COLLATERAL CASUALTIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series) (33 page)

            Rose frowned. “We’re getting really low on phones, but, yeah, do it.”

            When his former partner answered, Dolph said, “I know I’m not your favorite person right now, but I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what your prisoner had to say.”

            Judith sighed heavily into the phone. “He didn’t say anything. Made his phone call. Lawyer showed up claiming the guy has diplomatic immunity. Checked it out with the State Department. Had to let him go.”

            “Shit!”

            “My sentiments exactly.”

            “Lemme guess. Colombian embassy.”

            After a long pause, Judith said, “Yeah.”

            “So you believe me now?”

            Another sigh. “I believe these people are after you all. Doesn’t get Canfield off the hook though, especially since there are additional charges.”

            Dolph reined in his temper. “Your witnesses who claimed they saw Skip with Jamal, did they check out?”

            Another long pause, then, “One apparently lives in the administration offices of a shopping center, the other on a vacant lot.”

            “Without those wits, you don’t have much of a case. How about you drop the charges?”

            “How about you bring your boy in?” Judith asked in a tired voice.

            “No can do. Not until we know it’s safe.” Dolph disconnected, then dropped the phone to the floor and smashed it with his heel.

            Rob came back into the kitchen to share the results of his own call. “Took awhile to get through to somebody on the case. Finally talked to Special Agent Timothy Billings, who of course wanted me to come in and meet with him, tell him where I was, et cetera. I interrupted and asked if Delgado had been arrested or otherwise neutralized as a threat to myself, my friends and family.” Rob paused for breath. “Delgado’s on the run. They don’t know if he’s back in Colombia or still in the States but both countries’ law enforcement agencies are looking for him.”

            “So is it safe for us to go home or not?” Sue asked.

            “I asked the agent that. He said, ‘Maybe, maybe not.’”

            Kate threw her hands in the air. “That’s a big help.”

            “They’re not sure they’ve rooted out all of Delgado’s contacts and sympathizers from the embassy staff.”

            “But if the feds and the Colombian government are on to him,” Dolph said. “Then we’re no longer a threat. We don’t know any more than is already common knowledge.”

            “Except maybe the ambassador’s secret,” Kate said. “Did this FBI agent indicate they knew who Garcia really is?”

            Rob shook his head. “I think Garcia’s still in good standing with his government and ours. They’re letting him take credit for foiling the assassination attempt.”

            “When did Delgado take off?” Skip asked.

            “Sometime yesterday.”

            “So why were these dudes following you this morning?”

            “I posed that question to the agent,” Rob said. “He didn’t have a good answer. Said he’d check into it. I’m supposed to call him back tomorrow.”

            “That call needs to be from a location far away from here,” Dolph said. “At this point, I’m not sure I even trust the FBI.”

            “How about Towson? I have to appear in court to ask for that continuance.”

            Several heads were shaking. “Too dangerous,” Rose said. “They can find out from the court docket that you’ll be there.”

            “One isn’t allowed to phone it in,” Rob said.

            “Twice now they’ve double-teamed to try to get you,” Skip said, “when they’re obviously shorthanded. These guys want you bad and if they get their hands on you, they’ll torture you to get the names of the people you sent the packets to.”

            Rob blanched. “I’ll get an associate to request the continuance.”

            Kate too had paled. “That damned insurance policy has backfired on us.”

            Dolph was scratching his head. “This makes no sense. If Delgado’s plot has been exposed than why the hell would anybody still be after us?”

            “Maybe he didn’t bother to tell his flunkies ‘never mind’ before he took off,” Rose said.

            Skip turned to Kate. “We’re going to have to tell the ambassador’s secret. We’re never going to be safe until it’s out.”

            Before Kate could answer, Dolph jumped in. “That may stop the danger, but it doesn’t clear you of that boy’s murder.” He’d promised Judith a solve. If they couldn’t produce another solid suspect, what would she do?

            “Are we safe for today?” Kate asked.

            “As safe as we can get,” Rose said.

            “Then let’s see what this FBI agent tells us tomorrow.”

            “And if it’s not good news?” Skip asked.

            Kate took a deep breath. “Then we tell the ambassador’s secret. This has got to end.”

           
Let’s hope it doesn’t end with Skip on trial for murder.
Dolph opted not to voice that thought.

~~~~~~~

            The next morning, Rob walked into the kitchen, drawn by the fragrance of freshly-brewed coffee. He’d already had his normal quota, but he was bored and restless after twenty-four hours cooped up in this house. And he hadn’t slept well last night.

           
I miss you, Lizzie!

            A phone rang in his pocket. His stomach clenched when he read the caller ID–
Maribeth Benson
–even though he’d been waiting for her call.

            “I’ve got two messages for you,” Maribeth said without preamble. “One is from Judge Crawford. She wants to see documentation of your illness when you appear before her next month.”

            “She wants a doctor’s note? What is this, high school?”

            “She was not happy. She expressed...
skepticism
might be the best word, when I couldn’t tell her the nature of your illness.”

            “Okay. I’ll deal with that when the time comes,” Rob said. “What’s the other message?”

            “I have in my hand an envelope, fancy stationery, handed to me by a guy in the courtroom as I was packing up my papers to leave.”

            “Lemme guess. Guy was Hispanic. Envelope’s addressed to me.”

            The others, scattered around the family room and kitchen, suddenly sat up straighter. All eyes were on him, listening to his end of the conversation.

            “Right on both counts,” Maribeth said. “Do you want me to open it and read it to you?”

            Rob debated for a second. He suspected the sender had been circumspect about what he’d committed to paper. “Yes.”

            He heard paper rustling. “It says, ‘Dear Friend, I will be departing for an extended trip within the next forty-eight hours. Shortly thereafter, you will receive an indication that concerns for your safety and that of our mutual friends can be put to rest. I deeply regret the disruption to your lives caused by recent events.’ It’s signed ‘Your Concerned Friend.’”

            Rob grabbed a notepad and pen from the kitchen counter. “Read it to me again, please.” He wrote down the exact words, repeating them out loud for the benefit of the others. After thanking Maribeth, he reluctantly dropped the phone to the floor and stepped on it.

            Rob looked at Rose and Skip. “Now what?”

            “We need to call Mac,” Rose said. “Get his input.”

~~~~~~~

            Kate’s head was spinning as Rose placed the call and filled Mac in. Could it be as simple as the ambassador saying all clear, and they could go home? Then the “forty-eight hour” part sunk in.

            After Rob had read the words of the note to Mac, Skip said, “What do you think this means. And what, if anything, should we do about it?”

            “Lemme think about that for a minute,” Mac said. “Meantime, two small fry want to talk to their mama and daddy.”

            Silence for a beat, then a tentative “Mommy?”

            Kate’s chest ached at the sound of her daughter’s voice. “Hi, sweetie. Are you having fun with Aunt Liz and Uncle Rob’s mom?”

            “Yeah... She said to call her Grandma Franklin. Is that okay?”

            “Of course. Are you and Billy being good?”

            “Yeah. Is Daddy there?”

            “Right here, Pumkin.”

            “When are you coming to get us?” Edie’s voice was plaintive.

            Skip’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Soon, Pumkin. Real soon.”

            Kate swallowed hard herself.

            Billy’s voice was clamoring in the background, “Lemme talk to ’em.”

            “We love you, Sweetie. Put your brother on, okay.” She figured the little boy would have a meltdown otherwise.

            “Love you too, Mommy.”

            Edie’s voice was replaced by Billy’s. “Mommy, you gotta see Grandma Franklin’s house. She says it was built before she was born, and she’s really old.”

            The group around the table stifled snickers. Kate said, “Billy, it’s not nice to point out how old someone is.”

            “Why not? You tell people all the time that I’m four.”

            Kate smiled at the phone. “True, but once people get to be adults they don’t like to be reminded of their age.”

            “So why is Grandma Franklin’s house so interesting?” Skip asked.

            “It’s got torrents, Daddy!”

            Rob chuckled. “Do you mean turrets, Billy?”

            “Yeah. Like towers on a castle. And the rooms inside of ’em are round. No corners. They’re awesome!”

            “Yes, they are awesome,” Rob said. “One of those rooms was my bedroom when I was just a little older than you are.”

            “Really? You think Grandma Franklin’d let me sleep in there?”

            “That’s up to her and Uncle Mac,” Kate said. “You behave now and do what they tell you, okay?”

             “Say goodbye, Billy. I gotta talk to your folks again,” Mac said in the background, his voice a lot gentler than his usual growl.

            “Bye, Uncle Rob. Bye, Daddy and Mommy.”

            “Goodbye, Billy,” the group chorused.

            Mac came back on the line. “Ambassador’s leaving the country. The question is whether he’s gonna spill his little secret so you’re no longer at risk.”

            “I would assume that’s what he means,” Rob said.

            “Maybe,” Mac said. “Or maybe he’s assuming once he’s gone nobody’ll care anymore that you know his secret.”

            “’Cause he’s assuming that when he’s no longer the ambassador he’s of no use to Delgado’s crowd,” Rose said.

            “They may even want the secret to come out,” Skip said, “to convince
el Presidente
he needs to be harder on the rebels, that even his own administration has been infiltrated by them.”

            “Or to just plain discredit the current administration,” Rose said.

            “That’s a helluva lot of assumptions,” Mac growled from the phone.

            “I agree,” Dolph said. “And I don’t like assumptions any better than coincidences.”

            “Can we stay safe for another forty-eight hours?” Kate asked.

            “Should be able to,” Rose said. “But if he’s the one behind all this, we’re letting a murderer get away.”

            “I don’t think he is... a murderer, I mean.” Kate paused, trying to put words to what her gut was telling her. “If the assassination plot’s been stopped without his secret coming out, then why leave the country? I think he’s trying to get us out of this mess.”

            Mac snorted. “Or he’s just plain savin’ his own hide. Figures it’ll come out eventually, like when Delgado’s caught.”

            “Or,” Skip said, “he’s trying to keep us quiet long enough to track us down.”

            Kate raised her hand in a stop gesture. “I’m not condemning the man to death. We’ve kept his secret this long and we’re safe here.” She heard the sharpness in her voice and paused to take a breath. “We tell his secret once he’s gone.”

            After a beat of silence, Dolph said, “Still doesn’t solve the problem of the charges against Skip.”

            “Yeah, but it’ll be safe then for me to turn myself in and try to make amends to Judith.”

            “Who do we tell? Agent Billings?” Rob asked.

            “FBI’s not gonna announce it to the world,” Mac said from the phone. “It needs to be public knowledge for you all to be safe.”

            “Ask Judith to call a press conference?” Kate said.

            Dolph shook his head. “She can’t talk to the media without her lieutenant’s permission. He’s gonna go up the chain of command. The police chief makes a call to the State Department, and they hush it up.”

            “Damn!” Skip said. “Here we’ve been focused all along on should we or shouldn’t we tell the secret. Now we can’t figure out who the hell to tell it
to
.”

            “How about this,” Rob said, “we tell everybody, all at once. We send out an e-mail to the
Washington Post
, the
Baltimore Sun
, the major networks, the CIA, the FBI, Judith, the President of the United States, our Congressional representatives. Anybody and everybody who might care.”

            “Oughta work,” Mac said.

            “I’ll start getting together a list of e-mail addresses,” Dolph said.

            “Uh, Mac, can I talk to Liz for a minute?” Rob asked.

            “Yeah. Lemme go relieve her of small fry duty.”

            Rose picked up the cell and hit the button to take it out of speaker mode, then handed it to Rob. He took it gratefully and headed for the privacy of a bedroom.

            It suddenly dawned on Kate that this was Wednesday, and she had a problem. She’d scheduled her depressed client for a session the next day, hoping at the time that this whole mess would be resolved by then.

            She told the others she needed to go to her office the next morning. Skip was shaking his head before she’d even finished her sentence. “No way, darlin’. It’s too dangerous at this point to go anywhere near the house or either of our offices.”