“I absolutely think we can solve the case,” I said loudly, heartened to see her smile in response. “We’re close. We’ve got exactly what we need now.” I glanced toward my purse and the disc inside it. Suddenly, the thought of how it got there washed over me.
The salt stung my tongue. The vinegar soured in my stomach. My throat tightened.
“If I don’t get arrested and thrown in prison for the rest of my life first!” I murmured.
“There, there.” Eve reached over and patted my shoulder. She left a trail of crumbs and salt in her wake, and when she moved back, I brushed it away. “That’s not going to happen. Remember? Vow of silence. Nobody’s ever going to know where that disc came from. And if Yuri ever says we gave it to him… well, we’ll just deny it. Why shouldn’t we? Everything we’ve done, we’ve done to help the authorities. I don’t see them solving Drago’s murder.”
“Except Tyler said something about that, didn’t he?” I reached for another handful of chips, the better to smother my doubts. “He said he’d figured out Beyla’s part in the whole thing.”
“Yeah, just like we have. But he hasn’t been able to prove it. If he could, he would have arrested her by now.” Eve brushed crumbs from her hands and went to the fridge to get two bottles of water. She set one down in front of me. “He can’t prove anything because he doesn’t have the disc. We do. Which makes us way smarter than him. Take that, Tyler Cooper!” She twisted the cap off the bottle, and I couldn’t help but think that as she did, she pictured herself wringing Tyler’s neck.
Eve took a long swallow before she spoke again. “Let’s get this disc over to Yuri and be done with it. What do you say, Annie? Let’s call Yuri.” She reached for the phone. “Where’s his number?”
I dug it out of my purse along with the disc. “Maybe we’d better take a look at the disc before we hand it over to him,” I suggested. “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make a copy, either. You know, in case something happens to this one. Beyla might try to steal it back.”
“Or kill Yuri for it!” Eve gulped a too-big swallow of water and coughed.
I hadn’t thought of that scenario, but after what happened first to Drago and then to Magda, I wouldn’t be surprised. I went into the bedroom and dug through the desk drawer for an extra disc. Eve joined me a moment later.
“I want a look first,” I told her, inserting the disc we’d found at Magda’s into the proper drive. We waited for the disc to boot. When it did, my anticipation melted like an ice cube in the summer sun.
“It’s not in English.” Her nose wrinkled, Eve pointed at the screen. “How are we supposed to know what it says when it’s not in English?”
“Somebody will be able to read it.” I consoled myself with the thought while I clicked through a couple pages of what I guessed was Romanian. “Yuri can probably translate it. He never came right out and said he was Romanian, but I’ll bet he is. He knew that Beyla and Drago were lovers back in Romania. That means maybe he knew them back then. He’ll for sure know what this says.”
“All the more reason to tell him what we found.” Eve had brought the scrap of paper with Yuri’s phone number on it into the bedroom with her. She reached for the bedside phone.
“Not so fast.” I waved to her to relax as I started paging through another couple screens full of incomprehensible writing. “Let’s at least make the copy first,” I said. I had every intention of doing it, except that I was too fascinated by everything on the screen to stop.
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” I said, so engrossed, I was only vaguely aware of Eve standing behind me. “Yuri says that Beyla stole money from the gallery, and that the proof of her scheme is on this disc. But you’d think if this had anything to do with stolen money, there would be numbers. Lots of numbers. Like a ledger or an account book. There’s nothing like that here. There’s just writing. Page after page of it.”
The phone still in her hand, Eve leaned over my shoulder. “Maybe she’s explaining how she did it.”
“I don’t think she’s that stupid.” The little bar at the right side of the screen showed that there were more pages I hadn’t seen. I scrolled down.
“You’re not going to learn Romanian just by looking at it.” Eve clicked her tongue. “I’m calling him,” she said. In the screen, I saw the reflection of Eve with the phone to her ear. “There’s no way we’re going to find out what it says otherwise. And I’ll tell you what, I’m just dying to know.”
I was only half listening.
Something on the screen had caught my eye.
There in the middle of all the Romanian were bits and pieces of things I recognized. Not words, exactly, but letters and numbers. I pointed at the screen, even though I didn’t know if Eve was looking or not.
“It’s a list,” I said, and I scrolled down some more.
That’s when the pieces clicked.
“Yuri? Hi, it’s me, Eve. Eve DeCateur. Sorry you’re not there and I have to leave this message. I really wanted to talk to you.”
I heard Eve’s voice as if it came from a million miles away. It bumped around inside my head, smacking against the realization that hit me like a freight train.
“You met me at your gallery,” she was saying in her sweetest Southern belle voice. “And you know my friend Annie. Annie Capshaw? She’s the one I’ve been working with on the you-know-what. You know, the case we’re trying to solve. The one that involves you-know-who and the art gallery.”
I jolted out of my daze and turned in my chair. “Eve, hang up the phone.”
She waved aside my protest. “Listen, Yuri, I’m calling because-”
“Eve, hang up the phone.”
She rolled her eyes. “I just wanted you to know that we’ve got what you were looking for. The-”
I didn’t know I could move that fast. Not until I snatched the phone out of Eve’s hand and hit the Off button.
“Annie Capshaw! What on earth has gotten into you?” Eve tried to take the phone back, but I threw it over to the other side of the room. “Do you know how rude that was? I didn’t even finish leaving my message.”
“Good.”
“Good?” She tipped her head, trying to work through the thing. “I just don’t understand you. First you want Yuri’s help. Then you don’t. How are we going to know what that disc is all about until we get him to tell us?”
“We don’t need his help.” I grabbed Eve’s arm and tugged her closer to the computer. “Look!”
“At what?” She bent at the waist and narrowed her eyes. “It’s a list. Big deal. It’s-”
“AK-47. HK MP5. M16.” I read over the list. “It’s guns, that’s what it is.”
“What?” She sprang back and looked at me as if I’d suddenly started talking Romanian.
I pointed to the screen. “AK-47. M16. I’m no expert, and I don’t know jack about weapons, but I recognize these names. This has nothing to do with the art gallery, Eve. It has nothing to do with stealing money. At least not gallery money. I don’t know what the rest of the pages mean, but I’d bet anything that Beyla… She’s not cooking the books. She’s smuggling guns into the country.”
Seventeen
WE WERE IN OVER OUR HEADS. WAY OVER OUR heads.
I knew it the moment I saw the names of those guns pop up on my computer screen. It took a little convincing and a little more explaining, but Eve (who before my minilecture on global politics and federal crimes was inclined to think that lawbreaking was lawbreaking whether we were talking guns or art gallery money) finally understood, too.
The trick now, of course, was to figure out what to do about it.
Did I go to the police and admit that I’d stolen vital evidence from the scene of a crime?
Did I hope that Yuri returned Eve’s phone call, and that he’d pick up the disc and we’d be rid of it?