Triple cross, p.3
Triple Cross, page 3
He frowned. “I’m almost eleven. And you’re saying I shouldn’t weed for Nana?”
“No, we’re not,” Bree said. “But if you hear us talking in the future, do the right thing and let us know you’re there, please.”
Ali brightened a little. “I can do that.”
Before we could add anything, the front door opened, and my ninety-something grandmother peered out at us.
“Dinner’s ready,” Nana Mama said. “Spicy salmon-and-sweet-potato cakes, homemade tartar sauce, baby asparagus, and bow-tie pasta with garlic and butter.”
There was no argument from any of us, and we followed Nana back into her beloved kitchen, where the woman who’d spent many years as the vice principal of a tough inner-city school performed culinary magic every day. We sat at the table, said grace, and dug in.
After her first bite of the fish cake, Bree closed her eyes with pleasure. “Oh, Nana, that’s so good. Where did you get this recipe?”
My grandmother pushed her glasses higher up on the bridge of her nose. “I made it up.”
“C’mon,” I said. “This tastes like something you’d get in a restaurant.”
She grinned. “Except you can only get it here, tonight, for the first time ever.”
“So good,” Ali said. “The homemade tartar sauce too.”
“What’s in the cakes besides salmon and sweet potatoes?” Bree asked.
Nana Mama hesitated. “Green onions, some sriracha sauce, a little of this and a little of that. I’m still experimenting.”
“Make them exactly this way again next time,” Ali gushed. “You can’t make them any better than this!”
My grandmother laughed and said, “Want to bet?”
Chapter
6
Before Ali could answer, we heard the front door open and shut. My seventeen-year-old daughter, Jannie, came in a few moments later dressed in a blue tracksuit, her skin glowing, her eyes and smile wide.
“It smells so good,” Jannie said. “Sorry I’m late, Nana.”
“Everything’s still warm, child,” Nana Mama said. “You must be hungry.”
“I need a shower first.”
Bree waved at the food with her fork. “Take it after. Better sit down and have a few of these salmon cakes before we devour them all.”
Jannie took off her warm-up jacket, sat down, and heaped food on her plate. After several bites, she groaned and said, “These are incredible! Can you try them with crabmeat?”
“I can,” Nana Mama said.
“No,” Ali said. “Just like this.”
“I’ll make them both ways,” Nana promised, then looked at Bree. “You’ve been home quite a while, haven’t you? What exotic city are you off to next?”
Bree smiled. “I don’t know, Nana. I wrapped up a project last week and my boss is keeping my next assignment a secret until our meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Just as long as it’s not Paris again,” my grandmother said. “That was too dangerous, if you ask me.”
Bree and I exchanged glances, and I knew to change the subject. “I’m sure it will be a domestic deal, Nana,” I said, then I looked to Jannie. “How did practice go?”
Jannie was chewing, but she beamed and clapped until she finally swallowed. “Coach said it was my best workout of the season. I’m fast, hundredths off my best, consistently.”
Jannie had grown seven inches in eighth grade and four more in ninth, so she was taller, longer, and lankier than most girls her age. She was also stronger, with tremendous lung capacity and a God-given talent for running the grueling four-hundred-meter race.
Jannie was so good at the event, she’d attracted the attention of coaches at Division 1 schools as well as private coaches. She had already been offered scholarships to several colleges, including the University of Oregon and the University of Texas. But the coaches who’d talked to her and us had been split on whether she should focus solely on the four-hundred-meter or broaden her horizons to the multi-event heptathlon, where her natural overall athleticism shined.
“Are you training for any of the field events these days?” Bree asked.
“Not this week,” Jannie said, taking another salmon cake. “I’m running in that regional invitational Saturday at Howard University, and Coach wants me to focus on the four-hundred. He said a lot of college coaches will be there.”
“There’s always some college coach at your meets,” Ali said. “When are you going to make up your mind and choose?”
“I was kind of wondering the same thing,” I said.
“Take the best track program,” Bree said. “The one that will take you the farthest toward your Olympic dream.”
“The best academics,” Nana Mama said, shaking her fork. “Sports are fleeting.”
For a few moments, Jannie didn’t say anything, just gave us all a cryptic smile. Then she said, “After this race, if it goes the way Coach says it could go, I think I’ll know exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Chapter
7
Bree left the house first the following morning, heading off to her meeting at the Bluestone Group’s headquarters across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia.
Sampson and I were not far behind her.
We drove back to Chevy Chase and the Carpenters’ neighborhood and knocked on the door of many a small mansion. We got very little. Either the residents had not known the Carpenters or they had known them so well that they were too devastated to talk.
Again and again, we were told how wonderful Sue and Roger Carpenter had been as neighbors, friends, and fellow worshippers at the nearby Episcopal church. And again and again, we saw the evidence of the strange, terrible fascination and fear that the Family Man killings had ingrained in the public mind.
“I haven’t seen it like this since the Beltway sniper attacks when I was a kid,” said one neighbor, a man named Chuck Reed. He lived around the corner from the Carpenters. “Everyone’s scared to go out or is talking about putting in better alarm systems. But it doesn’t matter, does it? The killer has to be an expert on those systems because Roger Carpenter had one. Am I right? He disables them and goes right on in, doesn’t he?”
“We think so, Mr. Reed,” I said, giving him my card.
Elaine Parsons lived up the street from Reed in a large Tudor-style home with a For Sale sign out front. She opened her door on a chain and peered out at us with bloodshot eyes.
We held up our identification. “We’re with Metro Police,” I began.
“I figured,” Parsons said. “I don’t know anything. If I did, I’d tell you.”
“Can we talk anyway, ma’am?” Sampson said.
She hesitated, then drew back the chain and stepped out onto the porch. “Place is a mess inside. I’ve been…packing.”
She was in her late thirties, I guessed, and quite pretty, with long, wavy auburn hair. She wore yoga gear and her body looked fit, but her face was a different story. Her skin was sallow. She had bags under her eyes. Her breath and the coffee she carried smelled of vodka.
“Did you know the Carpenters?” I asked.
“Sue was the salt of the earth,” Parsons said. “And Roger was the best divorce attorney in the business. Got me this house and half of everything Hank had.”
“Hank’s your ex-husband?”
“As of last month, you betcha,” she said and sipped on the coffee and vodka.
“Did Hank know the Carpenters?”
She snorted. “He and Roger were big golfing buddies until Roger told him I’d given him a five-dollar retainer fee years ago in case Hank and I ever got on the outs.”
Sampson asked, “When did Hank learn this?”
“When he tried to hire Roger to divorce me so he could marry Sally the Ice Queen,” she said, smiling and enjoying the memory. “Hank flipped and broke a nine iron because he knew what Roger could do to him. He called Roger a traitor even though I retained Roger the very first time I met him. I’d heard what a tiger he was and just handed him the five bucks. Turns out he was a tiger, a kind—”
Parsons stopped talking, her jaw quivering. Tears began to roll down her cheeks. She looked up at us. “Roger was one of the good guys. Even though Hank hated him after that, he did right by me. I…I can’t believe he’s gone.”
Sampson said, “When did you last see Roger or Sue?”
She thought for a moment. “I saw Sue jog by last week. Roger I saw maybe two days ago?”
“Where was that?”
She appeared confused. She squinted and said, “At his mailbox.”
“At the bottom of the driveway?” I asked.
Parsons looked down and nodded. “I was late for a spa appointment. I didn’t stop. We just waved at each other. I…I didn’t know I would never see him again.”
She put her face in her hands and broke down sobbing. “So many things are ending on me, I can’t stand it half the time.”
Chapter
8
That morning, Bree walked into the corporate offices of the Bluestone Group in Arlington, Virginia, greeted the receptionist, and was told that Elena Martin was awaiting her in the conference room.
Bree had been in law enforcement for nearly twenty years and had worked every kind of case people could imagine and a few no one could. But she still felt the familiar thrill of anticipation as she headed to the conference room.
The last time she’d come in for a secret assignment like this, she’d ended up in Paris in a firefight with modern vigilantes associated with a mysterious organization known as Maestro and its even more mysterious leader, a man who called himself M.
Maestro and M had come into Bree’s life through Alex. One day about five years ago, out of the blue, Alex and John Sampson began getting texts from M. At times, M’s texts were taunting, criticizing her husband and his partner. But occasionally, M gave Alex information that resulted in big arrests.
But that all changed when M sent ex–Special Forces commandos to ferret out and kill U.S. federal law enforcement officers and agents corrupted by the Mexico-based Alejandro drug cartel. After Bree survived the firefight in Paris, Alex and Sampson got in the middle of the Maestro investigation and were caught in the Montana wilderness in open combat between M’s forces and the Alejandro cartel’s soldiers.
The experience had almost cost them their lives.
But now, the Alejandro cartel was no more. And M had been silent ever since the cartel’s leader had been killed when her private jet was blown up as it was taxiing down the runway.
Elena Martin waved at Bree from the other side of a glass wall. The founder and CEO of the Bluestone Group was talking on her phone and nodding. Two large cardboard boxes rested on the table in front of her.
Martin, wearing a sharply cut gray pantsuit, had shoulder-length light brown hair and a no-nonsense style that Bree loved. A former investigator with the Defense Intelligence Agency, Martin was also an entrepreneurial visionary who, after leaving the military and her marriage, had built Bluestone into one of the top private security firms in the country by aggressively recruiting top law enforcement professionals like Bree.
Martin was demanding but generous. What more could you want in a boss?
She ended her phone call as Bree pushed open the door and said, “Hello, Elena. Am I early?”
Martin smiled, stood, and extended her hand. “Bree,” she said. “How good to see you.” The two shook, and Martin gestured for Bree to sit. “I saw there’s been another Family Man killing. Alex must be busy.”
“Up to his eyeballs, as our boys, Ali and Damon, like to say,” Bree said, sitting.
“Any leads?”
“None that I’ve heard,” she said, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Because he doesn’t share much with me about the case. He can’t.”
“Understood,” Martin said, also sitting down. “The whole thing’s just wrong. On another, happier note, I read your report on the Wallace Industries investigation. Well done.”
“Thank you. It didn’t take me long to figure out who was embezzling from their research fund.”
“Well, they couldn’t figure it out, and Ken Wallace himself called yesterday to say how pleased they were with the results of your work,” Martin said. “He also gave us a hefty contract to examine his company’s security protocol worldwide, which I believe calls for a hefty bonus for you in your next paycheck, Ms. Stone.”
Bree was happily surprised. “Thank you, Elena. I didn’t expect that, but I’m not going to turn it down if you’re offering.”
“Who would? And I’m insisting,” Martin said. She steepled her fingers. “You were the one.”
Raising her eyebrows, Bree said, “The one?”
Martin pointed to the two boxes on the conference table. “The first and only one I thought of when this delicate case came our way. We have a client with very deep pockets who wishes to remain deeply anonymous.”
“Do you know the client?”
“I know the client’s representative but not the client, no.”
“What am I doing?” Bree said, reaching for the boxes. “Where am I going?”
Martin put her hand on Bree’s. “You need to sign a nondisclosure agreement.”
“Isn’t nondisclosure boilerplate in our contracts?”
“Not in this case,” Martin said. “The client’s nondisclosure agreement is punitive.”
“Punitive?”
“If anything leaks, you and I and the firm could be sued for damages.”
Bree frowned at that. “Elena, I’m not saying anything is going to leak, but—”
“Don’t worry,” Martin said. “I’m taking out an insurance policy to cover any damages we might incur from this case.”
“Is the contract worth it?”
“Yes, and you have no idea what it might mean down the road for you, for me, and for Bluestone if we can prove ourselves with this case.” Martin slid three documents across the table to Bree. “Sign if you’re in. If not, no problem, I can find someone less talented to do the job for a smaller piece of the company’s future.”
Bree hesitated for a moment, then smiled as she found a pen in her purse. “Well done yourself, Elena. You got me hook, line, and sinker.”
“Thank you, Bree,” Martin said. “I’d hoped that would work.”
Chapter
9
After Bree signed the NDA, Elena Martin left for another meeting. Bree took the two cardboard boxes into her office and locked the door behind her.
She removed her jacket and got out a pad of paper and her phone in case she wanted to take photographs for later reference. Bree opened the first file and was intrigued to see it held the records of a lawsuit from several years before; the file was stamped DISMISSED and SEALED in red letters.
The case had been brought in Raleigh, North Carolina, by two women and a man she’d never heard of against a defendant whose name was instantly recognizable. It shocked her.
“Frances Duchaine,” she whispered. “The Frances Duchaine? Really?”
Bree read the first few sentences of the dismissed suit and her free hand traveled to her mouth. By the time she was halfway through the document, she was not only thoroughly engrossed but also angry. When she finished, she was furious and wanted to throw the file away. But then she went back to the start of the complaint and that stamped word DISMISSED and wondered how much, if anything, she’d read was true.
Bree forced herself to withhold judgment, calm down, and be open-minded. She set that file to one side and chose another from the box.
Before Bree opened it, though, she thought: What if it is true? But how could it be? Wouldn’t someone have known? Duchaine is not exactly a secretive billionaire. A billionaire, yes, but not some secretive financier. She’s a marketer at heart. She’s her own brand. In the public eye all the time. Someone should have known. But again, why would a woman as successful as Frances Duchaine take the risks alleged in the suit?
Bree looked back at the first suit and the date of its dismissal, then wrote down the name of the plaintiffs’ attorney—Nora Jessup—and her address. She also noted the superior court judge’s name—Eloise Carmichael. Only then did she open the second file.
It contained a stapled sheaf of photocopied press clippings about Frances Duchaine and her meteoric rise and sustained position in the world of high fashion. Bree knew some of her history, but she spent the next hour studying the woman in greater depth.
Duchaine had suddenly appeared twenty-five years earlier, plucked from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology by no less an icon than Tess Jackson.
At that time, Tess Jackson’s eponymous brand was growing so fast, she couldn’t keep up with design demands. Jackson had graduated from FIT herself and was a generous alum. She’d called the president of the school and asked to see the portfolios of the three senior students the faculty believed showed the most promise.
Jackson was scheduled to give a lecture at FIT a few days later. Of course, word of the three chosen students got out. Duchaine, at that time a sophomore, was not among them. But she heard Jackson was looking for a young designer and ambushed her near her car when she arrived at the school.
“Frances looked like a model then too,” Jackson told New York magazine ten years later. “In fact, that’s what I thought she had in her portfolio, headshots and such. And when she told me she was a sophomore in the design program, I said I was interested only in the most experienced students. Frances would not take no for an answer and said I should at least look at her drawings. So I did. Right there in the parking lot.”
Jackson was floored by what she saw, and on the spot, she offered Duchaine a job as her personal assistant to learn the business while she coached her on her designs. Not long after that, Duchaine’s fashion started to appear under Jackson’s label.
And not long after that, Duchaine became Jackson’s sometime lover.
