Municipal Blondes

2006-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

1 Nightmare
2 Hangover
3 Telling Friends
4 Playing Santa
5 Bailed Out and In Over My Head
6 Getting Down to Business
7 Farewell Friend
8 Breakout
9 Perfection
10 On the Run
11 Hiding Out
12 Flirting with a Girl
13 At the Helm
14 Nailed It
15 The Committee
16 Flight
17 Dinner with the Enemy
18 Lying Low
19 Pampered, Spoiled, and Searched
20 On the Run, Again
21 Flight-Time
22 Zagreb
23 Finding Angel
24 Wash It All Away
25 Crossing the Adriatic
26 Homesick
27 Surprise at SeaTac
28 Hungry Lion on the Loose
29 Unexpeted Visitor
30 Into the Nightmare, Again
31 Kidnapped
32 Sail Away

Sail Away

2006-12-31T22:32:00.000-08:00

It turned into an impromptu sleep-over last night—not a very festive occasion, but each of us seeking comfort in the others. Silas and Cinnamon, of course, came home with me from the police station after we’d been checked out at the hospital and I’d recovered enough to give my testimony. Everything had been recorded from the wire I wore, so I was able to fill in the visual record as the voices replayed in my ears. When we got back, no one wanted to leave anyone else alone.

9:00 a.m.

The apartment is full of people. Not quite like Christmas, but the first time all these people have been in my new (Dag’s old) apartment. Maizie is jumping around like crazy and sniffing at everyone. Silas is making breakfast (guys always feel like they are pros at making breakfast, don’t you think?) and Cinnamon has been in here about twenty times to see if I’m okay.

This combination of Cinnamon and Silas and me that seems to be evolving is weirding me out. Last night we sat around like “Three’s Company,” staring at each other trying to figure out if there was a couple somewhere in the room. It’s like none of us wants to let go of one of the other two. I think Cinnamon was more shook up over losing Angel than I was, but she expresses it in a kind of sexual animation that I can’t fathom. The girl radiates heat.

I don’t know where it would have ended up if it hadn’t been for Dag’s cousin Teresia showing up. I’d almost forgotten that I invited her to stay the night for her last night in town so we could get a reasonably early start this morning. Once she was here, the tension seemed to break and she brought all of us out of our funk. She’s studying to be a doctor and took immediate charge of administering all our various medications. The doctors sent us all home with a mild sedative after the adventure yesterday, and Silas is still popping pain pills for his leg. No way he should have been busting into the Condo yesterday in his condition.

This morning, by 8:00, people started arriving. I was second thinking my decision to do this today, but when Mrs. Prior, Teri, Lars, Rhonda, and Janice, the Barista from Tovoni’s all got here, it was obvious that there was no turning back. Thank heaven for Janice. She brought espresso from the shop for everyone and somehow managed to get a perfect drink for each of us. She even remembered a cookie for Maizie.

I know there’s others that should have been invited, but this seems like the right set. I look around and realize I only knew three of these people two months ago. It seems like I’ve suddenly entered a new solar system and there is a new sun shining and new stars in the night sky. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it.

Well, if we are going to do this I’d better get people loaded into cars and head north. I’ll take Teresia, Maizie, and Dag’s ashes in the Mustang. Everyone else will have to sort things out for themselves. We’re headed for Deception Pass on Whidbey Island.

8:00 p.m.

It was awkward at times. There were no dry eyes. Hell, I could hardly see to drive up there.

The sky was overcast, but once we got off the Mukilteo Ferry on Whidbey Island, Teresia and I put the top down on the Mustang, in spite of it being just over forty degrees out. We just cranked up the heater to max and the volume on the radio and played 60s Rock music all the way up to Deception Pass. We hiked down to the beach with Rhonda showing us how to get there.

It’s a beautiful place. I could recognize it immediately even though I’d only ever seen it in Rhonda’s painting. We were all walking down the path, with Lars and Cinnamon helping Silas. When it opened out onto the beach, we all stopped short. There was a man out there at the edge of the water. He had a winter coat on and a hat pulled down over his ears and he was looking out across the endless expanse of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the open sea. While we all watched, he turned and walked away toward the south. A Black Lab came running up to him and he threw a stick further down the beach. The Lab chased it and we watched until he was out of sight.

We walked slowly across the sand to the edge of the water and just all stood there where the man had been, looking out across the water.

None of us knew what to do. I held the Urn cradled in my arms like a baby. We all came here to say goodbye and all we could do was stand there silently for about fifteen minutes. It’s too bad none of us are particularly religious. We should have had some words to say. We should have been saying “Sail away, old friend.” We should have said that we loved him—that there was never going to be anyone else like him in this world. We should have said that we’d see him in the next life. Or even that I’ll be worthy of the gift he’d given me.

But it was all silent until I knelt and began to unscrew the cap on the urn. Then everyone just silently stepped away. They stepped back and left me there alone with Dag and Maizie. I stood up with the urn outstretched in my hands and started to slowly let the ashes fall. I don’t know what suddenly gripped me—if it was Maizie’s bark or the sudden gust of wind in the air—but the next thing I knew I was spinning madly in a circle with the urn outstretched and ashes scattering in every direction and the wind picking them up in a huge cloud around me and Maizie jumping and snapping and barking like crazy.

When I finally stopped, the urn was empty. The ashes had not yet settled onto the water, but the wind was blowing them further out to sea in a cloud. Everyone closed in around me and we all put our arms around each other and cried and waved at the cloud and said goodbye and I love you.

We stopped for lunch at a little diner in Edmonds, just so we didn’t all have to part yet. We laughed at each other and set the empty urn on the table in a place of honor. We must have looked pretty weird to the staff there and any passers-by. But we didn’t care.

It was finally time that I had to take Teresia to the airport for her flight back to Sweden. Mrs. Prior took Maizie home while I joined Teresia.

“Thank you, Deb Riley,” she said to me formally. “I loved my cousin. In addition to everything else, he was a faithful guardian of my secrets. I’m so glad he had you, and that I can trust you with those same secrets.”

“Teresia,” I answered, “I don’t know what your secrets are, but they’ll be safe in The Vault. I loved Dag, too, and even if I didn’t do it for you, I’d do it for his sake. Thank you for coming to see him off with us.”

“You have some strange customs,” she said, “but it seemed like just the kind of thing he would do. I hope I’ll see you again sometime.”

“I’ve just learned about international travel,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come and visit you.” She smiled and we shook hands. She headed through security and I headed back home.

11:30 p.m.

So, I just heard a soft knock at my door. Someone has decided not to leave me alone on New Year’s Eve. I’m betting it’s Silas.

Of course, it could be Cinnamon.

Or both.

You know what? Either way, I’m going to get kissed at midnight tonight.

Kidnapped

2006-12-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

It was finally Saturday. I promised myself that I would sleep in as long as I wanted, then I was going to go play with Maizie all day. We would go to the park, have coffee at Tovoni’s, paint her nails and put ribbons in her hair, and anything else she wanted to do. We were having a Maizie-Day.

11:00 a.m.

“Ummm, Deb?” Cinnamon’s voice sounded hesitant on the phone. It was very un-Cinnamon.

“What is it Cinnamon?” I asked. Maizie and I were walking down toward the Waterfront and I was talking on my cell phone. With all the choices I’d given her, Maizie wanted to go to the office. No kidding! That’s what Mrs. Prior said. We were almost there.

“Miss Riley,” she said formally. “I’m in trouble.”

“Where are you Cinnamon?” I asked. “Are you in jail?”

“No. I’m at the condo.”

“I thought it was closed up.”

“Mrs. B. has a key.” Shit! Brenda Lamb Barnett was back in town. “She says that if you send for police, she’ll take me off the roof with her. She wants you to come here now. I’m sorry, Deb. I’m so scared.” The line went abruptly dead.

Maizie and I turned into my office. Mrs. B. isn’t the only one with a key.

I glanced up from the window and could see the roof-top garden of The Condo. Hang in there, Cinnamon, I thought. I’ve been through this before. And the one thing I learned was to call for back-up. I dialed Silas’s number and quickly explained the situation to him. He agreed to let me get there and give me enough time to get Cinnamon out of danger before he moved in. We were going to close this baby down once and for all.

I slipped on a wire and set it to broadcast at the frequency Silas gave me. As soon as I get a chance, I’ve got to start replenishing the stock of electronics in Dag’s Vault. I’m going through things kind of fast.

I looked at Maizie and she actually barked. Yeah. This time I’m taking reinforcements in with me.

“Let’s go partner,” I said.

10:00 p.m.

Yeah. The fact that I’m writing probably indicates that I made it through alive. Not everyone did, though.

Maizie and I walked through the front door of the building and took the elevator straight to The Condo. There was no sense climbing stairs or using a service elevator this time. I was expected and I was walking through the front door. As soon as we were in the elevator, I unsnapped Maizie’s leash. “Keep a low profile, girl,” I said. The doors to the elevator opened and I stepped into the room. There was still crime-scene tape stretched across the elevator doors. I walked through it and let it break. I knew where I was going. I walked straight through The Condo to the office. I didn’t bother to knock. I knew that Brenda was watching me. I lost track of where Maizie was. I just hoped that Brenda did, too.

The sight that greeted me was not what I expected. Oh Brenda and Cinnamon were there, all right. Cinnamon was tied in the very chair that I’d spent time in a month ago. Brenda was tied to the desk chair.

Behind her, Angel held a gun.

“Angel?”

“I knew you’d want to be here for this,” she said. “We’ll never be free until she’s dead. She blamed Dag for killing Simon, and she’s made it impossible for us to ever be together while she’s alive. So we’re just going to arrange a little accident.”

“Angel, you can’t do this,” I said. “Let’s just call the police and turn her over.”

“What good are they?” she demanded. “They let her loose when they had her in jail here. They couldn’t keep her in jail in Belize. Oh yes. I knew where she was. And I knew she was back in town.” She threw a cash card on the desk. “Don’t ever believe you can’t be traced through these. I own the database. I tagged all the cards that I knew she had and I watched for the account to be drawn on. When she showed up in Seattle, I was waiting. This is where it all started, and this is where it all ends.”

“Angel, bad as she is and as much as she deserves to die, we can’t just execute her.”

“We’re not. We’re rescuing poor Cinnamon. Mrs. B. was trying to throw her off the roof. Didn’t you get the message? We just came to her rescue.” The more I looked at Angel the more wrong she looked. She was losing it. She still wore no makeup. She was dressed in clothes that were too tight. She looked old. She was turning into the same kind of person she hated: Brenda. She had gone over the edge into grief and insanity. Now what was I going to do?

“Let’s talk this out,” I said. “Let’s hear what she has to say.” Brenda was sitting at the desk with tape over her mouth shaking her head at me fearfully.

“No.”I’ve heard enough of her. Let’s go.” Angel waved the gun around and gave Brenda a push out of the chair and onto her feet. I could tell she was near the breaking point. “Bring Cinnamon,” Angel snapped at me. I moved behind her and untied her hands. She looked at me fearfully and I removed her gag.

“Deb, I’m sorry,” she began. I hushed her by laying a finger on her lips.

“Maizie,” I whispered to her. Her eyes darted around and she joined the parade out of the office and around the corner to the dressing room door that led to the rooftop garden. Angel came in the rear, pushing Brenda ahead of her. When we were all on the roof, Angel pushed Brenda toward the edge of the roof.

“You can’t just toss her over with her hands tied and her mouth taped shut, Angel,” I said calmly. “It doesn’t look like suicide.”

“Cinnamon,” Angel commanded. “Go untie her.” Cinnamon obediently went to Brenda and removed the tape from her mouth first. A stream of invective began issuing from Brenda’s mouth as soon as the tape was off.

“You stupid bitches!” she yelled. “You will never get away with this. You will all hang. Three blonde tarts dangling from adjoining ropes. Somehow or other I will be there to watch.” Cinnamon worked the knot loose from Brenda’s hands, paying more attention to Angel’s gun than to what she was doing. I saw it a moment too late to act. As soon as Brenda’s hands were free she wrapped an arm around Cinnamon and pulled her in front of herself as a shield. Cinnamon screamed.

“Now get back!” Brenda yelled propelling Cinnamon in front of her. “If I go over the edge, so does she.”

“You see,” Angel snarled. “I told you she was threatening to pull Cinnamon over the edge with her. Now I’ll have to shoot her.” Angel raised the gun to take careful aim. There was no way she could make this shot. Brenda was ducking behind Cinnamon and I could sense that Angel was going to shoot anyway. I saw Maizie streak across the roof from the open doorway behind Brenda and I went into action at the same time.

I grabbed Angel’s arm and forced it up as she fired. She swung toward me and I used her momentum to trip her and wrench the gun from her hand. It went flying across the roof and Angel went down to one knee. In the meantime, Maizie had run up behind Brenda and bit her on the calf. Brenda fell backward with Cinnamon on top of her. Maizie ran in a circle barking and went for Brenda’s arm. Brenda let go of Cinnamon long enough for the girl to roll free, but Angel was on her feet and diving on top of Brenda.

There was no way to get between the two women, each of whom was bent on killing the other. Maizie circled, diving in to nip where she thought it would help and I reached to grab Angel’s arm as they rolled closer to the edge of the roof. When I loosened her grip, Brenda took advantage and drove her elbow into angel’s face knocking her out of my grip and over the edge of the roof. She teetered against the low wall for a moment and I thought she had regained her balance. But Brenda rushed her to give her the last push off the edge. Angel wrapped both arms around her as she passed the point of no return and both women disappeared over the edge of the roof. I rushed to the edge and could see that the building was already surrounded by police. Silas had moved in and I could hear police in the Condo behind me.

I sank to the ground and saw Cinnamon staring at me in terror. Maizie crawled up into my lap as the officers came through the door onto the roof.

It took a couple of hours before I could speak. Cinnamon had already recovered and told most of the details. Silas was hobbling into the Condo before he heard the report that two women had gone over the edge of the roof. He rushed, hobbling on his cast and cane as quickly as he could into the cold air.

Cinnamon rushed into his arms sobbing and I could see him comfort her, then call an officer to help him. Two officers approached me, but kept their distance as Maizie growled every time they got near. They looked to Silas for instructions and he motioned them away and told them to secure the apartment. Then he hobbled over to me and knelt down. He let Maizie sniff the back of his hand and she butted it to get her ears scratched.

“That’s a good girl, Maizie,” he said. “Let’s take care of Riley now.” He reached out gently and straightened my wig. Then he helped me to my feet and I leaned on him as we made our way back to the elevator. Silas shook Maizie’s leash at the elevator door and she sat in front of him waiting to be hooked up. Cinnamon had already been led down to a waiting ambulance and in minutes I was lying on a cot in the back of an emergency van with Silas and Maizie sitting beside me.

I would be happy if I never saw the inside of an ambulance or hospital again.

I would be happy if I never saw someone die again—if I never lost another friend.

I would be happy, but I’m not.

Into the nightmare—again

2006-12-29T08:29:00.000-08:00

Maybe it was having someone near who was so close to Dag in a life that I knew nothing about. Maybe it was the crash from all the adrenalin rush that I’d been through in the past month. Maybe because I was sleeping with Maizie in Dag’s apartment. Maybe it’s because I’m just a bad person and they are just reward for my sins. Whatever. The nightmares were back.

4:00 a.m.

I was sitting in my chair. I knew if I opened my eyes I would see them. The ghosts of my mother and father, the taunting children in my school, the refrigerator-like Oksama and his sidekick Bradley. Maybe Ray Hawkins would join them this time. They would laugh at me. Call me freak, Bozo, baldy. They would tear out my hair by the fistful and laugh as I cried out to stop. If I opened my eyes, it would all be there.

I forced them shut. I screamed into my pillow that I wouldn’t look, but inevitably my eyes were pried open of their own accord and I looked around me in the dreamworld I had created. It was worse. The dead were all there—even Dag. But they were silent. The stared at me and waited.

“What? What!” I wailed. “What do you want? Just do your worst. Stop staring at me!” I looked pleadingly at Dag, but his image changed and his cousin Teresia was there instead. Instead of Bradley, Simon was looking at me. Instead of my mother and father, Angel and Lars. And they were joined by everyone I knew. Mrs. Prior, Silas, Cinnamon, Goeff and Teri, even Davy. The dead had all been replaced by the living—all except Dag. He still stood there among the people I see all the time and they all just stared at me in silence.

“What? What!” I screamed. “What do you want?”

“You’ve got it all,” Dag said. “Friends, money, trust, power. You’ve got it all. Now what kind of person are you going to be?”

They all just stood there looking at me. All asking. What kind of person am I going to be? I was awake now, rigid in my bed. Even awake with the dim light of Dag’s apartment I could see them. When I closed my eyes the just became more real. The tears flowed. It was worse.

It was so much worse.

Unexpected visitor

2006-12-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

It is time to get back to my studies. What have I lost? Two months? Lars reminded me Christmas evening that my thesis is due in just three weeks. It’s almost done, but I really have to focus these next two weeks.

11:30 a.m.

About 10:30, Cinnamon knocked on my door and asked if I could take a visitor. I didn’t even think about waving her on in.

Angel came in.

I’ve never seen her like this. Her makeup is always perfect and she dresses perfect and she’s just so perfect all the time. But the Angel that came in this morning didn’t have any makeup on, and it looked like she’d been crying. Cinnamon shut the door and left us alone.

“I look a wreck,” she declared. “Deb, I am a wreck.” She burst into tears, and I dredged up some motherly instinct from somewhere and hugged her. We sat down on the sofa together and I dried her eyes with a tissue. God knows I’ve been doing enough crying the past month, I ought to know what to do about it. That’s a myth.

“What is it, Angel?” I asked. “I owe you my life. Please don’t ever regret saving it.” I just knew she was off on having shot Ray. She’s never talked about it, but I know that it’s on her mind. We both know that it’s just something that will be between us. Neither of us will ever talk about it to anyone else.

“It’s not that,” she replied. “I don’t regret for a minute what I did out there. I’d do it again. Maybe faster this time.”

“What then?”

“Simon.” That said it all. You know, I have to admit that when I first heard about Angel and Simon I kind of kissed it off. Rich Man. Gold Digger. Get what you can and get out while you can. But when I saw them together in Croatia… I mean, the way he looked at her like she was the beginning and the end of the universe. And she was the happiest I’ve ever seen her when she was around him. Pull out all the cliché’s you want about old men and young women, these two were crazy in love.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I got a message,” she answered. “He’s hiding and isn’t coming up until he knows that Brenda is permanently out of the picture.” I suppose that I should have told Angel that Brenda was on the loose again, but I really couldn’t. “He says that until then, we’ll both have to live apart. It was such a beautiful love letter. But he didn’t tell me where he was.”

“You want me to track him down?” I asked apprehensively. I really need to study, is what I was thinking, but if Angel asks me to track down Simon, you know I’ll do it.

“No. He’s right. In fact, I’m thinking that I should consider the same thing. She is a spiteful horrid bitch. She’ll hurt me just because she can’t get to him.”

“I could be your mutual point of contact,” I said, volunteering before I thought it through.

“I might need that if I decide to go,” she said. “But that’s not why I came.”

“What’s up?”

“Simon asked me to give you something.” She was fishing in a purse the size of Lake Washington and when she emerged, she was holding a little business card box. She handed it to me and I opened it. It was full of credit cards—the kind of ATM card that Angel sells through her travel agency. There must have been, OMG!, a hundred of them.

“There’s a limit on how much I can put on an individual card,” Angel explained. “$9,999.99. If I try to put $10,000 on it, I’ll get hit for all kinds of civil and criminal penalties. That’s how we’ve always worked it. The guys come in and buy $10,000 minus a penny at a time. It’s pretty much like having a pocket full of $10,000 bills.” She pulled a dollar bill our of her purse. “There’s $999,999 on those cards. This makes it an even million.” She handed me the dollar bill. “Simon would like you on retainer, just in case he needs to be found again. He’ll let you know.”

“Angel,” I exclaimed. “I can’t take this.

“Sure you can,” she said. “Simon is a good man. He knows that a good detective has to be able to put her hands on cash at any time. This is invisible. Just put them in your private safe and pull them out when you need one. It never hits the books if you are careful. If you are extravagant and live beyond your means, the treasury will come down on you for tax evasion. If you keep it quiet, you’ll always have a cushion. You are smart. Don’t blow it.”

Angel stood up to leave. I didn’t know what to say. Is that where the money Dag left me came from? The instructions were almost the same. I was thinking about the letter he left me that didn’t show up anyplace in his will.

I’m 27 years old. What have I gotten myself into?

4:00 p.m.

I’d studied my eyes blind in the four or five hours since Angel left. I gave Cinnamon some assignments to get her up to speed about what we really do and what she needed to study. I’m not going to go easy on her. If she quits because the work is too hard and doesn’t pay enough, that’s too bad. She’s making the same that I made when I started with Dag seven months ago. So I thought she was asking another question when she knocked on the door about 3:00. I was wrong.

“You’ve got a Miss Horseshoe here to see you, Miss Riley. At least I think that’s her name. She’s got a pretty thick accent.” It didn’t sound familiar, but if I found one more typo in this stupid thesis I was going to scream.

“Sure,” I said. “Show her in.”

Well, at least this one wasn’t blonde. She had hair that was coal black and stood about 5’ 1” tall if I’m any judge. Petite. Anxious. She looked around furtively and finally faced me. She was beautiful.

“Are you Miss Deb Riley,” she asked with a Scandinavian accent so thick you could cut it with a knife.

“Yes.” She rummaged in her purse and produced a letter and put it on my desk. Now I knew who she was. Teresia Hjortschoe. I had no idea how it was pronounced. I sent the letter to her at Dag’s request when he died.

“Did you read this?” she demanded. God, I’d thought about it.

“No,” I said. “Dag left me a letter asking me to send this to you after he died. I’m so sorry for the loss of your cousin, Miss Hjortshoe.” That did it. I had an ocean being cried in my office for the second time today. Please stop, I thought. I can’t take any more. If I let it come again, I might never stop crying. Fortunately she forced herself under control after I’d offered her a tissue from my unending supply. I better tell Cinnamon this box is running low.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Dag was my favorite cousin. He’s always been there for me.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “Losing Dag was hard on all of us, but I’m sure it meant a great deal to you.”

“Did Dag tell you about his trip to Sweden last fall?”

“I was here, holding down the fort. He was very disappointed that he hadn’t made it in time to see his aunt before she died. Having two losses in such a short period of time must have been very hard on you and your family.”

“Cousin Dag saved my life,” she said flatly. Dag hadn’t told me about that. In fact, the first I’d heard of a cousin Teresia was when I got instructions to send her the letter. We talked for quite some time. About Dag. About how I worked with him. About why I was sitting behind his desk. My initials happen to be D.H. Riley, so I’ve decided to keep the company name, D.H. Investigations, as it is. I had the impression that she was interviewing me, trying to find out what kind of person I am. She never got around to telling me how Dag saved her life.

We’d talked for nearly an hour when she pointed at the letter that was still lying on my desk.

“Please keep this in your safe place for me,” she said. “Cousin Dag kept it as surety for my good behavior. His requirement of me was that he would send this to authorities if I was ever accused of a criminal offense. Will you keep it safe against the same end?”

I looked at the envelope. As far as I could tell, it was the same envelope that I’d sent her, still unopened. I could tell that I was going to be regretting this for the next God knows how many years. I put the envelope in my pencil drawer. As soon as she leaves, I thought, I’ll put it in the vault.

“As Dag’s partner and friend,” I said, “I will keep this just like he did. I will not look at its contents and will only forward it to appropriate authorities if I hear that you are accused of a criminal offense.” I used her words as closely as I could remember them so that there was no room for misunderstanding. I’ve just become some kind of secret keeper. Where is it going to end?

I’m going to take Cinnamon and Teresia to dinner tonight. I’ve got an idea of what has to be done next, and as long as Teresia is in town, I might has well have her help.

Oh, yeah. The Fig. Turns out I was in bluejeans and a sweatshirt because we moved all my stuff over to Dag's apartment yesterday. Silas took me to Dick's Hamburgers and I felt like a real cop discussing a bunch of legal stuff. Then he dropped me off at the apartment and left. WTF?

Hungry lion on the loose

2006-12-27T16:32:00.000-08:00

OMG! It’s beautiful. I got to the office this morning and Cinnamon was sitting behind a new desk where my old desk used to be. The walls have been painted a soft green. There were plants and a new rug.

11:00 a.m.

Then I came in here. Cinnamon is amazing. The place is unbelievable. The pieces of furniture are generally smaller than Dag’s furniture was. It is sleek and modern with lots of glass. Maizie came in with me and went trotting over to the girliest little bed you’ve ever seen. She was so proud of it!

There’s no place in here to hide anything out of the way. My desk is wide open with nothing more enclosed than a pencil drawer. On it was the remote control for the new 52-inch plasma TV screen that hangs on the opposite wall.

And pictures. She brought some of my photos from the apartment over and put them on my desk. The one of Dag and me at Pier 57 sits by itself on one side of the table. I’ll keep that one here. I don’t know how to tell Cinnamon that the others are all fakes.

I was never photographed much as a child. My mother burned any photos she could find and I kept my little stash well-hidden. The family pictures, even my parents’ wedding picture, are all fake. In fact, they are all pictures of me.

When I was little, I could never pass one of those little photo kiosks without getting my picture taken. It meant that I had a lot of pictures of me, some of them clowning around, smiling, serious, and what have you. But they didn’t have any background of where they were. So, I scanned all the pictures, looked up photos of different scenery on the internet, and airbrushed myself into them in a digital editing program. It worked so well for my childhood photos that when my parents died, I started taking pictures of myself in disguise. I have to admit that one of my disguises looked a lot like my father. I didn’t try to look like my mother for any pictures. I tried to look like what I wanted for a mother.

Then I took all the pictures into my photo editing program and put them together in little family scenes with pictures of me from the photo kiosks. I got pretty good at it, and you have to look really closely in order to tell they aren’t completely natural and right. Cinnamon chose some of my best work. My parents’ wedding picture, the three of us at the Grand Canyon (never actually been there), with my dad at the Space Needle, my graduation picture, and, of course, the one with Dag that I didn’t do anything to but scan and enlarge.

Maybe I’ll leave them here.

When I’d had my tour, Cinnamon closed the door between our offices and left me alone.

I stood by the window looking out over Puget Sound and thought about the past two months. It seems like my whole world changed the day Brenda Barnett brought Simon’s laptop into Dag’s office. I’ve been going for 57 days now thinking about all the crap that she pulled. I was no longer sitting at the desk in the outer office with Dag humming away in here. All Dag’s furniture is gone and I’m standing by his window with stupid tears running down my cheeks and Maizie standing next to me leaning against my leg.

If I start this, I’ll never finish. I’m never going to understand everything that’s happened in these two months. I sat down on the sofa and Maizie jumped up on my lap. I buried my face in her fur and cried.

2:00 p.m.

I got a call from Silas a little while ago. It’s not over. First he said he’d like to hire me to do an analysis of how they were pulling off this mobile phone scam they were doing. Well, that’s pretty easy. What I didn’t figure out, Simon filled in the details of when I was in Croatia. He also said that he needs a bill from me for my services in investigating Simon’s computer. He said he can’t pay me for the field work because officially I wasn’t working for him. But I should be able to bill a lot of time “at Dag’s old rates” for the computer work. That’s good, because I’ve got to pay for redecorating the office and figure out a salary for Cinnamon. She says that Lars submitted insurance claims on behalf of the estate and that most of the new stuff should be covered.

Then Silas casually drops into the conversation, “Oh, by the way, Brenda has escaped from Belize.”

WTF???

“I thought she was in jail where the sun would never shine and the government wasn’t going to help her,” I exclaimed.

“Well, it’s one of the problems with working with a government that isn’t corrupt, like we could have gotten in some countries, but isn’t really so strong that it can enforce all its own laws,” he explained. “In a really corrupt government, we could have spread some money around to the right people and the problem would have been ended permanently.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“No, of course not. I’m just saying we could make sure that things stayed the way we wanted them to,” he said. “The problem with an honest government is that they would be highly offended by any suggestion that they do something that isn’t as respectable as they consider themselves to be. So we can’t make any offers at a level that can enforce the agreement. But that doesn’t mean everyone who works for the government is completely honest. And a very wealthy prisoner can promise almost anything to a low level guard and get a response. Brenda got to someone who just walked out with her at the end of his shift and disappeared.”

“So now what?” I asked.

“Well, we’ve got a search going on. She’ll turn up somewhere. A woman like that can’t live without spending a lot of money. We’ve tapped accounts that she’s likely to use and will be able to track the transactions. She is definitely gone from Belize. But there’s a lot of Caribbean to disappear into and almost all of it has air service to the rest of the world. She won’t get back here, of course. We’ve sealed the borders against her and every known alias that she has.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” I said.

“Don’t worry. We shut down the operation. She doesn’t dare contact any of The Committee. Those guys are hiding behind a cloak of respectability and cooperation. They all know what thin ice they are walking on right now and wouldn’t hesitate to turn in their mothers if we asked for it. The truth is they are all a little relieved that Brenda is out of the picture.”

“So was I when she was out of it. I’ll sleep better at night if you catch her.”

“I’ll do that. What are you doing for dinner tonight? Or should I make appointments with your assistant?”

“Ummm. Is this a business meeting?”

“It was more… well, no… I just thought that… Well, it was so much fun last night…”

“Are you asking me out on a date?” I asked.

“Ummmm. More like a fig, Deb.”

“What?”

“It’s between friends. Just dinner to catch up and thank you.” My sigh was probably loud enough for Cinnamon to hear in the next room.

So how do you dress for a fig?

Surprise at SeaTac

2006-12-26T14:38:00.000-08:00

I thought our troubles were over when we were finally on the plane from Amsterdam to Seattle. I gotta say that Angel knows her business as a travel agent. We sailed through security. I bought a few items at the Duty Free shops at the airport and we were treated like royalty in First Class. Oops. I guess it’s Business Class on this airline. Felt First to me.

11:30 a.m.

I slept a lot of the way home. We landed within an hour of on-schedule and since we were up front in the plane, we got off first and there was no line at Passport Control. That’s when everything started to fall apart. The immigration agent looked hard at my passport and asked me some strange questions about where I’d been. That was when I realized that I only had one stamp in that passport. For all the traveling I did this past two weeks, the only country I entered as Deb Riley was Croatia. This was the first time that I’d been outside the U.S.

He motioned an officer over and I just knew I was well and truly busted. There was already a line of coach class passengers getting fidgety waiting for me to be sent on. I glanced over my shoulder to see if Angel was through and saw that an officer had been called to her agent as well. Next thing I knew I was being led away from Passport Control by a man in uniform with a gun who had a very firm grip on my left arm and my passport. I could tell by the rhythmic clicking of heels on the tile floor that Angel was moving in the same direction.

We were put in separate rooms and the officer left, telling me to please wait quietly. I was surprised that he left me with my roll-aboard bag. It was about ten minutes of fidgeting on the cold metal chair before the door opened again and Silas Grant walked in. I should say hobbled in. He had a cast on one leg and moved with a crutch.

“Silas!” I said in relief.

“Deborah H. Riley,” he answered in a monotone. I was no longer relieved. “What have we here? Fleeing an arrest warrant. Using a false identity. That would include forgery, theft, probably computer crime, concealing negotiable currency on an international flight, I can’t tell you how many penalties there are for forging U.S. Passports. What else should I add? Murder? Kidnapping?”

“Silas! You know that’s not true. You’ve known where I was all along and what I was doing. You told me that guy was there to help me, not to kill me. You said I was doing a good job!”

“Shit, Deb. That’s why I’m here instead of letting Homeland Security intercept you. I swore out warrants for both you and Angel Woodward so we could intercept you here when you got off the plane instead of letting Customs find anything you might have in your baggage. I’ve got an officer collecting your luggage and as soon as he lets me know, we’ll get you two out of here. Until then, we’ve got to make it look like we’re doing our job.”

“Geez, Silas,” I gasped. “You scared me.”

“As you should be scared,” he answered. “Both for the past and the future.”

“What do you mean?”

“The best I’ve been able to put things together, you found out about a warrant for your arrest that was never actually sworn out. You adopted another personality—a very good one, by the way—and hid out in a location where you would have access to a lot of computing power so that you could hack into the customs and immigration control of half a dozen different countries. You assaulted a guard at a certain condo and threw him off a roof, fortunately into a hot tub. Davy, by the way, has decided that security is not really what he is cut out for. Oh yes, there were a lot of forged documents involved in renting a certain condo as well. Then there was using this false identity to get financial instruments from a less than reputable financial source that was under investigation by FinCEN. You further used that false identity to enter another country, then changed identities to another false identity while trespassing on property that you had no business being around. You then chased down a fugitive from FinCEN in Croatia and evaded the help I’d sent for you. You took on a third identity in the process and escaped across the ocean in the company of a known felon and suspected assassin, one Ray Hawkins. He disappeared on that trip, but you entered Italy with the third identity which you lost somewhere between there and Paris. Did I miss anything?”

“Yes, but it’s not worth mentioning,” I said. “That’s the past that scared me crazy for the last two weeks. What’s the future.”

“Eight angry executives want your head.” I groaned. That was just what I needed. With luck Silas would take me to prison.

“Didn’t you arrest them?” I pled. “I sent you all that evidence.”

“I want to put criminals behind bars and make them pay restitution for their crimes,” Silas answered. “But can you imagine what would happen if I arrested the executives of eight major corporations in the Seattle area in one sweep and accused them all of fraud and embezzlement? There isn’t an industry that isn’t touched—tainted if you will—and not a stock price in the entire region that wouldn’t plummet. In one fell swoop I could cause a major economic depression in a region that has been largely immune to the swings that plague the rest of the country periodically. Think of what happened to the employees of Enron when their bosses were accused and tried. Now multiply that by eight.”

“So you’re not doing anything? All that was wasted effort?”

“I didn’t say we weren’t doing anything. I said I wasn’t making arrests. The restitution part, however, I’m a stickler on. We’re having one-on-one meetings with The Committee members. Some of them are remarkably forthcoming about what they were doing as if they couldn’t believe there was anything illegal about it at all.”

“Reinholdt.”

“Others are a little more reluctant to tell tales out of school, as it were.”

“Gilliam,” I supplied.

“Oh you’d be surprised about that one. If you’d stayed put in either Belize or Croatia, he’d have gotten you to safety.”

“What?!” I couldn’t believe my ears. “That sadistic playboy?”

“You’d be surprised how useful a rich, playboy, sports team owner can be if he’s bored and gets approached to do undercover work for the government. And we don’t even have to pay him expenses. I arranged to have him take your friend Teri with him to Belize because I assumed she could recognize you through any disguise. Geoff had his suspicions when you came up with a bug at the dinner party, but Teri confirmed them when she suddenly got sick and followed you to the boat. Geoff was distraught when he discovered you’d both fled, but we when we caught up with Teri at the Belize airport and found you’d actually gone with Ray Hawkins, we were basically in a panic. Hawkins apparently figured he could follow you to Simon Barnett, so he came after you. Thank you for using your own name on the flight from Mexico City to Croatia. At least I was able to get Geoff in position to be where you were when it all came down.”

“My head’s spinning,” I said. Silas’s cell phone rang. When he’d finished speaking he reached to his belt and came up with handcuffs.

“Time to head for the car,” he said. He cuffed me to him and I still pulled my bag while he used his other hand to manipulate his cane and bum leg. In the hall we met another officer with Angel and were led into a network of tunnels to an underground garage where Silas had two cars waiting. I was a little ticked that he didn’t let Angel and me ride together, but he climbed into the back seat with me, still keeping the cuffs on.

Being cuffed wrist-to-wrist doesn’t leave a lot of options open as to where you can put your hand. I didn’t really think much of it when Silas put his hand on top of mine. When we were out of the airport and on the road, however, he leaned over and whispered to me.

“I was worried about you, Deb,” he said. Then he squeezed my hand and unlocked the cuffs.

WTF?

1:30 p.m.

Had to get a bite to eat before telling the last part of my Christmas surprises. Silas had Angel and me driven directly to my apartment. He came up with us and we were met at the door by Cinnamon and the smell of a roast turkey.

“Merry Christmas,” Cinnamon said, lingering as she kissed me on the cheek when I came in the room. I noticed she spent considerably less effort on her peck on Angel’s cheek, and somewhat more on Si. One of the other officers brought all our luggage up and then told Silas he’d be available when he wanted to leave. Maizie came running to me, sniffed up one leg and down the other and decided I was okay. She stood on her hind legs until I knelt down on the floor to pet her.

I looked around my apartment and then looked again. At first all I’d noticed was that there were holiday decorations up. Then I noticed that the “tree” was made of cardboard boxes. I started to tell Cinnamon that it was very creative when I realized that my things weren’t in their usual places. In fact, they weren’t anywhere.

“Cinnamon,” I said, “What’s going on?”

“Honey, you forgot,” Cinnamon said. “With all that’s happened in the last couple of months, you probably haven’t even looked at your mail. Your lease is up. The manager came by while I was here last week and handed me an eviction notice. Apparently they are redoing the apartments in this building and turning them into condos. It’s a big thing right now.”

“I’m being evicted? What am I supposed to do? I won’t go!”

“Sure you will, honey. You’ve got that other little apartment. I met your landlady, Mrs. Prior when she brought Maizie over a few days ago. The first thing she asked was when you were going to move into the apartment. I told her that it looked like the end of the month. I thought I’d get a head start for you and start packing.”

There was too much going on for me to respond, but Geez! I go away for a few days and my whole life is changed. But that wasn’t the end of the news. Teri was there, too, and we both hugged each other and started talking at once about how worried we were about each other. Then in the middle of the giggles of relief, she stopped and got real serious on me.

“Deb, I’ve got a new boyfriend!” she blurted out.

“No way!” I said. “Why didn’t you bring him over. We’re having a party.”

“I invited him,” she said, “but I told him he couldn’t come until you were home.”

“Why not?” There was a knock on my apartment door and I turned to answer it.

“Because you really need to give him permission to come into your home.” I pulled the door open and almost slammed it back shut in the face of Goeff Gilliam. I turned to Teri with my mouth hanging open to my knees.

“Him?” I said. Teri nodded. My best friend was dating a member of The Committee—okay, maybe an undercover federal agent on The Committee—who was a reputed playboy, sadist, and womanizer. I turned back to the door.

“Miss Riley,” he said. “I’m glad to officially meet you. I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot the first time.”

“Come in, Mr. Gilliam,” I said formally. “But if you are going to date my best friend, could we please call each other by our first names. I’m Deb.”

“I’m Goeff,” he responded with a smile. “Pleased to meet you.” He stepped into the room and was caught up in a lip-lock with Teri that had the rest of us turning away to give them privacy.

“Well, Merry Christmas, everybody,” I said, “and God bless us all.”

“Come to the table, everybody,” Cinnamon called. “The chef says he’s ready to serve.”

“Chef?” I asked. “Who now?” The question was answered as my advisor, Lars Anderson walked in from the kitchen with a huge turkey on a platter and sit it on the table. “Lars! I exclaimed and rushed to hug him.

“Merry Christmas, Riley,” he said.

We all sat and Angel and I were called upon to relate our story. It was helped along by Silas, Cinnamon, Teri, and Goeff all adding bits about their parts. The puzzle pieces all seemed to fit together somehow, but Angel and I carefully avoided details about how Ray Hawkins departed from this world. We’ll talk to Silas about it, but no one needs to know that Angel shot him with a harpoon. We just said he fell overboard and we didn’t see him again.

Well, with Brenda Barnett in a Belize jail on drug running charges under a pseudonym that the US government denies knowing, and The Committee all agreeing to make restitution, it’s beginning to sound like my first case is being wrapped up nice and tidy. I’ve finished most of the packing that Cinnamon didn’t already do and tomorrow after I’ve been in to inspect my office, we’ll start moving my stuff over to Dag’s apartment.

Will I ever think of it as my apartment? Or is the whole life I’m living just a continuation of his? I’ve got to do some serious thinking.

Homesick

2006-12-25T17:37:00.000-08:00

I’m not even sure where I am at the moment. I woke up about 7:00 and we’re still on the train. I know we changed trains someplace in Switzerland in the middle of the night, so I suppose we’re in France. Angel said something about flying home from Amsterdam. Home. That’s all I care about right now. I just want to go curl up in my very own bed and sleep for about a month.

10:00 a.m.

We rolled into Paris about an hour ago and had to change trains for Amsterdam. It’s quite a layover, though, waiting for the fast train, so I went shopping in the station. Angel has been really down. I understand… well, as much as I can. She killed someone.

I can’t tell you how thankful I am.

That’s twice in two months I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun. That’s twice too often.

I didn’t have any idea what to get Angel. It’s Christmas Day, but in the train station, all the little gift shops are open and selling souvenirs from Givenchy to Valhrona. I finally settled on something simple and then grabbed some food. I’ll go meet Angel and catch the Eurostar to Amsterdam in a few minutes.

4:00 p.m.

I’ve got a decent connection here at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. I sent a text message to Silas on the train that was short and sweet.

“Silas. I’m coming home. Ray Hawkins lost at sea. Angel with me. Simon presumed safe. WTF’s with Geoff Gilliam?”

I haven’t heard back from him. Not that I expect much.

Man! The fast train is fast, but it’s not all that comfortable. The motion affected me worse than the boat across the Adriatic. But I managed to hold my bread and cheese down while I gave Angel her Christmas present. She was pleasantly surprised when I gave her the little package. It’s a black silk scarf with a scarlet pattern of interlinked hands around the border. It is clear that the hands are all women’s hands.

“This is lovely, Deb,” she said. “I love it.”

“We blondes gotta stick together,” I said. She looked at me a little strangely, then surprised me by handing me a package as well. Apparently she had been shopping in Paris while we were laid over as well. I unwrapped the present and almost cried. It was a turban wrap that we saw many women wearing in Europe. It’s a beautiful dark blue with silver piping. Technically, if I wanted to, I could probably wear it out without wearing a wig. We haven’t talked about it much, but Angel figured out that when I dressed as a bald man, I was really bald.

“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but a lot of times I’ve discovered that I really don’t want to bother getting my hair all done up before I go out someplace. These things are really great because they are so stylish and no one can tell if you’ve washed your hair and spent an hour blow drying it, or if you just shaved it all off.”

“Thank you, Angel,” I said.

“Hey,” she answered, “we blondes gotta stick together.”

I’m making one more stop in the Amsterdam airport before we head for the plane. If I don’t bring a gift home for Cinnamon, I’ll regret it. I just need to get her something that is nice and conservative and won’t give her any ideas.

Oops! Just got a text message from Silas: “Good work. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

Hmmm. I didn’t tell him what flight I’m on. Maybe I should get a little gift for him as well.

5:00 p.m.

I called Cinnamon just before flight time to tell her I’m on my way home. It was only 7:30 in the morning, but she sounded pretty pleased to hear from me.

“Merry Christmas!” I said when she answered.

“Not unless you are coming home,” she said. “I don’t have anyone to celebrate with.”

“Well, Angel and I are both on our way. Can you stand having us all back together?”

“Maybe I can get Teri to come over, too,” Cinnamon answered. It will be like we started this month.”

“Right. You can all pay me the bets you owe me.”

“We’ll have a late dinner at your place,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything. Do you want me to meet you at the airport? I’ve got this classy Mustang all ready to roll.”

“I’ve got a ride,” I said. “In fact, maybe you should plan on a couple more for dinner. Is anything open today where you can get food? We could just order pizza.”

“Leave it to me, Sugar,” she said. “I think your dog is going to be there, too. She hasn’t left me alone for the past four days.”

“I didn’t know you had Maizie!” I exclaimed. “How’s my baby doing?”

“Oh, we’re getting along just fine. She’s staked out her own space in the office and I went down to Ikea and bought her a new bed. She loves it. Mrs. Prior came to the office on Friday and dropped her off because she was going to a sister’s house for the weekend and as she said, ‘Maizie was too concerned about Riley to go away. She wants to be here when Riley gets home.’ Mrs. Prior is a hoot!”

“Well, if Maizie starts talking to you, too, I want to know about it,” I laughed. “God I’m looking forward to being home. I think this case is wrapped up.”

“Ummm. Don’t count on that, Sugar,” Cinnamon answered. “I can’t tell what it is that’s happening, but something is up. Listen, this was in Saturday’s paper. ‘Belize authorities have detained an American citizen on drug charges after a raid on Ambergris Caye last night. Reportedly from the Seattle area, federal agents have indicated that they have no records matching that identity and have dispatched an agent to meet with officials in Belize City where the unidentified woman is being held.” That’s all. It’s one of those short article things on the second page of the international section. It just stuck out when I read it because you were just there. I thought it might have something to do with the whole thing.”

“You are going to make a detective yet,” I said. “That’s just the kind of article that should make you curious. I’m betting that it was meant for a very few important people to see. I’ve got to board my plane now, so I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“See you soon, Sugar. Be safe.”

You know what? I’m going to like having Cinnamon around.

Crossing the Adriatic

2006-12-24T17:24:00.000-08:00

Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Eve. I got to cross the Adriatic Sea. Washington’s crossing was about a mile. Mine was about 100 miles. At least I had a motor.

5:00 p.m.

It was supposed to be a simple ruse that would make anyone watching the house think that Simon had left the country. I intended to go down first thing in the morning and catch the ferry back to Split and from there catch a plane to Rome. Somewhere enroute, I’d change from Simon to Deb and catch a flight from Rome on home. I figured I could lure any watchers off for long enough that Simon and Angel could sneak out and head anyplace else that they wanted to.

But when I got downstairs at about 10:30 last night, Angel surprised me by being packed and ready to go as well. Between her and Simon, they convinced me that it would be more believable if Simon was seen leaving with Angel. They are quite a recognizable pair with the statuesque blonde Angel towering over the short dark Simon. Simon suggested that we leave in the middle of the night and take the boat across from Supetar to Split. We could rent a car there and drive to hell-and-gone for the next couple of days during which Simon would disappear and Angel and I would go separate ways and make our way back home. Simon would lay low for a couple of months and would call for Angel as soon as he could.

“Well, I’ll be go-to-hell,” I said mimicking Simon’s favorite oath. Both Angel and Simon snapped a startled look at me.

“You sound more like Simon than Simon does,” Angel said. “This could be a fun trip.”

Simon growled a little about having too much fun. It was still a risky endeavor. The toughest part would be getting from the house down to the dock. Once we were in the boat, it would take someone with a boat to catch up to us. The ferries wouldn’t run until morning. We could be long gone by then. We haggled back and forth for a good hour before everyone was agreed on a plan that could possibly get all of us away from the immediate danger of Geoff Gilliam and crew.

The goodbye kiss between Angel and Simon made my stomach ache.

It was 2:00 a.m. when Angel and I carried our one suitcase each out of the house, looking in all directions, and then slipping down to the wharf. Simon gave me an overcoat to wear as well, even though he knew that I’d be ditching the suit and overcoat both as soon as I could change back to my own identity.

Let’s see now: who am I? This playing dress-up all the time is beginning to drag on me, so to speak.

We were approaching the boat which was a good big one, I was relieved to see. It was a 30’ Four Winns 288 Vista Cruiser. It was a luxury yacht made to accommodate two people for fast trips to Greece, Italy, or any other port on the Mediterranean.

I whistled low as we approached the boat and to my surprise a figure stepped out from behind a crate on the dock.

“Hello, Simon,” he said. “Going somewhere?” Angel screamed and I nearly did as well, but I recognized the man a second before I let out a blast.

“It’s okay, Angel,” I said. “Silas said I’d recognized him when I saw him. Hello, Ray,” I finished speaking barely above a whisper. “It’s good to see you.”

“Right,” he said stepping back a step. “Just get on-board and go below. Don’t either of you stick your head out before I tell you and no one will get hurt.”

Pretty gruff if you ask me. The Ray Hawkins I’d met on Belize seemed a lot more easy-going. Maybe he was pissed because I gave him the slip in Mexico City at the airport. Well, if he was working for Silas, that would explain why he was so helpful on Ambergris Caye and why he was trying to follow me in Mexico City. Good old Silas. Still looking out for me.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” I said beneath my breath ushering Angel onto the little yacht and below deck in the forward cabin.

Ray boarded behind us and closed the door when we’d entered the forward cabin. We felt, more than heard the powerful engines turn over, and then heard shouting from the dock. I could hear angry voices and running feet on the dock. Ray gunned the engines and the boat lurched from the dock with G-force acceleration. Angel and I fell onto the bed together and clutched each other out of fright. We stayed that way for several minutes, trying to listen for sounds of pursuit, but hearing nothing but the slap of the waves and rumble of the engines as we sped across the channel separating us from Split.

It seemed like forever that we were down there. I finally turned to Angel and asked, “How long a crossing is it from Brac to Split?”

“Only about an hour,” she responded. “Maybe he’s trying to lose the bad guys by taking us further up the coast, like to Sibenik.”

“That would make sense,” I said, “considering we’re not just two girls trying to make our way to dry land.”

“Speak for yourself,” Angel said. “Simon and I have had this boat for two years. I can handle it pretty well.”

“Well, let’s find out where we are,” I said, opening my computer. “It’s a great thing about having a GPS receiver in your laptop.” I waited for the map to come up and an indicator that the GPS had acquired a signal. When it did, I stood up, hit my head on the low ceiling, and fell back into the bed.

“Something’s wrong,” I said. “We’re not headed up the coast.” I pointed to the screen. We’d come through the narrow straight between Brac and Solta and were headed southeast, out to sea.

I went to the door and tried to open it, only to discover it was locked from the outside.

“Hey! Ray!” I yelled. “Where do you think we’re going?”

“Keep your head inside or I’ll blow it off!” he yelled back. WTF??? I sat with Angel and we watched the blip on the map of the Adriatic that was us. We were definitely headed for the Mediterranean. I flipped open my cell phone and tried to call Silas, but we were already too far out to get a signal. Next phone I get will be a satellite phone. It was time to start thinking of ways to defend ourselves.

Angel proved apt. She knew everything that was stored on the boat and had us equipped with harpoons and scuba gear in no time. I really couldn’t see what the point was with the scuba gear. I wasn’t going diving, but the harpoon definitely held possibilities. The only problem was that it was so long that by the time I could get it positioned so that I might do damage to someone other than myself, anyone could blow me away. I was always better at defensive maneuvers than at figuring out how to attack someone. I stowed a knife in my belt and decided that was going to have to be the extent of my weaponry.

I looked again at the GPS that now showed that we had turned further south past the Island of Vis. When Angel and I felt we had prepared the best we could, we lay cuddled together on the bed waiting. I guess we dozed off because I came suddenly awake and alert to the silence of the powerful twin engines.

The water was pretty rough and the waves were slapping against the side of the boat. We could hear Ray scraping things around above deck. Then he yelled at us.

“I’m opening the door,” he yelled. “Stand back.” The door jiggled and then opened just wide enough for Ray to look in before he shoved it further open. He was holding a gun and waved it at me. I saw Angel glance toward the harpoon, but his approach had been so fast and unannounced that it was too far away to effectively get to and turn around the right way.

“You,” he said pointing at me. “Above deck. I’ll take care of you later,” he continued to Angel.

“You are making a big mistake,” Ray, “I said as I emerged from the hold. “Silas said you would help me.”

“I don’t know a Silas,” Ray said. “The orders from your loving wife are that this time when you are lost at sea, you stay lost.”

I looked at Ray. How could I have been so wrong about him? He wasn’t sent by Silas to help me. He was the assassin sent by Brenda to finish off Simon. How could I have been so stupid?

“Step over there,” Ray said waving his gun toward the stern. We moved out of the housing onto the wind and rain-swept deck. The water was rough and it was all I could do to keep my balance. “Now jump,” he commanded.

“No.” I said. “You are making a big mistake Ray. I’m not even Simon Barnett. I’d Deb Riley. You helped me escape from Belize.”

“Nice try, Simon,” Ray responded. He wasn’t even hearing the tone of my voice as I was shouting over the wind. You’d think that he could tell by now that I was a woman. “I got a babe off the boat thinking she’d lead me to you. It took an extra day of tracking airline records to figure out Riley Finn and Deb Riley were the same. Then I came straight here. The beauty is that she thinks I’m one of the good guys and I can use her when I get back stateside.”

“I’m her, Ray,” I said. He was already raising his gun. The SOB was going to shoot me!

“Jump or we do it the old fashioned way.”

“No.” I could see his hand tightening on the gun and knew that was the last thing I was ever going to see. The boat lurched and I lost my footing. I grabbed the rail and fell to the deck. I saw Ray stumble toward me, the gun still pointed in his outstretched hand. Then, as if in slow motion I saw him fall forward and tumble over the end of the boat into the choppy water, a harpoon stuck through his back. Angel was standing in the doorway of the cabin with the harpoon gun in her hand, staring out at the sea.

“Angel,” I said.

“Sorry it took so long,” she responded. “He jammed the lock on the door.”

“I’m so sorry, Angel.”

“He was trying to kill Simon. I couldn’t let that happen,” she said. “I’ve already lost him too many times.”

I went to her and we hugged each other tightly. Then she turned back to the wheel-house.

“We’d better plot a course that gets us home,” she said.

After consulting the maps, we chose Pescara, Italy. They have a beautiful little marina there and Angel made arrangements to have them dock the boat for the next month. She expects to be back soon. I looked back at the boat as we were leaving and realized that anyone could have waited for us at the dock in Supetar. The back of the boat was emblazoned in bright letters: “Angel.”

We caught a train at the Stazione Centrale di Pescara and headed north. Once we got into a private cabin, I stripped and changed out of my Simon Barnett clothes and returned to being Deb Riley. There is a lot to do, but sleep is calling now. Angel is busy making flight arrangements to get us home. I’m looking forward to that.

It’s been an exhausting Christmas Eve.

Wash it all away

2006-12-23T22:23:00.000-08:00

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. Yeah, it was a nice comfortable bed and I felt like I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a month. I remember waking up during the night and crying some more and then going back to sleep. It seems like such a huge betrayal that Dag died believing he’d inadvertently killed Simon and here he was just hiding out. I’m trying to be rational and it just isn’t working. I don’t trust him.

9:30 a.m.

What is worse, I don’t know what Dag saw in him. It has to be more than just being college friends. I mean look at all the crap Simon did to him. He slept with his wife and then married her after Dag divorced her. He can’t be clean. There is too much money involved. Dag distributed $2 billion in assets to charities over Thanksgiving weekend. But Simon isn’t hurting for cash right now. He blew up his own plane and was able to get from Cuba to Croatia with new ID and no financial hardship. Angel owns this villa (read that “mansion”) and I’m sure she’s got a couple of million stashed away for “retirement.”

I finally hauled my ass out of bed about 8:30. I considered calling Cinnamon, but either she is in bed or thinking about who she’s going to get there. I took a shower and stood wrapped in a towel looking out at the sea. I can see the ferry dock from here. A ferry came in while I was watching and I could see people getting off the ferry.

My mind kept playing tricks on me. I kept thinking I could see people getting off the boat that I knew. I saw a guy with a cane and a limp and thought Silas was there for a minute. I’d have sworn that I saw Cinnamon, Goeff Gilliam, Brenda, Bradley, Oksamma, Ray Hawkins, and one time even Dag. I’ll be seeing ghosts till the day I die I suppose.

But now I’ve got to go face the Devil and the Angel. If I don’t go down, I’ll never get any coffee.

2:00 p.m.

Coffee wasn’t all that bad. When I got downstairs, Angel was the only one there. Simon was staying on the third floor and decided it was best to stay out of sight for a while. Apparently my warning was being considered. What he could do about it, though, I really didn’t know. I had no intention of getting between him and whoever Brenda was sending after him. I figured it was no one that I’d know, so what good was I really. If I’d had Angel’s phone number I could have saved myself a trip and a lot of sleepless hours.

How could I have been so stupid as to think that just because I managed to hid out in the Condo for a few days, Brenda and her executive groupies would consider me any kind of a threat. I assessed the sum of what I knew and what I figured they knew about me.

First, they knew that Angel gave the thumb drive to Dag and that I probably had it. They’d ransacked my office when I disappeared. They didn’t find it or me.

They knew that a man named James Whitcomb had camped out at the Condo for a few days. I’d given Davy a bath when I left, but I was pretty sure that no one knew that I was James Whitcomb.

They knew (or I assumed they knew) that James Whitcomb had done business with Angel and then disappeared a few days after she did.

Finally, they knew Angel had this property in Croatia.

It really wasn’t much to go on. Frankly, I’d seen to it that Silas knew more than that. As far as I could figure, none of the Committee knew anything about me being with Angel now, or that I was James Whitcomb.

I was going to book a flight home and send the original thumb drive to Brenda’s address. That would wipe my name off their list of naughty and nice permanently.

Angel had coffee ready in a flash when I came downstairs. She has this great machine that you punch a button on, it grinds the coffee, and it brews a beautiful cup of rich black joe. I gotta get me one of those. She said in the U.S. they cost about $1500!

Maybe I should just hire the barista at Tovoni’s coffee shop to hand deliver a cup every day!

I asked Angel what she was going to do, and she almost started to cry. She said she’d been up half the night with Simon trying to convince him that they needed to run, but he was adamant that he’d done the wrong thing by coming to her and had placed them both in danger. Until he could be certain they were out of danger, he was staying put. If they ran, it would be obvious having a 5’9” man with a 6’ beautiful blonde running around the world. They could be spotted anywhere. I could sympathize a little. Simon had eight powerful enemies and probably more knowledge about what was happening in their world than anyone else. I bet Silas wished he had Simon on the witness stand instead of just having a disk full of names and accounts.

“Angel,” I said, out of the blue, “I want to know more about your business. You had FinCEN from the FBI hanging around your shop before you left. They were watching everybody who came in or out. What is it you really do?”

“Finance Crimes Enforcement? They’re always hanging around. They’ve been trying to pin a money laundering scheme on me for months. I’m not worried about them unless they send in the VICE squad. Now that would be embarrassing.”

“But you are, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Laundering money? No. I don’t think so. There is nothing illegal about hiding your money. I function a lot more like a bank than a money launderer. Any cash transaction of more than $5,000 I dutifully report on my little form. They know I can’t possibly handle the kind of cash that they want to investigate.”

“What about these?” I asked tossing one of my cash cards on the table in front of her.

“How did you get one of these?” she asked picking it up. “It’s just a cash card. If you don’t put more than $5,000 on it in a cash transaction, then there is nothing stopping you from buying it and using it anyplace in the world. Now, come on. Which shop did you get this one in? It’s one of ours.”

“Yours.” I pulled two more out of my wallet. “You charge a pretty hefty commission to fill one up.”

Angel looked at me strangely and closely. I stared her straight in the eye. She slowly began to grin.

“The little gay college professor? You?” I nodded. “I can’t believe it. You said you could disguise yourself so that we’d never recognize you, but that was incredible. Have you done Cinnamon and Teri yet?” I nodded.

“Let’s get back to the real question, Angel,” I said, turning the conversation back. “You put this in three different transactions and took a 10% commission on the deal. That was a total of $12,000. But you didn’t report it as a single transaction. Isn’t that just a little bit above the law?”

“Well, if you applied it broadly enough. But it still isn’t money laundering.”

“It sure isn’t normally for travel agency services.”

“I handled about $1.5 million a year,” Angel said. Simon got me the business and introduced me to people a long time ago. But there isn’t anything technically illegal about what I do.”

“It’s still too shady,” Simon spoke from the door. “I never should have gotten you into this.” He looked pretty worn this morning and Angel jumped up and kissed him, made coffee and had him at the table with us in no time. “What you have there, Miss Riley, is one of the wonders of the modern world. It isn’t even serious that the transactions are done in small amounts at stores all over the country. There are a lot of men, and a few women, who have no difficulty withdrawing a couple thousand in miscellaneous funds from their checking accounts each week. Their spouses don’t even notice it, probably because they are withdrawing similar amounts. Converting their little stashes to cash cards is also completely legal. Then it is instant cash, anyplace in the world that they want it. So a business executive is on a trip and is gone for two weeks. No wife with him and with sexual harassment suits the way they are, he can’t even look lustfully at the cute marketing director who is on the same trip. Doesn’t dare approach someone on the street because he could be recognized.

“But he can go on-line and pick his favorite escort, have him at his room for the night and gone before he meets his co-workers for breakfast, and pay her with $2,000 that he pulled from the local ATM on the way back to his hotel. There is absolutely no personal information contained on that card. If you have the card and the PIN, you have the money. He paid for his night with an A-class model who will never tell anyone who he is, with money he stuck in his pocket months ago and had converted to plastic in Angel’s little shop. It’s the closest thing America has to anonymous banking.”

“You can’t tell me that Angel brings in $1.5 million a year in money that executives spend on hookers,” I spat. Sorry, Angel, but let’s call it what it is.

“There are a lot of reasons for hiding money,” Simon continued. “Let’s say that you are planning a divorce next year. Washington is a community property state. You’ve been visiting Angel with $2,000 a week for a year before you file. We don’t even have to issue a new card every week. We just keep adding your transactions to the same card. So, you are carrying five additional pieces of plastic in your wallet. It happens that each one of them is worth $20,000 that isn’t going to show up on your balance sheet in divorce court.

“And another thing,” Simon continued, “let’s say you visit Europe once a year and you’d like to move your money into a nice safe Swiss bank account where your children will be able to get hold of it after you die without paying estate taxes on it. If you make transfers from your bank to this new account, there is a record of it and it’s money that your kids will never get. You can’t carry cash out of the country in excess of $10,000 without declaring it, resulting in the same effective search. But you can carry a credit card or cash card from every financial institution in the country and withdraw as much money as you want while you are overseas. The same is true of our little cash cards, but there is no tracking back to your home bank when you withdraw $100k in Switzerland and deposit it in a local bank there.”

“So the difference between this and money-laundering is what?” I asked. “Step one is convert the funds into a negotiable instrument. Taking fifty $20s in and having them give you back ten $100s is the one thing, but you ar having people bring you fifty $100s at a time and giving them back one little plastic $5000 bill. It’s all the same thing.”

“Yeah. If it weren’t so profitable we’d have gotten out of the business a long time ago. 10% commission on the sale plus 10% on withdrawal. For every $100,000 you manage to get out of the country, we get $20,000. Which we have to in turn hide someplace or we’d have to pay a heap of income tax. We choose, instead, to have the money to one of our own foreign bank accounts. Right now, though, all we’re trying to do is retire. It’s the guys that are working on a scale of a hundred to one on what we do that FinCEN is after. It just happens that they are mad at us because I didn’t exactly hand over the data to them that I promised. I gave it to Dag instead, and you broke into it and decided to become a vigilante—go after them yourself. You are way out of your league on this one, babe. I just need to stay holed up until that cop I cut the deal with cools off and uses the data on that disk that you cracked. Please tell me you gave it to Dag’s old friend Silas Grant.”

“You know Silas?”

“He’s the cop I cut the deal with months ago. I promised to give him evidence of a massive fraud being perpetuated on the American public by Seattle’s top executives.”

“WTF!” I flipped my phone opened and sent a one-hand text message to Silas: “What do you want me to do with Simon Barnett?” I didn’t expect an answer very soon. It was two o’clock in the morning in Seattle.

“So how did you discover this massive fraud?” I asked.

“My wife and I have been spying on each other for years. I bought her the condo up on Lenora years when they first started renovating the area. I knew way back then that she’d been making deals with prominent men all around the region. Sometimes it was just to introduce someone. Sometimes it was a place to hold a private meeting between two parties that couldn’t be seen talking to each other. She always had a supply of hostesses who were happy to dress elegantly and work for “tips.” When I figured out she was pushing the limits on having an operating brothel in Seattle, I stepped in and started enforcing some standards on behavior and conduct. I won’t say that sex never takes place at the Condo, but I used it more as an employment agency. I got beautiful young women in places where they could have one-on-one time with men they would never get to talk to, even if they worked for the same company. Those men, in turn, used their influence to get the women jobs in other companies that were equivalent to what any man with the same education and experience could have gotten. That’s always been the secret. Women get the shaft in the working world before they ever start to work. They get hired at a lower level then men with the same qualifications. And it isn’t because they couldn’t get better, it’s because they’ll settle for less.”

“So you want me to believe that the Condo is just a place where a few lucky young women are given a better chance at good jobs and isn’t a place where rich men go to get laid.”

“That’s a little harsh, Deb,” Angel broke in. “You can’t judge all the girls at the Condo by me. I’m a professional girlfriend, or I was until Simon came along.”

“You didn’t turn amateur, baby,” Simon said, giving her a squeeze. I thought back to my two experiences at the Condo—one as a hostage and one as the de facto manager. I had to admit that even Cinnamon seemed to be happy with what she was doing. Man, I was going to have some long talks with that girl when I got back to town. She couldn’t work for me and at the Condo, too. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket and I walked into the next room to look at it. I had a message from Silas. That was fast!

“Protect him if you can, but don’t risk yourself. We’re pulling them in and have a warrant for BB. Be careful!”

I was flipping the phone closed when I looked out the living room window. Down at the front gate I could see a man looking up at the house. This time I wasn’t imagining everyone I knew getting off the ferry. This time I was sure. Geoff Gilliam was in Croatia.

10:00 p.m.

It took about ten minutes to convince Angel and Simon that things were serious. When I finally told them who it was, Simon was convinced that he had to move. Geoff Gilliam had a reputation as a sadist at the Condo. In my experience, however, he was only a sign that there were thugs around. Both Cinnamon and Teri had confirmed that when he got in private he was all talk and no action. But I’d seen the kind of people he kept around him and I had no doubt that those men wouldn’t hesitate to take any of us out of the picture. Even if he didn’t bring them with me, I had no doubt in the playboy’s ability to hire talent anywhere he wanted to be. He’d probably do it with Angel’s little cash cards.

My counterplot was hatched over dinner. I needed hair dye. Why was I not surprised that Simon just happened to have a men’s hair-color product on hand. Vanity, thy name is middle-aged man!
I got Simon to give me the passport that he’d used to get into the country, and graciously supplied him with James Whitcomb’s in trade. Then I went to work. I gave my short red wig to Angel and had her dye it black and blow dry it. I pulled together the remnants of the beard and eyebrows I used for James Whitcomb and re-applied the fringe of hair that I use for him to my cheeks so that it resembled the full, closely cropped beard that Simon wears. I pulled out my man-suit and padded the old chest again. Then I restyled the now-black wig into a more manly cut. I dressed and looked in the mirror, then glanced at the passport picture. I’d pass.

But when I went downstairs, Simon’s reaction was completely different. He didn’t care about the hair and beard, but he complained that he wasn’t that fat and that my suit looked like I got it out of a second-hand shop (which is true). He disappeared and returned with a different set of clothes from his own wardrobe. These are designer label clothes: shirt with his initials embroidered on the French cuffs, silk tie, and an Armani suit.

I have to say that now that I put it on, I really like it. I may want to keep wearing it for a while. Cinnamon would love this.

Well, I’ve repacked, lightly. I keep leaving clothes behind when I take off. All I have are the essentials that it would take for me to change back to Deb Riley. Since I’ve dyed the red wig, I’m afraid that I can’t pass as Riley Finn again. I’ll have to refurbish that alias when I get home—whenever that is.

Well, it’s time to flee another country. How routine this is becoming. I didn’t even have a chance to decide if I like Croatia.

Finding Angel

2006-12-22T22:25:00.000-08:00

It was a struggle to get started this morning. Jetlag hit me big time and I had three cups of coffee that were thick enough to cut with a knife before I got in my rental car and headed south. I got a fast car and drove too fast all the way from Zagreb to Split. The border crossing into Bosnia and Herzogovina, then back out again wasn’t too bad, but it still puzzles me that you have to cross through a different country to get between two places in the same country. Guess I could have taken the long way around.

Before I took off, I sent a quick text message to Silas to let him know where I was headed.

3:00 p.m.

It took almost five hours to get to Split, and then I decided to enhance my wardrobe a little before continuing to the Island Brac where Angel’s villa is. She probably doesn’t know that I have the information on where her villa is, but it was part of the details that Dag left in his accounting files from when he transferred property for Simon. This piece wasn’t included anywhere in the transfers, but Dag didn’t let that stop him from locating it in Simon’s files. So, if Dag located it, it shouldn’t surprise me that much that Brenda knew about it and could track down Angel as well. Nothing is safe from prying eyes.

It’s as cold here as it is in Seattle, though I don’t think it’s going to get cold enough for a white Christmas. I’d like to be home by then.

After I got some fresh clothes and food, I got in line for the hourly ferry to Island Brac. It’s only a 45 minute crossing that I’m making now, so I’ll finish this and update later when I find Angel.

10:00 p.m.

It was a short trip from the ferry terminal to the villa that Angel owns. When I saw it, I thought I’d reached a dead end. The villa is near the center of Supetar—an immense stone structure with an iron gate separating it from the street. I wasn’t sure how I would get in until I walked up, pushed the gate and listened to it creak open. It wasn’t locked.

I walked up the stone steps to a massive front door and knocked.

Angel opened the door after a few moments and I don’t know which of us was more surprised to see the other. I assumed there would be servants; she assumed I was anybody else other than me. We stared for several heartbeats then both broke out in grins.

“Deb! How did you…? Why…? I don’t know what to say!” Angel said.

“Well, Angel, you could start by inviting me in. I’ve come a long way to bring you an important message.”

“Come in. God! It’s nice to see you! It’s only been, what, two weeks, and already I’m beginning to regret running away.”

We went into the house and I started to see what an immense place it was inside. It was an older structure, but had been completely modernized inside. The furnishings, of course, were impeccable. How much Angel had done in the two weeks since I last saw her and how much had been prepared long before, I couldn’t tell; but I had the feeling that the place had been prepared a long time ago.

She offered me a club soda and we sat in the living room to chat.

“So what have you been up to since we last spoke? You should have come in disguise. You’d have been able to fool me completely showing up here. I’d have never guessed it was you.”

“You didn’t,” I said. “But collecting on the bet isn’t what brings me here. Brenda and the Committee know you are here and I think they suspect that you may be sheltering a guy who is a threat to them.” Angel blanched. “I couldn’t call you, so I came to warn you that they are sending someone in to clean up loose ends.”

I expected Angel to ask who the guy was supposed to be that she was sheltering. I had some idea of exposing the fact that I’d fooled her as James Whitcomb and at least we’d have a good laugh about that. But instead she jumped up from her seat and headed for the door. Before she got there, it swung open and a man walked through.

“I heard,” he said catching Angel in his arms. “And who is this lovely creature?” He stepped out around Angel to look at me and I caught my breath. I’d only seen photos of him, but in spite of the fact that he now wore a full beard and his hair was dyed coal black, I couldn’t help but recognize him from the pictures in Brenda’s bedroom. I was looking at the very much alive ghost of Simon Barnett.

“You!” I gasped. “It’s you they are after, not me! You are supposed to be dead.”

“Isn’t it wonderful, Deb? I didn’t know until I arrived here and he was waiting for me,” Angel said. “I was just as surprised as you. Only, I think I was pretty furious at first.”

“Not half as furious as I am,” I exclaimed. “You let Dag die thinking he’d killed you. How could you do that? How could you use him and destroy him, you bastard? I’ll kill you myself!” I was a little out of control. I actually looked for something to attack him with, but I came up empty. I just stood there shaking.

Angel crossed the room and wrapped her arms around me and pulled me down onto the sofa. I was so furious I was shaking and tears were streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Angel was holding me and I completely went to pieces. It was several minutes before I finally came down and saw Simon sitting in a chair opposite me calmly sipping a drink.

“How could you?” I asked weakly.

“I didn’t mean to,” Simon said quietly. “You must be the assistant that he was so enamored of. Angel told me about you. It’s Deb, right?” I nodded. “Please understand that I didn’t expect Dag to die. He was the only person other than Angel that I trusted. I thought sure that he’d break the code on my thumb drive and when he’d busted the Committee then I’d contact him and come out of hiding. I didn’t know he was that sick.”

“He died thinking that he’d pulled the trigger that killed you. Brenda told him that the code on the GPS set off the bomb in your plane.”

“He did do that,” Simon said. “The thing is that I found the bomb before I took off. That oaf Oksamma didn’t have much subtlety. I knew that plane like the back of my hand and I inspected it completely every time I flew it. It was wired to blow up whenever anyone accessed the GPS. I could have blown myself up if I’d switched it on once I was airborne. Once I realized that Brenda was serious about getting rid of me, I reset the trigger and flew in low over Cuba. I bailed out and let the plane explode. I’m still hurting from the twisted ankle, but I have friends in Cuba who took care of me. When I heard Dag was dead, I gave up and headed for the villa here. I thought sooner or later Angel would show up. Then here she was, telling me the Committee was trying to track down whatever evidence I’d left behind and she ran.”

“Well, get ready to run some more,” I said. “Brenda held a meeting of the committee in Belize and said she was sending someone dependable out to finish the job. I thought she was talking about finishing me, and I came to warn Angel that they knew where she was.”

“Why would anyone want to finish you?” Simon asked. I looked at him for a long time.

“Well, for one thing, I’m the one who broke the encryption code on your thumb drive.” I thought I’d seen everything, but Simon blew half his drink out of his nose and dropped his glass on the stone floor where it shattered.

“I’ll be go-to-hell!” he exclaimed jumping up and wiping himself off. Angel scurried to the kitchen to get a broom and towels. “You mean you tracked down all four tattoos? You figured out the sequence and secondary encryption? I figured Dag was the only one in the world who could break that! You did it?”

“Apparently I’m not as dumb as I look,” I snarled.

“You are smarter than Dag looked,” he said, “and that fucker was the only certified genius I ever met.”

At the mention of Dag’s name I felt tears leaking out of my eyes again.

“Oh, JFC! Don’t go crying again. I’m sorry about Dag. I really am. And I’m damned impressed with you. I wish we’d gotten you on the inside sooner. You could have run the whole operation of the Condo,” Simon said. Some compliment. I didn’t even acknowledge it.

“Well, I guess you don’t need me,” I said standing. “Message delivered. You’re on your own. Brenda is sending someone to make sure you are really dead this time. Good luck. I can’t believe I thought she was hunting for me.” I turned and headed toward the door.

“Deb, wait!” Angel said. “Honey, don’t leave. Please, stay with us tonight. If you still feel like you have to go in the morning, I’ll help make arrangements. You know, I am a travel agent.” She grinned at me and held out her arms.

Maybe it is just because I’m so tired, jetlagged, stoked on caffeine, and emotionally strung out, but I let her convince me. So now I’m in one of the villa’s eight bedrooms having had a big meal and a glass of wine, and I’m ready to sleep. I’ll sort the rest of this out tomorrow.

Zagreb

2006-12-21T23:43:00.000-08:00

It’s 10:00 at night and of course I’m wide awake. The ten hour time change means my poor body is thinking it’s noon and time to get to work. No such luck.

11:00 p.m.

I called to check in with Cinnamon. She was glad to hear from me and her temperament was less volatile, though no less flirty.

“Hey Sugar! It’s nice that you called little old me again,” she said when she answered the phone.

“Hey yourself, Cinnamon. It’s good to hear the voice of home a little more often,” I answered.

“I’m home,” she said. “I like that. So come home.”

“I will, as soon as I can get this thing settled. I just don’t want to think that Angel could be in danger and I caused it. Stupid disguises.”

“Did she kiss you, too?”

“No,” I chuckled. “I told her I was gay.”

“Would you make up your mind, girl? Straight girl, gay guy, Straight girl in drag pretending to be a gay guy. Just finish and come home.”

“I’ll do that. Did you call Silas?”

“Yes. He was swearing right there on the phone in my presence. You really made him mad.”

“At least he knows approximately where I am. I’ll text him with an exact location when I find it.”

“He said he’s sending someone after you as backup.”

“Who?”

“He just said you’d recognize him when you see him.”

“Great. Now who could that be?”

“I don’t know, but he said he had to make calls and hung up on me. That was about 7:15 last night. Do you want me to call him back?”

“Don’t sound so hopeful,” I answered. “I’ll text him.”

“Did you really fall in a pool when you tried to escape at the party?”

“I was pushed into the pool.”

“That dress! Teri told me it must have cost a fortune.”

“Well, too bad. The dress was the least of my worries. I left it on the boat where they took me.” I hesitated a little before I went on. “Look, Cinnamon. You know a lot of these guys, er… professionally. What do you think of Goeff Gilliam?”

“Mr. All-Talk-And-No-Action?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“All the girls know that he talks macho and is ultra-rude about talking about sex, but when it comes right down to it, he never even touches one of us. The girls figure he’s a closeted gay guy. It’s a good thing he didn’t meet you in your Mr. J disguise. He’d have liked the fact that you were gay.” She laughed and I had to join in. But that was news that didn’t jive with what I’d experienced. I felt pretty certain that I wouldn’t have gotten away if I’d still been on the “Helen of Troy” when he got back to it.

“Did Teri say anything about him? Is he into hurting people?”

“Like I said, all talk and no action. Nobody has ever been hurt by him that we know. Of course, we all keep stuff secret from each other. It’s part of the code. What’s between us and a client is just between the two of us.”

“Okay. I respect that and I’m not going to ask you to betray any confidences. But the guy really scares me.”

“So where are you going now? Anything I can do to help?”

“Yeah. This is really dumb, but I just remembered it. Did you find any car keys in the office?”

“Car keys. Let’s see. Oh, yes. They were out here in the front office, not in your office.”

“Good. I couldn’t remember where I dropped them. My car is in the Pike Place Garage. Could you go over and bail it out? I’ve got a parking place at my apartment.” I gave her the directions and told her I’d wire money to her account if she’d give me the number. She just laughed and said she’d settle with me when I got back home. Anybody who drove a ’94 Dodge probably had less money than she did. I didn’t do anything to dissuade her of that opinion. Dag made sure that I had enough to do my job.

“That reminds me,” Cinnamon said. “Mr. Johansen came by this morning. He said he had the final papers for you to sign and something about expecting your thesis by the first. Ring a bell?” My thesis. Oh crap! I couldn’t remember doing any work on it at all since Dag died. Somehow it just hadn’t seemed very important. Of course the readers would want it a week before my defense the second week of January. I needed to wrap this up and get home. Life had to go on whether I was a detective or not. I decided to ignore the reasons Lars had come to the office.

“So did you want to date Lars, too?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure he’s available.”

“We all have standards, Sugar,” she answered. “I’ll leave Lars to you while I handle Silas.”

“You are an evil woman,” I said. She agreed and hung up.

Well, it is almost midnight and I’ve soaked in the tub and have to try to get some sleep. I need to drive about four hours according to the map I made on the computer. Here’s hoping I make it. I need more clothes and I have to drive through Bosnia and Herzegovia in order to get to Split, about a hundred-seventy miles from Zagreb.

Flight time

2006-12-20T17:41:00.000-08:00

Ray dropped me at the Holiday Inn in Chatumel at about 3:00 this morning, then took off like a bat out of hell. Apparently he wanted to be back on the island before people stirred this morning. I slept till about 8:00 and then made travel arrangements to fly from here to Mexico City and from there to Croatia.

11:00 a.m.

The first order of business this morning after flight reservations was a change of identity. It has suddenly soaked into me what incredible risks I’ve been taking. I fled to the airport in Seattle disguised as a man and I’m thinking it was nothing short of a miracle that I made it through security and customs. Then I changed identities on Ambergris Caye and ended up fleeing for my life with a different alias under which I entered Mexico. But now I’m headed for Croatia, and the booking information that I’ve been able to get says that I connect in Paris on my way to Zagreb. I’m just not going to risk getting snagged by some European police department in disguise.

The clothes in my suitcases are totally inappropriate for the chilly weather of Croatia. According to the web, temperatures have been in the 30s and 40s throughout most of that region. So much for the balmy 70s and 80s of Belize. I thought the Dalmatian coast was supposed to be a sunny Mediterranean port!

I went shopping for clothing that was more plain, but it is pretty hard to find just regular clothes in a Mexican resort town. I’m blonde again and that looks a little incongruous with my very Mexican-looking huipil and print skirt. I also picked up pants and some underwear and a wool serape. I really don’t want to be caught in the cold. I pulled a rebozo scarf over my head when I went to the airport and checked into my flight clear through to Croatia as none other than Deb Riley.

I suppose that being dressed in these exotic clothes made me think more about being in disguise. I didn’t think anyone could possibly have tracked me over night to Chatumel and have any idea that I was heading for Zagreb. None-the-less, I don’t know Ray that well, in spite of the fact that he basically saved my bacon (and Teri) back in San Pedro. I watched the Mexican women who were boarding planes to various parts of Mexico and further south. There weren’t that many who were travelling by air. It was mostly men. As a result, they acted… small. That’s the only way I can describe it. They seemed to draw in on themselves. I, in my typical stand-tall American body, stuck out among them in spite of being dressed similarly. I started thinking differently of myself. I drew inward and shrank. Head bowed. Hands grasping a carry-on bag in front of me. Careful not to look furtive. Just blend in with the other women. Look small. Don’t make eye contact.

Okay. Gotta board the plane.

5:30 p.m.

I’m about to board my flight for Croatia. Here’s the thing. When I got off the plane in Mexico City, looking small as my 5’9” can go, the first person I spotted was Ray Hawkins. He was standing behind a pillar in the airport scanning the people who were getting off the plane. I fell in step with a nice Mexican man and pretended to be talking to him, keeping him between Ray and me.

He was watching for me!

That SOB must have driven half way across Mexico to catch a flight earlier than mine and sat in the airport watching to find out where I was going.

Okay, so he was waiting for Riley Finn, the redhead he met in San Pedro. I don’t think he recognized me, but for all I know he could be searching flight records for my name. Who is he? And why is he following me now?

I’m flying first class to Croatia, cost be damned. So I’ve been waiting in the first class passenger lounge watching out the window for any sign that he is near. I don’t see him anywhere, but I’ll feel a lot better when I get on that plane.

I took the opportunity to call Cinnamon who was more than happy to hear from me.

“Sugar, where are you?” she exclaimed when I got through.

“Mexico City,” I answered. “What’s up?”

“When do I get to go jet-setting like you?” she asked. “Or with you?”

“I’m sure you’ll get a chance,” I said. “Anything new happening?”

“Well, I’ve about got the office cleaned up. Do you want me to keep any of the furniture? Everything small enough to put in a box I put in one. But there is the torn up sofa, chairs, and desk.”

“This will sound crazy, but I’d like you to hire someone to put them in a storage room for me. I just want to be sure nothing is hidden in anything.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” she answered. “When are you coming home? I miss you.”

“It will be a few days yet. I’m going to go visit Angel for a couple of days.”

“That lucky bitch!”

“Cinnamon! I’ve put her in danger and I need to go warn her,” I said.

“Well, Angel always got whatever she wanted,” Cinnamon pouted. “You’d get the same reaction from any of the girls.”

“Cinnamon,” I said soothingly, “when you were cleaning up the mess, did you find the TV remote control by any chance?” I’d had the uncomfortable idea gnawing at the back of my mind for several days that if they’d taken the remote, I didn’t know how to get into the Vault.

“Funny. Yeah. Couldn’t believe they took the TV without taking the remote. I don’t think men know how to operate a TV if it doesn’t have a remote.”

“Just goes to show you. It could be a clue, so make sure it’s in the box.”

“Will do. By the way, that nice Silas Grant came by.”

“Did he now? And what did Mr. Grant want.”

“I think he wants to ask me out on a date,” Cinnamon said. “He’s handsome.”

“He’s way too old for you, Cinnamon!” I said a little too vehemently. What was I thinking?

“Jealous?”

“No! I’m not interested in Mr. Grant. And I won’t date a client. Now why did he come around?”

“He said he was worried about you. Frankly, I’d say you should be worried about him.”

“Why?”

“He was on crutches.”

“What happened?” I was shocked. Silas always seemed to be indestructible. I still remembered that he shot Oksama when a second later Oksama would have shot me.

“Apparently he was rushing somewhere early Friday morning over on the Eastside where all the power was out. He went through an intersection where there was no light and someone plowed into him from the side. He’s got a broken leg, but said that otherwise he was all right. He said that if he hadn’t broken his leg, he’d have gone to Belize after you himself.”

“Wait a minute. How did he know I was in Belize? Cinnamon?”

“Don’t ask me. I never said a word. I didn’t confirm that you were there like he expected, either. I just said that when you called in you didn’t say where you were. I played pretty dumb. I think he liked it.”

“Oh come on,” I said. “Silas likes strong women with intelligence.”

“Like you, you mean,” Cinnamon said. “I’m smart enough to know when to be clever. That’s enough. Besides, I didn’t do anything. But if he asks me out, I might just say yes.”

“All right. Here’s an opportunity for you to talk to him again. Sometime after 6:30 tonight call him. Be sure it is after 6:30. In fact, make it after 7:00. Tell him you heard from me and that I’m on my way to Croatia to visit Angel. She’s in danger from the bad guys, or I should say from the bad girl. Most of the guys are old and slow and squeamish. All except one guy who would have drowned me in the high seas. I’m going to try to protect Angel, and I’ll let him know when I get there exactly where I am.” Frankly, I wanted Silas as back-up, but I didn’t want to be followed without knowing who’s there.

“You got it. Anything else?”

“Yes. Call Teri and make sure she got home safely, would you please? She can tell you all about our big adventure in Belize.”

“She got to go with you? Deb-bie….” Cinnamon broke off quickly. “Oops. Sorry Sugar. You can spank me for that when you get home.” I swear she giggled.

I’m getting on board the plane.

On the run--again

2006-12-19T03:46:00.000-08:00

Shite! I’m on the run again, in a car headed for the Mexican border with a guy I don’t completely trust. What’s next?

3:00 a.m.

Okay, it all started at the party at the Muffin-tops villa. I tell you, this lady’s got balls. Every man who showed up, young or old, had a girl in her twenties with him. Then there were the hired eye-candy who were young, beautiful, and even more exposed than the “dates.” Maybe the idea of topless sun-bathing was supposed to inspire the rest of us, but none of the other dates bit and neither did I. But there, as proud as anything was Miss Muffin-top in a swimming suit that was a size and a half too small for her. And the men all drooled over her with a dozen topless hookers sitting by the water being neglected.

Jon “Rentz” Reinholdt picked me up in a six-seater golf cart complete with a driver and two guys who rode on the back with sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts on. They are either his staff or guards. Maybe both. When we got to the villa we had to pass through a security gate like the one that was installed at the Condo. Really, it wouldn’t be that tough to bypass it if you weren’t an invited guest. But I saw the number of security people on the beach was now at least four instead of the one guy I was used to seeing out there on my walks.

I was nearly out by the pool when I got my first big surprise of the evening. Across the pool were a small group of women that I recognized. Delta was there with two others from the Condo whose names I couldn’t remember. But the real shock was seeing my best friend, Teri, chatting with them.

Teri has seen me in a couple different outfits. I expected that when I tried to disguise myself from her, I’d have to use a Hijab or even a Niqab to keep her from recognizing me. Here I was in all my glory. I wasn’t sure a red wig and gaudy makeup was going to go far in keeping her from recognizing me. I’d adopted a slightly Bostonian accent with Jon. It goes with the Riley Finn persona from Chatham. But even that didn’t seem like enough.

I utilized the practical strategy of avoidance. I really couldn’t risk any of the girls from the Condo or Teri blurting out who I was. That meant that I was going to have to steer clear until of her until I could make contact on my own terms and clue her in. I couldn’t believe she was here. I knew she’d met Angel and Cinnamon, but I didn’t think she knew any of the other girls, and I couldn’t imagine how she knew any of the Committee. It was too much of a coincidence.

I was lucky the party was so late. Within an hour after we got there, torches were lit and people started hitting the bar with great regularity. I excused myself to use the bathroom and slipped into the poolside dressing room. That was where I got my first break. The buildings are barely proof against being seen in the toilet. Soundproof they definitely are not. I heard voices outside and discovered that the back of the little building masked a private patio where the Muffin-top was holding conversations with three of the men who had come.

“I thought we took care of him,” one said. “You told us it was taken care of.”

“Apparently he didn’t quite go down as easily as I thought,” Brenda said. “He’s still loose somewhere and I don’t like it a bit.” It took no instruction to understand that they were upset that I had gotten away from the Condo in Seattle. I was fortunate that none of them knew that James Whitcomb was one of my aliases. Even if they caught me, they would still think he was on the loose.

“Where is he?”

“He’s slippery. Didn’t leave any tracks that we know of,” Brenda said. “But we’ve got a clue. Angel left Seattle a few days ago. If anyone knows, she does.”

“So where is Angel?”

“My husband didn’t know it, but I was quite aware that he’d brought property in Croatia in her name. I’m betting that if we go there, Angel will be able to help us.”

I scampered out of the toilet and back to the pool before anyone realized I had been gone long enough to be up to anything. Why did they connect Angel with me? Of course. She was the first person I’d visited when I put on the James Whitcomb disguise. I’ll bet they had some kind of access to Angel’s security camera and had Davy identify it. Crap! But they didn’t use a name. Perhaps they didn’t have access to Angel’s files, or maybe she erased them before she left. At least there was some good news.

It wasn’t long before those of us who were to attend the dinner with the men were told that our dresses were laid out in various bedrooms upstairs and we should get ready. When I got up there, my dress was all ready for me to slip into. Of course, it turned out that Teri had the same bedroom assignment to dress in with two other girls. We made quite the combination all trying to get dressed in the same little space. Fortunately, there wasn’t much for any of us to put on. I didn’t bother with changing out of the thong bikini bottom. I just took off the bikini top and put on the dress.

Some of the girls acted as though this was the most natural thing in the world, but I saw that Teri was spending a lot of time trying to cover up more of her than the dress did. I decided it was time to move in and face the music. I think it was the distraction of the dress that did it. I can’t imagine how else Teri could have missed recognizing me when I spoke, even though I carefully kept my voice modulated in that Boston accent.

“Don’t worry,” I said to her taking the scarf from her hand and tying it around her waist instead of her shoulders. It looked very fetching. “It will look strange if you try to cover up too much. Just look at the others.”

“I’m so nervous,” Teri responded. “I met this guy at a game the other night and I don’t know why, but I agreed to go on his yacht with him. I thought it was in Puget Sound, but it turned out we drove out to Boeing field and took off in a private jet, landed in New Orleans, and sailed down here. I would have freaked out if there hadn’t been half a dozen of us. I’m just so new at this.”

“Playing with rich guys is a different experience. They are so into their toys.”

“Here,” she said, “let me help you with your corsage. There’s one for each of us.”

There was an orchid laid out with each of our dresses. Teri pinned mine on and I returned the favor. She tugged it down the strap a bit so it slightly concealed her left nipple beneath the fabric of the dress. It seemed to make her feel better.

“Well, let’s go meet the lions,” I said. Teri still hadn’t shown a glimmer of recognition, and I wasn’t sure she had actually looked at me yet.

I was surprised to find that there was another security screening before we walked into the dining room. A guy with a security wand was sweeping each of us before we were let in. For Pete’s sake, where were we going to conceal anything.

Imagine my surprise when the damn thing beeped when he passed it over my left breast. He came back and passed it over again and the next thing I knew I was being led out into the next room. The guy was polite, but he let the back of his hand linger a little too long on my breast as he unpinned my corsage. Jon and Brenda came into the room where my flower was being dissected.

“What seems to be the problem?” Jon asked.

“We’re reading an electronic device on her,” the guard answered.

“Where would she conceal an electronic device?” Brenda asked. “She’s barely covered.”

“It’s here,” the guard answered. He tapped the little water holder on the flower on the table and a tiny metal device fell out of it.

“What’s going on?” The newcomer was Goeff Gilliam, the sports playboy from the yacht. Apparently Teri’s date. Well, I understood that a little now. He bought the team with inherited money, is half the age of any of the other men at the gathering, and is pretty sexy looking.

“We’ve got a listening device on this pretty little thing,” Brenda said. “Who were you planning to broadcast to, Honey?”

“I didn’t know anything about this,” I said. “I just put the flower on in the bedroom.” I was truly horrified that there was anything on me that could be against the rules. I was risking enough being here as it was. Brenda, at least, was showing no sign of recognition. When we’d last met, I was a blonde in a business suit.

“Sure you didn’t,” Goeff said. I could see a mean streak about him and was frankly worried about Teri. Sometimes she can really pick them. “Who are you really, and why would you have a sophisticated listening device in your flower?”

“Come, come, now, Goeff,” Jon said. “The flowers were delivered hours ago. I’ll bet the device came in with them.”

“Yes, that must be what happened,” I said a little too anxiously.

“You’re hiding something,” Goeff said. “I can always tell when a woman is lying to me.”

“What do you suggest, Goeff,” Brenda asked sidling up to him and slipping her hand through his arm. “She may already know too much. Who knows how long she’s been listening in with that thing.”

“No, really,” I said.

“Shut up, bitch,” Goeff said.

“Really, Goeff,” Jon began.

“You’re too soft, old man,” Goeff said. “You know how important security is. That’s why we’re meeting way the hell out here instead in Seattle. Load her up and take her out the “Helen of Troy” I’ll drop her off on an island sometime tomorrow and we’ll see how well she gets her information back. I’ll bet she’s a reporter.”

“What would a reporter be doing out here?” Jon asked.

“Think, Jon,” Brenda said. “What reporter wouldn’t want to be in this company. I’ll bet she has a story already. I agree with Goeff. You don’t even have to wait for an island to drop her off as far as I’m concerned. Drop her in the middle of the ocean.”

There comes a time when you should run, and I’d reached that moment. I gave dear, concerned Jon a shove into the security guard and blasted past headed out through the kitchen. Running in an evening gown and high heels is not to be recommended. I hit the pool deck and skidded, falling off the heels. As I bent to release the strap from my ankle, I was hit from the side by another guard. I lost my balance and fell into the pool. In a moment, I was surrounded by men with guns pointing down at me. I crawled out of the pool as I was ordered and was cuffed. If the dress did little for my modesty in the first place, the dress soaking wet did considerably less.

Two men propelled me out on the pier and into a small motor boat which they immediately steered toward the “Helen of Troy”. I’d been captured again, and I liked this captor even less than Bradley. Goeff Gilliam was not only a playboy, he was a sadist. God! How did Teri get mixed up with him?

By the time I was ushered into a cabin, I had had hands all over my body. They let me out of the cuffs in the cabin, but I heard the door lock behind me. All the while they were making jokes about what they’d like to do with this one. Apparently Geoff had rules about how the girls on his yacht were to be treated, however, and they extended them to me. A few moments later the door opened and a towel was thrown through it. Then it was closed and locked again.
I got myself dried off and checked the critical parts of my makeup—eyebrows, eyelashes, and wig. The rest I could do without if I needed to. Then I started examining my quarters. I needed to put something on now that I was out of the wet dress. There was various swimwear in the closet and I chose a one-piece and then wrapped myself in a terrycloth robe. The next step was to get out of here somehow.

It was an inside cabin with no porthole. There was nothing I could readily use as a weapon. I paced back and forth for an hour or more before I heard the rattle of the door being opened. I prepared myself this time to take out whoever came through the door. Teri walked in and I had her pinned to the bed before she could scream.

“Shhh. I came to help,” she whispered. I let her up and she turned to look at me. “It really is you!” she exclaimed. “I suddenly saw you when you were running toward the pool and thought, OMG it’s Deb!”

“Thanks for not blowing my cover,” I said. “But this is dangerous for you. I’ve got to get out of here.”

“There’s no place to go,” Teri said. “I mean, all the guards are at the party and they have all the boats with them.”

“How did you get out here?” I asked.

“I was trying to figure out how to get to you all through the first course. I finally poured salt in my water and drank it in a single swallow, then threw up. I complained that it was the shellfish. Goeff swore at me and said it was the alcohol and that I was dismissed from the party. There were plenty of other girls who would like to have my place. He told a guard to take me out to the boat.” Teri paused to breathe.

“But how did you unlock my door?” I asked.

“I picked the guard’s pocket as he was feeling me up helping me up the ladder onto deck.”

“I may have to find a place for you at DH Investigations,” I laughed.

“No thanks. I regretted making this trip from the moment we reached Boeing field. But there were six girls he was taking and I thought safety in numbers. I tried to call you, but all I got was voice mail.”

“I haven’t been checking since I got down here. I’ve got a lot to fill you in on. But now we need to leave. You should come with me. It’s not safe for you here.”

“Okay. Tell me what to do.” We were out on deck, keeping low so the pilot up in the pilothouse didn’t see us.

“If there’s no boat, we’ll have to swim to shore,” I said. “Come on.”

“I can’t swim, Deb.”

“Teri! You rollerblade, play soccer, play hockey, and run, but you can’t swim? You’re kidding!”

“I’ve always been afraid of the water,” she answered. “That’s made living on this boat hell.”

“We’ll take a flotation device then. I’ll pull you to shore.”

“Why don’t you take my boat, instead,” a voice spoke from the shadows. I went into a defensive crouch and Ray Hawkins stepped out of the shadow. “I came to rescue you, but it seems that I’m a little late.”

“Why would you want to rescue me?” I asked warily.

“Well, I got you into this situation,” he answered. “Least I could do was offer my help getting you out.”

“It wasn’t really your suggestion that decided me on getting invited to the party,” I said, not willing to flatter him with having a good idea.

“No, but it was me that planted the transmitter in your flower. I had to wait until I’d recorded enough of the conversation at dinner though to make it worth while before I came out here. I had a mike in the flowers on the table, too.” He motioned to the ladder on the offshore side of the boat where a little dingy bobbed alongside the “Helen of Troy.”

“Can we all fit in that?” Teri asked.

“We’ll have to,” Ray insisted. We dropped quietly down into the boat and he started rowing us south before turning toward shore near San Pedro.

“I’m afraid you two should get out of here,” he said. “I’m going to need to be back here, though to mop up. I’ve been broadcasting my results back home, but there’s no sense leaving a lot of expensive equipment lying around.

“I need to get back to my room and collect my things,” I said. “Teri, do you have your passport?”

“Yes. I collected my little bag from the room and tossed yours in it, too,” she said holding up the little beach bag. “Never travel without your passport, my mother always said.”

“Your mother never said that,” I laughed.

“All right, I made it up.”

“Ladies,” Ray interrupted. “Let’s get Miss Finn packed and get out of here. I’ll arrange a boat.”

Teri and I ran to my room and I started throwing things into my bag and slipped my khakis on over the swimsuit I took from the “Helen of Troy”. Last I crawled up on the toilet and removed the panel in the ceiling and pulled down my extra disguises and passports.

Ray knocked at the door and we joined him.

“I have a few contacts down here and have a friend who will take us across to the mainland. I can get you straight to the airport.”

“I don’t want to leave from Belize,” I said without thinking. “Teri can fly home from Belize City, but I don’t want to be tracked from here.”

“And what do you suggest?” Ray asked.

“I’ll get a car and drive up to Mexico. I’ll leave from there.”

“Oh great,” he responded.

We argued about it most of the way from Ambergris Caye to Belize City. We argued about it some more on the way to the airport. Teri was scared, but I assured her that she would be fine, and to look up Cinnamon when she got to my office. But I was determined to rent a car and head north.

I got Teri out into the boarding area for a plane that was a few hours away from takeoff, and then headed out to rent a car. Ray informed me that there weren’t any.

“What do you mean? I can’t rent a car in Belize?”

“No.”

“And why not?”

“Because I rented the last one.”

“You?”

“I can’t let you drive alone through Belize and the Yucatan. It wouldn’t be safe. Together we can pose as a married couple on vacation headed for the Mayan ruins. Alone, you’d just be prey.”

We argued about that most of the way from Belize City to the Mexico border.

Now I’m getting sleepy, and I’ve no idea how I’m going to get from Mexico to Croatia, but I’m going to try. I've got to warn Angel that the Committee knows where she is.

Pampered, Spoiled, and Searched

2006-12-18T17:30:00.000-08:00

So that’s what a spa is all about? I could get used to being pampered like that. I’ve been soaked, sweated, massaged, oiled, manicured, pedicured, made up, and dressed up. And this gown is really something else!

3:00 p.m.

Apparently, when you go to a pool party at a rich house, it isn’t to swim. It is to lounge around in a bikini so everyone can see. I didn’t want Jon to think I only had one outfit, so even though he bought me a new stunning dress, I bought a new bikini and matching pareo. But the dress! I have always wondered who wears those outfits that you see in runway shows from Paris. Well, tonight I guess I do. I feel like such a Bond girl!

It’s got some drawbacks, though. How do you wear this without blushing all the time? It’s pretty much transparent silk and cut so tight that I couldn’t carry a credit card without making a bulge. The idea of a bra is out of the question, and the panties aren’t worth mentioning. So in “Miss Congeniality,” where does Sandra Bullock keep pulling her wallet, gun, and handcuffs out of while she’s wearing those costumes?

When I got back to my room, there was another problem.

I’ve been searched.

I wonder if the reason Jon wanted me in the spa all morning and afternoon was so he could have my room searched. It’s not the mess that Cinnamon described the office as being. It was the kind of careful job that Silas did when he searched the office and my apartment. I wouldn’t have noticed, but there were things that were just not quite right. Clothes put back in the closet facing the wrong direction on the hanger. The mattress of the bed not quite square on the box springs. Whoever came in did a thorough job.

So what did they find out?

Well, the tells I left on my hiding place for my disguise and alternate ID were undisturbed, so it seems my basic cover is good. I made no secret about having my boyfriend with me, so the men’s clothes in my closet are okay. Of course, no one has seen the boyfriend since I checked in. If they were expecting to find him in the room, they missed.

I used the tile surrounding the fan in the bathroom to put my disguises and passports in the ceiling. They looked in the ceiling in the closet. There was dust that had fallen down from the ceiling on the shelf. But the bathroom hiding place was not visible from that vantage. I know because I checked.

It makes me a little queezy about going with Jon to the party this evening, but I can’t find anything that would give me away. My makeup was rifled through, but the only thing out of the ordinary in it is the spirit gum that I’m using to keep my wig firmly in place. I could dive in the pool with this on and it would stay.

Well, I’ve got my bikini on with a little lacy pareo wrapped around my waist. My bag is packed with the dress and makeup I’ll need for dinner. There’s nothing left for it but to go down and meet Jon when he pulls up in his luxury golf cart. Pretty much all transportation on the island is by golf cart or bicycle.

Wish me luck!

Lying Low

2006-12-17T23:23:00.000-08:00

I just got back to my room after Sunday brunch. I didn’t like what I saw down there. It looks like the Committee is meeting. Stan Metzger of the PNW Publishing Group walked in to breakfast beside Renee Fortier, the founder of one of the largest internet services groups in the country. I was really shocked to see the CEO of Allied Cellular with him.

11:00 a.m.

I ran to my room and decided to call Cinnamon. I used my Deb Riley SIM and she answered on the first ring.

“Deb, where are you? I’ve been so worried,” she spoke as soon as she answered.

“Well, I’m fine. I’ve been really lucky. How are you?”

“Well, Seattle is a mess. Downtown is fine and so is your apartment on Capitol Hill. Parts of town are still without power and the East Side is a virtual blackout. According to the news there’s 700,000 people still without power.”

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “I’m going to need you to go down to my office for me.”

“I already did,” Cinnamon answered. “In fact, that’s where I am now. It’s a mess.”

“No power?”

“Oh you’ve got power, all right,” she answered, “but it looks like someone came in and searched the place. When I say a mess, I mean everything is torn up and it looks like someone came in and vandalized it during the storm. A window was broken in the big office and there’s water damage. I called a glass company to come and replace the window for you.”

“You are terrific, Cinnamon,” I said. “Please be sure Maizie’s bed is cleaned up. I don’t want the poor girl to lie on any glass.”

“That’s the strange thing, Deb. There wasn’t any glass on the inside of the room. I think the window was broken from the inside. In fact, I think there is a chair missing, but I was only in here once.”

“I need you to give me a survey of the room,” I said, panic just at bay. “I want you to stand in the middle of the big office and start facing the window, then describe the damage as you turn to your left.”

“Sure. There was the window. The sofa was torn up pretty badly. It looks like it was cut open with a knife. Maizie’s bed is pretty much shredded. There’s an overturned pedestal table with a vase broken on the floor. There’s the door to the outer office.”

“Wait,” I said. “What about the television screen mounted on the wall.”

“There’s no television screen. Oh, I see. There’s a wire cut off hanging out of the wall. It looks like they took the screen. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I answered. “You are at the door into the office, continue left.” I held my breath.

“There’s a bathroom that is okay except that all the shelves have been torn out of the medicine cabinet. The desk drawers are all lying out on the floor and everything is dumped out of them. Everything that was on the desk is dumped on the floor. The desk is turned upon edge. There’s another pedestal table near the wall and a painting that has been slashed open and torn off the wall. The curtains were pulled down from the windows. There’s a recliner chair, but I’m sure there used to be another chair near the window. And the coffee table is upside down. I’m sorry, Deb. It’s really a mess. I got the window replaced, but I haven’t done anything else but take pictures of everything so you can file an insurance claim.”

I breathed. Cinnamon couldn’t have missed another room behind the desk with shelves for computer servers. The Vault was still secure.

“Do you want me to do the same thing in the outer office?”

“No, that’s okay. It sounds like I’m going to have to pretty much start over furnishing the office.” A tear was leaking out my eye. Everything that was Dag’s was destroyed. Even Maizie’s bed. “I’m not going to ask you to clean up the office, Cinnamon, but thank you for getting the window repaired.”

“Wait till you see the bill.”

“I’ll bet they gouged me on that one,” I said. “I’m going to want to go through everything that’s left to see if there is anything that is missing, so you can pretty much leave things the way they are till I get back.”

“I’ll make sure everything is kept for you, Deb,” Cinnamon said softly. “But I’m not going to let you come back to this mess. Is there anything here that you especially don’t want me to look at? I’ll try not to be nosey while I’m cleaning.”

“Really, Cinnamon. You don’t have to do that.”

“You hired me, remember?” she said.

“Yeah. Are you sure you want to work for me? It can get kind of dangerous.”

“Pharmaceuticals were getting kind of boring,” she said. “I’m going to quit the day job.”

“Cinnamon, did your boss know you were there Thursday night?”

“No. I wasn’t actually supposed to be there. I just hid out until I thought it was safe to come and see you. The girls aren’t supposed to be at a party with a group they work with professionally. You know what I mean? It’s something about a law called “quid pro quo.” Your responsibilities as a hostess never cross with your responsibilities in your day job.

“So the CEO of your company was there Thursday night,” I said. “Can you tell me anything about him?”

“Mostly he’s a really nice man. I never even saw him for the first year I was with Bio-Research. He sent me a congratulations letter when I got promoted to Sr. Marketing Manager. You know, that’s the thing, Deb. The members of the Committee all seem like really nice guys. I don’t know who they all are, but the one’s I’ve met have been the least likely to, you know, want to have sex with you on the sofa. They all seem to have their minds somewhere else.”

“Yeah. On money,” I said absently. Well that might mean that I won’t have as much trouble with Mr. Rentz as I was afraid. “Tell me about Mr. Reinholdt’s family,” I asked.

“He has a nice wife who looks like she came out of a Pillsbury cookbook, if you know what I mean,” she giggled. “I think he has three grown children, but that’s really all the personal information I know about him.”

“Cinnamon, we’re going to have to get you more curious about things if you are going to work with me,” I laughed. “But seriously. You should probably go back to work for Bio-Research. You know I can’t pay you anything like what they can.”

“I hate my job, Deb,” she answered. “I don’t need a lot of money. I’ve been careful at saving up from my job and my tips,” she said. “That’s one of the things that we were taught when we went to the Condo. If any of us were found to be using drugs or spending too freely, we were cut off and not allowed back. We’re all pretty clean-cut. But I don’t want to be a pharmaceuticals Marketing Manager. It’s just what they said I was best suited for. It’s boring. Your work isn’t boring, Deb. I told you Thursday night, I’ll be anything you want me to be for you.”

“Cinnamon, don’t pin too many hopes on anything personal on that. Quid pro quo laws apply to our relationship as employer employee just like they do at Bio-Research. And as much as I like you, I’m really not gay, or even bi. I just don’t happen to be very lucky with men.”

“Tell me about it, sister,” she sighed. “Well, unless you are firing me, I think I’ll start cleaning up this mess.”

“You are a treasure, Cinnamon,” I said. “Be careful.”

Geez. I’m sure Dag gave me that lecture at least once. And look how I behaved. What have I gotten myself into?

5:00 p.m.

I’d call that a little bit of a close shave. I have limited electronic resources here. I can’t depend on gadgets other than my laptop and my cell phone. But I’ve got eyes and ears. And I intend to find out what is going on at that meeting tomorrow.

I put on my khakis and headed up the beach with a pair of cheap binoculars I bought at a kiosk on the beach. Brenda’s house sits on a couple of acres of beachfront land about two miles north of San Pedro. You can get there via a sandy road that comes in at the security gated front entrance, or by water and the beach. There’s a security guard that patrols the beach and makes sure that walkers keep moving and don’t pause on Brenda’s 200’ of beachfront. I passed the security guard and waved to him. I figure if he gets used to seeing me, he’ll pay less attention to me. This time, as soon as I passed Brenda’s property, I cut up away from the beach onto the property next to it. It is still under construction with a 1.5 million dollar price tag. I thought at first it was 3 million, but the Belize dollar is 2 to 1 against the American dollar. I went up to examine the new construction. There were no workers today as it is Sunday. I climbed up to the second floor and found a window that gave a reasonable view down into Brenda’s property.

I’d been watching for about fifteen minutes and had yet to actually see anything, but I’d identified both a dining room and bedroom window that were visible from this perch. If I got a camera before the meeting tomorrow, I might be able to photograph them all arriving from up here. I could add that to the evidence that I’d sent Silas. I wondered why he hadn’t moved to stop the Committee from coming down to Belize, but maybe he was just being extra careful so as not to repeat the problems he’d had when he arrested Brenda. Well, that was his problem.

“If you try the attic window you can see the pool area and the living room patio,” a voice said behind me. I nearly fell out the window. He’d come up so quietly behind me that his presence was a complete surprise. I was face to uncomfortably close face with Mr. Ray Hawkins, Prince Charming.

“I was just…” I stammered.

“Just trying to get an exclusive story,” he said. “I can well imagine. Good job figuring out where they were going to meet. Did Jon tell you?”

“No, I… well, yes, I guess so.” I wasn’t sure what to do with this, but from his perspective he’d given me a perfect cover. I could be a reporter on a scoop. “Don’t tell me you are going to try to scoop me on this,” I said.

“No, no. I’m here purely for corporate espionage. When powerful men who wield a great deal of wealth get together, those of us who are left out want to know what they are talking about.”

“Well, if I hear anything I’ll let you know,” I said slipping around him and heading for the stair.

“I’d appreciate that,” he said. “You know, you might get a lot closer if you stick with Jon… what name did he give you?”

“Rentz.”

“Right. Stick with Jon Rentz and I’ll bet he invites you along. He’s always been a sucker for a beautiful face. And body.”

“Thank you very much,” I said curtly. “If you aren’t asking me out, then I guess I have nothing better to do than go with him.”

“I never tread on another man’s soil,” he said. “Not without an invitation.”

“Mine’s not coming and his doesn’t count,” I said. “Just so you know.”

I stormed down the stairs and out the front gates. I walked back along the sand road that fronted the property. He had a good point. Maybe I should play up the relationship with Mr. Rentz and see if he’ll invite me to the party.

I was still musing about that when I got back to the Beach Club and Mr. Rentz stopped me in the lobby.

“Miss Finn,” he said. I turned toward him. “Riley, I hope you will indulge me with your presence at dinner again tonight. That is, if your boyfriend is still under the weather.”

“Mr. Rentz, how delightful,” I answered. “Shall I join you in the Celebrity Restaurant?”

“No, no. I had something more islandy in mind. Meet me down here at 7:30 in beach wear and we’ll go to Elvi’s for a real Island meal.” Beach wear? You lech. Okay, kindly, fatherly, embezzling lech.

“I’ll see you here,” I said gaily and hopped up to my room.

There was one little piece of investigating that I needed to do on-line when I got back to my room. I looked up “Helen of Troy”. I’m not looking for a Homerian epic poem. I’m looking for the owner of a huge yacht that’s still anchored a few hundred feet off the beach at Brenda’s little island home. And I found it. A certain major sports franchise owner who likes to party at sea. I’ll bet that baby is armed.

11:00 p.m.

Played it right. A little flirtation. A little bare skin exposed where my sarong gapped open to show my bikini. A little too much laughter at jokes that weren’t that funny. An invitation to join him for dinner at the meeting he’s having tomorrow. There will be an adequate amount of time for lounging at the pool before dinner, and then dress formally for the meal.

“Oh dear,” I said. “I don’t have a thing to wear.”

“Riley, my dear, I insist that you let me buy you something. I’ll take care of everything. I’d like you to spend the day at the Sol Spa tomorrow. I’ll make the arrangement. They’ll shop for you and bring you a dress and make sure it fits correctly. Something fitting for the party. It will be my little thank you for brightening a few days with me here in the sun.”

“I hardly know what to say, Mr. Rentz,” I gasped.

“Please, call me Jon, dear. And think nothing of it.”

Whoa. It was a little more difficult to extract myself from him tonight as he wasn’t quite as loaded as he got last night. But I managed without injuring him or my pride.

I have to tell you, I spent a long time in the shower tonight after I got home. Ewwwww.

When I got out of the shower I went out onto my deck and looked out at the incredible beach. How I wish I was just here enjoying myself. Down on the beach a man was talking on his cell phone, animatedly waving his arms. It must be awfully hard to hear down by the water. Some people just can’t leave work behind, I thought.

Then he turned and looked up at my window. He stopped his conversation, or else he was just listening, because he stood there looking up at me and I suddenly felt like Juliet on the balcony with Romeo in the garden. Prince Ray Charming raised and hand tentatively and waved.

I waved back then slipped back into my room.

Dinner with the Enemy

2006-12-16T11:45:00.000-08:00

I will go to hell for this. If I’m lucky I’ll be dead first.

12:00 p.m.

It was a morning for some serious shopping. The only girl clothes I had were the bikini and sarong I bought yesterday. Saturday morning markets gave me everything I needed. The boutiques filled in the need for a more formal evening dress and I got a lot of accessories for it. It’s slinky. I’m going to pump Mr. Reinholdt for a bit of information. He could be my ticket into Ashley Lark’s home. It would be a lot easier if I was invited in instead of breaking in, and you can’t tell me that Jonathon Reinholdt is here on the island and won’t be visiting the esteemed Ms. Lark.

Remind me not to call him Mr. Reinholdt this evening. He hasn’t told me his name yet and god knows he might have an alias here, too.

So now I’ve lathered myself with sunblock and have on a pair of khakis and a light-weight white shirt. I’m planning on a little hike this afternoon.

I’ll check in later. It is so nice to be in a hotel with a WiFi connection!

5:30 p.m.

The place is like a fortress, except it doesn’t have a draw-bridge. I suppose you’d say it’s more palatial. There is a guard at the gate in front and one on the grounds on the beach side. He stopped me when I crossed onto Brenda’s property and went on. It’s a beach after all. I was just walking along it. There’s a huge yacht anchored about 400 yards off-shore. Either it’s Brenda’s (which would explain how she got down here from Mexico without triggering an immigration alert) or it’s another visitor.

When Davy told me there was no meeting of the Committee at the Condo, I got the message clear. The whole Committee wouldn’t risk being seen all together in one place unless it was at some charitable event. Some of them are fierce competitors. That means they must meet somewhere else, and what better time to go away for a week than right before Christmas.

I did a quick check on the net worth of these guys. If you added up the entire net worth of everyone in Seattle, half of it would be in the hands of these ten men. And that’s only the legitimate part that they report. It doesn’t include any of the hidden funds that I’m sure they all have from their illicit dealings.

It strikes me odd that they’ve targeted a specific industry, though, for their heist. I’ve got more research to do there.

Well, I’m meeting Mr. Wrong for dinner at 8:00. I’d better get made up and slip into the slinky gown. Wish me luck.

11:30 p.m.

Angel told me, back in November when I was trying to get a feel for what her business was all about, that the object wasn’t to sell sex to an old fart, it was to sell the idea that sex wasn’t beyond the realm of what was possible. And to make him pay for everything that he thinks might happen, not for what actually happens.

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

I met Mr. Reinholdt in the hotel lobby and he introduced himself as Jon Rentz. Not very imaginative, but then, look at the name I’m using. There’s no Riley Finn to complain about me using his name outside the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I chose it because all my aliases have something to do with Riley.

So, there we were, two impostors having a lovely polite but flirtatious dinner together beside the pool in an 80-degree paradise with the most spectacular night sky above that you’ve ever seen. There are several people I can think of, living and dead, that I’d rather have shared that experience with. Let me tell you, I wasn’t at all hesitant to order the “grill marinated lobster tail with rice and sauce vegetables” at $65, nor to have my fill of single origin dark chocolates with coffee for dessert.

Mr. Rentz, however, seemed to be somewhat disappointed when he offered me a glass of Chenin Blanc ($120 per bottle) from a Northern California vineyard that would have cost $12 at Fred Meyer in Seattle. Of course the menu that I had didn’t have prices on it, but I looked last night when I ate alone. The Dom here is $750 a bottle. Unbelievable.

“So, Miss Finn,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“Chatham, Mass,” I answered. “How about you?”

“Seattle,” he answered. I told you he wasn’t creative. Fake name, but he’s living in the same place.

“Does it really rain there all the time?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “we just tell people that to keep the population down. If everyone knew how beautiful Seattle is, we could never keep them out.”

“Ah. Like an exclusive club, huh?”

“You might say so. Finn. What nationality is that?”

“Oh, my father claimed to be full Irish, though it was his grandfather that immigrated to the US in the 1800s. He always said that’s where I get my red hair from.”

“And the blue eyes?” Ooops! I usually wear green contacts with this outfit, but I didn’t bring those with me.

“My mother is as Swedish as they come,” I said. “She’s tall and blonde and blue-eyed. I don’t know why I couldn’t have gotten her hair as well as her eyes.”

“You’d look good as a blonde,” he said. “You should try it. They say blondes have more fun.”

“Oh, hair color never stopped me from having fun,” I said. “What do you do in Seattle, Mr. Rentz?” It was time to move the conversation off of me and see what I could get out of him.

“I manage a little pharmaceutical company. Seattle is very big in bio-tech.” Really no imagination. I bet he doesn’t even know what other businesses are in Seattle.

“That sounds very exciting. Are you finding a cure for cancer or AIDS?” Where’s your social conscious, is what I was saying.

“Well, that’s a tough problem, better left to people smarter than I am. I just sell what they develop.” What? Was that a hint of false humility I detected.

“You must sell a lot of it to vacation down here in Belize. I mean, this must be a vacation isn’t it?”

“Mostly. Let’s say a working vacation. I have a business meeting to attend Monday, but other than that, it is a lovely place to spend Christmas.”

“It’s too bad you are all alone,” I said. “Don’t you have a family to spend Christmas with?”

“Well, my wife will be joining me Wednesday after the meetings for the holiday. She doesn’t really like it down here that much. But we have three days to enjoy ourselves before she gets here.” The cad.

“Oh, I can’t enjoy myself too much. I’m here with my boyfriend.” Let’s see how you handle that, lech.

“Where is your boyfriend now?”

“He got hit with a stomach bug the minute we got here. He is absolutely no fun to be with right now. I’m sure you’ll see him around by the time your wife gets here, though,” I said. Let’s see if you will pay for my company with a little information. “What kind of a business meeting gets held on an island in Central America?” I asked. “When you say pharmaceuticals, you’re not like a drug runner, are you?”

“I sell drugs,” he answered. “But they are all legal drugs. In the U.S. there are certain restraints on what people can discuss in a meeting if they are in the same business. But we really have to discuss these things or we’d never get anywhere with our businesses. It’s a matter of self-regulating the trade, so to speak.”

Okay. He’s a bigger idiot than I thought. If you are going to cover up a meeting for illegal purposes, you don’t invent a meeting for other illegal purposes to throw someone off your trail. Maybe it is not just an idiot. It is just flat-out arrogance. He might actually be telling me that they are going to meet together to fix the prices on Aspirin around the world. Why? Because he simply can’t believe that anyone in the world would be smart enough to understand what was going on.

By the time he started trying to push a glass of cognac on me, I’d pretty much had enough. By a stroke of good fortune that’s when Prince Charming arrived.

He was a nice six feet tall, dark hair cropped close, trim and fit and about 35 years old. I was looking forward to meeting him on the beach sometime soon. I bet he looks great in his swim trunks.

“Jon, fancy meeting you here,” he said striding up to my dinner date with an outstretched hand. Mr. Rentz rose reluctantly and accepted the greeting.

“Hawkins. The surprise is mutual. What brings you here?” He was just a little tetchy.

“Obviously the same thing as you. I’ve heard how magnificent the women are down here. I see you’ve already reeled one in, eh?” He turned to me and smiled the most brilliant perfect smile I’ve ever seen. I melted just a little. He held out his hand to me.

“I’m Ray Hawkins, Miss. If you wear out the old guy, look me up.”

“Thank you,” I said taking his hand. I was contemplating taking it home with me. Him attached, of course. “Riley Finn.”

“Nice to meet you Miss Finn. I certainly hope to see more of you.” Yes, yes. Much more of me. Okay! OMG! He’s beautiful. “I’ll see you around, Jon. Maybe we can go out for some deep sea fishing.”

“Sure, sure. We’ll make an arrangement later. Good evening.”

Ray Hawkins left the side of the table and headed for the bar. Mr. Rentz ordered another cognac.

“Young ass,” Mr. Rentz said confidentially across the table. “He thinks those video games he sells are real. Let me give you some advice, Miss Finn, stay away from him. He’s a user. Reputation for going through beautiful women like water. Wouldn’t have him in my club, I’ll tell you that, for sure.”

Suddenly the conversation took an interesting turn. My dear Mr. Rentz suddenly became a fatherly sage. The presence of a man about half his age must have struck his ego much harder than I’d have thought. The more glasses of cognac that Mr. Rentz drank while I put away $8.00 glasses of Perrier, the more fatherly and protective he became, leaning across the table and patting my hand, then whispering deep secrets about how men behave when in the presence of beautiful women.

“I see it all the time,” he said. “Hell, when I was that age, I was the same way. You see, Miss Finn—may I call you Riley?—young men only see a woman’s beauty. They don’t understand what a great contribution that woman may make to society, business, science, or even politics. Older men, like myself—I don’t kid myself about my age; I’m old enough to be your grandfather—older men see the potential for a smart woman to make a real impact on the world. What we really want to do is to help her along. For example, what do you do, Riley? What is your profession?”

“I’m a customer engineer for a manufacturer of precision instrumentation. I’m responsible for making sure their installations are set up properly, that their employees are trained properly, and that they never have a problem with our products.” Thank you Lars for insisting that when we create a persona for an alias we do a complete background on where we are supposed to work, even what color our house is.”

“You see!” he exclaimed. “You see what I mean?” He drank down another cognac. He seemed to have forgotten that I wasn’t drinking and poured two more glasses. In the next few minutes he drank both of them. “I knew the minute that I saw you that you weren’t just a pretty face. You have real talent and promise. Now if you were in Seattle, I could arrange for you to meet people who could help your career on its way. Possibly even get you a job with one of the big companies. Not just a field job, but something that would allow you to develop your management potential. I’ve got a young woman that works in my company who has that kind of potential as a Sr. Marketing Manager. She was introduced to me by one of my associates. We are always on the look out for smart, beautiful young women.”

Ding-ding! Bells started going off in my head. My dear little Cinnamon happens in her real life to be a Marketing Manager for a pharmaceutical company. In short, Mr. Rentz was leading up to an offer to come join the women of the Condo. If only he knew how I’d just escaped from the Condo. But the invitation wasn’t forthcoming tonight. Mr. Rentz was now seriously into his drinking. I’d seen it with my mother a hundred times. Once they get to a certain point, the booze is the most important thing, not the people you are with. It made me sick.

But I didn’t show it. I didn’t show how much I loathed him, his drinking, or his insinuation. I didn’t show my intention to bury him and the other nine men on the Committee.

I actually supported him all the way to his room—excuse me, suite—with another bottle of cognac, and managed to extract myself from him at the door with many sincere thanks for all the advice he’d given me and an excuse that I needed to go see how my boyfriend was doing.

I glanced over my shoulder as we left and noticed the handsome Mr. Hawkins watching us from the bar as we left.

Flight

2006-12-15T22:11:00.000-08:00

We didn’t get off the ground until 4:00 a.m., by which time the lights at SeaTac had flickered a few times and winds smashed into everything. The last report I got indicated that there are a million people in Seattle without power and SeaTac is closed because it has no power either. Taking off was like riding a rollercoaster, only not as much fun.

11:00 a.m.

I was originally scheduled for a seven hour layover at DFW, but because the flight was five hours late, I spent most of the layover time in Seattle. The late take-off gave me some opportunity to dig deeper into what was going on in Belize. Not only is she there, but she’s spending a bunch of money at local markets in San Pedro. It looks like she is settling in for a long winter’s nap. The emergency power backups in my office kept the servers running, though I’m down to one server instead of the array of ten that Dag set up. At least I can still do research.

So Brenda owns property under the name of Ashley Lark in San Pedro. I booked a reservation at the Belize Yacht Club, even though I had to commit to a week’s stay at $165 a night. I also had to book a fifteen minute flight on a local carrier to get from the airport in Belize City to Ambergris Caye. Seems typical that Brenda would choose a place in the most touristy part of Belize.

I switched SIMS in my phone again to see if there were any messages and Cinnamon had called from my apartment. She said the power was only out for a flicker on Capitol Hill so I have power and she is staying in my apartment. She’s afraid to go to work and intends to stay put in my place until I call. I’m not going to call until after I’m settled in San Pedro.

I keep going back to the list of people who make up the Committee. I can’t believe some of these guys would stoop so low. They each have a shell company that sells mobile phone services. One of the other companies subscribes to their service for the company phones. The shell company contracts to buy network time from the Mobile Operator at a base amount. Then they sell it at a higher amount. That much could be a pseudo-legit business. But they route the calls through carriers that markup the rates hugely. Those carriers bill the service back to the Mobile Operator at an inflated cost. The Mobile Operator is only getting five or ten cents a minute for calls and they are being billed a dollar or a dollar-fifty. The big gouge is into the pocket of the operator.

These guys have sold services, not only to each other, but to eighty percent of the top 500 companies in the world. They are raking in billions.

Well, it’s time to board for Belize. I’ll check in later.

9:00 p.m.

Beautiful!

I wish I was here for pleasure. It was 85 degrees when I landed and now that the sun has set over the clear blue Caribbean, it is a perfect 72. My room on the second floor looks out over the water with a perfectly wonderful deck where I can sit and have coffee in the morning. It is paradise.

I landed right on time at 3:30 this afternoon and caught the shuttle flight across to Ambergris Caye, the largest of the islands off the coast of Belize and just inside the Barrier Reef. The sand is perfectly white, and so is the hotel. The room is spacious and comfortable and people are running all over everyplace waiting on you.

Once I was settled in, I did some shopping. I didn’t pack much for my little adventure, but I did toss in a couple of extra wigs and my makeup bag. I bought a bikini (much to the surprise of the shop clerk), a pareo, and sandals. When I got back to my room, I stripped off all my makeup and showered thoroughly. There’s really no reason for me to pretend to be a boy here. Even if Silas didn’t revoke the warrant for my arrest, he can’t enforce it here, and he can’t stop me from travelling elsewhere.

On the other hand, Brenda knows me only in my blonde wig, which is why I also grabbed my short red bob when I was abandoning my apartment last weekend. It’s an easy look, and with makeup that plays down my lips and cheekbones, I really don’t look anything like I did when Brenda met me in Dag’s office. I’m now Riley Finn.

I had a nice meal in the restaurant. It’s been so long since I actually relaxed and had a meal that I indulged myself at the Celebrity Restaurant. I had the BBQ Grill Chicken, Vegetables, Rice & Beans, and Chocolate Cake. It was all exquisite, even if a little pricey. I’m trying to figure out who I’m going to bill these expenses to. I might have to tap into Brenda’s bank accounts. ;-)

As I was leaving a man approached me and offered to buy me a nightcap at the Splash! Poolside bar. I was going to blow him off when I realized he was old enough to be my father or grandfather. Then I realized who he was. Jonathon Reinholdt, CEO of Reinholdt Electro Conductor Corp. I let him down a little more gently and suggested that we take a rain check until tomorrow evening.

Jonathon Reinholdt is one of the Committee. And he’s staying here at the Belize Yacht Club. I guess it’s time to go back to work.

The Committee

2006-12-14T23:59:00.000-08:00

Did you ever have a dream in code? Last night I went back to The Condo and tried to figure out the last two digits for the hidden code, but I was so tired I fell asleep in front of the screen. All night long I dreamed long series of random numbers and letters. My head was apparently not satisfied with hexadecimal code. The dream included every letter of the alphabet and several figures from Aramaic, Chinese, and Farsi.

8:00 a.m.

I woke up as tired as when I fell asleep, still in the chair at the desk. When I saw what time it was I scrambled around to make sure my makeup and hair were all in place before Davy gets here. I don’t expect him until afternoon, but there’s a party tonight and he might be ticked if he just found out that Angel was gone. I have a feeling she didn’t tell him she was going. That means she won’t be at the party tonight. I had one of those creepy feelings down the back of my neck that told me I shouldn’t be here either.

When I got back to the desk, though, a flag I’d set up on the security system was chiming gently at the desk. Brenda used a credit card. It was charged yesterday. She’s in Belize. It’s time I left the country, too. I used my James Whitcomb identity and got myself a ticket on the most direct flights I could to Belize City, via Dallas/Ft Worth. The flight is at 11:55 tonight. I’m going after the bitch.

Now, back to my other problem. What are the last characters to the code? I set down the letters I have with all the possible permutations. Here are my choices at the moment.

b: b, be, bee
1: I, L, one, won
_
_
6: Six, G,
0: O, naught, zip, zilch, aught, nada (could be 60 with the 6)
1: I, L, one, won
d: d, de-, -ed (on Brenda’s tattoo, Simon used just a “d” instead of “ed” to make elated. But on his own, he used both the “e” and the “d” to make fated.)

Knowing Simon’s tendency toward the morbid, I’m probably looking for a death reference in here. Of course it could be sex or money, too. May as well do the same for the two characters I could plug in to the middle.

f: f, eff, ?
8: eight, ate, 8
e: e, (long or short sound, maybe even ā)
d: d, de-, -ed (on Brenda’s tattoo, Simon used just a “d” instead of “ed” to make elated. But on his own, he used both the “e” and the “d” to make fated.)
2: two, to, too, Z
d: d, de-, -ed (on Brenda’s tattoo, Simon used just a “d” instead of “ed” to make elated. But on his own, he used both the “e” and the “d” to make fated.)
1: I, L, one, won
e: e, (long or short sound, maybe even ā)

So, Simon is consistent. He’s (was) a game player. Game players always have rules that they follow or else they have to call themselves cheaters. Simon loved the game too much to cheat, which means that the letters should be in the order that they will be used. I won’t get “if” out of this, I don’t think. Combined with the “b1” in the first two places, here is what I get.

Bif? Bize (busy?), bile, bide, bild (oops, that switches the order)
Blf?, bl8d (that could work as in belated), bled, blez, blei, blee.
Bldi, blie?

Maybe I should try them with the next two letters instead. Think of it as “bi-“ something.

Bi-lego-id, bi-leg-old, bize-six-old, bizesixoid? Bi-f8-gold.

Wait a minute. Gold. That’s Simon-talk. Busy gold would work. Belated gold. Bled gold. There we go. Morbidity with the bleeding and money with the gold. What will it hurt if I try? I can always rebuild the system again if he decides to erase everything.

2:00 p.m.

I’m scared.

Davy is banging around out in the living room shouting at caterers and decorators for the party tonight. The party is for the board of directors of Bio-Research Technologies, one of the hottest new stocks on the Seattle market. But it’s not Davy that I’m worried about, or even the CEO of Bio-Research by himself.

I got into the thumb drive.

When I brought the computer out of hibernation, the message was still flashing on the screen: “Simon says, enter the next encryption code.”

Well, here goes. b-1-e-d-6-0-1-d. Bled Gold. Who is bleeding, Simon?

The screen blanked and I was poised to yank the thumb drive out of the port. Then a message appeared on the screen.

“There’s only one person in a billion that could get here, so congratulations, Dag. Everything you need is here. Simon says, nail the bastards. I’m counting on you, Dag.”
Then the screen dissolved and was replaced with a directory of hundreds of files. I scanned through a few of them. There were bank records, commerce records, spreadsheets, e-mail, and documents that set up off-shore accounts. Dag said he moved nearly two billion in assets for Simon before he died. These records showed traffic an order of magnitude greater than that.
There was a new area of fraud alive in the world, more profitable than drug traffic. I was holding one in my hand—a cellular phone.

I guess I would have been more at ease if I’d found some big crime syndicate in this mess. What scared me was that it was controlled by eight men and one woman. The committee comprised senior officers of every major corporation in the Northwest. And the way they were working would evade detection by the most careful auditors. They weren’t defrauding their own companies. They were preying on each other.

These people were the kind of people who could buy and sell a dozen of me a minute and not even care where I ended up. And one of them was going to be a guest at The Condo this evening. No wonder Angel had run. I’m doing the same thing.

I packaged up a compressed file of everything on the thumb drive. Then I sent it to Silas with instructions on how to access the data.

Then I started packing up.

11:55 p.m.

I’m at the airport, not that it’s doing me a lot of good. Nothing is moving with the storm. If I had half a mind, I wouldn’t have moved either, but by that time there wasn’t much choice.

The party got started around seven. I’d planned my escape route, but people started getting there before I left. I wasn’t counting on it being so early. I was going to get out around 8:00, but now I was going to have to watch for a break and make a move as quickly as I could. I hadn’t counted on early arrivals, or on the storm. Of course the first one to arrive would have to be Cinnamon.

She checked her phone and purse at the door and then headed directly for the private room opposite the office.

Of course, she knew that there were cameras all over the Condo. I’m pretty sure she knew where each one was. She went into the dressing room area and leaned into the mirror to powder her nose. She was wearing a very elegant gown this evening—pale blue that accented her tawny skin tones. It was a scoop neck front, but the back was cut so low that it nearly showed her butt crack. She turned so she was facing the camera and I saw the tube of lipstick she’d chosen from the counter drop to the floor. That was when I realized she was putting on a show. She tapped her foot angrily, made a big deal out of seeing where the tube landed, then bent over to retrieve it. While she was bent over, the straps of her gown slid down her shoulders and when she straightened back up, the dress slipped down around her waist leaving her pert little breasts exposed to the camera. Again she made a little display about being so silly as to let her dress fall off and slowly slid the straps back up her shoulders. She finished tidying herself up and turned to leave the private room. Just as she pulled the door open, she glanced up at the camera and blew a little kiss to it.

The girl had been giving James Whitcomb a show, intentionally inviting me to call for her. She was going to be so disappointed when she found out I was a girl, and we were both going to be really embarrassed when she found out what girl. Suddenly I understand the sudden impulse that guys have to run when a girl shows interest in them. I was about to run.

By that time the party was moving along with Davy serving drinks and monitoring the door. He checked everyone through and made sure that the house rules were followed. No phones, cameras, or weapons. Our security was as good as the airport’s. I was watching the CEO hand out gifts to his employees in the living room thinking that perhaps I could make it to the service elevator behind the kitchen when a knock came on my door. I checked the monitors and Cinnamon was standing outside looking up at the camera that monitored that side of the door. She tilted her head and waved her fingers at the camera.

Now what was I going to do? I could pretend not to be here, but then she would go ask Davy and there would be too much attention drawn to me. A flash of lightning and boom of thunder outside the windows shocked me as a gust of wind blew the cover off the hot tub. I was going to leave, but when I opened the door, Cinnamon rushed in and wrapped me in a warm embrace searching for my lips with hers.

“James,” she breathed in my face as she kissed my cheek. Before she could reach my lips I regained control.

“Cinnamon, baby,” I husked as I pulled her away.

“Have you recovered from your jet lag? I hope so.”

“I’m fine, Cinnamon, but I’m getting ready to leave right now. I have to make a trip tonight.” My mind was in overdrive trying to think of a way to use Cinnamon to get me out of the penthouse suite. Another gust of wind toppled a potted plant on the patio. A real storm was blowing in. Those plants are heavy.

“Take me with you, James,” she said. “I’ll be anything you’d like me to be. I’ll make your trip so much more enjoyable.”

“I don’t doubt you would, Cinnamon,” I said. “But I really need to get out of here now and I’d like you to help me. I don’t want to be recognized by any of the guys out there. They don’t know I’m here yet. I’m doing a little audit of their activities, you know.”

“Oh, I won’t tell anyone, James. I promise.” Just then the phone rang in the office. I knew that it had wrung in the bar as well and a quick glance at the monitor showed me Davy had answered it. I reached over and flicked on the speaker phone and pressed mute so I could hear and not be heard.

“Everything is going fine, Ms. B,” Davy said. “Mr. J got here on Tuesday and put everything in shape right away.”

“Who is Mr J?” I heard Brenda’s voice over a slightly delayed long-distance connection. I’d give anything to know exactly where she was calling from, but this conversation was getting dangerous already.

“The guy you sent to take control,” Davy said. “He’s got a lease and everything. Said he was part of the Committee.”

“There is no Mr. J on the Committee, Davy. You’ve been infiltrated.”

“Shit.” Davy hung up the phone and headed straight to the CEO of Bio-Research. This was looking bad. I glanced up and Cinnamon was looking at me in horror.

“I’m sorry, Cinnamon. But I’m one of the good guys. Are you with me?”

I headed for the door seeing on the monitor that the CEO had just looked up at the camera.

Then everything went black. It was a little pop and the monitors went out, the lights went out and the locks all closed. Another blast of wind hit the side of the building and rattled the glass so hard I thought it would cave in. I could hear screams out in the Condo and a gasp of breath from Cinnamon as she clutched my arm. I opened the door and pushed her toward the poolroom, letting the door latch behind me. It’s one thing to get out of an electronically locked door. You just turn the doorknob and leave. But I was counting on the electronic lock delaying any pursuit.

We emerged from the pool room into the buffeting wind. We were experiencing a storm like none I’d ever seen in Seattle. Down on the street the lights had all died. Everything was black. Clutching each other tightly, and a bag over my shoulder, Cinnamon and I were almost blown over when we were hit by the wind. Suddenly, climbing the ladder to the rooftop access stair didn’t seem like as good an idea as it had in the office. I could hear someone shouting orders behind us, though to get flashlights and search every inch of the Condo. We had no choice.

I yelled for Cinnamon to stay low and we crossed the roof to the ladder up. The covering tree behind the hot tub proved a challenge for Cinnamon to get over in her gown. I boosted her up the ladder and followed her closely. She hit the roof and rolled as another gust of wind hit and I was afraid she was going over the edge.

I grabbed her and dragged her back, staying low on the roof and dragging her toward the door. I was just reaching for the latch when Davy came blasting through the door.

Use greater force against itself. I quickly sidestepped and gave Davy a gentle shove, adding the force of my foot behind it. He went sailing straight ahead and over the edge of the roof. Cinnamon screamed as I heard a splash below and shoved her through the open door. Davy had gone into the hot tub. I was satisfied that was as good as I could expect. I half dragged half carried Cinnamon down the stairs all the way to the garage and to my car. I ripped the canvas off and stuffed it in the back seat along with my bag and we tore out of the garage, breaking the gate off since it wouldn’t rise in the blackout.

With the streets all dark, I made a bet that my best route would be to swing around the corner and hit the ramp up onto the Alaska Way Viaduct. It was in bad shape, but I had to bet it would take an earthquake and not a windstorm to finish it off.

I could hear sirens off in the distance as police tried to attend to the most urgent traffic conditions in the blackout, but the viaduct was quiet. Cinnamon was whimpering in her seat as I turned on traffic radio to see what was up. Apparently lights were going out all over town. I wasn’t going to enjoy taking off in this wind.

Finally Cinnamon spoke.

“Who are you really?” she asked. “Are you with the FBI? I’ll tell you everything I know. I promise.”

“I’m counting on that, Cinnamon,” I said.

“How did you know my name?” she asked. “The first night you called me by name but I’d never told you. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before. Who are you?”

“I’m a friend, and you are about to become my new partner,” I said. “But first, you have to promise me not to over-react to what I’m going to say. Got your seatbelt fastened?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, literally checking her belt.

“I’m a friend,” I repeated, softening my voice. As I proceeded to describe our real first meeting at the Palamino Grill weeks ago, I continued to soften my voice until I’d reached my normal tones.

“Debbie?” she gasped.

“Cinnamon,” I said, returning to my most masculine tone, “don’t ever call me Debbie.”

“But, Deb. I… We… You… Then…”

“I’m sorry, Cinnamon,” I said. “I didn’t mean to lead you on, but I did tell you that I could disguise myself in such a way that you couldn’t tell who I was. We had a bet, remember?”

“Yeah. Oh, Deb. What I said. Or suggested.”

“Forget about it. You didn’t know I was a girl.”

“Well, it doesn’t make that much difference to me,” she said. Now I was dumbstruck. “I like it both ways.”

“Um, well… Look… I mean…” I wasn’t handling this as well as she was.

“Where are we going, Deb?” she asked.

“The airport,” I said. “I’d like you to drop me off and take care of my car. If you don’t feel safe going back to your own apartment, I’ve got a safe place for you, and I’m going to need someone to monitor things for me back at my office. What do you think? Would you like to do some work for me?”

“Deb,” she said, laying a hand on my leg, “I’d do anything for you. But can’t I go on the trip with you?”

“No. Seattle may not be the safest place in the world, but where I’m headed is even less safe.”

“Where is that?”

“I’m going after Ms. B.”

“Deb! You can’t do that! Let’s just go away someplace and wait till this whole thing blows over.”

“It’s not going to blow over, Cinnamon,” I said. “I just sent information to FINCen that will put some of Seattle’s biggest executives behind bars if they can sort out the data. The only person on the Committee who is missing is Ms. B. I’m going to bring her in.”

Cinnamon was quiet for a few minutes and I was afraid I’d completely overwhelmed her. In some ways she was more vulnerable than I was.

“That’s why angel took off yesterday, isn’t it?”

“You knew she was gone?”

“Davy called everyone when she didn’t show up to meet him this morning. He was really pissed. He wanted to know where you were, too.”

I laughed. “I was sitting in the office giving him orders,” I said.

“You are a better man than any man I’ve ever met,” she said at last.

We pulled into the departure lane at SeaTac. There were still lights, but it was blowing up an incredible storm. It wasn’t going to be fun.

I gave Cinnamon my keys, including office and both apartments. Then we got out of the car and I walked around.

“Thanks, Cinnamon,” I said as we met in front of the car. She didn’t say anything. She just wrapped her arms around me and gave me another big kiss. I didn’t resist too much. I wanted to look like just another businessman heading out on a business trip.

I got into the airport and discovered that all flights were being delayed because of the storm. Now I’m sitting in the executive lounge hoping that no one else on the Committee decides to take a late-night trip tonight.

Nailed It!

2006-12-13T22:59:00.000-08:00

Amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for you now and then. With The Condo secured, I removed all my make-up, showered, and slept. I had Davy make sure I was supplied with food and coffee before he left yesterday and I got my luggage up out of the Mustang. I checked in with the building management to be sure it was okay where I’d parked it and now I felt safe. At least for long enough to get some sleep.

10:00 a.m.

I told Davy that he wouldn’t be needed again until party time on Thursday night. Everything else was fine in The Condo. That means that this morning I have time and energy to spend pulling pieces together. I’m monitoring a lot of accounts that Brenda had set up and am tightening my hold on her schedule. I’m guessing she moved from Acapulco pretty quickly after she arrived, but I don’t really have an idea where she went to.

I’m hoping that her sense of security in having escaped will make her careless. There’s sure to be a charge on one of her credit cards or a ticket purchased or a customs record sometime.

In the meantime, everyone seems to think the thumb drive holds the mysteries of the universe and the careers of some very important people. So I think I’d better get down to cracking it. It’s just a matter of waiting for Simon to say what’s next.

1:30 p.m.

I waited, and now I’m stuck. I plugged in a thumb drive backup and got the familiar message asking for the encryption key. I entered the thirty-two digits in the order that I’d worked out and waited. I got the same message: "Simon says, 'Find me if you can.' All the clues are here. Everything you wanted to know. I never expected you to get this far, but I'm not making it any easier to uncover the secrets that are contained on this drive. It's too bad you are colorblind, Dag!" Then, "Press Esc to continue." No deal this time Simon. I waited.

Sure enough there was a new message that appeared after about ninety seconds. “Simon says enter the next encryption code.” Oh shit. Now I’m stuck. If I hit the wrong thing, I’m at risk of losing the whole thing again. I looked at the keyboard for a while and pressed the one key that I thought might be safe. The computer went into immediate hibernate mode. Now if I can wake it up without triggering anything, I’ve got time to figure out what the next encryption code will be.

I sat back to think about it for a while. What did Simon’s message say? Too bad you are colorblind. Simon knew Dag was colorblind and somehow it affected the puzzle. But how? I was going to have to risk going back to the office. I locked things up and headed for the waterfront. I was hoping that Silas was serious about dropping the warrant and there wasn’t going to be a problem when I got to the office. I was also seriously hoping that no one else was watching the office.

9:00 p.m.

In and out. I can’t believe I was so dense. I’ve got two parts of the mystery and I know where the third is. Then it’s on to solving the fourth part. It was all in the file on Brenda that Silas gave me, and which he kindly left on the desk after he searched the office. I suppose he wanted it to look like no one had been there. They did a good job.

When I read about Brenda’s tattoo, it said the tattoo was red and black. Sure enough, the detail said that on Brenda’s tattoo the “1,” the “d,” and the pillow were red. Everything else was black. I checked my photo of Bradley’s tattoo and found that two letters on his were also red—the “b” and the “1”. If there are two letters in each tattoo that are red, they would make up a second 8-character code. What I have so far are the first and last pair if the order of the original tattoos holds true. b-1-_-_-_-_-1-d.

Dag didn’t mark any letters on either Simon’s tattoo or Angel’s as being red. But Dag was colorblind and had never actually seen Simon’s tattoo. I didn’t know if he’d seen Angel’s or not, but I could just call up and ask her.

I slipped the SIM out of my James Whitcomb cell phone and inserted my Deb Riley SIM. The first thing that showed up was that I had a lot of voice mail. I decided to check that before I called Angel. There were several calls from Silas. I have to give him credit, he did try my cell phone before he tried the office. I still didn’t completely trust him, but no one had burst into the office to arrest me yet. There was a call from Cinnamon. This is too funny.

“Deb, you’ve got to call me. I’ve met a guy and he is absolutely delicious. But I don’t know what to do. He hasn’t called me. I don’t dare call him. This is absolutely squeeee! Call me!”

Oh geez! The call was from early Tuesday morning, right after my last encounter with Cinnamon. She is going to be sooooo disappointed.

Teri called. “Hey girl, where are you? We were supposed to go up to the pass to ski Sunday. Call me.”

The last call was from Angel.

“Deb, this is angel. Give me a call, would you? Weird things are happening. I’ve had like a dozen people ask about you this week. Some of them are pretty spooky. They know I gave Dag a computer thingy from Simon. If you’ve got it, get rid of it. I don’t think you’re safe as long as you have it. Call me.”

That was a call I needed to return right away, but I came back to the Condo before I made it. I’m not ready to blow my cover completely. Here’s how it went.

“Hello?”

“Angel, it’s Deb.”

“Girl, where are you?”

“Everyone wants to know where I am,” I said. “I’m hiding out at the moment. What’s up?”

“I’ve had a string of transactions this week with a common thread. An escalating threat of “action” if I don’t come up with details about where that little computer disk thing is that I gave Dag. I’m sorry, Deb, but I told them that I gave it to Dag. Somehow I thought it would be safe since Dag was dead. But they zeroed in on you. They keep calling to see if I’ve heard from you and asking me where you are.”

“Geez, Angel. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. No. I’m getting out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m on my way to the airport. Simon left me a nice property in Croatia that I’m going to make use of. I’m sorry, Deb. I should be here for you, but I’m scared and I’m taking off while I can.”

“Don’t worry Angel,” I said. “I don’t blame you a bit. If I show up on your doorstep there, please invite me in.”

“Not to worry.”

“Angel, one other thing,” I said before she could hang up. It’s important.”

“Go ahead.”

“You’ve got a tattoo. Dag told me about it. But there is a detail that he missed. Which two characters in your tattoo are red?”

“The 6 and the first 0,” she answered. They are in a column up and down and Simon had some rather vulgar jokes about putting them in that order. He could make a dirty joke about just about anything,” she answered. “Look, I’m at the airport and I’ve got to run now. Good luck Deb.”

“Thanks Angel, but one more thing,” I tried to catch her before she hung up, but she was gone. I was sure she could have told me what Simon’s letters were, too. I tried back, but there was no answer.

Okay, so now I’ve got b-1-_-_-6-0-1-d. There’s a word or words here, and I need two more letters out of Simon’s tattoo to complete it. f-8-e-d-2-d-1-e.

Give me a hand here guys.

At the Helm

2006-12-12T18:56:00.000-08:00

I spent the better part of the day yesterday establishing firm control of The Condo, starting with locking the patio and poolroom doors and extending to changing all the security codes from the entrance to the office door.

10:00 a.m.

When Davy got here this morning, he was a little surprised to say the least. He stepped off the elevator and his card didn’t open the front door. He was swearing so loud he didn’t hear me over the intercom at first.

“Davy, calm down and follow my instructions,” I said.

“Who’s that?” he exclaimed backing up and looking up at the security camera.

“I’m the one who is writing your paycheck now. You can call me Mr. J,” I said. “I’ll explain it all to you when you come in. Yes. I’m going to let you in. But you need to follow your own security instructions. Empty your pockets into the security tray and step through the metal detector.”

He tried to get his knife past me the first time, but the metal detector caught it. He finally deposited everything that could set it off in the tray and I closed the security tray door and locked it. He walked through the metal detector with no alarm and I tripped the security lock on the front door.

“Come back to the office so we can chat,” I said. “I need an update on the events scheduled this week and then I have some errands for you.”

Davy was not happy, but he was also used to taking orders. In fact, I think I saw a trace of relief on his face when he found that someone else was running things instead of him. He came directly to the office door and knocked without trying the doorknob first. I buzzed him in and waved him to a chair without really looking at him. I kept my head down on looking at papers in front of my desk. He sat.

“The place is a mess, Davy,” I started.

“The maids were supposed to be here,” he interrupted.

“The maids were here,” I said. “I’m not talking about the cleaning. I’m talking about the events. The cops dragged out the main computer bank and I’m working with a laptop. Where are you getting the schedule from?”

“The security banks, sir,” he responded immediately. “You can get to it with my security code,” he continued.

“Is your security code tattooed anyplace obvious?” I asked. It was a long shot, but tattooed hexadecimal codes were in vogue this year. He looked puzzled. “Just log me in,” I said.

He rose and came around the desk. I slid my chair back and he tapped on the security cameras as I watched. I could replicate that. It was obvious that he thought he’d been clever. Password, Angel. Security rule number one for passwords; never use your name, the name of a family member or pet, or birthdays, anniversaries, and social security numbers as your password.

He returned to his seat and I slid back into place. The security camera screen had been replaced by a calendar showing the dates of parties. The place had never shut down after our raid two weeks ago by the appearance of it. That Saturday night when I came to The Condo with Angel, Cinnamon, and Delta for the girls party, they had talked about the party season. The things you never know till you ask.

“You did a good job getting things up and running after the little incident,” I said. “I have a lot of faith in you.” I was doing my best CEO impression. Lounging back in my chair was important. Women in big offices sit up straighter. Men slouch. I stuck one foot up on the mahogany desk. “Have you heard from any other members of the committee?” I asked.

“Just Ms. B. She called as soon as I… well…”

“Yes,” I said. “As soon as you were out of jail. Don’t worry. It’s not a black mark on your record in this office.”

“As soon as I was out. She told me to get things fixed up and make sure everyone knew that they were to be ready for the first party on Friday.”

“Have you heard from Ms. B since then?” I asked matter-of-factly.

“Yes sir. She told me to carry on until she contacted me again.”

“I’m that contact,” I said. “In order to keep everything straight, Ms. B gave me a lease on the Condo so that I could manage it in her absence. I don’t expect that we will hear from her anytime soon. But hey! Together we’ll get through the holiday, right?” I asked. A little camaraderie made Davy relax and even smile a little.

“So, I’m representing the Committee while we’re here and we just want things to go smoothly and keep them low key so we don’t attract any unwanted attention. We’ve got a Federal agent watching everything we do, so I don’t want to raise any suspicions.” I paused and looked over the calendar on the screen.

“Isn’t there a committee meeting here?” I asked.

“No sir.”

Davy was short with the answer. He acted like it was a test and he was answering according to the stated rules. I smiled.

“Good man,” I said approvingly. “Now, here’s what I want you to do.”

I went over a number of instructions that I’d prepared in advance regarding how the parties were to be handled and my changes to the security system. I gave him a new security code that would open the front door during the hours that I felt he should be there. I carefully described what those hours should be. He made one or two adjustments so he could be there when deliveries were scheduled. I approved and sent him off to do his work. Before he left we had come to an agreement that my presence would be on a need to know basis and that the security code on the office had been changed. No one was to come in or out during parties or in my absence.

When he was gone, I started scouring the secure database of information that was released when Davy logged me into the security network. Now I’m going to find Brenda.

3:00 p.m.

I checked my e-mail via my own VPN and found that I had a voicemail message from none other than Silas Grant. It’s about damn time he called me directly. It was a short message and sounded friendly for a man who had just put out a warrant for my arrest.

“Hey, Deb! Long time no see. I’ve got some of that information you wanted. Give me a call so we can talk. See you.”

Information I wanted? The only thing I wanted from Silas he’d given me in the form of Brenda’s arrest file which I had no doubt he’d retrieved when he searched my office. Careless of me. I should have kept that with me, but I hate paper. Silas was trying to get a bead on me through a phone contact. He might have been calling my cell phone, but that chip was safely tucked away in the back of my computer bag. Well, I had a way to reach him and he would have devil of a time tracking me back.

I logged onto my VPN and called up an internet phone system. I jacked a headset into my computer and called Si.

“This is Deb,” I answered his curt greeting. He was suddenly all smiles over the phone and I could imagine him directing a bunch of guys to trace the call. Tough to trace when you are calling a cell phone.

“Deb, I’ve been worried about you. Where are you?”

“Safe.”

“Is something wrong?”

“It’s a tough life when you don’t know who your friends are, who might be searching your apartment, and who might have issued a warrant for your arrest, Si,” I said. No sense beating around the bush. I could hear his hesitation as he decided whether or not to deny that he had a warrant out for me. Instead he came clean, at least to that.

“Look, Deb,” he said. “It’s for your own good. I wanted you in protective custody. There are some things you don’t know that could hurt you.”

“Why not call and tell me what I need to know instead of trying to make me run?”

“I wasn’t trying to make you run. I thought we’d get you in and explain things and you’d be safe. No one has seen you since the funeral.”

“I’m safe for now. But I’m on Brenda’s trail. You know she landed in Mexico?” I asked.

“No kidding?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “We guessed she’d be headed for Europe. Is she getting ready to fly?”

“I don’t know. I seem to be a few days behind her. Getting cooperation from the government down here is not easy if you don’t have any connections.” I thought I’d drop the phrase “down here” just to see if Si would assume that I was actually following Brenda.

“I can see if I could pull some strings if it would help. It’s actually a relief to hear you are in Mexico instead of Seattle. Things are getting sticky up here.”

“Tell me what’s up, Si. Maybe I can relate it to what I’ve found so far.”

“Well, there seems to be some sort of syndicate that is involved in this. We haven’t been able to trace it to any known crime family, but the activity moving through some of the BKL accounts is continuing, even though the operation is shut down. It’s like they have a life of their own.”

“It’s called The Committee,” I said. “Brenda is the chairman.”

“You’re kidding! Well, it seems that they believe there is some kind of artifact that Simon left that exposes them all. Word on the street is that Simon gave the artifact to Dag. With Dag dead, you default as the main target.”

“Shit,” I said. “It’s a stupid thumb drive. And if the data is on it, it’s well-concealed. I’ve got it with me. I’ll make a copy and send it to you, but be fore-warned: it’s encrypted with a 512 bit code and if you get it wrong it launches a virus that will wipe your machine—possibly spread to the whole network if you are connected.”

“Geez, Deb. Don’t you think that’s withholding evidence or something? Why didn’t you give that to me right away?”

“Independent investigations,” I said. “I share with my partners but my partners don’t usually try to get me arrested.”

“Okay, it was a big mistake. I’ll get the warrant cancelled. But for Pete’s sake, keep me up to speed on what you are finding out.”

“As soon as I’m sure there’s no warrant, I’ll come back to town.”

“Just get me the thumb drive. Oh and one other thing,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a new player in town. We haven’t got a make on him yet, but he’s the first new customer Angel Woodward has had in months. I was going to follow him, but he didn’t seem important enough when Angel made the move to her bank early in the day. I’ve got a feeling that he’s more than the errand boy I first took him for.”

“Can’t imagine who that would be,” I said flatly. “But thanks for the warning. I’ll be on the look-out.” I wasn’t saying if I was on the lookout for the new guy or for the tail.

We rang off on friendly terms and I was partially relieved to think the warrant would be off and I’d be able to be myself again. But I still don’t know if I can trust Silas. I want to. But I just don’t know.

What would you do, Dag? You could give me a little help here.

Flirting with a Girl

2006-12-11T03:54:00.000-08:00

That was a lot harder than I expected it to be. I can’t imagine that Silas is running such a loose operation that he’d let this place stay open. Are you hiding something, Silas?

12:30 a.m.

On the way into town, I stopped at the factory outlet shops in North Bend and got myself some more clothes. I think I’ve been wearing these for days. I need to be able to look professional, and to have some comfy’s to change into sometimes.

I got some warm clothes, too. It’s been freaky in Seattle lately and I didn’t have a good jacket to keep me warm, which would be essential to my entry into The Condo. It was easy to drive in and park in the underground parking for the building. I pulled in next to a row of other cars that were covered and carefully pulled the tarp over the Mustang. For now I was taking only the essentials. I figured I’d be able to come back on the inside to get them later if I was successful out there.

I took the service elevator to the next to the top floor and got out to go to the rooftop stairs. Dag told me about how he got in to The Condo when I was being held prisoner there. I understood several rules this time that I didn’t understand then. Primary rule was don’t get caught.

I was prepared for the blast of cold wind that hit me when I emerged from the stairwell onto the rooftop. I immediately dropped to the ground on all fours. What I don’t need is to get blown off the top of this place.

I crawled over to the edge of the roof where I could see the escape stair that would lead to the penthouse garden. I had one foot on the ladder when I heard the splash below me. A man and a woman were getting out of the hot tub, stark naked. She dried him off first and gave him a robe, then slipped into a robe herself and the two slipped into the pool house opposite the patio doors where light spilled out from what was obviously a party going on inside.

Look, it was only two weeks ago that Silas arrested Brenda for running a house of prostitution and the place was still open? I wasn’t expecting that. I hung there on the ladder for a minute and decided that I was going to have to get down out of the wind at least. Maybe I would find an opportunity to get inside as the party wound down later. It was close to nine o’clock now and surely most of these people had to go to work on Monday.

I glanced in the office window as I came down the ladder and it was completely dark. I had to assume that no one was in there watching. I found a sheltered spot in the gazebo and sat staring in through the patio doors. What I saw was awesome. If I had a camera I could make a mint off the faces I could see inside. Two public officials who ran hard-fought campaigns in November, the president and CEO of a major regional bank, and what looked like the entire board of directors of a technology company I owned stock in. (The annual report came out in September and I remember looking at all their faces with some amount of envy.)

OMG! I was seeing the holiday party for the Execs! They must have some kind of special arrangements with the bank and elected officials. No wonder the condo was open to them. I only saw a couple faces missing from the photos in the annual report. Of course, they could be in a different part of The Condo, but it looked like they were getting ready for a toast, so I figured most people were probably there.

Including the girls.

It was a shock to me to see Angel’s head towering above the others. A man was practically glued to her chest next to her. A few feet away, I recognized Delta. I was cataloging the attendees in my mind when I heard a noise just to my left. I started and she gave a little scream. I held up both my hands to show them empty and harmless.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Sorry I startled you.”

“I just didn’t realize anyone was out here,” she said. “Why aren’t you inside with the others?” I recognized her voice a second before I saw her face and confirmed that I was looking at Cinnamon.

“I’m not really into all that corporate bantering,” I said calmly, even though my heart was racing about a million miles an hour.

“I know what you mean,” she answered. “I had to escape a certain octopus in there. I swear he had hands everywhere.”

“You don’t have to put up with that kind of crap,” I said firmly, reinforcing something that Cinnamon had told me when we were interviewing last month. It was always up to the girl to indicate she was interested in something more than being friendly company.

“It’s hard with a gathering like this,” she said. “They all expect something. It’s not like it was when Mr. S. was here.”

“Who’s running things now?” I asked. “I heard Mr. B. and Mr. S. both passed on.”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think Davy Jones is.”

“The security guy?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“We’ve run into each other a couple of times,” I answered. This was valuable information. If Davy thought he was running things, I could manipulate him pretty well.

“Have you been up here before? You sort of look familiar, but I can’t place you.”

“Oh, I’ve been up a few times, but I’ve mostly been behind the glass,” I said nodding toward the office windows. They’d gotten that repaired at least. The last time I saw it there was a dead man lying in a pile of glass.

“Gee. I didn’t realize you were one of the committee. I didn’t get your name.”

“James,” I said. “You can call me Mr. J.”

“Can’t I just call you James?” she said sliding a little closer to me. Leave it to Cinnamon. If she smells power, she’s all over it. I needed a little more information without giving her too much.

“You can call me anything you like,” I said sliding an arm around her waist. Cinnamon is slim and pretty, but I swear when I put my arm around her she lost every bone in her body. She just melted against me. I’d avoided this with Angel. I didn’t have the confidence to flirt with her when I went to her office. But I was going to have to press my advantage with Cinnamon and if she discovered who I was I’d just plead that I was trying to fulfill my bet and I lost.

“I’ve been out of the country for a while doing some work for Mr. S,” I said. “Has the committee been meeting regularly?”

“I don’t think so,” Cinnamon said. “The girls certainly haven’t been called for them. It’s strictly been holiday parties. No open member nights.”

“Good. That’s the way it should be for a while,” I yawned. “Sorry. I just got in tonight from Amsterdam. It’s already six in the morning there. I intended to stay here tonight.”

“Well, we can go in if you really want to,” Cinnamon said laying a hand on my chest. Believe me I’ve tested my chest pads often enough to see if they feel natural, but I’m not in the practice of letting other people touch them.

“I don’t want to go through the party,” I said glancing at the patio doors where another toast seemed to be under way.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said. “We can use the locker entrance—through the pool house.”

“That’s good, but I saw someone go in there a while ago. I don’t want to interrupt anything.”

“Don’t worry. They went straight to the red room. He’s headed for a massage at the hands of Cascade that will keep them both occupied for a while.”

We headed into the house through the pool house, on the other side of the hot tub from the patio doors. It was a dark passage and Cinnamon kept herself glued to my side.

“Which room do you want?” she asked.

“I think I’ll go to the office first,” I said. “I want to check some records. I’ll wait till the party is over before I retire.”

“If you like,” Cinnamon said turning toward me, “I’ll stay with you and keep you company.”

OMG! I kissed a girl! I didn’t mean to, but Cinnamon was right up against my face when she suggested that she’d stay with me and the next thing I knew she was kissing me. It wasn’t a light little kiss goodnight, either. That girl is a serious kisser.

And it wasn’t that bad, either. Not really.

I gently pushed her away and felt her hand trailing down my front. I snatched it before she could not discover what she expected to find.

“Cinnamon, baby,” I said in a very husky voice with a little tremolo in it. I’ve heard guys use that sucking air tone after five minutes of foreplay before and was surprised how easily it came under the circumstances. “Like I said, I just got in and I’m jet-lagged tonight. Let me take a rain-check would you? I’d like to get to know you a lot better.”

“Any time, James,” she whispered back. “Here’s the office door. I hope you have your code.”

There was a sixteen key security pad next to the door. I hesitated for a moment, then decided to use the one code I was most certain hadn’t been changed. E-1-8-d-2-b-3-e. The door slid open. I started to step inside then turned back and caught Cinnamon’s hand and kissed her again.

It was all for effect… really!

“Cinnamon,” I said when we broke our embrace. “I’d rather no one knew I was here until I tell them. You understand don’t you?” I caressed her cheek with the back of my fingers and she melted into the touch.

“You sure are a good kisser, Mr. J,” she said. “Anything you say.”

I slipped through the door and closed her out.

I stood inside the door for a few minutes without moving—just listening. I’d plunged forward into this room once before and been surprised with a blow to the back of the head. This time I was on full alert. But this time there was no one in the room. When my eyes had fully adjusted to the dim light, I slipped across the room and lowered the blinds across the window. I was not interested in watching the party on the deck or through the patio windows. I wanted more direct access, and I knew how to get it.

I slid behind the desk and opened the security panel. It was only the flip of a switch to activate the security camera monitors in the office.

They no more than lit up than I killed them again. There was no person in the room, but someone had added a camera since the last time I was here. I crossed the room and carefully removed the camera from the wall. It was a wireless camera that was installed by an amateur. Davy apparently felt that he should know what was going on in the head office from now on. I opened the bottom drawer and put the camera in then covered it with a throw pillow from the sofa on the other side of the room. Finally I closed it in its nice dark drawer where it would draw no attention. If he hadn’t seen the initial flicker of the security screens in the office, he wouldn’t have any idea it was off until morning.

I activated the screens again and watched the party. I examined all the rooms, including seeing Davy at his post at the elevator. The red room was indeed in use and I tried to ignore it. That seemed to be the only private party that was going on, however, and it was close to midnight when everyone packed up their bonus checks and went home. Davy handed out all the cell phones he’d collected earlier in the evening. The last to go was Angel. She looked at him with a look that would wither fruit on a tree and he clicked out the lights and joined her in the elevator. According to the security cameras, I was alone. I watched their silent screens for nearly half an hour before I finally allowed myself to relax and prepare to sleep for a few hours.

Hiding Out

2006-12-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

I’m having breakfast at a diner in Cle Elum. I spent the night here after driving around forever trying to figure out what to do. I finally decided to come across the pass, but had to stop and get chains for the car before I could make the trip. Somehow I feel safer on this side of the mountains.

10:00 a.m.

There are two things that have me itching a bit (aside from the fact that once I was in a motel in Cle Elum I decided to remove all my makeup and get a really thorough shower. When I woke up this morning I carefully reapplied everything and refreshed the look.) I downloaded my e-mail this morning and had a cryptic message from a blind address. In fact, my guess is that the account was opened just to send me the message. It doesn’t seem to have a connection to anything else as far as I can tell. The message was:

Ms. Riley: We are informed that you have certain property once belonging to one Simon Barnett. We are certain that his property is of little or no value to you, but may be of significant interest to a party or parties with whom he had business relations. We are offering a substantial reward for this property and evidence that any copies of it have been destroyed. This could be a very profitable proposition for you. Or a very dangerous one should you decline our generous offer. Await our instructions regarding disposition of this property. We suggest you have it with you at any time we contact you.—The Committee

Okay. You could be a little more specific, Mr. Committee. What is this supposed property I’ve got and why do you want it? It makes me mad.

Oh yes, the other thing.

I got a hit on my tickler. Sandra Ramon entered Mexico on December fifth. It had took five days for the information to get through Mexican immigration into the data base I was scanning. If I was really going to make something happen, I was going to have to get closer to her or tracker on a more “real time” basis. Let’s face it. I’m not in a good place to be either out here in Cle Elum. I’m thinking I’ll have to go back to Seattle, but I don’t have anywhere to go.

4:00 p.m.

This is just crazy enough that it might work. There happens to be a perfectly good penthouse apartment in Seattle that is currently unoccupied. I’m intending to make use of it. I don’t know if I can stand it, but I know that I have to try.

It’s come together for me this afternoon. I kept Dag’s car covered overnight with the custom canvas car cover that he always kept on it in storage. I’m not sure, but it seems like a good thing to protect it with in inclement weather, and it might also keep it from being spotted immediately. I worked all afternoon in a café after I checked out of the motel. I need a better location for my base. I’m pretty sure Silas isn’t looking too hard for me or he’d have found me by now. So what’s with that? Is he just trying to spook me?

And who is this Committee?

Well, anyway, here’s what I pulled together. I tapped into the property management database at The Condo. I’ve leased The Condo from its current owner and am moving in tonight. I went all the way into Ellensburg to find a Kinko’s open so I could print out my papers, complete with the signature of the building’s property manager. All I need now is a key. I have a feeling I know how to get one.

It is getting dark now and I’m going to head back into Seattle to see if I can move into my new home. Wish me luck.

On the Run

2006-12-09T11:41:00.000-08:00

I was whimpering when Maizie woke me up. I could still hear myself as her wet sloppy kiss nearly dislodged my mustache. Tears were still running down my cheeks as I sat up in bed and started to take stock of my situation.

4:00 a.m.

I’d been dreaming, obviously. I was still caught between that fully submerged state of subconscious synapse firings and objective awareness of my surroundings. The bed wasn’t mine, but no one else was in it with me, except Maizie.

Maizie. I’d spent the night in Dag’s bed. I’d fallen asleep with my face buried in his pillow begging a man who wasn’t there for help in a problem he didn’t know existed. And people who I trusted were trying to arrest me. I felt my head and for a moment didn’t recognize myself.

I ran to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t even recognize myself behind the disguise. My makeup was a little smeared from the tears and sweat, but a little touch-up and it was soon put to rights. I took a sponge bath, careful not to splash any more water on my face or head.

I dried myself off and caught a full-length image of myself in the mirror. Unbelievable that this little bald guy with the mustache and goatee had perky little breasts and a tiny waist. And no other accoutrements. Well, nobody was going to get that close a look at me. I had to figure out what to do and where to go. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be that long before Silas thought to look in Dag’s apartment, if he hadn’t already.

I put my clothes in Dag’s closet. He’d showed me a couple of secret compartments in his closet when I was here over Thanksgiving weekend. He was so proud of all the little gizmos he’d built into the apartment. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t remembered anything about that day when he woke up, nor did he remember it before he died. I’d felt so intimate with him. He was sharing such secrets with me. I opened one of the hidden drawers to put my photos in and saw his car keys. That gave me an idea.

I dressed and took Maizie out. One thing that Dag taught me about field work was never to leave anything behind that I couldn’t do without. I loaded my pockets with cash, slung my computer bag over my shoulder and made sure that I had my ID. Everything that might give evidence regarding who I was or that I was in disguise was hidden.

Maizie dragged me down the hill toward the office and I reluctantly followed. Her goal, however, was not the office, but the coffee shop on lower Queen Anne near the Seattle Center. I slipped into Tosoni’s the minute the door was unlocked. It might not be a great idea, but I could really use a good cup of coffee.

The barista came around the corner of the counter and stopped short when she saw Maizie.

“Maizie?” she asked. “Is that you girl?” Maizie obligingly waved a paw and sat up to beg for a biscuit that the barista gave to her. She took it to a corner of the coffee shop and lay down to focus on the treat. “Excuse me for asking,” the barista said, “but who are you and what are you doing with Dag’s dog?” I’d prepared for this, but I wasn’t that confident.

“I rented this apartment up the hill and the dog kind of moved in with me,” I said. “I figured she should be walked and she practically dragged me in here. Could I get an Americano?”

She nodded and went to get the drink. I sat beside Maizie and looked at the newspaper. A few minutes later the barista set a drink beside me. I thanked her and took a sip. It was a non-fat latte, and perhaps the best I’d ever tasted.

“Mmmm. That’s good,” I said without thinking. “I mean… I think I ordered an Americano, but this is fine anyway. Thank you.”

“Funny, when you were in here the other night you ordered a non-fat latte. I must have gotten the drinks confused,” she answered.

“I’ve never been in here before,” I said.”

“Look,” she answered. “You are good, but I’m psychic. You don’t have a man’s aura about you, and Maizie just exudes love for you. You are the woman who told me about Dag’s funeral. And I’ve got to thank you for that. He was a good man and I miss him every morning.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I answered. “I’m James Whitcomb. I’ve never been in here before.”

“Deb Riley,” she said. “That’s the name. You see, I don’t remember people’s faces or often their names. I remember their drinks. You walk in and order one drink and I’ve got you for life. Take Dag, for instance. He drank what he liked to call a 50/50. It was basically an Americano, but with the same amount of hot water as of espresso. He liked the crema on top and just used the hot water to keep the coffee hot a while longer while he sipped it. You were a non-fat latte the first time you walked in, and I will always recognize you. You know Dag used to sit in that chair for about half an hour every morning. I’d look at him with the 50/50 every day. I knew when he walked through the door. But I couldn’t tell you a single thing about what his face looked like. Don’t know what it is, I just don’t remember faces.”

“How can I convince you?” I asked.

“Well, if you are going to be in disguise, don’t take Maizie with you. There’s a magic pairing that occurs between a man and his dog. I only say man because you want me to believe you are a man right now,” the barista paused. Jackie. That was her name, I recalled finally. “And there was something about your walk. You seemed hesitant this morning. You didn’t think it was a good idea to come in here.” The door opened and two policemen walked in. “Thank you Mr. Whitcomb,” she said turning away from me and going to get coffee for the officers. I continued reading the paper, glancing over it occasionally to see if they showed signs of recognizing me. There wasn’t a glimmer. They took their coffee in paper cups and left the shop.

I looked over at Jackie and she smiled at me. “You are safe here,” she said. “Anytime.”

I thanked her, paid for my drink and left a generous tip, and left. I never actually admitted to being Deb Riley, but I felt I could trust her. We’ll see.

When Maizie and I got back up to the house, there were two dark sedans pulled up out front and lights were on in Dag’s apartment. I took Maizie’s leash off and pointed to the house.

“Go home, Maizie,” I said. “Go on.” She hesitated a minute, but she seemed to get the message. She headed for the door like a shot. I turned and headed downhill again toward the garage where Dag kept his yellow Mustang.

Perfection

2006-12-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

I did something I never do last night. I slept in all my makeup. This morning I woke up to see what I would have to do if I maintained a disguise overnight.

11:00 a.m.

My mustache was loose on one side as was a piece of my hair over the left temple. I must have scratched at it in the night. My 5:00 shadow looked more like a smear of mud on my face. I tidied up as much as I could and headed for Stevie’s place. She promised to help me perfect the disguise this morning. And believe me, it needs perfecting.

It was hard enough to be with Angel while she flirted with me. It was even harder to run into Silas and deflect his interest. The two encounters left me in such a serious panic attack that after I escaped from them I practically ran back to my car, jumped into the back seat, curled up into a little ball and rocked back and forth while I panted and sobbed. It wasn’t even that important. I could pass off the disguise with Angel if she’d caught me out. I bet her that I could have a direct encounter with her and she wouldn’t recognize me. So, if I’d been recognized, it was a simple Oops. Somehow, though, I didn’t think Silas would understand as well.

And what was with that? Why is Silas watching Angel’s business and poking at people who go in there.

Well, duh. That’s easy. She’s helping people launder money. What she does may violate the spirit of the law, but as well as I can read it, unless they can prove that she’s receiving money from some illicit source, she’s technically legal. I don’t think Silas was completely satisfied with my answers about booking travel, but it was more important to him to follow Angel wherever she was going after our little meeting.

Stevie looked at my hair and makeup job critically. She made a few adjustments, and then had me sit in the chair of her salon for several hours while she completely redid everything, lecturing me the entire time. The first task was making it easier for me to get into the makeup and hairpiece. The second task was making it foolproof against detection at close range. If I was going to pull the same ruse with Cinnamon that I had with Angel, I was going to have to get up close to her without being spotted as a fraud. Even if she didn’t recognize me, if she recognized that I was in makeup and a costume, it would be just as much a failure.
There was no question that I was going to have to get more comfortable being around girls when I was dressed as a boy as well.

Here’s a bizarre question. Who do you think would be more pissed off at me: a straight girl who finds out I’m also a girl or a gay boy who finds out that I’m a girl? Oh, this gets so confusing. Why is it that I feel so obsessed with perfecting my boy act all of a sudden? I should just be sitting in my office trying to break the code of Simon’s little game or tracking down Brenda. Instead, I’m getting lectured by Stevie on how to improve my 5:00 shadow, fasten my hair on, and walk like a boy.

When Stevie was finished, I looked incredible. Looking in a mirror I couldn’t recognize myself. She instructed me to leave the makeup and hair on again tonight. Tomorrow I’m really going to have to shower and clean all this stuff off. I can only imagine what it’s doing to my skin. But I promised to complete the day today in disguise, seeing and talking to people as a boy. I still need to run by the office, though.

8:00 p.m.

WTF? Something has gone terribly wrong and I don’t know what it is. I had lunch on the way to the office, so it was easily 2:00 when I finally meandered down there. I had in mind to set up a couple more experiments with the thumb drive and see if there was anything on it other than the destructive virus. I had to remember that it was all going to be a game of “Simon Says.”

Before I got to the office, I could hear voices and see that my door was open. I started to hurry toward it, but then realized that I had no identity on me that would prove who I really was, and I didn’t want to barge in on a burglary anyway. I approached quietly and listened from outside the door. The voices were from the inner office. The outer office was empty, so I slipped inside to hear better.

“Nothing,” I heard a voice say. “The place is clean. I don’t find a random electrical signal or any indication that there is activity in the area.”

“It must have been cleaned out,” said a second voice that I recognized. I was about to walk in and reveal myself when he continued. “There’s only one person who could have it, and that’s Deb Riley. I want a search warrant for her apartment. And just to be on the safe side let’s get an arrest warrant on suspicion of aiding in the laundering of funds. She’s got a key to Dag’s research on Simon and Brenda Barnett and I want it.”

Silas Grant was getting a warrant for my arrest? But that wasn’t all.

“No one has seen her since the funeral,” Silas continued. “I want all the ports checked and see if you can locate her car. She may have skipped the country already.”

I got out fast. I could hear them closing the doors to the office by the time I reached the end of the pier. I thought about my car parked across the street in the Pike Place Garage. It was best to just leave it there. But where was I going.

I don’t really have that much to hide from the police, but a thorough search of my apartment will reveal some not-exactly-legal IDs and all my disguises, wigs, photos. My heart leapt to my throat. Including the one I was wearing. I had to get there before they did.

I flagged down a Taxi on Alaskan Way and gave him the address to my apartment. How much time did I have? He couldn’t move on the apartment until he had the warrants, but how fast would FINCen turn them around? I had a feeling that I didn’t have much time.

I did a quick walk-by on the apartment and got the cab driver’s card so I could call him back. I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be going too far away when I tipped him $20. I ran upstairs. The place was still a mess from my restless night last night. This was going to have to be fast. I grabbed two big suitcases from my closet and opened them on the bed. Everything that was Deb Riley’s had to stay in the apartment. I would be safest if Silas thought I was still around. But my false ID’s, my blonde wig, and my makeup kits had to go with me. I pulled all the cash I had out of my hidey-hole in the ceiling of the closet. The last thing I needed to do was grab my photos. Too many of them have pictures of me in disguise.

It’s a long story, and if I get a break sometime soon I’ll tell you more about it, but for now, suffice it to say that I don’t have pictures of me with a happy family. You know my history. A bald kid with a drunk mother and an over-protective father doesn’t get many pictures taken. Most of the pictures of me were taken in photo booths in the places we visited or wherever I found them. About eight years ago I discovered photo editing on my computer. So I created the kind of family memories that I wanted to have. I used photos of me and me in disguise to mash together a family portrait album with scenes from places I imagined we’d visited. The truth is I haven’t been many places outside of Seattle. I stuffed every photo I could find in my suitcase, removed all the men’s clothes, shoes, hats, and underwear from my apartment and locked the suitcases. I took off for the street and left by the service entrance to the apartment with a hat pulled down over my eyes. I caught sight of Silas getting out of his car in front of the building as I came around the corner and ducked back.

I dialed Hassan’s phone number on my cell and he pulled up about three minutes later.
Where to?

I chose Dag’s apartment. It might not be safe for long, but for now it should offer me just the kind of break I needed to regroup and figure out where I was going next. I placed a call to Mrs. Prior and told her that I had a friend in town who needed a place to stay and I’d given him the key to Dag’s apartment. Was that okay? Yes, she said, it was mine to do as I wished, but Maizie was often up there. That’s okay, I said, he likes dogs.

When I hung up, the cab driver was giving me an odd look in the rearview mirror. I realized I’d just made a call with a very different voice than the man’s voice I’d been using.

“It’s the phone,” I said, returning to masculine. “It always makes my voice sound high. It will be well-worth your while if you just forget you ever saw me or heard me talk.” He nodded. I went back to my phone. It’s a pretty sophisticated sleek black model with a lot of computer-like features. I’d only had it for a few weeks, but I was going to have to get rid of it. It was Deb Riley’s phone. I deleted all my personal information, connection routines, and e-mail from it, opened it and pulled out the SIM card. Then I polished it up nicely and when the cab pulled up in front of Dag’s house, I handed it to the driver along with a $50 bill.

“You’ll need to get the phone activated,” I said, “but it will be really good for your business. Keep the change and lose this address.”

He nodded and I escaped with my bags to the sanctum of Dag’s apartment. It wasn’t more than five minutes after I got there that Maizie pushed the door open and jumped up into my lap.

So what’s going on?

I’ve integrated all my men’s clothes in among Dag’s and found a place to hide my pictures. But I’m completely cut off from everything right now. I can’t even be Deb Riley. Right now I’m James Whitcomb. Why is Silas wanting to arrest me? What does he think I have, and why is it so valuable?

I thought the case was closed.

Breakout

2006-12-07T17:27:00.000-08:00

That MFSOB! If he weren't dead, I'd find him and kill him myself.

2:00 a.m.

I found the combination of 32 characters that, when put together in the right order, make a 512 bit encryption key. If you are interested, it is -1-5-b-4-1-d-1-3- -f-8-e-d-2-d-1-e- -3-6-d-b-0-0-b-5- -e-l-8-d-2-b-m-e-. Here's a bit of advice. If you get hold of this MF thumb drive, don't enter the encryption key!

Fortunately, the damage was limited.

I was just being lazy and too excited that I'd found a possible breakthrough to be careful. Dag had plugged the thumb drive into Simon's computer even though it might have an ill effect on the computer. It was isolated behind a million layers of firewall and protection, so we tried. I decided to take security one level further and did a bit by bit copy onto a new thumb drive. It's just standard. We always work with backups and I anticipated there was probably another in the Vault, but I hadn't looked for it, so it was just as easy to burn a new one. I don't have Simon's computer any more. So I put the new thumb drive in Dag's laptop. Now you've got to understand that Dag's laptop (Lars gave it to me after the hospital gave it up) doesn't have anything on it except the routines he has to execute to connect to the virtual private network. It doesn't connect to anything automatically, so it's a pretty save, clean, computer.

I sat in the office carefully inserting the thumb drive, getting the dialog to enter the encryption key, and trying the next one on my list. These are hexadecimal keys, so there aren't any capital letters. Each character is a number from zero to sixteen. It's pretty common in encryption keys. But you have to be exact, so I worked slowly. I didn't have to try them all, but I hit paydirt about three quarters of the way through the list. The box closed and for a minute I wasn't sure what to think. I launched an Explorer window and took a look at the files on the drive. There was only one, an executable.

Now everybody with an elementary education knows not to launch an unknown executable on your computer. I adjusted the file explorer settings to show hidden files. Voila, I could see dozens of files, but they were all still encrypted!

That's when all hell broke loose.

The screen dissolved into a lot of little dots and resolved itself into a moving message like a screen-saver. The message was juvenile at best.

"Simon says, 'Find me if you can.' All the clues are here. Everything you wanted to know. I never expected you to get this far, but I'm not making it any easier to uncover the secrets that are contained on this drive. It's too bad you are colorblind, Dag!"

You are dead, bastard. And so is Dag. How dare you taunt me from the grave?

The screen dissolved again and a new message appeared. "Press Esc to continue."

It appeared that everything was locked in a hold on the screen and I foolishly pressed Esc. The message that returned said simply "You lose! Simon didn't say Press Esc." What a childish game he was playing. Or so I thought. The screen re-wrote with rolling text. It didn't take me long to realize that it was deleting all the files on the disk, starting with the thumb drive and proceeding with the laptop. It was totally wiped in a matter of seconds. I unplugged, disconnected, ultimately had to pull the battery on the laptop in order to stop the action, but the damage was done. I had to reformat the laptop and start it back from scratch. Fortunately the bios wasn't damaged. The thumb drive, once destroyed was unusable. It had no file directory on it and showed as empty. I ran a few recovery tools and it's possible that I could recover it, but there's no real need to. It was a copy.

I'm going to go home. I'll take Maizie with me and go to sleep. At this hour, no one will know she's there. I've got other things to attend to tomorrow.

2:00 p.m.

Some things have to be done face to face. I had no doubt that if I simply asked Angel how she helped people move money, I would get a straight answer. But I still wouldn’t know. The only thing I could think of was to take a wad of cash into her office and get cash cards. Of course, she couldn’t know it was me.

I used the mustache and spent about two hours getting my hair on. It was important to be perfect because I knew my ID had to exactly match my picture. The hair I was using today was glued on. It is baldpate fringe. When they are looking for a disguise, people always look at the forehead. They figure that if there was any fake hair, there will be a line at the top of the forehead. They don’t see a line at the forehead on me, so they don’t look at the fringe of hair I glue on to look like a man with a really receding hairline. It’s much better if I have Stevie help me with this. She’s a master. She is the most intimately acquainted with my head and my various wigs as my hair dresser and confidant. She’s a former theatrical makeup artist as well, and has helped me get into any number of disguises. Today, though, it was going to be all on my own.

I suited up in a hounds-tooth tweed jacket with a turtle-neck shirt and a sweater. If you aren’t stacked (as if I’d ever have to worry about that), the easiest way to hide your boobs is with bulky clothes. I’ve got an under-vest that is padded to fill the valleys and give me just a little more breadth in the shoulders. Unless I get strip-searched, no one can really tell they aren’t looking at a man. The final thing is to add my mustache and just the hint of a shadow around the cheeks. Even when a man is clean shaved, the fact that he normally has hair growing on his cheeks affects the color of his face. I needed that appearance of manliness that diverts attention away from the narrowness of my nose. Finally, I added a pair of steel-rim glasses. They are slightly tinted and make it harder to see my eyes.

When I was done, I checked my appearance against the photo that I had on my John Whitcomb passport. I was a match, and even looking in the close-up mirror, you couldn’t tell I had makeup on. It was show-time.

I debated for a while on the amount of money I should take with me. One of the first things I discovered in the Vault was a stash of cash that Dag kept for just this kind of operation. There was a lot more than I would need. I carefully counted out $12,000 in hundred dollar bills. I didn’t want to be too loaded, but from what I’d observed at Angel’s office, I needed to have a significant amount of cash to transfer.

I drove over to Dag’s apartment and let Maizie in through the secret door without going into the apartment. I didn’t need Mrs. Prior asking questions right now. Fortunately she was out and I slipped in and out in no time.

Then I parked in the Macy’s lot and walked the six blocks to Angel’s travel agency. It’s a little mind-boggling to walk naturally through a not-great part of town with $12k in your briefcase. I elected not to use a bag with a strap because that too often signals a woman. I just kept my head up and strode along with purpose.

I felt a frisson of anxiety as I turned onto her block and disciplined myself not to look around for threats. The best defense is confidence. At any rate, I made it to Angel’s door a little before noon.

I was in the lioness’s den. Approaching it from this side of the counter, it looked considerably different than it had when I observed her operation from the other side. But she had taken all requests for cash cards into a private office. I approached the counter. I thought Angel looked stressed, but the moment she looked up at me her expression changed to absolute charm and hospitality. When Angel switches on her sex appeal, it even affects me. She’s that kind of gal.

“Good morning. How may I help you?” she smiled at me.

“Morning,” I said quietly. Bravado is not the right mode for me when I’m playing a man. I pitched my voice a little lower and softer than my normal. Angel instinctively leaned in closer. “I need to buy a cash card for vacation. I heard you sold them.”

“You heard right,” she replied easily. “How much would you like to put on your card?”

“Would $12,000 be all right?” I asked.

“Sure,” Angel said, leaning over and flashing an abundance of cleavage my way. No wonder men drool over her. She came back up with a form and pushed it to me over the counter. She seemed to be looking past me part of the time and it gave me the feeling that I should turn around and look at what was outside her window. Instead, I shifted my focus to look at the surface of my glasses in which I could see the reflection of what was behind me. No one had come up behind me, and I couldn’t see details through the window. I did see the shadow of two or three people pass by the window, but no one stopped.

“You will need to fill out this form completely and I’ll need your ID,” she smiled. I hemmed a little bit as I scanned the form. This was a government form and I wasn’t too enthused about writing down the information they asked for.

“Is there a way to do this without all the paperwork?” I asked quietly. “I really have poor handwriting.”

“Are you now or have you ever been associated in any way with any branch of law enforcement at either local, State, or National level?” Angel surprised me with the question.

“I got a parking ticket once,” I said. “Does that qualify?”

“A simple yes or no is the only answer I want.”

“No.” Angel went from intense to welcoming again. “What’s the big deal?”

“You cannot lie to me about that and use anything that we say or do as evidence in a legal case,” she responded. “Even if it is being recorded on a wire.” My mouth worked of its own accord in one of those stuttering denials. “Just hand me your wallet and identification as if we were conducting business normally,” she said, “and then step through the door over here to my office and we’ll complete your transaction.”

I fished my wallet out of my pocket along with my passport and pushed them through the grate to her, then obediently waited while she went around a partition. If you are going to create a disguise, you have to have foolproof identity papers to go with it. That’s a given. I’d learned in an elementary class with Lars how to get identification. But the big issue in pulling out a wallet wasn’t what was in it, but what it looked like. I’d picked up my wallet at a Goodwill store when I first started pulling this identity together. In addition to the well-worn wallet, there were three credit cards that I’d put through a card reader at home repeated times. You don’t want to have unused cards in your wallet; it is a sure sign that the ID is fake. There were also a few memberships, sports club, grocery store, frequent flyer, and both my own (as John Whitcomb) and from several businesses and people I’d met over the years. Some were tattered and had numbers written on the back. The piece de resistance was my very official-looking photo ID with a reader chip that identified me as faculty at a local university. The card wouldn’t get you through a door at the university, but it was very official looking anyway.

A moment later there was a soft buzz and I pulled the door open and walked through. My identity was apparently sufficient for her.

I don’t know what I expected Angel’s inner office to look like. She’d taken only two of her several customers into it the day I observed and I couldn’t see in. It looked more like a psychiatrist’s office than a banker’s. There was a small table with two chairs and a short sofa and easy chair facing each other with a floor lamp. The room was also dead. Closing the door behind me made it sound like no sound could get in or out. The lights were low, tasteful artwork was on the walls, and a thick carpet felt like you were walking on a mattress. When Angel spoke, her voice barely crossed the room to me and I sat on the sofa where she directed me.

“You are new at this, aren’t you?” she said. I nodded. “Well, I like to bring new customers in here to explain the menu and to counsel my clients. I find that privacy is sometimes required for our dealings. Now, I assume you have cash that you would like to use to buy Cash Cards with.” Again I nodded. “Well, John, there are certain restrictions that we have on dealing with cash. First, any transaction of over $5000 has to be reported on one of those forms you were concerned about. So, somehow we will have to break your transaction down into smaller chunks that I can report without arousing suspicion. Second, there is the small matter of transporting money in excess of $10,000 out of the country. It’s not illegal, you see, but it does have to be reported. Do you understand the problems that we have?” I was determined not to speak unless I had to. For all I knew she was recording everything. I nodded again.

“All right,” Angel said. She moved out of the chair and sat on the sofa next to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. “My agency provides a world of special services to important travelers like you,” she purred. “Especially to travelers who need to move money outside the country like you do. I’ll bet this is just a sampling of the kind of money that you want to take care of, isn’t it?” I considered a moment then ever-so-slightly nodded again turning my face away slightly.

“Sometimes you have to travel. What do you teach, Mr. Whitcomb? Or should I say Professor?” she asked.

“Literature. Uhh… just Mr.” I responded quietly. I wasn’t comfortable with Angel getting any closer.

“No tenure, huh? The bastards.” I couldn’t believe the way Angel was playing me. She was seducing me into her web. Becoming a sympathetic co-conspirator. She moved closer to me and I decided I had to get space between us. I was not at all comfortable with the idea of a close-up examination of my disguise. I moved away a bit and turned to her.

“No offense, Miss,” I said softly. “But I’m not that comfortable with women. I prefer… well, you know.” When rejecting a sexy woman, the gay card is the best one to play. Angel got the message immediately. She moved back to her chair.

“Oh, don’t worry, John,” she said. “We can still be friends, and you’ll find I still have a lot of services I can offer you.” There was a subtle change in Angel’s gestures and her coyness. A flick of the wrist. A new tilt to her shoulders and erectness to her posture. Her voice came down a notch as well, and had a subtle feeling of being intentionally softened, as though pretending to be a girl. In that instant she had transformed herself from sex goddess to drag queen. I was learning more about Angel than I ever imagined. But I still needed to know how the money operation worked.

“Thank you,” I said. “You are an Angel. How can I get this money to Europe without arousing suspicion. There’s nothing illegal about it,” I hastened to add. “An inheritance, you see.”

She cut me off.

“I don’t need to know where it came from,” she said. “I’m not complicit to any source of your income, no matter what you do. But I’ll help get it to a different place for you. Now here’s what we’re going to do to solve your little problem here. When there is a lot of money, everyone wants a piece of it,” she continued. “I’m not a bargain-basement deal, but I am high quality. I can move the money for you and give you access to it. When you get to Europe, voila! It is waiting for you. Once there, you can transfer it to any account you want. And you are not limited to Europe. If you decide Asia is better suited to you, or South America or even Australia, we’ll make sure you are well-taken care of. And you get all my services for just 20%. Of course if you want me to arrange traveling companionship or special transportation, that is extra. Doesn’t 20% sound like a good deal to you?” She barely waited for my nod before she went on.

“What I’m going to do is give you two $5,000 cash cards. You are going to pay me $2,000 for them. Oh! Look at that. It comes out to exactly $12,000! That will be convenient. I’ll report it as three separate transactions. No paperwork. I’ll even report it on different days so that there is no indication that you were here with a lot of money on one day. All you need to do is key in your PIN on the card reader so I can program your card. Now, you know all the rules about PINs, right? Don’t make it your birthday or an obvious pattern. But be sure you remember it, because we aren’t going to write it down anyplace. Future transactions—you will be back to do business with me again, won’t you?—will be much simpler. You’ll come to the counter, tap in your PIN, I’ll take the money and slide a new card through the printer. When you travel, any card will work in the vast network of ATM machines around the world that bear any of these logos.”

I was pretty overwhelmed by the time I walked out of the store, $12,000 lighter in my briefcase with two new money cards—one in my wallet and one slipped into my briefcase on Angel’s advice. I didn’t understand quite why, but she indicated that I should carry my cards too close, even though they had different branding on them. Who was going to find out?

That question was answered quickly. I was walking up the street from Angel’s agency when a red-haired man stepped out from a doorway in front of me, flashed a badge and said, “I’d like to speak with you for a moment, sir.”

I was facing Silas Grant in his official capacity as a FINCen officer.

“Did I do something wrong officer?” I asked quietly.

“We don’t think so, but we are investigating the agency you were just in. Would you mind telling me the nature of your business there?”

“Should I have a lawyer present?” I asked.

“Well, we could go through all that,” Silas answered, “but I haven’t even asked for your identity. At the moment, I’d prefer to keep our questions friendly and off the record. I’d just like to know what kind of business is conducted there.”

“Well, that’s easy enough,” I answered. “It’s a travel agency. I’m going to Europe this summer after the school year ends. I’m a teacher,” I added hastily.

“And the woman in the agency is making your travel arrangements?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied respectfully. “Italy is going to be magnificent in July. Hot, but magnificent. When you are on a school-year calendar you have to go when you can go,” I added confidentially. Silas, I knew, required a little more male-to-male bonding than I could get away with Angel. It is funny. I have a much easier time being a male around men than I do around women. The time with Angel was exhausting. This was a breeze.

“And does she charge a lot for travel arrangements?” he asked.

“Well, yes,” I said frankly. “I thought for a while she wanted to go with me, but frankly, you are more my type.” Silas took an automatic step backward. “But, really, I hastily continued on. If she puts together a whole trip package for me based on what I told her, gets me into the Vatican Library, like she said she could, and arranges a private tour of the major sites with a native Italian speaker, that should be worth 20%, don’t you think?”

“Sounds like it will be a good deal for both of you,” Silas answered. His attention was already distracted by someone down the street, and when I turned I saw Angel leaving the agency and heading out for lunch. I definitely didn’t want to be seen talking to Silas.

“Is there anything else?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “You’ve been very helpful. Thanks.” With that he simply turned and walked away in the direction Angel had gone and I continued back to my car.

Whew!

Farewell, Friend

2006-12-06T23:18:00.000-08:00

Everyone showed up. Lars and Silas, of course. Everyone I’d ever met at the Swedish American Center and dozens more. Teri came to be with me, and I wasn’t surprised to find Angel and Cinnamon there, too. The four of us—blondes in black dresses—must have looked unusual to many who were there, based on the number of stares we got. But there were so many blondes among the Swedish contingent that I don’t think we were at all out of place. Maybe it was just the way our dresses fit.

1:00 p.m.

I saw the obituary and funeral announcement in the paper last night, but I had no idea how many people Dag touched. There were people there that he must not have seen in years—certainly not in the last six months. Reverend Olson gave a kind eulogy that didn’t come across as too religious. It was really about Dag. People at the Center had put together a display board with pictures from various events over the years that showed Dag playing cards with the older men, and sitting on the floor amidst a huge pile of Legos with children. There were pictures of him teaching computer classes filled with older people at the Center and a beautiful picture of Dag at the top of Mount Rainier taken by one of his climbing friends twenty years ago. It was so incredible to see him as a young man, so full of vitality and so… sexy. There was really no other way to put it. Dag as I knew him was kindly, sophisticated, and distinguished. The young Dag was nothing short of a hunk.

I made my own contribution to the display. I had the picture of the two of us that was taken in the photo booth on Pier 57 blown up and framed. But I also brought the picture from Dag’s wall with me and set it in front of the memorial urn that held his ashes.

It was all about remembering all the wonderful things that Dag was to so many people.

And then it was over.

Lars pulled me to the doorway of the chapel and there, flanked by my blonde posse, people stopped to offer me condolences as they left. They treated me like I was more than his partner. Sometimes it was embarrassing to imagine what they must have thought, but everyone was polite. Rhonda stopped and held my hand for a long moment while tears streamed down her cheeks. Eventually she pointed at the picture she’d painted and just mouthed, “Thank you,” and then left.

It was obvious that my buddies were not intending to leave me alone for a while, but Silas managed to cut me out of the crowd when I went to retrieve the urn.

“I’ve brought you something,” he said. “I don’t think I should actually be giving this to you, but I’m going to file a statement that this is official business.” He handed me a manila folder filled with the dossier on Brenda. “She’s gone,” he said flatly. “We don’t know where or when, but we haven’t seen her come out of the house in two days. I got a warrant and we went in this morning on the grounds of being concerned for her well-being. She was gone. The entire house was immaculate except the bedroom. It looked like it had been ransacked. But we determined that she had packed one suitcase and left. The other matching pieces were out on the bed.”

“Can I say I told you so?” I asked. I suppose it wasn’t kind, but I had told him Monday morning that she would run. He’d lost her that very day.

“I’d rather you said you’ll help. I can bring you the laptop and backup disks if you need them, but I’m betting you either know where she is, or could find her.”

“And then what?” I asked. “Are you going to tell me that there is enough evidence to get an extradition from an unfriendly country?”

“No. I’m going to say that you will find the evidence.” Silas looked around. “Dag and I didn’t share everything either of us knew,” he continued quietly. “But we shared enough that I’m sure he was onto something more than Bradley’s little scheme to counterfeit software. I’m guessing that you are pursuing his leads. We always had a tacit agreement—don’t interfere with each other and we’ll share the results. Oh, and don’t go in without backup,” he finished.

“I suspect that the two billion that Simon disposed of before he got himself killed is just the tip of the iceberg,” I answered. “If so, there’s a Titanic about to find it.”

“I’ll bring the laptop and disks by this afternoon,” Silas said.

“Don’t bother,” I answered. “I’ve got all I need.” He looked at me a little strangely, but said okay. I told him I’d let him know when I’d found her and how bad it really was.

I turned to join my friends. They wanted to take me out for a drink, but I said absolutely not. Instead we four went down to the pier and they joined me in the office. Mrs. Prior dropped Maizie off after the funeral. The five of us sat on the sofa and chairs and I set the urn in front of the window.

“Ginger snaps for everyone,” I announced, getting the jar from the desk. Dag always liked the crisp spicy cookies. We each reached in and I tossed a cookie to Maizie. She took it to her bed and lay down. We all took a bite. There were various expressions ranging from disbelief to disgust. “I guess they are an acquired taste,” I said, laughing. Let’s just say that Maizie had a lot of treats that afternoon.

After assuring my friends that I was all right, I got them out of the office and settled down to do some work.

10:00 p.m.

The databases of United States Customs and Immigration are not exactly public, but they aren’t impenetrable, either. I knew that if I really wanted to I could get into it and find out if there was any record of Brenda’s travel under her aliases. But the truth is that we don’t check on people leaving the country. We only check on those entering. The fastest way for Brenda to get out of the country was to go to Canada. There is always traffic moving across the border, and a middle-aged woman crossing from the US into Canada isn’t going to raise any flags if she has some cockamimi story about going to Vancouver to shop for her grandchildren.

But Brenda didn’t take her car. That meant that she took some form of public transportation (or had a confederate hook up with her) and the most likely place to go would be to the airport. Once there she could either rent a car or board a plane. If the choice was the latter, it didn’t make any difference where she went. Out of the country was out of the country. That’s what I was betting on. I pulled up the OAG guide and looked at the flights normally leaving from Seattle with non-stops out of the country. There are a lot. I was guessing that she would head south rather than to Canada. It was always possible that she would catch a flight to Amsterdam or to Tokyo, but I couldn’t picture Brenda risking a really long flight. She would want to be on the ground someplace by the next morning.

Airplane passenger lists are actually harder to hack into than US Immigration.

Mexican Immigration, however, is a breeze.

I set up remote routines to scan every port of entry with direct flights from Seattle starting with the last time that Silas actually saw Brenda forward. There are twenty-one different international ports of entry with direct flights from Seattle. Four are in Mexico and six are in Canada. The rest are scattered throughout the world. I entered the passport numbers off the three identities that I’d seen in Brenda’s drawer. Someplace one or more of those people were going to show up entering a foreign port. The number would be scanned and entered in the immigration database.

It wasn’t child’s play. Before I finished, I had to take Maizie out for a walk and feed her dinner. She was getting impatient when I set the programs to run and started pulling apart Brenda’s file.

There were huge amounts of written evidence that had yellow stickies on them marked “circumstantial,” “unconfirmed,” and “hearsay.” I had to admit that the case against her looked shaky. No wonder Silas wasn’t getting any support from the authorities on his search for her; they considered it a waste of time.

The ferries were almost shielded by the nighttime fog over the harbor by the time I found something useful. If you commit a burglary, speed, rape someone, or even murder someone, they are going to do a pretty thorough job of marking down your identifying characteristics and getting your fingerprints. Age, weight, height, eye and hair color, race. But if you are accused of a Federal money crime, your file is going to have birthmarks, shoe size, ring size, moles, and tattoos.
“Tattoo at base of spine in red and black depicts a pillow with the characters E18d2bMe.”

Holy shit! Brenda has a tattoo with eight characters. Substituting “1” for “L” and what for “M?” It had to be a 3 laid on its side. e-1-8-d-2-b-3-e. I had a few more combinations to try out for my encryption key. Let me see, with four sets in all possible combinations of one, two, three, and four sets—I only had 16 possible combinations when there were three sets—there were 64 possible combinations. It was going to take a little longer, but I had the makings of a 512 bit encryption key.

It’s going to be a long night.

Getting Down To Business

2006-12-05T21:13:00.000-08:00

All told, it was a better day. Better than what, you ask? Well, better than sitting in my room crying. It appears that I still have a job, or a whole business, and I'd better take care of it.

10:00 a.m.

I sat in the room that I will always think of as Dag's office. If what Lars told me was true, it was now my office. Lars would take care of the books and hold the agency license until I'd completed my three years and tested, but he promised that the business was mine and he would hand over the accounts as soon as he verified them and reported the inheritance to the State. So it would never be fair to Dag if I didn't get some work done.

I opened the vault and located Simon's thumb drive. I knew right where it was. I'd filed it when I transferred all Simon's backup disks to the network. I might have returned the disks to Brenda's house for Silas to find, but I kept the data. Something told me that even if I succeeded in cracking the encryption code on the thumb drive, there was data on Simon's computer that I would need eventually. I shoved the thumb drive in a slot on the workhorse computer, closed the vault and sat down to work from the laptop. I now had three 8-digit numbers. It should be easy to put them in the right order to crack the encryption. F8ed2d1e, 36Db00bs, and 1sB41d1e. It took a couple of tries before I realized that I was dealing with hexadecimal numbers, and not a case sensitive password. f-8-e-d-2-d-1-e-3-6-d-b-0-0-b-5-1-5-b-4-1-d-1-e. The "s" was "5" and the "0" was "zero" and the "i" was a "1".

It was a kids game to make up words out of letters and numbers. Being hexadecimal, he only had the numbers 0-9 and the letters a-f to work with. Every eight characters would yield a 128 bit encryption key. But there was a problem. Twenty-four characters would yield a 384 bit key. I've never heard of a 384 bit key. Typcially you double, double, and double again. In light-weight areas, you get 64 bit encryption that can be done with four characters. Then you'd get 128 bit with eight characters, 256 bit with sixteen characers, 512 bit with thirty-two characters, and if you were really paranoid, 1024 bit encryption with sixty-four characters. In every instance you double the number of characters and double the strength of the encryption.

Somehow, I didn't think Simon was nerdy enough from what Dag described to be able to generate a 384 bit encryption key.

So what did I have to work with? I decided to try all combinations. I figured that the key would not be a scramble of the 24 characters, but could be any combination of the sets of letters. There are three combinations of just one set. Six combinations of two sets (order counts). And finally, there would be six more combinations that included all the possible arrangements of all three sets. I had no expectation that it would be any of the latter.

I started plugging them in when the disk launched and it asked for the encryption key. Fifteen straight failures. I looked at the three original numbers. The first two, Dag had written on a notepad in the hospital in his neat, precise lettering. The last one I photographed off Bradley's dead body with my cell phone. I examined all three to see if there was any other letters that I could substitute for the numbers or the sounds in the words. I came up blank. I didn't know what Simon's and Angel's tattoos looked like, but if they were like Bradley's there must have been some elaborate artwork that the words were encased in. Was there anything in the artwork that might lead to a clue? I couldn't find anything.

It was way past lunch-time and I was famished.

4:00 p.m.

About mid-afternoon there was a gentle knock at the office door. I called, "Come in," and Maizie came bounding across the office and leaped into my lap at the desk. She began vigorously washing my face with her tongue. I was laughing as I looked up to see Mrs. Prior.

"She insisted that she wanted to come to the office," Mrs. Prior said. "She's been going on about it since Sunday. I told her, give Miss Riley a chance to get her bearings, now. Don't rush things. But Maizie has a mind of her own. I finally had to give in and bring her down here."

"Oh, Maizie," I said. "You are wonderful. How could I not have thought of you without Dag. It must be terrible." Maizie lay down on my lap and put one huge paw over her nose and whined.

"She says she misses Dag," Mrs. Prior interpretted. "She was worried about you. She thought maybe you were gone, too."

"No, Maizie," I answered. "I'm here. And it looks like I'm going to be here for a while. You can come and visit anytime you want to."

"Mmmm hmmm," Mrs. Prior stuttered. "You see, about that." Oh, no. She was going to tell me that Maizie couldn't come to visit. I'd miss her terribly. How could she do such a thing. "Maizie was Dag's dog," she continued. "According to Mr. Andersen, Dag left everything he owned to you. That means Maizie is your dog now."

"My??? Oh my." I was floored. I know my stupid eyes were watering again. Maizie lifted her muzzled and licked my cheek. How can I ever hope to be all that Dag expected of me?

"Maizie is sending me pictures of jumping up and down in pink ribbons when she thinks of you," Mrs. Prior said. "I think she is very happy that you are hers."

"But I can't keep a dog in my apartment," I said forlornly. "It's a no-pets building."

"Well, dear, Maizie and I understand that you need some time to adjust. No one expects you to move straight into Dag's apartment tomorrow. I'm happy to sit with Maizie when you can't have her with you, but she hopes you will come to visit her and stay with her sometimes." Mrs. Prior talked so much like I expected Maizie to, that I sometimes forgot Mrs. Prior was in the room. "Do you know that Maizie goes upstairs at night to sleep, even though Dag isn't there?" Mrs. Prior asked. "She is so sad. This is the happiest I've seen her since Wednesday night when Dag got home."

"Do you want me as your pet, Maizie?" I asked the dog. After the past six months of hearing Mrs. Prior talk about her and to her, I no longer doubted that she communicated. "I'm not as good as Dag, but I'll take care of you."

"I see pictures of her dancing around on her back legs in excitement," Mrs. Prior answered. "Why don't you two have a quiet chat this afternoon. You can drop her back at my house when you leave for the day and I'll keep her at night. You really need to come and look after your apartment sometime."

"My apartment?" I suddenly saw new images in my mind. Dag had not left me just the business, he left me his entire life. Mrs. Prior was telling me that I could move into his apartment. The big question was "could I?"

"I'll bring Maizie up around seven if that is all right," I said. "We have food here for her dinner." As if I had just given her permission to be here, Maizie jumped up off my lap and ran once around the office as fast as her little legs could carry her, and then settled on her bed behind the sofa.

"She likes to walk up, you know," Mrs. Prior said. Then waved a cheery goodbye and left.

8:30 p.m.

I walked Maizie back home about 6:30. We went by way of the Post Office so I could mail the letter to Dag's cousin in Sweden. I resisted the temptation to read what he'd written her. Sometimes I'm too nosey. This time, I'd just let it pass. It was between him and his cousin. I wondered if she was nice. I hoped that I would hear from her sometime.

Maizie and I walked up the hill toward Dag's apartment and as we were passing a coffee shop, Maizie pulled on the leash, sat in front of the door and refused to go any further.

"Come on, girl," I coaxed. "That's a coffee shop. They don't allow dogs in there." She refused to move and I saw the barista come out from around the counter and approach the door. I braced for a lecture on pets in eating establishments. The door opened.

"Maizie!" the woman exclaimed. "How are you little girl? Don't you want to come in for a biscuit?" She looked at me curiously, then looked around. "Where's Dag?" she asked. Oh no. Another person who needed to be told. It was always so hard to say the words.

"I'm sorry," I said, "Dag passed away early Thursday morning. I've been trying to contact people he knew, but I didn't know he was known here." The barista's eyes glistened at the news.

"Oh. Are you his...?"

"Business Partner," I supplied.

"Won't you come in," she said. "I owe Maizie a biscuit."

"If it's okay," I answered.

"Oh yes. Until recently Dag stopped here every morning on his way to work," she said, leading us to a table. "You say he died Thursday morning? He was in Wednesday evening. Said he'd been out of town and that is why we hadn't seen him lately. I'm Jackie, by the way. Would you like an espresso?"

"Thanks," I said, "but I really shouldn't do caffeine this late in the day."

"It's okay. I'll make us decaf." She brought a dog biscuit and Maizie sat on her hind legs patiently while Jackie gave her the biscuit. Rather than crunch it up immediately, Maizie carried the biscuit to the other side of my chair, turned around three times and settled with it between her paws. Then she took a bite.

Jackie brought me a straight espresso in a demitasse and sat down opposite me. I learned that Dag and Maizie stopped here at Tovoni's every morning on the way to work and had done so up until a couple of weeks ago. Then she hadn't seen him until Wednesday night. He looked very tired, but she loved to watch him drink his coffee. He seemed transported.

The sneak. He knew he wasn't supposed to have coffee. Not for the past six months. But he'd been coming in here every morning anyway. I had to laugh as she told the story. I told her the time and place for the memorial service tomorrow and then walked Maizie the rest of the way home.

"What else are you going to tell me about Dag?" I asked her. She seemed very proud of herself.

When we got to the apartment, I knocked on Mrs. Prior's door to tell her we were there. She motioned me up the stairs and told me to take my time. Maizie led me up to Dag's apartment.

It was so much like it was after Thanksgiving when I'd spent the night on Dag's sofa and he'd touched my head and comforted me. God! How I wish I could have comforted him. I didn't know until that week how sick he was.

Everything in the apartment was clean and neat. I walked from room to room. I looked at pictures. I touched his clothes. I ran a hand over the top of his bed.

I'd made a lot of suggestions to Dag, half-knowing that he'd never take me up on them. But here I was feeling more intimate with him than in any of our encounters while he was alive.

I sat for a few minutes in his chair and looked at the picture on the wall. It wasn't terrible, like Rhonda thought of it. It was a little primitive, but it did have a way of capturing your thoughts. I'd sat there for almost an hour before I decided it was time to go home and go to bed.

I'm going to have to take this in little doses. If I try to swallow it all at once I'm sure I'll die.

Bailed Out and In Over My Head

2006-12-04T19:09:00.000-08:00

I’ve been sitting at the courthouse for an hour and they just started the hearing on Brenda’s bail and release. Because it’s Federal, she didn’t get the fast release that she threatened last Tuesday. I feel so bad for her having to sit in an actual jail for a week! ;-)

11:00 a.m.

I said hi to Silas when I came in, but mostly these court cases are a lot of sitting in the back of a big room in which almost all the action takes place at the front in very quiet voices that no one in the audience can hear. There’s no jury. It isn’t a trial or even a hearing. This is where the two (or if I’m counting correctly, six) lawyers argue with each other over whether it is safe to trust her on her own recognizance, and how much bail is adequate to assure that she won’t jump bail.

I could give them a tip—she’s going to run. But Silas already suspects that. All they can do is argue to make it as costly as possible for her to leave—and then watch to see if they can catch her. After about an hour of haggling up in front, the judge pounded the gavel and announced that bail had been set and paid and that Brenda was released on her own recognizance. There was a stern lecture to the prosecution regarding getting evidence before they attempt to press charges and that they’d better appear with an airtight case on the software counterfeiting charge in two weeks or he would dismiss it.

Silas finally separated himself from the prosecution team and came back to sit beside me. The judge called a recess for lunch with the next case to be heard at 2:00. Before long we were the only ones still sitting in the back of the courtroom.

“Well, the game’s afoot, as Sherlock would say,” Si said. “She’s being followed and I’m heading out to be near Madison Park when she gets there. We don’t want her to be in the house for long before we move in.”

“She’s going to run, Silas,” I answered.

“She’s going to try,” he smiled. “This is a Federal case and her passport has been collected. She would be stopped at any border.”

“Any wagers on that?”

“No. But frankly, in spite of what our judge said, we’ve got an airtight case against Barnett, Keane, and Lamb and she is the major share-holder. Bradley Keane’s wife holds a 25% share now that he’s gone, and I’m sorry that her retirement fund is looking a little weak at the moment. She seems like a nice woman.” Silas paused. “I shouldn’t do this, but do you want to ride along for the search? You’d have to wait in the car until we are done, but I wouldn’t mind having the company.”
Was he making a pass? What an exciting date to ask me out on if he was. Either way, I wasn’t in for it at the moment. I just wasn’t in to socializing with business interests right now.

“Sorry, I’ve got an appointment back at the office with Lars,” I said. “Why don’t you call me next time you are doing a drug bust? I’d really like to ride along for that.”

“You know I don’t do drug busts,” Si answered. Apparently my sarcasm was too subtle. Si’s a nice guy, but you know what? Sometimes he’s a little dense.

“You know what you could do sometime?” I asked. “Stop by with the file on this case, especially Brenda’s profile and arrest record. I’d just like to scan through it once for clues on where the real money was going, and where it was coming from.”

“That is probably just a little bit out of bounds,” Si said. “But I never turn down help from D.H. Investigations.” I bit back a response that D.H. Investigations was out of business now that D.H. was dead. Si didn’t deserve that, and it’s really just my bitterness showing through. I want Dag’s last month on earth to have meant something. I was really afraid that the whole thing was going to blow over and the person he’d fingered as the culprit was going to get away.
I left the courtroom and waved goodbye to Si, then headed my own car back up to Seattle.

3:00 p.m.

Everything started popping about the same time this afternoon. Si called and told me they had recovered the backup disks from Brenda’s home office. She was furious. It was a pleasure to watch her rant about planted evidence, but she could not deny that those were backup disks for Simon’s computer. They were all neatly labeled and were in the desk.

Unfortunately, their search warrant had limited scope. They were told to search for backup disks to the computer and once they’d found them, they really couldn’t search the house for anything else. He thought it was pretty amazing how immaculately she kept house, though.

Then the funeral home called me to ask me if it was okay with me if Reverend Olson led a memorial service on Wednesday before the cremation. Why were they asking me? He must have given my name to them. Could I stand another memorial service? I hoped Dag wouldn’t mind the Lutheran minister praying for him.

And then Lars showed up. He hemmed and hawed a bit and insisted that we go into Dag’s office to chat. He looked around the room and made a few notes. He said that as executor of the estate he had to place a value on Dag’s possessions. He’d already been to Dag’s apartment, and he knew about the Mustang. He pulled Dag’s little laptop computer out of his briefcase and set it on Dag’s desk, then returned to the sofa.

“His affairs were very tidy,” he said. “He left the list of his accounts and policies attached to his will. He wasn’t wildly wealthy, but he lived simply and frugally. There won’t be too much tax on the inheritance.”

I started to mention the vault, but Lars cut me off before I could say anything more.

“There’s no mention of a vault in the will. I believe he wanted his ashes scattered.” I started again, but he cut me off again. “There is no mention of a vault,” he said with finality. “Now, we should really sit down and read the will.” I was totally confused, but we sat opposite each other on the sofa and chair.

“I thought wills were read by the attorney,” I ventured.

“Yes. In fact it was. I’m the executor of the estate, so I’m the only one who was there for the reading. From that point it is up to me to contact the heirs, report the value of the estate, and distribute it according to Dag’s wishes.”

“Why do you want to read the will with me?” I asked. Maybe I’m dumber than I look, but I really had no idea.

“Because two weeks ago Dag visited his attorney and changed his will. The change made you his sole heir, Deb.”

I sat staring at Lars like an idiot. I’d heard these words before. Five years ago an attorney told me that I was the sole heir to my parents’ meager estate. There hadn’t been all that much. The house was mortgaged to the hilt. Dad had a retirement plan, but Mom had drunk most of the liquid assets. The car was wrecked. Because it was a good market, I made enough on the sale of the house to finish paying for college and get me into grad school. That was about it.

I remember thinking when I got that check that this was all that was left of my parents. Their entire lives had amounted to a check for $50,000 and a collection of rare whiskey bottles.

And me.

I couldn’t bear to see Dag’s life reduced to a few numbers on an accountant’s pad. Why was he doing this to me?

“Deb,” Lars was saying softly. “Listen to me. I didn’t send you to Dag to get involved with him or to become his heir. I sent you to him because he was the best graduate I had and you are the best student. This inheritance isn’t about money. It’s about carrying on. It’s about becoming all that you are capable of being. It’s not about making you into a memorial to Dag Håmar, either. It’s Dag’s way of saying how very proud he was of you and how much you meant to him.”

“But I can’t even run the business,” I wailed. “I don’t have a license.”

“He thought of that. He called me while he was changing the will and asked me to hold the business license until your three years is up and you can apply for it yourself. Since I’m fully licensed, I can act as your supervisor, just as I did for the first two years. Come May, you’ll be able to take the test and the State will license you independently. Now the business license is not the same as the Agency license. As a business, you can continue to do computer forensics in this office as long as you want with no PI license at all. That means that as soon as I file the papers, the license and all the business and its assets belong to you. And I am going to file the papers as quickly and as simply as I can. As far as I am concerned, you are now the owner and operator of D.H. Investigations.”

Lars left the office a little after six o’clock. He left me staring out at the Sound in the darkness and the fog that was gathering over the waterfront. Suddenly I understand why Dag spent so many hours staring out this window.

Playing Santa

2006-12-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Madison Park watching the locals come in for a Sunday morning coffee and newspaper. I’m lucky there’s a connection. I blend in perfectly with the surroundings here—just another Sunday morning blogger. I can see three other laptops from where I’m sitting.

I’ll bet none of them got here directly from breaking and entering, though.

I’ve got to break this habit.

8:30 a.m.

I got up at 5:00 after way too little sleep. The coffee buzz from yesterday afternoon kept me up past 2:00 a.m. But I didn’t wake up puking my guts out, unlike Friday.

I got into my cat burglar outfit which is remarkably like my running clothes—black leggings, black hooded shirt, running shoes. I chose a short brunette bob wig for my hair of the day, or at least the morning. Then I drove to Madison Park and parked my car at a public access point. I focused on looking and acting like any other early morning runner, only there weren’t many there at 6:00 on a foggy morning. Fog is good. It means that it’s marginally warmer this morning than it’s been the past few days, and it means that I become invisible much more quickly when I’m headed away from some place or someone. After I’d warmed up, I took only the tools that fit in my oversized waist pack beside the backup CDs I’d taken and took off running.

It was about a mile to the access point that I identified a couple of weeks ago that led up to the Barnett house. Since I was coming up from the beach this time instead of the front drive, it was much easier to slip up to the house without a chance of being observed.

The last time I was here, I didn’t care if Brenda realized someone was in the house, so I disabled the alarm system and left the door to the garage wide open. This time, though, I didn’t want to raise any suspicions when she got out of jail. So I had to take the second story entrance. In my brief visit two weeks ago, I noticed that there was a balcony off the master bedroom above the kitchen. It overlooked the pool and the lake. I also noticed two significant things about the alarm system. One was that there was no motion-detector. Why should there be in such a safe neighborhood. The other was that like most alarm companies, door and window alarms had been installed only on the ground floor level. I guessed that Brenda was way too confident in her ability to neutralize Dag and me to have bothered changing the alarm system. Her utter disdain for anyone’s brains but her own are a great advantage to anyone else with brains.

I hoisted myself over the railing on the deck, having first checked carefully to be sure no one was coming up the jogging trail. It took only thirty seconds to pick the lock to the French doors and get into the bedroom. I closed them behind me and stood looking around the room.

I rushed on my last visit to this house. I took the necessary precautions to ensure that I was not disturbed while there and then focused all my energy on the office where I found the backup disks. Granted, I was here today just to return said disks so certain law enforcement officers could find them, but I was interested in finding anything else I might be able to use to put a nail in the Muffin-Top’s coffin. I had no idea what it would be.

The bedroom was disgusting. A laundry hamper was full and there were dirty clothes on the floor around it. An elaborate bath was marred by the fact that makeup was scattered around on the sink without particular regard for order. I could see a huge bottle of lilac scented toilet water. The scent in the room almost made my eyes water and I’m not particularly sensitive to scents like Dag is. Was.

A bedside table showed a drawer open and various adult toys were shoved into it. The bed was unmade and velvet ropes hung from the corners onto the floor. The bolsters for the bed were lying on the floor in one corner, and the spread lay in a pile at the foot of the bed. A huge walk-in closet was crammed so full of clothes and shoes that you couldn’t walk into it. No matter what image Brenda attempted to portray in public, this room painted the picture of a lazy, messy person. I left the bedroom and headed for the stairs down, keeping a careful eye out in case I had missed a motion detector.

Apparently the housekeepers had taken care of the rest of the house. That told me something, too. Apparently the bedroom was Brenda’s private space and she didn’t allow even the housekeepers in it. That or they were too disgusted to go in.
I continued to the office and carefully replaced the disks in the exact place that I’d found them. I was trusting that Silas would arrive with his search warrant soon after Brenda got home from the hearing Monday morning and she wouldn’t have time or think to look for the backups being replaced. Just in case, I’d downloaded everything onto the servers on Friday.

I searched through all the desk drawers for any other evidence of Brenda’s wrong-doing, but to no avail. I looked everyplace I could think of for a safe, but also found nothing. In fact, the house outside the bedroom was so immaculate and spotless that you’d think no one actually lived there. Not only were there no dirty dishes, there were no clean ones in the dishwasher. There was no food in the refrigerator either. Not a quart of milk or a stick of butter. It looked like the house had been cleaned for sale, but the owner still occupied one room. I was suddenly very glad that I’d slipped surgical gloves on before I entered. Dag used them to protect sensitive equipment when he disassembled a computer. I used them so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints. In a house this clean, one solo set of prints that matched me would be pretty incriminating.

I checked every drawer in the dining room sideboard, the linen closet, the utility room. I couldn’t open a door to check the garage, but I was certain from my first foray that there was nothing there. If there was a safe in this house, I knew not where. I finally gave up and headed back to my exit through the master bedroom. I opened the drawer on the other side of the bed, but it contained little other than reading material and pencils. There was a half-worked book of crossword puzzles. I glanced back at the drawer full of toys and it suddenly hit me. This drawer was less than half the depth of the toy drawer, yet from the front it looked the same. I carefully removed the contents of the drawer and pulled it out of its guide.
It definitely had a false bottom, and when I shook it gently I could hear things sliding around in it. I turned the drawer over and saw a little twist screw on the bottom like you would see on the battery cover of a laptop. I used a penny from my pocket to twist it open and the lid came open. I’d hit the jackpot.

In the drawer were three complete sets of identity papers, passports, credit cards, birth certificates, marriage certificates, and a sizeable amount of cash in hundred dollar bills and 500 Euro notes. Everything in the house made sense now. It was cleaned to evacuate. The last room to be done was the only room Brenda had been using since… well, probably since Simon was killed. Brenda was prepared to run. In fact, my guess was that if Silas hadn’t stepped out of the closet to arrest her Tuesday, she’d have been gone by Wednesday morning.

I copied down all the information from each document on my notebook. The identity kits were complete for both Simon and Brenda. Sets this good must have cost a fortune. One set showed them as residents of Belize, one of Bangkok, and one of Monte Carlo. The names were all different. Two of the sets showed them married with the same last name and marriage certificate from the country in which they lived. The third was for two single people.

I replaced the contents of the drawer and put it back on its track in the bedside table. Then looking around to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I retreated out the balcony doors and made my escape. After running back to my car, I moved it to the coffee shop where I’m supposed to meet Teri by 9:00. I see her coming in now for our Sunday adventure.

As if I need more!

6:00 p.m.

Teri and I had a good time. We went to a little French Bistro for Sunday brunch and then went out to catch the first matinee of “Déjà vu.” Yeah, I’m a sucker for action films if there is a good plot and a good lead actor. It was fun. And Denzel Washington! Yow!

Here’s a concept. Everyone was all gaga over having a new blonde Bond. How about casting Denzel Washington in the role of Bond. Now I’d really be a Bond girl for that!

I got home about 5:00 and had a message from Lars. He wanted to set up an appointment to meet with me at my office tomorrow morning. I called back and offered to come up to see him, but he said he really wanted to come down to the pier for this. Absolutely wouldn’t say what it was all about.

Well, it could be that I haven’t done a damn thing on my thesis for two weeks, including have any meetings with him. But why at the pier?

It got me thinking and I went back into my bedroom and picked up Dag’s envelope that he had his lawyer deliver to me. Yes. I’m a huge chicken. I finally went to sleep last night with it still in my hand unopened. I decided I had to do it now. I curled up on the bed with it and slit it open.

I’m not going to tell you everything that was in it word for word. John Allen said it wasn’t a good idea. But here’s a couple things. There’s a long string of numbers followed by his name and mine. There is a page of what he thinks is on Simon’s thumb drive. I can’t believe he deduced all his guesses based on the limited amount of actually knowledge we have, but it is definitely a wow! And then there was this page:

I realize now that there are things I never got around to teaching you or telling you. Maybe some of them I did tell you so I’ll review.

First, you can do it. It may look impossible at first, but I have faith in you. It’s not a big business, but it is a good one. If you decide to stop, be sure to dismantle everything. Don’t leave a trace left.

Second, being clever, smart, and pretty won’t always be enough. Sometimes you’ll just plain have to be lucky. I’m hoping you will always be lucky. You’ll improve your luck if you decrease the risks you don’t have to take. Right now it’s easy to go prowling around when people don’t know you are there and just take what you need. But you will be luckier if you limit the amount of breaking and entering you do.

Third, the law doesn’t always define what’s right, but we don’t either. Whenever you decide to do the “right thing” and it’s not the “legal thing,” well… let’s just say that I’ve made my mistakes. The whole BKL thing was probably a mistake. I’m guessing we were manipulated through the whole thing. Doing what seemed like the right thing probably wasn’t even the smart thing.

Fourth, find good people to make up for your weaknesses. I’m not accusing you of having weaknesses, but I know that when I found you I made up for a lot of my own. I’m hoping you can find a partner that will back you up the way you’ve been there for me. Doing it all alone isn’t nearly as much fun as doing with a good partner. It’s a lesson I learned way too late in life.

Fifth, I know it’s been the hardest thing I’ve tried to teach you, but anything you can find out about someone else, a better hacker can find out about you. Take your security seriously. Don’t leave files, passwords, access codes, or anything else on your computer. You have a memory; use it for your own best interests. No one can subpoena what exists only in your head.

There are a couple of last things I’d like to ask you to do for me. There’s a letter addressed to my cousin Teresia in Sweden in the Vault. Write her a note and tell her that I’m gone. Enclose the letter. She’ll let the rest of my cousins know. I’ve left instructions that I be cremated. They’ll give the ashes to you if you ask for them. There’s a beach on Whidbey Island just south of Deception Pass. You’ll recognize the place when you get there. Scatter my ashes on the water at sundown. I’m finally going to find out what is out there in that sunset.

I wish I’d been thirty years younger when I met you Riley. Knowing you has been the best thing to happen in my life.

There you have it--the important part of it. Apparently Dag figured out a way for me to keep working here. That’s probably what Lars wants to talk to me about. He’s the executor of Dag’s estate.

I have to go to bed now. My stupid eyes are leaking again.

Telling the Friends

2006-12-02T23:00:00.000-08:00

I knew what I had to do. They were the friends that I'd seen dote on Dag. But it took all my courage to get in the car and drive over there.

2:00 p.m.

On Thanksgiving, Dag took me to the Swedish American Club for the most spectacular day I'd ever had. I saw him talk to people that he'd known all his life, even though he didn't speak English. They had known his parents and some had known Dag since he was a little boy. I also knew that every Saturday afternoon he went to the club to play cards and to eat dinner with those who gathered. It was the only family I knew that he had, and as far as I knew no one there knew that he had passed away.

On the way, I stopped at an international deli and picked up knäckebröd, a kind of Swedish cracker. From what I gathered, that was what Dag contributed to the weekly dinners. When I passed the club looking for a parking space, I could see people inside playing games and sitting watching TV. I parked, but I couldn't get out of the car. I was terrified of going into the club by myself. These people had all been so warm and welcoming to me last week, but I was with Dag. I wasn't one of them. I knew that and even though Mrs. Seafeld arranged to put the almond in my dish of risgrynsgrot it was to please Dag.

When I finally managed to pry myself out of the car (it was getting cold!) I didn't walk toward the club. I walked around the neighborhood just looking at the little houses on the hills of Ballard. The streets were hardly wide enough to drive down, but cars were parked on both sides. At every intersection there was an island in the middle that you had to drive around. Even in the cold air, children were outside playing, sometimes in steep yards and sometimes right out in the middle of the street. I walked for about thirty minutes before I realized I wasn't anywhere near where I thought I was. I retraced my steps, seeing everything again as if for the first time.

A ball bounced out of a yard in front of me and I instinctively bent to scoop it up and toss it back into the yard to the waiting toe-headed little kid who was laughing and running toward me. He screeched in laughter as the ball got to him, scooped it up and threw it to an equally blonde friend up the slope.

But something had caught my eye in the sidewalk. I knelt back down for a closer look. My heart caught in my throat when I saw scratched in the cement "Dag '03". No, it wasn't my Dag. But some little boy had scratched his name into wet cement three years ago. I could easily imagine Dag having done the same kind of thing when he was a child. These streets were his home. He probably grew up near this very place. Oh, don't get me wrong. I wasn't making a saint out of him and revering the neighborhood he grew up in. But it really got to me that this was his neighborhood, and his neighbors would want to know about him.

I quickened my steps back to the Swedish Center, took my knäckebröd firmly in hand and walked in.

It took a few minutes before anyone actually realized I was there. There was activity everyplace. Guys were playing cards in one corner. Women were playing board games with children in another corner. It was getting dark out and inside it was like watching a huge family gathered together on a winter's evening. I could see a few older people, men and women, in the kitchen preparing who-knew-what delicacy for the table tonight. After spending a few minutes invisibly standing near the door, I decided to start with the men at the card table.

"Excuse me," I said as I approached.

"Shhh, shhh," one said without looking at me. He raised a finger to me while another led a card, each played their last cards and they were scooped off the table by the winner. It could have been pinochle or whist from what I could tell watching one trick. The man who had hushed me now looked up at me and said, "Yah sure, what'll you have?"

"I was wondering if you are the gentlemen who usually play with Dag Håmar on Saturday afternoon," I said.

"Well, when he shows up now he plays here. Now look here," he said to his companions and then called across the room, "Lena! It's the young woman Dag brought to Thanksgiving." People suddenly stopped what they were doing and turned toward me. A few, including Mrs. Seafeld, whom I recognized from the Dinner, actually came over to where we were standing. "Where's Dag, Miss?" he continued to me.

I really thought I was going to get through this without crying, but my damn leaky eyes took it on themselves to nearly drown my words when I spoke.

"I'm sorry to have to bring you this news," I said. "Dag passed away Thursday morning. I thought you should all know." I was dripping tears out of my eyes and my nose was starting to run. I thought they were all going to just stay silent when Mrs. Seafeld wrapped her arms around me and said something to me in Swedish. I nodded my head and said, "Thank you," and everybody in the room started laughing and crying all at the same time. I reached out and handed Mrs. Seafeld the knäckebröd. "I hope I got the right thing. I didn't want you to be without since you didn't know about Dag," I said.

People were milling about as the word was passed back to the kitchen to those who hadn't heard and the TV was turned off. I was led to a chair and made to sit down while everyone gathered around and asked questions about what had happened. Someone pressed a cup of black coffee into my hands and I sipped greedily at it feeling the warmth and stimulation sink into my nervous system. I answered the questions the best that I could. I told them that Dag had rescued me on Sunday morning and had fought to stay alive for three days to get a new heart, but that it proved too long a wait.

What a contrast! My friends got me senselessly drunk on red wine when they came to comfort me. Inside of half an hour I was so wired on black Swedish coffee that I couldn't stop talking. I told them everything that had happened since I met Dag six months ago, and in turn they passed around stories of his childhood, military service, business, and card playing. It seems that they all remembered a time when he'd hit a baseball into the stands at a Little League game and hit the loathed math teacher in the head, when he'd had a double run in spades with a thousand aces and had taken every trick, when he moved away from Ballard and moved to Seattle (as if it had been another state), and who he dated in High School.

"That would be me," a woman said nearby raising her hand. "I'm Rhonda Somvar," she introduced herself to me. "Dag and I dated in high school."

"You..." I said and hesitated. "You painted the picture."

"What picture is that, dear?" she asked.

"A seascape at sunset with a man on the beach."

"You've seen that?" she laughed. "A childish effort I'm afraid."

"Dag loved that painting," I said. "He... He died looking at it."

"Oh my," she said. "I knew it was bad, but I didn't think it would kill anyone!" Everyone laughed, including Rhonda, but I could see there was moisture in her eyes, too."

11:00 p.m.

I think that I've been to a wake. Someplace along the line we ate dinner, including knäckebröd I brought, spread thick with slices of cheese. The dinner was different than Thanksgiving. For one thing, there was a turkey. They said that no one had thought of it on Thanksgiving, but that they were determined to have one sometime. Still, it had an abundance of butter, gravy, and potatoes, and many little casseroles that I couldn't identify. We told stories, even while I was helping wash dishes.

I can't imagine there being another memorial service for him that could be more fitting, though Reverend Olson offered to speak to the funeral home about the arrangements. I frankly didn't know who was in charge of arrangements, but I told him that Lars Andersen was the executor of the estate and that John Allen was his attorney. He said that he would take care of everything from there.

I did the right thing. I went to his family and told them. His family just happenes to be a club of people who share a neighborhood and heritage that I scarcely knew existed before I met Dag. I was invited to return each week (even though Mrs. Seafeld took me aside and showed me an entire kitchen cabinet full of unopened knäckebröd packages and we had a wonderful laugh about Dag bringing another one every week), but I know it won't be the same to go back again. I love them, but they were Dag's family. I can't hang onto that for the rest of my own life.

That reminds me. I've been hanging onto this letter for a whole day now. I'm afraid of what I'll read in it. I'm afraid that no matter what it says, I won't be able to take it. Well... I was afraid of the Swedish American Club, too. I guess there's nothing to do but face it.

Soon.

Hangover

2006-12-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

I was such a space-case yesterday. I wrote up my entry and forgot to Update the journal. Thank goodness for LJ autosaved drafts! So, here is what happened in my miserable life on Friday. I'll write up Saturday later on and get it up.

7:00 a.m.

I never should have done that. What on earth inspired me to drink god-knows-how-much wine with Teri, Angel, and Cinnamon yesterday? I woke up in the bathroom with Teri pounding on the door. She had to get ready to go to work. Oh! How could she do it?

There was already coffee made in the kitchen and I started rummaging through the shelves for painkillers. I don't keep many, but I have aspirin in my purse. Don't ask me why. I always carry aspirin and bandaids. I got back to the kitchen and Teri shoved a glass of milk at me. I popped the aspirin and took a big glug of milk then headed back to the bathroom.

"WTF was that?" I asked when I re-emerged five minutes later.

"Milk & Cayenne," she responded nonchallantly. "It's the best cure for a hangover known to man."

"It was a waste of two perfectly good aspirin," I said, though to tell the truth, I did seem a little clearer.

"Look, you can go back to bed, or sleep on the bathroom floor all day if you want, but some of us have to go to work." Work. I guess that officially I don't have a job anymore. My employer--my best friend--is dead. Stupid leaky eyes. I suppose I need to go into the office today and clean up, anyway. I'll do it later today.

"And don't forget your bet," Teri said as she was grabbing her coat and heading out the door.

"What bet?" I asked. Oh no. This is one of the many reasons I don't drink.

"You bet Angel and Cinnamon and me that within the next month you could have an interaction with each of us in which we had no idea who you were. You were bragging about how good you are at disguise. So, by Christmas you have to show us evidence that you had direct contact with each of us and we didn't know who you were. Should be pretty easy for a master of disguise," she smiled. "Toodles!"

Me and my big mouth.

11:00 a.m.

I got to the office after taking most of the morning to sober up. Last time I drank was after my parents died five years ago. Any pattern there? Never again.

I got dressed and started for the office, but I was halfway out the door and realized I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Well, I might not have a job anymore, but it was still Dag's office. I went back in and changed into a black business suit--slacks, white blouse, jacket. I put on the same blonde wig that I've come to identify with since I started wearing it a couple of years ago. I knotted a scarf around my neck and went out to catch a bus downtown.

The office seemed cold and empty when I walked in. Silent. I didn't bother to open Dag's door. I couldn't bear to look into his office without him there. I sat at my desk in the front office and opened my computer. First I'd check e-mail and come to think of it, there was paper mail lying on the floor inside the door that needed to be checked. I wondered if there was a protocol I should follow about opening company mail, but since no one had actually told me that I was fired, I decided that since it was part of my usual job, I'd function as much as possible in a normal mode.

That meant throwing away the junk mail and opening the one remaining piece. It was a check from FINCen for the work Dag did last month on a laptop Silas brought him. As usual, it was made out to D.H. Investigations for Computer Forensics. I could take it to the bank and deposit it like normal. I slid it in a desk drawer to deal with on the way home tonight, or on Monday if need be. I'd not gotten far into the e-mail, which was mostly just subscriptions and a couple of messages regarding my research thesis, when a man showed up in the doorway.

"Excuse me," he said. "I'm looking for Miss Deborah Riley?"

"How may help you," I said, straightening behind my desk.

"I'm John Allen of Allen/Jackson Attorneys at Law," he said presenting a card. It looked legitimate. In fact, now that I thought about it, that was the name of the law office I took Dag to last week.

"I suppose you want me to vacate the premises," I said. "I just came in to clean out my desk. I'm not taking any company property."

"No, no," he answered. "You completely misunderstand me. "Lars Andersen is the executor of Dag's estate. And I am quite certain he wants you to stay on and continue working. I'm sure he will be in touch with you shortly. I'm actually on my way to meet with him now."

"I don't understand." I'm pretty dumb when I don't want to listen.

"Dag came to my office last week and made revisions to his will. I'm not at liberty to discuss them with you because that is the responsibility of his executor. But I am confident that after he reads Dag's will he will want you to remain here and keep this business functioning until it is properly distributed to Dag's heirs. But there are things that lie outside Dag's will that I agreed to execute on his behalf without it being a part of his will. The thing that I have for you is completely within the legal rights of the deceased, so you don't need to worry about this being illegal." I was intrigued. Did Dag leave me some instructions that he wanted me to keep working on? Well, yes. He wanted me to collect the other code from the tattoo and put them together for him. But I assumed that would come to an end with his death. The attorney was plunging ahead. That's one thing about attroneys--you don't really have to hold up your end of the conversation.

"Dag asked me to personally deliver a letter to you," he went on. I nearly choked. "I do not know the contents of this letter, but I have some non-official advice for you. I strongly suggest that whatever its contents, you keep them to yourself until after Dag's estate has been settled. It is personal correspondence between Dag and you and does not have any bearing on how the estate is settled or how it is accounted. No doubt it contains information about his feelings for you, or since you were his employee, some people he wants you personally to notify or perhaps even how he would like to be buried. In any case, read it in private, and should you have questions about any portion of its content, you may contact me and discuss the matter under attorney/client privilege. Is that clear?"

"Yes," I said. Frankly I didn't understand a word of what he said, but it sounded like he was going to give me a letter and I should keep my mouth shut about it.

"Here you are," he said, and handed me the letter. Then he left.

I sat for a long time with it in my hands just staring at it, not sure that I wanted to know its contents. Dag was sending me a letter from the grave. Opening it would hurt.

I decided to put it away until later, perhaps when I was at home and in private. I shoved it into my purse and went back to cleaning up the office.

3:00 p.m.

I finally convinced myself that I needed to find out if Dag had left any kind of list or directory of people who should be contacted in case of his death, and that I could still access the network remotely. I had cleaned out his desk and made sure there were no notes paper notes around and I was sitting on the sofa just looking out at the Sound when I heard a sound in my office. A moment later, I heard Silas's voice.

"Deb? Are you here?"

"In here," I called back. In a moment Silas's frame filled the doorway and he came into the room.

"How are you doing?" he asked gently. JFC! I'm not a china doll. I'm not going to break. It sounded so patronizing.

"Fine."

"Must be tough to come in here and not have Dag here," he said. I realized that he wasn't just comforting me, but that he missed Dag's presence as much as I did. I waved him to a chair. "Brenda has a bail hearing on Monday. It's pretty likely that she'll be released," he said. That was like a blow in the gut. She tricked Dag into killing Simon. Dag went to the grave with that knowledge, and it was devastating. It was so unfair that she might be released after all the harm she's done.

"We have Simon's computer and the back-up disks that Dag made from the raid on the Condo. I just had a funny feeling, though that maybe the computer was tampered with--not by you or Dag, mind you--by someone before it was brought to you. If that were the case, I'm betting that there are backup disks for the computer someplace. Dag taught me a long time ago to always look for the backups. People delete things from their computers if they think someone is going to look at them. But they don't change their backups," he said and paused. I just nodded. Something about what John Allen said earlier made me think that even with Silas I shouldn't say anything about what Dag and I were doing. Self-preservation told me that I shouldn't admit to having the backup disks he was talking about, whether he knew or not.

"I've gotten a search warrant for Brenda's house to look for backups. I'm thinking that I'll hold onto it for a couple of days. It would be much more impressive to let her get home on Monday and serve the warrant then. I'd like her to be home when we come after the disks so that she has a little extra fear to deal with." He paused again and looked out the window at the ferry pulling out of the terminal. "I'll look a royal fool, though, if there isn't anything there to find." He let the words trail off, then added, as if to himself, "Yep. A real fool."

Okay. With the remnants of a hangover headache and admittedly unclear thinking, I was detecting that Silas was throwing me a bone. If I could get the backup disks back in Brenda's house before he went in with a search warrant, he would not be coming after me.

"I'm sure you'll find them," I said. "You guys are really thorough with your searches. I'll bet you won't have any difficulty finding them. She's so conceited that she probably has them in her desk drawer." There. I basically told him exactly where to look.

"Do you think so?" he asked. "It's good to get a second opinion on these things. I mean, you were a big help in examining the container that had CDs in it. If it hadn't been for you and Dag telling us to follow it, we might have missed the whole bust."

I smiled at him. It was a bit of a sad excuse for a smile, but I like Si and if I can help him nail Brenda's hide to the door, I'll do it.

"If you need anything, Riley, you've got my number. Maybe after things settle down a little I could take you out to dinner as a thank you for all the help you were on this case. There's a good possibility we might work together again in the future, don't you think?"

"If I can get a job someplace, sure," I said. "By the way, do you know of anyone else that should be contacted? I was just looking through Dag's address book, but there aren't that many people. He went to visit cousins in Sweden in September. I'm just trying to put together a list."

"I don't know, but I'll bet that someone over at the Swedish American Club would know. Maybe they'd even post a notice."

Of course. I dropped Dag there and he spent every Saturday afternoon there. I'd even joined him for Thanksgiving. Everyone there knew him and was his friend. I knew right then what I'm going to have to do tomorrow.

If I've got the courage to do it.

Nightmare

2006-11-30T23:54:00.000-08:00

2:00 a.m.

I had hair. Lots of hair. Long beautiful blonde locks like Angel’s. And I had hair under my arms that I hadn’t shaved, couldn’t even imagine shaving. And hair on my legs. And on my pubes. I couldn’t help but run my fingers through it. I wanted to spend all day brushing it and shaking it back and forth like a wild animal. Long beautiful hair and it was all mine.

But I couldn’t reach my hair. My hands were tied behind my back. I was sitting naked on a straight chair and Bradley was mocking me. He reached out and jerked out a big fistful of my hair. I thought he would tear my scalp apart when he pulled it. Then he jerked out another fistful. And another. Oksamma walked up beside him and hit me. Hair fell off my head with the jolt. He hit me again. And again.

They were ripping out all my beautiful hair, and my mother was laughing. I could hear her yelling “Hey Baldy,” and smelling like alcohol. I had just one lock of hair left on my head. Everything else was bald. He reached out and took hold of the last lock of hair.

“No!” I screamed. “Don’t take my hair away. Stop! Stop!” But he yanked on it anyway. And all my thirteen year old friends were laughing at me and pointing and calling me a freak and I couldn’t wake up. There was the fright wig mother gave me with its polyester hair sticking out in clownish curls.

“Hey Bozo!” my one-time friends yelled. “Hey Bozo!” “Wake up, Baldy!” “Freak!” “Transvestite!”

I woke up. My heart was racing and sweat poured off of me. I was in a flat-out panic. I wanted to run. I was crying. Panting. I was trapped in the sheets and couldn’t get free. When I finally found my voice I yelled.

“Daddy!”

That broke it. With the word came lucidity.

Daddy was dead. Mom was dead. Bradley and Oksamma were dead. For all I knew, the nasty kids at school were dead—at least as far as I was concerned.

I untangled myself from my sheets and went back to the shower. I spent an hour in there before I went to bed and I still felt dirty. The image of Bradley’s corpse came unwillingly into my mind. 1SB41D1E. Once before I die.

Too late, Bastard.

I didn’t bother to dry myself off. Once I caught myself starting to drift off in the shower, I just turned it off and flopped on my already wet bed. I was asleep in an instant.

Damn. I haven’t had a nightmare and panic attack in months.

4:00 a.m.

Something was thudding in my head. I covered it with a pillow and demanded of myself that I go back to sleep. Then the ringing. My stupid cell phone. I struggled out of my sleep and finally got the mf thing to my ear.

“Deb,” Si Grant said in my ear. “Are you home?”

“Yeah, of course,” I answered muzzily. “Where else would I be?”

“Come to the door then. We’ve been knocking forever.” The pounding in my head. It was at the door. I looked at myself in a mirror and hastily pulled on a wig and a robe. I padded barefoot to the door and looked out the peephole to be sure it was Silas.

I opened the door. Not only Silas, but Lars. WTF? Was I busted?

“Deb,” Lars said as he came into the room. “We thought we should come in person instead of calling you.” Panic was setting in. I could feel my breath coming in gasps. Please don’t say what you are going to say. Please don’t. “Dag passed away about two hours ago.”

My whole world collapsed. Please let this be another nightmare.

Please.

10:00 a.m.

He was sitting by himself in his chair at home. Mrs. Prior found him when she heard Maizie starting to howl. She rushed upstairs and Maizie met her at the door to Dag’s apartment. Dag was sitting in his chair with his eyes wide open staring at his painting with some music by Brahms playing on his stereo. He was wearing the suit I brought him Tuesday and the lavender shirt and tie I bought for him.

All by himself, except for Maizie. Poor Maizie.

I don’t know what to do with myself. Lars and Silas wouldn’t leave after they told me. Silas went into the kitchen and fixed coffee while Lars sat on the sofa with me and held my hand while I cried. There can’t be any more tears. Dear God, please let me stop crying sometime soon.

3:00 p.m.

Teri brought some food over. Lars didn’t leave until I’d called her. I’m going to float away on all the coffee and tea I’ve had to drink. I don’t know why, but after I called Teri, I called Angel, too. She showed up about noon with Cinnamon. So here we sit, four blondes talking about the men in our lives and who we’ve lost. We all sat around crying and then laughing. Cinnamon told about trying to seduce Dag at The Condo and finally suggesting that we have a threesome. She felt a little foolish when I revealed that I was his partner and we were private investigators.

“You mean I could have had him all to myself?” she said indignantly.

“Over my dead body girl,” I snapped back.

“God please,” Angel interjected. “We’ve had enough of those.”

We agreed and Cinnamon got up and opened a bottle of wine that she brought and poured us all a glass. It’s been so long since I’ve drunk any alcohol I wasn’t going to have any, but she put glasses in each of our hands and raised hers and said, “Here’s to Jeremy Brett and his girlfriend Debbie.” We raised our glasses and drank. It didn’t taste good, but it tasted necessary.

“And don’t you ever call me Debbie again,” I said. “It was all I could do to keep from throwing you off the atrium at the Palamino the first time.”

“That’s dedication for you,” Teri said. “So into her disguise that she spared the life of someone who called her the one name she can’t stand.”

“There’s others,” I said. “But I killed the last man who called me one of those.” That set us off talking about what happened at The Condo Sunday morning. The only person I’d told anything to was Silas, and that was just the bare facts. Dag was there, so he knew what happened. It felt good to share what had happened. I mentioned getting hit and having my wig knocked off, but I glanced at Teri and omitted the fact that it left me bald.

Everyone was amazed when I told them how Dag had locked Oksamma out and then attacked Bradley. Angel told them that Davy thought Dag was a berserker when he came into the kitchen and clubbed him. He’s not used to being laid out cold in a fight. I couldn’t help but say that it served him right after he decked Dag the first night he met Angel. Angel agreed.

“He didn’t get any nookie that night, I’ll tell you,” she said. “I was furious.” She paused, then picked up her story again. “I can’t believe that Dag tracked me in Minneapolis and I never saw him. He must have been a master of disguise. I’m sure I would have recognized him if I saw him.” Well that got us off on how to pull off an effective disguise and I told them about dressing like a man and hiding in the men’s room at BKL. They really couldn’t believe that.

Angel and Cinnamon left about 4:00, but Teri is still here and is determined to stay with me for the night, so I guess I’ll let her.

11:00 p.m.

I’m finally back in bed. Teri and I stayed up watching The Graduate on TMC. She’s out on the sofa now with a blanket and a pillow. I told her to go home and she said she couldn’t. She’d get arrested. I don’t know how many bottles of wine we drank, or where they came from. I’m going to regret that in the morning.

Si called to see how I was doing, and later so did Lars. I haven’t laughed and cried so much all in one day, sometimes all at one time, ever. I really can’t have any tears left, but they seem to keep leaking out of my eyes. I should drink some more water. I’ll be dehydrated.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I was totally irresponsible today, just wallowing in my own grief. Tomorrow, I’m going to have to go to the office and get ready to clear things out. I suppose that there must be people I should contact. I don’t even know where to start. I know so little about him. I never intended to get involved with him, not that I was in that way, but I ended up loving him so much. He was an anchor and a guide and I’m going to miss him.

I do miss him.

Tomorrow I’ll have to sort through papers. Si said he’d pick me up to go to the funeral home if I wanted. God please don’t let it be Johnson & Sons. There must be something that I can do. I’ll solve his last riddle for him. I’ve got three sets of numbers.

F8ed2die, 36DB00Bs. 1sB4IDie. Is it a code? What am I supposed to do with these, Dag? I don’t know what to do.

Oh, I feel sick.

In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

Municipal Blondes

Table of Contents

Sail Away

9:00 a.m.

8:00 p.m.

11:30 p.m.

Kidnapped

11:00 a.m.

10:00 p.m.

Into the nightmare—again

4:00 a.m.

Unexpected visitor

11:30 a.m.

4:00 p.m.

Hungry lion on the loose

11:00 a.m.

2:00 p.m.

Surprise at SeaTac

11:30 a.m.

1:30 p.m.

Homesick

10:00 a.m.

4:00 p.m.

5:00 p.m.

Crossing the Adriatic

5:00 p.m.

Wash it all away

9:30 a.m.

2:00 p.m.

10:00 p.m.

Finding Angel

3:00 p.m.

10:00 p.m.

Zagreb

11:00 p.m.

Flight time

11:00 a.m.

5:30 p.m.

On the run--again

3:00 a.m.

Pampered, Spoiled, and Searched

3:00 p.m.

Lying Low

11:00 a.m.

5:00 p.m.

11:00 p.m.

Dinner with the Enemy

12:00 p.m.

5:30 p.m.

11:30 p.m.

Flight

11:00 a.m.

9:00 p.m.

The Committee

8:00 a.m.

2:00 p.m.

11:55 p.m.

Nailed It!

10:00 a.m.

1:30 p.m.

9:00 p.m.

At the Helm

10:00 a.m.

3:00 p.m.

Flirting with a Girl

12:30 a.m.

Hiding Out

10:00 a.m.

4:00 p.m.

On the Run

4:00 a.m.

Perfection

11:00 a.m.

8:00 p.m.

Breakout

2:00 a.m.

2:00 p.m.

Farewell, Friend

1:00 p.m.

10:00 p.m.