Countdown - Iris Johansen [73]
“If you’ll help me.”
“Oh, I’ll help you. It gets boring here. This is the first interesting thing that’s happened to me in months.” He made a face. “That sounded very callous. It’s not that I’m not concerned about finding the old man. As I said, he was pleasant, never a cross word to anyone. You say he’s disappeared? Foul play?”
Nothing fouler on this earth, she thought as she remembered Donato’s death. “We’ll have to see when we find him.”
“Are you with the police?”
“No, I’m a friend of the family.” That was the truth. “They’re very concerned. Naturally, I’ll turn the sketch over to the authorities after we get a good likeness.”
“You’re very sure.”
She smiled at him. “Of course I am. You’re obviously an intelligent man with a fine memory. If we work together long enough, we’ll do it.”
“You’re flattering me.” He suddenly smiled. “But I like it. How do we start?”
She picked up her pencil. “The shape of the face. We have to have a canvas to work on. Square? Round? Angular?”
Almost done?” Brenner came to stand beside. “It’s been over four hours.”
She didn’t take her gaze from the sketchbook. “I want to be as sure as I can be.” She shaded a few more lines to the left cheek. “It’s not easy, is it, Albert? So many choices . . .”
“Leave her alone,” Dengler said. “We’re doing the best we can.”
We.
Brenner smothered a smile. She had obviously charmed Dengler into considering the two of them a team. It surprised him, since he had only seen the tough, wary side of Jane MacGuire. It had been interesting watching her skillful handling of Dengler. She was clearly a multifaceted woman. “Sorry.” He turned away. “Just thought I’d check. I’ll go back to my counter and clean the coffee machine or something.”
“Wait.” Jane added feathering to the hair of the man in the sketch. “Like this, Albert?” She turned the sketch to face him. “Is this the man?”
Dengler stared at the sketch. “My God.”
“Is it him?”
Dengler nodded and then smiled proudly. “Close as a photograph. We did it.”
“No changes?”
“You did the thinner hair. The rest was perfect before.”
“Does this mean that I don’t have to make any more caffe latte?” Brenner asked.
“He’s certain.” She handed Brenner the sketch. “Who is it?”
She nailed him,” Brenner told Trevor when he answered the phone. “You were right. It’s not Rendle, it’s Wickman.”
“Good. Is she on her way back?”
“We’re just leaving the café. She’s still talking to Dengler. She spent forty minutes or so after the sketch was finished complimenting Dengler and making him feel like a big man. She said that if you have to use someone you should at least leave them with a good feeling about it.” He paused. “She’s . . . interesting.”
“Put her on the plane and get her back here. You weren’t followed?”
“I’m not an amateur. I’ll get her safely on that plane. Then I’ll scout around and talk to a few contacts and see what I can find out about Wickman. He’ll be long gone from here, though.”
“Try Rome. That’s one of the places I ran into him.”
“He may be with Grozak now.”
“We still need to know everything we can about him. If he’s going to be the one doing Grozak’s dirty work, we have to take him down.” He paused. “But before you leave Lucerne, see what kind of rumors you can gather about the location of Donato’s body.”
“Hey, is that important? There’s no doubt he’s dead.”
“It’s important. Mario is hurting and he’s going to need closure.”
“Okay. I’ll get on it. If Venable was able to tell you there was something going down here before Donato’s death, then there must be sources I can tap. But I thought you wanted me to get back to Colorado. Though, heaven knows I haven’t found out anything yet about Reilly.”
“Give Donato twelve hours. Then hop on a plane to Colorado.”
“Right.” He paused. “You’re still going to be able to control Mario?”
“Control? Hell, I don’t know. He went back to work. I’ll take one day at a time. Just find the old man’s body.”
Jane arrived back at MacDuff’s Run after nine that night.
The