“It’s Martha Whitaker,” she said.
“You okay? I’ve been expecting to hear from you.”
“Everything’s fine. I take it you heard we left the hotel.”
“Hard to miss that one. The choirboy got yelled at for letting you walk. Personally, I would have arrested you and let you spend a couple of nights with the drunks and streetwalkers. Might change your mind about life in a hotel room. But it wasn’t my call. It is now, though. Metcalf’s no longer lead. I am. As if I didn’t have enough to do. What’s up?”
Martha went through her list: cell phones and computers for her and Trammell; copies of the documents. “And if it’s okay, I was wondering if Rebecca could continue taking care of Beatrice for me?”
“Not going home?”
“I’m not sure, but this way I won’t have to worry.”
“Can do, but Whitaker, I want to know where you land. The SPD is still the best protection you’ve got.”
“Did Metcalf tell you ‘the unfriendlies’ were getting information about what the police were doing almost as fast as it happened?”
“What do you mean?”
Martha related the story of Danny Kimble. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd they got to Hewitt’s houseboat, the newspaper, Ralph Hargrove, and my renters ahead of the police? Hewitt’s houseboat, maybe. But the paper? And Ralph? How did they know Trammell and I had met? Where did they get that information?”
“That’s a serious accusation. If it were true, why didn’t they try something at the hotel?”
“I’m not making accusations, Callison. I’m letting you know why I’m reluctant to tell you where I’m going. And I don’t know why they didn’t come to the hotel. Something doesn’t add up.”
“Don’t be foolish, Martha.”
After a moment, she said, “Do you have to tell Metcalf where we are?”
“I’m not negotiating with you on this. I’ll do what I think is right.”
After a long pause, Martha said, “I’ll think about it and let you know when you come by with our things.”
Martha circled the Mini Cooper. No sign of bullet holes. The paint job was flawless. The body shop had placed all her personal items in a bag before detailing the car, inside and out. The umbrella with the duck’s head handle stuck out of the bag. Near the bottom was a tube of lipstick she had been missing for weeks. Tucked between the pages of the owner’s manual was the envelope with Hewitt’s ripped postcard taped to it. She pulled out the umbrella and the envelope.
The car purred as she joined traffic heading across 85th. Tempted to punch it through a yellow light, she resisted and eased to a stop. Tires screeched behind her, and in the rearview mirror she saw the angry face of a man throwing up his hands. She stopped at the nearest Safeway, browsed the aisles, and occasionally dropped items in her basket. Near the deli she glanced at her watch and set the basket down. At the back door, she popped open her umbrella and crossed the street. The Number 48 bus was just arriving. Hopping on, she rode it back, getting off one stop beyond the house. Her umbrella again open, she hurried past the main house like someone wanting to get out of the rain. All seemed quiet around the Carriage House. She dashed in, grabbed a tote bag and a business suit, and tossed them in the Lexus. She drove around the corner and down the hill, parked the car, and caught the Number 48 back to the grocery store. Her basket still untouched, she purchased the items, took out cash from the ATM, and drove home in the Mini Cooper, parking it in the garage.
Dusk came early on the overcast winter afternoon. Martha set the light timers for four hours in the evening, beginning at six o’clock, and for two hours in the morning. Brushing her teeth and changing into clean clothes had to substitute for the bath that she longed to take. She jotted a couple of notes. With no computer and no phone, there was little to do except wait. She took a deep breath and willed herself to be patient. Callison’s copy of War and Peace felt heavy as an anchor, but she forced herself to open the book.
She must have dozed off because suddenly Beatrice lay curled in her lap. She didn’t realize how much she had missed the cat. Each stroke of her fur brought forth a purring that vibrated through her lap. It was like she had never gone. But, Martha also knew that for Beatrice, any warm body would do. Was that what Trammell was to her, just another warm body to cling to when she was feeling lonely and scared? Was that all she was to him?
Voices came up the stairs. She rose, still holding the cat, her whole body tensed until the voices became distinct enough to make out the conversation.
“I think Beatrice eats so much because she’s lonely.” It was a young girl’s voice. “Maybe I could stay with her.”
Martha recognized Callison’s voice. “Beatrice will be fine, honey. You’re not old enough to stay here by yourself. Besides, you have to go to school, so she’d be alone all day anyway.”
“Maybe Beatrice could stay in my room.”
“And you and I would be looking for a new place to sleep.” Suddenly his voice changed; it grew short and sharp. “Back downstairs. Get to the car. Remember what we talked about?”
“Yes, sir,” came the timid response.
Martha called out, “It’s okay, it’s me, Martha. I’m alone. Door’s open." When no response came, she added, "Room service for two.”
Callison entered, pistol drawn. He glanced around and holstered his weapon. He assured his daughter it was safe to join them. His arm on her shoulder, he made introductions. Rebecca was tiny standing next to her father. Brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. An elfin face and ruddy cheeks still showed some baby fat.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Rebecca said. She held out a soft hand. They shook. “I think Beatrice is lonely.”
“That’s why I’d like to have you keep looking after her,” Martha said. “I can see you’re doing an excellent job. Her fur is beautiful. You must be brushing her every day.”
Beaming, Rebecca nodded.
Callison was having another bad hair day, though he had shaved his neck and cheeks since she had seen him last. His Carhartt was damp from the rain. He eased a couple of briefcases off his shoulder, setting them on the floor. “Here’s the stuff you asked for. I put copies of the letters in your briefcase.”
“Thanks.” She handed him one of the notes. “Here’s where I’m staying, but please don’t spread it around. You understand why. Do I have you to thank for my car?”
“I just delivered it. Lieutenant Lane had it repaired.”
“Well, thank you both,” Martha said. She turned to the girl, “Rebecca, this note’s for you. Plus, I want to pay you for the work you’ve done so far.”
Rebecca’s interest in money overrode petting Beatrice. She counted it out, stopping a couple of times, as if she was remembering her numbers. “Wow, Dad.”
“That’s too much,” Callison said. “Rebecca, you have to give—”
“That’s what I pay my regular cat sitter,” Martha interrupted. “And she doesn’t do nearly as good a job.”
Callison and Martha sat opposite each other at the table. The detective peppered her with questions about her relationship with Hewitt, about this “Death Angels” theory Metcalf had scribbled in the files, about what wasn’t in the files. Who was Piter deVries, and why did he think a few musty old letters was worth killing her over? And who’s Danny Kimble? That had barely been a footnote in the files on the day Ralph Hargrove was murdered. Martha sat patiently through the questions, knowing it was how she would handle taking over a case.
“Do you think Hewitt might have faked his own disappearance?” Callison was jotting notes in a small spiral-bound notebook. He looked up, his dark eyes holding hers.
“Yeah, it’s possible,” Martha replied.
“If he was scared, is he the kind of guy who would run away and let you take the heat?”
The question brought her up short. Finally, she said, “Maybe. Hewitt never made any bones about being a coward. Said he learned it in the war. But he would never knowin
gly put me in danger.” She paused. “Why? Do you think he might have run?”
“The Harbor Patrol hasn’t found his body yet. I need to explore all possibilities. If he went underground, where would he have gone?”
Martha shook her head. “If I had any idea, I’d have already gone to find him.”
“No idea? None?”
“He joked sometimes about finding a cabin where television, the Internet and cell phones, and everything else that he detested couldn’t reach him.”
“Did he say where that might be? Mountains? Beach? Close? Far? US? Foreign? Anything?”
“Callison, it was a joke. He usually said it when he read how cell phones had reached some tribe in the jungles on the upper Amazon.”
“Many a truth was told in jest.”
No amount of prodding or cajoling or rewording of the question changed her answer. Finally, she snapped at him, “Callison, I don’t know, okay? If I did know or if I even had an inkling of where he might be, I’d tell you. Browbeating me won’t change the fact that I just don’t know. I think he’s probably drifting in Puget Sound. Christ, I thought you were a fucking homicide detective, not a missing persons cop.”
Immediately, she looked over at Rebecca who hadn’t looked up from stroking the cat. Beatrice lay stretched out with her belly in the air. Martha could hear her purrs rumble across the room.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Time to go, honey,” Callison said to his daughter. “Beatrice will be here tomorrow. Wait for me at the door. I have to talk with Ms. Whitaker for minute.”
Rebecca skipped to a stop in front of Martha. “Do you have another cat?”
“No, just Beatrice.”
“But why’s all the food’s gone but she’s not getting fat?”
“I don’t know, Rebecca, but that’s a problem for another day. And thank you again for taking such good care of her.”
“You’re welcome. And thank you for the money. My mom says I need new shoes. I know just which ones I want.”
Rebecca hummed the tune from Frozen as she disappeared down the stairs.
Callison’s dark eyes bore into Martha. His voice low and harsh, he said, “I am a fucking homicide cop. Most homicides are pretty straightforward—a gang fight, a drug deal gone bad, a husband who finds the neighbor fucking his wife. But this doesn’t pass the sniff test. Something’s not right. When I first got out of a patrol car, I worked Fraud. White-collar assholes think they’re smart. They pile layer upon layer of bullshit to hide their tracks. So I would dig down through all that bullshit until I could find them with their pricks in their hand. This feels more like that than a homicide.”
“Tell that to Ralph Hargrove.”
“Oh, don’t get fucking pedantic with me, Whitaker. You’re too smart for that. Of course it’s a homicide. That’s why I’m now in charge, not the choirboy. But why was Hargrove killed? And what’s all the helter-skelter about with secret agent tricks and mercenaries and fake B&Es? It feels like someone’s piling on the bullshit. It doesn’t make sense—yet.”
The evening had turned to night. Callison had no more questions. Martha had no more answers. They stared at each other for a minute, then Callison pushed himself away from the table.
Martha rubbed noses with Beatrice, and said, “So why are you eating all the food?” The cat was as forthcoming as Hewitt was with her secrets.
Soon, Martha made her way down the stairway. She entered the garage, adjusting the two briefcases, the straps slung in an X across her chest. She walked across the garage and slipped out the back door into the dark.
A trail opening appeared in the hillside bramble that was Beatrice’s favorite hunting ground. Martha gasped as a motion caught her eye. A black cat darted down the trail. Had Beatrice come out with her? She pictured her curled on the back of the sofa, taking Martha’s farewell with barely the twitch of a whisker.
She followed the path on its winding route down the hill, the ground slick with mud. Twice she stopped to listen, standing patiently in the rain, the hood of her rain jacket thrown back so she could hear better. The trail ended at the street near where she had left the Lexus. She waited in the shadows. When she finally emerged, she walked past the car once and doubled back only when she felt positive no one was watching it.
She rendezvoused with Trammell by pulling her boat up to the transom of MacAuliffe’s sailboat. She easily held the boats apart with a hand on the stern rail of the sailboat and rapped on the hull. “James, you there?” she called out, quickly adding the password from the hotel, “Room service for two.”
MacAuliffe popped his head out of the companionway.
“Everything okay here?” Martha asked.
“Just another perfect day in paradise,” MacAuliffe said, looking over her boat. “A stink potter? And I was growing so fond of you. Oh, well, no one’s perfect.”
Martha smiled. “Ask Trammell if he’d like to go for a boat ride.”
She motored around the breakwater, the only boat out on a dark, drizzly night. The dodger broke the wind and kept the rain off. From the tiny galley, Trammell handed up a slice of pizza, followed by a beer. She accepted both gladly. The boat rocked gently on an incoming tide. At Meadow Point she pointed it east into Richmond Bay, motoring slowly through the night. Halfway to shore she eased the boat into neutral, and they drifted with the current.
Trammell stood in the cabin with his head and shoulders out the companionway so he wouldn’t have to slouch. The galley light behind him had him in silhouette. “Mac’s doing the genealogy research for me,” he said. “If we can find the lineage of the Avard or Lee families, it might help us backtrack on the history of the letters. By tomorrow, I should have some more names to add to the list. That’ll free me up to go over to the U. I’ve got an appointment with one of my old archeology professors, Dr. Davidson.”
“Good. I’ve had a new thought. Maybe we don’t have to have the documents authenticated. Hewitt was ready to turn the letters over to you, which means he’d already done it. He wouldn’t have been willing to certify them as legitimate without Letters of Authenticity. The records have to be somewhere. I’m a signatory on his bank accounts. If he paid for the letters with his own money, I should be able to find out. Maybe you could ask the prof who I should be looking for, a company, an individual. We also should find out if they’ve added new testing procedures since we were in school. Spectral analysis, shooting it with laser beams, whatever.”
“Good idea,” Trammell said. “I thought I’d make some more copies. Ask Professor Davidson to study them for any historical inaccuracies. If he can’t, he probably knows someone who can.”
“We can’t forget about the safe. Hewitt included the key to the safe because it was important.”
“How are we going to find it if Metcalf and an entire squad of detectives can’t?”
“He must have given us the clues.” Martha smiled at him. “We’re just not seeing them yet. My beer is empty, kind sir.”
“At your service, ma’am. More pizza while I’m at it?”
“That would be most gracious of you. Thank you.”
When he gave her the beer, she touched his hands. He still wore the bandage on the palm of one. They were thin and bony, the veins prominent. Yet those hands could be so gentle, with the lightest of caresses. She released his hand and smiled again. “Thanks.”
He nodded, watching her for a moment. He flicked off the galley light and carried their pizza up to the cockpit, settling down under the dodger in the portside captain’s chair. With the diesel idling, the boat rode up and down on an incoming swell. Lights dotted the hillside of North Beach and Blue Ridge, the reflections glimmering off the water, reflections broken and distorted by the steady drizzle.
“It’s nice to breathe without being afraid of what’s behind me, what’s around the next corner, or hiding in the shadows,” Trammell said. “I don’t know how you manage.”
“It’s mostly an act,” she said. “I’ve spent a li
fetime training myself not to become paralyzed by fear. I was for a long time.”
“You’re always in control,” he said. She couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or a criticism. Maybe a little of both.
“This morning I wasn’t,” she said.
The current had carried them toward shore. She could see the dark line of the beach beginning where the reflections stopped. She engaged the transmission, pointed the boat north, and gave it a touch of throttle. In a couple of minutes, she put it back in neutral and turned around in the cockpit. Her eyes remained fixed on the hillside where affluent Seattleites raised their kids and walked their dogs, drank their lattes and denounced conservative politics as if it were a disease. Where they listened to classical music over candlelit dinners, while discussing Chihuly glass and the sorry state of the public school system. All with their backs to the picture windows overlooking a vista more beautiful and profound than any they would find on the four hundred channels at their fingertips.
Martha had pursued this community and joined it willingly, seeking to separate herself from a past in which a can of tuna, a package of noodles, and some cream of mushroom soup fed a family of eight. The first new dress she had ever owned had been for her first communion. What a waste that had been. She wondered at times if the moral compass set by Gran and a loving, hard-working father had gone askew. But then she reminded herself that she lived above a garage, that Mr. Göksu was her most valued client, that silk and diamonds held little value other than what the person wearing them brought with them.
She wondered what Trammell was seeing as he looked back at the hillside. A life he aspired to? A prison he’d escaped from? A life he would never have if the next assassin was successful? Or was he staring at the hill to avoid looking at her? He was strong and fit and scared to death. That made them alike. Just because fear could be controlled didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Out of the Cold Dark Sea Page 19