Lou Mason Mystery 03-Cold Truth (18 page)

Mason said, "Talk to me, Jordan."

"We were best friends," she whispered, the words slipping out so softly Mason stepped closer to catch them.

"Was Centurion telling the truth?" he asked.

He looked over her shoulder, out the window into the rain that had returned, pinging against the window. An oak tree soared past the window, its branches scraping the house. Jordan craned her neck, searching for the treetop or a way out. The wood frame smelled of the dampness harbored in its pores.

"Emily was high. That part's true. She was also eight months pregnant. She wanted an abortion, but Terry Nix talked her out of it until it was too late. I don't know if that's why she jumped or if she was just too fucked up to know what she was doing."

"Did you try to stop her?"

Jordan gripped the window frame with both hands, rattling it, stopping when it didn't give way. She looked again for the crown of the oak tree.

"It was late summer, like today, only it was a beautiful night," she began. "That's why we had the window open. It was bigger than this one. You could sit in the opening, practically stretching your legs out. Emily was leaning her back against the frame with her feet against the other side." Jordan smiled at the memory, Mason seeing her reflection in the glass. "It was like she was inside a picture frame. I told her she looked like a painting. She said, yeah, call me a portrait of an unwed mother. Then she started singing this weird song, like a twisted nursery rhyme.
Hush, little baby, we're gonna die. Momma and baby, we can't fly.
I told her to cut it out, that it wasn't funny. Terry came in our room. She got this cold look, like she was going to do it. I tried to grab her. Terry said I shoved her, but I didn't. I know I didn't. I couldn't have," she said, balling her fists against the pane.

"I believe you," he said, sensing that it was she who lacked faith, not him. "I'm sorry," he added, regretting that was all he had to offer.

"Me too." Jordan ran her hands through her hair, turned, and dipped past Mason, circling to the other side of the bed. "Well, thanks for that trip down memory lane. You said there were two things you wanted to talk about."

Mason was glad to change the subject. "Centurion said you took something that belongs to him when you left Sanctuary. He wants it back."

"Can we get out of here if I give it back to him? Can I go back to Abby's?"

"I hope so."

Jordan opened the closet door and picked up her backpack. She unzipped a compartment on the front, pulled out a slender leather-bound ledger, and handed it to Mason. The pages were filled with a series of initials separated by slashes, followed by dates and dollar amounts ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 and either the letter
P
or
B
in parentheses.

"What is it?" Mason asked.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter. Give it back to him."

"It can't be nothing," Mason said. "Centurion all but threatened to kill me and you to get this little book back."

Jordan tapped into a wellspring of venom Mason thought had run dry. "I said it's nothing! Give it back to the fucking pig and tell him I'll rip his fucking heart out if he comes near me!"

Mason thought about the lies he'd told and heard that day, adding Jordan's outburst to the list. The ledger was something—maybe gold, maybe poison, maybe both— but it was the opposite of nothing. That was Jordan's lie. That she would rip out Centurion's heart if she had the chance was nothing but the truth.

Mason left Jordan in the bedroom. He used the all-in-one fax, copier, printer, and scanner in Daphne's study to make a copy of the pages in the book. Then he called Centurion, arranging to meet him in another very public place. Mason thought his choice was perfect for returning a book. Besides, he doubted whether Centurion had ever been in the public library.

Mickey was in the study, seated at Daphne's computer, scrolling through a web site and muttering under his breath, as Mason confirmed his meeting with Centurion Johnson. Maroon velvet wallpaper shrank the study, already cramped by a rolltop desk, its cubbyholes stuffed with incoming and outgoing mail.

"Is that a good idea, Boss?" Mickey asked.

"Is what a good idea?"

"You going out in the rain to meet Centurion?"

"I'm meeting him at the public library. That's the safest place I know unless you take a sex education book back into the stacks."

"Bad idea to go alone."

"Who said anything about going alone. I'll call Blues."

"He's tending bar tonight since the regular bartender called in sick. Normally, I'd fill in, but I'm babysitting Jordan."

"That's why he calls the place Blues on Broadway. The customers expect to see him. I'll call Harry."

"Not home. Claire picked him up a few minutes ago. They're flying to Chicago for dinner."

"Get real, Mickey. Nobody flies to Chicago for dinner, especially Harry and Claire."

"She said it's for Harry's birthday, the celebration that never ends. She's acting like he won't see another one. Their flight is at six and their reservations are at nine. They're coming back in the morning."

Mason knew his aunt better than he knew anyone alive. She had raised him on a regimen of duty disciplined by frugality. She was a serious woman with serious values moderated by a serious humor that rarely indulged in flights of fancy, let alone flights to Chicago for dinner. Mason gave Mickey credit for his unintentional insight. Claire wasn't worried that Harry wouldn't live to see his next birthday. She was worried that he wouldn't
see
by his next birthday, and she was determined that he would see as much as he could for as long as he could. He envied her devotion to Harry as he rubbed the ache left by Abby's last angry words.

Mason agreed with Mickey that it was a bad idea to meet Centurion alone, even at the public library, but he was out of backups and it was a worse idea to back out now. Centurion would assume that Mason was setting him up, and that was the worst idea Centurion could get.

"We'll use our cell phones again. I'll call you when I get to the library and you listen in. If Centurion doesn't use his library card to check out this book," Mason said, palming the ledger, "call the cops."

"Swell, but still stupid," Mickey said, studying the computer screen. "Check this out. I found a web site that has all the Form 990s for private foundations. Here's the one for Sanctuary."

Mason pulled up a chair next to Mickey, crowding him for a view of the screen. The form looked like every other tax return Mason had ever seen, an indecipherable grid of add, subtract, multiply, and divide adopted by Congress as the Accountant's Full Employment Act.

"David Evans told me that this form lists all the donations and expenses for the foundation. Find that part."

Mickey scrolled through the pages, stopping at the list of donors. "It lists the names of donors making contributions in excess of five thousand dollars. Let's take a spin," Mickey said as he rolled the cursor down the list, stopping at Emily's Fund.

"One hundred thousand dollars," Mason said. "That's a lot of cheddar for Dr. Gina to give to a place that didn't stop her daughter from committing suicide. See if there's anything interesting on the expense side."

"It lists compensation for the highest-salaried people," Mickey said, clicking the mouse to find those entries. "Nice work if you can get it," he added. "Centurion is knocking down three hundred and fifty K, and Brother Terry Nix is alive and well at one hundred and seventy-five."

"Don't forget the free room and board," Mason added with a sour laugh. "Who sits on the board of directors?"

Mickey pulled that page up on the screen. "It's a Who's Who of the big-bucks crowd," he said. "Plus a few more familiar names, Gina Davenport, David Evans, and Arthur Hackett. Hackett chairs the investment committee. Evans got nice fees as the outside investment advisor and lawyer for Sanctuary. Guess how much?"

"One hundred thousand dollars," Mason said.

"You got it, Boss. Dr. Gina brought the money in the front door and David Evans took it out the back door."

"The world is round," Mason said, looking at his watch. "I've got to get going." He handed Mickey the copy he'd made of Centurion's ledger book. "See if you can figure this out. It may be a list of contributors. Compare the initials to the names on the donor list."

Mickey asked, "If it's a list of donors, why would Centurion make such a big deal out of it? Those people are already on the Form 990."

"I don't know," Mason said. "Maybe they were contributing to a different cause."

"Centurion is going to ask you if you made a copy of his ledger. What are you going to tell him?"

"A lie."

Mason wished he was back at his office, diagramming the day's developments on his dry-erase board instead of trying to connect the dots as he drove to the library. The storm front that had parked over Kansas City all day had dropped more coins in the meter and settled in for the night, painting the town with a heavy black brush. The rain was steady now, in no hurry to move on.

The main branch of the public library was downtown, a block from the triangle formed by City Hall, the County Courthouse, and Police Headquarters. Though open until nine o'clock, it couldn't compete with the bars nearby or the multiplexes in the suburbs, and was empty except for a skeletal staff manning the checkout and information desks.

Mason chose a round table in the center of the first floor near the information desk. A circle of other tables ringed the one he had chosen. Study cubicles equipped with computer terminals abutted these tables. Beyond them, more tables and chairs were arrayed for newspaper and periodical fans. The walls rose twenty feet, giving the room a cavernous feel. More than the size of the space, Mason liked that there was no place for anyone to hide.

The woman working at the information desk looked like she hadn't left her post in years, her hair and skin the same color as the binding of the book she was reading. Mason had called Mickey from the parking lot. Settling in at his table with a polite nod to the librarian, he checked the cell phone clipped to his belt, reassured by its flashing green light that his phone-a-friend lifeline was hanging on. The cell phone, he wagered, had a stronger signal than did the librarian.

At eight forty-five, Terry Nix walked into the library wearing a rain poncho and a wide-brimmed canvas jungle hat cinched under his chin. Nix spotted Mason and joined him at his table, smiling the wide, crooked smile of the overly laid-back.

"Mason," he said with practiced surprise. "I didn't think I'd run into you here."

"You mean you left Paradise on a rainy Saturday night to come to the library to check out
Chicken Soup for the Social Worker
and just happened to catch me on my night out alone?"

"Life is full of the unexpected, Lou. It's a mysterious tapestry of interwoven threads—"

"Dipped in bullshit, Terry," Mason interrupted. "Are you naked under that poncho, or just using it to cover the tape recorder Centurion stapled to your testicles to record our innocent conversation?" Mason said loudly enough to rouse the librarian at the information desk.

She dropped her book, knocking over a bottle of water perched in her lap. Sporting a watermark that spread across the front of her faded jeans, she hustled from her chair to the bathroom, glaring at Mason as she passed. "We close in ten minutes," she said.

"You have a gift for chasing people away, Lou," Nix said. "I'll keep you guessing about what's under my poncho. I'm looking for a special book to pick up. Have you seen it?"

Mason reached inside his windbreaker, removing the ledger from the inside pocket. "This one is pretty boring," he said, waving the small book at Nix, "but you're welcome to give it a try. I couldn't get into it."

Nix shoved his hat off the back of his head, wiping his lips with his tongue and extending his hand to Mason palm-up to receive the ledger. Mason tapped the ledger against the edge of the table and wrapped his fingers around it, bending the spine. Nix winced, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth, as if Mason was squeezing his throat.

"It's not for everyone," Nix managed. "That's why I need to know if you made any copies."

"Of this?" Mason asked, opening the ledger and spreading the covers to expose two pages of entries. "Why would I want copies of this? I don't even know what the hell it is."

Mason didn't expect an answer. He just wanted Nix to tell Centurion that he was an idiot who didn't understand the significance of what he had.

"It's a list of donors," Nix volunteered. "We need it for tax purposes so we can send everyone a tax deduction form."

Mason studied the pages, his lips pursed in mock concentration. "Makes sense. I'll buy it," he said, dropping the ledger on the table.

Terry Nix shot his hand across the table, coming down on Mason's hand that beat him to the ledger. "You have some issues you should deal with, Lou," Nix said. "Taunting and teasing are power games symptomatic of sexual dysfunction, you know that. I can recommend someone very good for you to see."

"What's it mean when a man wearing a poncho in the library tries to hold hands with another man?"

"Take it easy, Lou," Nix said, withdrawing his hand and easing back in his chair. "It means I was impatient, and I'm sorry. I can see you have something on your mind. Let's talk about it."

"For starters, why did you tell Jordan to confess to a crime she didn't commit?"

"I don't expect you to understand the intricacies of psychotherapy, Mason. Jordan was in a lot of pain. She needed to know if her parents would validate her existence by coming to her defense."

"You mean by pinning Gina's murder on Trent, making the parents choose one child over the other?"