Authors: Fern Michaels
Fergus untangled himself and got out of the sports car and walked around to open the door for Annie, his security surrounding him. “Looks like a lot of other people had the same idea you did, Annie. Dinner at dusk, the stars are about to come out, there’s a balmy breeze, and there is a spot with a bench right under that huge tree. Oh, dear, what about your dress?”
“This old thing! Please. The girls like to come here often. I think Maggie, she’s the editor in chief at the
Post,
comes here to run. After her run, she has a double-decker ice-cream cone. She has a metabolism problem,” Annie volunteered.
“Is there any truth to the rumor that you own the Post?”
“Absolutely none at all,” Annie said cheerfully as she fished around inside the bag and triumphantly pulled out a chicken leg. “This is what I love about their chicken—it’s sweet, and it actually tastes like chicken is supposed to taste. But concerning your question, I’ve heard that rumor myself. Where did you hear it?”
Annie munched contentedly, her legs drawn up under her. “Chatter at the Bureau, but it was also mentioned at Langley. I didn’t believe it for a minute,” Fergus said, his eyes twinkling.
“Good for you, Fergus. This town, as you must know by now, is full of secrets, rumors, and dirty deeds. I don’t even know why I want to live so close by. Ah, well, Las Vegas, my other sort of home, is pretty much the same. Secrets, scheming, gambling, crime, you name it.”
Fergus’s eyes continued to twinkle. “I’m thinking you’re a woman of action. You like to be on the move, create situations if you find things too dull to your liking. How am I doing so far?”
Annie laughed as she fished around for a crisp slice of potato and popped it in her mouth. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. As one ages, all the thrills seem to be left to the younger people. So as a senior, I like to take charge of my life and do what I want to do. I think I earned that right, and anyone who doesn’t like it, well, let’s just say it becomes their problem. You have to embrace life, Fergus, or it passes you by. Are you really going to be happy doing nothing when you retire?”
Fergus looked across at Annie in the gray light, and said, “Fishing, hunting, reading, and drinking ale aren’t exactly nothing.”
“They’re deadly. Inside of a month, you’ll be pulling out your hair. Trust me on that one. Now, I want to know why you called me, why we’re sitting here eating greasy chicken that is delicious but not good for us, and I want to know
NOW.”
Fergus cleared his throat, dabbed at his mouth, and sat back on the bench. He crossed his legs and turned sideways to see Annie better in the early-evening light. “I chose you … wait, that’s not a good way to start this. Years and years ago, when I first started with the Yard, I was feeling my oats, and a case was assigned to me. It wasn’t a career builder by any means, just routine, but it took me to other places. That’s how I met your husband. Who, by the way, I liked very much. My case involved an employee of your husband’s who, along with a few of his friends, was smuggling Spanish relics. On one of your husband’s boats. Your husband worked with me, young pup that I was. He helped me set a trap for the offenders, all ended well, and I got promoted.
“I remember seeing a picture of you with your husband on his desk. He said at the time you’d only been married a year. I had just gotten married myself, and we talked about finances and married life. I was struggling, and he was already a success. He told me to be patient, that my time would come. The promotion worked wonders for me and my new bride. To this day, no one has ever been more cooperative than your husband was with me that day. Things like that stick with you.
“You probably don’t remember me, but on the day of the memorial service, I was there. I said many, many prayers for the souls of your husband and children.
“To make a long story short, I called you … because I thought you might be able to help me the way your husband did. I lost a young lad who was the age I was when I visited your husband. I trained Sean myself, and he was one of my best agents. He was like a son to me. I believe in my heart, my mind, my soul that Hank Jellicoe is the one who had him killed. Sean walked into some kind of trap, of that I’m sure. I don’t know the whys or the wherefores of it all, just that no one will ever convince me otherwise.
“This visit, this request, has nothing to do with the agreement you and the other ladies signed with my colleagues. I wanted to hire you independently of the others. By you, I mean the vigilantes. I don’t even know if it’s possible, that’s why I came here in person. All trails led me to the CIA, then got cold. And then I picked up something that led me to the FBI. That’s pretty much the sum total of it all.”
“But when we were pardoned, we were not given immunity from prosecution for any future activity here in the States. If your trail is here, which means Hank Jellicoe is here somewhere, maybe as close as the other side of the Tidal Basin, the immunity you and your colleagues gave us is of no relevance. Things would be different if he were on foreign soil. Don’t take what I’m saying as any kind of commitment on my part, I’m just talking out loud. What did they tell you at the Bureau that made you come to me?”
“John Yantzy told me that one of his predecessors kept a file on just about everyone in the world, much like J. Edgar Hoover did. He said the vigilantes have those files, and your president herself told him that you were off-limits.” Fergus threw his hands up in the air to show he now was at an impasse. “Do you ladies have those files?”
Annie’s head jerked upright. “That’s NTK, Fergus Duffy,” Annie said coldly.
“But…”
“There are no buts here, Fergus. I said it’s NTK. Furthermore, assuming for one crazy, wild moment that the vigilantes did have those files, why would we trust you with them because of the FBI? Yantzy, I’m told, wants them so bad he’ll do just about anything to get them. His clock is ticking, and as of this minute, he has only thirty days to come up with Hank Jellicoe or he’s on the unemployment line along with Calvin Span and that dickweed from Homeland Security. Personally, I think that’s a good thing. Everyone in this damn town needs to start cleaning their respective houses and start over. Young eyes, young blood, a fire burning in their bellies. That’s what all those damn agencies need. When and if that happens, then you can call me. Thank you for this lovely… dinner. I can see myself to the car. Stay here. That’s an order, Fergus Duffy. Oh, and don’t forget to clean up this mess. The park police will fine you if you don’t.”
Three minutes later, Annie was in the yellow Porsche headed back toward the farm. She hit number 2 on her speed dial, and said, “Myra, you are not going to believe what I am about to tell you. Stop interrupting me; yes, I will drive carefully; no, I did not drink. Well, I did take a few sips, but I’m fine. Myra, shut up and listen to me before I bust wide open.”
M
yra lowered the retractable awning on the terrace. “It’s been threatening to rain all day. I’m not sure cooking out is such a good idea,” she said fretfully. “The grill is protected, so I guess since everyone is expecting Charles’s famous apple cider spareribs, we need to do a little rain dance to ward off the rain. Why don’t you do that, Annie?” Her tone was still fretful.
“Myra, dear heart, one does a rain dance to bring
on
rain, not to ward it off. And I’m sorry to have to tell you that I don’t have the faintest idea of how to do a rain dance to ward off rain. You need to come up with something better than that.” Annie’s tone sounded just as fretful as Myra’s.
“You certainly are surly this afternoon, Annie. I would have thought that while you’d not necessarily be on top of the world, at least you’d be climbing up there after your meeting or date, whatever you want to call it, with Fergus Duffy.”
“Stop right there, Myra Rutledge Martin Sutcliff! I told you how all that went down. You know what I can’t get out of my mind?” Without missing a beat, she continued, “When Fergus said he and his wife used to shake hands before going to bed if one or the other was upset. Part of me thinks that’s a wonderful thing, and another part of me wonders why I never did that with my husband. When he spoke of it, it seemed so perfect, and before you can ask me, no, I don’t know why it bothers me. Kissing and making up is soooo … American, I guess.”
Myra frowned. “I can see why that might bother you. Look at it this way, dear. Should you ever find yourself in that position again, you can shake hands
and
kiss each other. That way you can’t go wrong.”
Annie flopped down on her favorite chair. “I guess. Do you want me to turn on the grill?”
“I think Charles plans on using charcoal this evening. I saw the bag in the kitchen on my way out here. Don’t we have something better to talk about? When is Fergus returning to England?”
“I don’t know. I forgot to tell you, one of his security guys gave me Fergus’s card as I was getting into my car and said I should call. But to answer your question, we didn’t get that far, Myra, when I decided to hightail it out of there. Do we even care?”
“Let’s see what the girls have to say when they get here,” Myra said soothingly. “Relax, Annie. We’ll talk this to death when they arrive, and I’m sure we’ll come up with something that will put you in a good mood. I just hate it when you’re cranky like this.”
“You know what, Myra? Ask me if I care.”
Lady and her pups, who were playing on the terrace, stopped tussling, their heads jerking upright. As one they started to bark. “Someone’s here!” Myra said happily. She literally bounded out of her chair and raced to the kitchen.
It was uncanny, Myra thought. The girls always seemed to arrive one after the other almost like a caravan, yet all their starting points were different, so how could that be? Since it really wasn’t important in the scheme of things, she let the thought drop by the wayside and held out her arms to Kathryn, who hugged her tightly.
“Am I the first? I’m never first. Usually it’s Isabelle. I like being first sometimes. I’m babbling here, Myra.”
Murphy raced through the house, Lady and her pups right behind him. “Isn’t it wonderful? The patter of little and big feet.” Myra laughed. “Although ‘patter’ is too tame a word, more like stampede of the thundering herd.”
“How’d Annie’s date go?” Kathryn hissed.
“Oh, dear, I’m not sure. She’s on the terrace waiting for all of you. I have to warn you, she’s rather cranky.”
“Cranky or
pissed off
? There is a difference,” the ever-verbal Kathryn asked.
Myra laughed. “Take your pick, dear. Ah, here’s Nikki and Jack, and I see Alexis behind them. And Maggie is just turning onto the road.”
The greetings were effusive, as they always were. Inside of ten minutes, everyone was on the terrace, even Charles, who looked around to see whom he could trust to carry the ribs and to follow his instructions. He finally chose Bert, who for some reason looked like he had lost his last friend. He well might have, Nikki whispered to Yoko as she watched Kathryn avoid standing anywhere near Bert.
An hour later, the mingling and the joke telling wound down. Annie related the details of her meeting with Fergus Duffy to wide-eyed disbelief. “I told him I would talk to all of you. I don’t want any of you reading something into that meeting that wasn’t there.”
Ted Robinson looked over at Charles, who was expertly turning a rack of ribs, and said, “Charles, if you had a mind to, you could auction off Mitch Riley’s files and rake in tens of millions of dollars. Did you have a chance to go through Jellicoe’s files?”
“My dear fellow, it has taken me
days
to sift and collate those files. In the kitchen you will see nine, I say
NINE
boxes of files on Henry Jellicoe. It’s literally a day-by-day file on him from as far back as his early twenties. I did not read through them, I just figured out a system that would work for all of us. It would take months to go through all of those files to look for any one piece of something or other that would help us. I made it so we could divide it up by years and assign each of you a year; then you can sit down and compare whatever it is you think will be important in our quest to find Mr. Jellicoe. I understand from Harry’s lipreading that Director Span has an additional six boxes of files that he himself accumulated. I would give my right elbow to see what’s in them.”
“Wait a minute!” Jack all but bellowed. “Who’s the client? Is this on our shores or foreign soil? Is something going on here that I don’t know about?” He swung his attention to Nikki, and said, “You aren’t seriously thinking of giving up your … your current immunity here. I know ‘immunity’ is not the right word, but your pardon only applies to past actions. It does not cover anything done in the United States afterward.”
Nikki’s face froze into a grimace. “Jack, how can looking at files affect us? We own the files; they were given to us. We can do whatever we want with them. Even the president of the United States said those files are off-limits, and so are we.
“We can read them, we can try to decipher them, we can try to find Jellicoe’s wife, which is what this is all about. We are not actively out there on a mission. Think of this as a fact-finding … ah … mission. Girls?”
The Sisters weighed in, their comments echoing those Nikki made. The boys managed to slink over to where Bert was standing. Charles, unsure what exactly was going on, removed a rack of ribs to a serving platter and did his best to move as far from the ostracized guys as possible.
The girls all started to talk at once as they tried to figure out the best way to tackle the upcoming project. “I think we should all stay and work from here. Being free agents these days will allow us to do what has to be done,” Yoko said.
“What about the boys?” Isabelle asked.
The women grinned and shook their heads.
“I think we should send them home after dinner,” Maggie said. “I can stay and work through the night. You have to admit they don’t have our
eye
for detail, and they do tend to clutter things up.”