There were some missing pieces to the puzzle yet. He needed a brainstorming session with Acer and Sam. They needed to flesh out any clues there were in what Theresa had told them. He hadn’t mentioned his conversation with Theresa to Madeline yet. That could be tricky. He usually loved it when it got tricky. That got his adrenaline going. Not this time. He dreaded the prospect of witnessing her disappointment about Sarah. His face was a mask as he stepped out of the van.
They trooped into the back door of the inn where Sam got them a suite. The room was quaint and crowded. Madeline ended up sitting on the arm of the one sofa with her team behind her, all three of them scrunched in on the plush floral cushions.
“I have some questions for you. Some key questions,” Peter said. He was looking at her with a laser-like stare.
She looked around the room. She wasn’t usually inclined to break out in a sweat, but she could feel it coming on now.
“Strictly business,” he added.
Oh no. She was sure that was code for something bad. He motioned for everyone to carry on. Acer helped set Morty up at the desk with the hard drive. Peter looked straight at her again. No wonder he made a great DA. It must be hell being questioned by him on the stand. That was where she felt like she sat now.
“How did they know about the miscarriage?” he asked.
Madeline stopped breathing. Everyone in the room stopped and looked at the man with the million-dollar question.
“An insider,” Sam said. His face was like stone. They were the last words she wanted to hear. It meant betrayal. She’d had enough to do with betrayal.
“No. That’s not…likely.” Madeline stopped her own knee-jerk response as she looked at Valerie, Dennis and Jonathan. They all knew there was only one of them who knew the story.
“Sarah.” Madeline whispered the name, still uncertain. No one argued. She hadn’t needed her PhD to notice there was something not right with Sarah’s behavior lately. A guilty conscience would go a long way toward explaining it.
“Why?” Peter’s face was inscrutable, but he put his hands on his hips and took his commander stance. Without a move, he drilled her with his eyes. Now she knew why he’d done so well in special ops. This was no longer the pointed questioning of a DA to a witness on the stand. It was more like the interrogation of a prisoner.
“She never wanted me to be involved with you. Not professionally—or personally.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” The confession cost her, but she didn’t hesitate. She wasn’t jumping to conclusions and she wasn’t about to let anyone else hang her friend without a trial. But odds were Sarah was in trouble all the same.
“Shit.” That was Acer. Peter looked at Sam. The tension level in the room was turned up as if someone turned up the dial on an oven. Valerie stood abruptly, knocking the others aside and shoving them back into their cushions. They all stared at her. Madeline’s pulse picked up. Valerie looked panicked.
“Sarah wouldn’t do this,” Val retorted.
“We won’t know for sure how involved Sarah was until we confront Nurse Ratched.” Peter continued to look at Madeline. She melted at his words. He must have read her mind through her eyes because it was the perfect thing to say. There was no way he cared about protecting Sarah. He was doing it to protect her. He was doing all of this, risking his entire political future, for her. At that moment she felt that he was the noblest man in the universe and forgot everything else. Whatever else she had thought about any sins he’d committed in the past faded away into oblivion once and for all.
Peter knew Madeline would hold up, but it was hard for him to see her involved in all this. She looked pale to him. Her face took on an ice-sculpture look, as if it might crack under the emotional hammering he was subjecting her to. He was counting on whatever she had underneath to be as strong as she always claimed it was.
“Sam, wire Madeline. Acer you can wire me.” Peter glanced at his watch. “It’s 1900 hours now and we need to be finished and out of here by 0400. Do we have Benny on the line?”
Bill gave him a thumbs-up.
“He’s connected. The plain clothes will be with us, hanging back until they get the word,” Bill reported. “But you owe him for the media contact. He hates media involvement this early in a case.”
Peter nodded. “Necessary evil.” He looked at Mad. “Sometimes the justice system is too slow.” He was warmed by the understanding, somewhat bemused smile she gave him. With a slight nod of her head she conceded full control.
“Nice to know that big bad media is good for something—in the right hands, of course.” She smiled with real affection now. What a time and place for that look. But it vanished as Sam approached her with two tiny discs and a clip in his palm that were the latest in wireless communications. Peter hated to see that.
“Of course.” Peter turned to Acer. “Do your thing—turn me into a human radio tower, my man.” He looked in his friend’s eyes as the cogs of the plan fell into place.
“What about Sarah?” Valerie spoke in a voice filled with anxiety reminding Peter of his unusual crew. They would stay here with Morty and Bob to man the makeshift control center, but their inexperience and anxiety definitely qualified them as potential wild cards.
“We don’t know for sure she was the source. It doesn’t follow. We can’t jump to conclusions,” Madeline said. She sounded calm as she spoke with her loyal friend hat on. She was definitely not thinking like a trained professional.
“She could have inadvertently leaked the info. Most likely it was the nurse who decided to cash in and approached the senator’s wife or something,” Dennis said. He had been quiet, and Peter was annoyed he chose that moment to pipe up, especially when he knew the man said the lines solely to protect Madeline. Dennis was stealing his role. There was only room for one leading man.
Peter’s phone vibrated. He ripped it from his pocket, put it to his ear and clicked it on in one motion.
“Rick. What’s going on?” Peter struggled to keep his pulse from accelerating any higher than it already was.
“Plenty. Our contacts at the Globe are telling me that Sarah Lisky just set up a press conference on the steps of the state house for first thing in the morning. You guys assign her that? I thought we were doing one from the DA’s office…” Peter didn’t bother letting Rick finish his thought.
“Shit.”
“What?” The alarmed word came from everyone around him, including Rick on the other end of the line. Only Madeline didn’t ask. She only stared back at him as if she were trying to elicit the answer to her unasked question through mental telepathy. Time to lay some of his cards on the table.
“I didn’t mention this to you before, Mad. Sarah fed info to her insider at the mayor’s office—who happened to be the mayor’s daughter.”
“What?” Alarm again from everyone but Mad. That alarmed him.
“We have it from Theresa herself. St. Cyr was blackmailing her. Sarah gave Theresa the story about our engagement and then later, the story about your miscarriage. He may have been blackmailing Sarah too.” Hardly likely, but he didn’t say that out loud. He watched the play of a multitude of emotions on her face. The last one remaining, as her mind raced through the gamut to a stop, was compassion. That was damn puzzling, even from her. Whatever it was, it would have to wait. It was time to go.
Nurse Ratched’s House
Dennis went with Madeline up the walkway to the doorway of the small cape-cod house. She pressed on the doorbell. It seemed too simple for such a high-stakes plot. The nurse would be crazy to answer her door. Bill and Bob were covering the back and the garage just in case she wasn’t crazy, aka careless. Peter had informed Madeline that ninety-nine percent of the time people were downright foolish. Apparently, there was no need to go to a lot of trouble to talk to a person unless the straightforward approach didn’t work. The Berkshire County Sherriff was listening in at the local station and the Sherriff’s men were on the scene to int
ervene. PJD assured her that it was all legal. They had their warrant from the judge.
She heard the bell ring through the door. Exchanging glances with Dennis, she forced herself to exhale. The curtain next to the door moved and Madeline was about to turn and leave when the door opened.
“Can I help you?” The woman didn’t even know who she was. Stifling a laugh, Madeline took the woman’s hand and walked inside smiling.
“I’d like a few words with you, Mrs. Boyd. We met once long ago. I guess you don’t remember after all.” As Madeline walked past her and Dennis stayed on the threshold, blocking the exit, the nurse’s face changed from puzzled to astonished.
“You! You have a lot of nerve coming here.” Mrs. Boyd tried looking past Dennis as if she expected a mob on the other side.
“No one here but us chickens,” Dennis said. He stood solid and folded his arms across his chest with nothing less than a snarl slashing his face.
“Mrs. Boyd, on the contrary, I think you’re the one with all the nerve.” Madeline stood her ground in the middle of the small entry hall.
“Maybe. But you’re wasting your time here. I don’t care if you sue me. I’ve got nothing. You already have everything. Except not now, do you? Well, I don’t care. I’m leaving. And you and your boyfriend here can’t do a thing about it.” The woman dismissed them and moved to walk down the short hall, leaving them standing in the front entry.
“Why did you do it, Nurse Ratched?” Madeline asked her. The woman stopped and turned.
“What did you call me?”
“You heard me. Why did you lie about my miscarriage? Why did you steal my medical documents and then falsify them?”
The woman laughed at her as if she were a stupid child. “Why do you think? Money. What else? Some high-minded principle? Ha! Now get out of my house before I call the police. I’ll tell them you forced your way in and attacked me.” The nurse stood and considered her own words. They stared at each other. There was a beat of silence.
“I think I will call the police. Right now.” The nurse reached for the phone on the hall stand.
“No need, Mrs. Boyd.” The detective from the Berkshire County Sheriff’s office pushed through the door past Dennis, yanking the bud from his ear. “I already heard from you. You can come with me now.” The detective nodded and two men in uniform came from behind him and approached the nurse. They were just in time to catch her before she fell to the ground in a heap. Madeline looked down at her, felt nothing, and then looked back up to see the identical reaction in the others as they looked at each other.
“Great timing, detective,” Madeline said. She wasn’t ready to feel relief yet, but if hope had been a bud inside her it was starting to grow with this major dose of sunshine.
“Perfect confession on the medical record theft. We’ll want to get her to tell us who paid her off, of course. We’ll get her official statement back at the office. From what I understand she may be joining Mrs. Senator Brown there,” he checked his watch, “any time now.” Hopefully it won’t get watered down once she gets her lawyer involved. We need to get St. Cyr on the blackmail to really nail down a case. Might even get the three of them on conspiracy. Course, if the senator’s wife cooperates to give us the goods on the others, we’ll cut her a deal,” the detective said.
“What’s going on with that?” Madeline refocused.
“They’re in Senator Brown’s house. Not sure. Not my part in this operation,” he smiled the words.
“Detective, I need to find out.” Madeline was suddenly concerned and she didn’t know why. Peter was over at Senator Brown’s house to talk to Mrs. Brown. There was an urgency to go to Peter and an urgency to have this all over with.
“What we really need is a copy of that recorded confession,” Dennis said. “You could email it—better yet, I’d rather have a copy on a thumb drive—”
“All in good time. We need you two to make a statement. Meet me at the office,” the detective said. They watched the two uniforms carry the still prone nurse out the door. The detective instructed two others to search the place for whatever they could find, hopefully money.
Meanwhile, at the Senator’s House
Peter stood at the door with the Berkshire County DA, Bennie Chen, and made himself wait for the other man to knock. It was an effort to give up his command. Benny knocked and they waited a couple of beats. Acer’s intel assured them she was home. His pulse quickened, and he reminded himself this was a harmless woman. He wasn’t likely to need the kick of adrenaline. Damn. It had obviously been too long since he’d seen any action if he thought this operation even remotely resembled action.
The door opened and the senator’s wife, Mrs. Priscilla Brown, stood on the threshold. She looked at them and in an instant turned into a ghost. But a quick-moving ghost, as in the next instant she attempted to slam the door shut again. Peter didn’t wait for the DA. He shoved into the door and pushed it back open. Bennie barged in right behind him and they stumbled into the chandelier-lit, three-story entryway to watch the woman running the other way down the hall. If he had to hazard a guess, he figured she was headed for the garage. He looked at Bennie and they both took off after her.
“I have an idea. Why don’t you go back out front and head her off in the driveway?” Peter tossed over his shoulder as he stormed through the kitchen ahead of the man.
“Good idea.” The man turned back around and bolted the other way. Peter saw the back door ajar and heard a car door open. He launched forward and reached into the car window to grab the key from her hand before she had a chance to jab it into the ignition. The woman looked up at him. He caught his breath and leaned on the car door. For a second they didn’t speak. She was obviously frightened. Benny came bursting in through the door from the driveway.
That’s when the woman burst into tears. She was more distraught than he figured. But then, she had a history of emotional difficulty. Or it could be that she had more to hide than he knew about. They cajoled her out of the car and got her inside. A minute later Peter found himself sitting next to her on the couch and handing her a hanky.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She sniffled.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell us what it is you’re so sorry about?” Bennie said. Peter glared at him. He was hoping the woman might be more an innocent victim than a vindictive woman. But he wasn’t sure how much of this was payback for not letting her give an alibi for her boyfriend those years ago. Senator Brown said he took care of it. He’d insisted he squared it with her. He’d said he told her that he’d personally blow her alibi wide open if she pushed the issue back then. No one was going to believe her and she would only end up embarrassing herself—and him. The senator insisted that he painted Peter to look like her savior. She shouldn’t have an ax to grind. The Moroni case never went any further. It never came up again until now.
Until St. Cyr asked the question about that case during the campaign. Peter had a flash of memory seeing Mrs. Senator Brown talking to St. Cyr and Theresa at the mayor’s Fourth of July party. Either St. Cyr knew something, or Peter was getting disturbingly paranoid. The jury was still out on which it was.
“Mrs. Brown, what did you tell St. Cyr?” Peter asked. She looked up and stopped sniffling for a moment. Confusion was unmistakable on her face.
“I don’t know what you mean. I had to pay that horrible Mrs. Boyd a hundred thousand dollars or St. Cyr was going to publish all kinds of horrible things about my husband and Zach—uh, Mayor Torini.”
Peter exchanged a quick glance with Bennie. Bingo on the blackmail. Double bingo on the theft and forgery of medical documents.
“Why don’t you tell me about the first time you met Mr. St. Cyr?” Peter asked.
“It was at the Fourth of July party. Theresa introduced me to him. We had been talking…” She turned red and looked down.
“It’s all right,” Peter said. “I know. You were talking about me. What exactly did you say?
”
Chen had been standing. Now he took a seat across from them and loosened his tie. Peter squelched a twinge of apprehension and focused his attention on the woman.
“Nothing really. Just that I’d had that unpleasant experience dealing with you in the Moroni murder case. St. Cyr seemed very interested and very charming. But I know better than to talk much to reporters. Or at least I thought I could handle him.” She looked wistful, eyed them both, wiped her cheeks with his hanky and then continued. “He didn’t have much good to say about you. Said he wanted to make sure he covered all the angles was how he put it. He didn’t like how the press pussyfooted around you and how they all but idolized your girlfriend Madeline Grace. That surprised me. I said ‘what do you mean girlfriend?’ and he said he had it on good authority that you and Madeline Grace were an item. Theresa winked at me and I laughed. I must have looked at Zachary then—or something gave me away. I don’t know. But then St. Cyr said he knew about the mayor and me too. He said not to worry, as long as he was kept busy with interesting information to write stories about you and Madeline, he certainly wasn’t going to waste his time with stories about a mere mayor.”
“This all happened on the fourth of July?” Bennie Chen asked.
“Yes. I wasn’t sure how to take it. I didn’t take it very seriously at first. I…I told him I thought you were overly ambitious and that my husband had always been a behind-the-scenes supporter of yours and I always thought it was because he owed you.” She looked at him. This was not good. He begged her with his eyes to say no more. Either she got the hint or she had no intentions of going further. As it was, Peter knew he would have to explain that crack to Bennie. Bennie said nothing and continued to watch and listen.
The Scotland Yard Exchange Series Page 30
