Deadly Little Secrets Read online

  They’d both been right, so they stayed friends. A minor miracle.

  Once she was back in the States, on probation, he’d continued to send her questions, to publicly note her help in reports, and to praise her work to all and sundry. It was as if he wanted to turn the screws. He said it was to help her remember who she’d been, all the good she’d done.

  Sighing, she hit PRINT. She needed to see it in hard copy sometimes, to make sense of it.

  The second one was from him as well. It was titled More Greek. It contained one phrase only, which, in this case, was actually in Greek.

  The third e-mail was from Pretzky. She’d signed off and sent the report.

  The fourth was from Jen.

  “Damn it, Jen,” she hissed, printing and deleting the e-mail. “Who has a cattle-call date with millionaires at four-thirty on a frickin’ Wednesday?” She then backtracked through the coded system, which she’d long ago deciphered, and deleted the e-mail off the delivery server. Personal e-mails were frowned upon even in Cold Cases. She wasn’t rocking the boat over another of Jen’s goofy plans to get her out of the house.

  Obviously Jen was taking personal time off to try out the millionaire dating pool. Pulling out her phone, Ana sent her a text.

  Can’t go. Translations to do. Calls to make. No time for cattle calls.

  It would make Jen laugh, at least. It wouldn’t deter her, but nothing did. Within days she’d be after Ana again to try something else in the way of dating or getting out, or taking a class or something. Ana’s back still hurt from the yoga experiment.

  She slipped the Italian work into her briefcase. She’d look at that tonight.

  Her phone rang, and this time, she checked the incoming number. Not Jen. Hmmm.

  “Agent Burton,” she answered. “To whom am I speaking?”

  “Agent Burton, this is Gates Bromley, special assistant to Mr. Davros Gianikopolis.” The man’s rich, luscious voice filled her ear. “You had called regarding a follow-up on an old case.”

  She was so mesmerized by the voice, it took Ana a heartbeat to make sense of the words. “Yes. I’d like to make an appointment with Mr. Gianikopolis to discuss his losses in the incident. I’m following up on some new leads.”

  “I’ll be happy to meet with you, get the information, and assess if there’s any new data we can add.” Holy cow, the man’s voice was pure, liquid sex.

  For a second, all she could think about was the image of liquid sex. Jeeez, she had to get out more. Jen was right, and she hated to admit it. In the next second, she processed what he’d said and bristled at the high-handed phrasing. Assess the data, my ass. Fabulous voice or not, this guy needed a set-down.

  “Mr. Gianikopolis is the insured.” She kept her voice brisk, impersonal. “I’ll need to speak with him. You are welcome to be present, Mr. Bromley.” She put all the I Am An Agent Of The Law insistence she could in her voice. “Which day this week is he available?”

  There was a momentary pause, and when Gates Bromley replied, he sounded amused. “Mr. Gianikopolis is in town, but unavailable for the next several days.”

  “Fine. Tuesday then?” she pushed.

  “Ten a.m. at his estate” was the still amused but clipped reply. He rattled off the address.

  “I’ll be there. Thank you,” she added, remembering her manners. She’d gotten her way—didn’t hurt to sugar things up. “I won’t take much of his time.”

  “I’ll see to that, Agent. Good day.”

  Ana clicked off. “I’ll see to that? I’ll see to that? What a snotty thing to say,” she accused the now-humming phone. “You can bite my ass, Mister Gates Bromley.”

  “Oh, man, and here I was hoping to do that,” a male voice responded over the cubicle walls and Jim Davis leaned on the opening to her cubicle. Ana cursed under her breath. Just what she needed. The only other person in the San Francisco office who would speak to her was Davis, and he was a slimeball.

  “Shut up, Jim,” Pearson called. “And get over here. I need that file.” Davis blew Ana a smarmy kiss and obeyed. Pearson, the one other female agent besides Pretzky, had filed a complaint against Davis. Though not particularly friendly, Pearson had warned her about him.

  “Thanks, Pearson,” she muttered as Davis disappeared. She noted the appointment with Mr. Gianikopolis on her PDA, on her paper calendar, and in the file. Checking Gianikopolis off the list, she picked up the phone for the next call.

  It was all downhill from there, which made for a bitch of a headache and a long afternoon. At least she had a full Thursday to look forward to, and Friday. She hated the weekends now, with nothing to do but think, which was why she’d gone along with some of Jen’s crazier schemes.

  “No more yoga, though,” she promised herself.

  Dragging into her apartment several hours later, she picked up the plaintively meowing cat.

  “There now, Lancelot, we’ll have a nice dinner and a glass of wine,” she said. “Well, wine for me, some cream for you. We’ll read some strange Greek and Italian phrases and pop off to bed, perchance to dream.” She grimaced. No. No dreams. “Strike that, Lancie, let’s just stick with a good night’s sleep.”

  The cat wiggled, and she let him jump down. She followed him into the bedroom and changed into sweats. It felt good to get out of the dramatic black pantsuit. She’d stopped wearing the flamboyant Italian silks, the colorful scarves from the Milan markets. Now she stuck to what she thought of as her going-to-court suits for work. Somehow the formality of them helped her feel stable, serious, on the job. It gave her control of something in her life, no matter how small.

  That was important right about now.

  Dinner in hand, Ana dragged her briefcase to the coffee table. “God I’m tired, Lancie. The job used to energize me, you know?” she said, gesturing with her fork. The cat was far more interested in following the path of the tidbit on the fork than listening to her words. “Here,” she slid the bite onto a napkin and put it on the table next to the cat.

  “Not like you haven’t heard this all before, cat,” she sighed, ruffling his ears. “I’m like an effin’ broken record.”

  They sat in companionable silence as the news rolled by, and a sitcom came on. Somehow, it didn’t really seem all that funny but it was better than a crime show or a drama. She avoided them like the plague.

  “My own demons are enough, thanks,” she told the TV as she switched channels away from a cop show. Finally, at eleven, when the news came on, she picked up the folder with the e-mails from TJ. Pulling her long dark hair into a tail, she got to work.

  She smiled over his note, then read the phrases from both pages and laughed out loud, seeing why TJ had been concerned. Then she translated them and sent them to him with a note:

  TJ–out of context and literally translated, these could be disturbing. But they’re idioms, so you can’t take them literally. Send me the context if you can.

  Ti hanno tagliato la lingua? loosely translates as “cat got your tongue?”

  Acqua un bocca is literally, “water in your mouth,” but it means you can’t tell anyone, or you have to keep something a secret.

  Scopa un altra means someone is playing the field. This usually refers to an affair outside of marriage.

  As to the Greek, me keratose is literally “he horned me,” but it’s a euphemism for being cheated on, as in “he cheated on me.”

  She hit SEND, then doubted herself and pulled up the sent e-mail to double-check it. No. It was right. She had to quit checking everything to the point of obsession. She took her dishes to the kitchen and stuffed the files in her briefcase.

  As she sat back down, a program started itself on her computer, and a soft tone sounded an alert.

  “What? Why would someone be searching me?”

  She opened the alert, noting that a superficial search had already shown up and that whoever was looking at her had initiated a deeper, more intensive search, which included databases one had to pay for and register with. S
he grinned.

  “If you had to register…” She hummed the two-tone Jaws theme. “I can find you.”

  Cracking her knuckles and taking a big swig of wine, she set to work.

  “Damn, whoever this is, he’s good,” she muttered, yanking her dark hair off her face and tying it into a knot. The tracer had used a series of cross-referencing search engines, with ISPs that bounced back and forth as he searched first one and then the other in an attempt either to move faster or to deflect notice.

  The clock on her computer chimed midnight. That was her signal to shut it down and go to bed. She’d gotten pills to help her sleep. Problem was, she absolutely had to go to bed by midnight or they wouldn’t wear off before her alarm buzzed, which meant she would be worthless at work. Of course, if she didn’t take the pills and she had one of those nights when she couldn’t get to sleep or stay asleep, she’d be worthless anyway.

  She wanted to keep going. It was killing her. “What is he looking for?” The search was deep and thorough, but it wasn’t for financial data or data about the inquests or Rome.

  “My college? Why Marshall?” she wondered. The chime sounded again. Twelve-fifteen. Now or never.

  “Gah, I hate this. I hate pills,” she complained to the cat as she reluctantly shut down her laptop. Damn. She wanted to know what this guy was up to.

  “I can check in the morning. I can check in the morning,” she chanted as she went to her bedside and got the pill bottle. “I have to have sleep.”

  “I told you, someone’s looking at the files, calling people from the list,” the voice whispered on the phone. “It’s that new woman, Agent Burton. I haven’t been able to get in touch with Agent—”

  The man on the other end of the line cut him off before he could name anyone. “Someone? You call me again, without a name of who is doing this checking? Shoddy work, Perkins. Very shoddy work.”

  “Don’t use my name.”

  “What, you think the Agency could have possibly made the connection between us?” He laughed when he heard Perkins draw in a frightened breath at his more menacing tone. “You had better hope not, Perkins.” He used the man’s name over and over, just to irritate. “Now, don’t call me again until you have a name. And not even then until you know there’s something about which to be concerned. Calling old contacts on an old list of victims means nothing. You knew the files would eventually come up for review, which is why you set the alert. They had nothing nine years ago. They have nothing now.” He paused for a long, cool moment designed to unnerve his worthless snitch. “And if they begin to have anything, you will see that it’s taken care of. I assume that’s understood?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Perkins stuttered. “Certainly.”

  “Monitor it. Nothing more. Let me know if anything changes.” There was resignation in his voice as if he was sure Perkins would screw it up, which was quite true.

  “I think,” Perkins began, then stopped.

  “You think?” He began drumming his fingers on the mahogany desk.

  Perkins sighed. Most annoying. When Perkins finally spoke, it was with a quaver. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  He clicked off, hanging up on the still-whining Perkins, and sat looking at the disposable cell phone in his hand. How irksome. Perkins had his uses, but he was a nervous little shit and it was risky to continue using him. He was prone to panic, and that panic could easily turn to ass-saving. Perkins, in order to save his own ass, wouldn’t think twice about giving anyone up. He’d have to be eliminated. Soon.

  “Weak tools,” he muttered, wiping the phone with a cloth. He cleaned it thoroughly, then put it in a plastic bag and used the heavy bronze bust of Shakespeare on his desk to pulverize the pieces. Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, he left his office and climbed the stairs to pick a diaper out of the holder on his son’s changing table. In the bathroom, he poured water into the diaper so it swelled, as if it were full. Opening the bag, he dropped half the pieces in, then repeated the process with a second diaper.

  Sealing them both in a large plastic freezer bag, he carried them to the garage. Popping the trunk, he dropped it in. He’d deposit the diapers in separate trash cans on his route to the office the next day. It was time consuming, but it had saved his ass so many times he never even thought about it anymore. He just did it.

  “Honey?” his wife called out, as he closed the garage door. “Are you coming up to bed?”

  He smiled. Caroline was a wonderful woman, a great wife for a man in his position. Always eager, always on the ball, and very seldom curious about his work or his travel schedule. “In a moment, dear. I just want to check on Jeremiah.”

  He heard the smile in her voice as she told him not to be long. She thought him a doting father, and in that, at least, she was right. Most of what she knew about him, about his business, was a lie. That he loved her and their son, however, was true.

  Slipping back into the nursery, he touched his son’s damp curls. The boy was a sweaty sleeper, and his curling blond hair looked as honey colored as his mother’s in the dim glow from the night-light. He tucked the blanket in and pressed a kiss to his fingers, and then to Jeremiah’s cheek.

  “Daddy loves you, little man.”

  Chapter Two

  It took most of Thursday morning to wade through the calls and paperwork she’d already generated, before Ana found time to dig into her alert. When she finally managed it, she was thwarted at every turn. It was frustrating as hell. Whoever had done the deep search had bounced the ISP all over God’s green creation and back again. She wasted the last two hours of the morning and most of what should have been her lunch hour trying to track it down, to no avail.

  “Why would it bounce through the Bay Area Cisco facility?” she grumbled. The Agency contracted with Cisco for equipment, most people did these days, but to have one of the bounces go through Cisco? That was just weird.

  Another search had turned up, but that she’d been able to track. Bromley had checked her credentials, tried to go a bit deeper, but the Agency had those files blocked. The CIA frowned on people knowing too much about their employees. Frowning, she wondered if he’d done the illegal search as well. She didn’t have enough probable cause to dig that out.

  “Why?” she wondered, scribbling more notes. Bromley hadn’t worked for his boss during the art fraud case. There was a note in the file that he’d asked to review the case when he came to work for Davros Gianikopolis, but nothing else.

  She spent the rest of Thursday digging at the search and fielding return calls. Postponing being in her quiet apartment, she got dinner sent in and continued to work. She left late and was back in the office Friday morning before anyone got there.

  “A great life if you don’t weaken,” she quoted to herself, thinking that in the old days, she’d have had at least a dinner with friends or something besides hearing about Jen’s date to look forward to over the weekend. Now, well, too much time to think and brood was her enemy, not her friend.

  She started Friday by following up on the Moroni Gallery in New York. It was an exercise in futility and frustration. No one who’d been there for the case was still in the same precinct, or even still on the police force.

  “Where the hell is he?” she muttered, opening yet another search on the New York detective listed in the notes. It took her till well after noon to find him. His obituary popped up in one of her searches. The listing was five years old.

  Instead of pounding her head on the desk, she went to lunch. She was walking back from the deli when her phone rang. One look at the caller I.D. and she answered it.

  “Hey, Jen.”

  “Oh, my God, you should have gone with me last night,” Jen gushed. “There were the most gorgeous men, two of them. I’m going on a date with one of them.” Ana could visualize her friend bouncing up and down in her seat.

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I thought you said this was a meet and greet, not a date.” Ana stopped outside her office building, ste
pping behind a planter so she could continue the conversation.

  “It wasn’t a date, but one of the millionaires chose me for a date,” Jen hurried on, “and he’s really nice. I really like him.”

  “What’s his name? What does he do?” Ana set her lunch on the planter and fumbled a notepad and pen from her purse.

  “You are not going to run him and tell me horrible things about him,” Jen insisted. “You always do that, and I’m not telling you. I don’t care if he’s an ax murderer at this point. We’re going to dinner at Quatra Quilla up in the hills tomorrow night. Just us in the restaurant, no one else. Everyone waiting on us.” Jen sighed. “I’m going to feel like a princess.”

  “Oh Jen, don’t get your hopes up, honey.”

  Jen groaned. “Don’t be a buzzkill, Ana. I know he may be a total wipeout, but the experience will be a freakin’ Cinderella ride. What the hell, you know? You have to live full out.”

  Ana rolled her eyes. Herein lay the difference in their dating philosophies. Jen believed that you dated anyone who asked and enjoyed The Experience, no matter if it was a bust or if the guy was an ass, or ax murderer. She believed you learned something or got something even if there was absolutely nothing to it beyond one date. Ana, on the other hand, believed there should be at least one damn good reason to go, and preferably seven damn good reasons, including a background check that turned up single status.

  Not that she didn’t like men; she did. She just didn’t trust them after her run-in with a married man in Italy. Getting your heart broken by someone eligible was one thing. Being lied to and led on, when you were a data geek who should know better, was another.