No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 (20 page)

“Why is that?” I
wondered.

“Not only can you dance like
a dream, you can cook like one. That’s a lethal combination for a
man like me.”

“You’re such a tease!” I
scoffed, taking the seat beside him. “Still my ‘almost’ big
brother.”

“Is that what I
am?”

I dug my spoon into the
dessert cup and retrieved a generous piece of banana. As I slipped
it into my mouth, I caught Mac’s intense eyes on me. For a moment,
I thought I imagined an invisible flame passing between us. That
burning sensation went straight to my heart and I was suddenly
aware of the heat of my body and the closeness of his.

“Oh,” he smiled, suddenly
looking sly. “You’ve got caramel sauce on your chin.”

“I do?” I used my tongue to
catch the drips but they were evasive. Mac reached over and dabbed
it away.

“I just love it when women
drool over me,” he laughed, tweaking my cheek gently with his
fingers. Once again, he was the boy of long ago, who teased me like
the brother I never had. Had I fancied the magic that seemed to
pass between us? “Where’s that silver chicken of yours?”

I showed it to Mac after I
had loaded the dessert dishes into the dishwasher. He took it in
both hands and carefully studied every inch of it.

“Want a magnifying glass?” I
asked sardonically.

“Do you have
one?”

“Actually, I do, but it’s in
one of the crates.”

“I’ve seen these spice
containers before,” he told me. “There’s definitely something
different about this one.”

“The numbers?” He nodded,
his eyes focusing on the details. I sat down beside him
again.

“Just out of curiosity,” Mac
asked, “where were you in your relationship when Tom gave this to
you?”

“What do you
mean?”

“How soon before you broke
up?”

“I don’t know,” I said,
trying to remember. “He used to give me little gifts every time he
came back from an overseas trip. I think this was the last one.
Adelaide had her heart attack soon after that.”

“What else did he give you?”
Mac looked at me expectantly.

“Let’s see. There was an
antique Swiss doll. And there was a charm bracelet. Oh, and a
singing bird music box.”

“An automaton?”

“A what?” I
replied.

“Was it a box with a little
bird that pops up and sings? Was it brass?” I was surprised that
Mac knew what the music box looked like.

“How did you
know?”

“Kimmy, do you still have
these things?” Mac put the spice box down on the counter carefully
and gave me his full attention.

“Sure.”

“And let me guess -- you’re
going to tell me that we just packed them up in these unmarked
boxes?” Mac smiled at me, the corners of his mouth turning up
cheerfully.

“What’s so funny?” I wanted
to know.

“Do you realize that you
thwarted the bad guys? Most people mark their cartons when they
move. They describe the contents, or at least indicate what room
the box belongs in. Not you.”

“But I did mark them,” I
insisted. I walked over to one, pointed to the tiny number in
right-hand corner, and looked back at Mac. “See? I used my laptop
for the inventory list.”

“You listed everything in
your laptop? Not on the box?”

“Sure,” I admitted. “I
wanted a master list that stayed with me. I figured if I only
marked the boxes and I lost one, I wouldn’t know what was missing
unless I had a master list.”

“Kimmy, you’re a genius!”
Mac kissed me on the top of my head. “Now, let’s get to work. Get
that laptop out, woman! We need to find those items.”

Mac pulled all the drapes
while I got busy with my laptop. I showed him the list I had made
of the items at Adelaide’s, along with the one for my belongings in
my storage unit down in Belle Haven. The automaton was en route to
Jenkins Beach, along with the doll. The spice box and the charm
bracelet were with me in Northford. Mac was especially curious
about these two items I received just before we broke up. He went
over each one of them with the magnifying glass I brought out of
one of the cartons.

“Well, well, well....” Mac
was holding the charm bracelet in his left hand. “Tell me
something, Kimmy. Why did you put the charm bracelet in your
slipper sock?”

“That was Adelaide’s old
trick. You never keep your really valuable stuff in your jewelry
box, especially when you’re moving. She used to hide her treasures
in her stockings, wrapped up in her shoes. The everyday earrings
and bracelets were stored in her jewelry box, so it looked like she
just had costume jewelry, nothing worth stealing.”

“She was something else,
wasn’t she?” Mac smiled, remembering my mother. “A real
lady.”

“That she was,” I agreed, “a
unique person.”

“You must miss her a
lot.”

“I do. Especially now that
Marnie and her husband are out in Mountain View and Poppy is with
Hank in Belize.” My sisters had moved so far away from Northford
that when Adelaide was ill, we had spent most of our time
connecting with sporadic video-conferences to talk about medical
issues. Marnie was a professor of information sciences, married to
a man who worked for a large Internet search engine company out in
California. Poppy was an interior designer, married to a real
estate agent. She and Hank had been offered an exclusive
opportunity to develop a big condo complex for ex-pats and they
jumped at the chance. I had been planning to visit my sisters once
I got settled back in Belle Haven.

“As long as your laptop is
still running, let’s get a little more information about Tom.
What’s his last name?”

“Robacher.”

“What’s the name of that
company he works for?”

“Vanguard Advanced.” Mac sat
back on Adelaide’s sofa and typed in the information. An odd look
crossed his face. “Let’s try this again, Kimmy. The guy’s name is
Tom Robacher and he works for Vanguard Advanced.”

“Right,” I agreed. “What’s
the problem?”

Mac turned my laptop around
so I could see. He pointed to the screen.

“This isn’t the guy who
introduced himself to me.”

“This isn’t Tom,” I replied.
“There must be another Tom Robacher.”

“Working at Vanguard?
Working on a joint Navy project with the Walden Center?” Mac
scrolled down to Tom Robacher’s biography. There it all was.
Married to Bridget. His wife was an emergency room nurse and they
had three children, two boys and a girl.

“This doesn’t make any
sense!” I stared at the photograph of the man with the sincere, yet
professional smile. I had never seen him before.

“Maybe it makes a whole lot
of sense. Listen, Kimmy,” he said urgently, “I’m going to get in
touch with a friend of mine, a guy who’s a federal
agent.”

“Why are you going to do
that?” I asked. “What’s the point?”

“The real Tom Robacher may
be in danger. What if your fake friend has been targeting Vanguard
Advanced? We know they beat the living daylights out of poor Jim.
They tried to get at you. Robacher has a wife and kids, honey. He
needs to know about this.”

“Why can’t you just call
him?”

“If those guys are after
him, he’s going to need professional protection.” Mac was sincere
about that. I knew that as I studied his face. There was an
intensity that seemed to crackle in the air around him like a live
wire. “If I call the real Tom Robacher and they’re watching him,
they might move in before we can help him.”

“Oh,” I responded lamely.
“Okay. Do what you have to do. I’ll put on a pot of
coffee.”

“Coffee?” Mac was already
punching in numbers on his cell phone.

“Coffee. It’s going to be a
long night.”

Chapter Eight
--

“Tom Robacher is missing,”
Mac announced, half an hour later. “And so is his family. No one
has seen them since last Tuesday, when they were on their way back
from a camping trip over the holiday weekend.”

“Are you saying they were
kidnapped?” I asked.

“Not necessarily.” Mac sat
on the sofa, his hands on his face, lost in thought. He stayed like
that for some time. I left him alone while I started to pack the
contents of Adelaide’s hutch. Luckily, I had bought packing cartons
in bulk, along with bubble wrap, so I got busy. After several
minutes of working silently at the kitchen counter, I heard Mac
cough. Looking up, I watched as he rose from the sofa and took a
seat at the kitchen counter.

“You know, it’s possible
that Robacher disappeared because he knew these guys were after
him. Maybe he wanted to keep his family out of harm’s way,” he
suggested. “That’s what I would do.”

“Or they kidnapped him
because they needed something from him,” I pointed out. “They could
be holding him for ransom. Or worse.”

“You said that your fake Tom
claimed he was here for a conference on simulation training for
battlefield medicine. Maybe they needed the real Tom out of the
way, until they got what they were looking for, or maybe they
needed to impersonate him until they found it.”

“What’s so important about
the technology?” I wanted to know.

“I can think of a number of
reasons why it might have value,” Mac said. “if you’re a terrorist
and you need to keep your people alive, simulation training can
help your doctors do that without having to go to a medical center
to learn the latest techniques. Battlefield medicine can mean the
difference between life and death, Kimmy.”

“Terrorists?” The thought of
Tom helping terrorists chilled me to the bone. Mac saw me shiver,
so he got off his stool, came up to me, and put his arms around
me.

“He might not have been
dealing directly with terrorists, Kimmy. He might have had a deal
with a middleman.” I could smell Mac’s aftershave as I rested my
head under his chin. It had the scent of confidence and
experience.

“Like who?” I couldn’t
imagine what kind of person would help terrorists get their hands
on technology like the Vanguard simulation program.

“Spies do that kind of thing
all the time. Take the Russians. They’d be very interested in this
kind of thing.” Why was my childhood friend talking about spies?
What did he know about the subject? I felt like I was in a bad
dream, but I didn’t think pinching myself would help me wake up to
a brighter day.

“Why would the Russians want
simulation technology for operating on wounded soldiers on the
battlefield?” I wondered. I took a step back from Mac, looking into
those brown eyes. “They’re not at war.”

“No, but it’s a great
bargaining chip when you want to gain some influence with a rogue
nation or a group you hope to use to co-opt a government.” He held
onto my hands, not letting me go. “A lot of what an intelligence
officer does is to persuade the bad guys to play ball, whether by
coercion, compliment, or cooperation.”

“How do you even know all
this?” I wanted to know.

“When you’ve worked overseas
as long as I have, you often become a target for spies and bad
guys, especially if you work for a big company like KLPG
Financial,” he told me, giving me a smile that seemed forced for my
benefit. I suddenly wondered why Mac wanted me to believe this was
just a normal kind of situation in international business. I was
about to raise another question when a buzz from Mac’s cell phone
interrupted our conversation.

“Tweedie,” he announced as
he lifted it to his ear. I watched his face grow grim. His eyes
caught me and Mac turned away, walking towards the hall. I could
hear him talking in hushed tones, so I knew it was serious. I could
feel a growing apprehension invading my body, cell by cell, as I
thought about Tom. I had had an affair with an impersonator who may
or may not be a spy. I tried to think of another reason why Tom was
involved. Maybe he worked for Vanguard Advanced and tried to make a
buck on the technology by selling it to a competitor. That was also
another possibility, wasn’t it? Couldn’t there be a less sinister
reason why Tom pretended to be Robacher? As I considered the
possibilities, I wondered what his real name was and why he picked
me.

“Kimmy?” Mac was back in the
living room. As he stood there, I realized he was bracing for my
reaction.

“You have bad news to tell
me.” I studied his face, wondering how bad things really were.
Mac’s eyes lit on me and lingered, as if he was hesitating. I
watched him take a deep breath.

“The police went to talk to
your former boyfriend at the address he gave you.” He waited a
moment, as if stalling.

“And?” I prompted
him.

“And when they got there,
they found his body.”

“Tom’s dead?” I grabbed the
back of the counter stool and sat myself down. “How did he
die?”

“He was murdered. He was
shot with his own gun. The cops just found his body. It was still
warm.”