Myra grappled with her pearls and somehow managed to say, “Duly noted, dear.” She, like the others, knew that Yoko blamed Hank Jellicoe for her two miscarriages while Harry was his employee.
“Hank Jellicoe must have people somewhere helping him. I don’t see how he could do what he’s doing on his own with the intensive search for him that’s going on,” Annie said.
“Charles explained how it works to all of us, Annie. Weren’t you listening when that happened?” Not bothering to wait for Annie’s response, she continued on. “People, agents like Hank Jellicoe, during their active years, set up dozens of safe houses all over the world because he was a global entity. Your regulation agent has one safe house to go to for sanctuary as they don’t have the financial means Hank has.
“In Burn Notice, the main character didn’t have time to set up a safe house and the stuff that goes with it. After they burn him, he wakes up in Miami without a cent to his name, no identity, no nothing. Agents, especially deep-cover agents, never know when their cover is going to get blown. Charles is the perfect example. That means at each safe house Hank Jellicoe has a separate identity, a bank account in the name of that identity.
“In other words, a presence wherever that safe house is. That also includes a vehicle, a passport, a driver’s license, credit cards, everything a covert agent needs to blend into a community to survive. If Jellicoe has safe houses all over the globe, he’s as safe as he can be. He can lie low for years. But as Charles put it, men like Hank who are so supercharged can’t lie low. They have their vendettas and their agendas, and they live to act on them. He’s on the move, and he’s clever,” Myra said.
Annie sniffed. “I always say there is clever, then there is clever. Let me sum it up for all of you, but I know you know what I’m going to say. Henry, call me Hank, Jellicoe is a man. We are women. I think collectively, we can outthink him, and I even think we can catch him. Provided that’s what we decide we want to do.”
“Ah, the big decision!” Isabelle said airily as she added cream to her coffee.
“I’m having a problem with something,” Kathryn said. “Listen up and think about this. Mitchell Riley supposedly compiled these files,” she said, pointing to the stacked boxes. “He was director of the FBI for only a few years before he went off the rails. Then Elias took over, and when he retired, Bert became director. We are not talking a lot of years here, ten at the most. Neither Elias nor Bert had anything to do with compiling the files.
“If Riley did it on his own, he would have had to have spent every waking moment of his life working on those files, and this is just Hank Jellicoe’s file. Think about all those other files, thousands of them. Where did they come from originally even though they were in Riley’s possession? Who compiled them? Where are the people who compiled them? Is it even remotely possible that Riley somehow got his hands on a bootleg copy of Hoover’s files that he’d compiled over his fifty years as director? Everything I ever read said those files were destroyed a long time ago, but knowing politicians and the way this town works, I think there might be a bootleg file somewhere, and maybe that’s what we have.
“Think about it, girls; it’s the only thing that makes sense. And we never read those files. We turned them over to Charles. I don’t recall him ever saying he read them, either. It’s been quite a few years since that little caper, and I have this vague recollection that we all agreed we didn’t have the right to read someone’s file considering the way the files were collected. Do you all remember that?”
“I do remember. We said that it was none of our business and that we were not the Bureau’s personal police. We did agree among ourselves that those files would never see the light of day again,” Nikki said.
The others mumbled and muttered to themselves as they dragged the cartons of files to the center of the floor and squatted down Indian style to go through them.
Outside, the rain came down in torrents, slashing at the windows. Thunder rolled overhead as lightning lit up the sky. The dogs, oblivious to what was going on outside, sprawled wherever there was an open space on the cool kitchen tiles.
Hours passed, with coffee and ice-tea breaks. From time to time one or the other of the Sisters would forage for something to eat in the refrigerator, taking no more than ten minutes from their work.
The clock on the microwave oven clicked over to three-thirty in the morning. “Girls, we’ve been at this for over eight hours. We need to take a break. Our eyes are as tired as our bodies, and we might miss something important in these files. Let’s all catch a few hours’ sleep and get back to it after breakfast. Eight o’clock? How does that sound?”
“Like music to my ears,” Isabelle said, getting up from the floor and rubbing at her neck and shoulders. “I’d kill for a good sixty-minute neck and shoulder massage right now.”
“A nice hot shower will serve the same purpose,” Yoko said, heading for the back staircase that led to the second floor. “See you in the morning.” The Sisters trailed behind her, leaving Annie and Myra in the kitchen alone.
“You don’t look all that tired to me, Myra,” Annie said, suspicion ringing in her voice. “For some reason I feel all charged up. It’s almost like … it’s there … right in front of us, and we aren’t seeing it. Do you feel like that? What could it be, Myra?”
“I do feel like that, too, but I can’t put my finger on it. I’m coffeed out. Would you like a soda, something cold?”
“You know what, Myra? I think I’ll have a beer. I got cheated last night and didn’t get to drink mine other than a few sips. For some reason when I’m sleeping, I always wake up at four in the morning. I don’t know why that is. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, either. I still wake up at four o’clock. Then I just doze until it’s time to get out of bed. I read something about that once but can’t remember what it was. Yes, yes, I’m fretting, and I don’t know the why of that, either. So, do you want a beer or something else?”
Myra’s mind raced. Annie was on a toot of some kind, and when that happened, it behooved her to fall in line. “A nice cold beer sounds really good so, yes, I will join you. I also wake up at four. Charles gets out of bed at four to start his day. I don’t know what the significance of that is, either.”
“I think it’s one of those little mysteries of life that will never be solved.” Annie looked around at the stacks of files scattered all over the kitchen floor. Yellow legal pads with scribbled notes were next to each Sister’s stack of boxes. “I’m almost thinking this mess isn’t going to be solved, either.”
“Who do you suppose compiled all of this?” Myra asked, waving her arm about. “I know this is the high-tech age, but I’m thinking it would take a team of specialists to accomplish what we’re looking at. Which director had this done? I don’t even know if it’s important for us to know who did it, but it’s bothering me. Everyone is spying on everyone else, which tells me there is no trust anywhere. That really bothers me, Annie.”
“Ask yourself what else we don’t know. The whole world knows this town is full of secrets. We’d probably curl up and die if we knew what just some of those secrets are,” Annie groused.
“Do you think Bert or maybe Elias might have heard … you know, tidbits, something, maybe even just outright rumors on how this stuff went down?”
“We can ask. Nellie wakes up at four just the way we do. I’ll call her to see if she can rouse Elias. I think where Bert is concerned, we should leave well enough alone and let Kathryn handle that,” Annie said.
“I agree,” Myra said.
Myra listened to Annie’s end of the conversation with Nellie. She looked around the messy kitchen when she heard Annie invite Nellie and Elias for breakfast.
“Not to worry, she’s bringing breakfast. Homemade coffee cake and fruit. She said that’s what you do when you wake up at four in the morning—you bake. I’m learning all these new things these past few days. Shaking hands instead of kissing and making up. Now Nellie saying she makes
coffee cake at four in the morning. It boggles my mind. It stopped raining a little while ago, so we can dine on the terrace. It should be dry by the time she gets here.”
Myra pretended to slap at her forehead. “Task force, Annie! That’s the term we’re looking for. The directors must have had a task force set up to compile all this data. Probably a team of agents too old for fieldwork and just putting in their time until retirement. Whoever it was is probably retired by now. Or possibly dead. What do you think?”
“I think you might be right. But, Myra, assuming you are right, what is that going to do for us? Even if we have names, talk to those names, how are they going to help us with this?” Annie said, kicking a box she’d been working on.
“If I knew the answer to that question, we wouldn’t be sitting here at four-thirty in the morning trying to figure out if it means anything. More likely than not, it means nothing. We keep saying any little thing that we don’t think is important might turn out to be the smoking gun we need. I’m just saying …”
“The volume of these files is horrendous. Someone had a real itch on for Jellicoe to go to all this trouble. I guess that old adage of powerful people having skeletons in their closets is true. But, dammit, these files are nothing more than Jellicoe’s rise to glory. I wonder if the files Director Span is turning over to Director Yantzy at the FBI are duplicates of what we have here. We don’t have anything after Mitchell Riley was sent to the federal penitentiary. I wonder if that’s when Span started his own file. Do you think we’ll ever know, Myra?”
Myra reached for Annie’s empty beer bottle, carried it along with her own into the pantry, and placed it in the recycle bin. “At the rate we’re going, probably not,” she tossed over her shoulder.
“Myra, think about this. Knowing what we know about Hank Jellicoe, at what age do you think he would have gotten married? If we can get a lock on that time frame,” Annie said, pointing to the boxes scattered about the kitchen, “it would save us a lot of work.”
“I’m guessing his early thirties. The minute he changed his name, his life as Hank Jellicoe started. I’m guessing that was either at nineteen or twenty, give or take a year or so. Give him ten years to create his new life, start his business. I don’t think it would have been later than the age of thirty-three. I’m thinking the new bride would be mid-to late twenties. What do you think?”
“It makes sense. Who had that age bracket?” Annie said, dropping to her knees and looking at the dates written on the covers of the boxes in permanent black ink. “Ah, it’s Nikki! She’s only gotten to age twenty-nine in her notes,” Annie said, holding up the yellow legal pad Nikki had written on. “This box goes up to age thirty-one. And”—she stretched her arm to look at another cover—“Alexis has age thirty-two to age thirty-seven. Her notes say she’s up to age thirty-four. Look at the size of these files in Alexis’s box. This box must represent the years he really hunkered down and made it all work for him.”
Myra squatted down next to Annie. “Okay, let’s see if he has any unexplained absences during those years. Like two weeks for a honeymoon. Back in those days, a honeymoon was definitely a priority, or you weren’t officially married.”
“And you know this … how?”
Myra laughed. “Because Mr. Rutledge told me so. I was married to him, you know. He absolutely insisted we take a honeymoon for the very reason I just stated. And before you can ask, it was about as eventful as my honeymoon was with Charles, except for the water bed.”
“Well, damn, Myra!”
The two women went off into peals of laughter as they dived into the box of files Alexis had been working on.
“All I can say is there better be a smoking gun or a rabbit in the hat in this box, or I’m going to be …”
“Pissed?” Annie said as she held her sides to keep from laughing.
“Yes, pissed.”
Chapter 13
Myra divided Alexis’s box into two piles, handing the top stack of files to Annie and keeping the bottom half for herself.
“I think if we knew there was a prize for finding something, we’d both be a little more gung ho, do you agree, Myra?”
“I do. But since there is no prize in this box, let’s just wade through it and hope we find something that screams, ‘Here I am!’”
The two women sifted, stacked, mumbled, and muttered as they pawed through the neatly stapled papers inside each manila folder, ripping some apart, tossing others. The kitchen looked like a blizzard had descended upon it.
Myra was down to her last two files, and said so. Annie said she had three more to go when Myra suddenly said, “Annie, did you ever hear of a reporter named Virgil Anders?”
Annie stopped what she was doing, and said, “No, why?”
“He’s in this file. He worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun years ago. I guess you wouldn’t have heard of him since you were living in Spain. I never heard of him myself. This file says he was an investigative reporter like Ted Robinson.”
“Why is he in that file?” Annie asked, inching closer to Myra to look at the file in her hands. “Oooh, maybe he was investigating Hank. Do you see anything like that?”
“No. But these papers say he was writing a book.”
“On Hank Jellicoe? Did it get published?”
“I don’t know. The end of this report,” Myra said, holding up a sheet of paper, “says Virgil Anders dropped off the face of the earth. We can try Googling him or call the Baltimore Sun and ask how to get in touch with him. Oh, Annie, this might be the smoking gun we’re looking for. If he was important enough to include in these files, he must be someone we need to talk to. Oh, here comes Charles, let’s ask him.”
Charles Martin stood in the open doorway, dismay written all over his face. “Ladies, how am I supposed to prepare breakfast with this mess all around me?”
“Never mind breakfast, dear, Nellie and Elias are bringing it in a little while. Listen to me, Charles, and think back to Hank when he was in his midthirties. We think we found something. To your knowledge, did anyone ever write a book about Hank?”
“Several, Myra. I thought you knew that. Hank had his own biographer, a scholar from somewhere that I can’t remember, but he was notable. Hank wouldn’t settle for anything less than notable. But it wasn’t until much later, when he was in his late fifties. I actually read one of them, and it was boring. Let me see if I can remember his name. Ah, it was Franklin Fodor. There might have been an e on the end of his last name. Does that help? What will Nellie and Elias be bringing in the way of breakfast?”
“Homemade coffee cake and fruit. I’m thinking we could use some soft butter. Kathryn likes jam on everything, so some of that, too. We have to supply the coffee. If the terrace is dry, breakfast outdoors would be lovely.
“That’s not the name in this folder. The name here is Virgil Anders, and he was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun when Hank was in his midthirties. That’s the box we were working on. Since Nellie is bringing breakfast, do you think you can check Mr. Anders out while Annie and I shower and get ready for whatever the day is going to bring us?”
“I’ll do it right now. Ted might be able to come up with something. I’ll give him or Maggie a call. First things first, though, I’m going to run the dogs.”
Within seconds, the kitchen was silent and empty.
Forty minutes later, as Annie and Myra descended the back-kitchen stairs, the dogs rushed to greet them. Both women stared in amazement at the tidy kitchen. The boxes of files were packed, their covers intact. “Whatever would we do without him?” Myra smiled.
“We’d either survive, which we did once before, or flounder. I’ll make the coffee. Myra, when do you see us actually leaving for Vegas? I need to make new reservations.”
“Annie! You own a Gulfstream. All you have to do is call and tell them when you want to leave. You don’t have to make a reservation. You said yourself it only takes ninety minutes for them to ready the plane and file a flight plan.”
“Myra, I have to reserve the plane. My people use it, too, you know. I’ll call and tell them I have first dibs. Did I say that right? I’ll just put them on standby. So, when do you see us leaving? We’re going to have so much to do to plan for Kathryn’s party. Then if we close for that one night, I have to have the staff go through the cancellation process and make refunds, that kind of thing.”
“Let’s shoot for this weekend. By then we should be through with all of this,” Myra said, waving her hands at the boxes on the floor. “I hear Charles; maybe he found out something. I think it’s going to be a glorious day, Annie. Look at that sun!”
While Myra rummaged for plastic plates and utensils and Annie fixed the coffeepot, Charles reported what he’d found—nothing. “Virgil Anders was a young reporter, in his midtwenties when that file was compiled. He started to work for the Baltimore Sun when he graduated from college. From the short bio I read, it appeared he was a rising star. He had what his editors called journalistic gut instincts that never seemed to fail him. When he was on a story or a report, he worked around the clock and never gave up. There is no mention of a book other than one of his bosses saying he wouldn’t be surprised to hear someday that Virgil was writing the great American novel. There was a picture of him that I printed out. Handsome lad.
“That was all I was able to find out. There isn’t anything else. It’s like this report says, the lad dropped off the face of the earth. In this day of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the like, there is no mention of him anywhere. As he’s older now, that didn’t surprise me, so I called Ted, and he’s on it. I’m sorry, ladies.”
“I think we should call Maggie,” Annie said. Charles bristled, which was Annie’s intent.
“Maggie has sources that go far beyond Ted’s sources. And she gets her results quicker than Ted does. Yes, I think we should call Maggie. What do you think, Myra?”
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