“Can we sit outside? Some air would be good.” Eric looked around at the bustling newsroom. “Looking at this many computers, I feel like I’m back on the job! Like I should be running diagnostics or something. And I’m still on vacation. Anyhow, I’d like to get a look at Washington, besides the Beltway.”
Eric wasn’t giving off stalker vibes, but then she wasn’t the target of his supposed obsession. Lacey was also pretty sure he couldn’t have smuggled a gun into the newsroom. Since an assault before Christmas on one of The Eye’s editorial writers, metal detectors had been installed at the street entrances to the lobby.
“Well, I’m expecting a call,” she hedged. She tried to think of the safest place to take him. What could be safer than the highly secure area around the White House, only a few blocks away? “I could use a walk, Eric. We’re close to the White House. We’ll go over that way.”
Time to leave the prying eyes, and safety, of the newsroom. Lacey saved her files and grabbed her mouton coat. The sunshine was bright, but the temperature was falling. She and Eric walked in measured steps out the door to Eye Street, then toward Sixteenth Street and south past the lovely Hay-Adams Hotel.
“You said you were bird hunting, Eric. What kind of gun do you use for that?”
“Shotgun, of course.” He seemed surprised at the question, as if everyone knew that. “Oh you mean what gauge! Sorry. I’m a twelve gauge man. Remington pump. Hey, you want to see my birds? Had a good trip. Prettiest little things you ever saw. The quail especially.”
Yeah, and pretty dead too. But not dead ducks! Am I being sent another message? “Um, no thanks. Do you have a handgun too?” “Used to. I had an old Smith & Wesson twenty-two-caliber revolver of my dad’s. Got stolen. Too bad, it was a nice little gun. Had some others too. You ever do any shooting, Lacey?”
“Once in a while,” she said.
Eric stopped short in the middle of Lafayette Park. “Whoa! Would you look at that! The White House! I gotta take a picture!” He pulled out his cell phone and snapped some photos. “This is great, Lacey, thanks. I go right past D.C. on I-95 a lot, but I never get to stop.”
Lacey watched a group of tourists taking pictures of each other. “I heard Nina was killed in a drive-by shooting last fall.”
“It was terrible.” His face changed. He looked sad and thoughtful. He put his cell phone away. “It’s an awful crazy world. I’m wondering, why are you interested in her now? The police never arrested anyone. Is there some kind of new lead or something?”
“Some people think her death might be connected to a shooting in Northern Virginia last Saturday.” Eric looked surprised, but he said nothing. “Did anyone hate Nina enough to kill her?”
“No way! I don’t think so. Like I said, she was a good person. Everyone loved Nina. The cops said it was a random shooting, like maybe a gang thing, and she got caught in the crossfire.”
“Then let’s talk about your former girlfriend.”
Eric shrugged. “Okay. Which one?”
“Willow. Willow Raynor.”
His mouth fell open. “Willow? Are you kidding me? She has never been my girlfriend. Not ever. Whoa. Where did you get that? No way, Willow’s a total nutcake.” Eric seemed embarrassed. He wiped his hands on his jacket as if to clean them. “Willow Raynor! Give me a break. Hey, is this a setup? Some kind of weird joke? You filming this for YouTube?”
Lacey felt disoriented again. It was becoming a familiar feeling. Every time this story shifted it knocked her off balance. She didn’t like it one bit.
“Willow Raynor was never your girlfriend?”
“I don’t know where you got that idea. No way. Not ever.”
“But you do know her. How?”
Eric groaned. “Blind date. About a year ago. Not my idea, believe me. Buddy of mine was dating Nina. She has a shy friend, he says, somebody she works with, could we double up? Nice girl, he says, he’ll fix me up. It was a total pimp-your-friend moment.”
“Could you explain, please?” Lacey buttoned up her coat against the frigid air.
“Our big date was like this: Dave comes into the restaurant with Nina, and she is smokin’ hot. Long dark hair, big eyes, great smile, killer body. How bad could her friend be, right? So I’m feeling pretty hopeful. Then Willow gets there late. You should have seen her! She was colorless, like a zombie or something. Wearing some kind of terrible sack thing. She had dirty hair and pasty skin. Blank look on her face. Too shy to even talk. I wasn’t sure she could talk. Almost like she was paralyzed. Then she clings to me like Saran Wrap. I keep looking for the hidden camera, you know? Like a reality show: Amazing but True Horrible Dates! I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Nina felt really sorry for Willow, I think. She kept trying to get something going for her, but it never worked out. Anyway, that’s where I met Nina too. Dave moved on, Nina and I went out for a few months, had some good times, then we both moved on.”
“What about Willow?” Lacey asked. “Did you ever see her again?”
“Not if I could help it. She hung around Nina a lot, she’d show up at the bar or at parties, and Nina was so nice, she didn’t want to tell her zombie friend to get lost. Nina was running out of patience with her though, Willow could be an awful pest. We talked about how she could drop ‘the Zombie’ without hurting her feelings. Then after Nina died, Willow was all over me. She called me all the time, she followed me around, waited for me in my truck, she really wanted us to get together, but I always put her off. I mean, dude, zombie girl! Yuck.”
Eric fell silent. Lacey watched him admiring the White House like an awestruck little kid. He wanted to go look at the statue of Andrew Jackson on his horse. He said he loved Andy Jackson. Lacey led him to a park bench with a view of the statue. And a view of the security guards on the White House grounds.
“Let’s sit here. Do you mind?”
“No, this is great, Lacey.” He sat down next to her. “Wow, the White House looks exactly like it does in pictures. I can’t get over that. This is so awesome!”
“What did Willow talk about? Do you remember anything in particular?”
“Oh, man, Willow. What a zero.” Eric concentrated. “No. She never really said much. She just sat there on our one and only date and stared at me goggle-eyed all night. How is this going to help with your story on Nina?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I have to ask a lot of questions. ” Lacey folded her arms. She was cold, despite the sunshine and her warm coat. The light was golden, the shadows deepened, and the wind kicked a newspaper with her latest story about Cecily across the park past Andrew Jackson. “Do you know where Willow is now?”
“Don’t know, don’t care, don’t want to know.” He squinted up into the sunshine. “Whoa! Wouldja look at that! Sun dogs! Why are we talking about Willow anyway and not Nina? I mean, I want to help, but how—”
Sun dogs? Damn! Why don’t Marie’s predictions come with subtitles?
Lacey stood up and turned to face Eric, blocking the sun. “You haven’t been stalking her? Or me? With a shotgun? Or sending threatening messages?”
Eric looked up at Lacey. “You’re kidding me again, right? I mean, you really are kidding. This is like something you have to ask everyone who knew Nina, right?”
Ask the question and then shut up and listen, she told herself. She took a breath.
“Willow says you shot Nina. But it was a mistake. You really meant to shoot her. So you’ve been stalking her. And now me. Is that true?” The words sounded ridiculous to Lacey the moment she said them, but she shut up and listened and watched his hazel eyes blink. He shook his head.
“That’s so bonkers, I don’t even know what to say. No! Not me. Me shoot Nina? And stalk people? No.” He held her gaze and didn’t look away, but his eyes clouded over with anger. “Oh man, that is so insane. What is she thinking? She told the cops back home I shot Nina. Lucky they figured out I was okay, I wasn’t even around when it happened. Now she’s saying this weird crap about me? I gotta say I wis
h it had been her instead of Nina. Willow needs help, she is certifiable. What do you know about her anyway? Where is she? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. This is freaking me out.” He stood up and took a step toward Lacey. She stepped back. He seemed baffled, not threatening. “God. I gotta get back on the road. I better throw some more ice on my birds too.”
“Did the police ever talk with you about Nina?”
“Once. They talked to all her friends. I couldn’t help much, I didn’t know anything. I was working overtime that day.” He shook his head and looked at her, puzzled. “You know, it’s funny how death freezes everything. Makes you remember the littlest things?” He closed his eyes. “I remember everything I did that day. I worked late at Cyber Rescue and there was a baseball game on that night. My buddies came over and we had a good time. I didn’t hear about Nina till the next day, but I remember seeing the news, hearing her name and feeling sick, just sick to my stomach. Why did it have to be Nina? Life is freaky, huh?”
“Yeah, it is. Eric, one more question. Did you know Cecily Ashton?”
“That crazy billionaire’s wife? Oh yeah, I hang with lots of billionaires,” he cracked. “When I’m fixing their computers. No, I’m not the fox hunting kind of guy she’d probably hang with. Just me and my birds.” He zipped up his camo hunting jacket. They started walking back toward The Eye. Eric stopped suddenly and turned to her.
“Oh no! That’s too much! Did I shoot this Cecily Ashton too? Is that what you want to know? Is that what Willow is telling people?”
“Did you?”
“No! I’ve never shot anybody! Only ducks! Quail! Pheasants! What the hell is this all about? It’s like she’s trying to drive me out of my mind. She is one sick little girl.”
“I don’t know yet. If you think of anything that might help, call me.” Lacey handed him her card. “Can I call you if I have more questions?”
“Yeah, I guess, any time. Find out who killed Nina. But please try and leave that maniac Willow out of it. She scares me to death.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Let me know what happens, okay?” He pulled a business card out of his wallet. “My cell is on there. You know, Nina’s family would really like to know why she died.”
Who was the liar, Lacey wondered, Eric O’Neil or Willow Raynor? She wasn’t sure she should believe either one of them. But Eric had good eyes, she thought, for what it was worth. He didn’t look away from a hard question. And there was that one gesture he made when she mentioned Willow, wiping his hands on his jacket, like he was trying to wipe her away.
Lacey watched him swing himself up into his big black Dodge Ramcharger. Inside the truck somewhere there were shotguns and ammunition and dead birds on ice. Eric looked at her and waved. She stood and watched until he was out of sight; then she wrote down his Pennsylvania license plate number. She took one last look at the sun dogs fading in the January sky.
Chapter 34
“You still need the shoe leather,” Bud Hunt was lecturing his PI students. Lacey’s attention had wandered to the drizzly evening outside the classroom windows. They’d already been replaced with nice clean new glass. Lacey realized just how dirty the old windows were.
“With all our new high-tech gadgetry in the last few years,” Hunt said, “maybe you think you can be a private eye by remote control now. You can, to some extent, but not a good one. Computer databases and global positioning systems and so forth make finding people and information a lot easier, but some poor slob still needs to analyze the data and make the decisions. Despite all the technology, this is still a very personal business. It takes eyes and ears and a brain. Gut instincts. And shoe leather on the sidewalk.”
“But you can’t do the job without technology now,” Damon protested, tapping something into his laptop. “I mean, there’s so much data on the Web. And everyone is under surveillance now, right?”
Hunt sat on his desk and folded his arms. He looked tired. “Sometimes technology can help you a lot. Take vehicle surveillance. And forget that little follow-the-leader exercise with my buddy Greg the other night. He’s a joker. We’ll do that over the right way this weekend.” A few of the PI students laughed ruefully. “With the awful traffic in this area, you can’t count on being able to tail anybody visually anymore. You just try to cowboy down 66 or I-95 hot on some-one’s tail while you’re stuck in traffic. See where that gets you. A GPS unit and a vehicle tracking device on your subject could be your best friend.”
“That’s legal?” Lacey asked.
Hunt shrugged. “It’s not illegal. Yet. In Virginia anyway. You can get a tracking device with an antenna about the size of a hair. You brush casually against someone’s bumper, it just happens to attach. Keep in mind, you can’t do that in D.C. It is illegal in the District of Columbia to ‘alter’ someone else’s car. You can’t even adjust somebody’s side view mirrors. That law was an attempt to deal with their massive vandalism problem. Like vandals in the District care about the law. Like they even know about the law.” There was another smattering of chuckles. “But you need to know the law, so you’ll know what you can get away with. And so you can pass the test and get your Virginia PI registrations.”
“And if every sixth person in D.C. is a spy,” Lacey said, “how do you conduct surveillance on spies who are spying on you?”
“Spies don’t care about city ordinances either,” Damon noted.
Hunt picked up his coffee mug and took a long slurp. “I don’t care how much new technology you got, when you get right down to it, sometimes you need old-fashioned skills and guts and dogged determination.” Hunt thumped himself on the solar plexus. “You don’t need all the gizmos and gadgets. You need grit, guts, and gumshoes.”
Oh, good quote, Lacey thought. Grit, guts, and gumshoes! She wrote that down in her notebook and circled it.
“Sometimes you have to turn off the TV, the Internet, and all those noises in your head.” He looked at Hadley. “You hear me? It’s the voice inside you, the one that’s got nothing to do with the government. That’s the voice you gotta listen to. You got a mind? You got your own mind control.”
“What’s your gut telling you about the dead lady in the parking lot, chief?” Snake asked. “And that craziness last night. ’Cause my money’s always on the ex.”
Hunt shook his head. “Nine times out of ten you’re right. But if Philip Clark Ashton had her killed, he’d have come up with a lot smarter way to do it. He’s a bastard, but he’s no dummy. He could arrange a nice, quiet, convincing little suicide. You got a rich woman, unstable, history of mental problems? She overdoses on something, the medical examiner might even call it accidental death. She takes her pills, has a drink or two or three, ‘forgets’ she took her pills, takes some more. A sad little death, but eminently explicable, as they say. If it was Ashton, that’s the way it would have happened. ” Bud Hunt’s voice trembled a little. “And believe me, the bastard is capable of anything. But he wouldn’t have left such a mess in public.”
Lacey agreed that Philip Ashton would avoid any negative publicity. He didn’t need the embarrassment of the lovely Cecily gunned down in her Jaguar, or the memory of the blood spray on the windshield, or the police photos that might someday find their way to a tabloid reporter. If indeed Philip once loved Cecily, as he had told Lacey he did, a gunshot would not be the way he would do away with her. Would it?
The class was even smaller tonight. As they were taking their seats Hunt announced they had some more dropouts after the previous evening’s shoot-out at the PI corral. Willow had called in with ‘the sniffles,’ Hunt said with a hint of sarcasm, but she said she’d be back. To Lacey’s surprise, Edwina Plimpton was there, none the worse for her recent martini binge and being stopped at the police tape last night. Tonight she wore khaki slacks, a black sweater, and a white shirt, straight out of Talbots. Lacey gave her credit for tenacity. Once the woman sank her teeth into a style—or a class—she didn’t let go. At the break, Edwin
a sought out Lacey to share her theory about Cecily.
“Obviously it’s an inside job! It’s someone in the household staff,” Edwina insisted. “First they staged that silly burglary. After all, someone knew the security codes. Cecily caught on. That’s why she came here to see Bud Hunt, to have him investigate for her. But they got to her first. I’ll bet the staff have already cleaned out that poor woman’s fabulous closets. Had to be the servants. Who else would know her comings and goings so intimately?”
“You have a point,” Lacey said.
“The very same thing happened to me,” Edwina confessed.
“Really?” You were shot dead in your Jaguar? Lacey suppressed a smile.
“Well, not exactly the same thing.” Edwina inspected her perfect nails. “I had a housekeeper once, her name was Mirta. Good, thorough, pleasant. Best housekeeper I ever had. But little things began to disappear. Not valuable things at first, just some costume jewelry here and there. I thought I’d simply misplaced them, but it got to the point where I thought I was losing my mind. Then I lost a necklace my husband had given me for our tenth anniversary. I always kept it in a velvet jewelry box. It was just a single ruby on a gold chain, but it carried great sentimental value for me.” She rubbed her throat unconsciously.
“What happened? How did you figure out the housekeeper took it?”
“I caught Mirta wearing it! Can you imagine? She thought I was so rich she could steal my things right under my nose and I wouldn’t notice. I confronted her and she broke down. She told me how sorry she was. How it was so beautiful, she couldn’t help herself. And you know, maybe if it hadn’t been that particular necklace, I would have just fired her. But I pressed charges, I had to. She disappeared after they fingerprinted her. Never even showed up in court.” Edwina sighed. “I don’t have a full-time housekeeper anymore, just a cleaning service once a week. Bonded, insured, the whole nine yards.”
“She simply wore the necklace? Around the house?” Lacey found that part interesting. “She didn’t sell it for the money?”
Armed and Glamorous Page 29
