bet he told you the same thing.”
She tossed her head of snow-white spiked hair. “Well, Davey dear, I like Danny just fine, but he’s every bit as much of a spook as you are. How’m I supposed to know when he’s telling me the truth and when he’s feeding me Bureau gobbledygook?”
“Ahem,” said the alluded-to spook. “I’m not given to lying, Grandma Dottie.”
David’s friends all wound up adopting his grandmother as their own. The world’s very own professional grandmother turned to Dan Maddox. Her canary-yellow full-length wool duster coat swirled around her.
“Maybe not, Danny, but you’ll be the first to bend the truth to cover for Davey or any of your other fellow agents. And you can’t deny it.”
Dan met David’s gaze. The two men exchanged a knowing look. There wasn’t much either could say to the older woman. She knew them too well.
“So I’m right, then,” she continued. “Not only did I have to come see that you really were in one piece, but I also had to check to make sure you hadn’t cooked up a goofy excuse to not come and pick me up. I don’t know what you have against my friends. They’re such lovely gals.”
Now she’d started in with her guilt-inducing poor-me deal. “Hey, Gram, give it up. You may as well quit while you’re ahead. I’m not buying that ‘what you have against my friends’ stuff. You know I don’t have a thing against your friends. I just have a problem with your devious ways. I can find my own dates, you know.”
She snorted. “Well, you’re doing a lousy job of it, if you ask me. And I know some swell girls.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“Ask you.”
Gram stuffed her fists in the pockets of her outrageous coat and pushed out her bottom lip.
Now, really. Who else wore nearly neon-yellow in December?
Who else wore nearly neon-yellow at any time?
She lowered her head.
Anyone else would’ve thought she was contrite. Not David. He knew she was busy scrambling in her troublemaker brain for another plan of attack.
It was time to deflect the skirmish. “Well, listen—”
“So did you get the pretty blonde’s number?” she asked.
Without thinking, David said, “Her name, address, phone number…”
At the gleam in his grandmother’s brown eyes, David let his words die a merciful death. She’d tricked him well and good.
“Is there any reason to think this rises to the level of a Federal situation, Latham?” Radford asked.
David had forgotten the officers. “Ah…no. I doubt it.”
Sherman nodded. “Then we’ll take it from here. As a courtesy, we’ll let you know if we learn anything different than what we know now.”
“That’s fine. And thank you for your quick response. I appreciate it.”
Radford chuckled. “At least someone does. It doesn’t look like Ms. DiStefano thinks much of us.”
David glanced at the expensive house down the street. “Don’t take it personally, Officer. It strikes me that she doesn’t think much of law enforcement period.”
“I’m with you,” Sherman said.
“D’you mean that pretty girl?” his grandmother asked. “Are you boys saying she’s a crook?”
Her disbelief struck David as somewhat naive, but he didn’t have much to go on. “No, Gram. We have no evidence that she’s anything but what she says she is—a grieving sister who’s been left to raise a miserable little orphan boy.”
“So where’s the but?”
Nothing much got past her. And she wouldn’t let up on him until she learned what she wanted. So he said, “But something’s not quite right about that ghost story.”
“What?” she squawked. “Don’t tell me she’s one of those séance-happy nuts. She sure didn’t look like one.”
“And just how do people who’re into all that spiritist junk look, Grandma?” Dan asked, humor laced through his words.
Grandma Dottie shrugged. “Oh, the ones I’ve seen on talk shows wear yards of filmy fabric, too much eye makeup, and talk like spaced-out teenagers. And they haven’t been teens for decades, you know.”
David had a sudden vision of a well-upholstered matron, a cloud of lavender chiffon in swathes around her…upholstery, raccoon-black goop around turquoise-shadowed beady eyes, her hair a perfect Miss Clairol shade of champagne and giant gobby rings on her every finger.
“That’s it,” he said. “It’s late enough that my mind’s begun to do a Grandma Dottie meld. Reality check, folks. And time to head home.” He turned to Dan. “Hey, thanks for everything, man.”
Dan chuckled. “Are you kidding? I live for this kind of thing. I called Eliza, told her what was up with you, and what wasn’t happening at my post, and she couldn’t send me after you fast enough.”
“Great. Now I’ll have to face the dragon lady first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Make sure you have your Wheaties,” Dan said with a wink. “You gotta walk into the dragon’s lair well fortified, you know.”
“First ghosts, and now dragons,” David said. “Let’s go home, Gram. You can tell me what’s wrong with your Hummer on the way.”
He drove the short distance to his grandmother’s elegant town house in a historic district of Philly only half listening to her tale of Hummer woe. To his disinterested ear, it all sounded like a cooked-up excuse to drag him to the cosmetics party, after all. And that didn’t particularly bother him. He knew his grandmother very, very well.
He didn’t, however, know Lauren DiStefano at all. But he did know he was going to get to know her a whole lot better. And soon.
Because he’d just remembered where he’d heard the name Ric DiStefano. DiStefano was a big-time venture capital guru.
And his business, DiStefano Enterprises, was under investigation for SEC violations. It’d been all over the news. To make matters worse, it seemed the guy’d had possible connections with Mat Papparelli, a dead money launderer for the mob.
A late mobster whose widow had turned state’s evidence. The very same woman Dan Maddox was supposed to be keeping in protective custody.
Why would Eliza Roberts, Dan and David’s boss, pull Dan from his assignment? Why would she send him after David’s ghost-loving hit-and-run victim?
Organized crime was David’s shtick.
What was Lauren DiStefano’s
