Dangerous Allies (The Ruby Danger Series Book 1) (17 page)

R
uby sat
at a metal table in a windowless room for what seemed like hours. The detective seated across from her bent his head over a file folder, occasionally flipping a page. Ruby’s throat was dry, but she hadn’t been able to drink more than a sip or two of the water he had brought her for fear she would throw up.

A double knock broke the silence. The detective walked out, the door latch clicking behind him. She was alone—well, almost. Ruby had watched hundreds, probably thousands, of police procedurals and had even been in a few, so she knew the mirror on one wall was two-way. She reached for the water bottle with a trembling hand and tried to swallow.

The detective walked back in and held the door open for a second man, who plunked Ruby’s leather tote bag on the table and pulled up a chair, sitting down across from her. The new arrival had a big smile on his face.

“We meet again,” Pete Osler said.

Ruby pulled over the tote bag and settled it on her lap, staring at Pete. What was the detective from the Apollonis doing here? Had he brought more of those grisly photos?

“Hi,” she croaked, grasping Pete’s extended hand with an eagerness that surprised even her. She tried to smile.

“Sorry I can’t offer you a beverage,” she said.

“That’s been taken care of,” Pete replied. The door opened and a young constable entered with two coffee cups in a cardboard tray and a paper plate of muffins, which he put on the table.

“Cream and sugar?” Pete asked.

Ruby nodded and he pushed a cup across the table to her. She stirred two creams and two sugars into the coffee, but shook her head when Pete offered a muffin. After taking a sip, she put the cup down.

“Thanks.” Her hand still shook, but the knot in her stomach had loosened. “Why are you here, Pete? This is a long way from New York.”

“You’d be surprised how popular I am this week. Something about being on a cruise ship with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells.” He leaned in, grinning. “But first, tell me how you did it. Tell me how you got off that ship without anyone seeing you.”

“I went out with the garbage. In a barrel.”

The detective at the door snickered and she looked up.

“Was that … wrong?”

Pete pursed his lips.

“Well, it’s not … it’s not something you should have done, for sure.” He paused, and Ruby got the impression he was stifling a chuckle. Pete continued, his face grave. “For one thing, it triggered an expensive search and rescue operation and it’s not altogether clear who’s going to pay for that. Also, it doesn’t explain the video.”

“What video?”

“The security camera video that supposedly shows you jumping from a balcony into the ocean.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t jump from the ship. How could there be video? Oh,” she paused with her mouth slack. “I did jump, but onto a balcony. Not into the ocean. I jumped onto the balcony below. I was trying to get away. I was—” Ruby squared her jaw. “You know, I don’t think I have to talk about this.”

“The video shows you standing on the edge of the balcony. Then the camera moves on and when it returns to that spot, you’re gone. Everyone assumed you jumped.”

“You said it showed me jumping into the ocean. You lied, Pete.”

“I did say, ‘supposedly.’ But, Ruby,” he said, his smile fading, “that video is the only reason your husband hasn’t been arrested—”

“Arrested?” She jerked her head up.

“—for the murder,” he pointed a finger at her, “of Mrs. Antony Carver.”

Both men stared at her.

“I never meant for that to happen,” she whispered.

“You didn’t think it through, did you?”

She shook her head, looking down at the table.

“Look, we’ve seen your bruises and that wound on your arm. If you want to make a complaint against your husband, we’ll take you wherever you want. A friend’s, a relative’s, wherever. Your husband won’t know where you are. We simply want to ask you a few questions about his business affairs.”

“I’m not under arrest?”

Pete turned his head to look at the detective, who shook his head. Pete turned back.

“No. The Toronto police have no reason to hold you. Although the FBI wants to have a few words with you.”

“Why would the FBI want to talk to me?”

“As I said, that was an expensive search-and-rescue operation. They’re a little pissed.”

“They told you that?”

“We’ve had words, yes.”

“Are they on their way?” Ruby asked, clutching the bag against her chest.

“They’ve been persuaded that it might be in everyone’s best interests to let this ride for a bit. That you have certain … information. And if you hand over that information, the whole faking-your-death thing will likely be,” he shrugged with his hands out, “forgotten.”

Ruby looked from Pete to the detective by the door and back again.

“How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t hard.” Pete crossed his arms and leaned back.

“Was it Hari?”

“Who?” he asked, his face blank.

Ruby narrowed her eyes, remembering her dinner conversation with Pete’s wife Jillian on the Apollonis.
Pete was a fraud investigator. He used a lot of unusual devices to track people.
If only she had paid more attention.

“So, if I’m not under arrest, and you have no reason to hold me, I could walk out that door. Correct?”

Pete nodded and turned to the detective.

“If Miss Delaney wishes to leave, we should call her husband and give him the good news about his wife not being dead.” He turned back to her and raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Carver may want to come and get you.”

The detective nodded and reached for the door handle.

Ruby raised a hand, shaking her head.

“No, no, no. I’d rather you didn’t tell him. I mean, I’d rather tell him myself. Antony might—”

“Antony might what, Ruby?”

She stared at him, but said nothing.

“You know what I think?” Pete leaned over and rested his arms on the table. “I think your husband is associating with members of the Russian mob. I think they’re blackmailing him. And I think you know that.”

“He told you he doesn’t know those people.”

“He lied.”

“Antony’s not a criminal.”

“Those men followed your husband to Boca Raton and could have killed you both. If you tell us what you know, we can protect you.”

Ruby glanced around uneasily. Tell them what? That Antony had twenty million dollars in a ship’s safe and she was the last person to see it? Or that Antony had decimated Carvon & Co.’s balance sheet and stolen her nieces’ nest egg? If he was arrested for fraud, Carvon’s stock would plunge and she would never get the girls’ money back. Worse, she and Quentin might go to jail. Ruby pressed both hands against her legs and looked at Pete.

“What makes you think Antony’s being blackmailed?”

“We know that members of the Russian mob were on that ship,” he said. “And that your husband had something stored in your stateroom safe, something valuable. While we were searching for you, one of the staff noticed the safe door was ajar. When we pointed that out to your husband, he panicked.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“No. But you do.”

Ruby kept her shaking hands under the table, where he couldn’t see them.

“I don’t. Antony never told me anything about that safe and he didn’t give me the password to it.”

“Then why was your wedding ring in it?”

“I don’t know. I left it on the dresser in the bedroom. I didn’t want to wear it any more. Antony must have found it and put it in the safe.”

“Then why was he surprised to see it there?”

She bit her lip, summoned a few tears and then wiped them away with the back of her hand. Pete slid a tissue box across the table. Ruby took one and dabbed at both eyes. She thought about ramping up the tears, but his crossed arms told her it wasn’t working. She crumpled the tissue in her hand and sniffed.

“We believe your husband had a blackmail payment in the safe, and now it’s gone,” Pete said. “Which leaves two questions. Why is the mob blackmailing your husband?” He paused. “And why did you take their money?”

Ruby clutched the tissue so hard that her fingernails dug into her palm. She stared straight ahead, not looking at Pete.

“I didn’t take anything. I didn’t. Someone else must have done it …” her voice trailed off. “It wasn’t me.”

Pete pointed at her bag.

“There’s over ten thousand dollars in your purse. Do you always walk around with that much cash?”

The police had searched her bag. What else did they find? She thrust out her chin and tried to stop it from wobbling.

“I didn’t take anything. You’ve got to believe me. The cash is mine. It has nothing to do with … blackmail. I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know anything.” A sob caught at the back of her throat and soon she was crying for real. “I don’t know anything.” She reached a trembling hand for another tissue, blew her nose, then grabbed her tote bag and stood up. “You can’t keep me here. I don’t care if you do tell Antony.” She took a few steps toward the door.

“I spoke to your brother-in-law.”

Ruby stopped and looked back at Pete. His face was impassive.

“Quentin is worried,” he said, “but he’s relieved to know you’re all right. I told him you’re helping the police with an undercover investigation and to say nothing. He understands. But for his own protection you must not call or e-mail him. Do you understand?”

“Do the girls think I’m dead?”

“He hasn’t told them about your ... situation. But it’s all over the media. He won’t be able to keep it from them for long. Meanwhile, the authorities need your help.”

“You said I’m not under arrest.”

“And you’re not. But the FBI thinks you’d be safer staying here, under the protection of the Toronto police, for a little while. And even without an arrest, the police can hold you for twenty-four hours.” Pete pulled a leather card case from his jacket pocket and extracted a card. “Perhaps something will come back to you. Take this, in case you want to get in touch with me later.”

Holding her chin high, Ruby took the card and stowed it in her bag.

“The only person I want to get in touch with is my lawyer.” Actually, that was the last person she wanted to get in touch with, since her lawyer was also Antony’s lawyer. But there was no reason to mention that.

“You’ll be able to do that shortly.” Pete stood up. “Wait here and a matron will come to collect you and arrange for you to sign over your valuables for safekeeping. Lockup is not a place where you want to have ten thousand dollars on your person. It might take a while, so please be patient.”

“Lockup?”

“It’s the safest place.”

Ruby rummaged through her tote.

“I think you’ll find the station has jammers that keep cellphones from working in here,” Pete said as he walked to the door. He turned to look at her. “Sorry.”

“You’re not serious. You can’t put me in lockup.”

“It’s for your own protection.”

“But, but—”

Both men left the room, shutting the door behind them.

T
he steel door
was painted blue-gray, with an earlier beige coat detectable under each of the seven jagged scratches Ruby had memorized during the half-hour she had stared at it. She tried not to imagine how the scratches had gotten there. She paced around the table.

Finally, she rapped her knuckles on the two-way mirror.

“Hello? Hello?” Ruby put her face up against the glass and tried to peer through it. She pounded on it with her fist. “Anybody?”

With a hand on her hip, she turned to the door again. Had the lock clicked when Pete and the others left? She placed a hand on the handle and jumped back when it moved. Pressing her ear to the door for a moment, she tried the handle again. It was unlocked. She had been too upset when they brought her in to examine her surroundings, but she recalled seeing a stairwell with a red
exit
sign. It must lead somewhere.

Holding her breath, she turned the handle and opened the door a crack. She paused to listen, then pushed the door open a few inches and peered out. The
exit
sign was on her right. Slipping out the door, she closed it softly behind her, darted along the hall to the stairwell, and trotted down the steps.

Three flights later, she reached a door marked
fire exit only.
She took a deep breath and pushed the panic bar. An alarm wailed as the door opened. In front of her, about twenty yards away, a line of yellow cabs waited. Ruby jogged to the curb, opened the back door of a taxi and climbed inside.

“Union Station,” she said breathlessly. As the cab pulled away, she turned to look out the back window. That was easy.

She wrinkled her forehead. Too easy.

D
odging
the commuters who scurried between Union Station’s massive limestone columns, Ruby rubbed her bare wrist and frowned. Why had she given Hari the Hello Kitty bracelet? He must have lied to her about coming clean at the shareholders’ meeting. And followed that up by turning her in. With Ruby in custody instead of stirring up trouble, he and Antony could transfer more Carvon assets to the offshore account before the stock price crashed. Perhaps millions more.

But without the data on the bracelet, she had no way to tell if her nieces’ trust fund was also in that offshore account. And no way to get it back. Not without a bargaining chip, anyway. Thrusting out her chin, Ruby swiveled to face the entrance. Twenty million dollars would be enough leverage to pry the girls’ money from those two villains. Which meant she had to find the bearer bonds. Mila was the key.

So where was she?

Ruby pulled out her burner phone to call Dimitri, paused, and tossed it back into her tote bag. Pete Osler and his new friends would not follow her that easily. Union Station would have pay phones. She marched into the Great Hall and turned down the stairs that led to the commuter trains level, but paused as a woman in a red coat brushed past her on the stairs. Images of a man with a knife in his eye and a woman in a bloody dress blurred in front of her eyes. Stepping up her pace, she looked behind when she reached the bottom. As far as she could tell, no one was following her.

At a pay phone near the ticket kiosk, she dialed Dimitri’s number. He answered after two rings.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I have nowhere else to turn.”

R
uby strode
the few blocks to Queen’s Quay and stopped to gape at the gleaming condo that rose high above the waterfront. It was an upscale address for an out-of-work bartender. She waited for the elevator alongside a young man in black leather pants who held a Chihuahua in his arms. He lifted the dog’s tiny front paw in a wave.

“Say hello, Bruiser,” he said.

Ruby smiled, but her stomach twisted at the thought of Charlie. Where was the little guy? What had Antony done with him? She bit her lip and tried to put the Jack Russell terrier out of her mind.

When she got out on the fifteenth floor, Dimitri stood in a doorway halfway down the hall. He looked up and down the corridor before closing the door behind her. Once inside, Ruby clung to him for a full minute, unable to speak.

He drew back and looked at her, his hands on her shoulders.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. She’d forgotten how blue his eyes were.

“Coffee?” he asked.

She nodded again. “Please.” Her coffee at the police station had gone cold while she paced and fretted. Was it still there, congealed in its cardboard cup?

“Sit down.” Dimitri gestured at the front room and headed into the open kitchen on the right.

Ruby walked past the kitchen and into the main room. Its windows overlooked the harbor, the dark green sweep of the Toronto Islands and, beyond that, the blue-gray waters of Lake Ontario. A ferry chugged back to the city from Centre Island and a few late-season sailboats dotted the harbor.

Sinking into a low-slung armchair, Ruby glanced at the magazines scattered on the floor. A sound system, a battered table, and two wooden chairs completed the furnishings. In the kitchen, an open toolbox lay on the counter and a small trail of sawdust littered the floor. The space resembled a college dorm more than the apartment of a thirty-something male. Except that the armchair, which faced the windows, sat on a magnificent Oriental carpet. Intricate swirls and ripples, shaved into the silk by hand, caught the light from the windows. It was an antique, worth at least ten thousand dollars.

She looked up with a quick smile as Dimitri handed her a mug. Ruby cupped it in her hands, afraid to leave it on the chair’s wide wooden arm and risk spilling it. Dimitri grabbed a wooden chair from the table and twirled it around on one leg so that the back faced her. Straddling the seat, he folded his arms on the chair back and stared at her. She winced as the chair’s legs sank into the carpet.

“This is a beautiful rug,” she said, sipping her coffee.

“Tabriz. From Iran.”

“Really?” Ruby tried to act surprised. Antony often bought expensive furnishings that would impress his Wall Street colleagues. He had dragged her many times to the back rooms of Sotheby’s and other auction houses to view similar carpets. “Where did you buy it?”

“Is not mine. I’m keeping it for a friend. He has many rugs.” Dimitri waved at the apartment’s walls. “This is also his. I look after it.” He leaned on his arms and stared intently at her. “So. How can I help?”

“I have no right to ask, I know that.” Ruby reached for her tote bag. “I can pay you—”

“Later.” He shook his head. “Tell me what you need.”

“I need to find Mila, the maid who worked on the Apollonis. The one who has the bonds? You said you could find her, and I wondered if you had.”

“Not yet. But soon, I think. Have you gone to the police?”

“I can’t. They think I have the bonds. And besides, there have been … complications.” Ruby sighed and looked away. “If you can find Mila’s address or phone number for me, or some other way I can contact her, I won’t bother you again after that, I promise.”

Dimitri straightened up.

“This box. Who knows that Mila has it?”

“Nobody. Does it matter?”

“Were you followed?”

“I don’t think so. That steward, Bogdan, from the ship, the one with the creepy snake tattoo? He boarded my plane and then later he showed up at our house in Boca Raton.”

“And after that?”

“I lost him, I guess. I haven’t seen him since.” Ruby stood up and took her coffee cup into the kitchen. She emptied it into the sink and looked back at him.

“You can tell me to leave right now. I wouldn’t blame you.”

He followed her into the kitchen.

“I will help you.”

Her eyes misted and she looked away.

“So,” he said. “If
vor v zakonye
think you have the bonds, then they are not looking for Mila. We find her, get the bonds, everything okay. Now think. Did you tell anyone about Mila?”

Ruby shook her head and then frowned.

“Wait. There is someone, I forgot. I met Hari in the park yesterday. He thinks I took the money, and I tried to convince him that I didn’t. I might have told him about Mila, I can’t remember.”

“Hari?”

“Hari Bhatt, the chief financial officer of my husband’s company and his right-hand man. He was helping me.”

“So if he is the right-hand man, then your husband must know about Mila, too.”

“Not necessarily. I don’t think Hari would tell him because,” the words caught in her throat, “because he thought I was lying. He thinks I took the bonds. But there’s more.” She drew a deep breath. “I think my husband is a crook. I think he’s stolen millions from his company and intends to disappear and he’s somehow implicated me. I hoped Hari could find out what he’s done, and fix it.”

“If your husband is a criminal, how do you know this Hari is not also a criminal?”

“I’ve known him a long time. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”

“You are too trusting. Call him. Ask what he told your husband. If you know him so well, you can tell if he lies.”

Dimitri handed her his cellphone and Ruby keyed in the number. Hari answered after two rings.

“It’s me,” she said.

“I’m involved in something,” Hari said. “Can I call you back?”

“The police picked me up. Right after our little get-together. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Uh, no, I didn’t know that. We’ll move that meeting up.”

“Are you with someone? Is it Antony?”

“I’ll call you back.” Hari hung up.

She lowered the phone and looked at Dimitri.

“I think he’s with my husband. And he didn’t want him to hear our conversation. That’s a good sign, right?”

Dimitri turned to the window and watched a small passenger plane land at the Island airport.

“What does he want from you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why is he helping you?”

“We were … good friends once, a long time ago. He might think that we could be again.”

“So, not selfless.” He swiveled his head to look at her.

“I don’t know what you mean.” The phone rang, making her jump, and she raised it to her ear.

“Sorry, Ruby,” Hari said. “I was with Antony and some other people and I couldn’t talk.”

“I spent an hour in the police station. They think I’m a crook. Did you tell them something that would make them think that?” She paused to catch her breath. “Whatever you think I did, you’re wrong.”

“I didn’t tell them anything, I swear. I’ve been looking into a few things and I have some information. Why did they let you go?”

“Never mind that. Does Antony know about the bonds? Did you tell him that I don’t have them?”

“Antony isn’t communicating with me at the moment. He’s too busy planning your funeral.” Hari gave a snort of derision. “Last time I checked, he had the entire female staff in tears. He is such a jackass. Anyway, he doesn’t know about our meeting. I told him nothing.”

Ruby shook her head and mouthed
nothing
at Dimitri, who nodded.

“Listen, meet me tonight,” Hari said. “I’ll explain everything. Carmen’s. Eight o’clock. Wear one of your … you know … disguises.”

Ruby handed the phone back to Dimitri.

“What did he say?”

“I’m meeting him tonight, at a restaurant downtown.” She looked at her watch. Five o’clock. Plenty of time.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Ruby turned and gazed out at the harbor. The ferry had docked and would soon head back to Centre Island. She traced the boat’s outline on the window.

“Dimitri, how much do you know about the
vor y zakonye
?”

“Enough to stay away.”

She turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow.

He spread his hands, shrugging.

“I am Russian. Not criminal.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …” She winced and put a hand on his arm. Dimitri was the only person who had helped her so far. Who else could she trust?

“No problem,” he said. “I understand.”

Ruby nodded slightly, sighing, and turned to the door.

“I can go to the restaurant by myself. Hari has something to tell me and if he sees someone else—” She shook her head. “Anyway, you’re going to find Mila for me. Remember?”

He nodded. “Soon.”