woman named Penny Dearborn.
Everything about the tow was wrong. From the location, the farthest from the Smithsonian in comparison to all the other cases, and an ex-boyfriend missing, when Syd needed a woman missing. What it did have going for it was that it was somewhat closer to Scotty’s apartment, which meant she could swing by, talk to the woman, then wait for Scotty to get back, since she was starved and had no intention of eating peanut butter for dinner.
Penny Dearborn’s apartment was dark, at least the upstairs windows. The two downstairs windows were boarded over, and she wondered if anyone still lived there. Sydney parked Scotty’s Jeep about two doors down, then walked up the well-lit street. She kept to one side of the front door, knocked, and looked up at the darkened window upstairs. A few moments later, Sydney heard what sounded like footsteps descending an interior staircase, and then the door opened, revealing a tall, thin blond woman with a gaunt face.
Sydney held open her credentials. “Special Agent Fitzpatrick, FBI. Are you Penny Dearborn?”
The woman glanced up and down the street before looking at Sydney, then nodding. “Yeah, why?”
“I have a few questions about your car being towed, and the missing person’s report on your boyfriend, Xavier Caldwell.”
Penny gave a cynical smile. “Not so paranoid, am I?”
Syd figured that remained to be seen. “Do you mind if I come in?”
Again the woman gave that look up and down the street, then stepped aside allowing Sydney to enter. The room reminded Sydney of her own place, filled with boxes stacked around the walls, some taped shut, others still open, filled with books, newspaper-wrapped items, and other possessions tossed in with less care.
“You’re moving?”
“Tomorrow. Which isn’t soon enough. I haven’t had electricity in two weeks, and I’ve been broken into twice in the last week, never mind the drive-by shootings from the gang war. Used to be a nice neighborhood. But I have to draw the line when bullets start flying through my living room window,” she said, nodding toward the boarded-up windows on either side of the TV. “Goddamned landlord says he’s deducting it from my deposit. Bastard.”
“I’m hoping this won’t take but a couple of minutes.”
“Mind if we talk upstairs. I’m a bit paranoid these days…”
“Upstairs is fine.” Sydney followed her into a bedroom, unlit, except by the glow from a streetlamp outside. Like the downstairs, this room was filled with boxes stacked around the perimeter of the double bed in the center of the room.
The woman sat on the bed, and Sydney stood near the dresser next to the window that looked out over the street below. “I understand you made a missing person’s report on your boyfriend?”
“Not sure why I bothered. I should’ve figured out what he was up to, ever since he hooked up with Miss Hoity- Toity.”
Sydney had the sinking feeling that this was nothing of any consequence. Spurned lover. “What happened?” she asked, more as a way to urge the girl to get on with the story so Sydney could get out of there.
“Happened? Xavier hooks up with this girl from his religion class or political history, or whatever it was, and wants to borrow my car. They’re going to go talk to someone about a conspiracy theory,” she said in a voice that told Sydney that the only conspiring was that which was taking place in the backseat of said car. “I used to think he was so profound. We’d sit and talk for hours over coffee about how every country’s governments were all working to keep the people in the dark, how everything from 9/11 to the Catholic Church was all part of some big conspiracy, just like the conflicts in the Mideast. And then he met
There were a lot of nuts out there thinking that Freemasons were taking over the world, and the proof was on the back of the dollar bill. Amber undoubtedly had the right of it about this particular case, when she’d put together the reports for Sydney. Whacked. Even so, Syd was sympathetic. The woman had lost her lover to someone who told a better story. “Proof?” Sydney asked. “On the dollar bill?”
“Yeah. Like the eye on the pyramid. And the Star of David that points to the word MASON. He just got all into it. Found his kindred spirit, he says. Hope you don’t mind, but it’s fate, he says. Fate that he forgets to give me his half of the rent money, and the utility bill. I have no power, no phone, and I got evicted when I couldn’t come up with the rent. And then maybe two weeks ago, he calls up and says they’re in trouble. That they want to borrow my car again, because he’s got to get to the airport, and he thinks they’ve been following him and her both.”
“Who was following them?”
“He didn’t say.”
“This girl, she have a name?”
“Hell if I know. I never actually met her. She was an assistant to some professor in Xavier’s history or archeology class at UVA.”
“You know the professor’s name?”
“Woods, I think. Anyway, Xavier started meeting her for coffee, just like he used to take me. Only with her, he became twice as paranoid. He actually believed this crap.” She sat down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I know it’s stupid, and I even used to agree with him, but once he met her, all that stuff he spouted just sounded… annoying. Like a cop-out. Everything that went wrong in his life, he blamed on the government. The fact we got evicted from this apartment? Government plot. His checks kept bouncing, because his deposit was lost? Government plot. All of it proved his point that they were going to take over world banking. At one point he had tinfoil on every window and wouldn’t talk without the water running. He let them turn off the phones, because they were tapped. I swear he had escape routes planned,” she said, sweeping her hand around the room to point up into the closet, now emptied. “The attic, the bathroom. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s one thing to rail against the government over coffee, but at some point you still have to pay your rent.”
She shrugged, tried to smile, and added, “So I kicked his ass out, got the landlord to give me an extra two weeks to get the rent money together, and what good did that do? Nothing, because I had to use my rent money to get my car out of hock, because that son of a bitch sweet-talked me into borrowing it, then left it parked in a construction zone after he ran off with his new girlfriend. It got towed.”
Syd was tempted to tell the woman she was better off without the guy and was almost glad when her cell phone vibrated. Whatever Penny and her boyfriend were about, it wasn’t related to her case. “Excuse me,” she said, when she saw it was Scotty.
“You ready for dinner?” he asked. “I thought we could meet at King Yen’s.”
“Can I call you back in a few?” she said, moving away toward the window for a bit of privacy.
“I’ve already made the reservations.”
He’d proposed to her there and, no doubt, had chosen that spot for tonight in hopes that they could discuss their relationship. Her fault, she supposed, for not squelching the dinner thing. That didn’t mean she wanted to hurt him, give him any ideas. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time or place to discuss it. “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you right back.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
She disconnected, was just tucking her phone on her belt when she noticed a man in a long overcoat looking into the window of Scotty’s Jeep parked just down the street. “You get a lot of car thefts in this area?” she asked Penny.
“Don’t even get me started on this crappy neighborhood.”
The man straightened, started walking up the sidewalk. He was white, clean-shaven, too healthy-looking to match the profile of some dirtbag hoping to smash a car window for a stereo. Even so, Sydney kept her eye on him, then noticed a second man across the street, also in an overcoat, paralleling the first man. The second man started across the street, and she noticed a vertical ridge running down the length of his coat. A ridge about the length of a long barrel of an assault weapon hidden beneath. The momentary thought that these were the missing bank robbers fled when she realized Scotty would not have called her for dinner if the robbers were still out there.
Her gaze flew to the man on this side of the street. The one walking toward Penny Dearborn’s front door.
Syd glanced at Penny. “Where’s your phone?”
“Downstairs. But it was shut off.”
Every telephone in the U.S. was supposed to have 911 access, even if it was shut off for nonpayment, and 911 access meant instant address relayed to the cops, far superior to using a cell phone. “Please tell me you have a phone up here?” she asked, looking around.
