Eyes widening, Zander and Julie stared at the ornate Victorian silver centerpiece. Nick whacked his fork against the base, probably hoping to ring Graham’s ears. Since we needed our spider’s cooperation, I didn’t shove the microphone into the sideboard as had been our wont when we first arrived.
“Josh once had a crush on Magda,” I threw into the teapot for flavor.
Silence reigned. It was lovely.
Before Graham could steal the show again, I brought the discussion back into focus. “Have they dug up any more bodies? We need to start identifying missing people, tracing their whereabouts before they disappeared, and following the money. Where did the embezzled funds end up? They’ll come down hard on the reverend if the park really is in financial trouble.”
“He didn’t shoot himself,” Julie protested.
“There is no honor among thieves,” Nick said cynically. “That’s how cops think. We have to prove he didn’t know about the embezzlement or any bodies. That’s a lot of naiveté.”
“And you said he offered you concert tickets,” I reminded her. “If it turns out that these tickets lead to parties where rich men pick up young girls for immoral purposes, then he’s in way deep.”
“I think he is a kind man and people are using him,” she said stubbornly, crossing her arms.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Patra said. “I’ve done the research. Josh Arden turned in a high school coach who wanted him to throw a game in return for a free ride to college. In the pro’s, he reported team members to the gaming commission for using under-inflated balls. The guy is a walking target.”
“He’s a hero,” Julie protested.
“Which makes him a target,” Nick explained. “There is nothing criminal minds like better than to prove that good is a weakness and nice guys finish last. It justifies their existence.”
Impressed, I raised my teacup in salute. “Wisdom is, Master.”
Zander held up the tablet he’d been typing on. “The police dogs have been working on the incomplete foundation for one of the pyramids. Apparently concrete was to have been poured a month ago, but work has slowed to a crawl, so they’re still able to dig. Speculation is that the male body they have sniffed out is that of the missing embezzler, George Paycock, but the coroner has not confirmed it. It has not been there long. There is a female corpse as well, but it has been there a while, and there is no identification yet.”
Julie frowned worriedly. That might be the first body she’d filmed.
“I suppose they found them with Magda looking on,” Patra said. “What are the chances that her cohorts were the ones who revealed Paycock’s embezzlement, and she bears responsibility for his death?”
“He disappeared weeks before Magda arrived. That’s a pretty large leap, grasshopper,” I said, trying to puzzle through her logic.
“Not when you know Magda has spies in every defense industry organization on the planet,” the candelabra reported. “She’s playing a larger game. Stick to the small fry and leave the planet out.”
I stuck my tongue out at the ornament, not caring if Graham was monitoring us visually. If he was, I knew I was raising his temperature in lewd ways.
“Back to Joshua Arden. Was he near this grave site when he was shot?” I asked. “We have way too many crimes and loose ends and I want connections.”
“No, he was not near any of the interesting structures where I aimed my cameras,” Julie said. “That is why the videos of the shooting are bad. The school’s security camera caught him walking toward a maintenance shed. There are several gunshots. He crumples, holding his middle, as if the bullets come from the shed or the shrubbery nearby. We see no women screaming. No one runs to him. If I had not heard. . .” She let the sentence drop.
We could all imagine where it would have ended. Josh would have bled out and died before anyone found him—unless there were witnesses, which the screams seemed to indicate there were. “Did anyone else call 911 at the same time you did?”
“The police reports confirm the shooter was in the shrubbery near the shed,” Zander reported, zipping through his tablet. “Dispatch reported two calls to 911, one of them untraceable, the other Julie’s. They are trying to follow an unknown call to the reverend’s phone placed ten minutes before the shooting, but they suspect a burner phone.”
“Julie, you still have yours?” I asked.
She reddened and shook her head. “I had hidden it in my drawer. I couldn’t find it when I returned last night, that is why I used the bugged phone to text Zander and make the 911 call. But Reverend Arden couldn’t have received any call. His phone battery was dead.”
“Might Maryam have your burner phone?” I suggested gently.
Julie opened her mouth, closed it, then looked at her newly cleaned-out phone. She flipped through her contacts and pushed one, presumably to Maryam. She got no reply but left a message. Then she looked at Zander. “I do not have my burner number in here.”
He pulled out his phone and showed it to her. She added to her contact list and hit it. I held my breath as it rang through the speaker.
“Hello?” a faintly accented female voice answered warily.
“Maryam,” Julie said in relief. “It is me. I am with family. Where are you? Can we help?”
“Julie.” The voice sounded weepy. “Are you all right? We were so worried. Lucas said you were with the reverend last night.”
“Lucas is with you?” Julie asked.
I didn’t have a clue who Lucas was, but she obviously did. We all waited, although not patiently. Nick poured another brandy. Patra picked at some chocolate peppermint candies on the sideboard. Zander looked as if he might hyperventilate.
“We’re witnesses,” Maryam whispered through the speaker. “I need to go home to my papa before my brother finds out. Lucas wants to go to the police, but I told him it’s dangerous.”
I was fairly certain the candelabra groaned in exasperation. Or maybe that was me.
“Introduce me to your friend, please,” I said, holding out my hand for the phone.
“My sister wishes to talk to you,” Julie said hurriedly. “She knows important people. You can trust her.” She handed over the phone.
I turned up the phone speaker.
“Reverend Arden may die if we do not catch the shooter,” I said. “Julie is in hiding for fear the shooter will think she was the witness. The police are digging more bodies out of graves on the campus as we speak. You and Lucas need to tell us everything you know. It’s probably not good to return to your homes yet, so we’ll arrange a safe hiding place.”
I could hear whispering on the other end of the line. I would have liked to reach through the phone and drag her into the twenty-first century, but Julie had said her friend was from Pakistan. Her fear of authority probably came from her family and demonstrated strong survival instincts. I knew nothing of Lucas, which worried me, but at least he wanted to talk to the police.
A man’s voice came to the phone. “Maryam still wants to go home. Can you arrange to send her there after we’ve talked?”
I grimaced and glanced around the table. No one looked happy with that alternative, but Nick reluctantly nodded. The others followed his lead.
“If the police don’t object, we can get her out. You will be doing the world, and Reverend Arden, a favor by telling us what happened.”
“We don’t know much at all,” he warned. “We just don’t want to be on anyone’s radar. Find us a safe place, and we’ll talk.” He gave us the address of their hotel.
“Give us half an hour,” I suggested, crossing my fingers and hoping we could come up with something. “For safety, we’ll call you back on another burner phone. The one you have shouldn’t be tapped, but it’s best to avoid using anything else the school might have had access to.”
Julie grabbed her phone. “Maryam, these are good people. They will help, I promise.”
“I’m sorry I ran,” the female voice said, obviously crying. “I was so very
afraid.”
The phone clicked off. I had to hope that at least Lucas understood my warning, and that they wouldn’t throw away the phone that was our only means of reaching them again.
“Can we bring them here?” Julie asked anxiously.
“No,” thundered the candelabra.
Since that was my reaction as well, I didn’t argue. “If you’re still a suspect, it’s best not to bring them near you,” I said more politely. My more personal reaction was that I didn’t want dangerous strangers inside my family fortress.
Zander’s tablet beeped. He glanced down at it in surprise and read off an address that I instantly looked up on my phone—a secure neighborhood on the edge of the Adams-Morgan district north of here and near Nick. Our attic spider was quick. All we had to do was wish for a safe house and he produced one. Knowing Graham, though, he probably had access to secure houses all over the city, maybe a few states.
I showed the location to Nick, who nodded approval.
“How?” Zander asked in confusion, staring at his screen.
I pointed at the silver centerpiece, and his eyes widened. Graham had that effect. I should quit calling him a spider in the attic and refer to him as our Evil Genie.
The discussion broke down into the hows and whys of transporting them from the too-public hotel where they were hiding to the safe house. It was too late to go over to the park and retrieve Maryam’s clothing. That would have to wait until morning. I left Nick with Julie and Zander to work out details of rescuing our witnesses.
Patra donned her coat and swung her heavy purse over her shoulder. “This has been enlightening, folks, but I have to go. Let me know if we can get in to see Arden and keep me up to date on our paranoids.”
I followed her out of the dining room. She didn’t immediately leave but stopped in the parlor to examine our distorted tree.
“Give Sean my regards,” I said dryly, since she had a perfectly good room upstairs.
Ignoring my goad, she produced an ornament from her bag and looked around for an empty place on the branches. “I intend to pick Sean’s brains on what he knows about your father and his and GenDef. He had access to his father’s papers, but he’s not communicative on the subject.”
“Will he help if he knows GenDef is a suspect in this case? They’re high on my list for assassin hiring.” Not that I saw a point in hiring professionals to kill an embezzler, if that really was Georgie’s body, but that was the way my mind worked. A lover’s spat didn’t seem likely to end in concrete.
“Sean knows Rose’s cohorts had my father killed, but he’s still not sharing, so I can’t say. He’s probably trying to protect us.” She hung a shiny gold wreath on the branch. “But it’s time Sean and I had a little heart-to-heart. I’ll let you know what I find out, if you’ll do the same.”
Her father had died years ago, but Patra had only recently discovered he’d been killed by our own side in a middle-Eastern war zone—while investigating some of the warmongers currently behind Jesus World.
“Knowledge may be dangerous, but ignorance is deadly,” I said, giving her my promise in words we both understood.
Patra pulled on her beret, gave me a peace sign, and slipped into the early evening winter gloom.
I checked the ornament she’d hung. She’d had it engraved to say In memory, Patrick Llewellyn, beloved father, RIP.
Chapter 17
Julie anxiously twisted her fingers as the limo pulled up in front of the small hotel set back from a busy street where Lucas had said they were hiding. “This does not look like a cheap hotel.”
On the seat facing her, Nicholas checked his watch. “There is no such thing as a cheap hotel in DC, but they may have found the only two-star on this side of town. It’s safe enough, as these things go. Come on, we need to keep moving.” He climbed out of the limo and opened the front passenger door to talk to the driver. “Sam, drive around the block. Let’s not attract more notice than necessary.”
“Ana prefers Uber,” Zander said tentatively, stepping out and holding out his hand for Julie. “Is that not more private?”
“Nothing is private in this town. But we have no reason to believe anyone is watching us, yet. It’s best not to be noticed, but a limo isn’t completely out of place here.” In his rather expensive-looking cashmere coat over a tailored business suit, Nicholas strode toward the hotel entrance.
Julie had a hard time believing she was part of a clan sophisticated enough to include Nicholas and private limousines. She glanced down at her own bright-pink nylon jacket and wondered if she could ever manage to look as elegant as her older siblings—or if she wanted to. Zander didn’t look much better than she did in an ill-fitting coat he’d borrowed from Nicholas.
The old hotel had only one small elevator. They rode up silently. Heating was evidently not a priority. Julie clenched and unclenched her chilly fingers as the mechanism lurched upward. The elevator smelled of cleaning fluid, although there was an even less appealing odor underlying it.
She was already nervous and feeling antsy when the elevator doors opened.
Loud pinging noises rang out, shattering what was left of her composure.
“Skort!” she cried, tugging Zander’s coat and dropping to the floor the way she’d been taught to do when bullets flew. “Watch out!” she translated uselessly for Nicholas, who now had his back to the elevator wall. Zander crouched in front of her on the opposite side.
The advertising poster on the elevator wall shattered in a cascade of broken glass. Julie bit her lip to keep from screaming.
The elevator doors automatically creaked to close. Julie’s teeth chattered. The door took eternity. Crouching low, Nicholas rolled into the hallway before the doors shut.
“Bladdy hell,” Zander whispered, then jammed the open-door button.
Julie muffled a shriek of protest as the door opened again. To her relief, no more shots rang out. Instead, heavy feet pounded against the thin carpet in the opposite direction. What had happened to Maryam?
Nicholas uttered a curse worse than Zander’s, stood up, and loped off down the hall.
Wanting to see if Maryam was safe, terrified to find out what lurked in shadows, Julie peered around the door. A dark figure fled toward an erratically blinking exit sign on the far end of the corridor with Nick hot on his trail. He could be shot that way!
Zander started to run after Nick, but Julie grabbed his hand and forced him to pull her up from the floor, delaying him. “We must see if Maryam is all right, nè? You have no weapon to fight a gunman.” Did Nick?
Zander scowled but grabbed her arm and tugged her down the corridor, checking door numbers for the one they sought.
At the far end, Nick smacked a fire alarm on the wall, causing glass to tinkle, and a siren to wail. Julie clapped her hands over her ears to block the shriek and glanced around in panic.
Doors popped open all along the corridor and heads peered out, but no one seemed too concerned. With the alarm howling, Julie winced, uncovered her ears, and rapped on the door of Maryam’s room.
At the other end of the hall, Nick misdirected the people spilling into the hall by pointing at the exit near him and shouting, “Fire! We have to go this way!”
Confused, Julie didn’t know if she was supposed to follow his instructions or wait for Maryam. Zander pounded the door louder.
“He’s putting people between us and providing cover so he can run after the gunman. They were shooting at the lock.” He pointed at the shattered key slot and slammed his shoulder against the door to jar it loose. “It’s okay, it’s us,” he shouted as he did so. The door opened—as it would have done for the shooters had they not interrupted.
Inside, Maryam cowered behind a couch. The Tall White Boy—Lucas—to whom Reverend Arden had introduced her, stood with a chair upraised, prepared to bash heads—or a gunman.
“Eish!” Julie cried, dodging out of his reach.
He dropped the chair in relief, apparently recognizing her.
“Lucas is hurt!” Maryam exclaimed, jumping up from her safe place. “We must take him to a hospital.”
“It’s just a flesh wound.” He winced and grabbed his left arm now that the chair was lowered. “Let’s beat it.”
“Don’t be dof.” Julie winced. Her American English apparently escaped her in emergencies, but dumb sounded like dumb in any language. “Zander, find some towels so he does not bleed all over. I’ll take a look at his arm when we are in the car.” Alarmed by the blood seeping through his fingers, Julie looked around for baggage, backpacks, anything.
“We ran without taking anything,” Lucas explained. “Did you see the shooter? Is it safe to leave?”
“Our brother Nicholas set off the alarm,” Julie explained, taking the towels Zander returned with.
“He’s leading the other hotel guests down the far stairs, away from us. There are more stairs closer, beside the elevator. It’s probably not safe to take the elevator if the fire department or alarm might shut it down. Let’s go.” Zander took Maryam’s arm and tugged her toward the door.
Julie tied one of the thin cotton towels around Lucas’s large bicep. “We have a car, if we can reach it.”
“How do we know we’re safe with you?” Lucas asked, sensibly enough, stopping to check the hall before leaving the room. “The shooter arrived after we talked to you.”
“We’ll have to figure out how that happened later.” Julie tried to sound urgent. “Did one of you use your normal phone, for instance?” she asked as he finally followed her out.
“Just to call for pizza,” Maryam said, hurrying with Zander in the direction of the elevator.
Lucas whistled in disgust. “You didn’t use the burner?”
Julie kept looking over her shoulder as they ran, but the other guests must have followed Nick down the far stairs. The hall was empty. Their feet pounding against the cheap carpet couldn’t be heard over the wailing alarm.
Twin Genius Page 15
