I rubbed my hands over my eyes. Maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
I stared at the screen and tried to will all of the pieces of this puzzle to come together. Unfortunately, I was not a psychic. I was not a private investigator. I was an accountant, and this was beyond my skill level. I needed someone with know-how when it came to this sort of thing. Someone with shady connections. So I went to the shadiest person I knew. I went to Dick Cheney.
Leaving Danny sleeping at home under Kerrianne’s watch, I drove downtown to Specialty Books and parked outside the warm glow of the store’s front windows. Despite her status with the Council, Jane had insisted on continuing to work from her shop. She tried to split her hours, but Andrea had to pick up a lot of slack.
To my surprise, Finn was sitting at one of the coffee tables with Jane and Dick. All three of them wore grave expressions, so I could only guess that they were talking about me. Gabriel and Andrea were behind the bar, cleaning the coffee equipment, pretending not to be listening.
Finn’s face lit up with a grin when he saw me, though Jane and Dick looked concerned.
Before any of them could speak, I approached the table and announced, “I have a question for you, and it will involve discretion and shady connections. Finn, this doesn’t change anything, but it’s probably a good thing that you’re here.”
Finn looked affronted. “That’s . . . No, OK, that’s fair. Frankly, I’m a little insulted you came here before looking for me,” he said. “At least my shady connections are current.”
“Hey, just because I haven’t been in the game for a few years, that doesn’t mean I’ve been forgotten,” Dick protested.
Jane covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe you two are having this argument. Libby, please explain before I lash out and say something I’ll regret.”
I explained my ethical-gray-area investigation of Les and Marge’s bank accounts and its implication of Les’s potential criminal activity. To my surprise, Jane and Dick weren’t all that upset, and they informed me that thanks to some heavy-handed negotiations with the nation’s legal branch, Council representatives didn’t have to put up with pesky details like search warrants or just cause. So technically, I hadn’t broken any laws.
Dick was not, however, thrilled with my plan to drive to Louisville and scope out the address of the mysterious payee.
“Why not just let us send a local Council rep to the address to check it out?” Jane asked. “Less risk. Less chance of tipping off this hit person that you’re aware of them.”
“Because I might see some link to Les that you wouldn’t recognize. Also, I won’t give you the address unless you let me go.”
Dick stared pointedly at Finn. “I blame your influence for this.”
Finn shrugged.
Jane sighed. “Well, we’re going with you. As a member of the Council, I feel an obligation to protect my constituents. Plus, I’m afraid you’ll never come back.”
“Your faith in my fighting skills is a comfort, really,” I told her.
“Yeah, well, my faith in my own fighting skills means we’re taking backup with us,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “You know the great thing about being a Council official? You have a SWAT team on call.”
The almost four-hour drive to Louisville was awkward, to say the least. Finn gamely tried to start polite conversations, but I was too uncomfortable around him to reply, and Jane tended to be cagey around people she didn’t quite trust. Dick tried to bridge the gap between the two, but it mostly ended in fizzled “getting to know you” prompts, like “Finn, didn’t you live in Tibet once? Jane has an amazing collection of Tibetan prayer bowls at the shop.” And it turned out that neither one of them was that interested in talking about prayer bowls.
I couldn’t sleep in the car, because I was mulling over what this confrontation could mean. Yes, finding out that Les was up to some nefarious activities would exonerate me and take a lot off my plate, legally speaking. But it would taint my father-in-law’s memory within the community. People wouldn’t remember him as Les Stratton, the Sunday-school teacher who loved University of Kentucky basketball and bass fishing. He would be that guy who got tangled up in vampire politics and got his throat ripped out for his trouble. Poor Marge. How was she going to deal with this?
We drove into an industrial section of town, poorly lit and barely occupied. The address put us at what looked like an abandoned bulk-dry-cleaning facility. Most of the windows were broken out, save for a small section on the top floor. From the gate, we could see a light in the window, which winked out the moment we pulled into the parking lot.