True Blue

CHAPTER 71

WHY AM I not surprised that you can pick a deadbolt?” Roy was staring over Mace’s shoulder while she worked on the lock. They were at the fence-enclosed basement entrance to Diane Tolliver’s waterfront luxury town home at Fords Landing. It was an upscale community a little south of the main strip in historic Old Town Alexandria.

Mace had her pick and tension tool inserted in the lock and was manipulating both instruments with ease. “Amazing what you learn in prison,” she said.

“You didn’t learn that in prison,” he said in a scoffing tone.

“How do you know that?”

“Trust me, I just know.”

“Are you insinuating that I bent the rules while I was a cop?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I mean, I’m not insinuating it, I’m stating it as a fact.”

“Go to hell, Roy.”

“Wait a minute, how do you know the security system’s not on?”

“I already snuck a peek through the glass sidelights on the front door. Green glow coming from the security touchpad means security off. Cops probably had the alarm company shut it down when they came to bag and tag. They almost always forget to tell them to turn it back on.”

There was an audible click and Mace turned her tension tool like a key. “And we’re in.” They closed the door behind them and Mace on a small flashlight with an adjustable beam. She widened the focus and looked around.

“This is a rec room with a full bar over there,” Roy said as he pointed up ahead and to the right. “And there’s a media room through that door over there.”

“Nice.”

“If the cops already bagged and tagged, what can we hope to find?”

“Stuff they missed.”

They went room by room. One space had been outfitted as a home office. There was a large desk, wooden file cabinets, and builtin bookshelves but no computer.

“I think she had a laptop in here,” said Roy. “The cops might’ve taken it instead of using the flash drive you talked about.”

Mace was eyeing a pile of documents she’d pulled from a file cabinet. “Do all lawyers at Shilling bring this much work home?”

Roy ran the light over the papers. “Looks to be some docs from a private stock acquisition we did last month. We repped an oil exploration company in the U.A.E. that was buying a preferred minority interest in a Canadian shale oil field. It was done through a specialized broker in London and there were several other piggyback purchasers with packaged financing securitized over a number of debt platforms in about ten countries that had also had some sovereign fund participation and a buy-sell playing-chicken option.”

“I have no idea what you said, but I think it just made me horny.”

“If I’d only known that’s all it took.”

“So how much are we talking dollar-wise?”

“A little over a billion dollars. Paid in cash.”

“A billion in cash!”

“That’s how Diane could afford this place. She probably paid for it in cash.”

Mace’s brow creased.

“What are you thinking now?”

“I’m thinking I should have gone to law school,” she growled. While Roy went over Tolliver’s office, Mace methodically covered the bedroom, guest rooms, bathrooms, and the garage. She finally arrived in the kitchen, which had a small brick fireplace with a wooden mantel and extended into the well-appointed dining area that had as its centerpiece a ten-foot-long table constructed from reclaimed wood. There were views of the Potomac through several large windows.

Mace checked the cupboards, the refrigerator, the stove, and the dishwasher. She opened jars and cookbooks, and dug into flowerpots in case Tolliver had bought one of those mini security boxes that look like something mundane. She examined piece by piece the trash that had obviously not been bagged, tagged, and taken by the cops. Roy joined her while she was seated in a chair still going through the garbage.

“Find any banana peels with secret writing?”

“No, but I did find a meat wrapper, veggie peelings, and a moldy piece of bread. Along with an empty bottle of red wine.”

“So that was Diane’s last meal.”

“We’ll all have one someday.”

Mace rinsed off her hands in the sink. “Anything suspicious in her files?”

“Not really.”

Mace started walking up and down the room, hitting the walls, floor, and ceiling with her light. “See all the shiny surfaces?”

“Fingerprint powder.”

“That’s right.”

She reached the wall at the far end of the room, turned, and started back. When her light flicked to the ceiling she stopped. “Roy, grab a chair for me.”

He brought it to her and she stood on it on her tiptoes, shining the light around the smoke detector mounted on the ceiling. She handed him the light. “Get up here and tell me what you see.”

He stood on the chair. “Scratches on the paint and what looks to be dirt smudges.”

“Somebody moved the smoke detector.”

“Well, you’d do that to change the battery.”

“How about this?”

Roy stepped off the chair and angled the light to where Mace was pointing at the carpet. He got down on his knees for a better look. “Paint flakes?”

“You’d think they would’ve been vacuumed up. Unless it happened after she was dead. Let me see that detector.”

Roy got back on the chair, unhooked the wires, and handed it to her.

She turned it over. “Smoke detectors are popular items to substitute with surveillance pin cameras.”

“Surveillance? Of Diane?”

“They tapped her computer, why not her home?”

“So why didn’t the police find it?”

“They probably removed it before the cops searched the place. I think you need to go to your office tomorrow and do some real digging.”

“You really believe it’s tied to Shilling?” he said skeptically.

“Billion-dollar contracts? Companies in the Middle East? Uh, yeah.”

“It’s actually pretty boring stuff. Just business.”

“One man’s business is another man’s apocalypse.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Just humor me and check around. Come on, I’ll drop you off at your condo.”

Outside, they climbed on the Ducati. Before Mace started the engine, she turned and looked at him. “So why did you tank the HORSE game?”

“Why do you think?” Roy said quietly.

Mace found she couldn’t meet his gaze. She slowly turned back around, engaged the engine, and they sped off.