First Family (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 4)

“Care to give an example?”

“Would you believe me if I told you?”

“I’ve got a very open mind.”

Hilal looked off for a few moments before glancing back at Sean. “This is sort of embarrassing, actually.”

“I’m very much into maintaining confidences.”

Hilal popped a piece of gum in his mouth and started chewing and talking fast as though beating up on the gum and grinding his teeth were giving him the juice to confess everything. “Last year’s Christmas party? We’d won a nice little contract. Nothing to write home about, but we splurged anyway to keep up morale. Booze, band, fancy buffet, and a private room at the Ritz-Carlton. We spent too much but that was all right.”

“Okay. So what?”

“So Tuck gets shitfaced and makes a pass at my wife.”

“A pass? How?”

“According to her, by grabbing her ass and trying to stick his tongue down her throat.”

“Did you see it?”

“No, but I believe my wife.”

Sean shifted his weight to his right foot and drilled Hilal with a skeptical look. “If you believed your wife, why the hell are you still partners with Tuck?”

Hilal looked down, obviously embarrassed. “I wanted to kick his ass and walk out the door. That’s what I really wanted to do. But my wife wouldn’t let me.”

“She wouldn’t let you?”

“We have four kids. My wife stays home. Like I said, everything we have is tied up in this business. I’m a minority partner. If I tried to pull out, Tuck could screw me, leave me without a penny. We couldn’t survive that. We’d have lost everything. So we swallowed our pride. But I have never let my wife be in the same room with Tuck since then. And I never will. You can talk to her if you want. Call her right now. She’ll tell you exactly what I just did.”

“Was Pam at the Christmas party?”

Hilal looked surprised for a moment and then nodded. “Right, I see where you’re going. Yeah, she was there. Dressed as Mrs. Claus if you can believe it. Bright red hair and skinny. I think some people were laughing at her not with her.”

“You think she saw Tuck messing with your wife?”

“The room wasn’t that big. I think a lot of people saw it, actually.”

“But no visible reaction from Pam?”

“They didn’t leave together, I can tell you that.” Hilal paused. “Look, anything else? Because I’ve really got to get home.”

Sean walked back to his car. The principal reasons he believed Hilal were twofold. First was “Cassandra” being the password on Tuck’s computer. And second was Tuck’s claim that he was having financial troubles and Hilal was trying to take advantage of t

hat. After his meeting with Jane and Tuck, Sean had taken a much harder look at Tuck’s financial records he’d found on the hard drive. The man had a stock and bond portfolio worth in excess of eight figures, and outstanding debts at less than a quarter of that amount, so his cry of poverty was total bullshit. Yet if they knew he had cracked Tuck’s hard drive, they also had to know he would find that lie out. But sister and brother had still tried to snooker him. Sean put that aside and turned to the next obvious questions.

So why did you come back early, Tuck? And what were you doing for almost an hour between the airport and your house?

On the drive back to his office, he called Michelle. She didn’t answer. He left a message. He was worried about his partner. Yet he had spent much of his time worrying about her. On the surface she was the most rock-solid person he’d ever met. But he’d learned that rock had a few cracks if one poked at it deeply enough.

He drove home, packed an overnight bag, zipped to the airport, and paid an exorbitant walk-up fare to snag a flight to Jacksonville that was leaving in an hour.

He needed to talk to Cassandra Mallory. In person.

He got a phone call on his way to Washington Dulles Airport. It was his linguistic friend, Phil, from Georgetown University. “I’ve got someone who is familiar with the Yi language. If you want to send me a sample of what you’re talking about I can let her look at it.”

“I’ll e-mail it to you,” said Sean. When he got to Dulles he sent the sample. He walked to the security gate praying the letters on the arms would lead to something. But the more he thought about it he didn’t see how that was possible. As Michelle had rightly pointed out, the sample wasn’t even in Chinese.