by BV Lawson
“So? Jerold and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. Including Ophelia. He never treated her right.”
“Your niece practically said she wishes you were her father instead of Jerold.” Drayco put the pot down and moved to a shelf filled with books and games—Life, Monopoly, playing cards. And one Tarot deck.
“Ashley said that?” Edwin resumed the tapping again, slower this time. “Guess since Ophelia and Jerold are both dead now, it won’t hurt to tell the truth.”
Drayco put the pot back on the table. “I’m listening.”
“It was love at first sight for me. I never stopped loving Ophelia, not until the day she died. No, no, not even then. I still can’t imagine being with anyone else.”
“Did you and Ophelia have an affair?”
“We ... we had a one-night stand.”
“When was this?”
Edwin chewed on his lower lip. “A long time. Years.”
“Did Jerold ask for a paternity test? To see if Ashley was his?”
“What? No. Oh, no no no no. He didn’t know about us. The chasm between us was mostly his creation. Had nothing to do with Ophelia.”
Edwin jumped again when the phone rang. He didn’t make a move to answer it and let it go to voice mail. “I hear they’ve released Jerold’s body to Ashley. Took long enough. Now we can move forward with the cremation and funeral.”
“I’m surprised Ashley wants a funeral at all, considering she believes he killed her mother.”
“My parents requested it. It’s their son, after all.”
“I didn’t think Ashley was on speaking terms with your parents.”
“I confess I talked her into it. Didn’t seem right, him not having a proper send-off with all his family and friends there.”
“All?”
“Well, we won’t have to rent out Westminster Abbey.” More goat-bleat laughter.
“Will the surviving members of the quartet play? Or maybe you?”
“Don’t think the quartet is up to it. And me, I’m tone deaf.”
After Drayco made his exit, leaned on his car in the now-darkness. Edwin’s house wasn’t close enough to the Alexandria waterfront for Drayco to see it or hear it from here. When the winds were from the east like tonight, though, you could get whiffs of the Potomac River’s fishy, rotting compost odor that was minus its sometime-chaser of sulfur or sewage. The river couldn’t hide its presence, no matter how hard it tried.
The Potomac should take a few tips from Edwin. Because Drayco would wager his beloved Steinway that Edwin was hiding something.
Chapter 27
When Drayco had left home earlier in the day, Brock was still sleeping off his alcoholic stupor. Drayco wasn’t surprised his father was long gone by the time he made it back to his townhome after dark. No note. Nothing on the home answering machine. No cellphone call. No surprise, that. In danger of losing a bet once, Brock changed the rules in his favor so he wouldn’t have to admit he was wrong.
Drayco took a quick shower and did a minimal towel off before pulling on a pair of sweatpants, then hurried down to the den where he flipped open his laptop and dialed up his friend, Brody McGregor. It was after midnight in Edinburgh, but Drayco wasn’t surprised Brody-the-night-owl had suggested this time for a video conference call.
Brody held up a bottle of Balvenie single malt Scotch whisky and poured a glass. His Scottish brogue always deepened after he’d had a few. “Wish I could hand you one through the screen, Scott, ’cause I think you’re going to need it.” He took a sip. “And put a shirt on, would you? Don’t need your manly abs mocking me at this hour.”
Drayco grabbed a t-shirt he’d thrown onto a chair and slipped it over his head. “Happy?”
“Happier than you’re gaunnae be. But you’re the one who asked me to check into Maura McCune.”
Drayco steeled himself against the news. Whatever Brody had dug up, it was bound to be the truth. The ex-Interpol agent was as thorough in his private career as he’d been at his old job, where his former bosses were still trying to get him to return.
“Good or bad, I want to hear it.”
“Aye, then. You already know her family name, Brisbane, via her twin brother. A lot of the records have gone missing over the years, but the Brisbane family has a history of run-ins with police. Mostly small-time stuff. They were what we call Scottish lowland gypsy Travellers.”
“Like the Romani gypsies?”
“Can be, or at least, share a common history. Also, share cultural beliefs. The importance of family, a hatred of working for anyone else, and of course the nomadic bit. In Scottish Gaelic, they’re known as the Ceàrdannan or Craftsmen. Or, if you’re one of their critics, ‘tinkies.’”
“Tinkies?”
“Short for tinkers.”
“Ah. Tradesmen.”
“Of a sort. Often found around circuses and fairgrounds.”
“Apparently, they peddle more than honest wares, if they’re having police run-ins.”
“Exceptional con artists or confidence tricksters, that lot.”
That wasn’t surprising at all, considering what he knew about Maura and Alistair. Perhaps it was in their genes. Or they’d been doing it so long that they didn’t know how to do anything else. “You said small-time crimes. That doesn’t sound like anything that would make me need a whisky.”
Brody took a sip from his glass. “The records are a wee bit spotty, but I came across one of a man named Dugald Iverson. Found dead thirty-six years ago. Blunt force trauma. No one ever arrested.”
“Suspects?”
“The police records daednae list any. Found a couple of elderly former neighbors of Iverson’s who gave me a name. His teenage ex-girlfriend, Maura Brisbane.”
Drayco wiped his still-wet hands on his t-shirt. “And yet she was never charged or arrested.”
“Neighbors never saw her again. No one did. Poof, vanished just like that.”
“Until she turns up in Virginia under the name of Maura McCune.”
“And marries your faither. Sorry, Scott. Wish I had better news. I’ll keep on digging. Always more than one side to a story.”
“So they say.” Drayco wished he had that glass of Scotch whisky right now. “Thanks, pal. Next time I’m in your neck of the woods, I’ll buy you some haggis or something.”
“You do, and I’ll puke all over you. Never liked that shite. Now hamburgers, on the other hand ...”
“Blasphemy, my friend.”
“Not if it’s McDonald’s, aye?”
“Funny man.” Drayco didn’t feel like laughing upon hearing Brody’s bad news about Maura, but he was grateful for his friend’s attempts at softening the blow.
After Brody signed off with that promise to do more digging, especially on the Dugald Iverson case, Drayco sat with the laptop while staring at the blank screen. What had he ever known about his mother? Zilch, mostly. And apparently, Brock hadn’t either. Or else Maura really was a masterful con artist who had everyone fooled.
The immigration records he’d checked on this side of the Atlantic produced paltry results, and even his usual reliable sources had found nothing on Maura Brisbane, Maura McKewen, or Maura McCune. What name did she use when she landed here? And how did she get here? Fake passport? Stowaway on a boat? It was a lot easier to do thirty-six years ago before the days of 9-11 and the TSA.
He headed to the kitchen, pulled a Manhattan Special soda from the refrigerator, and looked for something to eat, the empty shelves reminding him he hadn’t made it to the store in a while. Grabbing a carton of leftover takeout rice, he added some pickle relish and hot sauce. Dinner was served.
While munching on the rice, his gaze fell on the necklace he’d taken from Maura’s apartment, now lying on his table. Halabi would have his nuts on a skewer if he knew Drayco pocketed the jewelry. He picked it up, turning it over in his hand as he studied it. He was pretty sure he’d seen something like it before.
He put down the rice and made his
way upstairs to his attic where he dug through a box of old cards and trinkets he’d almost forgotten. His probing fingers touched what he was after and then grasped a smaller, white box.
It was a box he’d rescued from the trash when he was five, a box he’d seen his father throw away in anger along with an album filled with photos. Right after his mother left. Drayco didn’t know why he’d rescued it or why he kept it. Other than his piano playing, for years it was the only real tie he had to his mother.
From the box, he pulled out a near-identical necklace to the one from Maura’s apartment—with a half-heart, this one engraved with MIZ on it. He went back downstairs and put the heart from this necklace next to the half-heart from the apartment. Together, they completed a heart figure and spelled MIZPAH.
He sat back down at the computer, and it didn’t take long to find what he was after. Mizpah, originally from Genesis, an emotional bond between people who are usually separated, a way of keeping the other person in your memory. Even sometimes used on headstones.
She kept her necklace?
He picked up the two necklaces and let them dangle from his hand, the gold glinting in the overhead light. He carried them with him to the piano and laid them on top, then started playing the Intermezzo in A Major from Opus 118 by Brahms.
When he was first learning how to play, his mother told him it was one of her favorite pieces. That had spurred him to learn it, practicing it over and over while she hummed wordlessly along with the melodic line. One of the saddest little pieces in a major key there ever was.
He closed his eyes as he played, easing into the complex harmonies that fired every region of his brain, hearing the music with its grooved fuschia sandpaper sheets sliding across his skin even as his mind thought about the case and how it seemed out-of-tune, just like his Steinway had lately.
He reached the hymn-like passage in F# major that used hints from the composer’s German Requiem, partly inspired by the death of the composer’s mother. It was the segment from the fifth movement where the voices sing verses from Isaiah, “As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you.”
He stopped playing, jumped up from the bench, and began pacing. After a few minutes of that, he headed to the kitchen to grab what was left of Brock’s bottle of Scotch but stopped. He didn’t want to play, and he didn’t want to drink.
Instead, he flopped down onto the sofa and stared at the dust on the ceiling fan as his thoughts swirled like the fan blades. Jerold, Edwin, Ashley, Maura, Ophelia—he stopped on that one. Why did the ATM thieves change their M.O. and bash in Ophelia Zamorra’s brain with a baseball bat, then cram the bank card down her throat?
Ashley said her mother hadn’t been acting strangely prior, with no hints of fear or stalkers or business woes. Unless Drayco’s mother were lying and her relationship with Jerold went back several years, and she decided to get rid of her romantic rival.
He hardly knew Maura McCune, and he owed her virtually nothing. Why did the truth matter so much now?
He started to pick up the TV remote when something caught his eye. A switch plate in a back corner of the room was ever-so-slightly crooked. His housekeeper wasn’t that vigorous. He grabbed a screwdriver to unscrew the plate and peered inside with his flashlight as it illuminated something that definitely shouldn’t be there.
Using the screwdriver again, he gently freed a small metallic device no bigger than one-fourth of an inch across and held it up to the light. It was one of the most sophisticated bugs he’d ever seen, and he had a pretty good idea of who’d put it there.
There were probably more, but he was too tired to make a sweep of the house. Besides, as high-tech as this little baby was, he’d probably need his bug and wiretap detector that went up to ten gigahertz, which was currently living at his office. He lay back on the sofa and settled on a sports channel. He hoped his listeners liked ice hockey.
§ § §
Iago popped some pepitas into his mouth as he stood in the shadows of a building far from the nearest street light. He stared at the detention center, its concrete, steel, and glass facade looking colder and deader in the dark light. Even the clouds seemed determined to prevent any moonlight from bathing the building in a more welcoming glow. Maura was in there, somewhere. Was she cold? Was she frightened? If they were in certain other countries, he could just plant a small bomb and waltz right in and grab her. It had worked well in Lagos.
He let the rest of the pepitas fall from his hand to the sidewalk and whipped out his cell. When the baritone voice answered, Iago said, “Got the bugs on their phones. Benny Baskin’s was easy. Scott Drayco’s was a little trickier, but they’re working good. I put the tracers on both of Drayco’s cars and a couple in his home and office.”
“Excellent. I also have another associate carefully monitoring Detective Halabi’s whereabouts. I hear he’s rather fond of fish and chips.”
Iago grunted. “Then you’ve got something in common. What about the senior Drayco, Brock?”
“He won’t be a problem.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure he could be a problem if he chose, with his high-profile connections. But he has no interest in either helping or hurting Maura.”
“Good. One Drayco is a handful. Or at least, the younger one is.”
“I suspected he would be. I have followed his career with great interest. I was surprised when he left the FBI, but after learning his reasons, I understood. I think he was mistaken, but it works to our advantage now.”
“He’s asked his former partner, that Sargosian guy, for help. Might have to worry about the FBI getting involved after all.”
“Aye. But I’m preparing for that possibility, just in case.” The man on the phone coughed. “Sorry. A touch of a cold, I’m afraid. Do you need more money?”
“I’m good. You taking something for that cold?”
“A little rowanberry wine.”
“Sounds better than menthol crap. Maura would probably give you some of her whisky-honey-vinegar cure.”
“Yes, well, hopefully, we’ll have her back soon. Do keep the faith, old friend.”
“Faith? I prefer action. Think I’ll check out that Gogo Cheng kid. Had plenty of reason to hate Zamorra, and he’s got that martial arts thing going.”
“And yet I doubt he could take you on and win.”
Iago chuckled. “Your confidence in me warms the cockles of my heart.”
“Warming—a lovely idea. I think I’ll have Hazel heat up some chicken soup for me. And your talk of bugs reminds me I need to check that latest sweep to make sure we’re clean.”
“Time for me to switch to a new burner phone.”
“I’ll see to it. Do keep me posted on our detective friends.”
Iago hung up with his employer and gave one last look at the detention center. At least Maura was safe, for now. No telling if Zamorra’s real killer would be gunning for her, too, if she were out on the streets. With a heavy sigh, he headed off in the direction of Clarendon. He had a sudden hankering for fish and chips.
Chapter 28
Wednesday, February 20
The late-morning sun beat down on the white bubble dome that stretched out like the top of a giant Moby Dick. Rena Quentin didn’t allow one single blade of grass a chance at life under her active feet, which is why Drayco was meeting her at the East Potomac Tennis Center. He’d never been inside, although he liked Hains Point, the little island between the Washington Channel and the Potomac River. The tip of the island and nearby Gravelly Point were two of the best places to watch planes take off and land at DCA.
He was early, so he meandered through the center’s pro shop. Tennis balls, tennis shoes, tennis clothing. Imagine. He picked up a tennis racket, a graphite-tungsten Babolat, and looked at the price tag. Two hundred dollars. Yikes.
Heading to the indoor courts, he spied Rena and watched as the instructor worked on her strokes with her. Hardly a bead of sweat crossed her brow, and her clothes looked d
ry. Not that she wasn’t working hard, her skin just wouldn’t dare to perspire.
All that exercise seemed to be paying off, with the near-sixty retiree running around like someone a few decades younger. Even when she was just walking, she moved like a dancer, springing, pirouetting, with controlled movements.
After she wrapped up her lesson and approached him, he could see her hair better this time sans polo hat, dyed chestnut with a hint of gray at the roots and sprayed into submission. She wore a navy blue tennis dress and white shoes with a navy stripe. Her racket also had navy trim and looked suspiciously similar to one of the Babolats in the pro shop.
Rena looked up at him. “You’re much taller than I remember.”
She nodded at the wall, and he followed her to a sports bag she opened to stuff her racket inside. “Men think women love horses because it’s an orgasmic thing. But it’s not. It’s the controlled power in horses, their magnificent energy and strength that I can control with a flick of my legs and feet. They’re such amazing animals.”
“Horses can turn on their riders.”
“Mine don’t.” She smiled at him. “So, you’re trying to prove your mother isn’t a killer.”
“Edwin Zamorra said you’d checked on me. You do that with everyone you meet?”
“You have to admit it was odd having you show up like that. Besides, once a security wonk, always a security wonk. Edwin’s words, not mine.” Rena patted her hair. “It must be difficult having your mother be a suspect in a murder.”
“I haven’t seen her in thirty years. I hardly know her.”
“Then we have something in common. I didn’t get the chance to know my mother, either. My cop father pushed her down some stairs in a drunken rage when I was eight. Broke her neck. I’d love to have just one more day with her. She was my entire universe.”
She zipped the bag, and as they walked to a bench, added, “Is your mother like you remember her?”
“Her voice is.”
Rena bent over to tie her shoelace tighter. “No disrespect intended, but if she’s convicted, maybe she’ll try the suicide route. I would in her shoes. Jails are so messy.”
