Perfect Crime (20 page)

She didn’t.

“That’s not what I asked you. Did you know who I was before you came to Chicago?”

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

“Yes, I did.”

Chapter 16

Geography

Silence.

Tessa turned her head, looking away from Scott. She stared at the headrest in front of her.

He could have babbled something—maybe filled the silence with a feeble excuse, but he didn’t.

The stewardess standing in the aisle asked if Scott wanted a drink.

“No, thanks,” he replied.

“Would you like something , ma’am?”

“Red wine, please,” Tessa replied, a plastic smile on her face.

Normally the window shade would have been pulled down, shielding any visual of the ground moving out from beneath her feet as the plane surged down the runway. But tonight, Tessa pushed the visor as high as it would go, gazing casually out the window at the lines on the landing strip. They moved faster and faster, until they were nothing but a blur, and she felt the lift of takeoff press her back into the airplane seat.

The glass of wine remained untouched in her hand. It sloshed in her glass and dripped onto her fingers. She pulled one to her lips, kissing the sweet alcohol. This was her poison. And yet, as she stared at the blood-like color, she had no desire to take another sip. She would resist.

Just as she would resist him.

The silence continued. Scott sat back in his seat, eyes closed. He looked calm and unaffected by his lies—his omissions. Too calm.

She flicked her drink at him. It splashed off his face, rolled down his chin, and wet the front of his shirt.

His green eyes popped open, face grim. “Feel better?”

“Not really.”

“Too bad I can’t return the favor.”

Scott mirrored her posture, shoulders stiff, until the captain turned off the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign. With that soft chime, and the announcement that he was free to move about the cabin, Scott did just that.

Tessa glanced in his direction, but didn’t ask him where he was going. Obviously he couldn’t get far.

He rummaged in the overhead bin and pulled a T-shirt from his suitcase. Methodically, he undid the buttons on the dress shirt and pulled it off, replacing the garment with the dry one. He then sat back down with Marlayna’s purse.

“That’s mine,” Tessa grumbled, pulling at the leather strap.

“Really? Petty larceny will get you one to five.” He took out Marlayna’s wallet. “Wanna go for ten to twenty?” Several thousand-dollar bills were in the billfold. He flashed the inside and then passed the leather wallet to her. “Looks like we just moved up to grand larceny.”

“I thought I could trust you.”

“You can trust me. I’m on your side.”

“Ha! You admitted you knew who I was…”

“So?”

Blindly, Tessa accepted the other woman’s wallet while Scott pulled other items from the bag: a scarf, a pack of cigarettes, cosmetics. All were stacked neatly on Scott’s tray table.

“So? You’re not some rookie reporter looking for a big story.”

“You knew that before. I haven’t changed. I still want to find out who runs the Xenex Corporation, and who killed Darla. Don’t you?”

She lifted one shoulder.

Scott leaned forward. “Let’s try this again. All I said was I knew your full name, and that you might know more than you let on. What of it? If anything, it’s me who should be nervous. I’ve been shot at and nearly blown up—on more than one occasion I might add—since you became my partner.”

“Funny thing is,” she added dryly, “same stuff’s happened to me—ever since you became my partner.”

He smiled again. “Don’t ever say I don’t show a girl an exciting time.”

She rolled her eyes, apparently not appreciating his sense of humor.

Shaking his head, Scott said, “Look, I just got thee lecture from your Daddy. You’re stuck with me.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that comment. Tessa’s olive-toned fingers slid over the calfskin wallet. Flipping the brass clasp, she splayed the selection of credit cards and identification for viewing. Conversationally, she said, “The only one she’s missing is Diner’s Club. Oh, wait. There it is.” She did not like this woman, for more reasons than simply the obvious, but…Tessa sighed; she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Scott opened a lipstick tube, sniffed the contents. “The lady likes to buy things. Be interesting to know who pays the bills.”

“Are you suggesting…?” her tone was mocking.

“I had no idea she was in his pocket. Although, I probably should have guessed something of the sort. Did your father talk about her?”

“I don’t know…I don’t talk to my father.”

The cell phone in his palm was surprisingly empty of stored numbers. Only five were programmed in its memory, and Scott didn’t recognize the names. Only one made him take note. She’d coded in ‘D.T’ on the speed dial, and the first thought he had was, strangely enough, “Deep Throat”—every newspaper writer’s dream source.

Scott scrolled through the list again as he tried to think of any Post employee who might match the initials. His fingers itched to dial the number and see what happened, but given they were in flight, he couldn’t.

Tessa continued to inspect the wallet. Business cards clustered in several slip pockets, not an unusual thing for a high-powered woman. Lifting one bunch from their stash point, she flipped through the collection. “Sometimes people write little notes on the back of these cards.”

“Find anything?” Scott asked.

Tessa was turning each card over, inspecting both sides. “Would I even know if I saw something?”

The stack before her grew larger: one from a prominent New York City advisor, two different car services, a financial consultant, a building inspector and a councilman from Chicago.

Interesting mix.

“Barton Malone,” Tessa mumbled, “there’s a name that keeps coming up.”

Scott snatched the card and scanned the generic information on the front. “Councilman Malone. After his press conference in Chicago I got my first ‘be careful’ warning from Detective Blaine and the note on my windshield.”

She didn’t respond.

Scott pushed. “Darla’s family got a postcard…I got a note…same author.”

Maybe she was absorbed in looking at all the business cards, but her lack of interest had to make him wonder.

Continuing to flip a few more cards over to read the back, Tessa finally said, “And you know this, Sherlock, because…?

“Same backwards ‘e’ on both.”

“On both postcards?”

“No, the first postcard and the note,” he said “I did mention it to you once before.”

Scott stared at her for a moment, though she wasn’t looking at him for her to notice his scrutiny. The writing on both cards to the Perelli’s was not much better than scrawl but the second one had a different slant to the script and lacked the notable backwards ‘e’ of the first. The obtuse act didn’t wear well on her.

“So, where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The note?”

“Crumpled up and tossed on the Hilton parking lot.”

“Well, that makes it a little hard to use as evidence.” She almost appeared happy at his carelessness.

The topic was closed. Scott could tell by her body language, and simply, she had a point. Without the note, he couldn’t really press his suspicions. Strange choice of words though.

Scott began searching for some sort of secret pocket in the purse of a thousand things. He found one among the folds, opened the zipper, and extracted two loose keys. He added them to his pile. “How did she ever find anything in here?”

She let the wallet and business cards fall into her lap. Tired and reluctant to share with Scott, she sighed, “I don’t know what I’m looking for. The woman carried too much cash and credit.”

“Maybe, if needed, she wanted to be able to get out of town fast.”

“We should all be so lucky.”

“Okay, but…”

“But what?”

“But we just cut off her escape route.” He pointed to the wallet

“There is no escape,” Tessa said, barely above a whisper. Her gaze was distant, as if staring at the blatant truth.

His time with this woman had been short, barely 48 hours, but he didn’t need to ask her to explain.

True to a spy novel, he picked up a powder compact and busied himself trying to pry the mirror from the front of the case, suspecting some sort of microdot underneath.

No such luck.

Disgusted, he began shoving everything back into the bag. “Tell me. Why were you so sure Cy had gone underground and wasn’t dead?

“Does it matter?” she hedged.

“Maybe not,” Scott said, while staring at her, “but maybe.”

“I’d heard things through the grape vine,” she said without looking at him.

“This grape have a name?”

“Nope.”

Scott picked up the contents of the wallet strewn about Tessa’s lap, adding them to the haphazard pile growing in the purse. It didn’t matter that the credit cards were loose like playing cards, he’d probably courier the mess back to Marlayna as is.

She didn’t want to discuss things; Scott decided he needed time to think. He made an excuse, “I’m going to catch a cat nap, you may want to do the same.”

Leaning back the leather seat, he crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, turning his face away. The air conditioning was cold and she mentally excused his closed-off body language as warmth generating rather than defensive.

The reporter didn’t sleep. Instead, he reviewed the events of the last 24 hours and tried to make sense of them. He was no closer to solving the riddle when the plane landed. Scott collected all their personal belongings, handing Marlayna’s purse to Tessa.

“It doesn’t go with my outfit,” he explained, trying to lighten the mood even though he felt distinctly separated from his companion.

He smiled at the joke. She didn’t.

They had a car at the airport, Dante’s Mustang, but Tessa advised against collecting it in the wee hours of the morning in the deserted garage. Scott couldn’t argue with the logic, when she noted that their arrival would be known and any ‘random ambush’ well planned, but there was one small detail they appeared to be overlooking.

Scott asked, “But isn’t Dante going to need his car?”

She’d wondered about that too, but it had been about a month since she’d heard from Dante; normally no more than a day or so went by without him giving her a call. But that worry would have to take its place at the end of a long list of concerns she had in connection with her twin brother.

“Let’s just get a cab,” Tessa suggested. “I want to go home. We can regroup tomorrow.”

Given their location, it made sense to head to Tessa’s place first, but it soon became clear that ‘going home’ would also not be the best plan. The cab cruised up to Tessa’s apartment building, only to be waved off by a police barricade. Emergency vehicles lined the street.

“Now what?” Tessa groaned. The uniforms almost outnumbered the headcount at a policeman’s ball. Her ice-blue eyes peered up to the window of her condominium. A switched-on living room lamp was noticeable, even through the closed curtains, though that in itself didn’t mean anything.

The cab driver spoke to them, “You getting out?”

Scott wasn’t sure. Then his eyes locked on a familiar face in the crowd. Detective Blaine was standing with G.J. Perelli, the latter in handcuffs. “Did your ‘brother’ come back to visit?” he asked, reminding Tessa of their earlier conversation with her neighbor and the attempted breakin before they went to New York.

Without thinking, Tessa automatically went to her purse for her cell phone, then remembered that it had been stolen. “The alarm company would have called me if the alarm was tripped, and someone would have had to give the code to disarm the system. I can’t check to see if that’s what happened, and we both know that if Cy was responsible for taking it, he isn’t available to respond.”

“Maybe jail is the safest place for G.J., right now.”

“Maybe.”

“Though it doesn’t tell me what he was looking for.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Scott frowned, a bit put out that she didn’t share her ideas. Apparently, he was still on probation.

The cab driver grew impatient. “Meter’s running, people.”

Sitting back in his seat, Scott crossed his arms. “Now what?”

“Your place.”

“Probably no better.”

“How about I just drop you at the corner?”

“Nope. You’re stuck with me.”

Tessa made a split-second decision and leaned forward, giving an address on Lakeshore Drive. She didn’t explain anything about their ultimate destination. They drove in silence, until she directed the cab driver to pull over.

Bags in hand, Scott followed Tessa out onto the sidewalk, paid the driver and watched the cab drive off. He looked around at the residential neighborhood. The houses, mostly two stories, were on large lots.

Being such a late hour, the neighborhood was quiet and the streets all but deserted. Tessa said, “I think this is a place where they won’t look for us.”

Scott followed as she walked around the block. The building she chose to guide them to was dark and still. If the small pile of daily newspapers on the front step weren’t enough, the accumulation of mail would have been as much of an explanation, as her words. “Dante has been gone for a few days,” she said offhandedly.

A sniff of the musty air in the house lead Scott to say, “A few?”

“He didn’t ask me to swing by and take care of the place like he usually does.”

Something flipped in Scott’s gut. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

Punching in a code on the security system box, Tessa led the way into the lightless room. Finding a light switch was no problem; her old family home was more or less as it was when she’d lived there so many years earlier, and the last occupant to move in, hadn’t bothered to change things much.

She quickly changed the subject. “Do you play?” pointing to an old stand-up piano. “Dante loves to play the blues, but his forte is classical.”

“And is your forte classical as well?” Scott asked, wondering if that would put a name to the artist he’d heard in Donatello’s car…or muddy the waters with two possibilities.