‘Shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I have no regrets either.’
‘You’re a good guy.’
‘So are you. Not a guy. But good.’ He had never been deft at the morning-after chatter and he saw he wasn’t improving now. He felt a pang of regret, because this was going to change or complicate an already tough situation between them. He couldn’t deal with another problem. But if he was going into battle, he wanted her: a smart and brave partner.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes. You?’
‘I’m sad for Eric. I can’t help but feel that way.’
He said nothing.
‘But we… we can get out of this mess,’ she said. ‘Get our lives back.’
‘If we find who he made the deal with, where he hid the money.’
‘Where do we start?’
‘We start with his cell phone.’ He opened up the phone he’d taken from Eric’s pocket, searched the call log. Aubrey leaned over his shoulder. There was only one number listed on the log. An international number.
‘I know that international code is France,’ Aubrey said. ‘Eric and I went to Paris a couple of months back. He had business and I’d never been.’
‘Business,’ he said. ‘What kind?’
‘Banking stuff, I don’t know.’
Luke pressed the callback option under the number.
‘Um, is that smart?’
‘Let’s see,’ Luke said.
Four rings, and then: ‘Hello?’
He recognized the British woman’s voice. ‘Hello, Jane,’ Luke said.
She didn’t seem shocked at the use of her name. ‘This isn’t who I was expecting.’
‘No. Eric Lindoe’s dead.’
‘Sad. I thought he’d make it through the weekend, at least. Let me guess. Luke Dantry, running man?’
‘Why did you want me kidnapped? Why have you involved innocent people?’
‘Nothing personal, darling,’ she said.
‘Bitch, it’s personal,’ Luke said. ‘Why did you do it? What did I or Aubrey ever do to you?’
‘Nothing. Hence, not personal.’ Her voice was cool, crisp as breeze caught in linen. ‘You’re not going to find me. You can’t hurt me.’
‘I have a question for you. You knew about the fifty million. So who the hell’s giving it to the Night Road? Where’s this money coming from?’
‘Some secrets, sweetheart, go to the grave. My lips are sealed.’
‘This fifty million you want so badly? I’m going to find it before you do.’
‘That, darling, I seriously doubt.’ Then he heard a click, Jane hanging up.
He tried the number again. No response. ‘Why would a British woman in Paris be using us as pawns?’
‘Insulting her wasn’t exactly productive.’
‘Aubrey, this woman isn’t going to negotiate with us. Not until we find where he hid the money. Only then could we maybe lure her into the light.’ He shook his head. ‘I want to know where this money is coming from.’
Aubrey bit her lip. ‘I do have a thought about a potential hiding place for the money.’
‘Where?’
‘Eric’s childhood home. We stopped there on the way into Chicago after we ditched your car in Dallas. Eric was getting his stepfather’s gun. The house is empty; Eric’s stepfather died recently and he hasn’t sold it.’ She swallowed. ‘Maybe he did more than get the gun. Maybe he left something behind.’
The house was a few blocks off Cicero, not far from Midway airport; in a neighborhood that looked like its better days were more myth than memory. Narrow brick houses were jammed close together, as if sharing secrets. Some of the houses were maintained with pride and care; some were not. People idled in yards, on corners, bored, laughing, arguing. They drove past a trio of teenage boys who looked at them with a mix of calculation and studied disinterest. Luke parked in front of the old Lindoe house. The small yard needed a mow. Every window was darkened. The Lindoe house looked like the shy child on the block.
‘Eric paid off the house for his parents when he made real money,’ she said.
Luke thought if he made serious money he’d have bought his parents a nicer place but who knew the calculus of relationships in the Lindoe family. Maybe this had once been a happy home, one worth staying in for memories alone. Why would a wealthy, successful guy keep this house? Sentiment? Or maybe because he was involved in dirty dealings? After six months, had the will even been probated? The property would still be in his stepfather’s name. It was a perfect place to hide.
They used a key on Eric’s ring to get inside the house. The house smelled slightly musty.
‘He’s not here much,’ Luke said.
‘Yeah. His mom died of cancer two years back. His stepdad passed about six months ago – heart attack. Not long after we met. Eric said his stepdad didn’t want to live without Eric’s mom.’
‘Yeah. My own stepfather said the same thing after my mom died.’
‘I’m sorry, Luke. How…?’
‘Car accident. She was driving. Rainy night. They hit a skid, went through a guardrail, tumbled down an incline. She died, he lived.’
Aubrey opened her mouth and closed it. The silence grew heavy.
‘But because of what you know about your stepdad now…’
‘I wonder if it was really an accident.’ He shook his head. ‘Henry nearly died. It took him a long while to recover. I don’t know. I thought he adored my mom. But he’s the king of lies. Maybe I’ll never know.’
Aubrey took his hand, gave it a kind squeeze.
He switched on the kitchen lights.
‘He made me hot tea and told me to sit here and wait. I was still so rattled by what had happened and what we were facing, I don’t know what he did while I waited for him.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘In the back.’
They walked to the end of the hallway and found a master bedroom, the cheap furniture shrouded in plastic, as if trapping memories in a clear amber. Dust covered the plastic.
They backed up to the next bedroom. Eric’s bedroom. A flicking-on of the light showed a room little changed from when Eric had taken his scholarship money and headed off to the University of Illinois. Clippings of his achievements dotted the wall – from high school through college, and then after, a shrine of proud parental hopes. A son who’d made nothing but good choices and then made a very bad one.
Luke studied the clippings. ‘He was president of an honor society, and he ends up a killer and kidnapper and a money man for extremists.’ He ran a finger along the frames: Eric’s first letter offering him a banking job, in the operations division of a national bank; Eric in the sands of the Middle East, at a construction site, shaking hands with an older, elegant Arab businessman; in London, standing stiffly with other bankers; on a windswept beach, a borderline between desert and sea, watching the skeleton of a resort take hold.
‘He really did spend a lot of time overseas. Did he ever talk about it?’
‘No.’ She paused for a moment, looking at the smiling Eric beaming in the desert sun. ‘At my import company, I bought these really unusual pots from Papua New Guinea. There’s a face on each side, like a totem. Eric thought they were cool. Maybe he liked them because they were two-faced, just like him.’
‘He’s like Henry, in some ways. Henry loves his photos of himself at work, surrounded by powerful people. I don’t understand why Eric and Henry got involved in this. Why? Why risk it all?’
‘Some men can never have enough – money, pride, power,’ Aubrey said. ‘Name your poison and it will have an addict.’
He peered inside the closet. ‘Help me look.’
‘What are we looking for?’
‘What shouldn’t be here.’
She found the laptop three minutes later, tucked behind a stack of worn paperbacks on the top shelf. An old, cheap subnotebook, paired with a power cord.
Luke plugged in the system, started it up. It presented a password prompt.