“Sure, no problem. Essie and I can hold down the fort, I think. Can’t we Essie?”
Essie gave them one of her hundred-watt grins. “Where are you going in case we need to get in touch with you?”
“See, that’s the problem with you two.”
“Problem? What’s a problem? I only asked for a phone number in case there is an emergency. It’s SOP, right?”
“Not this time. I asked if you thought you could manage for a few weeks and you said sure. Then you implied you couldn’t, after all.”
“How? All I did—”
“All you did was ask me for a phone number where I could be reached. Why? What extraordinary set of circumstances do you imagine would require a need to talk to me? You are a good cop, Frank. If I dropped dead, you’d be running this show. You do not need to be in contact with me.”
Frank scratched his head. “Sorry. I see what you mean, but I’m thinking maybe you need your morning coffee, Ike. Essie, get the boss some of today’s special before it starts to turn into something more useful for paving the street than drinking.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I am off to the Crossroads Diner in a minute, then I pick up the aforementioned Dr. Harris who is setting her mother up as gatekeeper at the university, and we will be off. I wanted to get here early enough to ward off any calls about to be dumped on me which will stop or slow down the process.”
“If I tell the mayor that I have no idea where you are and the Martians land and take over the Kroger supermarket, he’ll be really upset.”
“And well he should. Okay, Ms. Harris and I will be traveling to a remote location. There are no phones there—none at all. Don’t give me that look, it’s true, there are no phones, no e-mail, really poor TV reception if you could actually turn the set on but since there’s also no electricity you can’t, and again, no phones, no cell phones, no land line, nothing.”
“But—”
“But. Okay, in the event that the Martians do in fact attack us or Sarah Palin shows up on her motorcycle, you can send a message to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office in Ellsworth, Maine. Someone there will get a message to me in a day or two, a couple of hours if it’s a real emergency.”
“A day or…Ike, I’m serious.”
“And so am I. I do not wish anyone to be able to find either me or Ruth. We want absolute privacy. You can run this office, and I expect you to do it without any input from me.”
“But—”
“And that means no phone calls or contacts, especially from Charlie Garland, Essie. If he calls, you have my permission to give voice to every expletive you’ve ever deleted. He is like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. He calls and you know a storm is on the way. He brings trouble, complications at least, and I am not willing to put myself in his orbit anymore. He was a sweetheart during Ruth’s hospitalization and I owe him for that, but for several weeks starting today, I do not know him. You are to tell him nothing.”
“No to Charlie Garland. Got it. Suppose he says it’s an emergency?”
“With Charlie it’s always an emergency. He lives in a perpetual state of emergency. It is his life, but it is not mine, and he never seems to remember I do not draw a paycheck from his outfit anymore. In fact, I do not want to draw a paycheck from it, and I have absolutely no intention of allowing myself to be sucked into one of his dark plots, not now, not ever again. Tell him that.”
“No dark plots, right. But you are going to tell us where you’re going.”
“Nope. Nothing beyond what I said, Hancock County Sheriff’s Department, Ellsworth, Maine. That’s all you get.”
The phone rang as if on cue and Essie picked up. “Picketsville Sheriff’s Office, how can I help?” She listened for a moment, then covered the phone with her hand and mouthed, “Charlie Garland.”
“Tell him I haven’t come in today, you don’t know where I am, and he probably should try calling me on my cell phone.”
Essie nodded and turned back to the phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Garland, but Ike ain’t here today. Him and Ms. Harris is taking some time off. Maybe you should try his cell…What?…No, don’t know where he’s gone to. He said something about a camping trip and he’d let us know later when he got to wherever that was at. Yes, sir, I sure will let you know as soon as I do…An emergency, right, I hear you. Matter of life and death? Really? Wow. Well, if he calls in, I’ll sure enough tell him.”
“Thank you, Essie. That was perfect. Camping trip? Terrific, keep it up for two weeks and I’ll see about getting you a raise.”
“How about Frank here, won’t he deserve one too?”
“That will depend on how he handles the Martians down at the supermarket.”
“Not Ms. Palin?”
“That lady can take care of herself.”
Chapter Five
Charlie had to wait for the director to return his call. He spent the interval reviewing the sheets of paper in front of him. He shook his head in frustration. First he had been unable to track down Ike Schwartz. There were two other names as well that needed checking—Neil Bernstein and Al Jackson. They were involved in at least two of Archie’s stickier operations gone south. Jackson’s controller said he’d tell him what happened but did not seem concerned. That was the frustrating part. Unless Charlie could talk to the three of them privately, they could not know that they might be at risk. That was assuming whoever knocked off Archie Whitlock turned out to be someone connected to his old ops or holding a contract on Archie as a result. It was an untested, even sweeping assumption, but Charlie would rather let them weigh the risks than take a chance. As far as he was concerned, they needed to know and stay alert until the whole Archie business was resolved.
Then there was the phone log. Someone inside the building was tracking his calls. Was he being monitored by the director or by someone else in the Company who might be the “hole in the fence?” In any case, this conversation with the director would be the last he’d make using a traceable phone.
The phone rang.
“Director, could you please push the green button on the phone now?”
“What? You want to scramble this conversation? Garland, we are in-house and you are talking to me, not some field agent in Syria.”
“Yes, sir, I know that. Could you please push the button anyway?”
“It’s come to that?”
“’Fraid so.”
Charlie listened for the soft squawk that told him their conversation would be digitally encoded, pushed the identical button on his phone and took a breath.
“Why?” the director said.
“Someone in the building is tracking my calls, Director. Unless you can offer a reason why I shouldn’t be, I am worried about that. I called Ike Schwartz and shortly after that, so did someone else. That might have been you or someone running a parallel program. I don’t know, but until I am sure what is going on or who is poking around in my stuff, I am not willing to take any chances.”
“And you are afraid of what, Garland?”
“I don’t know who killed Archie Whitlock, or why he was killed, and as you made clear, that is not my job. In fact right now I really hope it was an accident, but we both know it wasn’t and it probably wasn’t a random event or unrelated to who he used to be and what he used to do, either.”
“You think it goes back to something he was involved in before?”
“As I said, I don’t know. But if it is connected, then it’s within the realm of possibility that Ike, Neil Bernstein, and Al Jackson may be in that same someone’s crosshairs as well. I am not willing to wait until one of them turns up dead to find out.”
“They are possible targets because…?”
“They share some history with Archie that was not so good for our side.”
“I see. So have you contacted them?”
“That’s my current problem. I can’t locate Ike. His people tell me he’s on vacation somewhere and they do not know where. They are waiting for him to call in with h
is location.”
“You believe them?”
“I believe they believe him but, no, I don’t. I called Ruth Harris…you remember her…as well, and also spoke to her mother. She didn’t know anything either. But…”
“But what?”
“Well, she and I had a misunderstanding back in the fall and I don’t think she’d volunteer anything to me anyway.”
“A misunderstanding?”
“It’s a long story and one for another day. But in any case I asked her to tell Ruth to tell Ike that Archie was dead and he should call in. I made her write it down. That’s all I can do.”
“How about the other two?”
“Coincidently, Bernstein is in absentia as well. I talked to Halmi, his control, who gave me the number of his girlfriend, Krissie somebody…wait, here it is, Kristine Johansen. I did manage to reach her. She said she wasn’t sure, but she believed he was in Colorado someplace climbing rocks. Why do people take those kinds of risks, anyway?”
“Charlie, Bernstein was a field agent. Rock climbing would be pretty tame stuff compared, say, to running with Archie Whitlock.”
“Right, sorry. This Krissie person didn’t know where he’d gone for sure but gave me the name of a town she thought she remembered being nearby. I left the same message with her and put in a call to local cops to look for him. I told them I was his boss, and that ‘there was a problem at the plant,’ and that if they ran across him to please have him call in.”
“And Jackson?”
“Better luck there. He’s up the road in Baltimore with relatives. His guy will have him come in as soon as he connects. He should be pretty safe; he’s using an untraceable credit card and his relatives have different last names.”
“Okay, I can’t think of anything more you can do. When they call, bring them all in until we’re sure we have this thing sorted. Are we done here?”
“Yes, sir.”
The director’s phone went dead. Charlie hung up. He’d done what he could. The three either were in danger or they weren’t. The immediate problem now was to fix the fence and that might coincidently lead him to a killer—or not.
***
Eden Saint Clare sat perfectly still for nearly a half hour, thinking about Charlie Garland’s call. Her daughter was all she had left of a life spent as the wife of an academic who now teetered on the brink of oblivion—his mind, having succumbed to Alzheimer’s, had anticipated the trip by several years. Ruth Harris reminded her of her soon-to-be late husband in many ways. She was stubborn, opinionated, tough, and brave. And stubborn often ruled the day. She said under no circumstances was Eden to tell Garland or anyone else that Ike and she were off to Aunt Margaret VanDeVeer’s cottage on Scone Island. So she had dummied up when Charlie called. Then he left a message for Ike, it was very important that Ike know that Archie somebody…Whitlock…was dead. What was that all about?
And the other thing that bothered her a little was that Ruth had borrowed her American Express card. “Why,” she’d asked, “don’t you use your own?”
She’d only looked up and said, “So Charlie Garland and his spook friends won’t be able to trace me.” She seemed annoyed when she said that.
Eden had suggested that Charlie Garland was no dummy and if he thought about it for a minute the first thing he’d do would be to try “Saint Clare” in his search engine, wouldn’t he?
Ruth stopped packing, a sports bra suspended in mid air, and nodded. “You’re right,” she’d said, “I’ll only use it for emergencies.”
So Eden had a secret and a mission of sorts: keep Garland and his people in the dark. Presumably that meant everyone in the sheriff’s office as well. She poured a dollop of brandy into a snifter, warmed it for a moment with her palms, enjoyed the aroma and then downed it in one gulp. So much for sophistication. The brandy perked her up, she thought. Actually, a jolt of one-hundred proof alcohol, irrespective of the medium with which it is delivered, will anesthetize a substantial number of neurons and significantly reduce anyone’s cognitive faculties, but Eden came from a generation that relied on a “pick-me-up” and therefore, science notwithstanding, she felt invigorated.
What if, she wondered, Charlie’s message carried a subliminal warning, that Archie Somebody-or-the other is dead was actually code for some big and dangerous undertaking involving Ike and spies or terrorists? After all, Ike’s past life had an uncomfortable habit of resurfacing. If Dead Archie meant something bad loomed in the near future, then might she be in peril as well? After all, if she knew where Ike and Ruth were and the guys in the black SUVs were on their trail, wouldn’t they come to her ASAP? Wouldn’t the goons in trench coats arrive at her door to ask? Visions of water-boarding and blinding lights crossed her mind, abetted somewhat more than she’d ever admit by the brandy. Once burned, twice shy, she thought, time to make tracks. Since Ruth had taken her AMEX card, she rummaged around and took Ruth’s. Tit for tat. She scooped up the rest of her credit cards, packed a bag and booked a flight to Chicago. She had business there anyway, and who, besides family, would think to look for her there?
Charlie Garland would. He’d been there once before when she made the trip west. But she didn’t think of that.
Chapter Six
“We’re stopping for disposable cell phones.” Ike pulled into a parking lot adjoining a strip mall.
“Isn’t that a little over the top? I mean leaving no trail is one thing—kind of fun actually, but would anyone really go to all that trouble to find us?”
“Probably not, but as they say, ‘old habits die hard.’ I still suffer from ‘residual spook paranoia.’ I’m not as bad as I used to be, but you get me started on a maneuver like this and all the old routines kick in whether they make any sense or not.”
“Okay, fine, but you seem to have forgotten, there are no phone towers on the island. You can’t call anyone. What do we need these for?”
“I am not thinking about the island. If I have to, I will take care of that some other way. We are traveling by car. You are still in a neck brace and recovering from some serious trauma. No matter how much you play at being Plucky Petunia, you have a way to go before you are near to being your old self, physically. Consider this, if we have car trouble, a health set-back, or any unexpected nonsense on the trip up and back, I want to be able to contact somebody. Okay?”
“Gottcha. Safety first and all that.”
“And all that. Wait here.” Ike entered a drugstore and fifteen minutes later emerged with a plastic bag with numerous items.
“How many of those things did you buy?”
“Enough so that if one fails, can’t be charged, runs out of minutes, or for any other reason turns out to be useless, we have backup”
“Holy cow, Ike, you really are in super spook mode. I’d have loved to see you in your heyday playing at being America’s 007.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I promise I wasn’t playing at anything, and believe me 007 is fiction.”
“But fun to watch. Who do you think was the best Bond—Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, or Daniel Craig?”
“Who’s George Lazenby? And David Niven was Bond? When?”
“Niven was in the spoof and Lazenby only did one picture, I think.”
“None of the above. I liked the books okay, but the movies became sillier and sillier as they went on. Please, an invisible car? And don’t forget diamond thread saws tucked into a Rolex. At the end they were more like Get Smart than Fleming’s original. In any case, if that’s your idea of spying, forget it.”
“You would know. So, how are we traveling to Maine and when do we stop for lunch?”
“You’re thinking food already?”
“I’m on vacation. I intend to eat and get fat. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope. We will take I-81 to I-66. It merges with the Washington beltway, and it feeds us onto I-95, which we will follow all the way north to Maine. We will take the appropria
te exit to Mt. Desert Island and follow Jill—that’s the voice on our Garmin—to Bass Harbor. Boat from there to the island, simple. As for lunch, when we hit the DC beltway, we’ll pull off near the airport and find a place to eat, okay?”
“Goody. Now, if you have no objection, I am going to take the first of many naps. Please do not play the radio except classical music, and that softly.”
“That is one mouthful of declarative sentences. Who appointed you captain of this ship?”
“I am the victim, remember. We live in an age of victimhood and, on this trek, I am the one to be pitied.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nevertheless.” Ruth punched a pillow into submission and slumped against the door post and was asleep in three minutes.
“Victim, my sweet…” Ike glanced at the sleeping figure and smiled. She really did need to eat and get fat.
***
Scone Island had been so named by Scots-Irish sailors in the early 1600s because of its rough triangular shape and the fact it rose from the ocean as a low mound. Except for the cove at its southernmost end, it did indeed resemble a triangular scone. The long edge, the hypotenuse, if you will, faced the mainland, and the road that paralleled its western shore became West Road. The road on the northeast leg of the triangle was then North Road, and the remaining leg of the roadway, South Road. The designation as roads seemed something of a conflation, but at the turn of the twentieth century, the term road carried a different expectation than it does today. They had been named that way for something over a hundred years, and no one thought to change them any more than anyone wanted to change the island’s ambiance from what it had always been. Some of the old-timers worried that a newcomer, like Harmon Staley or even that Barstow fellow, might start trouble. Newcomers usually did, but now Staley was dead, fell over a cliff, and Henry Potter, who’d retrieved the body, said he smelled like a distillery, so there you go.
The rough triangular shape which gave Scone Island its name had one flaw. The western edge had a semicircular indentation near its southernmost end, adjacent to the cluster of houses indicated on the map as Southport. It appeared as if someone had taken a bite from the scone. In 1910, when the newly formed Scone Island Association planned the community, naming the little cove became an early point of contention. How and by whom would it be used? Should it be declared a common area, or would control, that is to say ownership, fall to those who’d purchased the lots on its periphery? The rest of the island’s shoreline had been so relegated. The residents of Southport, mostly lobstermen who were on the island well before the “foreigners” arrived, moored their work boats in it and made it crystal clear that they would not be moved irrespective of the Association’s high-falutin’ ideas. Franklin Cabot, that would be the original Cabot on the island with that name, insisted the cove be privatized and be delegated for the exclusive use of the property owners immediately adjacent to it. And, because he or his relatives owned the majority of those lots, he insisted the cove be named after him. The other owners objected to both the naming and the privatization and he was overruled. Then, in keeping with the scone theme and because it appeared as such, it became, instead, The Bite.
Scone Island Page 3