Chapter 13 #2
I pulled the business card for Stella’s out of my bag. “Do you remember seeing this? Did you go there?”
Zachary looked at it. It seemed to be hard for him to concentrate. Or maybe his memory was shot.
It was even possible he might have a concussion. Mendoza hadn’t mentioned it, but maybe he didn’t know, either.
“I think,” Zachary whispered, “maybe…?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Mendoza gave me a look and I dropped the card back into my purse. “You mentioned Tatiana. Who’s she?”
Zachary’s eyes got that vague look again, that indicated he was trying to remember. His pupils were tiny, probably a result of whatever was going into his arm from the clear bag hanging above his bed.
“A girl. I met her…” He trailed off.
“At the club? Stella’s?”
“Yeah…” After a second he added, “Maybe.”
“OK.” Mendoza must have realized, as I had, that this wasn’t getting us any forwarder. “Have some rest. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Everything at the office is fine. Rachel is taking care of the dog. I’ll take her home with me. Edwina, not Rachel.”
The corners of Zachary’s lips turned up. At least I’d made him smile.
“You’ve missed some things while you’ve been laid up here,” I added. “Tonight Diana’s supposed to bring a hundred thousand dollars to the Arena downtown, in exchange for Steven. The ransom note came this morning.”
Zachary’s mouth dropped open.
“I’ll stop by in the morning and tell you all about it.”
He nodded.
“Get some rest,” Mendoza told him. “We’ll be back.”
Zachary nodded and closed his eyes obediently. We tiptoed toward the door and out.
Back in the parking lot, Mendoza said, “I’ll go see to the arrangements for tonight.”
“I’ll go pick up the dog and check in with Diana,” I said. “And if she wants my company, I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Hopefully that won’t happen,” Mendoza said, dashing all my hopes, “but if you’re there and you see me, pretend you don’t know who I am.”
Seriously? Was I that much of an embarrassment? “Why?”
He looked at me as if the answer was obvious. “Because I don’t want to be made for a cop. Just another hockey fan.”
Ah. Yes, that made sense.
“If I see you, I won’t bat so much as an eyelash,” I said. “You’ll be dead to me. I promise.”
His lips twitched. “You don’t have to go that far. Just ignore me. And tell Diana to do the same.”
I promised I would, and we went our separate ways. He headed for downtown to make arrangements, and I headed for the office to update Rachel and rescue Edwina.
Rachel was shocked and appalled, of course, when she heard what had happened to Zachary, and stated her intention to stop by the hospital later to spend some time with him. “I can’t believe his own mother wouldn’t be there with him. Why, if he was my baby…!”
I nodded. “It’s horrible. Did you know that his mother kicked him out? Did he tell you?”
“I wondered,” Rachel said. “I saw all the clothes in the back of his car. And his computer. And some other belongings. It looked like he was carrying most of his life around in that car. But I didn’t want to ask and make him feel bad.”
I nodded. I’d noticed the clothes, too—I had assumed he was planning to do laundry, so I hadn’t even been as quick on the uptake as Rachel—as well as the pizza box in the office: the same pizza box he’d taken home for dinner two nights ago.
I should have figured it out sooner than I did.
“We’re going to have to work something out.
He’ll be in the hospital for another day or two, but when he gets out—with cuts and bruises and a punctured lung—we can’t have him sleeping in his car. ”
Rachel agreed. “That wouldn’t be good for him.”
“He can stay here, I guess. Once we figure out what’s going on with Steven and the Russian girl, and there’s no danger in it. Although I’d prefer for him to be somewhere safer. And more comfortable.” More comfortable than both the car and the office couch.
Rachel nodded.
“I can’t take him to the Apex with me,” I said. “If his mother had a problem with him working for me, she definitely wouldn’t appreciate it if he moved in with me. And anyway, I only have the one bedroom.”
“I have two,” Rachel said. “I could take him in, if he wanted. But he’s a grown man. He’d probably prefer his own place.”
He probably would. “We’ll have to talk to him about it, I guess. Once he’s out of the hospital and he can think straight again. Right now, he’s too out of it to string more than a couple of words together.”
Rachel tsked.
“We did find the place where we think he was last night. We went to the Russian grocery store he told me about, and the clerk said he’d been there.
And there was this business card on the bulletin board.
” I pulled it out of my purse and put it on Rachel’s desk.
“We went there, but it was closed up tight. But just as we were about to leave, this car drove up.”
I told Rachel about the two men and the three young women. Her lips pursed as she listened, and after a second she started clacking on the computer keyboard. “The place belongs to someone called Stella Ivanov. Hence the name, I guess.”
I nodded.
“She’s owned it a couple of years. Bought it off a corporation called BGH. Got a good deal on it, too.”
Good for her.
Rachel leaned back on the office chair. It creaked. “Let me guess. You’re going there tonight, when they close, to see if you can get a better look at the girls.”
The thought had crossed my mind. However— “I’m not sure I’ll be able to. It depends on how long this operation at the Arena takes. I have to call Diana next, and see if she wants moral support.”
Rachel refrained from rolling her eyes, but I could see that she wanted to. “Just tell her you don’t want to miss the excitement, Gina. You don’t have to fib to the person who hired you.”
I guess I didn’t. But it still seemed more polite to couch the request as me doing her a favor rather than her doing me one.
“At any rate, I don’t know how long I’ll be there. I guess it depends on what happens. Mendoza is making arrangements, so I guess they’re hoping to catch someone in the act of picking up the money. It could take some time. And I don’t know how late the club stays open.”
“Later than the Arena,” Rachel said. “My guess is you’ll have time to do both. Unless you plan to get some sleep at some point tonight.”
I hadn’t really thought about that part of it. I’d been up early this morning. If I went to the Arena, and then to Stella’s to lie in wait and watch when the two Russian men and the three girls left, and then perhaps follow them home, I might be looking at tomorrow night before I got any sleep.
On the other hand, if I didn’t do it tonight, there was no guarantee I’d get to do it at all.
They were there tonight. They might not be there tomorrow.
The fact that I’d been there asking questions, on top of Zachary having been there last night, might mean that they’d suspend operations for a while.
By the time I got there later, they may have closed up shop and left, if it came to that.
“I think I’d better try,” I told Rachel, and explained my reasoning.
She nodded. “Would you like me to come along? For company? Or moral support?”
I blinked. I hadn’t expected her to offer to do that, but it was nice of her. “Are you sure you want to? I’m not paying you to do field work.” Just office administration.
“You’re not paying me at all right now,” Rachel pointed out. “The only one of us who’s getting paid is Zachary, and he’s in the hospital. If I can help figure out who put him there, I’d like to.”
“That’s really nice of you,” I said. “Bring binoculars.”
“Anything else?”
“Dark clothes. Something you don’t mind getting dirty, or getting ripped. We might be crawling around in the trees.”
She looked at me. If I haven’t mentioned it, Rachel is about fifteen years older than me, in her mid-fifties, and not skinny.
“Not in them,” I clarified. “We’re not climbing. Just hanging out under them. Where we can see the back door of the club when theye take the girls out.”
Rachel nodded. “Give me a call when you’re ready to go. I’ll meet you there.”
I warned her that it could be late. “Maybe we’ll open late tomorrow. It’s not like anyone’s beating down our doors.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Rachel said, and pushed her chair back. “Take the dog with you.”
I planned to. She was looking at me expectantly, and wagged her tail hopefully when I turned her way. “Time to go. Car ride.”
She jumped up, grinning happily, her doggie tongue lolling. “Mendoza gave her to me,” I told Rachel as we all headed for the door.
“I know. Yesterday morning.”
“Permanently. Araminta Tucker doesn’t want her. She wanted Edwina taken to the pound. Can you imagine? So Mendoza told me I could keep her.”
We both watched as Edwina pranced out the door and over to the bare ground under the small tree where she liked to do her business.
“Better you than me,” Rachel said, and headed for her car. “Call me.”
I assured her I would, and then I scooped Edwina up and put her in the car so Rachel wouldn’t run over her—or she wouldn’t get spooked by the car coming at her and take off out of the parking lot and down the street.
That done, I locked up the office and drove the two of us to the nearest pet store, where I bought food and snacks and another couple of bowls so Edwina could have a set at the office and a set at home.
“Welcome home,” I told her when I put her down in the foyer of the penthouse.
“I know you’ve been here before.” Last night, and yesterday morning after Griselda Grimshaw’s murder.
“You might remember. Or maybe you were too distraught at the death of your human. But this is your permanent home now. Griselda’s gone, and Araminta doesn’t want you.
And I’m not giving you to the pound. So it’s going to be you and me.
Here. And at the office. I’ll take good care of you, I promise. ”
Or the best care I knew how, anyway. She was my first dog. She’d just have to deal with any mistakes I made.
I looked around. “I’m sorry there’s no yard.
” Maybe I needed to rethink this penthouse business.
I liked living here. It was a nice change from the house in Hillwood, which had so much space I didn’t need, now that there was just me.
And besides, it had been nice to take over David’s love nest, snubbing my nose at him, even if he was dead and probably didn’t have any idea what I was doing. But if Edwina needed a yard…
“We’ll take a walk after I feed you,” I said. “Get some exercise. It’ll be good for both of us.”
Edwina wagged her little stub of a tail and headed for the living room. In the doorway, she turned and looked at me over her shoulder.
I lifted the bag of dog food and bowls more securely and followed.