The Zen Man (30 page)

“Ms. Fitzhugh, we’d like you to contact Brody, set up a meeting.” When I started to speak, Quinn made a hear-me-out gesture. “This is a two-way street. You need the government to overlook a felony—” He glanced at the GPS. “And we need some leverage with Brody to force him to testify. At the meeting, Ms. Fitzhugh will be wired, and we’ll be nearby monitoring the conversation, ready to act at a moment’s notice.” He looked at Laura. “You’ll say you’re tired of what Rick’s putting you through, that you need the bond released off your lodge. You claim you’ve broken the encryption code, are willing to return the photos in exchange for Brody killing Rick. You offer ten thousand cash at this meeting, forty thousand after Rick’s dead.”

“Dude,” I croaked, “I’ll take the felony.”

“Don’t worry,” said Quinn, “as soon as Brody accepts the deal, we’ll have him in our custody.”

“And if he doesn’t accept, I’ll have a pissed-off organized-crime kingpin with multiple homicide counts on my ass. Felony, please.”

“It’s Ms. Fitzhugh’s choice.”

I slammed my fist on the table. “Stop fucking calling her Ms. Fitzhugh. Or me Mr. Levine. And no fucking way in fucking hell are you putting her in danger like that, got it?”

He barely blinked.

“We’ll be a heartbeat away, ready to intercept and arrest Brody as soon as he agrees or reaches for the money.”

“Man, you guys never give up! No way. Forget it. You want to put somebody in harm’s way, put
me
in there, asshole, but not her. You knew what was happening on Christmas, but you let her get kidnapped, assaulted and left to die out there in godforsaken Elbert County!”

Quinn gave me a long, assessing look. Finally, he steepled his fingers and spoke in a dry, faintly accusatory tone.

“Please keep in mind that if we had known
ahead of time
about yours and Ms. Fitzhugh’s—” He caught my look. “Laura’s plans to steal Dixon’s laptop and return it on Christmas day, she never would have been kidnapped.”

Feds and their holier-than-thou attitudes. Reminded me of lawyers.

“Hindsight always gives one twenty-twenty vision,” I said. “Let’s talk about the present. Laura calls, sets up a meeting with Brody. He agrees, hangs up, then mulls over why a woman who’s madly in love with her guy, has stood by him through thick and thick, would want to suddenly turn on him. Right, baby?”

Laura was staring at me as though I’d just landed from the planet IdiotMaleWithoutAClue.

“Yeah, uh, so anyway,” I continued, looking back at Quinn, “he realizes this is really a set-up by the feds, but instead of meeting Laura at whatever spot they pick, decides instead to pay us a visit
here
. Demands in not very pleasant graphic detail that we tell him what the FBI knows. Then he kills us. To put it succinctly—we’re sitting dog meat.”

Quinn nodded. “You’ll have security. Myself and another field agent are moving into one of your cabins.”

Only an idiot would argue with the feds over any supposed rights to privacy. “Great,” I mumbled, “this place is becoming one big happy sleep-over with Kush, Sativa, Mulder, and Scully.” Which didn’t mean I was buying into the Laura thing. “But about that meet-and-greet with Brody—”

Heavy clunking footsteps interrupted my thoughts. Garrett and Ziggy wove their way through the kitchen, each carrying a box. Garrett, smelling like a grass hut on fire, stopped at the table, and after shifting his box and pulling something from his Rasta hoodie pocket, set Brianna’s cell phone on the table.

“Found this in that storage room,” he said.

Laura stared at it, frowned. “Why does this cell phone look familiar?”

“It’s Brianna’s,” I answered.

“How’d it get…” She looked toward the stairs, back to me. “In the storage room?”

My cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID, couldn’t place the number, answered it anyway. Couldn’t be worse news than the feds luring my girlfriend into a sting, announcing they were my new roommates, and promising thousands of dollars to an organized crime lord to kill me.

After a few moments, I terminated the call.

“Have a lead on where Scraggy Scarpello might be headed when he leaves Denver,” I said to Quinn. “After all, he gave you the slip in Boston. Might do the same here, too.”

“Who was that on the phone, Mr. Le—Rick?”

“The pal of mine who just finishing running a pixel software program on the photo Dixon used as a screen saver. Seems the picture was taken by a camera purchased in Nevis, an island nation in the West Indies.”

“Extremely tight privacy laws in their banking industry,” Quinn said.

“Yeah, probably easy-breezy for Scraggy to hide assets there.”

I could see the proverbial wheels turning in Quinn’s head. He was taking what I’d said in, analyzing it, and if I was correctly interpreting that look on his face, I was getting some r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

“Good to know,” he finally said.

“Back to this Brody meeting,” I continued, “I’ll tell him I want to put a hit on
me
because I want Laura to have my life insurance policy. Ten grand upfront, forty on conclusion, and I give him a copy of the flash drive to show good faith—”

“Absolutely not,” interrupted Laura, emotion filling her eyes. “He might as well shoot you right then before the FBI has a chance to do squat.” She turned to Quinn. “I’m in. Let’s make that call.”

Not one, not two, not both, not either
—Zen saying

A
t eleven the next morning, I knocked on Brianna’s front door. Back in the day, it’d been dingy white with peeling paint in the top right corner. Now, it was smooth, a pewter color like the surface of the ocean on an overcast day. Had to have been Joe’s choice as Brianna loved pinks and yellows in her home. Funny how such a rough-and-tumble girl went all soft and fairy when it came to her house. I blamed it on that peculiar southern trait where a home is treated like the dream of a long-ago lazy, still summer’s day, even if one had put down roots thousands of miles from the Mason-Dixon line.

A latch clicked, and the door opened. Brianna stood there, a washed-out version of her former self. The angular, jaunty imp had turned into a raw-boned, lifeless shell. A drawn face crowded by a mess of blond waves, wearing a shapeless pink robe and sheepskin slippers spotted with caked mud.

“Well, ah’ll be,” she whispered in a ragged voice. With a start, she patted her hair, a stricken look on her face.

“Should’ve called first,” I mumbled, started to turn. “I’ll come back another time.”

“No,” she said quickly, “it’s okay.” She stepped back, opened the door wide. “This is one of my days off from work, so we’re lazing it, not quite dressed for the world but presentable.” She laughed, or I suppose that’s what the empty sound was supposed to be.

How often I’d walk in here, darn near suffocating in the rich, greasy scent of frying chicken mingled with baking peach pie. I knew her tastes in music were more Dave Matthews, Dixie Chicks, Keith Urban, but for me she’d play a CD I’d given her, the Dead’s complex, orchestral
Terrapin Station
.

I paused, my senses snapping back to the present. The only scents were coffee, the only sounds the ticking of the grandfather clock and a distant scramble of music and voices from another room, probably a TV show.

I looked around at the new furniture, all of it coordinated in various shades of beige. Not the hodge-podge of flea-market bargains and family heirlooms that used to fill this space. A built-in bookcase had been added to the far wall. Toward the top, an entire shelf was dedicated to photos of Joe, the largest being a professional portrait of him in his Arapahoe County Sheriff’s uniform, the American flag forever unfurled behind him.

“I’ll cut to it. Tell me why you killed—”

I stopped as a little girl in yellow flannel PJs covered with smiling cowboys on horses ran into the room. Seeing me, she halted behind Brianna, peeking at me with bright blue eyes. Her hair was curly, like her mother’s but darker. More of an auburn. The color of my hair before I went the salt-n-pepper route.

“Rose, darlin’,” Brianna said quietly, stroking her little girl’s hair, “this is Rick Levine.”

The little girl held up her green-monster toy. “This is my Shrek. I am going to get Donkey next. Then they will find the princess.”

“She got a Shrek doll for Christmas,” explained Brianna, “and DVDs for all the Shrek movies. Which one are you watching on mommy’s laptop, hon?”

She felt up two chubby fingers. “They’re having dinner with her parents.” She tucked a thumb in her pouty lips.

“Mommy and Mr. Levine are going to talk, okay, sugah? Go back to your room and finish watching your show. We’ll make cupcakes with Shrek green frosting when it’s over, just like Mommy promised.”

Clapping, the little girl skipped out of the room.

After she left, I glanced at the photo of Joe in front of the flag. His eyes were gray. Mine are blue. Blue, recessive gene.

“Rick,” Brianna whispered, stepping closer, “I didn’t kill Deborah. I swear on my daughter’s life.”

I shook, couldn’t control myself. Stepped forward, my insides roiling with anger and confusion, and I grabbed her arm. “And my daughter’s life? Am I really her father?”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Answer me!”

“She’s your child,” she cried softly. “Trust me, I know.”

“Were you seeing Joe before I was given the boot? Expect me to trust anything you say after you screwed around behind my back?”

“I didn’t screw around—”

“Liar!”

“Rose, please, she’ll hear this.”

I lowered my voice to a growl. “Everyone, including that crazy cousin of yours, told me you were with Joe before giving me the boot.”

She shook her head fervently. “You? Believing hearsay? Lindy always had a thing for you…”

Her words trailed off as she glanced up at the ceiling and rolled her head slowly from side to side as though her very thoughts were battling it out in her mind. When she looked back at me, it was as though someone else had stepped into her skin. Her face was blank, her eyes dim. A single tear spilled down her cheek.

“Want a drink?” she asked dully.

“I’m not staying.” I released my hold, hating myself. Me, who’d conducted hundreds of interviews as an attorney, just as many as a private investigator, knew how to sway, cajole, manipulate with words to dig for the information I wanted. But I’d lost it with Brianna. Stripped her and myself of dignity.

I fished in my pocket. “Here’s your phone.”

She looked at her cell in my hand. “How’d you—?”

“It was lying on the front seat.” I pressed my thumb and index finger on my temples, closed my eyes. “Look, I’m sorry for acting like an asshole. The other day in the Jeep, today…”

“Hush.”

I opened my eyes, met a look of concern in her velvety brown ones.

“I’m scared,” I admitted.

“Me, too, darlin’. Me, too.” With a small, sad smile, she dropped her hand, took the phone from me. “I reckon you didn’t find whatever it was you were lookin’ for.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Her tone was so sincere, her look so sweetly incredulous, I started to doubt myself about everything I’d been thinking. “Maybe I will take that drink. Root beer if you got it.”

“Lemonade?”

“Close enough.”

I settled onto one end of the couch while she exited to the kitchen. I eyed the mess of women’s magazines on the coffee table, a tattered yellow blanket in a child’s rocking chair, a picture of Brianna holding a newborn on the fireplace ledge. Next to it, a photo of Rose, her face covered in what looked to be chocolate ice cream, grinning at the camera with such innocent glee, my heart ached.

Brianna came back, set a frosty glass on the coffee table in front of me. “Lemonade for you.” She settled onto the couch next to me with her glass.

“Lemonade for you, too?”

“Plus a splash of spirits.” She took a sip, swallowed. “What happened to Mellow?”

“After Deborah’s will is probated, I’ll probably make a bid on it.”

“You can do that?”

I nodded, even as a little voice inside said screw it. Mellow was another life, a scrap of an age-old lullaby.

She mindlessly pulled a loose thread on her robe. “Deborah, she may have had the goods on someone—and that person killed her to stop her from ever revealing it. Any idea whose career, reputation, financial well-being could’ve been crushed by something she had or knew?”

I thought of Lou, who despite his bumbling hysteria had a cold, hard reason to rid the world of Wicked. And then there was Iris who may have been hot for Wicked, but nobody got homicidal about hiding their lesbian tendencies in this day and age. Like those faux-lesbos at the party, it was cool to make-out with the same sex
and
be photographed doing it. Justin was too much of a party twit to do anything but snort, swill, and manage to get himself to court on time.

Brianna stared out the window, bit her lip. “What I’ve guessed has made it to the wrong ears. The killer doesn’t want me around because I’ve correctly guessed the cause of death and I’m stirring the waters, dredging up the truth. I’ve become
a problem
.” She took a long sip.

A chill skittered across my skin. “Who have you told?”

She stared at her drink as though the answers lay within. “You. Sam. Actually, everybody at your place the other night. Finally got Bill Lashley to return my call, told him too. He wasn’t happy I
accidentally
saw evidence—his emphasis, not mine. Told me to mind my own business. Prick.”

“William Lashley doesn’t want anybody to question his pronouncement that stabbing was the cause of death.”

But Brianna was somewhere else in her thoughts. Holding onto the arm of the couch, she pushed herself to a standing position, crossed to the picture window. Looking outside, she said quietly, “Somebody came back to my house the other night. They were in my Jeep.”

Her house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. Didn’t make a lot of sense for anyone to drive here unless they had a reason.