Cold Case

by Linda Barnes

  “Where do I sign?” she said.

  Quickly Mooney motioned me out of the room.

  “Don’t try any more tricks,” Thea advised as he shut the door.

  “I’ll have to get a judge’s approval,” Moon said urgently. “It’s not like we’re going digging tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “Where are we going to keep her?” he said. “If I arrest her, I’ve got press coming out of my ears, national TV. Can you take her?”

  “No way. Someone’s already tried to crack my house, searching for her notebook.”

  “Who?”

  “Possibly her kid. Possibly Manley’s killer.”

  “Which means you don’t think they’re one and the same.”

  “Whatever, she’s not coming home with me. What about you? Your mom would love the company.”

  “I assume that’s a feeble attempt at humor. How about Gloria?”

  “No,” I said. “Gloria’s not up for guests yet. We could stick her in a hotel.”

  “Sure,” he said, “with what money? And what makes you think she wouldn’t waltz out the door?”

  “Don’t you have any federal witness protection bucks? Couldn’t you put a guard on her?”

  “No extra money, no extra men,” he said. “Come on, Carlotta, if they’ve already tried your house, it could be the safest place. Roz can bodyguard her.”

  “I thought you were concerned about a mob attempt on my life,” I said. “Aren’t you worried she might get in the way?”

  “Oh, that,” he said coolly. “Turned out to be bunk, like you thought. Just a punk trying to plead.”

  So that’s how I got Dorothy Cameron as a houseguest. The digs would definitely not be what “Thea Janis” had been accustomed to, but “Susan Gordon” seemed to require less splendor.

  51

  Mooney didn’t trust her one bit. He shadowed us home in an unmarked car. I half expected her to make a run at a traffic light, but she never moved. I doubt she noticed our honor guard.

  “Do you have another car?” she asked. No big deal, like she was asking questions for the census bureau.

  “No,” I said. “And you are not to take this one. If you’d like to visit anyone, I’ll drive you.”

  I made a mental note to call Gloria, make sure no cabs picked up at my house without my knowledge.

  Time passed. I didn’t play the radio or the boom box. I wanted her to feel free to chat. Some people can’t take silence. Thea wasn’t one of those.

  It seemed hours before she asked, “Did Drew Manley really talk to you about recovered memories?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He seemed unsure himself. He kept trying to talk, then running away. I think it was very important to him, but he didn’t know where to begin.”

  She twisted her hands in her lap.

  “Why are recovered memories important to you, Thea?” I asked.

  “Who said they were?” she snapped.

  Then there was just the engine, running a little ragged, racing at the stoplights. Tuneup time.

  “Maybe he didn’t deserve to die,” she said eight minutes later.

  For the rest of the drive, no matter what I asked, she maintained her silence like a shield, staring straight ahead as though she could see the horizon three thousand miles away.

  There are lots of rooms in my old Victorian. When times are tough I can rent them to Harvard students. Times haven’t been that hard lately. I’ve gotten used to having only one tenant: Roz.

  I chose Thea’s room with care. No telephone. No jack for a telephone. No lock. I didn’t give a damn for her personal privacy. She was either too exhausted to fuss or beyond such niceties. The room had no windows that overlooked trees, drainpipes, or porches. Straight down to unwelcoming cement a floor below. Not a high enough drop to kill you, unless you had a lucky fall. Her purse had been searched at the station house, so I wouldn’t have to worry about her shooting herself—or me—in the night.

  Her door, like most bedroom doors, opened inward. She could fashion a lock by shoving a chair underneath the door handle. I couldn’t do the same.

  Instead I woke Roz, climbing to the third floor with dread. If I found her with Keith Donovan … talk about the end to a perfect day.

  She was home, asleep, alone. A minor miracle. She opened her eyes and snapped on the light as soon as she heard my tread. I don’t know if it’s the karate training or a natural sixth sense. No one sneaks up on Roz. Together we carried one of her futon mats downstairs. If Thea had plans to flee, she’d have to step over her watchdog.

  Roz was sufficently awake to haggle for a higher fee, so I figured she could handle the job.

  It must have taken me all of two minutes to fall asleep.

  The phone rang. With one eye still glued shut, I rolled over and stared at the illuminated dial of the bedside clock. Four A.M. The phone chimed again.

  Tessa Cameron’s accent sounded more ragged than regal. I wondered if she’d been drinking, steadily downing Martini after Martini, since hearing the news of Drew Manley’s death. Once I recognized her voice, I guess I was expecting her to rant on about how I’d failed in some way, failed to keep her lover alive.

  “The kidnapper,” she whispered, startling me. “He just called. Garnet insists he will take the ransom alone. He will not tell the FBI where he is supposed to make the—what you say?—the drop.”

  “Yes,” I said, struggling to sit, to make sense of her words. The floorboards felt cool under my bare feet.

  She continued, “I pick up the extension, very carefully, between rings, the way I see the federal agents do, so I know where Garnet will bring the money. You must go as well. Meet him there. Watch out for him.”

  “Garnet knows about this?”

  “No, but of course he does not know! You will go for me, because I paid you.”

  “You paid me to find a fraudulent manuscript,” I protested.

  “And have you done so?”

  I thought of the notebooks Pix had described, the ones the missing Alonso had protected so vigilantly.

  “I think I know where the book is,” I said.

  “Good. Then I pay you more, to make sure Garnet is not hurt.”

  “That’s all?”

  “All?”

  “You’re not hiring me to catch the kidnappers. You’re not hiring me to get the ransom back.”

  “Just to see that my boy is not hurt.”

  “When is the rendezvous?” I asked.

  “In one hour, so we have no time for foolishness. The man who calls, the one with the voice like a machine, he knows Garnet already has the money. The kidnapper wants to give him no chance to think, to plan.”

  “Where?”

  “Underneath the Harvard Bridge. On the Boston side.”

  One of the few areas of town that wouldn’t be deserted at five in the morning. The Charles River Esplanade comes to life early, crowded with runners, joggers, Rollerbladers, cyclists, all rushing to finish their exercise regimen before the workday begins. Run, race home, shower quickly, get to work. The urban Boston schedule.

  “I’ll be there,” I told Tessa Cameron, hanging up before she could tack any provisos onto my mission.

  I yanked on underwear, tried to fashion a running outfit suitable for the fancy Back Bay. I settled on gray to blend with the gathering light. My sleeveless gray knitted shirt could be worn as an overblouse, hiding the gun at the small of my back.

  I called Mooney at home, woke his dread mother, who threatened me before agreeing to wake her darling son.

  “Jogging clothes,” I said to Moon. “Corner of Commonwealth and Mass. Ave. within the half hour.”

  “Anything else?” he said, as if I were making a reasonable request at a reasonable hour.

  “Binoculars,” I said.

  52

  “Okay,” Mooney said, bending and stretching in exact imitation of my runner’s warm-up, “first thing, assume the FBI
’s got people all over the place. Half the joggers are agents. If you see a weather ’copter, that’s gonna be full of agents.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “According to Tessa, Garnet refused to tell them anything.”

  “Why would he need to tell them when they’ve got his phone tapped?”

  “Are you sorry I woke you?” I asked.

  “That brings up a question: What do you think of this kidnapping? First you figured it was the real thing, and Garnet was trying to hush it up. Then you called it a phony, with Garnet using it to move cash. How about right now, this minute?”

  “Not a clue.” After a deep breath, I repeated, “Are you sorry I woke you?”

  “No way. The drop’s going down in my jurisdiction, no state lines have been crossed. It’s my case.”

  “Shall we mingle?” I asked.

  Mooney elevated an eyebrow to show he was intent on deliberately misunderstanding me, adding sexual overtones where none were intended. Then he grinned, and we jogged the single short block to the river in companionable silence, trotted briskly down the green-painted wooden stairs at the right of the bridge.

  “I admire your sweatband,” I told him. To tell the truth, I couldn’t figure out what it was, maybe his aging mother’s chin strap. We’d both dressed and driven quickly. Our reward: twenty-five minutes till opening curtain, according to Tessa Cameron. I wanted time to sort the civilians from the troops, if possible.

  “No friggin’ FBI,” Mooney said softly. “I don’t recognize a soul. Maybe the kidnapper used some kind of code.”

  “A code the FBI couldn’t break? Come on.”

  A biker whizzed by on a blue Diamond Back so shiny it must have just come from the showroom.

  “Personal,” Mooney said. “Like the kidnapper talks to Marissa, says to Garnet: Take the money to the place we went on our second date.”

  “And Tessa would know that? Garnet would tell his mother where he went on a date?” I asked.

  “Go ahead, scoff,” Mooney said. “Maybe Mama squeezed it out of his chauffeur, or his valet. Or his nanny.”

  “He’s forty-two,” I said. Mooney increased his stride.

  It was still easy going, although running is not my sport. My wind’s okay from volleyball and swimming. I’m not saying I was comfortable. My gun bumped up and down. The binoculars smacked my chest.

  I kept checking my watch.

  “Figure the kidnapper will show?” I asked Mooney.

  “Kidnappers are after money,” Moon replied. “That’s what the Bureau preaches. But kidnappers panic easily, and when they’re scared, they kill. So we want to identify the kidnapper, follow the kidnapper, if we can. We do not mess with the kidnapper.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Make sure you do, Carlotta, because whoever picks up the cash could be a gofer, some guy who got spotted a twenty to deliver a bag from Point A to Point B. We nab him, we’ve got zip, and the kidnapper kills Marissa.”

  “And we get shot at sunrise by the FBI.”

  “They won’t have to wait long,” Moon said. “Geez, I’m thirsty.”

  “Maybe we can use that tree as a vantage point. It’s got location. Good climbing tree.” There aren’t a lot of hefty trees along the Esplanade. Mainly spindly Japanese cherries, donated by Boston’s Sister City, Osaka, and planted as a gesture of goodwill. Pretty enough, they’re too young to climb, too short to offer much in the way of camouflage.

  “I don’t climb trees,” Mooney said.

  “I do.”

  A full-breasted blonde with a royal scarf tied at her throat charged past on Rollerblades. The scarf matched her plunging bikini top.

  “Think she’s FBI?” I asked Mooney.

  “Are you going to climb or comment on the passersby?”

  “Maybe I should have worn green,” I said. “To match the tree.”

  “Shhh. I’m gonna try the radio.”

  I wondered who Mooney’d bribed to get the broadcast frequency for the FBI.

  “It’s dead quiet,” he said. “This isn’t right.”

  “They could have changed frequencies.”

  “See anything?”

  “No.”

  “Not even other bird-watchers? FBI could have commandeered a building with a view.”

  “Without telling the Boston police?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them,” Mooney said.

  I dangled in the crotch of a sturdy maple and watched the sun rise over Beacon Hill, glinting on the golden dome of the State House. I was shielded by sufficient branches to make good use of my binoculars. My eyes worked while my mind worried at a sequence of events that had played out twenty-four years ago April. What might MacAvoy have told me if he’d lived another five minutes?

  To earn truly big bucks, MacAvoy would have had to know where the real skeletons were buried …

  “Mooney,” I said, “how’s the exhumation order coming along?”

  “It’s August,” he grumbled. “My pet judge is on vacation.”

  “Make another pet. It has to happen soon. As in now.”

  The sun was rising quickly, almost blinding to the east.

  “There he is. Garnet,” I said. “At three o’clock and closing. Carrying a duffel bag.”

  “Not very sporty,” Mooney commented.

  Garnet had made no effort to blend. In his pinstriped suit and knotted tie, he could have been hot on the campaign trail. He seemed to be alone, but half the feds in Boston could have been following.

  “Where do you think he’ll dump it?” Mooney asked softly.

  “I don’t know. It might be a direct hand-over.”

  “Too risky.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but he can’t leave the bag on the ground and skedaddle. Half these Rollerbladers are do-gooders who’d race three miles to return it. In that getup he looks like he’d offer a fat reward.”

  “We should have brought Rollerblades,” Mooney said. “Dammit.”

  “Or a boat,” I said, glancing at the dawn-lit Charles. “The kidnapper could be a sailor.”

  “Dammit.”

  “Get on your radio and see if Beacon Hill can spare a couple bicycle cops,” I said. “If I have to, I’ll trip a skater and steal his blades.”

  While Mooney was speaking into the radio, I saw him, saw them. I started my descent faster than I should have, skinned my elbow on a stray branch. In seconds I was tugging at Mooney’s shirt.

  “Look!”

  “What?”

  Two people approached Garnet, one on foot, one on blades. In spite of the added height of the blades, the pedestrian was taller. Thin and muscled, he carried a well-stuffed camper’s backpack like it weighed nothing. They were heading outbound, Garnet in, toward the city. Each party in the threesome seemed aware of the others, pacing themselves, so they’d pass underneath the bridge at the same time, the two strangers splitting to flank Garnet.

  “Don’t try anything,” Mooney cautioned.

  I had the scene centered in my field of vision. I was trying to remember every detail for later Identikit use. Ears, eyes …

  “Mooney,” I said excitedly. “The Rollerblader’s a girl. Short hair tucked into a cap. Blond. Shit.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve only seen her once, but I swear to God, it’s Marissa. It’s Marissa goddam Cameron! Garnet knows it’s her. Look at his face.”

  “Stop jumping to conclusions!”

  “She’s not built like a man, Mooney!”

  “The first guy could have a gun on her.”

  “From in front?”

  “Stockholm Syndrome,” Mooney muttered. “He could have turned her, like Patty Hearst. She could think he’s on her side.”

  “My God, look at his fucking ears, Mooney. You can move on him. You’ve got a legit warrant.”

  With that parting shot, I took off. Not fast. Just like the rest of the joggers, pacing myself for a burst. I wanted to get close enough to lunge, to knock Marissa Gates Moore Cameron on her cute l
ittle fanny.

  It had never been a real kidnapping.

  Mooney moved next to me.

  “Alonso’s the guy,” he said, no question in his tone.

  “Wanted in Marblehead. He looks exactly like his mother.”

  “Extortion for past wrongs?”

  “We’ll ask him when we nail him,” I said. “I’m going to bump Marissa off her blades. Cover the guys. Get backup.”

  I knew Mooney’d already taken care of everything, called in both silent-approach and siren cars. I just couldn’t help myself.

  Moon picked up the pace.

  The Harvard Bridge passes low over the path, a half-moon shape, sudden darkness in its shadow.

  I hadn’t counted on the moment of blindness, coming in from the sun. Garnet must have seen me.

  “Run!”

  I’m sure it was his voice.

  “Hold it,” Mooney said. “Boston police!”

  Marissa moved just as I lunged. She had a good long stroke and I was lucky to grab her by the skate blade. She fell headlong on the grass, wrenching her leg away from me, kicking at me with her heavy footgear.

  The marked units arrived, sirens screaming. Uniforms jumped out, guns drawn. There was yelling. I stayed frozen, hanging on to Marissa’s blades till a young cop ordered me to my feet.

  Everything was going like clockwork. Until Garnet Cameron refused to press charges. Point-blank refused.

  Mooney had to let him go, let Marissa go. It took Garnet five minutes to persuade Marissa not to level assault charges at me.

  Garnet would not allow the police to open the duffel. He held grimly to its strap.

  Marissa made a grab for Alonso’s backpack. I was ready to tackle her again, but Mooney got there first.

  “My clothes are in there,” she offered lamely.

  “Then we’ll return them to you,” Mooney said, “once they’ve been examined.”

  “Oh, Garnet,” Marissa cried, apparently losing her admirable composure, “are you all right?”

  It would have been more convincing the other way around, but I got the feeling she was coaching him, feeding him his lines.