Dead to the Last Drop

by Cleo Coyle

  He poured, and Bernie nodded his thanks.

  “Moroccan authorities admitted nine terrorists tunneled out of that cesspool of a prison. In truth, there were more than twenty of us, and my fellow fugitives made me part of their new terrorist network. They trusted me completely now. It wasn’t until I got to Pakistan that I finally managed to hook up with the CIA again.”

  Bernie drained his glass. “The gold I handed the agency after that, you wouldn’t believe. I was living in the heart of the beast. I helped stop bombings of hotels in North Africa, an embassy and nightclub in Europe, a girls’ school in the Middle East, an assassination of a world leader, and targeted attacks against our troops. I was also able to identify active terrorist cells for our military. Then a drone strike hit a meeting I was attending, and I was badly wounded, but officially I died in that attack, with everyone else—”

  “You mean Aamir Tuli Abdal died.”

  Bernie was astonished at my intelligence gathering. “Stan said you would figure out we were here, and you did. But I had no idea you were so adept at my game. You may have missed your calling, Clare Cosi.”

  “Thanks, but after the last twenty-four hours, the only thing I’ve missed is the calm, cozy comfort of my coffeehouse.”

  Quinn poured again. This time Bernie actually tasted the scotch, and approved.

  “Anyway, Navy SEALs extracted me. I’ve been in Washington about two years, healing up, getting plastic surgery in the process. Now I’ve got this new identity and a lecturing job at CIA headquarters, training case officers. In the meantime, I learned Senator Parker became President Parker, and my wonderful daughter became America’s First Daughter.”

  Bernie set his empty glass aside. “Being an intelligence officer, I couldn’t help using my skills to check up on Abby, and what I discovered, I didn’t like: An attempted suicide. Confinement in a psychiatric hospital. I knew something had gone wrong in my daughter’s life, so I decided to lurk on the fringes—watch over her.”

  He met my gaze. “I sent Abby an invitation to your Open Mike Night, making it appear as if the invitation came from your club. I was hoping she’d come, and she did. After that, it was easy for me to see her.”

  Finally, I asked the question that had been bugging me for hours.

  “How did you know Abby was going to elope?”

  Quinn made a guess from his own work on Katerina’s case. “You cloned her phone, didn’t you?”

  Bernie nodded sheepishly. “I’m not proud of it, but, yes, I did. This was long before she became a celebrity. The Secret Service kept its distance then to give her some semblance of freedom. I forged a faculty ID so I could move around. Abby was at the library one day with friends, and I was able to snatch the phone and return it.”

  Bernie’s expression became more serious. “As I listened to Abby’s conversations and read her texts, I became even more concerned for her future. The situation she was in with Stan and Preston gave me the chance to take the measure of both young men.”

  “And what did you conclude?” Madame asked.

  “Preston talked down to Abby, treated her like a child. Called her ‘the total package.’ But it wasn’t a compliment. It was a definition. He knew Abby had the kind of connections that could help him get ahead. And that’s all he ever wanted to talk about—his political aspirations, his ‘networking,’ and what he needed from her.”

  Bernie glanced at me. “Abby’s love of music so threatened Preston that he tried to make her believe you folks at the Village Blend were using her for her connections.”

  “Blatant hypocrisy!” Madame cried.

  “Yes, the Prestons of the world are good at charging rivals with exactly what they’re guilty of. And in her heart, Abby knew the boy was lying, that you had befriended her without ulterior motives.”

  “What about Stan?” I asked. “What did you think of him?”

  “Stanley McGuire never talked about Abby’s connections, only about how amazing my daughter is, how talented, and how much he cares for her. But I think it was Stan’s philosophy about jazz that really endeared him to Abby.”

  I already knew what Bernie was going to say—

  “Stan told Abby that she had to stop criticizing herself, and learn how to love every note she played.”

  “That’s a beautiful metaphor, one that goes well beyond music,” Madame observed. “No wonder you chose Stanley.”

  “My daughter chose Stanley,” Bernie clarified. “She chose him freely. And I wanted to protect her right to make that choice.”

  “Everyone at this table wants to do that,” I said. “But how? We’re a bunch of fugitive plotters in hiding. How can we thwart the wishes of a President and his recalcitrant First Lady?”

  “We could go to the press,” Madame suggested.

  “No good,” said Bernie.

  I quickly agreed. Too much of what we’d discussed, including the truth about Abby’s parentage and Bernie’s real identity, was top secret—

  Wait a minute! I thought. Top secret. Just like that flash drive . . .

  “Mike, where’s the clean laptop Danica brought you?”

  “In the kitchen. Why?”

  “Because Abby’s father needs to see this!” Without thinking, I pointed to my cleavage. And Bernie Moore nearly fell off his chair.

  One Hundred Eight

  TWENTY minutes later, Abby’s father was still sitting in front of Danica’s laptop, poring over the top secret e-mails about his own disappearance after the bombings in Morocco.

  “Clare, when you handed me this flash drive, you said Helen Trainer kept printouts in a file that was stolen from her office?”

  I nodded. “For some reason, she named the file Bathsheba.”

  Bernie lifted an eyebrow. “Poetic, but true. Do you know the story?”

  “I do,” said Luther Bell, who’d joined us at the dining room table. “King David had the hots for a soldier’s wife, so he sent her husband to the front lines to die, which left him free to dally with the missus.”

  “That’s it, in a nutshell,” Bernie said, “but you left out a few important details. Like the part about King David doing more than dallying with Uriah’s wife. After her husband died in battle, David married Bathsheba and made her his queen.”

  Bernie finally closed the laptop. “It’s the perfect parallel to my story, and even better, it’s a story millions of voters will understand, which is why I’m going to use this against the First Lady.”

  “Use what, exactly?” I asked. “I know there’s a scandal here, something that makes the President look bad. But I still don’t know the specifics.”

  “They cut me loose,” Bernie said. Though his voice was calm, I could see the cold rage in his gaze. “Right after the Casablanca bombings, my people at the CIA wanted an investigation. They wanted confirmation of my death. Or proof of life. But President Parker, then Senator Parker, worked behind the scenes with his crony at the State Department to kill the investigation. He was in love with Beth Noland by then, I’m sure of it. And he wanted me out of the picture. So he got his friend to testify that it would be a diplomatic disaster with the country of Morocco if they went looking for me. As a result, I was cut loose, declared dead.”

  Bernie swiped his hand across his throat. “These e-mails make it clear enough. The future President of the United States ended me.”

  “No wonder the administration tried to keep this secret,” Quinn said. “A lot of military families would not be too keen on reelecting a President who left a man behind . . .”

  Bernie nodded at Quinn’s observation. Then, oddly, his craggy face split into a smile.

  Now, I’d seen Bernie smile before. But never like this. It wasn’t a fatherly smile, or a charming one, or even one that conveyed amusement.

  It was the kind of smile that revealed who he really was—a ruthless, canny chess
player who had finally found the strategic move for checkmate.

  “This is how we’re going to help Abby,” he said.

  I leaned forward. “How?”

  He rubbed his hands together. “For this strategy to work, we need to wait until the world knows Abby is missing. Once the announcement is made, the White House won’t be able to tell their version of the truth. They’ll have to provide real answers to a curious press. Where did Abby go? Why did she run away? Who was she with?”

  Bernie unplugged the flash drive and held it up.

  “With this little piece of history, I can make things very difficult for the First Lady unless she does what I ask. And all I want is for her to stop making Abby’s choices for her. I want her to give Abby the freedom to make her own choices. And if she doesn’t, I will go public and ruin her husband.”

  I exchanged a glance with Mike. “Do you think it will work?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Quinn. “It’s brilliant.”

  “Thanks,” said Bernie. “The moment Abby’s disappearance goes public, I’ll place the call to the First Lady myself.”

  Quinn grunted. “As a fellow divorcé, I’m sure you’re dying to make that call. But remember, the White House controls the FBI, the Secret Service, and the CIA. How are you going to bring in the authorities without losing control of the situation?”

  “I know a way,” I said. “Agent Sharon Cage knows Abby’s story and she’s become sympathetic to Abby’s feelings for Stan.”

  “But how do we bring her here without bringing an FBI SWAT team down on our heads, too?”

  It was my turn to display a chess master’s smile. “Code. I can send Sharon Cage a text in a code only she’ll understand. It’s a phrase we privately shared. She’ll remember, and I guarantee she’ll figure it out.”

  Bernie looked skeptical. “What’s to stop her from alerting the FBI?”

  “Embarrassment. Sharon was the head of Abby’s security detail. Hours after Abby went missing, she was relieved of her duties. I witnessed it myself.”

  Madame frowned. “That poor girl. It’s so unjust.”

  “But good for us,” I said. “With Cage on the outs with the FBI and the Oval Office, she’ll check things out for herself before sounding an alarm based on a coded message. When she arrives, Bernie can explain everything the way he explained it to us. With the press out front, Sharon Cage can be the one who brings Abby and Stan out of the mansion. A happy ending for everyone.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Madame said. “The woman will look like a hero.”

  I smiled, recalling my talk with Sharon in front of those ruby slippers. “Believe me, if anyone can get Abby and Stan safely over that rainbow, it’s the agent from Kansas.”

  One Hundred Nine

  THERE was a celebration in the dining room once the young lovers’ dilemma was finally solved. Luther cooked up a quick snack, and Abby and Stan joined us at the table.

  It was Bernie who noticed that Quinn and I weren’t feeling the joy.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked. “Can I help?”

  Quinn informed him that I was still wanted for the murder of Jeevan Varma, and that I was also the prime suspect in the poisoning of Helen Trainer.

  “That’s unacceptable!” Bernie said. He was fuming. “Who would do that to such a lovely woman? You know, Abby told me all about Helen, how supportive and helpful she’s been. Personally, I found the woman very charming . . . and I was hoping we’d meet again.”

  I began to pace. “I just can’t understand how she was poisoned . . . I filled her cup from the communal coffee urn myself. Everyone else drank the coffee from that urn, including me. And Helen’s cup was empty when I filled it—”

  “But it had Helen’s name on it,” Bernie pointed out. “The poisoner must have used a residue, something invisible when it dries. An eyedropper could have been used to deposit the toxin on the bottom of the cup. When the hot coffee went in, the residue dissolved and contaminated the drink.”

  “That’s possible?” Madame said, amazed.

  “It’s simple tradecraft,” Bernie replied. “It worked for me.”

  We all stared at him.

  He shrugged. “I poisoned a sadistic Moroccan guard using strychnine I distilled from the rat poison scattered around the prison. I put it in his teacup. He didn’t die from it. But the residue was enough to send him to the hospital. And he never came back to torture us prisoners again.”

  I stared at this man who, just two days ago, I thought of as a genteel jazz critic who could give my ex-husband lessons in sensitivity. Maybe not.

  “Well,” I said, “at least Helen recovered.”

  “From what I remember about the Smithsonian party,” said Bernie, “too much champagne is what saved her life.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No. It’s called the Rasputin effect.”

  Madame blinked. “The Russian mystic?”

  “As the story goes, a group of Russian nobles, threatened by Rasputin’s political sway with the czar, invited him to dinner. They plied him with wine and poison-laced pastries. But because he got very drunk, the poison didn’t kill him.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Excessive alcohol can cause a temporary condition of malabsorption, in which the stomach can’t digest certain nutrients. So the poison doesn’t enter the system fast enough to overwhelm it.”

  “That’s interesting,” Quinn said. “But let’s get back to the part about Helen’s cup sitting in plain sight for the entire party. A defense lawyer could argue access by any number of people, which creates reasonable doubt for Clare.”

  “Thanks, but I’d rather deliver the guilty party,” I said. “And I think I know who’s behind it—Katerina Lacey. The strategy is sickeningly clever. Helen is poisoned and it looks like I did it. Two rival birds taken out with one deadly cup.”

  Bernie leaned forward. “Tell me everything you know about this Katerina person and why you think she hurt Helen . . .”

  Quinn joined me in explaining the many faces of Katerina Lacey—politically appointed acting director of a Justice Department task force and sometime advisor to the First Lady.

  “For years she’s been advancing her career with ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’ evidence,” Quinn continued. “I’ve been running my own investigation on her past in Baltimore—with the help of a detective there. Here in Washington, I’ve been helping her run stings with shady evidence that I strongly suspect was gathered illegally.”

  “You suspect,” said Bernie, “but do you have any proof?”

  “Only a theory and a small stack of police reports on lost, stolen, and returned mobile phones from the subjects of her Justice Department prosecutions.”

  “Where does Helen fit into all this?”

  I jumped in. “Helen was a key witness to events surrounding the murder of a State Department employee, a man named Jeevan Varma who was trying to sell that flash drive to the highest bidder. We have reason to believe Katerina was involved in Mr. Varma’s murder. We don’t know if she was helping him with his blackmailing plan or trying to stop him, but we know she had access to the White House—where Helen’s printouts of those e-mails were stolen. Helen even told me Katerina asked her about her meeting with Mr. Varma. How could she know if she wasn’t involved? And, of course, Katerina was at the party the night Helen was poisoned.”

  “But who do you think poisoned Helen’s coffee?” Madame asked. “Katerina herself or an accomplice?”

  I faced Bernie. “Would members of the Secret Service know about residue poisoning?”

  He nodded. “It’s something they have to watch for.”

  “Then if Katerina didn’t do it, she could have had someone else do it for her: Agent Sharpe, who I saw her flirting with on Saturday night. Or her assistant, Lidia.” I snapped my fingers. “That girl actuall
y made a crack about her boss liking ‘men with guns.’ Agent Sharpe certainly fits that profile.”

  “Does this woman just bend the law or is she truly corrupt? How dirty is Katerina Lacey?” Bernie asked.

  “Very,” said Quinn.

  “And in more ways than one,” I added. “Much to the delight of the men she pulls into her web. She’s been trying to pull Mike in for some time.”

  Quinn shrugged. “As it happens, I’m allergic to female spiders.”

  “But who knows who else Katerina has seduced? We need to learn the identity of her accomplice, too.”

  Bernie turned to Quinn. “Do you have any physical evidence against her?”

  “This.” Quinn displayed Varma’s cloned phone and explained how it came into his hands. “Not much of a connection. But it’s a brick we can build on.”

  “Let’s not forget Danica,” I added. “She’s looking for a hit on that security camera footage. If she gets one, then I have an idea that might catch Katerina in her own web.”

  “Your ideas have been good so far,” said Quinn.

  “Actually, it’s half Stan’s idea. We had a talk once about beating bullies with strategy instead of force. How’s this for a strategy?”

  I laid out the whole gambit, including the roles Quinn, Danica, and I would play. When I finished, Bernie nodded his approval.

  “Out of curiosity, Clare, where did the other half of that idea come from?”

  “Simple geography.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Katerina’s luxury apartment building is in Maryland. According to the map, it’s not far from Wisconsin Avenue, which means we can take Wisconsin all the way up to her home.”

  “So?”

  “So do you know what Wisconsin was before it became a tony shopping district or a rolling road for Georgetown’s tobacco port?”

  “Haven’t got a clue.”

  “An ancient buffalo trail.”

  Quinn laughed so loud I was worried the FBI might hear, but he wouldn’t stop. The man was positively gleeful at the prospect of buffaloing his awful boss.