King and Maxwell

CHAPTER 7

THE OARS CUT CLEANLY THROUGH the murky water.

The rains had passed and the sky was cloudless. The winds that had beaten off the storm system had come up from the warmer southwest, but it was still cold enough to see your breath.

Michelle worked the oars with a polished motion built up over many years of piloting narrow vessels with barely a foot-deep draft through water. She didn’t have to think about what she was doing. She just had to pull and recoil, pull and recoil, moving in a precise straight line because getting off-course cost precious seconds. Every muscle in her body was engaged at some point, particularly the core and the lower body where a person’s real strength was housed. She would take oblique mass and corded thighs over tank-top beach muscle.

The Potomac was empty of boats except for a police vessel that was slowly chugging its way south toward Memorial Bridge. Michelle was heading the other way, following a route to the old boathouses that hugged the shore near Georgetown.

Perched on the hood of his Lexus, Sean watched his partner methodically make her way back to her starting point. He was glad to see that she had taken his advice and put her shell in the water even if it was cold outside. She was at peace there, he knew, one of the few places she was likely to find it. He only took his gaze off her once, when a mass of gulls started swirling in the air, pivoting, dropping, and then swooping upward.

That was real freedom, thought Sean. Must be nice.

He settled his gaze back on his partner. They had been intimate on one occasion and never again after that. He had thought about the reasons behind this. They were many and varied. The sex had been great. The morning after had been confused, as though they had both been culpable in stepping over a sacred boundary and had nearly ruined a perfectly good partnership by doing so.

She pulled up at the ramp to one of the boathouses painted yellow and green. Sean pushed himself off the Lexus’s hood and came forward to help her. She wore a dark blue one-piece wet suit with booties that allowed free range of motion and protected her against the chill. It revealed not an ounce of fat on her tall body. But it also showcased how thin she was.

Together they tied the shell to the top of her Land Cruiser, and Michelle angled her oars through the truck’s back window. They were long enough to reach into the front seats.

Sean gazed inside her car. It was full of trash, most of which should have been tossed a long time ago.

She noted him staring and said, “Don’t go there. I’ll clean it out at some point.”

“Right. When you can no longer reach the steering wheel?”

“That’s very funny, Sean. And you always claim not to be a morning person.”

Sean snagged two coffees from his car and handed her one. She took a sip.

“You looked good out there,” he said.

“BS[6] I can do without.”

“What do you mean?”

She stretched out her shoulder until she was rewarded with a pop. “I’m slower than I’ve ever been. I couldn’t make a high school team right now.”

“We all get old.”

“Not all of us. Not Tyler’s dad.”

Sean drank his coffee and looked off toward the water. “We’re officially pulling out of Afghanistan. But we still have casualties. Dying for what?”

“You could ask that question in just about every war.”

“I didn’t see the trigger was missing from the Mauser,” he admitted, glancing at her.

“I probably had a better angle than you did. He was on my side of the road. If we’d been in England, you would’ve spotted it instead of me.”

“You still lie really well.”

“Comes in handy in our line of work.”

“I know I said we needed to get back on casework, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe, instead, we should take some of the money and go somewhere.”

Michelle stared at him quizzically. She leaned against the hood of her truck and said, “Why the sudden change in plan?”

“I’m a spontaneous person.”

“Your idea of spontaneity is going with eighty-nine octane over full premium.”

“You never really got any downtime, Michelle. It was hospital, surgeries, rehab. That was hard work. You need a break. We both need a break.”

“And our rainy-day fund?”

“Frankly, we’ve got enough money to get away for a while and have plenty left over. I vote for someplace warm and sandy where they line the drinks up for you all loaded with limes and salt. You can see me in my swimsuit and you can wear a bikini.”

“Why? To better show off my scars?” she said harshly.

Sean’s face fell. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Her features softened. “I know,” she said quietly.

“Besides, I’ve got some of my own,” he said. “And you’ve seen them all,” he added, smiling.

“One of them is actually sort of cute.”

“So will you at least think about us getting away for a little R and R[7]?”

“That actually might be nice.”

“And Tyler Wingo?”

“I guess I was trying to insert myself where I don’t belong. Maybe we can just mail him back the gun.”

“Now you’re talking. I can check into travel arrangements and we can nail this whole thing down in a couple of days. You ever been to New Zealand?”

“No.”

“I went there on a trip when I was guarding the VP.[8] Let me tell you, the word paradise does not cut it. And it’s their summer season now.”

Her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen.

“Just hold that thought. Hello? Yes, this is Michelle Maxwell.”

She listened and then said, “Okay, I understand.” She was silent for about a minute as she listened some more, then said, “We can make that. Give me the address.”

She saw Sean giving her the high sign not to commit but ignored it. She clicked off and slipped the phone back into her waterproof fanny pack.

“Who was that?” asked Sean.

“Tyler Wingo.”

“Does he want his gun that bad?”

“No. He didn’t mention the gun.”

“What then?”

“He wants to hire us.”

Sean gaped at her. “Hire us? For what?”

“To find out what happened to his dad.”

“We know what happened to his dad. He was killed in action while serving in the Army in Afghanistan. And we are not going to Afghanistan to confirm his death, if that’s what he’s asking us to do. The military can do that perfectly fine without our help. And you just said yourself that you were inserting yourself where you didn’t belong. We were going to jump on a plane to New Zealand.”

“But that was before he called. Tyler wants to meet.”

Sean let out a long sigh. “Meet where, at his house?”

“No, he wants to keep this between him and us for now. He didn’t mention anyone specifically but it was easy to tell that he doesn’t want his stepmother to know.”

“First of all, he’s a minor and he can’t hire us because he can’t legally enter into a service agreement with us. It would be unenforceable by us.”

She gave him a disappointed look. “That’s just legal mumbo jumbo. You’re not an attorney anymore.”

“Once an attorney always an attorney. And it’s not just mumbo jumbo. It’s how we get paid.”

“I’m sure he’ll pay us.”

“I’m glad you’re confident. But I’m also not going to take money from a grieving teenager when there is no investigative work for us to do. His dad is KIA. It’s a moot point. The Pentagon is really good at identifying remains. And soldiers carry dog tags and they keep DNA[9] samples now and everything. If they say he’s dead, then he’s dead.”

“I don’t know if Tyler is disputing that his father is dead. He has another reason he wants to hire us.”

“What?”

“He wants to know how he died.”

“Didn’t the Army tell him and his stepmom? That’s part of what they do when they notify next of kin.”

“Apparently, Tyler was not satisfied with their explanation.”

“This is crazy, Michelle. The kid is obviously not thinking clearly.”

“It might be crazy,” she agreed. “But there’s something to be said for helping grieving teenagers get through a really bad situation.”

“And you think we can do that?”

“We’ve done it lots of times before for lots of different people, some even younger than Tyler.”

“That’s true,” said Sean halfheartedly. “So if not at his home, where does he want to meet?”

“At his high school.”

“His high school? He just found out his dad was killed yesterday and he went to school today?”

“Yeah, I thought that was odd too. But then again, if he and his stepmother don’t get along, he might not want to be there with her. And maybe he thinks if he sticks to his routine, he won’t have to think too much about his dad never coming back.”

“I guess everybody handles grief differently,” said Sean.

“I guess they do. And he’s just a kid.”

“Exactly when does he want to meet?”

“He gets out at three fifteen. He has swim practice starting at four thirty. He can meet with us in between.”

Sean chuckled.

Michelle pulled her car keys from her fanny pack. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I was just afraid we were going to have to do a confidential client meeting on the playground during recess.”

“He’s in high school, not kindergarten. And they don’t do recess anymore.”

“My apologies. But I just don’t see this going anywhere.”

“At the very least we can return his gun, although it’s probably not a good idea to pass him a weapon while he’s on school grounds. Maybe we can meet him someplace else.”

“Which high school?” he asked. She told him.

“We drove past there last night. There’s a strip mall across the street with a Panera café. Call him back and tell him we’ll meet him there.”

“I won’t call. I’ll just text. That’s what kids do these days.”

“However you want to do it.”

“You’re not into this case, are you?” she asked.

“There is no case,” he replied.

“There might be a case,” she corrected. “Depending on what we find out.”

“You’re just not letting this go, are you?”

“I really don’t know why this has gotten ahold of me. But it has. And I have to do it. Okay?”

“Fine. In for a dime, in for a dollar.”

“Now you sound really old.”

“Our new ‘client’ is barely past puberty. Of course I feel old.”

She nudged his shoulder with her hand. “Thanks for indulging me.”

“What I live for,” he replied. “But you have to promise me, if there is nothing to this case, and I can tell you right now that there isn’t, you will drop it and we go on vacation. I want your word.”

“You have my word. If there is nothing to the case, we go to New Zealand and I’ll wear a bikini. But you have to wear a Speedo.”

He said, “That would not do wonders for New Zealand’s tourism business.”

But what he was really thinking was, I’m just thrilled that I’m not grieving about losing you.