A Deadly Vineyard Holiday (17 page)

I believed him. Almost.

“Maybe it was you who made that trail,” I said.

The little smile flicked again. “That's one of the possibilities. Another is that there isn't any trail at all. Another is that you made it yourself. Or maybe the king of Siam made it.”

“Oh, there's a trail,” I said. “Come over and have a look. Maybe you can tell if it was the king of Siam. I don't think so, because if it was, he'd have had Anna with him, and I think this is a one-person track.”

We walked back to the trail and looked at it.

“Never noticed this when I came on duty,” said Ted. “Someday I'll probably trip over a curb and break my neck.” His eyes followed the trail first to the south, then back toward the Felix Neck driveway. “One person headed north. You say this guy went down from here, then came back out?”

“I didn't back track the first trail I found,” I said, “but that's what I figure.” I told him everything about finding the trail except about the thread. “The trail led down from this direction and then led back.”

“Smallish foot,” said Ted, squatting on his heels and pointing at a print in the ground. “This guy wore shoes, not herring boxes without topses. That proves it wasn't you.”

“Or you, either, Clementine, unless you can walk on your hands.”

“As a matter of fact, I
can
walk on my hands. But not
that far. So I guess we're both in the clear.” He stood up and swept the forest with his eyes. “You're sure about it not having happened before you left this morning?”

“I'm sure.”

“Why?”

“Because a snow-white dove descended from heaven, circled my head three times, then alighted on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, ‘This happened after you all left the house this morning.' That's why.”

He stared at me, then shrugged. “That means it happened on an earlier watch than mine. Maybe the one just before I got here.”

“That's what it means,” I said. “Who had that watch?”

Frank pointed a forefinger to the sky and made little circles with it. “It was probably the same dove. It told me not to tell you.”

“I'll bet Walt Pomerlieu can tell me,” I said.

“Ask him,” said Ted. He turned and walked away, frowning.

By the time I walked back through the trees to our house, it was beginning to get dark. Walt Pomerlieu and a carload of agents were there. One of them was Joan Lonergan. When I came out of the woods, two of the agents stopped what they were doing and kept their eyes on me.

“I'm J. W. Jackson,” I said. “I live here.”

The agents kept watching. One put a hand on his hip.

Pomerlieu looked up. “Yeah, that's him,” he said.

The agents nodded and went back to work. They were going over the grounds, buildings, and cars for whatever they might find. Karen Lea and Debby were fifty feet up the driveway, just watching.

“We found this in your telephone and this in your living room,” said Pomerlieu. He showed me two small devices. “Everything you said in the house or on the phone could be heard.”

I wasn't surprised. I had been dumb so often lately that another example of my stupidity seemed only natural.

“I'm not used to this espionage stuff” was all I could manage as an explanation, but I could feel anger rising inside of me. Someone had actually come into my house, where nobody belonged except Zee and me and our guests, and had listened to everything we had to say. It was more than just irksome.

Pomerlieu's tone was intended to calm. “No reason
for you to be hard on yourself. How could you have guessed?”

I thought for a moment. “If these bugs work twenty-four hours a day, does that mean that whoever planted them has to listen twenty-four hours a day? Because if it does, it must mean that there's a good-sized team out there, three or four people at least, taking turns at the listening post.”

“It doesn't mean that,” said Pomerlieu, “because they could have just taped whatever they heard and played it back later.”

“So we can't guess how many people there are?”

“No,” he said. “Where were you just now?”

I told him about the trail coming into the house and the one going north to the Felix Neck sanctuary, and of my meeting with Ted Harris. “He surprised me,” I said. “He knows what he's doing in the woods.”

“He should,” said Pomerlieu. “He came to us from another agency. He was in their operations directorate for years, working mostly overseas. He switched to us when they brought him back from his last job. He does know his way around.”

“He wouldn't tell me who had the shift before his.”

Pomerlieu allowed himself a smile. “Good.”

“Not from my point of view. Whoever came down here did it on that shift. I'd like to talk to the guy who was on duty.”

“We'll attend to that. Don't worry.”

“Don't worry? Trust your Secret Service? You jest.”

The humor went out of his face. “I don't jest, Mr. Jackson. My job is to protect the family of the president of the United States, and I take that job seriously.”

“You're all serious, but so far we've got somebody bugging our cars and our house, somebody following us
up to Gay Head, and somebody coming down through the woods past agents of yours who never saw a thing. Who had the duty up there? Some city gink who wouldn't know a moose from a mouse? Somebody who was so busy slapping mosquitoes that he'd miss an elephant going by?”

A ripple of anger crossed Pomerlieu's face. “No elephants would get by Joan.”

Joan Lonergan? “You mean Joan Lonergan was on watch up there before Ted? What does she know about the woods?”

“Probably more than you,” said Pomerlieu in a cold voice. “She and Ted came to us at the same time. They were partners on their last job overseas. You could drop Joan Lonergan naked into the Amazon jungle five hundred miles from the nearest human being, and she'd walk out okay. I don't think the same could be said for you or me.”

I looked at him for a moment, then said, “I'm trying to imagine Joan Lonergan naked in the Amazon jungle, but I can't quite pull it off. I keep seeing an image of Sheena. Joan doesn't have blond hair or a leopard-skin bikini, does she?”

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I don't think so.”

“Neither do I, sad to say. If she's so good in the woods, why didn't she see the person who came down here on her watch?”

“That's one of the things I'll ask her,” said Pomerlieu, looking across the yard to where Joan Lonergan was nosing around our outdoor shower. “When I find out, I'll let you know.”

“If you think I need to.”

“If I think you need to.”

“What agency did they work for before they came to you?”

He put on his long-suffering face. “That's one of the things you don't need to know, Mr. Jackson.”

There was a sudden gathering of agents over by the outdoor shower. We looked that way, and I saw a dusty man come out of the crawl space under the house, where Velcro and Oliver Underfoot sometimes like to go to escape the summer heat. The man brushed at cobwebs that adorned his face and showed his find to Lonergan and his other companions. Then he and Lonergan came to Pomerlieu.

“You'll want to see this, sir.”

“What is it?”

The agent hesitated, glancing at me. “It's okay,” said Pomerlieu.

The agent revealed a plastic bag containing a small square box with strips of tape hanging from it. “I found it under the house,” said the agent. “As near as I can figure, it was right under the bed where the girl sleeps.”

“Jesus,” said Pomerlieu.

“What is it?” I asked.

The agent looked at Pomerlieu, who was definitely pale but managed a shrug.

“It looks like a bomb,” said Lonergan. “One of the kind you can detonate by radio. It was taped onto a floor joist.”

Pomerlieu pointed across the yard. “Take it over beyond the garden and put it down. If it's what it seems to be, whoever put it there can set it off whenever he wants to. Do it.”

“Yes, sir.” The agent walked swiftly to the far corner of the yard and put the plastic bag on the ground, then trotted back.

“Call the bomb people,” said Pomerlieu.

“Yes, sir.” Lonergan walked away and lifted her wrist to her mouth.

“And go over everything again. If there was one, there may be others.”

“Yes, sir.” The male agent went first to his companions, who listened and then scattered, two of them going back under the house itself. Then he began talking into his collar.

Pomerlieu dug out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Good Lord, a bomb. If it had gone off . . .” He looked anguished.

“But it didn't,” I said, feeling an unexpected sympathy for him. “And now it won't.”

“I know, but . . .” He seemed to become aware of himself, and to pull himself together. “This is bad business,” he muttered, and went into the house.

Bad business, indeed. I was shaking from fear and anger. A bomb under my house!

I watched the agents swarm over, under, through, and around my buildings, and ran different scenarios through my head. Eventually, Pomerlieu reappeared, spoke to various agents, then came over to me.

“There doesn't seem to be anything else, Mr. Jackson. I'm afraid your house has been turned a bit upside down, though. Sorry.”

“Don't be. Better that than another bomb we never learned about. Listen, can you send somebody up to the hospital to check out Zee's Jeep? It may have another one of those bugs on it.”

“What makes you think so? Didn't you already find the one on her car?”

“That was this morning's bug. If there's another one, whoever planted it did it this afternoon, while we were
clamming. Ted went on duty about the time the girls and I drove downtown, and if we can believe him, the guy who made that trail did it before Ted got there.”

“How do you know it didn't happen before you went clamming?” asked Pomerlieu.

“Because the only time her Jeep was here and people weren't was when we were clamming. If the guy who made the trail planted this bomb, he might have planted another bug at the same time.”

“We'll check out her Jeep,” said Pomerlieu.

“Good.” I wished I knew whether the bomb and the bugs in the house had been put there this afternoon or installed earlier, when the first car bugs were installed. “You're sure you've found everything?”

He looked at Lonergan, who was coming out of the house. She gave him a nod.

He nodded back and turned to me. “I think we've found all there was to find here. Now we'll have to get to work on that trail. It's possible that you're right about the bomber having made it.”

It seemed a good time to try again for information. “Do you want to tell me what you think is going on?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it again. “I understand your feelings, particularly in light of what we've found here just now. But you don't need to know. Excuse me.” He stepped out into the driveway and waved Karen and Debby in.

As they walked toward us, a flatbed truck carrying a large circular container came down the driveway behind them. They stepped aside to let it pass, and it arrived and unloaded three people I presumed to be the bomb squad. Pomerlieu spoke to them and pointed across the garden. The people backed the truck as near to the plastic bag as they could get, then began to
unload gear and climb into suits that looked like they'd been designed for outer space.

“You may not tell me anything,” I said to Pomerlieu as Debby and Karen came on toward us, “but it's pretty obvious that somebody has some nasty plans for cousin Debby, and that you think that person's got an agent inside the president's compound. You may have thought that Debby was going to be safer here with Zee and me than she would be out there with the presidential party, but do you still think so?”

His face was expressionless. “Go on.”

Karen and Debby weren't too far away now, so I didn't have much more time.

“I've been wondering why the inside agent didn't do the job on Debby's face before now, instead of—”

Pomerlieu's big hand shot out and gripped my shoulder. “How do you know about the threat to her face? Where did you get that information?”

His grasp was strong, and his voice was hard and angry. I looked at the hand, then back at his face. “You tell me nothing, and you expect me to tell you everything. It's true, then. That story about the girl with no face, and whoever it is out there who wants to do the same to Cricket Callahan. Take your hand off of me.”

He looked at the hand and took it away. I had the impression he hadn't noticed it being there. “Where did you get that information? That's confidential material! Who gave it to you?”

“How many people work for intelligence services in Washington? And how many of them know about the letters and the threats they contained? And how many of them have lovers or wives or husbands that they talk to? And how many of those people have other lovers or wives or husbands that they talk to?”

“Who told you?”

“A friend who has friends who have friends.”

“What's his name?”

“I didn't say it was a he. In any case, you won't get the name from me.”

Karen and Debby arrived and looked around.

“What did you find?” asked Karen, looking at the bomb squad.

Pomerlieu told her about the bugs, but not about the bomb.

Debby pointed at the truck. “What are they doing?”

“We found something we can't identify,” said Pomerlieu smoothly. “When in doubt, take it out. They're removing it.”

Karen frowned but, after a glance at Debby, made no comment about an operation she certainly must have recognized. Instead—deliberately, I thought—she spoke of the bugs, the lesser of two evils by far. “If they've been there long, it means that whoever installed them knew when we went downtown and could have followed us there.”