Page 68 of 3rd Tango
“Well, hello, Meg,” she says. “So nice to see you. Join us.”
The words are friendly, but there’s a flatness to them. Or maybe I’m freaking the hell out.
Gayle leans against the counter, folding his arms while his lifeless brown eyes stay pinned to me.
“No. Thank you,” I tell Marie. “Mom, we should go, I need your help with something.”
She waves me off. “Oh nonsense. It can wait.”
“Actually, no. It can’t. It’s…Charlie. She needs us.” Using her as bait, particularly after she got shot, is dirty pool, but I’m a desperate woman. I face Marie. “My mother and sister were in a car accident. Charlie is in rough shape so it’s all hands on deck.” I swing my arms toward the living room. “Let’s go, Mom. Chop-chop.”
A noise—the quiet footfall of rubber on tile—draws me around. Alfonzo Baez is walking toward me with Matt in tow.
What in holy hell is going on?
“What is it?”
This from Gayle who’s now on my right, bringing all his negative energy with him. He peers down the hallway, spots Al and his head snaps backward.
In my line of work, I’ve seen enough shocked faces to recognize one and Gayle? Stunned. Blown to bits.
And, if I’m not mistaken, the way his shoulders hunch, there’s a little fear thrown in.
I shift my gaze to Al, then to Gayle and back to Al. “What’s going on?”
“What…” Gayle stutters, “are you doing here?”
Wait one second. Could they…? Do they…? I waggle my finger between them. “Do you two know each other?”
Mom steps up behind me, peering right over my shoulder, further crowding the doorway. I’ve got Gayle on one side and now Mom on the other and between the two of them they’re an absolute medley of weird energy.
“Al?” Mom asks. “Is that you?”
It’s him all right.
Al meets her eye and blows out a breath. “Helen, what are you doing? Are you okay?”
Gayle pushes around me and pokes his finger at Matt. “Who the hell are you? I want all you nosey people out.”
Ever the calm one, Matt holds up his hands. “Whoa, dude. Relax. I’m a friend of Meg’s. This guy showed up and I figured I’d check on her. No harm. No foul.”
“Yeah, well, get out.”
“We’ll go,” Al says quickly. “Helen, come on.”
Mom turns and speaks to Marie, but the words are a blur. I’m stuck on Gayle asking Al what he’s doing here. There’s something about the way he said it. Baez and my mother have been working together a long time. And Al was an FBI agent prior to that. Twenty years, Charlie told me. He’d worked the London Fog bank robbery case. Charlie shared that, too. But this is different. It’s as if they’ve met. A familiarity that puzzles me.
My thoughts speed up, racing too fast for me to decipher, but one question breaks free.
If Gayle and Marie are somehow connected to this gang and the FBI is still looking for all that money, how has Al, with all of his Bureau contacts, not alerted someone there about the strange couple living across the street from my mother?
Even if he didn’t suspect they might be part of the bank robberies, he’s been actively investigating them. His first call should’ve been to some federal agent friend to run a background check on them.
That’s what Charlie would do.
And now I want to know why, after all this time, he hasn’t.
“Al,” I wait a beat for him to focus on me. When he does, I hold his stare, making sure he knows I’m done messing around and want answers. “How do you know these people?”
