Blood and Bone (18 page)

“So it's over,” she said. “You're unemployed again.”

“Not really,” Hannibal said. “I do have another job in progress, remember? Even though Sarge and Quaker seem to be handling that one fine. But this check says I'm off Harlan Mortimer's payroll. Problem is, I don't feel like I'm finished, if you know what I mean.”

“So, how do you feel?”

“Babe, I'm sore, I'm tired, and right now I'm a little confused. What I really want to do is just go home, have a nice quiet evening and go to bed.” Hannibal
stared down at the redwood planks beneath his feet. They reminded him that nothing in nature is a straight line. Including human nature.

“Mind if I join you?” Doctor Lippincott's Harvard accent asked. Hannibal shrugged, and Lippincott settled onto the bench beside him. Sipping a tall drink, he did not look as impressed as many others. He spoke to Hannibal, but his gaze seldom strayed from his son's back.

“So now you're off Harlan's payroll,” Lippincott said.

“Afraid so,” Hannibal answered.

“In that case, perhaps you could do me a favor.”

Hannibal looked at Lippincott with renewed interest. He seemed to have been pushed to the perimeter of the case. Which might explain why he did not share his friends' festival mood. Or he might have unrelated troubles of his own. Hannibal was no psychic, but he had developed the ability to recognize people with problems. Despite so much going through his mind, all he said was, “Perhaps.”

“Good.” Lippincott leaned toward him the way amateurs do when they want to share something confidential. “I'll be working down at the clinic tomorrow. I know it's the weekend and all, but do you suppose you could stop in and have lunch with me? I'll gladly pay for your time. I need your professional opinion about something.”

“I can do that,” Hannibal said, standing. Lippincott had unintentionally reminded him he was not really part of this party. With his job done, he felt he did not belong here. “Right now, I've got to be going. I'll meet you at the clinic at noon.”

“That will be fine,” Lippincott said as Hannibal worked toward the door back into the house. “Please come alone.”

“Guess he doesn't trust me,” Cindy said as they climbed into Hannibal's car.

Hannibal gunned the engine and punched on the CD player. Foreplay filled the car and he instantly felt better. “Don't take it personally. People often talk to me about things that are real private.”

“Bet it's his son,” she said as they eased out of the cul-de-sac and into traffic.

“What makes you say that?”

“Surely you noticed,” she said in her teasing tone. “The way he was looking at Angela. The whole dynamic has changed.”

“What are you talking about?” Hannibal asked. “Everybody's treating Angela like the second coming. She's got them all conned.”

Cindy let a beat of silence pass. “Don't like her do you? Well, Malcolm Lippincott sure does. When we first met him, he only had eyes for Camille, Jacob's widow. But his puppy dog infatuation has switched over to the new kid in town.”

“You could tell that the two minutes we saw them,” he said, his lip curled sarcastically.

“You'd have to be blind not to see it. So, my place? I'll make pasta.”

“No,” Hannibal said, raising Cindy's eyebrows. “I'll drop you if you want, but I want to be home.”

He worked at not looking at her, but it did not work. From the corner of his eye he saw Cindy stare out the window, heard her take a deep breath and let it out as quietly as she could. Then she straightened her smile and turned to him. “Okay. Your place. And I'll make pasta.”

He held his smile to a reasonable level. “Jewel's still there you know.”

“I know. She's a client. I'll be good, as long as she doesn't get too close.”

Hannibal shoved his face into the hot water and let the tensions of the week flow down the drain. He loved a hot shower, but hated washing Cindy's scent off himself. They had shared a perfect evening. Candlelight and soft jazz, wine and cheese, back rubs and foot massages. And Cindy used her body to prove he was irrefutably, exclusively hers, at the same time demonstrating why he should want it that way.

He could still feel the warmth of the night while drying himself. He planned a do nothing, robe and slippers morning. Maybe they would sit around and watch cartoons. Or maybe, they would stage an encore of last evening. Wrapped in his navy blue terry cloth robe, Hannibal stepped out into his living room. The pleasing aroma of frying bacon started his mouth watering.

“Cindy?”

“In the kitchen,” she answered, and he reached the kitchen doorway before he heard “and we have company.” Cindy was at the stove, flipping silver dollar pancakes in a large skillet. Bacon crackled in a second pan. Over by the door to the backyard Jewel stood with her hands behind her. She wore a too small tee shirt and jeans which must have interfered
with her circulation from the waist down. She offered him a tentative smile, but she looked for all the world like a child sent to the corner by her teacher.

“She came to the door and offered to help with breakfast,” Cindy said, focused exclusively on her pancakes. “Honey, you want to get the juice and the syrup out?”

Jewel moved as if her mother, or a drill sergeant, had snapped out an order. Without a word she got orange juice and syrup out of the refrigerator, and without being told went back for the butter. The small table was already set for three. Hannibal dropped into a chair at one end and waved Jewel to another, but she did not move. Cindy, wearing nightgown and sheer robe, her fuzzy slippers and her Stepford Wives smile, delivered the food to the table on two platters. After she sat, Jewel sat.

“Papa called while you were in the shower,” Cindy told Hannibal. “He said he'll be at National Airport at two o'clock.”

“Good, I'll pick him up,” Hannibal said, picking up his fork and knife.

“Oh dear,” Cindy said in mock surprise, “I've forgotten the coffee.” Jewel was up before Hannibal could brace to stand. She retrieved the pot, poured three cups, and replaced it. When she returned to her place, Cindy said “Thank you, dear.”

Hannibal buttered a stack of pancakes and gathered bacon onto his plate. “So. You two seem to be getting along.”

“Well, once I got a chance to talk to Jewel,” Cindy said over her coffee mug, “she turns out to be a nice young lady who's just made some bad choices in life.”

“Miss Santiago says she'll help me find my family back in Jersey,” Jewel said, flashing her bright teeth.
“She says I can stay here, I mean across the hall, until then.”

“Does she?” Hannibal asked, smiling through a mouthful of food. Cindy knew how to handle pancakes. And competition.

“I tried to call home before,” Jewel said, “but no luck. I guess Mama moved and had the phone turned off. I'm scared to go back, but I got nowhere else to go, you know? Besides, I miss my Mama.”

“Did you know Jewel's the same age as the girl you introduced to the Mortimers?” Cindy asked. “Another child trying to survive on the streets.”

Hannibal hoped his eyebrows did not go up too high. If Cindy was right, he had misjudged Jewel's age by a decade. Now he looked at her again, racing through her breakfast, and thought about her actions since he had known her. Yes, beneath the signs of abuse was a girl not quite out of her teens, but with a lifetime of experience and wear. It made her hiring him and breaking with the street life an even greater act of courage than he originally thought.

“Miss Santiago told me a little about that girl from the other case you were on,” Jewel said. “Her father ran away, just like mine did. But I guess you found out her dad's dead. I know you're off the case now, but any idea who killed him?”

Hannibal leaned back, sipped his orange juice. “Jewel, it could be almost anybody I've met in the last week. But there's this mob boss named Zack King. From the sound of things, he found out the victim was sitting on some rare and valuable coins he stole from his old man. He might have sent his man Slo Lerner to kill him.”

“Didn't Daisy Sonneville say Pat Louis knew about the coins?” Cindy asked. “Instead of involving King, he might have done it himself and kept the coins.”

“Or told his buddy Killer Nilson,” Hannibal added. “Baltimore cops say he was a known murderer at the time and we know he and Pat Louis were pals.”

Cindy turned to Hannibal, a twinkle in her eye. “If this was a mystery movie, I'd finger Malcolm Lippincott. When we met him, I could see he was mad in love with Camille.”

“Who?” Jewel asked.

“The dead man's widow,” Cindy said. “He's been around the family all his life. He might have bumped Jacob off to clear the field, so to speak. How could he know she'd be loyal to her dead husband?”

“Loyal, or keeping a deep secret of her own?” Hannibal asked, playing into her game. “He ran out on her, remember? And she was pregnant. What if she found him up in Baltimore? Suppose she walked in on him with the Barbie doll? Don't you think she's got the stuff to stab a man?” Hannibal ended his question with an evil chuckle.

“Well, what about the father?” Jewel asked in a quiet voice. Hannibal and Cindy both turned to face her. She swallowed, but went on. “You said he stole from his father. Couldn't he have found his son first? It's hard to believe he didn't even look for him. If they argued, he might have done it himself.”

Hannibal grinned as he crunched up his last strip of bacon. “Got a point there, girl.”

“Yes,” Cindy said. “Too bad it's not your job to solve this mystery. And considering the interest we saw yesterday, probably nobody will.”

“Maybe not,” Hannibal said. “I have to move on to my next case, which might well start this afternoon in the district.”

Less than half an hour after dropping Cindy at her home in Old Town Alexandria, Hannibal pulled up in front of the Northeast Free Clinic. Doctor Lawrence Lippincott's clinic was neither bright nor shining, but it was remarkably clean. When Hannibal parked his Volvo behind Dr. Lippincott's Mercedes, there was a man with the look of the homeless sweeping the sidewalk in front of the clinic. Another was washing the windows. Inside, the cramped reception room appeared recently scrubbed and sanitized, except for the plastic chairs, and the people waiting in most of them. The floor was industrial tile, the walls painted stark white. Each wall held a framed painting, the kind usually found in hotel rooms. The waiting patients carried their own offensive odors, but none of them could overpower the smell of iodine, or whatever antiseptic was in use these days. Two of the people waiting coughed with the kind of congestion Hannibal associated with tuberculosis. Without meaning to, he shrank away from them.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked in an icy voice. “You don't look like our usual client.” The woman was rail thin, ink black in a white uniform, and very definitely in charge. Hannibal nodded.

“I have a lunch appointment with Doctor Lippincott.”

“He's upstairs in the cafeteria,” she said, raising a frail arm, pointing to the stairway on her right.

Two flights of stairs later, Hannibal found himself in a small, clean lunch room. The choices offered at the
counter were limited, but the food looked and smelled good. Hannibal spotted Dr. Lippincott in the corner, sitting behind a tray, talking to another man in a white coat. He looked up and smiled in recognition.

“Get your lunch,” Lippincott called. “We'll be done by the time you get here.”

Hannibal picked up a tray and selected the pot roast and a piece of corn bread. He drew a lemonade from the machine and stopped at the cashier. The man at the register, in Rastafarian braids, looked surprised to see someone in front of him.

“How much?” Hannibal asked.

“Donations accepted,” the man replied in a strong West Indian accent. Hannibal fished a ten dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to the man, who rang it up with a look of shock.

When Hannibal reached Lippincott's table, he pulled off his gloves, but not his glasses. Lippincott was starting a plate of spaghetti. He smiled at Hannibal, with the kind of superiority saints always beam from their paintings.

“I see you found us,” Lippincott said. “I don't suppose a fellow like you spends a lot of time here in Northeast, eh?”

Hannibal kept his smile from sliding into a sneer. “Actually, just about every Tuesday I volunteer at the homeless shelter three blocks from here. But I'm glad your Georgetown clientele pays you well enough that you can keep this place running for those who can't afford health care through the normal channels. Is it all free?”

“Oh, I collect from Medicare or Medicaid from those who qualify,” Lippincott said. “But otherwise I don't charge for the care we give here. My doctors are all volunteers from George Washington University
Hospital, or the military hospitals: Walter Reed and Bethesda. They each give up a few hours, just like you do, to try to help those less fortunate.”