Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 (21 page)

Chapter 40

The minute I walked back into the apartment, I heard noises in the kitchen. Trey, I assumed.

Boy, was I wrong. It was Gabriella, dressed once again in her white baby-tee uniform, only this time she carried a picnic basket. Her hair fell loose about her shoulders, and she smelled of sandalwood.

I shut the door behind me. “Could have sworn I locked that.”

“I have keys.” She gestured toward the stove, where a small cast iron pot simmered. “Do you like miso soup?”

“I prefer donuts. You know, the ones with the little sprinkles.”

She turned the stove eye on low and wiped her hands. “I came to get my tarot cards and check on Trey. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding—I’m glad you dropped by. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

She cocked her head, her green eyes clever. “Of course. Would you like to join me on the terrace? I’m dying for a cigarette.”

***

So I stretched out once again on the chaise lounge, cigarette in hand. I was done by the time Gabriella joined me, having stopped at Trey’s desk to gather her tarot deck. She brought it and her picnic basket onto the terrace, placing both beside her as she dropped into a half-lotus. Then she extracted a pack of Gitanes blondes from the basket and tapped one out.

“My least interesting vice,” she said.

I offered her the lighter. She lit the cigarette and inhaled luxuriously, almost sexually. “You said you had questions?”

“A few, just to fill in some backstory. Like how you met the Beaumonts.”

She pursed her lips to blow out a smoky tendril. “I was Charley’s massage therapist—we met soon after she and Mark moved here. We became friends, and they invested in my shop.”

“How did Phoenix get involved with them?”

“Phoenix is visible and well regarded, of course. But mostly because of Marisa. And her connections.”

I remembered what I’d read about her in the files I’d returned to Landon, how she came to Atlanta with a stack of money and an impressive Old Charleston family tree. “She’s not one of the Good Old Boys, is she?”

“No. She’s properly respectful, but she is an outsider and always will be.”

“Which is why she threw her lot in with Senator Adams. He
is
a Good Old Boy.”

Gabriella smiled. “It was a risky investment. Less so now. Adams has an excellent chance of winning.”

“Which means Phoenix wins too. And the Beaumonts.” And Landon, I thought, since I was sure he’d brokered the Beaumont-Phoenix-Adams partnership. But I didn’t share this with Gabriella, who dropped her still smoldering cigarette into the Pellegrino bottle from last night. She picked up her tarot deck and cocked her head.

“Have you seen the Beaumonts’ new resort property, on Lake Oconee?”

“No. They’re holding the reception there, I know that much.”

“The boat dock is especially nice—slips for the yachts, a gorgeous view. It’s the water that makes the place, you know, especially now, after the drought two years ago.”

I waited for her point. There wasn’t one. “So?”

She shuffled the cards in her hands, smoothly. Not like a poker player. Like a magician.

“If you do your research, you will notice that the wife of Senator Adams has a sister who has a husband on the water board of Greene County. Not yet, of course. He begins his term next year. But he has a reputation for protecting the commercial interests of property owners.”

“Friends tend to have friends in high places.”

“Yes, in high places you can always find some friends for sale.” She was cutting and restacking the deck now. “This is the nature of business.”

“What about Eliza? Was she starting to make noise about this business?”

She looked at me with puzzled amusement. “You think this is a secret? Don’t be naïve. As for Eliza, I’m afraid I can’t help you—I’ve told you everything I know about her. Ask Trey if you don’t believe me. He knows I don’t lie.”

She pulled a card from the deck and laid it face-up at my feet. A woman on a throne, some clouds, butterflies.

“The Queen of Swords,” she said. “Intensely perceptive. Quick and confident, independent and clear-thinking, sometimes rashly so. She has suffered loss, but has the strength to bear her sorrow.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“That hardly matters.” She pulled another card and laid it down at a right angle to the first. It was a man this time, also on a throne, also armed with a formidable piece of steel.

“The King of Swords. A card of power, of strength, of a man who holds life and death in the palm of his hand. He is firm in both friendship and in enmity, but often over-cautious. Usually solitary. And sometimes ruthless.”

I regarded her carefully. She was playing me, yes, but I was curious enough to play along. “So what are you and Trey? Friends? Lovers?”

“Both. But only because he isn’t in a relationship…is he?”

“You’re the one with the cards, you tell me.”

“That’s not how it works.” She turned over one more card. “This is the final outcome—The Magician, the card of creative archetypal energy. Whatever you choose to do, you will have the power to do it. Because there will be a choice, an important one—for both you and Trey.”

She collected her cards and tucked them in her basket. “He’s not what he seems to be on the surface. He’s very brave, yes, but also afraid. Only fear could make someone so brave.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. Mark my words.” She stood and headed for the sliding glass door, her dainty slides clip-clopping with each step. “Tell Trey to enjoy the soup—it’s good for his electrolyte balance. And you should get some sleep—you’re going to need it.”

“Why? What—?”

But she was already gone.

Chapter 41

Trey slept through everything, which was just as well. When I checked on him, his breathing had deepened, dropping into a steady rhythm.

I left him to rest and flipped on the television just in time to catch the press conference. The gist was this: the APD announced that they had arrested William Aloysius Perkins, AKA Bulldog, and were charging him with the murder of Eliza Abigail Compton. Mark and Charley did a nice concluding piece about community, culminating in a big fat check to the Police Benevolent Fund with lots of hurrah-hurrah and general back-patting.

Mark spoke with solemn relish. “There will be justice now, not just for Eliza Compton—”

Wow, I thought, he finally got the name right.

“—but justice for all.”

A smattering of applause. I shut it off before I got sick. Now that Bulldog was behind bars, everyone was eager to move on, case closed, let’s get some Champagne. Forget that Dylan’s body just got pulled from the Hooch, forget that Nikki was missing.

Life keeps going, Eric said. Yes, it did.

I collected all the tobacco-related trash on the terrace and took it to the kitchen. The miso soup simmered; other than that, the silence of the apartment was stunning. Combined with the stark black-and-white décor, the hard floors and empty walls, the place was downright spooky.

Gabriella. I had one brochure on her spa, four sentences from my brother, and a morning riddled with French cigarettes and tarot cards. Other than that, she was a cipher.

A cipher who was sleeping with Trey
, my gut reminded me.

I shoved the butt-filled Pellegrino bottle deep into the trashcan. I had no right to feel territorial, and yet her presence nagged at me. I finished straightening the apartment, including putting the file folders I hadn’t used back in Trey’s desk. I noticed that he’d left his computer on, his Phoenix laptop. This didn’t surprise me—he’d been uncharacteristically haphazard with his things the night before—but what did surprise me was that his desktop was up.

Gabriella had been after more than cards—she’d been on his computer.

I sat at the desk too, and my conscience gave a twinge. Not snooping, I told myself. Investigating.

Thirty minutes later, I’d examined all the files that had been opened recently—nothing suspicious, just lots of premises liability reports, a couple of other Phoenix forms. Boring stuff. And none had been opened in the last hour.

His web history was a different story. An e-mail program had been pulled up during the time of Gabriella’s visit. I clicked on it and got a log-in page, password required. But there was no chance of retrieving the message, or even seeing where it had gone.

She’d trespassed on his work computer to send an e-mail? Or perhaps something more nefarious?

I fetched Rico’s portable drive from my bag. From what I’d observed, running his security program was a simple matter of turning it loose and letting it do its thing. It ran a virus scan first, then a more intensive search for more dangerous malware. The second part of the procedure—fixing what it found—was more complicated. But then, I wasn’t interested in correcting the problem. I just wanted to know if one existed.

While the program hummed along, I checked out Trey’s desk—everything looked just like I’d left it when I reassembled it that morning. His gun drawer was locked, just like it had been the night before. I checked the drawers—papers, folders, pencils. The meds and the
GQ
magazine.

I picked up the magazine and thumbed through it. There was a single sticky note marking an article about formal wear. I thumbed through the rest of the pages, but found nothing else of interest. I did, however, notice an ad for Trey’s watch, a Bulgari Diagono GMT. It retailed for $6,600. Right beside it were his shoes, Ferregamo classic black lace-ups: $595. I turned back to the front cover, to the model wearing Trey’s suit.

Always Armani
, Garrity had said,
or some other Italian crap I can’t pronounce.

I flipped rapidly through the pages. The first article featured his apartment, B& Italia with La Scala marble in the kitchen and bath. I kept going, seeing his coffee table, his trench coat. I even found shaving soap, Acqua di Gio, and I knew if I could put my nose to it, it would smell faintly of the ocean.

And then I saw it, the
pièce de résistance
, stretched out languorously on a two-page centerfold spread—the Ferrari F430 coupe in all its sleek glory.
La Dolce Velocità,
the headline read. The sweet speed.

I held him in my hands, all of him, or rather, all of who he was now. No wonder Garrity was confused—Trey had reconstructed himself as precisely as from a blueprint, obliterating the previous Trey like razing a construction site. I realized my hands were shaking.

I didn’t have time to ponder the implications, however. Rico’s program had done its job. I examined the screen—a flashing green light. No viruses, which wasn’t a surprise, since Trey had rather formidable firewall.

But then the second part of the program kicked in.

And that was a different story.

***

I’d just finished talking to Rico when I heard the bedroom door click open. Trey stood in the doorway, his dress shirt a wrinkled mess, untucked and unbuttoned.

“You were supposed to go home,” he said.

Trey’s
GQ
still rested in my lap. I slipped it nonchalantly into the drawer. “I was waiting to make sure you were okay.”

He didn’t move. “I’m okay. Go home.”

I stood up and got right in front of him, then put the back of my hand to his forehead. He yanked away and scowled.

“Good,” I said. “Still no fever.”

“Go home.”

“You are such a one-trick pony sometimes.”

He was getting exasperated. “This could be contagious. I don’t want you to get it. I want—”

“I know, I know, you want me to go home. But we need to talk first.” I waved toward his desk. “Did you know you have a key logger program on your computer?”

That got his attention. “What? How?”

“Good question. I’m assuming you didn’t install it.”

He frowned and moved past me, sat down in front of the computer. Sick or not, he typed like wildfire. “What did you run?”

I moved to stand behind him. “One of Rico’s programs. It’s behavior-based, looks for things that are trying to hide, which makes it more effective than the signature-based stuff. Or so Rico says. I mean, virus scans and firewalls are nice, but they don’t protect you against something that’s recording your every key stroke.”

“But this isn’t possible,” he said, studying the information I’d scrawled on a sticky note. “Rico. I know that name.”

“He came to Phoenix once—big guy, piercings everywhere. He says it was most likely a physical installation since you’re not exactly a high-risk user, and the program didn’t find any Trojan horses.”

“A physical installation isn’t possible. I mounted the locks on these doors myself. They’re grade one deadbolts.”

“So it was someone who has a key.”

I let the words fall. He shook his head.

“Only three people beside me have keys to the apartment—the concierge, Garrity—”

“And Gabriella.”

He was still staring at the computer screen. “She wouldn’t—”

“She would. She came over and dropped off some soup right before she went through your things.”

He turned around. “How do you know this?”

“I saw her do it.”

He fixed me with the look.

“Okay, not exactly.” And then I told him the story—the picnic basket, the cigarettes, the tarot cards, the e-mail, the magazine with the sticky note inside. He stopped me there.

“She looked at the magazine several days ago, when she ordered my tuxedo.”

“So? It’s not any
one
thing that makes her look guilty, it’s
all
the things.”

“There’s no evidence.”

“Screw evidence, I thought you trusted me.”

“I do.”

“Then you should believe me without evidence.”

“Belief and trust aren’t the same thing. For belief, I need evidence.” He stood up abruptly. “Go home now. I’ll deal with this.”

“You’re still—”

“Go home.”

He pushed past me toward the kitchen, where he got a bottle of Pellegrino from the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap. He took one tiny tentative sip.

“Go,” he said.

I walked over to my stuff, slung my bag over my shoulder. “You want me to go home, you have to go back to bed.”

“But—”

“That’s my offer.” I pointed toward the front door. “Home.” I pointed toward his room. “Bed.”

He turned around and went to his room without another word. I called after him, “Yes, and thank you, Tai, for saving me in my hour of need. Oh, you’re very welcome, Trey, it’s what I do. Saving people and all that.”

His voice carried from the bedroom. “Go home.”

“I’m going! Enjoy the soup your two-faced spying mistress brought you!”

I slammed the door on the way out. It felt really, really good.

***

I’d barely hit the lobby when my phone rang. I kept walking as I answered. “Now what?

“Thank you, Tai, for saving me in my hour of need.”

My pace slowed from huffy to merely annoyed. “Whatever. Are you in bed?”

“Not yet. I decided to take a shower.”

“Not a bad idea. For the first time since I’ve known you, you do
not
smell good.”

A pause. “I mean it. I couldn’t think of the words to say it, but I felt it. Thank you.”

His voice was soft. It melted away the last scrap of resistance. “I know, Trey. Just be careful, okay? You’re still pretty weak.”

“You are too. You couldn’t have gotten much rest.”

I stopped at the exit. The concierge watched me with disguised disinterest.

“I can rest at the shop.”

“Okay.”

“Or I could come back up. But if I come back up, we have to talk about this Gabriella thing.”

“Okay.”

I sighed. “Fine. I’m coming back up. But I’m going to get you some crackers and ginger ale first.”