Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
Page 18
A snort. “Look, all I can say is, she sailed through all her paperwork and her psych evaluation looked great.” Although not required by the FAA, Northeastern Southwest required psychological screening for all air crew before they could join Team “We fly everywhere!”.
“And?”
“And that’s it. Honestly. No red flags. She even joked a little about how being an orphan actually helped her choose this line of work—no family to let down when she’d inevitably work during the holidays.”
“But … she has a family. A brother, at least. That’s what she said when we saw each other in Boston and she freaked right out. Because, again, something’s up with her.”
“Ava, honestly, that’s all I can tell you. And I shouldn’t have told you even that much. If you don’t want to file a complaint, my hands are tied.”
“There’s nothing to file a complaint for,” Ava fretted.
“Then I’m ending this conversation by assuring you that I don’t think you’re in any physical danger from Becka Miller.”
“Well, that—wait, just physical danger?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Am I in emotional danger? Psychological danger? Jan? Hello?” Dammit. One thing about Jan, she was as ruthless as Ava about ending phone calls. When she said she was hanging up (so to speak—did they even have the phone receivers required to hang up over at Human Resources? Or were they all on their smartphones?), she never bluffed.
So Becka’s smart, did great on her tests, aced her psych eval, and poses no physical danger to me. But she’s also an orphan who may or may not have a creepy brother she may or may not resent and who talked about me to strangers to an extent that the HR rep knew instantly who I was calling about.
Yeah, not convinced this puts her in the clear.
If Ava was a cop, she’d have nothing. But she wasn’t a cop, which was the advantage of being a pilot instead of a police officer: she didn’t need much more than her intuition to look into something.
She’d lay it out for Tom, see what he thought. Maybe after some kissing. Well, no. This was important. Before the kissing, then. But then immediately after she laid out the Becka speculation, on to the kissing.
Always good to have your priorities straight, she figured. Right?
Forty-One
Mall of America
South Street Dining Area
Bloomington, MN
She could see at once meeting at the food court had been a bad idea. Tom looked tense, which given his line of work was alarming. What could freak out a guy who carved up corpses for a living? A rubber glove shortage? A zombie apocalypse? (To be fair, that last would upset her, too.)
He didn’t even notice her until she was almost on top of him (figuratively). “Hey,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. “It’s great to see you.” It was. He was in khakis, loafers, and a black polo that set off his build and eyes to wonderful effect. Ava knew she had it bad when she thought how sexy he looked when the decidedly unsexy mall lighting hit his shaved skull. “Are you all right?”
“It’s dinnertime,” he replied in a low voice, brown eyes almost black in their intensity. “It’s … very crowded. Hard to focus. And I should be with you more. I can’t keep you safe if I’m not with you.”
She squeezed his hand, turned at once
“Ava, please don’t g—oh.”
and started leading him through the food court and back to the entrance to the Radisson Blu a few hundred feet away.
“I’m not going anywhere. Well, I am, but you’re coming with me. What, you thought I’d run because you’re stressed?” she chided him.
“It’s been known to happen. Not with you. Others.”
“Every day, you have to wade through the worst people do to each other; it’s literally your job description. I’m impressed you’re not stressed every day. The reason I wanted to meet here is because I’m lazy—my hotel is here—and because I like the Mall of America.”
“Why?”
“Because Danielle never came here—utterly refused—and because my folks only went a couple of times. Called it a marketing monstrosity. It’s one of the places in this benighted state that doesn’t remind me of murder.”
“Oh.”
“But it’s fine if you need to leave. We’ll grab dinner at the hotel. In my room if you want—it’s nice and quiet and oh my God, people have been murdered in the Mall of America. That’s what that look on your face means.”
The tension around his eyes had eased, and he looked down and grinned. “Well. Yes.”
“In unusual ways, or you probably wouldn’t have remembered. The mall’s not even in your bailiwick. It’s Hennepin County, not Ramsey. Let’s go somewhere quiet where I can have a steak and you can tell me about murder.” What have I become?
“Thank you,” he said quietly, and she could sense the weight of feeling behind his words but, because she was an immature idiot, shrugged and looked away. Which is why she didn’t notice her would-be muggers until it was close to too late.
She’d led him outside rather than taking the skyway, and they were skirting the edge of the parking ramp when opportunistic thieves made their presence known with, “Give it up.”
Oh, swell. This is on me. Tom’s probably still freaked out; I should’ve been paying attention for both of us. An unpleasant experience is nigh. Nigh, I say!
She knew the best and safest option was to meekly hand over her purse
“Man said give it the fuck up.”
no matter how much she wanted to arm-wrestle them for it. Still, they were both big—almost as tall as Tom. More worrying, they didn’t seem especially nervous or edgy—she had the impression they’d done this before. The one on the left was wearing a knitted cap pulled low, which also should have tipped her off, and had one hand stuffed into his pocket
(knife? gun?)
while his empty hand dangled at his side. His partner was shorter and wider, and flashed his knife with disconcerting confidence. Less-than-even odds, in other words.
She started to unsling her purse from her shoulder
(better update my list and get more Tootsie Rolls and also a new wallet)
when Tom struck. Literally. She felt the wind of the blow as his fist shot past her face, which was followed by a “crunch” not unlike the sound of someone wrenching a turkey leg from the thigh.
The tall one made an outraged, bubbly sound as blood poured down his chin while his partner lunged into Tom’s left hook. She was astonished at Tom’s speed—she would have expected him to be strong, not swift. Tom made a grab for the first guy, but they had decided to git while the gitting was good, and were around the corner and away not even ten seconds after Tom had thrown his first punch.
“Holy shit! Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Are you kidding? Nobody touched me. I didn’t even get my purse all the way off. C’mere, let me see.” He held his hands out to her like a kid letting a grown-up see if their hands were clean. One was fine; the other was … holding something?
“Oh my God, you lifted his wallet.” She stared up at him in amazement. “I thought you just grabbed for him and missed, but you picked his pocket!”
“Yes.”
“That is so cool!”
He grinned and ducked his head, affecting a “no biggie” shrug. “I don’t believe this attack is related to Danielle’s murder or the vandalism, but I’ll hold onto this just in case.”
“Sure, fine, great plan, and also maybe your bodyguarding idea isn’t as craptastic as I assumed.”
“Thank you,” he replied dryly, as she produced Kleenex and dabbed the blood off his knuckles.
Radisson BLU
Bloomington, MN
Room 263
“… and the filet mignon with mushrooms.”
“Yes.”
“And cheddar herb mashed potatoes.”
“Yes.”
“And a pitcher of iced tea.”
&
nbsp; “Yes.”
“And white chocolate banana cream pie.”
“Yes-yes-yes!” For a moment, Tom thought the room service server was in real danger as Ava lunged. No, she was merely in a rush to sign the bill and devour her meal. “Looks great. Thank you. Tom! The food’s here.”
“Ava, I am six feet away. I’m very aware the food is here.”
“Keep up the snark and no dessert for you.”
She had brought him back to her one-bedroom suite and ordered their food while he excused himself and fled to the bathroom, washed his hands, then glared at the idiot in the mirror and told him to calm the hell down—yes, hell, I meant hell and definitely not heck—for God’s sake!
It wasn’t the fight. She was fine, he was fine, the threat had been neutralized. It was the other thing. He thought about how best to explain. Most of the time I would have been fine in such a bustling place. But there were a number of factors that heightened my anxiety and shattered my focus. The first factor: Ava Capp.
Must I explain? He was surprised by the thought, one his much younger self would have asked plaintively. Again?
The sharp rap on the door had splintered his concentration, and a few seconds later he heard a delighted yelp
“Food’s here!”
and left the bathroom.
So here they were, eating in companionable silence while he struggled to think of what to say. Ava had wasted no time spreading out the food in the separate dining area; she was a fourth of the way through her steak by the time he pulled his plate of chicken kebobs toward him.
“Thank you. For coming back here.”
“Thank you for going all Apollo Creed over those two. It’s nicer here anyway. Better food and more privacy.”
Yes. Privacy. To talk about the killer. And. Perhaps. Something more?
He did not know, and wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. So he avoided it with, “I like this carpet. It’s incongruously blue.”
She looked up from her plate and giggled. “It is incongruous, isn’t it? Most of these places have tan or brown or gray. Or a pattern. But this is very, very blue.”
“Like a moat.”
“A fuzzy, deep-blue moat.”
A short silence fell, which Ava broke with, “Where’d you learn to fight? Can all medical examiners do that, or just you?”
“I box at Top Team. It’s an excellent full-body workout as it’s a valuable balance of resistance and cardio. Abe got me into it.”
“Please tell me you don’t spar with Abe.”
“Not anymore.”
“Tom! One hit and you’d blast him through the ropes! And possibly the wall behind the ropes.”
“Like I said, not anymore.”
She groaned, then realized he was teasing and smacked him on the elbow. “Well, I’m officially thanking you for preventing my mugging and subsequent need for a new purse.”
“The important thing is that you weren’t hurt,” he said softly.
“No, the important thing is that neither of us were hurt. And speaking of hurt, will you tell me about the Mall of America murders?”
Never had he been so pleased to talk shop. “Murder, singular. It wasn’t murder so much as manslaughter. The restaurant had a new employee who was behaving foolishly with the machine they use to make eggrolls.”
“Am I about to be very glad we didn’t order egg rolls?”
“Perhaps. During the employee’s shenanigans—”
“Oh, man. Gotta give full props to anyone incorporating ‘shenanigans’ into a story about death by egg-roll machine.”
“—one of the blades violently detached and nearly amputated one employee’s arm. And while people were panicking over that, a cylinder somehow rolled loose and crushed the first employee. His chest cavity filled with blood and he suffocated.”
“Wow.”
“Yes.”
“Awful.”
“Yes.”
“So the takeaway here is to keep the shenanigans to a minimum when you’re making egg rolls. Got it. Y’know, I love this macabre shit, even though I spent ten years pretending otherwise. I’m sure someone died a horrible-yet-weird death right here in this building.”
“A banker had an allergic reaction to someone else’s service dog and went into anaphylactic shock. It wasn’t murder, but it was interesting.”
“It is interesting!”
“I’m pleased you’re pleased. But if you’ll allow me to go off topic—”
“No more carpet and egg-roll chitchat while you work up the nerve to tell me what’s really on your mind?”
That took him by surprise, which was foolish. Ava was many things; stupid was nowhere on that list.
“—you checked the peephole before you opened the door, yes?”
“Yep. Don’t worry, it definitely wasn’t Becka with a crowbar. Though I’m so hungry, I might’ve let her in if she’d had food.”
“Your text alarmed me.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to tell you what was going on. I called Jan, my union rep, too. To ask about Becka.”
This, too, was alarming. He set down his partially gnawed kebob. “Ava, I do not like your exposure here.”
“Don’t worry, Jan won’t say anything. And she didn’t give me much, either. Apparently Becka was a big fan of mine even before she started working for the airline.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Jan knew who I was asking about before I mentioned Becka’s name.”
He had picked up his kebob, then nearly dropped it. “I don’t like that, either.”
“Weird, right? But apparently she aced her psych exam. All her exams. And Jan didn’t think I was in any ‘physical’ danger from her.”
“That’s an interesting way to quantify such a thing.”
“That’s what I said! Then that rotten bitch hung up on me, which is only fair, but it’s still annoying. So what do we—salt, please—what do we know? Becka’s young—early twenties.”
He took the salt back. “Which could rule her out.”
“Except we can’t use the ‘she’s too young’ rule because she could have a partner. That’s why you suspected me at first.”
“Yes, but in her case, she’s—what? Eight or nine years younger than you are?”
“Yeah. So if she has a partner, it hasn’t been for long, is that what you’re saying? Because it’s a good point. And talking about Boston, that’s the other thing I wanted to know—how’d she know I was going to Boston and how’d she find me, also in Boston?”
“It is troubling. If you’d never before met, never moved in the same circles, why would a random pilot seize her attention in such a manner?”
“Hey! No, wait. You’re right. I am a random pilot.”
“Perhaps the exposure from the belly landing flagged her attention?”
“Maybe, but that wouldn’t explain how she knew all about me months earlier, when she was applying to the airline.”
“Point. Fortunately, there’s a simple way to get some answers.”
“Have Hannah dose her with truth serum? Bug her uniform? Dig a pit and lure her into it, and refuse to let her out until she confesses?”
“Those are all terrible ideas.”
“There are no terrible ideas in brainstorming, Tom.”
“That is a lie.” He batted away the mushroom she tossed at him. “Ask her. The two of us. We sit down and we ask her. We. As in, the two of us. As in, do not rush off alone, Ava. Do not tackle this without backup. Do not—”
“O-kay! Cripes, I get it. And I’ve got to give you points for the direct approach. I like the idea of inverting a trope.”
“What?”
“Or would it be subverting? In the books, the amateur sleuths never just sit down with their suspect. They come up with all these plans to do everything but sit down with her, or him. They spy on them or follow them around or bug them somehow … everything but a sit-down.”
“What books are we talking about?”
“Ones you haven’t read, apparently. Never mind. It’s a good idea. Especially if we do it in a public place. Not a food court,” she added quickly.
Do it. Perfect opening. “Ah … Ava. About that…”
“Uh-uh.”
“… I wish to explain—pardon?”
“You don’t have to explain dick.”
“I don’t have to explain dick,” he parroted, bemused.
“You couldn’t think there. So we came somewhere you could. And, by happy coincidence, somewhere I could have you all to myself. Win-win. Case closed. Well. That case, anyway.”
Do not be fooled. It’s never this easy.
Yes, but in the past the Ava Capp factor was never in play, either.
“So I’ll reach out to Becka and we’ll set up a meet. She’s probably still doing the MSP-BOS-LAX run. We could probably meet her here in the Cities in the next couple of days. Assuming she wants to even meet with us.”
“My advice is to frame it as a meeting with you. She needn’t know I’m there until it’s time.”
“Okay. Definitely worth trying. And if she doesn’t want to get together, we can—”
“She will,” he said at once. “She will not be able to resist.”
Ava just looked at him. “Is that a fact?”
“It is.”
“So I guess that’s what we’re doing.”
“Very well.”
“This is about the time when I’d make a really clumsy innuendo like ‘so how do we kill time until then, wink-wink, nudge-nudge?’”
He laughed. “You are dazzling in your subtlety.”
“Aren’t I?” She rose, circled around the small table, came to him, rested her hands on his shoulders. Smiled down at him and—ridiculous thought—the light behind her lit up her hair like a curly halo. “I really need to kiss you right now, with your kind permission, so you’re gonna have to deal with that.”
He was already gently pulling her down, slotting her upper lip between his and gently sucking it into his mouth, encouraging her lips to part for him and then
“Oh. Yes.”
she was on his lap and wrapping both arms around him. “Oh my God,” she murmured, “I love the way you smell.”