Reluctant Witness (27 page)

“I hear you, kid. It’s like you’re living on
borrowed time and someone can come along and snatch it back from
you. I felt like that for the last three years of my first wife’s
life. We never knew how she’d be month to month. Sometimes she’d be
fine and then she’d relapse. It frustrated her to work so hard at
feeling healthy, only to find out that the sneaky cancer of hers
went behind her back and invaded another organ.”

For a brief moment, I saw the sadness in
Tom’s eyes as he remembered those difficult times. I wondered what
his life would be like if he and Jojo hadn’t discovered each other.
Would he have remained miserable and alone, holed up in a house he
shared with a ghost?

And what of her life? Would Jojo have
continued to assume all the good men were taken and settle for
second best? She and Tom were friends before they were lovers. Was
that the secret? I found myself wondering if Tom felt as strongly
about his second marriage as he had his first. Could we humans love
even after our hearts were shattered? Did all of our passion die
with the departed, or could it begin again with someone new?

I thought my heart had shattered the day I
came home and noticed something amiss. The door was slightly ajar
when I climbed the stairs up to the hallway, key in hand, ready to
insert it into the lock. I pushed the door open, expecting Jared to
be there, waiting. We were going to drive up the coast, to check
out a new restaurant. It wasn’t as if I was running late. I
returned on time.

“Honey?” There was broken glass on the floor,
sharp, tiny shards of it. I heard the unexpected crunching sound as
I stepped upon them.

“What the....” I rounded the corner and there
was blood. More blood than I ever thought was possible.

Joe DiMarco, my neighbor, heard me screaming
and came running up the stairs. He was the one who called the
police. He was the one who hurried me out the door and down the
steps, into the office of his restaurant. He was the one who sat
with me while I shivered and sobbed uncontrollably. That was the
moment when I thought I would never again feel warm, when I
believed life was over for me. And yet, here I was, hoping there
was someone out there for me, someone who needed me the way Tom
needed Jojo. I felt that little stab of fear, that I would spend
whatever time I had left in this world on the run, never knowing a
lasting love, one that would sustain my soul. How could I possibly
ever find a man when I was never in one place long enough to get to
know him? And now, with so many questions about Jared, how would I
ever be able to trust someone else?

The young man returned to us, putting three
bags on the counter. “You’re all set.”

We sat in the SUV, ready to move the moment
the new team to arrived. Just before quarter to nine, a Coachmen
Freelander pulled into the parking lot and parked next to us. It
was time to bid Kary and Tom farewell. I climbed aboard the RV with
my coffee, turkey club sandwich, and a bag of muffins in hand. I
put them down on the counter by the door. Tom handed me my suitcase
and addressed my new security team.

“Take good care of our girl here. Don’t let
anyone mess with her,” he instructed them.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get her there, safe and
sound,” said the driver, Vince. He kept the engine idling as Nancy
settled me in the back. She gave me a quick tour, pulled down all
the shades, and returned to the front passenger seat. “We’re
off.”

By nine o’clock, we had all scattered in
different directions. I was in an RV, heading towards Boise, Idaho,
accompanied by a couple of retired FBI agents Tom hired as my
protectors. Jeff was at the airport to catch a flight to Los
Angeles for a hastily scheduled business trip -- anything that
would get him out of town in case a hired hit man showed up in
Atlanta. Rocky was holed up in his office, working to track down
information on my case. Tom was on the road, headed back to
Virginia with Kary, to connect with Lincoln and coordinate the
federal side of things.

Vince was a gruff, no-nonsense kind of guy, a
bit scruffy around the edges, but according to Tom, more than
capable of keeping me alive. His partner, Nancy, was a twenty-year
veteran of the bureau and every bit as tough, but at least she had
a sense of humor.

“Well, it’s too bad we’re taking you to
Idaho, Marigold. I would have preferred something warmer, like
Miami.”

“You and me both,” I agreed. I settled down
for a long night of travel, as Vince drove us all over the state of
Georgia to determine if we had a tail. After three hours of
backtracking, he and Nancy decided it was safe to proceed on our
adventure.

I dozed on and off, rolling around on the
double bed in the back. I would have preferred to be on terra
firma, but as recreational vehicles went, this one was fairly
comfortable, and compared to some of the relocations I’d had in
witness protection, this went smoothly.

For the next three weeks, Vince, Nancy and I
meandered around the country, ostensibly on our way to Boise, all
part of the plan to give us credibility as tourists on an extended
road trip. I was instructed to call them Mom and Dad. They took to
calling me “kid” and “buttercup” in public.

We didn’t really have specific travel plans.
Instead, we played it loose and went with the flow, so that our
journey wouldn’t be predictable. Nancy had always wanted to see
Graceland, so we took a detour to Memphis for a couple of days,
seeing all the tourist sights and staying at a Best Western in the
city. My bodyguards took shifts, one sleeping in the bed beside me,
the other taking the watch in the rather uncomfortable arm chair.
With no obvious signs of a killer on the hunt after five days, we
headed back to Nashville and checked into a Comfort Inn that night,
Nancy and I sharing a room, Vince next-door in a single.

The following morning, Nancy and I stayed
behind at the Hilton while Vince left to take care of some
business. He was in the process of making arrangements for our trip
to Kansas City, where we were expected to meet up with Rocky for a
briefing.

Chapter Twenty
Five

Nancy and I went down to the
pool for a swim just after breakfast. I brought my copy of
Vanilla Orchid Magic
and
read, lounging in a chaise, while Nancy did laps. I fell back into
the story as the heroine, Nora Hazen, was explaining the coffee
business on Guadeloupe:

My father bought his first plot of land in
Petit-Bourg on Basse-Terre Island ten years earlier, just before he
retired as an investment banker up in Boston, Massachusetts, and as
his agricultural endeavors became more profitable, he continued to
buy more, until he had several hundred acres of farm land in
several plots across the bigger of Guadeloupe’s two main
islands.

His plan of working with local farmers to
produce Guadeloupe Bonifieur coffee for export involved creating a
coffee co-operative that would eventually expand to other islands
in the Antilles. Although susceptible to rust and other diseases,
the Bonifieur coffee tree produced one of the finest types of
Arabica beans in the world, often blended with lesser beans. This
Bourbon Pointu relative, similar to Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee,
was legendary for fetching high prices in the coffee commodities
market.

In order to insure the quality of the
Bonifieur beans, my father hired an agricultural adviser, Guy
Cloutier, to oversee the implementation of pesticide-free coffee
production; Guy was responsible for everything from the soil
testing to pest maintenance on our land, enabling our coffee to be
sold as organic. The men and women who worked for the company were
paid fair base wages, and they shared the profits whenever the
beans sold above market estimates. My father believed in the people
of Guadeloupe and wanted them to benefit from the efforts to
resurrection of the coffee industry, and he was willing to take the
risks with his own money.

As the years went on and the mature trees
became established, he began to branch out, adding cacao, nutmeg,
allspice, and cinnamon, as well as the vanilla orchids that yielded
the valuable vanilla beans so coveted by gourmet cooks. His dream
became Le Papillon Coffee and Spice Company, based in
Baie-Mahault.

After graduating from college, I spent a
summer in Guadeloupe, seeking to learn about the coffee and spice
business. It was my father’s hope that I would join him stateside
and promote the products offered by Le Papillon Coffee and Spice
Company. That year, we launched our mail order business in Natick,
just outside Boston. The beans were shipped in oak barrels to our
warehouse....”

“Good book?” Nancy gave me a poke as she
plopped herself down in the chaise lounge beside me.

“It is,” I nodded, marking my page and
turning my attention back to my protector. “How’s the water?”

“A little chilly, but I’ll take it. There’s
only so long I can stand being cooped up in a hotel room. I get
restless.”

“I can understand that.”

“Don’t let me keep you from your book, kid.”
She toweled off, her alert eyes scanning the horizon for any sign
of danger.

“No, I’m good.” A part of me wanted to get
back to the story, but I didn’t want to be rude.

“Relax, buttercup. You don’t need to amuse
me. I’m a working woman. Or did you forget I have a job to do
here?” She gave me a playful poke in the arm. “Go ahead. I know
you’re dying to get back to reading.”

It was true. I felt the pull of my past, of
my summer days the more I read Nora’s story. We actually had quite
a few things in common.

My childhood was made up of magical journeys
and sunny days in the country. I couldn’t think of my grandparents
without remembering fields of poppies, daisies, and lupines that
seemed to go on forever, carpeting the hills with color. Artists
would come quite a distance when the flowers were in bloom, lugging
their canvases and paints with them. And as I got older, I began to
take more of an interest in what was grown on the farm.

My grandfather often took me along as he made
his rounds on the flower farm. We would walk the land, inspecting
plants for signs of infestation or disease. Sometimes, it was just
a matter of snipping off a piece and bagging it. Other times, my
grandfather would dig up the entire plant and remove it, for the
sake of the others.

He also had a large greenhouse, where he kept
rows and rows of potted plants in various stages of development.
This was where he grew exotic blossoms from faraway lands. He was
constantly trying to propagate plants, in the hopes of preventing
them from becoming extinct in their native habitats, whether
rainforest or desert. His favorites were the African impatiens,
commonly known as the poor man’s orchids.

My grandmother kept honey bees and grew
vegetables in her carefully tended garden by the old farmhouse.
Trellises invited beans to climb skyward. I used to till the soil
with her, letting my hoe tear through the packed dirt as the twins
played near by. At night, I would sit in at the farm table in the
kitchen, shucking peas or slicing strawberries, while she got busy
cooking on the stove. Those were the times she would pass along
little snippets of wisdom.

Maybe that was why I felt such a kinship with
Nora. We both understood the importance of farming, of caring for
the land. It was in our blood. For someone like me, cut off from a
normal life for so long, Nora’s story gave me a chance to reconnect
with what mattered most to me, the family I had lost, the way of
life I had lost.

After lunch, Nancy and I went clothes
shopping at a local mall, picking up some jeans and tops for me,
along with a winter jacket and sneakers. It gave us an excuse to
linger as we perused the racks. By the time we got back to the
hotel, it was time to head out. Vince had the RV gassed and ready
to go.

“Shake a leg, people! Time’s a-wasting.
Hurry, hurry,” he instructed us impatiently.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put a sock in it, Vince.”
Nancy winked at me as she went through her purse. She pulled a
couple of things out and placed them on the bed. “We’re ready when
we’re ready.”

“Fine,” he sniffed, standing at the doorway,
examining his fingernails one by one. “You ladies let me know when
you’re ready.”

“We will,” she agreed cheerfully, returning
to the bathroom for a handful of tissues. Carefully folding them,
she tucked them in her purse, added the other items, and at last
reached for her suitcase. I took that as my cue and followed her to
the door. “Now we’re ready.”

“Will wonders never cease!” Vince responded
sardonically.

“Wait till he finds out I’m driving,” said
Nancy, poking me in the side. “Oh, we’re going to have some fun
now!”

Vince protested all the way down to the
parking lot, even while his partner pushed back. She reminded him
that she was more than qualified to drive the camper and pointed
out that it didn’t require a special license before he finally
ceded the keys to her.

“Don’t mind Vince. He likes to be in charge.
That’s because he’s got trust issues,” she explained as she sat
herself behind the wheel. He glowered at her from the passenger
seat.

“No, it’s because I like to get to where I’m
going in one piece.”

“Well, make yourself useful while I’m driving
and keep a look out for tails, because if we pick up one, we’re
going to have to deal with it.” Nancy backed up the Coachmen
Freelander, inching it out of the tight space as the reverse
warning system beeped its alert. I could see Vince tense up as she
narrowly missed the fender of a small green Toyota.

“Careful, Zemaki!”

“I am, Lorenzo! Just chill, will you?”

Once we were safely on the highway, I grabbed
a soda from the small fridge and retreated to my double bed in the
back of the RV. There I picked up my paperback and got myself
comfortable for the long drive to Kansas City.