Deja Vu (29 page)

“Guess that takes care of that,” Kathryn said as she pressed the button to raise the window. “We can come back in the morning, Bert.”

“How did it feel when you said your husband is a car buff?” Bert asked in a jittery voice.

“You know what, Bert, it felt kind of nice.” Kathryn’s tone changed slightly. “Don’t push me, Bert.”

“Okay. So you’re all right with coming back tomorrow morning?”

“Well, yeah, now that you’ve got me all curious about a robin’s-egg blue car that knocked you off your feet. What do those babies go for these days, or do you even know?”

“Probably way out of my league. You know what, Kathryn, I can’t explain it, but when I saw that car tooling along at thirty miles an hour, it just caught my eye. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

“You don’t have to. Come on, let’s go home.”

“Do you want to stop at the Squires’ Pub for something to eat or drink? Ted asked me, and I said I’d check with you. He’s feeling pretty down right now.”

“Sure. You want me to text him?”

“If you don’t mind.” Kathryn obliged.

Back in the District, Ted Robinson was settling himself on a bar stool in the Squires’ Pub as he looked down at the text message coming in. He sighed happily. Bert and Kathryn would be joining him after all.

The air moved around his stool with a swoosh. “Hey, aren’t you Ted Robinson?” a pretty blonde asked as she took the seat next to him.

“I was when I woke up this morning. Have we met?”
That was certainly clever,
Ted thought.

“No, but I always wanted to meet you. I admire your work. Amy Blandenburg. I work for the
Sentinel
,” she said, holding out her hand. “I tried a couple of times to wrangle an invitation to meet you, but it never worked out. Did I say I really admire your work? I hope I can be half as good a reporter as you are someday.”

“You did, but you can always say it again. I don’t get all that many compliments. How do you like working at the
Sentinel?

“It’s a job. I’m still paying my dues, I guess. I’m sure it’s nothing like working at the
Post.
That’s my goal, to move on to a bigger and better paper. What’s it like working over there?”

Ted looked into Amy’s eyes and saw only genuine interest. She wasn’t buttering him up. She was what Maggie used to be. Used to be.

“Want to move over to a booth, or are you here with someone? It’s kind of noisy at the bar to talk.”

“Sure. No, I’m by myself. I like coming in here before I go home. You know, shoot the breeze for a little while, get rid of the adrenaline rush. I think you have to be a newsperson to understand that. I have other friends, but they have different interests, and those interests aren’t something I can listen to them rattle on about for hours on end. Talking to other reporters, even when I know I’m low man on the totem pole, is something I enjoy, and my fellow reporters don’t talk down to me, because they were all in my position at one time or another.”

Ted nodded as he carried their drinks to a booth in the back. Bert and Kathryn would find him. Settled comfortably, Ted realized he liked the adoration he was seeing in Amy Blandenburg’s eyes. And the best part was he didn’t feel guilty for being here with her. “You hungry?”

“I am, but let’s go Dutch. I don’t know you well enough to let you pay for me. Talk to me, tell me what it’s like to be a star reporter for a big paper like the
Post.
And then, if you don’t mind, tell me about yourself.”

Ted couldn’t remember the last time anyone wanted to know anything about him. He started to talk and was so intense he didn’t see Bert and Kathryn when they walked in. Bert nudged Kathryn, and the couple backed out the door with knowing looks.

Outside, Bert said, “Aha!”

“What does ‘aha’ mean, Bert? Maggie gave Ted back his ring. That means he can sit in a booth in a bar with another female companion. I also suspect she’s a colleague,” she snapped.

“Whoa! I thought you would be on Maggie’s side. For whatever it’s worth, I agree with you. Does this have anything to do with you and me? Our situation?”

“No. Well, yes, in a way. Couples have to respect each other and their opinions. You tried to muscle me, Bert, and you damn well know it. I don’t like being muscled. I told you I wasn’t ready to get married, but you pushed and you pushed hard. I might never be ready to marry. I told you all of that up front. You said you were okay with it. Then you weren’t all right with it, at which point I suggested we each move on in whatever direction we wanted to take. You backed off, and we’re at the position we’re in right now.

“In addition to all of that, Ted and Maggie are not your business, nor are they my business. The female in the booth with Ted is not our business, either.”

Bert sucked in his breath. “You’re right, Kathryn. So, do you want to head home or stop for some Italian?”

“I am hungry, and Italian sounds good. Let’s go for it.”

Bert felt his body go limp. He’d dodged that one. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never be able to figure out women, Kathryn in particular.

Back at the Squires’ Pub, Ted looked at his cell and the message coming through. Bert and Kathryn had changed their minds and were headed home. Ted felt giddy at the thought that he had Amy Blandenburg to himself.

Chapter 27

L
incolnville, Oklahoma, was any small town in America as Annie drove the rental car through the residential streets. There were sidewalks with giant shade trees and benches underneath. The hardware store on Main Street featured its wares on part of the sidewalk; old-fashioned bamboo rakes sat next to modern-day leaf blowers. It was hard to tell what was in the six or seven bushel baskets with the exception of one that held rosy red apples that people picked up as they walked by. Swanson’s drugstore had a sale—Listerine mouthwash was half price if you bought two tubes of Crest toothpaste. Alfredo’s Pizza Parlor said a slice and a Coke was your dollar lunch on Fridays.

Annie drove by the courthouse, a redbrick building with white columns and what looked like a shiny, new asphalt parking lot with blinding white lines designating the parking spaces.

“What’s the GPS saying, Myra?”

“It says you make a left at the quarter-mile sign, and our destination is two blocks from there. Are you nervous, Annie?”

“Yes and no. I wish, though, that we had come in disguise. I feel kind of naked for want of a better term. She might recognize us,” Annie said fretfully.

“We aren’t here on a mission, dear. We’re just here to talk. We’re going to walk away when we’re done talking. The estranged Mrs. Jellicoe is a woman, Annie. She’s going to understand when we explain why we’re here.”

“But what if …”

“There are no what-ifs, Annie. It’s what it is. If you don’t want to do this, and may I remind you that you were the one who suggested this in the first place, you can walk away right now.”

“It’s not that, Myra. Here is this woman who feels safe and has every right to stay that way, and we’re going to invade her life.”

“Not in the true sense of … invading. Like I said, all we’re going to do is talk. I feel strongly that she will not kick us out. I think she’ll listen to what we have to say. She is of an age with us, Annie. Surely she has garnered wisdom along the way the same as we have.”

“Well, here we are,” Annie said as she made a turn into a long, winding road. The house, a redbrick two-story affair, was trimmed in white, with neat black shutters. The lawn was landscaped beautifully; someone loved flowers, because there were colorful blooms everywhere.

“I guess that long, low building at the back end is the place where she does her button thing. I see three cars back there. Customers? Or the help. Here goes nothing, Myra,” Annie said, swerving into a space next to a Ford Ranger pickup.

There were flowers here, too, that lined the long line of the building along with low-lying evergreen shrubs. A huge tree in line with the front door cast shade over the front of the building. Tongue in cheek, Annie said, “This looks just like what I imagined a button shop would look like.”

Myra smiled. She’d never given much thought to buttons. Buttons were buttons. They were just there, something on clothing to close it up. Who knew?

Both women climbed out of the car and walked to the front door, opened it, and walked into a neat little foyer that screamed cleanliness. Annie rang a bell that was sitting on the counter next to a huge bowl of beautiful lemon yellow marigolds. A set of French doors opened, and a tall, striking woman with a fashionable hairdo entered the foyer. She was wearing a bright red smock over jeans and what looked like a T-shirt. She smiled, and asked, “What can I do for you ladies today?”

Since no one was in the foyer, and it didn’t look like anyone was going to invade the foyer, Myra saw no reason to delay matters. She got right to the point. “I’m Myra Rutledge and this is Anna de Silva.”

The woman continued to smile as she held her hand out to be shaken. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

“People say that all the time,” Annie said. “No, we haven’t met, but it hasn’t been for lack of trying, Mrs. Jellicoe.” There, it was out. The striking woman turned pale under her beautiful tan. She reached for the edge of the counter, her eyes full of panic.

“Please, no one knows we’re here. Your secret is safe with us. The reason we seemed familiar to you is because of our own notoriety. We
were
members of the vigilantes.”

“Oh, my God, how did you find me?”

“With a great deal of difficulty. Which, by the way, was not legal, just so you know. We tell you this so that you know we mean you no harm. Your secret is safe with us. For all intents and purposes, we are just two women who want to buy some buttons. If you have any outdated buttons or leftovers, we’ll be happy to buy them.”

“What is it you want? I just don’t understand how you found me. So many years have gone by. For the most part, I no longer think about those early days. I have a wonderful life that is so fulfilling. I have grandchildren, a son-in-law, a man in my life who cares about me, and this business that I built.” She threw her hands in the air in despair.

“When we leave here, you will still have that. We would die before we’d tell anyone about you. You have to believe that. We’re here about Hank. I’m sure that over the past year you’ve heard through the marshals or just by reading or listening to the television that the man is wanted. He’s been labeled a terrorist. An enemy combatant, if you will. He’s after us. But right now, we’re one step behind him and closing in fast. At least we hope we are.”

“I thought you were pardoned. Are you … are you
back in business?
Lord, how stupid that sounded.”

“See, now, you’re one up on us. When we leave here, you can notify the authorities and tell them whatever you want to tell them, and we’ll go to prison. That gives you the edge right now. All we want to do is ask you some questions; then we’ll leave.”

“Would … would you like something to drink?”

“Actually, I would,” Myra said, trying to put the woman at ease.

“We have a very nice old-fashioned kitchen in the back. No one will bother us there, and I think I need to sit down. Follow me.”

As Myra and Annie followed Louise Jellicoe, a.k.a. Marsha Olivettie, through the factory, Annie said, “Why buttons?”

The woman laughed. “Why not buttons? Right now we are primarily doing children’s buttons. Big, bright, and bold colors. I myself was stunned when the orders started flying in. We can’t make them fast enough. It was my daughter’s idea. Little fingers need big buttons.”

“That makes sense,” Myra said as she thought about Lizzie’s son, little Jack.

Marsha Olivettie opened the stainless-steel refrigerator, and asked, “Is green tea okay?”

“Green tea is fine,” Annie said.

Louise handed out the bottles, then took her place across the table from Myra and Annie. “My daughter and I cheered you ladies on and donated to your cause back in the day. We cheered again when we heard you were pardoned. Having said that, it’s your turn. Talk to me.”

“Tell us why you’re in the Witness Protection Program. And how did you get here? I know how the WPP works. What I mean is, what did you know that got you in the program?”

“I didn’t
know
anything, but I suspected a lot of things. I was afraid of Hank. Not in the beginning, but later on he turned into someone I didn’t want to know, much less be married to. He was always gone, patriot that he was. He was a zealot, but at the time I just thought he was cruel and inhuman. There came a point in our marriage when I no longer existed to him. I was just there. Almost like a servant. He would talk on the phone and didn’t seem to care if I heard him or not. I started keeping a diary. He was doing all kinds of things, deals with the government he shouldn’t have made, people covering up, things he covered up. It got to the point where I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys.

“Huge sums of money were involved. Huge might be the wrong word; vast sums of money were being sent to the wrong places. Then Hank would ride in like the white knight and save the day. The only problem with that was he set it all up, caused the problem to begin with, then went in and cleaned up his own mess and was rewarded with tons of money. He kept records that I was never able to get to, but my diary was enough to convince the marshals to put me in the program when I told them I was going to expose him if they didn’t get me and my daughter to safety. I made a copy of my diary and gave it to a lawyer I knew who didn’t have a dog in that fight.

“I guess in the end I convinced them, and they agreed to relocate me and my daughter. They made me swear on a Bible, literally, that my diary was the only copy. Of course I didn’t blink an eye when I swore on the Bible, which doesn’t say all that much for me. But it was me and my daughter or him. Before you can ask, nothing was ever done with the information that I know of. They swept it all under the rug. I blame the CIA for all of that.” Marsha’s voice was bitter, her eyes full of tears.