off— it was the toupee he wore. The color was perfect, but the style didn’t quite fit the shape of his head.
As for Kostas, Jack thought he looked like a dissipated playboy, a man who lived only for his own pleasure, for his own whims. He was handsome, Jack supposed, fit, well-dressed, but there was something off about him, too, and it wasn’t a toupee. He didn’t know at that moment what it was.
Rachael turned and said pleasantly, “Uncle Quincy, this is Special Agent Jackson Crowne. He’s here to find out what happened to my father and who tried to kill me last Friday night, Monday, and— goodness—yesterday, as well. But I’m sure you know all about that, don’t you?”
Quincy Abbott laughed, then looked sideways at his sister and said, “Sounds to me like a boyfriend gone nasty. Who have you been sleeping with?”
Rachael thought about her one-time fiance from Richmond. What a fiasco that had been.
Stefanos waved his question away. “What’s this about killing you?”
Jack said pleasantly, “Perhaps you, sir, Mrs. Kostas, and Mr. Abbott could tell me where you were on Friday night.”
Quincy raised a brow. “I was at Mrs. Muriel Longworth’s welcome party for the new Italian ambassador. Stefanos, you came in later, as I recall.”
Stefanos nodded and looked at Rachael’s breasts.
“I will not dignify your question with a reply,” Laurel said.
Rachael said, “Uncle Quincy, Jimmy told you about killing that little girl.”
“Perhaps he did. I wasn’t much interested, to tell you the truth. Oh well, who cares now? The senator is dead and buried. I just wish he hadn’t left you our house. As for the stock, at least you don’t have enough to cause trouble.” He brightened. “You said someone is trying to kill you? Well then, have this FBI agent go find him and throw him in jail.” Quincy Abbott nodded to both of them, gave his sister a long look, turned on his designer heel, and left Laurel Kostas’s office.
Stefanos leaned against the door, arms across his chest, and said to his wife, “I’ve been shopping. Guido called me about this very lightweight wool I’m wearing. What do you think?” He looked at Rachael’s breasts again, knowing his wife was watching. If she’d been Laurel, she’d have shot him dead. But Laurel said nothing, didn’t appear to notice anything amiss.
The three of them, Rachael thought, didn’t appear to live on the same planet.
Rachael walked out, Jack right behind her.
Jack’s last memory of Laurel Abbott Kostas was of the cold, ripe malice in her eyes, her husband leaning against the door, like a beautifully suited lizard. He thought about Jukie Hayes, owner of a junkyard in Marlin, Kentucky a good ole boy who visited neighboring towns. He killed people and buried them under ancient wrecks of cars, between stacked tires, stuffed inside car trunks. He told Jack he liked the smell of the decaying bodies. Jack still had nightmares about Jukie, and the stack of bones he’d uncovered beneath a tarp thrown over a dozen steering wheels. Odd that a wealthy Greek playboy would remind him of Jukie, but he did.
Both of them breathed in the sea air as they walked down Calvert Street to the Inner Harbor. Jack laughed. “She’s a terror, Rachael, scares the crap out of me. Quincy doesn’t like her, but he knows she has the power. Is he afraid of her? I wonder.”
“I need to take a shower,” Rachael said. “That Stefanos Kostas is a dreadful man. And she didn’t appear to even notice he was eyeing me.”
Jack stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, put his hands on her shoulders, and said, “You held it together. You went after her. That was well done. I’m proud of you.”
Rachael stood very still, aware of people moving around them, aware that she felt good, and what he’d said. “Thank you. You said Quincy is afraid of his sister. Why?”
Jack dropped his hands and he and Rachael moved back into rhythm with the crowds of tourists. “He’s smooth as silk, terrified someone won’t believe he’s God’s gift to the world, and weak. He’s not in his sister’s league. As for the toupee, nothing said is too much. This was only the first salvo, Rachael.”
Madonna’s voice blared out “Like a Virgin.”
Rachael’s eyebrow went up when Jack pulled out his cell, flipped it open. “Yeah?”
He listened. His hand tightened on the phone. He listened for a very long time.
When he slipped his cell back into his jacket pocket, he said, “That was Savich. The guy I shot in the shoulder yesterday in Gillette’s kitchen—the woman on the walkie-talkie called him Donley—they ID’ed him from a blood sample from the kitchen floor. His name is Everett, Donley Everett. Turns out he showed up in Clapperville, Virginia, went to a local doctor’s house and forced the doctor to treat him. He didn’t kill the guy, thank God. Evidently Donley thought the doctor lived alone, and so he left him bound and gagged in the basement. Turns out the doctor’s wife had been on a business trip. She arrived home an hour after Everett left. They called the police, who put out an APB on him.”
“What’s Donley Everett’s physical status?”
“The doctor said he was running a fever when he showed up, that if he’d had that bullet in his shoulder for another day or so without treatment, he might very well have died. Everett forced him to remove the bullet with only a local anesthetic, which he did. He told Savich the guy didn’t make a sound.
“The doctor gave him a week’s worth of antibiotics, some heavy-duty pain meds. He said Everett would feel rotten for a while, but he thought he’d pull through. The doctor wasn’t very happy about that.
“Savich said the doctor was very relieved when Everett only tied him up in the basement.”
“What about the other guy at Slipper Hollow, the one you shot dead? You said the woman called him Clay?”
“Yes. There’s no word yet on his whereabouts. Savich thinks, and I agree, that Everett buried him somewhere deep in the sticks. Savich said they ran Clay’s first name through the system. He’s sending photos on my cell of two guys who seem promising, both with the first name Clay one of them is a known associate of Everett, so he’s the most promising.”
They waited next to a Starbucks, both staring down at the cell screen.
In another second, Jack was looking at a guy named Clay Clutt. But he wasn’t the man Jack had shot at the edge of the forest in Slipper Hollow.
He called back. “It’s not Clay Clutt.”
“Okay, Clutt was my warm-up. Here’s the second one. He’s worked with Everett in the past. Coming through now,” Savich said.
“Bingo,” Jack said to Savich a few minutes later. Clay Huggins. Rachael listened to him tell Savich about their meeting with Laurel Kostas, her husband, Stefanos Kostas, and Quincy Abbott. When he pocketed his cell, he said, “Both Donley Everett and Clay Huggins have sheets reaching to Kalamazoo, including suspected murder. Neither has been convicted. Savich is sending out agents to both gentlemen’s places of residence. He said he and Sherlock are going to Everett’s apartment, since it’s likely he’s holed up there, nursing his wounded shoulder and popping pain pills. Savich said it sounds like we stirred up the snakes, which is good. Let’s call it a day, Rachael. Let’s have that lobster.”
TWENTY-SIX
When Savich pulled his Porsche to the curb half a block from Donley Everett’s apartment building, the sun was low in the sky, the June air soft and warm.
The apartment building was in the middle of a transitional neighborhood, where the old single-story houses from the forties and fifties were slowly being rehabbed or torn down. Unfortunately for the new, larger homes, the yards were still as minuscule as they’d always been. Everett’s apartment building looked maybe ten years old, well-maintained, with a redbrick facade.
Sherlock waved at Dane Carver and Ollie Hamish, who were just getting out of Ollie’s black Pacifica, behind them the two surveillance agents.
Savich and Sherlock watched as Ollie and Dane circled to the back of the building to check out exits. There weren’t many tenants around yet since federal offices, the bread and butter of the Washington workforce, were just now closing down for the day. They heard a baby gurgling happily through an open window on the second floor, heard the new country singer Chris Connelly singing about his cheating love raking over his heart. Savich liked Chris Connelly.
