He faced forward until the next red light. “You’re the lady who left those messages for me. I recognize your voice now.” He made a disgusted face. “What do you want, lady? Is your dude cheating on you? Are you doing some crazy-chick maneuver, trying to bust someone for breaking your heart? ’Cause I don’t get involved in messes like that. I pick up. I drop off. That’s all.” He gave Fifi another long look. “You can call me any time.”
“Stop.” I lifted my hand. “Did you or didn’t you?”
He huffed again. “Look, maybe he’s just not that into you.”
“This has nothing to do with a broken heart. I’m investigating a murder.”
“Murder?” The light turned green and he swiveled slowly in his seat.
Fifi edged me out of the way. “Did you pick up a guy like the one she described? Someone like that wouldn’t be hard to remember. No one walks around here. There aren’t even any sidewalks. We don’t know how far he went before calling, but probably less than a mile. He’d want to get off the street as soon as possible without being picked up at the gate.”
Calvin considered his answer so long I thought he might’ve decided on giving us the silent treatment for the remainder of our ride. “Nah.”
“Nah?” Fifi echoed.
“No dudes. There was a lady dressed fancy, crying about a cheating boyfriend and trying to walk to the airport, but that’s all. She wasn’t too far from your place.”
“She was walking to the airport?” I scoffed. “She must’ve been mad.”
“She was. She flew in to surprise him, but he was with someone else, so she was catching the next flight home. She looked like a nice business lady. Cried all the way to Delta’s drop-off.”
Another dead end.
Fifi patted his shoulder. “Calvin, can you just take us back to the clubhouse? We don’t really need to go to the airport.”
Bernie made a face when we arrived at her gate ten minutes later.
I waved.
Fifi paid for the ride. I gave him a hefty tip for his time and the information.
She held the clubhouse door for me. “Looks like we’re going to visit some newborn babies.”
“Maybe Bree will have her girls soon and we can visit them all at the same time. Streamline this sucker.” I stopped at the concierge desk to pour a consolation coffee. “I wonder if Sammie will care if we ambush her in the maternity ward to ask her about someone she picked up for a fare. It’s the kind of thing that Bree would injure us for trying.”
Fifi stroked her long blond ponytail over one shoulder. “Murder. Investigation.”
“We can be extra nice and quick.” I added a hefty dose of French vanilla creamer to my coffee and stirred it with a tiny wooden paddle. “I can bring a gift. Maybe cash.”
“Everyone loves cash,” she agreed.
Marcella appeared at the end of the employee hallway and jogged toward us with a severe look of constipation. Her hands were up by her shoulders. No one was chasing her.
“Why is she running?” Fifi asked.
“Um.” I scanned the area for reasons to panic, angry residents, wild animals, the community’s founder.
When she was within a few feet, Marcella began waving us closer.
We stayed put, although I set my coffee aside in preparation for a fast escape.
“Everything all right?” Fifi asked.
Marcella took my free hands in hers and dragged me in the direction she’d come. “There’s someone here to see you,” she whispered. “I am not allowed to tell you who he is and you are not allowed to tell anyone he is here. Is that okay?”
I dug my heels in. “No. Not okay. What if he’s here to kill me?”
She latched both hands on to my wrist, turned to face me and leaned back. “No one is killing you right now.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.” I wiggled my wrists in her strangely viselike grip. “How are you so strong?”
“I raised five boys. I can do things you wouldn’t imagine.”
We padded over the soft carpet lining our employee hall and rounded the corner toward clubhouse storage and a set of unused rooms.
A big meathead-looking guy stood beside an unused office door. His suit clung to his unnatural biceps. His jaw was chiseled from stone. He nodded at Marcella.
She released me.
I rubbed my red wrists. “I know you,” I told the guy. Who could forget that jawline? “How do I know you? Why’d you make her abduct me like that? What’s this about?”
“Sorry,” Marcella said. “He made it sound like this was really important.”
And she wanted to know what it was about.
He ignored my questions. He stood straight as an arrow, or in his case a telephone pole. He clasped his hands behind his back like a soldier standing at ease.
What did this guy want with me? Why the big secret?
“Has Ms. Connors been informed of the terms of this visit?” he asked Marcella.
“Yes. I explained all the rules.”
I gave her an angry face.
He dipped his chin sharply in acceptance and turned emotionless eyes to me. “Do you agree to the terms of this visit? Do you understand this is off the books, unofficial, and for all intents and purposes, this meeting is not taking place and never will?”
My mind raced with confusion.
“I need your answer now, ma’am.”
Could I phone a friend? Ask the audience? Something? I lifted my shoulders to my ears. “I’m sorry, but no to all that. I think. I don’t know what is happening. Can you repeat the questions?”
“Excuse me.” Fifi’s voice sounded behind me.
I turned toward the sound.
She leaned her head and shoulders around the corner. “Hello.”
“Miss,” the suit addressed her. “Come here, please.”
She strode to my side. “Hi.”
“Miss,” he began again, “I need you to proceed to your office or wherever you normally are at this time. I must also ask that you do not speak of my presence here to anyone now or in the future.”
Fifi smiled. “Of course.” She stepped between the man and me, positioning her back to him and her face to mine. “Do you remember this guy from Saturday night?” She broke Saturday into three distinct sounds. “I believe you met him on your way in.”
I looked past her to the man’s remarkable jaw and deep-set eyes. “Yes!” He was a member of the security team outside the fundraiser.
Fifi squeezed my shoulder and left with a skip in her step. “Good luck.”
“I agree to all the stuff,” I told him. “Yes, to all that.”
He opened the door for me to enter.
Marcella leaned around him for a look inside, but he pressed her back with one big palm.
I slid inside, trying not to focus on why he’d called Fifi “miss,” but I was “ma’am.” I was only two years older than her. I gave my outfit a serious look. I liked it.
“Ms. Connors?” Senator Vince Adams sat in one of two chairs in the little abandoned office. “I believe you requested my presence.” He slid my business card across the desk in my direction. “Very slick. I didn’t find it until this morning when my maid was collecting the dry cleaning.”
I lowered myself onto the other chair. “Thank you for coming. Call me Mia.”
He shifted his weight and gave me a cold smile. “I didn’t get the impression there was a way to avoid you, and I don’t want the bad press you’d bring.”
“I only have a few questions.”
“As you are aware,” he interrupted, “Dante Weiss and I go way back. He’s been a long-term proponent of my campaigns and positions. We’ve worked well together for decades, and he was greatly influential in getting me to where I am
today, especially early on when I had no track record or contacts and he seemed to know everyone that mattered. All the right people. All the time.”
“Not all the right people.”
He laughed humorlessly. “So it appears.”
“Did you know Dante maintained a relationship with a federal fugitive?”
“I knew he had the connections I needed and he was always decent and fair to me.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.” I leaned forward in my chair, trying to recall how my body language should be if I wanted to really connect with him, get him to open up. I couldn’t mimic his current posture or we’d both look disinterested and marginally annoyed. “This isn’t a good turn for you. You’re up for reelection this fall and you’ve lost your moneyman, plus he turned out to be on the wrong side of the law, so that’s a double whammy if anyone finds out.”
“Do you plan to tell them?” Anger flushed his cheeks. “Is that what this is? Blackmail?”
“Of course not. I told you Dante was a friend of my grandmother’s. I want to know who killed him.”
The muscles in his jaw relaxed. “So you want to know if I killed Dante, or if I had him killed. You think I’d kill to stop his bad press from tainting all the good I’ve done. You think my hard work will seem irrelevant in the face of questionable funding. Or maybe you think I killed him because I was pissed off he’d kept something so important from me for so long, dragged me unwittingly into his shit storm and potentially tarnished my legacy, when I’ve been nothing but upstanding and dedicated to my state and country every day of my life?”
“That was well thought out. Any of it how you truly feel?”
“All of it.” He rapped a fist against the arm of his chair. “I’m mad as hell and I can’t even yell at him about it. He didn’t have the decency to tell me what an asshole he was before he got himself killed.” Frustration burned in his eyes. “He could’ve cost me everything, and I had no idea. I considered him a great man.”
I appreciated his honesty. The senator had a lot to lose by telling me anything at all about his respect and friendship with a man whose lifestyle probably got him murdered. Definitely not the sort of thing he’d want popping up during the next election. I watched the color drain from his face as his temper cooled. Adams had a reputation for good. For defending the defenseless. He funded battered women’s shelters, after-school programs to keep kids out of gangs, and volunteered regularly at soup kitchens. He insisted his staff volunteer too, so they never forgot why their jobs existed. He wanted a better quality of life for everybody in our state.
Still, there was the little detail of where the funding came from and if the programs could legally keep it. “How much of Dante’s money was used for your projects?”
He pulled polished brows low over his eyes. “Don’t you dare.”
“I’m just asking. If your connection to Dante gets out, people are going to ask.”
“I’m well aware. The funds were mostly his. He was my biggest supporter. I poured every cent, not wasted on the campaign trail, back into those projects. If that money is determined to be dirty, the projects end. The people lose. It won’t hurt me or my family. I’d be heartbroken but I’d survive. Closing every one of my projects won’t do a damn thing to hurt my quality of life, but it will lead to untold deaths across this state. Hundreds of women and children will have nowhere to go except back to the monsters they fled from. Kids who spent their evenings in my after-school programs will be back on the streets until their moms get home from third shift at their second jobs. They’ll be beat up until they agree to join local gangs for protection, fall into a life of drugs, crime and statistically premature death or early-adult incarceration. I don’t know with any certainty where the money Dante contributed to my causes originated, and I don’t want to know. What if we learn it was dirty? Is it better to close those shelters and end those programs than continue to put the money to work for community betterment? So we can feel good about turning away a criminal’s money?”
He posed the kinds of questions Nate and I spent hours debating over pizza and ruffled chips with dip. There wasn’t a perfect answer. Sometimes everyone lost. And it sucked.
Senator Adams stood and buttoned his navy suit jacket. “I didn’t kill my friend, Mia, though I would certainly like to give him a piece of my mind. If I’d had any idea he was in this kind of trouble, maybe I could’ve helped him for a change, returned one of the many favors he’s done for me.”
I followed Senator Adams to the closed office door, with one final question on my tongue. “Where were you the night Dante died?”
His lips angled down on both sides.
“Sorry. I have to ask.”
“I attended an alumni dinner at my old fraternity. I’m sure they’d lie for me if I wasn’t there, but I was. Check YouTube. We try to keep these dinners quiet, but technology works against us.”
“It might have worked in your favor this time.”
He gripped the knob and swung the door open. His guard dog turned to look at us.
Senator Adams straightened his tie. “Please lose my number, Mia, and if we meet again, let’s pretend it’s a first.” He stepped through the threshold.
“Wait!”
He gave me a dirty look.
“Sorry. Do you have access to mice? Not computer mice.” I wiggled my fingers beside my nose, hoping they looked like whiskers. “Like pet mice.”
Senator Adams stared for several beats at my wiggling nose and fingers. He turned on his heel and pulled the door shut in my face.
I dropped my hands to my sides and slunk back to the empty chair, alone with my thoughts and no closer to finding Dante’s killer.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nate drove me downtown for a lunch meeting with another project manager. He stopped at a historic building, completely the opposite of our last interview location, and checked the navigation app. “I guess this is it.”
The bricks were ancient, crumbling at the corners and piled only three stories high. He took a spot right outside the front door and fed the meter two hours’ worth of coins.
Nate turned slowly to take in our surroundings. “Is it a bad sign that no one else is here? Do you think the lack of cars means they’re hard up for clients?”
I looked up and down the quiet street. “It might mean your Navigator isn’t safe here.”
He gave his beloved truck a worried look. “I’m sure it’s fine. There’s probably a surveillance system on the building.” He shaded his eyes with one hand and checked the building for cameras.
“No cameras. Do you still want to park here?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Wes is a friend. I promised to hear his proposal. If he’s any good, we should hire him on the spot. We could get a deep discount if he’s in need of work.”
“Hose your friend? Nice. Smart, too. Let’s see what he has to say.”
An ancient security guard nodded as we entered the lobby. He struggled to get onto his feet before we reached him but failed to accomplish the goal.
“We have a twelve o’clock appointment at Delecorte,” Nate said.
The guard settled back on his barstool perch. “Third floor.” His voice was an appropriate warble.
“Thanks.” I took the lead to the elevator. “Excellent security. No cameras and someone’s great-grandfather standing guard.”
“Give this company a chance,” Nate said.
“I could’ve outrun that guy in four-inch Via Spigas. I think he came with the building. He might’ve helped build it.” I pressed the button and absorbed the surroundings. “You know, there was no one outside because this is a terrible neighborhood, and this building is in worse shape than the Ghostbusters’ firehouse.” The marble flooring was cracked down the center wide enough to wedge my heel in. “Does Delecorte own the
building or are they renting?” I leaned back for a look at the numbers over the elevator. “Is this out of order?”
Nate hefted a tablet from his bag and tapped the screen to life. “Wi-Fi’s good.” He chuckled. “Delecorte must not have any squirrels.”
“Ha. Ha.”
My phone rang. “It’s the caterer.” I rolled my eyes and declined the call. “Jake dropped blueberries off for Bree’s blessed rainbow fruit skewers. I’m sure they’re just thanking me.”
The elevator bell rang and the doors struggled apart. The car was a full inch below our floor. The ceiling was yellowed with decades of legal indoor smoking. “Oh dear.”
Nate climbed aboard and jumped. He ducked before bumping his big head on the ceiling and landed with an unhealthy creak of the car. “See? Sturdy. Come on.”
I stuck my head in and appraised the buttons and emergency telephone.
“According to my master research techniques, this building was one of a dozen historic sites purchased last spring from a Restore Downtown benefit auction. Delecorte Resource Management bought it outright and has filed for several permits with the county zoning office.”
“You probably found all that information in one article.” I stepped gently aboard, wishing I’d had a lighter breakfast.
Hopefully one of the permits was for a new elevator.
Nate put away his tablet. “We could’ve taken the stairs.”
I lifted one foot for his inspection. “Sure. I’ll slip on your comfy leather dress shoes and let you climb three flights in these.”
“Why do you wear them if they’re so uncomfortable?”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. “Do not get me started on that again.” I reopened my eyes. “Why aren’t we moving? Did you push the button?”
He poked a finger against the number three. “I thought you did.”
“I did not.”
“You always push the button.”
The aged security guard stared at us from across the empty lobby until the shiny doors rumbled shut.
The car rattled around us, dragging its cargo painfully upward while I calculated our odds of survival.
A Geek Girl's Guide to Justice (The Geek Girl Mysteries) Page 23
