The Rapids

by Carla Neggers

  He’d have to convince her there was another way.

  Twenty

  Maggie arrived back in the Netherlands on Friday morning. George Bremmerton met her at Schiphol himself.

  He eyed her as she dragged her suitcase behind her. “You don’t look so good, Spencer. Any other luggage?”

  She shook her head. She’d bought a few things to replace what she’d lost in the fire. Sarah Dunnemore, as beautiful as her twin brother was handsome, had flown to New York to check on her marshal brother and insisted on taking Maggie shopping in New York, somehow talking her into buying fuschia shoes and a ridiculously expensive nightgown.

  “Anything happen while I was in the air?” she asked, trying to stop thinking about the Dunnemores—but she’d been trying for hours.

  “No.” Bremmerton gave her a grudging smile. “Somehow we all managed with you out of commission for seven hours.”

  Her laugh sounded tired even to her.

  “You got back here alive,” her boss said. “That’s what counts.”

  “I appreciate the thought, but Libby Smith kept meticulous records that all went up in smoke. I should have grabbed her laptop, at least.”

  “You did fine.” He paused as they walked out to his car. “I’m just not sure I like having you come to William Raleigh’s attention.”

  Maggie stopped. “Then you do know him.”

  He shrugged. “I know everyone.”

  As they continued to his car and she dumped her suitcase in his trunk, Maggie felt the same kind of uneasiness she’d felt the entire flight across the Atlantic—as if the other shoe was about to drop. As if Ravenkill was the beginning, not the end of what had been set into motion with the Janssen tip a week ago.

  On their way to The Hague in the crush of Friday-morning traffic, Maggie sipped the last of the bottled water she’d had on the plane.

  Finally she sank her head back against her seat and shut her eyes. “Raleigh told me he had contacts in Prague who notified him that Tom was asking questions about my father’s death.”

  “Did he?”

  She opened one eye and observed Bremmerton. “I don’t think that’s the whole story.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Goddamn it. There were no contacts in Prague who tipped him off.” She had both eyes closed again but wasn’t even close to relaxed. “It was you. You got in touch with him and told him to find out what Tom was up to.”

  But Bremmerton wasn’t going any further. “You’ve had a hell of a week. You must be exhausted. Get some rest.”

  After he dropped her off at her apartment, Maggie unzipped her suitcase and dumped it out on her bed, wondering what had possessed her to buy pink shoes. Sarah Dunnemore’s influence. She was so damn pretty, Maggie had felt compelled to go a little feminine.

  But where the hell was she going to wear fuchsia sandals?

  Her mind racing, Maggie checked her one orchid and was surprised to find it had revived in her absence. It was still alive after all.

  She went down to the bakery and bought herself two soft white rolls and took them back up to her apartment. She had butter and hagelslag. She applied both liberally to one roll and sat in her tiny living room, thinking of Tom and Krispy Kreme doughnuts and how and why he’d done what he’d done.

  Ah, Tom.

  He’d been to Den Bosch before Janssen’s arrest. Libby had said she’d seen him there.

  Had Tom e-mailed Maggie the tip about Janssen?

  But why her? He knew everyone at the embassy—why not alert Bremmerton?

  And why was Tom in Den Bosch in the first place?

  Why had he chosen it for his Saturday meeting with Raleigh? Why go to the Binnendieze when they were meeting at the cathedral?

  Maggie finished her bread and chocolate sprinkles and warned herself not to do serious thinking while she was jet-lagged and dehydrated from the long flight.

  So she thought of Rob and his apartment in Brooklyn and how she’d stayed with him, and they’d made love. She wondered if he’d been thinking what she had—that it’d been a great fling, a temporary thing, of the moment…something they’d both needed and wanted and would look back on without regret.

  But it wasn’t what she really felt. It was what she told herself. She wanted to convince herself that she didn’t care about Rob as much as she did.

  After her lunch and shopping extravaganza with his twin sister, he took her to Central Park and showed her where he and Nate Winter had been shot four months ago.

  Damn.

  Adjusting to being back in The Hague, on her own, wasn’t going to be that easy, Maggie thought, tearing open a dresser drawer. She pulled out fresh work clothes and peeled off her travel clothes, changed, then headed off into The Hague’s picturesque streets.

  How could anything be so right and so wrong at the same time as she and Rob were?

  More serious thinking.

  It wasn’t to be done.

  She remembered the excitement and energy she’d had in her first days in the Netherlands. Meeting legendary George Bremmerton. Tom.

  Her serious mood wasn’t going to abate and being at the embassy didn’t help. After a couple of hours, George Bremmerton caught her and kicked her out.

  She needed rest.

  Time to calm her mind.

  But even in the morning, after a solid night’s sleep, two cups of coffee and more hagelslag, she couldn’t push back the questions and the over-whelming sense that her life was at a crossroads.

  She ducked into her Mini and drove out to Den Bosch on a Saturday morning as glorious as the one Tom Kopac had died on.

  She parked in the shade and walked to the Binnendieze, stopping at the open fence and staring down at the shallow, ancient waterway. Tourists eagerly climbed onto the flat-bottomed boats, carrying on as usual, no matter that a coldly calculated murder had taken place here a week ago. But the killer had been caught. That, at least, had to provide them some reassurance—if even they were aware of the murdered diplomat, the solitary assassin.

  “I bought us two tickets.”

  Maggie recognized the Southern accent, the mix of humor and charm in the male voice. She looked behind her, and for a moment thought the events of the past week—the emotions, the jet lag, the physical demands—had affected her mind.

  Rob stood next to her along the fence. “You DS agents do tend to forget what we marshals are good at.”

  “Tracking fugitives. I’m not a fugitive. I’m—” She broke off and frowned at him. “How?”

  “It wasn’t easy. Yours isn’t the only red Mini in this country. I almost had my cabdriver follow an old woman and her dog.”

  She smiled. “You did not.”

  “Don’t try to tell me you knew all along I was tailing you.”

  “I wouldn’t want to bruise your marshal ego.”

  “You didn’t know,” he said. “Your mind’s on figuring out what Tom Kopac was up to last Saturday.”

  She glanced at the river again and tried not to see Tom’s body floating toward the dock, to hear the people screaming. “When did you get in?”

  “This morning.”

  “So you haven’t slept—”

  Something sparked in his eyes. “I figure there’s time for that. You want to see what we can do without alerting the Den Bosch police and getting them all pissed off?” He seemed relaxed, but Maggie knew he wasn’t. He had the same questions she did. “Then we can do the boat tour.”

  She looked back down at the still water, longing, suddenly, for nothing more than normalcy in her life. But she’d rejected normalcy at every turn. And what was it, anyway? Her father had tried to discourage her from a foreign service career not, she realized, because of the dedication and sacrifices and many rewards it offered her, but because of the choices he’d made. He’d let his work take over his life. He’d lost his family because of it.

  Tom had never had a family.

  But it didn’t have to be that way. No one was more dedicated to his w
ork than George Bremmerton, and he had a full, rewarding family life.

  Maggie winced at herself. How had her mind gone off in that direction?

  Because of Rob, she thought.

  She shook off her rambling thoughts. “I don’t know if I can do the tour.”

  “I can always give the tickets away.”

  He needed a shave, but that only made him sexier. And he wasn’t armed—that had to feel strange when he was standing yards from a murder scene. Maggie moved away from the fence. “I never saw Libby. I’ve replayed every moment of last Saturday a hundred times. She must have acted fast for us—for someone—not to have seen her.”

  “She was brazen, that’s for damn sure.”

  “But I can’t see how she actually believed she’d take over Janssen’s network.” Maggie sighed, listening to the tour boat on the river below them, the guide explaining, in Dutch, what they were seeing. “Presumably Libby was in Den Bosch to get her target list from Janssen, but when did she get here? And Tom—why was he here last Thursday?”

  “Your father was on to Libby months ago. Maybe Kopac was on to her, too.”

  Maggie pointed down the street toward the café where she’d spotted Tom last week. “I wonder if that’s where Tom was when Libby saw him before Janssen was arrested. It’s not far from where the police picked him up. He could have been drinking coffee, spying on him—”

  “You think he sent you the tip,” Rob said.

  “Who else?” She started walking toward the café. “I just don’t understand why.”

  Rob fell in beside her, naturally, without any protectiveness or posturing—he had nothing to prove. “Libby must have stayed around here somewhere.”

  “Not with Janssen at his safe house. That would have been too provocative.”

  They found a small hotel around the corner from the café. It had its own café, a scatter of tables on the sidewalk. A good-looking kid of about twenty was working both the front desk and the café. He spoke halting English, but recognized the description of Libby Smith.

  “She was here last week,” he said, filling two small cups with strong espresso.

  “Did you see another American—a man?” Maggie asked.

  “He asked for her. Mrs. Smith. Like you.”

  The clerk seemed not to make any connection between his American and the American who’d ended up in the Binnendieze, never mind that Tom’s picture must have been flashed on Dutch television and appeared in every Dutch newspaper.

  Of course, Maggie thought, he could simply have decided not to get involved in a murder investigation if he didn’t have to.

  But he was struggling with his English to continue what he had to say, and Rob stepped in with his seven languages. In two seconds they were speaking French. Maggie, whose French was respectable but didn’t roll off her tongue the way it did theirs, followed along haltingly.

  The American had left a package at the hotel Saturday morning and asked the clerk to hold on to it.

  He delivered his two coffees, then came back and plucked the package from behind the counter. It was a large yellow envelope both clasped and taped shut, with no writing on the front or the back.

  “I give to you?” he asked tentatively.

  Maggie smiled at him and showed him her badge. “It’s fine. Thank you.”

  He handed over the package. He didn’t even seem that curious about its contents or why the American hadn’t returned for it. Employing all his natural charm, Rob asked the young Dutchman if they could have coffee. He pointed them to a small outdoor table.

  Maggie sat facing the sunlit street and placed the package on the table. “I don’t know if I should open it.”

  “The desk clerk says Tom left it right after Libby came down from her room. He followed her out and never came back.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, but he didn’t give her the package. He was waiting for her to ask for it. Then she checked out.”

  “The police—”

  “I asked. The kid says the police haven’t talked to him.”

  The young clerk walked toward them with two cups and saucers.

  “Did he know about Tom’s murder?” Maggie asked.

  “He’s pretending it never occurred to him the package and the two Americans he saw here that morning had anything to do with it.”

  “It’s understandable. I wanted to think Ravenkill had nothing to do with it. I’m sure he’s nervous. Think he’s calling the local police?”

  Rob gave a small smile. “I would.”

  The clerk delivered the coffees and withdrew without a word.

  Maggie tapped the package with her fingertips. “It could be argued Tom meant whatever’s in here for me.”

  “It could be argued he meant it’s evidence in a murder investigation.”

  “It’s been sitting behind the desk here for a week. We don’t even know for sure it’s Tom’s, never mind whether or not someone’s tampered with it. What if it’s tourist brochures on Den Bosch?”

  “You’re going to open it,” Rob said.

  “As our friend Raleigh says, sometimes you have to break the dishes.”

  “Finders keepers?”

  She frowned at him. “What would you do?”

  “Me? I’d have been into the thing by now.”

  Maggie peeled off the tape and unfastened the clasp, then carefully pulled out the contents of the envelope. There were four or five separate paper-clipped stacks of papers and photographs, she realized, all held together, in Tom’s typical meticulous fashion, with a larger paper clip and a fat rubber band.

  On top of the first batch was the printout of the Old Stone Hollow Inn’s Web site home page. “No wonder the police didn’t find it in his apartment,” Maggie said, pulling off the rubber band and paper clip.

  The rest of the paper-clipped stacks appeared to be in chronological order, beginning with two days after Maggie’s arrival in The Hague.

  It was a journal entry, handwritten on pedestrian yellow lined paper. Leave it to Tom not to trust a computer, she thought, her throat tightening, his precise, easy-to-read handwriting making her feel his presence, the loss of a good man. She scanned his words.

  Maggie Spencer has no idea that her father and I were friends. We met ten years ago in South Asia and stayed in touch. As different as we were, we got along. He stopped by The Hague on his way to New York a few weeks before he was killed—he was flying out of Schipphol, said he was off to check out some antiques shop in Ravenkill, New York. I had the feeling a woman was involved.

  “Maggie?”

  She looked up from the paper and realized she had tears in her eyes. “I’m okay.”

  “We can pack up and head to the embassy—”

  She shook her head. “Another minute. I won’t read every word.”

  In that same matter-of-fact style, Tom explained how surprised he was to realize that her father’s trip to the States hadn’t included a visit with his daughter—it turned out to be their last opportunity to see each other. Shortly after he returned to Prague, he was killed. Tom had felt guilty for not tearing himself away from his work to attend his longtime friend’s funeral.

  He’d started asking questions. Researching his friend’s death. At first, curiosity drove him. Then concern. Other entries detailed how he’d checked out Ravenkill and figured out that Philip Spencer had developed an apparent interest in antiques.

  But Tom didn’t believe it.

  He found out about the Old Stone Hollow Inn and Libby Smith and the Franconias and put the word out to a few people he knew to alert him if their names popped up. He didn’t identify his sources in his log. He indicated that he believed his friend Philip Spencer had gone to Ravenkill after Libby. Andrew and Star were in Prague—but that he’d never stayed at the inn. On Wednesday, the day before Nick Janssen’s arrest, one of Tom’s sources tipped him off that Libby had arrived in the Netherlands and was staying in Den Bosch.

  Maggie made herself look up from her
reading. Her steaming coffee was untouched at her elbow, but Rob was sipping his. “You’re polite,” she said. “You’re not reading over my shoulder.”

  “Your hands are shaking.”

  “Just what I need then, sugar and caffeine.” She tried to smile but couldn’t pull it off, and he wasn’t smiling, either. She pushed that first stack of papers across the table. “Here. Have at it.”

  But he kept his gaze on her. “Your father—”

  “He had his own life. It was a good one. He made his choices.”

  “He didn’t choose to be killed.”

  Maggie wasn’t shocked at Rob’s blunt words. They were what she needed. She picked up her coffee, took a sip and focused on the beautiful day. The cars, the bicyclists, fellow travelers stopping for coffee and a bite to eat.

  “I don’t think I could have done this right after his death,” she said. “And Tom…he was killed because he and my father were friends.”

  “He was killed because a ruthless woman didn’t want to be found out.”

  Rob’s tone was kind without being patronizing or condescending. “He was a seasoned foreign service officer, Maggie. He knew the score.”

  “He came out to Den Bosch looking for an antiques dealer who might know something and found an international fugitive and a killer.” She pulled off the paper clip and blank cover sheet to another stack. “Jesus.”

  She held up a photograph of Nick Janssen and Libby Smith together on a bench overlooking the Binnendieze.

  Maggie read another of Tom’s journal-type entries. Rob came around the table and stood over her reading along with her. “Tom thought Libby might be an undercover agent,” she said almost to herself. “Someone my father worked with before his death.”

  “An intelligence operative posing as an antiques dealer,” Rob said. “He was afraid of mucking things up.”

  “Poor Tom. He sent me the tip because he figured I’d handle it—I’d know if we really wanted the Dutch police to pick Janssen up, or if Libby was an undercover agent—”

  “He didn’t mention her in his e-mail.”

  “He wouldn’t have risked it. He gave me the chance to ignore it if he was stepping into something—if my father had stepped into something—”