Undercover Memories Page 11

  “I won’t use it, I promise.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Please,” Paige insisted. “You have to explain.” Was it possible John’s whole life was a blur?

  “I can’t. You’ll print what I say in your newspaper.”

  “I won’t, but even if I did, his life isn’t a secret, is it?”

  “He’s very private.”

  “If he’s suspected of murdering at least two people, do you really think his secrets will stay buried?”

  Natalie bit her lip and shook her head.

  Paige regarded the other woman with curiosity. “Why did you agree to talk to me if you didn’t want to be honest about John? What’s the point?”

  Natalie’s lips parted, then she shook her head again. “I’m worried about him, that’s all. I hate hearing people talk about him like he’s a monster. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?” She looked away and then back. “I guess you’re right. No matter what’s going on, his life will be an open book from now on, won’t it?”

  “I think so,” Paige said.

  “He just didn’t like to talk about the past because so much of it was unknown or unpleasant. John was an only child. When he was ten or so, he was in a car accident that killed his folks. He was in a coma for weeks. When he finally awoke, he didn’t remember anything. Not his parents, not the accident, nothing. His grandparents explained everything, but there were big holes, missing details they refused to discuss. The grandparents told him his father had been American, working in England when he and John’s mother, their estranged daughter, died. They showed him all his papers and everything, but they didn’t speak much English. His teenage years were difficult, to say the least.”

  John was raised in Kanistan. Why didn’t that surprise Paige? “I’ve heard he has burn scars,” she said. “A result of the accident?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I’ve also heard he collects antique fire engines.”

  “Oh, that. That’s a new passion, but most of the collection actually belongs to a guy named Frank Elton, a strange old guy, kind of a hermit. I haven’t seen John’s new place in the warehouse district, but my fiancé has and he says it’s full of fire trucks. He thinks John was allowing Mr. Elton to keep them there when he lost the lease on his old place. John always had a weak spot for both loners and firefighting equipment.”

  Frank Elton must be the dead man in the fire truck. Paige rubbed her neck as she pondered what to ask next. Her fingers rolled over the fine chain that supported the owl pendant. “Do you know anything about any, um, phobias, he might have?”

  “Phobias? Like what?”

  “Oh, you know, fear of snakes or bats or spiders or maybe owls?”

  “No,” Natalie said, brow furrowing.

  “How about nightmares?”

  “Some, but don’t we all? These are odd questions.”

  Paige half smiled as her mind raced. Did this mean these dreams and this paranoia were recent manifestations? She realized Natalie was waiting for her to comment. “Oh, you know, just mining for tidbits,” she said. “So how did Cinca end up back in the United States?”

  “He ran away from Kanistan when he was seventeen. He said as soon as he got here he felt he’d finally come home.”

  “Did he have any family living stateside?”

  “No. He never even sees his grandparents. I’m not sure they’re still alive. He was married right out of college, but it didn’t work out. John’s about as alone as a man can get. But he’s also a good man, Ms. Roberts.”

  “So you don’t think he killed the Pollocks?”

  Natalie shook her head. “I can’t believe he did.”

  “You mentioned in the interview I read that Mr. Cinca took a job right before all this happened.”

  “Yes,” Natalie said, obviously relieved to move away from discussing John’s past. She lifted the mug of coffee to her lips, but set it back down without taking a sip and ran a finger around the lip.

  “What are you thinking?” Paige asked softly.

  Natalie met Paige’s gaze. “Several months ago, right before the whole scandal with the bribery stuff, John told me he was going to Canada to see someone claiming to be a relative. Apparently this woman contacted him after seeing his picture in the paper when he saved Congressman Richards from that crackpot. When he got back, Kevin asked him how it went, and he wouldn’t talk about it. The next thing I knew, he was headed to Kanistan.”

  “You know about Kanistan?”

  “Of course. Even though we stopped dating, we stayed friends. In fact, he introduced me to my fiancé. Kevin is a policeman, too.”

  “But John isn’t. He left the force because he took a bribe.”

  “He didn’t take a bribe.”

  “The article I read said he pled guilty.”

  Natalie shook her head. “He didn’t take a bribe,” she repeated.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. And this time I am not explaining,” she added with a pointed glance at the recorder. “I’ve already said too much as it is.”

  “The article was vague, too.”

  “They claimed he took money to look the other way. What other details do you want?”

  “And he confessed,” Paige repeated.

  Natalie shrugged.

  “Okay. Well, can you tell me who John went to Kanistan to see?”

  Natalie suddenly turned coy. “Maybe he went on a vacation.”

  “For two days?” Paige said.

  Natalie’s eyebrows inched up her forehead. “You seem to know an awful lot about that trip.”

  Paige spoke the truth. “Actually, I don’t know anything besides when he left and when he came back. I don’t know why he went.”

  “Well, I don’t, either.”

  Drat. “Do you know who his new client was?”

  Natalie checked her watch, then opened her purse and took out her wallet. She waved away Paige’s offer to pay.

  “No,” she said, smiling at the waiter, who came to collect the money. “John came back from his Kanistan trip more tight-lipped than ever before, and that’s saying something. I only know about the new client because Kevin and I invited John on a double date and he said he was going to be out of town, that he was acting as a bodyguard for some guy.”

  Paige sat back in her chair, thinking. She knew time was running out. “Recently I ran across a photograph of John standing next to a shorter, more burly looking guy holding a baby with beautiful brown eyes. Do you know who that is?”

  “I guess it could be anybody, although it sounds a lot like his old partner on the force, Andy Patter. He and his wife adopted their little girl last year.”

  “Do you think Andy would be willing to talk to me?”

  “Probably, but I’m not sure where he is. They moved away, and as far as I know no one has heard much from them.”

  “You mentioned a double date. Does that mean John was seeing someone new?”

  “No, it means Kevin’s cousin was visiting from out of town and we needed a date for her. She and John had met and gotten along on her last visit, so naturally we thought of him.” Natalie folded her napkin and set it beside her cup, then checked her watch again. “I’m meeting Kevin so I really have to go.”

  Paige stood at the same time. “Is there anything else you can tell me about John Cinca that will help my, uh, readers understand him better?”

  Natalie paused as she buttoned her coat. “I can’t think of anything.” She gestured at the recorder. “On second thought, would you be willing to turn that off?”

  “Sure.” Paige flipped the on/off button and dropped the recorder in her pocket.

  “I’m going to tell you something off the record,” Natalie said, her voice softer than before. “Kevin heard the police found fingerprints from an unidentified person in the dead couple’s home and in their car as well as on an old stolen truck abandoned at a little airstrip in the mountains somewhere.”

  “Pr
ints coming from the same person?”

  “Exactly. They’re looking for this person but not announcing it. I don’t think they really suspect John. I think they figure they’ll run across his body, another victim of the real murderer. They’re waiting for the man who was beaten up to regain consciousness and explain what happened to him.” Natalie’s eyes watered as she continued. “When you write this story, be careful what you say about John and how you say it, Ms. Roberts. If it turns out he’s an innocent victim, your words could come back to haunt you.”

  Chapter Ten

  Paige arrived back at the car a little pink from the cold, a little out of breath and carrying a bag from which issued the best aroma John had ever encountered. At least as far as he knew.

  “What is that?” he asked as pure, unadulterated hunger drove both anxiety and curiosity away.

  “Soup,” she said.

  John unpacked insulated containers of soup and packages of crackers while Paige settled behind the wheel. He handed her a cup and popped the lid off his own. “What kind is it?”

  “Tomato basil bisque. It’s all they had left.”

  “It’s good,” he said, taking a cautious sip from a plastic spoon. It was hot. Hot was good.

  She produced a little recorder, which she placed on the dashboard.

  “Don’t tell me you taped your conversation with Natalie.”

  “Isn’t that what an aspiring journalist does?” she asked with a smile. “Eat up while we listen.”

  Natalie Dexter had a nice voice but it sparked no memories. Obviously they’d been close and had remained friendly even though she’d moved on with her life. He tried to put some meaning to the name Kevin but drew yet another blank. He was sick of blanks.

  He lost his appetite as he heard himself described as a man with closed doors. He felt naked sitting there in front of Paige, discussed and dissected by someone he couldn’t remember knowing. And oddly enough, the compliments were just as embarrassing as the hesitations.

  The silence after the tape finished made everything more difficult. John cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “So the dead man at my place is probably Frank Elton.”

  “Probably. And you were doing him a favor by allowing him to keep his collection at your place.”

  “Some favor. If he hadn’t been there— Well, talk about water under the bridge. Why did Natalie want you to turn off the recorder?”

  “Because she told me that Kevin had heard about the existence of a third man, one whose fingerprints were in the Pollocks’ car and in a truck abandoned at a small airstrip.”

  “Anatola Korenev. So, that’s how he got off the mountain. That’s why he was in a hurry. Somehow he’d arranged to have a plane waiting at that little airport.”

  “She also thinks you might be a victim yourself and warned me to be careful about what I wrote about you.”

  “It’s kind of reassuring that she doesn’t think I killed anyone. I mean, she knows me.”

  Paige touched his hand. “So do I.”

  “Okay, this is weird, but it never occurred to me that I should assure anyone I’m okay, that anyone would care one way or another. Isn’t that odd?”

  “I don’t know, John. Given that you apparently suffered from amnesia after that accident when you were a kid—”

  “And how about that? I’ve had amnesia twice in a lifetime? Doesn’t that strike you as a little weird?”

  “A little,” Paige said, licking the last of the thick red soup off her spoon. John was momentarily distracted by the sight of her tongue sliding against her lips. Less digging in the past, more wallowing in the present, that’s what his brain kept screaming at him. Or maybe it wasn’t his brain sending that message.

  Whoever, whatever, take her in your arms, scatter soup containers and crackers from the hood ornament to the trunk, make love like a crazy man. Use her to stay sane.

  “I should have asked Natalie about your ex-wife,” Paige said out of the blue. “I have her cell-phone number—I’m going to call her.”

  Paige made the call, spoke for a few minutes, then hung up.

  “Well?” he asked. He’d been unable to get a feeling for the conversation by listening to Paige’s end of it.

  “You married a woman about two weeks after you met her. She said you haven’t been in touch with her since the divorce over ten years ago. It didn’t really sound like you discussed her much with Natalie.”

  “Another one of my damn closed doors,” he muttered. He took a deep breath as Paige piled the garbage back into the bag. “I hate to tell you this,” he added, “because I really like the way you keep thinking I’m a good guy, but Natalie may be wrong about my not taking bribes.” He thumbed through the papers he’d found in the envelope and extracted the one he was looking for. “According to this bank statement, I deposited a hefty piece of change in a bank account late last year.”

  She glanced up. “How much?”

  “Just over two million dollars.”

  “Yikes.”

  “And that was just in one account. In another, I deposited a million and have been steadily drawing from it. And there are other accounts—I must have been crooked for years.”

  “And stupid enough to put the money in the bank? That doesn’t make sense.” She took the paper from him and looked at the amounts and dates. “These deposits occurred after your trip to Canada. Natalie said you went to see a woman claiming to be a relative who sent you a note about having important information of a personal nature. You got back from Canada, left the police force, suddenly had a lot of money. John, we have to go to Canada. We have to try to figure out who you went to see and why, except how do we do that?”

  “Carol Ann Oates,” he said, and started digging through the papers again.

  “Who’s Carol Ann Oates?”

  “A woman who lives in Deep Falls, Alberta, Canada. She sent me a letter last year.” He found what he was looking for and read aloud. “‘Dear John, I don’t know how much you remember of me or the rest of your family. But I have important information you must know about. Come see me as quickly as you can. Carol Ann Oates.’ There’s a contact phone number.”

  “If this woman can tell you why you contacted her, we may start to understand some of this.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Do you want to call or should I?”

  “You call. Let me look at that letter.”

  He placed the call. It took several rings, which even he knew was odd as almost everyone seemed to have answering machines and call waiting, but right before he was about to give up, a woman finally answered. He asked to speak to Carol Ann Oates.

  The woman responded in such a thick French accent, John couldn’t grasp a single word. “English?” he asked hopefully, and then uttered a resigned, “Please, slow down.”

  Paige touched his leg. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.

  He covered the speaker. “I can’t understand her. Thick French accent.”

  Paige extended a hand and he gave her the phone, his eyebrows rising as she began to speak.

  “Quel est votre nom, s’il vous plaît?” she said.

  After a moment, she continued. “Bonjour, Gaelle. Puis-je parler à Madame Carol Ann Oates, s’il vous plaît?”

  She fell silent as Gaelle apparently spoke on the other end. Paige asked a few more questions, muttered, “Merci, Mademoiselle Batiste,” and hung up.

  “You are full of surprises,” John said.

  “I speak Spanish, too, not that anyone can understand me. Gaelle Batiste is apparently a house sitter. She said she would have never divulged Madame Oates’s location to a male, but it was okay to tell a woman. She recently traveled to a hospital in Montana specializing in alternative treatments.”

  “For what?”

  “She didn’t say. I gather she’s very ill.”

  “And she’s in Montana?”

  “We have to go see her.”

  He thought for a moment—really, he was tired and gritty and so was she.
But there wasn’t any other option, he knew that. If they stood still too long, Korenev or the police would catch up with them. If there was a chance the Oates woman could clear things up so he could go to the police and get himself and, more important, Paige, out of danger, then he had to try.

  “While you drive, I’ll use the GPS and figure out a route,” he said. “Where in Montana?”

  “Up in the mountains near Seeley Lake at a place called Deer Creek Spa.”

  They left Lone Tree as the sun set over the bridge.

  * * *

  PAIGE MADE IT UNTIL about 7:00 p.m. before John took over driving. They listened to the news every hour, hoping to hear Anatola Korenev had been apprehended, but the only update concerned news of a new unnamed suspect. Nothing of the attack at Brian’s apartment or the mess at John’s warehouse home were mentioned.

  At midnight, Paige woke up with a jolt as it registered in her subconscious they were no longer moving. She opened her eyes to find herself staring at an illuminated sign that said Lamp Light Motel. A smaller vacancy sign shone like the promise of paradise.

  “I can’t go any further,” John said, suppressing a yawn with his fist. “My eyes can’t focus. I’m a danger on the highway.”

  “I can’t, either,” Paige admitted. “I’ll go see if they have a room.”

  “Just one,” he said, holding up a finger. “Anatola is out there somewhere. I think we should stay together.”

  She hesitated, remembering the way John had woken up that morning.

  He mistook her silence. “Don’t be offended but I am entirely too tired to threaten your virtue,” he said. “Not that I wouldn’t love to have a go at it another time.”

  She laughed as she got out of the car, but the worry of what the morning would bring didn’t strike her as very funny.

  It was obvious the bearded man who appeared out of the back room when Paige hit the bell on the desk had been asleep. He appeared disinterested in anything, including license-plate numbers and names. As Paige had taken money out of an ATM after seeing Natalie, she paid in cash. The bearded man handed her a key, warned her the vibrating bed was broken and staggered off to the back room before Paige could get out of the tiny lobby.