The Third Brother Read online

  “The men who harassed Kaltun Hirsi. I told you they’re missing. I need to be sure you didn’t—”

  “Didn’t what?”

  I looked around the room. I was no longer being ignored. I regretted not taking a minute to order a cup of tea. I needed something to fortify me. “That you didn’t have anything to do with their disappearance.”

  I registered the shock on his face as the impact of the question hit home.

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s just a question.”

  “You’re saying I did something to them?”

  “I have to ask. This case is getting stranger by the minute.”

  “How could I have done something to men whose names I didn’t know? You are the one who told me their identities.”

  “Do you know the expression, leaving no stone unturned?”

  “I have heard that. But I must tell you I am hurt.” He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “I thought we were friends.”

  I recalled the offense Helene Paulus took at my tracking down Barbara Mendoza despite her declaration the counselor didn’t want to speak to me. The pique in her voice at the perceived violation of some kind of rule of etiquette. I pondered what might have happened had I backed off, not visited, and not ended up leaving my card at Barbara’s house for her to use later, to call me about Angela’s kidnapping.

  I said, “Being friends doesn’t eliminate the need to ask questions like this. I’m sorry if I offended you. But I still feel—”

  “Feel what?”

  “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. What you said at the mosque that day. That if Abdi died because of gun violence or something, at least the community would be spared the suspicion of extremism. You can’t really think that’s right. And then there’s the way you reacted the day of the fire, when those FBI cars rolled up. Like it was you that had something to hide, not Abdi.”

  He didn’t speak for a minute or so, out of character for the normally chatty man. At last he raised his eyes to me. “Can I trust you, Andy Hayes?”

  “Of course. I hope that’s been clear all along.”

  “That has always been my feeling, my friend.” He adjusted his tie, squeezing the knot so that it fit squarely against the bottom of his Adam’s apple. “So, what I have not been telling you is that I think I am in trouble.”

  I got a funny feeling inside, as if I’d just opened a bill—a big one—for a credit card I’d forgotten I had. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Trouble involving Abdi Mohamed.”

  “What about him?”

  “I gave him money.”

  “Money? Why?”

  “To . . . to help him on his journey.”

  I STARED AT HIM, trying to read his face. “You gave him travel money? You’re not telling me—”

  “No. No.” Vigorously shaking his head, like a man on the witness stand providing last-ditch testimony. “Nothing like that. He needed it for books, and other things. For Ohio State. He didn’t have enough from his job at the grocery store, and he didn’t want to ask his parents. Sammy, the youth coordinator you met at Masjid Omar, told me a little bit about his troubles. I decided on my own to assist him. I was more than happy to. I know how much this meant to him.”

  “How much are we talking?”

  “One thousand dollars.”

  I couldn’t help myself—I reached out, took his cup, and drank some tea. “It’s a nice gesture. But I’m not seeing the significance.”

  “The significance is that I know the alternative, to not having money. To losing opportunity.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Now he was staring straight at me. “My nephew is one of those boys.”

  “Boys?”

  “In Minneapolis. One of the ones that disappeared. That went back to Somalia. That joined al-Shabaab. My brother—he still doesn’t know what happened. But it is not good. I thought—”

  I nodded, his point dawning on me. “You thought by helping Abdi, it was a way to show your support for someone taking the opposite path.”

  “That’s right. Because of my nephew. I thought I was doing the right thing. But then—he disappeared. And posted those things. And if he did take the money, and use it for other purposes—”

  “And the feds connect you to your brother and nephew . . .”

  He nodded sadly.

  “Then this case just got a hell of lot more complicated.”

  “I am afraid so,” Abdulkadir said.

  42

  I LEFT ABDULKADIR AT GLOBAL MALL, drove home, opened a beer, went into the backyard, and sat down heavily in my Adirondack. I tried to ignore how badly it needed a coat of paint. I reviewed the problems confronting me. These included, in order: the disappearance of Kaltun Hirsi’s parking lot tormentors; the whereabouts of Abdi Mohamed; the blackmailing of Barbara Mendoza by a mysterious group connected to Mike and Todd Bowden; the future of Barbara’s niece as a U.S. resident hanging in the balance; Abdulkadir’s heavy-hearted confession; and me still without a date for prom.

  I was distracted from national security concerns by a call from Kym about more Red, White & Boom arrangements, which led to another hour of my life I’ll never get back while I worked the phone to juggle Mike’s already busy summer schedules, add input from Joe’s mom, Crystal, top it off with uncomfortable back-and-forth texts with Anne, and stir vigorously. I nearly cramped my thumbs promising all those team members that I wouldn’t screw it up and I’d be there when I said I would. I didn’t help my cause when I flatly turned down Anne’s offer to give me her boyfriend’s number so I could text him directly if it would make things any easier. It wouldn’t. That was communication I needed like a hole in the head.

  To add to the excitement, I got a bad-news call from Bonnie Deckard.

  “It took me a while to find the spyware on Barbara’s computer. But there’s no question someone has control of her hard drive.”

  “Can you figure out who?”

  “I’m working on it. But honestly, my immediate concern is you.”

  “Me?”

  “It’s possible you’re infected too. With everything going on with this case.”

  “I haven’t traded any e-mails with her. Nothing like that.”

  “I want to check your computer out anyway, just in case.”

  “Why? If I haven’t been in touch with her electronically—”

  “We’re dealing with something big here, Andy. Everybody could be tainted.”

  I thought about telling her she was being paranoid. But was that fair, given the course this investigation had taken—the twin, possibly entangled threads of Abdi Mohamed’s disappearance and the mystery men with an eastern Ohio connection stalking Barbara Mendoza? After I hung up, I rose with a groan of protest, saddled up my Odyssey, and drove to Linden, Bonnie’s north-side neighborhood, with my laptop in tow. Goldie greeted me at Bonnie’s door as if I were a long-lost master, but that might have had something to do with the dog treat Bonnie slipped into my hand.

  Back in my van a few minutes later, I was debating whether to take a return trip to eastern Ohio, check in with Abdi’s family, or just start a new life on St. Lucia, when I got a text message that I definitely didn’t see coming.

  We need to talk

  It was Helene Paulus. See what? That you fell down on the job?

  Topic?

  Barbara Mendoza

  OK

  And her niece

  43

  PAULUS LIVED IN WORTHINGTON, THE north-side suburb founded in 1803, a decade earlier than Columbus and don’t you forget it. It was settled by immigrants from the wilds of Connecticut, and its downtown of tiny shops and restaurants and cozy streetlamps looked like something out of a Currier and Ives illustration of old New England with a bunch of Honda Fits and Toyota Priuses thrown in. I offered to come to her house, but she suggested a nearby Old Bag of Nails instead. We settled with pints of Seventh Son IPA in a back booth an hour later.
She sipped hers. I drained half of mine while studying her studying me.

  “So you know,” I said.

  She nodded. “Barbara told me this afternoon. I checked in with her again, and I could tell she was upset. Mr. Hayes, I’m sorry. When I think about what I said to you, the other day, the morning I saw you at her house—”

  “Listen,” I said, taking another swallow of beer. “Most of my friends call me Andy. Most of my enemies go with Woody. Time to choose.”

  “Woody?”

  “What everyone used to call me.”

  “Why?”

  I looked at her to see if she was teasing. “You really don’t know?”

  She shook her head. So I explained, tentatively at first, then warming to the subject, how early in high school I’d been slapped with the nickname of the legendary Ohio State coach’s first name. Not, as most people believed, because of my football prowess. Because, just as the real Woody Hayes lost his job when he slugged an opposing Clemson player at the end of the ’78 Gator Bowl, I’d punched a player on another team in the state semifinals after he’d directed one too many racial slurs against a black teammate of mine.

  “I’m doubly impressed. A knight in shining armor from an early age.”

  “If armor comes in aluminum foil, sure.”

  “Well, it didn’t make your Wikipedia page, so it must be true. Fine. Andy. Anyway, Barbara told me what you did. How you saved Angela. You and your partners.”

  Partners. Theresa and Otto would like that. Like the Mod Squad with smart phones and weaponry.

  “It’s a bad situation,” I said. “And we’re going to have to go to the authorities soon. For Barbara’s sake, but also for Abdi Mohamed’s. It’s gotten too crazy.”

  “But Angela—”

  “That can be fixed, I think. It may be painful, and it may take a while. But the alternative is worse at this point. I know the FBI agent working on Abdi’s case. She’s got a hard heart and a harder ass. But that heart’s in the right place. She doesn’t give a shit about an innocent girl caught up in an immigration mess not of her own making, despite what the America First crowd says. The only thing she’s interested in is protecting U.S. lives, and doing that means resolving Abdi’s case, one way or the other.”

  “But how? No one knows where he is yet, right? And the firebombing—”

  “The firebombing may be the flaming straw that ignited the camel’s back, if you’ll forgive the metaphor. Which is why we have to find him soon. Why I have to find him.” Even as I said that, though, I recalled what Abdulkadir told me at the coffee shop about the money he’d given the teen. What if Abdi really wasn’t here? What if he’d somehow made it overseas? I shook the thought away.

  “Do you have any leads?”

  I finished my beer and signaled for another. Helene took hers down to just below high tide.

  “Honestly, the pickings are slim. I’m sure Faith Monroe’s parents would love to put their God-fearing hands around his neck. But I don’t think they know where he is. Whoever these guys are who kidnapped Angela might know, since they seem super interested in making sure no one messes with his newfound extremist reputation. But they’re not exactly listed in the white pages.”

  “Is there, I don’t know, anything I can do?”

  “You can keep an eye on Barbara, for starters. Make sure she’s OK. I mean, emotionally.” I explained how Otto and Bonnie’s boyfriend, Troy, along with Goldie the mastiff, were rotating security shifts. “And double down on your defense of Abdi if the feds come around again. If they continue hearing contradictory stories, it’ll keep them guessing a little longer.”

  “If I may be frank?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “If I seemed suspicious when you first came into school—”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “OK. If I was a bitch. But I want to explain. It’s because of how unsettling this whole episode has been. First Hassan, then Abdi. You have to understand, we have a lot of immigrants at Maple Ridge. Seventeen languages at last count. We’re hypersensitive to these kinds of accusations.”

  “I can imagine. And for the record, I may not have acted the perfect gentleman myself.”

  “So we could both do with a turn at obedience school.” She raised her pint with a smile and we toasted our newfound détente. “My point is we’re walking around on broken glass over this. We had an expert on extremism come in this spring to talk to some government classes. It was like pulling teeth just to get central office permission.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A very quirky guy. But he knew his stuff. Ronald something.”

  That got my attention. “Ronald McQuillen?”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “Puts the D in disheveled? Drinks Mountain Dew like water if water was going out of business?”

  She laughed. “Yes, definitely him. He was wearing a tie, if that counts for anything.”

  “It might. When was this?”

  She thought about it. “April maybe.”

  “Before Abdi disappeared?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But also when his brother was allegedly abroad.”

  “I suppose, yes. Why?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. I appreciate you telling me.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t think so.” I hesitated. “McQuillen contacted me out of the blue about the guys in the parking lot. Wanted to tell me about them, who he thought they really were. It just seems strange he was at your school, with everything else going on. Another coincidence that I can’t tell means anything or not.”

  “A highly unusual one?”

  “Well played,” I said, and touched my glass to hers.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, I’m impressed with how calm you are about all this. You’ve got people’s lives in your hands, but we might as well be sitting here discussing, I don’t know—”

  “The opiate epidemic?”

  “Touché. But seriously. How do you manage it? And how’d you get into this kind of thing in the first place? I take it there’s not a school.”

  “I’ll spare you a joke about hard knocks. I thought you checked me out already.” I repressed the memory of her throwing the reporter’s murder in my face.

  “Humor me.”

  So I gave her the abridged version, starting with the point-shaving scandal my senior year in college that led to prison time and consignment to the basement of public opinion in this football-crazed town. I followed with my ill-advised comeback attempt with the Browns, a decade or two of bad-boy behavior that culminated in a head-clearing summer on my uncle’s pig farm. I finished up with the end-of-my-rope job for Burke Cunningham strong-arming witnesses to a murder on the east side that finally won me a path to gainful employment.

  “Quite a story.”

  “That’s one way to look at it. How about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “How’d you become a high school principal?”

  She looked down at her hands. “Needed a change, I guess. I taught English for twenty years. My kids were in college by then, and I decided to try something else. Make a little more money.” She paused. “After the divorce, to be perfectly honest about it.”

  “I’ve got a little experience in that arena, if it’s any consolation.”

  “Thanks. I know.”

  “You do?”

  “That stuff actually is on Wikipedia.”

  “Not my finest hours, I can assure you.”

  “For a big, bad, private detective, you’re very self-deprecating.”

  “For someone who called me a snoop not so long ago, you’re very forgiving.”

  She leveled her eyes at me. “Everyone makes mistakes. Right?”

  “No argument there. So does this mean we’re friends now?”

  “If I decide we are, maybe.”

  “Lucky me.”

  She didn’t reply and instead took another sip of her beer. She’d
managed to drain nearly two fifths of it. I eased up and left my second pint half full.

  “I don’t mean to keep you,” she said. “I appreciate you coming out like this. And again, I want to thank you for helping Barbara.”

  “I’m glad we’re on the same page finally.”

  “Me too.”

  I paid for our drinks, and walked her around to the back of the restaurant to a municipal parking lot that served several of the businesses in Worthington’s annoyingly quaint downtown. Night had fallen. It was warm out and the air was muggy with a hint of summer sulfur in it, as though it might storm.

  “This is me,” she said, stopping beside a red mini-SUV. “Thanks again. I’m really grateful.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She put her key in the lock but didn’t open the door. Her eyes lingered on my face. Mine lingered back. The sound of crickets filled the evening air. I stepped forward, put my right hand on her left arm, leaned in, and kissed her. She didn’t resist, and for a moment I tasted the stirrings of reciprocation. Then she whispered, “Stop.”

  I stopped.

  She looked up at me. Even in the orangey glow of the street lights I could tell she was blushing.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “My apologies. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I did it because I find you very attractive. I have since I walked into the school that day. And also because you have George Bellows prints hanging on your office wall.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. You’re supposed to be saving the day. Not—”

  “Not what?”

  “Not, I don’t know, saying things like that. About me.”

  “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “You didn’t upset me. It’s just—”

  I waited. She examined me like a scientist pondering an interesting discovery in a petri dish.

  “It’s just that I need to go,” she said, opening her car door and sliding inside.

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, Woody,” she said, shutting her door with a very small smile.

  I stepped back and made sure she got out of the lot OK. I waved but she didn’t return the gesture. Then I got in my van, the one with the big butt, and drove home.