money too. So what are you telling me?'
Mr Synstrom consulted his briefcase. 'The Coastguard recovered six suitcases belonging to Mrs Hutchmeyer. That's one. They contained all her jewellery and her best clothing. That's two. Three is that Mr Piper's suitcase was on board that boat and we've checked it contained all his clothes too.'
'So what?' said Hutchmeyer.
'So if this is a political murder it seems peculiar that the terrorists made them pack their bags first and loaded them aboard the cruiser and then set fire to the boat and arsoned the house. That doesn't fit the profile of terrorist acts of crime. It looks like something else again.'
Hutchmeyer glared at him. 'If you're suggesting I blew myself up in my own yacht and bumped my wife and most promising author...'
'I'm not suggesting anything,' Mr Synstrom said, 'all I'm saying is that we've got to go into this thing a lot deeper.'
'Yeah, well you do that,' said Hutchmeyer, 'and when you've finished I want my money.'
'Don't worry,' said Mr Synstrom, 'we'll get to the bottom of this thing. With three and a half million at stake we've incentive.'
He got up and made for the door. 'Oh and by the way it may interest you to know that whoever arsoned your house knew exactly where everything was. Like the fuel store. This could have been an inside job.'
He left Hutchmeyer with the uncomfortable notion that if the cops were morons, Mr Synstrom and his investigators weren't. An inside job? Hutchmeyer thought about the words. And all Baby's jewellery on board. Maybe...just supposing she had been going to run off with that jerk Piper? Hutchmeyer permitted himself the luxury of a smile. If that was the case the bitch had got what was coming to her. Just so long as those incriminating documents she had deposited with her lawyers didn't suddenly turn up. That wasn't such a pleasant prospect. Why couldn't Baby have gone some simpler way, like a coronary?
Chapter 16
In Maine the Van der Hoogens' mansion was shuttered and shrouded and empty. As Baby had promised their departure had passed unnoticed. Leaving Piper alone in the dim twilight of the house she had simply walked into Bellsworth and bought a car, a second-hand estate.
'We'll ditch it in New York and buy something different,' she said as they drove south. 'We don't want to leave any trail behind us.'
Piper, lying on the floor in the back, did not share her confidence. 'That's all very well,' he grumbled, 'but they're still going to be looking for us when they don't find our bodies out in the bay. I mean it stands to reason.'
But Baby drove on unperturbed. 'They'll reckon we were washed out to sea by the tide,' she said. 'That's what would have happened if we had really drowned. Besides I heard in Bellsworth they picked up your passport and my jewels in the bags they found. They've got to believe we're dead. A woman like me doesn't part with pearls and diamonds until the good Lord sends for her.'
Piper lay on the floor and found some sense in this argument. Certainly Frensic & Futtle would believe he was dead and without his passport and his ledgers...'Did they find my notebooks too?' he asked.
'Didn't mention them but if they got your passport, and they did, it's even money your notebooks were with them.'
'I don't know what I'm going to do without my notebooks,' said Piper, 'they contained my life's work.'
He lay back and watched the tops of the trees flashing past and the blue sky beyond, and
