by Ted Bell
“Is Hildy all right? Where the hell is Hildy? Hold on just a second, okay? Hildy? Where are you?”
Brick went first to the kitchen and emerged seconds later, heading for the central staircase.
“Hildy,” he called out. “Please come down here. Right now.” Getting no response, he went back to the woman waiting by the door. “Probably up in the attic,” he said.
Crystal took a step toward him, her face full of tender concern. Her blue eyes brimming . . . for one insane moment Brick actually thought she was going to kiss him on the lips . . .
“Someone ran over your poor dog. Right out at the end of the drive. I came around the corner and saw the poor thing lying there in the road. It must have happened only a few seconds earlier. I saw the flashing brake lights of a car up ahead just before it disappeared over the hill.”
“Captain? Jesus Christ! Where is he? Is it bad?”
“I would have taken him straightaway to the vet, but I’m a stranger here, just visiting friends in Upperville, and had no idea which way to go. I gathered the poor thing up in a blanket and brought him here to the house. Your very kind housekeeper and I tried to stabilize him until we could locate the doctor . . . but . . .”
“But what?”
“I am so very sorry.”
“He’s dead? Don’t tell me that. Don’t even—”
“He’s on the sofa in the library.”
The director tore himself away and raced down the hall and into his library.
She heard a cry of despair and ducked into the living room. There was a deep velvet wing chair by the hearth and she collapsed into it, her orange Hermès bag resting in her lap, the .38 automatic within easy reach when she needed it.
Timing was everything, as always. She needed to get the target out of the house as quickly as possible. Before he had time to question her about Hildy’s whereabouts. She’d kill him here in the house if she had to, but that was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted him out under the trees by her car. Where she could put a bullet in his brain and heave him up into the back of the wagon. Drive him back to Kentucky where she would dispose of him and the car as well . . .
“Where the hell is Hildy?” Kelly demanded, suddenly appearing in the living room doorway. He’d wiped away his tears, but the enormous grief was written all over his face.
“She’s in shock, I’m afraid. Devastated. Poor old thing said she was going up to her room to lie down. I’m to let her know when you arrive and—”
“That won’t be necessary, Mrs.—”
“Methune, Crystal Methune.”
“I’d like to be alone now, Mrs. Methune. I’m sure you can understand that. I’m grateful for all your help. I know you did the best you could under the circumstances. Good Samaritans are as rare as rocking horse shit around here these days . . . and now . . . May I at least walk you out to your car? Least I could do, I think.”
She took a tentative step toward the front door, paused, and looked over her shoulder. She said, “Oh, you shouldn’t bother. I can find my way.”
Crystal lasered the big blues on him as she pulled the door open.
“Well, then,” she said, “I’ll be going. But . . . wait . . . on second thought, it might help somehow if I described what I saw. The hit-and-run car up ahead, I mean. I only got a glimpse of it but I’m pretty good at that kind of thing . . .”
“Yes. Yes, that would be very helpful. I wouldn’t mind having a little chat with that sonofabitch,” he said, following her outside.
“Right. You of all people could probably find him. I mean—”
Shit, Crystal thought, her mind racing. Staring at that chiseled face, she’d lost her focus and put him on high alert.
“What the living hell do you mean by that?” he said, his eyes going suddenly dark and suspicious. “Why me ‘of all people’? Do you know who I am?”
“No, of course not—I mean, whoever did it is probably a neighbor. Somebody close by. Someone you know.”
He started at her hard, decided what she’d said was logical.
“Yeah. Probably so,” Brick said.
“All right,” she said, heading down the walk and hoping he’d follow. She left her bag unlatched and hung it from her left shoulder the way she’d been trained.
He was a courtly sort, an old southern gentleman to be sure, trusted her because of her appearance and the old wagon. Men are all suckers anyway; she wasn’t surprised. He’d looked like he wanted to kiss her back there.
He lightly took her elbow as they made their way out into the increasing gloom of evening.
“So, tell me, Mrs. Methune—”
“Please. Call me Crystal, won’t you? And you are?”
“Brick will do. Just Brick.”
First-name basis. Bingo.
“Well, Brick, the first thing I noticed was that there were no skid marks on the pavement. So, whoever it was, he didn’t even bother to hit the brakes . . .”
“Christ.”
Their footsteps were crunching on the pebbles now. Maybe thirty feet more to her car. She put her hand into her bag as if searching for her keys . . . covering her action by saying, “He was going very fast or I’d have gotten a much better look at him. Sorry.”
“Definitely a he?”
“Definitely. Bald head.”
“What else did you see? The car color?”
“Yes, it was red. Cherry red. No top. Some kind of sports car, I think. Very loud. Very low to the ground. Do they still make Corvettes?”
“Of course. A red Corvette. Wouldn’t you just know it? Asshole.”
They were very near the Chrysler now and she began to enter the semi-fugue state she went to in kill mode. Everything slowed way down . . . her fingers closed around the pistol grip, her index finger slid easily inside the trigger guard . . . and suddenly she went cold. He was no longer walking just behind her, he was matching her stride for stride . . . what was he doing?
He was stock-still, staring at the bloody front fender of her car.
All the blood! How could she not have seen that? How could she have been so stupid not to have realized—
“You lying fucking bitch!” he cried out, his rage given full vent in an explosion of curses.
She spun to her left, then to her right, pulling the gun as she did, knowing she had him now, swinging the muzzle up to where she’d heard his voice coming from.
He wasn’t there!
No! Somehow he’d bounded up onto the hood of the wagon, and then leaped onto the roof.
She whirled again and fired, missing his head by inches. “You’re going to die like your dog!” she said coolly, squeezing the trigger as she swung the gun around . . .
He wasn’t there.
He was flown from the roof, hands outstretched, coming straight for her, getting his hands around her throat, his momentum slamming her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her.
He was on top of her now, his right hand going for her gun, his left tightening around her throat. His strength was just overwhelming, and she knew instantly that she’d underestimated her opponent—he was shutting down her esophagus and she had seconds remaining to put a bullet in his head. His hand was sweaty and she was able to twist the barrel away from herself and toward his heaving torso above her. He grabbed her gun hand with blinding speed.
Crystal squeezed the trigger and died in the same instant. At the last second, Brick had found the muzzle of her gun and pressed it into the soft flesh of her belly.
The woman would never know if she’d won that final battle and that was too bad, Brick thought, rolling off her dead body, because she’d goddamn lost that life, the murderous bitch who’d run his dog down in cold blood. His Captain. His beloved old Captain. He’d wanted to avenge Captain’s life with hers and by God he’d done it.
He looked into her stone dead eyes and said, “He’ll get a far better funeral than you will, you worthless piece of filth. You can bet on it. No one will even know you ever lived.”
Brick couldn’t stand the stink of her another second and heaved himself away, rolling over onto the grass. He lay there for a long time, watching the pinpoint stars pop into life in the blue-black heavens above. He mourned his dog then, letting the tears just flow, rolling hot across his cheeks, but not cried in vain.
He’d avenged the life of his old friend of many years. That was all there was to say now. He’d just have to live with the rest of it.
HE LEFT HER LYING THERE, dead on the gravel, and made his way back up the hill to his house. There were no lights on for some reason. It was full dark. Why hadn’t Hildy turned on the—oh Christ . . .
He bolted up the walkway, through the front door, taking the steps three at a time. Hildy’s room was up on the third floor, but it took him less than a minute to reach her door at the end of the hall.
He paused a second to catch his breath.
No noise from inside. No snoring. Perhaps she’d taken one of her “sleep tranquilizers” to shut down all the pain over Captain. Not only her own grief, but what she must have imagined Brick would feel like. Poor dear Hildy, with a heart bigger than the sky.
“Hildy,” he said quietly, rapping softly on her door. “Hildy, it’s me. I’m home. Are you asleep?”
Nothing.
Feeling a wave of nausea rising, Brick twisted the knob and pushed the door inward.
All the lights were off, but a new moon was flooding the room.
He walked toward her, already knowing what he was going to find, but unable to just turn and walk away without at least seeing her. He had to look away from her face. The stench of blood was overpowering. He bent down on one knee, taking her hand in both of his and squeezing it before bringing it to his lips.
“Oh, Hildy, I’m so, so sorry.”
How long he knelt there in the streaming moonlight, holding her cold, dead hand he didn’t know. Maybe forever.
But, finally, he realized that he’d seen far more than his share of death this night. He got up, profoundly sad and weary, and walked across the wooden floor, Hildy’s whole room now turned silver by the rising moon. He picked up the phone on the hall table. First he called the McLean police, then CIA. Fighting tears, he descended the stairs.
He pulled the door shut behind him.
HE WENT OUT INTO THE MOONLIGHT. Everything looks lovelier by moonlight. He crossed the small stream and went into the barn to find his shovel. It was right where he’d left it, leaning against the wall just inside the door. He took it and stepped back outside, gazing across at the lovely pale blue countryside, his eyes finally coming to rest on one of his favorite places.
In the near distance was a grassy hillock overlooking the main paddocks, and he went there now. He made his way slowly to the top, seeking the solace he knew he would find up there. The night air was cool and sweet with a perfume that couldn’t be bought for any amount of money, jasmine and honeysuckle.
A single apple tree stood atop the hill, now gnarled and twisted, but it had provided all the shade his family ever needed up there . . . high summer picnics, usually . . . but the children’s swing he’d hung from the same limb where his father had once hung one for him. Everything made this a place close to heaven. In spring, it was covered with wildflowers; in summer, like now, with swaying green grass that was never mown. In winter, the gentle slope of the white hill was a paradise for children with sleds.
He found a perfect place at the base of the old apple tree and shoved his spade into the ground to mark the spot.
And then he went down the hill to bring the old Captain home to his final resting place.
CHAPTER 36
Monte Carlo
Sunlight flooded the expansive living room of Ambrose Congreve’s two-bedroom suite. Giant crystal vases of exploding pink and white roses bloomed on every table. He assumed the suite’s second bedroom was in case of flower overflow. He had been booked into the ridiculously expensive Hôtel de Paris by the KGB Travel Department at the Kremlin, under specific orders from the big man himself. This famous old white hotel, this giant wedding cake of a building, overlooked the bustling harbor and the storybook palace at Monte Carlo.
He heard a faint bell tinkling from somewhere down a long hall.
“Hullo?” he’d called out. “Who’s there?”
Room Service appeared like magic before him, two elegant uniformed staffers rolling in with an immaculate white table overflowing with so much china and so many silver platters, and even more flowers, that it was hard to believe this movable feast was indeed what one received when one ordered: “Breakfast for one, please.”
“I’m sorry,” the famous sleuth said, baffled, “I fear there’s been some kind of mistake. I only ordered breakfast for one. There’s only just me, you see. Not another half dozen waiting in the wings, as it were.”
“Ah, mais oui,” the mustachioed captain said, taking in the table with a magisterial sweep of his arm, “C’est ça! This is the Hôtel de Paris, monsieur! Voilà! Le breakfast for one!”
“Really?” Ambrose asked, lifting one of the silver domes to appraise the contents of one of the chafing dishes. “Might I find a strip of bacon or a soft-boiled egg in here somewhere?”
“Where would you like the table placed, monsieur?” the waiter asked, all smiles.
Everyone in this damn hotel had been all smiles ever since he’d checked in the afternoon prior. Congreve wasn’t stupid. He knew these blinding displays of perfect-capped white teeth did not reflect his star status as an English policeman. No, no. They were a reflection of the extraordinarily deep pockets and long-reaching power of his host, President Vladimir Putin, the new tsar of all Russia.
“You like it here by the windows, perhaps? Or over there, monsieur?”
Congreve sat down for a moment and contemplated the possible location of his breakfast table. Did he want the harbor view? A view chock-full of whirling white seagulls above a sparkling turquoise sea filled with gleaming megayachts?
Or, perhaps, the lovely view landward to the gentle foothills of the Maritime Alps with Prince Rainier and Princess Grace’s fairy-tale palace in the foreground? It was a pleasant quandary, and Congreve took his time deciding, puffing away on his morning pipe.
“I think just over there by those two open French doors will do nicely, overlooking the harbor please. That fresh air coming in off the sea from all these windows is most salubrious,” the chief inspector said, all perfectly accented in the language of the locals.
Congreve, a former language scholar at Cambridge before becoming a copper, spoke any number of them perfectly, but his idiomatic French was impeccable, really, and he rolled it out now, just to show these snooty Frenchmen that not all Brits were bumpkins from the boonies. The smiling captain, bowing yet again, was duly impressed, he was pleased to see. He adjusted the position of the table, making a few minute silverware adjustments until it was, as they say, parfait!
“Mais oui, monsieur, c’est parfait, n’est-ce pas?”
“C’est genial, c’est très genial,” Congreve replied as the waiter pulled out the chair for him. “Le petit déjeuner, c’est parfait!”
“L’addition, monsieur,” the captain said, bowing as he presented the bill with such pomp it might have been an historic treaty between their two nations at the close of the Napoleonic Wars.
Congreve signed the bill without a glance at the total, knowing that, even though it shouldn’t, the vast sum would make him feel slightly guilty. His host may be worth forty billion rubles, but Ambrose was still making a modest stipend from Scotland Yard.
The two waiters bowed and scraped a few more times before finally leaving him in peace.
Congreve sat, inhaled the life-giving air from the sea, and spread his huge white linen napkin across his lap. What first? He lifted a cover and saw a rasher of perfectly cooked bacon. And here, eggs Sardou, and over here? Best not to know. He chose a simple croissant, knowing it would be flaky heaven, and anointed it with creamy butter you’d never find at
Tesco. He smiled, lifting the delicacy at first to his nostrils so that he might inhale that sublime—
At that precise moment, the phone rang.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, returning the croissant to his plate.
He looked across vast carpeted plains of the palatial room to where the offending instrument sat atop an antique walnut writing desk. Should he bother? He knew who it was, of course. Alex Hawke, checking up on him. Damn the luck. He poured a cup of steaming black coffee and went to answer the bloody phone.
“Yes?” he said coldly, putting the receiver to his ear.
“Am I disturbing you?” Hawke said, very chipper for this hour of the morning.
“You are.”
“Working?”
“Dining. It is the breakfast hour, you know. One has to eat, after all.”
“Sorry. I’ll ring you back.”
“No, no, don’t be silly, Alex. It can wait. I’ve got my coffee. I’m just going to plop down on this delicious silken sofa where I can be comfortable.”
“How’s your room, by the way? Up to snuff?”
“Light-years beyond snuff, I should say. Almost embarrassing. Marie Antoinette might even find it a bit over the top. De trop, as we say en France!”
“That’s our boy Volodya. When he goes, he goes big. By the way, did you make it to the morgue last night?”
“I did indeed. Saw the victim. The autopsy, forensics, the toxicology reports, and all the rest. I’ll have copies for you when I return.”
“How did he look, our late general? A rather large corpse, I assume. He was a bit of a jack-the-lad with some rather expansive habits, so I understand from Volodya.”
“Hmm,” Ambrose considered. “Let’s just be kind and say one hopes the gentleman looked a good deal better alive than he does dead. I did a cursory examination to verify what I was presented with. No ligature wounds, no obvious trauma, no signs of poison either ingested or injected. I left the morgue at ten. I spent the balance of the evening inhaling secondhand smoke and drinking tepid coffee in the chief of detectives’ offices at the Compagnie des Carabiniers. The vaguely charming man covering the case from Interpol in Brussels was there as well. Very interesting stuff.”