“I appreciate that very much, Mr. Devine. But what about the murders? Do you think these two women found out what was going on and that’s why they were killed?”
“Ewes knew about the Locust Group. Stamos was her lover and was also sleeping with Cowl. He might have let something slip over pillow talk, and Ewes and later Stamos followed up on it. And they were both murdered, maybe as a result.”
“Financial crimes are one thing, killing people is totally something else.”
“I don’t think Cowl is calling the shots here, not really. I’ve run into some goons who decided my time on earth was up. Luckily, they were wrong. But it was strongly intimated that Cowl is not running this show.”
“If Brad Cowl is involved with the sorts of people it looks like he is, this will become even more dangerous,” said Nestor.
“I’m actually sort of counting on it,” said Devine.
Chapter 57
On the way back to New York, Devine and Montgomery stopped and had lunch at a restaurant on the water. They sat at an outside table overlooking Long Island Sound. It wasn’t too hot; the breeze off the water was pleasant and refreshing and the views were lovely.
Still, Montgomery stared sulkily off before glancing at Devine.
“Doesn’t sitting here just make you want to chuck it?”
“Chuck what?” he asked.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Travis.”
He sat back and looked out to the water, where a sailboat was cutting through the waves. “Got to make a living. I’m not rich. I’m not even well-off enough to take a vacation.”
“I’ve got my portfolio.”
“Then you can chuck it, Michelle.”
“Not that much fun alone. You could come along for the ride.”
“There are about a million other guys who’d be a lot better for you than me.”
“And I can’t make that decision for myself?”
“Yes, but I also have to make that decision for myself.”
She hiked her eyebrows. “And you have no interest?”
“I think you know that I do. But I’ve got baggage that you don’t need to deal with.”
“And you think I don’t?”
“And you don’t believe that’ll be a red flag for them to hunt us down if we suddenly disappear together?”
“I suppose it would be.” She studied him closely. “Why are you really at Cowl, Travis? You don’t strike me as a person interested in that world at all.”
He started to tell her the standard line, but then he decided to be more candid. His conversation with Campbell had made him reevaluate things. And Montgomery had stuck her neck out for him. She deserved something close to the truth.
“I left the Army under a sort of cloud. It messed with my head. My old man always wanted me to go for the money, so I decided to do what he wanted.”
“Even though you really didn’t want to?”
“I guess it was a form of self-punishment. Force myself to do what I hate.”
“What the hell happened in the Army to make you want to do that to yourself?”
“I can’t talk to you about it. I can barely talk to myself about it.”
“Okay, I guess I understand that,” she said slowly, but looking disappointed.
“You said your family situation wasn’t a ball of fun,” he noted.
“I’m the black sheep, I guess. Never lived up to my promise, or so my mother told me.”
“Come on, you’re only what, twenty-two?”
“Almost twenty-three. I should have graduated from college by now. I’m way behind, Travis. No way to catch up, really. It’s like being in the nineteenth century and suddenly realizing you’re a washed-up old maid at age eighteen.”
“I went back to school after getting out of the Army. It can be done.”
“But that’s not what I want. I just want to travel to different places, experience different things. I don’t want to be tied down to a desk or a computer for the rest of my life. But now I’m arm candy for a rich criminal.”
“But you got me into Area 51. You went with me to see Nestor.”
She stared off moodily. “Where do you think Brad is now?”
“It’s anybody’s guess. I don’t think they found the surveillance device I put in there, because I can still see the space.”
“Maybe and maybe not,” replied Montgomery. “They might have found it but didn’t remove it so you wouldn’t know they had discovered it. Give them time to come up with a counterattack.”
“You’re getting good at this stuff,” noted Devine.
“Not really, but I’m going to need to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“The thing is, Travis, they’re going to eventually realize how that camera got in there. And when they do, we are both going to be in deep shit.”
Chapter 58
They rode back to New York. Devine pulled in front of the walk-up, and Montgomery climbed off and passed him the spare helmet.
“Can you come up for a little bit? Now that it’s fully hit me that I was the unwitting messenger for a criminal syndicate, I don’t want to be alone. I might slit my wrists.”
“Don’t joke about that,” said Devine.
“I’m not joking.”
They went upstairs, got beers, and returned to the roof and sat in the deck chairs.
“Now, you said you met Cowl about a year ago. But I imagine Area 51 has been going on a lot longer than that.”
“So how did they work the signals before me? Did he just use a different method?”
“He built the house that the train overlooks three years ago. And now I guess I understand why he allowed a gap between the tree canopies and the wall. So the person on the train could see. So maybe that method of communication dates to back then.”
“You know, one morning while I was there I couldn’t sleep and got up early. I looked out the window and Brad was raising the umbrella at one of the tables by the pool.”
“Red or green?” asked Devine.
She thought for a moment. “Red. I thought it was odd. I mean, it was so early. And I think the train came by a few minutes later.”
Devine looked thoughtful. “There was a guy on the train who said he saw another woman by the pool, before you hooked up with Cowl. She was a brunette and she wore a bikini early in the morning sometimes, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
She sat back, looking perplexed at first, and then a look of understanding came into her eyes. “I thought Christian was helping me by introducing me to Brad in Italy. But maybe Brad was looking for a new messenger girl and Christian was really helping him.”
“I think you might be right. Hey, do you think this ‘brunette’ might have stayed in this building, too?”
Michelle suddenly became rigid. “When I was moving some things into my bedroom here, I found a credit card slip that had fallen behind a drawer.”
Devine perked up at this. “Do you remember the name on the credit card?”
“I do actually because it was so unusual. Dominique Deveraux. Very alliterative. I mean, it sounds fake.”
Devine took out his phone and searched the name.
“Okay, Dominique Deveraux was a character on the TV show Dynasty. Both in the original series back in the 1980s and then on the reboot on the CW.”
“Maybe it was an alias, then.”
“Hold on, here’s another Dominique Deveraux.” He clicked on a link and read down the page. “Age twenty-four, originally from California. And—”
He stopped speaking and stared at the screen, his look troubled.
“And what, Travis?”
He glanced up at her. “Deveraux killed herself nearly one year ago, by jumping into the East River.”