Restoreth My Soul (Psalm 23 Mysteries) (14 page)

“I’m not just talking the clichés here like good food, plenty of rest, and exercise.”

“Yeah, because last time I tried to go on vacation it worked out so well,” Cindy said, the sarcasm slipping out. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired.”

“Don’t be sorry. You’re being honest. That’s a good thing. You don’t have to pretend with me, you know. I like honest, even when it’s messy and unpleasant and harsh.”

Cindy shook her head. “Three words I definitely don’t enjoy.”

Sylvia shrugged. “I’m just saying, let yourself go through what you’re going through, don’t judge yourself, don’t even try to pretend for other people. In the end it will just exhaust you and end up taking you three times as long to work through what you need to. If you need a mental health day, you take it. You need to punch something, sign up to a real gym.”

Cindy wasn’t sure whether to be amused or embarrassed. “Did someone tell you that I slapped Jeremiah?”

“No, but I’m guessing he had it coming. I’d rather you hit a punching bag than a man, but at least you let something out.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. I had a terrible childhood, the kind they make movies about that make everyone cry and vow to be better people. I learned the hard way that if you don’t learn to care for yourself, you’ll never heal, never grow, never learn how to really live. So much of our lives are spent putting on a brave face and being strong for other people, whether it’s out of guilt or shame or a misplaced sense of responsibility. Let yourself grieve, let yourself rage, whatever it is you need to do, do it. And don’t apologize to anyone for it.”

“Thanks, I’ll try to remember that,” Cindy said.

Sylvia stood. “I’ll be here to remind you if I need to. Now it’s time I go kick those two out of my office so I can get some work done.”

Sylvia made a certain amount of sense, but it sounded easier said than done. Cindy had spent so much of her life afraid, and just as much of her life hiding that fear from other people.

She shook her head. Time to grieve or rage or whatever later. Now it was time to get back to work. She glanced at the clock. It was ten in the morning. She sighed. Only seven more hours until she could go home and get busy trying to do something else.

Mark headed back to the office. Once there he put in a call to his friend Vince, at the bureau.

“What on earth has got me accepting a call from you this early in the morning?” Vince asked in a friendly tone.

“A heck of a mess,” Mark admitted.

“How about you give me a preview?” Vince said with a laugh.

Ten minutes later Vince wasn’t laughing anymore. “That is seriously messed up all the way around,” he said.

“I told you.”

“You did the right thing calling. I know a couple of agents to sic on this. Can you send me over some files?”

“I’ll fax you what I’ve got as soon as I’m off the phone,” Mark promised.

“Okay. I’ll take a look and then get them started on them. I wouldn’t expect a call back until tomorrow probably.”

“As long as no one else gets shot in the meantime I’m okay with that.”

“I miss your sense of humor. Tell you what, I’ll try to find you someone who can do some art authentication right away.”

“I would appreciate that. The longer we’re in the dark the harder it is to keep from tripping over stuff.”

After they hung up Mark faxed him the file. Then he debated his next move. Before he could make a decision he got a text on his phone from Vince.

Sorry, no number. Your art guy is Joe Weinstein.

There was an address in Los Angeles.

Great, Mark thought with a grimace. Driving into Los Angeles was exactly what he didn’t want to do. Oh well, maybe he’d manage to cruise by a couple of consulates while he was at it. Not that he could even dare go inside and start asking questions. And he was sure it was too much to hope that they’d have black cars sitting out front that he could take pictures of and send to Cindy and Jeremiah to try and identify, but one could dream.

Several hours later he realized the whole thing had been one ridiculous dream. He’d spent three hours getting to his first destination, what should have been a one hour trip, but there were accidents on multiple freeways in the city. He’d made it to the art guy’s place just to find that it was a house, not a business, and no one seemed to be home. He left his card stuck in the front door with a note on the back to call him.

Then he spent a couple of hours just trying to drive by the German and Russian embassies. As expected, no ominous black cars hanging around. Finally he gave up, realizing that most of the day was pretty much a bust. From the sounds of things on the radio, traffic was going to be even worse getting back out of the city. Just one more reason he hated L.A.

He called Traci. “I’m in L.A. I’ll be home for dinner...whenever I can get there.”

“Okay,” she said. “You must be in a good mood.”

“You know how much I love the city.”

“Then I’ll make sure to make something yummy for dinner.”

“You are the best,” he said.

He hung up and felt himself grin. He might be trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic for a few hours but at least he had a wonderful wife to get home to.

Cindy was running on fumes. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was four-forty. Only twenty minutes left.

You can do it
, she told herself,
just hang in there
.

The rest of her day had been crazy hectic. With Geanie not there everyone had been suddenly looking to her to figure out what to do about the programs for Sunday services. She had thought on three separate occasions that it might just be her day to quit her job.

She had gotten through, though, somehow. Now she was just hoping for a few minutes of calm while she wrapped things up.

The door opened and she winced, not wanting to have to deal with anyone else.

She glanced up, expecting to see one of the staff or ministry leaders. Instead a man and a woman, both wearing black suits and white shirts walked in. They both walked with a sense of purpose.

They headed straight for her desk and she felt herself tensing up as she wondered who they were and what they wanted.

“Cindy Preston?” the man asked.

“Yes?” she asked.

He pulled out a badge. “Agent Davies, F.B.I. You need to come with us. Right now.”

Mark had been going to call in the F.B.I. and she couldn’t help but wonder if something else happened to him or Jeremiah. “Why, what’s wrong?” she asked, standing up as anxiety began to course through her. She could feel her hands starting to shake again.

“You’re under arrest for grand larceny, smuggling, and conspiracy to commit murder.”

“What?” Cindy asked, struggling to process what Agent Davies had just said.

“Ma’am, turn around and put your hands behind your back,” he said.

She stared at him, wondering what on earth he was doing.

“Ma’am, don’t make us ask you again,” the female agent said, her hand moving under her jacket and touching the barely visible butt of a gun.

“Th-this is a mistake,” Cindy stuttered.

Davies produced a pair of handcuffs, put his hand on her shoulder and spun her around. He yanked her right arm behind her and she cried out in pain. Cold steel snapped tight around her wrist.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

He grabbed her other arm and in a moment she was completely handcuffed. He spun her back around. “You’re coming with us. You have a lot to answer for.”

“This is a mistake. Call Detective Mark Walters, he’ll tell you. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m one of the good guys.”

“That’s what they all say,” the woman sneered.

“I’m innocent!” Cindy shouted. “Why won’t you listen to me! Call Mark, he’ll tell you what’s going on. I’m helping him.”

“More like helping yourself,” Davies said.

Fear and pain mixed together inside her and she felt like an explosion waiting to happen. She wanted to scream, cry, kick, fight, whatever it took.

The door opened before they reached it and Roy walked in. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

“F.B.I.,” the woman said, flashing her badge. “We’ve placed this woman under arrest.”

“Oh, oh, I see,” he said, looking stunned at first. Then he turned and looked Cindy in the eyes. Instead of compassion, she saw condemnation there as his lips tightened into a thin line. He opened the door for the officers and they pushed her out of it.

“Help me!” she screamed. “Call Detective Mark Walters! Tell him what’s happening! They’ve got the wrong person! Call Jeremiah! Tell them it’s Agent Davies and his partner!”

She looked around frantically, hoping to see Sylvia or Dave. They would help. She screamed at the top of her lungs, hoping it would bring someone else running.

The two agents just pushed her along faster. She tripped but Davies who was holding her by her upper arm kept her on her feet and half dragged her forward.

“I didn’t do anything,” she sobbed.

“Cut the crap, we all know you’re guilty,” Davies growled. “Protesting won’t do you any good here. We have proof.”

“What proof?” she sobbed.

Her entire body was shaking uncontrollably now and she realized she was going to throw up. When they made it to the parking lot, she doubled over and retched. As soon as she was finished, they shoved her into the back of a black van. She fell onto the seat, blood roaring in her ears and she blacked out.

When she came to she was sitting in a gray room in one of three chairs at a table. The two chairs across from her sat vacant. Overhead florescent lights hummed, the only sound in the silence.

Her hands were still handcuffed together, but now they were in front of her body instead of behind it. Also, the cuffs weren’t cutting as deeply into her wrists as they had been before. She supposed she should be grateful for the small things, but her mind was too filled with panic over what was happening to her.

Had someone heard her at the church and called Mark or Jeremiah? Were they right now straightening everything out? She had no idea how long she had been unconscious and it was impossible to tell what time of day or night it was in the room.

The door opened and the female agent came in. She had light blonde hair worn high in a tight bun that seemed to pull at her scalp. She had bright blue eyes that were cold, calculating. She sat down across from Cindy and looked her over as though trying to make up her mind about something.

She leaned back in her chair, before speaking. “So, are you ready to talk?”

“I don’t know what’s happening. This is just some terrible mistake,” Cindy blurted out. “Did you call Detective Walters?”

“He’s been contacted. He was very interested to see the file we’ve been building on you,” the woman said.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Cindy pleaded.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on. We’ve been tracking Heinrich for several months now, ever since he contacted an art dealer in regard to a certain valuable painting that went missing during World War II. We were waiting to close in on him because although we knew where he was, we didn’t know the location where he’d stashed the majority of the artwork in his possession. We also knew he had an accomplice, but we didn’t know who. We were waiting to pick him up until we could ascertain those two things. He was clever, though, always careful except for the one slip up with Haverston.

“Then he got himself killed and you came out of the woodwork. Very clever of you, by the way, pretending to find that one piece of art in his house. Convenient that it was later stolen. Only his accomplice could have suspected that what appeared to be a worthless piece of art was far from it.”

“Please, I don’t know this man. I never even met him. Detective Walters had my friend Jeremiah translating the Hebrew writings in the house and I took him over dinner. I found the painting by accident. Jeremiah can tell you.”

“Oh, I assure you, he’s being questioned closely about your involvement in this entire situation.”

“They both know me,” Cindy said. “They’ll both vouch for me.”

“They might be willing to vouch for you, but how well does either of them really know you?” the woman asked, arching a brow.

“Really well!”

“Is that a fact? I think they’d be surprised to learn that your father’s engineering firm did work several years ago in Germany.”

“What? No, I don’t think Dad was ever in Germany,” Cindy said, struggling to think. “But, I don’t know, all I knew was he was gone a lot. What does that even matter where my dad was?”

“Maybe your friends would also be surprised to learn that your brother, Kyle, took a little trip to Germany in between filming seasons of his television show and did a little excavation of abandoned mines. You know, the kinds of places that looted art treasures were hidden in by Nazis?”

“When did Kyle do that?” Cindy whispered.

The truth was, it could have happened at any time. She had made a point of not following her brother’s career and her mom never talked about what Kyle did that wasn’t newsworthy in the read-about-your-brother-in-a-magazine kind of way. The truth was, she had no idea what he did in his private life.

“And maybe they’d be fascinated to know that the first place you rented in this area, the one on Goose Creek Road, was owned by Heinrich Beck.”

Cindy couldn’t help but stare. She felt like she was going to be sick. “I dealt with a property manager. I didn’t know who the owner was. I wasn’t even there long before I started renting from a guy who rented his house to staff members of the church. This is just a bunch of coincidences.”

The woman slammed her fist down on the table, making Cindy jump. “We might not be able to prove your family’s involvement with Beck, but we can prove yours.”

She snapped her fingers and the door opened and Agent Davies came in with a folder. He sat down and pulled out several photos. He pushed the first one across the table toward Cindy. “You and Beck three weeks ago.”

Cindy stared at the picture. It was her sitting on a bench in the park where Jeremiah liked to take Captain to run. Three weeks ago she had gone with them and played some fetch with Captain. She had sat down on a bench for a couple of minutes while Jeremiah took a turn. There, sitting on the same bench as she was, was an old man. He had his lips parted and it almost looked like he was talking.

She racked her brain, trying to remember. She remembered going to the park and she remembered sitting down on the bench. After a moment she remembered the old man as well.

“That’s Heinrich?” she asked. She hadn’t seen his body.

“As if you didn’t know,” the woman sneered.

“What did he say to you?”

It came back to Cindy in a rush. “He was watching Jeremiah play with his dog. And he said ‘he seems like a good man.’ I wasn’t sure if he was actually talking to me or even talking about Jeremiah. I said, ‘yes, he is,’ in case he was. That was it. He got up and left.”

“And what exactly is your explanation for this picture?” Davies asked, sliding another picture across the cold metal table toward her.

Cindy picked it up, her handcuffs clinking together as she did and stared at it. She was walking into her house in the background and there, in the foreground, parked in a car on her street and staring at her was Heinrich.

“That was taken five days ago.”

Her head began to spin. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

He began to slide more pictures across the table, all of them showing her and somewhere in it Heinrich.

“He was following me? Why?” she asked.

“These were all taken over the course of the last three months,” the woman said. “We’ve been watching him for months, but it’s only recently that he got so sloppy when it came to his meetings with you.”

“This isn’t true. I wasn’t meeting with him. I don’t know him. I don’t know anything, especially why he was stalking me.”

She felt like her mind was shattering, scattering into tiny fragments and flying apart. The world was upside down. Three months. That was how long ago he had met briefly with Jeremiah. Did she dare mention that or would they just think that Jeremiah was a conspirator, too?

She couldn’t think and her chest was tightening up so it felt like she couldn’t breathe. She could hear herself taking short, gasping breaths and in a part of her brain that was still functioning she was wondering if she was hyperventilating.

“I...want...a...lawyer,” she finally managed to gasp.

This wasn’t just a misunderstanding. These people truly believed that she was guilty of the things they were saying. What if Mark couldn’t convince them otherwise? She had been arrested, the full force of that hit her. What would people think? What would happen if she went to court? Surely they couldn’t prove all of this, not enough to convince a jury.

I can’t go to jail
, she thought. As the thought came to her it seemed like the walls of the room that she was in were closing in on her. She thought about the endless days she had spent trapped, confined, imprisoned after being kidnapped in Hawaii. Jail would be worse. There would be no hope of rescue, and possible torture at the hands of guards and other inmates.

“You’ll see a lawyer when we’re done talking,” the woman said.

And that wasn’t right. Cindy closed her fist around the photograph she was still holding and jumped to her feet. She was about to do something, she didn’t know what, when the door flew open. A tall man stood in shadow. “That’s enough for now,” he said.

The two agents stood up. Davies scooped up the photos, tucked them in his folder, and they left the room. The door slammed shut behind them and Cindy sank down into her chair. She opened her fist and stared at the crinkled up photograph that she had been holding when she started to lose it.

She wanted to remember that day and figure out why Heinrich had been there, watching her. That might be the only thing that could save her now.

Mark was heading home when he decided to drop into the precinct and grab the jacket he’d left there earlier that morning with the coffee stain on it. Traci would be running errands the next day and that would include dropping by the drycleaners.

His plan was to get in, get the jacket, and get out. He was exhausted and he wanted nothing more at this point than a hot meal and some time vegging on the couch. He made it to his desk, grabbed the jacket, and glanced down. There were a couple of messages that had been scrawled out for him.

“Leave it until the morning,” he breathed, even as he realized he was reaching to pick them up.

There were three. The first two could definitely wait for the morning. The third one caused him to pause.

Dave W. called about Cindy and the FBI.

Nothing in that sentence made any sense. There was a local number. He would have dropped it back on his desk but for the mention of Cindy. Nothing that ever happened with the secretary was delay worthy.

He pulled out his phone just in time to see that the battery was dying. He picked up his desk phone instead and called the number.

“Hello?” a male voice answered.

“Hi, I’m looking for a Dave W.”

“That’s me, Dave Wyman.”

“Wildman! This is Detective Mark Walters. I got a very cryptic message from you.”

“Detective! Why did the F.B.I. arrest Cindy?”

“What? I’m sorry, you said, what?”

“Two agents came by the church and arrested Cindy almost two hours ago. They dragged her out of here in handcuffs.”

Mark sat down at his desk. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you know the names of the agents?”

“The man was named Davies and I have no idea what the woman’s name was. I didn’t even get close to them. I just heard Cindy screaming for help, for someone to call you. By the time I ran out of my office and got to the parking lot they were gone.”