“Yes. I’ll get a cab.”
“No, uh, he won’t. We’ll take him, Ralph. Thanks for the help,” the larger Mr. Torrente said. Ralph gave a little salute, and Austin closed and locked the door.
“So, how’s this going to work?” I asked the two men staring at me.
Dominic grinned. “Honeybee, I’ll go to the office with Mr. Fitzpatrick and—”
“Call me Sean, guys. It seems like we might be spending some time together, so let’s drop the formality.” I’d interrupted Dominic—I wanted to laugh that he called his husband Honeybee. It was adorable—so I nodded for them to continue.
“I’ll go to Jericho Hess’s place and pick up your other things, Sean. Do you have meetings outside the office tomorrow?” Austin asked.
I glanced at the stack of books on my dining table. “My phone has disappeared in all the shuffling between Wallis’s condo, Jeri’s farm, and here. I guess I should just get a new one. I left the burner I had at Jericho’s house too. It has my assistant’s personal phone number on it. If you could collect it so I can destroy it, that would be helpful.”
Austin nodded. I then turned to Dominic. “You’ll be with me in the office tomorrow? Are you sure no one in my employ is involved in this fiasco?” I thought I had good people who worked for me, not against me, but fuck all if I could be sure.
“We’re waiting for your permission to check them out, Sean. Will you consent to allowing us to investigate your employees?” Dominic stared at me, waiting for an answer.
It broke my heart to do it, but with everything going on... “Yes. You have my permission to investigate everyone—except Spencer Brady. He was a former congressman, so he’s had enough scrutiny in his life. I also have a few names of others I interact with on a regular basis, so you might want to check them out too.”
God, I felt as if I were betraying everyone I trusted. Everyone I depended on. Everyone I cared about.
Was I being a horrible person for having my own people investigated? If I couldn’t trust those I worked with, then why the fuck was I trying so damn hard to make a difference?
“Okay, Sean. We don’t check out anyone without the permission of our primary. Let’s sit down and make a list for Casper, if you don’t mind,” Dominic said.
I nodded, and the three of us sat at the dining table. “What do you want to know?” I asked.
For two hours, I went through the roster of my employees. Dom had Lawry on the phone, and I could hear the keys clicking over the speaker phone as we chatted.
“Ava Renfro is clean. She’s got a verifiable degree and has no arrest record. No known affiliations with any conservative groups. No red flags.” He went on to cite Ava’s curriculum vitae. I wasn’t surprised at all that she was clean as a whistle.
“Gloria Lambert—or Mrs. Gloria Lambert, as she prefers to be called. She’s my executive assistant. I hired her about six weeks ago. She’s shown to be a good employee, but I know nothing about her personal life.”
Thankfully, Gloria had nothing in her history that was of concern. We worked our way through everyone, and then we moved to my acquaintances who weren’t business contacts.
“Dagmar Volt and Claus Wagner. They work at the bar, Café Berlin, where I go for happy hours at the end of my workdays. They’re very nice people. I doubt you’ll find anything on either of them.” God, I hoped not.
“And how long have you known them?” Lawry Schatz asked over the line.
“About five years since I moved my office into the building behind theirs. We’re more casual acquaintances, but I think we’ve formed a mutual respect for each other.”
There were keystrokes in the background and then it was quiet. “Okay. Dagmar Volt, aged forty-nine. Chef. Attended Le Cordon Bleu in London in 1995. Born in Berlin in 1976. Immigrated to the US and was granted a green card in 1983 when her father, Kirk Becker, was sent to work in the GermanEmbassy in Washington. Naturalized in 1993. Married in 2001. Divorced in…Oh!Uh, there’s a problem.”
“What?” I asked.
“Dagmar Volt has two older sisters. One is named Lena and has a wife named Lilian. They married in 2016 and live in Rehoboth, Delaware, where they own a gift shop.
“The other sister, Sophia, is married to someone named Arthur Judge. Former Special Forces training officer, retired. He currently runs a campground outside Southern Pines, North Carolina: Camp Brotherhood. It’s owned by a church in Pinehurst—Word of God Pentecostal Church—and the church extends its non-profit status to the camp. It says the camp is used by religious organizations and operates year-round. We knew this from my previous research, but I think we’ve found the connection to you, Sean.”
I had a hard time believing Dagmar would help an organization that thrived on hate. If she didn’t like me, why didn’t she just stop making me extra potato pancakes? She just didn’t strike me as such a hate-filled human.
I drummed my fingers on the table. “Yeah, Mr. Wallis mentioned a hate group and a missing young reporter when he and his family came to Davidsonville. Dagmar told me her sister was shunned by her family because she’s a lesbian, but she had no problem with her sister being gay. She didn’t mention anything about having another sister. All she said was that her family was homophobic.”
“I’m not saying she’s not accepting, but maybe she talks to her family about you? You’ve been on television with network interviews and campaign rallies. I saw you at the convention in Chicago last year. Your speech was fantastic. Maybe she mentioned that she knows you, and they heard your speech and decided to do something to you. I have no idea why bigots do what they do, Sean.” Lawry’s tone was like a sad, invisible shrug.
I stood from my chair and began to pace. What the motherfucking hell was going on? “Are you telling me that Dagmar might have been innocently telling her family where I work or details that I have shared over the years as chit-chat when I’ve gone in there, and they’ve been collecting the information to use to harass me? That she might have unknowingly been setting me up for her religious family to harass me and try to kill me?”
Keystrokes.
