But couldn’t they happen later? “Didn’t you get my email about coming in late today?”
“No. I haven’t been granted access to my computer yet.”
That didn’t make any sense. Among her many duties, Heather acted as the supervisor who controlled system access at Crestview for everyone, obviously including herself. “What are you talking about?”
“The holding company went down.”
“I’m not following.”
“Charlie Hanson committed some kind of fraud. The banks are taking over every company Parker Investments owns, including ours. Their auditors are crawling through the files right now.”
He tightened his grip on the phone.
“So, we need you here, Brewster, and—”
“Wait. Let me think.”
Something about those files triggered a half-formed germ of an idea, but it couldn’t quite work its way through the turbulence in his mind. He swept his gaze around the living room. When he settled on the snow globe Carla had given him, the idea came closer to finding a voice. He bent to the coffee table, took the sphere in his hand, and shook it. The snow puffed up in a cloud, then settled back down on the little cottage—insulating Carla’s safe haven beneath a pristine blanket of white once again.
Brewster needed to dream his way back and talk her out of that Manhattan trip. But he couldn’t count on a wormhole assist by Gabriella this time. She’d done him wrong once already. The task of harnessing the amazing, time-and-space-bending energy of dreams rested on his shoulders alone.
Only he didn’t have a clue how to tackle the problem.
And yet, he’d recently met someone who wore dreams right on her wrist. Somnium. And who knew Gabriella.
The time had come to join forces.
“Heather?”
“Are you coming?”
“Yeah, but listen. Has Igor Tesfaye signed his new loan documents yet?”
“Who the hell cares?”
“If the bank is running the company now, we need his paperwork in the files before they have a chance to renege on the deal.”
“You’re always the Good Samaritan, aren’t you, Brewster?” Heather’s voice was getting ever more shrill. “People are worried about their jobs at the moment. Why not try focusing on that instead of some trucker?”
He took a deep breath. “Actually, the man’s a poet.”
“Are you sitting at home sniffing glue? I need help here.”
“Calm down. We’ll work something out with the bankers. I’m on my way.”
“Hallelujah.”
“Meanwhile, get Tesfaye down there and tell him to bring his girlfriend along as a witness.”
“She doesn’t need to come. Any one of us can—”
“Just do what I said, Heather.” Brewster ended the call and hurried out of the house.
He got into his car and backed out of the driveway without shooting a second glance at the police cruiser parked just outside the cul-de-sac. Parents had been complaining about speeders lately, and the cops had responded by increasing their presence on neighborhood streets. When this one pulled out and started following him, Brewster’s main concern was to stick to the speed limit and avoid cheating at stop signs. Not until after he’d driven from Shermer to Willow, then east to the Edens Expressway and onto the southbound entrance ramp did his hands start getting sweaty. The cop had tailed him all the way.
Once on the highway, Brewster cut across three lanes of traffic from the far right to the far left. The cop tagged along, gliding from lane to lane until settling between him and another car. A mile later, Brewster switched back to the right lane but failed to shake his new friend. His grip on the steering wheel had gone white-knuckle. Then, two separate police jurisdictions executed a perfect tag-team maneuver at the Touhy Avenue exit. The Northbrook squad car peeled off the highway, and a Chicago cop swung on.
Brewster wasn’t a mere citizen caught in the ticket-quota sights of a local cop anymore. Somehow, he’d become a hyperventilating, high-profile person of interest throughout the county.
So this was the game now, huh? Those New York City cops hadn’t called on him for a touchy-feely interrogation topped off by coffee and pie. They’d had every intention of arresting him on the spot and plenty of cause to do so. Wacky circumstances or not, two separate witnesses put him at the scene of a possible murder, and a business card in Carla’s purse suggested a relationship with the victim. If he hadn’t had an airtight alibi, he’d probably be sweating it out under a bare light bulb at the nearest holding pen. He’d earned a reprieve, but the cops couldn’t be expected to let him out of their sights until they checked out his story.
He pulled off the highway at the Foster Avenue exit, headed west toward his office, glanced in the rearview mirror, and still saw the tail. He tried talking himself off the ledge with the assurance the cops were sure to stop following him as soon as they confirmed his alibi—most likely a matter of placing a few phone calls or calling on a person or two. Deep down, though, he knew better.
In the heat of the earlier moment, Brewster had seen no problem in producing his comb as evidence of his innocence. He hadn’t been with Carla at the accident scene, and in fact, he’d never been in a New York City subway station in his life. But that comb now looked like a boomerang fully capable of flying back at him with the opposite of his intended result.
Disassociation had been the problem. Twice during his police interrogation, he’d failed to think of the Tug Hill incident as a real event. First he told the cops he hadn’t been out east, and later he forgot the forensic evidence he’d left in his wake. Hairs on Carla’s coat? They’d hugged, leaned against each other, shed hairs all over each other for sure. When the police mined his comb for a DNA sample or whatever, they’d learn without any doubt their person of interest had been with the victim shortly before her death. What
