Dead to the Last Drop (38 page)

“We’ve got a drive ahead of us, but we’ll make the rendezvous on time.”

Though the water was serene, and the docks much more quiet than they had been during last night’s frenzy of official activity, I was not sorry to leave the yacht club behind.

“Did you bring it?” Quinn asked. “And is it clean?”

“As soap,” she replied. “It’s under Clare’s seat.”

The laptop was there, along with a variety of useful items, like a truncheon, a switchblade knife, and boxes of ammunition.

“You guys got lucky last night,” Danica said as we left Federal Hill’s traffic behind. “The local police made a fuss, so the FBI cut the raid short. They might have searched each boat if they’d stayed longer.”

“What’s going on at the Village Blend, DC?” I asked, suddenly missing my old routine.

“The FBI has set up shop outside your coffeehouse, and Mrs. Bittmore-Black’s Georgetown mansion, too. They’ve been in and out of both places, so they’re probably bugged. Your telephone lines are definitely tapped, and federal agents took all the files in your office, your smartphone, and your computer—I hope you didn’t store nasty stuff on your hard drive . . .”

“
Food
porn. That’s still legal, isn’t it?”

Danica met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “There’s more. Metro DC and the feds are now actively searching for you, Clare Cosi. My precinct got the BOLO this morning. We’re going to have to be very clever to get you both inside that Georgetown mansion.”

“Our plan will work,” Quinn assured her.

We drove for forty minutes, until houses became as sparse as the traffic.

Finally, in the parking lot of a shuttered diner, I saw the Village Blend’s van. Luther was there, opening the back doors. There wasn’t another vehicle in sight as Danica pulled up.

Laptop under my arm, Quinn and I hopped into the windowless back of the vehicle and settled in among the boxes. Luther closed the doors, and we were off.

The van’s interior was heady with the smells of roasted coffees, and once again I felt a painful longing for the lost comfort of routine. Opening the coffeehouse, the morning sun burnishing the polished floor, pulling that first espresso of the day . . .

Were those sweet moments, which I too often took for granted, gone forever?

Would I be spending the rest of my years in prison, separated from my daughter, from Mike, Madame, Matt, everyone I loved? Would I be drinking prison coffee for the rest of my natural life?!

“Welcome aboard the fugitive express,” Luther called from the driver’s seat. He made a U-turn and rolled onto the road. Then he reached into his chef’s jacket and handed me an envelope.

“It’s from Tito.”

In the Italian boy’s gracefully flowing cursive, Tito revealed that only two establishments served J. Chocolatier chocolates within a twenty-block radius of the Village Blend, DC. One was By George, a tony restaurant six blocks away from our coffeehouse. The other was Tillie’s, a gastropub around the corner from our back alley.

I showed the note to Quinn and he immediately phoned Danica, who was following us. He asked her to go straight to those restaurants and review their security footage from the night Varma ran into the Village Blend and collapsed.

“With luck you’ll find out who the dead man had dinner with that night.”

When Danica replied, Quinn listened for a long time. I watched his jaw working, and his shoulders grow rigid with tension.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

Quinn didn’t appear to like the answer. He grunted before ending the call.

“What is it, Mike? What’s wrong?”

“It’s bad, Clare. Danica reached out for an update from a friend at DC Metro. The reply came five minutes ago. They’re after you for more than Varma’s death. And this time the victim named you as the perpetrator.”

O
ne Hundred Four

“A
victim named me as a perp?!”

Quinn nodded.

“Well, what in heaven’s name did I perpetrate? And who is this victim?”

“According to Danica’s source, a janitor at the Museum of American History found Helen Hargood Trainer collapsed on a piano bench, the personalized gift coffee cup still clutched in her hand.”

“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.”

O
ne Hundred Five

W
HEN 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 followed, 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!”

O
ne Hundred Six

“O
KAY, 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.”