7
If The Hill was a food, it would be spaghetti, or maybe pizza, or ravioli or manicotti. Well, anything Italian. The kind of food you share with a boisterous group of friends or family and that’s guaranteed to put a smile on your face. As the hostess led us through the dimly lit restaurant to the last remaining empty table, I couldn’t believe my eyes or good fortune. I was 95 percent certain the blonde sitting at the table in the back corner, wearing the pricey designer dress and an even pricier diamond necklace, was Linda Kempler. I pulled out my phone to search the photos I’d downloaded.
Nate caught my elbow and nudged me forward. “Everything okay?”
I looked from the photo on my phone to Linda. Yup, definitely Linda. “Yes. Thank you. Everything’s perfect.” I slid into the booth opposite my aunt and Nate gave me an odd look. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to sit on that side?”
I glanced toward Linda’s table—a perfect view. “No, I’m good. Thanks.”
He slid in beside Aunt Martha. “Okay, but I thought cops never sat with their back to a room.” He leaned across the table and added in a stage whisper, “Especially when their aunt might ask the wrong person the wrong question.”
Aunt Martha swatted his arm. “Watch it or I’ll make you pay for dinner.”
He rubbed his arm, grinning. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“No, it’s my treat,” I said. “Wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re bribing a federal agent.”
“Ri-i-i-ght,” he said, his incredibly expressive eyes twinkling with amusement, “because someone might think I stole the outrageously valuable paintings kicking around my apartment.”
“Exactly.”
“Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Lou’s.” A bubbly, dark-haired waitress handed us each a menu. “My name’s Lori and I’ll be your server this evening. May I start you off with a drink?”
“Just water for me,” I said, doing a quick survey of the other customers. There was an eclectic mix of diners, from seniors and businessmen to a table of college students, who were probably here for the all-you-can-eat spaghetti, to couples like Linda and her date. His Armani suit and polished shoes screamed wealthy, and from the look of the pale line circling his slender ring finger, he was either recently separated or pretending to be.
“Someone you know?” Nate asked.
“Just a museum employee I didn’t get a chance to interview today.”
“A suspect?” Aunt Martha chimed in. “Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, she couldn’t have paid for that outfit on a museum salary.”
Oh, I’d noticed all right.
“More likely she entices rich boyfriends to treat her,” Nate said, his voice tinged with disgust.
Aunt Martha flashed him a sympathetic look.
Okay, what was that about? Nate was hardly the kind of guy who’d have his heart broken by a gold digger.
The waitress cleared her throat.
“Oh, hot water and lemon for me,” Aunt Martha said, then excused herself to go to the restroom.
Nate tapped the top of his menu to mine, snagging my attention again. “So, when did you first decide you wanted to be a federal agent?”
“A few months after 9/11. The day the FBI recovered the Norman Rockwell painting of the Boy Scouts, with the World Trade Center in the background. Did you know that over a hundred million dollars worth of fine art was destroyed during 9/11?”
“No, I had no idea, but I imagine a lot of the offices were decorated with valuable paintings.”
I nodded, my gaze straying back to Linda and her date. He looked like the kind of guy who’d have expensive art on his walls. “Their loss was nothing compared to the lives lost, of course, but the art that survived became compelling symbols for many people.”
“Including you?”
His soft question jerked my attention back to his face.
He looked at me expectantly, his gaze as soft as his question had been, almost as if he knew he was treading into risky territory.
He nodded. “I remember seeing pictures of a sculpture still standing amidst the rubble of Liberty Park. It was of a businessman looking into his briefcase, and it became a kind of makeshift memorial.”
“Yes! It was a J. Seward Johnson sculpture called Double Check. Every time I saw it, I cried.” Tears welled in my eyes just thinking about it. I blinked them away. “The businessman reminded me of my grandfather, I guess. He’d been a businessman, but he also loved art and nurtured my love of it.” The recollection drew my gaze back to Armani guy’s hands.
“He gave you a special gift. Art shows us ways of seeing the world that science can’t.”
“Exactly! Most law enforcement officers don’t put a high value on art crime investigation, because they think only the rich are losing, but we all lose a piece of our common heritage. For me, the return of that Rockwell painting helped reclaim a small piece of the American ideal we all lost that horrible day.”
“And the day your grandfather died.”
“Yes,” I admitted, flinching at how easily he’d read my thoughts. Apparently I needed to work on my poker face with more than just my family. “My grandfather used to say, ‘Life beats us down and crushes the soul, while art reminds us that we have one.’”
“I think Stella Adler said it first,” Aunt Martha said, returning to the table at the same time Linda’s date pulled his linen napkin from his lap and stood.
“Would you excuse me a minute?” I said as Nate slid over to make room for Aunt Martha. “I see someone I need to talk to.” I waited until Linda’s date turned away from the table, then strolled over and handed her my business card. “Hi Linda, I’m Special Agent Serena Jones. I need to ask you a few questions.”
Like a heat-seeking missile, her impeccably dressed dinner date did a midair flight adjustment and stalked back toward me. “What’s this about?”
I straightened, and thanks to the extra two inches my boots lent me, we stood eye to eye. “I’m sorry, sir. This doesn’t concern you. Could you excuse us for a few minutes?”
A vein in the middle of his forehead bulged. Literally bulged. For a second, I thought he was going to bust an artery right in front of me. Instead he growled, “Do you know who I am?”
He didn’t wait for a response before he strode away, which was probably good. Because he would’ve been disappointed that I didn’t have a clue who he was. Although I knew his type—the type that assumed everyone would kowtow to his whims.
“What’s this about?” Linda lowered her voice as I slipped into the man’s vacated seat.
“Let’s start with your brother.”
“My brother? Is he in trouble?”
Funny how the pair of siblings both assumed the other was in trouble. “I guess that depends on what you think of his renovation to your apartment.”
“My apartment?” Her voice edged higher. “He was in my apartment?”
“He said he’s staying there,” I relayed, as if I’d had no cause to disbelieve him.
“Oh, of course,” she lied, although she covered it well. “I was unexpectedly called out of town and only just got back.”
That explained the rotting meat in her fridge.
“But he knows he’s always welcome in my home,” she added.
“That’s interesting, because he thinks you changed your name so he wouldn’t be able to find you and recover his share of your father’s inheritance.” If not for the attack on Aunt Martha, I might’ve stuck around long enough to point out to him the inconsistencies in his two claims.
“He told you that?” Irritation edged her words. “I told him all the money that wasn’t lost in bad investments went to Dad’s care. If I’d known Stan was back in the country, I would’ve met with him.”
“It was kind of hard for him to let you know, considering you’d changed your name and phone number and moved to another state.”
She shook her head. “I did all that because I had a possessive ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t stop harassing me. Stan didn’t need to call the feds.”
She was a good liar. I’d give her that. She’d caught herself twirling her hair and made a point of stopping, same with avoiding eye contact, but I’d been watching her talk to her date before I came over. She’d talked with her hands a lot. Now, when they weren’t twisting in her lap, they were subconsciously moving objects between us, such as her water glass and the Prada clutch that had been sitting on the other side of her plate.
“Your brother didn’t call me. I’m investigating a theft from the art museum.” I swept my gaze over her outfit. “And considering you have a part-time job for wages that are nothing to write home about, I’m struggling to make two and two add up to a fifteen-hundred-dollar dress.”
Her fingers tapped a nervous rhythm on the stem of her wine glass. “Doug likes to take care of me.”
I assumed Doug was the date, now watching us from the bar, who’d just pocketed his phone. My smartphone rang the Daah, da-da-duh . . . Daah, da-da-duh daah of the Dragnet theme song reserved for my supervisor. “Excuse me.” I cupped my phone to my ear. “Special Agent Serena Jones.”
“Jones, have you interrupted the senator’s dinner?”
“The”—I gulped, lifted my gaze to Linda—“senator?”
She nodded.
Okay, that explained . . . a lot. “Uh, yes, sir. I guess I did.” It figured he’d know how to reach my boss after hours. They’d probably hobnobbed at the MAC—Missouri Athletic Club—like all society’s movers and shakers. “His companion is a witness in a case I’m working on.”
“An art crime investigation with a trail colder than the Mississippi does not justify you interrupting a public official’s private dinner.”
“No, sir.” The senator headed our way and I stood. “Leaving now, sir.” I hung up and tapped the business card I’d handed Linda earlier. “Please call me when it’s convenient.” I nodded to Doug. “I apologize for the interruption.”
“I guess the senator wasn’t happy about you interrogating his date?” Nate asked as I returned to the table.
“That obvious, huh?” Oh, man, what kind of FBI agent didn’t recognize a state senator, when even my building super had? I really needed to pay more attention to politics. I did a double take on the empty seat beside him, my pulse quickening. “Where’d Aunt Martha go now?”
“To say hi to Lou.”
I looked at him as if he’d grown a third eyeball—one my organ-donor-seeking aunt had just swindled off an unsuspecting diner! “You let her out of your sight? Are you nuts?”
His mouth bobbed open and closed like he was a fish out of water.
I whirled to my feet and nearly sent the waitress’s tray of drinks sailing.
She did a graceful turn and managed to slide the tray onto the table the second time around. “Is something wrong?”
“My aunt. Have you seen her?”
“Yes, she’s talking to a gentleman at the bar.”
“Oh no.” I raced to the bar at the front of the restaurant, probably looking as if I was the one in need of a straitjacket, and arrived in time to hear Aunt Martha say, “If I needed a kidney, say, the donor wouldn’t even have to be dead, right?”
“Aunt Martha!” I grabbed her arm and tugged her away. What had I been thinking, indulging her detective kick? The guy she’d been talking to bore a striking resemblance to that bulbous-nosed actor who always portrays a mobster in the movies and—my heart thumped—he looked as if he was seriously contemplating Aunt Martha’s request. “I’m sorry she bothered you. She forgot to take her medicine this morning.”
“What are you doing?” Aunt Martha struggled against my hold. “That was Carmen Malgucci. He could’ve helped.”
“If you don’t come back to the table this instant,” I hissed under my breath, “I’m leaving.”
By the time I dragged Aunt Martha back to our table, a platter of deep-fried ravioli appetizers she must’ve ordered sat in the center.
“I told the waitress we’d need a few more minutes to decide on our entrees,” Nate said, then turned his attention to Aunt Martha. “Is your knee swelling again?” he asked, probably thanks to the way I’d “helped” her back to the table.
“No, it’s fine.” Aunt Martha dipped her chin toward a Godfather lookalike in a dark double-breasted suit, sitting next to the window across from a heavyweight who looked like he’d break your leg if you welched on your debts. “Now, he looks like a man who could get you an organ if you—”
“My aunt will have what he’s having,” I said loudly enough to drown her out as the waitress returned to our table. “I’ll have a lasagna.” I mentally scheduled fifty extra sit-ups and another mile into my morning exercise routine . . . if I survived tonight. Or more precisely, if my job did. My first annual physical fitness test was next month, but from the scrutiny I felt pinging the side of my head from the general direction of Linda’s dinner date, he’d have my boss questioning more than my physical fitness for the job.
I awoke with a start and yanked the blankets to my chin. As my eyes adjusted to the scant light filtering through my bedroom curtains, my pounding heart slowed a fraction. Horror movies had nothing on Aunt Martha’s wild imaginings.
Between nightmares of meat-cleaver-wielding butchers in bloodstained aprons snatching me out of bed and the knocks and rattles of the radiators jolting me awake, I felt as if I’d been the one knocked over by yesterday afternoon’s would-be burglar.
I squinted at my digital clock. 5:30. I still had an hour and a half before I had to start figuring out what I was going to do about Aunt Martha’s sleuthing and how I’d go about questioning Linda again without incurring my supervisor’s wrath.
Something crashed. I yanked open my night table drawer and reached for my gun before the sound registered as dishes in my kitchen. “Must be the cat,” I whispered to no one in particular, but I loaded the gun and grabbed my flashlight anyway.
Harold grunted from the foot of the bed.
Okay, not the cat. I jumped up and pressed my back to the wall next to the open door, listening.
Another dish rattled.
What was the guy doing? Making himself breakfast?
Righteous indignation at what he’d done to Aunt Martha surged up my chest, galvanizing my courage. I padded down the hall, then, flicking on the flashlight and pointing both it and my gun toward the sound, shouted, “Freeze!”
Beady little eyes glinted in the beam of light.
Really little eyes.
The mouse froze for all of half a second, then had the nerve to not only scurry away but also brazenly take the bread bag he’d been scavenging with him.
I stalked back to my bedroom and slammed on the overhead lights.
Harold blinked indignantly.
“What kind of cat are you? There’s a mouse in the kitchen helping itself to my breakfast and you’re in here snoring.”
Harold stretched one paw out in front of him, then the other, and arching his back, let out a bored yawn.
“That’s it. It’s time you earned your keep.” I laid my gun on the bedside table, scooped Harold off my bed, stalked down the hall, and plopped him on the kitchen floor next to the crumb trail left by the mouse. “Find it.” I nudged him with my slipper. “Now!”
Harold tapped a breadcrumb with his paw, then proceeded to bat it around the kitchen floor like he was the Blues hockey team’s next star center.
“Wait until it starts stealing your food, then you’ll change your game plan.”
Harold stopped mid-swipe and looked at me as if the prospect of a mouse daring to touch his kibbles seriously miffed him. He sat on his haunches and cast glances to every corner of the kitchen.
“I think he ran under the stove,” I said.
Apparently not up on his appliance names, Harold swiped a paw under the fridge.
A gray, furry body slid across the floor.
“Way to g—” I took a second look as Harold proudly pranced off to the living room carrying his prey. “Hey, that’s not a real mouse. Where did that come from?”
A shadow crossed the window above the outside stairs leading to my kitchen door.
I snapped off the light and raced back to the bedroom for my gun, then, gripping it with both hands, edged toward the side of the door. The lone parking lot light scarcely pushed back the lingering darkness, and the fridge motor kicked in, muffling any sound I might’ve heard, save for Harold yowling at his phantom toy mouse. Or maybe that was the blood screaming past my ears.
Suddenly, a face pressed against the door’s window, hands cupped around the eyes.
“Nate? What on earth?” He must’ve overheard the mouse commotion. Dropping my gun hand to my side, I unsnapped the deadbolt. Pulling my gun on Nate was becoming a bad habit.
As I opened the door, a linebacker-sized figure charged up the stairs and slammed Nate into the rails.
My outside landing was a good fifteen feet above the driveway, and the safety rail caught Nate at the small of his back. The assailant gripped his collar and kept shoving until Nate’s upper body teetered precariously over the rail, a gun in his face.
“Freeze,” I shouted, steadying my Glock with both hands, my feet braced. Sleet found the open door, pinging my bare limbs.
The gunman’s head cocked my direction. “I got this, Serena. Wait inside.”
I blinked. “Tanner?”
“Yeah, wait inside,” he growled.
Maybe it was the sleet freezing my limbs solid. Maybe it was the sight of Tanner’s gun shoved into Nate’s chin. But my own gun stayed aimed at Tanner’s center of mass. “Stand down,” I ordered. “That’s my apartment superintendent.”
Tanner scrutinized the man caught in his grip, his gun easing back only a fraction. “What’s he doing peering in your window in the middle of the night?”
“I heard a commotion,” Nate said in a surprisingly steady voice, considering Tanner’s finger was a quarter of an inch away from blowing his brains out. “I came up to make sure she was okay.”
I suddenly wished I was carrying a hammer-fired pistol so I could cock back the hammer and send a chill down Tanner’s spine with the sound that said I was primed to take him out. “Stand down, now!”
“Okay, okay.” Tanner holstered his weapon, and with his other hand still fisted in Nate’s jacket, tugged him off the rail.
The instant Tanner released him and backed off a step, Nate’s fist connected with Tanner’s jaw. Tanner scarcely flinched.
I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter.
The man had four or five inches on Nate, plus at least fifty pounds and hours of SWAT training a month, but all he did was smirk and rub his chin. “I guess I deserved that.”
Meanwhile, Nate was shaking his hand and massaging his knuckles as if the punch hurt him more.
“Get in here,” I said to both of them and shut the door behind them. I slammed my gun onto the counter, amazed I could pry my frozen fingers from around the grip. At the sight of both men’s gazes slipping to my attire, I yanked on the jacket I’d left hanging over the back of a kitchen chair the night before. “I’m pretty sure this is not what my mom meant when she said I needed more men in my life!”
The kitchen suddenly felt very small with two testosterone-pumped, would-be heroes competing for space.
“Okay, I know what Nate’s doing here.” His apartment was below mine, after all. “I’m sorry I woke you. It appears we have a mouse problem. The commotion you heard was it knocking a dish on the floor. I appreciate you coming up to check.” I shifted my attention to Tanner, my eyes narrowing. “But what are you doing here?”
He stood at the other end of the kitchen, a vantage point that gave him a view of the living room and hallway to the bedrooms, and his stony, unreadable expression did not give me the warm fuzzies. But it took another second to clue in that he must’ve been watching my place for no good reason.
Except Tanner always had a good reason for everything he did.
I crossed my arms, tucking my hands under my armpits to hide my trembling—a mix of bare feet on a cold floor, my adrenaline crashing, and the unwelcome thought that my paranoia was actually justified. “What aren’t you telling me?”
His head tilted, his gaze shifting to the living room. “Looks like your cat took care of your mouse problem.”
My derisive snort snapped his attention back to me. “It’s a toy. He found it under the fridge. I have no idea where it came from.”
Tanner chuckled. “Maybe you’ve got smart mice. Planted decoys to keep the cat busy chasing the wrong thing.”
Nate glanced around the doorway at Harold prancing about with the toy mouse dangling from his mouth. “Your aunt brought that for him yesterday afternoon.”
The cat’s proud swagger and his rod-straight tail stretching toward the ceiling reminded me of the college student I’d interviewed today. My mind whirred at that thought. “What did you say?”
“I said, your aunt—”
“Not you”—I shifted my attention to Tanner—“you. What did you say?”
“The mouse planted decoys?”
“Yeah . . . That’s it.”
Tanner and Nate exchanged glances, clearly both thinking I’d been sniffing Harold’s catnip.
“I’m thinking suspects. I interviewed this employee yesterday morning and right from the start I figured he was slippery, but he gave me good information. Pointed a finger at a woman who looked like she could be a prime suspect.”
“A decoy,” Tanner said, getting where I was headed.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Do you think he’s good for the job?”
“I think I need to talk to his friends, because he’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t have been able to resist bragging about it.”
Tanner whipped out his smartphone. “What’s his name?”
I glanced at Nate, reluctant to name suspects in front of him. Of its own volition, my gaze dropped to his bare chest peeking past his unzipped coat.
“Name?” Tanner prodded.
Name, right. I took Tanner’s phone and thumbed Malcolm’s name into the social media search bar Tanner had already opened. When I’d connected to the right Malcolm and seen that he’d actually gotten smart after our little tête-à-tête and tightened his privacy settings, I handed the phone back to Tanner. “Him.”
“Could this guy have figured out where you live?” Nate cut in. “Sent a buddy to break in while you were at the museum?”
“Yeah.” Tanner’s thumbs tapped away on his smartphone. “If he wanted to sidetrack your investigation, giving you a break-in to deal with would be smart.”
In a strange way the theory was almost reassuring. Better than thinking Baldy had put a hit on me. But . . . “I don’t see how he’d have figured out where I live so quickly. I don’t have a landline so my number’s not in the phone book, and I’m subleasing the place from my aunt, so my name’s not likely on any other kind of register.” Which should boost my confidence that the whole break-in thing was random. “I haven’t even gotten around to changing my address on my driver’s license yet.”
Tanner turned his phone screen my way. “Do you know this woman? She looks like someone a guy would try to impress with a little boasting.”
It was a picture of Malcolm in a bar, with his arm slung around the back of a dark-haired beauty, posted six hours ago. “She works at the reception desk at the museum. How’d you access his photos?”
“His friend posted it.”
Clearly another non–privacy-savvy friend.
“Do you know her name?”
“She’s not tagged?”
“No.”
I closed my eyes, straining to put a name to the face. Petra. My eyes popped open. “Petra Horvak. I’ll have to move her to the top of today’s interview list, find out what Malcolm’s been saying to her.”
Nate hitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “I’d better get going. Leave you two to your investigating.”
“Thanks for checking on me.” I gave him a quick hug. At least it was meant to be quick. I wasn’t even sure why I hugged him. It wasn’t as if I came from a huggy family, which probably explained why the unexpected zing that jolted through me as his arms encircled my waist and his bristly cheek grazed my hair short-circuited my brain.
“Yeah,” Tanner added. “I’m sorry I roughed you up.” Although he didn’t really sound sorry.
Nate stepped back, gave Tanner a terse nod, his jaw squared, clearly not appreciating the reminder, then returned his attention to me. “I’ll bring you a couple of mousetraps later.”
I eyeballed Harold, who’d fallen asleep with the toy mouse tucked under his paw. “Good plan.”
As I held the door open for Nate, Tanner glanced at the lightening sky. “I should go too. We can follow this up on Monday.”
I shut the door before he could wedge through. “Not so fast. I want to know what you were doing outside my apartment in the wee hours of the morning.”
Tanner leaned back against the counter, crossing his long legs in front of him.
“Oh, you know. I had a sudden burning urge to figure out which movie actor your apartment maintenance man looked like. It was giving me insomnia.”
“Cute.” I crossed my arms.
“No, I don’t think he is.” Tanner rubbed his jaw as if in deep thought. “In fact, now that I’ve gotten to know him a little better, I’m gonna go with . . . Shrek.”
“Ha ha.” Nate was a long way from a green ogre. “Answer the question.”
He sighed, dropping his pose. “Fine. I was making sure your burglar didn’t come back.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Part of me wanted to be irritated with Tanner for watching my place, as if I couldn’t defend myself. But another part of me turned warm and fuzzy at the thought.
I squelched that part as fast as it rose. “So you don’t think the attempted break-in was simply a crime of opportunity?” I asked.
“I don’t like coincidences.”
“Neither do I. Oh, you won’t believe who I found at Lou’s restaurant last night.”
“Who?”
“Linda Kempler. Unfortunately, before I could get much information out of her, her date called Benton.”
“State Senator Doug Reed.” I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized him.
Tanner whistled. “The image her brother painted of her is looking truer by the minute. She sounds like a real gold digger.”
“Yeah, I just hope she doesn’t have plans with the senator today too.”
“Take the day off. If she’s the senator’s girlfriend, she’s not going anywhere.”
I rolled my eyes. “This from the man who spent the night sitting outside in his freezing cold vehicle watching my door.”
He shrugged.
“Can you spell double standard?”
Tanner squeezed my shoulder. “What you need to do is take the day off. It’s Sunday. Twenty-four hours isn’t going to make a difference on a case this cold. Go to church. Have dinner with your folks. Start fresh first thing Monday morning.”
“The museum’s closed Mondays. I need to do more interviews today.”
“No. You don’t. If you harass Linda on a Sunday and the senator’s there, guaranteed you’ll get another call from Benton.”
“What I need is less unsolicited advice and someone to keep an eye on my aunt. Last night she asked a mobster where she could get a kidney donor.”
Tanner burst into laughter.
“I’m not joking. I don’t know what to do with her. If she’s not careful, she could wind up the donor.” I choked up on the last word, despite making light of it. Lately danger was hitting way too close to home.