Fonduing Fathers (27 page)

“You haven’t been back home yourself?”

“Too scared.”

She backed away from me, eyes darting from side to side so quickly I didn’t think she was giving herself time to digest what she was seeing. She gasped.

“What?” I asked.

Stepping closer once again, she lowered her voice. “That boy was on my train,” she said. “I noticed him at my station. He got on the same time I did. He followed me here.”

I glanced at the object of her scrutiny. An average height, average build young man wandered about twenty feet away. He wore a baseball cap with the brim pulled low over his eyes, plaid shorts, and running shoes. I couldn’t get a look at his face, but he didn’t seem to pay us any attention. I was about to say as much when he shuffled away into the next outdoor room. “He’s gone,” I said unnecessarily.

“I think he was following me. Now he knows I met you and gave you the box.”

Gav couldn’t have been close enough to hear our conversation, but he must have read our body language. The boy had about a ten-second head start before Gav followed him away. Despite the fact that it was getting dark now, I wasn’t worried. There were plenty of tourists around.

“Ingrid,” I said, placing a hand on her forearm. “You should be okay now. Why don’t you call your husband and let him know you gave me the box. Maybe he’s home, waiting for you.”

“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. “He told me to tell you something else—something I knew, but we promised never to breathe a word of it to anybody.”

“What is it?” I asked.

She swept the area with cautious reserve before inching still closer. “I don’t know why he wants me to tell you,” she
said, her voice wavering. “I don’t know what good it’s going to do anybody. It could only get us into trouble, I think.”

If ever a person needed to be coaxed, it was Ingrid. “He must have had a good reason,” I said, “and I’ll bet it will be good for me to know once I open the box.”

Rocking back and forth on her heels, she gave the object a biting look of scorn, as though it held all the power in the world and was responsible for the plight of her life. Maybe it was. I’d find out soon enough. In the meantime, I couldn’t allow her to leave without delivering the entire message. “What did he tell you to tell me, Ingrid?”

Maybe it was hearing her name, but she seemed to snap out of her reverie. She took a breath, visibly steeling herself. Whatever she was about to impart wouldn’t be easy for her to do.

“He wasn’t sick when he left Pluto,” she said at last. “Not even a little. Healthy as a horse and just as stupid.”

“Wait,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

“Listen,” she said, “all’s I know is that when Mickey was working there at Pluto, he was scared about something but he wouldn’t ever tell me what it was.”

“Before or after my dad was killed?”

She pointed at me. “Right after. I’d gone and forgotten about it—it’s been so long, you know—but ever since you showed up, he’s been nervous again.” Panic turned her mouth downward and I was afraid she might break into tears.

“Right after your father was killed, Mickey came home all shook about things at work. At first he told me he was upset about losing a friend, but he got worse over the next few days instead of better. I’ll never be able to forget how your dad’s murder changed our lives. And not for the better.”

Anger sparked from her dull eyes, though I could tell it wasn’t directed at me. She was seeing a story play out before
her, her stinging criticism directed at events that had happened many years ago.

“About a week after the murder,” she continued, “Mickey wanted to quit his job. Told me he planned to give his notice even though he didn’t have anything else lined up yet. I thought that was a bad idea and said so. We were thinking about starting a family right then.” She gave a sad laugh but didn’t elaborate. “Mickey insisted that he had to quit, so I told him go ahead if it was so important.”

“Did he?”

Ingrid shook her head. “Came home that night shook up worse than ever before. Another guy at work had a bad accident.”
Harold Linka
. “They thought he wasn’t going to make it through the night. Mickey said that he couldn’t quit now. I asked was it because they’d be shorthanded with the other guy gone, but he said no.”

I had a feeling I knew the answer to the question I was about to ask. “Then why couldn’t he quit?”

“Mickey said what happened to the other guy was a warning. He said if he quit, they’d come after him.”

“But he did quit,” I reminded her.

“He went on disability,” she corrected. “He got my doctor brother-in-law to make a diagnosis that wasn’t true. Said that he was so sick he couldn’t work or he’d die.”

This sounded hokey. “You’re trying to tell me that Pluto—”

“Shh!”

“You’re trying to tell me that your husband believes that the company injured Harold Linka on purpose?”

She nodded. “That other guy knew everything that was going on. More than Mickey did, and as soon as that guy opened his mouth, they tried to kill him.”

“He still works for them,” I said, poking a hole in her story. “He works from home.”

“I’m telling you what happened,” she said. “Doesn’t
matter what’s going on now. You weren’t there when it was going on twenty-five years ago. Mickey knew that if he tried to quit, it would look suspicious. So he figured another way out.”

“By claiming a disability.”

She made a noise of disgust. “Barely enough to live on, so I took a second job.” The look in her eyes was weary—not just physically, either. “It’s been tough for both of us.” She took a step sideways. “Now you know it all.”

I didn’t. I fought the urge to rip the box open right then and there, to see what was inside before Ingrid hurried off, in case I had questions about any of it. But Ingrid was liable to turn into a puddle of panic right in front of me.

She sent worried looks all around. “I stayed here too long. That guy may come back.”

With Gav trailing him, I doubted it. “Do you need help getting home?”

She shook her head, waves of fear emanating from her as she started away. Now that her mission was accomplished, it was clear she couldn’t wait to be gone.

“Ingrid…”

“I don’t want what happened to your dad to happen to Mickey.”

“You think it could?”

“I don’t know what to think.” She eyed the box in my hands. “It’s your problem now,” she said. “I don’t want nothing to do with it. All’s I want is for me and Mickey to have things back the way they were.” She started off again, turned and said, “Don’t you be calling or showing up anymore.”

She didn’t wait for me to respond before she was gone, in the opposite direction the young man had disappeared.

Gav came back around the breadline a moment later. “Think about the devil,” I said. “Where did you go?”

“I followed that kid.”

“Ingrid said she thought he was following her.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Why?”

“Got a weird vibe from him. He seemed to be paying attention to your conversation before Ingrid pointed him out to you. I wanted to know why.”

“What did you find out?”

“Not a thing. He couldn’t have been more than fifty steps ahead of me, yet I couldn’t find him.”

“Gone?”

“In a flash. You noticed how he was strolling when he was here?”

“I did,” I said.

“Seems to me he took the rest of the exhibit in a flat-out run. No other way he could have been gone without me seeing.”

“That’s not good.”

“Did he seem at all familiar?” Gav asked.

“I couldn’t get a good look at him. Too dark, and with that hat…”

Gav and I stood there, he watching one direction, me the other. “I guess we got what we came for,” I finally said, showing him the box. “Let’s find out what’s inside.”

WE WAITED UNTIL WE WERE BACK AT MY apartment to open the mysterious package. In the kitchen, I used scissors to cut through the shiny brown packing tape Fitch had used to secure the small container. “You ready?” I asked as the lid came free.

“The bigger question is, are you?” Gav said.

We both stood next to the kitchen table, breathless. I lifted the lid, eager to see what was so damaging that Mickey had ordered Ingrid to make sure she hadn’t been followed. Inside were several sheets of paper, folded in half. I lifted the pages out, disappointed there was nothing more beneath.

“Fitch has a flair for the dramatic,” I said. “Three sheets of paper could have easily fit in a standard envelope mailed from his local post office.”

“Let’s see what he has to say.”

We sat at the table, Gav pulling up a chair so we could sit next to each other. I unfolded the papers and scanned the
first, Gav reading over my shoulder. Although I was a quicker reader, he was always more thorough. As I finished each page, I handed it to him.

The room was quiet, with only the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional car horn outside to keep us company.

When we got to the end of the missive, I turned the final sheet around, hoping for more, then waited for Gav to finish reading. When he did, he met my gaze. “There’s no doubt Fitch is a lunatic,” he said, “but if any of what he’s alleging here is true, the repercussions could be explosive.”

“I started this to find out the truth about my dad, not to bring down a corporation. All I want is to know that my dad wasn’t the villain in this story.”

Gav’s mouth was set, grim and tight. “Then you’d better hope everything Fitch claims is true.”

I laid the three sheets side to side on the table between us. What we’d read was nothing short of a manifesto. Fitch’s tiny, cramped handwriting, interspersed with underscores and exclamation points scratched in so violently they occasionally ripped the page, was a real eye-opener.

Like Gav said: If any of it was true.

“Look at this,” I said, my eyes roving, finding the passages I most wanted to discuss. I pointed to one of Fitch’s first assertions. “Here. Remember when we visited Craig Benson? The Cabrigan flag he had in the corner? That fits. Sylonica is the sworn enemy of Cabriga. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”

Fitch told a story that was high on emotion and short on detail, but what he claimed to know, while damaging to Pluto Incorporated, would be personally ruinous to Craig Benson. Back when my dad worked for the company, Fitch wrote, Craig Benson had arranged to have “special shipments” of supplements sent to Sylonica under the guise of humanitarian aid. The supplements, however, were anything but. Benson directed that Ingredient X, a deadly toxin, be included in all products sent to Sylonica. While levels of
Ingredient X wouldn’t immediately kill those who ingested it, it would most certainly hasten their demise.

“If this is true,” I continued, “Craig Benson was attempting to kill people halfway across the world, in the name of loyalty to his family’s country.”

Gav pursed his lips, letting air escape in a thoughtful whistle. “The problem I see is that this is all very self-serving,” he said. “Fitch is making some outrageous assertions here without offering a shred of proof.”

“My dad found out,” I said, “according to Fitch. That’s why they killed him.”

“That’s quite a claim.” Gav tapped the pages in front of us. “Notice how nothing he states here can be confirmed unless we find this so-called proof.” Gav shook his head as he read aloud. “‘Craig Benson is a creature of habit. He always kept everything under lock and key in his antique desk. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out all the proof is still there.’”

“I wonder what kind of evidence he’s talking about.”

Gav chewed on his lower lip. “There’s nothing in this that’s actionable. We can’t get any kind of warrant or move forward. Not without more.”

“Do you think this is what Yablonski was talking about when he told me that Pluto was being investigated?”

Gav considered this. “According to Fitch, all this happened twenty-five years ago. Why would Pluto be under investigation now? Fitch can’t be suggesting that this has been going on all these years without anyone noticing.”

“I think that’s exactly what he’s suggesting.”

“Why not take this to the authorities then? Why all the drama sending his wife with a secure package, claiming she might have been followed,” Gav pressed, “unless Fitch is working hard to manufacture mystique?” He sat back and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not saying this can’t be true. I’m saying that we need to proceed with caution.”

I’d been thinking along similar lines. “I hate to say it,
but because my face has been in the paper enough times, Fitch may be counting on me to run with this. But to what end? Unless he holds a deep grudge against my dad that we’re unaware of—and he wants to take me down because of it—I can’t imagine why he’d make all this up.”

Gav steepled his fingers in front of his face. “I can’t either. We’re missing a piece of this puzzle.”

“I want to go back.”

“Where? Pluto?”

“Yes,” I said, gritting my teeth as I stood to pace. “I want to watch Craig Benson’s face as he reads the letter. Then I’ll know.”

“That won’t be good enough for you. Admit it.” He waited for me to look at him. “And if any of this is true, can you imagine the kind of danger you’d be walking into?”