Island of Thieves Page 15

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Linda Edgemont looked at the clock on the mantel for the third time in as many minutes. A quarter to eleven at night. It felt both later and earlier.

  She’d been awake since before dawn, when the deputy in his black shirt and baseball cap had thumped on the door of her suite at Briar Bay. One knock among many, as other policemen roused the rest of the guests. She recalled stumbling to the suite’s door and barely following what the deputy had said to her. Not that he’d revealed much. It wasn’t until she’d joined the others in the pavilion that she learned that Nelson Bao, the younger, smaller Chinese man, had died.

  Not just died. Found dead. Very different, that phrasing.

  Those two words had repeated in her mind many times throughout the long day. After an abrupt trip home she’d been delivered to her house by midmorning. She had tried to work and given up after her fourth attempt at reading the same paragraph. The notion of sitting and watching television was absurd. Offensive. As though she would be disrespecting the dead man somehow.

  Which was crazy. She hadn’t known Nelson Bao. She’d had relatives, even close friends, die over the years. Their passing had left her less troubled than the death of the Chinese man whom she’d met only a day before.

  She knew why it bothered her so. There was a third word that threatened to reverberate in her brain, along with the other two.

  Culpable.

  The wine had helped some. Or at least buoyed her resolve. It was time to do what she’d been building up to—and dreading—for weeks.

  She went to the kitchen and opened the bottommost drawer by the refrigerator. Hidden beneath the muffin tins and baking supplies was a simple flip phone.

  The phone only had one number programmed into its memory, with a Maryland area code and no name assigned to it. The person at the other end wasn’t in Maryland, but that phone had been purchased there originally, just as hers had. Twins, like the set of walkie-talkies she and her brother had played with when they were children.

  Linda pressed Call and listened to the phone at the other end ring.

  “Yes?”

  Ed’s answering startled her. She’d expected voice mail at this hour, two in the morning on the East Coast.

  They didn’t use names. That had been one of Ed’s first instructions, when he’d handed her the phone. But she knew his voice. It was husky and a little Noo Yawk, which Linda had once found charming.

  “I need to speak with you,” she said.

  “Here we are.”

  “Have you . . . do you know what happened last night?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ed. “I’ve been on the phone all day, handling the fallout.”

  “So it’s done, then? The deal’s canceled?”

  “What? No, of course not. It’s just a setback.”

  “A setback,” she said.

  There was a long silence. Ed gave in first.

  “It was an accident,” he said. “That’s all.”

  Linda’s head ached. She took another moment to select the right words, cautious not to blurt out something best left unsaid, like a name or an amount. Or an accusation that had nothing but her suspicions fueling it.

  “It’s not being treated like an accident anymore,” she said. “Officially.”

  “Is that direct information?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. That doesn’t mean they’re right. They have to make sure every theory is checked off. Procedure. You know how these things roll.” He sounded as though he were persuading himself.

  “I think we should stop. That I should stop.”

  “There’s no need. Nothing has changed.”

  “I have. Or I need to.” Linda rubbed her temple. “It’s overdue.”

  He hummed doubtfully. “Are you negotiating? At this late date—”

  “No. It’s not about getting more. I don’t even want what I already have.”

  It was Ed’s turn to take a pause. Maybe she’d said too much.

  “If you need to stop, of course that’s what we’ll do.” He coughed lightly. “You sound worried . . . There’s no reason to be concerned. I promise you. It’s just a tragedy at a terrible time for all of us. You’ll see.”

  “Very well.”

  “Let’s talk tomorrow. Whatever you need, we’ll make that happen.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Linda hung up. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. It felt like the first deep breath she’d taken in weeks. Funny how stress caught up to you. Dealing with pressure for ages and ages, thinking you were just fine, and then all at once you were crushed in a vise of your own making.

  Ed’s reassurances had helped. Of course Nelson Bao’s death was only an accident. With awful timing.

  Having taken the first step, Linda felt prepared to take the worst one. Confessing to Sofia what she’d done.

  That was a conversation so fraught that the mere idea of it had plagued Linda’s dreams. She continually invented reasons it shouldn’t happen. For a time she’d even thought she might be able to live with the situation, as terrible as it was. But no longer. Linda supposed that was the tiny blessing that had been born from this horrible week.

  Sofia would be wounded. Furious. Learning the truth might be catastrophic to their friendship and likely Linda’s career as well. But without that confession, she couldn’t face Sofia again.

  Linda put the phone back in the drawer and decided that she was ready to try sleeping. Tomorrow she would reach out to Sofia. Privately, away from the office and its many inquisitive eyes.

  In the lightless den of his Brooklyn apartment, Ed Chiarra sat and stared at the phone as its tiny screen dimmed. Its ringing had woken his wife. She was used to him receiving calls at all hours, but the ringtone of the phone assigned to Linda Edgemont was different from his regular work phone. She’d glared at him while he got out of bed in his boxers, as he’d said “Yes” into the phone and then shut up until he’d found his sweats and left their bedroom. He knew she was angry at her sleep being disturbed and probably convincing herself right now that he was having an affair.

  Which was almost insulting. If he’d wanted to spread it around, shouldn’t his wife of thirteen years think he’d be smarter about it than that? Keeping a cheap little burner phone in his suit jacket’s pocket like some plumber from Poughkeepsie?

  That domestic concern wasn’t even close to being important right now. He knew that. He was just bitching to himself. Putting off what had to come next.

  He went to his desk. His regular work phone was there, plugged into the charger. He called the number that was first in his contacts. James Hargreaves.

  “Sir? Sorry to disturb you,” Ed said.

  “I was awake,” said Hargreaves, with the voice that always reminded Chiarra of frozen tundra. Flat and well below zero.

  “I just received a call from our Seattle asset. They’re very upset. They would like to withdraw.”

  “Did they give a reason?”

  “Not directly. But the events of the past day were . . . emotional.”

  “Hold.”

  There was a change in the pitch of the open line. Ed listened to the almost-silence for three full minutes. Staying calm. He knew what Hargreaves was doing. Listening to a voice record of the conversation Chiarra had just had with Linda Edgemont. Every call to a company phone—temporary burners definitely included—was recorded, regardless of whether the party at the other end was aware. Standard procedure for Paragon Consulting.

  “All right,” Hargreaves said when he returned. “Maintain contact.”

  “If our asset leaves—”

  “Then they leave. We always viewed them as a temporary resource.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “Make it clear that their silence is still required. Keep all transaction records close at hand. We may have to apply some pressure to be certain.”

  “Yessir. I will.”

  Hargreaves closed the call.

  Chiarra rolled his neck
to loosen the muscles. He hadn’t realized he’d been so clenched. He’d thought—he didn’t know exactly what he’d thought would happen.

  There were whispers about Hargreaves around their company. The head man kept himself at a remove. Never lunching with personnel, taking most meetings by videoconference long before and after Zoom was standard procedure for everyone in the world. He even floated in and out of the office at unpredictable hours. When Chiarra had first joined the firm, he figured that distance was some air-of-mystery affectation Hargreaves cultivated to keep things professional. But before long he’d realized that, no, the man really was apart from everyone else. By nature or by training. No one seemed to know for sure where Hargreaves had worked before he’d started Paragon.

  Most of what they did was bread-and-butter: a little surveillance, some forensic accounting. For Chiarra’s part it was largely the same work he’d have been doing at any white-shoe firm, legal reviews of contracts and advising clients on their options. It was the other ten percent that was exciting, when he got to play a part in one of the company’s cover stories. The normal mood around Paragon was casual, even fun.

  Then, on an otherwise average afternoon, some hard-faced operative like Emmet Tucker would turn up unannounced, walk into Hargreaves’s corner office, and shut the door. Everyone on the floor would become very subdued. Rumor had it that guys like Tucker only appeared when a job was going sideways. The office would wait, hushed, to see what mood prevailed. Scorched earth, he’d heard one of the senior staff call it once.

  Maybe that’s why he was so tense, Chiarra thought. Why his knees felt rubbery as he stood. This job, running Linda Edgemont, had been a step up for him. Her withdrawal could be viewed as his failure.

  Chiarra shook his head. That wouldn’t happen. He’d brought Linda in, and Paragon had gleaned great intel from her. Surely that was one in the win column.

  Still, when he went into the office tomorrow, maybe he should gather a few records of his own. Some insurance. He could collect what he needed without leaving an online trail. Print a few pages and keep them close.

  He nodded, feeling more at ease. Couldn’t hurt to be ready to scorch some earth himself, in case it looked like Hargreaves might be sending Tucker to knock on his door some dark night.

  TWENTY-SIX

  At ten o’clock the next morning, Shaw arrived to pick up Addy and Cyndra. Addy’s tidy yellow house sat a few doors down from where Shaw had grown up. The Shaw family home was gone now, replaced by a much more modern and far less interesting house on the same lot at the top of the block. Shaw had noticed that he didn’t tend to look in the house’s direction, preferring to pretend that the old place was still there, looming over the surroundings like a dented helmet on a polished suit of armor.

  He drove the big black Ford pickup truck he’d acquired from the former owner of the high-rise. The truck wasn’t as fun to drive as the Barracuda, but it was easier for Addy to climb in and out of.

  Cyndra fell asleep in the backseat on their way to the university.

  “Up all night gaming?” Shaw asked Addy, with a nod to the snoring teen.

  “Gaming, talking on the phone, watching TV. All at once. So much energy she has on summer vacation, so little during the school year.”

  Shaw smiled. “What were your summer vacations like?”

  “Toil and trouble, mostly. I had a job at a concession stand at Playland as a teenager. That was an amusement park near San Francisco. The place was on its last legs by then. Half the rides didn’t work, and the big coasters had been torn down years before. I didn’t care. I loved it. Much better than being at home, fighting with my sisters. You?”

  “Felonies. With school out, Dono had me as a full-time accomplice.”

  “Of course.”

  They parked, roused Cyndra with some effort, and strolled onto the Washington campus. Addy had come with Shaw to make introductions. Cyndra stayed glued to her phone while walking.

  “Eyes up, dear,” Addy said, in a way that told Shaw she said the phrase multiple times each day. Cyn navigated the flock of similarly distracted undergraduates crossing their path and managed to halt before running into Shaw’s back.

  He’d stopped in front of the big fountain. The water soared in a twenty-foot-high central plume as half a dozen smaller jets arced outward from their larger brother. None of them spraying far enough to douse the students who sat around the rim. It was the Thursday of finals week, Addy had told him, the very end of the school year. Shaw could feel the energy. Half exhausted panic, half hysterical elation.

  Shaw had been on the Washington campus a few times. Most memorably when he was near Cyndra’s age, with Dono. At this same time of year, he recalled, with the spring quarter finished and before the smaller summer classes began. A job on consignment. They had removed some equipment from the storage area of the physics building in the dead of night, just a few hundred yards away from where they stood now. Shaw didn’t recall what the equipment had been, only that it was heavy and still in multiple crates after being delivered a couple days prior to their visit. They had brought handcarts to pull the crates directly out the door and along the pedestrian paths to the other side of the building and into the back of a truck parked on 15th Avenue. The day before, Dono had instructed Shaw in the use of a miter saw to cut the two-by-fours that they used for a ramp into the truck bed. Shaw, as strong as he’d been at fourteen, had still needed Dono’s help to pull the loaded handcart up the ramp.

  “That’s Bagley Hall,” Addy said, pointing to a blunt building that looked to Shaw like the high school from every movie set in the 1950s. Redbrick, arched stone entrances, a flat aspect with each window divided into nine equal panes. “Professor Mills’s class should be letting out. Cyndra, have a look around. You might go here someday.”

  “Ugh,” said Cyndra. “I just got out of school. Let me vacation.”

  Shaw grinned. This was a running debate, a close second to wrangling Cyn’s fashion choices. She had celebrated the end of her middle-school career by dyeing her hair pink and cutting the sleeves and hood off her gym sweatshirt, which she wore inside out so as not to show the now-outgrown school logo. She added cargo shorts and a pair of Doc Martens that Shaw had bought for her birthday. Addy had sighed resignedly when she saw the ensemble but let it go as they were already running late.

  “I’m not saying you’ll enroll tomorrow,” Addy pressed, “but look at the opportunity. Educational and social. There’s nothing to equal your college years. Everyone should have that.”

  “Van didn’t.”

  “I was in the Army,” Shaw said. “A different kind of schooling.”

  “But you didn’t do college. You turned out fine.”

  “‘Fine’ might be stretching it.” Shaw looked around at the rush of students hurrying between classes. Most of them didn’t seem much older than Cyndra. But then he’d probably been just as wide-eyed and gawky when he’d enlisted.

  “I signed up because I didn’t see a better path,” he said to Cyn, “and it worked out. But I was lucky. Usually.” He tapped the left side of his face. “If I’d had the chance, maybe I would have gone to college instead. Here’s one thing the Army taught me: Don’t reject an option before you’ve looked hard at it. Otherwise you’ll always wonder if you could have done better. You know what I’m saying?”

  Cyn nodded. Addy mouthed Thank you over her shoulder.

  “Here’s the professor,” she said out loud.

  Shaw turned to see a tall black woman in a light blue car coat and cat-eye glasses headed toward them at a pace halfway between walking and jogging.

  “Ms. Proctor,” the woman said, her voice causing a passing coed to jump. “How wonderful to see you.”

  “Professor Mills, hello,” Addy said, extending a hand. The women were similar builds, Shaw noted. What Hollis might call sturdy, meaning it as a compliment. But Mills was nearly Shaw’s height, a full foot over Addy’s. Like nesting dolls from the same set. And she was younger
than he’d associated with the word “professor.” Midthirties, max. The edge of a purplish tattoo showed above the neckline of her cotton shirt.

  Mills scoffed. “Call me Jemma, please. What do you have for me here?”

  Shaw realized she meant him. “Van. Hey. I’ve got some pictures . . .”

  “Follow me. This is the one hour I have before a meeting, and I’m going to spend it in my favorite spot, with shade and a smoke, except I gave that second part up.”

  She strode on. Cyndra giggled as they all hurried after the professor, along a path bordering a green lawn that extended for a quarter mile. On a clearer day, Shaw knew, you might see Mount Rainier. Today the overcast sky made the professor’s desire for shade moot.

  Mills seemed to quickly realize the difference in leg lengths and made a circle to slow her pace and walk next to Addy.

  “Habit, moving so fast,” she said. “Sorry. It was Van, right? Addy here was my aunt’s favorite deejay. So much so that she wrote a letter to the radio station when they moved her time slot.”

  “Your aunt was about the only one who noticed,” Addy said, “but I appreciated it.”

  “You were on the radio?” Cyndra said, staring. “When was that?”

  “For about fifteen minutes back when tube tops were terrorizing the nation,” Addy answered. “But I wrote to thank Jemma’s Aunt Bess, and we became friends.”

  Mills pointed to a row of benches and they sat, Shaw and Addy on either side of Mills and Cyndra happy to sprawl on her own and disappear back into the online ether.

  Shaw brought up the pictures he’d taken of the laboratory and handed the phone to Mills.

  “This machine,” he said. “Wyvern GPC-IR. I did enough online homework to learn that GPC stands for ‘gel permeation chromatography’ and I know the machine has something to do with analyzing molecules. Beyond that I need your help.”

  Mills began speaking even as her fingers zoomed in on the image. “Good brand, the Wyvern. Yeah, this all looks like standard stuff. How much do you know about chemistry?”

  “I stopped at making baking-soda-and-vinegar volcanoes in second grade.”