Smoke

Ten

Jeffrey had taken off to go talk to Christian’s jeweler and Dax sat in a spare office among the trainees trying to find out what he could about the specialized security system installed at The New Day. Lydia did something she thought she wouldn’t do. She went into her office and closed the door, got on her computer, and entered a name into LexisNexis. Arthur James Tavernier.

Most of the listings were not related to her father. But one of the early entries was his obituary. Short and simple, it said only that he had died and when the services would be. Would she have gone if she knew? Maybe. Out of curiosity. Maybe not. It did lead her to wonder however who had held the services. She didn’t have to read far.

The next entry was a brief article on her father’s death that had run in a small local Nyack paper. He died of an apparent heart attack in his small two-bedroom home. He was found three days after the incident when neighbors complained of the smell. At the bottom of the article, which she almost skipped, there was a single sentence that felt like a blow to the solar plexus. “Arthur Tavernier is survived by his wife of fifteen years, Jaynie, and their daughter, Este, from whom he was estranged.”

She put her head in her hand and exhaled deeply. She’d always imagined him as alone in a single-room apartment, with no one in his life. But he’d had another family. And unless Este was his stepdaughter by marriage, Lydia had a sister she never knew about. She wasn’t sure what to do with that information. She searched for some kind of feeling about it, about the way her father died, about the fact that she might have a half-sister somewhere, and came up with a kind of emptiness, a numbness that she was afraid wasn’t normal. What kind of person felt nothing when faced with these types of things?

From the leather bag at her feet she fished out the business card that Patricia O’Connell had given her when she and Jeffrey picked up the box.

“Ms. O’Connell,” said Lydia when she finally got the woman on the line.

“Yes, Ms. Strong, what can I do for you?”

“I need to know, is there a way for me to get in touch with Mr. Tavernier’s wife or his daughter?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line and Lydia heard her moving papers around.

“Well,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s my place to give you their contact information. There was nothing in his final instructions to that effect.” She hesitated, then added, “As I understand it, they were also estranged from Mr. Tavernier.” She said it like a woman who had made judgments about things she didn’t understand.

“All right,” said Lydia. “Well, did they all share my father’s last name?”

Another pause. “Ms. Strong, there was nothing about them in your box?”

Now it was Lydia’s turn to go silent. She looked across the hall through the glass wall that separated her office from the hallway; she could see the entrance to Jeffrey’s office. The box was in there waiting for her to get up the courage to open it.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to go through it yet,” she said.

“Well, perhaps there’s something in there to help you find out what you want to know.”

Lydia sighed. She hated people who didn’t easily give things that were easy to give, people for whom rules and procedures were more important than other people.

“Can you do this for me?” she said, trying to keep patience in her tone. “If you have their contact information, can you please call one or both of them and tell them I’m interested in speaking with them? And then give them my name and number.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Ms. Strong,” she said vaguely. “I’ll get back to you.”

Lydia said her thanks but the lawyer had already hung up.

She felt a swell of emotion now, some combination of anger, resentment, and sadness. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want a box from her dead father waiting for her in Jeffrey’s office. She didn’t want to learn that she might have a sister somewhere. But like with all the mysteries of her life, there was this eternal flame inside of her, this burning to know. She could take that box to the Dumpster, call Patricia O’Connell back and tell her not to bother. And that would be the end of it. But she couldn’t. She just wasn’t hardwired to walk away from a question mark.

“Shit,” she said out loud to no one.

“What’s up?” Dax filled the doorway. She hated him at the moment. He had hurt her feelings. And since her feelings were so rarely exposed for the hurting, vulnerable to so few people, they were still smarting.

“Nothing,” she said flatly. “What do you want?”

He walked in and sat down, unperturbed by her mood.

“Well,” he said. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

She looked at him with an expression that she hoped would encourage him to just spit it out.

“It looks to me like the security system installed at The New Day is a custom job. We’re talking motion detectors on the exterior, roving security cameras, infrared beams in entrance hallways, security shutters over doors and windows. Retina and palm scan entries on certain areas, heat sensors on doorknobs, serious stuff. A system like the one they have would cost a hundred grand, at least. It would be nearly impossible to get in-or out-once the system is activated.”

“And the building behind was connected by an interior walkway?”

“There are two connections. One on the first floor and one in the basement of the building.”

Lydia cocked her head at him. “You didn’t mention that before.”

“That’s because I just found out.”

“How?”

“I know the guy who designed and installed the system.”

“I guess that would be the good news?” she asked.

He nodded and gave her a smile.

“Doesn’t seem very secure,” she said. “You pay someone a hundred grand to secure a building and then he runs around telling people how to subvert the system.”

“That’s the problem with mercenaries,” he said with a shrug. “Loyalties shift.”

“So he told you how to get in?”

“Not exactly. He gave me the specs of the system. But he’s so good at building these things that even he couldn’t get in. I’ll have to figure it out.”

“When the alarm goes off, who gets alerted?”

“It’s not connected to the police department or to any outside security agency.”

“So presumably there’s a security staff on the premises.”

“My guy didn’t know anything about that, said that the client was highly secretive and that when his people were installing the system, there was no one around. But presumably, yes, I imagine there’s a security staff. We’ll have to assume.”

“Why would a church, especially one concerned with abandoning materialism, be so concerned with security?”

“It’s a good question. Another question would be how they found out about the guy that designed this system. I mean, it’s not like he’s in the phone book or anything. You need to know people to get in touch with him.”

“What kind of people?”

“People you don’t want to know. Like, bad guys… gangsters, mobsters, guerillas, the CIA. Really bad.”

Lydia looked at him. “And where do you know this guy from?”

“We served together. He’s former British Special Forces. Now he’s freelance.”

“Like you.”

He nodded. “Yes, like me.”

He’d gotten a serious tone to his voice and the stony expression to his face that he always got when she asked too many questions. He’d give her a little bit of information, stuff she already knew like the bit about his having served with the British Special Forces, then he’d shut down.