Twisted Genius

by Patricia Rice

  “Dragons aren’t charming,” the detective said with a snarl.

  “Dragons protect their treasure and breathe fire,” I said solemnly. “Don’t threaten them, and they can be anything you want them to be.”

  The captain almost looked amused—but then, he apparently knew Magda. “You’ll let us know if she calls?”

  “Probably not,” I said honestly. “My business is to protect my younger siblings, and if that includes protecting their mother, I will.”

  The captain did smile then, and poked his unfriendly companion. “She just told you that she’s a chip off the old block. Don’t threaten her, and you might eventually get cooperation instead of scorched.”

  “Thank you for understanding, Captain.” And I meant it. Most people didn’t appreciate my enigmatic remarks. I’d have to respect this one. “I will gladly help where I can, but if you’re not inclined to share, then you can expect the same.”

  He saluted me with his cap and strode for the door. I bared my teeth at the detective, who returned his most intimidating glare.

  I could have told him I’d stared down rabid camels worse than him. Camels had no rules. Law enforcement was hog-tied by them. I almost felt sorry for the old dear as he stomped out. Almost.

  As soon as they were gone, I ran up the stairs to tackle the snarling lion returned to his den.

  Chapter 14

  Why was my mother a murder suspect?

  Hitting the third floor, I saw Graham’s office door open. As I suspected, he had returned. His mode of transportation is faster than Metro, and I’d been delayed—by cops in the parlor. He sat there on his wheeled throne as always, not appearing in the least ruffled by my appearance, the death of our fathers’ killer in his hands, or whatever had brought Captain Freddy into our safe house.

  There’d been a time when Graham had roared like a wounded lion over our ability to attract the law. Was he ill or just coming to expect our talent for trouble?

  “What murder? What suspect?” I demanded of our resident spy, too furious to ferret out the info on my own.

  Knowing me too well, Graham punched a key and brought up a police file on one screen, a bad security camera photo on another.

  I studied the image. It was hard to disguise my mother’s almond-shaped eyes; they were as distinctive as mine. We didn’t need eyeliner to elongate, or mascara to lengthen lashes, although Magda used cosmetics to enhance her high cheekbones and come-hither look. I was pretty sure most of her blond came from a bottle these days, but her sleek coiffure gave her an unmistakable Sophia Loren quality that bypassed me.

  So, that was Magda sitting at what appeared to be an artificially battered, polished trestle table. I had no idea why people paid big bucks for a glorified picnic table, but I’d seen the architectural magazines Nick waved in my face. I’d heard about the country kitchen style. I guessed it proved they were rich enough to have space no one would ever use.

  The man with her was less visible, as if he knew where the camera was placed. He looked older than Magda because he was going bald and his jaw was starting to sag, but it was impossible to tell more than that.

  “Who is he?”

  “Michael Moriarity,” Graham answered without hesitation. “Possible heir to some portion of Scion’s wealth. If there is a will, it isn’t public yet, but Scion had no offspring. His sister, brother, and their families are next of kin. Michael is his nephew, on his sister’s side.”

  “Did Scion not designate an heir-apparent, someone to take over his shares of the stock or place on the board?” Don’t ask me how I knew this stuff. My research was often boring but informative.

  “He evidently thought he’d live forever. Or he was paranoid and afraid a successor would kill him. Take your choice.”

  “With his background, I vote both. Whose kitchen is that?”

  “That’s the odd part. They found this footage on one of Scion’s private security cameras, one not on his network, but that’s not his kitchen.” Graham called up an image of a gleaming stainless steel kitchen with black granite counters—and no trestle table. At least the table in the shot had a homey look. Scion’s kitchen looked like a factory.

  “Someone hacks his security, replaces footage, and the cops don’t realize someone is framing them?” I asked in incredulity. “Captain Freddy didn’t seem to be a stupid man.”

  “Captain Freddy?” he asked, gifting me with a glance from those sexy, deep-set eyes. “No, Bottom isn’t stupid. The bulldog terrier isn’t either, but he’s used to intimidating gangsters and lacks finesse. That’s why they sent Bottom. If your mother would simply tell them the time and place of this meeting, life would be easier.”

  “Magda is apparently busy bringing down Rose’s campaign if I’m to judge by her phone calls from this past week. She may have been responsible for the Scion balloons as well as Miss Kitty.”

  “There were some of those balloons at the murder scene.”

  I winced but had to defend my mother. “If Magda meant to murder someone, she wouldn’t leave arrogant messages. The balloons were planted just like this tape,” I said dismissively. “Besides, if that was her in the Mata Hari hat, she didn’t have a lot of time to race down the mountains from West Virginia to DC. If there’s no real footage of her in the kitchen, they have nothing.”

  “Driving time, six hours,” he said with a shrug. “Close, providing the coroner’s time of death was accurate. The security guards didn’t find Scion until a midnight shift change. Rigor mortis had just begun to set in. The cops have nothing else. Persuade Magda to talk.”

  At any other time, I’d have rolled on the floor in hysterical laughter at the thought of me persuading Magda to so much as peel an apple. But someone framing my mother was too creepy for laughter.

  “Bottom will have to earn his reputation. I gave him her number. That’s all I’ve got.” Well, that, and my research abilities.

  I turned to leave, but Graham stopped me by changing the screen and using a dire tone of warning, “Ana.”

  With trepidation, I looked up again. There was Old Tony the Bomber, sitting in the bar, just the way I’d left him well over an hour ago, before the confrontation with Graham. He was nursing a nearly empty mug—so it was a while after I’d left. The kid bartender was flirting with a waitress at the far end of the bar.

  Old Fart was on the phone, looking concerned. He glared at the phone, stuck it in his pocket, and stomped out of sight.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked. “Are we waiting for your men to show up and blow it?”

  “Keep watching.”

  Old Fart returned with a fresh mug of beer, setting it down in front of Tony. For the first time that day, the old man brightened. He’d only taken a few sips before the guys in khaki showed up, Tony’s hand jerked, and he spilled his beer.

  I was a little slow. “I saw that part. They chase him out the door.”

  Graham zoomed in on the mug. “Thanks to the diligent bartender, the beer was gone and the mug washed before we could examine it, but the medical personnel we called think it wasn’t a stroke.”

  Horrified into stupid, I stared as Graham replayed the scene of Old Fart glaring at his phone. “Then it really was poison? Does that mean Old Fart knew your men were coming?”

  “The old guy wasn’t there by the time we arrived. He was warned. Looks like my sources may have been hacked,” Graham replied angrily. “We’re dealing with professionals.”

  The same professionals who were setting my mother up for a murder rap? Had Tony known something about Scion’s death?

  Ana was too well-versed in espionage techniques for her own good, Graham concluded after she stomped out in a fury. He’d like to blame Magda for Ana’s upbringing, but reality was that her whole family had Machiavellian intelligence and too much curiosity. He supposed it was better that Ana apply her assets for the forces of good than waste her time and millions going to spas and buying jewelry.

  But he’d been the one who’d given her
the drug report, then dragged her into Tony’s case. He’d let her see him lose his temper. He’d been holding back his fury over his father’s murder for over two decades. He should have mellowed by now, but how did one forgive a murder that disrupted entire lives and kept a country at war for years longer?

  It had felt good plowing his fist into the old goat’s jaw. Graham flexed his bruised knuckles and still couldn’t feel bad about it. He wouldn’t have killed the man, no matter how much he deserved it. He hadn’t anticipated someone killing Tony for him.

  He could hope that the scene had been worth it so that Ana had the closure of knowing who had murdered her father and tried to blow up Nick. Maybe she’d let well enough alone now. He’d rest easier if she would go downstairs and read the comics instead of. . .

  Staring at the monitor that connected with her computer, he frowned. What was she doing now? She’d opened a file called Old Fart and started digging into the bar’s ownership. Damn, she had a devious mind. And unfortunately, he liked the way it worked. She had no personal interest in Tony’s death, but she was doing exactly what he meant to do. She was like having an extra arm—and brain.

  He had already ordered his IT people to start cleansing his servers after the Russian cyber attack. How had anyone hacked his communication with Ana or his men? He ordered IT to set up completely new IP addresses and encryption.

  While others performed technical tasks, Graham clenched his molars and began systematically digging through his resources looking for an on-line mole. He had the IP path of the Russian hackers but didn’t have the resources to physically knock on Russian doors once he found their nest. It didn’t matter. He had other means of blasting them to hell once he found them.

  Graham and Tudor could handle the hacked computer problem better than I could. I had a hard time imagining any common criminal with the capability to worm inside Graham’s impregnable computer fortress, but if we were dealing with Russians hackers as Tudor had indicated. . . They apparently had nothing better to do but poke around inside US computers, admiring how the other half of the world lived, if the paranoids could be believed. Not my line of work.

  I was simply irate that Old Fart had denied me the satisfaction of seeing Tony twist in the wind. I wasn’t any too happy about Magda being involved in Scion’s death either, but she was a big girl. As long as she didn’t drag us in, I’d stay off her case.

  The time and date stamp on Graham’s video of his men entering the bar was barely half an hour after I’d gone outside. He worked fast.

  There had been no one else in the bar besides Old Fart and Joe College. If Tony had been poisoned, they had to have done it, and since Fart had handed him the beer, it had to be him. Why?

  The bar wasn’t part of a chain. I traced the ownership to an LLC. Amateurs. It’s hard to hide corporate ownership behind an LLC. Two people by the name of Ivan and Piotr Popov had filed the papers.

  The names sounded vaguely familiar. I ran a search through my computer and found them in one of Graham’s files about the cell tower Scion had used—the Rustel Corporation had major stockholders by the same name.

  I’m very good at jumping to obvious conclusions, but I wanted more evidence before deciding Scion was funding his Russian connections in legit US businesses. It didn’t make sense.

  I dug out what I could on Ivan and Piotr. Old Fart hadn’t had any accent that I’d noticed, although the Popovs could have been born here for all I knew. Old Fart had acted like an owner—maybe he was just management? He’d called the bartender “my boy” and “Bill” but I didn’t have anything else on either of them. I couldn’t find pictures of Ivan and Piotr. Frustrated, I dug back through newspaper files, looking for grand opening stories. The bar had looked fairly new.

  Yup, there we were, Old Fart proudly cutting ribbons. The caption called him general manager, Robert Estes. Beside him stood the owner, a portly old gent in a horrible plaid golf blazer, “Peter” Popov.

  What the heck did I do with all these puzzle pieces?

  Scion Pharmaceuticals had Eastern European connections. They hired mafia thugs like Viktor, and apparently, old IRA terrorists like Tony. Scion himself had been in the terrorism business many long moons ago.

  Senator Rose had done Scion’s dirty work by suppressing Guy’s report, which put Rose in the pockets of terrorists as far as I was concerned. In return, Scion had been funding the PAC supporting Rose’s campaign for president. Theoretically, that didn’t give him the right to micro-manage Rose’s platform and staff, but the media called him Rose’s campaign strategist. That was a pretty close relationship.

  Who was stepping into Scion’s campaign job now? Too soon to tell, probably. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be a flea in Rose’s ear?

  I pulled out my Top Hat spreadsheet from previous cases. Where did Scion fit into the wealthy cadre of corporate bullies? He’d come from an Irish slum, much like my father. Unlike Brody, he hadn’t gone fundraising or mingled in my grandfather’s elite circles. He just bought and sold drugs and guns like any low-level gangster.

  I’d been able to trace Max’s involvement with the original founders of Top Hat back to the fifties. By the mid-eighties, they’d been bringing in offspring and the newly rich. At that point, my father died, Magda fled, and Max’s involvement became less clear.

  Rose’s father had been one of the newer members who came in after Max started fading out, if thirty years ago qualified as new.

  Most of the members served on each other’s boards, owned considerable amounts of each other’s stock, attended the same country clubs, and funded the same conservative charities. No Planned Parenthood or ACLU donors in this bunch. They’d mostly attended the same Ivy League schools. Top Hat was a good old boys’ club to beat all old boys’ clubs.

  A thug like Scion simply didn’t fit the picture. How the heck did he get to run Rose’s campaign?

  The phone jarred me from my fugue state. Patra never called if she could text, so this had to be important. “They’ve offered you a Pulitzer prize for non-reporting,” I said just to wake myself up.

  “If we don’t receive a Pulitzer for this Scion article, it will be because World War III has broken out,” she said with excitement. “Do we get to make speeches so I can thank you for the story of a lifetime?”

  “Keep me out of it,” I said in genuine alarm. “I don’t want people knowing my name. And Nick is the one who provided the report. He likes a little glory. What have you found?”

  “I’m sending the full research to your box. But we’ve confirmed the addictive properties of Mylaudanix and the correlation with opium. Guy and Nadia already had the numbers on cost, which is nominal with the Middle Eastern opium connection we’ve verified, and sales price, which is astronomical. We’ve had third parties corroborate them.”

  “Pharmaceutical companies claim they need that profit to continue research and fund less profitable but valuable drugs,” I said, quoting repeated PR articles on the subject.

  “They could pay every man, woman, and child on the planet to do research with this kind of profit. What they’re funding is a huge promotional campaign, pushing the drug in Third World countries as well as here. I had Zander send us his findings on Scion’s investments. The promo doesn’t even begin to touch the profits. Outside of advertising, the money is not going into Scion Pharmaceutical for research. The profits are pouring into buying weapon factories across Europe, mineral companies in Africa, oil in the Mideast—he could have started his own war.”

  “And into Rose’s presidential campaign to buy his own government,” I added, shuddering.

  “So who is heir to this vast network of war machines?” Patra asked, understanding.

  Reluctantly, because Patra deserved to be included, I told her about Magda and Moriarity.

  She must have passed the name on to Sean. I could hear him shouting in the background.

  “Tell me Moriarity isn’t the new guy running Rose’s campaign,” I said, trying to translate Sean’s
shouts.

  “The opposite,” Patra said gleefully. “His mother is in Bill Smith’s PAC. Moriarity is a lawyer for the ACLU. The Scion family did not get together for happy holidays.”

  “Oh wow. Then Top Hat is gunning for Moriarity as well as Magda.”

  “And us, shortly,” Patra said cheerfully. “Our first article is on the editor’s desk. We’re starting with Guy’s report.”

  I’d taught myself not to swear so my younger siblings wouldn’t learn to behave like uncivilized ignoramuses. But I ran through a mental list of profanity as I thought about a beautiful, intelligent young couple like Sean and Patra in the crosshairs of a bunch of ruthless greedmeisters and the Russian mafia—as our fathers had been.

  “Could you take a vacation to South Africa, visit Zander?” I asked with a sigh.

  “That’s what Magda does when a country gets too hot,” Patra reminded me. “Send her.”

  The phone clicked off.

  Out of sheer masochism, I Googled Harvey Scion’s family. Scion had grown up in war-torn Dublin. His parents had taken their younger two children to the US when teenage Harvey brought bombers to their door. Harvey Scion had stayed behind with his gang of hooligans. Well, I was reading between the lines a lot here.

  In the ensuing years, Scion had made a profit off war and drugs, while his family had lived in peace in New York. In a normal world, Scion should have been a union sympathizer and supporter of the poor like his family, except he’d decided being rich was more fun. Admittedly, he had been good at it.

  I had the nasty feeling that Scion had not left his fortune in the hands of his liberal, peace-loving family.

  I dug through police files. Surely they’d had the sense to ask about a will since they considered Moriarity as a suspect. But all I found was the name of Scion’s law firm and their refusal to cooperate. There was no record of a will filed in probate yet. I was not the level of hacker that Graham and Tudor were. I sent a request to both of them asking if they could get into the law firm’s computers.