by BV Lawson
Sarg hid a cough behind his napkin, and Drayco picked up the salt shaker and followed her lead. “You’re right. It’s quite good.”
She tried a bit of the tart, with a pleased “Umm,” and washed it down with some coffee. “You think Rena Quentin was behind Jerold’s murder, but why frame me? Was she that jealous?”
“Rena likes being in control, manipulating actors in her dramas like a Hollywood director. You were horning in on her action. That wasn’t in the script.”
“I suppose that’s true, Scotty, but I didn’t even know her. I certainly didn’t know she was Jerold’s partner.” She fingered her coffee cup, then shook her head. “Jerold wouldn’t have turned her in, because doing so would out him, too. Seems like she would have killed me, the interloper, instead.”
Maura changed the subject to ask about Sarg’s wife and kids, and Sarg regaled her with stories from his days with Drayco at the Bureau. When they dropped her off at her apartment an hour later, she hesitated as if wanting to talk some more. But she waved them off with a smile.
When Benny arranged bail, he knew as well as Drayco that Maura was a flight risk, if her past was any guide. Even now, as Drayco and Sarg drove away, Maura stood at her front door looking after them as her smile faded. And Drayco wasn’t entirely convinced he would ever see her again.
Chapter 53
On the way back to Drayco’s townhome where Sarg had parked his own car, Drayco pulled into the parking lot of Edwin’s pharmacy on a whim. A light rain forced him to use the windshield wipers, but it was easy to see the Closed sign on the pharmacy entrance.
“She loves you, you know.” Sarg glanced at Drayco. “In her own way.”
A parade of missed birthdays, parent-less holidays, and his sister’s funeral passed through Drayco’s mind. Along the sidelines of that parade were other mothers he’d come across through the years—mothers who’d abused their children, tortured, even killed them. Birth, family, death, the three things you can never escape.
“I’ve always blamed Brock for pushing her away. But it was never him, not really.”
“Like Maura said, she was an interloper. Of sorts.”
Drayco drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “That’s why Rena framed Maura, in part. A handy scapegoat. Killing Jerold without that scapegoat might have focused attention on Rena. This way, she could appear all innocent and blameless.”
“And since Maura didn’t know anything about Rena, she couldn’t rat her out.”
“But how?”
“What do you mean how?”
“How could Rena be sure Maura didn’t know about her? She’d only have Jerold’s word unless she was bugging both of them like Alistair did me, which I highly doubt.”
“Maybe she extracted that tidbit of info from Jerold when she had him at gunpoint? You know, swear to me blah-blah-blah, or I’ll kill you.”
The light rain picked up tempo, making larger blobby patterns on the windshield. Patterns. It was always patterns with Rena. Always getting rid of whoever was in her way, even if the reasons were based on little more than a belief. Ophelia might have uncovered the lottery scheme. Jerold might have cut her off when he partnered with Rena—anything or anyone that bore the tiniest whiff of disturbing her carefully orchestrated masterpiece of deception.
Sarg said, “They’ll catch Rena soon. Halabi and his crew are good. And the BOLO should help.”
Drayco didn’t answer, lost in thought, until Sarg poked him in the ribs. “I said they’ll get her, if that’s what’s eating you.”
“Maybe she never left. Maybe she’s still in the area.”
“Why would she do that? She’s probably got tons of money socked away in offshore accounts. And all that TSA experience should make it easier for her to flee the country.”
“Eventually, yes. But if there’s one thing I’ve picked up about Rena, she likes everything neat and tidy in an OCD way. She loathes loose ends. And she found out about Maura, probably followed her, knew where she lived.”
Sarg sat up straighter. “And now that Maura’s out of jail—”
“Seems like she would have killed me, the interloper, instead. Those were Maura’s exact words, weren’t they?”
Sarg took a sharp breath. “You think we should—”
In answer, Drayco threw the car into reverse and peeled out of the parking lot to head back to his mother’s apartment.
§ § §
As they pulled onto the street that led to Maura’s place, another car passed them in the other direction going at least twenty miles over the speed limit. Drayco caught a brief glimpse of the driver. From the profile, he was pretty sure it was Rena Quentin.
Drayco tossed his cellphone at Sarg. “Call Halabi. Tell him to send someone to check on Maura’s apartment. We’ll stick with Rena.” It took every ounce of willpower Drayco had not to rush into his mother’s apartment right then and there. But they couldn’t risk losing their target.
As he turned the wheel and forced the car into a sliding U-turn, he called out, “Hold tight,” and tried to keep Rena’s car in sight.
Sarg whipped out his cellphone, punched Halabi’s speed dial, and barked their location and direction. Halabi must have passed his phone over to someone else because Drayco doubted Halabi would be content to sit by and play stenographer while Sarg kept shouting out the landmarks and streets as they flew by.
Rena’s car merged onto I-66, with Drayco and Sarg following at a prudent distance behind, heading in the direction of the District. After they crossed over the Roosevelt Bridge and took the Independence Street exit south of the Tidal Basin toward Ohio Drive, Drayco had a pretty good idea of where Rena was heading. But why? He doubted it was for another lesson with her tennis instructor.
In fact, they passed the tennis center as well as East Potomac Golf Course, where Jerold used to play, and curved around Ohio towards Hains Point. Drayco’s attention was focused on his quarry, but at the same time, he noted the headlights of a car following theirs. Halabi’s men, hopefully.
By now, it was almost completely dark, and Rena’s dark car was so hard to see that Drayco almost passed the spot where Rena had parked on the side of the road. He pulled in behind her and hopped out while Sarg took a moment to grab his gun from his shoulder holster.
They were close to the edge of the Potomac, with only a short three-railed fence separating the edge of Potomac Park from the river. Rena struggled with a long, dark object she hoisted over her shoulder.
Drayco started toward her as a voice from behind him shouted, “Rena, no!” It wasn’t Sarg’s voice. Drayco half-turned to see that the driver of their chase car was none other than Iago Pryce.
Drayco also saw the horrified look on the man’s face and turned back just in time to watch as Rena shoved the dark object over the railing and into the water. It was a body bag. Drayco and Iago reached the railing at the same time, ignoring Rena who ran in the opposite direction with Sarg following in pursuit.
As the cold rain continued to fall, Iago looked over the railing and wailed, “I can’t swim.”
Drayco kicked off his shoes and jacket, took a deep breath and dove into the cold, inky water. He had to get to the bag before hypothermia kicked in and he couldn’t feel his arms and legs anymore. It was near impossible to see anything. He fumbled in his pants pocket for his mini-flashlight, praying he didn’t drop it.
It was difficult to swim with the flashlight in his hand, but he did the best he could as he conducted a frantic search. Ordinarily, he could hold his breath for five minutes, but the adrenaline and the cold combined to make him feel the increasing pressure on his aching lungs.
His only hope was that there were enough air pockets inside the body bag to help it float gradually down instead of plummeting to the bottom. Parts of the Potomac were close to seventy feet in this area, and he didn’t have enough oxygen in reserve for that.
Just as his lungs were telling him he had to surface soon, he glimpsed the edge of an object a few fe
et to one side. As he grabbed out at it, the smooth, slick texture told him what he needed to know—and then his flashlight fell out of his hand.
Grabbing the bag in the now-pitch-black water, he heaved his body upward with all his might toward the surface. He held on to the bag for dear life with his arms circled around it, kicking his legs hard and fast. Just as he thought his lungs were going to burst, he broke through the surface and took deep, gulping gasps of air.
Where was Sarg? Where was Iago? No signs of either man.
Now that he could breathe again, he positioned his body and the bag as close to the bank as he could and hoisted the bag up over the concrete edge. With one last adrenaline-fueled burst, he pushed the bag onto the grass and dragged himself out of the water.
His fingers trembled as he found the bag’s zipper and ripped it open. His mother’s face appeared, her eyes closed as if she were sleeping. He bent down with his ear to her mouth and felt for a pulse in her neck. Was it there, a faint blip, or was it his imagination?
He raised up to shout for Sarg to call an ambulance, when he felt two giant hands clasp around his neck squeezing hard. He struggled to breathe as if he were the one drowning. And then Maura’s face grew dim as a cold, black veil settled over him and darkness met darkness.
§ § §
When he opened his eyes again, he was flat on his back with Sarg and Detective Halabi bending over him. Sarg’s blurry face snapped into focus as he said, “You okay, junior?”
Drayco forced himself into a seated position with a little help from the other two men. At least, the rain had stopped and made it easier for him to look around. “Where’s Maura?”
Sarg said, “You got me. When I came back from my hundred-yard dash tryout, you were lying there alone.”
Drayco looked around. “But she was there. I got her out of the body bag. I felt her pulse.”
“Well, she’s not here now. Nor is Iago, for that matter.”
“No body bag?”
Halabi replied, “No bag, no body, just you when I got here. And Agent Sargosian dragged Rena in shortly after.”
“You saw Rena throw the body bag into the water, didn’t you, Sarg?”
“I thought I did, yeah. But as Detective Halabi here says, it was gone when I returned.” Sarg held up an object with its trigger guard dangling on Sarg’s pen. “We found this on the grass, though.”
It was a gun. The one Rena possibly used to threaten Jerold? Had she put in the body bag and it fell out? It hardly mattered now.
Then, with a sudden recall of the hands around his neck, Drayco knew beyond a shadow of a doubt those hands belonged to Iago, Maura’s devoted bodyguard. He must have spirited her away. But why did he attack Drayco? And was Maura dead or alive?
A woman laughed, and he whipped his head around. It was Rena, sitting on the ground under the watchful eye of a police sergeant. “You don’t have a body. You can’t charge me with anything. And I’ve never seen that gun before in my life. I don’t even know how to use a gun.”
She added, in a sing-song voice, “Besides, your mother died the day she left you behind.”
Drayco stared into her eyes. “Have you never cared about anyone in your life?”
Rena snorted her disdain. “I cared about someone once. He left me when he found out I was pregnant. Caring clouds your judgment, Mr. Drayco.”
Halabi and another detective hauled Rena up off the ground, her hands cuffed behind her. Someone grabbed a blanket and threw it over Drayco as he realized his teeth were chattering. The blanket-giver turned out to be Sarg, who stuffed Drayco into the car and turned on the heater full blast.
Sarg’s expression wasn’t pity, but concern. He started to say something, then stopped and looked over at Drayco, clearly not knowing what to do.
He turned on the satellite radio, tuned to its usual classical station. It was Bach, his mother’s favorite. Sarg turned up the volume so they could hear it over the blast of the heater, as they listened to the Shepherd Cantata and its text, “Fly, vanish, flee, o worries.”
Chapter 54
Thursday, March 1
Drayco looked over at the trash can in his kitchen filled with empty bottles of Manhattan Special, an assortment of beer cans, and takeout boxes with congealed food clinging to the containers. They were piled upward into an overflowing trash pyramid like Giza monuments with the mortar cracked and the stones tumbling down the sides.
Rena had been formally charged with Jerold’s murder. The police found a key to Jerold’s storage unit in her possession, for starters. When they confronted her with the facts—they also found traces of Jerold’s blood in the trunk of her car and her fingerprints on the gun that was tracked to Jerold—she seemed eager to talk.
Boasted, more like it. Down to the disposable raincoat, the gloves, and shoe covers she wore. And why she washed the knife clean, to make it look like Maura was destroying evidence when the police showed up. She didn’t know Maura was going to pick up the knife, but even better.
Drayco glanced at the box of caramels Halabi had sent to Drayco’s townhome. Peace offering or gentle jab, he wasn’t quite sure.
He changed the channel on the TV remote but ended up back at C-Span, where it had stayed most of the week. Mind-numbingly boring and no local news, which he’d been trying to ignore. His neglected piano called to him in vain—after starting and stopping the same Chopin sonata ten times, he’d given up.
The phone rang, and he almost didn’t answer, thinking it was another meeting with Halabi or the FBI or the TSA or the FTC. He’d talked so much about Maura, Rena, and the Zamorras over and over, he was ready to go MIA.
But it was someone quite unexpected. After hanging up and making a few additional calls, he hopped in his car, made a stop at Ashley’s house to pick up his passenger, and drove to the detention facility. Lauralee wanted to meet her mother in person for the first time.
As they waited in the lobby, Drayco asked, “That watch you lifted from the store. Did you take it because you saw Rena wearing one just like it?”
Lauralee’s smile was brief and bitter. “Yeah. When I saw her smoking, I took that up, too.” She sighed. “All this time, I resented my adoptive parents. I always felt more like a missionary project than a daughter. But at least, they cared and didn’t abandon me.”
Drayco briefed Lauralee on Rena’s traumatic childhood and her mother’s murder. “When the police questioned Rena, she said her elderly grandmother told her girls are useless and only boys matter. She said she hated that old woman, and it’s not women who don’t matter, it’s old people with dried-up souls and hearts turned to dust.”
“Is that why she married that elderly guy? Just so she could divorce him and kill him later?”
“That’s what she says. With the added benefit of his rather large estate.”
“But why kill Jerold? I mean, Ashley told me about his gambling and that lottery swindle thing. I don’t get the murder part.”
“Because he was getting careless—the gambling debts, sending lottery letters to women in his own neighborhood. She confronted him with a gun and forced him to call Maura, who she framed for his death.”
He noted the shadows gathering over Lauralee’s face. “Are you sure you want to do this? You can still back out.”
She straightened her drooping shoulders and smoothed out a wrinkle in her dress. “I want this. I have to do this.”
He wasn’t sure how much more he’d tell her. At least not right now. Certainly not that he’d found out Rena knew Lauralee was her daughter and never contacted her. Whether it was another symptom of Rena’s callous nature or inability to love anyone, it was hard to say.
Drayco asked, “Looks like it could take several more minutes before they take us to see Rena. Need a smoking break?”
She shook her head. “I suppose I should try to quit. It doesn’t seem nearly as glamorous as it once did.”
He studied her posture—so straight you could raise a flag up her spine. He imagi
ned a flag that read “Free Lauralee.” But he liked the new glint of purpose he saw in her eyes, and as the deputy came to escort them, he had a feeling that no matter what happened with Rena, Lauralee would be just fine.
Chapter 55
Friday, March 2
Nelia Tyler joined Drayco in looking out the window of the car at the Massaponax sandstone gate with its Gothic columns and pointed arch. Beyond, lay a flat expanse of late-winter grass dotted with markers serving as marble and stone flowers.
Nelia said, “We seem to do this too often.”
He knew what she was referring to, the ending of the first case they’d worked together and a cemetery like this one. When Nelia called earlier in the day and learned where Drayco was headed, she offered to ride with him. He wasn’t sure at first if he should accept, but having her solid, quiet support made him glad he’d said yes. He pushed aside the little nagging voice asking why he hadn’t invited Darcie.
His cellphone rang again. This time, he rolled down the window and started to throw the phone out, but Nelia slipped it out of his palm. She checked the incoming number and frowned. “You’ve labeled this contact as UAB.”
Drayco took the phone from her. He pictured the distinguished man with the Greek nose he’d seen from afar twice, as the voice spoke. “I know this is not the most opportune time to call, dear nephew.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t here.”
“Who says I’m not?”
Drayco turned his head sharply, looking all around them. There were a few cars parked several yards away, but they appeared to be empty. “Been trying to get you for two days, Brisbane. All of a sudden, you stopped taking my calls.”
“I’m not sure how I could help you.”
“You could tell me whether my mother is alive or dead, for starters. And where she and Iago are.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have that information for you.”
“You don’t know, or you won’t say?”
“I mean that I don’t have that information for you.”
