Pushover (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 5) Page 8

  “You are the Iris Thorne who was in Moscow with Todd Fillinger the day he was murdered?”

  “How do you know about that?” Iris asked warily.

  Winslow ignored her question and accusingly demanded, “Why did you leave Moscow so suddenly?”

  The woman’s headmistress’s tactics worked on Iris, who dutifully responded. “I had no choice. I was escorted to the airport by the police.” She leaned both hands against the desk, angling toward Winslow, and asked a few questions of her own. “Who are you? And how do you know so much about me and Todd Fillinger and Moscow?”

  Winslow smiled slyly. “Twenty-five thousand dollars, Miss Thorne. That’s a great deal of money. I’m prepared to hand it to you right now.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “I think you should leave.”

  Winslow’s square jaw became rigid with disapproval. “You’re becoming tedious, Miss Thorne.” She stood her handbag on her lap, opened the brass clasp, and took out a lace-edged, monogrammed handkerchief. She carefully folded the fabric into a point and touched it against her upper lip. The delicate handkerchief looked incongruous in her broad hand.

  Iris glared at her. “Who told you to come here?”

  Winslow slowly returned the handkerchief to her handbag. “Someone who has good reason to believe that you have the statuette.”

  She set her handbag on the seat of the other chair, stood, and rapidly walked around the desk to where Iris was standing, shoving her out of the way with an outstretched hand.

  “Hey!” Iris protested.

  “I’d sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to this, Miss Thorne, but you leave me with no choice.” Winslow opened a desk drawer and began rifling through it.

  “I’m calling security.” Iris grabbed the telephone receiver and started punching in numbers.

  Winslow didn’t pause or look up from her work. “That will bring you a temporary fix, Miss Thorne, but I won’t stop until I get what I want.”

  Iris set the receiver down and slowly walked to the other side of her desk. In a quick movement, she snatched Winslow’s handbag from the chair and dumped the contents onto the seat.

  That got Winslow’s attention. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” She glared at Iris with her lips pursed, her lipstick melting into the fine lines around her mouth.

  “Don’t forget to look through the filing cabinet. It’s not locked.” Iris quickly pawed through Winslow’s belongings.

  In addition to a wallet and passport, she found a plastic key for the classy Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills and a folded piece of hotel stationery with Iris’s home and office addresses written on it in flowery handwriting. There were two linen handkerchiefs with Winslow’s embroidered initials, a small steel box of licorice candies, a mirrored lipstick case with a tube of rose lipstick, a gold pressed-powder compact, a package of Dunhill cigarettes, a gold cloisonné lighter, and a small, pearl-handled gun.

  Winslow quickly rounded the desk, grabbed her handbag, and began scooping her things into it, but not before Iris had picked up the wallet, passport, and gun and scurried to a corner.

  She slipped the gun into her skirt pocket and proceeded to examine Winslow’s belongings. The wallet was of fine leather and crammed with U.S. dollars, Deutsch marks, pounds sterling, francs, and lire. There were several credit cards. The passport was British, heavily stamped, and with multiple visas. Iris flipped through the pages. There was no Russian entry stamp, but she did see that Winslow had entered the United States in Miami, Florida, a week ago.

  Winslow dimly watched Iris with her hands folded across her chest.

  “How did you get my address?” Iris demanded. “How did you know I was in Moscow with Todd? The murder was barely reported in the Moscow newspapers, and I wasn’t mentioned at all.” She rudely tossed the wallet and passport at Winslow, who bolted forward to catch them.

  “One has one’s methods, Miss Thorne.”

  “You come in here, search my office…At least show me the courtesy of telling me what the hell is going on.”

  “I want the fox, Miss Thorne.” A muscle below Winslow’s eye twitched. “Twenty-five thousand dollars is very generous. If you don’t cooperate, things can become unpleasant for you.”

  A tall man with chiseled features, olive complexion, and dark wavy hair entered the doorway. He pointed the gun he held at Iris.

  Iris, eyes wide, backed toward the window.

  “Fernando, darling,” Winslow said. “There’s no need for weapons. Miss Thorne and I are having a nice chat.”

  “Why is it taking so long?” he said to Winslow, his sleepy eyes still focused on Iris.

  “Fernando, come now.”

  He slipped the gun into the back of his pants waistband where it was hidden by his sports jacket.

  “Enough.” Iris picked up the telephone receiver with a trembling hand.

  Winslow pulled the hem of her jacket, straightening it, and brushed the lapels. “Miss Thorne, if you did smuggle the fox into the United States from Russia, I would not recommend calling the police. In my experience, they do not look kindly upon international smugglers.”

  Iris hesitated before punching the last number.

  “You brought something back with you from Russia, didn’t you?” Winslow’s eyes gleamed.

  Beads of perspiration pricked Iris’s skin. She remained frozen with her hand still poised above the telephone dial.

  Winslow condescendingly went on, “I can assure you that the authorities won’t care when you bat your pretty blue eyes and tell them you didn’t know you had smuggled stolen art.”

  Iris set the phone back in the cradle and tried to ignore Winslow’s smug expression.

  “As you’ve ably discovered, I’m staying at the Peninsula Hotel. If you change your mind about the fee, please call me. May I have my gun, please? Don’t worry, if I’d wanted to use it, I would have.”

  Iris took the gun from her pocket and handed it to her.

  Winslow put the weapon inside her purse and then gave Fernando a lascivious look, drawing her fingers slowly down his cheek. “Shall we go, darling?”

  In the doorway, Winslow turned back to Iris. “And don’t even think about doing a deal for the fox on your own. I do not look kindly on amateurs muscling in on my business. Have a nice evening.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Iris unlocked the front door of her house and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it had not been ransacked. At first, she didn’t think it had been entered at all, then she found small things out of place, drawers carelessly left ajar, and an empty wine glass that had been washed and left in her dish drainer next to a saucer that had also been washed. The odor of cigarette smoke hung in the air. She found ashes and a Dunhill cigarette butt in the kitchen garbage. Winslow and her henchman had gained access by cutting a small circle out of the glass of a side window. At least they were neat.

  She kicked off her pumps, re-washed the glass standing in the dish drainer, and poured what was left of a bottle of Chardonnay into it. At the sound of laughter in front of her house, she peeked out her front windows to see Kiki and Roger from up the street heading toward her neighbor Marge’s house. They were followed by an older man carrying a large bouquet of flowers—Kiki’s father. Iris thought he and Marge would make a cute couple.

  Too edgy to sit down, Iris picked up her remote phone and called Garland while she paced around her living room. He wasn’t home. This was the normal pattern of their weeks, leaving messages and connecting about half the time. It was no way to build a relationship. She knew that. He knew that. They’d talked about it, but neither of them wanted to move cross-country. Maybe what Iris’s mother had told her was true. Iris was too set in her ways to get married. Iris had dismissed the comment as fatalistic and bleak. Certainly, two bright, determined people who wanted to be together could work things out. She left a message telling Garland she was looking forward to Palm Springs that week
end. They’d lie in the sun and engage in conspicuous consumption like capitalists.

  Thoughts of a romantic weekend away only momentarily distracted her from the incident with Rita Winslow and the sultry Latino. She kept replaying her experience at the L.A. airport with the customs officer. If she’d smuggled something, it must have been inside the urn, but how?

  The officer said he’d X-rayed it. Certainly he would have seen the statuette that Winslow was talking about—unless of course the urn was lined with lead.

  From a bookcase in the guest bedroom that she’d set up as an office, Iris located her road atlas of California. She changed into loose jeans and a T-shirt, brushed her hair, freshened her makeup, grabbed a jacket, Todd’s portfolio, and a jug of water, and headed out the door. At the corner gas station, she gassed up the Triumph.

  Iris reached the Bakersfield city limits in an hour and a half. She pulled into a gas station to ask directions to Tracy Fillinger’s house. Todd had given her Tracy’s address when they’d lived in Paris. She’d kept it in a box where she threw the addresses of people with whom she’d lost contact. She didn’t throw the addresses away. It seemed like throwing the people away.

  The house was white with dark blue trim and looked as if it had been recently painted. A nylon banner with bright flowers hung from a pole attached to the porch roof. Terra cotta bunnies nestled in a flowerbed. When Iris drove up, the front porch light clicked on.

  With difficulty, she pulled Todd’s portfolio from where it had been wedged into the front passenger seat. She walked up a cement path to the house. A dog fenced in the backyard of the neighbor’s house began to bark.

  Iris rang the doorbell and before long a man with neatly trimmed, receding wavy hair answered.

  “Hi. I’m sorry to bother you, but is Tracy Fillinger home?”

  The man appeared surprised and amused by Iris’s question. “Tracy Fillinger?”

  Behind him, Iris saw a girl and a boy of about eight and ten years old, sprawled on the floor too close to a large television. “Is she here?”

  “Yes, she’s here. I just haven’t heard her called by that name in a while. We’ve been married for seventeen years. Who can I say is calling?”

  “Iris Thorne. I’m a friend of her brother Todd.”

  He looked at her with heightened interest. “Todd? Oh sure.” He turned inside the house and yelled, “Tracy!” then said to Iris, “Come on inside.”

  The kids rolled on the floor to look at Iris and then returned their attention to the television.

  “Here, let me.” He took the portfolio from her and leaned it against the arm of an easy chair. “I’m Richard Beale.”

  Iris shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  The furnishings in the house were comfortable and practical. The sole excess was the large-screen television that occupied most of the far wall.

  A woman walked across the dining room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She had short, dark hair and a rotund figure that was somewhat camouflaged by the oversized blouse she wore over black jeans. She smiled at Iris and looked at her husband for assistance.

  “This is Iris Thorne,” he said. “She’s a friend of Todd’s.”

  The woman held her hand out. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Iris tentatively accepted her hand and squinted with confusion. “You’re Tracy Fillinger?”

  “Yes. Well, that was my maiden name.” She exchanged a glance with her husband. “Is something wrong?”

  Iris rubbed her forehead. This was not the woman she’d met at the airport. “You can’t be Tracy Fillinger.”

  Richard took a step forward. “Ma’am, we don’t mean to be rude, but why don’t you tell us what you want?”

  “Do you have a sister?” Iris ventured.

  “No,” Tracy answered. “There’s just me and my brother. Kids!” she shouted, turning toward them. “Go watch television in the back, please.”

  Iris pressed her fingers over her mouth as she pictured handing the urn to the woman she thought was Tracey Fillinger at the airport. She remembered the woman’s edginess and tears, which Iris had attributed to grief. What a fool she’d been. It was all a ruse to string her along, to dupe her into transporting the urn into the United States and delivering it. Rita Winslow was right—Iris was a smuggler. And Dean Palmer, her supposed one ally in Moscow, was behind it.

  Then something else occurred to her. Palmer had probably never contacted the real Tracy Fillinger about Todd’s murder. She slowly exhaled. “Umm…Can we sit down?”

  Tracy gestured toward a blue couch and sat next to Iris while Richard took a leatherette easy chair. No one seemed relaxed.

  Iris nervously rubbed her hands together. There was no good way to deliver bad news.

  Tracy folded the dishtowel, tossed it on the coffee table, and guessed what was on Iris’s mind. “Did something happen to Todd?”

  Iris looked her over. It was clear that this woman bore more of a familial resemblance to Todd than the woman at the airport. She took a breath and spoke quickly. “Todd was murdered in Moscow a few days ago.”

  Tracy sucked in air.

  “He was shot to death while he was standing in front of a hotel. The police don’t know who did it, but they suspect the Russian Mafia.”

  Tracy stared intently at Iris. The silence in the room was deafening. Iris babbled to fill it. “I was there when it happened. I went to Moscow to see Todd and to discuss investing in a chain of art galleries he’d wanted to launch. I’m very sorry to have to tell you this. I’m so sorry.”

  Tracy sat back on the couch and looked at her husband. “Well…We’d figured Todd for dead lots of times, hadn’t we, Richard?”

  He clasped his hands between his splayed knees and nodded.

  Tracy explained. “Long periods would pass when we wouldn’t hear from him. It almost became a joke between Todd and me. Todd would show up out of the blue and we’d tell him, ‘We’d figured you for dead,’ and then we’d all laugh.” Tracy emitted a choking sob. Her husband winced in sympathy. She covered her face with her hands and cried.

  Iris briefly stroked her arm then dropped her hand, feeling like an unwelcome intruder.

  Richard rose from the chair to kneel on the carpet next to his wife, wrapping his arms around her. At this, she cried harder, as if she could let go knowing there was someone to lean on, someone who wouldn’t let her completely tumble down. Richard handed her the dishtowel, his face grave.

  “My Todd, my baby brother,” Tracy cried.

  Iris wiped tears from her own cheeks.

  “Poor, poor baby. He never had a chance.”

  After a while, Tracy’s sobs subsided. Richard left the room and returned with a box of tissues and two glasses of water. Iris drank greedily.

  The discussion quickly returned to the practical. “What happened to the body?” Tracy asked.

  Iris’s face burned. She couldn’t bring herself to tell this woman that she’d handed her brother’s ashes to a stranger. “They cremated the body in Moscow. A consular officer at the U.S. Embassy knew Todd and said he’d talked about wanting to be cremated when he died. I don’t know what happened to the ashes.” It wasn’t a complete lie. “I brought back that portfolio from Todd’s apartment. It has samples of Todd’s photography. I thought you might want them.”

  She walked around the coffee table and picked up the portfolio. From it she took the scrapbook of Todd’s magazine work.

  “Todd has some nice furnishings in his apartment. Probably not worth the cost to ship them here, but I can ask someone at the Embassy to help me sell them and you can have the money.”

  “That would be very kind but don’t go to too much trouble if they’re not worth that much.”

  Tracy moved a potted plant on the coffee table and some knickknacks to make room. She began slowly turning the stiff pages lined with plastic film. “Death Valley. I remember when he shot these photos for a travel magazine.”

  There was a photo of
a city marker apparently in the middle of nowhere. Two donkeys were dozing next to it. The sign said: FURNACE CREEK. Pop: 78. El: -190.

  “Todd loved Death Valley. We went there a couple of times when we were kids, on family vacations. When we were still a family.” She started to weep. “Everyone’s gone now. They’re all gone.” She snatched a handful of tissues from the box on the coffee table.

  Iris reached into her purse. “Here’s a letter Todd was writing you before…”

  Tracy unfolded the plain, white paper. “He was writing me a letter? I hadn’t heard from him in…must be three years or more.”

  “Really? The tone of the letter doesn’t sound like years had passed.”

  After reading the letter, Tracy refolded the pages and pressed them flat on top of the scrapbook. “I’m glad he was doing something he enjoyed. Sounds like he was finally settling down.”

  “He looked good. Very successful. He had a…” Iris stopped before mentioning the Mercedes. What had happened to it?

  “When did you meet him?”

  “I met him about five years ago when he lived in Paris.” Iris was intentionally vague.

  Tracy regarded Iris with new interest. “I remember Todd talking about you.”

  Her husband leaned forward to get a closer look.

  Iris shifted uneasily.

  Tracy pointed at her. “You sent a letter here for Todd. He’d left Paris and was living in London. He’d come home for Christmas. My goodness, he had all these expensive gifts for the kids. Remember that, hon?”

  Her husband nodded.

  “Anyway, I gave Todd your letter. I’d had it here for a couple of months.”

  “He read my letter?” Iris asked.

  “Yes.” Tracy hesitated. “He read it. Then he balled it up and threw it in the fireplace. I didn’t ask him about it. Probably wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Todd was kind of a private person. You never really knew what he was thinking. All he said was that you were someone he’d met when he was living in Paris.”