bad.
Among all the awful things that had happened to Rune that summer, his shocking discovery of the death of The King of Pop had definitely made the top three. Renata had every single album Michael ever made, from Got to Be There right up through Invincible. Rune knew every song by heart, whether he understood what they were about or not. He was steeped in the rhythms of them.
Nobody had bothered to inform him that Michael had been dead since 2009. Somebody’s casual acknowledgement of June 25th as the sad anniversary had broken a big chunk off Rune’s reality. Now his mother had joined the
ranks of the people who’d died when he wasn’t looking.
The music was everything to him. It carried him away into a magical world where Michael still danced and sang. Maybe Renata was still alive in that world, too, for all I knew. In any case, Rune was aching to visit Michael’s glove.
It was a few minutes shy of ten a.m. when I nudged our new Jeep Wrangler from Avis into a space in the parking garage. Rune was jazzed by the vehicle—its desert-like sandy color and its cowboy-soldier-guy attitude. It wasn’t exactly undistinguished, but it had a certain hide-in-plain-sight nonchalance. At that hour, the garage was almost deserted. I was spooked by the chill, shadowy surroundings, but all was calm.
I was more worried about the phones ratting us out now, but I’d stored my life in mine, and I hadn’t been able to let it go. Not yet. I’d restored it once and I turned it off whenever I thought of it, but then it would be after me, poking at me to turn it on again. Reminding me that Margo or Elaine or Benedict Cumberbatch might be calling. Addict that I was.
We’d withdrawn money from Tom’s account and stopped using the credit cards. Except, of course, we’d used his for the Wyndham. I was plotting another move. And a windfall of hard, cold analog cash. I thought I could get Skip to handle that. I was doing the best I could, striving to make up for my inexperience with my innate hyperactive vigilance.
I herded my small tour group up a flight of stairs and out onto the sweeping plaza where the Cleveland skyline glared down on us as if we could never worship it enough to make it feel good about itself. We emerged into that bright, hot day looking like the family I hoped we were slated to be. Rune vibrating with excitement. Tom, beaming and looking incredibly attractive. Me directing traffic, mom-like. And like a wife, I was thinking. That was how we walked across the sun-splashed plaza and in through the big glass doors. Tom’s hand on my elbow. Rune dancing and twirling out in front of us.
OCD Librarian Allie had a sinking second or two of wondering whether I’d neglected to lock the Jeep’s doors, but Rune was spinning out, the Rock Hall awaited, and we had nothing of value in the car anyway. I hit the key fob a couple of times, hoping it had a phenomenal reach.
Too Lucky to Live Page 21
