18
Leave it alone? How could I leave it alone now? After finding a photograph of Granddad’s painting in Capone’s file?
Tears blurred my eyes as I drove out of Nana’s parking lot. Stopping at the exit, I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. What did I think? That she would suddenly forgive me for begging Granddad to stay home with me? That she’d forget I was the reason he’d been in harm’s way?
I slammed on my turn signal and blinked back the tears. It didn’t change anything. Granddad deserved justice, whether Nana loathed the idea of another investigation or not.
A text alert chimed on my phone. Nate asking if I could give him a lift home from my parents’ or if he should ask my dad. I tapped in that I’d be there in a few minutes.
The traffic blocking my exit began to move, exposing a black Lexus parked on the other side of the street. The same black Lexus that followed me from Capone’s. And this time, it was close enough I could make out the license plate.
I bypassed the radio in case the driver was monitoring signals and phoned the FBI radio room for his info instead.
“The car is part of a fleet for a company called XYZ Inc.,” the operator said.
“What kind of company?”
“Import/export.”
“Is it under federal investigation?”
I heard more keyboard tapping. “Not that I have a record of.”
“Okay, thank you.”
Behind me, a horn beeped. Traffic had cleared, and I was blocking the guy’s exit. I turned right onto the street, so the guy in the Lexus would have to pull a U-turn, and called Tanner. “Your case happen to be connected to XYZ Inc.?”
“Why?”
“One of their employees is tailing me.”
“Where are you?” The urgency in his voice answered my other question. XYZ Inc. was definitely connected.
I squinted at the street names on the intersection I was approaching and shouted them out, then added, “He’s three cars back.”
“I’m at Malone’s Grill five blocks down. Give me a second to pay my bill and—”
“I’m not picking you up. If this guy sees me with you, he might be more inclined to hurt me.”
“Yeah, so drive by, I’ll pick up his tail as you pass, and then you can work on losing him.” He spoke to someone at his end of the line, and a moment later, the background noise changed as if he’d stepped outside. “Where did you pick up the tail?” he asked, the beep of a car door lock punctuating the question.
“As I left a murder scene thirty-five minutes ago. I stopped at my grandmother’s house and he was still waiting for me when I came out.”
“The Capone murder?” An uncharacteristic edge laced his voice. “The police van transporting the evidence just blew to smithereens.”
“What?” The ledger, the photos . . . they were my only hope of tracking down Granddad’s murderer. “Your guys are connected to Truman Capone?”
“I didn’t think so, but you just put them at the scene.”
I rolled my car past Tanner as he climbed into his SUV, and my heart tripped into double time at the panic on his face.
“Was anyone hurt in the explosion?”
“Two officers were seriously injured. The suspects hit the van with a couple of grenades as the officers were climbing in.”
I studied my rearview mirror.
Tanner let a second car pass him after the Lexus, then pulled in behind it.
I coasted into the next intersection and cranked a hard left at a sudden break in traffic. “Why blow up the van? If they were worried about evidence incriminating them, why didn’t they clear it out when they killed Capone?”
“Someone must’ve surprised them.”
Horns honked at the Lexus as it cut off traffic to make the same left.
I grabbed the next right. “Capone’s place was deserted when I got there. They could’ve hung back and waited for another chance if that were true.”
“Maybe someone else killed Capone. Someone not connected to them. Where are you now?”
“Take the next left.”
I did as he suggested and passed him at the next block. “So you think they showed up after hearing about the murder on the news?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. And maybe the guys who blew up the van aren’t connected to the ones on your tail.”
“Yeah? And I suppose you think pigs can fly too?”
The Lexus suddenly accelerated and veered into oncoming traffic, passed the two cars behind me and then screeched back into my lane a hair before a honking cube van would’ve rearranged his windshield.
“What did you do?” I yelled at Tanner.
The bus in front of me slowed. I swerved around it using the turning lane.
The Lexus swerved into the oncoming lane and rammed me into the side of the bus. The airbags exploded, and the next thing I knew I was staring out the passenger window at a bus-sized image of the local news anchor’s face.
Behind me, Tanner flipped on his siren and bubble light.
The Lexus sped off, clipping another car in the intersection.
The clipped car did a three sixty and plowed into my front end, bouncing me off the steering wheel of my now airbag-less car.
Tanner screeched to a stop beside me and yanked open my door. “You okay?”
“Yeah, go after that guy.”
“I alerted the police. They’ll catch him. I need to check on the other driver.”
As Tanner struggled to get the other driver’s door open, I brushed the shattered glass off my lap and did my best to ignore the faces pressed to the bus window and the reek of gasoline.
A rubbernecker crawling by from the opposite direction flicked his cigarette out his window.
“Idiot.” I jumped out of the car to ensure it wouldn’t spark the leaking gasoline.
Flames licked the ground.
“Tanner, get her out of there. It’s going to blow!” I waved to the people on the bus. “Get off the bus! Off the bus!” I raced around the car to give Tanner a hand with the trapped female driver.
He pulled out his Leatherman knife and sliced the seat belt at its base. “I got her. Go!”
I raced to the bus and steered escaping passengers toward a nearby parking lot.
The lady’s car exploded in a fireball.
“Tanner!”
“You’re, like, a magnet for trouble,” my old high school friend Matt Speers said, sidling up to me next to the convenience store I’d chosen for a semblance of cover as I watched the tow truck load my blackened, crumpled car.
“Is that what they teach you to say in police school to cheer someone up?”
He chuckled. “No, I thought it up all by myself.”
Manufacturing a smile, I wrapped my arms around my aching ribs. Airbags didn’t feel so pillowy when they exploded into your chest. I shifted my focus from my car to Tanner talking animatedly on his cell phone as an EMT wrapped gauze around the burn on his arm. He’d insisted on being the last person they attended to, saying he’d had worse sunburns, but that hadn’t stopped tough guy from wincing as the gauze hit his skin.
Thankfully, no one was seriously injured. They transported the other driver to the hospital because she was in shock, but she hadn’t appeared to have any injuries.
Tanner pocketed his phone, thanked the EMT, and then joined Matt and me. “XYZ Inc. reported the car as stolen a few minutes before I phoned 911 to report the hit-and-run on a federal agent. Police found its burned-out remains ten minutes ago behind an abandoned factory in North Riverfront.”
“And let me guess. No one saw the driver?”
“Bingo.”
“Do you think the car was stolen?”
“Not a chance. XYZ Inc. is one of Dmitri’s holding companies. He’s got to be behind the attack.”
“Or someone wants you to think he is,” Matt interjected.
“What did the police learn about Saturday’s shooter?” I asked.
“Nothing helpful,” Tanner said. “Every witness disagreed on the make, model, and color of the gunman’s vehicle, and no one saw the gunman.”
“You think you were the shooter’s target too?” Matt asked.
I gave him my best duh? look.
He shrugged. “Ramming your car is a big step down from a drive-by shooting, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. For all we know, the guy with the cigarette was in on it.”
“Bad guys are only that coordinated in the movies. But trust me, there are plenty of screw-looses who’d flick a cigarette without thinking.”
“Or to see if they could cause chaos.”
“That too.” Matt looked from Tanner to me. “If you don’t need me to give you a lift home, I’ve got to get back to work.”
The accident reconstruction team was still taking photographs and measurements on the pavement, even though the last of the vehicles had been towed.
“I’ll take her home,” Tanner said, then cocked his head at me. “Is that your phone chirping?”
“Oh, with all this traffic noise, it didn’t register.” I dug it out of my purse. “Six missed messages.” All from Nate. I thumbed through them.
Is everything okay? Did you get called out? Just heard about a traffic accident. Please tell me that wasn’t you. Serena, I’m getting really worried. Praying you just got sidetracked and your phone’s lost its charge.
“Your aunt?” Tanner asked.
“Nate. He drove Aunt Martha home from Capone’s in her car, and I said I’d give him a ride back to the apartment.” I glanced at my watch. “Over an hour ago.”
“We can swing by and pick him up.”
I tapped in Sorry for the delay. On my way now.
On the drive to my parents’, I caught Tanner up on why Aunt Martha had been at Capone’s and about Detective Richards’s investigation and on what we found in Capone’s apartment—the evidence that had been destroyed.
At the mention of the photograph of my grandfather’s painting, he reached across the console and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry.”
Tears burned my eyes at the warmth in his voice, his touch. But I managed to hold it together. Forced out a chuckle even. Nana would be proud. “We may have lost the ledger, but I snapped a picture of the photograph of Granddad’s painting. That’s something. It’s one more piece of the puzzle, and one way or another, I’ll figure out how it fits.”