Clawback (38 page)

“What is this? It feels like blackmail.”

“And your collecting twenty percent of people's hard-won savings seems like highway robbery,” Ali replied. “This isn't so much blackmail as it is a plea deal with a little give-and-take. You might even call it a clawback of sorts. We drop our twenty. You drop yours. As an added bonus, we won't speak to the SEC or the State Bar Association of Arizona.”

There was a pause. “Okay,” he said finally, conceding defeat. “Done.”

“What's your hourly fee?”

“Five hundred.”

“You should be able to shave quite a bit off that when it comes to doing simple accounting and administrative work,” Ali said. “And to help you with that, here's something else.”

She pulled out a memory card and slid it across his desk. He caught it just before it slid off the far side.

“What's this?”

“I believe that's a complete listing of OFM's clientele along with all their contact information as well as some helpful accounting info.”

“Where did you get this?”

“Does that matter? What really matters is that we have it. That's only a copy by the way.”

“All right,” Lowensdahl said finally, conceding on the issue of his hourly rate, too. “One fifty.”

“Great,” Ali said, smiling, rising to her feet, and brushing the wrinkles from the legs of her pantsuit. “Sounds good, Mr. Lowensdahl. I believe we're done here. Do stay in touch.”

“S
o this is where you think it happened?” Bob Larson asked.

“That's what Cami said,” Stu Ramey answered. “She was starting to slow down to make the turn when Jessica threw the memory card out of the car.”

Bob's Bronco was parked on the shoulder of Highway 179 just east of the I-17 entrance ramp. Armed with matching metal detectors, Bob and Stu had waited until late afternoon to tackle the project. Some of the heat was beginning to dissipate, but it was still hot.

“I did some computerized reconstructions on this,” Stu said, “trying to estimate speed, weight, and wind factors to come up with possible distances. If Cami's right, and she had already started slowing down, the object wouldn't have traveled as far as it would have if they'd been going fifty-five. We're going to do this in three-foot-wide sections, thirty feet long, on either side of the fence line. Got it?”

Bob looked at the fence line stretching off into the far distance. He looked at the sea of dried grass on either side of the barbed wire. What he really wanted to say was that Stuart Ramey was absolutely, 100 percent nuts. But of course he couldn't say any such thing. He and Edie owed this guy far too much for that.

“Got it,” he said.

“Which side of the fence do you want?” Stu asked.

Bob didn't know exactly how much older he was than Stuart, but when it came to climbing over barbed wire fences, he was in far better shape than the younger man. “I'll take the far side,” he said.

They worked for the better part of two hours—back and forth, back and forth. The sweat ran into Bob's eyes and down his shirt. His back ached. His legs hurt. But Stu wouldn't give up. He was relentless. He was going to find that damned USB adapter or know the reason why.

And just when Bob was ready to give up—when he was ready to say he couldn't take another damned step—his metal detector alerted. It wasn't an aluminum can this time or a bottle cap, either. It was, in fact, exactly what they were looking for—the USB adapter with the memory card still tucked safely inside.

“I've got it,” Bob shouted. “Here it is.”

With more speed and agility than Bob would have thought possible, Stu clambered over the intervening fence and covered the distance between them at a dead run.

“Don't touch it, whatever you do!” Stu commanded, panting and out of breath. “We need to take photographs of it. If Jessica Denton's prints are on it, we don't want to lose them.”

C
ami sat in her oversized first-class seat and stared out the window as first the bay and then the airport runways materialized out of the fog. She had relented after all and agreed to come home for Papa's birthday party, but she hadn't caved completely. She was coming for the party only, would spend the night—at a hotel of her choosing—and fly home the next day. She had assured her mother that there was no reason to pick her up at the airport. Cami would get herself back and forth on her own, thank you very much.

In actual fact Ali was the one who had chosen and booked the Four Seasons and had insisted on buying Cami a first-class ticket and had made arrangements for a limo pick-up and drop-off as well. “It's a perk,” she had said. “Let's just call it retroactive combat pay.”

It was an afternoon party. Papa had agreed to close the restaurant for the afternoon, but not for the evening. The place would be open again for regular dinner service. By the time Cami set out to walk the mile-plus distance between the Four Seasons and the restaurant, the morning fog had burned away completely. She walked well-remembered streets, looking in familiar shopwindows, peering at strangers, watching the traffic. And all the while, her heart was filled with dread.

Her parents would both be there. Cami wasn't sure who had blown the whistle on her, but somehow her mother had learned of Cami's exploits in Peoria weeks earlier, and Sue Ling Lee was not a happy camper. The mere fact that Cami had finally agreed to show up for her grandfather's birthday celebration hadn't done much to improve mother/daughter relations.

Cami had timed her arrival so the party would already be in full swing when she got there. She had planned to slip in through the back door. That would give her a chance to blend in with the crowd and be involved in conversation before either of her parents spotted her. What she hadn't counted on was the fact that the birthday boy himself was no more enamored of the party than she was.

Papa, seated on an upturned lettuce crate and smoking a forbidden cigarette, hailed her as she made for the door. “Meili,” he called, patting the top of the crate. “Come and sit with me.”

Cami's grandfather had never approved of the name
his
daughter had given
her
daughter. In a way, Cami saw it as an appropriate bit of “what goes around comes around.” She had always called her grandfather Papa, and he had always called her Meili—“Beautiful.”

Cami sat.

“Your mother would not like it if she knew we were sitting out here in the alley,” Papa said.

“No,” Cami smiled. “She would not. And Nainai”—“Grandmother”—“would not like it if she knew you were smoking.”

Papa smiled at that. “Then we shall not tell them.”

He took another drag on the cigarette. “I'm glad you came.”

“So am I,” Cami said, realizing suddenly that she actually
was
glad.

“Did you know that when I was a boy I wanted to be a doctor?”

Cami was floored. “I had no idea.”

Papa nodded. “My father said to me, ‘Boy, you are too stupid to be a doctor. You must learn to cook.' ” Papa paused and shrugged. “And so I cooked. I have cooked all my life. It is what I do.”

It came as a shock to learn that her mother's version of their family history was a total fabrication. To hear Sue Lee tell it, her parents had loved running their restaurant and had insisted that she grow up and become a part of it. Given Papa's history, Cami somehow doubted that was true.

“What do you want to be, Meili?”

“What I am,” she answered. “Someone who helps people.”

“Like you are helping all those poor people get their money back?”

Cami was floored again. How did Papa know about that?

“George, our new cook, is on the Internet all the time. I asked him to—what do they call it again?—oh yes, google you. He found many articles about you and read them to me. It sounded very exciting.” He took another drag on the cigarette. “And then, I'm afraid, I did a very bad thing.”

“What's that?”

“I had George send them to your mother.”

Suddenly Cami burst out laughing. She couldn't help it. Leaning over, she kissed her grandfather's weathered cheek and hugged his neck.

“Thank you, Papa,” she said. “I think this is going to be the best birthday party ever.”

B.
and Ali left for the Brought Back girls' housewarming party early on Saturday afternoon. It was the Fourth of July, and the handwritten invitation, done in someone's recently learned and somewhat awkward cursive, had said: “Plese come to our Indeppendence Day celibration. 2:00 PM. Satarday July 4.”

“I believe that's the most touching invitation I've ever received,” Ali had said, brushing away a tear as she passed the small envelope over to B. “It took real courage to write that.”

“Yes, it did,” B. agreed.

“Sister Anselm has been in on the planning. It's Fourth of July all the way—hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon, potato chips, potato salad, coleslaw, and a batch of red-white-and-blue-frosted cupcakes. This is their first ever Fourth of July celebration, and the girls are very excited.”

“What are we bringing?”

“S'mores. You should have seen how thrilled they were when they tried potato chips for the first time. I can hardly wait to see how s'mores will go over.”

Late on Friday afternoon Dave had called. “Are you ready for some good news?”

“What?”

“They ran Jessica Denton's DNA through CODIS and got a hit to a twenty-year-old unsolved homicide in L.A. Guy comes out, finds someone stealing his car, and the car thief shoots him dead. DNA from a hair from a scrunchie found near the car leads straight to Jessica. Still doesn't tell us who she is or where she's from, but we're getting closer. And once she's been tried and hopefully convicted on our charges, LAPD will be ready to charge her with theirs.”

“I'm glad she's off the streets,” Ali said.

“I'm glad they're both off the streets,” Dave said. “Without Jason's confession and plea arrangement, we might not be able to nail her, but now it looks like a done deal. With any luck they'll both end up serving life without.”

That was Ali's hope, too.

“You're very quiet,” B. said as they turned northbound on I-17. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“I was just thinking about Jessica Denton,” Ali said. “She's linked to at least five homicides now, and Cami took her down.”

“Cami is one tough cookie,” B. agreed. “And are we ever lucky to have her.”

They arrived at the house in Flag and stepped out into a perfect summer day—seventy-five degrees and sunny, with a hint of promising rain clouds peeking over the distant horizon. Maybe the monsoons would arrive shortly. It was time.

The house Sister Anselm had snagged and rehabbed looked like it had stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting from the fifties. What appeared to be a brand-new American flag hung on one of the newly painted porch posts. A picnic table with a Fourth of July–themed paper tablecloth had been set up in the front yard, along with an oddball collection of outside furniture that said “yard sale” all the way.

A smiling Enid Tower, carrying Baby Ann in one arm, hurried to greet them. “I'm so glad you could come. Sister Anselm's already here.”

“I'll trade you the baby for this,” Ali said, handing over a brown paper bag holding the s'more makings. “Something for dessert,” she added.

“But we already have a dessert.”

“Believe me, you're going to want to give these a try.”

In this house of many women, Baby Ann had quickly become accustomed to being passed from one hand to another, and she made no protest at being left in Ali's care. B. gravitated over to the grill, where a guy named David Upton was keeping a close watch on a newly lit fire.

Months earlier, David's car had clipped a runaway Enid Tower as she ran across a darkened highway directly in front of him in a desperate attempt to escape a pursuer determined to return her to The Family's clutches. Horrified to have hit a pedestrian and wanting to help, David had climbed out of his car only to discover that not only was sixteen-year-old Enid Tower injured, she was also going into labor.

David Upton was not Baby Ann's father, but you couldn't tell that by looking. He was a fixture in Enid's and Baby Ann's lives, and in the lives of the other Brought Back girls as well. He was their go-to guy, their handyman, and their plumber, as well as their interpreter and comforter when the complexities of the Outside became too much for them.

“How's it going?” B. asked.

“I think I've got it now, Mr. Simpson,” David said. “What can I get you to drink? We're strictly sodas and iced tea here.”

“Iced tea sounds great. That's what I'll have and Ali, too.”

As David went to fetch drinks, Sister Anselm appeared on the front porch and then came down to join them in the yard. Just then a small commotion occurred out on the street. When Ali saw the roof of a silver Sprinter pull over and stop outside the fence, she turned back to Sister Anselm.

“You had them invite the governor?”

“Yes, I did,” Sister Anselm beamed. “And here she is. I'd better go get the girls.”

Governor Virginia Dunham waved off her security detail and came into the yard wearing jeans, a cowboy shirt, boots, and a white Stetson. She looked nothing like a governor. Grinning from ear to ear, she walked over to Ali, holding out her arms. “My turn with the baby,” she said.

“I can't believe you're here,” Ali said.

“My scheduler couldn't believe it, either,” Governor Dunham said with a laugh. “She had a fit when I told her I wasn't doing any public appearances for the Fourth of July. This is way more fun. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”

One by one the Brought Back girls came down the steps to greet their guests. They had met Governor Dunham before, but that was in the very beginning, before they had enough exposure to the world to understand that she was someone important. Now they did, and they approached her shyly. One by one, she pulled them into a one-armed embrace.