by Julie Hyzy
“I thought he said something about the curator’s office,” Cyan said, “but I can’t be sure. We’re just about done here. If you need him, go on.”
“I hate to leave all the work to you guys.”
Virgil gave a hearty snort.
Bucky rolled his head toward the other man, shooting him a derisive look that Virgil missed, completely. “You get stuck here late more than anyone,” Bucky said to me. “If it makes you feel better, come back here after you talk with Sargeant. You can double-check our cleanup.”
“Thanks,” I said, heading out again.
Sargeant was just exiting the curator’s office when I caught up with him. “Peter,” I said, heartened to notice he was looking less dazed than he had last time I’d seen him. “You have a moment?”
He went tense immediately. Would we always have this effect on one another? I thought about his assurances that his observations of me and Gav would be kept confidential and I decided to press forward. “This won’t take long,” I said.
“Certainly.” He waited, clearly expecting me to start talking here in the center hall.
That would not do. I peeked into the nearby library. The last time I’d been in here it had been with Sargeant, going over mug shots. “There’s no one in here.”
He didn’t remark, simply followed me in. I could tell curiosity was getting the best of him, but he wore an air of calm I hadn’t seen on him for a very long time.
“What’s so pressing, Ms. Paras?” he asked when I closed the door.
Now that I had him here I barely knew where to begin. “It’s a matter of some delicacy.”
“Oh?”
I gave a self-conscious chuckle. “This may seem very odd. I feel strange in this situation…”
“Ms. Paras,” he said sharply, “I have never known you to mince words around me. Please get to the point.”
“You’re right. Here it is as plainly as I can give it to you: Thora, the woman who set up our disguises for the Food Expo, is interested in you.” I waited for that to sink in before adding, “Romantically.”
If I’d have taken one of the heavy tomes from the shelves and smacked him across the face with it, he couldn’t have looked more surprised. “You know this?” he asked. “Or do you simply suspect?”
“She asked me to act as intermediary.”
“Oh,” he said again, but this time with that dazed look on his face again. He massaged the small area between his brows and closed his eyes for a moment. “Today is certainly a day fraught with surprise.”
“What else has happened?” I asked.
He shot me a quizzical glance, then his gaze relaxed. “It may shock you to hear this, but I’m sorely tempted to tell you. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to discuss it. Not yet.”
“Sounds serious.”
He took a sharp breath. “Yes.”
“When you can discuss it, if ever, I’ll be happy to do what I can to help.”
His mouth twisted, half up, half down. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to smile and his muscles simply couldn’t remember how, or if he was about to chastise me again. “That time may come. In the meantime, this situation with Thora…” He didn’t look displeased. “Quite unexpected.”
“If you’re concerned about letting her down I can tell her—”
“No, no, that’s not it.”
My turn to be taken aback. “All right then, whatever you want.” I suddenly remembered the card and dug it out of my pocket. “Here, she gave me this. It’s all yours.”
“Thora,” he said to himself as he studied it. “She’s tall.”
“She is.”
Making eye contact once again, he smiled. It was a sight I hadn’t often had the opportunity to experience. “Is she here today?”
“I saw her this morning. I’m sure if she’s still around, Doug will be able to find her for you.”
His eyes clouded. “Doug does not care for me overmuch.”
“That makes two of us.”
He made a noise that could have been a chuckle.
“Have you heard that the Hydens are thinking of naming him to the position of chief usher, permanently?” I asked.
He frowned. “That would be a travesty.”
“I agree.”
CHAPTER 21
GAV AND I LEFT THE RESTAURANT A LITTLE before eight, giving us plenty of time to walk to the FDR Memorial and get there well before our appointed time with Ingrid. I’d brought him up to date on my clandestine trip to the National Cathedral and subsequent discussion with Yablonski. I left out Yablonski’s review of our love life.
I finished by saying, “He didn’t have a lot to share beyond the fact that Pluto’s being investigated. He wouldn’t even tell me for what. He doesn’t want me to visit Fitch or Linka without letting him know, so I suppose we ought to tell him about this visit with Ingrid tonight.”
Gav listened, taking several moments to reply. “He won’t be reachable this evening. I know that much. I’ll contact him first thing tomorrow. We’ll know more by then.”
“Another thing,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me that Quinn was one of Yablonski’s go-to guys?”
Gav expelled a breath that could have been a laugh. “It never occurred to me to mention it. Yablonski has connections in every possible corner. There are plenty of people around us every day with ties to him. From here on, it will be better if you assume he has eyes and ears everywhere.”
I gave him a sidelong appraisal. “Et tu, Brutus?”
He laughed for real this time. “You know better than that.”
As we strode west along the National Mall, Gav looked up at the dimming sky. “I’m very glad I’m able to come along on this excursion,” he said. “Mickey’s wife calling you out of the blue raises flags.”
“For me, too,” I said. “I don’t know what to expect.”
The first time I’d visited the FDR Memorial, I’d come at it from the back and walked through in reverse chronological order. That hadn’t made the experience less enjoyable. In fact, I liked being able to take in each presidential term before moving backward through time. I had, however, returned on multiple occasions to go through from beginning to end. That’s where we started today.
We passed the statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his wheelchair on our way to the breadline sculpture. Ingrid wasn’t there yet. “It’s still a few minutes early,” I said. “Let’s walk around.”
Tourists took pictures of each other, posing with the statues of men in the Depression-era breadline, as well as with the one of a seated man, leaning forward in eager attention, listening to one of FDR’s Fireside Chats.
Gav and I meandered, looking like tourists ourselves. We headed deeper into the presidency, admiring the many waterfalls and stonework. “This place is magnificent,” I said. “It’s one of my favorite memorials.”
Gav gave a low chuckle. “You say that about all of them.”
“I suppose I do,” I said. “Whenever I visit, I’m overwhelmed by their beauty.”
He grabbed my arm, silencing me as Ingrid came into view. She walked quickly, gripping a small box tight in her hands, looking this way and that, like a shoplifter making a furtive getaway. And not a particularly adept one, seeing as how she missed us watching her. As she hurried past, a flurry of birds rushed out from one of the nearby trees with a wild rustle of wings and flutters. Ingrid gave a tiny yelp, clasping the box closer and ducking away.
We started after her, catching up as she reached the breadline exhibit. Her head twisted right and left; she was clearly looking for us.
“Go on,” Gav said. “I’ll keep an eye on you from here.”
I approached the woman. “Ingrid?”
She yelped again, spinning to face me, one hand flying free from the side of the box to clutch at her throat. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “You scared me.”
The way she studied the people near us, a family with kids in strollers, an elderly couple, a group of twenty-somethin
gs placing baseball caps atop the breadline heads for photos, made me believe she was losing her grip. Her eyes were wide and it looked as though she hadn’t slept in days. “I came from my sister’s,” she whispered. “Going right back there after this. Mickey said that if this got into the wrong hands, it could be bad.”
Ingrid thrust the box at me as though eager to be rid of the vile thing. “Here, it’s yours now.”
I hefted it. Lightweight and no bigger than a paperback, it didn’t resemble the shoe box my mom had saved my dad’s letter in, but it reminded me of it just the same. I didn’t want to examine it too closely in front of Ingrid. “And you have no idea what’s in here?”
“None,” she said. “Scout’s honor. I never seen Mickey as worked up as he was when he gave it to me. I’m afraid for him.”
“Why didn’t Mickey come with you?” I asked.
Ingrid looked ready to cry. “I told you, I haven’t heard from him. Not since yesterday. I left a note at home telling him I’d be by my sister’s and I thought he’d call or something.”
“You haven’t been back home yourself?”
“Too scared.”
She backed away from me, eyes darting from side to side so quickly I didn’t think she was giving herself time to digest what she was seeing. She gasped.
“What?” I asked.
Stepping closer once again, she lowered her voice. “That boy was on my train,” she said. “I noticed him at my station. He got on the same time I did. He followed me here.”
I glanced at the object of her scrutiny. An average height, average build young man wandered about twenty feet away. He wore a baseball cap with the brim pulled low over his eyes, plaid shorts, and running shoes. I couldn’t get a look at his face, but he didn’t seem to pay us any attention. I was about to say as much when he shuffled away into the next outdoor room. “He’s gone,” I said unnecessarily.
“I think he was following me. Now he knows I met you and gave you the box.”
Gav couldn’t have been close enough to hear our conversation, but he must have read our body language. The boy had about a ten-second head start before Gav followed him away. Despite the fact that it was getting dark now, I wasn’t worried. There were plenty of tourists around.
“Ingrid,” I said, placing a hand on her forearm. “You should be okay now. Why don’t you call your husband and let him know you gave me the box. Maybe he’s home, waiting for you.”
“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. “He told me to tell you something else—something I knew, but we promised never to breathe a word of it to anybody.”
“What is it?” I asked.
She swept the area with cautious reserve before inching still closer. “I don’t know why he wants me to tell you,” she said, her voice wavering. “I don’t know what good it’s going to do anybody. It could only get us into trouble, I think.”
If ever a person needed to be coaxed, it was Ingrid. “He must have had a good reason,” I said, “and I’ll bet it will be good for me to know once I open the box.”
Rocking back and forth on her heels, she gave the object a biting look of scorn, as though it held all the power in the world and was responsible for the plight of her life. Maybe it was. I’d find out soon enough. In the meantime, I couldn’t allow her to leave without delivering the entire message. “What did he tell you to tell me, Ingrid?”
Maybe it was hearing her name, but she seemed to snap out of her reverie. She took a breath, visibly steeling herself. Whatever she was about to impart wouldn’t be easy for her to do.
“He wasn’t sick when he left Pluto,” she said at last. “Not even a little. Healthy as a horse and just as stupid.”
“Wait,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“Listen,” she said, “all’s I know is that when Mickey was working there at Pluto, he was scared about something but he wouldn’t ever tell me what it was.”
“Before or after my dad was killed?”
She pointed at me. “Right after. I’d gone and forgotten about it—it’s been so long, you know—but ever since you showed up, he’s been nervous again.” Panic turned her mouth downward and I was afraid she might break into tears.
“Right after your father was killed, Mickey came home all shook about things at work. At first he told me he was upset about losing a friend, but he got worse over the next few days instead of better. I’ll never be able to forget how your dad’s murder changed our lives. And not for the better.”
Anger sparked from her dull eyes, though I could tell it wasn’t directed at me. She was seeing a story play out before her, her stinging criticism directed at events that had happened many years ago.
“About a week after the murder,” she continued, “Mickey wanted to quit his job. Told me he planned to give his notice even though he didn’t have anything else lined up yet. I thought that was a bad idea and said so. We were thinking about starting a family right then.” She gave a sad laugh but didn’t elaborate. “Mickey insisted that he had to quit, so I told him go ahead if it was so important.”
“Did he?”
Ingrid shook her head. “Came home that night shook up worse than ever before. Another guy at work had a bad accident.” Harold Linka. “They thought he wasn’t going to make it through the night. Mickey said that he couldn’t quit now. I asked was it because they’d be shorthanded with the other guy gone, but he said no.”
I had a feeling I knew the answer to the question I was about to ask. “Then why couldn’t he quit?”
“Mickey said what happened to the other guy was a warning. He said if he quit, they’d come after him.”
“But he did quit,” I reminded her.
“He went on disability,” she corrected. “He got my doctor brother-in-law to make a diagnosis that wasn’t true. Said that he was so sick he couldn’t work or he’d die.”
This sounded hokey. “You’re trying to tell me that Pluto—”
“Shh!”
“You’re trying to tell me that your husband believes that the company injured Harold Linka on purpose?”
She nodded. “That other guy knew everything that was going on. More than Mickey did, and as soon as that guy opened his mouth, they tried to kill him.”
“He still works for them,” I said, poking a hole in her story. “He works from home.”
“I’m telling you what happened,” she said. “Doesn’t matter what’s going on now. You weren’t there when it was going on twenty-five years ago. Mickey knew that if he tried to quit, it would look suspicious. So he figured another way out.”
“By claiming a disability.”
She made a noise of disgust. “Barely enough to live on, so I took a second job.” The look in her eyes was weary—not just physically, either. “It’s been tough for both of us.” She took a step sideways. “Now you know it all.”
I didn’t. I fought the urge to rip the box open right then and there, to see what was inside before Ingrid hurried off, in case I had questions about any of it. But Ingrid was liable to turn into a puddle of panic right in front of me.
She sent worried looks all around. “I stayed here too long. That guy may come back.”
With Gav trailing him, I doubted it. “Do you need help getting home?”
She shook her head, waves of fear emanating from her as she started away. Now that her mission was accomplished, it was clear she couldn’t wait to be gone.
“Ingrid…”
“I don’t want what happened to your dad to happen to Mickey.”
“You think it could?”
“I don’t know what to think.” She eyed the box in my hands. “It’s your problem now,” she said. “I don’t want nothing to do with it. All’s I want is for me and Mickey to have things back the way they were.” She started off again, turned and said, “Don’t you be calling or showing up anymore.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond before she was gone, in the opposite direction the young man had disappeared.
Gav
came back around the breadline a moment later. “Think about the devil,” I said. “Where did you go?”
“I followed that kid.”
“Ingrid said she thought he was following her.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Why?”
“Got a weird vibe from him. He seemed to be paying attention to your conversation before Ingrid pointed him out to you. I wanted to know why.”
“What did you find out?”
“Not a thing. He couldn’t have been more than fifty steps ahead of me, yet I couldn’t find him.”
“Gone?”
“In a flash. You noticed how he was strolling when he was here?”
“I did,” I said.
“Seems to me he took the rest of the exhibit in a flat-out run. No other way he could have been gone without me seeing.”
“That’s not good.”
“Did he seem at all familiar?” Gav asked.
“I couldn’t get a good look at him. Too dark, and with that hat…”
Gav and I stood there, he watching one direction, me the other. “I guess we got what we came for,” I finally said, showing him the box. “Let’s find out what’s inside.”
CHAPTER 22
WE WAITED UNTIL WE WERE BACK AT MY apartment to open the mysterious package. In the kitchen, I used scissors to cut through the shiny brown packing tape Fitch had used to secure the small container. “You ready?” I asked as the lid came free.
“The bigger question is, are you?” Gav said.
We both stood next to the kitchen table, breathless. I lifted the lid, eager to see what was so damaging that Mickey had ordered Ingrid to make sure she hadn’t been followed. Inside were several sheets of paper, folded in half. I lifted the pages out, disappointed there was nothing more beneath.
“Fitch has a flair for the dramatic,” I said. “Three sheets of paper could have easily fit in a standard envelope mailed from his local post office.”
“Let’s see what he has to say.”
We sat at the table, Gav pulling up a chair so we could sit next to each other. I unfolded the papers and scanned the first, Gav reading over my shoulder. Although I was a quicker reader, he was always more thorough. As I finished each page, I handed it to him.
