Chapter 6 - THE KISS BETWEEN TWO BAD IDEAS
By nine in the morning, Dominic Vescari’s arrest was on every television in Philadelphia.
By ten, three networks had replayed the diner apology beside footage of Dominic being led into police headquarters in handcuffs.
By eleven, someone on cable news had built an entire theory around Maggie’s blue apron.
She turned off the television.
“Congratulations,” Anthony said from the doorway. “You lasted longer than I do.”
Maggie sat at Dominic’s kitchen table wearing borrowed sweatpants and the same oversized shirt.
“Where is he?”
“Still being questioned.”
“Can they hold him?”
“They can hold anybody for a while if they ask questions slowly enough.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Anthony looked older in daylight. Not old. Just tired in a way that suggested loyalty had charged interest over the years.
Maggie studied him.
“You trust Reggie?”
“I trusted him yesterday.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Anthony pulled out a chair.
“Reggie Moss came to us after the Army. Good driver. Better shot. Never gambled. Never borrowed. Never talked more than necessary.”
“And now he kidnaps a wounded man from a hospital and murders him with a company gun?”
“Doesn’t fit.”
“Then why did the camera show him?”
Anthony looked at her.
“That’s what someone wants us to ask.”
Maggie thought of Curtis in the church parking lot.
I made a mistake.
Insurance.
Crowe isn’t buying the Bluebird. He’s burying it.
“What was on the flash drive?” she asked.
“Ortiz has it.”
“She’ll tell me.”
Anthony gave her a patient look.
“She is a homicide detective. She will absolutely not tell you.”
Maggie stood.
“Then we have different ideas about absolutely.”
Detective Ortiz was not pleased to see her.
That made two of them.
Maggie waited outside an interview room for forty minutes before Ortiz finally appeared with two coffees.
“You look terrible,” the detective said.
“So do you.”
Ortiz handed her a cup.
“Mine is occupational.”
“Mine is arson.”
They sat on a bench beneath a bulletin board covered in public notices.
Maggie wrapped both hands around the coffee.
“Did Dominic do it?”
Ortiz leaned back.
“You want me to say no.”
“I want you to say what the evidence says.”
“The evidence says someone wearing a Vescari Security jacket moved Shaw out of the hospital. The camera angle catches half a face. It resembles Reggie Moss. His access badge opened the service elevator.”
“And the gun?”
“Found in a storm drain two blocks from the body. Registered to the company armory.”
“That sounds too neat.”
Ortiz’s mouth twitched.
“I said the same thing.”
Maggie exhaled.
“So you don’t think Dominic did it.”
“I think Dominic Vescari has probably ordered things I would put him in prison for if I could prove them.”
“That is not this question.”
“No.”
Ortiz looked at her coffee.
“I do not think he ordered Curtis Shaw killed.”
Maggie’s shoulders loosened.
“Why?”
“Because Shaw had just become useful to him.”
“That is a horrible reason.”
“Welcome to homicide.”
Maggie took a sip and grimaced.
“This coffee is criminal.”
“Focus.”
“The flash drive.”
Ortiz stared at her.
“What about it?”
“What was on it?”
“I cannot discuss evidence in an active homicide investigation.”
Maggie nodded.
“Fine.”
Ortiz narrowed her eyes.
“That was too easy.”
“I’m learning restraint.”
“From Vescari?”
“Apparently we’re all full of surprises.”
Maggie stood.
Ortiz sighed.
“Sit down.”
Maggie sat.
The detective lowered her voice.
“Hypothetically, if a dead private contractor had kept payment records, encrypted messages, photographs of meetings, and copies of bank transfers, that could be useful.”
“Hypothetically.”
“And hypothetically, some of those transfers might connect a law firm used by Crowe Development to Shaw.”
Maggie’s pulse increased.
“Grant Mercer.”
Ortiz did not answer.
“Anything else?”
“Hypothetically, there could be repeated payments from the same network to a security consultant named Reggie Moss.”
Maggie went still.
“So Reggie was working for Crowe.”
“I did not say that.”
“You said it with your entire face.”
Ortiz drank her coffee.
“Go home, Maggie.”
“My diner burned.”
“Go somewhere with locks.”
Maggie left police headquarters and went directly to Grant Mercer’s office.
It was a terrible idea.
She knew that before she entered the elevator.
Knowing did not stop her.
Mercer, Lowe and Pierce occupied the seventeenth floor of a glass tower where the lobby smelled faintly of lemon and money.
The receptionist told Maggie Mr. Mercer was unavailable.
Maggie sat down.
“I’ll wait.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“Then I’m afraid—”
“I own the Bluebird Grill.”
The receptionist stopped typing.
Three minutes later, Grant Mercer appeared.
His smile was thinner than it had been in the diner.
“Ms. Callahan.”
“Mr. Mercer.”
“I heard about the fire. Tragic.”
“You’re bad at pretending.”
His expression did not change.
“Would you like to step into my office?”
“No. This is fine.”
Several associates glanced over.
Maggie had chosen the lobby for exactly that reason.
Grant understood.
“What can I do for you?”
“You can tell Nathaniel Crowe the diner is not for sale.”
“I believe we established that.”
“And you can tell him burning it did not improve the offer.”
Grant’s eyes cooled.
“That is a serious accusation.”
“So is murder.”
Something flickered in his face.
Maggie caught it.
“Curtis Shaw is dead,” she said.
“I saw the news.”
“Funny. They haven’t released his name.”
Silence.
Grant recovered almost instantly.
“People talk.”
“Yes. They do.”
Maggie reached into her purse and took out a folded photocopy.
Not the original note.
A copy of Patrick Callahan’s letter.
Grant’s eyes dropped to the page.
Maggie watched his pupils change.
There.
Recognition.
“You know what this is,” she said.
“No.”
“You lie worse than Eli.”
“Who?”
“The kid your contractor used as bait.”
Grant took a slow breath.
“What do you want?”
“Now we’re having a conversation.”
Maggie leaned closer.
“I want Crowe to leave my diner, my employees, and me alone.”
“You are in no position to make demands.”
“Maybe not. But I’m in an excellent position to make copies.”
Grant’s gaze sharpened.
“The material you found belongs to whoever placed it there.”
“My basement disagrees.”
“You have no idea what you found.”
“Then why are you sweating?”
He was not.
But his hand moved to his tie.
Close enough.
Grant lowered his voice.
“Your father spent years holding things he did not understand.”
Maggie’s blood turned cold.
“You knew my father.”
“I knew of him.”
“He died nine years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Did Crowe know him?”
Grant stepped closer.
“Ms. Callahan, some doors are closed for a reason.”
“My front door got blown in with a brick.”
“You think Vescari can protect you because he stood between you and some glass?”
Maggie did not answer.
Grant’s voice became almost kind.
“He could not protect his sister. He could not protect his own family from itself. He certainly cannot protect you.”
Maggie smiled.
Grant frowned.
“What?”
She held up her phone.
The screen showed a recording timer.
“Thank you.”
His face changed.
Maggie walked backward toward the elevators.
“You cannot use that.”
“Maybe not in court.”
The elevator opened.
“But the internet seems pretty flexible.”
She stepped inside.
Grant did not follow.
Dominic was released at six thirty that evening.
Police had found Reggie Moss’s car abandoned near Camden. Blood in the trunk belonged to Reggie, not Curtis. The hospital footage, on enhancement, showed the man’s ear and jawline did not match him after all.
Someone had used his badge and jacket.
No charges were filed against Dominic.
For now.
Maggie waited outside headquarters.
He came through the doors in yesterday’s clothes, exhausted, furious, and somehow still intimidating enough that two reporters took a step backward.
His eyes found Maggie immediately.
“You came.”
“You have my shirt.”
Dominic looked down at himself.
“Your shirt?”
“The one I wore at your place.”
“That is my shirt.”
“Details.”
They made it three blocks before Anthony told Dominic where Maggie had spent the afternoon.
Dominic stopped walking.
“You went where?”
Maggie looked at Anthony.
“Snitch.”
Anthony raised both hands.
“I have survived this long by recognizing which information will eventually explode.”
Dominic turned to Maggie.
“You went to Mercer’s office alone?”
“I went to a law firm at two in the afternoon in a building with cameras and eighty witnesses.”
“That does not make it safe.”
“It made it safer than meeting Curtis alone in a church parking lot. I improve.”
“Maggie.”
“No.”
She stepped toward him.
“You do not get to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn scared into angry and call it authority.”
His eyes flashed.
“I spent ten hours in a room while detectives tried to tie me to a dead man, and the entire time I knew Crowe could reach you.”
“I am not yours to reach.”
“I know.”
The words came out hard.
Then quieter:
“I know. That is the problem.”
Maggie stared at him.
Traffic moved around them.
A bus sighed at the corner.
Anthony took three deliberate steps away.
Dominic continued.
“If you worked for me, I could order you behind a door. If you were afraid of me, I could use that. If you wanted my money, I could buy distance.”
Maggie’s heartbeat climbed.
“But you do none of those things,” he said. “You walk into danger holding a phone and a bad attitude, and I have no idea how to make you stop.”
“You don’t.”
“I am beginning to understand that.”
“Good.”
“Maggie.”
“What?”
“I am still angry.”
“So am I.”
“Good.”
Then Dominic kissed her.
There was nothing tentative about the first second.
It was six weeks of watching her across a diner, two days of fear, one burned building, twenty-eight years of grief, and every word he had not known how to say colliding at once.
Maggie grabbed the front of his shirt.
Then she pushed him back.
Dominic stopped immediately.
Her breath came fast.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
“That was a bad idea.”
“Yes.”
She pulled him down and kissed him again.
The second one was slower.
Worse for both of them.
Anthony’s phone rang behind them.
He answered, turned away, then went very still.
“Dom.”
Dominic lifted his head.
Anthony’s expression erased the moment.
“What?”
“It’s the kid.”
Maggie released Dominic’s shirt.
“What about Eli?”
Anthony looked at her.
“He never made it home from the hospital after visiting his mother.”
Maggie’s phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
There was a photograph attached.
Eli sat tied to a metal chair in a dark warehouse.
Beneath it was a message.
BRING CALLAHAN'S LEDGER TO PIER 19.
May you like
COME WITHOUT VESCARI.
OR THE BOY DIES.
