Then the small towns funneled into Salem, the capital, and the traffic speed increased. I hoped the other drivers knew what they were doing and went with the flow in the slow lane.
Exit 253. I eased onto the off-ramp, turned left on Highway 22 and stuck to that main route until I saw the sign for Shari’s. The hexagonal building sat in the close corner of a huge WinCo parking lot. Just like that — the easiest thing all day. I was grateful for Josh’s selection, and the banner strung over several of the restaurant’s windows, flapping in the cross breeze, announced fresh cream pies — banana, coconut, chocolate. My kind of place.
I backed into a space on the west edge of the lot so I had a wide-open view through the rain-streaked windshield. Josh didn’t know what kind of car I was driving. I tipped the seat back a bit, hunkered down, and grabbed the first composition book my hand landed on. A little light reading while I waited.
oOo
I ended up knitting on hat number fourteen while waiting for Josh. I just couldn’t concentrate on poetry and short fiction while contemplating how much of the truth I might want to share with a former FBI agent. Given his situation, maybe Josh and I had conscience struggles in common.
The black Accord arrived precisely at 10:00 a.m. and angled into a spot all alone on the south side of the lot. A tall, slim, dark-haired man in jeans and windbreaker climbed out of the driver’s seat and strode directly into the restaurant. He didn’t look around; he didn’t swerve for puddles. Hands in his jacket pockets, head down, as though he was completely focused on his own thoughts.
I exhaled and wound the loose yarn around the skein, reminding myself that Josh had requested this meeting. It didn’t make sense for my stomach to be jittery, but trying to apply logic to your internal organs is an effort in futility.
I creaked my stiff joints out of the Volvo and followed in Josh’s wake, slogging across the parking lot.
There were only a few patrons relaxing over coffee and breakfast remnants in the restaurant. Josh was already seated in a booth facing the door, and a pair of intense brown eyes regarded me over an open menu. No question — he’d known I was there the whole time.
I waved the hostess off with a weak smile, dropped my bag onto the bench seat across from Josh and slid in after it.
“You look exactly like your picture, except thinner,” he said.
Was I supposed to say thank you? I wasn’t sure it was a compliment. “What picture?” I asked instead.
“On Skip’s desk. Looked like it was taken up at Sutro Heights.”
I winced. I knew the one. The day after Skip had proposed, we’d played hooky from work and taken a long, leisurely walk through the park, stopping at every viewpoint, blissfully happy. At least I had been, and it showed in that photo. I wondered if the picture was still there.
“You’ve been in Turbo-Tidy Clean’s offices?” I asked.
Josh shrugged. “A few times.”
“In what capacity?”
Josh’s brows drew together, hooded over his eyes, giving his face the narrow, peaked look of a bird of prey — Gus would know which kind — falcon, eagle, hawk? Then he shrugged and glanced out the window. “Consultant.” His tone indicated it was a questionable label, not definitive.
“Let’s dispense with the veiled meanings,” I gritted out. “I don’t have all day. We might be able to help each other — or not. Why are you here?”
“Cognitive dissonance.”
At first I thought he was being flippant. But maybe that was the technical, law-enforcement term for when things don’t add up. If it was, then I had it too.
“Explain,” I said. “Talk until you don’t feel comfortable talking any more. Then I’ll do the same. We’ll see where we end up.”
Josh actually grinned at me a little and nodded. “Now I know why Skip liked you.”
A waitress bumped her hip into the end of the table and leaned there, breathing through her open mouth, pen poised over her order pad, one eye squinted in lieu of a greeting. I thought about asking about the special of the day to see if she could pantomime that too, but instead I ordered blueberry French toast. Josh doubled the order. She flipped our mugs over and splashed coffee into them before strolling away.
“First,” I said, “how long have you known Skip?”
“We were roommates for a couple years while we were at UC Davis.”
I had to set my mug down to keep from spilling it. “Mechanical engineering?”
Josh shook his head. “That was Skip’s thing. I majored in psychology.”
I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest. Their friendship, acquaintance — whatever it was — was longstanding. Skip had been an older college student, taking classes at a rate he could afford. I guessed there was at least a five-year age difference between them.
Josh studied his fingers as he pressed the tips together, forming a hollow sphere with his hands. “Went our separate ways after I graduated. Skip was still chugging along, you know, in that steady way of his. I got bored with the options available to me with a psychology degree, so I applied to the FBI. Got in, worked at a couple lousy postings until a spot in the San Francisco office opened up. Skip called me on my third day downtown.” Josh shook his head. “It was like he knew, had been following my career or something.”
I did a quick mental calculation of the timeline and guessed that this renewal of their friendship occurred before I started working for Skip, certainly well before my photo showed up on Skip’s desk. “What did he want?”
“To pick my brain. Boy, was he curious.”
I flexed my hands under the table, trying to distract myself from expressing frustration. I opted for silence — long and uncomfortable — because my attempt at verbal prompting sure wasn’t effective at speeding up the pace of Josh’s forthcomingness.
He opened his mouth, caught sight of the waitress arriving with our plates stacked on her arm, and closed his mouth again. I was no longer hungry, but eating was something to do. I tucked in.
Josh impaled a row of blueberries on the tines of his fork then left them to marinate in a puddle of syrup.
I made it about halfway through the sticky, fruity conglomeration before my stomach started cramping. I shoved the plate away and switched to twisting a paper napkin to shreds in my lap.
Josh had been fiddling with a sugar packet. It started leaking white granules all over the Formica tabletop, and he brushed them onto the floor. “Okay, look. I didn’t figure it out for a while, why Skip was so fascinated with organized crime figures. I thought it was some sort of morbid curiosity, and I indulged him, shared details, had a few laughs with him at some of their ingenious antics. But he kept pressing me — names, locations, preferred forms of money-making vice. He was so appreciative, though, made me feel — I don’t know — important. We all have this complex, you know — FBI agents. White knights, guard dogs protecting the sheep, hacking off the many heads of the criminal serpent, whatever. It’s not something you can talk about with just anybody, and that often includes your spouse and close family. It’s nice to be appreciated.”
“So you got him into the business?” I asked quietly.
Josh hunched forward, his eyes burning into mine. “That’s the thing. I’m not so sure he was in the business. Sure, he asked detailed questions, but so do reporters and some politicians. Doesn’t mean they’re pimping on the side or funneling drugs for the cartels.”
“Or laundering cash for their cronies,” I added.
Josh slumped back against the seat. “The gist of it is that I did share information with him which he could have used if he chose to. Contacts, methods, who was hot and who was floating under the radar at the moment. Channels, details on methods we didn’t have a way to detect or collect sufficient evidence on yet. He had it all — because I gave it to him, or close enough that he could figure it out. We were friends, Nora.”
I rested my hand on his. “I know. I married him, and I still don’t know what to believe about him.”
Josh exhaled heavily. “My career is screwed. My wife’s not going to take me back.” He stared out the window, his eyes vacant.
“Will you be prosecuted?” I murmured.
“Don’t know yet. My accounts came up clean. They haven’t been able to prove I profited financially from sharing information.” Josh snorted softly. “Because I have next to no money. My wife — well, she spent most of it while we were together, and she’ll get the rest in the divorce. FBI agents don’t get paid as much as you might expect. Certainly nothing like how well Skip was doing for himself.”
“Are they watching you?” I knew the answer, but I wanted confirmation from one of their own kind.
“Oh yeah. Here and there, not constant surveillance.”
“Me too. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t asked them to. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Josh gave me a funny little grin and dug in the pocket of his windbreaker. He laid a small black gadget, about the size of a cell phone with a stubby antenna protruding from one end, on the table and pushed it across. “Bug detector. It’ll find anything that’s transmitting radio frequency. Some bugs are voice activated, so they’re hard to find when they’re on stand-by mode, but they will ping every once in a while, sometimes as infrequently as every twenty minutes. You’ll have to be patient, but it’s a good one.”
I balanced the item in my hand. It was heavy for its size. “GPS? Cameras?”
“All of the above if they’re transmitting. It won’t work for cameras that collect video but don’t stream it. But then they’d have to come in and retrieve the data, and I doubt they’re using that kind of device with you.”
“Thanks. Do you need this back?” I asked.
Josh shook his head. “I have another one.”
In this swirling mess around Skip, the first thing I’d done, once I was willing to admit there might be some truth to what the FBI had told me, was pay cash for a bunch of throwaway cell phones. Josh had bought bug detectors. We were a paranoid pair. But the fact that he also was taking safety precautions meant I wasn’t delusional.
I had a gift for Josh as well. I pulled my copy of Lee Gomes’s contact list from my tote, pressed out the creases and laid the papers in front of him.
He took his time, skimming slowly. “Damn,” he finally whispered. “You know these guys?”
“Not personally, but I recognize some of the names.”
“I recognize almost all of them. If there’s a who’s who of who you don’t want to mess with, this is it.” The corner of Josh’s mouth curled up. “You’ll notice Skip’s name is not here.”
“He owns the property where I obtained this list,” I muttered.
“Damn.” Josh’s voice came out guttural this time, his fingertips white where they anchored the pages. “There’s a reason, then—” His words dwindled off, and his face drew into a concentrated scowl.
“Reason for what?” I prodded.
Josh sighed. “Skip was crazy about you — you know that, right? He was the happiest I’d ever seen him when you finally said yes. I know about your dad’s Alzheimer’s and your wanting to wait to accept Skip’s proposal until your dad was placed in a good facility. Skip got downright bubbly when it came to you. But a couple months ago, the next to the last time I met him for lunch, he handed me a card with a few addresses on it, said you’d probably end up at one of those places if anything happened to him. He asked me to check on you.”
I was finding it difficult to breathe. So Skip hadn’t just abandoned me. Because it had sure felt like it. For weeks and weeks and one measly gigantic bouquet of roses and—
Josh handed me a tidy white bundle — his handkerchief.
“And Mayfield?” I whispered from behind the soft cloth.
“First place on his list.”
I pawed through my bag, sniffing the whole while, and came up with a pen which I handed to Josh. “Draw me a diagram, please. You said it’s a who’s who. I want to know who reports to whom, who’s small potatoes, and who’s at the top of the chain. Everything you can give me.”
“Nora—” Josh’s voice held warning.
“Just do it,” I hissed.
It took him a good half hour. He covered the pages with arrowed lines linking names. Not a standard, tiered organizational chart — more like the web of a frenetic spider.
When he finished, he sat back and stared at me for a moment. Then he scrawled his new phone number on a napkin and tucked it into my palm. “Don’t be a stranger.” He squeezed my hand and eased out of the booth.
CHAPTER 10
I studied the connections Josh had made between the names on my list while sipping another mug of coffee. I also figured it’d be best if we weren’t seen leaving the restaurant at the same time in case he’d had a tail or was GPS-tracked. I wished I had a photographic memory because the lines were like a crazy roadmap.
A couple names surfaced — the same ones that had showed up most frequently when I’d scrolled through the emails Lee had sent. Like Thomas, I decided playing the odds was a good idea. More contact meant more knowledge of the situation — yes?
I knew a little something about organized crime myself. A little. The narrowest something. It was so negligible that I wasn’t willing to disclose it to Josh yet — or to my FBI watchers — since it was more likely to make me look guilty than not, but it was a start.
Truth is, I hadn’t even considered it important until I saw all the lines developing on the pages under Josh’s measured hand. My dad. It was ancient history which I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to know about. I couldn’t be sure even how much my mom knew — she tended to avoid unpleasantness by nature, a sort of willful ignorance of things she didn’t like.
I think I’d started putting the hints and suggestions together when I was in college. By then, it was past tense because my dad was already exhibiting signs of dementia and had taken an early retirement. I hated to think that my cleft palate and lip were what drove him to it in the first place — the need for money for all the surgeries his little girl required.
My dad had been an organizer and representative for the Bay Area’s Inlandboatmen’s Union, a branch of the powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union. He’d worked his way up the ranks — fast — eventually becoming the regional director. As such, he’d had access to business leaders, politicians and many members of the social upper crust which, of course, thrilled my mother. But due to my dad’s good-humored kindness, he counted many of those people as friends as well.
Only some of them weren’t so friendly when they didn’t get what they wanted. I remembered hushed, late-night meetings in the den with large, foreboding men who arrived in Cadillacs and Mercedes and left their associates lurking in our driveway while they met with my dad. I would have been sent to bed hours earlier, but that didn’t stop me from making frequent bathroom visits and getting countless glasses of water so that I could peek at them or catch snippets of the conversations that wafted through the crack under the door.
One time, I was caught in the hall in my pink ruffled nightie, and the big man had whirled me up into his arms and scratched my cheek with his stubble. “Look what I found,” he’d bellowed. “Cutest little thing. She sure don’t take after you, Burl.”
My dad had pulled me out of the man’s grasp and hurried me back into my room. He’d tucked me in firmly with a strict warning to stay put and go to sleep, as if a six-year-old could make that happen on command.
But I’d heard the man’s name — Vince DiBella. And when I was home during spring break of my freshman year of college, I read about his death in the Chronicle, complete with a captioned picture. He’d been gunned down, his body half hanging out of a newer version of the Cadillac he’d driven to our house that night. My dad’s so-called friend.
It seemed as though organized crime works a lot like multilevel marketing. A whole layer of minions doing the dirtiest work who report to the next layer, etc. The money funneling upward with bigger a
nd bigger cuts. The people at the bottom didn’t get much of the pie. I’m not saying Amway is in the same category as La Cosa Nostra, but you get my drift.
I wasn’t sure where my dad had fit in the structure, wasn’t sure it mattered anymore anyway. But if I wanted answers, I did know I needed to look up the chain, not down.
The rain had returned, thick and splatty, no longer frozen. I trotted across the parking lot and dove into the Volvo. One of my phones rang while I was wiping water from my face and hands. I found the right one in my bag.
“Yeah?” I panted.
“I need to make the handoff today.” It was the washed-out voice of Susanna White.
“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to give my mind a chance to catch up.
“I’m almost to Portland. Where are you?” Her words were nearly obliterated by the roar of traffic in the background.
“Salem,” I answered.
“I thought you — aren’t you in Washington?”
“Yes. I just had an errand today. I’m heading home now.”
“We’ll wait for you at the McDonald’s off the Jantzen Beach exit. You know it?”
I knew I’d seen that sign on the way down. I draped the map over the steering wheel and flipped it around until the Columbia River was at the top of the page. “I can find it.”
“I gotta be out of here by 1:30.” Susanna aimed a phlegmy cough directly into the receiver.
I flinched and jerked the phone away from my ear. When I returned to the line, it was already dead.
I checked my watch. I’d have to speed if I wanted to find out what this woman had that had belonged to Skip. It was as though I’d signed up for a missing husband scavenger hunt. Not exactly fun and games.
oOo
Even McDonald’s decorates for Christmas. The big plastic Ronald McDonald statue guarding the entrance had a fake pine wreath around his neck in clashing contrast to his clown face. It had one of those motion sensor devices, and from somewhere hidden in the plastic needles, a tinny music box started playing “Jingle Bells” accompanied by flashing lights every time someone walked by, which was constantly. I’d been inside the restaurant for all of two seconds and I already hated it.
Grab & Go (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 7
