“Mrs. Broome, I appreciate your telling me these things. But I really came here for a specific reason. I need your help.”
“I’ll do whatever I can.”
“My father sent you a package.”
“Yes. And I sent it on to Mr. Graham, like Luther said to.”
“Yes I know. Jack got the package. But someone... someone took it away from him. Now we’re wondering if my father sent you something else, something else that might help us?”
Edwina’s eyes no longer looked sad. They had collected into twin masses of stark intensity. She looked over Kate’s shoulder.
“Behind you, Kate, in the piano seat. The hymnal on the left.”
Kate opened the piano seat and lifted out the hymnal. Inside the pages was a small packet. She looked down at it.
“Luther was the most prepared man I have ever met in my life. Said if anything went wrong with my sending the package that I was to send this to Mr. Graham. I was getting ready to do that when I heard about him on the TV. Am I right in thinking Mr. Graham didn’t do any of the things they say he did?”
Kate nodded. “I wish everybody thought like you did.”
Kate started to open the package.
Edwina’s voice was sharp. “Don’t do that, Kate. Your father said that only Mr. Jack Graham was to see what was inside of there. Only him. I think it best if we took him at his word.”
Kate hesitated, fighting her natural curiosity, and then closed the package.
“Did he tell you anything else? Whether he knew who had killed Christine Sullivan?”
“He did know.”
Kate looked at her sharply. “But he didn’t say who?”
Edwina shook her head vigorously. “He did say one thing though.”
“What was that?”
“He said if he told me who had done it, I wouldn’t have believed him.”
Kate sat back, thought for several anxious moments.
“What could he have meant by that?”
“Well, it surprised me, I can tell you that.”
“Why? Why did that surprise you?”
“Because Luther was the most honest man I’d ever met. I would have believed anything he would have told me. Accepted it as the gospel.”
“So whatever he saw, whoever he saw, must have been someone so unlikely as to be unbelievable. Even to you.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly what I thought too.”
Kate rose to go. “Thank you, Mrs. Broome.”
“Please call me Edwina. Funny name, but it’s the only one I have.”
Kate smiled. “After this is all over, Edwina, I... I’d like to come back and visit if you don’t mind. Talk about things some more.”
“I’d like nothing better. Being old has its good and bad. Being old and lonely is all bad.”
Kate put on her coat and went to the door. She put the package safely in her purse.
“That should narrow your search shouldn’t it, Kate?”
Kate turned around. “What?”
“Someone that unbelievable. Can’t be too many of them around I wouldn’t think.”
The hospital security guard was tall, beefy and uncomfortable as hell.
“I don’t exactly know what happened. I was gone maybe two, three minutes tops.”
“You shouldn’t have been away from your post at all, Monroe.” The diminutive supervisor was in Monroe’s face and the big man was sweating hard.
“Like I said, the lady asked for some help with a bag, so I helped her.”
“What lady?”
“I told you, just some lady. Young, good-lookin’, dressed real professional.” The supervisor turned away, disgusted. He had no way of knowing the lady was Kate Whitney and that she and Seth Frank were already five blocks away in Kate’s car.
“Does it hurt?” Kate looked at him, with not much sympathy in either her features or her voice.
Frank gingerly touched the bandages around his head. “You kidding? My six-year-old hits me harder.” He looked around the interior of the car. “You got some smokes? Since when the hell are hospitals nonsmoking?”
She rummaged in her purse and flipped him an open pack.
He lit up and eyed her over the cloud of smoke. “By the way, nice job on the rent-a-cop. You should be in the movies.”
“Great! I’m in the market for a career change.”
“How’s our boy?”
“Safe. For now. Let’s keep him that way.”
She turned the corner and looked hard at him.
“You know, it wasn’t exactly my plan to let your old man buy it right in front of me.”
“That’s what Jack said.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“What does it matter what I believe?”
“It does. It matters to me, Kate.”
She stopped for a red light. “Okay. Let’s put it this way. I’m coming around to the idea that you didn’t want it to happen. Is that good enough?”
“No, but it’ll do for now.”
Jack turned the corner and tried to relax. The latest storm front had finally wearied of the Capital City, but although there no longer was any pelting icy rain, the thermometer had remained consistently in the twenties and the wind had returned with a vengeance. He blew on stiff fingers and rubbed sleep-deprived eyes. Against a drift of black sky, a sliver of moon hung, soft and luminous. Jack checked his surroundings. The building across the street was dark and empty. The structure he was standing in front of had closed its doors a long time ago. A few passersby braved the inclement conditions, but for large chunks of time Jack stood alone. Finally he took shelter inside the doorway of the building and waited.
Three blocks away a rusting cab pulled to the curb, the back door opened and a pair of low heels touched the cement sidewalk. The cab immediately pulled off and a moment later the street was silent again. Kate tugged her coat around her and hurried off. As she passed the next block, another car, lights out, turned the corner and drifted along in her wake. Her thoughts focused on the steps that lay ahead of her, Kate did not look back.
Jack saw her turn the corner. He looked in all directions before moving, a habit he had quickly cultivated and hoped he would be able to discard very soon. He moved quickly to meet her. The street was quiet. Neither Kate nor Jack saw the sedan’s nose as it crept past the corner building’s front. Inside the driver zeroed in on the couple with a night-vision device the mail-order catalogue had trumpeted as being the very latest in Soviet technology. And although the former communists had no clue as to how to run a democratic, capitalist society, they did, for the most part, build sound military hardware.
“Jesus, you’re freezing, how long have you been waiting?” Kate had touched Jack’s hand and the icy feel had coursed through her entire body.
“Longer than I needed to. The motel room was shrinking on me. I just had to get out. I’m going to make a lousy prisoner. Well?”
Kate opened her purse. She had called Jack from a pay phone. She couldn’t tell him what she had, only that she had something. Jack had agreed with Edwina Broome that if risks had to be taken, he would take more than anyone. Kate had already done enough.
Jack grasped the packet. It wasn’t that difficult to discern what was contained inside. Photographs.
Thank God, Luther, you didn’t disappoint.
“Are you okay?” Jack scrutinized her.
“I’m getting there.”
“Where’s Seth?”
“He’s around. He’ll drive me home.”
They stared at each other. Jack knew that the best thing was to have Kate leave, maybe leave the country for a while, until this blew over or he was convicted of murder. If the latter, then her intention of starting over somewhere else was probably the best plan anyway.