All Through the Night (15 page)
T
he enclave of John’s Island held the special silence of the rich. The wind was still strong enough to push the palms around. Raindrops rattled off the leaves and sparkled in the emerging sunlight. The lawn was the shade of liquid emeralds. A chickadee sang from around the side of the house. A car whished by on wet tires. Otherwise the world was orderly, calm, restrained.
Tatyana rang the front doorbell and said, “I hate going to Easton with just more questions and no answers.”
“He’s the one who asked for this meeting, right?”
“Even so, I feel that I am letting him down. My job is to identify solutions. That is why we are close. Most attorneys specialize in finding problems. I look for answers as well.”
“That’s one reason you’re close, not the only.” He heard footsteps tapping across the interior. “You’re close because he trusts you.”
The door was opened by the same girl they had seen on their previous visit. Tatyana said, “Hello, Clara. Your father is expecting us.”
She did not look at either of them directly. “He’s on the phone.”
“Can we come inside?”
Wayne had the clear sense that the girl really wanted to shut the door in their faces. Just slam out all the impossible terrors. Her face was pinched tight as she stepped back. The Labrador retriever kept so close she bumped him with her leg. The Lab moved forward and nudged Wayne’s hand with his wet nose. Wayne stroked the dog between the ears and felt the Lab’s tail thump against his knee.
“Come here, Jody.”
The Lab returned to his position behind the girl. She directed her words to the door as she shut and locked it. “Dad’s in the kitchen.”
“Then maybe we should go wait in his study.”
The girl gave a teenage shrug and walked away. As if she didn’t care. As if she could block them out. Then the Lab nudged her leg, just a little, and she almost tumbled. The slightest force was enough to wreck her fragile equilibrium.
Tatyana pointed Wayne toward the stairs. Midway up the girl spoke from the bottom of the stairs, “Do you know who’s doing this?”
Tatyana leaned over the railing. “No. I’m sorry. I wish I could say it was all behind us. But no.”
The pinched features almost hid the tight quiver to the girl’s mouth. Almost. “He won’t go out. Not even to the store. Not even to play golf. It’s like he’s sick or something.”
“We’re working on this just as hard as we can.”
She looked at the panting dog without seeing him. “Daddy is scared. He says he’s not. He says he likes the time at home with us. But I know.”
“Would you like me to call you from time to time? I could do that.” Tatyana hesitated, then added, “I know what it’s like to be scared.”
“Mom’s scared too.” Her voice broke then. She turned away.
“I’ll call you, Clara.”
The girl padded in her bare feet across the marble-tiled foyer and disappeared.
The room at the top of the stairs was everything a rich man’s study should be, paneled in some wood that glowed, a matching desk, big leather chair, fireplace, oil paintings, awards, books. The smell was like a man’s cologne, or a musk. If money had a scent, Wayne decided, it would be this. “Nice.”
Tatyana walked to the window, or started to. But her attention was snagged by something on Grey’s desk. She picked up the two sheets of paper and studied them. Wayne could almost feel her intensity. She was still looking at them when Easton Grey entered the room and said, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Grusza.”
“Call me Wayne.”
“Have a seat. I understand you have something to tell me.” He saw how Tatyana remained absorbed by the sheets of paper, and told her, “Names and times of every call I’ve received, just as you asked.”
Her face had returned to its customary lines of singular focus. Wayne felt a sudden stab of loss, which he knew was absurd. But he couldn’t help himself. She asked in the voice of old, “Trace Neally called you at two fifteen yesterday afternoon?”
“That’s right. Take a seat, Tatyana.”
She remained where she was. “Can I ask what you talked about?”
Grey waved Wayne into one of the leather chairs and chose the sofa for himself. “We talked about you.”
“Those charges the disciplinary board brought against me are utterly false.”
“Tatyana, think of who you’re talking to. I know they’re false. Now come sit down. Please.”
She moved with the stiffness of repressed anger. She selected a high-backed chair next to the fireplace. The pages dangled from her hand. Wayne asked her, “This guy was one of those who accused you?”
“Trace Neally was the last member of the disciplinary board to arrive.” Her face now resembled Easton’s daughter. Same pinched features, same small mouth, same tremble so tight it appeared almost a tic.
“Who is he?”
“A property developer. One of the biggest in Florida.”
“And a friend,” Easton added. “We’ve known each other for almost twenty years.”
“So why would your friend level charges you know are false against your company’s legal counsel?”
Easton nodded approval. “Exactly what I asked him. He replied that he was there because he had been asked to come.”
“We need to know who brought up this issue against Tatyana with the disciplinary board,” Wayne said. “The timing is too perfect for this to be chance.”
“Trace promised to check into it and come back to me.”
Wayne gave Tatyana a chance to take charge. But her attention had returned to the sheets in her hand. So Wayne said, “Did this Trace guy say who asked him to come?”
“His secretary made the appointment. After I got off the phone with Trace, I checked with her. She arrived that morning to find a board-level memo waiting for her. The signature was illegible.” Easton turned his attention to the lady seated by the fireplace and said, “You look very nice today, Tatyana.”
Her eyes returned to the page. “My ex-husband called you three times?”
“Just as I recorded there on the page.” Easton kept his voice intentionally mild.
“Was that about me too?”
“To some degree. Eric Stroud is now representing Teledyne.” Easton added for Wayne’s benefit, “Teledyne is a company we are seeking to acquire.”
Tatyana said, “I’ve been responsible for those negotiations. Eric’s name has never come up before.”
“Eric’s firm is Teledyne’s outside counsel. You know that. Their board specifically requested that Eric take personal charge. He would not say why. He approached me because, well, he feared there might be some difficulty dealing with you.”
She directed her words to the page in her hand. “So he’s going behind my back.”
“He tried. I told him if he could not handle the matter with you, Teledyne would either need to find new counsel or the deal was finished.”
Tatyana blinked once. A second time. The tension gradually drained away. She moved her lips back and forth, as though trying to massage blood back into them again. She said in a very small voice, “Thank you, Easton.”
“You are my chief in-house counsel. How else could I possibly respond?” He dismissed the issue by turning to Wayne and saying, “I understand you have met the gentleman in question.”
“Hold that thought.” Wayne turned to Tatyana. “We need to follow up on this Trace guy.”
Drawing the room back into focus clearly required serious effort on Tatyana’s part. “He is Easton’s friend.”
“Think about it. You were tackled by this disciplinary group. How many were there?”
“The same as always. Four. Two company executives, two board members.”
“And it’s a very serious matter to be brought before them on charges, right?”
Easton asked, “Where are you going with this?”
“I have a friend who’s a former cop. Since this thing broke, he’s kept saying how he hates coincidences.”
Wayne expected the company boss to object to his sharing of confidential information with an unknown. Instead, Easton said, “You think someone on the board is involved in this scam, if that’s what it was.”
“Maybe.” He directed his words to Tatyana. “Does your ex handle a lot of corporate buyouts?”
Easton replied, “Eric Stroud is partner in Orlando’s largest firm. They handle whatever comes their way.”
Wayne had assumed that already. His question, however, had the desired effect. Tatyana was back fully with them. She said, “The takeover.”
“I’m thinking that’s what Jerry would say. After you’re pulled away I’m confronted by an exec from a completely different department. Your husband pops up like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat.” He shrugged. “So we follow the coincidences and see where they lead. We need to talk with this Trace guy, see if he can give us a feel for what happened when you weren’t in the room.”
Tatyana nodded. “I’ll set that up.”
Easton leaned back in the sofa, his gaze moving back and forth between the two of them. “Well, well.”
Tatyana glanced at her boss. “What?”
“It sounds to me like you two have become a team.”
She made that gesture from her distant past, the raising of her chin, the noncommittal full-body shrug. “Is that bad?”
He said to Wayne, “In a matter of a few days, you have moved from arm’s length to trusted ally. Tatyana does not trust easily. I hope her confidence in you is justified.”
“I hope so too,” Wayne replied.
“Back to my earlier question. You spoke with the gentleman who claimed to be God’s messenger?”
“More like, he spoke to me.”
“Describe it, please. In as much detail as you can.”
Wayne did so. When he finished, he watched Easton pull at his lip for a moment, then added, “I dreamed about him last night.”
Easton Grey revealed neither shock nor derision. Just a return of that absorbed concentration. “Was it just a dream, Mr. Grusza?”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you know what I’m referring to.”
He licked his lips. He wished he had not brought it up now. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Did he speak?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
The leather squeaked as Easton Grey leaned forward. “What did he say?”
“Choose.”
The corporate chieftain surprised him. He smiled. The invisible strain he had carried with him both times they had met suddenly lifted. “He told you to choose.”
“Maybe. I sort of heard the word after I had woken up.”
“Choose,” he repeated, and rose from the sofa. “The same word he spoke to you in the conference room.”
“That’s right.”
“The same conference room where he could not possibly have appeared.”
“So I’m told.”
Easton Grey was slender in the manner of a long-distance runner, lean and taut. He moved across the room and tapped his hand thoughtfully upon the oiled wood of his desk. He spoke to the polished surface. “And still you insist that he must be part of a scam.”
Wayne found the breath hard to come by. “I don’t …No. I’m not insisting.”
Easton Grey’s smile was both gentle and as taut as the rest of him. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“I think we should track down this possibility of a scam. See if there’s a connection between anybody on the disciplinary board and Eric Stroud and Teledyne.”
Easton Grey kept smiling. “The
possibility
of a scam.”
“Yes.”
“And what about the
other
possibility? What about that?”
Wayne swallowed. “I’m going to check that out too.”
A
s Easton Grey opened his office door, a figure as lithe as a seaside sprite scurried down the upstairs hallway. He stared at where her bedroom door clicked shut. “Clara is worried about me.”
Tatyana replied, “Of course she is.”
“She is also very angry. She feels like her world is slipping from her control. Control is as important to her as it is to me. Maybe more. I try to talk to her about faith’s testing times….” He stared at the door. “She’s thirteen. She loves me and she’s angry at me and she feels guilty about her anger.”
Tatyana walked down the carpeted hallway and knocked softly on the door. “Clara?” When there was no reply, she said, “I meant what I said about us talking.”
Tatyana fished in her pocket for one of her cards and wrote on the back. “This is my card. I’m putting my home phone and my cell on the back.” She bent down and slipped it under the door. “I’ll call you tonight. Is that all right?”
Easton led them down the stairs and across the front foyer. He unlocked the front door but did not draw it open. “That was very nice of you.”
Tatyana shook her head. “She’s a wonderful girl.”
“Yes. She is.”
“I understand what she is feeling. If I can, I would like to help.”
Easton opened the door. “I wish—”
Wayne slipped between them. “Hold it there a second.”
The two corporate professionals stared at him. He kept his voice very calm, his manner as nonchalant as he could manage. “Tatyana, take a step back into the foyer. Like you’ve just realized you’ve forgotten something. Easton, go with her.”
“What is it?”
“Just go.” It was the only answer he could give because he had no idea what exactly had triggered his alarm. Sometimes it was like that. A shadow glimpse, a fractional image that did not fit with normal. Staying alive meant responding before the conscious brain formed the final structure.
Wayne stepped outside and raised his arms, as though stretching out a kink. He rolled his head from side to side, scouting the perimeter. He stayed on the top step, as the elevation gave him a bit more scope.
There.
Two men. They were across the street and one house north of the Grey residence. A gardening truck, all the normal gear. The men looked normal as well. One of them up a ladder, working the line of Imperial palms. Call it seventy yards from where Wayne stood. He checked his watch and shook his head. He turned as though calling into the house for Tatyana to hurry, but said, “Stay where you are and don’t come out.”
He inspected the clearing sky as he took the steps and started down the front walk. Looking everywhere but directly at the men.
They wore normal gardening clothes, dirty and old. The truck was battered and draped with gear.
Wayne had worked for several gardening services in his time on the road. Gardeners everywhere had one thing in common: they got paid by the job. Which meant they
ran
. One of these men was up on a ladder. The other used a curved saw attached to a long pole for trimming off the dead palm fronds. Only the men were not racing. As Wayne crossed the street the guy not on the ladder switched to the next palm. But he moved slow.
Wayne patted his pockets as he crossed the street. “One of you guys got a match?”
Even this close he could not see their faces. Both wore floppy hats with the brims down low and streaks of dirt on their faces like camouflage. As he approached, the guy on the ladder started coming down. The other guy kept on with his sawing. His face remained turned up toward the branches.
Which was how Wayne spotted the pistol.
The gun was jammed far down inside the guy’s belt, with his shirttail out and draped over his waist. But the way he lifted his arms and sawed at the branch drew the sweat-stained shirt into sharp definition over the pistol’s handle. Wayne’s mind automatically sorted the data even as his feet turned him about and started back. A shooter’s pistol, was what he was thinking. A nine mil, fourteen in the dock and one in the chamber. Fourteen more than they would need on him at that range.
“You know what? Forget it. I left my cigs in the car.”
He meandered back, taking it slow, not really aiming for anywhere. Still glancing at the sky and his watch. Calling out for good effect, “You folks found it yet?”
The lady, bless her cautious heart, did not show.
It took him about seventeen years to cross that street. He forced himself not to scratch the hollow itch between his shoulder blades. There was nothing he could do about the growing stain of sweat. The one shaped like a target at the center of his back.
He was midway down the Greys’ front walk when he heard the rattle of a ladder being stowed and the truck cranking up.
In the distance, a siren wailed.
The driver gunned the motor and pulled out fast enough to burn rubber. Wayne kept moving up the steps, slow and easy. Only when the motor disappeared in the emerald distance did he turn around and take his first full breath.
“Tell me again about those men.”
Wayne had been through it twice before. But he did as the John’s Island security chief ordered. “One was six feet one or two, two-twenty, mid-forties. Couldn’t see his hair, and he wore a long-sleeved shirt. Hair on his hands might have been dark or it could have been dirt. He wore sunglasses. His features were thick—might have been either Anglo or Hispanic. The other guy was up a ladder and the perspective wasn’t good. I’d put him at an inch or so shorter than the other guy and much lighter.”
“In other words,” the chief said, “you didn’t see a thing that’ll do us any good.”
“I guess that sums it up.”
“That is, if they weren’t just a couple of guys on the job.”
“They weren’t gardeners,” Wayne replied.
The chief’s radio crackled. He thumbed the mike on his shoulder lapel. “Coltrane.”
The voice on the radio said, “Maintenance reports no crews were scheduled for tree work today.”
Officer Coltrane had eyes of muddy marble. He blinked twice, examining Wayne, then clicked the mike and said, “Swing by the front gate. Find out which gardening crews were checked in.”
“Roger that.”
“Chief out.” He was a thick man, with forearms like beefy clubs below his short-sleeved shirt. “I think we’d all be better having this discussion inside.”
Easton Grey said, “Wayne wants us to stay here on the porch until your men are done.”
Easton Grey’s wife had arrived back about five seconds behind the first security car, whining down the lane like she was on the Daytona track. She stood behind her husband now, clutching her daughter. Easton kept one hand resting lightly upon his wife’s arm. Connected.
The chief did not argue. He glanced across the street to where another of his officers was up a ladder, inspecting the palm where the men had been working. Wayne was not going anywhere until he saw if his hunch was right.
“You say one of them was packing.”
“A pistol under his shirt. Nine mil is my guess.”
“You know enough about small-arms weaponry to identify a pistol by its butt through a shirt?”
Wayne did not shift his focus from the tree. “That’s right. I do.”
The officer up the tree hefted something and called, “Chief!”
The chief moved remarkably fast for such a heavy man. His belt squeaked audibly as he trotted across the street. Wayne was one step behind.
The security officer was a woman with copper skin and the solid look of someone who spent a lot of time fighting off excess poundage. She leaned over and handed the chief a black box about twice the size of his hand. “This was fastened to a branch.”
He turned the box around in his hands. Other than a thumbsized on-off switch, there was nothing to see. “You know what this is?”
“My guess is, a radio-frequency amplifier.” Wayne gestured back toward where Tatyana and the Greys stood on the front porch. “They’ve bugged the house. The mikes have a limited transmission range. This catches the signals and boosts the power enough for them to catch it outside your perimeter.”
Officer Coltrane touched the switch, but did not turn it off. “I can probably tell you how it went. The gardeners, they’re hired by the individual houses and a lot of them don’t speak much English. So if my guy at the front gate don’t know Spanish, he’ll make a note of their tags. If he’s doing his job proper.”
“And if they haven’t got so much dirt on the tags they can’t be read.”
The chief sighed his agreement. “We’re our own township. Most of the time, we operate without outside help. But I can call on just about anybody I like.”
“Somebody needs to sweep the house for bugs.”
“I know that. What I’m asking is, who else do I need to make contact with?” He lowered the box and took aim at Wayne. “That is, assuming there are other police involved in this thing.”
“Right now I don’t know for certain what it is we’re facing. But there’s a homicide detective in the Naples area, Mehan.”
“Homicide.”
“Yes.”
“Clear on the other side of the state.”
“A scam artist operating as a tax accountant bilked a senior community across the bay out of its entire operating budget. Did the same to a lot of the individual families. The guy turned up dead.”
“Did you have anything to do with that?”
“With discovering he was scamming the old folks, yes. With him winding up dead, no.”
The chief returned his gaze to the box. “This Detective Mehan, he’ll vouch for you?”
Wayne hesitated. “I wish I knew.”