by BV Lawson
Her wide, brown eyes looked off into the distance. “If I’ve learned one thing working at the women’s shelter, it’s that how we’re treated as kids makes a big difference in how we deal with the world. Time to stop avoiding my grandparents and talk to them. Maybe they can help me understand my father.”
Drayco studied her wrinkled brow and clenched jaw, knowing the path to that understanding was going to be bumpy. “You told me you only saw your father once recently, when you took items to his condo. Was that the only time?”
She wiped a hand across her forehead. “What? Oh, you must mean that time I ran into him outside an ice cream shop in Clarendon. We exchanged some words. Not very kind ones, I’m afraid.”
Drayco heard a car’s engine shutting off in front of the house and nodded to Nelia so the two of them could make their exit. As they left, an elderly Chinese couple stopped and bowed to them.
Nelia slid into Drayco’s car. “You didn’t treat Ashley and Gogo like they were still murder suspects.”
“We can talk about that on the way.”
“On the way?”
“This is going to sound like a cheesy joke, but I’m taking you to meet my mother. Of course, when most people say that, they’re not referring to jail.”
“Will Benny be there?”
“All four-foot-nine of him.”
Whether his mother wanted to see him or not, Drayco didn’t really care. He’d lived most of his life without her approval, and he wasn’t going to start now. Sarg’s words echoed back to him, about Drayco feeling like he didn’t need anyone. He cast a sideways glance at Nelia who shot him a wicked smile as she fiddled with the radio and found a radio station playing KISS.
Chapter 47
To Drayco’s surprise, Halabi agreed with Benny’s request to allow both Drayco and Nelia to join the attorney in an interview room at the detention facility. No sitting across glass windows, this time. He’d half-expected Maura to refuse the meeting, but she hadn’t.
Halabi himself ushered them in, then hovered close by outside. Drayco hoped the detective was as trustworthy as he seemed and wasn’t “accidentally” listening in via a monitor. It would be tempting, considering this was the first time Maura said she was willing to offer up more details.
Benny introduced Nelia as his assistant, but when Nelia sat next to Drayco, Maura focused a microscope gaze on the deputy. Nelia stared back, the two assessing each other. With a slight nod, Maura turned her attention back to her son. “You are persistent. Definitely take after your grandfather. His eyes, his temperament.”
“Is he still alive, this grandfather of mine?”
Shadows crossed Maura’s face at the accusation in Drayco’s voice. She shook her head. “He died ten years ago.”
“Is he the one who taught you how to run cons like the lottery fraud you and Jerold Zamorra cooked up?”
She exhaled softly. “I worked as a psychic reader for a while. Mostly rich widows. Didn’t see the harm in it. Just cold readings, telling them what they wanted to hear, making them feel better. It’s a form of therapy—maybe it’s fake, but so are placebos, and they work, too.”
She looked at Drayco briefly, then back down at the table. “One day, I did a reading for Imogen Layford, and she told me about the lottery. I saw an envelope she’d addressed for that purpose with a mail drop in the District. I can’t explain why, but I haunted the address for a few days and waited until I saw Jerold walking out with that envelope. I confronted him, but after we got to talking, we ended up partners.”
She’d mentioned pieces of this story to Drayco briefly on his second visit, but from her glance over at Benny, then Nelia, he guessed she was mentioning it for their benefit. Still, a mail drop in the District? That could be traceable—a Canadian account would have been much safer. But then, this was from the same man who’d filed his passwords under “P” in his Rolodex.
He asked, “How did you run the scam?”
“We’d tell seniors they’d just won a huge lottery cash prize but needed to send in a money order to free it up from customs. Just a few thousand here and there. Not enough to draw suspicion or drain anyone’s account. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. As I said, I targeted only rich seniors.”
“And Edwin?”
“Edwin? Oh, aye, the police asked me about that. He was defrauding his pharmacy customers, wasn’t he? Funny thing, I don’t think either Jerold or Edwin knew about each other’s little projects. I certainly had no clue about Edwin.”
“How did you get the names of your victims?”
She winced at the use of the word. “Jerold started with some of the women at the condo. The rest is easy enough. The internet is full of sucker lists. Once someone takes the bait for one scam, those thieves sell the names, addresses, and phone numbers. But as I said, I filtered out most names and picked the wealthy ones.”
Drayco didn’t dwell on the irony of both Zamorra brothers scamming the same woman and not even knowing it. “Why didn’t you tell any of this to the police?”
“I had my reasons.”
“Alistair Brisbane?”
She pulled her clenched hands on the table closer to her. “I needed to protect Alistair. But not just him. My family’s been on the run in Europe for so long now, hiding from the law. I’ve vowed to protect them. So has Alistair.”
“They’re still on the run?”
“Not so much now, but a few are. And some of the marks have long memories and are still angry. Violently angry.”
“Is that why you and Alistair left Europe all those years ago?”
“I wanted to make a clean break, start a new life. I tried, you know, as a music teacher in Fredericksburg. That’s where I met your father. But my brother was, still is, very powerful and clever. And when necessary, he can be ruthless.”
He waited for her to talk about Dugald Iverson, her dead ex-boyfriend from years ago. He hadn’t told anyone but Sarg, swearing his former partner to secrecy unless and until it became absolutely necessary to bring up the cold case. But apparently, even now she wanted it to stay forgotten.
“You said you protect each other, you and Alistair.”
“When Alistair followed me to the States, I was furious. But he was a reminder of who I was pretending to be versus who I really was. That’s why I kept that piece of paper with the word ‘Brisbane’ with me. I don’t want to forget who I am.”
“People change. All the time.”
“We’re the sum of all we’ve been, don’t they say? Every fraction of our life adds up to make the whole of us. The fraction of me that was the perfect telly housewife was too small. It didn’t weigh enough inside my soul.”
He was trying to understand. Trying to override the five-year-old voice in his head screaming “Mommy, don’t leave me!”
Maura opened her clenched hands. “You asked me last time you were here why I married your father. Fact is, I was in love. Maybe I still am. Must have been madly in love for someone with my background, someone who had so much to lose, to marry an FBI agent. Temporary insanity, the kind only love can cause.”
He glanced at Nelia out of the corner of his eye, but her head was down, focused on the pad of paper as she scribbled some notes.
“Let’s get back to Jerold. You had this exclusive partnership, or so you thought. But you found out he had another partner, and in your words, double-crossed you. How did you discover this mystery partner in the first place?”
“I overheard Jerold’s end of a phone conversation. Jerold had been canny, I’ll grant you. But it’s hard to fool an old conner like me.”
“When was this in relation to the murder?”
“The day before. So, I decided to confront him. Look, I was furious with Jerold for betraying my trust. And yes I did stick a knife in him once when he was already dead. But in a way, I was stabbing myself. Jerold represented my life, my choices, my folly.”
Her hazel eyes tried to pierce a hole in his soul. For some reason that knocked him off-kilter
in a way he couldn’t articulate. “When I first spoke with you, you said Jerold wanted you to come over to discuss that trip to Nevada. Have you thought more about what he meant, other than you’ve always wanted to go to Reno?”
She hesitated. “Jerold actually said something even odder after that. It seemed so out of character, I put it down to stress. Or he was half-way to being sloshed. He said it would just be us two ‘twin guns’ out on the town having a blast.”
“Twin guns? Did Jerold have a gun that you recall?”
“Kept one in his condo. Hidden under the carpet and floorboards. I didn’t like it. I hate guns.”
Drayco thought back to the list of items from Jerold’s apartment Benny had gotten from Halabi. There was no entry for a gun or ammo. Nor had Ashley or Edwin mentioned Jerold having one. Was it taken by the killer?
Maura could be lying, but there was no reason, since a gun wasn’t used in the murder. Halabi had promised to provide Benny with a list of the items Ashley delivered to Jerold in a box on the day of his murder, but he hadn’t followed through yet. Maybe there’d be a gun there.
“Did he know you and Alistair were twins? Could he have been referring to that?”
She frowned. “Absolutely not. I knew you’d think Alistair had something to do with this. Which is exactly why I didn’t tell the police.”
Benny had stayed silent, checking a timer on his watch occasionally to keep track of their time limit. But as he held up three fingers to Nelia and Drayco to show they only had three minutes left, Drayco asked, “Knowing the knife was likely the murder weapon, why did you wash it before you used it on Jerold after he was dead?”
“I admit I wasn’t playing genius at the time, but I didn’t do that. Why would I? I just picked it up off the table.”
“It was lying there on the table, not on the floor? All nice and clean?”
“Aye. I didn’t think about it being clean. Or it possibly being what killed Jerold. It was handy, and I just picked it up.”
Halabi opened the door promptly on the thirty-minute mark, and the trio left Maura to be escorted back to her cell. Halabi handed a list to Benny, which Drayco peeked at over his shoulder. It was the list of Jerold’s belongings Ashley took to him the day of his murder. Ask and ye shall receive.
Halabi then looked at each of the three in turn, but directed his pointed comment to Drayco. “We still have no proof to tie anyone other than Maura McCune to Jerold Zamorra’s murder, his brother notwithstanding.”
“Maybe tomorrow, detective. Maybe tomorrow. Oh, and you might want to search Jerold’s condo again for a hidden compartment under some floorboards beneath the carpet. I’m guessing the bedroom. Where a gun might have been stashed.”
“For your information, we found that compartment already. It was empty. But what’s this about a gun?” Halabi scowled, but Drayco just waved and followed Benny and Nelia out the door.
Outside, Drayco asked the attorney if he could take Nelia back to his townhome to pick up her car.
“Hot date?” Benny was never the model of tact.
“I have an appointment.”
Benny handed Drayco the list Halabi had given him. “Well I hope it’s not with the murderer, because you’ve done that Lone Ranger thing of yours too many times. You’ll give me a heart attack some day.”
The look Nelia gave him was what she herself had once dubbed “worriosity,” but he waved them both off with an “I’ll be fine.” Sitting in his car, he gave a quick glance over the list from Halabi and made a comparison with his mental note of items in Jerold’s condo. No gun.
The two lists seemed to gibe, except for one oddly missing item. But it was that one item that sealed the deal in his mind. After all, an addiction was an addiction, no matter how unusual.
Chapter 48
Wax museums. Ugh. He’d rather go to an art gallery and see paintings of famous people than these monstrosities that looked like Halloween candy for giant ogres, like the wax lips of his youth. He’d promised the docent he was meeting he’d buy a ticket to D.C.’s Madame Tussauds and schedule a private tour at the front desk. The docent, none other than Lauralee Fremont, greeted him in her uniform, and they started walking through the exhibits.
“If it hadn’t been for a friend of mine who got me this job after I got fired from my last one, not sure what I would have done. McDonald’s, maybe. If they’d take someone with shoplifting on their record.”
“What about the quartet gig?”
“A pittance. Split four ways. I also fill in with local symphonies. I’ve got a concert tonight after I get off work here.”
They stopped at the wax likeness of J. Edgar Hoover. She didn’t seem to notice the irony and grabbed the ever-present little tube of coconut lip balm from her pocket. Her hair was in a very familiar style, a chignon, that he’d seen on another female recently.
Women’s fashions were a bit of a mystery, but he really should try to learn the fine art thereof. If he were more of an expert, he’d have noticed sooner that Lauralee copied the look, down to the same designers, as Rena Quentin. And the same jewelry, like a certain stolen pink-gold watch.
He asked, “Did you find out Rena Quentin was your mother before or after you went to work at that adoption agency?”
Her jaw dropped. “How the hell did you find that out?”
“More importantly, how did you manage to worm her identity out of the agency? They don’t usually give out that info.”
“I might have bribed someone there, okay? But I’m not going to tell you who. Don’t want them to get into trouble.”
“Why do you keep Rena being your mother a secret?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “As I said, my adoptive parents are very strict, very religious. They’d be angry with me for tracking Rena down.”
“But you’re an adult now. What you do with your time is your own business.”
“A near-penniless adult. One whose parents still give her money.”
But Rena wasn’t penniless. Polo, tennis, all paid for by the money from her ex-husband. A ready-made bank for Lauralee. “Have you contacted Rena? Does she know who you are and where you are?”
Lauralee scrunched her eyes tightly for a brief moment. “I was afraid. Afraid she abandoned me because I was not just a bastard but a half-breed bastard.”
“But you did follow Rena. You dress like her. You must feel connected to her on some level.”
“I guess.”
When he raised an eyebrow and just stared at her, she added, “Fine, so I got a little obsessed. But I pulled back once I found out about her father, my grandfather, and him killing my grandmother.”
“That it’s genetic, you mean?”
“I learned he’s out of jail. And now I’m afraid he’ll find out about me and maybe target me, too.”
Out of jail? Drayco mentally kicked himself for not checking out that line on inquiry. Just went to show how much his timing, his thought processes were off. He forced his thoughts back to Lauralee and Rena. “When did you really find out about Rena’s sexual harassment claims against Jerold?”
“He mentioned it once, and only once, when the four us went out and had some beers after a concert.”
“The police could point to that and say you killed Jerold Zamorra on your mother’s behalf. Maybe as a strange way of showing her how much you would do for her.”
“They would be wrong. I am not a killer.” Her raised voice and creased face made one of Lauralee’s fellow docents glare at Drayco.
“You’d met with Jerold several times recently. Outside of rehearsals or concerts. Was that about the instruments he gave you for safekeeping?” Brisbane’s photos had indicated at least three such meetings.
“There was that, yes. I also do some painting on the side. Mostly watercolors. Jerold told me I’m pretty good. We were discussing setting up a gallery exhibit somewhere, and he was even going to help finance it. He seemed interested. That is, until ...”
“Until he found
out you were in love with Ashley?”
She froze in place, her eyes wide and unblinking. “God, are you psychic?”
“Does Ashley know about your feelings?”
“Would it matter if she did?” Lauralee’s voice dwindled to a whisper. “She’s marrying Gogo.”
Drayco gave her a moment to collect herself. “How do your parents feel about gambling, Lauralee?”
“You kidding? That’s right up there with murder.”
“And you?”
“I’m too poor to gamble. I mean, it’s easy to make money if you have money, right? What’s a few thousand to rich people.”
“What if I told you both Jerold Zamorra and his brother Edwin were involved with criminal gambling and fraud?”
“What?” She blinked at him as the meaning of his words slowly dawned on her. “Oh God, I’m in so much trouble. A poor girl who must be in cahoots with thieves and murdered one of them out of revenge.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s probably what you’re thinking. The police, too. I’ll never be able to afford a lawyer. And I can’t tell my parents. What the hell am I going to do?”
“Nothing.”
She looked at him with her mouth agape. “What?”
He said, “Finish your shift, go to your concert, and make music to the best of your ability. Let me deal with the rest.”
She shook her head, doubtful.
“What are you playing tonight?”
“Haydn’s Miracle Symphony.”
“There, you see? It’s ordained.”
As they parted ways, a slow smile spread across her face. It was the first time he’d seen an actual smile from Lauralee. It made her look a lot like Rena Quentin.
Chapter 49
Drayco stopped by Union Station long enough to pick up Sarg, who’d hopped the train into town from Quantico. “We could have taken your car,” Drayco said.
