Twisted Genius

by Patricia Rice

  “Same type bomb and he as much as admitted it. Scion was former IRA, a was my father, and they knew the bomber back in the day. It makes sense.”

  “You didn’t have a chance to ask questions?” Nick knew what that meant to me.

  I shrugged. Nothing would ever fill the hole my father’s death had left. I at least now knew why and who. “He was old and unreliable. At least we know more.”

  “Is there any chance the hackers know we have the contents of Nadia’s computer?” Guy asked worriedly.

  Graham’s heavily secured computers had been relentlessly hacked until someone had broken through his security. Graham’s computers were connected to mine. And the contents of Nadia’s computer had been in both of them. Guy’s enemies could now be focused on my home.

  Oh double filthy crap.

  I stormed out with EG under a black cloud of fear and fury.

  Chapter 16

  Once we were back at the mansion, I sent EG off to bed, then raced upstairs. Graham met me at his office door and hauled me back to the bedroom.

  I was becoming really addicted to these interludes of Graham’s sexual prowess, but I had to wonder what had set him off this time. Adrenaline and frustration were our usual triggers. I wasn’t arguing. I needed this too.

  After we got ourselves hot and sweaty, we took a long shower where we worked off more steam. Collapsing into bed, I summoned the effort to plant my elbows on his hardened chest. “What did you do now?”

  “The hackers were using Rustel’s towers,” was all he gave me in explanation.

  I fell back on the rumpled sheets to ponder all the implications left unsaid. “Are the Popovs really Russian then?”

  “Da,” he answered grumpily, turning his back on me.

  I punched his shoulder blade and he grunted. “Then you’d better have a pharmaceutical expert take a look at Nadia’s files, because the Russians now have access to them.” I hadn’t had time to dig through Nadia’s less than meticulous files. I had a feeling she had deliberately concealed the contents with the hodge-podge.

  “They have the files in the laptop,” he said less grumpily, following my train of thought.

  “If there’s anything dangerous in there, they may still want to take out Nadia.”

  “And us.” He growled, turned over, and planted his arms over me. “I hate it when you do that.”

  Since he leaned over and kissed me thoroughly, I considered that a mixed message.

  Tuesday morning, I decided if Nadia’s computer had put her and my entire family in danger, I had to keep going after Scion’s Russian connections, even if Scion was dead.

  Of course, opening my phone at the breakfast table to a text from Patra provided different distraction. ROSE IMPLICATED IN SCION’S DEATH read the headline. In smaller headlines: Heir Provides Evidence of Blackmail.

  My eyes bugged out. I didn’t believe screaming media headlines often, but this one deserved a happy dance. I so seldom got to read good news.

  The headline at least explained what Magda was doing with Moriarity—looking for dirt. The big question was—what did any of this have to do with my father’s death? Or guns. The men behind those two obsessions were all Magda fixated on. She might trade information or tasks to obtain what she wanted, but after she’d blown up GenDef’s weapon stores last month —GenDef had sold weapons to my dad and Tony—I’d finally accepted that it was all about vengeance.

  I scanned the article, then read again for details while EG slurped cereal at the end of the table.

  The only real implication was the blackmail. There was utterly no other evidence that the senator had killed his campaign fat cow. So this was the usual media smear campaign. I wasn’t complaining. Rose needed to be smeared. But I really liked a few facts with my hysteria.

  From what I could gather from this article—I really wanted a red pen to edit all the indefinite pronouns—Rose had borrowed money from Scion to pay off Gertrude all those many years ago.

  After EG finished eating and left to get ready for school, I called Patra. She actually answered. “Fun stuff, huh?” she answered with glee, knowing I’d just read the article.

  “Let me run this theory past you. Tell me where my logic fails.” Patra politely waited, so I rearranged my thoughts and did a quick timeline. “Scion was more Mallard’s age than my father’s, right? So when my father was buying guns and Rose was boffing Gertrude. . . Scion was already making his fortune in drugs and war.”

  “Sounds about right,” Patra agreed. “According to the article,” she stopped, apparently to skim through it. “At the time, Scion was a salesman attempting to make contacts with Paul Rose’s wealthy inner circle.”

  “Way to gloss over details, people,” I complained. “I translate that as Scion needed Rose’s wealthy father or Top Hat or both for nefarious purposes. Paying off Gertrude put Rose Junior right in Scion’s pocket.”

  “But why would Scion need Rose’s father and Top Hat? Scion already had wads of cash, and he wasn’t exactly good old boy material,” Patra argued, playing my devil’s advocate.

  “Because Rose’s father had something Scion wanted besides money. Scion had just bought the guns my father had tried to refuse. Rose’s father had. . . coal mines? For storing weapons,” I cried in excitement.

  “Your mind leaps like a grasshopper,” Patra grumbled. “And you might just be right.”

  I saw EG off to school and ran down to my computer, where I looked up Rose’s father. In the 1980s, his coal mines were still booming, but one had recently been shut down for health and safety violations—therefore there were no workers inside. They had a train right there to offload and upload goods, with tracks that connected to shipyards all up and down the east coast.

  Rose Senior had a hole in his budget and Scion had a way to fill it.

  After a quarter of a century, I doubted we could find anyone to testify that trains ran to an empty coal mine or that they stored boxes of ammunition and weapons, but my curiosity was satisfied on that point.

  If Rose had been directly involved in storing and transporting illegal weapons, Scion had a hold over him, not a huge one, but it was probably the start of Rose’s relationship with the dirt bag. Over the next quarter of a century of Rose’s political career, I’m sure there had been opportunity for more dirt to accumulate.

  And really, unless another member of Top Hat was turning snitch, only Magda and Moriarity could possibly have revealed any of this. Magda would most certainly have followed the weapon trail from the moment of my father’s death. Moriarity might have had access to the family papers to confirm some portion of it.

  Oh, jolly fun. I could almost appreciate my mother’s insane perseverance—now that I didn’t have to live with it.

  I toyed with Tony’s odd comment about the “bloody kid” snitching on my father. Rose would have been a kid to him at that point. Graham knew more than I did about that period. I emailed him: If Rose was looking for someone to help him pay off Gertrude—would he have known my father?

  I got a laconic: Yup, in reply. I glared but didn’t disturb him more.

  Fine, if Rose knew my father, he might have heard that Brody was looking for a way to end the weapon deal. If Rose had snitched that news to Scion so he could make nice with the powerful men in Top Hat, they’d have easily concluded my father and his friends were expendable.

  And my mother knew that. Magda would have known about Rose and Tony, just as she’d known about Gertrude.

  I didn’t have time to yell at my mother or gloat over the pieces of Rose’s platform toppling. I had other plans. My brain processes a lot while I’m sleeping, and I had a whole new to-do list to start my day.

  Someone with technical know-how had knocked off Scion. I wanted to find that person. I had the gut feeling he could split open this rock hanging over our heads and spill gold. I needed to know who Scion had called the night he died, if he’d been expecting company.

  It had belatedly occurred to me that I might have
Tony’s phone number, if he hadn’t made up the one on the napkin. Tony’s phone might contain Scion’s private numbers. I checked police files, and they didn’t find a phone on Tony’s body.

  I dug through Graham’s neatly categorized videos and found the one dated for yesterday and labeled with the name of the bar. I ran it again. There was Tony at the bar, empty glass in front of him—shortly after I’d left and he’d given me his number. He pulled a phone from his pocket and glanced at it, then set it on the bar—waiting for my fake uncle to call? It was still there when the men in khaki arrived and Tony ran, leaving the phone on the bar.

  Graham hadn’t copied the rest of the tape, but my bet was that Bill the Bartender had flung the phone in a lost and found after he washed the mug. He struck me as that kind of neatnik.

  The coroner’s report on Tony hadn’t been filed yet, so the cops weren’t actively suspecting murder. Tony was a smoker and obviously not in the best of shape. They’d have better things to do than investigate a possible heart attack. So they hadn’t seen this video or looked for the phone.

  With Tony’s record, the cops had no reason not to believe whatever lies Graham’s security crew had told. Authorities still didn’t know Tony had worked for Scion. Naughty Graham. But naughty Graham was providing the security protecting Nadia, so I couldn’t quibble.

  Since it was too early for the bar to be open so I could look for Tony’s phone, I called the other number I’d collected that day, the one for Scion’s housekeeper. I hoped she spoke a language I might stumble around in a bit. The person who answered sounded young and spoke fine English.

  “Hi, my name is Linda Lane.” That was my alias of choice today. “Ursula gave me this number for Maria. She said she might be available for housekeeping?”

  “In what part of the city?” the young voice asked crisply.

  All I had was Nadia’s place, now Guy and Nick’s. Heaven only knew, they needed help. Since they now had security out the wazoo, we could spy on her if she decided to spy on them. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and all that. “Upper Northwest,” I said. “Not far from the Metro.”

  “How many rooms?”

  I wanted to be the one doing the interrogating. Dang. “It’s not a large house. Three small bedrooms and a family room, plus the usual. Are you Maria?”

  “No, I am her daughter. I help her. Her English is not so good. Will that be a problem?”

  The name sounded Spanish, but the daughter had the slightest hint of accent that didn’t. I threw a wild guess anyway. “If she speaks Spanish or French, I’ll be fine.”

  “Russian,” the daughter said crisply. “But I can translate.”

  Oh my my. We were really going to have to spy on this one. I kept that thought to myself. “Good to know. Are you interested? I can meet you at the house today.”

  We made an arrangement to meet at Nadia’s place in an hour. It was north of here, so I could travel on to Bethesda after. I called Nick and warned him of what I was up to.

  “Espionage and housekeeping in one blow, nice multitasking,” he said with cynicism. “We’ll be certain not to bring any secrets home. Any clue as to who blew up one of Rustel’s cell towers last night? There are rumors flying all over the office, and I’ll get a gold star if I can produce a credible theory.”

  Cell tower? I remembered Graham’s adrenaline overload last night, connected it to his fury with the hackers, and opened door number two. “Let us assume the Russian stockholders used Rustel for nefarious purposes, and they hacked the wrong server.”

  Nick and I had learned to speak in riddles back in the day when anything we said was overheard. We could figure his office was tapped. He knew I was talking about Graham and my theory was credible. The Brits didn’t need to know that, although they’d probably hired Nick for just this reason.

  “Rustel—Russian telephone?” Nick connected the dots quickly. “I like it. The feds are reportedly crawling all over the other towers this morning, so something is up. Rustel’s office has been cleaned out. Mission accomplished.”

  If taking out the hackers was the mission, yup, but I wish I could have dug into Rustel’s records first. There was the little matter of Scion’s missing phone to start with.

  Graham had demolished a cell tower? Wow. He worked fast. Pity he couldn’t take out the hackers while he was at it. Hackers got nasty when thwarted. If anyone could handle them, it would be Graham.

  Unless I wanted to dig further into my father’s files or Magda’s phone calls, I didn’t have a lot of other leads. I wasn’t optimistic about cell tower demolishment stopping anyone who would try to murder a mother and chemist and anyone in their vicinity.

  Since the weather had turned colder, I’d dressed in leggings under a black wool ankle-length skirt that concealed my furry boots. For fun, I donned my leather spotted furry hat that only needed ear muffs to look Russian. I still wore my leather coat over my sweater, though. I didn’t want to play wealthy sophisticate by wearing my matching faux leopard coat.

  I took the Metro to Nadia’s place. Guy was still working there, but Nick had warned him I was coming. Gauging by the level of disarray in the front room, I was at least accomplishing a good deed by bringing in a housekeeper. We’d just have to watch out for wire taps.

  Maria and her daughter Lillian arrived on schedule. Maria was short and chunky and wrapped up like a babushka doll, but Lillian was in her early twenties, polished and svelte. While Maria exclaimed over the chaos in mixed English and Russian, Lillian and I followed her around.

  “Ursula said all Mr. Scion’s employees received good references from his lawyers,” I said while Lillian jotted notes. “As you can see, my brother needs all the help he can get. Would you have the contacts for Scion’s gardeners and handymen?”

  “Maria has all that in the little phone he gave her,” Lillian said absently, examining a drapery falling off a rod. “She kept his house running. She is very good. Perhaps we cost too much for a place like this? There are children, yes?”

  “The children are the reason my brother needs help. He and Guy can’t afford what Mr. Scion paid, I’m sure, but the house is much smaller. They don’t have room for live-in help, but someone who can occasionally cook would be good.” I was improvising madly, hoping to find out more about the phone. It all came back to the wretched phones.

  She nodded and jotted more notes. “Mr. Scion had his own cook. We could call her. But if Mama comes three days a week, she could prepare a hot meal those days.”

  Guy popped out of his office. “That would be ideal,” he said in relief. “I could go into the office those days and work here the other two.”

  I left them discussing arrangements and followed Maria into the master, where she was studying the toiletries strewn over the vanity and shaking her head. Nadia may have lived simply, but Guy and Nick were spoiled single men with money to spare.

  Out of sight of Lillian, I took out my phone and gestured at Maria’s. “We should exchange phone numbers,” I enunciated as clearly as I could.

  She nodded and carelessly handed over her treasure trove. There were only half a dozen contacts in it. I sent them all to my phone and left Nick’s number in hers. Without a search warrant, the police couldn’t do this. I had a purpose in life as a cockroach.

  I left Maria compulsively sorting men’s hair products from hygiene products and putting them into drawers. That would teach the slobs to buy baskets and sort things out themselves. Bathrooms had shelves for a reason.

  “I have another appointment,” I told Guy and Lillian, who were happily ticking off check boxes on a list. “Make sure you exchange phone numbers.”

  Guy gave me a thumbs up. Lillian offered an absent nod of dismissal. That kind of focus would take the kid far someday. I let myself out and trotted back to the Metro, my good deed done. I’d look up the phone numbers I’d just stolen when I got home, but right now, the only number I needed was Tony’s. Had Scion given him a handy-dandy private phone too? I k
nocked wood and sent wishes to the heavens.

  Joe College wasn’t behind the bar when I arrived in Bethesda. The waitress from the other day was there, chatting up early lunch customers. I took a table near the corridor I knew led to the kitchen and office, ordered tea, and pulled out my phone. Holding my breath, I punched in the contact I’d labeled with Tony the Bomber’s number.

  I nearly toppled in surprise when I actually heard it ring. I hadn’t really expected this to work, so I wasn’t prepared. The waitress looked up to see what was ringing. I got up and jogged toward the restroom corridor calling, “I found it! I thought I’d left it here.”

  A customer called for a refill and the waitress shrugged. With no other wait staff available, she couldn’t do much more.

  The office door wasn’t locked. The room looked as if a hurricane had struck it, but my interest was in the stack of phones I discovered in the desk drawer. I grabbed the ringing one, switched it off, and stuck it in my pocket. I really wanted to take the rest but couldn’t justify it.

  I knew I walked a fine line between seeking justice and criminal behavior when I pulled stunts like this.

  I worried that the phones would disappear before the police decided Tony’s death justified a search warrant. Estes apparently hadn’t considered them important enough to take when he’d fled.

  I returned to my tea and waited until the waitress came over to ask if I wanted more.

  “The half sandwich and cup of soup sounds good. I’d like to thank Mr. Estes for saving my phone for me. When will he be in?”

  “He lost an old friend yesterday, said he was taking some time to help the family. Bill should be in at noon. He can pass on the message. You want beef or tuna?”

  “Tuna and chowder, please. I’ll leave a note, thanks. Do a lot of people lose their phones here?”

  “Yeah, but everyone has those tracking apps now. You oughta see if yours has it.” She trotted off to wait on a new customer.