Page 61 of Girl, Remembered

The bar itself wasn’t up to much. It had closed down months before Edis bought it, and the place had been going to hell for about two years by the time it shut down. When the realtor showed him the meat and bones of the place, it was exactly like he’d remembered. The last time he’d been there had been on a cold Friday night in November, and it was a fond memory of his, despite the circumstances. Edis had put an offer on the place right there and then, and the owner had jumped at it. He’d bought the building, not just the business, so his finances had taken a double uppercut. He didn’t mind. It was nice to put his savings to use.

It was, predictably, a renovation nightmare. A Saturday here, three hours on a Tuesday night there, whenever his knees agreed to let him kneel on a concrete floor that long. He was working through the exterior paint job now. The electrical alone had taken him six weekends. The floor still needed sanding. At this rate the place would open sometime around his eighty-fifth birthday, but he had no particular urgency about anything anymore. That was the whole point of retirement, as far as he could tell. Nowhere to be, and all the time in the world to not quite get there.

Would the place ever become profitable? Maybe, if he got lucky. It had previously closed down because the trade was bad. It was a law enforcement bar for law enforcement people, but the days of the alcoholic cop were long over, which was great for the law enforcement industry but not great for the alcohol trade. But even if it didn’t make a profit, this bar was William Edis’s way of giving back to the people he’d asked so much of.

Edis was looking forward to tackling the project.

The only thing he disliked about the whole thing was the alarm system.

The alarm system was the reason why now, at 10PM on a Thursday night, he was heading there. He’d done the late-night grocery run, and then his cell had told him that the silent alarm in the bar had been going off for three minutes.

It was the third time this month. The last two had been rats. Whatever landscaper had put a pond behind the building decades ago had never accounted for what lived in it, and every so often a rodent found the gap where the foundation met the old loading door and tripped the motion sensor in the bar. He could call someone closer to check that nobody was breaking in, but it was faster to just drive over and check himself.

His cell phone, which was face down on the passenger seat, began to vibrate. Somebody was calling, but that somebody would have to wait. He had an alarm to deactivate and, if fortune wasn’t in his favor, a rat to kick out.

***

Mia Ripley was no stranger to William Edis’s house. Ten years of working together on the biggest serial cases in America had necessitated a place to talk off the books, and Edis’s house in Kalorama had been their designated sanctuary. She ditched her car at the foot of the driveway and rushed up toward the front door. It was flanked by two narrow panels of leaded glass – expensive and decorative, but mostly to give the illusion of security. Mia was always surprised to find that a former FBI director didn’t have something like quantum cryptography keeping him safe. Take away his wealth and Edis remained an everyman.

She banged on the glass.

‘Will! Open up!’

She waited. Checked her phone. Three calls to Edis, all of which had gone to voicemail.

No response.

She tried again.

‘It’s Mia! Open the door!’

Her frantic rush to the front door had rendered her ignorant to the fact that Edis’s electric blue Mustang was absent from the driveway. The white BMW was here, but Edis – even a post-retirement Edis, wouldn’t be seen dead driving a German car.

Was absence a good thing? Did that mean he was safe?

No. It meant he was exposed.

Through the two walls of security, Mia made out a blurry figure beyond the panel. The door opened on the chain and a pair of eyes peered out.

‘Yes?’

Ripley heard her through a speaker. ‘Lisa? It’s me. Open up.’

‘Oh.’ Out stepped a woman in black satin pajamas. She had peroxide blonde hair and porcelain skin, despite pushing sixty according to the last time she spoke to Edis. She opened up both doors. ‘Mia? What’s going on?’

‘Is Will home?’

‘No. He went to WinCo about an hour ago. Why?’

‘Not sure, but he might be in trouble. I need to find him.’

There was no point lying to the wife of the former FBI boss. There were only two reasons his ex-employees would show up on his doorstep; either he’d been embezzling or his life was in danger. Lisa’s face drained of color.

‘In trouble? Why? Who’s after him?’

‘It could be nothing, it could be something. Can you call him?’

‘Yes. One second.’ Lisa retreated in the house and came back brandishing a cell phone. She stuck it to her ear, but after ten seconds, Ripley heard Edis’s familiar voicemail message come through.