Chapter 21

“Thank you for escorting us,” Julie said to the two uniformed policeman standing at the trailer door as Maryam hurried in to pack her bags. “It is very disturbing to think a place of godliness is polluted by a murderer.”

One shrugged and turned his steely-eyed gaze to the park. The other just nodded impatiently.

Lucas pushed her toward the steps. “Pack and hurry it up. Maryam’s brother is waiting for her.”

Maryam had finally broken down and given Julie her brother’s number. Ana’s magic genie in the attic had somehow summoned him to do his duty to his sister.

“I packed my things already.” Julie squeezed past Lucas’s big body to address the policeman again. “May I run over to the classroom to collect my laptop?” She pointed at the two-story block building just down the road.

“We can’t be in two places at once, miss,” the taller officer said disapprovingly.

“You can see me walk over.” Unlike Zander, she didn’t have a little tablet with all her life inside it. The laptop was all she had.

Lucas jumped down from the trailer steps and gestured at the officers. “If you’ll look after Maryam, I’ll go with Juliana. It shouldn’t take a minute. I have a key to the classroom.”

The uniformed men looked relieved. Juliana wanted to have a tantrum but, accustomed to the attitude that she was a frail helpless female, she merely hurried down the road. Tantrums were wasted if she was getting her way.

As they approached the concrete block building where classes were held, she could see the door was already open. She hesitated. “Did they not say the school was closed?”

“Yes. Everyone was dismissed early for the holidays,” Lucas confirmed, halting with her.

“I hear voices.” She glanced over her shoulder. One of the policemen was looking in their direction. She aimed for the side of the building, as if that had been her goal all along.

Amazingly, Lucas didn’t argue. They walked past a ragged hedge where they couldn’t be seen and ducked down beneath a window.

“That jackass has left us bankrupt!” A man’s low roar nearly rattled the thin pane over their heads. “We need their bankrolls. Surely there has to be some of those girls still around. They didn’t all fly off to Never-Never Land.”

A woman’s angry reply didn’t carry as well. Julie strained to hear but could only catch the tone and inflection. “Mrs. Overcamp?” she whispered to Lucas.

He shrugged and fiddled with his phone.

Annoyed, she returned to listening as the man shouted again. “Look, Ed has a party coming up. There’s no better way of getting these guys to open their checkbooks than getting them drunk, and they’ll do that with pretty women around. You got a better way?”

Again, the low murmur. The man cursed and stormed out. Julie ducked into the hedge and only saw his heavy construction boots stomp by.

“She’s leaving,” Lucas murmured, listening to his phone. “Give her a minute and we’ll get your laptop.”

She widened her eyes and stared at his phone but kept her mouth shut as she heard a key scrape in a door. A moment later, Mrs. Overcamp’s Uggs stamped by.

“Eish, you have the classroom bugged?” she asked in horror, staring at his phone as he put it away.

“Do you want to know what she was saying or not?” he asked smugly, leading her around to a rear door and unlocking it.

“Who are you?”

“Security, like I said. Don’t ask questions. Just grab the laptop and let’s beat it before someone comes to check on us.”

She ran down the rear hall to her classroom, snagged her laptop, and emptied her desk drawer. Finding an unused USB drive, she flung it at Lucas, who was examining Mrs. Overcamp’s computer with interest. He caught the gadget, raised his eyebrows, and without a word, plugged it in and began copying the hard drive. Mrs. Overcamp always used the school password that everyone could access.

“The machine’s too slow,” he griped as Julie packed all her things into her briefcase and came over to watch him. “And the computer is filled to capacity.”

“We’d be doing her a favor to take it with us and clean it out,” she suggested mischievously.

“Theft of information and grand larceny, nice.” He unplugged the USB when it hit capacity and shoved it in his coat pocket. “Let’s go.”

They left by the rear door, locking it after them. One of the policemen was already walking down the lane in their direction when they emerged from behind the hedge. He looked relieved and motioned them to hurry up.

And there, watching them gather in front of the trailer, was Mr. Gregory, the contractor she’d seen with Mrs. Overcamp before. His scowl was threatening as he took in their faces. Without a word, he walked back toward the construction area.

He was wearing heavy-duty construction boots.

“Not good,” Lucas muttered as they hurried toward the waiting police car outside the gate.

“Could you take us to the police station instead of home?” Julie requested as they climbed in.

“You’ve already given your report,” the taller policeman said. “We were told to see you safely delivered to your residence.”

“Then you had best make certain we aren’t followed.” She glanced nervously out the back window and opened her phone when it buzzed.

Where are you? Ana texted.

Leaving park. With police.

Julie could almost hear the urgency in the instant flash of an image on her screen. She studied the photo, didn’t recognize the face, and then realized what she was looking at—an ID badge from the general contractor working on the park—the contractor who had just glared at them.

Looking at the screen over her shoulder, both Maryam and Lucas made inappropriate noises.

“Who would follow a police car?” the policeman driving the squad car asked scornfully, although she noticed he checked his mirror.

She held her phone out to the policeman in the passenger seat. “This man has just been arrested for assaulting my sister.” The cop took it, examined it, and frowned.

“That was his boss scowling at us when we left,” Lucas said, taking the phone back and using it to text Ana back.

“Yoh!” Julie protested. “What are you doing?”

“We can’t even take you to the safe house if we’re followed. I’m telling your family we need to get you out of here.”

Julie snatched the phone back. “I am not hiding. No skebanga will drive me from my family at Christmas.”

She smiled at Ana’s text and held it up to Lucas. Julie stays with us. you stay with maryam.

“She knew it wasn’t you texting?” Lucas scowled at the phone, took it back, and started copying her contact list.

“You are such a. . .” The only English word she could think of was one Zander had once used—dick. She thought that might be inappropriate. She snatched her phone back again and texted to Ana that she would go with Maryam to meet her brother, then return home.

Ana texted back that she would send a limo to pick her up when she was ready.

“Construction truck on our tail,” the policeman driving the car said as Maryam huddled in the corner with her carry-on and Julie fought with Lucas over the phone. “Prepare yourselves.” He hit the siren and the gas pedal and left the truck in his dust.

“Show me the trail of the embezzled money,” I ordered, standing over Zander’s shoulder as he pulled up a spreadsheet on the computer screen. He’d returned from the police station by Metro, leaving Julie and Maryam with Lucas and the police. I admired his dedication to his task.

“The FBI has already done most of the work,” he said, almost apologetically. “They have traced the funds leaving GenDef and being deposited into an account that the board of Jesus World controls.”

“But they’ve not found any wrongdoing at the park?” I asked in disbelief.

“They’ve only begun looking. I have downloaded the park’s financials from Mr. Graham’s files. The park is spending buckets of money; much of it appears to be for legitimate expenses. Reverend Arden signs off on most of them, although several board members and employees can apparently approve invoices and control money transfers. I have a list of the largest contractors and businesses receiving payments. Will those help?”

I studied the list of expenditures he brought up. Trusts, LLCs, corporations, no individual names. These guys knew how to make it difficult. “There, that one.” I pointed at an account named WGCI. “That’s a Virginia bank and the park contractor’s name is William Gregory.”

“Then it should be perfectly legitimate,” Zander complained. “They are constructing the park, and they should be paid large sums.”

“We’ll need the construction contracts, see how much they were supposed to be paid. I can’t see how that park can have spent this much on rusting skeletons and used tin cans.”

He frowned at the screen. “I will need the contracts and the construction company’s books. I only have the park’s.”

I sat down, took the computer away from him, found the bank account where WGCI’s payments were being deposited, called up Tudor’s hacker program, and rolled my eyes as I broke in easily with User ID: WCGI and password: 123456. Office grunts liked things simple. But all I wanted was the address to which the statements were sent, and if I was really lucky, to find out if the bank downloaded into WCGI’s bookkeeping system. They did.

I turned the computer back to Zander. “Here’s the contracting office’s computer. One can hope both contracts and bookkeeping are in it. Merry Christmas.”

I ran down to my office to line up my thoughts. Julie texted that they were taking Maryam to her brother at the embassy. Graham IM’d that Magda was not on her way to the airport. Magda was the X factor in any equation, and I wanted her out of our hair as much as he did.

I made my own spread sheet. The police had been busy. We had three known bodies at the park: (1) an unknown construction worker last spring who died of a broken neck, (2) George Paycock—police records had confirmed that the dumped body Julie had videoed was his, and (3) and they’d uncovered the remains of an unidentified woman. Since Julie’s friend, Esther, was the only student unaccounted for, I feared the worst.

Rebecca had worked at the park but hadn’t been buried there. She had been strangled and her body had been found in the river. Thanks to Melissa, I now knew her park construction boyfriend had a boat, so I counted her as a fourth park victim.

It was too early for a full post mortem on George Paycock and maybe-Esther, but police reports indicated they’d suffered gunshot wounds before being bulldozed into one of the park’s unfinished foundations. Broken neck, strangulation, and bullets—just the varying manner of deaths said we might have multiple killers using the barren wasteland of the park as a burying ground, which made the river case an outlier.

I needed motives.

I went back to my spreadsheet. CAD received large sums from many donors, most equal to or exceeding the ones from GenDef. Paycock had been accused of embezzling from his employer, GenDef, and hiding the theft by depositing the funds into CAD. He’d not been convicted in court, however.

What would be the point of killing someone who would be going to jail—unless he knew more than the feds did and was about to spill the beans.

Tony Jeffrey, CEO of GenDef, also had access to the company accounts. His name was on the park board, too, although he didn’t seem to be an active participant and wasn’t authorized to sign off on invoices or bank accounts. That made him a little less suspect than George. Besides, I couldn’t see any reason why a well-heeled, lawyered-up CEO had any reason to kill a man accused of embezzling. He would just want his money back.

Or maybe this wasn’t even about the embezzlement. If Paycock was a womanizer. . . one of those construction guys could have taken objection to his attentions to the wrong woman.

Then we had William Gregory, construction contractor. Money from the park was pouring into the WGCI bank account, which was presumably his company. Julie’s summary of her encounter at the school raised him high on my suspicion-o-meter. How could WGCI possibly be almost bankrupt with a money flow like this?

Melissa had said someone called Bill in the construction department had argued with Rebecca. I needed to find out if William Gregory might be that Bill. If so, it would enhance his standing as killer material, but why would he dump her in the Potomac if he was using his bulldozers to bury Georgie and others in the park?

I needed to speak with Mrs. Overcamp and Ed Parker III, trust fund baby, as well as William Gregory. But first I needed to know more about them. I fired up my Cobalt Whiz and began digging.

It didn’t take long to discover that Mrs. Dorothy Overcamp had previously been married to Bryson Gregory, a construction contractor. They had a son and a daughter. Surprise, surprise, William was the son and had taken on daddy’s business. Mrs. Overcamp held part ownership of her son’s construction company.

That smacked of collusion, but the son could have just arranged a job for his mother. Overseeing the marketing department wasn’t exactly a highway to wealth.

EG came home just as I was trying to match Ed Parker’s income with some of the expenses in the park’s books. She usually went straight to her gothic tower, but today she favored me with a visit.

She set Tudor’s plastic blob ornament on my desk. It was now painted a lovely red with eccentrically wobbly gold stars and a few white stripes I thought might represent starlight. My sister is a genius. That does not mean she’s an artist.

“I haven’t hung my own ornament,” she declared, flinging herself into my wing chair. “Tudor is working on something top secret and won’t make what I asked.”

“He hasn’t made his own,” I pointed out. “You can’t expect him to make one for you first. Google origami. I’m betting you can make something special with just construction paper and glitter.”

“Glitter?” Her eyes lit. Her eyes were green like mine and dangerous when narrowed, but they were wide with interest now. “I have lots of glitter and some plastic jewels.”

“And glue?” At her excited nod, I knew I would regret this. “Then go for it.” I handed her a silver Sharpie. “This would look good on purple.”

“Yeahhh,” she breathed happily, snatching the pen. “Can I make more than one?”

“Knock yourself out.” It felt good to steer her creativity down constructive paths for a change.

“Lock her up with the cat,” the intercom said after EG happily ran off to pester Mallard for cookies. “Magda is breaking into Arden’s hospital room, and Patra is over at GenDef’s weapons warehouse pretending she’s working for Jeffrey’s office. Lock them all up with cats.”

“You don’t think I haven’t tried that over all these years?” I asked with annoyance.

“Your other sister and her FBI informant boyfriend just told Sam to return the limo to the park.”

This is one of the many reasons I try not to use Graham’s limo service. He spies on us. In this case, that was a good thing, I thought, maybe.

“What? You mean Juliana?” I was on my feet and two steps from taking the ladder stairs up when I realized Magda’s suitcase sat on my trap door. “FBI informant?” I asked weakly, dropping back in my chair.

“Lucas isn’t a college drop-out. He’s Rebecca’s brother, a trained officer who left his job to spy on CAD. He’s a free-range ticking bomb. And he and Julie have just uploaded Overcamp’s computer contents into Julie’s laptop.”

I didn’t know whether to boggle more over the company Julie was keeping or the fact that Graham was actually talking to me instead of burying me in documents. Well—I glanced at my computer—he was doing both. He had hacked Julie’s laptop and was downloading file copies as fast as she uploaded the originals.

I skimmed through the documents and opened one at random. It appeared to be a B-list of DC political lobbyists. My eyebrows rose at the sums attached to their names.

“Convoluted,” I told the intercom as I opened a few more of the files Julie had apparently stolen from Mrs. O. Julie had texted that the police had delivered her and Lucas to the safe house after their hair-raising police ride.

“Party lists,” he suggested, presumably scrolling through the same files.

I ran a search on the name Rebecca, and found her on a list of other female students with cryptic letters and numbers after their names. Esther and Melissa were there, too. Was Overcamp the one responsible for choosing photogenic students—so she could send them to parties?

“Overcamp hooks up political sleaze balls with eager students in exchange for what?” I demanded.

“PACs raise billions,” he said with an audible shrug. “A choice of available young women might be a reward to fundraisers who meet quotas.”

“Cynic.” But he was probably close to right. Julie had said it sounded as if someone was using the women as lures to open checkbooks. “Rich Ed, Jeffrey the CEO, and Georgie the Embezzler are all on this list for an October party. Gregory isn’t, so how did he hook up with Rebecca?”

“He’s a blue-collar contractor without money or political ambitions. But he does have control of the bulldozer. Keep Julia out of the park.”

My stomach dropped. The intercom clicked off.

I didn’t think too highly of an FBI informant or unemployed cop who would let my little sister walk straight into trouble.

I called Julie. “Gregory could be a killer. Don’t be Magda. Come home and let’s work out the evidence.”

“The evidence is likely to be in the construction office at the park,” she responded. “Gregory has gone home for the day.”

“He just tried to follow you a few hours ago! He probably has mutant goons working for him. Tell Lucas I know who he is, and I’ll call his handlers if he doesn’t bring you back here.”

“Who he is?” she asked dubiously, quoting me.

“Come home, and I’ll tell you.”

“You told me to make my own decisions. Unless you tell me Lucas is a killer, I must trust him.”

Argh, save me from my own advice! “Fine. Then tell him Magda will hoist more than a petard if she finds out where you are. And look up petard.”

I hung up. There wasn’t much point in arguing. I could order the limo home, but I had to respect Julia’s choices. Although I was pretty sure Lucas would be in Julie’s hot seat shortly.

Lucas was Rebecca’s brother. He was looking for the killer who strangled his sister. Would he still protect Julie? I thought a litany of curse words while I did a quick search through Mrs. O’s files. I found no smoking guns. Antsy, I checked what Zander was doing. He had begun an insane spreadsheet showing large sums of money feeding into the park as donations from numerous sponsors and out again to companies that didn’t exactly say “Mechanical dinosaur creator.”

“Going snipe hunting,” I told the intercom. “Zander and Tudor can help you mind the cat.”

I thought my spider may have thrown the intercom across the room. I heard a crash, a crackle, and dead silence. Worked for me.