Damage Control (18 page)

36

S
HE LAY ON
her back, staring up at the roof of a car. A woman leaned over her, talking. Dana’s head felt like it was splitting down the middle. When she tried to sit up, the woman put a hand firmly on her chest. Dana felt something over her mouth and nose and tried to remove it. The woman grabbed her hand. “You’re in an ambulance. We’re transporting you to the hospital. Do you feel pain anywhere? What about your chest? Are you having trouble breathing?”

She was wearing a mask. She felt the cool flow of oxygen. Though she heard the woman speaking, her mind was not assimilating the information. She recalled hearing a loud roar and feeling a rush of energy, as if she were being pushed from behind by a huge wave. It had knocked her forward, swept her up, and dropped her violently to the concrete.

“That cement barrier and pillar took most of the force,” the woman said. Dana reached up and felt a bandage across her forehead. “You struck your head pretty good. I’m afraid we couldn’t find your shoes.” Dana looked down at her bare feet. She had gauze wrapped around her lower legs. The synapses in her brain continued to trigger memories. She recalled being facedown, feeling the cold concrete against her cheek, shards of metal and crystals of glass raining from the sky amid a deafening cacophony of bells, beeps, and whistles in the airport garage. There had been sirens.

The paramedic pulled open Dana’s eyelids and shone a bright light in her eyes. “I’m checking the dilation of your pupils.” The powerful light blinded her. “Are you having any blurred vision?”

Dana’s neck felt stiff and sore. She remembered the man, the Good Samaritan. Fred Jeffries. “The man in the car,” she mumbled through the mask.

The paramedic shook her head. “Are you having any trouble breathing, any discomfort in your chest?”

Dana put her head back against the pillows. “The man in the car,” she said again, her voice muffled.

“Just try to relax,” the woman said.

Tears rolled from the corners of Dana’s eyes, diverted by the plastic cinched tightly to her face. The ambulance slowed and turned. Out the back window, Dana saw a sign for the emergency entrance to Highline Community Hospital in Burien. The ambulance stopped beneath a covered entry. The back doors were flung open. Two paramedics pulled the stretcher out the back, revealing a gunmetal-gray sky. “My bag?” Dana asked, panicked.

The female paramedic reached into the ambulance and handed it to her. “It’s right here. Nobody was going to take that from you. You had a death grip on it when we arrived.”

M
ICHAEL LOGAN HURRIED
down the hall, nearly jogging. During their short telephone conversation, Dana had said only that there had been an explosion and she was in the hospital. She did not want to call her mother. Would Logan come? From the tone of her voice, Logan sensed there was something more, something Dana was not going to tell him over the telephone. Two minutes after hanging up, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and threw his leather jacket into the Austin Healey.

When he reached the door to her hospital room, he knocked twice before pushing it open. She sat upright in the bed with a piece of gauze across her forehead. Though she looked battered and bruised, she was in better shape than his mind had conjured on the drive to the hospital. A nurse stood taking her temperature and blood pressure. Dana smiled when she saw him. Logan let out a sigh of relief. Then he turned to give her and the nurse a moment of privacy. After the nurse left the room, he walked to the bed.

Dana spoke as he approached. “I need you to get me out of here.”

Logan shook his head. “I spoke to the nurses. They want to keep you at least overnight. They’re monitoring you for a concussion and possible internal bleeding.”

She threw back the sheet and started to lower her legs over the side of the bed. She had bandages on her shins. “I can’t stay overnight. I need to get home.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy. I sent a police car to watch the house, just as you asked. Now tell me what happened.”

She shook her head. “Someone blew up my car.”

“I know,” he said. “I called the SeaTac Police Department on the drive over here and spoke to the detective who responded.” The detective had told Logan they’d descended on the place like an army unit, concerned that the explosion was some sort of terrorist attack. The initial indications were that someone had used C4 and a device set to detonate when Dana’s car engine started. “Whoever set it up was a pro,” the detective had said. “He wasn’t messing around.”

“Then you know that you have to get me out of here,” Dana said.

“Do you know who did it?”

“Get me out of here,” she said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

The tone of her voice told Logan she
needed
to leave, that she did not feel safe. “I can put police officers outside your door.”

She got out of the bed and walked toward the bathroom. Her hospital gown splayed open, and she reached behind to pull it together. She removed her bag from a closet in the room and emptied the contents on the bathroom counter. “Come in here,” she said.

She stood at the sink, holding the half-eaten Snickers bar. It looked to have melted. She peeled away the remainder of the paper and rinsed the gooey mess under the faucet. As the chocolate and caramel fell away, Logan saw the earring. She looked up at him. “This is important. More important than we realized. I’ll tell you everything. But first I want to take you someplace.”

“Where?”

She shook her head. “I have to show you.”

Logan nodded. “All right, I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and walked from the room.

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
, he pulled the Austin Healey to the curb and got out to open the passenger door. A nurse stood next to Dana, who sat in a wheelchair beneath a darkening gray sky that had all the indicators of an impending heavy rain. The wheelchair was a small concession to hospital protocol. Logan had to sign a consent form acknowledging that he was taking Dana against the doctor’s protestations.

Dana grimaced as she lowered herself into the car and bent her legs into the cramped front seat. Her clothes were ripped, torn, and stained. The nurse handed Logan a bag with pain medication from the hospital pharmacy. Then he walked to the driver’s side and started the engine.

“What time is it?” she asked. Her watch had stopped.

“A bit after nine.”

Dana took out her cell phone. “I need to call my mother and tell her to keep Molly home today. I’m sure she has anyway.”

“Where to?” Logan asked.

“Montlake.”

“Can I ask why?”

“I have something to show you. Don’t drive directly there. Take a couple of detours.”

Logan decided not to debate the matter with her further. In the wake of Marshall Cole’s murder, he knew things were not as they seemed. He had no reason to doubt she knew why. He made several detours and took back streets off the freeway. He saw no indication that they were being followed. When they reached Montlake, he followed her directions, made a right onto Interlaken, and crossed over a one-lane bridge.

“It’s the colonial on the left, the last house before the arbo-retum. Drive down the driveway,” she said.

He pulled down a steep driveway to a white colonial with hunter-green shutters.

“There’s a side yard just past the house. Park under the carport. The car won’t be seen from the street, and there’s an exit out the back.”

Logan drove beneath a white trellised carport and followed the driveway to the back of the property. He parked in front of a freestanding garage. Unlike the house, the garage needed a coat of paint. One of the panes of glass in the door had been broken. Dana exited the car with some difficulty, not waiting for Logan to assist her. She grimaced and held her ribs.

Logan came around the side. “Are you okay?”

She took a breath, grimaced again, and walked to a wooden gate. She waited for Logan to reach over and unlatch it. The backyard was an expansive green lawn surrounded by dogwood and maple trees. Behind the property fence, the Washington Park Arbo-retum offered a green canopy. In the corner of the yard, a hot tub sat beneath a redwood gazebo. Logan followed Dana to a side door and took the keys from her. Before opening the door he checked around the frame for any indication of wires that could lead to a detonator. Finding none, he opened it, and followed her inside. If the disarray inside the house surprised her, Dana did not reveal it. He sensed from their brief conversation at the hospital that she had expected it and had prepared herself. This trip had been for his benefit.

Logan followed her from room to room, stepping around her possessions, strewn books and pictures and emptied drawers. She showed little emotion. He followed her upstairs. When they reached what he presumed to be her bedroom, she stood at the windows, looking out at the trees, their branches seeming to gently envelop the room.

“I used to love to sit here with Molly and look out this window,” she said. He noted that she had used the past tense. “It made me feel like being a kid in a tree house again, you know? Did you ever have a tree house growing up?” When he didn’t immediately respond, she turned and looked at him.

“Not growing up, no,” he said.

She turned back to the window. “James and I asked our father to help us build one. He hired a contractor instead. It had a trapdoor and a rope ladder. Nicest one in the neighborhood. My father never skimped. I used to like to go there and sit and think. I guess I still do.”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She continued to gaze out the window. “I found out why my brother is dead.” She turned and handed him the earring. “The markings on the back are the artist’s initials. It’s a trademark. Reputable jewelers won’t copy it. The artist’s name is William Welles. He lives on Maui.”

“That’s where you went?” he asked, rolling over the earring to see what appeared to be two interlocking “W”s.

“The earring is one of a kind. I thought if he had records, he could tell us who he made it for.”

“Did he?”

“No,” she said. Then she looked up at him. “But he remembered her.”

37

E
LIZABETH
M
EYERS SAT
on the bench seat in a corner of the family kitchen. One of three in the compound, this kitchen was closest to their living quarters on the second floor. It was also rarely used. Her husband preferred to eat either at restaurants or at his desk. Though there was a stocked refrigerator, Elizabeth rarely opened it. There was no need. She had a staff to do those things. When she wanted something to eat or drink, she asked for it, and it materialized. If she said, “I’d like a Coke,” someone brought her one. “Make it a root beer,” and someone changed it. “A tuna sandwich. A steak.” Anything she wanted, she got. The staff was never far away.

She pulled her bathrobe around her and sipped a cup of chamomile tea. Carmen Dupree, a rail-thin black woman with a shock of gray hair, stood humming and peeling a green apple. Carmen had worked for the Meyers family for the better part of thirty years because she could bake an apple pie that Robert Meyers III could not live without. As Carmen liked to tell the story—and she told it often—her pie had taken first place at a county fair in Seattle the year Robert Meyers was stumping the state, in search of the black vote for his run at governor. Meyers had been an honorary judge at the fair and insisted on a photo with the winner. Carmen wasn’t dumb. She knew Meyers was more interested in a photo opportunity with a poor, dark-skinned black woman from slave roots, but she also knew that once he ate her apple pie, he would be hooked—everyone was, especially men. It was never enough to keep them around full-time, but, as with sex, they always returned for it.

Robert Meyers was no different. He sought out the recipe, even offered to buy it. No fool, Carmen refused to let it part her lips. When Meyers was elected governor, he sought her out again, this time dangling a job as bait. It was another photo opportunity, and Carmen was once again a prop. She didn’t care. She said she liked to imagine what her mother and grandmother would say, knowing that a Dupree was working for one of the wealthiest families in all of Washington. Then she would chuckle and answer her own question. “Probably that the size of the house only meant there was more house to clean.”

Carmen popped a slice of the apple into her mouth and savored it with her eyes closed, as if letting it melt. Concluding that it met with her approval, she continued cutting razor-thin pieces, letting them fall into the center of the second of two freshly made pie crusts. The first pie baked in one of the three ovens. Carmen spoke to Elizabeth as she peeled the skin from another apple. “It’s a shame to waste the skin. That’s where you find the nutrients. But it can be bitter, and that takes away from the flavor of the cinnamon. And cinnamon”—she looked over at Elizabeth—“is what makes an apple pie, apple pie.”

Elizabeth smiled in reply.

Carmen cut the last of the slices onto the mound in the uncooked pie crust, then put down the knife. She checked the clock on the wall, wiped a spot on her forehead with the back of her hand, and walked to the ovens, turning on the light to study the pie through the window. She gently eased open the door as if worried she’d wake what was inside. “Golden brown. Not a bit darker, or the crust can crumble on you,” she said.

She donned two oven mitts and gently removed the pie. The hidden ingredients passed down through generations of Dupree pie makers overwhelmed the room with the aroma of vanilla, cinnamon, and baked apples. She placed the pie on the counter and smiled down at it as if it were a newborn baby. The pie was as much art as delicacy. The crust crisscrossed in a perfect grid pattern. Baked apple oozed to the surface through the squares.

“Would you like a slice of pie, Mrs. Meyers? Need to let it cool a spell, but it will be ready in no time.”

Elizabeth looked up from her cup of tea. No matter how many times she asked, Carmen refused to call her Elizabeth. Her husband had made a point that first names were not appropriate, and the staff abided by it. “No, thank you, Carmen. It does smell wonderful, though.”

“You need to keep up your strength, Mrs. Meyers.” Carmen leaned over the pie. “It’s going to be a busy year for you and Mr. Meyers. Busy, indeed.”

“Well said, Carmen.”

Elizabeth dropped her cup. It shattered on the tile floor, tea splattering.

Robert Meyers stood in the doorway, cinching tight a silk bathrobe. Carmen calmly walked to a closet in the servants’ pantry and retrieved a broom, dustpan, and mop, sweeping up the shards of porcelain. “Don’t cut your feet, now, Mrs. Meyers. You just stay put.”

“I’ve been telling Mrs. Meyers she needs to eat better, but she doesn’t seem to want to listen to me.” Meyers shuffled across the white-tiled floor in bedroom slippers, careful to avoid the tea casualty. “I can get an entire company to move with just a word, but I can’t get my own wife to eat. What do you think about that?”

Carmen used a white towel to wipe up the tea that had spattered the side of the bench seat. “I wouldn’t know nothing about that, Mr. Meyers. I ain’t never had a problem eatin’, or getting my men to eat.”

Meyers went over to where his wife sat and stroked her hair. “?I awoke to find you missing. I was worried. Having trouble sleeping again?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Well, it’s probably the tea. You know caffeine keeps you awake. You should be drinking warm milk. Isn’t that right, Carmen?”

“Chamomile tea don’t have but a bit of caffeine, Mr. Meyers, and I wouldn’t know about not sleeping, neither.” Carmen wrung the wet rag over a sink and ran it under hot water. “I’ve never had trouble sleeping, and I drink a cup of tea or more every night. Tea soothes the body.”

Meyers continued to stroke his wife’s hair.

“Can’t speak for the soul,” Carmen added quietly.

“What’s that?” Meyers asked, turning toward her.

“Oh, nothing, Mr. Meyers, just mumbling to myself as I do.”

Meyers walked to the counter, broke off a piece of the pie crust, and nibbled on it. “So, what were you two ladies discussing at this late hour?”

Carmen ran the towel under the water, wrung it out again, and walked back to finish wiping down the table and floor. “Woman talk, Mr. Meyers; nothing that would interest a man.”

Meyers turned from the pie and leaned against the granite counter, his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe. “Well, that makes me all the more interested. It sounds like something secretive and exciting.”

Carmen shook her head. She had her back to him as she finished wiping down the table. “Nothing secretive or exciting about it. Just this and that.”

“Hmm. Well, I think I’ll have a slice of pie, even if Mrs. Meyers won’t join me. Do you think it’s cooled enough?”

“It could cool some more.”

“Just the same, I think I’ll have my slice, now that I’m awake. Cut me a piece, won’t you?”

Carmen left the wet rag on the table and wiped her hands dry on the light blue apron around her waist. She walked to the counter and picked out a sharp nine-inch knife from a wooden block. Meyers remained stationed at the counter. She looked up at him, knife in hand. “Excuse me, Mr. Meyers, but if you’re fixin’ to have a piece of pie, you’ll need to let me cut it.”

Meyers moved to his left, allowing Carmen just enough room to step past. She cut through the outer crust of the pie slowly, careful not to break the rest of the grid and risk caving in the entire pie. As she moved her hand to make the second cut, Meyers reached out and took her wrist. Elizabeth looked up from the table.

“You have to give a man a bigger slice of pie than that.” Meyers moved Carmen’s hand to the right. “You never want to cheat a man out of something he has become accustomed to having.”

Carmen’s focus remained on the pie. She waited patiently until Meyers released her wrist. When he did, she looked up at him. “My mother said you always give a man what he deserves. Just what he deserves,” she said. Then she lowered the knife, and her gaze, and cut the slice of pie exactly where she had intended.