In Plain Sight (9 page)

“I’m not liking this one little bit,” Nikki continued to grumble, as they made their way up the steps to the main part of the house. “We’re always in the thick of things. How did this happen?” she demanded.

The others looked as confused as Nikki.

“I don’t know, dear,” Myra said. “Once we sit outside on the terrace in the sun, I am sure we’ll come up with something. I do agree that everyone has something to do but us.”

“Well, I’m all for stirring up some trouble,” Annie snapped. “Put your thinking caps on, girls! Go along outside, and Myra and I will bring lunch out. Tuna melts with fresh strawberries in sugar. The sweet apple tea is in the fridge. You girls can take it and the glasses, along with the ice bucket. We won’t be but a few minutes. Scoot now.”

Nikki lowered the retractable awning Myra had installed in the early spring. It covered the entire terrace and helped keep the potted plants from wilting. Normally, Myra or Charles lowered it early in the morning and had their coffee out here while the dogs romped through the yard. They must have been busy this morning, she thought.

“Ah, that’s better,” Alexis said.

“So, here we are. With nothing to do. I’m all charged up, and I’m standing, or in this case sitting, still. There must be something we can dig into,” Nikki continued to complain.

Alexis reached down into her oversize bag and pulled out the before and after pictures of Amalie Laurent Moss. “I’ve heard the fashion world describe Amalie as looking like a Botticelli angel. Personally, I wouldn’t go that far, but she certainly is beautiful, there’s no getting around that. The after picture is still beautiful, but something’s gone from her face. I can’t pinpoint it exactly. If I saw the new Amalie on the street, I am quite sure I wouldn’t recognize her as Amalie. To me that means she’s safe. But to her husband, now that’s a whole other ball game. What do you all think?”

“I agree,” Nikki said. Isabelle nodded.

“What are you all agreeing to?” Myra asked as she set a platter of sandwiches on the glass-topped table. Alexis explained. Myra nodded in agreement, as did Annie.

“What does all that mean? To us,” Alexis asked as she reached for a sandwich. She popped a cherry tomato from a side dish and chomped down.

“Not a darn thing,” Nikki said.

“Maybe we should be concentrating on Lincoln Moss. If Kathryn is right, and we have no reason to think she’s not, then Moss has his jockeys in a knot about now. I’m up for taking him on. I hate those high-powered Washington insiders who think they can get away with anything. Oooh, I can’t wait to end this guy’s career,” Nikki said as she bit down into her crisp sandwich.

As an afterthought, she asked, “Do you all think it’s true that he has a black book? Kind of the way J. Edgar Hoover kept all those files on everyone? I think he does. I think he has something on every single person in Knight’s administration. Why else is he so powerful? Why is everyone so afraid of him? It sure explains how he practically lives at the White House, calling the shots.” The others said they agreed.

“I might be able to help with that,” Annie said suddenly, excitement ringing in her voice.

“Oooh, are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking, Annie? Of course you are, I can read you like an open book, and it’s not a black book either.” Myra laughed.

Myra turned to the girls. “I’ll show you!” She ran into the house and returned with a cream-colored envelope. “This is an invitation I received three weeks ago to a gala at the Four Seasons this weekend. All you need to get in is this invitation, which you present at the door. Annie has one, too. I’m sure with very little effort Charles can come up with some extra, and we can all go. Tell me, is that brilliant or what?”

“What’s it for, and how do you know Lincoln Moss will be there?” Isabelle asked.

“It’s for children with disabilities, a pet project of the First Lady. I saw the guest list in the paper this morning, and Lincoln Moss’s name was on it. Annie agreed to buy a table for ten. I’m not sure if the committee will send six additional invitations or exactly how that will work, so we’ll have Charles work some magic just to be on the safe side.”

“Oh, Myra, that’s a great idea,” Nikki said, as she bit into a crunchy celery stick. “We can pepper him with questions about his wife and watch him lie. I bet you five dollars he’s going to want his picture taken with the Countess de Silva!”

“And of course, the countess will demur and make him work for the picture. I think it’s doable. It pays to brainstorm. Now, doesn’t it?” Myra laughed.

“Will you wear your tiara, Annie?” Isabelle asked. “And your cowgirl boots?”

“We can vote on my attire later, dear. Now, let’s work out a plan.”

Chapter 8

N
ikki and Kathryn arrived at Pinewood at almost the same moment, Nikki riding a motor scooter across the field and Kathryn in her MINI Cooper with the top down. They looked at each other and at the exact same moment said the exact same words, “We missed something.”

“I was up all night, couldn’t sleep, and believe it or not, it wasn’t my leg bothering me. We missed something, Nikki. Sure as shooting we did.”

“I know, I know. I couldn’t sleep either, and it had nothing to do with Jack’s being gone. It wasn’t Goodwin, I think he leveled with us yesterday. That only leaves . . .”

“Pam Warren!” Kathryn snarled. “Five bucks says that skunk Lincoln Moss got to her. We need to go there right now. Hop in, girl!”

Myra and Annie appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Where are you two going? You just got here!”

“I screwed up!” Kathryn shouted. “We’re on our way to fix it! We’ll be back as soon as we can get here!” In the blink of an eye, she had the MINI whipped around and was blasting out of the gate, tires smoking on the little compact car.

“What do you think that was all about?” Annie asked.

“Kathryn screwed up,” Myra said, shrugging her shoulders. “The only place she went yesterday was to the tabloid paper. At least as far as I know. They said they got what they went after, so I don’t have a clue what Kathryn was talking about or what she meant about screwing up. If they’re going back there, then it’s obvious something has happened there since yesterday and that Kathryn is involved. We’ll just have to be patient and wait till they get back for the details.”

“I just hate being on hold,” Annie grumbled. “What are we going to do now, Myra? Everyone is out doing something, and here we sit.”

“I thought we were picking out our outfits for the gala this weekend. You’re the one who said we needed to knock everyone’s socks off with our outfits. So, since time is of the essence, we had best get back to work.”

“That is so humdrum. We need to be where the action is. Think, Myra, what can we do?”

“By
do,
do you mean like visit Nellie and Elias or possibly pestering Pearl? Define the word
do,
Annie.”

“That’s the problem, Myra. I don’t know. All the bases seem to be covered at the moment. We are at this point in time at ground zero and empty-handed. Unless you have some ideas.”

“Let’s have some coffee. We think better with coffee. Charles can pick our outfits. For some reason, he has good fashion sense, and no, Annie, I have never figured out the why of that.”

While Myra prepared the coffee, Annie paced the confines of the kitchen. “I think we should concentrate on Lincoln Moss. Who do we know who knows him? Think, Myra. I’m sure I must know
someone.
Do you think Charles knows anyone? Or better yet, do we know anyone who knows . . . or knew his wife?”

“Off the top of my head, the answer is no. But let’s run it up the flagpole and see if either one of us can salute it. There has to be someone. How much have you read up on Moss, Annie?”

“Pretty much everything. Self-made. Private person. Loves politics. Best buds with the President. POTUS, according to the political gossip, doesn’t make a decision until he clears it with Moss. Moss sits in on top-secret meetings. So that has to mean he’s got clearance. He’s a dollar-a-year man. Which brings up the question of why the President didn’t give him some high-ranking political job or, at the very least, a title. He attends all the White House functions, usually alone. I think I read somewhere that his wife only attended four functions. Because, according to Lincoln Moss, she has a career, and he wouldn’t dream of interfering with her career, which keeps her in France a good many months out of the year. Oh, one other thing, he’s into physical fitness. Works out, runs the Tidal Basin. Lifts weights, all that macho stuff. As the young people say today, he is buffed and ripped. I would assume that for a man in his fifties, that is about as high as you can go, compliment-wise.

“And yet he manhandled that beautiful wife of his. To the point where she had to get away from him. She gave up her career in the process. So it had to be pretty bad. That’s my opinion,” Annie said. “It isn’t making any sense, Myra.”

Myra poured coffee. “I agree. Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong, Annie. The man has to have servants. Do they live on the premises? I think Abner said they do, and he has a lot of them. Maybe we could get to the cook or the housekeeper. They have to go to the market because the man has to eat. We could stake out the house and do a snatch and grab. Or if that isn’t feasible, we could try to bribe them. You know money talks and poop walks as they say.”

“That’s a possibility. I’m sure Moss has private security. Not Secret Service. Security he pays out of pocket. So that lets that out of the equation. I say we call Avery Snowden and ask him to arrange a stakeout unless you want the two of us to sit in the bushes and wait for the housekeeper to go to the market. Ah, I see by your expression that’s a no. Okay then, I’ll call Avery and arrange it. He can then follow her and call us, at which point, we’ll take over. You okay with that, Myra?”

Myra nodded. It hardly came under the heading of action, but if it was all they were going to get, she was all for it.

While Annie conversed with Avery Snowden, Myra let her thoughts go to Nikki and Kathryn and what they were doing to correct Kathryn’s screwup.

 

 

The elevator slid open without a sound or a ping to announce its arrival. Both women stepped out and almost knocked over Joel Goodwin who groaned and muttered something that wasn’t too complimentary. “Good God, ladies, what are you doing here again? You picked my brain, you drained my blood. I swear on everything holy, there is not one other thing I can tell you.”

“We know that, Mr. Goodwin. We aren’t here to talk to you. We’re here to talk to her,” Nikki said, pointing to Pam Warren, who had gone as white as the blouse she was wearing.

“Pam! What does Pam have to do with anything?” He addressed his next comment to his secretary-receptionist, who looked like she was going to black out at any moment. “Pam, do you know anything?”

“I think what you should have asked her, Mr. Goodwin, is what did she tell Mr. Moss this morning about our visit here and whatever else she knows? Then I think you should ask her how much money he paid her. Then you should inform her we ran her bank account, and guess what we found?” The last comment was a lie, of course, but neither Goodwin nor Pam needed to know that.

“Pam! Is this true? Did you sell me out? Why would you do such a thing? Tell these ladies it isn’t true? Oh, God, it is true. I can see it on your face. Why? Tell me why you would do such a thing?”

Pam Warren started to sniffle, then outright bawl her eyes out. She reached into her desk for a wad of tissues.

“I’ll tell you why, Mr. Goodwin. Lincoln Moss intimidated her for one thing. Then he flashed a wad of cash, and what woman can’t use a wad of cash. She probably viewed Jane Petrie as someone doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing, which, of course, is true, so she figured why not. It’s that simple.”

“Dear God! What did you tell that monster, Pam?”

“All right, all right! I gave him Jane Petrie’s address in France. And her cell-phone number. He paid me a hundred thousand dollars. He only wanted to give me ten thousand. I laughed at him. I wanted more than the sixty-six thousand dollars you paid Jane Petrie. You would have paid her another sixty-six thousand if she’d supplied that after picture. You know it, Joel. He said . . . he said . . . I could have an accident. And that no one would ever know it wasn’t really an accident. Everyone in this town knows how powerful Lincoln Moss is.

“Then he said he would call me at home and asked if he had the correct telephone number. I have an unlisted telephone number, and yet he somehow had it. He wanted to know who was in the conference room with you this morning. I couldn’t give him names, so I just said the FBI. Then he left.”

“You’re fired, Pam. Clear out your desk. You just put Jane Petrie’s life in danger. You do realize that, don’t you?”

“Well, if I did, it’s your fault, Joel. You deal with people who break the law. What she was doing was illegal. So I took his money? So what? Do you think I wanted to end up in some ditch alongside the road or worse yet, mugged and raped?”

“And do you really think you’re any safer now than before you spilled your guts?” Kathryn asked.

“Now he knows what you know, and he knows who told him. I think if I were you, I’d run to ground,” Kathryn said. There was not one ounce of sympathy in her voice. Pam Warren burst into tears again, all of her defiance gone.

Pam Warren looked at the faces staring at her as she shoved her personal things into an oversize shoulder bag. Her hands were shaking so badly, she could barely pull the zipper to close the bag.

“What does this mean now?” Goodwin dithered.

Kathryn shrugged as she watched Nikki’s fingers on her iPhone. She knew without asking that she was sending a text to Jack in France. “Let me ask you a question, Mr. Goodwin. Do you think Jane Petrie would have heeded your advice when you called to warn her and relocated? If so, then we can assume she’s safe, at least for the moment.”

“I think so. I scared her, I do know that. Where she would go I have no clue. She’s gone many times to France so I have to assume she’s made some friends who could, I guess, hide her out. For all I know, she could be out of France by now and be someplace where she thinks she’s safe. I did tell her to read up on Lincoln Moss. If there is nothing else, ladies, I’d like to head on out and get myself a stiff drink.”

“Don’t expect me to give you a reference, Pam,” Goodwin snarled, as his secretary headed for the elevator.

 

 

It was brutally hot as only July can be in Washington. Doubly hot in the garden pavilion at the Home Builders Depot. The overhead sprinklers that dispensed a fine, cool mist on the hanging wilted plants did nothing to cool things off.

Dennis West looked around for Jason Woods and finally spotted him at the back end of the pavilion, stacking different-colored wheelbarrows. Woods, he noticed, spotted him almost immediately. He could see the young man’s shoulders tighten up. Dennis chewed on his lower lip as he made the instant decision to approach and confront the young man. He didn’t think twice but sprinted across the pavilion and held out his press credentials. “Got a minute, Jason?”

“Actually, I don’t. My boss doesn’t like it when we conduct personal business during work hours. Since you aren’t a customer, that puts you into the personal category.”

“I can clear it with Mr. Quincy for you. That is his name, isn’t it? I just want to ask you a few questions. It concerns Rosalee Muno and Amalie Moss. Look, let’s not beat around the bush here. I know you’re helping them, and that’s a good thing. Really it is. Those two women need all the help they can get right now. But, you see, here’s the thing, you are out of your league. Lincoln Moss is not a guy you want to tangle with. Trust me on that. I represent people who can truly help.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. West. You must have me mixed up with someone else.”

Dennis sighed. “No, I do not have you mixed up with someone else. Please, tell me where you took those women. And here is another question for you. Do you know the FBI is also looking for those women? They are. You really do not want to mess with the feds, young man. Not because they did anything wrong but to protect them. And there is one other thing you need to tell those two women. The nurse, whose name is Jane Petrie, the one who sold the picture to
In the Know,
left the area and is now in France. The FBI is looking for her, too. The people I work for, and I’m not just referring to the
Post,
told me that Lincoln Moss might, and we are certain of this, just so you know, have people on the way to France to talk to Petrie. We believe she is in danger. She did sell that picture to the tabloid, then she hightailed it out of here. That should tell you something, Jason.”

Jason felt like his insides were turning to jelly. How much could he bluff? “I don’t know why you’re telling me all this. I have no idea why you are fixated on me. I can’t help you. Listen, I have to get back to work. I get paid by the hour. You want to stand here and watch me, that’s fine. If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to alert the manager and file a complaint. I need this job, so butt out of my life, mister.”

“Listen, kid, everyone knows you and Rosalee are very good friends. The neighbors told us how you went to the house to see her. The chick in the paint department introduced you to Rosalee. You’re making a mistake by not talking to me. I just want to help.”

“I don’t need your help and I don’t want it. Go help someone else. Now leave me alone.”

Dennis shook his head to show his disappointment, but he did walk away. The kid would crack sooner or later. He walked out to the parking lot and reported in to Ted and Maggie, who had been whispering with their heads close together. Dennis was almost inclined to tell them to get a room.

“We need to put a tail on him. Call that guy Snowden. I think I scared him, so he’s going to do something. The thing is, will he work the rest of the day or leave early? I’m thinking he knows he’s being watched, so he is going to finish out the day, then try to give us the slip. He’s a bundle of raw nerves. I’m on my way to the paper now. I don’t think he’s going to do a thing right this moment because he’s too scared. He’s going to try to bluff it out. That’s my opinion, for whatever it’s worth.”

Back in the garden pavilion, Jason was indeed a bundle of nerves. He had to play out the day and act normal. Whatever the hell normal was. He looked down at the watch on his wrist. An hour to go till lunch. Maybe he’d get a brainstorm before then. Maybe he would somehow be able to recruit Stacey Copeland. But if he did that, it would mean one more person would know about Rosalee and Amalie. Crap! Sweat dripped down and into his eyes, burning them. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. What to do? What not to do? Whom to trust? Hell, that was easy, no one!