Читать книгу Mixed Up with the Mob - Ginny Aiken - Страница 6

David rolled his eyes. “Let me get this straight. Nothing really happened here, you say. It was just a driver who slid on wet pavement. And that driver was…your brother’s ghost?”

Lauren bit her lower lip. Then she squared her shoulders and nodded. “Yes. That’s what I said.”

But she didn’t meet his gaze.

The ambulance shrieked up and came to a complete stop a few inches from David’s feet. Two squad cars careered around the corner behind the siren-blaring, light-flashing, foot-threatening white-and-yellow menace. He scrambled upright, if for no other reason than to protect his feet.

But it was good. Reinforcements just when he needed them. He didn’t know what to make of his accident victim.

Two officers approached. David nodded at them. “Glad to see you guys.”

Officer Radford, as per his name tag, returned the nod. “Can you tell me what happened? The dispatcher wasn’t long on details.”

David withdrew his ID and turned it over to the two cops. “I was on my way down the street when a gray Lexus swerved around me and aimed straight at the woman and child. It hit and ran, and although she says she’s fine, I think she might have a concussion or something. At the very least, she must’ve rattled her head.”

The EMT who’d come up behind Officer Sherman, Radford’s partner, waved her own partner toward Lauren then said, “Why her head? Did you see evidence of trauma?”

“No, but she’s talking crazy.”

With a puzzled look for him, the medic turned to Lauren.

Radford took out a notepad. “What do you mean, talking crazy?”

David snorted. “I feel stupid just telling you what she said. She tried to tell me her brother’s ghost was behind the wheel. And that’s after she insisted again and again that the driver had only skidded on the damp road.”

Radford didn’t look up from his scribbles, but his right eyebrow rose. “So we’re talking criminal ghosts, are we?”

David ran a hand through his hair. He’d known better than to agree to come after Gram. Now he was making a fool of himself thanks to a pretty blonde who might have rocks in her head.

“That’s what she said.”

“Did you get a good look at the driver?”

“It happened so fast, I didn’t even get a good look at the license plate, much less the driver.”

“But you’re sure it was a gray Lexus?”

“That I’m sure. My grandmother just traded in one just like it only in pink.”

The eyebrow rose higher. “A pink Lexus. What’d she get? A pink Caddie instead?”

David’s cheeks flamed. “No. A purple Hummer.”

Radford’s left eyebrow joined his right. He turned to Officer Sherman. “Is that ID for real, or did he get it in a gumball machine?”

Sherman scanned it again. “Looks plenty kosher to me.”

David glared at Lauren. “Call the office. I’m for real. I’m just not sure what she is.”

“She,” said the female EMT as she returned, “is just fine. Oh, she’ll have a doozy of a bruise on her hip by tomorrow, all right, and I’ll bet she scraped her knees good under those pants, but otherwise she’s fine. Not even a bump on her head.”

“Then she’s nuts,” David said before he could stop himself.

Lauren glared back. “I’m not crazy, but I am fine, as I told you over and over again.” She turned to Radford. “He shouldn’t have made such a fuss. I’m sorry he bothered you, sir. But as you heard, I’m fine. You can all go home now. It’s getting late, especially for my nephew.”

Radford glanced at David. In that quick look, he saw the same alarm he’d felt at Lauren’s urgent objections. Something was up with this woman. And he wasn’t about to let her go until he had a good idea what it might be.

David crossed his arms and pinned Lauren with his stare. “Listen. I don’t buy a word of your ghost story, so why don’t you try telling me the truth? What’s going on here? What are you trying to hide?”

At his side, Radford cleared his throat.

David winced. He was stepping on the locals’ toes, and he was off duty, but by now he’d lost his patience. He had to know what Lauren DiStefano was up to.

Instead of answering, though, she helped her nephew stand before she stood, as well. Only then did she meet David’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m absolutely exhausted. And I’ve been under a great deal of stress these last few weeks. I’m sure it’s all taken its toll on my sanity.”

David caught himself before the spontaneous “Yeah, right” popped out. “So in your world exhaustion and stress lead to hit-and-runs and ghosts.”

She had the decency to blush. “I suppose it does sound stupid when you put it that way.”

“What way would you rather I put it?”

The shrug made her wince. She was hurt, no matter how hard she tried to deny it. What he wanted to know was why she was so determined to do so.

“Well?” he prodded.

Radford’s pencil scratched across paper.

The ambulance pulled away, this time minus the theatrics.

Officer Sherman joined them.

Still, Lauren didn’t speak. By now, she’d grown visibly uncomfortable with the triple scrutiny—just what David had hoped for. Maybe that discomfort would make her decide to talk.

She took a deep breath, clasped her nephew’s shoulders, pulled the boy close to her side. “The last three weeks have been very hard on us. My older brother Ric died twenty-three days ago. A car accident.”

That did explain stress, and the stress probably explained the exhaustion.

“But how do we get from grief and mourning to a Lexus-wielding ghost?” he asked. “Are you sure your brother’s dead? That you didn’t…uh—”

“No, Mr. Latham,” she cut in, her green eyes bright with indignation. “I didn’t imagine my brother’s death. I could never have done that. Besides, I have plenty of evidence of his passing.”

“I didn’t mean that you might have imagined his death.” David shifted his weight from one to the other foot. “That evidence you mentioned would be…?”

“The usual,” she countered. “I have a death certificate, the obit from the newspaper, the tasteful gravestone I had to order, a casket and fresh burial plot, the unending funeral bills I still have to pay and none of those is even the most heartbreaking bit of proof you could ever want. I have a grieving five-year-old nephew who only wants to know where his daddy went.”

David’s gaze dropped to the boy. The tears in Mark’s large green eyes, so like those of his aunt, filled him with guilt. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t be asking these questions with…ah…him here.”

“You shouldn’t be asking them period,” she said.

“Amen,” added Radford.

Although their objections didn’t have the same meaning, David got where they were coming from. He shot the cop an apologetic glance, but then his attention flew back to the woman and child in the blink of an eye. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking ghost stories, either.”

To his satisfaction, she glanced down at the boy, and frowned. “You’re right. I’m going home.”

“Not so fast, lady,” Radford said. “I need your name, address, telephone number, and the full name of that maybe-dead, maybe-not-so-dead brother of yours.”

David didn’t let his gaze stray as Lauren responded. But then, when she got to her brother’s name, a touch of recognition tickled the backside of his memory.

Ric DiStefano.

He knew the name. But he couldn’t quite place it. Not right away, at any rate. He’d have to think about where he’d heard it, how he came to know it.

Then, to his surprise, after Radford’s okay, Lauren walked to the large, three-story brownstone mansion two doors from the corner, unlocked the door and slipped inside. She lived there and she complained about funeral bills?

Something still didn’t add up.

While he stared at the double mahogany doors, someone tugged on the back of his shirt. He turned around and groaned.

“You okay, Davey?” his grandmother asked.

Oh, boy. Was he ever in trouble now! His grandmother at the scene of a crime.

“I’m fine, Gram. What are you doing here?”

“Sure you’re fine?”

“Yes, I’m sure. So why are you here?”

At nearly six feet of statuesque height, Dorothea Stevens Latham rarely looked anything but her usual competent, eccentric self. Right now, though, under the weak glow of the streetlight at the other corner, his grandmother looked shaken.

Guilt filled him. He opened his arms wide, and she stepped into his hug. He felt her shivers in the deepest corner of his heart.

“Aw, Gram,” he said as he patted her sturdy back. “You shouldn’t’ve worried. I’m fine. It’s just that I witnessed a hit-and-run.”

Then she shuddered, took a deep breath, and stepped away. “And just how was I supposed to know that, David Andrew Latham?”

Now this was more like it. “Because I called you and told you Dan would pick you up. Then I bet he told you the same thing.”

She tossed her head of snow-white spiked hair. “Well, Davey dear, I like Danny just fine, but he’s every bit as much of a spook as you are. How’m I supposed to know when he’s telling me the truth and when he’s feeding me Bureau gobbledygook?”

“Ahem,” said the alluded-to spook. “I’m not given to lying, Grandma Dottie.”

David’s friends all wound up adopting his grandmother as their own. The world’s very own professional grandmother turned to Dan Maddox. Her canary-yellow full-length wool duster coat swirled around her.

“Maybe not, Danny, but you’ll be the first to bend the truth to cover for Davey or any of your other fellow agents. And you can’t deny it.”

Dan met David’s gaze. The two men exchanged a knowing look. There wasn’t much either could say to the older woman. She knew them too well.

“So I’m right, then,” she continued. “Not only did I have to come see that you really were in one piece, but I also had to check to make sure you hadn’t cooked up a goofy excuse to not come and pick me up. I don’t know what you have against my friends. They’re such lovely gals.”

Now she’d started in with her guilt-inducing poor-me deal. “Hey, Gram, give it up. You may as well quit while you’re ahead. I’m not buying that ‘what you have against my friends’ stuff. You know I don’t have a thing against your friends. I just have a problem with your devious ways. I can find my own dates, you know.”

She snorted. “Well, you’re doing a lousy job of it, if you ask me. And I know some swell girls.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Ask you.”

Gram stuffed her fists in the pockets of her outrageous coat and pushed out her bottom lip.

Now, really. Who else wore nearly neon-yellow in December?

Who else wore nearly neon-yellow at any time?

She lowered her head.

Anyone else would’ve thought she was contrite. Not David. He knew she was busy scrambling in her troublemaker brain for another plan of attack.

It was time to deflect the skirmish. “Well, listen—”

“So did you get the pretty blonde’s number?” she asked.

Without thinking, David said, “Her name, address, phone number…”

At the gleam in his grandmother’s brown eyes, David let his words die a merciful death. She’d tricked him well and good.

“Is there any reason to think this rises to the level of a Federal situation, Latham?” Radford asked.

David had forgotten the officers. “Ah…no. I doubt it.”

Sherman nodded. “Then we’ll take it from here. As a courtesy, we’ll let you know if we learn anything different than what we know now.”

“That’s fine. And thank you for your quick response. I appreciate it.”

Radford chuckled. “At least someone does. It doesn’t look like Ms. DiStefano thinks much of us.”

David glanced at the expensive house down the street. “Don’t take it personally, Officer. It strikes me that she doesn’t think much of law enforcement period.”

“I’m with you,” Sherman said.

“D’you mean that pretty girl?” his grandmother asked. “Are you boys saying she’s a crook?”

Her disbelief struck David as somewhat naive, but he didn’t have much to go on. “No, Gram. We have no evidence that she’s anything but what she says she is—a grieving sister who’s been left to raise a miserable little orphan boy.”

“So where’s the but?”

Nothing much got past her. And she wouldn’t let up on him until she learned what she wanted. So he said, “But something’s not quite right about that ghost story.”

“What?” she squawked. “Don’t tell me she’s one of those séance-happy nuts. She sure didn’t look like one.”

“And just how do people who’re into all that spiritist junk look, Grandma?” Dan asked, humor laced through his words.

Grandma Dottie shrugged. “Oh, the ones I’ve seen on talk shows wear yards of filmy fabric, too much eye makeup, and talk like spaced-out teenagers. And they haven’t been teens for decades, you know.”

David had a sudden vision of a well-upholstered matron, a cloud of lavender chiffon in swathes around her…upholstery, raccoon-black goop around turquoise-shadowed beady eyes, her hair a perfect Miss Clairol shade of champagne and giant gobby rings on her every finger.

“That’s it,” he said. “It’s late enough that my mind’s begun to do a Grandma Dottie meld. Reality check, folks. And time to head home.” He turned to Dan. “Hey, thanks for everything, man.”

Dan chuckled. “Are you kidding? I live for this kind of thing. I called Eliza, told her what was up with you, and what wasn’t happening at my post, and she couldn’t send me after you fast enough.”

“Great. Now I’ll have to face the dragon lady first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Make sure you have your Wheaties,” Dan said with a wink. “You gotta walk into the dragon’s lair well fortified, you know.”

“First ghosts, and now dragons,” David said. “Let’s go home, Gram. You can tell me what’s wrong with your Hummer on the way.”

He drove the short distance to his grandmother’s elegant town house in a historic district of Philly only half listening to her tale of Hummer woe. To his disinterested ear, it all sounded like a cooked-up excuse to drag him to the cosmetics party, after all. And that didn’t particularly bother him. He knew his grandmother very, very well.

He didn’t, however, know Lauren DiStefano at all. But he did know he was going to get to know her a whole lot better. And soon.

Because he’d just remembered where he’d heard the name Ric DiStefano. DiStefano was a big-time venture capital guru.

And his business, DiStefano Enterprises, was under investigation for SEC violations. It’d been all over the news. To make matters worse, it seemed the guy’d had possible connections with Mat Papparelli, a dead money launderer for the mob.

A late mobster whose widow had turned state’s evidence. The very same woman Dan Maddox was supposed to be keeping in protective custody.

Why would Eliza Roberts, Dan and David’s boss, pull Dan from his assignment? Why would she send him after David’s ghost-loving hit-and-run victim?

Organized crime was David’s shtick.

What was Lauren DiStefano’s game?