No eye contact, no acknowledgment at all.
She helped an old man from the back door. A man who couldn’t stand properly, who walked as if with massive arthritis. He had to hang an arm across Shelley’s shoulders in order to walk.
“Where’s . . .” Jeffrey? He’d aged horribly in the last seven days. She stepped off the porch. Moved toward them.
“Hi Mand.” He slid his free arm easily across her shoulders and pulled her in tight. So tight it was hard to breath and at the same time she managed the first full breath she’d taken since Jeffrey had called that they were on their way.
He sniffed her hair, she could hear him breathe in deeply. Could feel his chest expand with the arm she’d slid across his back without thinking.
“You smell incredible. What’s for dinner?”
CHAPTER 79
“I don’t understand. There’s something else here that we’re not seeing. The answer is right here.”
They’d shoved aside the pizza boxes from the Franconia Cafe which had really hit the spot. Jeff’s feet were throbbing quietly beneath fresh bandages after taking a couple of Tylenol. The old kitchen hadn’t changed since the day he’d cooked blueberry pancakes at the old electric stove. It had avoided two dozen years of fads and was back in style with its soft almond appliances and gray countertops. The linoleum squares of alternating red and black had thankfully stayed out of style, so far. These were faded enough to be comforting instead of garish, but they still weren’t attractive. Even the old table was the same, right down to the utilitarian white metal single-bulb light fixture that hung down from the old pine ceiling.
Only the players had changed. Phillip’s chair had some perky, blond kid with one of those high, air-headed voices. She should be a pool lifeguard somewhere sitting up in the high chair, wearing a sheer one piece and one of those white pith helmets.
And Shelley had unknowingly sat where she always did, but the two-volume set of the New York City yellow pages were no longer necessary to raise her to eating height. He considered checking the lower right cupboard to see if they were still stacked in the corner. The child had been replaced by the woman grown and it surprised some part of him every time he looked her way.
The table, he knew many of the scuffs and scrapes by name. The darkened circle where Mandy had so distracted him just by being in the kitchen that he’d set the stew pot directly on the old wood. The discolored puddle-shaped spot that had been a spill of Shelley’s blue water paints. She’d been making him a picture of the sky.
And there, right in front of him, were Phillip’s files. The worst part was that they were completely boring.
“Okay. There’s some great stuff here. File one: Some amazing botanical development. File two: one hell of a marketing prospectus to convince us to spread these plants far and wide. But why did he put in all this stuff about blockages. Blocked paths of research. Blocked receptors. He dealt with all that. Even starts his first sentence and ends his last with that word. Maybe he was calling me a blockhead.” Which he had often enough in real life.
“But anyway, the stuff that’s in here, any corporation would kill to get their hands on. But why would the President? We still think it’s him, right? It doesn’t make any sense.”
No one was agreeing, but no one was disagreeing either.
“Well, he’s certainly a crappy uncle-in-law. Really stupid Christmas presents, probably chosen by a bored staffer, and never one for my birthday, not even a gift card.”
“Thanks, Clarice. That helps immensely.”
“You’re welcome.” She was irrepressible. Be a laugh to have her on the show some day if it turned out she had more than two brain cells to rub together.
Mandy and Shelley were studiously ignoring each other.
He picked up Phillip’s phone. It had ten times more buttons than he’d ever seen.
He tossed it to Shelley who jolted from her studied indifference long enough to catch it.
“I don’t know how to use that thing. I still have a landline. Can you see if there’s anything interesting?”
“I’ve never used one either.”
“You haven’t?” Clarice was shocked and scooted her chair next to Shelley’s. “Okay that’s how you access the main menu. That button. Now scroll up and down for your options, the wheel on the side. Let’s start with recent messages. Then we can drop down into e-mail and stored files. You know it works just like a flash drive, too. You can store a mess of stuff on it.”
In moments the two of them were oblivious to the others.
He waited until Mandy looked up at him and nodded toward the back door. Neither girl reacted as they left.
Mandy went first.
He was almost across the threshold when Clarice called from behind him, “No having sex with Shelley’s mom.”
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t groan.
He did turn back, grab both their jackets against the cool evening, and return to the door.
Just before he closed it he answered back.
“Only in my dreams am I that lucky!”
Shelley only looked at him with that closed-off look of hers.
Clarice laughed though.
CHAPTER 80
They didn’t make it past the Adirondack chairs. Which had the advantage of letting Jeff put his feet up and the disadvantage of keeping them too far apart to do more than hold hands.
“She’s an amazing young woman, Mand. You should be proud of her. Really.”
They watched the stars for a while.
“I am. I’ve just never been able to tell her.”
Big Dipper. Orion. Taurus.
“Tell her about you,” Mandy’s voice was as soft as the honeyed night.
“About me? What about me? I left when she was five. She doesn’t even remember the man who gave her the crystal polar bear.”
Canus Major. Sirius. The dog star. The faithful follower of Orion.
“Were we ever so young?”
Jeff grimaced, glad of the dark that would hide his expression. He certainly had been and had thought he was right. No, he’d known he was right, then insisted that EMS was a mistake and that Amanda and her daughter must leave with him. Of course he’d also been certain Karen would make him happy, rather than gifting him with the marriage from hell for the simple crime of not being Mandy.
He’d known so damn much. It was EMS that had created the amazing crops in the folder on the table. It was Amanda’s role in EMS that had saved his and Shelley’s life today. And it was his own research which put them at risk in the first place.
“I was so damn young,” Jeff still couldn’t believe how young. “I know now why you said no. I would have too. What a loser.”
“Not a loser. Jeffrey, never that.” She squeezed his hand. “I just couldn’t live up to your standard.”
“My standard? You were my standard. You were, are, the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
“And what will you think of me when you finally wake from that moment? Wake to find that I won’t live with you in that incredible, perfect Manhattan apartment of yours. Because I could never be that woman you imagine. That neither my body nor my mind are young.”
He turned to her. Took her hand in both of his.
“What?” Clarice burst through the door. “Aren’t you two even necking yet? What’s up with that?”
“Did you find anything?” Redirection.
Clarice’s look made it clear that she was not put off the scent. Not by a long shot.
“One more file that he didn’t send, but we can’t open it.”
Jeff could feel the cold of the autumn evening transferring from Mandy’s hands to his.
“I think you’d better come look at it.”
CHAPTER 81
Mark Anders slipped out of the spare bedroom. His hosts, Jimmy and Doreen, sl
ept upstairs.
Fudgcicle looked at him from her doggy bed. He pet the little rat terrier, put down his business card, and picked up the keys off the hook by the door. Screw that. He picked up the card and walked out the door. Within the minute he was on his way to anywhere but here in their battered old Chevy Nova.
Twenty minutes later he got a signal on his phone. Within thirty he had a strong signal.
He pressed the speed dial.
“Give me, Richards,” he told the night operator. The guy actually laughed when he realized who it was, though he was clearly trying to muffle it. In a couple of seconds he was patched through.
“Roll over and go back to sleep, Anders. It’s after your bedtime.” Though apparently Richards never slept. Maybe he really was part machine just like the rumors.
Mark checked the dashboard clock. Nine-thirty.
“Sure. Glad to. You aren’t interested in any more helicopter pictures anyway.” He hit send.
“What the hell is that?”
“That, Mr. Richards, is the best attack helicopter that’s never been built. It doesn’t exist. And I know exactly where it’s going.”
“Where?”
“Nope. So sorry. Might have told you if you hadn’t dumped me in Bumfuck, Ohio.” EMS had gone back to their original home and he knew exactly where that was.
“So here’s the deal, Richards. I want in on this bastard. He’s taken down too many. I want all the way in. You have a plane pick me up in Columbus, Ohio in thirty minutes. It flies to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I pick up a team there. A good one this time.”
The old man sputtered and cursed for a while.
Let him.
He cruised down I-70 for a while until the old man recovered.
“We’re having difficulty getting helicopter support.”
“That’s your issue, old man. Just get me there.”
He hung up, stuffed the phone in his pocket, and cranked on the radio. All he could find was a crackling jazz station. That was it. No rock and roll. Not even country. He turned it up and placed both hands on the wheel.
That’s when the shakes set in. No one talked back to Stephen Richards. He’d bet even the President didn’t talk back to him.
Had he just signed his own death warrant?
He was sick enough of the whole business that he really didn’t care.
Mostly.
CHAPTER 82
The office was perfect. It was different than his apartment, but Jeff could move in here tomorrow. Old unfinished pine, weathered dark as chocolate sauce, braided-rag rugs in circles and ovals were scattered about the room. Two old desks, one looked handmade with loving care, a master work of oak carving. The other looked as if it had been stolen from a school teacher about fifty years ago. Big, stout, and covered with weird little knickknacks.
That had to be Clarice’s.
She had the file displayed on her computer. He sat in front of the computer, Mandy beside him and they stared at it.
It looked so innocent.
Jeffrey1.doc
A name he might have used himself, if they’d had decent word processors when he was doing his research in the late 1970s.
They’d clicked on it.
“Enter password:”
And a blank.
He tried his name, his name backwards, his birthday, Phillip’s, Mandy’s. It wasn’t soil, dirt, earth, or any variation on that.
Mandy had looked at him strangely when he’d tried elastomer and polymer and a dozen more variations, but she didn’t comment.
“I need to move the helicopter. I don’t want it out in the open at daybreak.” Shelley rose to her feet, her hands stuffed deep in her jeans pockets.
Where was she going to put it, back in its silo in Ohio? Actually, she probably had that half in mind.
“Does, um, what’s his name, damn . . . Jack!” Mandy snapped her fingers when she remembered it.
“Damn Jack?”
“Thanks for the help, Clarice. Jason Reynolds. He has a big horse arena he never uses, never bought any horses as I recall. It’s just the next farm over about a five minute walk. All open on one side.”
“He died eleven years ago.”
“Shit!” She covered her mouth quickly, looked about twelve when she did. Cutest thing Jeff had ever seen.
“But his kids are still using the place as weekenders. The arena’s still there. Still no horses. Come on, Shelley, I’ll show you where it is.” Clarice sprang to her feet, her long blond hair a sudden swirl.
“How the heck do you know that?”
That brought her to a full halt. He could feel Mandy smiling at him somewhere just out of sight. Uh-oh.
“It’s my job to know, Mr. Davis. Though we’ve been here only twenty- three and a half hours, I can tell you every property owner in a two-mile radius. I know you prefer iced cappuccino to hot, even in the winter. I know that Shelley’s Comanche has under a quarter of a tank left and that a truck filled with Jet A will be here tonight around two a.m. to top it up. A rare commodity in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire, let me tell you. Don’t mess with me, mister. I know shit.”
Then she smiled one of her beatific smiles and flounced out the door in her Converse sneakers, hippie skirt, and denim jacket.
Shelley left with no comment.
Mandy was laughing. It was soft, but she was laughing. At him. Not with him.
“How?”
Mandy held up her hands. “No idea. For all I know, she makes half that stuff up, but I haven’t caught her out in five years. Rhodes Scholar, Dartmouth, Oxford, Cambridge. Don’t ever let the blond hair, silly girl act fool you for one second.”
“Christ. Now she thinks I’m a total blockhead.”
“Either that, or she was showing off for her new friend. She thinks the world of Shelley. At least that’s something. Maybe Shelley will unravel a little around her.”
He stared at the projection screen.
“Enter Password:”
He’d had a thousand nicknames from Phillip. They changed daily, sometimes hourly.
And he’d given more than his fair share to Phillip over the years.
There was only one they had in common. One they’d both used on and off again from the first day of college until the day he’d left EMS.
He pulled over the keyboard, only peripherally aware that Mandy was still talking about her daughter in quiet, musing tones.
“What did Phillip call me?”
“What? When?”
“At the apartment. When you first arrived.”
He knew it. Had to be.
He typed it in as she spoke with a sense of wonder.
“Blockhead.”
The file opened on the screen.
CHAPTER 83
He had set them on their ears tonight.
Lindsey had never heard her husband speak so movingly. Passion had rolled out of the President. Passion for sound foreign relations, for America leveraging the global economy to our own greatest advantage, for lifting Americans back onto the top of the economic and educational ladders. That he’d claimed a half dozen of her projects as his own didn’t bother her. Much. She was used to it. All she cared about was doing good, in anyone’s name.
A thousand dollars a plate for five hundred happy donors was the least of the cash rolling in tonight. Jeremy Struthers was polling under fifteen percent and President Grant had just banked almost six million for his party.
He was high as a kite in the limo tonight, practically dancing in his seat.
“Did you see them, Babe? Did you see them eat it up? That was fucking beautiful.”
Lindsey knew what she wanted to ask, knew what she needed to find out.
But she could think of no method of masking the question that wouldn’t bring out the shark.
&n
bsp; Her husband was two people, that was the problem. The cheerful friend of the people was one. He hid the avaricious shark well. The one that swam deep below the surface snapping up everything it could take.
“You’re almost done with him.” That’s what she must keep telling herself. “Just be done with him.” Shelley and Jeff were safe enough. Eddie Johns would see that there were no more attacks by US troops. And they were off somewhere, she didn’t even know where. She’d use tomorrow’s breakfast to cement their safety and it would be nice to see Eddie again.
Lindsey had signed and faxed all the documents Henry had sent to her. Tina had been shocked when asked to notarize them, apparently because Lindsey hadn’t come to Mother Tina first to discuss it. Once over the disappointment of not being involved, she’d wrapped Lindsey in a big hug and put her stamp of approval on the documents with tears running down her face.
Henry confirmed the good news, with no alimony or division of property, it could settle in weeks, perhaps faster, assuming the President would sign off on it when he was served the day after tomorrow. There was a mandatory six-month waiting period in California from filing until it took effect, but everything else could be settled quickly, then she’d just have to sit back and wait.
The bad news, he’d told her, was that though he’d filed with a very discreet judge, she’d have two, perhaps three days before it became public record, assuming some court clerk didn’t leak it sooner. It would be a hell of a scoop and could make some poor clerk a quick ten grand or so.
Two or three days. Anything could happen in that time. It would be enough, it would have to be.
The phone rang in the car.
CHAPTER 84
“Grant here.” The friend of the people answered the limo phone.
“Stephen. What the hell are you doing calling me here?” Still merry. Looking for the laugh.
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