by Rickie Blair
“We did buy them,” Ethan said.
“Go on,” Pete urged.
“So then we turn a corner and the sun is in my eyes, but Helen says, ‘Look, isn’t that Ruby Delaney?’ and she points to a woman leaving a restaurant. It was a chicken place, I think. I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, she’s dead,’ but Helen snapped a coupla pictures. ‘No,’ she says to me, ‘I’m positive it’s her.’ Course I thought she was crazy. But when I saw the pictures, I had to admit there was a resemblance. Helen’s real good at faces.”
Pete turned to the detective.
“Pictures?”
The detective stood up and tapped on the glass. A few seconds later the door opened, and an officer handed him an open laptop and left, closing the door behind him. The detective placed the laptop on the table and swiveled it to show Pete the photos on the screen.
“CID ran facial recognition software and says it could be Ruby Delaney. Could be.” He clicked on another photo, a head-and-shoulders publicity shot of Ruby, and aligned it with the two snapshots already on the screen.
Pete bent over the pictures. The young woman in the photos taken on Pintado Island wore sunglasses and a floppy sunhat over long auburn hair. A large tote bag was slung over her shoulder.
“The nose doesn’t look the same, does it?”
“Not to me, but forensics says she might have done something to it.”
Pete studied the pictures, looking from one to the other. He frowned.
“You see something?” the detective asked.
“I don’t know.” Still frowning, Pete gestured at the photos. “That purse,” he said, pointing to the tote bag. “Miss Delaney had a similar purse. I remember seeing it in their stateroom. It was leather, very large, sort of braided, and it looked expensive.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, absolutely. It was very unusual.”
“Bottega Veneta.”
Both men looked at Ethan.
“Italian. And it’s intrecciato, not braided. That bag would have cost at least four thousand.”
“Dollars?” both detectives said in unison.
He nodded. “At least.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ruby locked the motel room door, latched the chain with trembling fingers, and dragged over a rickety chair to prop under the door handle. She closed the blackout curtains, turned on all the lights, and ripped the brown paper bag off a bottle of gin.
It took two shots before her hands stopped their shaking. Then she remembered the emergency stash she had retrieved from Charlie’s chalet. Ruby dumped the contents of her tote bag onto the bed and pawed through them until she found the foil-wrapped plastic bag.
* * *
She awoke at noon, lying face down on the bed. Sunshine bled around the curtains and the half empty bottle lay on the floor beside her. The plastic bag lay open on the bureau, white powder scattered over the scarred wood.
Ruby rolled over, slid her legs over the side of the bed, and carefully sat up. She bent to pick up the bottle and groaned as blood rushed to her head. Slumping over, she rested her head in her hands. Her phone thrummed on the nightstand and she fumbled for it with one hand without looking. She held it up to her face and squinted at the display. Quentin’s number. It must be one of the girls. Ruby turned it off and collapsed back on the mattress, staring up at the stained ceiling tiles.
Did the girls know she was dead? What about Aunt Dot? She closed her eyes, remembering her last visit with her great-aunt. Ruby had stumbled back into her house at two a.m., swaying and giggling. Aunt Dot waited while she threw up in the bathroom and then helped her into bed in the spare room. Sitting on the bed, she patted her niece’s arm and said quietly, ‘All the booze in the world won’t bring her back.’
Now, in a grimy motel room in Georgia, a spasm gripped Ruby’s throat and forced open her mouth in a wrenching sob. She bent over, arms pressed across her waist, while tears coursed down her cheeks.
Eventually she straightened up, wiping her eyes with both hands, sniffled, and bent to pick up the gin bottle. She reached for the glass on the night table and poured a double shot.
Ruby raised the glass to her lips and paused.
All the booze in the world—
She had tried all the booze in the world, pretty much, and it had done no good. Lily was gone and always would be. The surface of the gin quivered in her hand. Ruby took the glass and the bottle into the tiny bathroom and upended them over the sink, watching the gin glug down the drain. Then she flushed the cocaine down the toilet.
After an awkward shower, much of it spent trying to avoid the embrace of the stained shower curtain, she went shopping. She had left the Aston Martin in a vacant lot across town with the keys in the ignition, so her first purchase was a beat-up Ford sedan. She followed that up with clothes, hair dye, and an unregistered burner phone. Ruby dyed her hair blonde, leaving two inches of dark roots, and added brown contact lenses and dime store drop earrings. Then she tugged on a short black T-shirt, and tight pink stretch pants that ended two inches below her navel where temporary tattoos drew attention from her face. High heels and a denim jacket completed the ensemble. ‘Jersey Girl’ would get her to the border. Then she’d scrub off the tattoos and think of something else.
She had also bought a shiny new laptop. Ruby propped the computer on her knees, inserted the Hello Kitty USB stick, and clicked on the list of deposits she had copied from Antony’s computer on the Apollonis. It totaled over five hundred million dollars. Her brow furrowed as she stared at the screen. It must be a mistake.
Sighing, she pushed the laptop to one side and turned on CNN.
‘Up next, a report from the Florida home of tragically deceased television star Ruby Delaney, where her grieving husband has been the victim of a brutal home invasion.’
With a smirk, Ruby picked up the potato chip bag lying beside the remote. The barely edible chips must have been in the Easy Dayz Motel vending machine for months. She munched on the stale snacks while she watched the news. At least she wasn’t the lead item any more. That had taken all of, what, twenty-four hours? Her death wouldn’t have been in the news even that long if Antony hadn’t gotten himself home-invaded the very next day. Ruby’s lips curled into a smile.
The network cued up a clip from the previous day’s news. She turned up the sound, not wanting to miss any of it. Unlike Antony’s scripted appearances on the business channels, when he wore bespoke suits and silk-screened ties, outside the house in Boca his hair was rumpled and his jaw was reddened in duct tape-sized stripes. His shirt was untucked and one eye was swollen shut. Antony stood in his stocking feet on their tumbled-brick driveway and yelled at the cops and, when that had no effect, at the bystanders gawking on the sidewalk.
His lawyer stepped between Antony and the television camera, uttered a firm, ‘No comment,’ and put his hand up to block the videographer’s view. The video ended there, but CNN had aired it many times since. Ruby thought idly of checking YouTube to see how many more thousands of views it had accumulated overnight.
Today a CNN crew was still at the house, but nothing had happened for hours. They had interviewed several neighbors walking their dogs, and a cleaner or two, but none of them knew anything.
The on-air anchor tried desperately to fill empty airtime.
“What we’re seeing here is footage from our helicopter hovering over the Carver mansion in Boca Raton.” The anchorman reached one hand to his ear. “Angela, are you there?”
The image on the screen changed to a petite blond woman, holding a cordless microphone.
“Yes, Bob, I’m outside the Carver residence, where—wait, someone is coming out of the house.” She swiveled for a better look. “It’s one of the detectives. Let’s talk to him.”
Angela pushed through the pack of other reporters and ran onto the lawn. The picture wobbled as the cameraman ran after her. They headed for a man in a blue suit and running shoes who had walked out the front door.
“Sir,” she
said, pushing her microphone in front of his face, “CNN. How is Mr. Carver?”
The detective held out a hand to clear a path through the pack.
“Mr. Carver is fine. He’s had a shock, as you can imagine.”
Angela hustled alongside as he headed for the street.
“Is it true that Mr. Carver was the victim of a home invasion last night?”
“It looks that way, yes.”
“Was he injured?”
“Only slightly.”
“What were the perpetrators after?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know that.”
“Is it true they took Mr. Carver’s Aston Martin?”
The detective paused and gave her a suspicious look.
“Who told you that?”
The camera panned to the garage, which was crisscrossed with yellow caution tape. Mangled metal hung from the upper frame of one of the doors. The camera swiveled back to follow the detective, who had climbed into a waiting unmarked car. As the car pulled away from the curb, Angela turned to face the camera.
“Police have now confirmed a home invasion occurred yesterday at the Boca Raton home of Antony Carver, well-known Wall Street financier,” she looked grave, “who’s had more than his share of trouble recently. This is Angela Powers, signing off.”
“Thank you, Angela,” the anchorman said, turning from her oversized face on the studio monitor back to the main camera. “What a shock that must have been for Mr. Carver so soon after the loss of his young wife. Our hearts go out to him.”
His co-anchor nodded soberly.
“Yes, what an unfortunate incident, coming as it does on the heels of that tragedy at sea two days ago in which Mr. Carver lost his beloved spouse,” she turned smoothly to the second camera, “best known to our viewers as Ruby Delaney, star of the hit sitcom, Family Album.”
The image dissolved into video clips from the show, punctuated by a laugh track. Ruby turned off the television before they reached her ‘career retrospective.’ She already knew the ending.
Leaning against the headboard, she reached for another chip and looked around the motel room. It had been two years since she was fired from Family Album and this room looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since. She studied the brown stains creeping around the ceiling tiles and glanced at the bent wire hangers in the dusty alcove by the door. In the tiny bathroom, black mold edged the shower stall. It had taken less than forty-eight hours for Ruby Danger to transition from a luxury cruise ship in the Caribbean to a seedy dive somewhere in Georgia. She sighed. Even for her, that was a new record.
Her left arm throbbed and she reached for the economy-sized Advil bottle on the night table. Then she retrieved the crumpled paper with Dimitri’s phone number from her tote bag. For at least the twentieth time she wondered if she should call him. Dimitri knew about the vor v zakonye, so he might know how to avoid them.
But how could he help her? How could anyone? Over the past two days, she had stolen twenty million dollars, faked her own death, damaged a car, committed a hit-and-run, and left the scene of an accident—although since she was running from the Russian mob at the time, that last one might not count. She had procured an illegal substance, and was contemplating a run across the Canadian border that might get her strip-searched and turned over to Homeland Security. Not to mention that she was also implicated in a multimillion-dollar stock market fraud.
She put the phone number back in her purse.
The deposits on Antony’s laptop had come from Carvon subsidiaries and many of them led back to Quentin or her, on paper at least. As long as they were involved, how could she alert the SEC about the fraud at Carvon? And if she went to the police for protection from Viktor, she’d have to tell them why he was chasing her. That would mean telling them about the twenty million in missing bonds. And that would lead back to the fraud at Carvon, and Quentin, and her.
There seemed to be no way out but forward. Besides, she wasn’t sure the police could protect her from the Russian mob. And what if they put her into a witness protection program and she never saw the girls again? Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat.
Auntie Ruby isn’t coming. Just like last time.
She was surprised how much that prospect hurt.
Meanwhile, Antony must have told the FBI that his wife was alive. Did they think he was lying? Or were they looking for her right now? Ruby rubbed her forehead with both hands. Maybe it was all a nightmare and any minute now she would wake up.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She had to find a way to get the mobsters back their money and to clear Quentin’s name. That meant she had to find Mila, retrieve the bonds and figure out what Antony was doing at Carvon. But she couldn’t do it alone.
Reaching for her new burner phone, she tapped in the number and held her breath until voice mail answered.
“Dimitri? It’s Ruby Delaney. I need your help. I understand if you don’t want to get involved, but I’d like to see you. I’ll be in Toronto in two days. I’ll call.”
Time to get moving.
It took only a few minutes to stuff everything from the bed back into her tote bag, zip it up, and sling it over her shoulder. On her way out, she stopped to place the motel’s plastic key fob on the bureau. Then she reached into a pocket of her denim jacket and pulled out the tiny velvet bag. One pull on the frayed string and the malachite pebble dropped into her cupped palm.
Her lip quivered as she placed it beside the key fob and walked out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Six
TORONTO
Mila paced and worried for hours. She circled the tiny living room and walked out onto the fire escape to peer down the street, returned to the living room to check the clock on the TV, and walked out onto the fire escape again. She and Dimitri had arrived from Fort Lauderdale that afternoon. But as soon as they got home from the airport, he had gone out and taken her brother, Sergei, with him. It was two a.m. and she had no idea where they were. Another streetcar rumbled past, its trolley pole sparking on the electric wires overhead.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. The door opened and a beaming Sergei burst in. His blue eyes sparkled and his face was flushed.
“Mila, look,” he said, holding out a roll of small bills. “Look at the money I made.”
“I see that.” She patted her brother’s cheek. “It’s past two. You have school tomorrow. Go to bed,” she said, pointing at the pajamas, sheets, and blanket stacked on the sofa.
Dimitri hung his coat on a hook by the door. He crossed the room with a heavy tread and walked into the kitchen, dropping a large package wrapped in butcher paper on the counter with a thud.
“Steaks,” he said, in Russian. “Frozen.” Then he opened a cupboard door and pulled out a bottle of Stolichnaya. He poured a shot glass full and drained it, left the glass and bottle on the counter and walked into the bedroom.
Sergei took off his shoes and sat on the sofa. Wrapping a blanket around his waist, he squirmed out of his pants.
Mila rolled her eyes. “I’m not looking.” She followed Dimitri into the bedroom, closed the door and leaned against it.
“Where have you been?”
He pulled his shirt off over his head and threw it on a chair in the corner, tossed his jeans after it, and stretched out on the bed.
“We made some money, what’s wrong with that?”
“Doing what?”
“Unloading merchandise for your uncle.”
“You took Sergei to see Viktor?”
“So?”
“Was it stolen?”
He ignored her.
“The merchandise. Was it stolen?”
“How should I know? What does it matter?”
“It matters when you take a fifteen-year-old boy along.”
“He has to start making money some time.”
“Not that way. Not with Viktor.” Stepping over to the bed, she bent over him. “Sergei has talent, he needs to go to school.”
“Talent,” Dimitri said with a sneer. “I had talent.” He pulled her down by her wrist until their faces were inches apart. “What good did it do?”
“Leave him alone, Dimitri. Please.”
Releasing her, he flopped back onto the bed and closed his eyes.
“We need Sergei again on Thursday. Make sure he comes home from school by noon.”
“No,” she said, rubbing her wrist.
Dimitri opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “Then I will cash one of the bonds. I met someone tonight who said—”
“We can’t,” Mila blurted. “We have to give them back.”
“Give them back?” He turned his head slowly and stared at her. “Ruby Delaney took the bonds. And now she’s dead. If we give them back, the police will think we killed her. That you killed her.”
“That’s not true. She was asleep. I knew there was money in the box and I wanted to keep it safe for her. I was going to give it back when she woke up. But she was gone.”
“So. First you took the bonds. Then you killed her.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t know about the bonds.”
“Then why did you help her?”
“I told you. She would have given me money. Lots of it.”
“So you were trying to take her money.”
“Stop making it sound as if I’m a criminal.”
“I am only telling you what the police will say if we return the bonds. You think they will believe us?” His mouth twisted. “Noon. Thursday. Make certain Sergei is there.” He rolled to face the wall and pulled up the blanket. “And turn out the light.”
Mila flicked off the wall switch and stood quietly by the door. Then she slipped silently into the living room. Sergei was already asleep, stretched out on the sofa with a blanket pulled up to his chin. Picking up the pack of cigarettes Dimitri had left on the counter, Mila slid one out and took matches from a bowl on the table.
She crossed the room and stepped onto the fire escape where she struck a match and cupped it in her hand to light the cigarette. Mila waved the match until it was out and tossed it away. She puffed on the cigarette a few times, leaning both elbows on the metal railing. A streetcar stopped at the corner. A young couple got out and hurried across the street, holding hands.
