In Plain Sight (21 page)

Moss whipped out his checkbook so fast one could be excused for thinking that he was making a profitable investment in a sure-thing acquisition. He scribbled off a check and didn’t bat an eye. “Gunter,” Moss said, using the detective’s first name again to show how serious he was, “I want to remind you that you have failed me twice. First with my wife, then with the woman who started this whole mess. Keep in mind that I can ruin you if I want to. Because of your ineptness, I’ve had to write off that young woman. I want you to pay attention now. I want solid confirmation by the close of business today that my wife is definitely accompanying Director Sparrow to the First Lady’s gala at the Four Seasons on Saturday evening. Once I have that information, I will know better how I will proceed. Can you guarantee me this information by the close of business today?” Moss didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until Wolf nodded.

He watched as Gunter Wolf popped the rest of his breakfast sandwich into his mouth and dabbed his thin lips with one of the tiny paper napkins that were in a stainless-steel holder on every table.

The terms were agreed upon, and the meeting was now over.

Lincoln Moss left the diner without another word. He wondered if he had just paid for a pig in a poke.

Chapter 20

“Y
ou’re early this morning, Annie,” Myra observed, looking at the kitchen clock, which indicated that the time was ten after seven.

“Blame it on Fergus, Myra. For some ungodly reason he said that he told Charles he’d be here at seven. So you have to put up with me, or I could turn around and go back home. What’s for breakfast?”

“Toast or Pop-Tarts, take your pick.”

“I suppose I have to make it myself, eh?”

“That’s how it usually works. The butter is soft, and the jam is room temperature. Does that help?”

Annie rolled her eyes. “Is it going to be one of those days, Myra?”

Myra knew exactly what Annie meant by one of those days. It meant she was jittery, and nothing would go right until she figured out a way to make things work the way she wanted them to work.

“Okay, let’s hear it,” Annie demanded as she dropped four slices of thick bread into the toaster.

“Last night, after you all left, I went down below to talk to Jane Petrie. All she kept doing was yammering for a lawyer. I really wanted to give her a good swat. I gave her every opportunity, Annie, to show some remorse, but that young woman just laughed in my face. She’s all about money, vacations, and designer clothing. She earns a decent living, and she has a profession, but she’s greedy.”

Annie reached for the toast that popped up and lathered an inch-thick coating of butter and jam over all four slices. “So, what did you do?”

Myra clenched her teeth. “I made an executive decision all on my own. I called Abner and told him to erase her identity. I also told him to clean out that robust brokerage account of hers. As of this moment, she no longer exists. Then I called Avery Snowden and at two o’clock this morning, he and his team came to pick her up.”

Annie stared at her friend over the top of her coffee cup. “Where did they take her? Never mind, I do not want to know.”

“I told them to give her some cash and to take her somewhere where she could put her profession to use. We’ll probably never hear from her again, and that’s a good thing. Annie, she did not show one iota of remorse. Even when I described in graphic detail what Moss had done to Amalie. What she said was, ‘Tough for her. It’s a dog-eat-dog world we live in, and only the strong survive.’ Can you believe that?”

“Yes, I do believe it. Well that takes care of that loose end, and I can assure you no one will care that you made that executive decision on your own. Oooh, a text is coming in from Maggie.”

“What’s she saying?”

“That she called Lincoln Moss and left a message she knows he is not going to return.”

Myra reared back as she, too, received a text from Abner, alerting her to the fact that Lincoln Moss had just called a company called Universal Privacy. She showed the text to Annie and frowned. “I know that name from somewhere,” she said.

“It’s one of the dozen or so detective agencies that Moss used to try to find his wife. I recognize the name. That has to mean he’s up to something, or he’s really worried. Probably both,” Annie said, finishing the last of her toast. She carried her dishes to the sink, rinsed them, then set them in the dishwasher before pouring herself another cup of coffee.

“So, what does all this mean to us?” Myra asked fretfully. “The gala is just two days away.”

Annie drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Let’s look at the worst-case scenario, Myra. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Moss somehow, some way, got his hands on his wife. What do we think he would do? We never discussed that aspect. Lock her up and throw away the key, kill her, what?”

“Good Lord, Annie, I haven’t the slightest idea. What I do know is that we cannot let that happen. Not in a million years.”

Annie was a dog with her favorite bone. “But, Myra, what if it did happen?”

“Then I guess we call the police, the feds, anyone we can think of. What? Do you have an idea?”

“I don’t, that’s the problem. Always remember, what can go wrong will go wrong no matter how hard you try and no matter what you do. Things happen to thwart the best-laid plans. I’m nervous, I admit it.”

“It’s raining out,” Myra said inanely.

“So it is,” Annie said just as inanely.

“Where is everyone?” Myra asked fretfully.

“Probably still sleeping. Even our guests, I assume. We really should go get our nails done, Myra,” Annie said, holding out her hands to show the condition of her nails, which had not been rectified since the day Pearl Barnes interrupted their session at the Beautiful Nails Salon. “If we leave now, we can be the first customers when they open at eight o’clock.”

Myra looked at her fuzzy nails and winced. “Let’s do it.”

Maggie Spritzer met up with Ted, Espinosa, and Dennis for breakfast at a small café in Georgetown. She briefed them on her early-morning phone call to Lincoln Moss and the message she had left for him.

“He’s not going to do the interview so why are we even discussing the matter,” Ted said sourly.

“I think I boxed us into a corner. At the time it seemed like the thing to do.”

“I got a text from Abner on my way here,” Espinosa said. “He’s been monitoring Moss’s accounts and phone usage, and he said he contacted Universal Privacy. That’s a private detective agency Moss has used in the past to try to find his wife. Probably the same agency he sicced on Jane Petrie, too. Might I add, with no known results.”

“How does that help us?” Dennis asked.

“I don’t know, Dennis. I’m just talking to convince myself I’m still alive until our food arrives. I’m starved,” Ted said.

“I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what he’s up to. Now, if we’d been really smart, we would have put a tail on Moss,” Maggie said.

“What do you mean, Maggie?” Dennis asked.

“What I think it means is he’s hired the company to do surveillance on the gala Saturday night to see if Amalie really shows up. If she does, the guy or gal, whoever he hired, will be tailing them to see where they take Amalie, then he’ll swoop in and try to snatch her. That’s just my personal opinion.”

Dennis snorted to show what he thought of Maggie’s personal opinion. “No one in their right mind would do something so stupid right under the feds’ noses.”

“Whoever said or even alluded to the fact that Lincoln Moss was in his right mind and that he wasn’t stupid?” Espinosa snarled. “That guy thinks he’s a law unto himself. Right now, his feet are to the fire.” Dennis leaned back in the booth and thought about what Espinosa had said. He shrugged. Everyone, he thought, was entitled to his or her own opinion.

“Listen, guys, I heard something earlier. I got it on the down low, so who knows if there is any merit to it. I have a friend in the White House press corps and we . . . you know . . . trade info from time to time. He woke me up this morning to tell me there was some kind of hush-hush meeting in the President’s chief of staff’s office at the crack of dawn, and Lincoln Moss was
not
there. The scuttlebutt is that the President showed up looking like a movie-star President dressed in a Savile Row suit. Now, my buddy doesn’t know Savile Row from a Target suit that comes with three pairs of pants, but a colleague, Katie O’Brien, told him the prez was wearing a Savile Row suit, a Hermès tie, and John Lobb shoes.

“And he tore into everyone who was there and said today was the beginning of something new. Or words to that effect. And, this is the best part, the prez kicked Moss’s chair, the one he always sits in, clear across the room.”

“And your buddy knows this . . . how?” Maggie demanded.

“He butters up the kitchen stewards and slips some green under the table. You gotta do what you gotta do in cases like this. We all do it, so don’t look so shocked, Dennis,” Ted said.

“What good is it if you can’t print it?” Dennis grumbled.

“You see, kid, here’s the thing. When gossip like this hits the fan, it grows legs, then someone in the know has to come front and center and either deny it or explain it, then the reporter gets to expand on the gossip angle without getting the steward in trouble. You getting it now?”

“Yeah, yeah. So that means Moss is out as in
out?
” Dennis asked. “More to the point, does Moss
know
he’s out?”

“He has to know. This town has been buzzing for weeks now about a mass resignation. I don’t think Knight had any other choice but to do what he did if he did indeed do it. Remember, this is all Capitol Hill gossip,” Maggie said.

“You know what they say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Espinosa said, just as platters of omelets and bacon were set down on the table.

For the most part, the little group ate in silence, with only a few comments about yet another day of rain and what it was going to do to Nikki’s and Jack’s efforts to install a swimming pool. “They’re living in a world of mud, that thick gray kind that grabs you like a million leeches that won’t let go once you step into it. Nikki said she’s glad Nellie isn’t around to see what’s going on.

“So where does this all leave us?” Ted asked.

“Right where we were when we came in here for breakfast. The way I see it is that there is nothing for any of us to do until Saturday evening. Other than the fittings we have to have for our party duds tomorrow.”

“We go back to the paper?” Dennis asked, hoping the answer was no, and that they were going out to Pinewood, where he could see Rosalee. His hopes were dashed when Maggie said yeah, they did have jobs and had things to do. He took it all with good grace and paid the breakfast bill since it was his turn.

 

 

Myra and Annie left the Beautiful Nails Salon, admiring their new glossy manicures. “Lunch?” Myra asked.

“Only if it’s a hot dog,” Annie said.

“Okay by me,” Myra said, opening her umbrella. They walked along, huddling close under the umbrella until they got to a newly opened hot-dog joint, where Annie started smacking her lips in anticipation. “The works on two dogs,” she told the pert waitress, “and two double Orange Juliuses.”

“We are living dangerously, aren’t we?” Myra giggled.

“Sometimes you just gotta do it, Myra. Otherwise, what’s the point in getting up in the morning?”

“Guess that’s as good as any excuse I could come up with,” Myra said, gulping at her Orange Julius.

Annie held up her Orange Julius, and said, “Here’s to Lincoln Moss’s downfall! At our hands!”

“Hear! Hear!” Myra said, taking another big gulp from her tall drink.

 

 

Lincoln Moss was sitting in front of his computer, the word
downfall
on his lips. How in the hell did this happen? How had he gone from being the number two man in Washington and the Knight administration to . . . this? How?

When he first got wind of the rumors about the mass resignations on the horizon, he’d actually laughed. Not for one nanosecond did he take them seriously. And here he was, two weeks later, at the threshold of oblivion. In his mind, it was all because of his wife and her sudden reappearance. If it was even true and not some trumped-up trick.

Moss bent down and opened his bottom drawer and pulled out his little black book. He thumbed through the pages, smirking at what he was reading, thanks to Universal Privacy and the Pinkerton Agency. Right now, all he had to do was start making phone calls to every name in the book and watch what happened. Or better yet, he could call one of those reporters, anonymously, and spiel off the contents and sit back to watch the fireworks. But did he really want to open that can of worms?

Moss leaned back and closed his eyes after he replaced the book in the bottom drawer. Hell, he even had the goods on his best friend, Gabriel Knight, President of these here United States. He smirked as he wondered, and not for the first time, what Gabe would say if he knew that Moss had kept a record of his short stint as a cat burglar, stealing priceless paintings and jewelry, then fencing them. He conveniently ignored his own role in the heists as being inconsequential. How else were they to get the money to dive into the stock market? Working a nine-to-five job simply wasn’t in the cards for either one of them. They both wanted success ASAP, not years down the road. And it had worked because of his own cleverness.

All water under the bridge as they say, he thought. It was over, and he knew it. The way he saw it, he could go quietly, fade away into the night, or he could go out with a bang and take everyone out with him.

Moss looked over at the door and the bag that had sat there for years. His GO bag as he called it. It contained cash, some files, memory sticks, and four different cell phones, which were activated but had never been used except to charge them from time to time. Plus three different sets of documents attesting to the fact that he was someone other than Lincoln Moss. Each packet contained a new name, a driver’s license, a passport, two credit cards, and a voter registration card, along with a library card and several other pieces of ID that would help him blend in and start a new life anywhere in the world.