“So you got the gig and the guy, huh?” Lydia hoped she sounded cavalier. “How did Julie Christopher feel about that?”
Cameron looked confused by the question. “Julie? She loves to tell the story. Brags that her fall made Fred fall. She’s a real romantic. She and Michael have been married over forty years but they’re as in love as a couple of high schoolers.”
Lydia felt the chill of another trail gone cold. Neither animal cruelty nor business rivalry appeared to be motivating the hit on Cameron. She tried again.
“It does sound destined, doesn’t it? And not just Julie’s fall landing you the job. I mean, what are the odds two people your ages would both be free to act on such an instant attraction?”
Cameron winced. “Fred was used to dating powerful career women. No one seriously. But I had an obstacle.” She looked down at her lap. “I was engaged at the time. The wedding was just weeks away, actually.” She looked up with sheepish eyes. “My fiancé didn’t take my announcing I’d fallen in love with Fred very well.”
Lydia felt the tight muscles in her neck and shoulders begin to tingle. “Tell me about that.”
Mort sat with his third cup of coffee and stared at the folder he’d just closed. He’d requested a background on Lydia after she offered to help with the Buchner investigation. The Mapquest files on Buchner’s computer made him even more interested to learn about the Olympia psychologist with such keen observation skills.
A lot of it was pretty much what he’d expected. No criminal history. Purchased the property listed at the Mapquested address four years ago. Paid her taxes on time. Credit score in the mid seven hundreds. Graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Biology undergrad out of Carnegie-Mellon. Member of two professional organizations, one of which managed her retirement fund. Owns a four year old Volvo that’s never been ticketed or stopped for a traffic violation. Same office since she arrived in Olympia eight years ago, straight out of grad school. No complaints lodged against her professional license.
Squeaky clean. Not even a ne’er-do-well husband to check into.
How’s a woman like that end up being checked out by a guy who gets his face blown off?
It wasn’t Lydia’s boring background that kept Mort quiet and thinking. It was where the background check ended.
There was no trace of Lydia Justine Corriger before the day she stepped her freshman foot onto Carnegie-Mellon’s campus. Mort wanted to know why. He also wanted to know more about those personal reasons she mentioned for wanting to help find Buchner’s murderer.
His cell phone rang. He looked at the screen and pulled himself into the present.
“Hey, Robbie.” He looked at the clock. “How much snow you got in Denver?”
His son laughed. “I’m in Miami, Dad. I got sunshine and tropical breezes.”
“Miami? Claire and the girls with you?”
“They’re home. I’m out here following some leads on the Halloway case. You have anything for me?”
Mort reached for the folder beneath the one holding Lydia’s truncated background check. “What have you got, a spy in the department? I just got the stuff back a half hour ago.”
Robbie chuckled again and Mort found himself longing for the sound of his daughter’s laughter.
“Call me lucky,” Robbie said. “Or impatient. You make the call.”
“With you I’d go with impatient every time. Remember the time you slipped out of your cast because your broken arm was itching? I’ll bet that little bit of impulsivity still sings to you every time it rains.” Mort flipped the file open and scanned the contents. “Well, the taxpayers just spent some money running down a short blind alley. I’m afraid we got nothing on Anna Galeta Salada.”
“Nothing at all?” Robbie asked. “How can that be?”
“Want me to read the entire one page file to you? Says here no records found in any database domestic or international. Several different spellings tried.” Mort let out a snort. “Here’s fun facts to know and tell. Says here ‘Galeta Salada’ is Spanish for ‘cracker’. Sounds like your little hooker has a sense of humor.”
“I’m thinking she isn’t a hooker at all. What about her passport? How’d she get into Costa Rica?” Robbie asked.
“No record of such a passport being issued legitimately. But you got enough money, Robbie, you can get anything.”
“And if my theory about her being a gun for hire is correct….”
“Then she’d have enough money to buy anything she wanted.” Mort closed the file. “You said you were running down leads. What else you got?”
“You tell me. You ever hear of somebody called ‘The Fixer’?”
Mort tossed Galeta Salada’s folder aside. “Isn’t that a television show? No, I’m thinking of something else.” He scanned his memory bank. “Can’t say as I have. Why?”
“While you were running background on Galeta Salada, I tried some different angles. The desk clerk at the hotel where Halloway died couldn’t stop talking about how beautiful this woman was. How Halloway was drawn to her right away. Said she was flawless except for a port wine stain on her neck.”
“I’m listening,” Mort said.
“I get to thinking that being a gorgeous hooker wouldn’t be a bad cover for a shooter, right?” Robbie sounded excited. “So I put out some feelers to see if anybody knows anything about drop-dead beautiful babes putting a hit on someone. I mean, gorgeous women draw attention, right?”
“Very clever. You’re a regular Woodward and Bernstein.” Mort reached for a pen and paper. “What did you learn?”
“Well, I didn’t get the names of anybody who’d been killed by a supermodel, but I did stumble onto something, could be nothing. Turns out a guy got nailed last summer for contracting a hit on his wife. Some low life scum owned car lots up and down the Florida coast. Gets tired of his wife, hooks up with his kids’ nanny, and decides a divorce would cost too much. Hears about someone called “The Fixer” from a friend of a friend who knew some guy with a cousin who used the services once. Says The Fixer makes problems go away permanently. So this guy makes contact. Sets a meet at an airport hotel. The Fixer turns him down but tells him an associate will meet him tomorrow. The guy gets burned when The Fixer calls the local cop shop and busts the guy. Cops send in a decoy and nab his fat ass.”
Mort chuckled. “So what’s this Fixer got to do with Halloway?”
“Here’s the thing.” Robbie sounded like a kid at Christmas. “I interviewed this douche today. Martin’s his name, and he says The Fixer is a woman! A drop-dead looker. Martin said he got a hard on just looking at her. What d’ya think, Dad? Think I found my beautiful hit man?”
Mort was impressed with his son’s work and told him so. “I’ll see what I can find on this end. Martin have a name for this woman?”
“Yeah,” Robbie said. “Said she called herself ‘Graham’.”
Mort wrote it down and tapped his pen against the paper. “Like the cracker.”
Mort slammed the door to the Subaru. He’d gotten the call halfway through lunch and could have handed it to anyone on the homicide squad, but this one was worth abandoning his pastramion-rye. He walked over to the body lying on the rain-slicked pavement, looked down, and fought the impulse to kick the dead man’s vacant stare off his face.
Angelo Satanell, Junior, aka Satan, had a gaping hole in his neck. Mort figured a .36 caliber at least.
He glanced over to a nondescript middle-aged man sitting on the curb, staring into nothing, oblivious to the freezing rain. Mort recognized him. Mark Hane. Father to Meaghan, the oh-so promising cellist left stuffed behind the dumpster after she overdosed on Satan’s heroin.
“Why isn’t he in cuffs?” Mort asked the uniform standing next to him.
The policeman shrugged. “He hasn’t given us any grief. Called it in himself. We found him sitting right there. Handed us his piece soon as we pulled up.” The officer spit into the street. “You know who this dirtbag is, right?” He leaned into Mort and whispered. “The way I see it, this gentleman did us a favor. I got half a mind to cut him loose and let this one go cold.”
Mort shot the officer an “If Only” look. He took another look at Junior, grabbed the forensic cop’s umbrella, and approached the man on the curb. He held it over the man’s drooped head.
“Mr. Hane?” Mort knelt to face him. “You may remember me. Mort Grant.”
Hane’s focus shifted. He looked at Mort and nodded. Rain dripped from his hair, nose, and chin. Mort recognized the powerless desperation in his eyes. He reached out his hand and lifted a fellow father to his feet.
“You’re going to have to come with me, sir.” Mort steered him to his car and opened the front passenger door. “Careful with your head, okay? What do you say you and I stop for some coffee before we head to the station?”
Hane stumbled into the car. He still hadn’t said a word.
L. Jackson Clark caught the newspaper Mort tossed him as he neared their booth. “You’re early. Making up for past sins?”
Mort took a sip of Guiness. “Needed to get out of the deluge. Started without you. Hope you don’t mind.”
Larry shook the rain off his parka, ran a hand over his gray hair, and pulled the waiting beer closer to him. “You get to the theme yet?”
Mort shook his head. “Two clues in is all.”
The men worked their puzzles in silence for several minutes. “You have anything for 28 across?” Larry asked. “’Another cold dish’?”
“I’ve got an r and an e as the first two letters,” Mort said. “Not enough spaces for ‘refrigerated’.”
A few more minutes of silence. “Ha! Catch 49 across. ‘Another unstrained quality’. There’s the theme. Get that one and you’ve got 28 across.”
“Mercy’s a quality that’s not strained,” Mort said. “At least that’s the rumor. But it’s eight spaces. Ends with ‘cy’.” Mort began writing. “Got it. ‘Clemency’. Old Will wants us looking for synonyms.” Mort pushed his reading glasses up on his nose. “That cold dish served is revenge, huh? So the synonym starting with an r and an e would be…” He filled in the spaces, leaned back, and took a long drink of beer. “Retribution.”
Larry set his paper aside. “You want me to beg or guess?”
“What are you talking about?”
“That deluge you wanted to get out of.”
“I’m that obvious?” Mort signaled Mauser to bring another round. “Call it a rough day. Remember that Satan character?”
“I do. Your impatience getting you again?”
Mort frowned. “That asshole’s off this city’s worry list.” Both men thanked the waitress as she replaced their empty glasses with fresh-filled mugs. “And in reward, the guy who made it possible will probably get ten years in prison.” He nodded to the puzzle. “Where’s the clemency or mercy in that?”
Larry asked for background and Mort filled him in on the details of Satan’s demise at the hands of a grieving father. “Tragic.” The big man shook his head. “I have no envy for your profession, Morton.”
Mort stared into his glass. “I play a vital part in the justice system. That’s what the recruiting posters say anyway.” He took a long drink. “Where’s the justice for Meaghan?” He took another. “Give me ten minutes with the guy who took Allie and I’m not sure what I’d do.”
“You wouldn’t kill him.” Larry’s voice was calm and steady. “Justice is meted out through law, Mort. You’ve dedicated your career to overcoming wanton revenge. No matter how understandable.”
Mort leveled a sad gaze at the good professor. “Let’s talk about your career, Dr. Religious Studies. Don’t your books talk about an-eye-for-an-eye and all that?”
Larry exhaled long and slow. “That’s Bronze Age man’s code. Devastating for developed civilizations. I’m certain the transcendent power of the universe hopes we’ve evolved.”
Mort took another drink and knew he’d need a cab home. “Have we , Larry? Some dick-wad with a rich daddy kills somebody’s daughter and we’re supposed to stand on
his
side? Against a father who buried his little girl?”
“Justice is different from revenge, Mort. In the words of Gandhi, ‘An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind’.”
Mort looked at his friend. “Maybe there are worse things than blindness.”
Lydia knew that seven o’clock in the evening wasn’t the time for a double espresso but she brewed herself one anyway. An afternoon filled with appointments had given her the distraction she needed from worrying about Savannah, but also forced her to postpone the research she wanted to do on Cameron William’s jilted fiancé. If there was any hope of helping Savannah and freeing her own life from Private Number’s control she needed to find the person who ordered the hits on Bastian and Cameron. Since Mort Grant wasn’t sharing details on Buchner’s murder, the ex-fiancé was her only lead. By eight thirty she had lots of information, but little idea what to do with it.
Cameron said she met Bradley Wells the same way she’d met Fred Bastian. She catered an event for Wells’ mother’s eightieth birthday. Like Fred, Wells became infatuated with the lovely and talented chef. Cameron described his pursuit as relentless. She said she was hesitant at first. Not only because of their twenty-five-year age difference, but because she didn’t want anyone to think she’d slept her way to the top.
And Bradley Wells was the top. Lydia knew, like most everyone else in the United States, that he was a self-made billionaire with holdings in timber, real estate, and entertainment. One who used his infinite fortune to champion numerous progressive causes and candidates. She’d also read speculation over the years about a dark side to Wells’ climb to unimaginable wealth. Rumors of ties to organized crime. But he appeared impervious to innuendo and emerged unscathed from a senate investigation twelve years ago.
Lydia assessed the full-color photograph of Wells that beamed from his company’s website. Tanned and silvered haired, looking relaxed and confident in a white t-shirt under a navy blazer. Deep blue eyes. Runner’s body. He could easily pass for a man two decades younger than his actual fifty-five years. She could see why Cameron eventually succumbed to his courting.