Deadlocked

Chapter 47

Neither woman spoke. Mary stared at Victoria, her face filled with questions. Victoria gazed back at Mary, no hint of recognition in her blank expression. After a moment, Victoria looked away, finding the passing scenery out her window of more interest.

"She doesn't know who I am," Mary said softly.

Mason looked at Victoria in his rearview mirror. "I'm not certain how much she knows about anything. She seems out of it."

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I'll know when we get there," he said.

Mason sped east on Eighty-seventh Street Parkway, cutting north on a side street, working his way through a patchwork of subdivisions to avoid Whitney King. The aftermath of the storm added its own detours. Some streets were closed due to downed power lines. Others were blocked by fallen trees. People were already out in their yards, chainsaws in hand, cleaning up. No one gave them a second look and no black BMWs suddenly appeared in Mason's rearview mirror.

As badly as he wanted to talk with Mary about what had happened to her, he didn't want to do it in front of Victoria. He assumed Mary hadn't checked in to Golden Years for her health, which meant that taking her home was not an option. He didn't know where Victoria lived before she was at Golden Years and didn't want to take her there even if he did know. She was his ace, though he couldn't decide how to play her.

Whitney King knew that both women were with Mason. King couldn't report Mason to the cops for kidnapping his mother without implicating himself in Mary's disappearance.

Better yet, King had some explaining to do about his mother. Sandra Connelly suspected that Victoria King didn't belong at Golden Years. If Sandra was right, Victoria wasn't crazy and Whitney King had bundled his mother into the loony bin for some other reason. Mason's best guess was that Victoria knew that Whitney was guilty of the Byrnes's murders. Proving that there's an ounce of good in everyone, Whitney couldn't bring himself to off his mother. Instead, he warehoused her.

One thing bothered Mason about his theory. Victoria was out of it, muttering about going home and not wanting any more phone calls. Mason was no shrink, but Victoria didn't look right to him.

King's other problem was that the cops were looking for him. If he wanted his mother back, he'd have to come get her. In the meantime, Mason needed a place where both women could stay while he figured out what to do next.

Mason introduced Mary and Victoria to Claire who said how pleased she was to meet them and didn't ask any questions. She knew enough to understand who they were and knew Mason well enough to know that he wouldn't have brought them to her house if he had had another option. Harry stood behind her in the front hall of her first floor office.

"This is Harry," she said to Mary and Victoria, offering no further explanation. "Let me take you upstairs."

Mason and Harry watched as they climbed the stairs.

"Where'd you find them?" Harry asked him.

"Golden Years."

"You were there when the tornado hit or did they just drop out of the sky like Dorothy and Toto?" Harry asked, keeping his voice level.

"I was there," Mason answered. "And so were they. I was looking for Victoria. Mary was a bonus."

"What was Mary doing there?" Harry asked.

"I haven't had a chance to ask her yet. We've been kind of busy."

"You suppose Whitney King is going to be looking for his momma?"

"I suppose," Mason said, giving Harry a quick rundown on what had happened.

"What do you have in mind?" Harry asked.

"Been a long day," Mason said. "I think I'll have a chat with Mary and then Victoria. After that, I'm going to take the rest of the weekend off. See what Monday brings."

"You stirred up the shit stew and now you want to see what happens. Is that it?" Harry asked.

"Sometimes I'm a lot better at stirring stuff up than I am at figuring it out."

"Well then, you better get upstairs. Claire's probably taken their orders for breakfast already."

"Does she offer rooms with the American or European meal plan?" Mason asked.

"Doesn't matter. You know the woman can't cook."

When Claire bought her house, she renovated the first floor into her law office, keeping the existing rooms intact. She knocked out every wall on the second floor, stripping the space to the exterior frame, and started over. She had liked the open feeling of the loft she had lived in downtown but didn't want as much space. Here, the kitchen merged with dining and living areas into a single room. There were two bedrooms, each with a bath, tucked at one end. The walls were white, the floors were hard, but Claire warmed the atmosphere with plants, primitive art, and herself.

Claire was alone, sitting at her kitchen table, catching the first sunlight to emerge in the aftermath of the storm as it shot through her window. It was late in the day and the sun was dropping, giving the light a burnished glow against the glass. The door to the guest bedroom was closed. Harry joined her at the table.

"Where are they?" Mason asked, standing in the center of the living room.

"In there," Claire answered, tilting her head at the closed door.

"I need to talk to them," Mason said, taking a step in that direction.

Claire raised her hand. "Not yet, Lou."

"It's important," he said.

"No doubt it is. It may even be as important as what they are talking about, but I doubt it. Leave them alone. They're not going anywhere."

Mason took a deep breath and a long look at the bedroom before letting out an impatient sigh.

Claire said, "You know, that deep breath thing you do is really annoying. Those two women have lived with what happened to their sons a lot longer than you have. I imagine that they have never talked about it with each other until now. From the looks on their faces when you got here, they need to. You'll just have to wait."

Mason shrugged in surrender, joining his aunt and Harry. "I can wait."

"Why did you bring them here?" Claire asked.

"I can't take Mary home until I know whether it's safe. As long as King and my lawyer are running loose, that's not a good bet."

"Your lawyer?" Claire asked. "Why should Mary be afraid of your lawyer?"

Mason shook his head. "I'm not certain. Sandra Connelly asked Dixon Smith to find out whether Victoria King belonged at Golden Years. I'm guessing that Sandra had a good reason for asking. Victoria may have known that her son was a killer. Whitney may have put her in Golden Years to keep her doped up and quiet."

"A man who loves his mother is man enough for me," Harry said.

"But how could Whitney get away with that all these years?" Claire asked. "Too many people would know that she was there. Doctors, nurses, social workers. It would be impossible to keep that a secret. The insurance company that paid the bills would get suspicious after a while."

"Hard, but not impossible," Mason said. "Whitney may have paid the freight himself. Golden Years is a little short of medical supervision. Plus, the whole place was built by King's construction company, which Whitney owns. That would give him an in with Damon Parker who owns Golden Years."

"So why not talk to Parker?" Claire asked.

"If Sandra thought of that, she must have had a reason not to," Mason said. "Instead, she asked Dixon Smith to check into it since she knew that Dixon represented Parker and Golden Years."

Harry asked, "What did Dixon find out?"

"According to Dixon, not a damn thing. Plus, Dixon says that Parker fired him for asking."

"Why would any of that make you think your lawyer is a threat to Mary?" Claire asked.

"I went to Golden Years today to talk to Victoria," Mason said. "Dixon Smith had left instructions to call him if I showed up. Turns out, he lied to me about Parker firing him. He was running around at Golden Years after the storm acting like a tornado was the least of his worries. I think he was looking for Mary and me."

"He's supposed to be defending you," Claire said. "You should fire him!"

"Not yet. He doesn't know that I'm on to him. I'll learn more this way."

"Aren't you forgetting the small matter of the murder charge against you?" Claire asked. "You need a lawyer you can rely on."

"Maybe not. Maybe all I need is a lawyer I can prove killed Sandra."

Claire said, "You think it was Dixon?"

"Sandra was killed to stop her from telling me something about Whitney King or his mother. She was about to tell me when she got a phone call from Dixon Smith. Sandra must have told him we were together. She may have even told him we were meeting King at King's office."

Harry said, "Whitney says he didn't know anything about meeting with you and Sandra, plus his mother is his alibi. Dixon is the only other person who knew where you and Sandra were going to be."

"Exactly," Mason said. "Plus, there wasn't time for anyone else to do it."

"But how do you explain the phone call?" Harry asked.

"Why would Sandra tell you King had called and told you to wait there if the caller was Dixon?"

Mason frowned. "Maybe it wasn't King. Maybe it was Dixon with a bad cell phone connection or a disguised voice. I don't know. Dixon told me that there are no records of a call from Whitney to Sandra. There is a record of a call but no originating phone number."

Claire said, "Then it couldn't have been made from Dixon's phone. That number would appear in the records."

"If," Harry said, "Dixon was dumb enough to use his own phone. More likely he stole someone's cell phone."

"If he did, that stolen number would show up and lead us back to the owner of the cell phone. Dixon told me that all the numbers in Sandra's records checked out except for the one that's unidentified. Dixon wouldn't lie about that since he knows I'll see the records."

"I'll tell you what," Harry said. "You better find out who placed that anonymous call or the jury will think you made the whole story up."

"No plan is perfect," Mason said, pushing back from the table, casting another long look at the closed bedroom door.

"Go home," Claire told him. "Leave them be. Come back in the morning and bring a bag of bagels and cream cheese."

Mason nodded and stood. "Okay," he said. "We've got some things to talk about too."

"I know," she said. "It's time."

Mason looked at her, not certain if the light was playing tricks. A sadness he'd never seen crept into her eyes and spread across her face. He turned to Harry.

"You staying?"

Harry said, "I'll be here."

"Feel better?" Claire asked. "And no speeches about Whitney King looking for Mary and his mother. We'll be fine. Harry keeps a gun here that I'm not supposed to know about and I've still got the bulletproof vest he bought me for Valentine's Day," she added, patting Harry on the thigh.

Mason looked at them. His aunt was defiant. Harry was a rock. He doubted that King would think to look here. It was more likely that he'd wait for Mason to come home. Even if King showed up at Claire's house, he liked their chances.

"See you in the morning," Mason told them.