“How’d we get found so fast?” Erika asked just after Haynes turned onto Wisconsin Avenue and headed south.
“No idea.”
“I thought you were a detective.”
“I was.”
“Well, suppose somebody like us came to somebody like you and said, ‘Hey, we were trying to hide out from the bad guys but they found us and took a few shots at us. So what d’you think we should do now?’ ”
“I’m still a cop?”
“You’re still a cop.”
“Then I’d probably say, ‘How d’you folks feel about Baltimore?’ ”
Since there was no polite way to refuse the freshly baked apple pie that Lydia Mott pressed on them, Haynes and Erika each had a piece, plus a cup of coffee, and then followed Howard Mott in his pyjamas and bathrobe up the stairs and into the study-cum-music room.
Once they were seated, Haynes gave Mott a concise report on the incident at the Bellevue Motel. After Haynes finished, Mott asked his first question. “How long were you there?”
“Five or six hours.”
“Any idea of how you were found so quickly?”
“None—except whoever came looking must’ve had help.”
Mott pushed back the left sleeve of his enormous blue-and-white-striped bathrobe to look at his watch. “You checked into the motel when—around six?”
“Closer to five-thirty.”
“So the shooter found you by eleven—approximately.”
“It could’ve been a lot earlier.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever it was waited for us to come out of the motel room and we were in there for at least five hours.”
“I went out once to get some food,” Erika said.
Mott looked at her and asked, “When was that?”
“Not long after we got there.”
Haynes leaned forward suddenly, betraying his impatience. “The question is still, how did he find us and where does a shooter go for help? Not to the D.C. cops or the FBI—and who the hell else has enough bodies to check every motel in the Washington area?”
Mott smiled slightly. “Those weren’t questions. They were the introduction to a theory.”
“Or an approach from a different angle,” Haynes said. “Answer me this: Who saw and even touched Steady’s old Cadillac other than Erika, myself and Ledell Dark, master mechanic?”
“Horace Purchase,” Erika said.
Mott asked, “He was actually close enough to touch it?”
“Dark claims he was close enough to drool on it.”
“And that means close enough to slap on a sender,” Haynes said.
“An electronic transmitter,” Mott said.
Haynes nodded.
“But why would Purchase be so interested in Steady’s car?”
“It was the last place left.”
Mott frowned. “To do what?”
“To look for the manuscript.”
“Please, God, don’t let him tell me there really is a manuscript.”
“Yes, Howard, there really is a manuscript.”
“You’ve actually seen it, touched it, maybe even read it?”
Haynes nodded.
“Me, too,” Erika said.
Mott sighed. “All right, let’s deal with the car and its sender first, then come back to the manuscript. Okay?”
Haynes again nodded.
“Apparently Purchase was hired to kill you and he also may have been given the additional and earlier assignment of locating and, I presume, buying the Cadillac.”
