“Nick brought more presents!” EG exclaimed, dancing through the hall when I returned home. “And Zander is upstairs wrapping his. This will be the best Christmas ever!”
No matter how world-weary I became, I’d always have this moment of pure joy. The cynical, purple-haired gremlin who had showed up at my door last spring was now an almost-normal nine-year-old bouncing with perfectly ordinary holiday excitement.
“We’re all buying you toads,” I told her, hanging onto the tote bag on my shoulder which held a few stocking stuffers I’d picked up on the way home from my visit with Josh Arden’s father. “Purple toads, sparkly toads, horned toads. How many are we for dinner?”
Being a fan of bats and not toads, she grimaced and attempted to peek in my bag.
“The gang’s all here,” Nick announced, emerging from the library across the hall. “Patra is upstairs with Juliana, primping and exchanging dirty family secrets.”
“The whole gang?” I asked, lifting a knowing eyebrow as EG gave up on spying and danced off to examine presents again.
“Well, except the head cuckoo,” he said, understanding. “Mallard is crushed but keeping a stiff upper lip.”
Our tough butler idolized Magda, doting on the memory of her as a little girl. He tolerated us because we’d brought her home after all these years. Magda thrived on adrenalin these days and would never settle down, but like so many, Mallard liked to dream of the good old days that never really were.
“Now, if we could drag Graham from the attic, we could have a true three-ring circus,” I said in mixed satisfaction and frustration. I wanted family around me. Graham was becoming part of my family, but he refused to acknowledge it. Smart boy.
Zander trailed out of the library bearing his tablet computer. He solemnly showed us the screen.
Body-sniffing dogs had led the police to the grave in Julie’s photos. They’d uncovered one corpse and the dog indicated there were others. The headlines screamed about the good reverend being a suspect. Dang. I’d been afraid of that.
Pragmatically, I hoped it drew attention away from Julie, because I knew she wouldn’t let up about her missing friends. I wanted her under the radar while we searched.
“The truth will out,” I said. “We just need to see that it’s the whole truth. We’ll talk about it after dinner.”
Mallard, as usual, had produced a feast fit for the varied diets of an eccentric family. I noted with interest that the twins dived into my favorite dish—a Persian frittata made with spinach and goat cheese. Nick, Tudor, and EG preferred the meatloaf and potatoes—although Mallard’s wizardry had added cheese and nearly-invisible vegetables for the nutrition-avoiders. Model-thin Patra took minuscule shares of everything, particularly the vegetable side dishes, preferring to taste but not to actually eat a full meal.
Copper-haired adolescent Tudor was an introvert like me, but even he relaxed at a table full of people capable of understanding his formidable mind. I’m not a Pollyanna by any means. If we’d all been raised to sit at the table together every night of our lives, we’d probably have abraded each other’s weak spots until our patience wore out. The fights would have been the stuff of legend.
But we were still in that happy getting-to-know-each-other stage, and it was Christmas. This was as close to peace on earth, goodwill toward men that could be expected, and I lapped up every minute of it. I needed to store the joy for the bleak days to come, when they all left again.
“I brought home an ornament-painting kit,” I announced after dessert—a Black Forest Cake to die for, given the level of cholesterol ingested. “EG, I thought you could use some of the paints for finishing that camel for the Christmas play at school. Tudor, I thought you could use Graham’s 3-D printer to make your own ornaments for EG to paint.”
Tudor gaped. “A 3-D printer? Really? May I go upstairs now?”
The candelabra centerpiece—Graham’s window on our world—didn’t object, bless his pea-pickin’ heart. Our attic spider liked encouraging Tudor’s dangerous technical skills.
“The kit with the paint is on my upstairs desk. Take a look at what real ornaments look like so we don’t end up with all Star Wars figures, please. EG?” I lifted an eyebrow in her direction.
She wasn’t enthusiastic about the camel, but at the mention of Star Wars figures, I could see her contemplating what evil ornaments she could persuade Tudor to make. She nodded and trotted off after him. I knew my siblings. They might want to know everything that was going on, but they were still kids. They liked their toys. And they were smart enough to know they could fish out interesting information later, after the boring talk.
“You are wickedly manipulative,” Nick admonished as he produced the brandy from the sideboard.
“I learned from the best.” I poured hot water over a ginger-infusion tea.
“You have a creative mind that took what you learned to the outer limits,” Patra corrected, not necessarily with approval, as I poured her tea.
Zander sampled Nick’s brandy. Juliana went for the tea. Both intelligently sat back and waited.
The Council of War had begun.
“Have you heard from your friend yet?” I asked Juliana.
She frowned and shook her head. “I heard a woman’s scream before the gunshots. Maryam wasn’t home. I am very worried. It is not like her to not respond to my calls.”
I hadn’t put together a timeline yet, but I doubted there would be time to bury a body in this scenario, and the police would have found any other bodies by now. There was hope for Maryam.
“But the police only found Arden at the scene, and the security tapes don’t show anyone else present. No women,” Zander said. “Mr. Graham has the most amazing contacts. We know everything the police know.”
I wouldn’t tell our goody-two-shoe siblings that Graham had probably hacked police computers. There was some possibility he came by the information legitimately. He occasionally surprised me—not often, but sometimes.
“How much of the area where the shooting took place was covered by the cameras?” Nick asked, sprawling his long legs under the table and tilting his chair back. “And why do we care what happens to a pompous airhead?”
Since that had been my question earlier, I had to point out the less-than-obvious. “Because Magda cares. And because Julie—and her friend—may be in danger. And because Reverend William Arden, Josh’s father, is Graham’s friend.”
“Really?” Patra suddenly looked interested. “Could he get me in to talk to the son when he wakes up? I’ve already taken the information about the park’s money problems and built up background, but if I could have Josh Arden’s story. . .”
We had Patra hooked and on the case. I lifted my eyebrows at Nick. We’d been through enough together that he understood without words. He tossed back a swallow of his brandy.
“The Brits pretty much know everything we know about Rose and his partners. Presidential elections are hot topics over there. My boss would owe me if I provide whatever we find out about the embezzlement at GenDef and its connection to the park, since GenDef is an international weapons dealer suspected of selling to terrorists,” he admitted. “Not exactly altruistic reasons, but I’ll help where I can.”
“World peace is a reason,” the candelabra intoned. “Which might happen if you’ll remove your mother from the premises. She is currently dragging an ex-CIA agent through the mud at the park, along with the police chief. She will undoubtedly be parked at the hospital next, and has an appointment in GenDef’s office at noon tomorrow.”
Eyes widening, Zander and Julie stared at the ornate Victorian silver centerpiece. Nick whacked his fork against the base, probably hoping to ring Graham’s ears. Since we needed our spider’s cooperation, I didn’t shove the microphone into the sideboard as had been our wont when we first arrived.
“Josh once had a crush on Magda,” I threw into the teapot for flavor.
Silence reigned. It was lovely.
Before Graham could steal the show again, I brought the discussion back into focus. “Have they dug up any more bodies? We need to start identifying missing people, tracing their whereabouts before they disappeared, and following the money. Where did the embezzled funds end up? They’ll come down hard on the reverend if the park really is in financial trouble.”
“He didn’t shoot himself,” Julie protested.
“There is no honor among thieves,” Nick said cynically. “That’s how cops think. We have to prove he didn’t know about the embezzlement or any bodies. That’s a lot of naiveté.”
“And you said he offered you concert tickets,” I reminded her. “If it turns out that these tickets lead to parties where rich men pick up young girls for immoral purposes, then he’s in way deep.”
“I think he is a kind man and people are using him,” she said stubbornly, crossing her arms.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Patra said. “I’ve done the research. Josh Arden turned in a high school coach who wanted him to throw a game in return for a free ride to college. In the pro’s, he reported team members to the gaming commission for using under-inflated balls. The guy is a walking target.”
“He’s a hero,” Julie protested.
“Which makes him a target,” Nick explained. “There is nothing criminal minds like better than to prove that good is a weakness and nice guys finish last. It justifies their existence.”
Impressed, I raised my teacup in salute. “Wisdom is, Master.”
Zander held up the tablet he’d been typing on. “The police dogs have been working on the incomplete foundation for one of the pyramids. Apparently concrete was to have been poured a month ago, but work has slowed to a crawl, so they’re still able to dig. Speculation is that the male body they have sniffed out is that of the missing embezzler, George Paycock, but the coroner has not confirmed it. It has not been there long. There is a female corpse as well, but it has been there a while, and there is no identification yet.”
Julie frowned worriedly. That might be the first body she’d filmed.
“I suppose they found them with Magda looking on,” Patra said. “What are the chances that her cohorts were the ones who revealed Paycock’s embezzlement, and she bears responsibility for his death?”
“He disappeared weeks before Magda arrived. That’s a pretty large leap, grasshopper,” I said, trying to puzzle through her logic.
“Not when you know Magda has spies in every defense industry organization on the planet,” the candelabra reported. “She’s playing a larger game. Stick to the small fry and leave the planet out.”
I stuck my tongue out at the ornament, not caring if Graham was monitoring us visually. If he was, I knew I was raising his temperature in lewd ways.
“Back to Joshua Arden. Was he near this grave site when he was shot?” I asked. “We have way too many crimes and loose ends and I want connections.”
“No, he was not near any of the interesting structures where I aimed my cameras,” Julie said. “That is why the videos of the shooting are bad. The school’s security camera caught him walking toward a maintenance shed. There are several gunshots. He crumples, holding his middle, as if the bullets come from the shed or the shrubbery nearby. We see no women screaming. No one runs to him. If I had not heard. . .” She let the sentence drop.
We could all imagine where it would have ended. Josh would have bled out and died before anyone found him—unless there were witnesses, which the screams seemed to indicate there were. “Did anyone else call 911 at the same time you did?”
“The police reports confirm the shooter was in the shrubbery near the shed,” Zander reported, zipping through his tablet. “Dispatch reported two calls to 911, one of them untraceable, the other Julie’s. They are trying to follow an unknown call to the reverend’s phone placed ten minutes before the shooting, but they suspect a burner phone.”
“Julie, you still have yours?” I asked.
She reddened and shook her head. “I had hidden it in my drawer. I couldn’t find it when I returned last night, that is why I used the bugged phone to text Zander and make the 911 call. But Reverend Arden couldn’t have received any call. His phone battery was dead.”
“Might Maryam have your burner phone?” I suggested gently.
Julie opened her mouth, closed it, then looked at her newly cleaned-out phone. She flipped through her contacts and pushed one, presumably to Maryam. She got no reply but left a message. Then she looked at Zander. “I do not have my burner number in here.”
He pulled out his phone and showed it to her. She added to her contact list and hit it. I held my breath as it rang through the speaker.
“Hello?” a faintly accented female voice answered warily.
“Maryam,” Julie said in relief. “It is me. I am with family. Where are you? Can we help?”
“Julie.” The voice sounded weepy. “Are you all right? We were so worried. Lucas said you were with the reverend last night.”
“Lucas is with you?” Julie asked.
I didn’t have a clue who Lucas was, but she obviously did. We all waited, although not patiently. Nick poured another brandy. Patra picked at some chocolate peppermint candies on the sideboard. Zander looked as if he might hyperventilate.
“We’re witnesses,” Maryam whispered through the speaker. “I need to go home to my papa before my brother finds out. Lucas wants to go to the police, but I told him it’s dangerous.”
I was fairly certain the candelabra groaned in exasperation. Or maybe that was me.
“Introduce me to your friend, please,” I said, holding out my hand for the phone.
“My sister wishes to talk to you,” Julie said hurriedly. “She knows important people. You can trust her.” She handed over the phone.
I turned up the phone speaker.
“Reverend Arden may die if we do not catch the shooter,” I said. “Julie is in hiding for fear the shooter will think she was the witness. The police are digging more bodies out of graves on the campus as we speak. You and Lucas need to tell us everything you know. It’s probably not good to return to your homes yet, so we’ll arrange a safe hiding place.”
I could hear whispering on the other end of the line. I would have liked to reach through the phone and drag her into the twenty-first century, but Julie had said her friend was from Pakistan. Her fear of authority probably came from her family and demonstrated strong survival instincts. I knew nothing of Lucas, which worried me, but at least he wanted to talk to the police.
A man’s voice came to the phone. “Maryam still wants to go home. Can you arrange to send her there after we’ve talked?”
I grimaced and glanced around the table. No one looked happy with that alternative, but Nick reluctantly nodded. The others followed his lead.
“If the police don’t object, we can get her out. You will be doing the world, and Reverend Arden, a favor by telling us what happened.”
“We don’t know much at all,” he warned. “We just don’t want to be on anyone’s radar. Find us a safe place, and we’ll talk.” He gave us the address of their hotel.
“Give us half an hour,” I suggested, crossing my fingers and hoping we could come up with something. “For safety, we’ll call you back on another burner phone. The one you have shouldn’t be tapped, but it’s best to avoid using anything else the school might have had access to.”
Julie grabbed her phone. “Maryam, these are good people. They will help, I promise.”
“I’m sorry I ran,” the female voice said, obviously crying. “I was so very afraid.”
The phone clicked off. I had to hope that at least Lucas understood my warning, and that they wouldn’t throw away the phone that was our only means of reaching them again.
“Can we bring them here?” Julie asked anxiously.
“No,” thundered the candelabra.
Since that was my reaction as well, I didn’t argue. “If you’re still a suspect, it’s best not to bring them near you,” I said more politely. My more personal reaction was that I didn’t want dangerous strangers inside my family fortress.
Zander’s tablet beeped. He glanced down at it in surprise and read off an address that I instantly looked up on my phone—a secure neighborhood on the edge of the Adams-Morgan district north of here and near Nick. Our attic spider was quick. All we had to do was wish for a safe house and he produced one. Knowing Graham, though, he probably had access to secure houses all over the city, maybe a few states.
I showed the location to Nick, who nodded approval.
“How?” Zander asked in confusion, staring at his screen.
I pointed at the silver centerpiece, and his eyes widened. Graham had that effect. I should quit calling him a spider in the attic and refer to him as our Evil Genie.
The discussion broke down into the hows and whys of transporting them from the too-public hotel where they were hiding to the safe house. It was too late to go over to the park and retrieve Maryam’s clothing. That would have to wait until morning. I left Nick with Julie and Zander to work out details of rescuing our witnesses.
Patra donned her coat and swung her heavy purse over her shoulder. “This has been enlightening, folks, but I have to go. Let me know if we can get in to see Arden and keep me up to date on our paranoids.”
I followed her out of the dining room. She didn’t immediately leave but stopped in the parlor to examine our distorted tree.
“Give Sean my regards,” I said dryly, since she had a perfectly good room upstairs.
Ignoring my goad, she produced an ornament from her bag and looked around for an empty place on the branches. “I intend to pick Sean’s brains on what he knows about your father and his and GenDef. He had access to his father’s papers, but he’s not communicative on the subject.”
“Will he help if he knows GenDef is a suspect in this case? They’re high on my list for assassin hiring.” Not that I saw a point in hiring professionals to kill an embezzler, if that really was Georgie’s body, but that was the way my mind worked. A lover’s spat didn’t seem likely to end in concrete.
“Sean knows Rose’s cohorts had my father killed, but he’s still not sharing, so I can’t say. He’s probably trying to protect us.” She hung a shiny gold wreath on the branch. “But it’s time Sean and I had a little heart-to-heart. I’ll let you know what I find out, if you’ll do the same.”
Her father had died years ago, but Patra had only recently discovered he’d been killed by our own side in a middle-Eastern war zone—while investigating some of the warmongers currently behind Jesus World.
“Knowledge may be dangerous, but ignorance is deadly,” I said, giving her my promise in words we both understood.
Patra pulled on her beret, gave me a peace sign, and slipped into the early evening winter gloom.
I checked the ornament she’d hung. She’d had it engraved to say In memory, Patrick Llewellyn, beloved father, RIP.