Lipstick and Lies (21 page)

Dante would head the team. I was already aware that he held a law degree; now I was surprised to learn he was also proficient in German. His language skills meant that he would perform the role of team evaluator, appraising all documents found in Renner’s safe, deciding what should be photographed.

For a moment I thought Connelly had been left on the bench with me. But before Dante finished, he indicated Connelly had the important responsibilities of building a strategy for Renner’s interrogation, as well as overseeing certain logistical aspects vital to the break-in.

An awkward silence followed. I had not been asked to join the team or even participate in off-site support. I was crushed.

We had not yet covered my interviews at Willow Run. Determined to maintain a professional demeanor in spite of the rejection, I began reviewing what I had learned from Renner’s secretary, Mrs. K. My observation that she seemed to have a great deal of influence over Renner, so much so that he bent over backwards to please her and to help her daughters, interested the men. They were equally intrigued by the tale of my unexpected encounter with Renner at Willow Run. His mood was cool but on edge, I informed them, before going on to describe the dark side of his personality that had emerged later during his confrontation with his wife at the Club.

Dante and Simmons were impressed with my handling of the unforeseen meeting, citing his abnormal behavior as further evidence that the time was ripe to reel him in. On the opposing end of the pole, Connelly thought I should have found an excuse to leave the moment Renner arrived, suggesting I had needlessly exposed my cover. I shrugged off his comments. Then I brought them up to speed about my meeting with Clara, indicating she had confirmed her husband’s alibi for the night of Blount’s murder and had not revealed any discrepancies suggesting her story differed from his. Her contact with Grace Buchanan-Dineen was limited to only one hair-cutting session, I elaborated, pointing out that the singular event had soured any future relationship between the women, permanently.

I hesitated, then summed up. “I must, in good conscience, add that I’m not entirely convinced Mrs. Renner is part of the ring.”

Connelly countered, “But the admiral’s wife said…”

“I know what the admiral’s wife said. She claims Clara asked her for a map of the base. But how do you know she’s telling the truth? What if she made the story up?”

Connelly asked incredulously, “Why would an admiral’s wife lie?”

“To get attention. To reinforce a need to feel important. To get back at her husband for something he did—or
didn’t
—do.” Good reasons raised in my conversation with Liberty.

“The admiral’s wife didn’t lie,” Simmons said flatly. “She’s solid. We’ve checked.”

I was a sucker for the underdog. What other reason could I have for stubbornly plowing on as Clara’s advocate? “Okay, so Mrs. Renner asked her for a map. How do you know she was getting it for her husband? How does that prove she’s part of his ring?”

Connelly made a choking noise. “You put two and two together.”

My tone was measured. “I have nothing solid, but my gut tells me she’s not involved. I feel compelled to let you know that.”

Connelly snickered. “
Your gut
? What are you saying? A bit of girl talk in a beauty parlor and, presto, with a wave of a hand, she’s absolved? How about some facts?”

I glared at him. The stiff waves in his hair still held the lines drawn by the teeth of his comb. The styling was so perfect he might have been wearing a hand-sewn wig. An
ill-chosen
wig.

I ripped my gaze from him and focused on Romeo. In private, Dante had repeatedly praised my instincts. Now would be a good time for him to put Connelly in his place. Occupied with flipping his unlit cigarette on the table, he passed on the chance.

I cleared my throat and continued, first assuring them that Clara’s connection to the Barclay-Bly sisters was also strictly business, saving the “chair gossip” involving Kiki and Philip for last.

“So Kiki had an affair with her sister’s fiancé,” Dante muttered under his breath. “Well what do you know.”

Simmons had been following our tripartite exchange without comment. He tugged a large ear thoughtfully. “So, if Renner didn’t do it, who’s your murderer?”

“The lieutenant who sent Blount out on the training maneuvers that cost him his hand was dishonorably discharged. Could be him.” Dante frowned. “Or, most likely, Renner’s handler…”

“With help from someone on the inside,” Connelly said. “Someone who knew the layout and was familiar with Blount’s routine. We know Renner was in cahoots with an employee able to help him pass faulty castings through assembly safeguards. Maybe this employee, likely an inspector, discovered Blount was squealing. This inspector would be desperate to save his neck, right?”

I drew a shaky breath. Until this moment I’d dismissed Connelly’s theories as bunk.

“You might have something there,” I began, slowly. “Mrs. K’s daughter, not Wanda, the one I was supposedly assigned to interview, but the other one, Gisela, is an inspector. Works inside the main wings, on the final assembly phase. According to Mrs. K, it was Renner who pushed Gisela in that direction. Could he have drawn her into his web somehow?”

“Has anyone checked out this daughter?” Simmons asked.

Dante and Connelly exchanged glances.

“Uh, no,” Dante said. “Blount swore that before their night out at the Orange Lantern, Renner had never breathed a word about other insiders. And when he finally spilled the beans, he didn’t volunteer any names.”

“It’s possible that Renner himself didn’t know who the mole on the assembly line was,” Connelly added. “His handler may have deliberately set it up that way so the identities of his spies remained secret from one another. That way if he lost a man to the other side, the defector wouldn’t be able to give anyone else away.”

“The setup would also give the spy master leeway to assign one ring member to spy on another, incognito,” Dante said. “To be sure everyone remains loyal.”

“Hey…” I searched first Dante’s face, then Connelly’s, as a fuzzy thought took shape. “Didn’t one of you say Renner was born in the States?”

Connelly nodded. “Yeah, why?”

“He’s got an accent. It’s hardly noticeable, but it’s there.”

Simmons had been jotting something into a small notebook. He looked up, zeroing in on Dante, but Connelly spoke first.

“We ran a check…”

“Then ONI will run another,” the lieutenant snapped, cutting him short.

We were back to the interagency grudge match. My stomach tightened.

At the head of the table, Dante had been bouncing the pink eraser on his pencil against the table’s waxed surface. The noise stopped. “We haven’t covered your jail visit yet,” he said.

“What’s to cover?” I asked. “You were listening, right?”

“We’ve been
here
for the better part of the day.” Connelly cast a dark glance at Simmons, suggesting the fault rested with him.

Dante whacked the eraser against the table. Connelly settled back into his seat, methodically cracking his knuckles while his partner continued.

“We had a man positioned at the jail, yes. But you had the advantage of watching the woman’s expressions and body language. What’s your take? Is she being straight about not knowing Renner and Blount?”

I gawked at him. Did he understand the irony in what he was asking? He hadn’t spoken up for me earlier when Connelly had ridiculed me for defending Clara, based on my gut. Now he wanted “my take” on what the Countess had said?

I waited a few beats longer. “Yes, I believe she is leveling with me. With good reason. She had hoped to be exonerated by now. But beyond that, she’d like to get on with her life. Thinks I can help by clearing the way for a visit from her fiancé.”

Connelly snickered. “The fiancé. We’ve got that ground covered. Heard he’s considering breaking off the engagement.”

“What are you talking about? He’s devoted to her.”

He didn’t reply, but the sneer on his face said it all.

“Go on,” Dante said, addressing me.

I did, concluding with the terms the Countess had laid out.

Dante’s pencil tapped the table, loudly. “We can’t ignore her. We need to know if the sisters are involved.”

“What about Leo’s progress?” Connelly asked. “Anything?”

“Not yet,” Dante replied.

I pulled my steno pad out of my satchel and flipped pages. “You might want to check out this name and address I found in her cell,” I said, repeating the information on the fence, Tazio Abbado, that I’d found behind the photograph of the Countess’ father.

“I’ve decided I want Pucci on the break-in team,” Dante announced, abruptly. “She’s a pro on flaps and seals. The man we lined up is too green.”

Connelly’s jaw dropped and my heart was jack hammering so loudly I thought everyone in the room could surely hear it.

I smiled at Dante. I glowed. I tingled. I felt so good it was like I was flying.

Connelly’s face was beet red. “What? Take a woman on a clandestine mission? What if there’s trouble and she crumbles? She could compromise the mission. And what if she can’t keep a secret afterwards?”

Dante’s voice was smooth and sure. “Lewis is in. She’s trained, she’s been inside the office premises. I’m confident in her abilities.”

No additional objections followed. Dante was the mission leader. He raised a final item of business. Still convinced that the Barclay-Bly sisters were somehow linked to our case, he asked if I would return to jail for a third session with the Countess. It was a grim task made worse, as I would have to begin the meeting by informing her that her wish to see Mr. Butler had been denied.

Across from me, Connelly’s thin mouth had twisted into one of his schoolboy smirks. His arrogance made Dante’s latest challenge suddenly irresistible. I accepted. My reward, Connelly’s incredulous look, was instantaneous.

Chapter Eighteen

I left the conference room with Dante, who told Simmons and Connelly he wanted to discuss the break-in with me, in private. When we were alone, he suggested we continue our discussion outdoors. Given the FBI’s propensity for eavesdropping, and sensing that there was a second sub rosa layer yet to be disclosed, I scuttled two steps ahead of him to the elevator.

Downstairs in the main lobby, uniformed guards stood beside the bank of doors at the main entrance. They each gave Dante a discreet nod as we passed.

Outside, I grabbed his arm. “I got a tip Roy Jarvis is in town. He’s G-2. Was he the rep who was supposed to be in the meeting but cancelled?”

Dante stared at me. “I’ve been in contact with Jarvis several times in the last twenty-four hours, but let’s find someplace more private first. Over here.”

We strolled to the far end of the portico, pausing beside a limestone column in the corner. I searched Dante’s face. “What’s going on? Do you know something about Liberty?”

“She’s disappeared.”

“I know. We were together just before it happened. Last night, shortly before midnight.”

Dante looked surprised. “You saw her last night?”

I nodded, hurriedly filling him in on my surprise encounter with her at the Club. I described her changed appearance, stifling a grin as I repeated the
nom de guerre
she’d selected for her war-time role as a manicurist. The light moment ebbed as I reported her disturbing absence from work that morning.

“Her disappearance, is it connected to the sting? Is she all right?”

Dante stared over my head, looking perplexed.

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “Liberty told me she was working for G-2.”

He came back to earth. “She what?”

I should have known he’d be upset with us for confiding in one another. I rushed on. “She had to. We were both at the same club, undercover. We suspected there’d been a mix-up and that we’d been assigned to the same case. We figured we needed to come clean with one another or risk botching things up altogether.”

Dante remained eerily still.

“We didn’t go into detail,” I added. “She revealed just a little about her—uh, G-2’s—side of the case, and I barely had the chance to admit I’d been sent by the FBI.”

“Which case?”

I squinted up at him. “The case that placed Liberty in the Cosmos Club, posing as a fascist sympathizer, testing the admiral’s wife to see if she could get her to steal a map,” I replied impatiently.

I watched a school of pigeons pecking the cement on the steps below. I shook my head. “I can’t believe that an admiral’s wife would want to sell out her own country. Why is she doing it, do you know? Has a loose screw? Needs money? Husband do something unforgivable?”

Dante had no ready answers and my list of troubling issues still held an important straggler. “Simmons…ONI…they have it all backwards. Why does G-2, and now you, the FBI, want them to think Clara Renner is the
femme fatale
? Why aren’t all agencies leveling with one another, like you’re supposed to?” Out of breath and out of questions, I paused.

“We
are
leveling with each other.”

“No you’re not.” The words echoed hollowly in the surrounding silence.

“We are. Clara Renner asked the admiral’s wife for a map of Grosse Ile Naval Station.”

“But that’s not what Liberty said. Where is she? What’s happened to her? And why wasn’t Roy at the meeting?”

Dante’s gaze caught mine and held. “Roy Jarvis is in Washington D.C. juggling a host of unsolved national security matters, recently upgraded to top priority. Liberty—by the way, I never heard of her before Jarvis brought me in on the matter—went out on a field test in the Washington area a month ago. Never returned. The incident hit his desk yesterday.”

“But I just saw her—” I paused, letting what Dante had said sink in. “
A month ago?
But that’s when
I
completed training.”

He nodded. “Right. But you were enrolled in an accelerated course. She had weeks of instruction remaining.”

A tiny spasm pulsed in front of Dante’s ear. There was more. “What?” I asked, cautiously.

“The Countess and her ring of spies were arrested a month ago. Liberty vanished the day after.”

My stomach dropped. “What are you saying? You think she’s an enemy agent? Not possible. She’s a good person, the daughter of missionaries. She was recruited by OI. She passed OSS security checks—”

Dante placed a hand on my arm. “Liberty’s your friend, you have a bond. But think a minute. She was working undercover as a manicurist at the Cosmos Club. She told you G-2 placed her there. That Jarvis was running her assignment. They didn’t. He wasn’t. What do
you
suppose is going on?”

I sighed. “She lied to me. Why?”

“Not sure. What I do know is, after she went AWOL, an investigation launched by her trainers led them nowhere. G-2 was contacted and asked to cover matters domestically. Jarvis took the reins yesterday. He contacted the parents and they pointed him here. He also checked her records, saw you listed as her former roommate. He followed up with Miss Cochran, hoping to contact you for some insights.”

“She told him I was in Detroit and he contacted you…”

Dante slipped a finger under his shirt collar, tugging it away from his neck. “Let’s walk.” He bounded down the stairs. His long strides and my fitted skirt made it impossible for me to keep up. He waited on the sidewalk.

Tall commercial buildings formed a canyon around us. Earlier, when I’d entered the Federal building, the air had seemed oppressive. Now it positively brimmed with the exhaust and grime spewing from passing automobiles. I unfastened my jacket; Dante loosened his tie and undid the button under its knot. We started down the block.

I looked over. “You mentioned Liberty’s parents. Do they know she’s missing?”

Dante nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“They must be worried sick.”

“They don’t have much contact with her.”

“That’s strange. Liberty and her parents have always been very close.”

Dante shook his head. “Not according to the Leaches. They told Jarvis they’ve hardly spoken to one another in years.”

“Years?”

“Uh-huh.” He paused and looked over. “Pucci, did you know Liberty was adopted?”

“Adopted? Nooo…”

A malaise moved through me and my bones felt weak while bit by bit he revealed her background.

When she was only hours old, Liberty had been left in a box on the Leaches’ doorstep. The couple, both medical professionals, she a nurse, he a doctor, had no children of their own. After a futile search for the baby’s mother, they decided to adopt.

The pivotal moment came when Liberty was fourteen. A typical teen, more willful and mischievous than most, she had already pushed her parents’ tolerance to the brink. On one particularly trying day, in a fit of frustration and anger, Mrs. Leach lashed out at her husband, saying, “She’s a wicked little brat! Maybe we shouldn’t have adopted her after all!”

She regretted her words the instant they left her mouth. A million times more once they learned Liberty had overheard them. Shocked by the discovery of her adoption, she pummeled them with vengeful outbursts that went on for days. Once she had calmed down enough to listen to reason, Mrs. Leach tried to make amends. But by then something in Liberty had changed. She told her mother she had never felt connected to them, had no desire to be like them, and now, having at last learned the truth, she felt a new sense of inner peace and freedom. According to Dr. Leach, after that her behavior regressed even further. She became surly, sullen, and completely antisocial.

My mind reeled. How could my friend have told me something so different? Why?

I tried to make sense of it. “And so, unable to think of anything better, they sent her off to boarding school in Europe…” I hesitated. “Her mother’s sister is in Switzerland. Liberty lived with her aunt and uncle, learned all those languages there. That part of her past is true, right?”

“Yes, but putting an ocean between them did little to mend the familial relationship. Communication remained next to nil even when she returned home on breaks.”

“But she was adopted, never knew her real mother, had never been told…the trauma—”

I was feeling a little shell-shocked myself, the sensation suddenly magnified by the haunting image of
my
mother, her blank green eyes bulging with the terror of her free-fall from the church loft. The sick despair I’d felt afterwards, kissing her unresponsive cheek, came flooding back. “I’m sorry,” I’d whispered, my tears flooding the planes of her immobile face, running to catch in the crook of her twisted neck.
Sorry
for saying I didn’t want to go to practice with her that afternoon;
sorry
for refusing to leave the house until she gave in and let me wear my patent leather Sunday shoes, not the high-top brown oxfords prescribed to correct my pigeon-toed feet;
sorry
for making her angry, making her late, making her rush so that she was distracted when she got up in front of the choir, turned her back to the railing…
Sorry, sorry, sorry
.

Dante must have sensed the anguish churning within me. He clasped my elbow, drawing me close. “The Leaches might not have been perfect parents, but they loved their daughter. They made a mistake and did their best to mend it. They gave her opportunities—Swiss boarding school, summers abroad until the war started. Later, when she wanted to attend Vassar, they helped arrange it.”

I nodded, but my brain whirled and I felt slightly nauseous. We walked in silence.

“Liberty’s parents directed Roy to Detroit,” I said after a while. “Why was that?”

“They thought she might be visiting a young man who was part of the crowd she ran with in Europe.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “A group of young radicals, according to the Leaches. Supposedly, this chum immigrated here in the fall of ’41.”

“Fall of ’41? That’s when the Countess arrived. Immigration control would have a record.”

“Right. He registered as an alien—Tazio Abbado—and we’ve followed the trail to his last known address. No sign of him, though. Or Liberty. But we’re still digging.”

It wasn’t getting any better. “
Tazio Abbado
?”

“Uh-huh. The same guy the Countess told you is a known fence.”

He didn’t say it, but we both knew Liberty’s pre-war job at the Oral Intelligence Group involved interviewing refugees and screening for
agents provocateurs.
She was at the organization in 1941, when both the Countess and Abbado would have passed through.

“Was he put on the Watch List?” Dante shook his head. I swallowed. “Has Liberty been identified as the OI agent who cleared him through?”

“No. But our office has been on the case for only a day.”

We hovered near the curb of an intersection, waiting for the light to change. “I know things don’t look good for her,” I began softly, “but I’m wondering. If she’s crossed the line, why was her room ransacked? Who would have done it? It wouldn’t have been Liberty. Who then? Could it have been someone involved with Renner?” I waited while a car with a faulty muffler rattled past. “She had a midnight meeting to go to. What if the appointment was a ruse? Maybe she was lured somewhere, shanghaied by someone from Renner’s group. It’s possible, right?”

I had been watching Dante’s expression closely. “You’re not completely convinced she’s with the enemy either, are you? Is that why you didn’t mention her disappearance to Simmons? You wanted to shield her?”

He lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug. “Let’s just say I’m not prepared to throw one of ours to the lions before it’s clear what’s going on.”

A snarl of pedestrians had formed around us. I pressed closer to him and felt the thick muscle of his upper arm tighten. I glanced up. Our eyes met and I recognized the tenderness that made my heart go zing. I squeezed his forearm.

The light turned green and we were swept into the crosswalk. We strolled, and I raised a different aspect of the case that was nagging me. “Do you know the investigator who visited Liberty’s landlady at the boarding house?”

Dante bobbed his head. “Yes.”

“Are you aware that he went to the Cosmos Club and questioned Clara Renner?”

He nodded again.

“And supposedly by then she had already asked the admiral’s wife for a map of the base, correct?”

“Pucci, there’s no
supposedly
. Mrs. Renner asked for, and was given, the map.” He read my startled expression. “Not an accurate map,” he explained, softly. “Things the enemy would be looking for—runways, storage tanks, barracks, and the like—they’d all been redrawn.”

False map or not, Clara Renner was in the soup. Right up to her mascara-laden lashes. And I had thought she was innocent. What had happened to my ability to read people?

I viewed the crowd around us with an Impressionist’s eye, melding the forms into a blur of soft shapes and colors, and quietly groaned again. First Liberty had duped me, now guileless Clara appeared to be aligned with the enemy. Imagine! After telling me she loved her beauty parlor work and that she wanted to grow her business so that her husband could retire.

I clenched Dante’s arm. “I don’t want to think the worst,” I began, haltingly. “And I can’t believe I could be so wrong about her—”

“Who?”

“Clara. She confided that she had some money secretly squirreled away. Said someone—not her husband—was advising her, helping her make private investments.”

“And…”

I lowered my voice. “Could it be by
investments
she meant gathering U.S. secrets and maps? Selling them to
you-know-who
?”

Dante stared at me like he thought I had finally come to my senses. “Sounds like you’ve struck gold, now you need to mine it.” He thought for a second. “She trusts you. In the morning, we’ll arrange it so she’s left for work before we pull Renner in. That way, you’ll have another chance to talk to her, find out what you can about this adviser before she hears we’ve got her husband.”

It was my turn to stare incredulously. But I didn’t object.