Dead to the Last Drop

by Cleo Coyle

  “Helen! Oh, God, Mike. Is she alive?”

  “Apparently it was touch and go, but this morning Helen was able to provide a statement to police from her hospital bed.”

  “A statement about what?”

  “Clare, a single drop of coffee was left in her cup. Poison was found in it.”

  “Poison!”

  A shadow crossed Quinn’s face. “Helen Trainer told the authorities that you handed her the cup with the coffee already in it. That she watched you fill the cup and no one else touched it. She also told them you were in possession of sensitive information involving the First Family.”

  Panic welled up inside me, until I couldn’t breathe. Quinn saw my distress and he held me until the initial shock passed.

  Still in his arms, I looked up at his face, but found no comfort there. His expression looked beaten—as beaten as I felt.

  No, I thought. We are not beaten. Not yet!

  Pulling away from comfort, I locked a firm gaze onto him. “We have to find Abby and deliver the real killer. We have to!”

  With a nod, Mike pulled himself together, and we began to brainstorm a loose list of suspects. As we talked, the list grew. Even worse, it was crowded with power players.

  We both knew Katerina Lacey had to be involved. Her skill at opposition research made her perfect for the job of rooting out dirty secrets and deleting them. But did she delete witnesses, too?

  Then there was Agent Sharpe.

  Sharpe had been at my coffeehouse many times for Abby’s Open Mike Nights. The evening Jeevan Varma broke in, Sharpe could have been the reason. He seemed awfully suspicious of Helen and me before the Bathsheba file went missing, and he and Katerina were particularly friendly. Lidia Herrera even told me her boss had a thing for “men with guns.”

  Come to think of it, Katerina’s ambitious young assistant had the same access to the White House as her boss, along with the same demagnetized moral compass.

  And there were others.

  What about the former chief of staff from the previous administration? Helen shared information with him about Abby along with the contents of that flash drive.

  Could the President himself be involved? Maybe he decided his stepdaughter’s past had become too dark a threat to his shining bid for reelection and sent in “cleaners” to get rid of the mess for good. Or could it be—God forbid—Abby’s own mother who ordered her daughter and Helen gone? With her position and prestige threatened by her daughter’s perceived “instability,” perhaps she took action.

  “What about the Ponytail Man?” Luther Bell chimed in. “Maybe he’s involved.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy with the white hair and beard who always came to see Abby perform.”

  “Bernie Moore? He’s a jazz critic. How could he be involved?”

  “Is that what he told you?” Luther shook his head. “Clare, that man works at the CIA, and I’m not talking about the Culinary Institute of America.”

  Another round of panic took hold of me. “Are you sure?”

  “No doubt about it,” Luther replied. “I recognize him from a long talk we had at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, right before I moved to the Senate Dining Room. He complained about the ‘Moroccan Stew’ the cafeteria served, said it was too bland to be authentic.”

  Luther shrugged. “I agreed with the man, but it wasn’t my recipe. I remember that talk because, right after that, I transferred out. That damn stew was the last straw. Their culinary standards were too low and their security hurdles too high. I was glad to get out of there!”

  I’d stopped listening after Luther mentioned yet another Moroccan connection. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Abby’s father died in Morocco and the First Lady spoke of living there for a short time after Abby was born. And then there was Helen Trainer, so unwilling to reveal the only truth possible—that Abby’s father was a violent terrorist.

  But what about Bernie Moore?

  He was at our coffeehouse every time Abby played. Abby said she noticed him on campus, too.

  And the next thing you know, Abby’s missing!

  Bernie was also at the Smithsonian event, and took a real interest in Helen when she started talking too much about Abby and her father.

  Did Bernie find a way to poison poor Helen? That has to be the answer!

  “It’s Bernie Moore,” I declared. “He’s some kind of black ops guy for the executive office or a double agent with ties to terrorism or a hostile government. Or he simply sold her out for an astronomical payday. He might have snatched Abby himself and turned her over to some group out to use her.”

  “Use her?”

  “Think about it, Mike. They could brainwash Abby, the way heiress Patty Hearst was turned. The spectacle of America’s First Daughter spouting revolutionary propaganda would be the greatest tool any terrorist could ever have.”

  I faced him. “I’m not even sure we should risk going back to the mansion now. It’s a dead end. We have to find Bernie Moore, or discover the truth about him. That’s the only way we can resolve this mess.”

  “No. We’re going to the mansion first. This notion of a CIA mole is a solid line of logic, but it’s not what your gut told you, Clare, and we’re going to follow your Underground Railroad theory. That’s the track your instinct gave us, and we’re staying on it, all the way to the end of the line.”

  One Hundred Five

  WHEN Luther reached the mansion’s Georgetown block, Danica distracted the FBI’s stakeout team by pulling up to their car and flashing her badge. She told the two feds she just got the BOLO on Clare and asked for an update.

  While the agents chatted with her, Luther steered the van down the narrow service lane behind Cox’s Row and backed it up as close as he could to Mrs. Bittmore-Black’s kitchen door. Mike and I donned ball caps and carried boxes on our shoulders to hide our faces.

  As Quinn and I entered the mansion’s sunlit kitchen, Madame brandished a rolling pin.

  “I’ll have no more armed fascists in this house!” she cried. “Warrant or not, you’re leaving now!”

  I lowered the cardboard box to reveal myself.

  “It’s me,” I said in a whisper. “Don’t say my—”

  “Clare!” Madame cried.

  I cringed and Quinn quickly found a radio and turned it up to drown out our voices.

  Meanwhile Madame dropped the baker’s tool and hugged me tightly, tears welling in her violet eyes. “Oh, dear, I was so frightened—”

  I put my index finger to my lips, and Madame lowered her voice to a whisper.

  “—The FBI has been here twice,” she said. “And someone broke in last night. I heard noises. Maria heard them, too; but when we came downstairs, they were gone.”

  “They may have left microphones behind,” Quinn said.

  “Where’s your maid now?” I asked, breaking our embrace and wiping away my own tears.

  “Maria’s gone sightseeing. The jackboots have the poor woman terrified!”

  “Listen, Madame. We have to check something downstairs. I’ll explain later.”

  “You won’t have to, dear. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  Luther agreed to stand guard upstairs, while the rest of us hit the steps. In the subbasement, I located the flashlight, and hoped the key was still in place.

  It was, so on my knees, with Madame looking over my shoulder and an armed Quinn beside me, I gripped the key with both hands and turned. The lock clicked easily, too easily, as if it had been oiled since the last time.

  Quinn placed his shoulder against the carbonized wood and pushed. The door flew open—and struck something or someone!

  We both heard a grunt of pain.

  Alarmed by the human sound, Quinn surged through the opening. I quickly follow
ed, scuffing my elbow in my haste.

  We didn’t need a flashlight. The secret rooms were lit by battery-operated lanterns. The air mattresses we’d used for the Walton crowd were now inflated. A card table was set up with folding chairs, and the shelves held food pilfered from the mansion’s kitchen.

  Meanwhile, on the far side of the room, Quinn was pointing his gun at a man standing with his head tilted back, hands covering a bleeding nose. When the man raised his hands in surrender, I recognized his snow-white ponytail.

  “Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt my father!”

  Abigail Parker charged out of the adjacent room and threw herself in front of Bernie Moore, arms spread.

  Stan appeared next, clutching a rusty crowbar. When he saw me, his shoulders relaxed in grateful relief.

  In the stunned silence that followed, Madame crawled through the door and rose to her full height. Hands on hips, she regarded everyone. Then she focused her sharp gaze on Stanley McGuire.

  “Young man!” she said sternly. “You have a lot of explaining to do!”

  One Hundred Six

  “OKAY, it wasn’t the smartest plan in the world,” Stan admitted. “But Abby and I were desperate, and it was our only chance to be together.”

  The Fugitive Club had moved out of the Underground Railroad and up to the finished portion of the mansion’s basement. I sat with Stan on the couch. Quinn paced the wooden floor. And at the lounge chair, Madame and Abby were fussing over Bernie as they iced his swollen nose.

  “How did Abby escape?” Quinn asked.

  “Her friend threw her a bridal shower,” Stan replied, “and the First Lady agreed to let Abby stay overnight. When the party ended and the house went to sleep, Abby slipped away the same way she always did. Only this time I met her in the park.”

  Stan lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry to say, Ms. Cosi, we were going to borrow your van without asking. I’d already copied the key from Gardner’s key ring, and I had a blanket for Abby to hide under, a change of clothes, even a wig.”

  “Where did you think you were going?” Quinn asked.

  “Las Vegas. We were going to get married.”

  Quinn shook his head. “You wouldn’t have made it out of DC. I doubt you would have made it out of Georgetown.”

  “That’s what I told him,” Bernie said, clutching a cloth to his nose. Underneath it appeared he was grinning. “You’ve got to admire the boy’s spunk, though.”

  Quinn groaned. “Stan’s spunk launched a million-dollar manhunt.”

  “That’s right, and they still couldn’t find him,” Bernie said, sounding like a proud parent.

  “We weren’t going to leave right away,” Stan countered. “We were going to wait it out in the Underground Railroad, then leave when the heat was off.”

  Quinn rubbed his eyes. “Son, when you help the First Daughter of the United States evade her security detail, the longer she stays missing, the hotter ‘the heat’ gets.”

  “I didn’t say he was a mastermind at subterfuge,” Bernie amended. “Only that he had spunk.”

  “So what went wrong?” I asked.

  “Me,” said Bernie. “I knew their plan, and I was trying to stop them. But upon reflection, I might have approached them differently. I rushed up to them in the dark park, and Stan mistook me for a mugger. Along with spunk, Stan has a great right hook. That was the first time I got a bloody nose in this misadventure.”

  “Then it was your blood they found in the park,” I realized. “Along with Abby’s scarf and her hair.”

  Bernie nodded. “I had to prove to Abby that I was her father, right there on the trail with my nose still leaking.”

  “And he did,” Abby said. “He knew why I had the notes from ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ tattooed on my arm. He remembered he taught me ‘Chopsticks.’ He described things in my childhood bedroom, what our house looked like, until I had no doubts.”

  “What happened next?” Quinn pressed.

  “We agreed to go forward with part of Stan’s plan,” said Bernie. “I advised them to leave Abby’s bloodied scarf and Stan’s Hoover cane by the riverbank to throw off the dogs. Then we went into the river and climbed into the storm drain. Stan had a rope rigged already, and we helped Abby up into it. We followed the drain here, to your Underground Railroad station, and camped out the last thirty hours or so. I took the time to let Abby get to know me a little better, and all three of us have been talking about options.”

  Quinn frowned. “Options?”

  “It’s clear these two will never get away with elopement. Even if we did get them to Vegas, the second they file for the license, the authorities will snatch them. Stan will be charged with kidnapping, never mind the circumstances. Sure, he’ll be cleared, but there’s no getting around the mess—”

  “I can’t walk out of here without a plan,” Abby said, becoming emotional. “My mother will say my behavior was a ‘cry for help.’ I’ll be back on medications and under even stricter security, right up to the moment she pressures me into taking a zombie walk to the altar with Preston!”

  Tears welled in her eyes, and Stan crossed the room to comfort her.

  “Let’s all stay calm,” I urged. “Gathered in this room we’ve got an intelligence officer, a combat veteran, an NYPD detective, and a woman who survived sixty years of running a small business in New York City. I think we can come up with something!”

  One Hundred Seven

  THIRTY minutes later, Luther and Quinn went through the mansion, pulling down blinds, closing curtains, and turning on every radio or television they could find to thwart potential listening devices. Then we moved Abby and Stan upstairs, into the comfort of the double parlor.

  In the kitchen, Madame made a large pot of my freshly roasted Wake Up Washington blend to the raucous sounds of BIG 100.3—DC’s classic rock station. It wasn’t until she served the coffee that I noticed she was wearing earplugs.

  Finally, Quinn, Bernie, and I took our coffee into the stately dining room for a serious discussion around the Walton family–sized table.

  “You could talk to the First Lady,” I suggested to Bernie. “Try to reason with her.”

  “That would accomplish nothing,” he assured me.

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Let’s just say I know Beth Noland better than you do.”

  “You and the future Mrs. Parker shared a relationship once,” I pointed out. “And you had a child together. Is there no hope?”

  “Our history was a tad rocky, Clare, and today it’s ancient. She wouldn’t listen to me then, and she won’t now.”

  “A comment like that makes me wonder how you two got together in the first place.”

  “Do tell,” Madame said, removing her earplugs.

  “I guess I should start at the beginning . . .”

  In the next ten minutes, Bernie quietly revealed his true background, some of which I’d learned already from Helen Trainer: He’d been born Andy Aamir Ferro here in the USA, right across the border in Virginia. His father was an American university professor; his mother a French national of Arabic descent; and he’d studied world music here in DC, as well as in France, Spain, and Morocco. His love of travel and adventure and facility for languages reminded me of Matteo Allegro.

  Then he revealed something I hadn’t heard before . . .

  “My uncle worked at the CIA. It was through him that I was recruited to act as an asset, and inform on terrorist activity abroad. Intel I supplied prevented the bombing of a Paris concert, and I realized that saving those people who didn’t even know they were in danger was as big a kick as the music . . . so I decided to become a CIA officer like my uncle. I returned to DC for training at the agency’s headquarters, and that’s when I met Abby’s mother.”

  He paused to taste the coffee, and give Madame a thumbs-up.

 
“Beth Noland was already a seasoned CIA analyst at Langley, five years older than I was, and happy with her Washington career path. From the start, we were physically attracted to each other, and Abby happened. Beth had been told she couldn’t have children, so when she got pregnant she was overjoyed, despite the complications it brought to her life.”

  “In matters of the heart, there are always complications,” Madame pointed out.

  “Not like these. I was being trained for a special assignment, and it was too late to back out. I asked Beth to give me five years in the field, then I’d return to DC and we’d marry. She was very unhappy with my decision. She left the CIA and took a job on Capitol Hill. But she did allow me a relationship with my daughter when I visited Washington. Beth even brought Abby on a few extended trips overseas to see me, and at one point she did consider a move to Casablanca.”

  “But she never did move, did she?” I said.

  “No. Because of 9/11. After that, everything changed. The world, my outlook, and my relationship with Beth. She decided it would be too dangerous for her and little Abby to move. She tried to persuade me to come back, but my work was never more important, so I refused.”

  Bernie sighed. “By 2002, Beth had begun her affair with Senator Parker. Because no one knew of me inside the Beltway, everyone began to assume Abby was Senator Parker’s love child.

  “Then came the Casablanca bombings of 2003, the worst terror attack in Morocco’s history. Two thousand suspected terrorists were arrested, convicted, and sent to the most brutal prisons you can imagine.”

  Sweat appeared on Bernie’s brow. “I was one of them. My cover was so good I’d fooled the Moroccan authorities. My fellow inmates immediately began talking about a plan to escape. I believed they could do it, so I kept my cover and played my role to the hilt. I did terrible things, but I earned respect in that prison, and trust.”

  Quinn rose from the table. When he returned, he had a shot glass and a decanter of very fine scotch.