The Woman (17 page)

Okay, girl. The curtain’s going up.

Chapter 26

A thin woman with round eyes looked down the bank counter. Her tongue darted through a deep red swath of lipstick. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Too nervous to speak, Linda raised her arm and dangled her box key so the woman could see it. The woman replied through an index finger held in the air.

She’s stalling, while the police close in.

Linda placed her hands flat on the counter to steady her nerves and looked around. There were two other tellers, each with that tanning bed look—they probably went together after work. Peripherally, Linda noticed a woman stand from behind a desk fronted by a small brass name plate with the title Bank Manager. She wore a respectably short skirt and a slightly tight sweater, her heels a bit high, but not platforms. She walked toward Linda, and stopped at a closer desk. She had no ring on the third finger of her left hand. Did she purposefully hire female employees to help establish her as the diva?

Calm down. Your thoughts are all over the place.

The teller’s voice startled her out of her bizarre thoughts, her tongue again in play. “You want to access your box?”

Linda nodded. When the woman turned to obtain the signature card, Linda took a deep breath and willed her hand to be steady while she signed her new name:
Nora Larick
.

“Your box is co-owned with whom?” asked the teller.

“Glenda Farrell,” Linda said, recalling the 1930s actress favored by Cynthia.

The teller nodded, then buzzed open the chest high gate.

Linda followed the woman’s slight figure through a vault-like door into the innards of the bank. The fear that inhabited her spine whispered run. Run from the bank. Drive back to Sea Crest. Sit on your deck. Walk the beach. Live your life and wait for the inevitable. But she did not. She had to know what was in that box. She had to know why Cynthia Leclair had died. So, she braced herself and followed the teller’s bony backside deeper into the bowels of the bank.

The boxes were kept in the bank vault, which gave her path the feel of entering prison. Her heart clamored like an inmate riffing a tin cup across the bars of a cell. She swallowed hard and willed herself calm.

“I’ll need some time alone with the box.”

“Of course, Miss Larick, we have viewing rooms for your use.” The enthusiastic teller smiled and looked at her own narrow finger pointing toward three adjoined rooms that rose to shoulder height. “They’re very private, yet open at the top for air movement. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee perhaps?”

“No, thank you,” Linda said, while thinking that banks should serve martinis.

The teller took the key from Linda and slipped it into the lock next to where she had already inserted the bank’s key. The box was a large one near the floor. After turning both keys, she pulled out Cynthia’s inner box, rose and carried it into the nearest private booth where she placed it on the counter, smiled, closed the door, and left.

At last, Linda was alone with Cynthia’s secrets of the private dealings of her mysterious SMITH & CO. Linda’s heart raced when she read the notation on the face of the top envelope inside the box.

OPEN ONLY IN THE EVENT OF THE VIOLENT DEATH OF CYNTHIA LECLAIR.

Linda held the envelope as if it might dissolve, its contents absorbed by the very air. At that moment, she again felt the urge to run, drop everything and leave all this shit behind. Permanently become Nora Jean Larick and drive until she found some small town somewhere with a John Wayne type sheriff who would keep her safe.

But she couldn’t. Whoever had found her in Sea Crest would eventually find her no matter where she went. And her traditional view of justice still hoped that whoever had tortured and killed her friend would be identified and hunted down. She looked back over her shoulder to be sure the short door was closed and latched. Then she looked to each side to be sure that no cameras had been positioned to record the contents of the box. After a deep breath, she nervously lifted the envelope with the ominous message.

Before reading anything, she inventoried the full contents of the box. There were two larger envelopes folded over and held that way by thick rubber bands. On the outsides of each, Cynthia had written in pencil: one-hundred-thousand dollars. There was also a tube filled with diamonds and a list of jewelers in major U.S. cities where Linda could sell them, no questions asked. A third large envelope held five more sets of identities carrying different names. Each ID had Linda’s picture, but with unfamiliar hairdos and different styles of clothing. One of five wore no earrings, another no glasses.

With the general inventory taken, as well as additional glances at the closed door and the upper ledge of the partial walls around the booth, Linda sat down and opened the letter-size envelope. Inside were two handwritten pages, unmistakably by Cynthia’s hand.

She held the pages in front of her face, and again looked over each shoulder as if she were sitting in the middle of a bus station. Finally she leaned back, took a deep breath, crossed her legs and began reading.

“Dear Nora Jean:

Well, how are you enjoying being someone else? I often fantasized disappearing, becoming someone else, starting all over again. Fresh! Well, I never did so that doesn’t matter any longer.

“I am dead or you would not be here. And I have died violently or you would not have opened this envelope. And, I expect you are running for your life. This man does not like loose ends and, unfortunately, he will see you as just that, a loose end. I expect if you do not already know, his men are under orders to capture you so they can learn what I might have told you, and then kill you. Do not doubt they have this intent. There is no reasoning with these men.

“The morning I expected them to come for me, I called in sick. Actually, I was sick, a cold I think, or maybe just a case of nerves. Then I came to your home and left the letter while you were out jogging on the beach. By the way, I apologize for standing you up at O’Malley’s for lunch and not answering your calls. I knew I could not have fooled you. The night before, when you called to confirm our luncheon, I could tell even then you sensed something was wrong.

“I considered going to the FBI, but chickened out because I would have ended up in jail. I should have for two good reasons: 1) to protect you, and 2) to hopefully bring this man’s evil to an end. Instead, I clung to the hope that somehow I had it figured wrong and they might let me be. That decision was stupid and selfish. After a lifetime in espionage and intelligence work, I accept the fate that sometimes goes with the territory. But you don’t deserve what is happening to you and I am sorrier than I can say.

“After leaving your place, I drove here to Portland to put these things in this bank box. This box should be safe, the actress’s name I used for myself I have not used for anything else, and my partiality for that actress is not real. I told you her name several times the week this became a possibility. The wisest course may be for you to keep some of the money and diamonds with you and split the rest up in other boxes in other cities under your other identities.

“The man looking for you is powerful and very well connected. He has access to all government records and the computers used by banks, credit bureaus, and credit card companies. Leave no trail. The likelihood is he will not learn of this deposit box, but I cannot say that with certainty. His bribes are so huge that his reach is unimaginable. Therefore, I strongly urge you to dump these contents into your purse and leave now. This minute. Read the rest of this letter later. The other bank boxes you open will be in your other identities without my involvement. That will add another layer of safety for you.”

Linda desperately wanted to read the rest now, but she did as Cynthia had warned her to do. She put the contents in her large shoulder bag and walked out of the bank.

Chapter 27

Chief McIlhenny answered his personal cell phone.

“Get somewhere we can talk. Now!”

McIlhenny did so before saying, “What do you want?”

“What can you tell me about Linda Darby?”

“She has lived here in Sea Crest for some years. A quiet lady. Day trades for a living. She was a close friend of Cynthia Leclair. Why did you have to murder everyone at SMITH & CO., and steal their computers? I had them under surveillance. I was giving you everything. You knew what was going on there.”

“Why, Chief, what makes you think I had anything to do with that awful tragedy?”

“Spare me your bullshit. You paid me to install electronic surveillance in their office soon after I became chief of police. You’ve had me send you the results every week or so. Now they are all dead. It had to be you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Chief. And, may I add, you don’t want to think anything else. I shouldn’t need to remind you that if I’m involved, you’re involved. If they were killed for what they discovered, you were an accessory. Am I making myself clear, Police Chief Ben McIlhenny?”

“Yes.” Ben sighed, and then repeated in a lower tone, “yes.”

“Now, tell me more about Linda Darby.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Is she still in your town? Has anything happened to her or at her home?”

“Yes and not to my knowledge are your answers. Now, let me be clear. Linda Darby is off limits. If anything happens to Miss Darby, I’ll take the wraps off and blow your entire deal wide open.”

“Do I hear a little lovesick swooning?”

“Listen asshole. Nothing is to happen to Miss Darby. Your threats to keep me in line won’t work any longer. Too much has happened. You hear me, nothing!”

Then the line went dead. McIlhenny had punctuated his message by hanging up.

* * *

Ryan Testler returned to Sea Crest, checked back into the motel just outside town, threw his bag in his room, and went to Millie’s Sea Grog for a late lunch. He wanted to be seen back in town. And he wanted to hear the latest rumbling about town. Millie’s and O’Malley’s were the town’s rumor centers. There were seven customers in Millie’s plus the staff, four at one table, and three at another. All seven were men and all men he had seen in Millie’s before, locals. Beef dips and nachos and a pitcher of beer were on each table. There were no women, although he could hear enough to know women were the subject under discussion at both tables.

After a crab Louie with Thousand Island dressing, he drove down and parked close to the public beach access near Linda Darby’s home. From there he studied her condo through his Swarovski binoculars. Linda did not appear to be home. If she had jogged this morning, by now she would be back. She was not sitting on her deck, and she was not at her computer. Before leaving, he used the zoom lens on his camera to snap several pictures for later study, including a zoomer of her clothespin bag so he could determine if the money and gun were still there. Then he walked back to his car intending to call the cell phone he had left for her.

* * *

More than two thousand miles away, Alistair Webster walked out of his mansion after finishing a three-course meal. The cook had eaten in the kitchen. His two bodyguards, Victor and Mark had eaten with him.

Webster’s estate dated back to revolutionary days, but little of the original structure remained. The remnants of a few outbuildings were in disrepair, but he had the old slave quarters razed to remove any stigma that might connect him with things politically incorrect. As far back as he knew, the property had always been known as The Continental. Over the years, it had been owned by four congressmen and one associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. There was a time when Webster had considered becoming a congressman but chose not to join such men. He desired to control them, to influence and dictate a fair amount of law and regulation without having to be accountable to the fickleness of the voters. Elections were a waste of time when money and blackmail, not the vote, ruled the application of power.

The Continental was the nerve center of his nefarious dealings. His most secure place where he kept all the files he had on those in power who were subject to his influence. J. Edgar Hoover, the once mighty head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had compiled and used similar files to protect his fiefdom. Hoover had been Webster’s inspiration, but Webster believed he had taken the idea to greater heights and to serve a loftier purpose.

Webster meandered toward the pasture with a cube of sugar in his hand. The nights he dined without guests, his ritual included a walk of the grounds and the bringing of a sugar cube to Oval, his riding horse. The stallion had an oval-shaped mark on its face, but only Webster knew the name had been for the Oval office, not the stallion’s marking. On these evenings, Oval would walk inside the corral fence along Webster’s path and at his master’s pace. When his walk was finished, Webster would let Oval eat the cube from the palm of his hand.

Thirty yards behind Webster and Oval, walked Victor, one of Webster’s two resident bodyguards, Victor’s brother having gone up to man the security gate at the entrance to The Continental. Webster insisted that his bodyguard maintain that spacing in case he received a phone call. He always wanted the calls private and his staff knew to keep a safe distance. Inside the house, they had been instructed to immediately leave the room and shut the door.