That Touch of Ink (16 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

“It’s your turn, lady,” said a voice behind me. An elbow jabbed into my arm, and I stumbled forward. “Window 5.”

I looked at the imposter, and he looked back at me. He showed no sign of recognition. I was more scared by that than if he’d smiled and waved and said something about the coincidence of random interactions.

“I forgot to fill out my deposit slip,” I said and got out of line. The man behind me shook his head, as if I was one more example of a bubble-headed blonde in Dallas.

I moved slowly past the waiting line, stopping for a moment by the island of deposit slips. My back was to the teller’s windows. I didn’t know if Grant was watching me or not. I didn’t know how he had gotten a job at the bank or how this figured in to the murder at Paper Trail right across the street. All I knew was that I wanted to get out of there. Despite my anger at Tex, I needed to tell him what was going on.

I dug around inside my handbag and found my phone. 47 missed calls. Forty-seven?

I sent a text message.
Fake archie leach at bank on buckner. Across street from paper trail. Check out.

I sent the text and buried the phone back into my bag. Now what? I had close to eight thousand dollars’ worth of endorsed checks in my hand and a five thousand dollar bill hidden in the lining of my bag. A bank was the one place I should have felt safe.

I didn’t.

An ATM sat to the left of the tellers’ windows. Despite the retro nature of my business, I was a fan of technological advances. I liked the self-service machine at the post office. I paid my bills online. I used the GPS on my phone when I needed directions. I’d never trusted the ATM with the rent money, but there was a first time for everything. I stepped up to the machine and looked behind the wall of glass for Grant. He wasn’t there.

I looked to my right and my left. Where did he go? Had he seen me as a threat, someone who would question how he got a job working at the bank? Had he made his way out of the lobby before I could point a finger and yell fink?

“Having trouble with the machine, ma’am?” asked a male voice from directly behind me. It was him.

My body went rigid. Nobody else was near us. Nobody else would hear what he said. And his mere proximity told me he was confident there was nothing I could do. He leaned closer and his voice dropped to a hiss. “Act normal and everything will be fine.”

I didn’t turn around. “I don’t know what you’re doing here or how you got behind that window, but whatever you think you’re going to get away with, you’re not. The police are going to be here any minute now.”

I pulled my ATM card from my wallet and fed it into the machine. The screen prompted me for my pin number. I got an idea. I keyed in the wrong pin once, twice, a third time. The screen flashed a warning that I’d exceeded the allotted number of attempts to login.

“Your machine ate my card,” I said, loud enough for the other patrons to hear. “What do I do now? I need to talk to the manager.”

Grant’s olive skin reddened and his mouth pulled together into a tight line. “That was a stupid move,” he growled.

A man in the line behind him let out an annoyed sigh and craned his neck to see what the holdup was.

“I’m sorry, sir. I think the machine’s broken.” I turned to Grant. “If you can’t help me, can you find your manager? Thank you.”

Grant stood up straighter. “Ma’am, why don’t you have a seat? I’ll send our manager to help you with a replacement card.”

I moved past him to a gray tweed chair and pretended to choose a magazine from a pile of
Time
,
Newsweek
, and
People
. Grant consulted with the next person in line while I waited. It was three thirty-eight. The bank closed at four. Where was Tex?

I pulled my phone from my handbag and checked the screen a second time. The missed calls were up to sixty-two. That was beyond crazy. No sane person would call me sixty-two times.

No sane person.

I punched a couple of buttons and cued up a list of missed calls. Tex was among the early listings. He’d stopped calling hours ago. He was only five of the missed calls. One was from Joanie Chen. Two were from Connie.

And fifty-four were from Brad.

I clutched my phone in my palm. A man with a youthful face and a fringe of salt and pepper hair around his head approached me. He wore an olive green suit and a necktie printed with dollar signs.

“I hear our machine ate your card. Come with me and we’ll get a new one ordered for you.”

I followed him to a desk in a small office with glass walls. I picked a business card from his desk and dropped it into my handbag.

“Are you the bank manager?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“The man—the teller who was trying to help me—he’s not who he says he is.”

The bank manager continued to type on his keypad. “Who did he say he was?”

“He’s—he’s not Archie Leach.”

“I know he’s not Archie Leach. Who said he was?”

“Archie Leach.”

The bank manager stopped typing. “Ms. Night, are you okay?”

“He pretended to help me, but he really wants to get my money.”

“We’re a bank, Ms. Night. It’s his job to try to get your money.” He chuckled.

“No, not that money. This money,” I said, and pulled the five thousand dollar bill from my handbag. His eyes opened wide when he saw it. He reached across the desk, but I pulled it away. “No. This is mine.”

“Would you excuse me for a moment?” He stood up. He looked over my head at the row of teller windows, then scanned the interior of the bank. “I’ll be right back.”

I sat against the chair and ran my palm back and forth over the worn wooden arms. The clock on the wall was closing in on four and the line had dwindled. Five of the six teller windows had This Window Closed signs in front of them.

The bank manager stood in front of the sixth window. Grant was talking to him through the glass and the manager was listening intently. They stopped talking, and both turned to me.

I slipped the James Madison bill back into the interior zippered pocket of my handbag. I had to get out of there. I dug my phone out of my bag for the third time since I’d arrived and sent Tex another text.
Need you. Bank on buckner across from paper trail. SOS

My palm sweated. I squeezed the phone like I was juicing a lemon. I stood up on shaky legs and flexed my knee a few times. I wasn’t close to the door, but I was closer than either of the two men.

The possibility existed that I was acting irrationally, that there was a perfectly normal explanation for everything. I wanted a sign, an indication that running out the door of the bank, screaming that they were after my money, was a bad idea. My phone vibrated, startling me. I didn’t recognize the number, but whoever was on the other end of that call might be the only person to help me.

“Hello?”

“Is this Madison Night?” said a vaguely familiar male voice.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Harry from Turtle Creek Luxury Apartments. You asked me to call you if anything happened with Mrs. Bonneville’s son?”

“What happened?” The connection was quiet, and I pressed the phone against my head and looked at the carpet, concentrating on the valet attendant’s voice.

“I thought you’d want to know that a couple of cops came into his apartment earlier today. Art let them in. I’m not sure what they wanted, but it seems your suspicions were right.”

I looked up at the window. Grant was no longer there. The bank manager was on the phone at a different desk. A door, between where I stood and the exit, opened toward me and Grant stepped out. In two steps, he’d be standing between me and the only exit I had.

The phone beeped, and I looked at the screen.
Come to parking lot. Now.

I grabbed the handles of my bag and stepped away from the chair. With the explosion of a sprinter who hears the shot of a starting pistol, I ran past Grant, past the bank manager, past the ATM machine, to the glass doors that led to the parking lot. I ran to the second row of vacant spaces and looked around for Tex. Where was he? What parking lot was he hiding in?

This was no time for games. An alarm blared behind me from the bank. The now-familiar brown sedan swung into the parking lot and pulled in front of me. The passenger side door swung open.

Brad was behind the wheel of the car.

TWENTY-SIX

I stepped back. “Where did you get this car?” I asked. “What are you involved in?”

“Get in the car, Maddy,” he said. “I’m not involved in anything—I’m trying to get out. Buckle your seatbelt. Let’s go.” He peeled out of the parking lot and jerked a hard right onto Garland Road.

I braced myself with hands on the dashboard as he sped down the street. Something fell against my foot. I looked at the floorboards. The box for Brad’s watch lay open. Loose hundreds were scattered around my feet.

Brad turned off Garland onto the dirt road that wound around White Rock Lake and pulled the car under an overhang of trees. He threw the car into park and got out. I jumped out of my side and slammed the door behind me. Brad ran his hands through his hair and turned to face me, the brown sedan between us.

“You’re acting crazy, Mads. You’re going to get us killed.”

“What about you, Brad? You have a gun. I saw it. Since when do you carry a gun?”

“It’s for protection. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to protect you, just like I tried to keep you from getting involved years ago.”

“But you didn’t! Whatever is going on, you brought it to my back door.” My vision was distorted with the kind of extreme emotional agitation that removes everything from sight except the other person in an argument. “Why did you send me the original five thousand dollar bill? What did you want from me? Why are you really here?”

Brad took a step backward from the car and dropped his arms to his sides. He moved around the car and walked toward me. I stumbled away from him.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Madison. You have to believe me. But you were the one person no one would have suspected.”

“Brad, where did you get this car?” I asked again.

“I borrowed it.”

“From who?”

“Forget about the car, Maddy.”

“This car tried to run me off the road once, so I’m not going to forget about it.”

He grabbed my forearm. I yanked away from his hand and he let go, his eyes wide, as if he couldn’t believe I thought he was going to hurt me.

“That wasn’t me. C’mon, Mads, you know me.”

“I used to think so, but not anymore.”

“Listen to me. Philip Shayne was after me. He’s the man from the film strip. He had a gun and was going to kill me. The only way I got away was because I shot him first. Four times in the leg. It gave me the time I needed to get lost. I’ve been running ever since, looking for you. I had to tell you it was all a lie, that I never stopped loving you. For two years. He followed me from Pennsylvania. I thought I’d lost him. I never expected to see him again. You have to believe me, Maddy.”

“I don’t have to believe anything you say.” I spun on a patch of dirt and spotty brown grass and headed back toward Garland Road.

“Madison,” Brad called from behind me. “He found me four months ago. He told me he was going to get to me through you.”

I stopped walking. Brad’s words sank into my brain slowly, but loops of information, of lies and truths, of circumstances beyond my control kept me from understanding a chronological timing of events. Brad caught up to me and put his hand on my shoulder. This time I didn’t pull away.

“Madison, I couldn’t let that happen. After everything, I couldn’t let any harm come to you because of my mistakes.”

I turned to face him. “How did he connect us?”

“The article about you in the newspaper. Something about murders related to Doris Day and a mid-century modern interior decorator living in Dallas. The story was picked up and run in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. There was a sidebar about your past, working for Pierot’s Interiors, and how you had successfully relocated and started Mad for Mod. I don’t think it was hard for him to put it all together.”

“Is that why you sent me the bill?”

“I needed a way to let you know something was wrong. I had to give you a warning, in case I wasn’t around to tell you what was going on.”

“Tell me the truth, Brad. What happened at Paper Trail?”

Brad ran his hand over his hair. It seemed there was more gray than there’d been a week ago. Sweat and desperation had caused it to fall from its usual style. The front hung across his forehead. When he let go, he reached out for my hand and pulled me a couple of yards away from the dirt road. The car was hidden, thanks to the cloaking of the trees.

“You know the numismatist you went to see? Stanley Mann?”

I nodded.

“Philip Shayne was holding him prisoner in his own home. He starved him, beat him, until he agreed to authenticate fake James Madison bills to sell on the collector’s circuit. It was the same scheme he’d run in Philly. But Stanley had morals. He refused to cooperate until Philip threatened his dog.”

I thought about what Brad said he’d done to protect me, and what I’d do to protect Rocky.

“They didn’t hurt the dog, did they?”

“No. Stanley agreed to do what they wanted. I went to Paper Trail after I left your apartment. I wanted to get him and his dog out of there. But then you called. I heard you say you were coming over, and I knew I had to get lost. Stanley wasn’t the person who took the call. Philip Shayne was. He wanted to get the bill I sent you. You were going to walk into a trap.”

“I found Philip’s body when I went to Paper Trail. He’d been shot. The dog was there but Stanley wasn’t. Who killed Philip?”

“Philip had a partner. I never saw his face but I think he’s Grant Bonneville. Same build, same height. He was always in a black knit ski mask. Philip found me hiding in Paper Trail. We fought in the field out back. He wasn’t in good shape when I left, but he was alive.”

“What do you mean he wasn’t in good shape?”

“Let’s just say I won the fight.”

“What about Stanley? Where is he now?”

“I’ve been trying to find him. The guy in the mask dragged Stanley with him and left Philip behind. I took his wallet and arranged for you to get it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I know how your mind works. You have a need to figure things out. I put other stuff in the box that anybody else would ignore but would get your attention. I knew you’d obsess over that wallet until you had answers.”

“But the bill—why did you send me the bill?”

“Mr. Pierot trained us both to consult with a professional if we ever questioned a piece’s authenticity. I knew you’d go to a numismatist when you got that bill. That might have tipped off the professionals that this ring from Philly was here. I only wished you’d gotten there sooner.”

“A man died that night. If I’d gotten there sooner I might have—”

Brad cut me off. “You might have gotten killed too.” He hung his head. “That’s why I wanted you to meet me for dinner. I knew if you were with me, I could protect you.”

“Do you know where the numismatist is? Is he’s okay?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been spending my free time searching for him. The field behind Paper Trail, Turtle Creek, White Rock Lake. That’s their way. If he’s dead they’ll try to dump his body.”

“That’s how you got the poison ivy. You said you were giving me space but really you were waiting until the rash was gone.” Our eyes connected. “We have to go back to the bank, Brad. A police lieutenant is going to be there and you need to talk to him.”

“Forget the police lieutenant,” said Grant Bonneville. He stood by the car pointing a gun in our direction.

Gone was the nervousness that had colored his appearance the first day he came to Mad for Mod. In its place was a cold determination, setting the angle of his jaw and the line of his brow. “Ms. Night, get into the car and drive back into the bank by yourself,” he said.

“Don’t trust him, Mads. He’s not who he says he is,” Brad said.

“I know he isn’t, but I don’t know what he wants from me.”

“He wants the James Madison bill. Where is it?”

I looked at the car. My handbag rested on the seat next to the gift from Hudson. The bill was inside. I couldn’t let them know how close they were to it. 

“Why not give him one from the briefcase in your trunk? Because you know it’s not there anymore?”

Brad was in front of me now. His expression changed from intense to hurt. “You know about the briefcase?” he asked. “Why couldn’t you trust me?”

“You told too many secrets, Brad. Too many lies.”

“Those secrets and lies were for your own good.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t believe anything you say.”

“You were never supposed to be involved,” he said, like he’d been saying all along.

“Ms. Night, he’s right. You were never supposed to be involved. The fact remains that you are. Now give me the bill,” Grant growled.

“Give
me
the bill, Maddy.”

“I don’t have it.”

“I know that you do. Hand it over, and nobody gets hurt,” Brad said.

And then shots fired from behind us and a blossom of red spread across Grant’s shirt.