“Eat, Sara,” Matthew whispered.
“In a minute.”
She leaned back in her seat and watched the changing expressions on Robert’s face.
“You know, Mr. Farrell, I like the way this lady’s mind works. Anyone else would have come here today to defend herself and try to save her job. Not our Sara, she focused on the bigger issue – how to preserve my company and its reputation.”
“May I ask what happened in your conversation with Jonathon, sir?” she asked.
“It seems he was fed erroneous information in Washington. He called me in an attempt to save the company from disaster. The people he was listening to appeared to be on a witch hunt for you, Sara, and by extension, Starr Shine Communications. The rumor also attempted to bring Mr. Farrell down. We traced the source to the office of a board member of Global Communications in Southern California.”
Sara nodded at Robert’s statement. “That’s the company our San Francisco comptroller was feeding company secrets.”
“The very same,” Matthew added.
“I don’t know how any of that has to do with the death this morning, or the drug bust the night before.”
“Sara, it may not be related. It could have been used, though, to spread negative rumors. We’re asking congress for another large appropriation. Money our competitors would like shifted into their own company coffers.”
“So, where do we go from here?” She asked glancing from one face to the other.
“My suggestion is that you take the moral high road,” Matthew added.
“I’m in agreement with that. I plan to spend most of next week in DC smoothing ruffled feathers and schmoozing the appropriations committee. Sara, I want you to take an extra day here in Chicago, tour some museums and try to stay out of the news. Mr. Farrell, what are your plans once the conference is over?”
“I’ll stick around and play body guard through Saturday. Most of next week, I’ll be in Washington myself. If it’s all right with you, Robert, I’d like to hold onto the space you’ve provided in your Portland office, for a little while longer.”
“I have no problem with that. You two try to stay out of the limelight for the next three days. We wrap up at dinner tonight. Once the Chicago crew cleans up tomorrow morning, I expect you, Sara, to spend some time relaxing. You looked stressed out.”
“Will there be any problem with Jonathon on Monday morning, sir?”
“There shouldn’t be. I expect he may be a bit tamed down by then. Now I would like you to do one more thing for me.”
“Anything, Robert.”
“Help us eat this table full of food. I don’t want to explain to Elaina why it’s untouched.”
***
Matthew Farrell opened his hotel room door and picked up the morning paper at his feet. It had been a long night – not one of pleasure, but concern. Just when pieces began to fall into place, logic took a twisted turn to the left. He was the professional here and all he could think about was that she didn’t spend the night with him. After the last formal dinner of the conference they were all going to meet at Murphy’s Bar.
“Are you going?” she’d asked.
“I thought I might. It’ll be good for you to shake loose from the tension cord, too.”
“I’m going to pass,” she’d added. “I’ve been fighting a headache all day. Medication just seems to push it from one side of my head to the other. I think I just need uninterrupted sleep.”
It was a signal to back off, he’d thought. He decided to give her some space and that thought kept him up all night.
Back in his room with a cup of the lousy in-room coffee in his right hand, he sprawled in the desk chair and stretched his legs onto the end of the bed. He unfolded the morning paper and scanned the headline about the manhunt for the hit and run driver. An artist sketch filled most of the front page. The image was rough but familiar and raised the hair on the back of his neck. He shoved his coffee onto the desk and picked up the room phone.
“Sara, how’s the head?”
“Better, I’m sorry I crapped out on you last night.”
She wasn’t asking him to back off – another sleepless night for no reason. “Have you seen the paper yet this morning?”
“I just got out of the shower and haven’t opened the door yet. If it’s bad news I want to read it with my clothes on.”
“I’ll be right down. Don’t move.”
Minutes later, Matthew was tapping out his arrival on Sara’s door. She answered in a long white robe and a terrycloth turban. “Hi,” she said with a slow grin on her scrubbed face. If she only knew how well she looked first thing in the morning. She pulled the door open all the way and lifted a hand in welcome. He slapped the paper into her palm and walked through, acting all crisp and business-like when all he really wanted to do was unwrap the toweling and…
“What’s this?”
“The morning paper, open it.”
He leaned up against the wall trying to look nonchalant. She opened the paper, glanced at the sketch, five maybe ten seconds. “It’s the elderly gent with the lethal umbrella, isn’t it?”
“The sketch is rough, but I believe so.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled the towel from her hair, and began to read. He waited, scanning the room. She definitely slept alone, one pillow dented in an otherwise made bed. Damn, he should have skipped chumming up the Chicago staff and spent the night here.
“He’s connected in some way with your investigation, I can feel it. All we have to do is find out how he fits in. Maybe the other pieces will fall into place. Matt?”
“What?”
“How could anything out here in Chicago have anything to do with what...?”
He slowly shook his head with his right index finger on his lips.
She grabbed the notepad near the phone on the desk and began to write. ‘We need to find a place to talk!’
He leaned over to read her message and got sidetracked with the sweet scent of her shampoo. Whispering softly into her ear, he leaned her back onto the bed, “Have you ever been to the Art Institute?” He nibbled her ear lobe until she moaned.
Without remembering how they got there, he found himself imbedded, without protection. Bloody hell!
***
They finally made it to the Art Institute by noon. Sara kept running through the disaster that was her life lately; she was not paying much attention to the paintings on display. “Here we are standing in front of Ma and Pa Kettle, I can’t believe we’ve gone this far. My life is falling apart. I have a husband and a lover and I’m chasing suspicion from Maine to Chicago. I don’t know who I am anymore, Matthew.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and whispered, “You have an estranged husband, soon to be ex. This is a Grant Wood piece, very famous actually. I understand his sister and his dentist posed for it. I do not believe they were married and the name Kettle isn’t mentioned in the brochure.”
“Ma and Pa Kettle were down and out farmers with a dozen or so kids in an old movie series, Matthew. We’ve walked all over the museum and I don’t believe we’re being followed. Can we please find some place to sit and maybe get something to eat? We skipped breakfast and my stomach is starting to sound like an echo chamber. Then, maybe, we can make some sense of this bizarre series of incidents that keep following us like a snagged anchor.”
“The brochure says there’s a restaurant on the lower level. A pot of tea and a bite to eat will lift your spirits, love.”
After several wrong turns and dead ends, they finally stumbled onto the Garden Restaurant. They were led to a table with white linen and long stem glasses. “I don’t think they serve hot tea. It looks like its wine or water,” she whispered as she spread the napkin across her lap.
“A pity this.” He leaned forward. “Why don’t we split a bottle of Perrier?” He covered her hand and Sara looked into his gray eyes. “You need to relax, love. We’ll eat first; then we’ll talk.”
The w
aiter had come and gone with their order. They did serve tea, Earl Grey, which created a broad grin on Matthew’s face. You would think he’d won the lottery over the waiter’s announcement. His index finger was drawing lazy eights on top of hers. “What?”
“I just want you to trust me. Every time you start remembering all that’s happened, you take smaller and smaller breaths.”
“People are dying,” she said a little too loudly and the host at the entrance to the restaurant looked in their direction. Leaning forward, she whispered the rest. “Starting with my son there have been five maybe more. Who’s next, Matt? How do we stop it?”
“Sh, love. Panic won’t help us. I still believe what’s happening is connected to what Carl was working on. I just need a little more time. If we knew what Carl knew, we could close this thing. He doesn’t say anything about that when he’s with you?”
“No, he just says he watches.”
"The nightmares are back. I thought you only had those until you recognized him.”
“I did, too. Maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe he can’t tell me any other way. When we get back to the seacoast, I need to check some things out.”
“Tell me. I can do that for you.”
“It’s something I need to do myself.”
“Sara, not without me; it’s too dangerous. I have to go back to Washington tomorrow night and follow up on a couple of leads. I do not want you snooping into anything without me. When you go back to Maine, act as if you had a wonderful time in Chicago. Go about your business as you usually do.”
“There isn’t any usual. Ron is investigating. What if he stumbles onto something that puts him in danger? Am I supposed to just sit on my hands? I can’t do that.”
“Has he called you again?”
“Last night,” she whispered across the table. “He found a collector of...you know...memorabilia on the internet. Jordie is helping him.”
“Bloody hell, I warned Ron not to continue.”
“I don’t think he quite trusts you, Matthew.”
He paused in the process of dialing on his cell. “Do you?”
A half a heart beat too long, she replied, “Yes, I do.”
“We are going to have a serious conversation about your fleeting trust.”
“Who are you calling?”
“Your estranged husband,” he held up his hand to stave off further complaint. “Damn.” He pushed more buttons.
“What?”
“What’s his office number?”
“Why?”
“He’s not picking up at home or his cell.”
She gave him the number and a few seconds later he gave her a thumbs-up. “Ron, Sara tells me you’re still tracking on your own. I don’t think that’s the safe thing to do… I’m aware of that. Let the professionals do that. It’s what they’re paid for... Yes, she’s right here.”
He handed her the phone. Sara really didn’t want to play twenty questions with Ron again. “Yes, what is it now?”
“Hey, you called me,” he said. “What’s going on with the Brit? I thought your conference was over yesterday.”
“The conference completed yesterday, but the final staff meeting was this morning. I told you before; I won’t be back until Sunday. I’m trying to spend some down time touring museums.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Ron, that’s enough! Please stop investigating. Bad things are happening here, too. I feel like I have an albatross hanging around my neck; everything I touch is followed by an unexplained death.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you either.”
“How’s your ankle, Ron?”
“Doc put another walking cast on it when I complained about the pain; then told me not to put any weight on it. Even when the doctors speak in English they don’t make sense. When are you flying back?”
“Sunday morning. I’m going back to my place. I need to shop and clean and make sense of a mountain of mail.”
“So you’re not coming back here.”
“I explained that to you before I left. You’re mobile now. You don’t need me.”
He disconnected.
“Did he mention if he found anything?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“He hung up. Listen, Matt, I have a nagging feeling that the gentleman with the umbrella, the one in the sketch, is not who he appears to be.” He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head silently waiting for her to continue. “You’re not helping here. I give you all the information and you don’t give me anything back.”
“I was just trying to figure out how your brain works.”
“Ron tried for years, don’t bother. Women are wired differently. About this guy with the British accent, he doesn’t sound like you. Something is off with the way he sounds out words. It’s like he has to force it. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“First of all, Sara my speech pattern is a blend of British and American. And there isn’t one British accent. The aristocracy tends to speak with their noses in the air. If you’re a bloke from SoHo you speak with a gutter twang. People from Yorkshire have a different sound to their voices. It isn’t any different than speech patterns of someone say from Brooklyn as opposed to a Texan or the southern drawl from Georgia.”
“I don’t think this is the same thing. It’s a careful, forced accent. There’s a middle eastern hitch to it that he doesn’t quite cover up.”
“Sara, you’re grabbing at straws.”
“Just check it out. You have the resources, don’t you? Hotel security may have him on tape from the day he ran into you. Maybe you can run his picture. If he’s the same guy in the sketch, the Chicago police will be interested, too. Don’t you think?”
“We can’t afford to get snagged into another local investigation. If the guy is international, I want to know which team he’s playing on and why.”
“Do you think the kid was with the neo...group? I can’t even say the word. It makes me ill.”
“We don’t have anything we can prove, but my gut says yes.”
“Then, you think he knew who we were?”
He nodded his head. “I think he was trying to set us up for a fall.”
“But how would he know?”
“I don’t know, Sara. There are too many pieces missing. When we both get back to Maine we can go down to Odiorne together. See if your dream is at the same place.”
“I thought the police went over the scene carefully.”
“The locals thought it was a suicide. The state police agreed. I’ve been at the site several times and nothing else jumps up as a clue.”
“You told me you know where it is, the piece we’re all looking for. It’s there isn’t it?”
“I don’t know the exact location,” he said.
“When will you be back from DC?”
“I’m not sure, a few days, a week. Don’t go there again without me. I don’t think it’s safe. Whoever killed your son is running out of time. From the clues Ron discovered, they’re getting desperate.”
“That’s fine Matthew, but we still don’t know who they are. Groups yes, but not the actual people.”
“I know that.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “Every time I narrow the field the suspect ends up dead.”
CHAPTER 31
Hey, Cass, come on in.”
“Where are you, Sara?”
“I’m on the floor by the slider. I don’t know how I managed it but I got mud all over the floor here by the slider. How are you?”
“Probably better than you are, you made the network news, three days in a row. I see you’ve been cavorting with the hunk in the hotel pool after hours.”
“That was on television?”
“No, that was in the Globe and the National Enquirer. The network news had you and your British friend tied to a drug bust and a murder. I thought you went out there to rest.”
“It was a busy week. I didn’t know you read those rags.”
“I don’t buy that smut; it passes the time waiting in the checkout line at the store. How many two-headed Martians do you suppose we have on earth?”
“I have no idea, Cass, but the conference was the reason I was out there and busier than I expected. I was just supposed to help out and observe how it was put together, a week of rest, my boss told me. He dumped almost his whole week of speeches in my lap then flew off to Washington.”
“Something tells me that wasn’t all of it.”
“We finally connected on a personal level.” Sara didn’t have to tell her who.
“Is that an understatement?”
“He’s wonderful, but I’m married.”
“Speaking of Ron, have you heard from the gimp lately?”
“Too much I’m afraid. He’s still investigating on his own with some help from Jordie. We told him to stop. It’s too dangerous. Talk to Jordie; make him stop, too.”
“You can’t mean that what happened in Chicago is connected in any way?”
“We think it is. Just ask Jordie to stay out of it. I don’t want you to lose him, too. What’s in the big box you brought?”
“This is your mail, my dear.” Cass set the box on Sara’s kitchen table.
A moment later the front doorbell chimed. A plump, elderly lady in a red wool coat was standing on the other side with a cake in her hands. “I’m your neighbor, dear, Ruth Obermeyer. I know I’m a little late with this, but I’ve come to welcome you to the neighborhood.”
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