Double Take

“Maybe twenty,” Simon said, laughing. “Don’t worry, the movie was more action-adventure, not all that much gore.”

“Yeah, kind of tame,” Rob said and headed toward the bowl of popcorn on the table in front of his father.

Before Dix and Ruth and the boys headed out, Savich said to him, “I’ll e-mail you everything I’ve got. Then you and Ruth can visit David Caldicott in Atlanta.”

CHAPTER 21

SAN FRANCISCO

Sunday morning

Julia held a protesting Freddy close as she wiggled farther toward the wall beneath the kitchen table. “Don’t move, Julia! Keep Freddy quiet if you can.”

Cheney, SIG drawn and ready, walked quietly to the closed kitchen door, pressed his cheek to the wood, and listened.

He looked back to see Julia straining to hold Freddy still. Freddy suddenly stiffened in her arms and hissed again.

Cheney went through the maid’s quarters to a back door that gave way onto the enclosed garden. He listened, then opened the door onto the overcast morning.

The backyard was large, the back wall lined with huge oak trees. It didn’t lead to another backyard, but to an alley. It was filled with flowers nearly ready to bloom, trees and hedges and an ivy-covered fence. He saw no movement. He pressed himself against the wall right outside the closed door and listened.

Nothing.

He walked quietly back into the kitchen, and shook his head at Julia. She whispered, “Freddy’s hissing toward the front of the house now.”

Cheney moved quickly toward the front hallway, pulled up, and listened again. He heard the front door rattle, then open. He heard footsteps, heard men speaking, then a woman’s voice.

They weren’t trying to be quiet. They were coming toward him.

Cheney came out of the kitchen, raised his SIG and said, “All of you, hold it right there.”

The woman threw up her hands and shrieked.

One man tumbled over the over, both of them nearly stumbling onto the Italian tiles.

The woman yelled, “Oh God, it’s the man who’s trying to murder Julia! Mrs. Masters told me all about you the minute we got home. Is my poor Freddy all right? I’m his mother!”

To Cheney’s surprise, both men rushed forward, the woman right behind them, swinging her big red purse. He ducked.

Julia yelled, “No, no, don’t hurt him. He’s an FBI agent!”

SFPD Officers Blanchin and Maxwell burst through the front door after them. Everyone simply froze where they stood. What had taken the cops so long? Cheney wondered. After all, they’d been assigned to watch the house.

Not long after Blanchin and Maxwell withdrew, their guns back in their belts, muttering between them, Julia sitting in the living room, cozy on one of the sofas next to an older man she’d introduced to Cheney as Wallace Tammerlane. Tammerlane was holding her hand, whispering quietly to her. Thankfully, Freddy’s mother, still clutching her huge red purse, and Freddy himself had left right after the two officers.

Julia introduced both of the men as psychic mediums. Great, just great. Psychic mediums, which meant that in addition to the woo-woo, they also claimed to speak to the dead. More like con artists. The older man, Wallace Tammerlane, looked up, studied Cheney’s face and frowned, then said something quietly to the other man, a younger man, about Julia’s age. They looked like father and son, both wearing casual designer clothes, shooting him looks to kill.

Cheney had heard of Tammerlane. He’d had a TV show a couple of years back, had written some books, and he lived right here in the city. He evidently wasn’t married since he kept easing his tall lanky body closer to Julia’s. He looked about fifty, hard to tell since his face was smoother than a streambed rock. The other man, Bevlin Wagner, Cheney hadn’t heard of, which fact he said aloud, with the result that the man looked at him like he was dumber than a turkey and put his thin nose into the air. He was lanky like Tammerlane, who really did look like his father, down to his large dark eyes. But when junior tried to look brooding and intense, he only managed to look like he wanted a drink.

Cheney grinned at him. “You need to practice that in front of a mirror. That’s the ticket,” to which Bevlin Wagner replied in a voice not quite as deep as Tammerlane’s, “You’re not in a good place, Agent Stone. I see conflicting shades of black around you.” He shook his head and poured himself some coffee from a beautiful silver carafe.

“My dear Julia,” Wallace Tammerlane said, voice low, flicking a look toward Cheney, “I was distraught about what happened last night, nearly worried myself into a psychic block. Are you all right, my dear girl?”

“Yes, Wallace, I’m fine, really.”

He gave her a longer brooding look. “And this nonsense a few minutes ago, this man waving around a gun.”

“He’s here to protect me, as are the two police officers who came rushing in.”

Tammerlane said, “Let me get rid of Bevlin and this philistine agent fellow, unnecessary, both of them. I’m with you now. I can protect you. We can go over to Cecile’s for an espresso. I need to talk to you, take you away from all this. Perhaps August will have something to say.”