Chapter 14
Fourteen
The Gulch, where the penthouse is located, isn’t more than half a dozen blocks from the Arena. Diana rang my doorbell at ten-thirty, and I headed downstairs and got into her car. “Is that it?”
There was a bag in the backseat. Your standard duffel, with a shoulder strap and a zipper.
She nodded, her jaw set.
“A hundred thousand dollars doesn’t take up a lot of space, does it?”
She glanced at me. “It’s newspaper.”
Right. “But that’s what a hundred thousand dollars in cash would look like, if it was stuffed into a bag. Right?”
Diana shrugged. “If we don’t know, I don’t think whoever’s picking it up will.”
She had a point. “Did Mendoza give it to you?”
“A uniformed officer dropped it off, with Jaime’s compliments. And the suggestion that I should leave you home tonight.”
“I hate him,” I said.
Diana smirked. “Sure you do. Anyway, it was too late. I had already agreed to take you with me.”
“You could have changed your mind.”
She shrugged. “I wanted the company. This is weird. And a little scary.”
It was weird. And a little scary. “Are you worried that Steven’s actually in danger?”
“Not so much,” Diana admitted, as we took the turn from Twelfth Avenue onto Charlotte, into downtown proper. “There’s no reason to think he’s in danger. Right? He was with the girl willingly.”
He had been. At least as far as I’d been able to tell.
“Did Mendoza happen to mention that I got a phone call from Steven in the middle of the night?”
“No,” Diana said, with a sharp glance at me. “How come you didn’t mention it yourself?”
“When I saw you this morning, I didn’t know about it.”
She looked confused, and I added, “It came in on the office phone. I didn’t get it until I got to the office this morning. After I left your house.”
Outside the window, the State Capitol building went by on the left. Diana signaled to turn right on Fifth. “And you didn’t think to call and tell me?”
“I called Mendoza,” I said.
“Mendoza isn’t married to Steven!”
Again, she had a point. “I’m sorry. After we’re done here, we can go up there and I’ll let you listen to it.
It isn’t very long. Just a few sentences.
He said he’d recognized me yesterday—two days ago now—and that you must be worried.
And that he wanted me to tell you something.
But before he could get it out, someone came in and caught him.
The girl, I guess. He said ‘Nothing,’ and hung up.
I assume she asked him what he was doing. ”
Diana’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Did she hurt him?”
“Not that I could hear,” I said. “He didn’t sound scared of her. Just like he didn’t want her to know that he’d been trying to get a message to you.”
“Why didn’t he just call me? Instead of you?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “He didn’t want to deal with you directly?
You’d ask questions he didn’t want to answer?
Or maybe he just didn’t want to talk to anyone in person.
I wondered why he’d called the office in the middle of the night—it was around one in the morning when the call came in.
He had to know nobody would be there. And Mendoza said that maybe that was the point.
He wanted to leave a message, not talk to a real person.
If he’d called either of us on our cell phones, we would have picked up.
Even if it was the middle of the night. Especially you. ”
Diana nodded. Her hands had relaxed on the wheel again. Up ahead, we could see the plaza in front of the Arena, and the barricades blocking Fifth Avenue to vehicular traffic south of Broadway.
“Maybe we should have called a cab,” I said. “It’s going to be hard to find somewhere to park.”
“Jaime said to pull behind the barricade.” She drove across the intersection and straight up to it.
The uniformed cop on duty took a couple of steps toward the car, his mouth opening.
He was getting ready to tell us to beat it, I’m sure.
Diana rolled down her window. She didn’t even have to speak.
The young man took one look at her and nodded.
“Just a second, ma’am.” He hustled to pull the barricade out of the way so Diana could drive through and up to the curb.
A car that tried to sneak in behind us was summarily waved off, and left with an irritated blast of the horn.
Diana cut the engine and sat for a second without speaking or moving. The dashboard clock showed that we still had some time to spare before eleven, so I didn’t push her to move more quickly. We’d still get inside by the deadline. As for what happened after that…
“Have you gotten any further instructions about this?” I asked. If she had, she hadn’t told me about them. And the note this morning had been vague. Just ‘bring the money to the Arena,’ but nothing about what to do with it once it got there.
She shook her head. “I guess we just walk in with the bag and see what happens.”
I guessed so. “Are you ready?”
“No,” Diana said. “But I don’t think I’ll be any more ready if we sit here for another five minutes. Let’s just get it over with.”
My feelings exactly. I opened my door and got out. Diana did the same, and reached into the back seat for the duffel bag. The young cop had stepped back to guard the barricade again, but he gave us a nod as we headed inside.
The guard on the door didn’t ask us if we had tickets, he just swung the door open and let us into the building.
With my newfound PI skills, I deduced that he was probably another cop—this one undercover in a Bridgestone Arena uniform—and he was expecting us.
Diana gave him a pleasant smile, and we headed across the lobby just as the doors to the interior opened.
It was like opening the flood gates on Percy Priest Lake and letting the water burst over the dam. They frothed out, a mass of people in team colors. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A surging mass of humanity aiming for the doors to the outside.
I moved a little closer to Diana and looped my arm through hers, keeping the duffel bag between us.
In this kind of crush, it would be only too easy to snatch it out of her hand and melt into the crowd before she even realized the bag was gone.
And I was damned if I’d let whoever was behind this get away without giving us a good look at his or her face.
Even if there was nothing but newspaper in the bag.
Mendoza’s face floated out of the crowd.
He was scanning, and for a second, he met my eyes straight on.
I almost forgot that I wasn’t supposed to know him; it was only at the last second that I remembered that he didn’t want me to give any indication that I knew who he was.
But he was close to us. Maybe he’d realized, as I had, that snatching the bag in the melee as everyone was fighting their way to the exits, had been the plan all along.
Another familiar face floated out of the crowd, just in front of me. It took a second of frowning concentration before I was able to put a name with it. “Ms. Tucker? What are you doing here?”
She looked up at me. Standing, she was even smaller than she’d appeared yesterday, sitting cross-legged on her couch. Hardly more than five feet, if that. Both Diana and I towered over her.
She must have had the same problem I had, in placing a familiar face in unfamiliar surroundings, because she looked from me to Diana and back to me for a second before she said, “I like hockey.”
I knew that. Or I guess I’d known it. She’d been watching a hockey game on TV yesterday, when I’d knocked on her door. If I hadn’t been so distracted by all the people, and the noise, and the seriousness of the situation, I would have remembered that.
Araminta Tucker glanced over her shoulder. “I thought I saw that handsome Detective Mendoza earlier.”
She probably had. “Maybe he likes hockey too,” I said lightly. “Ms. Tucker, this is my friend Diana Morton. Diana, Araminta Tucker.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” Diana said automatically, her eyes still scanning the crowd, and then the name seemed to register. “I’m sorry… Araminta Tucker? You own the house my husband rented in Crieve Hall?”
Araminta nodded. “Yes, dear. He called me off a notice I posted at the university. Said he was looking for a place for his daughter.”
“Steven doesn’t have a daughter,” Diana said.
Araminta looked at her, bright bird eyes shining. “So your friend told me.”
“Mendoza said he stopped by earlier today to show you the drawing of the girl,” I said. “What did you think of the likeness?”
She smiled. “Oh, very good. That’s just what she looked like.”
Good to know. At least we had that going for us. A good likeness. If she was here, and came close enough to us that we could see her, we’d recognize her.
Probably.
“We should let you go,” I said. “It’s late, and you have a long drive home.
” Had she driven here herself? Or maybe the retirement community had a shuttle that took the old people to where they needed to go when they needed to go there?
“Oh, and if you happen to see Mendoza again, just pretend you don’t know him. ”
Her eyes danced. “How exciting! Is this a sting?”
“Between you and me,” I said, “we’re hoping that the Russian girl will be here, and we can catch her.”
“Oh, dear!” She looked around, her brows furrowed. “I’d better get home, so I won’t be detained.”
Since there was no way on earth anyone—especially Mendoza—would mistake her for a tall, blond, twenty-year-old Russian stripper, I didn’t think she was in any danger. But if anything happened, I wanted her out of the way, too. So I nodded. “Good luck, Ms. Tucker. Drive carefully.”
She scurried off toward the exit, her yellow and navy team jersey blending with the crowd.