“Coffee, soft drinks. I think there’s some ice tea in the fridge. Name it.”
“Make some coffee, Jack. I think better with a cup of coffee.”
Both men walked down the steps and into the immaculate kitchen. “Guess we’re out of coffee. Shit. It was my turn to do the grocery shopping. See this list, coffee is right at the top. Sorry, Bert.”
Bert shrugged. “I like this house, Jack. I like the color scheme, like that it isn’t cluttered and like how it feels … homey. My apartment looks like some guy from Budweiser lives there. I never got around to … you know, doing the finishing touches. I was sort of hoping my cleaning lady would fix it up, but she just cleans.”
“This is all Nikki’s doing. She has good taste. This is not my house, Bert. I just live here with Nikki. She wanted to put my name on the deed, but I said no. Before the girls’ pardons came through, I paid rent to her.”
“That’s a good thing, Jack. You have your priorities straight.”
“Yeah. She could kick my ass out into the street anytime she feels like it. I might be knocking on your door someday with my bags.”
Bert laughed as Jack poured tea over glasses filled to the rim with ice cubes made from tea. “Got a spare bedroom. I’ll charge you rent, too. How come these ice cubes are brown? Jesus, you didn’t make them with rusty water, did you?”
“No, Nikki makes ice-tea ice cubes so the ice doesn’t dilute the tea.”
“That’s clever,” Bert said. “Isn’t it?”
“Women do shit like that,” Jack said. “Nikki puts an apple in her pot roast gravy. Would you ever think of doing that?”
They were off and running then, one thing following the other. The end result much later was that the two of them agreed that neither one of them was even half as smart as his significant other.
“And we came to this conclusion stone-cold sober,” Bert cackled. “Just for the record, Kathryn does not cook.”
“Maybe you could give her a gift certificate to some cooking classes for her birthday, which—by the way—is just weeks away. I’m kind of looking forward to going to Vegas for the event. Things around here have been rather dull. It will be nice to see Lizzie and little Jack again. What are you getting Kathryn for her birthday?” Jack asked, a devilish glint in his eyes.
Bert’s voice was serious when he said, “I was thinking of giving her a gas card for diesel fuel for her rig.”
Jack’s jaw dropped before he bellowed his outrage, a sound that could be heard all the way to the Capitol. “You WHAT? Damn, Bert, that’s right up there with buying something with a plug on the end. You don’t ever give a woman something with a plug on the end. Or mud flaps. Another no-no is peat moss or manure for their flower gardens.”
Bert looked like he was going to cry. Jack took no pity. “I refuse to deal with stupid.”
“C’mon, Jack, help me out here. Jewelry, flowers, candy?”
“Forget the candy. By the time they finish eating it, they’ll be on your case because they gained weight. The only word you’ll hear is fat. Stick with the jewelry. You can’t go wrong with sparklers.”
“Kathryn doesn’t wear jewelry.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have any to wear. Did you ever think of that, Mr. Stupid?”
Bert groaned as he refilled his glass with ice tea. He groaned again when Jack went off into a fit of laughter. “Screw it. Something will come to me. Don’t help me anymore, Mr. Know-It-All.”
Chapter 22
Jack Emery slid out of the car. Immediately, the fine hairs on the back of his neck started to dance. He looked around at Myra’s compound to see what had triggered his sudden sense of déjà vu.
Bert stopped in his tracks and stared at Jack, sensing something wrong. His shoulders stiffened as he looked around. Danger. He automatically dropped into defensive mode, as did Jack. He found himself reaching to his left side, where he wore his gun and holster when on active duty. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jack doing the same thing.
No guns. Civilians don’t carry guns. “I feel it, but I don’t see it. Someone is watching us,” Jack hissed.
“Where?” Bert hissed in return.
Jack moved his head to the right to indicate the dense forest beyond the perimeter of Myra’s fenced property.
“We’re standing ducks,” Bert continued to hiss. “On three, head for the kitchen door. One! Two! Three! You know the drill, run like an alligator is after you—zigzag.”
Both men blasted through the kitchen door, breathless, to the dismay of the dogs, who were barking and snarling while Charles, Nikki, and Isabelle just stared at the men.
“Good Lord, what’s wrong?” Charles said. He whistled sharply to the barking dogs, who went silent immediately.
“When was the last time you had this place swept for unauthorized surveillance?” Jack bellowed.
Charles looked momentarily blank. He shook his head. “Inside or outside?”
Jack looked exasperated. “Jesus, Charles! Both!”
“Avery checks the house once a week. We’re bug-free. As to the outside, I have no idea. We sit here on over a hundred acres.”
Jack’s exasperation continued. “If you recall back in the day, I perched in those damn trees and watched this place for months, hoping to catch all of you doing whatever you were doing at the time. I sat perched up in those trees until I froze. Then I hired someone to sit in for me until I ran out of money. Ask Nikki, in case you forgot.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Jack?” Nikki asked.
Jack shrugged. “Yeah.”
Something in Nikki’s eyes flickered. “Well, we did say we wanted to draw him out and make him come to us.”
Isabelle clenched her fists and her jaw as she headed for the door. “Is he out there?”
“Whoa! Easy, Isabelle,” Jack said, reaching for her arm. Isabelle jerked free, her intention clear; if Hank Jellicoe was out there in the woods somewhere, she was ready to take him on. One on one. Bert blocked the doorway. Isabelle’s eyes filled as her shoulders slumped. Defeated, she walked back to the kitchen table and sat down. Nikki patted her shoulder from behind.
Charles was heard murmuring on the phone. When he powered down he said, “Avery will be here with his men in short order, and they’ll sweep the woods. They have some special equipment that will jam any feed going to Hank if it’s out there, but first they have to find it. Having said that, I think we will be dining indoors this evening instead of on the terrace.”
Cell phones chirped and were answered. Myra and Annie’s plane had just landed; they’d be here within the hour. Maggie was less than a mile away. Kathryn was just leaving the trucking depot and would arrive, depending on traffic, in less than an hour and a half. Ted and Espinosa were behind Maggie but not by much. The sound of Harry’s Ducati could be heard at the entrance to Myra’s property. They all knew Yoko would be with Harry. All present and accounted for, with the exception of Alexis.
“So we’re hiding out?” Isabelle bellowed.
“For the moment,” Charles said. “It’s always best to know what your adversary is about, you know that. Once you figure it out, then you attack. Do not let your emotions rule here, my dear.”
Charles was right, and Isabelle knew it full well. She mumbled something that sounded like an apology, hanging her head in the process.
Jack thought he’d never seen Nikki look so grim. He toyed with the idea of saying something flip but changed his mind. Bert moved from the doorway but still close enough if Isabelle changed her mind and bolted.
The kitchen monitor over the doorway pinged as it showed Maggie Spritzer at the gate.
She blew into the kitchen like a wary wind, her gaze taking in the tenseness. “I know something,” she blurted.
“Well, don’t just stand there, spit it out,” Jack said.
“Who died and left you in charge, Jack Emery? Never mind. Listen,” she said, yanking at a chair and sitting down. “I remembered something. I ca
n’t say exactly when this happened, but I can nail it down when I get back to the paper. I always go in early to peruse the paper just as it hits the streets. I’ve been doing it forever. Anyway, I saw this article, I read it, and didn’t think too much about it, but then for some reason I went back and read it again. It still didn’t register anything with me, but I’ve thought about it off and on over these past months. I don’t know why it bothered me, I just know it did. I finally figured it out.
“There was a fire in town in this four-office medical building. They never found out who set it, but it was arson. The insides were burned to a crisp, all the doctors’ files. The doctors were partners, but they dissolved their partnership and none of them wanted to go to the expense of rebuilding, and the insurance wasn’t enough for it anyway. They sold off the property, it was leveled, and a new twenty-four-hour clinic was built. It’s actually up and running now. There was a dermatologist, an OB-GYN, a plastic surgeon, and right now I can’t remember what the fourth one was, but it doesn’t matter. The plastic surgeon is/was Julia Webster’s old partner, Dr. Laura Valentine. Julia was one of your Sisters. I think, and this is my gut talking now, that Hank Jellicoe went to that plastic surgeon and had a makeover. Then he got to thinking he had a witness, so he burned all the files. I can’t find the doctor. The best I could come up with was one of her nurses, who said Valentine packed it in after the fire and took her losses.
“She said Dr. Valentine couldn’t afford the malpractice insurance, so she sold her house in Rockville, and no one knows where she went. She was a single woman with no ties, and as the nurse put it, free to roam the world. So, what do you think?” she asked breathlessly.
Charles, his eyes wide, managed to sound sincere when he said, “I am impressed.” Everyone in the room knew Charles was jealous of Maggie and her sources, which sometimes outperformed his own.
“Well, that certainly bolsters my ego,” Maggie said tongue in cheek.
“If you’re right, Maggie, and I suspect you are, that certainly would explain how Jellicoe can be out there moving around with no one knowing who he is. I think what you were saying without really saying it was that you think Jellicoe had something to do with the doctor’s … ah … disappearance,” Charles said.
“Yep, that’s what I’m saying!”
“So, we’re saying Hank Jellicoe could look like just about anyone, and we’d never know it. And we also think he’s got surveillance out there in the woods,” Isabelle said.
“Listen, this morning when I was over at Annie’s farm, one of the contractors stopped by, then this man came by and … he was meandering around like he knew the property. He didn’t do anything wrong, but looky-loos way out here are not the norm, and you can’t really see the farmhouse from the road, so the man had to drive in like he knew where it was. All he said was it was nice to know someone was going to refurbish the old house after so many years. Then he left. I didn’t think anything about it till just now.”
The little group descended on Isabelle like a flotilla of locusts, all of them shouting, “What did he look like?”
“I can do better than tell you, I can show you. I’ll sketch his likeness.” Isabelle walked over to her leather bag, which she’d tossed in the corner with a dozen long rolls of blueprints still sticking out of it. She pulled out a white artist’s pad and a charcoal pen and went to work.
The group was so intent on watching Isabelle’s deft strokes they didn’t know that Alexis had entered the kitchen until her dog Grady raced through the house to chase the others.
“Hey, I know that guy. I saw him not two hours ago.”
The little group turned and gawked up at Alexis, their mouths hanging open.
“Why are you all looking at me like this? Who is that guy?” Alexis said, pointing to the sketch on Isabelle’s pad.
“We think it might be Hank Jellicoe,” Nikki said. She went on to explain what Maggie had told them and about Isabelle seeing the man she was drawing at Annie’s new farmhouse. “Where did you see him, Alexis?”
“Are you kidding me? No, I guess you aren’t. I was backing out of my driveway and there was this car parked at the curb. Just as I was about to cut the wheel, this guy started to roll and I had to slam on my brakes. I rolled down my window and let him have it. He got out of his car, and before you can ask me, it was black, either a Toyota of some kind or a Honda. He apologized profusely, saying he meant to put the gear in reverse. Yada yada yada. He said he was sorry for upsetting me, and he could tell I was upset. And I was. Damn, that’s him!”
Then they were all babbling at once as Isabelle added a few more strokes with her charcoal pen. She eyed it for a moment, then ripped the sheet off the pad and stuck it to the refrigerator with two magnets. The group moved backward to study the sketch from all angles.
“It doesn’t look anything like Hank Jellicoe,” Nikki said.
“That’s the beauty of it. That tells us the plastic surgery was a success,” Bert said. “I would know that son of a bitch in a dark room, and this sure as hell doesn’t look like him. That’s how he’s able to move about out in the open with no one having a clue as to who he is. If he had the balls, excuse me, ladies, to step into Isabelle and Alexis’s world, he sure as hell must feel pretty confident.”
Charles moved over to the kitchen door and opened it. The dogs barreled through, their hearing picking up the men tramping through the woods beyond the fence just as Ted and Espinosa arrived, followed by Annie and Myra ten minutes later.
Another long explanation followed for the benefit of the newcomers. They all stared at the sketch tacked to the refrigerator. All agreed that it did not resemble Hank Jellicoe in any way.
“It’s him, I’m telling you, that’s Jellicoe,” Maggie said adamantly.
“No one hates that bastard more than I do,” Ted said. “Maggie’s instincts are always spot on, so if she says it’s him, then it’s him.”
“Suck-up,” Jack hissed.
“Screw you, Jack. Look at his ears. I always thought that for a guy he had weird ears; they were too small for the size of his head. Did they seem out of proportion to you, Isabelle?”
“Not when I was looking at him face-to-face. It didn’t register. But I guess so, because they’re smaller on the picture. It registered in my subconscious, and it came out in the drawing. Let’s all agree that this is indeed Hank Jellicoe.”
Harry slapped at the refrigerator so hard it moved. “Why are we standing here?”
“Because we need to have a plan,” Jack said. “The guy looks like he could be anyone’s neighbor. He could be living anywhere. How do you suggest we find him, Harry?”
“Let’s concentrate on finding Dr. Valentine. Charles, that is your area of expertise. People just do not drop off the face of the earth unless they have unlimited monetary resources like Jellicoe.”
“I think I can handle it if you all take care of the dinner preparations.”
There was a wild flurry of activity as everyone moved to do Charles’s bidding.
Annie poked Myra on the arm. “I think we might be coming into the home stretch, Myra.”
“I think you might be right, Annie.”
Chapter 23
Even though there was chaos in Myra’s kitchen as the Sisters bustled about, and the guys were talking above a comfortable decibel level, they could all hear Murphy’s joyous bark as Kathryn roared through the gate and parked. Murphy bolted out of the car and raced to where the other dogs were running up and down along the fence even before she could open the driver’s side door to let herself out.
Bert held the door open, looked down at Kathryn’s face to judge her mood. She smiled, and his world turned bright. He kissed her lightly and put his arm around her shoulder. “Just in time for dinner,” he said.
“Good! I’m starved,” Kathryn said, “but right now I’m more thirsty than I am hungry.” She headed for the refrigerator for a cold bottle of water. She blinked at Isabelle’s sketch, then frowned. “Hey, I just
saw this guy not an hour ago at the depot when I signed out. Who is he? How come you have his picture here?”
Bert grabbed Kathryn’s shoulders and whirled her about. “You saw that guy! That’s Hank Jellicoe.”
“No, it wasn’t Jellicoe. I’d know that SOB anywhere. The guy I saw was just some guy checking on a load that was an hour late. I heard him telling the manager he was expecting eighteen hundred weed whackers. He was pretty upset when the manager told him there was no paperwork on file. The guy was really upset and threatening to sue, the whole nine yards. I was signing out, and that’s how I heard what was going on. No way, that was not Hank Jellicoe, but the guy at the depot sure does look like this sketch. You do this, Isabelle?” Isabelle nodded.
Then they were all talking at once, with Kathryn refusing to believe she’d literally been eyeball-to-eyeball with Hank Jellicoe and didn’t even know it. Eventually, when Maggie repeated her story again, she came around to agreeing with the others. “Now, all we have to do is find out where that son of a bitch lives and go after him.”
“Easier said than done. He’s coming to us. One by one,” Nikki said. “He’s taunting us like a little kid. You know that game we all used to play when we were kids, catch me if you can. He thinks he’s giving us an edge because we’d never catch him otherwise. It’s a game to him now.”
Charles appeared in the kitchen doorway just as Annie announced that the steaks were done. A bit of confusion ensued as everyone grabbed something and settled it on the dining-room table. Myra poured ice tea while Harry dropped twice-baked potatoes on each plate. Bert handed the huge salad bowl to Ted, who started to pass it around the table.
Yoko looked around the table, and said, “Screw your rule of not talking business at the table, Charles. Either we talk business or Harry and I are leaving.” Harry smiled from ear to ear as his little lotus flower showed off her muscle.
“Fine,” was all that Charles said by way of agreement or disagreement.
“How’s that grilled tofu, Harry?” Jack asked.
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