She could find one. G. Dragojesich. In Fort Henry, not Millers Kill. Russ had sent Kevin on his way, with an admonition to say nothing about their less than legal visit to the McNabb house. Then they dropped Nichols off at his rental car-he had parked it on Morningside Drive and hiked the mile to his hideaway-with directions to the Sleepy Hollow Motor Lodge and a promise to call him first thing in the morning.
“Don’t you worry he’s going to bolt again?” Clare asked.
Russ glanced away from the road for a second. His mouth tipped up at one corner. “That sounds like something I’d say.” He faced forward again. “No, I don’t. First, even if he originally planned to get ahold of the money, he knows that’s not going to happen now. If he disappears, I’ll blow the whistle on him. His best bet is to do just as he said, help us out in the hope that returning the loot will squeak him past any damaging questions.”
“And second?”
“Second, the man’s a cop. I think he’s probably a good one. Were you watching him when we were laying out the investigation? He wanted in. He wants to break this case as bad as we do. More.”
“Do you think he’s hoping it’ll give him a lead on Tally’s murder?”
“Clare…”
“I don’t want to fight with you. Honestly, I don’t. I just want you to admit-”
“That I should have ignored the evidence and the ME’s report and kept the case open?”
“I’d settle for you keeping your mind open!” She looked out the window at the orange sodium lights of the Super Kmart. “I have a personal stake in this.”
“She knocked you down, sprained your ankle-and gave you an infected gash in your back, remember that? Then you met her once a week for an hour with a bunch of other people. How on God’s green earth does that translate into a personal stake?”
“She was one of us.” Clare’s voice was low. “I can’t just turn my back on her.”
“Look. I understand that. I meet a guy who served in Nam, I feel a spark of connection with him. It doesn’t matter if we have nothing in common. It doesn’t matter that we’re old and gray now. He was there, and I was there, and we remember.”
She turned toward him. Looked at his hands, big and steady on the wheel, his forearms exposed where he’d rolled his flannel shirt up.
“But here’s the thing. That connection doesn’t overshadow the ones I’ve made with people I’ve lived with and worked with and served with.” He glanced at her. “We’re supposed to be getting married in a week. You need to decide which connection is more important. The one with your brothers in arms? Or the one with your husband?”
“So I should support you, no matter how I feel? Pretend I think you’re right?”
“No. You should respect my professional judgment and realize that I only rejected your point of view after careful consideration.” He flicked on his signal and turned onto the street whose name they had copied out of the phone book.
“We’re here.” Russ pulled into one of Fort Henry’s small condo complexes, the sort of place where couples commuting to Albany or singles with good jobs in Glens Falls touched down until they’d saved up the down payment for a house. “Will you take the lead? Since you’ve already met him?”
“Of course.” She half-expected Dragojesich to be out on a Friday night, so when the door opened moments after she rang the bell, the sight of him filling the entryway knocked her opening line out of her head.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“Mr. Dragojesich? I don’t know if you remember me, but I met you at the BWI Opperman party at the end of August. I was with Tally McNabb?”
His forehead creased, then cleared. “The major! Who likes Canadian Club!” He looked past her to Russ. “And the boyfriend, right?”
“Fiance,” Russ said.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions about Tally, if we could.”
“Oh, cripes, that was you at her funeral, wasn’t it? Yeah, sure, come on in.” He stepped back to let them pass. “She was such a sweet girl. Give you the shirt off her back.” He ushered them into his living room and snapped off the television. “Can I get you something? Sit down, sit down.”
“Nothing, thanks,” Russ said as Clare perched on a chair wide enough to pass as a love seat.
“Mr. Dragojesich-”
“Call me Drago.” He took the opposite seat. Dressed in a Syracuse Orange sweatshirt, he resembled a black- haired, black-browed snowplow. There was enough room on the chair for Russ to sit down next to her. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? A small whisky?”
Clare thought of the pills in her coat pocket and swallowed her desire for a drink. “No, thank you. You were in Iraq the same time Tally was, is that right?”
“Yeah, sure, during her second tour. She hadda spend a lot of time at Balad, setting up some finance thing. That was where we staged out of. She would hang out with the crew, ’cause her husband worked with us. We became buds.”
“How about Wyler McNabb? Were you friends with him as well?”
Drago’s face crunched in thought. “Not really. I mean, I got nothing against him, but Wyler was more of a party kind of guy. He liked to live large. Me, I like it nice and peaceful. Do my work, come home to my babies.”
She could feel, rather than see, Russ’s eyebrows rise.
“You haven’t seen ’em yet.” Drago whistled. “Hey, my puppies!” Clare heard yipping and the scrabble of nails, and then three toy poodles bounded into the living room. They leaped onto Drago’s lap-he could have fit several more-and the big man crooned to them, lifting the whole pack in his hands. “Who’s Daddy’s good girl? Is it you? Is it you?”
“We’re trying to track a shipment McNabb would have made from Balad back to the States.” Russ’s voice was as coplike as ever.
“Anything more specific?” Drago let the dogs down on the floor. They immediately scuttled over and began exploring Russ’s boots. “Wyler was in charge of ordering materiel. He was usually pretty accurate, but he did overestimate at times.”
Russ reached down and scratched a tiny head. “This would have been a pallet, maybe a couple meters square, shrink-wrapped. It would have been marked for transit beyond your Plattsburgh depot.”
“The bedding!” Drago nodded. “It’s gotta be the bedding. Everything else stayed in Plattsburgh.”
Clare and Russ looked at each other.
“It was a big, dumb mistake. We got sent a load of the sheets they order for the resort. They’re all fancy and stuff, Egyptian cotton and a zillion thread count.” His eyes, which had been lit with pleasure at being able to answer their questions, clouded over. “What’s this got to do with Tally? We kept it on the q.t. so’s not to get the clerk on the other side of the operation in trouble. But Tally couldn’tuv been responsible. She didn’t work for BWI until this summer.”
“Drago”-Clare tried to keep her voice neutral-“do you have any idea of the final destination of the, um, sheets?”
He looked at her as if she were cracked. “Where do you think they went? The resort.”
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
