predicted, the answer to his query wasn't on the Secret Service's database. She started making calls to Service colleagues. On the fifth try she found someone who could help. She gave the man the information King had given her.
'Hell yes,' said the agent. 'I know because my cousin was in the same damn prison camp, and he came out a skeleton.'
Michelle thanked him and hung up. She immediately dialed King, who was home by this time.
'Okay,' she said, barely containing her glee, 'first you have to anoint me as the most brilliant detective since Jane Marple.'
'Marple? I thought you'd say Holmes or Hercule Poirot,' he shot back.
'They were all right, for men, but Jane stands alone.'
'Okay, consider yourself so anointed, Miss Smart-ass. What do you have?'
'You were right. The name you gave me was the name of the village in Vietnam where he was held prisoner and then escaped from. Now, can you tell me what's going on? Where did you get that name from?'
King hesitated but then said, 'It was scratched on the wall of the prison cell in the Tennessee bunker.'
'My God, Sean, does that mean what I think?'
'There was also a Roman numeral two scratched in after the name. Sort of makes sense. It was his second POW camp; I guess that's the way he was looking at it. First Vietnam, now Tennessee.'
'So Bob Scott was the prisoner in that cell, and he left the inscription as a way to say so?'
'Maybe. Don't forget, Michelle, it could have been left as misdirection, a clue we were meant to find.'
'But it's such an obscure one.'
'True. And there's the other thing.'
'What?' she said quickly.
'The ‘Sir Kingman' note that was pinned to Susan Whitehead's body.'
'You don't think Scott could have written it? Why?'
'A number of reasons, but I still can't be sure.'
'But assuming Scott isn't involved, who the hell else is out there?'
'I'm working on it.'
'What have you been up to?'
'I had some legal research to do at the UVA law library.'
'Did you find what you were looking for?'
'Yes.'
'Care to fill me in?'
'Not yet. I need to think about it some more. But thanks for verifying that info. I'll talk to you soon… Miss Marple.' He clicked off and Michelle put down her phone, not very pleased with his declining yet again to take her into his confidence.
'You help a guy out, and you think he'll return the favor, but nooo!' she complained to the empty room.
She threw some more wood on the fire and started rummaging through the box of files and Joan's notes.
It felt a little awkward reading over the woman's personal comments on the case, considering she might be dead. Yet Michelle had to admit Joan kept meticulous notes. As she worked through them, she began to have a greater appreciation for the woman's skill and professionalism as an investigator. Michelle thought about what King had told her about the note Joan received on the morning of Ritter's murder. The guilt she must have carried all these years, though, seeing a man she cared for being destroyed while her own career rocketed onward and upward. And yet how much could she have really loved him if she chose not to speak up, in effect picking her career over her feelings for Sean King. And how must King have felt?
What was it with men anyway? Did they have this dominant gene that made them have to act noble when it came to suffering, however stupidly, as some woman walked all over them? Certainly a woman could pine over a guy just as hopelessly. And too often members of her gender fell for the bad boy who would break their hearts and even sometimes their heads. Yet a woman would have just cut her losses and moved on. Not the boys, though. They had to keep ramming their big pigheaded selves into a wall no matter how cold the heart lurking underneath the blouse and breasts. God, it was so frustrating that a man like King could be taken in by a woman like Joan.
Then she caught herself and wondered why it mattered so much. They were working a case together, that was all. And it wasn't like King was perfect. Yes, he was intelligent, sophisticated, good-looking, and had a witty sense of humor. But he was also more than a decade her senior. And on the negative side he was moody, aloof, occasionally rude and at times condescending. And he was so damn neat! To think that she'd actually cleaned out her truck to please-
She suddenly blushed at this frank admission and quickly refocused on the papers in front of her. She studied the warrant filed against Bob Scott that Joan had found and was the only reason they'd discovered the cabin and empty bunker. Yet from what King had just told her, the conclusion that Scott was behind all of this had become a lot more tenuous.
And still, it was
She gave up in frustration and continued perusing Joan's notes. She came across another name that gave her pause. For her, the fact that Joan had drawn a line across the man's name, ostensibly writing him off as a suspect, wasn't in itself conclusive. For though sheprobably wouldn't admit it to anyone, she was as confident about her investigative abilities as King was about his.
She said the name slowly, drawing out the two syllables of the last name. 'Doug Denby.' Ritter's chief of staff. Joan's notes said that after Ritter's death, Denby's life had actually taken a turn for the better with his inheriting land and money in Mississippi. Because of that, Joan had concluded he couldn't be their man. But Michelle wasn't that confident. Were some phone calls and general background information undertaken by Joan's people enough? Joan hadn't gone down to Mississippi to see for herself. She'd never laid eyes on Doug Denby. Was he really in Mississippi playing the country squire? Might he be instead around here somewhere, waiting to kill or kidnap his next victim? King said that Denby had been thoroughly upstaged by Sidney Morse on the Ritter campaign and come to resent him deeply. Maybe Denby had come to hate Clyde Ritter as well. What connection might he have had to Arnold Ramsey, if any? Or Kate Ramsey? Had he used his wealth to orchestrate some sort of revenge-filled campaign? So far Joan's inquiries hadn't answered those questions.
Michelle took a pen and wrote Denby's name under the one Joan had scratched out. She pondered whether to call King and ask him what he remembered about the man. Maybe she should take these notes over there and force him to sit down and work through them with her. She sighed. Maybe she just wanted to be around him. She was pouring another cup of tea and looking out the window, where it was clouding over and looking like rain, when her phone rang.
It was Parks reporting in. 'I'm still in Tennessee,' he said. He didn't sound happy.
'Anything new?'
'We've talked to some folks who have homes nearby, but they were no help. Didn't know Bob Scott, never seen him, that sort of thing. Hell, I think half these people are felons on the lamthemselves. The place did belong to Bob Scott. He bought it from the estate of an old fellow who lived there about five years but, according to this fellow's family, didn't even know the bunker was there. And the place was wiped clean. No clues other than that earring you two found.'
'Sean found it, not me.' She hesitated and then said, 'Look, he found something else.' She told him about the name of the village in Vietnam that had been scratched on the wall of the other prison cell.
Parks was furious. 'Why the hell didn't he tell me that while he was down here?'
'I don't know,' she answered, then thought about King's withdrawal from her. 'Maybe he's not into trusting anyone right now.'
'So you've confirmed Scott was a POW there during Nam?'
'Yes, I talked to an agent who knew the whole story.'
'Are you telling me somebody came down here, took it over and made him a prisoner in his own home?'
'Sean said it might have been a trick, to throw us off.'
'Where is our brilliant detective?'
'At his house. He's following up some other lines of inquiry. He's not really communicative right now.
