"Have you received the information yet?" Nick opened the confidential conversation.
At Nikki's insistence, Elizabeth had informed her lieutenant by telephone about the secret of the encrypted messages. As a result, the lieutenant had invited Mardas and Maura to a six-eyed meeting at the Blue Line Diner.
"Sanskrit, then," Mardas replied, sipping water.
"Pretty far-fetched, isn't it?" Nick said, glancing involuntarily at the traffic thickening again along the diner.
"You mean, maybe a little too far-fetched?" Maura speculated with a furrowed brow.
The fact that Nick had invited her to a conspiratorial meeting outside the BPD spoke volumes in her eyes.
I'm wondering why this is all happening now. Sixteen years later. Who woke the sleeping dog? And with what?"
Mardas cleared his throat and leaned back a little in his seat. "And that's where I come in," he said. "I can't assume that you only asked me to your meeting so I could get out of my storage room?"
"You know Liz better professionally than we do," Nick conceded.
"We're running out of options," Maura added, keeping her eyes on Mardas.
"I'm going to ask you this very clearly," Nick continued bluntly. "Who could be blackmailing Elizabeth? And with what?"
Rupert Mardas seemed less surprised by the question than his interlocutors had expected. "Well, frankly, I don't feel comfortable thinking about something like that," he began hesitantly. "But well, we have to consider every possibility. Elizabeth doesn't have any skeletons in her closet. She's financially independent and doesn't trumpet the fact that she used to attend self-help groups, but that's not a secret either."
Maura didn't move, while Nick kept his eyes on the traffic and listened attentively to Mardas. "All right, she's been attending discussion groups for socially awkward geniuses," he summarized. "Could she have told someone something she should have kept to herself?"
Mardas hesitated a moment too long with his answer. This called the prosecutor to the scene.
Maura looked closely at the sergeant; at that moment, she was not Elizabeth's mother but a prosecutor who had left her personal feelings aside. She folded her hands and pursed her lips for a moment. "It is sometimes said that people in danger of collapsing under the weight of their genius find relief in certain substances. Could Elizabeth have something on her mind in that respect?"
"She always seems as if she's just taken something. But as long as I've known her, she's only ever drunk wine, beer, and whisky to influence her thoughts," Mardas reported. "Why are you worried that someone is putting her under pressure?"
"Because a person who can conjugate verbs in Sanskrit doesn't usually leave murders unsolved," Nick explained ruthlessly. "We've given Liz certain liberties in this investigation. But also because Liz is no longer a good team player anyway. On the other hand, sometimes it can make sense to let your dog off the lead. That's the only way to find out where he runs off. We don't have to pretend you sympathize with her, so you're one of the few people I can expect to give an honest assessment."
Mardas thought hard again, wondering if he could think of anything that had gone wrong in Elizabeth's past. "Well, I don't know if that will help us," he began suddenly. "It wasn't in Boston, and it was a long time after McMillan's murder."
"And yet you throw it in," Maura said with a deep frown.
"Well," the sergeant pressed. "Not because it had anything to do with McMillan's death, but simply because it was something very unusual. The second time that --"
Nick took a sip of his coffee. "We're listening," he continued.
"So, the murder of Dr. McMillan is Elizabeth's only unsolved murder. But it's not her only cold case."
Maura raised her eyes with the highest possible astonishment she could muster. "Well, tell me about it."
xxx
"Only three phaetons with the equipment we're looking for have been lent out," Elizabeth told Mike over the phone as she and Nikki drove back to Boston on the highway.
It was now evening, and she was driving Elizabeth's car after Nikki had held back on the delicious wine. She had made herself comfortable in the passenger seat and stretched out again. She yawned increasingly, and Nikki noticed that her mother had trouble opening her eyes. "One of them was delivered to a field office near Boston. I bet Ishmael borrowed it," the captain continued.
"And I bet he paid cash," Mike added over the intercom.
"They don't rent out a car worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars without having something to show. Driver's license or something, he left us some trace! Please drive by there first thing tomorrow."
"Sure, I'd love to. I'll be on the road tomorrow anyway, visiting surgeons' surgeries. I'll do that as well. Did you get the documents on Paul Matthai?"
"Where did you send them?"
"To your e-mail address."
"Then I should have them on my iPad; I'll check immediately. Is there anything else?"
"Yes," Mike replied. "Estelle Bepoldin wasn't too happy you didn't call her after you cracked the code."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Please tell her I'll get back to her tomorrow!"
"You can tell her yourself; she's in the other room. Shall I give her to you?"
"Think of the priorities!" the captain defended. "I'll check your files now and hopefully find Ishmael's next message. See you later!"
With that, Elizabeth ended the conversation.
"Let's just go to a bar together once we've got all this out of the way," Nikki suggested with furrowed brows.
While eagerly waiting for Elizabeth's reply, the captain pulled her iPad out of the glove compartment without saying a word and opened Mike's message. Attached was all the relevant information about Paul Matthai that Mike had gathered since midday.
"Just forget about Bepoldin," Elizabeth finally replied while she compared the information from the documents with the pictures from the victim's apartment.
Nikki chewed the inside of her cheek. "Why do you have to have an affair with a teenager? They're inferior to you in every way. That must be driving you crazy yourself?"
It was evident to Elizabeth that the subject was upsetting her. As she continued to go through the attachments to Mike's message, she searched for an answer that would satisfy her daughter. "All right, we'll go to a bar," she conceded. "But only if you stop now."
"All right," Nikki gave in. "And then there's --"
"Nut granola!"
Only by the light of Elizabeth's iPad screen could Nikki see the satisfied look on her mother's face. "I assume you're not referring to --" she stuttered uncertainly.
"The next clue is in the nut granola in Matthai's pantry!"
"And how --" the detective began, but Elizabeth interrupted immediately.
"Make an effort! You can guess for yourself."
Nikki accepted the challenge. After a moment's thought, she suggested: "The medical records say he was allergic to nuts?"
Elizabeth laughed merrily. "Score, sunk," she confirmed and reached for her cell phone. She was about to dial Mike's number when she saw she had received a message while at the Max Downtown. She glanced at her daughter and debated whether she should read it immediately or later.
As if you could stand it that long ...
Finally, she opened the text and read what Caleb had written.
"Anything important?" asked Nikki, who had noticed that her mother had chosen to read a text over a critical phone call.
"An appointment for tomorrow," the captain replied succinctly while she inconspicuously began to compose a reply.
Abort! Don't come under any circumstances; it's too dangerous. I'll let you know when I've got everything under control again.
Before informing Mike of her decisive realization, she deleted the text and sent another instead.
It's tricky at the moment, but okay: Tomorrow, noon Dungeon Boston. Make sure no one follows you!
xxx
"That was a complete coincidence at the time. No one could have suspected Elizabeth's presence beforehand," Mardas recalled the events of fifteen years ago. "It was somewhere near Stamford; she was there privately. The smell of burning had come from an apartment, and the neighbors had called the fire department."
While Nick looked at Mardas with alert eyes, Maura's gaze was fixed absently on the entrance to the diner.
"Elizabeth had probably been sitting in a café opposite the house and noticed something was happening. She ran over to offer her help."
"So you weren't there?" Maura clarified, listening attentively despite her absent gaze.
"No, as I said, that was on Elizabeth's vacation. I'm just passing on what she said at the time."
"All right, so there was a fire in the apartment?"
"No, luckily, it was just something burnt in a pot."
"Burnt food in a pot near Stamford?" Nick summarized before clarifying: "If this one doesn't take a spectacular turn, you'd better think of another one quickly."
Mardas tried to recall as much information as possible. Colleagues had told him about the incident. By then, he had hardly spoken to Elizabeth in private; when he did, it was usually full of hostility. "It was about an elderly woman. She had died after putting food on the stove," he continued.
"A natural death?"
"Yes, as far as I know, yes. Elizabeth looked around the apartment while the paramedic tried to resurrect the woman. And that's when she found it." He paused and took a sip of water. "It was a little girl, about a year old."
Maura took a deep breath and looked at the sergeant now. "The woman was looking after her granddaughter. What was so special about that?"
"The special thing was that the woman didn't have a granddaughter. She was over seventy, had been a widow for years, and her only son had no children. There wasn't a little girl in the whole family."
Nick gradually began to understand the story. "So the child was just there?" he concluded. And nobody knew who it belonged to?"
"There was no abduction, no missing persons report. No one had the slightest idea where the child could have come from. It was just lying in a dead woman's apartment."
"What did the apartment look like? Was there a crib, toys, or baby food?" Maura wanted to know.
"I don't know exactly," Mardas admitted. "As I said, it was in Stamford; I only heard about it from stories."
"What happened to the child?"
"Elizabeth was very involved at the time. She had nothing to do with the case officially, but she probably felt responsible somehow. She spent weeks trying to find out something. But she failed. The little girl was handed over to the youth welfare office and later to foster parents. As far as I know, they later adopted the girl."
Nick thought tensely. "And that was long after McMillan's murder?"
Mardas nodded slowly. "Yes. I only thought of it because Elizabeth could never find out where the girl came from."
"So, Nick?" Maura challenged her son-in-law. "Should we pay any attention to this matter?"
"I'll bring it up with her tomorrow. We'll keep an eye on Elizabeth. She may know more than she's telling us. And as soon as one of us realizes she's covering something up, we'll intervene."
"You fear the ghosts of her past are affecting her judgment?" Mardas concluded with a furrowed brow.
Nick shook his head slowly. "What do we know about Elizabeth's current judgment? Just watch her critically and report anything strange to you."
Rupert Mardas pursed his lips, then contorted his face to look almost sinister. "Between you and me, it will be a pleasure!"