21

Adam catapulted his duffle bag into the back seat and squeezed into the rental car, cursing as his knee jammed into the steering wheel. He shifted the seat back with a grunt. Sylvia said she couldn’t live with him. Captain Farrow told him to take time off to spend with his family. Julia was right, now seemed as good a time as any to head down to Atlantic City.

He steered the rental car over the Walt Whitman Bridge and headed for the Atlantic City Expressway. He’d known traffic would be heavy on a Friday afternoon, even at this time of year. Everyone was cutting out early to get a head start on the weekend. He swerved to avoid a tractor-trailer pulling into his lane and told himself again this was a good idea. Not a waste of time, as he’d claimed to Julia earlier.

He’d caught her at home this time, seeking her out after his fight with Sylvia.

“Adam, come up.” Her words were welcoming but the tone was neutral as she buzzed him into her building. At least the door was locked. For once.

She stood in the middle of her loft, surrounded by easels displaying a variety of photographs. Garden scenes ranging from extreme closeups that made it impossible to identify the plant in the photograph to grand vistas that drew his eyes off into the sunrise. Urban scenes, beach scenes, portraits. Some in color, some black and white. Some a combination of styles and colors in a blend that only Julia could have come up with. He stopped to admire her work. He couldn’t help it. He was impressed.

Julia did not look impressed. She stood in the midst of the easels, a frown etched across her forehead. She held a box cutter in her hand, and given her expression, Adam feared a little bit for what — or who — was to be the next victim of the knife.

“What can I do for you?” she asked without looking at him, her eyes focused intently on one of the images to her right.

“Just checking in, seeing how you’re doing.” He spoke casually as he slid sideways onto her sofa. She was obviously upset, and he did not want another woman yelling at him today. One was enough.

“Argh.” She threw the knife onto the low table by the sofa and flung herself down next to Adam. “I can’t do it.”

“What exactly are you trying to do?” Adam tried to figure out from the spread of images around him, but could see no rhyme or reason to the display.

“Anything.” She buried her face in her hands, her hair falling forward over her shoulders. “I’m just trying to do anything. To focus. To stop thinking about that judge. About my statue. About being a suspect.”

Adam sank lower into the sofa, weighed down by the guilt of not being able to help his little sister. “Julia, I’m so sorry you had to go through that — that I couldn’t stop it. I’m working the case, finding everything I can on the other suspects. I’m trying, I am.”

“I know.” She kept her face hidden and took a deep breath.

“Jules?”

She nodded.

He took a deep breath of his own. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me, anything I’m missing?”

“How can I tell you that when I have no idea?” She looked up at him finally, and the look in her eyes broke his heart.

He’d been expecting anger in response to his question. Defensiveness. Those he could handle. This… this was grief. He couldn’t handle that.

He stood. “All right, then, I’m heading back out, see what I can find.”

“What can I do to help?” She stood with him as she asked the question.

“Nothing. Just stay safe, stay out of trouble.”

Finally, her anger flared. “How can I stay here? I can’t work, I can’t focus.” She flung her arms around as if to demonstrate the futility of her efforts. “What are you going to do next? Tell me.” She put her hands on her hips and stared at him.

He had no good answer to that. “I’m not sure,” he thought out loud. “There are a couple of options. I can go back to the precinct, see what else I can dig up on some of the suspects in the case.”

Julia shook her head. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be working this case. You think you can sneak around right under your captain’s nose?”

She had a point. He chewed on his lip as he stared at one of her photographs. One of the beach scenes, gentle waves lapping against a pale sandy beach. But in the distance, in the background of the shot, a larger wave was forming, breaking against a sandbar somewhere out in the water. Somewhere buried, unseen.

“I could always do what Heyward suggested and go to Atlantic City.” He laughed as he said it.

“AC? Sounds good, I’m in.”

He turned to look at her. “No way. First, I’m not really going. It’s a long shot that will most likely go nowhere.”

“And second of all?” She gave him an impatient look, one he’d seen far too many times over the course of their lives.

“Second of all, you’re not getting any more involved in this investigation. No way.”

“Perfect, then.” She grabbed her knife, mats, and images and started filing everything away into thin, wide drawers at the far end of the room.

“Perfect? What does that mean?”

She shook her head but didn’t turn around from her work. “Look, you said yourself it’s a long shot. A lead Pete probably wouldn’t follow anyway, right?”

“Yeah…” Adam still didn’t know where she was going with this.

“So, if you go to AC, you stay out of the way. You’re still doing something useful, but you’re not stepping on anyone’s toes.”

“Okay, but —”

“And if I go with you, I’m not in any danger, ’cause you said yourself this probably would turn out to be nothing. And I get a day off, away from this.” She turned back to him, and he saw the worry forming in her eyes again. She turned to look around the room and shook her head one more time. “I need to get away.”

Adam glanced over at Julia in the passenger seat. She had her window rolled down, despite the chill in the air, and her hair billowed about her face. She stared into the fields as they passed them, though Adam wasn’t sure how much she was seeing.

They were more than halfway to Atlantic City, driving past rows of blueberry bushes, bare now of their harvest. He saw signs for the New Jersey Wine Trail and thought how nice it would be if this really were a vacation. If Sylvia were sitting next to him, and they could stop at the wineries along the way, sipping whatever latest concoction the local wineries had come up with.

He must have made some sound, because Julia turned to him. “What else is bugging you? I don’t think it’s just about me.”

He grinned. “Stop reading my mind. You know I hate that.” He waited for her to push, but she let it drop. After only a few more minutes, he caved anyway. “It’s Sylvia.”

“What’s she done now?”

“Nothing. She’s worried about me, that’s all.”

“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes as she answered and turned back to the view of the blueberry fields.

“Why don’t you like her, Jules?” His question was sincere. Ever since Sylvia had come back with him from Warsaw the previous year, Julia’d been difficult with her. He never could figure out why.

“I don’t know, I can’t put my finger on it. But there’s something about her. She’s not…”

“Not what, Kaminski material?”

“No.” She shut her eyes before answering. “She’s not honest, Adam.”

“And you know this how?”

“Just a gut feeling.”

Adam nodded, turning his eyes back to the road, and wondered what she wasn’t telling him. Perhaps when it came to recognizing people with a secret, it was like the kids used to say. It took one to know one.

“So why can’t you put that gut to work on this case. Think of anyone who might have ended up with your statue. Maybe someone’s trying to frame you.”

“What?” She sat up in her seat, lines of worry cutting across her face. “Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to think outside the box here.”

“That’s a terrible thought.” She shook her head, her eyes back on the road. Traffic was slowing in front of them, the expressway lit up with red lights. And farther up the road, flashing red and blue lights.

“Great, traffic.”

“Looks like an accident,” Adam pointed out. Their drive came to a complete halt, then a slow jerk forward and another halt. This was not going to be a quick and easy drive after all.

“Okay.” Julia sat up straighter, her face serious. “Let’s use this time. Tell me, who are the suspects in the case?”

Adam laughed and shook his head. “I thought this was a day off for you — a chance to get away. Why would I tell you about the case?”

“Because we’re stuck here.” She gestured toward the back end of the car immediately in front of them. “We have to talk about something.”

“Then I’ll tell you about Dad’s research.”

Julia snorted. “Dad did research? I don’t believe you.”

“No, it’s true.” Adam’s voice expressed his own surprise. “A few years back, when he was in high school.”

Julia watched him, waiting for him to continue.

“He found some background info on our grandfather. And his father, too.”

“You still bothered by the letters you found last summer, Adam? That’s crazy. Why do you care if some relatives we never met said some bad things about our great-grandfather?”

Adam shrugged, pulling the car forward another twenty feet. It looked like they still had another mile like this ahead of them before they’d pass the accident. “I don’t know, Jules. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know more about our family history?”

“Me? Nah.” Julia shook her head, slid down in her seat, and rested her feet on the dashboard. “I get enough family time as it is. I don’t need to go back into the past to get more.”

Adam grinned. Julia never had shared his interest in history. “There’s a painting, apparently. Of our great-grandfather.”

“Yeah?” Julia’s question was polite, but her tone was light, her attention on the cluster of cars they were slowly approaching to their right.

“Yeah. Dad found it. In one of the branches of the Free Library.”

“Really?” This seemed to have caught Julia’s attention. “Why would there be a painting of our great-grandfather in a Philly library?”

Adam shook his head, his eyes focusing on the bent mess of steel that used to be a car pulled over to the right side of the road. The ambulance was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully whoever had been in that car was well on his way to the nearest hospital. “I don’t know, that’s why I want to look into it. Maybe go see the painting, see what I can find out.”

“Sure, sounds fun.” Julia yawned and rested her head against the back of the chair.

Adam smiled and kept his mouth shut. A few hundred feet more, and he was past the accident, out of the mind-numbing traffic. Julia’s head nodded to the side. He hit the accelerator and thought about why he was really going to Atlantic City.

Maybe because it had been Ian Heyward’s suggestion, and he was curious about Dr. Heyward and his surprising past. Matt certainly wanted to keep the focus there. But Adam was still interested in Grace Evans, too. There was something about her. A woman who always got what she wanted. No matter the cost. And she wasn’t above lashing out to hurt people who got in her way. Look at how fast she had lodged that complaint against him with his captain.

And then there was Roc Lubrano. A developer with ties to illegal smuggling, easy access to stolen artwork, and a clear motive. But not a motive to kill Oliver Ryan-Mills. To kill Ian Heyward, maybe. If he were Heyward, he’d be watching his back right about now. But Ryan-Mills? He’d helped the casino, blocking the injunction. Giving the tribe more time to move forward.

So why had Ryan-Mills partnered up with Heyward to fight the casino? Given his role in helping the casinos move forward, it didn’t make any sense.

The scent of salt hung in the air as Adam hit the last toll on the expressway. Around one more bend, and the casinos and hotels of Atlantic City loomed before him, lights on and gaudy even at this time of day. Adam had to admit, he could understand why people were fighting to prevent something like this from being built in Center City Philadelphia.

But he wasn’t here to judge the relative merits of casinos. He was here to form a judgment of Roc Lubrano, and gather whatever facts he could about the man, his connections, and his way of doing business.