Secret Combinations (21 page)

“There's somebody upstairs, in your home.”

Kenyon slammed the phone down
and thrust his hand out to deWolfe. “Give me your keys!”

Startled, the appraiser dug in his pocket. “What is going on?” he asked.

“Somebody's in my house.” Kenyon had no doubt who the prowler was: Charlie Dahg.

The front door locked itself as they sprinted from the gallery. Kenyon leapt into the driver's seat and started the Volvo.

“Er, have you ever driven on the left before?” asked deWolfe.

“Yeah. Piece of cake.”

DeWolfe put on his seatbelt and cinched it tight.

Except for a few late night buses, traffic was light. Kenyon gunned the car up to one hundred miles per hour and roared through a roundabout.

Two bobbies walking the pavement stared in amazement as Kenyon did a controlled, four-wheel drift around a corner onto Cromwell Road. Seeing them, the agent hammered on the brakes and screeched to a halt beside the startled pair.

“61 Herringbone Gardens!” he yelled out the window, before roaring off again. Glancing in the rearview, he could see the policemen radioing in for back-up.

As they approached the corner to Lydia's house, Kenyon eased up on the gas and turned off the headlights. He wheeled onto Herringbone Gardens in neutral, slowing to a stop about one hundred feet from Lydia's home.

There was just one light burning, over the front porch. Kenyon couldn't see any movement or wayward flashlight beams inside. He turned to deWolfe. “I'm going to look for Mrs. Santucci. Wait here for the cops.” Kenyon got out of the car and quietly closed the door. He moved slowly toward the house, keeping as close as possible to the iron fencing that paralleled the sidewalk.

As he neared the house, he spotted a shadow moving in the front stairwell that led to the basement of Lydia's home. Crouching, he slowly advanced, wishing that he had his Sig Sauer.

Suddenly, the shadow turned and flew from the stairwell directly at him. Kenyon braced himself as Señora Santucci leapt into his arms.

“Mr. Yack!”

“Shh!” said Kenyon. “Is he still inside?”

“Yah!”

“Did you see him?

“No, I just hear some glass shatter, and then I hear noise upstairs. I remember what you say, and call you at work.”

“You got anything I can use as a weapon?”

“Just this,” said Santucci. She pulled something from the front pocket in her apron.

Even in the dim light of the street lamps, the large cleaver glistened. “That'll do,” said Kenyon. “Come with me.”

The pair slipped down the stairs and into Santucci's basement apartment. “Where's the back door?” whispered Kenyon.

Señora Santucci motioned to follow. They tiptoed through the maid's flat until they came to the door that led to Lydia's basement. Kenyon mimed to Señora Santucci to wait there, then, as quietly as he could, he eased back the bolt and advanced into the wine cellar.

The basement was deserted. He cautiously advanced up the stairs into the kitchen.

The darkened room was quiet and devoid of occupants. Kenyon stood for a moment, wondering if the woman was imagining things.

Then he heard it: the sound of scraping somewhere in the house.

Kenyon cautiously advanced. He glanced into the dining room; the silver drawer had been opened, and a trail of spoons led into the living room. Clutching the cleaver tightly, he crept into the front living room, ready to strike, but it, too, was deserted. Placing the cleaver on the couch, he advanced to the suit of armor. The pole axe came away from the gauntlet easily. He hefted the weapon. It was well balanced and intimidating, but the shaft would make it difficult to maneuver in the narrow hallway upstairs. He returned it to the suit of armor and retrieved the cleaver.

As he reached the hall, Kenyon heard the scraping sound again. He moved to the bottom of the circular stairs and glanced up. As close as he could tell, Dahg was pushing furniture around on the floor above. The agent hoped that nobody was acting as lookout. Gripping his weapon in his right hand, he advanced up the stairs.

The second floor hallway was deserted. A sudden flash of light caught his attention; Dahg was in Lydia's office. Keeping low and to the wall, Kenyon advanced down the hallway toward the partially opened door. He leaned forward, his face inches from the crack, trying to peer inside. Without thinking, he placed his foot upon the loose board, and it squeaked.

Oh, shit
, was all he had time to think before the heavy door slammed violently shut, knocking him across the hall.

When Kenyon came to, he was laying on Lydia's bed. An ambulance man was pressing an icebag against the top of his head.

Detective Inspector Arundel was sitting on a vanity chair. “Ah, Sleeping Beauty awakens.”

Kenyon tried to focus his blurred eyes on the detective. “What happened?”

“Your house guest seems to have made a hasty exit,” said Arundel. “By the time we arrived, he was long gone. Did you get a look-see at the culprit?”

Kenyon sat up in bed and took the ice bag from the attendant. “No.”

“Any suspicions who it might be?”

“No.”

“Does the name Charles Dahg, late of the
CIA
, ring a bell?”

A bolt of pain shot through Kenyon's head, and he winced as he lay back into the pillows. “How do you know about Dahg?”

“I received a call from a Mr. William Deaver. I believe he is the assistant attorney for the federal district of San Francisco. Are you acquainted?”

“I've heard of him.”

Arundel leaned back in his chair. “He is well acquainted with you. And not fondly, I might add. He tells me that Mr. Dahg has jumped bail and headed for these parts. He wanted to know . . .”

They were interrupted by a constable entering the room. “He broke a window and came in through the back, sir. There's scaffolding in the mews; he probably used that to reach the window.”

A second constable entered. “Some silverware missing from the dining room, sir.”

“It would appear we interrupted his search,” said Arundel. “Any ideas what this nefarious cur wanted in your home?”

“I have no idea,” replied Kenyon.

Arundel looked at him dubiously. “You seem to be making a career out of that.”

Kenyon wanted to kick Arundel in his well-pressed trousers, but his head still swam. “Speaking of ignorance, what's happening with your investigation into Lydia's murder?”

“We have some surprising new leads.”

Kenyon sat up, his headache forgotten. “What are they?” he demanded.

Arundel stood, carefully adjusting the crease on his trousers. “Haven't you ever heard? Information is a two-way street.” He nodded to the two constables, and they followed the
DI
out.

After the police left, Jack called the
FBI
office in San Francisco. It was late afternoon on the west coast, and Gonelli was still at the office.

“Marge, Dahg busted into my house.”

“Are you all right, sweetie?”

“Yeah. I got a bump on my head, but I'll live. He wasn't after me, he was after something in the house.”

Gonelli thought for a moment. “You sure you didn't bring none of your Cyberworm notes along?”

Kenyon shook his head. “No. Like I told you, I left it all with Jasmine.”

“Then it must have been something of Lydia's.”

“Yeah, but what? He isn't the kind of guy to steal a painting, Marge.”

“Did the London cops have anything to say?”

“Plenty,” said Kenyon, bitterly. “Deaver's been spilling his guts to Scotland Yard.”

“
What
?”

“He's been telling them about Dahg and the Cyberworm investigation.”

“So that's it,” said Gonelli. “Ya know, that little runt is starting to piss me off big-time. He's been stonewalling us from the git-go, and here he's yapping to Scotland Yard. He'll make dead meat look good when I'm finished with 'im.”

“Good for you, Marge. Anything else on Cyberworm?”

Kenyon could hear someone come into Gonelli's office. She covered the phone for a moment, then came back on. “I gotta go, cookie. You get some rest, I'll give you a shout later.”

“I just thought . . .”

But before he could finish, Gonelli had hung up.

Kenyon put the phone down, then lay back in bed.
Why do I feel like such a mushroom?
he wondered. He found the ice pack, and placed it on his head.

When Kenyon awoke in the morning, his mouth felt like an ashtray, and his head pounded. He got up and closed the front window, shutting out the noise of traffic.

Wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, Kenyon headed downstairs and put the kettle on to boil, wondering as he did so why Dahg would want to get into Lydia's house. Kenyon had told Gonelli the truth: all of his notes were back in San Francisco. Even if Dahg had simply been waiting in ambush to revenge his arrest, he'd certainly had the opportunity to kill the unconscious Kenyon before the police arrived.

Kenyon poured the boiling water into a mug and stirred in a spoon of instant coffee. No, there was something here that Dahg was after, he thought. Taking the mug with him, he wandered into the dining room.

The spoons on the floor had been gathered up and taken away for fingerprinting. Scotland Yard might make a match against Dahg's
CIA
set. Kenyon closely examined the silverware drawer. There were no false compartments that he could detect, nor any cryptic markings. He turned the drawer over and felt the unfinished wood. There were no sticky spots where an envelope might have been taped.

Kenyon walked through the living room, which appeared untouched, and headed back up the stairs. As far as he knew, Dahg had confined his search to the dining room and the office.

In the office Kenyon made note of the broken window pane. The window was still unlocked; he pulled it open and peered down into the alleyway. Shards of glass glinted in the well surrounding a basement window. That must have been the noise that Señora Santucci heard, thought Kenyon.

The agent almost had his head back into the room before he realized that something was wrong. Why were the shards of glass on the
outside
of the house, if Dahg was trying to break
inside
?

He got down on his hands and knees and carefully examined the floor beneath the window. There were no shards of glass, not even a speck. He looked out the window again. As far as he could tell, it was all down in the alleyway.

Kenyon went over and sat down at Lydia's desk. His head still hurt, and it distracted his concentration. Why would Dahg smash a window and steal some spoons? Suddenly, the agent recalled the scraping sound he had heard: Dahg had been shifting furniture around. Kenyon arose from the chair and stared at the desk. It had been slightly shifted. When he looked behind the desk, at first, there appeared to be nothing to see but the telephone line and wainscoting. On closer inspection, though, he realized that part of the telephone line seemed to disappear into the wall. He shifted the desk aside to get a closer look. Sure enough, the telephone line had been pinched under the wainscoting for several feet before it emerged near the wall plug. He tugged on the telephone line, but it was firmly wedged under the wainscoting. He gave a harder pull and a portion of the wainscoting popped away from the wall.

Puzzled, Kenyon peered closely at the top of the wainscoting, noticing a small slot, about a half inch wide. Digging in the drawer of the desk, he found a slim letter-opener. He eased the metal blade into the slot and heard a latch click; a three-foot section of the wainscoting, mounted on embedded hinges, swung free to reveal the door of a grey steel safe.

So,
that's
what Dahg was looking for, Kenyon thought. The safe stood about two feet wide and three feet high. It was an older model, protected by a skeleton key and a combination dial. Kenyon pulled on the handle embedded in the steel door, but it was locked. He remembered the key ring Tanya had given him and wondered if one of those keys would fit the safe. He arose and went to the bedroom and fetched the key ring from his jacket.

Getting back down on his knees in front of the safe, Kenyon tried an old-fashioned skeleton key. Sure enough, the key fit. He could feel the latch inside give way. The door resisted his attempts to open it, however. He still needed the combination.

Disappointed, Kenyon sat down at the desk and pondered his next move. When it came to
PIN
numbers or combinations, most people either used easy-to-remember ones like their birth date, or wrote it down in their daybook or wallet.

Lydia's Filofax was still at the gallery, so he couldn't check to see if she had written the combination down. As far as he could recall, however, none of the pages contained a heading saying “Secret Combinations.”

What was her birth date? he wondered. All he knew was that she was born in the late 1950s. Cyrus rarely talked about Lydia, and they never celebrated her birthday.

Kenyon remembered Lydia's American passport, tucked into a pigeonhole. He flipped it open. The passport listed her birth date as February 28, 1958. He knelt in front of the safe and blew on his fingers like they did in the movies. He spun the tumbler twice clockwise, stopping at 2, then one full rotation back to the 28, then finally, clockwise to 58. Inside the safe door, Kenyon could hear the tumblers drop into place. He turned the handle, and it rotated.

Just then, the phone rang. Kenyon wanted to ignore it, but it might be Gonelli calling back. He reluctantly arose and picked up the phone.

“DeWolfe here,” said the evaluator. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I'm okay,” replied the agent. “What happened to you last night?”

DeWolfe cleared his throat, nervously. “I did not want to get under foot. I kept well clear.”