Damaged Goods

Chapter Twenty-Six

For a moment, I had no idea what to say. Jen approached me as one might a wounded animal.

"So what's your story?" I asked, once I'd found my tongue.

As she drew near, I was able to make out her expression, a mixture of bafflement and guilt.

"Who are you?" she asked. A fair question.

"I was hired to find a man who stole money," I said. "And while I was looking, I ran across a dead body and someone tried to kill me."

"I don't know anything about that," Jen said. Her gaze darted toward Weis and snapped back to me.

I stood up and backed away from Weis. He scuttled back and kept an eye on me, as he rose to his feet.

"How about we sit down and have a chat?" I said.

Jen nodded and looked at Weis, who shrugged. Jen led the way toward a small kitchen, with Weis behind her and me in the rear.

"Coffee?" Jen asked. I nodded. She grabbed a half-filled carafe off the burner and poured three mugs. Once we'd gotten our fixings (Jen offered milk, sugar, soy milk, fancy flavors—all that crap), we took our places around the vintage Formica dinette. We made a cozy threesome.

After a moment of quiet, I decided to get the conversational ball rolling. "Let me get this straight. Are the pictures on my phone of fake artifacts?"

Jen began to answer but hesitated. Weis touched her arm, in a wordless show of support. I sipped my coffee, thinking my hosts seemed about as dangerous as field mice.

I sighed. "Can you at least tell me who paid you to make the artifacts? I'm assuming they're fake?"

Jen finally nodded. "Yes, they are," she blurted. "Slava Kandinsky paid me to make them."

I turned toward Weis. "So that would put you in charge of transportation." His head bobbed forward once.

"Funny you should mention Kandinsky," I said. "It was his body I found."

Their faces turned such a ghastly pale, either they hadn't heard that he had been killed or they should both be awarded Oscars.

"Any idea who might've killed him?"

They shook their heads, looking numb.

"Okay," I said. "Those were the easy questions. Let's get down to brass tacks. Why were you"—I jabbed a finger toward Weis—"following me?"

Weis swallowed so hard, his neck seemed to spasm. "Our contact asked me to do that. He got worried after you started asking people around the art school about Melissa."

Like this should surprise me.

I pressed forward. "Did your contact tell you to cut my car's brake fluid lines?"

His gaze met mine, confused. "No."

"How did you know where to find me?"

"Our contact . . . " His voice trailed off. "He gave me the address of an auto repair shop and told me to look for a blue Fiesta."

Weis looked sincere and seemed unlikely to lie about this. So, who the hell damaged my car?

"Who is your contact?"

Weis shook his head. "He calls himself Mr. D." He must have sensed my discontent with that answer, because he added with haste, "That's all I know about him. The rest of the time I dealt with Mr. Kandinsky."

"What does Melissa have to do with this?"

Weis propped his head in his hands and rubbed his face, elbows on the table. "She introduced us to Mr. Kandinsky. Oh, shit."

I absorbed the response. If Kandinsky had stolen money, this could be where he'd spent it. "So, Slava Kandinsky paid you to make fake artifacts for his contacts? Is that how it works?"

Weis said, "Yep," so abruptly, it sounded like a grunt.

"Who are these contacts? Buyers? Wholesalers? What?"

"I don't know," he snapped. "We just get paid and do our job."

And whoever got the product probably figured out the scam, and Kandinsky had paid with his life. That was my guess. Oh, shit, indeed.