Municipal Blondes
9
Farewell, friend
EVERYONE SHOWED UP. Lars and Jordan, of course. Everyone I’d ever met at the Swedish American Center and dozens more. Teri came to be with me and I wasn’t surprised to find Angel and Cinnamon there, too. The four of us—blondes in black dresses—must have looked unusual to many who were there, based on the number of stares we go. There were so many blondes among the Swedish contingent, I don’t think we were at all out of place. Maybe it was just the way our dresses fit.
In memoriam
I saw the obituary and funeral announcement in the paper last night but I had no idea how many people Dag touched. There were people there he must not have seen in years—certainly not in the past six months. Reverend Olson gave a kind eulogy that didn’t come across as too religious. It was really about Dag.
People at the Center had put together a display board with pictures from various events over the years that showed Dag playing cards with the older men and sitting on the floor amidst a huge pile of Legos with the children. I thought he would have made a great dad. There were pictures of him teaching computer classes filled with older people at the Center and a beautiful picture of Dag at the top of Mount Rainier taken by one of his climbing buddies twenty years ago. It was so incredible to see him as a young man, so full of vitality and so… sexy. There was really no other way to put it. Dag as I knew him was kindly, sophisticated, and distinguished. The young Dag was nothing short of a hunk.
I made my own contribution to the display. I had the picture of the two of us, taken in a photo booth on Pier 57, blown up and framed. I also brought the seascape painting from Dag’s wall and set it in front of the memorial urn that held his ashes.
It was all about remembering the wonderful things Dag was to so many people.
And then it was over.
Lars pulled me to the doorway of the chapel and there, flanked by my blonde posse, people stopped to offer me condolences as they left. He explained people needed a focus for their condolences. They treated me like I was his widow. Sometimes it was embarrassing to imagine what they must have thought but everyone was polite. Rhonda stopped and held my hand for a long moment while tears streamed down her cheeks. Eventually, she pointed at the picture she’d painted and just mouthed, “Thank you,” and then left.
Another blonde in black stood before me. I was a little in awe. Cali Marx had come to Dag’s funeral.
“You must be Deb Riley,” she said softly. I nodded. “I know I’m probably no older than you, but you remind me of my mother. That’s not fair but Dag was going to be my father before Mom died. I hope you don’t mind that I hope they’re together now.” Dag was going to marry Cali Marx’s mother? Damn!
“Of course, Miss Marx. Uh… If you’ll forgive me, Dag had an envelope in his vault with your name on it but it doesn’t have an address. If you’re staying in town, I could have it couriered to you.”
“I’m still not ready. Are you continuing his… business?”
“Yes. I was his partner and inherited the bulk of his estate.”
“I paid Dag a retainer to keep that envelope until I need it. Can I trust you to do the same?”
“I will always honor all Dag’s commitments,” I said. She handed me a personal card with an address and phone number.
“Dag told me about you when he came to the premiere of Donovan in August.” The movie hadn’t been a big success but Cali Marx was sensational. So, that’s where Dag went when he said he had business in LA. “He told me about his brilliant new assistant. It was obvious that he was in love, even then. Please update my file and continue to hold the envelope for me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come on. I’m not that old. I’s love to stay and chat, but I practically had to commandeer an airplane in order to get here. I don’t dare keep them waiting to fly me back. Please let me know when you plan to scatter his ashes. If it’s possible, I’d like to be there.” She lifted her veil. Despite the tear tracks on her cheeks and the smeared mascara, she was incredibly beautiful. “I loved him, too” She kissed me on the cheek and then left. I saw a limo waiting outside the doors of the funeral home. She stepped in and was gone.
It was obvious my buddies weren’t intending to leave me alone for a while but Jordan managed to cut me out of the crowd when I went to retrieve the urn.
“I’ve brought you something,” he said. “I don’t think I should be giving this to you but I’m going to file a statement that this is official business.” He handed me a manila folder filled with the dossier on Brenda. “She’s gone,” he said flatly. “We don’t know where or when but we haven’t seen her come out of the house in two days. I got a warrant and we went in this morning on the grounds of being concerned for her well-being. She was gone. The entire house was immaculate save the bedroom. It had been ransacked. We determined she had packed one suitcase and left. The other matching pieces were on the bed.”
“Can I say I told you so?” I asked. I suppose it wasn’t kind but I had told him Monday morning she would run. He’d lost her that very day.
“I’d rather you said you’ll help find her. I can bring you the laptop and backup disks if you need them but I’m betting you either know where she is or could find her.”
“And then what?” I asked. “Are you telling me there is enough evidence to get an extradition from an unfriendly country?”
“No. I’m saying you will find the evidence.” Jordan looked around. “Dag and I didn’t share everything either of us knew,” he continued quietly. “But we shared enough that I’m sure he was onto something more than Bradley’s little scheme to counterfeit software. I’m guessing you are pursuing his leads. We always had a tacit agreement—don’t interfere with each other and we’ll share the results. And don’t go in without backup,” he finished.
“I suspect that the two billion Simon disposed of before he got himself killed is just the tip of the iceberg,” I answered. “If so, there’s a Titanic about to find it.”
“I’ll bring the laptop and disks by this afternoon,” Jordan said.
“Don’t bother,” I answered “If your crew hasn’t found anything, it’s unlikely I will.” He looked at me a little strangely but said ‘okay.’ I told him I’d let him know if I found her and how bad it really was.
I turned to join my friends. They wanted to take me out for a drink but I said absolutely not. Instead, we four went down to the pier and they joined me in the office. Mrs. Prior brought Maisie to the memorial service and handed me the leash before I left. The five of us sat on the sofa and chairs and I set the urn in front of the window.
“Ginger snaps for everyone,” I announced, getting the jar from the desk. Dag liked the crisp spicy cookies. We each reached in and I tossed a cookie to Maizie. She took it to her bed and lay down. We all took a bite. There were various expressions ranging from disbelief to disgust. “I guess they’re an acquired taste,” I said, laughing.
Let’s just say Maizie had a lot of treats that afternoon.
Carrying on
After assuring my friends I was all right, I got them out of the office and settled down to do some work.
The databases of United States Customs and Immigration are not exactly public but they aren’t impenetrable either. I knew, if I wanted to, I could get into them and find out if there was any record of Brenda’s travel under her aliases. But the truth is, we don’t check on people leaving the country. We only check those entering. The fastest way for Brenda to get out of the country was to go to Canada. There’s always traffic moving across the border and a middle-aged woman crossing from the US to Canada isn’t going to raise any flags if she has some cockamamie story about going to Vancouver to shop for her grandchildren.
But Brenda didn’t take her car. That meant she took some form of public transportation (or had a confederate hook up with her) and the most likely place to go would be the airport. Once there, she could either rent a car or board a plane. If the choice was the latter, it didn’t make any difference where she went. Out of the country was out of the country. That’s what I was betting on. I pulled up the OAG online guide and looked at the flights normally leaving from Seattle with non-stops out of the country. There are a lot. It was all guesswork. I figured she would head south rather than to Canada. It was always possible she could catch a flight to Amsterdam or Tokyo but I couldn’t picture Brenda risking a really long flight. She would want to be on the ground someplace by the next morning.
Airline passenger lists are harder to hack into than US Immigration.
Mexican Immigration, however, is a breeze.
I set up routines to scan every port of entry with direct flights from Seattle, starting with the last time Jordan actually saw Brenda. There are twenty-one different international ports of entry with direct flights from Seattle. Four are in Mexico and six are in Canada. The rest are scattered throughout the world. I entered the passport numbers from the three identities I’d seen in Brenda’s drawer. Someplace, one or more of those people were going to show up entering a foreign port. The number would be scanned and entered in the immigration database.
It wasn’t child’s play. Before I finished, I had to take Maizie out for a walk and feed her dinner. She was getting impatient when I set the programs to run and started pulling apart Brenda’s file.
Huge chunks of written evidence had yellow stickies on them marked ‘circumstantial,’ ‘unconfirmed,’ and ‘hearsay.’ I had to admit the case against her looked shaky. No wonder Jordan wasn’t getting any support from authorities on his search for her; they considered it a waste of timme.
The ferries were almost shielded by the nighttime fog over the harbor by the time I found something useful. If you commit a burglary, speed, rape someone, or even murder someone, they are going to do a pretty thorough job of marking down your identifying characteristics and getting your fingerprints. Age, weight, height, eye and hair color, race. But if you are accused of a federal money crime, your file is going to include birthmarks, shoe size, ring size, moles, and tattoos.
‘Tattoo at the base of spine in red and black depicts a pillow with the characters El8d2bMe.’
Damn! Brenda had a tattoo with eight characters. An ‘l’ had to be a ‘1’. The ‘M’? It had to be a 3 laid on its side. Elated 2 be me. I had a few more combinations to try out for my encryption key. Let’s see, with four sets in all possible combinations of one, two, three, and four sets… I only had sixteen possible combinations when there were three sets. There were sixty-four possible combinations with four sets. It was going to take a little longer but I had the makings of a 512-bit encryption key.
It’s going to be a long night.
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