Fair Game (36 page)

“I see. Well, thank you, Julio. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Miss Drummond, you won’t say anything about this to anybody, will you? I already told you too much.”

“I won’t say anything, Julio. Thanks again. Goodbye.”

Meg severed the connection, then dialed the number of the Fair estate outside of Harrisburg.

A man’s voice answered.

Meg hesitated. Elsie or one of the other female house staff usually answered the phone.

“Who is this?” the man demanded.

“This is Margaret Drummond, the late Senator’s personal assistant. Who are you?”

“This is Special Agent Forsyth of the FBI,” the man replied.

Meg thought that over for a second. The Bureau must have descended on the homestead with a vengeance once they realized that Ashley was virtually alone there, and could identify the killer.

“May I speak to Miss Fair, please?” Meg said.

“I’m sorry, I’m not authorized to give any phone clearances,” Forsyth replied.

Meg had a choice to make. She could confess what she was thinking to this unknown agent over the phone, or she could go to the estate and talk to Ashley herself.

She opted for the latter course of action, primarily because she didn’t want to cast suspicion on Ransom needlessly. He had definitely been up to something, but she wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the Senator’s death. Maybe he was just a nosy reporter looking for a campaign scoop, and his report back to his newspaper or magazine had coincided with the assassination. Such a cover could explain a lot of what had happened, including her hunch that he had raided her computer.

“May I speak to the senior house maid, Elsie Jenkins?” Meg asked Forsyth. “She knows my voice and can identify me.”

“Hold on, please.”

These people are always so polite, Meg thought impatiently.

There was a long pause, and then Elsie came on the line.

“Hello, Miss Drummond, is that you?”

She sounded upset.

“Yes, Elsie, it’s me. What’s going on there?”

“I can’t tell you about that, Miss Drummond.”

“Well, is Miss Fair there?”

“I can’t tell you that, either.”

Meg could picture Forsyth standing next to the diminutive maid, towering over her and scaring her to death.

“All right.” Meg sighed. “I will be there in about two hours. Will you tell the agents that so they can alert the men at the entrance to let me on the grounds? I don’t feel like having another conversation like this one at the gate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elsie said meekly.

Meg hung up. She had to get to Ashley as soon as possible.

* * * *

Martin got off the shuttle and headed immediately for the car rental desk at the airport. He was now technically unemployed, but he shamelessly displayed his police ID to the clerk when signing the rental contract, thinking that all his credit cards would probably be revoked once Big Brother discovered his recently acquired welfare status.

He was on the road in minutes, headed back to the house in Harrisburg.

* * * *

“I don’t see why I have to leave this house,” Ashley said to Agent Forsyth. “Can’t you protect me here?”

“This house is too well known. The killer may come here,” Forsyth replied.

They were standing by the fireplace in the library, and Forsyth was explaining why she had to be removed to the hunting cabin until the assassin was caught.

“Mr. Forsyth, you have turned this place into a fortress. If he can get in here, he’s supernatural.”

“Nonetheless, we feel that you would be safer at a more remote location.”

There was no point in arguing with this man, Ashley thought. He listened to what she had to say, courteously, and then repeated his position as if he hadn’t heard her.

It was like talking to a computer.

“The funeral is tomorrow,” Ashley pointed out to him.

“You won’t be attending the funeral.”

“But it’s my father…”

“It’s your life,” the FBI agent interrupted her. “Everyone will understand.”

Ashley gave in, defeated. “All right, I’ll go. But I’ll have to leave a message about where I am for someone who might be coming back here to see me.”

“No messages,” Forsyth said. “Just pack a bag. We’ll be ready to leave in fifteen minutes.”
 

“But I want Lieutenant Martin to be able to reach me,” Ashley said quickly, before she realized with horror that Forsyth knew Tim. All too well.

“Martin? Is that the cop who was assigned to this case before we came in? He was at the hospital when you were brought there.”

Ashley was silent. The damage had been done.

“You’re not going to be leaving word for that guy about anything,” Forsyth said grimly, and strode away.

Ashley went upstairs to get her things.

She tried to see Elsie alone, but an agent was with them the whole time she was packing.

Forsyth met them in the hall.

“Sir, what shall I do with Miss Drummond when she arrives?” Elsie asked, following Ashley and the FBI men down the stairs.

“You can let her in, but say nothing about Miss Fair’s situation. No speculation on her destination, especially.”

“I don’t know anything about it, so how could I speculate?” Elsie replied, meeting Ashley’s eyes.

“Fine,” Forsyth replied. He signaled to two more of his men, and they escorted Ashley out to the waiting car.

Elsie watched them go from the front bay window, her expression bleak.

* * * *

When Meg arrived an hour later, the man at the gate let her go up to the house, and Elsie greeted her at the door.

“Miss Fair is gone,” Elsie said. “They took her away.”

“Where did they take her?” Meg asked, about ready to burst into tears of frustration.

“I don’t know. They told me not to talk about it.”

“Was it Bear Trail Lake?”

“They never said so,” Elsie replied carefully.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, Miss Fair took her Aran sweater. She mentioned it particularly and asked me to fold it for her. She never takes that anywhere except to Bear Trail.”

“She was sending you a message.”

“I think so.”

Meg fell into a chair in the entry hall.

“Well, Elsie, what do we do now?”

Chapter 11

AS SOON as Martin approached the gate of the Fair estate, he knew that Ashley was not there. The same FBI sentry was still in the guardhouse at the foot of the hill, and there were agents about on the grounds for appearance’s sake, but the whole place had the air of an abandoned camp.

The maid, Elsie, admitted him, and he wasn’t surprised when Meg Drummond greeted him inside.

“Where is she?” Martin demanded without preliminary.

“The federal people took her away. They felt it wasn’t safe for her to be here since it was on the news that she saw the killer.”

“I heard it,” he said tersely, looking around. He could see through the door at the end of the hall to the kitchen, where two agents lounged against the banquette, watching him from a distance. They clearly knew who he was, but did not seem disposed to interfere. They must have been assigned to guard the house, and, like robots programmed for a certain task, that’s all they were going to do.

“How many did they leave behind?” he asked Meg, nodding to the federal men.

She shrugged. “There’s more outside.”

“How many went with Ashley?”

“Four, I think. Forsyth and three others. I know that they took two cars.”

“Okay, where did they take her?” he asked.

Elsie and Meg exchanged glances.

“We could only make a guess,” Meg said.

“Forsyth told us not to say anything,” Elsie chimed in weakly.

“Tell me,” Martin said.

Meg bit her lip. “I don’t know. The rest of the family is at the town house with Sylvia. They can’t make any decisions...”

Martin seized her by the shoulders. “You have to tell me. You know she would want me to know.”

“She asked if she could leave word for you, and they forbade it. Tim, don’t put me in this position. She’s really scared, and so am I. You’re not being fair.”

“He’s going to kill her if you don’t tell me where she is.”

Meg felt a chill. All of her doubts about Ransom, which she had managed to suppress since arriving at the house, returned. And Capo had asked her about him too, she remembered, at the hospital.

The boyfriend with the flowers.

Martin surveyed her with intense blue eyes, waiting.

Even if Ransom was not involved, did she really want to take the chance that Martin might have been able to help Ashley, and didn’t, because she wouldn’t tell him where her friend was?

She looked at Elsie, who nodded.

Meg made her decision. She trusted Tim Martin; he wasn’t an alarmist and he knew what he was doing. If he believed that Ashley was in immediate danger, there was good reason for it.

“They took her to the Senator’s hunting cabin at Bear Trail Lake, about twenty miles from here,” Meg said quickly.

At her side, Elsie sighed audibly, then walked away.

“And?” Martin said.

“It’s a one-room cabin, much easier to guard than this huge place. It’s not well known; only the Senator’s intimates are aware that it exists. I guess they didn’t think the killer would know about it.”

“He’ll know. How do I get there?”

Meg told him, praying that she wasn’t sending him to create worse trouble than they already had.

“Do you have a floor plan for it, some kind of blueprint?” he asked, pocketing his scribbled directions.

Meg thought a minute, then left the room, returning with a manila folder which she handed to him.

“It was built twenty-five years ago. Those are the specs,” she said. “You’re not going alone, are you?”

Martin ignored her, already headed for the door. “Capo okay?” he called over his shoulder.

“He’s much better. He asked for you and said to tell you…”

The door slammed on her words.

Meg didn’t move, absorbed in her private thoughts.

Should she have told him about her suspicions concerning Ransom? She could hardly bring herself to consider them, much less discuss them with an itchy cop in love with Ransom’s potential victim. But her conscience bothered her.

Something was wrong with Ransom’s presence in her life, that much she knew, and she still hadn’t told Martin about it.

Was it because to do so would have been to face the fact that her lover had been using her? Was she still denying that on some level, despite the mounting evidence to suggest it? Was she protecting him, though she wasn’t sure he deserved it?

Meg went to the window and watched unhappily as Martin got into his car.

She had never felt more miserable and confused and scared in her life.

“The men in the kitchen are asking for coffee,” Elsie said, coming up behind her.

“I’ll make it,” Meg replied automatically, glad of something to do.

“That’s my job,” Elsie volunteered.

“Go ahead and finish polishing the silver,” Meg told her. “You can supervise those two new girls. I’m not sure they know what they’re supposed to be doing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Elsie said, and walked ahead of her into the vast kitchen, where the two agents Martin had seen were now seated in the breakfast nook, going over some papers.

Meg put on the coffee and then chatted with the two men, who were young and clearly bored. Another agent came in through the back door just as the coffee machine was steaming to a conclusion. He had a sheet of paper in his hand.

“We just got this from headquarters/’ he said, handing it to his colleague. “According to the Fair girl, this is the perp.”

Meg got cups from the glass-fronted cabinets and went to the refrigerator for cream.

“A guilty face if I ever saw one,” the recipient said.

Meg passed behind his shoulder to look at the picture, then dropped the container of cream to the floor. It shattered noisily, causing Elsie to splatter polish on Sylvia Fair’s ornate silver teapot.

“Lady, you all right?” the closest agent said quickly, grabbing Meg’s elbow as she appeared about to fall.

With a sudden burst of clarity, she heard herself telling Ransom about the Bear Trail Lake cabin. She saw herself in the Swanleigh bed with him, bathed in afterglow, telling him exactly where to find the woman he was planning to kill.

Just as he had killed her father.

“Sit down,” she gasped.

He guided her into a seat, and when she could talk again she said, “Let me see that, please,” pointing to the sketch he still held.