Wake Up Maggie (5 page)

“Taylor. No, Trask. Oh! I got it. Boyd. Quinn Boyd.”

“You went through the T’s to get to Boyd?”

“My mind is a strange and wondrous place.”

“No kidding. Can you tell me anything else about him? Maybe something about his background or something the senator might have said about him? Sometimes it’s the smallest slip that trips up these guys.”

“That’s kinda it. Wait. There was this one time when I caught him in Chuck Puckett’s home office going through his desk drawers. He claimed he was looking for a pen and paper to write a note. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but I let it go. Chuck Puckett seemed to trust him so I did too.”

“Did you ever see him use the senator’s computer?” he asked.

“Once, but Chuck Puckett was with him. They were working on something. Don’t ask me what. They’d been holed up in his office for a couple of hours. I went in to prod Chuck Puckett to eat something. He’d get busy and forget sometimes. He was diabetic, so eating was important. And I have no idea why I told you that last part.”

“You took care of him.”

“Someone had to. Anyway, they spent a lot of time together in those last few days, and it struck me as odd at the time. Quinn was just a flunky, but Chuck Puckett treated him as though he was absolutely vital to the campaign.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that ‘hmm’ mean? You know more than you’re telling me, don’t you?”

“You’ll probably find out eventually.”

“Find what out?”

“The senator and Julius Clemmons, AKA Quinn Boyd, were having an affair.”

Chapter Ten

“Who wasn’t Chuck Puckett screwing?” I asked. “Oh, wait…me.”

“Maggie…”

“I don’t even think you could call it betraying, could you? I mean there would’ve had to be something
to
betray. Some faithfulness for there to be unfaithfulness. Some one-timing for there to be two-timing. Well, I guess there was some one-timing…all on my part. I went through more batteries… Anyway, yeah. Another affair. Got it. How does Quinn boinking my boyfriend fit into the picture?”

“He was a jerk to do that to you.”

“I’m not mad at him. Mostly. I’m mad at myself.”

Super Agent reached up and touched my cheek. I leaned in to the caress. It felt good to be touched. To have a guy interested in me for something more than my photogenic-ness and my ability to charm political snakes.

“Don’t be. He should’ve been honest with you.” He pulled a chair over for me. “Come and sit down.”

“More bad news? Don’t tell me…you and Chuck Puckett?”

“God, no. It’s pretty clear where my interests lie.” He winked at me, then cleared his throat back-to-business-like. “I’ve been considering why someone would go to all the trouble of torching your apartment. I want you to think hard.” He pushed a piece of paper and pen toward me. “Write down everything the senator ever gave you, no matter how incidental.”

“Why?”

“I have a feeling someone doesn’t want whatever it is found.”

“So they destroyed my entire apartment?”

“Exactly.”

“Isn’t that rather like killing the dog to get rid of the fleas?”

“They must want to get rid of whatever it is very badly. Yes. I can’t come up with another reason why they’d destroy your apartment.”

I got to work on my list while he went back to clickety-clacking at his computer. Thinking back to when Chuck Puckett and I first met brought back some nice memories. He’d walked up to the Estelle Landers counter just as I was pulling my purse out of the drawer to go to lunch. Normally I didn’t let anything get between me and a meal, but he had the most amazing blue eyes, crystalline looking, almost like glass. I’d dropped my purse as if it held a nest of spiders and shouldered my coworker out of the way.

By the time I rang up the perfume he’d bought for his mother, I’d worked my wiles on him. He asked for my number. I gave it. And for the next year, my life was filled with beautiful places, not-so-beautiful faces, and never-ending political races. And I wouldn’t have changed a day.

I jotted down all of the clothes, jewelry, shoes and other trinkets Chuck Puckett had bought me during our year together. He’d had fantastic taste. The list was going to be longer than I thought. Sadly, they were all ashes now. I was on my second page when there was a knock at the door.

Super Agent produced a wicked-looking gun from out of nowhere and went to the door. Whoever was on the other side must not have been an assassin, because he opened the door, had a brief conversation, then closed it again. He came back with a grocery bag and sat it on the table.

“This is what we could salvage from your apartment. Any of it come from the senator?”

I stood up and peeked inside. It smelled like my three-pack-a-day Aunt Esther’s old romance novels. The items were completely random and from different rooms of my apartment
—
a Christmas ornament, a mug, a photo in a frame of my brother and me at our graduation, a troll doll and a pair of emerald-green satin heels that Chuck Puckett had bought me to wear to some gala. I mourned the dress they’d matched; it had been a work of art.

And that was it. Everything I owned reduced to a stinky grocery sack.

“The shoes,” I told him.

Super Agent took them from me and went to the kitchenette. A series of bangs and curse words ensued.

“What are you doing?”

“Examining the shoes. Did you finish your list?”

“Almost.”

“Finish it.”

I sat back down, worried about my shoes. Something pinched. I dug into my pocket and pulled out the broken keychain. Huh.

“Um, Mr. Super Agent?”

He turned to me with a half-torn-apart shoe in his hand. “Yeah?”

I sucked in a shocked breath. “What have you done to my shoes? My beautiful shoes?”

“Sorry.” He had the good sense to look ashamed. “They might’ve had a clue inside.”

“I can assure you they don’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I think I’ve got what everyone’s been looking for right here.”

I held out one of the broken pieces in my palm to show him. He took my hand and brought it up for a closer look.

“Well, I’ll be damned. That’s clever,” he said.

“What is it?”

“A microchip. Congratulations. You found what everyone’s been looking for.”

Chapter Eleven

At some point, unbeknownst to me, Chuck Puckett had switched the original keychain he’d given me for an identical one with the hidden microchip. Handy things, microchips. As I found out, you can store information people would kill your ex-girlfriend for and firebomb her apartment over. Things like bank codes and safe deposit box information. A safe deposit box with evidence that Quinn/Julius had been accepting bribes in Chuck Puckett’s name.

“Bribes for what?” I asked Super Agent.

We were on night four of being stuck in this crappy apartment together, which was starting to feel more like a hamster cage without the wheel. And I was either getting a contact high off all the cheap Chinese plastic furniture in this place or somehow, some way, Super Agent was growing on me. Like drawing-our-initials-in-hearts, scribbling-my-first-name-with-his-last-name, imagining-our-children kind of growing on me.

“An online gambling scheme,” Super Agent answered between phone calls to and from his fellow agents. “Julius Clemmons used the senator to cover up an elaborate online gambling ring. If it were ever discovered, everything would’ve come back to the senator. From what we can gather, the senator found out what Clemmons was up to and tried to put a stop to it. That’s when their relationship went south and Clemmons hired Thai Dinh to get close to the senator. He needed someone on the inside to plant more evidence and control the senator. Except the senator caught on again. We think that’s why Dinh killed him.”

“Why didn’t Chuck Puckett just go to the authorities?”

“We think he was planning to but got killed before he could.”

“So what you said before about Chuck Puckett being involved in gambling and all, that stuff was a ruse?”

He nodded. “A very elaborate one, yes.”

“It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out. So go arrest Quinn so I can get out of this crappy apartment and back to my life.”

“We’re not sure where he is.”

“We’re back to that? Really?”

“If we could find anyone anywhere, there wouldn’t be an FBI’s most-wanted list, would there?”

He had a point. A very frustrating, infuriating point, but a point nonetheless.

“What’s the plan then? Please tell me there’s a plan,” I said.

“There’s a plan. Of sorts.”

“If it’s anything like the plan that got me shot at and my house torched, then I think you need to replace your planning committee.”

“I’m on the—” He let out a frustrated sound. “The FBI is not the garden club. We don’t have committees.”

“So what’s your sort-of plan?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I looked around the thrift-store-furnished shoebox I was temporarily calling home. “Who am I going to tell?”

“It’s not a matter of you telling anyone.”

“I found the microchip,” I grumbled. “You’d think that would earn me a hint.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t. But I did get you cable,” he offered.

“HBO?”

“No. But you have more channels than just the local ones now.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He went back to staring at his computer screen.

All this confinement was doing weird things to my judgment and perception. So was everything about Super Agent, from his scent to the way he said
crick
instead of
creek
. The other day he’d asked about laundry and added an R to
wash
. I’d nearly jumped him. And right now, the way the computer made his skin glow was having a peculiar effect on my underused libido.

“I’m bored. Let’s have sex.”

His head jerked up. “As tempting as that offer is…and you have no idea…I know you’re not really serious.”

“I might be half serious.”

“I’d rather you be completely serious.”

“Have it your way.” I got up from the couch. “I’ll just be in the bedroom…you know, going it alone.”

A vein along his jaw throbbed and he stared at me as though he was rethinking his entire moral philosophy. I closed the bedroom door, feeling slightly guilty and a little turned-on. Yup, he was definitely growing on me, and I couldn’t help but think that maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Chapter Twelve

I woke up freezing, to the sound of rain through the open window and a gun pointed between my eyes. Thai Dinh stood over me, his pretty face half lit by the streetlight that beamed into the room every night as though we were being invaded by aliens. I opened my mouth, but my lungs seized and no sound came out. I’d always imagined how I’d react in a situation like this, and lying there in a frozen lump of fear wasn’t it.

“Scream and I’ll drop you right here.” His lightly accented voice was unusually high-pitched but aggressive, like Mickey Mouse with a grudge to settle.

He produced a gag that smelled like feet, stuffed it in my mouth and strapped it around my head. He made me roll over so he could bind my hands behind my back. His motions were quick and efficient as though he tied people up everyday. Maybe he did. I shuddered.

All I could think about was how had he gotten in? This place was supposed to be secure. I was supposed to be safe. And where the hell was Super Agent and the mother-lovin’ FBI?

He yanked on my arm. “Get up.”

I complied. What else could I do?

He pushed me toward the door that led to the living room. I dug in my heels. Super Agent was asleep on the other side. He wouldn’t know what was happening until it was too late.

“Get moving!” Dinh whispered, sounding like an angry balloon with a slow leak.

I shook my head. He was going to have to shoot me here. Super Agent would come in, guns blazing, at the sound. I might be dead, but at least he’d be all right.

Dinh leaned his bony frame into my back. “Move it!”

The thing was, I weighed more than he did. I was taller too. His pushing me was like a child trying to move my Pontiac. It wasn’t going to happen.

I shook my head again.

“I should just shoot you here.”

I nodded.

A befuddled frown settled between his brows. “You want me to shoot you?”

I swiveled my head back and forth.

“Then get a move on.” He gave me another shove.

“Mmm.”

“What?”

“Mmm mm mm mhh m mm mhh.”

“I can’t understand you.” He nudged me again. “Let’s go.”

I shook my head and stomped my foot. Or really, his foot. He bent forward and I turned to apologize and accidentally clocked him under the jaw. He dropped like a sack of wet sand at my feet, the gun clattering against the cheap linoleum floor.

I stared down at him for a second, then my common sense finally decided to make an appearance, and I started kicking at the closed bedroom door. Super Agent burst into the room, sending me backwards. My legs caught on the edge of the bed, and I sat down, nearly tipping over sideways.

“What the—” Super Agent flipped the light on and took in the scene. He pointed his gun at Thai Dinh. “You did this?”

I nodded. “Mmm mhh mm mmm mhhh!”

He bent down and checked Dinh’s pulse, then lifted Dinh’s eyelid and blew on it. Nothing. “He’s out.” Super Agent glanced up at me. “Are you all right?”

I bobbed my head again. “Mmm mh mm.”

“Hold on.” He disappeared and came right back with a pair of handcuffs. He locked them around Dinh’s wrists, then patted him down. He pulled out his cell phone and called the other agents.

“Mh mm mmm mm mmh mmmmh mm mh?” I showed him my tied-up hands.

“Oh, sorry.”

He went to work on my hands, then my gag. When I was finally free, I launched myself at him.

“He-came-into-the-room-pointed-a-gun-at-me-tied-me-up-threatened-to-kill-me-all-I-could-think-was-that-you-were-in-the-next-room-and-that—”

“Hey, take it easy.” He gave me a hard hug, then pushed me back to look at me, smoothing the hair back from my face. “You’re all right. I’ve got you now.”