The Stars Shine Bright (36 page)

But when I stepped inside the private dining room, I didn't see DeMott.

Or Eleanor.

The maître d' stood at the podium. He was a fastidious bald man who always wore white slacks and an emerald-green blazer. He glanced up from a map where the room's tables were represented in circles and rectangles.

“Hello,” I said. “I was looking for my aunt, Eleanor?”

“She just left,” he said. “Something about a plane to catch and time being the longest distance between two places. A young man with her—”

Anyone following the Ghost down Interstate 5 ate Italian dust. I pulled into Eleanor's porte cochere in record time and took the front steps by twos.

I found her sprawled on a fainting couch in the wood-paneled den. She held a bag of frozen peas to her forehead and bellowed even louder than normal.

“Three snorts of brandy!” She raised her chin. “When monster meets monster, one's got to go.”

I didn't care who said it in what play. “Is he ready?”

“Ready?” She sat up. The bag of peas slumped into her lap.

“DeMott—remember?”

“Young lady, I'm not that drunk.”

“Fine. Where is he?”

“Where? He took a cab.”

I stood rooted, staring as her expression changed. The proud chin lowered.

“Oh dear,” she said softly. “I assumed you two had discussed . . . that you couldn't drive . . . I wasn't going to interfere—oh, courage, courage—”

I was out the door before she finished the line.

The Ghost flew through the airport's parking garage, the tires squealing like bad Italian opera. I pulled into the first open spot and sprinted through the garage and across the sky bridge into the terminal. The crowd at the Delta check-in counter was so thick I had to move sideways, searching for that seersucker jacket and wavy brown hair. After several minutes, I realized his “baggage” was Madame. Otherwise it was just his carry-on duffel. I ran to the display that showed departures.

Delta to Atlanta, leaving in thirty-three minutes.

Still time
.

The line for security check-in snaked back and forth. Hundreds of passengers. I walked along the outside of the ropes while people trudged forward with boarding passes and driver's licenses and faces looking somewhere between hopeless and condemned. When I came to the end of one line, I turned and walked down the other. It must have looked suspicious, because a rotund man in a rumpled TSA uniform headed straight for me. His eyes looked like he hadn't slept in six years.

“Line starts back there.” He pointed.

“I'm looking for somebody.”

“Boarding pass?” He opened his hand. “License?”

“I just need to say good-bye.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He snapped his fingers. “Boarding pass, license.”

“There!” DeMott stood on this side of the X-ray machines. He was removing his shoes, placing them in the plastic bin. “I just need two minutes.”

“And I just need your boarding pass.”

“I don't have one.”

His eyes darkened even further. “What?”

“I'm not flying.” DeMott was folding the seersucker jacket, placing it in the bin. “Please, before he goes through the X-ray.”

The agent walked away.

If I had my FBI credentials, I could flash them at that sick excuse for a public servant. But right now the bad bureaucrat was my only hope. I followed him down the line to where he was harassing a guy whose studded jeans didn't cover his underwear.

“Excuse me,” I said. “It's really important.”

The TSA agent took the guy's driver's license and ran a small penlight over it, searching for falsification.

“Please,” I said, feeling ill with groveling. “He's my fiancé.”

“Trouble already, huh?”

I glanced back. DeMott had walked through the arches and now stood at the conveyor belt.

“DeMott!” I yelled.

The faces swiveled toward me.

“DEMOTT!”

The TSA guy moved in front of me. “Hey, knock it off.”

But my dignity was already on the floor. So I tried again, louder.

“DEMOTT!”

“Do it again,” the agent said, “I'll have you detained.”

I didn't doubt it. Taking me into custody would make this guy's day. He could convince himself his job actually mattered. And OPR would salivate hearing about my problem.

I watched DeMott shrug into the jacket.

“That's more like it.” The TSA guy moved down the line.

DeMott picked up his leather bag.

I whispered, “Turn around.”

He walked toward the gates, walking away.

“Please.”

Suddenly he stopped. He was patting down his pockets, as if he'd forgotten something.

“Please, DeMott. Turn around.”

But he never did.

For a long while I sat in the Ghost, contemplating my options. Things looked so bad that I even considered calling Weyanoke. Leaving a message. Saying what? That I yelled his name across the airport, embarrassing myself, hoping we could at least say good-bye? A message like that would only add fuel to his sister MacKenna's claim that I wasn't worthy of a Fielding marriage. I didn't belong among the First Families of Virginia. But I couldn't send an e-mail either, because DeMott's job managing the estate meant he never had to touch a computer. The postal letter would take days, and between now and then he would think I'd totally forgotten about him.

My only option was to call later tonight, when he got home. Then hope no other Fielding picked up the phone.

But as I drove the Ghost down the parking garage's spiral ramp, my phone started playing “Camptown Races.” My heart was doo-dahing with sudden hope as I fumbled for my purse. I decided that TSA troll had some rare attack of conscience. He must've told DeMott some girl was hollering for him. DeMott found a pay phone and—

“Hello?”

“Great lead on the trailer. Got a pen?”

I couldn't speak.

“Harmon?”

“I'm here.”

“Is it safe to talk?”

“Yes.”

“It took me over an hour working the IDW.”

Investigative Data Warehouse. A digital garage of law enforcement data, the IDW held everything from threat assessments and suspicious contacts to full investigative cases. The data could also search relationally, connecting cases and suspects by certain words or even objects. Type in “horse trailer” and it would cough up everything.

“You all right?” he asked.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it wasn't wise to discuss this in the car, which might have a listening device somewhere on the undercarriage. But I felt too weak to get out of the car, almost defeated, and I managed to convince myself nobody could understand a one-sided phone conversation. Pulling over to the side of the toll booths, I opened the glove box. My pen and notebook were still in there. I flipped past the pages that had DeMott's handwriting.
You couldn't pick Fielding?

I felt something kick my heart. “Go ahead.”

“I plugged in the letters from the plate but too many vague hits came back. Since you said it wasn't a full read, I played with some combinations. Add A, test. Then B, so on. Not that I need a thank-you, but I got a double hit on S.”

I closed my eyes, trying to breathe. The ache inside my chest seemed unbearable. “A lot of work.”

“Yeah. Take down this name. Arnold Corke. Registered owner of a white horse trailer with a license plate containing all those letters. He's also got a criminal record.”

“For what?”

“Civil disobedience.”

“That's quite a leap to kidnapping.”

“I don't think Corke stole the horse. He lives on Bainbridge Island with a bunch of foster kids.
Teenage
foster kids. The ones so bad nobody else will take them. There's a long record of complaints and police reports involving his kids.”

“For . . . ?”

“Loitering, vandalism. Petty theft. Stolen cars. Rape–”

“What?”

“Three years ago. Corke used to bring boys and girls to the farm. After the rape charge, he switched to boys only. Not that it helped. One of them held up a local Bank of America.”

“Could he be the same kid?”

“Rob a bank, why not steal a horse? Yeah. But that kid's incarcerated. He's in, uh, Western State Hospital.”

“Is that another one of your jokes?”

“He's nowhere near your mom, I checked. They put him in the criminal psych ward.”

“What about Corke's civil disobedience?”

“He was protesting the Vietnam War.”

“How old is he?”

“He sent a nasty letter to Spiro Agnew in 1973. The Secret Service showed up. Corke was in ninth grade.”

“And the parents probably described him as precocious.”

“Right. He got accepted to the University of Washington at sixteen, where he stepped up his protests. Doing sit-ins on pharmaceutical research, oil companies, the usual suspects because they made money. But in terms of priors, Corke's record is so old it's antediluvian.” He paused. “Geology term. Are you impressed?”

“If you knew what it meant.”

“That's so cold it's
glacial
.”

I stared out the window. “What about the trailer?”

“You don't appreciate the geology terms, fine. The trailer's only match is Corke.”

“How do I get there?”

“Let the local cops handle it, Harmon. His foster kids probably stole the trailer and—”

“And it doesn't make sense. You said so yourself.”

“Sure it does. Delinquents meet all kinds in the juvie jails. Think about it. Somebody offers to pay them to steal the horse, so Sal Gagliardo can file for loss on his insurance.”