Nothing about the situation sorted out into nice, neat boxes.
When the pilot announced their descent into the Portland airport she looked out the window for a sight she knew would comfort her — the Columbia River, gushing its way from a glacier in Canada to the Pacific. Seeing it always meant she was home.
But, in the end, the comfort of being home was superseded by discovering she had someone else’s messenger bag. As soon as she discovered the error, she called the airline. The only good thing about it was she’d stuffed the bag so full of research materials she’d had to carry a purse, too, or she would have lost keys, wallet and credit cards along with her case files and iPod.
After she unpacked, she called Tony.
“Hey, sugar. How was your flight?”
“Tedious. Flight got canceled out of Seattle so I had a longer layover than I expected. And I got home with the wrong messenger bag. So, not great. How was Newark?”
“About the same as your trip,” he replied. “We now have one less mobster to watch. The dead guy’s been on our list for a while. He was killed with a weapon similar to the one that did Jameson so he’s not the shooter Isiah’s looking for. And there wasn’t a damn thing in Jameson’s briefcase that looks like something worth killing over. Last, the two live Russians we picked up swear they don’t know anything about anything.”
“So what’s this all about?”
“Deal gone bad, probably, although we don’t have hard evidence. We think Jameson may have been trying to sell Microsoft information to someone. Problem with that theory is, Microsoft says there was nothing in the briefcase worth selling. And it doesn’t explain how we ended up with two bodies.”
“What do our federal friends say?”
“Not much. The ones I’m working with are as baffled as I am. The new kids on the block have been tailing the Russians — the same Russians who were found with the body — for weeks and didn’t see them shoot anyone. So they’re not likely to be the bad guys. It could be the internal politics of a struggle for control of the Bratva. Haven’t talked to our contacts in the Russian community yet. That’ll happen tomorrow.”
“So not exactly a cleared case.”
“No, just more mud in the water.” His voice changed to a softer tone. “Let’s talk about something less frustrating. I hear you had a long talk with Theresa.”
“Yeah.”
When she didn’t go further he said, “What’d you think about her theory?”
“She told me to ask you what you said when she told you.”
“Ah. So I get to go first. Okay, I laughed it off as another of her interferences in my life. But after I thought about it for a while, it seemed possible. Now, I’m positive it’s right.”
“Me, too. But I don’t know what that means.”
“I don’t either. We’ll have to sort it out as we go along.”
She sniffled, trying not to cry. “I’ve been trying to figure it out and … ”
“We need time to figure it out together.”
“That’s hard to do when we live so far apart.”