“I hate those kinds of confrontations,” Danielle confessed, taking my place on the bench. “It’s much easier to tangle with an out-of-line boss on someone else’s behalf.”
“Man up, sister-mine,” I said.
“Hmph.” She cut off any more elder-sister advice I might have been planning to offer by asking if Phineas Drake and Uncle Nico had framed anyone yet. I’d called her when I’d gotten home from the police station and she’d been fascinated to hear about Phineas Drake swooping in to liberate me.
“Not as far as I know,” I said, using ten-pound weights to do biceps curls. My goal was lean and defined, so I used light weights and did lots of reps. “But Taryn Hall is missing.”
“You don’t think maybe she’s gone off for an abortion or something, do you?” Danielle suggested when I told her about my meeting with the girl and Leon Hall’s invasion earlier this afternoon.
I hadn’t thought of that. “I hope not,” I said. I had no idea where one would even go to get an abortion. But I suspected a resourceful-and desperate-woman could find out easily enough. “I’m sure the police will take action if she hasn’t shown up by tonight.”
“Hey,” Danielle said, glancing up at the TV mounted over the water fountain. “Isn’t that your congresswoman?”
“My congresswoman?” I followed her gaze to see Sherry Indrebo being interviewed on the Capitol steps. Wearing a charcoal-gray suit with a maroon blouse and a serious expression, she faced a wall of microphones and reporters. Still clutching my dumbbells, I moved closer so I could read the closed captioning.
“Allegations of fund-raising improprieties and of inserting an undercover spy into her opponent’s staff have surfaced in regard to Congresswoman Sherry Indrebo’s reelection campaign.”
“I guess the thumb drive turned up,” Danielle observed, reading the text alongside me.
“The congresswoman denies any wrongdoing and says she has no intention of resigning. She says she will continue to serve her constituents and is staying focused on the upcoming vote in the House Armed Services Committee, which could decide the army’s helicopter acquisition strategy for years to-” A commercial broke in before the scrolling type could catch up with what had happened in the interview, replacing Sherry with a mother applying a stain treatment to grass-stained jeans. I didn’t figure any product made would get the stain out of Sherry’s reputation if the allegations proved true.
A livid Sherry Indrebo burst into the ballroom at six o’clock, vibrating with anger in stretchy pants and a workout top showing sinewy arms and prominent collarbones.
“I will ruin you, Stacy Graysin,” she said between gritted teeth, stalking toward me like a barn cat focused on a mouse. Her face was gaunt, her lips drawn into a thin line. She didn’t give Vitaly, standing behind me by the stereo, a glance. “You found my flash drive and sold it to the Washington Post. I hope they paid you a lot because-”
“Hey! I had nothing to do with it,” I said. “I didn’t find it.” I tightened my grip on the CD cases I held, ready to fling them at her if she pounced. “And if I had, I’d have given it to you.” Probably after I checked it for anything incriminating about Rafe bribing judges. At any rate, I wouldn’t have sold it to a reporter. I didn’t even know any reporters.
She bit out a laugh. “Ha! Then how did the Post come up with the documents that were on that drive?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t me.”
“Politicians is having many enemies,” Vitaly put in, moving forward. “In Russia, peoples is shooting politicians.” Reaching for Sherry’s hand, he lifted it to his lips. “But our politicians is not so beautiful as American politicians.”
I stared at him in astonishment as his lips brushed the back of Sherry’s hand. I thought I caught the barest hint of a wink as he released her hand. “I am Vitaly Voloshin,” he proclaimed, “and we must practicing so we are winning the competition this weekend, yes?”
“Yes,” Sherry said, anger melting from her in the face of Vitaly’s charm and flattery. She stood straighter and cast me a sidelong look. “Don’t think this is over, because it’s not,” she said, moving toward the middle of the floor with Vitaly.
Under the pretense of putting a CD into the stereo, he glided back to me and whispered, “You are not leaving Vitaly alone with this-” He used a Russian word that I didn’t attempt to translate. The way he snapped his white teeth together made it clear what he thought of her.
By the time the session ended, with Vitaly announcing loftily, “You are not totally disgracing Vitaly this weekend,” we were all drained. I escaped into my office as Sherry, lacquered hair drooping, trudged to the door. I had to be grateful to Vitaly for exhausting her to the point where she couldn’t harangue me anymore. As soon as she had gone and I had turned off all the lights and locked up, I nipped downstairs to the convenience store on the corner, paid for a Washington Post, and brought it back to the house with me. The story about Sherry Indrebo was on the second page and I zeroed in on the name of the reporter: Kevin McDill. It had occurred to me that perhaps McDill had gotten the flash drive not from someone who found it after Rafe died, but from Rafe himself. I wanted to talk to the man and find out. If he’d met with Rafe, maybe he could tell me something that might point to why Rafe was murdered.
A phone call to the Post’s switchboard hooked me up with McDill the following morning, Tuesday, and he agreed to meet me for breakfast. He insisted on a holein-the-wall Mexican diner not too far from the Post’s offices on 15th Street. I arrived ten minutes late, having gotten turned around when I exited the Metro at the McPherson Square stop. The diner smelled of cilantro and refried beans as I pushed through the smudged glass doors. What sounded like a Spanish love song played from the kitchen and a handful of Latinos, all men, sat at a counter eating burritos, drinking coffee, and arguing loudly but amicably with one another in Spanish. The man I took to be Kevin McDill lounged at a tiny, chrome-rimmed table in the corner, newspaper open, mug of coffee steaming in front of him.
I approached and stopped three feet away. The paper stayed up. The Wall Street Journal, I noted. “Mr. McDill?” I finally said.
“Yeah.” A gravelly voice spoke from behind the newspaper.
“I’m Stacy Graysin.”
“You’re late.”
Impatient with his rudeness, I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat.
After a moment, the paper dipped slightly and a pair of bushy brows and eyes framed by reading glasses appeared over the top edge. “You said you wanted to talk about the Indrebo story.” He had skin the color of old walnuts and dark eyes with slightly yellowed corneas. He was older than I’d expected, in his sixties.
“That’s right. I was wondering where you got the documents you referred to in your story.”
“You want information from me?” He hacked a laugh and I figured he’d been a smoker back in the day. “That ain’t the way it works.”
“I just need to know who you got the thumb drive from.”
Laying the paper on the table, he eyed me cynically. A toothpick stuck out of the corner of his mouth and it jumped up and down as he talked. “What makes you think I’ve got a thumb drive? I don’t compromise my sources, Miz Graysin.”
He folded the newspaper and I got the feeling he was headed out. I reached across the table and put a hand on his forearm, bared by rolled-up sleeves. “Wait. Can you at least tell me when you got the thumb dr-the information? Was it this week?”
After a moment’s thought during which the toothpick wiggled mightily, he said, “I don’t see what that would hurt. I acquired the information last week. The story only broke yesterday because we had to get corroboration on some of the details. And that, Miz Graysin, is all I’m prepared to tell you.” He stood, revealing a thick trunk and short legs. Something in my expression grabbed his attention because he paused, looking down at me, reporter’s nose all but twitching at the faint scent of a story. “Why are you so interested, anyway?”