False move, p.3
False Move, page 3
‘Hey! Try not to upset the locals,’ she suggested.
‘It’s a bit late for that.’ It wasn’t long ago that Po had kicked a would-be extortionist out of Portland, not to mention doled out some heavy-handed punishment to the hitters the guy had brought in to deal with Po, and they all hailed from Boston. Hopefully they could leave town before their enemies learned Po had made an incursion of their home territory. Despite trying to keep a low profile, they had chosen the location on the wide thoroughfare opposite the Central Boston Public Library for the purpose of visibility. It wasn’t to advertise their presence to the local hoodlums, but so that Estelle Lacey couldn’t miss them.
Last night, before she’d arrived home on Cumberland Avenue, Tess had rung the number given to her by her mom on the slip of paper. A brief conversation ensued, and while Po pulled his Mustang onto the ramp outside Tess’s home above an antiques and curios shop, she’d assured Stella that they would meet her in Boston. Speaking to Stella had been like conversing with a stranger, unsurprisingly, seeing as approaching three decades separated them from the little girls who used to play together during recess. As she waited, seated in the morning sunshine, Tess tried to mentally age the small, round-faced, buck-toothed and bespectacled child she once knew, casting her eye on any woman that approached to see if there was a match. When Stella arrived, Tess saw she was way off the mark.
Stella Lacey – correction Stella Dewildt, as she had married and taken her husband’s name – was wholly unlike the picture Tess had formed in her mind’s eye: she was beautiful. She was tall and slim, and her blond hair cascaded down her back. She wore a bolero jacket over a form fitting dress, and high-heels accentuated her height without affecting her bold gait. Po watched her approach with a hint of appreciation he hadn’t given any other passer-by, but perhaps Tess was projecting her envy on her partner. She sniffed loudly, and Po’s turquoise gaze slid to her. ‘You think this could be your friend?’
Tess shrugged. But she knew the attractive woman was Stella, even before she received a wave and the woman’s mouth twitched a nervous smile. Stella picked up pace. Tess stood, feeling underdressed in jeans and a sweater, and black leather bomber jacket, returning her old friend’s smile of greeting, and suspecting she looked equally as nervous. ‘Hi,’ she said, extending a hand.
Stella surprised her by stepping directly into a hug, and air-kissing her. Next she stepped back, appraising her at arm’s length. ‘Oh, wow, Tess! How long has it been?’
‘Too long,’ Tess said, but there was no sincerity in her words. She had expected to lay eyes on Stella and immediately slip back into a comfort mode with her childhood playmate, but this woman remained a stranger. She recognized nothing of the socially awkward Stella Lacey she’d once known.
‘You haven’t changed one little bit!’ Stella went on.
‘Thanks,’ said Tess, secretly fuming. ‘I have to admit, Stella, I wouldn’t have recognized you … you’re …’
Stella chuckled. Ran her hands down her front, wiggling her hips. ‘This isn’t the chubby girl you remembered.’ There wasn’t a jot of pride or egotism in her as she waved off her image. ‘Trust me, if it were my choice I’d be wearing jeans and sneakers too. They’re far more practical, right?’
Po grinned unabashedly at Tess’s flat expression. Stella was oblivious of slighting her. She checked for a spare chair.
‘We don’t have to sit out here,’ Tess offered, ‘if you prefer we can speak in private?’
‘No, no, here’s just perfect. In fact, I’m just about to bum a cigarette from your friend?’ She’d posed her words as an invitation to an introduction.
‘This is Nicolas Villere,’ Tess said. ‘He’s my partner.’
Stella wagged a finger between them, one eyebrow cocked in question.
‘Yes,’ Tess said. ‘In business and in our private lives.’
Po offered his hand: his knuckles were permanently ingrained with traces of engine oil. Stella didn’t balk at the idea of accepting his hand and shaking. ‘Stella,’ she said.
‘Most folks call me Po. Pleased to meetcha.’
‘That isn’t a Maine accent.’
‘I hail from Louisiana.’
‘As I thought; I had you pegged as a southern gentleman.’ She winked conspiratorially. ‘How’s about that cigarette, Po?’
‘F’sure.’ Po offered his pack, and once Stella had fed a cigarette to her lips, she cupped her palms around the lighter he held for her. Tess was tight-lipped. She sat: Stella could drag a chair over for herself. Except Po – the southern gentleman – stood and offered his seat. Tess glanced sharply at him, and he winked at her. ‘I think I should leave you girls to get reacquainted,’ he said, and the line of Tess’s mouth softened. He sauntered away, pluming blue smoke, while Stella set down her purse and got comfortable in his vacated chair. Po didn’t wander far. He stood at a respectful distance, one thumb hooked in his belt, seemingly still but alert to his surroundings.
‘You’ve done well for yourself, Tess,’ Stella commented with a nod at Po.
‘That depends on who you’re talking to,’ Tess replied. ‘My mom said your dad is missing and you want help to trace him.’
‘Directly to the point? You don’t want to catch up a little first?’
‘I thought we could do both at the same time.’
Stella’s face grew thoughtful. Their purpose for meeting wasn’t to swap anecdotes or memories. Tess wasn’t interested in how Stella had arrived at this point in her life unless it had any bearing on why Aaron Lacey had disappeared. She certainly had no intention of relating her story: she wouldn’t with any other client, so why start now with a girl she only shared a tenuous historical link to?
Stella took a few puffs on the cigarette, before she dabbed it out in the ashtray Po had earlier commandeered from a nearby table. She blinked a few times, and exhaled loudly. The cigarette had been her first in a while, or she was mentally preparing to get started on a troubling issue. She looked at Tess, starry eyed. ‘Do you remember my dad?’
‘Vaguely. He was my grandfather’s patrol partner, and I saw him a few times, but I don’t have any specific memories.’ She didn’t think her recollection from her granddad’s graveside was genuine; it could have been any of his colleagues that had picked her up while her parents paid their last respects.
‘He was a dyed-in-the-wool cop. He retired from the NYPD after twenty-five years, but that wasn’t of his choosing. He’d some medical issues that threatened to sideline him from active duty, and he wasn’t the kind of man to work from behind a desk.’
‘What kind of medical issues?’
‘None that’d explain his disappearance if that’s what you’re thinking? Trouble with his knees, an arthritic shoulder … age-related problems that were beginning to pile up. He immediately took another job with a security outfit, apparently he’d made contacts in the private industry during his law enforcement career and it was one of those who recruited him.’
‘He still works for the same company?’
‘Yes. At least he did until a week ago. If not for them, I wouldn’t have been aware my dad had gone missing.’
‘They told you?’
‘I haven’t been close with my dad in some years. Not since my mom divorced him. A representative of the security company contacted me when he failed to show up for work. I was listed as his next of kin, and they hoped I could tell them where he was.’
‘I’ll need the details of this company,’ said Tess.
‘I thought you might want to start with them.’ Stella lifted her purse off the table, and pulled out various sheets of paper. ‘I’ve also collated other details I thought you might find helpful: his home address, cell phone numbers, credit card records …’
Tess accepted the slim stack of papers, but didn’t study them. She folded her hands on top of them on the table. ‘You said your parents divorced?’
‘Yes. It’s possible that Dad has taken off with another woman. He never was a loyal husband to my mom, and now there’s nobody holding him back, well …’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘That he’d disappear with a woman for a few days?’ Stella snorted at the inevitability. ‘No I don’t. Not this time. When he disappeared in the past, he was never fully out of contact. He didn’t switch off his phone, and he never let down his employers, and always showed up for work. This time’s different, Tess. It’s almost as if he has deliberately cut all ties.’
‘It sometimes happens with men of a certain age.’
‘You think he’s having a mid-life crisis?’
‘It’s not unknown,’ said Tess, with a glimpse at Po. ‘I only mean that, well, maybe this time he’s more serious about things, and needs more thinking space. He’s been out of contact for a week?’
‘More like nine or ten days. According to his employers he failed to show for work last Monday, but they hadn’t been in contact with him since two days beforehand. He once gave me a key to his apartment in Manhattan, so I went there. As far as I could tell he hadn’t been home since at least the Friday before last.’ She indicated the stack of notes she’d made for Tess. ‘That’s how I managed to get hold of his credit card statements; they were unopened in his mailbox. Judging by the date stamp they’d been delivered after he disappeared on the Friday.’
The thought had crossed Tess’s mind how his daughter had gotten access to Lacey’s bank statements. It was a question she needn’t ask now. ‘So your dad’s apartment’s in Manhattan, but he was employed here in Boston?’
‘The security company’s based here, but my dad usually worked wherever contracts took him. But, yeah, they told me that prior to disappearing he was on a private security detail for a local client.’
‘They wouldn’t say who?’
‘No, they gave me some BS line about client confidentiality.’
‘Figures,’ said Tess, unconscious of the fact she had picked up some of her partner’s speech pattern in the couple of years they’d been together. She was confident she’d easily find out whom Aaron Lacey had been working for, not that it would necessarily tell where he’d gotten to since. ‘It’s only a guess that he went missing from here, rather than home, then?’
‘Or anywhere in between,’ Stella suggested.
‘You’ve thought of checking hospitals, right? I know it isn’t something you want to think about, but he could have gotten in an accident …’
‘I had no idea how to do that apart from going through the phonebook and checking with all the hospitals between here and Manhattan … It seemed like an endless task. Besides, I assumed that if he’d been involved in a serious accident somebody would’ve contacted me by now on his behalf. Right?’
Tess mentally shrugged. Stella was probably correct.
‘I did however do an online search,’ Stella went on, ‘and found this.’ She reached for the papers under Tess’s hand, and Tess allowed her to flick through them and tease out a folded sheet of paper. Tess opened it out and placed it flat between them. It was a print-out from a local news webpage, dated from the previous Sunday. Tess absorbed the headlines before glancing at Stella for clarification. The news article concerned a body found washed up on the strip of beach at Squantum Point where the Neponset River emptied into Massachusetts Bay, and identified as Ethan Brandon Prescott, a twenty-six-year-old male. ‘I find it worrying,’ said Stella.
‘Why?’ Tess again scoured the article for a clue. There was some conjecture that the discovery of the dead man could be related to reports of a gunfight two nights earlier, upstream near to Mattapan Station. The details were sketchy and the only injuries cited in the article were from blunt force trauma to the dead man’s skull. ‘This has no bearing on your dad’s disappearance as far as I can tell.’
‘Except for one thing,’ Stella pointed out. ‘Last time I spoke with him, my dad mentioned working with a younger guy called Ethan Prescott. What are the odds of this being a different man?’
Slim, Tess would bet.
SIX
‘So who’s the other blond?’
‘Beats me,’ said Hayden James with a brief glance at his partner, ‘but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’
Seated alongside him in a nondescript van, Megan Stein studied the young woman sitting across the table from Stella Dewildt with an envious eye. The ‘blond’ was dressed down, her fair hair unruly having been subject to the breeze gusting down the open plaza, but she was as equally pretty as the immaculately presented Stella; Megan immediately despised her, the way in which she despised most attractive people. She turned to briefly check out Hayden’s opinion of the woman, and despised the slow smile he showed her. Unconsciously she raised a hand to her cheek, concealing the twisted scar tissue that marred her from chin to left eye socket. Under her palm the flesh felt cold and dead, each lump and furrow a reason to hate those with flawless complexions. ‘She looks like trouble to me,’ she muttered.
Hayden shifted incrementally, and his gaze drifted from the two women to where a tall guy leaned nonchalantly against a nearby storefront, smoking a cigarette. The man was wiry and long-limbed, almost gangly, but there was nothing uncoordinated about his movements whenever he shifted his stance. Even from a distance, the guy appeared alert, though the only hint was in his sharp gaze as he observed passers-by. He looked like trouble, to Hayden; he appeared to be a man who expected danger at any moment and was prepared to meet it. ‘See that guy over there?’
‘Who?’ Megan spotted the guy even as she asked the question. ‘The red neck?’
‘I get the impression he’s with Dewildt’s girlfriend.’
‘He hasn’t looked at them once,’ Megan said, even as the target of interest watched the passing traffic.
‘Yeah,’ Hayden agreed. ‘That’s my point exactly. Two good-looking women like those, and he ain’t as much as raised an eyebrow in their direction.’
‘Maybe he’s gay. Or he isn’t into dumb blonds.’ Megan sucked air between her teeth.
Hayden again offered her a smile. Megan was short, solidly built, and dark haired, her complexion café au lait: Dewildt and her friend were her negatives. ‘You ask me, he’s purposefully not looking at them, so nobody puts them together. Pity we didn’t get here a minute earlier, we could’ve settled the question …’
They had tailed Stella from her hotel in the van, wrong-footed momentarily when she elected to walk rather than hail a cab, and they had to complete the one-way circuit of the street adjacent to the library whereas she’d cut across both streets to the plaza. By the time they were in position, parked so they could observe her from a safe distance, Stella had already been seated at the table, and smoking a cigarette. The tall guy dressed in denims, plaid shirt, and high-topped boots was already a fixture against the wall ten yards distant.
Discreetly, Megan aimed her phone at the guy, zooming the image on screen so that his upper torso and features were fully displayed, and took a series of photographs. With that done, she switched emphasis to the women conversing at the table and repeated the process, concentrating on the stranger. Done, she composed a quick message and sent the images as attachments back to their office. ‘If they’re in the system, we should get an ID on them in a New York minute,’ she told Hayden needlessly.
‘Yeah,’ said Hayden. Not everyone that Stella had met with in the past couple of days had earned similar attention, but they’d be fools to disregard the importance of this meeting. He’d already gained the impression that Stella had reached out for assistance in finding her father, and any extra set of eyes was a bonus to him, and ultimately to their employer. ‘While you’re on with control, see about getting another team out here. I want them on Stella, I don’t want to miss any opportunity with the new girl.’
‘We should stay tight to the daughter,’ Megan countered.
‘Lacey hasn’t reached out to her yet, and I don’t think he will any time soon. He’s no fool, he’ll know we are watching her, and won’t make direct contact. He cares too much about his kid to put her in danger. But he won’t feel the same for this new woman though; she could lead us directly to him.’
‘Or get in our damn way.’
‘Well …’
‘If she does, we move her?’
‘Lace killed Ethan and Mathers. He doesn’t get to walk away from this, even once we get the USB stick back. And we will get it back, and God help anyone who gets in our way.’
‘Is that your call, Hayden?’
‘Is anybody gonna object?’ Hayden turned and stared directly at Megan. Lace used to be a member of their team, as had been Ethan Prescott and Jacob Mathers. He’d killed both men in self-defense, when they had been trying to kill him. In retrospect, could they blame him for saving his own life? Yeah, Hayden thought, because he’d stepped over a line when he stole from their employer, and Ethan and Mathers had only been doing their damn jobs when he shot Mathers and later stove in Ethan’s skull with the butt of his pistol. Those actions had condemned him in Hayden’s judgment, and he was certain Megan had a similar strong opinion on Lacey’s just desserts: particularly when she’d been screwing Ethan. Megan rarely formed attachments with other people, she was a loner, but she had felt something for Ethan even if for the simple fact her ugly mug hadn’t put him off. If only she knew that Ethan had boasted to his male pals about using her: You don’t look at what’s on the mantle when you’re poking the fire, Ethan had grinned.
