Authors: Fern Michaels
Myra’s mind raced. “Does that lawyer still have your diary?”
“I would assume so. I go online every so often and Google him. He is still practicing law. You want the diary, is that it?”
“We do. Could you write us a letter authorizing him to release it to us?”
“I can do better than that. Not only will I give you a letter, but I will have my local attorney call him and make the arrangements.”
“Are you sure you’re willing to do that?”
Marsha’s shoulders straightened. “I’m sure. Are you finally going to get him?”
“We are. Actually, we had him once; we turned him over, then he got away from some of the most sophisticated operators walking the face of the earth. All
men,
I might add,” Annie said.
Marsha laughed, a genuine sign of mirth. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“What should we call you?” Myra said.
The smile again. “How about friend?”
“That will work,” Annie said. “Is there anything we can do for you before we leave or after we get back to Washington?”
“No. I’m good. Catching that SOB and locking him up for the rest of his life will work for me. Can you promise that?”
Without missing a beat, Myra said, “Absolutely.” Annie’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. “Are you going to notify your handler that we were here and what we talked about?”
Marsha laughed again. “Tell a man something like that! I-don’t-think-so! Your secret is as safe with me as I know mine is with you.”
“When will you call your attorney?” Annie asked.
“The moment you’re thirty thousand feet in the air. Call me when your plane takes off. I’ll wait for twenty minutes and make the call.
“Here’s the lawyer’s name and phone number. You might want to set down and pick up my diary in person. He’s on the way for you. One small change in your flight plan if you came by private jet, which I assume you did.” Marsha reached up and tore a piece of paper from a notepad on the refrigerator and scribbled a name and a phone number along with the address.
“Will you stay on here?” Myra asked.
“Probably. My life is here, and, as you can see, it’s a good life. I won’t kid you, I will sleep a lot easier knowing you’ve put Hank where he belongs.”
“Well, I guess that’s it for us. You have nothing to fear from us, just so you know … friend,” Annie said.
“I want to thank you for coming. It doesn’t matter how you got here or what you had to do to find me. I’m just glad that you did. If my diary will help you, then this has all been worth it. Good luck.”
“Same to you, Marsha … friend. Do you want us to get in touch if… when we’re successful?”
“I have phones, but they’re monitored. If you call this number,” Marsha said reaching up for another slip of paper from the refrigerator, “on the first Saturday of the month at two in the afternoon, I’ll be there to answer the phone. It’s one of the few public phones left in this town, and it’s in the drugstore.”
Myra pocketed the slip of paper, and the women didn’t bother to shake hands. They hugged one another because that was what women who trusted one another did.
Back in the rental car, Myra drove this time. “I thought that went rather well, don’t you, Annie? She seems to be a lovely person. Buttons! Who knew buttons could be a way of life.”
“What about that guarantee of catching Hank Jellicoe? That might come back to bite you, Myra.”
“On which cheek?” Myra laughed. “Call ahead to the pilot and tell him we have to detour to Salt Lake City. I don’t think that’s exactly on our way, but it should work out anyway. Buttons! Who knew, Annie?”
“Shut up about the buttons already, Myra. I’m going to be dreaming about red, yellow, and blue buttons for the rest of my life.”
“Children love bright colors and big buttons. Everyone knows that.”
“Myra, erase the word
button
from your vocabulary or I will strangle you.”
A devil perched itself on Myra’s shoulders. “Button, button, who’s got the button?” she squealed until Annie doubled over laughing.
“Call everyone, Annie, and tell them what we found out and be sure to tell them we’re making a short stop on the way. Charles is going to love this, as will Maggie. The CIA covered up for Hank Jellicoe. Now, that is going to blow the lid off Washington, D.C., for sure.”
I
t was a golden day in Washington, D.C. The sun was shining, the sky was a clear blue, with barely a cloud to be seen. But it was hot and humid, the horrible dog days of summer. It was hard, Bert thought, to try to figure out what kind of day it would be emotionally.
Bert was on his way to pick up Kathryn to travel out to the retirement village to see if he could track down the owner of the car that consumed his dreams all night long. He wished he knew why he was suddenly so obsessed with that stupid car. Kathryn had been tolerant of it all, but the guys … the guys didn’t really understand it, either.
“Shit!” Bert said succinctly as he made his way to the underground garage where he rented space for his car. Maybe it wasn’t the actual car itself but more about the time period when it was manufactured. The fifties.
Happy Days
and all that. Before his time, and he wasn’t into the fifties, so then what the hell was it? The color? He looked up at the blue sky and decided it was the exact color of the car he’d seen yesterday. He couldn’t remember ever, during the whole of his lifetime, seeing a car that particular shade of eye-popping blue.
The driver? He hadn’t gotten that good of a look. Did she remind him of his grandmother? His mother? Or was it the whole package and some long-submerged memory that the car triggered? That had to be it. Some kind of old memory.
Before he could change his mind, Bert sent off a short text message to Kathryn saying something had come up and he’d call her later in the day. He jammed his phone into his pocket, climbed into the car, and headed to Harry Wong’s
dojo,
where he knew Jack was working out. His gut churning every which way, Bert pulled up to a red light, stopped, then whipped out his cell and sent a text to Ted Robinson that was short and sweet. “Meet me and Jack at the dojo.”
When Bert arrived at Harry’s
dojo,
he found Jack wandering through the renovation site and talking to the crew about what they were doing.
“Harry’s finishing up a class. What brings you here? I thought you were spending the day with Kathryn.”
“Change of plans. Listen, Jack, all shit aside, I need to talk to you. Let’s go out back, where no one can hear us.”
“Does this have something to do with that ridiculous car?” Jack grumbled.
“Actually, it does. I’m trying to figure something out, and I can’t get a handle on it. I don’t want that goddamn car. I don’t know what the hell got into me. It was like I was possessed or something. I need you to help me figure it out.”
Jack threw his hands in the air. “Well, let’s figure it out quick since it’s hot as hell out here. Not that the
dojo
is any cooler, but this sun is brutal. You saw the car tooling down the road. It was going around thirty miles an hour. We talked about that, saying old people drive slow. We all commented on the color, the fins on the Caddy, and wondered if it was in mint condition. We talked about car collectors and what a car like that would be worth.”
“Right! Right! There’s something else. I’m missing it. Something maybe that my subconscious registered, and it’s right there tickling me. Help me out here, Jack; this is driving me insane. You have to know it’s making me nuts to give up spending the day with Kathryn.”
“Was it the driver? The old lady? Do you think it had anything to do with where we were going and what we knew we were going to find when we got there?”
Bert literally did a twirl around as he pounded Jack on the back. “Damn, Jack, you are good! That’s it! Jesus, how could I have been so damn stupid to miss that? You are amazing, I will give you that.”
Jack preened, wondering what the hell he had said to make Bert so euphoric.
“We were going. The blue car was coming from the direction we were going to. You know that old saying, when you want to hide something, do it right under someone’s nose, right out there in the open. Same principle as keep your friends close, your enemies closer.”
“What?”
“Yeah, what?” Harry said as he waved to the last of his departing students.
Jack explained.
“You’re still harping on that car, Bert. Give it up already. It would cost you a fortune to store it somewhere. Where are you going to get parts when it breaks down? My advice is to get over it.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t the director of the FBI for nothing. I’m telling you there is something logged into my subconscious about that car, and I can’t get it out of my mind. Jack just enlightened me, Harry. We were heading to Professor Jordan’s house. When we got there, it looked to all of us like old Jellicoe had just left. You saw that four-car garage. The fourth bay was empty. You following me here?”
Ted and Espinosa suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “Thanks for standing me up last night,” Ted growled at Bert.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t actually stand you up. Kathryn and I did go to the pub, but when we got there we saw you with that sweet, young blond thing, and since we didn’t want to interrupt, we left.”
“She’s not that young. She’s thirty-three, and she works for the
Sentinel.
Her name is Amy Blandenburg, and she is enamored of me. She told me I am her inspiration. A guy needs to hear stuff like that once in a while. We hit it off big-time. And she has a cat, so that makes us both cat lovers. We have a date this weekend.”
“Does Maggie know?” the guys chorused as one, shock written all over their faces at this brazen news.
Ted huffed and puffed. “In case you forgot, Maggie returned my ring. She does not want to be engaged to me, and she does not want to marry me. That means I am a free agent, just the way she is a free agent. So, get off my case. Aren’t you supposed to be on my side? What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Maggie scares me sometimes,” Jack said. “I think you should be scared. Scorned women are vicious.”
Harry spoke. “I will protect you, Ted.”
Ted’s legs turned to jelly. He plopped down on the picnic bench, his eyes glassy. “Thanks, Harry.”
“Can we please get back to my problem here?” Bert admonished. “The fourth bay in the garage was empty.”
“And this means … what?” Jack said.
“It means … it could mean … I think it means there was maybe a robin’s-egg blue Cadillac sitting in that fourth bay. It was going in the opposite direction. Like maybe Jellicoe was the driver, and he’d just left Professor Jordan’s house. Try that on for size.”
“Jellicoe dressed up as an old lady. Is that what you’re saying?” Jack said.
“Why not? He assumed the professor’s identity. What’s to say he can’t pretend to be a woman. Something triggered my reaction. Espinosa, you took pictures from the car, right?”
“I did, but in passing. Hell, I didn’t even see the driver. I just clicked when you yelled for us to look at the car. Hold on, let me see what I g
ot
.”
“When something is nothing like what it seems, you need to look into it,” Ted said.
“Very astute, Mr. Robinson. I totally agree. I think we should find a vehicle that Mr. Jellicoe won’t recognize and drive out to that retirement village and ask some questions.”
Bert shared his and Kathryn’s experience with the dog walkers from the night before. “We even have a street the couple thought might be where the woman lives. Butternut something or other. They said to talk to the mailman.”
“Okay, here is the picture. All you can tell about the driver from this angle is the gray hair. Sorry, guys,” Espinosa said.
“Let’s head out to Manassas,” Bert said. “We need a nondescript car that will not draw any attention to us as we cruise through the village. You know, a sedan of some kind. Old people like Chryslers for some reason. I read that somewhere,” Bert said as an afterthought.
“What about the girls? Should we tell them what we’re doing?”
The boys stopped, looked at one another, then laughed out loud. The sound was devilish, which meant they were in high spirits.
Forty minutes later, Jack was driving a Chrysler Sebring, and they were tooling down the highway.
“And our plan is …?” Harry said from the backseat. His tone clearly said there had better be a plan in motion.
“We drive up and down the streets until we find the mailman. We stop the car. We ask him questions. Then we drive off. We stop. We confer.”
“And then we call out to Pinewood with our findings?” Bert said. “Shit! Kathryn is
not
going to like this when she finds out I blew off our day together to come out here with you guys.”
“I will protect you, Bert,” Harry said in a singsong voice from the backseat.
“What’s with all that shit about protecting everyone, Harry? Are you up to something you haven’t told us about?” Jack all but bellowed. Harry ignored the question.
“The couple Kathryn and I met last night said there are seventy-five homes where we’re going. They said it is Phase One. They’re going to start Phase Two after the first of the year.”
“That was information we don’t need, Bert,” Harry said.
“Information is powerful. The more you have, the more successful you will be at dealing with the problem,” Bert huffed.
“It’s stupid,” Harry said.
“My mother had an expression she was rather fond of, which was, stupid is as stupid does,” Jack said. “Okay, according to the GPS, we are a tenth of a mile from the entrance to the village.”
“Do you think four guys asking questions of a mailman about an old lady with a robin’s-egg blue Cadillac isn’t going to come under suspicion?” Espinosa asked. “To me, that’s an immediate red flag. Seniors are vulnerable to scam artists who prey on them.”
“He has a point,” Bert said. “I never thought of that.”
“That’s because you’re stupid,” Harry said. “Someone should have thought of it. No, not me, I’m your protection. Now, come up with something or I’m outta here.”