"So who's this college friend?" he asked.
Dru wasn't planning to surrender all her cards. "Someone called Maggie. I don't think this is a business rival. It might even be personal. An affair his wife found out about."
"That would explain a lot."
"Okay, seeing as you're talking to him again, why don't you prod him a little and see what falls out?"
"Oh, I'm more than talking to him. He agreed to visit and discuss working with us again."
Dru really hadn't expected Kinnery to want to set foot in the place. Now she wanted to look him in the eye and see if she could tell whether he was lying or not. Even professional interrogators were generally poor at detecting lies from body language, but at least getting him in a room was a good way to pile on the pressure and see if he slipped up. That was probably Weaver's plan. He knew the man better than anybody.
"When is he coming in?"
"End of this week. Do you want to meet him?"
"That depends what you want me to do."
"Observe."
"You really do believe he's stolen something."
"My gut says yes. I'm still working out what he could
have taken from Ringer."
"You'd better have a plan in case we find a mule after all, then. You might flush out Kinnery sooner than you expect."
Weaver did his finger meshing gesture as if he was trying on tight gloves, looking at the screen. His focus was all wrong. This wasn't for her benefit. He really was thrashing out something in his mind.
"I'm going to give him the opportunity to come clean with me," Weaver said. "An amnesty. And that could well be the end of it. Neither of us wants bad publicity."
"Before you do, then, we need to know why this leaked when it did, and who leaked it if it wasn't Kinnery. If he wanted to sabotage you, it's a suicide bomber way to do it. He'll take damage too. It's always better to ask questions you already have the answers to."
"Okay," Weaver said. "Carry on, but don't do anything that might force him into a corner before I get a chance to talk with him."
"Understood."
It was the timing that still bothered Dru. Her mind snapped back to those sticky notes that she tried to arrange into a coherent pattern. With the hotline number, the resurrection of a dead project had to be significant.
What haven't I factored in? The times on the phone log. I need to check exactly when those calls were made.
"You missed your vocation, Dru," Weaver said. "You really should have gone into investigation. Good work."
Dru really couldn't read the expression on Weaver's face. She could read the runes, though; he was probably going to lean on Kinnery to do something for KWA to help the merger, and whatever she found would be the blackmail material for that. Weaver had been right. This wasn't a job for Sheelagh. She was risk averse, to put it kindly. Her idea of best practice was not getting sued.
As Dru headed back to the basement, she thought again about the Seattle number. If it was connected to Maggie Dunlop, calling it again might set off a chain of events that would blow whatever game Weaver was playing with Kinnery. But it could also rule out a connection, provided that she was smarter with her response if someone answered. Either way, she couldn't just leave it.
She locked the office door and took out her burner phone. All the cocky confidence built by daring to knock on Maggie Dunlop's door was evaporating again.
Shall I just ask for Maggie? Or Ian? No, that would spook them if there's any truth in this. Weaver wants to confront Kinnery. It's his company, and his property, and if that's how he wants to play it, it's fine by me.
She still wanted to hear who answered, though. They'd have a hard job identifying a withheld number unless they were the police. She just had to listen. Dru counted to ten before shoving herself over the precipice and keying in the number.
But the call didn't connect. After a delay, an automated message cut in, telling her that the number wasn't available. There was no voicemail option, either. The number was out of service. Either it was a rare coincidence or she'd rattled someone's bars.
Another non-existent pattern? No. I can't ignore everything. This is linked somehow.
Now she had to dig deeper without scaring Kinnery. There were still folders to check and names to add to her paper database. Web searches would now have to wait until she got home.
Kinnery's not innocent. It's just a matter of finding what he's guilty of. Maybe it's an old child support issue and an unhappy ex. In that case – you go, Maggie. You go, girl.
As Dru turned into Ridgeway Drive that evening, her usual line of sight to the house was blocked by a car parked outside the Greggs' entrance, close to the bend. As she passed it, her house loomed into view, still intact with no sign of smoke, firefighters, or teen gangs trashing the front lawn. She found Clare in the back yard, sunning herself.
"Wrinkles," Dru said.
"Sunblock," Clare retorted. "And I'll never get rickets. You know that people in Britain are getting rickets again? It's so
medieval
."
Dru was starting to like Clare again. It was one thing to love and another entirely to like. Love was wired to all kinds of other compulsions and instincts, but liking had to justify itself; Dru knew she'd stopped liking Larry long before she realised she didn't love him any longer. Clare was actually a smart, curious, sensible kid who was simply growing up, which was a lurching and chaotic process. Nature erased the memory of how extreme and desperate things could feel at fourteen.
I've got a degree in this. You'd think I'd engage that knowledge before I knee-jerk into the Mom from Hell.
Dru got a couple of sodas from the fridge, mindful of the need not to grab a bottle of wine each evening and accidentally teach Clare that alcohol was the antidote for a crappy job. She handed her a can and flopped down on a lounger.
"Thanks, Mom," Clare said. "Any more gun-toting rednecks on your trail?"
The case had started to feel like a shared interest, even if Dru hadn't told Clare the details. It was something to talk about that wasn't centred on battle zones like Larry, the phone, or dating.
"No," she said. "I still can't work out how this employee stole stuff."
"Don't they search your bags or anything?"
"It's not money or paper."
"Oh, it's something on a disc or a card? Well, copy it and e-mail it out."
"What if you can't do that?"
"Swallow it. Or put it – well, you know. People smuggle all kinds of stuff in pretty gross places." Clare pulled a disgusted face. "Did you see the movie about the guy with the chip in his brain? He's on the run with secrets on the chip and the bad guys try to kill him to get it out. I mean, that's asking for trouble. Put it just under the skin, like a microchip on a dog. It's way safer if they catch you."
So what do you do if you're smuggling DNA? They can't cut it out. And you can't just hand it back.
Dru hoped she was simply ignorant of some brilliant new drug that identified specific DNA and flushed it out. She was pretty sure it didn't exist. But Weaver was very good at buying cooperation; he'd managed to get Kinnery to discuss returning, after all. No chips were going to be gouged out of brains or anything distasteful like that.
"Anyway, how was your day?" Dru asked.
"Oh, we went bowling. Rebecca's got a thing for one of the guys there." Clare got up and opened the back door. "Was that blue Kia still parked on the bend when you drove in? Rebecca thought the guy was watching her."
Dru hadn't really noticed colours. She remembered the dumb-ass parking, though. An uncomfortable thought crossed her mind a little too late. She'd set a private investigator on Charles Kinnery. It wasn't impossible to imagine someone doing that back to her.
"Maybe. Hang on."
She walked down the drive to take a look, but the car was gone. Her own guilty conscience was probably making her overreact. Who knew she even existed, let alone where she lived? Kinnery certainly didn't.
"Nobody there now," Dru said. "If the car comes back and I'm not here, call the cops. You know how to do all that. You just need to be situationally aware."
"Oh my God, Mom, have you joined the CIA or something?" Clare burst out laughing. Dru felt like an idiot. The phrase had just slipped out. "We got his licence plate. You think we're dumb? Well, Rebecca's still in ditzy mode, but I know how to take care of myself."
Clare tore a sheet off the notepad by the phone and handed it to Dru. It was a licence number. It might come in handy some day. On the other hand, maybe this was karma. If you spied on others, sooner or later all you did was look over your own shoulder at imagined boogeymen.
"That's my girl," Dru said, pocketing the paper.
VANCOUVER
AUGUST.
Kinnery knew this would be one of the worst decisions of his life. And he had no choice but to obey Leo and make it.
Returning to KWA didn't top the list of disasters, but it was already hurting. The news about the ranch had just cemented it. He knew he'd never let anything slip. He could safely assume they'd acquired the phone numbers illegally, but he hadn't worked out how they were getting the rest of the information.
Who even knew Maggie existed? Shaun must have gone back forty years to dredge this up.
He paced up and down the hall, waiting for the airport taxi and crushed by the prospect of shuttling between Vancouver and Michigan for the foreseeable future. With stopovers, it took longer than a flight to Europe. Jesus H. Christ, he was getting too old for all that.
Then one of his phones rang. He felt in his pockets and took out the burner.
"Glad I caught you," Leo said. "Any progress?"
"No. The source has to be someone who knew Maggie, because her family had that ranch for years, but how I can't work out how they identified her in the first place. I agree that the phone number gave them a break. But someone's got more than the call logs."
"Well, they might not have confirmation that there's any connection at all. Play it by ear. You know they've acted illegally. But keep your powder dry. Goodbye."
Leo rung off as abruptly as he'd opened the conversation. It was to reduce the length of the call, Kinnery knew, but he also detected that whiff of disdain. He now had a long flight via Portland and Detroit and an overnight stay to rehearse his responses before he had to face Shaun.
At some point he was going to have to square his exit with the university, too. Automatically, he thought in terms of playing the age card and explaining to the head of faculty that he simply couldn't cope health-wise. The truth was a theoretically noble thing, but never respected, appreciated, or acted upon; it was lies that kept society stable. Lies were gentler and easier fit around you. The truth never put anything right, and most people didn't much like it.
So how would I have traced Maggie?
Kinnery put the resignation issue to one side for the journey and spent the next eleven hours working his way through a mental list of everyone he knew who'd also known her. He could only think of friends at Lomax University. If she was in touch with anyone after graduation who also knew him and had left a trail that had persisted for all those years, then she'd never mentioned it, and Maggie was the ultimate destroyer of trails and clues.
That's one of the reasons I chose her.
Kinnery rehearsed every possible confrontation with Sean, his chest sporadically hollowed by palpitations that made him think the next heartbeat would never come. By the time he arrived in Lansing that evening, he was ready to drop and in no mood to take any crap. But whatever Shaun had unearthed, he'd never find Ian. Kinnery still had the advantage.
Despite that, he woke before five the next morning and paced the floor of his hotel room, trying out different personas – the weary Kinnery, the curious Kinnery, the flattered Kinnery, whatever act was appropriate to explain why he'd decided to take Shaun's invitation seriously after such a long, cold exile. When his taxi dropped him at the KWA building later that morning, he set his shoulders a like a man who had every right to be there.
And I do. I made all this possible. Don't forget that, Shaun.
Coming back to the building felt like returning to high school and finding it was a smaller and meaner stage for life's dramas than it had seemed at the time. Kinnery walked in un
recognised. But the offices were actually much bigger than he remembered, with a couple of extra wings built since his day. The receptionist on the front desk asked him to spell his name.
"Kinnery, as in Kinnery Weaver Associates," he said pointedly. She looked more baffled than impressed.
Shaun came down to greet him. He looked older than Kinnery had expected, but it was probably a mutual assessment.
"You know the way," Shaun said, showing him into the elevator. "You never forget these things."
"Oh, I forget a lot these days." Kinnery walked into Shaun's sumptuous office and looked for the prime seat, the best spot on the fattest sofa, the one he thought Shaun would regard as his territory. The extra creases in the soft leather confirmed his choice. "I'll have a coffee, please."