She gave an audible sigh.
“Yeah sure, okay. We’ll talk about it when you get here. Can you stay for dinner?”
“What are you serving?”
“Like you care, I’ll see you in ten,” she said and hung up.
I was there in closer to twenty once I stopped and picked up a bottle of wine. As I pulled in I couldn’t help but notice her car, a black Prius, her pride and joy, sporting a broken headlight and smashed right front-quarter panel.
“Hey Dev, come on in,” she said opening the door and sounding genuinely glad to see me. She gave me a slight kiss on the check. She wasn’t good looking, she was beautiful and a friend. Oddly, given my history, the friendship was really important and I’d never attempted to try and work the sexual end of things.
“Gorgeous as always, Sunnie. How are you?”
The home smelled delicious. There was a bell ringing somewhere.
“Come on back to the kitchen, my timer’s going off. Lasagna, I’m just taking it out, we’ll eat in about ten minutes, which should give me time for a glass of your wine and you can tell me about this opportunity.” She stressed the word opportunity like it was anything but as she nodded at the laptop under my arm.
“Now be positive,” I encouraged. “Hey, what happened to your Prius?”
“Oh God, Mr. Grounded For The Rest of His Life, did that, the little idiot. Only one friend in the car is my rule. Of course five of the little deadbeats are driving out to the Mall of America, Josh doing everything but paying attention. He rammed someone in the parking ramp.”
“The parking ramp? How’d he do that?”
“Exactly! You have that wine opened up yet? I could sure use it.”
Ten minutes later we were at the dining-room table, a contrite Josh seated across from me rolling his eyes as Sunnie carried the pan of lasagna into the room and said, “Dev, will you lead us in grace, please?” Not really a request, more of a directive.
Josh rolled his eyes again.
I winked back.
After dinner Josh dutifully cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. As he headed upstairs to his room Sunnie gave a final instruction.
“No computer, no TV.”
He gave an exasperated sigh, similar to his mother’s earlier on the phone with me, but had enough sense not to offer further protest. After he’d gone upstairs she said, “God, I really want to kill him right now. Is that bad? Do you think they’d catch me?”
“I think it’s normal. Look, at least no one was hurt, were they?”
She shook her head no, then changed the subject, “So, tell me what you have there?”
“Oh this,” I said reaching for the laptop resting on her coffee table.
“Yes, the reason you came in the first place.” She smiled coldly, then sipped some wine. She was curled up in the corner of the couch, her legs tucked beneath her, the gas fireplace was on even though the evening wasn’t cold. She brushed her blond hair off her shoulders, looked me in the eye, and raised her eyebrows as if to say get to the point.
I took out the page I had printed off, handed it to her and told her most of what I knew, which wasn’t a lot. I couldn’t see much point in worrying her about the murders of Leo Tate, Dennis Dundee, or little Mai. I didn’t bring up being grazed by a bullet. I neglected to mention what I assumed was Da’nita’s hit-and-run murder. Skipped the part about Tibor or actually breaking into the Lee Dee office. Then wound up my request by saying, “So anyway, I’m just trying to figure out what was going on. I’m guessing based on that page,” I nodded at the page I printed off now resting on her lap, “all this is coded. I don’t have passwords to get in there, and once I did I probably wouldn’t know what I was looking at anyway. I’m trying to find out how to contact Kerri, or her sister, Nikki. If there’s anything obviously illegal, I’ll take it to the police. I’ll most likely do that anyway, but I just want to see if you can find anything out.”
She poured herself another glass of wine, sat back, and thought for a moment.
“Okay, it might take a bit. I’ve got some programs and algorithms I can work. You know what might help. The woman you mentioned, what’s her name?”
“Da’nita Bell?”
“Yes, if you could get her date of birth, her son’s full name, his date of birth. Those are standard password sources. It’s at least a starting point,” she said.
“I think I can get that for you.”
“You didn’t happen to see a Rolodex or Post-it notes around the desk in the office, did you?”
“No, there wasn’t, well actually there was a Rolodex, why?”
“Amazingly it’s not uncommon for people to put their passwords in their Rolodex or tape it right to their computer. If you could ask to borrow that Rolodex it might help.”
“I’ll ask them,” I said not even blinking.
“All right then. I’ll get started tomorrow.”
Chapter 24
My phone rang before eight the following morning. Although I was awake I had to crawl out of bed to answer it.
“Hello,” I couldn’t read the phone number displayed on the cell-phone screen.
“You called,” Aaron said.
“Hunh?” I was crawling back into bed.
“I had a message from you, said to give you a call. What, don’t tell me you were still in bed?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay I won’t tell you I’m still in bed.”
“God, you are so worthless.”
“I was wondering if you could run Karina Vucavitch and Nikolaevna Mathias through your system, let me know what comes up.”
“Let you know?” emphasizing the “you” in his question.
“Yeah, look, I got you the names, Kerri Vucavitch and Nikki Mathias. If you get a hit on anything it’d be nice to know. I think I got something else that might at least be connected.”
“Like what?”
“You gonna run the names?”
“Already did, once you get out of bed you might drift down this way and maybe learn a thing or two.”
“I’m there within the hour,” I said jumping out of bed.
“I can hardly wait,” Aaron said and hung up.
Chapter 25
Actually he wasn’t kidding. He was waiting for me in the hallway when I got off the elevator.
“Did you sense my magical presence as I ascended in the elevator?” I asked.
“No, I glanced out the window and watched as you pulled that piece-of-shit car of yours into a no-parking zone. You’ll probably get ticketed.”
“Good thing I know you, then.”
“I’m not fixing a ticket for you. I only do that for friends and gorgeous women.”
We were passing a series of blue and burgundy cubicles, walking back to his office as we spoke. I saw two figures seated in his office. Even a hundred feet away one looked to be in a pressed suit, starched shirt, trendy tie, blond crew-cut hair. He screamed FBI. The other guy was a little more casual. Striped shirt, slacks, dark hair, and more of it. He was cracking a piece of gum, working it.
“Feds?” I asked Aaron.
He ignored me. As we approached his office he broke into his good-cop routine.
“Hey Dev, come on in, let me introduce you. Gentlemen, here is the man with all the answers, the guy I’ve been telling you all about, Mister Devlin Haskell.”
I smiled grimly, felt like I was being delivered to the lions and wondered exactly how much Aaron may have told them as I extended my hand.
“Agent Peters, FBI,” Aaron introduced the suit.
“Kimball Peters,” he said, springing out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box, giving me the rock solid, vice grip Bureau handshake. He wore a dark suit with just the slightest hint of a pattern in a not quite as dark blue. Black wingtips shined to a high gloss.
“Agent Hale, I.C.E.” Aaron directed me to the dark-haired guy in the striped shirt.
“Billy Hale,” he said not getting up but nodding in my direction. “Nice to meet you, man.”
“I wonder if you wouldn’t mind telling us in your own words what you know about this Vucavitch business,” Agent Peters said as he sat down. He pulled at his trousers just above the knee so he wouldn’t ruin the crease.