Jack opened his wallet, showed her his creds.
Julia’s smiled wavered.
“We’d like to see Ms. Kostas, Julia.”
“Ah, well, yes, may I tell her what it’s about?”
“No,” he said. Then he smiled that lethal smile again, lowered his voice. “National security.”
Julia immediately rang a number and spoke quietly.
“I’ll show you to her office,” she said. They followed her down a wide hallway with Stubbs horse paintings on the walls. There were half a dozen niches along the way holding antique vases filled with lush trailing ivy, warmed by small circular overhead lights.
Julia knocked lightly on a set of mahogany double doors, opened them, and they stepped into a large rectangular room furnished with spare, plain blond Scandinavian furniture, not a single antique in the place. Lots of windows filled the room with afternoon sunlight and views to die for, but still the office felt cold.
“Ms. Kostas, this is Special Agent Crowne and, ah . . .” Julia turned brick red because she’d neglected to ask Rachael her name.
“I know who she is, Julia. You may leave us now.”
Jack had read all about Laurel Abbott Kostas on the drive over to Abbott Enterprises International headquarters in Baltimore. He’d studied several unflattering photos of her. She wasn’t by any stretch a beauty. Still, given the wealth factor, he’d expected her to have at least a hint of glam, designer everything, but there wasn’t a scintilla of pizzazz in this woman. Her eyes never left Rachael as she slowly walked toward them. Her hair was neither short nor long, salt-and-pepper, not a sophisticated salt-and-pepper like his mom’s, whose hair was cut in a swinging bob, but flat, drab, and coarse. She wore no earrings, no makeup to soften the sharp angles of her face. Her eyes beneath thick black brows were cold stone gray, her mouth pinched and small. She was wearing a plain gray suit and low-heeled pumps, her sole jewelry a wedding band. She didn’t look fat or thin; what she looked like was a hard matron, or a prison warden. She wasn’t smiling. She looked older than her fifty-one years. He wondered what she’d looked like at twenty-one, what she’d looked like when she married Stefanos Kostas at age thirty-five.
“Hello, Aunt Laurel.”
Laurel Abbott Kostas looked at Rachael with a combination of distaste and indifference, and there was something else, something feral in those eyes of hers. “You are a bastard, Ms. Janes. It’s very possible you are not even my brother’s unfortunate mistake. I am not your aunt, nor are you and I on a first-name basis.”
Rachael said, “Actually, I’m no longer a bastard, which means you are indeed my aunt. Didn’t Jimmy tell you and Quincy that he adopted me? I became his legal daughter five days before his death. His lawyer, Mr. Cullifer, said the entire process took only five weeks, less time than it took the mechanic to fix his Jag, and then he smiled and said money and influence are very fine things.”
“A fine tale, Ms. Janes. You will not call the senator by that ridiculous low-class name. His name was John James Abbott.”
“He told me until I could get used to the idea of calling him Dad, I was to call him Jimmy. And now I’ll never have that chance.”
Laurel Kostas’s hands clenched at her sides. “He did that to get back at us.” She sucked in a breath, calmed herself. Jack saw the take-no-prisoners iron in her, the formidable opponent who’d tear your heart out before breakfast, or, like Rachael had said, he could easily see her sucking the blood from your jugular. Old Man Abbott must have been proud of her. She looked briefly at Jack, dismissed him, then back at Rachael. “All right, you bullied your way in here. What’s this nonsense about national security? What do you really want?”
“We’re here about Jimmy’s death.”
Her eyes turned colder, if possible, and her mouth seamed as she said in her very precise voice, “What about his unfortunate death?”
“He didn’t just die, he was murdered.”
“That is absolute nonsense. Senator Abbott’s death was a tragic accident. It was ruled an accident by the police.”
“Greg Nichols, his senior staffer, knew it wasn’t an accident.”
“Everyone spoke to Greg Nichols. He was shocked and saddened by the tragedy. He believed it an accident, as well.
“It has nothing to do with you, Ms. Janes—yes, I will call you that until I have proof you have told me the truth. Brady Cullifer would have called both Quincy and me if you had been legally adopted; he would have warned us. But he did not.”
“Perhaps,” Rachael said, “Mr. Cullifer didn’t call you because he considered it a confidential matter.”
“There are no confidences in a family, Ms. Janes. However, regardless of any legalities, I will never recognize you as an Abbott. I want you to get out of here. I never want to look at your face after today. You managed to bilk my brother out of his money and his property, that wonderful house in Chevy Chase where we all grew up. It’s in your hands, a stranger’s hands. Bastard or not, you have won. Get out of here before I call security.”
Rachael said easily, “I brought security with me, Mrs. Kostas. Don’t you remember? This is Special Agent Jackson Crowne, with the FBI.”
Laurel put out her hand. Short buffed nails, clear polish, but the thumbnails were chewed to the quick. Jack handed her his shield, watched her study it for an aeon before handing it back. “So,” she said, “this pathetic girl managed to talk the FBI into revisiting this national tragedy. Has she accused us of murdering Senator Abbott?”
“Actually, ma’am, we have a lot of questions, not only about Senator Abbott’s death.”
“You won’t for much longer,” Laurel said, reaching for her phone, and she turned her back to them. Jack hoped she wasn’t calling her lawyer. He really didn’t want to have to deal with that.
Jack had faced down monsters during his years in the FBI’s Elite Crime Unit, and remembered every single one of them with utter clarity, but in this woman’s presence, listening to her low, clipped voice, he felt a sort of black coldness in her.
He purposefully turned away and led Rachael to the huge window that looked toward the Inner Harbor, lined with tourists, the blue water of the harbor dotted with pleasure craft, ferries, and fishing boats. It looked intensely alive, very different from this frozen world so high above it. He was losing it.