Hour Game

by David Baldacci

  Michelle. “I hope you’re making progress on the case,” she said.

  “Every day,” King replied.

  She looked at him curiously but said nothing.

  “We wanted to come by and talk to you at some point,” said King.

  “Yes, Eddie mentioned that. Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Don’t let the newspapers get you down, Remmy,” said King.

  “Papers? If I want to know what’s happening with me, I don’t consult strangers, I just ask myself.”

  Priscilla Oxley suddenly swooped in, juggling a large plate crammed with food and a glass of wine. “Honey,” she said to Remmy, “thank you so much for everything. Why, I’ve always told Lulu you’re a saint. Right, baby, just the other day I was saying if the world had more Remmy Battles, what a world it would be.”

  “Mother, please,” began Lulu, but Priscilla rushed on.

  “And here you and Lulu have become friends, and you brought us to your beautiful home and said you’d take care of the children. Why, when we lost our poor Junior, I didn’t know what my daughter was going to do.” Her big chest heaved, and her gravelly voice broke in her throat. It was a magnificent job, King thought.

  “Mother, I have a job, a good one. It’s not like the children were going to starve.”

  However, Priscilla was too worked up to be denied. “And now that I’ll be staying on to help Lulu and everything, having that new house finished and your continued support, why, I know everything’s going to be just fine.” Twin tears dribbled down her flabby cheeks. “As one mother to another I can’t tell you what a relief that is.” She finished this off by swallowing the entire contents of her wineglass.

  To King the connoisseur it was an appalling moment. Yet after her emotional performance, he thought, the woman deserved her own TV show.

  “I’m just glad I could help, Priscilla,” said Remmy politely.

  Priscilla looked shyly at her. “You probably don’t remember, but I waited on you when you used to visit the Greenbrier in West Virginia.”

  “Oh, I remember you very well, Priscilla.”

  Priscilla froze. “Oh, you do? Well, thanks again.” And then Priscilla was gone as fast as she’d arrived.

  Eddie and Bailey next joined them.

  “It was a beautiful service, Remmy,” said Bailey.

  “Reverend Kelly does a good job,” she replied. “And he had a lot of good material. Bobby led quite an extraordinary life.”

  “I’m going to see one of Eddie’s reenactments Saturday,” said Bailey.

  “Which one are you doing?” asked Michelle.

  “The Battle of Cedar Creek near Middleton,” answered Eddie. “Phil Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah against Jubal Early’s Army of the Valley. It’s usually held in October, but they moved it up this year.” He looked down and then glanced at Michelle. He seemed to be about to say something but remained silent.

  Harry said, “Wasn’t old Jubal the only Confederate general who never formally surrendered?”

  “That’s right,” said Eddie. “He ended up practicing law over in Rocky Mount, Virginia.”

  “Well, at least he took up an honorable profession after the war,” said Harry.

  “I think Eddie and I are going to be spending a lot more time together,” said Bailey. King thought the man could not have been more obvious.

  “I’m looking forward to that,” said Eddie with what seemed genuine enthusiasm.

  You’re a good liar, Eddie, King thought.

  Remmy reached out and took her son’s hand. “How you doing?”

  “Just hoping for happier days, Mom.”

  “Maybe you and Dorothea should go away somewhere, just get away.”

  “Yeah, maybe we’ll do that,” answered Eddie with not a trace of interest.

  King noted that the Oxley children had come inside when they saw their mother. As Lulu joined them, King excused himself, went to the bar, got two glasses of wine and headed to the rear porch to see Savannah while she was still alone.

  The young woman was sitting on the couch staring into the fire that blazed in the fireplace at one end of the room.

  “Long day for you, Savannah,” he said quietly.

  She started and looked up, smiling when she saw who it was. He handed her one of the glasses and sat next to her. “A glass of Château Palmer can work miracles for the spirits. It’s a fine French wine.”

  “ ‘Palmer’ doesn’t sound French,” she said, staring at her glass as though she could see images in it.

  “He was an English general under Wellington who came to Bordeaux with his army around 1814 and stayed. He purchased a property that eventually became known as Château Palmer, and started producing wine, which goes to show that the grape, like the pen, is mightier than the sword.”

  “I don’t know much about wine,” she said. “I’m more a Jack and Coke girl.”

  “One can never go wrong with Jack and Coke, but if you’re interested in wine, I’d be glad to help you, although you could start learning right in this house. Your parents have a ten-thousand-bottle cellar. I nearly fainted with envy when I first saw it.” He took a sip of wine and watched her watching the fire. “I saw you with the Oxley children.”

  “They’re nice kids,” she said quietly as she played with her string of pearls. “The little one, Mary Margaret, was bawling when she got here, poor thing. She really misses her daddy. I brought them out here. Mom and Ms. Oxley wanted to talk.”

  “They seemed to have worked everything out.”

  “I really thought Junior had done it.” Her eyes suddenly glimmered with a layer of tears.

  “So did I, at first.”

  “I know I wasn’t much help the other day.”

  “You were still in shock. Whenever you’re ready to talk, I’m here.”

  She nodded absently, and her nervous fingers played over her pearls. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. She simply stared into the fire.

  He finally rose. “If you need anything, anything at all, just give me a call.”

  She glanced up and clutched at his hand. “How come you’re not married?”

  At first he thought she was flirting with him but then realized she was serious.

  He said, “I was, a long time ago, and it just didn’t work out.”

  “I think some people are supposed to be alone.”

  “You don’t think you’re one of those people, do you?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I think my father was.”

  Puzzled, King sat back down. “What makes you say that?”

  Before she could answer, they heard Remmy say, “I’m sure there are people who’d like to see you, Savannah.”

  They both looked over to see her standing in the doorway scrutinizing them.

  Savannah rose obediently. “I’ll see you, Sean.”

  He watched mother and daughter walk off before rejoining Michelle in the family room. Harry had caught Remmy and Savannah as they were coming back in and was speaking with them in a far corner.

  Get as much as you can, Harry, thought King, because I pretty much struck out.

  “Anything interesting?” asked Michelle.

  “Savannah is one troubled woman. She knows something but can’t get it out.”

  “Use your charm, Sean. She has the hots for you.”

  “Oh, you think so?”

  “Please. Men are so blind when it comes to that.”

  “So anything happen on your end?”

  “I’ve been invited to Eddie’s next reenactment. I’m going with Chip.”

  King crossed his arms and stared at her. “Really?”

  She stared back at him defensively. “Yeah, really. Why?”

  “Women are so blind when it comes to that.”

  “Come on, he’s married, Sean!”

  “Yes, he is.”

  CHAPTER

  52

  MICHELLE DROVE WITH

  Chip Bailey to the outskirts of M
iddleton, Virginia. It was a crisp morning with nothing but blue skies overhead and a nice breeze to relieve the growing heat.

  “Good day to fight,” said Bailey.

  Is there really ever a good day to slaughter each other? thought Michelle.

  The big man sipped on his coffee and munched on an egg sandwich from McDonald’s. Michelle chewed on an energy bar and cradled her bottle of orange juice. She wore jeans, hiking boots and her Secret Service windbreaker. Bailey had donned khakis, a sweater and wraparound shades.

  “You ever been to one of these?” asked Bailey.

  “No.”

  “They’re actually pretty cool. They have all these events, infantry drilling, hospital demonstrations, bands, dances, even fancy balls, afternoon teas, candlelight tours. The cavalry charges are really something. These guys are serious about this stuff. You’ll see hundreds of them out there today, although during the actual war the armies had tens of thousands of soldiers. But they put on a good show anyway.”

  “How did Eddie get into that? Doesn’t seem like something a sensitive artist would be drawn to.”

  “I think it was his father who was interested in it at first. He was very much into history, even helped finance some of the battle reenactments.”

  “Was Eddie very close to his father?”

  “I think he wanted to be. That’s one reason he got into reenactments—at least that’s my educated guess. But Bobby Battle was an inscrutable fellow. And he wasn’t around all that much. I think he preferred sailing around the world in a hot-air balloon or building a factory in Asia to raising his kids.”

  “I understand he offered you a job after you rescued Eddie.”

  Bailey looked surprised that she knew this.

  “He did but I wasn’t interested.”

  “Mind my asking why not?”

  “No big secret. I just liked being an FBI agent. I hadn’t been with the agency all that long, and I wanted to make a career out of it.”

  “How’d you bust the case?”

  “Got a tip that I ran to its source. Eddie was in college back then, and I did some digging around. Found out this guy living at the same apartment complex was a convicted felon.”

  “Why didn’t Eddie live at home? Didn’t he go to UVA?”

  “No, he went to Virginia Tech over in Blacksburg, a few hours from here. Anyway, turns out this guy had found out who Eddie was, or more to the point who Eddie’s parents were. Eddie came home late one night, and next thing he knew he was tied up in a shack in the middle of nowhere.”

  “How’d you learn about the shack?”

  “The guy had used it before for hunting. I’m not saying he was the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was dangerous. The Battles paid the money; but we were watching when the pickup was made.”

  “Wait a minute; I thought the Battles didn’t pay the ransom.”

  “No, they did but they got it back—well, at least most of it.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “With kidnappings the dicey piece for the criminal is getting the payoff. Today you can do it with wire transfers and computer gimmicks and such, but it’s still tricky. Twenty years ago it was far harder. But this guy thought he had it figured out. He had the drop arranged so it was at a shopping mall on a Saturday, people everywhere. He must have scoped out the place, because he knew where this back exit was. As soon as he took the bag, he disappeared into a sea of people.”

  “How’d you pick him up, then?”

  We had two transmitters hidden on the bag. But we figured he’d think of that and toss the bag, so we had transmitters in some of the cash wrappers binding the money. We didn’t think he’d throw out the money. He did, in fact, toss out the bag. But we were still able to follow him right to the shack.”

  “Wasn’t that a risk, not arresting him on the spot?”

  “The bigger risk was never finding Eddie. This guy’s past history showed him to be a loner. If Eddie was alive, and that was a big if, this guy was probably going back to either set him free or more likely kill him.”

  “And that’s when the shoot-out happened?”

  “He must have spotted us and opened fire, and we returned it. We had a sniper with us, and the kidnapper took one in the head.”

  “You said you recovered most of the money?”

  Bailey laughed. “After he spotted us and opened fire, this idiot burned about five hundred thou of the five million total in the potbellied stove that was in the shack. I guess he was thinking we weren’t going to get him and the money.”

  “Lucky you didn’t hit Eddie,” said Michelle.

  He looked at her sternly. “It’s easy to play Monday-morning quarterback.”

  “I’m not trying to second-guess what you did. I’ve been in situations like that too. It’s never easy. The important thing is, Eddie lived.”

  “That’s the way I’ve always seen it.” Bailey pointed up ahead. “And there he is in the flesh.”

  They’d turned off the main highway and into a parking area filled with trucks, horse trailers, campers and RVs. Along one side numerous tents were set up. Michelle waved at Eddie, who was busy getting his gear together. They got out of the car and joined him.

  “So what are you this time?” asked Bailey.

  Eddie grinned. “I’m a man of many talents, so I’ve got multiple roles. First, I’m a major in the 52nd Virginia in an all-Virginia brigade under General John Pegram’s Division. After that I saddle up as part of the 36th Virginia Cavalry Battalion, Johnson’s Brigade under General Lomax’s Division. I belong to lots of different units actually; they’re always looking for bodies. Hell, I’ve mustered up in Confederate armies in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and even Texas. Done artillery, cavalry, infantry, even went up in an observation balloon once. Now, don’t tell my mother, but I’ve suited up in Union blue on occasion too. ”

  “Sounds pretty involved,” said Michelle.

  “Oh, it’s quite a show. There are primers for how to put one of these events together, complete with sample budgets, marketing plans, logistics, finding sponsors, that sort of thing.”

  Michelle pointed to the line of tents. “What are those?”

  “They call them sutlers,” replied Eddie. “During the actual Civil War merchants would follow the armies and sell them things. Sutlers nowadays sell period-style items and goods to reenactors and the public. As for the reenactors there are definitely different levels. They have the ones called thread-counters who make sure their uniforms are authentic down to fabric having the same thread count as during the real war, hence the nickname.” Eddie deadpanned, “They’re also referred to as the stitch Nazis.” Bailey and Michelle laughed. “Then you have the other side of the spectrum, the Farbys; those are the ones who dare to have polyester in their uniforms or use plastic dinnerware during a reenactment, when those things weren’t even invented at the time of the real war. I call them Julie instead of Johnny Rebs.”

  “So which are you, Nazi or Julie?” asked Michelle.

  He grinned. “I’m a tweener. Most of my stuff is authentic, but I occasionally bend to the comforts of life at times as well.” He lowered his voice, “Don’t tell anyone, but my uniform has some rayon in it and, God forbid, Lycra. And if you press me on the point, I won’t deny that there might be some plastic thingies on my person.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “I’m actually going to buy some stuff from the sutlers today. Everybody’s gearing up for the reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July. Then we got the Spotsylvania, Virginia, campaign coming up; the Road to Atlanta and the Battle of Franklin are in the fall. But this battle today is a pretty big deal. The Union outnumbered the rebels by about a third on both the infantry and cavalry side and had over twice the number of artillery pieces, but the Yanks suffered double the number of killed and wounded.”

  As Michelle helped him with his gun, canteen and bedroll, she looked around at all the activity. “This is like a bi
g movie production.”

  “Yeah, but without the big payday.”

  “Little boys who never grow up,” replied Bailey, shaking his head and grinning. “The toys just get bigger and more elaborate.”

  “Is Dorothea here?” Michelle asked.

  Eddie shrugged. “My good wife would rather have all her hair pulled