Minotaur

34

“I don’t know how much more I can tell you,” Fiona said. Some of her confidence had fallen away. “The shipments came in by water. Through that boat launch you saw, under the house.”

“I thought that was just Favorov’s escape route,” Chapel said.

“You saw the panic tunnel, the one that leads from our bedroom down to the water. But there’s another tunnel that leads from the launch to the cellar. When Ygor was building the house he had some contractors build the escape route first, then he fired them and hired some new people to dig the tunnel through to the cellar, so no one blabbing workman could give away the plan for the whole complex.”

“How often did shipments come in?” Chapel asked.

“Only two or three times a year. Ygor would get very nervous around those times. His biggest fear, I think, was that someone would see the boats coming and going. It was all done in the middle of the night, and very quietly, with no lights showing at all. Ygor always thought I was asleep when it happened, but I would wake up when he crept out of bed to oversee a delivery, and I would go to my bedroom window and listen to it all happen. The boats would come in—from Cuba, I think, the men who came on the boats always spoke Spanish—and offload down there, then our servants would move the crates into the cellar.”

“What about outgoing—when the crates went to his white power friends, how was that handled?”

“Now that was rather ingenious,” Fiona said. She looked proud of her husband for how he’d masterminded his criminal enterprise. Well, she had stayed married to him even knowing as much as she did. “We would throw a party, just a little thing with a few other couples and their families. A garden party, a Christmas toast, it didn’t matter. The caterers were always the same, and there were always more of them than we actually needed. They would come in a truck with all the food and wineglasses and tablecloths and such, and when they left, they would take the crates with them. No one in this part of Long Island would look twice at a catering truck.”

Chapel supposed he was a little impressed, himself. It would have taken a truly mammoth amount of organization and discretion to make this all work for so long with nobody noticing. Though he supposed the police and the Coast Guard rarely came out to the richest part of Long Island, and then only when they were called in. Every house in the area was big enough and expensive enough to have its own private security.

“Tell me something,” Chapel said, not because it would help his investigation but just because he had to know. “Did you know what was in those crates?”

Fiona shot him a glance from the corner of her eye. “Not as such.”

“But you had to know it was something illegal. You knew that these people, the people your husband sold the guns to, were dangerous people. And yet you never did anything to stop it. I’m not saying you could have. I’m sure Favorov would have laughed if you asked him to stop. But you never even tried. Did you?”

Fiona inhaled deeply. “You know exactly why I said nothing. You know it, and you’re just trying to make me say it, because you think I should be ashamed. You might as well ask me if I loved my husband or not. Well?”

Chapel opened his mouth to speak but he just couldn’t be that cruel. He couldn’t say what he really wanted to say.

Angel could, though. “She married him for his money. She’s a total gold digger.” Chapel was glad Fiona couldn’t hear the little voice in his ear.

“I grew up in a home where the only food on the table came from government assistance. My father spent his whole life looking for work and never found any. I vowed, when I was just a little girl, that I wouldn’t die as poor as he did. I worked hard to make that happen, to get where I am. I don’t regret the things I’ve done. You can think of me what you like, Mr. Chapel. Better people than you have called me a whore.” For a second she turned her head, glancing back at the boys in the backseat. Chapel wondered how much, if anything, they’d understood of the conversation he’d been having with their mother. “I’ll tell you what I told them. It’s hard work, and the hours are shit. But the benefits are amazing.”

That was enough to shut Chapel up. For a minute, maybe. Then he felt like he had to say what he was actually thinking. “I don’t think that at all.”

“Oh, really? You still respect me, is that what you were going to say?” Fiona lashed out.

“I think a lot of people would have had a hard time jeopardizing their position as the wife of a billionaire, just on an ethical qualm. Honestly, I have no idea what I would have done in your situation. That much money must be incredibly tempting,” he admitted. “What I was going to say, though, was that I don’t think you did it for the money.”

Fiona stared ahead at the road.

“I saw the look on your face, when I came out of the boys’ bedroom. When you were worried they might be hurt. I saw the same look my mother used to get, when I was a kid and I fell out of a tree I had tried to climb. Maybe at first, when you first met Favorov, it was about the money. But it isn’t anymore. And that, I can definitely respect.”

Fiona turned to stare at him. He had to nod forward, at the road, so she would keep focused on driving.

They were silent for a long time. Finally, in a very small voice, she said, “Thank you. Thank you for that much. We’re almost there.”