was her turn to be surprised. “Of course, it’s me. I live here. Who’re you?”
His chin, just shaved but already darkened by the regrowth of heavy beard, jutted. “So where’s your old man?”
“My old man?”
“What’s wrong with youse? Can’t you hear right?” He shook his head. “Where’s Ric? Last time I spoke wid him he told me to be here by ten. And no one can say ah…er…Boris Martinez is ever late.”
A spooky feeling overtook Lauren. Boris Martinez had talked to Ric. And what kind of phony, cooked-up kind of name was Boris Martinez, anyway? Who really was this guy? “You…you talked with Ric?”
He muttered something.
She was glad she didn’t quite catch it.
“That’s what I said, ain’t it? I talked to Ric, and he told me to be here by ten. I’m here, and you ain’t him. So where is he?”
Tears filled her eyes. Too many emotions to identify any one ripped through her. Lauren closed her eyes for a moment, prayed for help, for peace, for this horrid person to leave her alone.
“Ric’s dead, Mr. Martinez.”
That shocked him. After a few moments of slack-jawed surprise, he clamped his mouth shut and narrowed his gaze. “How can he be dead, lady? I just talked to him…oh, not three weeks ago. And I woulda heard if someone’d—” He stopped, cleared his throat. “I woulda heard if something’d happened to him.”
Lauren had had it with her unwanted visitor. “Well, something did happen to him. Three weeks ago, as a matter of fact. And it doesn’t matter whether you heard about it or not. My brother died in a car accident twenty-four days ago, Mr. Martinez. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot to do. Goodbye.”
He stuck the pointed toe of his hand-sewn leather shoe in the crack between the door and the frame. “Not so fast, lady. I don’t believe a word you said. Ric DiStefano ain’t dead. And you better not try and pull a fast one on me. He owes me a whole pile of dough. And he ain’t about to stiff me by pretending he’s stiff—you get my drift?”
All she wanted was for him to leave. So she said, “Fine. I’ll be sure to tell him the next time I see him. At the cemetery, when I go put flowers on his grave.”
“We’ll see about that grave thing,” he groused.
Lauren looked down at his fancy footwear, then, with determination and total disgust, she did what she should have done at the start. She shoved her foot against his, dislodged it enough to gain a scant advantage, and shut the door.
Despite the house’s heavy construction and the thick wooden door, she heard his objections all the way to the kitchen.
If he didn’t leave in the next five minutes, she was calling the cops. No matter what.
Because now she realized that the deer-in-the-headlights feeling she’d experienced last night had been no accident. Something was going on. Something dangerous. Something she didn’t like.
And she wasn’t going to just sit and take it.
She was going to find out what was what.
Lauren didn’t know how or why she knew it, but she did know her life depended on what she learned. Worse yet, Mark’s life depended on it.
And no one was going to hurt that little boy.
No matter what.
FOUR
He’d been too tired to drive home after the accident, so David spent the night at his grandmother’s. He benefited from the vast, luxurious bed he used when he stayed with her, and in the morning she greeted him with one of her “groaning board” breakfasts—two juices, apple and grapefruit, pancakes and real maple syrup, eggs, ham, sausage, bacon, coffee, tea and two kinds of sweet breads.
No way could he eat like that and hope to put in a decent day’s work. So his reasonable serving brought about the expected commentary.
“Are you all right, Davey? You’ve hardly eaten a bite. You sure you didn’t get hurt last night?”
“I’m fine, Gram, and it’s way past time you stopped calling me Davey. You know it.”
She winked. “Sure. But it’s so much fun to bug you. I love to see you blush.”
“You’re a sadist, you know that?”
“Nope, not at all. I’m just your grandmother, and teasing you is fun! You’ll get it when you’re a grandpa yourself—and you know that.”
Over the years, David had learned to ignore certain of his grandmother’s comments; the grandpa one was classic Grandma Dottie. “Okay. So we both know you love to tease me. How about we skip the Davey deal, since we both also know it’s so hokey?”
She spread her intense purple-draped arms. “This is my home. When you’re here, I get to bug you all I want. When we’re at your place, you get to bug me all you want. Isn’t that fair?”
“Listen, you sly fox,” he said with a chuckle. “You’d better add something about when we’re in public to your oh-so-generous offer. I didn’t catch anything about those times.”
She pouted, then waved. “Public, schmublic. You’ll just have to wait and see. That’s all I’m going to promise.”
He gave her a mock scowl. “Be that way, then. But I’ve got to go. Some of us have to work.”
She erupted like a purple satin and gold lace volcano. “Don’t give me that, buddy boy! Sure, your grandpa inherited the house and a little bit of money, but then the two of us worked mighty hard for decades to turn that little money into enough to give back to the Lord for what He’d given us and to provide for our family. And you know I still operate that way.”
He raised his hands and blushed. “That wasn’t at all what I meant, Gram, and if that’s how it came across, I apologize. Please forgive me for the dumb statement.”
“Of course, I forgive you, David.” Her tight hug filled him with a shot of pure love. “And I’m sorry I took offense. Now, go! Get yourself to work with the rest of your pals.”
On the way to the office, he had to deal with the sloppy streets. It was early enough, cold enough and wet enough that last night’s slush hadn’t melted but was enhanced with more of the same. If the thermometer dipped even a couple of ticks, the streets would turn wicked. He hoped the salt trucks came out in hordes.
The elevator to his floor crawled up at its usual slow pace. When it finally got there, he grabbed a cup of what they dubbed FBI sludge from the nearly empty coffee machine and went straight to his desk. After the bitter brew scalded his tongue, he sat back, then closed his eyes.
Ric DiStefano.
He’d scanned the file Eliza gave him, and the pathetically few facts he found there made him wonder. Had the Bureau failed to get more on the guy? Or had someone withheld vital information?
Something reeked.
If he were a betting man, which he wasn’t, he’d bet on the latter. For some reason someone didn’t want Ric DiStefano’s activities, contacts, whatever, turned into common knowledge—well, common within the Bureau. That raised a multitude of problematic flags.
A few months ago, J.Z. insisted someone in the office had turned. No one could explain how the mob buddies of the money-launderer whose death J.Z. was assigned to investigate had known where to find him no matter what he did to keep his plans secret.
David doodled on a notepad, flipped through the few papers on DiStefano, drank his poison, grew more frustrated with every passing minute. He glugged down his last gulp of lousy coffee, threw down his pencil, grabbed the papers, and rose.
If Eliza was only going to give him these lousy