Undercover Genius (12 page)

After lunch, I left EG with Mallard and set off on my spy
mission across the street. I took the back approach to hide where I was coming
from. The cellar door was still open. Workmen still gabbed inside. I wore
binoculars around my neck and took the back stairs to the attic as if I
belonged there. Who would suspect evil of a hippy-looking twerp, even if they
noticed me? Which they didn’t.

I ran a few trip wires. I saw no evidence that any work was
being done in the attic, so anyone coming up here was just being nosy. I hooked
up my wireless device and the silent alarm and camera. Basic tools of the trade.

Returning to my office, I worked up my next plan, which
would involve deserting EG yet again, now that Patra and Nick were in the house.
Feeling guilty, I checked with her in the kitchen. “Will you be okay doing your
homework while I run out for a while? You can pester Nick or Patra if you need
anything.”

“I’m good,” she declared, hopping down from a stool where
she’d been cleaning up on cookies. “Can I use your laptop?”

“The Dell, in my office, where Mallard can check to be
certain you aren’t ordering drones to intercept missiles.”

She made a rude noise. My sister might be a genius, but
she’s still only nine.

For my expedition into conserva-burbia, I opted for khakis
and blazer and wrapped my braid around my head. I couldn’t look more innocuous
if I’d worn glasses. I waved at the camera on the landing as I strode down the
stairs. I never knew if Graham was watching or if he even cared what I was
doing, but I figured if I was ever kidnapped, he’d have a record of the time I
left and what I was wearing.

I stopped and bought a sympathy card and a little potted
plant before I hit the Metro.

Carol Bloom, Bill’s mother, lived far enough out of the city
to not be easily accessible by Metro. I took the line as far out as it went,
then called a cab. One of these days, I’d have to buy a car and obtain a
driver’s license, but I wasn’t spending money until I knew had an income.
Working for Graham didn’t pay in anything except room and board. And my other
clients were getting short shrift these days.

I’m a world traveler, but I hadn’t spent a lot of time in
suburbs. All the little brick houses looked alike to me. Some had covered their
immaculate yards with flowers and ornaments. Others hadn’t mowed their grass.
Carol Bloom’s house was somewhere in between. The yard needed mowing, but she
had pots of bedraggled flowers on her concrete porch and a climbing rose
straggling up the wall.

The woman who answered the doorbell actually wore a faded,
flowered housecoat like those on TV matrons from the fifties. Where does one
buy such a thing? She was stout, short, and graying but she didn’t look
particularly grief-stricken.

"Mrs. Bloom, I’m Linda Lane, a colleague of Bill’s,” I
said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear of your loss. He was a good,
good man.”

She opened the storm door and allowed me in. No wonder so
many people get robbed. They’ll trust anyone bearing presents.

She set my houseplant and card on a coffee table in the
living room. I didn’t see any similar tokens. “Not too many people have been
by,” she said stiffly. “Bill was like a stranger to us lately. I knew the city
would kill him.”

“Have the police caught the driver yet?” I asked, assuming
that would be the natural thing to ask.

“They found the car, but it was stolen. Would you like to
take a seat? I can bring you some coffee.”

I didn’t think she meant a Starbucks mocha latte, so I
declined. “I don’t know if he ever mentioned me,” I ventured with a question in
my voice. “We often shared files. I’ve been trying to finish up some of his cases
as a gesture of respect. He often spoke of you, so I thought I’d let you know,
in case you were worried.”

“That’s kind of you,” she said, but her expression didn’t
display gratitude. She just looked irritable. “Bill was always the oddball of
our family, hanging around with misfits and weirdoes. It’s good to know he
worked with decent people.”

I didn’t think I’d call myself decent, but I suspected that
was a code word for white and/or conservative. I egged her on, just a little.
“The city is full of all sorts,” I agreed. “You have to take work where you can
get it. Did you know any of his clients?”

“No, no, I didn’t. After he brought that Spic home to meet
us, he hasn’t been back. I blame her. Those lousy Mexicans are taking over the
country. We’ll all be speaking Mexican if someone doesn’t do something.” She
tugged agitatedly at a crocheted doily on her recliner arm. More echoes of the
fifties.

“I understand your concern,” I said sympathetically. “You
know about the group called the Righteous and the Proud, don’t you? They’re
trying to help.”

She nodded, relaxing a fraction. “Me and my other kids
belong. Bill told us we were puppets for the Man. I don’t know where he
gets…got…those ideas.”

The Man — as represented by Broderick Media, et al? Or
just a general term for the One Percent? I wish I’d known Bill better. “I never
thought of Bill as the rebellious type,” I said sympathetically. ”I wonder if
he had anything in his files that Dr. Smythe should look into? Bill was
terribly good with his recording equipment.”

My brief research had turned up Dr. Charles Smythe as the
leader of R&P, if a mob could have leadership.

A frown formed over her nose. “The police brought me all the
boxes they took from his apartment. Ken went over and cleaned the place out but
said Bill didn’t have anything worth keeping. He said he’d give it all to
Goodwill when he had time to truck it over there. Reckon I should look at those
boxes? I didn’t know what to do with them.”

“They’re probably just client files. I can’t imagine there’s
anything bad in them. I can look them over if you like, see if there’s anything
Dr. Smythe should see.” I was positively brimming with excitement but I played
it cool. Easy to do since I had no car and no way of hauling away the files.

“Would you?” She still didn’t look relieved but as if she
were worrying over some new crisis. “I’d better ask Ken, first. He said he
might want to burn them like we did his dad’s papers after he died.”

Brother Ken cleaning out the apartment and burning Bill’s
files might strike me as symptoms of guilt, paranoia, or a need to wipe his
brother off the planet, if it hadn’t been for the bit about burning his
father’s
papers. The guy could just be a
firebug, but it seemed weird to ritually burn all family history.

“Oh,” I said, “I’m not sure I’d realized Bill had lost his
father. I’m sorry. Was it recent?”

Carol shook her head with sadness. “We lost Ernest almost
five years ago. The boys were grown by then.”

That didn’t seem exceedingly relevant but just in case, I
kept up my fake sympathy. “That had to be hard. Was it a serious illness?”

She shook her head, turning non-communicative.

Not willing to push my luck too far, I pulled one of my fake
business cards from my purse. “I shouldn’t keep you any longer. If you decide
you’d like me to take a look at the files, you can send them to this address or
just let me know, and I’ll have someone pick them up. I don’t know all Bill’s clients
and couldn’t notify them, so if nothing else, the files might help with that.”

She took the card and nodded absently. “Thank you for
stopping by. I do appreciate it.”

Poor Bill,
I
thought, pulling out my new phone to call a cab company as I walked down the
street. Just when he started living an interesting life, he’d been taken out
and erased in a mundane fashion. In honor of his memory, I’d have to find out
why.

I reversed my travel process, taking the cab to the Metro
and the Metro to home. It gave me time to think — and to check my email,
thanks to my handy new toy.

I had turned off the phone while talking to Mrs. Bloom. The
chimes rang the instant I switched it on. The screen also flashed a warning
that I had a dozen voice mail messages.

Since they were all from Nick, I called.

“Where the devil are you?” he asked in irritation. “We have
a situation, and as usual, you’re the cause.”

“Just for that snide remark, I think I’ll go shopping.” I
kept my voice low so as not to annoy my fellow riders. Nick was such a drama
queen, I waited for real news.

“We’ll have the cops out here if you don’t come back and
settle this now. Your mouse trap caught a rat, and we don’t know what to do
with him. Mallard seems in favor of slicing and dicing him and serving him up
on rigatoni.”

I heard a protest in the background, but I was translating
Nick’s metaphors and didn’t know whether to laugh or frown. “I’m just a few
stops away. I trust you’ve prevented squealing.”

“Just come straight home.” He punched off — so less satisfactory
than a slamming receiver in my ear.

If I’d translated correctly, my fun with spy toys had
tripped up a nosy reporter. The alarm going off must have been exciting. I
wondered who had been in my office monitoring my equipment. That was a foolish
question. EG had been down there while Patra and Nick slept upstairs. But EG
couldn’t hogtie a grown man. That would be Mallard’s involvement was my guess.

Patra was furiously pacing the front room of our abode by
the time I arrived. She shot me an angry glance, but EG was eagerly bouncing to
tell me her part in the escapade and no one else could get in a word edgewise.

“And the alarm went off while Patra was in the shower,” she
was saying. I’d tuned out on the prelude of what she’d been doing in my office
but tuned back in again when we got to the real news. “And I told Mallard we’d
caught a spy, so we went over there and Mallard decked him! One blow and he was
out! We had to tie him up!”

“You left him over there?” I asked, already turning toward
the door.

“They couldn’t carry him across the street,” Patra said
dryly, finally breaking into EG’s moment of glory. “I can’t go over there. I
don’t want Broderick suspecting I have anything to do with my insane family’s
depredations.”

“Are Nick and Mallard over there slicing and dicing?”

“I believe they’re discussing whether rats belong in
Dumpsters,” the lamp on the table said. “Please return Mallard so dinner won’t
be delayed.”

I was almost positive I heard amusement in that sepulchral
voice. “I’m happy the gladiators entertain Caesar,” I retorted before heading
out. I had to turn and point EG back inside. She glared, but she knew better
than to disobey She Who Owns the Computers.

The work trucks were gone. Presumably the construction crew
only worked half days on weekends. I wondered how the rat had got in if the
door was locked. I checked the imposing carved oak front door. The crew had
done due diligence by locking it. I trotted around the house and found a board
removed from one of the side windows. I assumed the rat had entered there. Since
I couldn’t imagine portly Mallard or elegant Nick wriggling through that entry,
I continued around to the back.

The plywood covering the French doors had been neatly
removed and lay on the deck. The glass in the doors was cracked, but probably
not in the process of opening them — the door lock had been jimmied by an
expert. Mallard and Nick were professionals.

I stepped inside and took the front stairs up, admiring the
light wood finish on rails and floors. This place would be far more modern than
my grandfather’s mansion when they were done.

I heard muffled protests and kicking before I reached the
top. That would be the rat. Mallard and Nick were probably cleaning their nails
and waiting for my appearance.

Keeping in mind that I looked like a shrimpy librarian in my
blazer and khakis, I removed brass knuckles from my shoulder bag. I never used
them. A roll of coins was legal and just as lethal. But sometimes I needed
accessories to get my point across.

It was still daylight so the attic was filled with enough
gray light for them to see my approach, if they hadn’t already heard it.

I let the rat see me don the knuckles as I climbed the last
step. He was on the floor with a tie stuffed in his mouth and his hands tied
behind his back. His eyes widened. I didn’t smile but lifted a black eyebrow
over my gimlet glare. Small and dark can look deadly with a bit of effort.

Mallard held a baseball bat at the ready. Nick was leaning
against the wall, polishing a wicked looking switchblade. Neither of them had a
hair out of place. Well, Mallard didn’t have many hairs to muss. Nick’s shirt
was missing a tie.

“Have you called the cops yet?” I asked.

“We thought you might like to question him first,” Nick said
with a threatening undertone that was probably more for me than the rat. But he
wouldn’t yell at me in front of strangers.

I leaned over and released the necktie holding our intruder’s
mouth shut. “Hello, again,” I said, recognizing yesterday’s culprit. “I think
you’d better give me your name this time so I know where to go looking for
you.”

“Puddin’n’tame,” he taunted. “I’m going to have the lot of
you arrested.”

Yesterday, I’d been outweighed and in no position to
investigate our spy. Today, I had him where I wanted him.

I tugged the worn billfold from his back pocket. His license
labeled him as one Leonard Riley, living on a street I didn’t recognize. I
removed my nifty smart phone from my pocket. “Well, Leonard, it’s this way.
You’re trespassing. From the looks of that window downstairs, I think we can
charge you with breaking and entering. And even if Patra isn’t aware of your
existence, I can assure the police that you’ve been stalking her, hence our
little trap. I warned you yesterday that we take care of our own. Did you not
impart that information to your employer?”

“Assault and battery!” he countered. “I’ll have your two
thugs behind bars for years.”