Getting Away Is Deadly (20 page)

W
ith her hands braced on her hips and her head tilted to one side, she said abruptly, “You okay?”

“Sure. I’ll be fine in just a minute.”

She ignored me. “You don’t look okay.” She contemplated me for a few seconds with a frown, then shook her head and sighed. “No use. I can’t walk away.” She sat down in the other wicker chair. “Are you sick? Do you have low blood sugar?”

“No, I’m not sick. I’ll be fine. I just had a bit of a shock.”

She reached in her purse and handed me a package of peanut butter crackers. “Eat some of these. I’ll be right back.”

I opened the package and pulled out a cracker. It flaked as I bit into it.

A few minutes later, Lena swept back in and popped the top on a can of Coke. “Drink this.”

“Oh, I couldn’t take your drink. I’ll be fine in a minute. I usually drink diet anyway.”

“Drink it. You need the sugar. You’re pregnant?” I nodded and took the can from her and washed down the dry, salty cracker. “You can’t go without eating. I can’t believe women today. You have to gain weight to have a baby.” She sat down in the chair on the other side of the table.

“No, it’s not that. Believe me, I’m not into dieting while I’m pregnant. I’m not into dieting ever, actually. Anyway, it’s just tonight I was so distracted with, well…it’s hard to explain.”

I devoured more crackers and downed them with swigs of the Coke. “Thanks. I feel better.”

“Good.” She pulled her lipstick and a tiny mirror out of her purse. “Sorry to be so bossy.” Her words were indistinct since she wasn’t moving her mouth as she talked while she reapplied a coat of red lipstick. I had the feeling she wasn’t sorry at all and was used to ordering people around, for their own good, of course. She rubbed her lips together and checked her tiny mirror. “I used to be a nurse. Old habits die hard, you know.” She capped her lipstick and slid it and her mirror into her purse. “You rest in here a little longer and finish off that drink.”

“I will, but before you go, can I ask you about Jorge?”

She studied me warily for long moment; then she said, “Jorge?”

“Yes, a man who did yard work, construction work. Manual labor. I know that you knew him, that you knew him in Georgia.”

“Doesn’t sound familiar,” she said as she quickly zipped up her purse and got ready to stand up.

“Yes, it does. It took you a few seconds to figure out how you were going to act when I mentioned his name. That hesitation gave you away. And I also know that you sent him a check, a rather large one, and wanted to meet with him.” She didn’t look so commanding now as she studied me and chewed on her lower lip, eating away some of the fresh lipstick.

She went on the attack. “How do you know that? And why do you care?”

“I’ve got—let’s call them connections,” I said. She didn’t need to know that my connection was a stack of stolen mail. Besides, I’d just had an enlightening conversation with an FBI agent. That was a connection, if there ever was one. “And I have a relative who’s suspected of pushing Jorge off the platform in the Metro and killing him. She didn’t do it.”

Lena relaxed and leaned back in the chair. “You think I pushed him?” she asked as she ran the purse strap through her fingers.

“You were on the platform.”

She raised her eyebrows at me questioningly.

“There’s a photo.”

“I see.” She kept running her fingers over the stitching on the strap. “Well. I didn’t push him, so I have nothing to worry about, do I?”

“If you didn’t push him, then no, you don’t have anything to worry about. Did you see who did?”

Lena shook her head. “I was checking my watch when it happened, so I was looking down and didn’t see anything.”

“Did you see a woman with long red hair on the platform near you?” I asked.

“No,” she said impatiently. “I didn’t look around and catalogue the people beside me. I was thinking about my meeting I had in twenty minutes. The meeting I didn’t make because of what happened.”

She was annoyed and I could tell she was about to cut off my irritating questions, so I said, “You’re really here in D.C. on business? I thought you might be here to make sure Jorge didn’t cash your check. Or maybe it was to convince Jorge to keep your relationship with him quiet? Or was it only Jay MacInally you don’t want to know about it?”

Her eyes narrowed. “So that’s it. You want me to tell you about Jorge and you won’t tell Jay about him?”

Since I’d obviously hit a sore spot, I nodded and she said, “Fine. Okay. Jorge was on a crew that drywalled. I was having the inside of my garage finished. Anyway, he let me know he was available to do other work, landscaping, handyman projects.”

I’ll bet he made himself available
, I thought, but kept that to myself. “And he was a contract employee to you?”

“No. We had a romantic relationship.” I hadn’t expected her to admit it so readily and I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. Would Jorge romance Lena, then turn around and pursue Summer a few weeks later? She must have read the skepticism on my face.

“You think I’m too old? That he wouldn’t be interested in me?”

“No, I think you’re a very attractive woman.” A very deceptive woman, too. “But you wanted your relationship to stay a secret? Is that why you sent the money?”

“No, of course not.” She was offended. “It was a loan. Jorge wanted to start his own landscaping business.”

I suddenly felt sorry for this beautiful, aging woman. She got scammed and she didn’t want to admit it. “Why here? Why start his business in Washington, D.C.? Why not Georgia, near you?”

“Georgia was seasonal work to make ends meet. This was where he had family.”

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t think anyone had claimed Jorge’s body and Detective Brown had asked if he had family. Mrs. Matthews gave the impression that Jorge only had a few visitors, not hordes of family coming and going. And that thought reminded me of Mrs. Matthews’s comments about the one visitor Jorge did have.

“You visited him at his apartment here, didn’t you? Not this last week, but before.”

She looked a bit uncomfortable. “Once. I went there once.”

Rebecca Matthews had said the woman was crying, so her visit hadn’t gone well. It seemed Lena wasn’t going to say anything else about that, so I asked, “Was he involved with anyone dangerous?”

“No.” She said it quickly, but her gaze dropped to her hands.

“Are you sure? It looks like Jorge was mixed up with some shady stuff.”

She kept her attention fixed on her hands. “No, definitely not.”

She wasn’t going to talk about any unsavory connections that Jorge had, so I went back to his relationship with her. “He’d taken your money and wasn’t calling you back. You decided to give him a little push and take care of the whole thing. Your money stayed in your account and you didn’t look foolish either.”

She sputtered, “That isn’t true. There’s no way—”

“What I don’t understand is why you’re with MacInally,” I continued.

She said, “Jay’s a dear. I watch out for him. He’s too trusting. I’ve always felt…protective of him. I don’t want anyone taking advantage of him.”

“That’s not the impression I have of him. He seems to be someone who can take care of himself.”

She sighed. “He comes across as tough, but I knew him after he was wounded. He was fragile. And he still is.” She stood up, settled the strap of her purse on her shoulder. Her hips swayed as she moved to the door. “Don’t let his facade fool you.”

The door sighed shut and I took a deep breath. I actually felt better, steadier, and the blood no longer seemed to be pounding through my head. I brushed cracker crumbs off me, threw the can and wrapper in the trash, and examined my face in the mirror. Amazingly, I didn’t look too bad, considering I’d been at the center of two confrontations in the last, what, half an hour? And one of them had involved spray cans of foaming bathroom cleaner. Except for a dark patch of fabric on my shoulder, which I figured was from the cleaner, and scraggly hair, I looked about the same.

I finger-combed my hair, touched up my lipstick, and did the best I could to blot away the dark spot on my shoulder. It wasn’t totally gone, but I heard voices moving down the hallway outside and I hurried to join the group of people on their way back to the atrium. I didn’t want to meet up with Tony, or anyone else in the hallway. I was going to plant myself beside Mitch and not move for the rest of the night while I tried to sort through the confusing jumble that was my brain.

I wasn’t quite quick enough to reach the atrium without being waylaid. I was a few steps behind the group of people when I saw Lena marching down the hall toward me with her face set in a determined way. I quickened my pace, but she slipped around the group, grabbed my arm, and pulled me over to one side of the hall.

What was it with people grabbing my arm tonight? I’d had it with being manhandled. I wasn’t about to get dragged away again, so I ripped my arm away roughly and said, “What?”

She took a step back and said, “Sorry.”

Maybe I overreacted just a tad.

“Sorry,” she repeated. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” Despite her apologetic words, her expression was set and resolute. “I couldn’t walk away without telling you.” She gestured to my stomach. “You’re pregnant. I don’t want to be responsible for…anything. You have to be careful.” She lowered her voice. “You asked if Jorge was involved in anything dangerous. He was. He had a group of, I don’t want to call them, friends, I guess. I don’t know what other word to use. I don’t know anything about them, except that you don’t want to be on their bad side.”

“Who were they?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that one of them worked for Ms. Archer. There was a struggle going on between Jorge and this other man.”

“On the platform? You saw them fighting?”

“No,” she said impatiently. “It was a power struggle. Jorge wanted to be in control and the other man was threatened. The other man got rid of Jorge. I know he did.”

She paused and I didn’t think she was going to say anything else, but then she rushed on, the words tumbling out. “I know what you were insinuating back there. You think Jorge swindled me.” She swallowed and blinked rapidly. “I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I could see it in your face. The way he came to me, made sure I knew him, suggested jobs he could do. It’s obvious now, looking back. He sought me out. And he’s the one who wanted the blackmail thing. I didn’t want to do it, but he talked me into it. And the thing is, we didn’t have to do it. He’d have done it for me.”

“What blackmail thing?” I asked and she clamped her red lips together, shock in her eyes. She hadn’t meant to say that, but I put her words together with the interaction I’d seen earlier in the evening. Tony said he’d sent Jorge to Georgia. Lena knew Mr. Archer.

“Mr. Archer. Jorge talked you into blackmailing Mr. Archer. To keep Taylor off the closure list. And then after that, he had something to blackmail you with, too.”

She backed up a step. “No. No, it wasn’t like that. It was a loan.” Lena gripped my forearm again and fixed her gaze on me. Her eye-liner had smudged, leaving black streaks under her eyes. “It wasn’t like that at all.”

“What did you know that you could blackmail Mr. Archer with?”

“That doesn’t matter. You have to careful.” She squeezed my arm painfully, then released it and hurried back into the atrium.

I took a deep breath and leaned against the wall, trying to assimilate everything that had just happened. I didn’t know if I believed Lena about the blackmail being Jorge’s idea. She could easily have come up with it, and now that Jorge was dead she could say it was all his idea. He wasn’t around to contradict her, but I did believe her when she said those people were dangerous. She was genuinely scared. For me. I swallowed hard, rubbed my arm.

I made a decision right then to stop looking, poking around. It was too dangerous. I didn’t know who I could trust and I didn’t have the resources to sort it out. And all this emotion, the fear, the worry couldn’t be good for the baby. I had to consider that. I had to step away and trust the police. At least Summer was back and I knew she was okay. That was one less worry. As soon as I got back to the hotel I was going to call Detective Brown and tell him everything. Of course, that would mean telling Mitch everything, too, probably on the way to the hotel, but I needed to do it. I wasn’t looking forward to either encounter. In fact, I wasn’t sure which one I was dreading more.

“Ellie, where have you been?” It was Summer coming from the opposite end of the hall, her high heels clicking toward me. “I came back here, but you were gone.”

“You’re upset that you can’t find me after five minutes? This coming from someone who disappeared for a day?”

“Okay, you’ve got me there. I’m glad I finally found you, though.”

“You just missed Lena,” I said.

“Lena Stallings? She’s here?” Summer turned to look toward the doors into the atrium.

“Yes, she’s here and I just had a long conversation with her. Two conversations, in fact. She says she didn’t see anything on the platform—not who pushed Jorge or a woman with red hair. I’m going to call Detective Brown tonight and tell him everything that’s happened. Everything she said. She said to be careful, that there are dangerous people involved in Jorge’s death.” I yawned and it was one of those jaw-cracking yawns that I couldn’t hide.

“You don’t look too worried,” Summer said.

“I know. I’m drained. My tired phase is about to hit me. I can feel it.” I decided I’d better save my energy for talking with Mitch and Detective Brown.

“So, did you ask her about the check?” Summer asked and I nodded.

“What did she say?” Summer asked eagerly.

“She said it was a loan so he could start a business.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m going to look for her.”

I summoned up enough energy to say firmly, “Summer, I asked her everything I could think of and I don’t think she’s going to talk about it anymore to us. It will probably be a different story when Detective Brown asks the questions.” I fought off another yawn. “Look, I’m not up to explaining everything right now, but I promise I’ll fill you in on everything tomorrow. I think we can deflect some of Detective Brown’s attention away from you onto Lena. You still have the check?”