motto.”
“Yes, that’s right. After you and your mom left, it was tough being here alone, but I didn’t want to leave. That’s when I tore down the house and started building this one. It was a work in progress for a long time. Been finished about three years now. I’ve enjoyed every project, Jack, and you will, too, so take your time and don’t cut corners. I made a cheesecake. Who wants strawberries with that?”
This handsome, fit man who looked like an Italian count in his pale blue cashmere V-neck, white shirt, black slacks, and butter-soft loafers, was a down-and-dirty marine? He made vegetarian stew and cheesecake and laid that incredible kitchen floor; he built this entire frigging house?
After his first bite of cheesecake, Jack said, “I have a sister who’d hunt you down like a dog, so great would be her desire for you.”
“Hmm. She likes cheesecake, does she? Is she a lawyer like you?”
“How do you know I’m a lawyer?”
“The way you process information, the way you speak. It helped, too, that after Rachael called me, told me your name, I Googled you. You were second in your class at the University of Chicago. Good job. That’s a tough program. You went directly into the FBI after graduation?”
Jack sat back, folded his hand over his belly. “No, I started out in the Chicago DA’s office, stayed only a year and a half before joining the FBI. My sister was first in her class, also at Chicago, eight years before me. Plus, she’s a vegetarian. So is Savich.”
“Funny,” Gillette said, frowning at a laptop that sat next to a bowl of green apples on the long kitchen counter, “for an FBI agent.”
“Yeah, I’d have to say that most of us are predators.” Jack thought about Gillette Googling him, about the state of privacy now, and knew anyone could find out he’d made a B in Torts in his second year.
At ten o’clock that night, Rachael led Jack into her mother’s old room, which, naturally, Uncle Gillette had prepared for him.
“I was wondering, Rachael, how does Gillette make his money? It’s obvious he isn’t hurting, plus he built this house and it’s really high quality.”
“He does computer troubleshooting for several large international corporations. Exactly what this involves, you’ll have to ask him. I remember once he started talking about a tax scam he was hunting down in Dubai, and my eyes started glazing over. Go take a pain med, Jack,” she added. She raised her hand to lightly cup his face. “Thank you. You fall out of the sky at my feet, then you become my bodyguard. Add to that you’re fixing up your own house and I’ve gotta think you’re quite a miracle.”
“I like being a miracle,” he said, and stared at that sexy braid before he left her. Jack took his pill and settled between lavender-scented sheets, unconscious in two minutes flat.
As for Rachael, for the first time since Friday, she felt safe to her bones even though she knew intellectually that anyone with the proper motivation and a certain degree of skill could locate her and Slipper Hollow without much fuss.
She lay on her back on her narrow childhood bed and looked up at the high-beamed ceiling that she couldn’t see in the dark, and wondered how she was going to prove Jimmy’s brother and sister murdered him before they added her scalp to their belts.
She wanted more than anything in the world to make them pay. She’d had only six weeks with Jimmy because of them. Talk about miracles, Jimmy had been the biggest miracle in her life, and he was taken from her. After so little time. She fell asleep thinking that Jack was a pretty nice miracle himself.
SEVENTEEN
Chief of Neurological Services Dr. Connor Bingham said to Savich and Sherlock, “Dr. MacLean regained consciousness an hour ago. He was in considerable pain from the broken ribs and the cut in his chest, so he’s medicated, a bit on the drowsy side. Maybe all the physical stimulation, the noise and activity of the helicopter ride, helped speed his awakening. But he is by no means a normal man, as you’ll see. With his dementia, he’ll never be.
“When you speak to him, keep it short. If you have questions afterwards, I’m available.”
As a matter of course, Savich and Sherlock showed their IDs to the agent posted outside Dr. MacLean’s room, even though they knew one another.
Agent Tom Tomlin was tall and rangy, his dark eyes alight at the sight of Sherlock as he said, those eyes of his never leaving her face, “Agent Sherlock, my mom sent me a photo from the
Her father had sent her the same photo. Sherlock grinned. “It took forever to get all the black smoke off. And the smell. It’s still like a faint perfume.”
Savich gave Agent Tomlin a terrifying smile before taking Sherlock’s hand and leading her into Dr. MacLean’s room.
Dr. MacLean moaned. They moved to stand on either side of his bed, staring down at gray eyes darkened with confusion.
“Dr. MacLean?” Sherlock waited until the gray eyes focused on her face. “I’m Agent Sherlock and this is Agent Savich. We’re FBI. We work with Jack Crowne. Don’t worry about a thing. You’re safe. You’re protected. We won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The gray eyes, a bit blurred, blinked at them. “You’re friends of Jackson’s? I want him to marry my daughter, you know, but my wife thinks he’s too old for her. She’s a freshman at Columbia this fall.”
“He might make a better uncle,” Savich said. “Remember, that’s about the same number of years that separated Prince Charles and Diana. Look what came of that.”
“Maybe so. Oh my, I never had such great drugs, even back in college. I feel like flying right off this rock-hard excuse for a bed and out that window, maybe buzz the White House. Is the weather nice?”
“Yes, bright sunshine, and it might hit eighty-five today.”
“I have a real good friend who’s a pharmacist and a killer at bridge. After I buzz over his house in Chevy Chase, hopefully ruin the bridge hand he’s playing, I think I’ll fly clear to the West Coast. I don’t want to go back to Lexington—my family are a bunch of nags and doomsayers. And my wife Molly—I tried to make her listen to reason, but she’s got her own rules for reason and won’t listen to mine. Molly kept pushing me until we were on a plane back to Lexington. And then I had to come back here again—but wait now. What kind of sense does that make? Oh, I remember. There was a plane wreck— Jackson was piloting. Is he all right?”
Savich saw his sudden alarm and said, “Jack is fine now, just headaches from the concussion and some pain from a gash in his leg.”
“Good, good, he’s okay then. I’ll tell you, even with these excellent pain meds, I still feel like I’m hurting all over.”
“Understandable. You got thrown around quite a bit. There was a bomb on board the Cessna, but Jack managed to bring it down in a narrow valley. He pulled you out before the plane exploded. You are hurt all over, sir.”
Sherlock said, “Dr. MacLean, we need to ask you some questions, to try to get a better handle on all of this.”
MacLean closed his eyes, appeared to go to sleep, but he didn’t. He said, eyes still closed, “Jackson had questions, too. He wanted me to tell him the names of my patients who live locally, as the majority do since my practice is here, so the FBI could interview them. I couldn’t do that, of course. My patients must have their privacy. They don’t deserve to be singled out, to have others find out they’re seeing me, and speculate why. I didn’t—”
“Dr. MacLean,” Savich said, interrupting him smoothly, “the fact is, with this disease—do you remember that you have frontal lobe dementia?”
He nodded. “How do you like that for a crappy roll of the dice? The disease starts in the front lobes, then
