Basil Jarrett slapped him on the shoulder and returned the grin. Then he picked up his own rod and waded into the stream.
That evening I flipped on the television to catch the news. I’m not a TV guy — an occasional ball game or movie and now and then the news takes all the time I am willing to devote to television, which is not much. That Thursday evening the network’s big stories were an earthquake in southern Russia, a flood in Bangladesh, another accounting scandal — this time at a big HMO — and lots of political news. This was an election year. The first convention was in ten days; the other one the week after that. According to the pundits the president had his party’s nomination locked up, so most of the coverage was of the opposition’s front-runner and his two closest rivals. When the broadcast was over I flipped off the idiot box.
It was merely a matter of time before the bad guys learned we were here and came for us — the only question was, how much time did we have? I wanted to boogie right now and get on with the business of tracking these guys down. What was I going to do with the women? Where would they be safe?
I was mulling over that question when I heard a car roll into the parking area near the front door. Ten seconds later I heard a door slam. I grabbed the pistol, went to the window, and took a fast look.
Thank God! It was the owner of the house. And his wife. And … an elderly, white-haired lady. I ran for the door and threw it wide.
“Admiral Grafton, am I glad to see you!”
Jake Grafton looked at me in amazement. “Carmellini! What on earth are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story. I needed a hideout and picked the lock. Hope you don’t mind.”
It took a lot to shake Jake Grafton; this was nowhere near enough. He grinned at me. “Good to see you.”
“Tommy, we were just talking about you the other day,” Callie Grafton said as she got out of the car on the passenger side. She smiled at me. “Come over here, meet my mother-in-law, Mother Grafton.”
The old lady couldn’t walk without help. “Goddamn hell to get old, young man,” she told me as I helped her up the stairs into the house, carrying her walker. “Jake said the house was empty. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I brought a couple of girlfriends over for a long weekend. I knew the admiral wouldn’t mind.”
She gave me the eye to see if I was serious. “Only two?” she said. “In my day single men went around with as many as they could afford.”
“Two is about my limit,” I told her glumly. “These days everything costs more.” I introduced Kelly, then got Mrs. Grafton started off in her walker toward the downstairs bathroom.
Perhaps I should tell you about Jake Grafton before I go any further. I met him a few years back in Cuba when he was in charge of a carrier battle group. He had been mixed up in a few things since, and I had worked with him on several occasions. He was now retired from the Navy. About six feet tall, he had thinning hair, gray at the temples, which he combed straight back, and a nose that was a tad too large for his face. Without a doubt, he was the toughest, most capable man I had ever met. Having him here was a huge relief.
His wife, Callie, was one of the nicest people on the planet. She was tough as shoe leather, too, although you wouldn’t know it looking at her. She taught languages at Georgetown. She and Kelly Erlanger were soon engaged in an animated conversation— in Russian! Dorsey O’Shea came downstairs and I introduced everyone, then I took Admiral Grafton out onto the porch, closed the French doors, and told him how my week had gone.
I chattered away, trying to hit all the important facts, telling everything as fast as I could. As I was talking Dorsey came out, closed the door, and found a chair. She listened in silence.
“It’s someone high in the government,” Jake Grafton said after listening to my tale. “They’ve kept it out of the newspapers and have police cooperation — those factors alone point to someone very high up.”
Dorsey O’Shea thought he was ignoring the most important point. “There is a body lying in my foyer in a pool of blood,” she said coldly. “I want someone to remove it and the corpse lying beside the house.”
“Indeed,” Jake Grafton murmured after an appraising glance at Dorsey.
“Just who are you, anyway? Tommy evaded the question when I asked who owned this house.”
“I’m a retired naval officer, Ms. O’Shea.”
“I have a great-uncle who was an officer in the Navy. As I recall, he commanded some kind of ship. That was years ago, of course.”
Grafton glanced at me, then murmured, “Umm.” I managed to maintain a straight face.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dorsey decided the long-retired nautical relative was a conversational dead end. She pressed on. “What can you do about this mess?” she asked the admiral.
His reply came immediately. “I don’t know. Tommy and I will have to discuss that.”
“I’m going to have my entire foyer torn out and redesigned,” she said. “Unless that room is drastically changed, I will see that dead man and all that blood every time I pass through it.” She pressed her fingertips against her forehead. “I haven’t talked to the police, and I think I should. They may arrest me. I feel so out of control… so…”
We were going to have to hold Dorsey’s hand for most of the evening if I didn’t do something fast, so I said to her, “Didn’t you tell me the other night that you had an invitation to go to Europe?”
“Yes.”
“Who invited you, anyway?”
“Dino LaGassa. He wanted me to join him on his yacht in July. You met him several years ago at the Spencers’ party. He’s tall, with long hair and—“
“Oh, yeah,” I said, as if I remembered the guy and gave a rat’s ass. “Ol’ Dino. Truthfully, this might be an excellent time for you to go to Europe. I recall you mentioning that you know three or four people who are spending most of their time there. Call them when you get to Europe. If you don’t know or like Dino well enough to drop in for a visit, you might look up some of these other folks. When the police get around to investigating, you can make a statement for the authorities in Europe to pass along or come back and make a statement. In the interim you can hire a lawyer.”
“I have a firm I use from time to time.”
“Right.”
She brightened. “Perhaps I should go.” She paused before she added, “It was self-defense, that man I shot. He broke into my house. Two women, there alone — my God, surely there will be no question! When the police investigate, I’ll be delighted to cooperate.”
“I’m sure the authorities will see it as self-defense,” Jake Grafton said.
“On the other hand, perhaps I should go to the police now, make a statement, tell them how it was. They can get the bodies, I can arrange for a contractor, then go to Europe with this behind me.”
“What if they arrest you?” I asked.
She sat staring at me, her mouth slightly agape.
“Tommy can call you from time to time, keep you advised how things are going here,” the admiral said sympathetically. He could read her like a book. It had taken me six months, way back when, to figure her out. Slow on the uptake — that’s always been one of my failings. So Grafton was an admiral and I was just a grunt in the spy wars.
“I don’t have any clothes,” she pointed out with a frown.
“Do like the common people do,” I said curtly. “Buy some.”
She ignored the tenor of my remark. We discussed the location of her passport — a dresser drawer in her bedroom — and I promised to get it for her tomorrow.
On that note we went inside to see about dinner. I confess, I was feeling better already. I had someone to share the load with, and I was getting rid of Dorsey.
Once inside, Dorsey sailed off to the restroom. That’s when I whispered to the admiral, “Corpses get so gross if you leave them lying around the house.”
