Dead to the Last Drop (28 page)

Before Quinn jumped in, Danny wished him a good night, promising to return in the morning. I expected the detective to leave. Instead, she waved me into the ship’s kitchen, pointing out the location of the food and coffee.

She had one last thing to point out, but it had nothing to do with dinner.

S
eventy-five

“M
IKE’S pretty wound up,” she said, leaning against the counter.

“Considering our situation, that’s not surprising.”

“No. But you know what you’ve got to do, right?”

“Excuse me?”

Danny folded her arms. “You need to help him get some sleep—some
good
sleep. That means no alcohol. And no sleeping pills.”

When I didn’t reply, she gave me a long stare. “Do I have to spell it out? Find
another
way to get the man’s mind off your situation. Help him
unwind
. Are we on the same page?”

Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“Yes. Message received,” I said, cutting off the discussion.

The young detective’s advice was getting far too personal, but given the stakes involved, propriety was the least of my worries. Quinn and I owed her for sticking her neck out—boy, did we—so the last thing I was going to do was give her grief over something I agreed with anyway.

“I’m going,” she said, squeezing my shoulder before heading out. “I’ll be back, first thing. Just keep your heads down around here, and you’ll be okay . . .”

Keep our heads down?
I thought, watching her climb up to the deck and onto the dock.
What else would we do? Go to the Tiki Barge and party all night?

With Mike still in the shower, I started a pot of coffee, and hoped for the best on dinner. Danny said takeout was in the oven, and I expected
burgers and fries, maybe a lukewarm pizza, but when I pulled open the door, two thick Outback steaks with fixings met my hungry gaze.

The dessert in the cupboard turned out to be a local favorite—a package of Berger Cookies. Famished, I ripped open the plastic to mountains of fudgy frosting heaped on cakelike vanilla cookies . . .
ahhhh
 . . . right in my mouth!

The Bergers reminded me of New York’s famous black-and-whites, but there was no white in Baltimore’s version, and no restraint on the fudgy icing. The cookies were heavy with it, dreamy, ridiculous dollops. Layers so thick your first bite left teeth marks.

I handed one to Quinn in the shower. He inhaled it and put out his hand for another. I gave it up. Then I moved back to the galley through the bedroom, where I saw Danica had left us new clothes.

Jeans and a white sweater for me with a pair of slip-on sneakers. For Mike, a pair of high-tops with a shimmering velour jogging suit—the kind a semisleazy yacht owner might wear. Perfect camo for a square-jawed, suit-wearing fed attempting to hide from his own kind.

She’d thrown in two oversize Orioles tees along with underthings, not that Mike bothered. He returned from his shower shirtless, sandy hair darkly wet. His dinner attire—a thick mauve towel wrapped around his hips, another hanging on his neck.

Too hungry for words, we ate the thick New York strip steaks, butter-slathered baked potatoes, and steamed green beans in silence. As Quinn cleared the dishes, I poured us both fresh mugs of coffee. Then I set the rest of the fudge-frosted cookies on the table between us and settled in for what I hoped would be some clarity.

“Okay,” I said, “I’m ready to hear good news. Did you get what you needed from Chan?”

Mouth full of Berger Cookie, Quinn nodded, retrieved the phone Chan had given him, and set it on the table between us.

“Do you recognize that device?” he asked between chews and swallows.

It looked like a typical smartphone, powered down so I couldn’t read the screen. Other than that, it meant nothing to me.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why do you think I would recognize it?”

“Because it belonged to the man you’re accused of killing—the late Jeevan Varma.”

S
eventy-six

A
S a harbor foghorn wailed in the distance, my mind went back to the night Varma collapsed in my coffeehouse . . .

*   *   *

I
knelt
beside the well-dressed man, checking vital signs and thinking there was nothing more I could do for him. Since I didn’t know his name, I went through his clothes.

The man’s pockets held little: a half-empty pack of cigarettes; a few after-dinner chocolate mints from J. Chocolatier; and a fine leather wallet, which contained loose bills, credit cards, and a U.S. State Department ID.

I found nothing else on him . . .

*   *   *

I
sat back, slightly stunned by the realization.

“I didn’t find
a phone
on Varma that night. And what State Department employee wouldn’t have a phone on him?!” My gaze locked on to Quinn’s. “The person who killed Mr. Varma must have taken this phone!”

Quinn nodded.

“Then, Chan killed him? Or he knows who did?”

“I wish it were that simple. But Chan ‘the phone man’ is only the receiver of stolen goods.”

“Like a fence?”

“Yeah, that’s the old-school name for it. But he doesn’t care about
gemstones and watches. He’s a fence for the digital age. He’s also an informant for the Baltimore PD because he’s been dealing in stolen smartphones for the last few years. The phones are delivered as is—unwiped—because the data can be mined before the phone is restored to factory default and resold. He bought Varma’s phone in a consignment of devices stolen in and around DC.”

“But how did you know he’d have Varma’s phone?”

“I didn’t. I just went fishing. When Katerina told me you were the prime suspect in Varma’s murder, I got word to Danica, asked her to look for any hits on Varma. She came up with this—
his phone
.”

“And Danica doesn’t know who stole it, either?”

“No. Like I said, Varma’s phone was part of a purchased lot—the way a fence might go to a pawnshop owner with a bag of hot jewelry. The consignment Chan purchased matched phones that were reported stolen in a robbery at a catering hall in Reston, and one from a robbery in a bistro on Connecticut Avenue—”

“I remember that Connecticut Avenue robbery. I was worried the same thing would happen at our supper club. There were two men, weren’t there? They stole wallets, smartphones, and jewelry at gunpoint.”

“That’s not the whole story . . .”

According to Quinn, “The stickup was a panic move to cover up their real business.”

“Which was?”

“Cloning those phones. These thieves weren’t simply pickpockets, they were smart and skilled. Their game was to grab devices, take them into a secluded area, and clone them, but something went wrong this time. A woman noticed the man’s hand in her bag and she screamed. That’s when it turned into an armed robbery to cover up the cloning.”

“Cloning . . . that’s making a copy, right? But what exactly is a
cloned
phone
?”

“It acts like a mirror image of the original. When the first one rings, so does the clone. All communications go to both phones, all text messages, pictures, and videos stored in the original are accessible on the clone, as well. There’s only one bill, and it goes to the original owner. So whoever owns the clone can make calls free of charge, but that’s not why someone would want a clone. The real value is in the information.”

“So it’s the ultimate wiretap?”

Mike nodded. “It’s what the NSA and CIA call tradecraft.”

“Spies use it?”

“And criminals. And blackmailers.”

My mind raced on the blackmailing angle. People stored their whole lives in their devices, including things they shouldn’t: naughty pictures; sexting; communications they wanted to keep off their public office computers . . .

“Mike, if we have Varma’s phone, then we can find out who he was planning to meet with on the night he was killed, right? It’s a real lead!”

“It
would
have been. But all texts and voice mails in the forty-eight-hour period prior to the phone being stolen—and presumably Varma being attacked and killed—have been erased.”

“Can’t you use some kind of forensics to un-erase them?”

“If I had my full powers, I would get a warrant to access his cloud drive, but we’re not exactly in the position to do that.”

“Then this phone is of no use to us?”

“The phone itself is evidence because whoever holds the clone is guilty of one murder at least. And we got lucky with one more thing . . .”

He turned on the phone and showed me its contact list. The list was long, but there was one name on it that we both recognized—
Katerina Lacey.

S
eventy-seven

I
stared at Katerina’s name, feeling numb for a moment, then angry, and finally frustrated.

“This
proves
they knew each other.”

“But little else.”

“So what do we do?”

“For now, we hold it.”

I pounded the tabletop. “This may not prove Katerina did anything to Varma, but it’s proof enough to me that she’s involved in this mess.”

“Me too. The bad news is—there’s nothing else. When Danica told me she had a connection to your case, she was right, but . . .”

Mike sat back.

“I get it. If Mr. Varma’s recent voice mails and texts were wiped, we can’t prove he met with Katerina the night he was murdered.” I shook my head. “Maybe he didn’t even meet with her. Maybe she sent someone to do her dirty work . . .”

I thought of Lidia, that pretty, young Latina assistant I saw by her side in the White House, teetering on those stilts, trying to measure up to her boss.
I’ll bet she’d do anything Katerina asked . . .

“We’re stuck, Clare. We’re out of leads.”

“We can’t be . . . we just
can’t
 . . . Let me think . . .”

And to fuel my little gray cells, I intended to eat.

Yes, I know I just inhaled a steak dinner, but those fudgy Berger Cookies were calling out to me, and I was going to answer—
with
a fresh, hot cup of
joe. Chocolate and coffee were too good a pairing to pass up, especially after dinner . . .

Hey, wait a minute.
I froze, my mind racing.
Chocolate and coffee . . . after dinner . . .

“Mike,” I cried. “Chocolate and coffee!”

“Excuse me?”

“Give me your prepaid phone. I need to make a call . . .”

When I took a minute to explain my plan, Quinn was all for it.

“Keep the call short,” he warned. “Speak in Italian as much as possible, and do not use any real names. Use code.”

“Got it . . .”

*   *   *

“H
ELLO, Tito,
cosa c’è di nuovo?
” I asked. (What’s new?)

“Chi sei?”
he demanded. (Who are you?)

“Your old friend,” I replied in Italian. “
Signora
Rogers. Remember? From
Signor
Rogers’ neighborhood?”

“Holy Mother!” Tito cried. “Where are you?!”

“Speak in Italian,” I advised—in Italian. “And I can’t tell you where I am. You understand?”

Tito paused, then his voice was much calmer. “I understand . . .”

I asked him about the drummer boy. “Have you seen him?”

“No. He’s gone. Disappeared.”

“And what about the piano man. The one who has an office on the third floor. Is he around?”

“No! Men in suits came and took him away. Now he’s gone, too!”

“Tito, I need your help.”

“Anything. What can I do?”

“I want you to call the woman who runs J. Chocolatier and ask her for the names of the locations she supplies with chocolates. Narrow the area to twenty blocks around our Village Blend’s address. Do you understand?”

“I understand. I don’t know why you’re asking such a thing, but I understand.”

“Don’t worry about why. Get the information, and I’ll be grateful . . .”

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

“I’ll call again, Tito. Thank you. Don’t tell anyone about our talk. And try not to worry.
Buona sera
.”

“
Buona Sera
,
Signora
Rogers.”

*   *   *

I
handed Quinn back the prepaid phone. “Enough code for you?”

“Good job.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “But those J. Chocolatier chocolates in Varma’s pocket should have been a dead giveaway—excuse the pun. The man was impeccably dressed. It made no sense for him to be carrying around after-dinner chocolates unless he’d gotten them at a restaurant the same night.”

“Did Tito understand what you asked?”

“Absolutely . . . and once we know who serves J. Chocolatier chocolates in our area, we’ll have Danica check their security cameras. If we’re lucky, we’ll see Katerina’s bony ass sashaying in on the same night as Mr. Varma.”

“You missed your calling, Cosi. You should have been a cop.”

“Thanks, but guns and I don’t get along,” I said, going for a refill. “I’m better with coffee.”

S
eventy-eight

F
EELING more positive, I finally took my shower. The warm water felt heavenly sluicing over my naked curves. I washed my hair, too, and used the blow-dryer to fluff it up prettily. Then I wrapped myself in a mauve towel, took a deep breath, and sashayed into the bedroom.

Oh, shoot. No Quinn . . .

I could hear the TV in the other room. And I could guess why.

Down deep, the man was a romantic. Back in Greenwich Village, he loved lighting the fire in my bedroom’s hearth. A bottle of wine, soft music, and he was putty in my antique four-poster.

Unfortunately,
this
boudoir had all the charm of a 1970s pimpmobile.

It didn’t even have the tasteful 1890s “Mauve Decade” palette going for it like the rest of the boat. The few pieces of furniture were upholstered in either purple or pink, or purple
and
pink—and everything was fuzzy, very fuzzy. The fuzziness extended to the pink and purple animal-print carpeting.