by Sara Rosett
“Nope. Tell me about Lena. What did she say?”
“She said the check she sent to Jorge was a loan to start a business. She let it slip that Jorge talked her into blackmailing someone. I think it was Alan Archer. He is powerful. He’s on the base closure commission and Lena wants to guarantee that Taylor Air Force Base isn’t closed. She also said that one of Jorge’s friends worked for Vicki Archer.”
“That would be Tony. Okay, so Jorge goes down there with the intention of connecting with Lena so that he can get something on Alan Archer?”
“Yes, Tony said he sent Jorge to Georgia, but Jorge got too close to ‘her.’ He had to be talking about Lena. At first, I thought that Tony killed Jorge. Apparently, there was a bit of a power struggle going on between Jorge and Tony. Lena thinks that’s what happened.”
Mitch positioned a bowl of chopped fruit between our plates so we could share. He speared a chunk of watermelon. “But we know that Tony’s a good guy. He wouldn’t kill Jorge.”
I poked at some cantaloupe. “Unless he had to?” Mitch and I looked at each other for a few moments.
“It’s possible,” Mitch finally said.
I bit into the juicy fruit and chewed thoughtfully. After I swallowed, I said, “I can’t really see him letting Summer take the heat of an investigation, though. There’s something there between them. I think he really likes her. And I know she likes him.”
Mitch laughed. “That’s all we need. Federal law enforcement in the family. We’ve already got enough contact with the police.”
I ignored that comment. “Back to Lena. We still don’t know what Lena used to blackmail Archer.”
“What if it wasn’t Archer who was blackmailed?” Mitch said.
“Okay, who else? Ms. Archer? Vicki Archer doesn’t have anything that Lena wants,” I said.
“That we know about,” Mitch countered, “but all right. Say it was Alan Archer. What have they got in common?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it really doesn’t matter why she blackmailed him or what she used. It only matters that she did.” I ate the last strawberry. It was almost time to call Detective Brown. I swallowed hard. “I feel kind of bad for MacInally. I think he really likes Lena.”
Mitch said, “You know I talked to him some more last night while you were having your closet conversation with Tony. You said you didn’t think Lena and MacInally went together?”
“No. There were tons of mismatches on display last night. He’s open and honest. She’s cunning. I get the feeling that she’s looking out for herself first.”
“Well, he’s known her a long time, since Korea. He’s got to know what she’s like.”
I paused with my glass of orange juice poised in midair. “Since Korea?”
“He told me she was his nurse in Korea.”
“In Korea?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I put my glass down and leaned back in the chair. “I had the impression she met him after he came back to the States. I know Summer said something about Lena being a nurse in Vietnam. Could she have been in both Korea and Vietnam?”
“It’s possible, I guess. I don’t know much about how they assigned nurses back then.” Mitch put the covers back on our empty plates and moved them to the tray. “When are you going to call Detective Brown?”
I was still stuck on the discrepancy between what Lena had told me and what MacInally had told Mitch. I trusted MacInally more than Lena, so I had a feeling that his version was what had actually happened.
I pulled myself back to the present when I realized what Mitch had asked. “What? Oh, that’s right. Detective Brown.” I stood up. “I’ll call him after I shower.” I grabbed a green cotton shirt and denim capri pants.
An Everything In Its Place Tip for an Organized Trip
Travel with kids
A great way to generate excitement about the trip for your kids is to let them get involved in trip planning. Help them contact the visitors center or chamber of commerce at your vacation destination a few weeks before departure to request brochures and maps.
If you’re flying, don’t forget to carry on an over-the-counter decongestant. Check your pharmacy section for medicine strips that dissolve in the mouth. They’re lightweight and not as messy as a liquid medicine.
For entertainment for kids, go beyond electronic handheld games and include dot-to-dot books, a notepad and colored pencils, and books geared to their age.
A map and highlighter will let your kids track your progress across the country.
Don’t forget that special blanket or stuffed animal.
A night-light always comes in handy and can help kids feel more comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings.
Chapter Twenty-six
When I emerged from the shower, I was still thinking about Lena and MacInally. I’d decided I wouldn’t get any deeper involved in trying to sort out the mess around Jorge’s death, but I could think about it. I couldn’t talk to Mitch while I was drying my hair, but as soon as I switched off the blow-dryer and started on my makeup, I asked Mitch, “So, what else did you and MacInally talk about?”
The TV volume went down and I heard the closet door slide down its track. “Oh, you know, how long he’s lived in D.C. Where he grew up. Stuff like that.”
I gave my lashes a few swipes with the mascara wand. “Where’s he from?”
“Arizona.” Mitch appeared in the mirror behind me and braced his arm on the wall, settling in. “I know that look. You want details, don’t you?”
“Of course.” I smiled as I ran some lip gloss over my lips.
“Okay.” Mitch sighed. Details were like torture to him. I wondered if interrogators had ever tried that technique to get men to talk. Drown them in details. They’d break after a couple of hours.
“Let’s see. We talked a bit about Arizona. Not much, since I’ve never been there. He’s lived in D.C. for about ten years. Before that, he was in San Francisco. That was about it.”
“Okay.” Nothing earth-shattering there. Mitch went in the bathroom and started the shower water. I sat down on a chair, slid my feet into my comfortable tan sandals, and dialed Detective Brown’s number while I fastened the straps.
I was hoping for his voice mail, but he answered the phone.
“Detective Brown, this is Ellie Avery, Summer’s sister-in-law.” I paused.
“Yes?” His tone was impatient. I tried not to picture his jowly face and cold gray eyes, but I could imagine his expression of annoyance without too much trouble since his tone conveyed it so well.
“Summer got in touch with you?”
“Yes. Do you need something else, Mrs. Avery? I’m on my way to talk to Summer now.”
“Oh.” Was that good or bad? “You just want to talk to her, right? You don’t have any new evidence, do you? Because even if you did, Summer’s not guilty,” I finished hurriedly.
“I have to confirm a few things. That’s all. Now, if that was all you needed.”
“No. I’ve found out a few things you probably should know about.”
There was total silence on the line and I wished I’d thought about what I was going to say before I’d called him. “I met a woman last night, Lena Stallings. She was on the platform the day Jorge was pushed. She had a relationship with him. I think she might have wanted him dead.”
“And you know this how?” His tone was less impatient, but still had a heavy dollop of reluctance mixed with doubt.
“She told me.”
“Why would she tell you something like that?”
I paused, trying to think fast, but thinking fast on my feet had never been one of my strong points. Basically, I froze. Wasn’t stealing mail a federal offense? I couldn’t tell him about Summer taking Jorge’s mail. And that would be tampering with evidence, too, wouldn’t it? I was suddenly glad I was sitting down, because I felt dizzy. I wanted to help Summer, not get her in more trouble.
“Mrs. Avery, are you still there?”
�
��Yes. Sorry.” Okay, skip the mail part. Stick to last night. “I met Lena Stallings at a fund-raiser event last night. She’s from Georgia and works for STAND, an organization that wants to keep Taylor Air Force Base open. That’s in Georgia, the base, I mean.”
“Yes, I know.” His voice was less curious.
“Anyway, I know she was on the platform right before Jorge was pushed because my friend took some pictures that day and Lena’s in one of them. She told me Jorge had dangerous friends and that he was blackmailing someone.” There. That was vague enough, wasn’t it? No mention of Summer, but I had given him the link between Lena and Jorge.
“Mrs. Avery,” he began, but silence cut into his words. He was getting another call. Thank goodness. I breathed a sigh of relief as he put me on hold. I plucked at my shirt and went to turn up the air-conditioning in the room. He came back on the line. “I’d like to talk to you more about this. Will you be at your hotel this afternoon?”
“We’re on our way to the Air and Space Museum, but we’ll be back later. We’ll probably stop by here before we go to dinner.”
“Fine. I’ll call you.”
He hung up and I collapsed onto the bed and let the cool air fan across me. That was nerve-racking.
“Hey, can you hand me a new bar of soap?” Mitch called.
“Sure.” I unwrapped one and handed it to him.
He stuck his head around the shower curtain. “I remembered one other thing MacInally mentioned. Alan Archer. It’s freezing out there. Have you got the air blasting again?”
“Alan Archer?” I said and went to turn the air off.
Mitch was back behind the shower curtain when I got back to the bathroom door. “Yeah. Apparently, he and Archer go way back. They’ve known each other since the war.”
I leaned on the door frame. Archer was a Vietnam vet. How could MacInally have known him since the war? Steam billowed out of the top of the shower and engulfed me, but I hardly noticed the mugginess of the room.
“Mitch, I’m going down to the business center to look up some bios online.”
I hurried down to the little room located in the lobby, but stopped short in the doorway when I saw a man in a white dress shirt at the computer. I turned to leave, but he said, “I’m done,” and clicked on the box at the top of the screen to close the window. There was something about the way he moved quickly and the way his gaze darted back to me and then to the computer that gave me the feeling that he didn’t want me to see the screen.
He stood up and grabbed several pages as they slid out of the printer. He hurried out of the room, pulling on a brown vest that the hotel employees wore. I frowned, watching him. I’d seen him before. He worked at the front desk, but seeing him out of his brown vest had jogged a memory. I walked over to the computer and swirled the mouse around, still thinking about the man. He was young, tall, with inky dark hair.
The screen was still active, but blank. I clicked on the bar at the bottom and a screen from a free online e-mail service came up. He’d been in such a hurry he must have hit the button to minimize the screen, not close it. I pointed the arrow at the button to close it, but paused as the subject lines of the e-mails caught my eye. “Stop Zionist Aggression Now,” “Your donation equals dead American soldiers,” “End U.S. aggressors.” I couldn’t help but skim down the list, which went on in the same vein with more calls for donations and action.
The e-mails were from groups with names like Humanity Against Zionist Aggression, Save Palestine Now, and End U.S. Imperialism. There weren’t any personal e-mails on the list. All of them were from causes either requesting money or thanking “Faiza88” for the donation. I saw a movement at the doorway and I jumped, my grip tightening on the mouse. I twisted sideways, but it was just a business-woman hurrying through the lobby, pulling her rolling suitcase. I took a deep breath and turned back to the computer, but it was blank.
“What?” I circled the mouse, but the screen was gone. I’d closed it when I jumped. A few clicks brought up a new connection to the Internet, but I wouldn’t be able to get back to the e-mail account of Faiza without a password. Not that I wanted back in. Thinking of what those organizations raised money for made me shudder. It was hard to grasp the fact that people gave money to these organizations with the hope that it would actually contribute to someone’s death, preferably that of a U.S. soldier. I could see the hotel check-in desk and the young man was there, smiling at the woman who’d dashed by the door a moment ago. I watched him. He was the one who’d come over to us when Abby and I had talked to Joe Tickner. Abby had signaled him and he’d hovered in the background until we were sure Joe wasn’t going to do anything more threatening than clear out the breakfast buffet. But there was something else.
The woman left and a family moved up to the desk. The mother turned to scold the boy who’d tossed a foam football in the air. I watched it bounce wildly across the shiny floor and then I had it. The desk clerk had been the man Tony talked to at the reflecting pool on the Mall. His clothes were different, but the face and build were the same.
I shifted my chair to the left so that the family blocked the desk clerk’s view into the business center doorway. It looked like Tony had been telling the truth about his connection with radicals. I felt I should do something about the e-mails I’d just seen. I couldn’t see something that threatened soldiers and Americans without feeling that I should report it. But what was there to report? The fresh connection to the Internet glowed on the screen and the printer hummed softly in the small room. I couldn’t get back to the screen. Would anyone believe me if I told them what I saw? I had no proof that the e-mail account existed and I didn’t even know the guy’s name, except that he called himself Faiza online.
It would take forever to explain what I’d seen to the police. Even Detective Brown had thought I was being rather tedious when I’d called him earlier. I doubted he’d be exactly eager to hear from me again so soon. And there was the little fact that I dreaded calling him again because I knew he’d probably ask more questions about the whole Lena/Jorge connection. I wasn’t that good at dancing around the truth without tripping all over myself. No, Detective Brown was pretty low on my list of people to call.
Tony seemed to be a better choice. At least he would know the guy’s name. Maybe Tony already knew about Faiza’s contact with those radical groups? And Tony would have the resources to call in someone who might be able to find the e-mail account either on the computer hard drive or out in cyberspace.
I rolled the chair closer to the keyboard and ran a quick search on the names I’d been curious about when I first came down, MacInally and Alan Archer. I threw in Lena’s name, too. I had a hard time focusing because I kept checking the front desk, but it was a busy time and there was always a line of people. I paged through the results rapidly and printed a few articles that popped up associated with the names; then, I snatched the papers out of the printer tray. After a quick check of the front desk, which still had a line three people deep in front of it, I zipped across the lobby to the elevator bank. Well, I probably lumbered. I was pregnant and didn’t want to slip on the mirrorlike floor tiles, but I went as fast as I dared.
I squeezed into the elevator beside the kid with the football and his family. As we went up, I scanned the articles. There were more pages about Lena than the other two, with lots of info rehashing her background, which had been on the STAND Web site. Alan Archer only had a few mentions. Vietnam vet and war hero were the most popular descriptions attached to his name. MacInally only had one article about his consulting service, a fluffy piece that ran in the business section of his local newspaper when he started the business.
The elevator doors opened as I flipped to the last page. I paused on the elevator’s threshold. The page didn’t belong to me. It was from Humanity Against Zionist Aggression, one of the groups I’d seen on the e-mail account, and the addressee was Faiza88. The subject line read Increase in funds urgently needed.
“Are you going up?�
�� I realized the dad in the family group in the elevator had his finger on the button that held the doors open.
“No, I’m sorry.” I stepped into the hallway and almost ran into Tony.
Chapter Twenty-seven
We both paused for a second, assessing each other. Thistlewait said Tony was legit. That thought was the only thing that stopped me from darting past him to our room down the hall.
Tony smiled disarmingly and said, “Just the person I was looking for. Don’t worry. There’s no storage closets around here. Could I speak to you for a moment?”
“Okay,” I said slowly and paced down the hall to our door. I inserted the key card and pushed it open. “Give me just a minute.” Inside with Mitch seemed like a better choice than outside in the hall alone.
The room was empty. The bathroom door was still closed. I tapped on it and said, “Tony Zobart’s stopped by.” I suddenly felt a little silly. Clearly, Tony wasn’t here on a social call, but my words sounded like I was about to offer him some juice and a muffin.
“Really?” Mitch’s tone sounded more interested than alarmed. “I’m getting dressed. Be out in a second.”
I went back to the door and let Tony in. He spoke before I did. “Sorry to show up unexpectedly, but this will only take a minute—”
“Here,” I interrupted him. I shoved the printout of the e-mail at him.
Mitch emerged from the bathroom dressed in a dark brown shirt and khaki shorts. I felt better with him in the room. I still didn’t quite trust Tony, despite the fact that Thistlewait had vouched for him. I explained where I’d gotten the printout. Mitch shook his head. “Again, I have to ask, how do you do this? You were gone ten minutes.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Either I’m lucky or I’m cursed. I can’t figure out which one.”
Tony’s gaze flicked down the paper and back up to my face. “Do you believe me now?”
