Whiplash

  As the adults looked over at her, Erin said, "It wasn't a totally happy ending since I was the one who had to clean sucker-sticky off the window. You didn't tell them that, Georgie. You want another moo shu pork pancake?"

  "Daddy calls them moo burritos. Can I fill it myself, Erin?"

  Sherlock watched the easy camaraderie between the woman and Bowie's little girl. She said, "You guys have known each other for a very long time, right?"

  "Just about forever," Georgie said. "Erin's been teaching me since I was a little kid, not even five. But she just met my daddy yesterday."

  Interesting, Sherlock thought. "I've never met a ballet teacher before."

  "I'm from a long line of dancers and teachers," Erin said as she handed Georgie the bowl of moo shu pork. "Both my grandmother and my mother are beautiful dancers, both of them still teach ballet, my grandmother in St. Petersburg, Florida, and my mom in Grand Haven, Michigan."

  Sherlock rolled up a moo shoo pancake. "Is your father also in the arts?"

  "No, Dad died of cancer three years ago. He couldn't dance a step even after a dozen Arthur Murray dance lessons with Mom. She finally gave up. He was a Navy SEAL." And he could pick locks and strategize how to break into places where you shouldn't be. He taught me everything he knew- "Well, that's enough about me, isn't it?"

  Bowie bit into an egg roll. "Erin's primarily a private investigator."

  "Whoa," Savich said. "That seems an odd combination. How did you pick investigation as a field, Erin?"

  "I'm good at finding out things," she said, "always have been. As a kid, my friends would ask me to help them find missing candy bars, video games, schoolbooks, whatever. I got better and better at it. Dad was always giving me hints on how to track things down. Then their folks started coming to me when they lost something or they had a problem with their kids, like a fight at school or something, and they needed information, or wanted to know what really happened. I could usually find out what they needed. And they'd give me a buck. My mom was embarrassed."

  "And your dad?" Sherlock asked.

  Erin laughed, couldn't help it. "He was very proud of me, said I was earning my college fund."

  "What exactly did your dad do?"

  "He was a security consultant," Erin said. "By the time I went to college, I knew what I wanted to do. My degree was in forensic science, lots of options there. I moved to Stone Bridge five years ago, got my license, and set myself up in business. I've supported myself very nicely, at least after my first two years or so in business. Most of my income came from teaching ballet in the lean years. Now, it's become more a hobby, something I enjoy and it keeps my hand in. Or my feet," she added and gave them a fat smile.

  Georgie said, "Erin found my house key once. I looked and looked. I nearly called you, Daddy."

  "That wasn't a biggie," Erin said. "You'd stuffed it inside your sock and tossed your sock in the waste basket because you found a hole. My dad told me all about how to find where missing keys were hiding."

  Bowie waved his glass at her. "Thanks."

  Erin grinned at him, waited a beat, and gave the agents a bright interested look. "Enough about me. Bowie told me you guys were sent here to assist him in his investigation into this Helmut Blauvelt's murder."

  Sherlock shot Bowie a look, saw that he was concentrating on helping his daughter stuff moo shu pork into her burrito. Well, Erin was a professional, and she seemed smart and savvy. Evidently Bowie thought so. Why not use her brain? Sherlock said, "We've got a witness who saw our girl wriggle out of Caskie Royal's bathroom window, land in the bushes below, bounce right up, and take off running into Van Wie Park."

  22

  Erin nearly fell off her chair in a dead faint. She cleared her throat. "Did the witness give you a description?"

  "Yes, he did. Longish hair flopping up and down out the back of a baseball cap. Probably brown, like yours, Erin. She was tall and rangy, the guy said. Slender. He said she didn't look like a runner, but he was struck by how gracefully she moved. Fluidly, smoothly, he said. Isn't that interesting?" And Sherlock held her eyes.

  She can't know, she can't know, she can't- Erin laughed to keep the terror out of her voice. "That is an odd thing to say. I wonder who she is."

  Bowie said, "Whoever she is, she's got Caskie Royal's fate in her hands, and he knows it. His lawyers sure know it, and I'll bet now his bosses in Germany know it. He's scared, but not enough to let us help him yet, the idiot."

  Sherlock added, "We also had a gorgeous German agent added to the mix today. Dolores Cliff, one of Bowie's agents, thinks he looks like Adonis. He's not Dillon, but I've gotta be honest here-he's a pretty close second."

  Bowie said to Georgie, "You remember Agent Cliff ?"

  "Oh, yes, she kicked my soccer ball clear out of the field. It took Coach and a bunch of parents to find it. She showed me how to do the splits. I'll bet Erin does the splits better than anybody."

  "Don't kiss up," Bowie said. "Yeah, that's Agent Cliff, a real hardnose. Only thing is, she's acting like you'd better not act when you turn thirteen, kiddo, and discover Y chromosomes."

  "What's Y chromosomes?"

  "Y chromosomes give fathers nightmares." He ruffled his daughter's hair. "Boys," he added.

  Erin said, "You mean this guy, this Adonis, bowled her right over?"

  "Yeah. I had to team him up with a guy who wouldn't care what he looked like."

  "Why does he look like Adonis?" Georgie asked.

  It was left to Sherlock to describe Kesselring, and she did him justice.

  Georgie thought about this as she took another bite of her moo shu pork burrito. "I bet Krissy would really like him."

  Bowie blinked. "Why do you think Krissy would like this foreign agent, sweetheart?"

  "I heard Krissy tell you that she really likes your sexy stomach muscles. I'll bet this guy has sexy stomach muscles like you."

  Bowie looked appalled. Erin thought he looked like his heart had seized.

  Savich said easily, "This makes me wonder if Sean has passed along any phone conversations he's overheard. Scary, isn't it, Sherlock?"

  Sherlock laughed. She leaned over to Georgie. "Do you know, I've probably said the same thing about Dillon. Hmm. I have to say that Agent Kesselring does look like a real dish. But you know what? Even though he looks like a chocolate sundae, I don't like him much. He isn't a straight shooter like Dillon or your dad, and that's something super important. I don't think he's got much respect for us women, either."

  "A woman's got to be honest too," Bowie said. "Even if the woman is still a kid," he added, looking at Georgie.

  Georgie spooned on some more sauce and took a big bite of her burrito. "Daddy's always honest except when he lies to Krissy."

  Another heart stopper.

  Bowie eyed his daughter. "I don't lie to Krissy. Why'd you say that?" Why had he asked that question, he, the well-trained FBI agent?

  All the adults watched Georgie chew and swallow, and take a drink of her water. "I heard you tell her once that you were head-over-heels with work and couldn't see her. Then you took me out for pizza and a movie."

  "Okay, but it wasn't a lie, not really," Bowie said. "I worked after you went to bed." Talk about lame. Well, he had checked his e-mails.

  "What about when she wanted to give me a movie-star Barbie birthday party and you told her my birthday was going to be at Grandma's?"

  "That was very nice of her, but something came up. Hey, I threw you a party, remember?"

  Georgie said to Sherlock, "I was Wonder Woman. I looped all my friends with my lasso of truth so they'd be forced to tell me what was written on the card in their hand-Daddy wrote down stuff-and they had to tell me if it was a lie or not. It was totally fun although the lasso didn't work very well. Well, Billy Bennett did tell me he'd stuck his finger in the frosting on my birthday cake."

  "What did Wonder Woman do about that?" Sherlock asked.

  "Billy helped me climb up to where Daddy hid the cake and I got a
swipe too."

  Bowie stared at his daughter, who looked very pleased with herself, the center of attention. "I wondered why the cake was all smeared."

  "Billy and I tried to smooth out the frosting," Georgie said. "With our fingers."

  After dinner, Sherlock dried glasses in the small kitchen while Erin washed. "Imagine, both guys tucking Georgie in."

  Sherlock buffed up a dish and set it in the cupboard. "Dillon told me he'd like to see how it works with a little girl as opposed to a boy. He's very good at reading bedtime stories."

  Erin handed her a plate to dry. "She's precocious. I'm reading her Nancy Drew's Mystery at Lilac Inn right now."

  "I remember I always had a Nancy Drew under my pillow," Sherlock said. She added after a moment, "I know Bowie's wife died in an automobile accident. Do you know what happened?"

  "Sorry, I don't. Georgie told me once that her mama was in Heaven, but I didn't want to ask her what had happened. And as I said, I only met Bowie yesterday."

  "Looking at the three of you, it seems like much longer. You're all very comfortable around one another. Are you working any interesting cases right now, Erin?"

  "Yes, one," Erin said without thinking as she washed a fork. She shot a look at Sherlock. "Well, it's not all that important, not really."

  Sherlock didn't change expression. "I hope it's not following a cheating husband?"

  "Oh, no, I don't do those sorts of thing, at least not anymore. When I first started out, I did half a dozen to feed myself. No, this is about a man whose father is ill and-he's asked me to look into a-financial problem with his drugs."

  Sherlock cocked an eyebrow.

  Shut up, shut up, do you have a hole in your head? She was facing a real professional who could smell something crooked in the next county.

  "What do you think about this murder?"

  Relieved, Erin stopped scrubbing the shine off a fork. "From what Bowie's told me, it sounds like this guy Blauvelt went all over the world for Schiffer Hartwin, and cleaned up messes for them, silenced people who were causing problems, that sort of thing, right?"

  Sherlock nodded.

  "So maybe it's the CEO of Schiffer Hartwin here in Stone Bridge who killed him, maybe in self-defense. What's his name?"

  "Caskie Royal. Or maybe whoever killed Blauvelt is planning on killing Caskie Royal too."

  Erin said, "You know, I think I'd speak to his wife. Wives know every secret, every sin."

  "Her name's Jane Ann Royal. She's on my To Do list for tomorrow," Sherlock said. "Turns out, Caskie was sleeping with one of his executives. I guess the night of the break-in, they didn't make it to the couch."

  Yeah, I sure wrecked their fun. Erin said, "I'd shoot the louse if he were my husband. Why is his wife putting up with it?"

  "I'll ask her," Sherlock said. "Interesting that you're working on a case about drugs. Tell me about it."

  Unfreeze your brain. "Well, I promised the client to keep it confidential, you know?"

  Erin was saved by the two men walking into her small kitchen, Savich saying, "The kid's got Nancy Drew memorized."

  Bowie laughed. "That's the truth. She said Savich read okay, but she likes your voice better, Erin. She said you should go to Hollywood. I think she really wants you to do her ironing."

  Erin was still lying wide awake in her bed around midnight, with Georgie asleep and her apartment quiet, wondering if she'd looked guilty when Sherlock had asked her about her case. Sure she had.

  No, she was being paranoid, about all of it. None of them would ever begin to guess it was she who'd dived out of Caskie Royal's bathroom window. Graceful or not, long brown hair or not, they knew her in an entirely different context. They had no reason to suspect her, none at all. She wasn't on their radar, she wasn't on anyone's radar.

  Tomorrow, she was driving up to New Haven to have lunch with Dr. Edward Kender at the Berkeley College dining room.

  She realized she'd told Sherlock she was having lunch in New Haven with a client at Yale, but that was it. Sherlock probably wasn't even listening.

  Erin finally went to sleep and dreamed of the eight-hundred-pound gorilla sitting under the red beanbag in the middle of her living room.

  23

  BERKELEY COLLEGE DINING ROOM

  New Haven, Connecticut

  Wednesday

  Erin gazed around the huge dark-wood-paneled room as she chewed on a pork sparerib, the meat falling off the bone it was so tender. She waved the rib toward the large buffet. "I've never seen such a delicious display of food in one place in my life, and it's a college dining room. Amazing."

  "Wait until you taste the garlic mashed potatoes, my father always calls it his forbidden treat when he eats here with me. It's been a while now."

  Dr. Kender paused a moment, swallowed.

  "I have the papers with me, sir. I think you're going to be very pleased. I know I am. It's all laid out, everything we want and need. Whenever you would like to look at the pages-"

  He raised his glass of spring water and clicked it to hers. "Congratulations, Erin. That was well done of you, but far too dangerous."

  "As I already told you, sir, I couldn't think of anything else to do. But please don't congratulate me for breaking the law, though in this case, I think it was worth it. On the bright side, I'm in the clear."

  "Then we'll drink to your being in the clear." He tapped his glass to hers again. "I am happier than I can tell you that we have the goods on those unconscionable bloodsuckers. Yes, I would like nothing better than to study the papers in detail, but I invited you here for lunch. Let's eat first." He looked around the vast dining hall with its long tables and benches and the scattered group of students. He and Erin sat at one of the small tables favored by the faculty. "I spent many happy hours here when I was a student. It seems like an eternity ago. Life continues to happen, doesn't it?"

  "Yes sir, it does."

  He sighed, ate a final bite of green beans, then slowly placed his fork neatly across his plate. "I can see something's happened since we last spoke. Before we go over the papers, tell me if I'm right."

  Erin said honestly, "I'm scared. For you. Please tell me you had nothing to do with killing Helmut Blauvelt."

  She watched a flash of fear cross his face, and then she saw anger, deep anger at her, and she saw something else in his eyes, some reaction she couldn't grasp, though she was usually very good at reading people. She watched him pick up his fork again and push a cherry tomato around in his salad plate. Then he looked at her and said smoothly, "I see you're serious, so I will answer you seriously. No, I did not kill Helmut Blauvelt. After you told me who he was, I paid more attention to the newspapers and the television reports. That isn't to say that if I'd run into him in a dark alley and I'd had a gun, I wouldn't have been sorely tempted."

  "Good, that's answered. Thank you, Dr. Kender. To be honest, I was afraid you'd made contact with him in some way, that perhaps you were on the list of people he was here to see. If you had killed him, it would have been in self-defense in any case." Except for bashing his face in and cutting off his fingers. She wasn't about to tell him that. Those details hadn't been released by the FBI, probably never would be, except to a grand jury.

  "Thank you for believing me to be such a man of action."

  "I think most anyone could be a man of action if pushed hard enough, if, for example, someone you love is placed in danger."

  Dr. Kender stared at her. "Do you really think the man could have been here to see me? Me, as in archaeology professor at Yale University? An academic right down to my tweed jacket?"

  "And a very persistent one, Dr. Kender. I'd like for you to tell me exactly how far you went with your complaints and questions to Schiffer Hartwin. Both here and in Germany."

  "I pestered them nearly every day from the day after Dad's oncologist told us about the unexpected Culovort shortage, until I came to you last week. I helped support the post office, one registered letter after the other, maybe a few dozen i
f you count all the members of the board of directors in Hartwin, Germany. I don't remember if I told you I called. The first couple of times, the assistant put me through to the head of the whole shebang, a Dr. Adler Dieffendorf. The conversation was not cordial, especially after I told him cutting back on the production of Culovort was criminal, that he was killing my father. I asked him if it was his wife or one of his children who needed the drug, would he have allowed this to happen? I told him I was sure they could start production up quickly again if it was worth more money to them. I told him I would soon have proof of that, and I planned to go to the media once I had all the facts. I might even have intimated I'd key his Mercedes before he lost his calm and threatened me with their cadre of lawyers. Then he hung up on me."

  Erin said, "Did you tell him where you were going to get the proof ?"

  He looked down at his elegant hands. "Well, I might have mentioned the American headquarters in Stone Bridge."

  Wonderful, just wonderful. "Did you imply that an employee here in the Stone Bridge headquarters had ratted them out?"

  "I made up any number of things, any threat I could think of. Yes, I might have suggested that someone would roll on them. I remember he snorted when I mentioned a whistleblower. A pity, but he didn't seem to believe that.

  "It got harder and harder to get through to anyone after that, though I did manage a few calls to some of the other directors. They all spoke English quite well, a good thing since I can't think all that fast in German."

  He gave her a crooked smile that was really quite charming, but Erin didn't smile back. "So you've been a real pain in the butt, sir?"

  "I certainly tried to be. There were also e-mails, and I've contributed to several blogs and public forums on the Internet. I'm just one voice among many out there."

  "Okay, here's what I'm thinking. Suppose someone actually believed you about getting your hands on proof, believed that an employee at Stone Bridge was going to spill the beans. I'm thinking you might have scared someone into action, and they sent Helmut Blauvelt over here to see exactly what you had and who you were talking to at Schiffer Hartwin."