When Hannibal walked into the motor vehicle office, Janet deserted her post and rushed to him. She hustled him into the back offices and ran to the ladies’ room for a wet cloth to press against his face.
“God, thank you thank you thank you.” The words poured out of Janet, tripping over each other. “Are you all right? What about Ike, did you have to hurt him? You didn’t have to involve the police did you? Is he gone, really gone?”
“Not gone from your life, Janet,” Hannibal said, stopping her hand’s movement over his face and holding the cloth himself, applying less pressure. “I’ll be fine and he’s fine physically, but he’s a man in torment. If this is going to go on, I need to know how you feel about this guy. Do you still love him?”
Her answer was very, very quiet. “I don’t know.”
“What do you want, Janet?”
Janet turned and walked to the closed door. When she turned back, her face was composed again. Her strength was returning with her distance from Isaac. “I want to be safe.”
“I understand,” Hannibal said, “but it won’t be free.”
“I’ll figure a way to pay you,” she said. “I know this is business for you.”
Hannibal stood, dropping the cloth on her narrow desk. “That’s not what I meant. You can’t just avoid him. You’ve got to make peace with him one way or another. I told him you’d call tonight and talk to him. The two of you need to figure out what you want and how to make it happen. Counseling is probably a good idea.”
“I’ll call him if you think it’s important. But I meant what I said about paying you.”
Hannibal considered the inherent strength hidden in this woman and wondered how she ever came to a place where she would let a man beat her. “Janet, you can hardly afford my rates. But we might be able to handle this another way. Take it out in trade, maybe. Tell me, how hard is it to find a person if all you know is their license plate number?”
This brought Janet’s first smile of the day. “You kidding? I’m the shift supervisor. Why don’t you give me the number and a description of the car and let me see what I can do?”
When Hannibal pulled up in front of the palatial rambling home at the edge of Arlington he was replaying his last conversation with Janet in his mind. He had been little more than a mile from her office, stopped at a red light when she called, sounding chipper and in control again.
“You said a red Chevrolet Corvette with Kitty as the vanity plate? No such vehicle.”
“Damn,” Hannibal had muttered.
“But,” she added with an annoying dramatic pause, “I do show a 2004 ‘Vette with a plate reading KITTYCAR. Think that could be it?”
Hannibal pulled away from the light a bit faster than he should have. Irons would have considered that a gay license plate for sure. “Very likely, kid. Whose ride is that?”
“Vehicle is registered to one Langford Kitteridge. And if you’ve got a pad and pencil I can give you his Arlington address.”
Instead, he had memorized the address and driven straight there. Now he sat in the colonial’s extensive driveway, behind a low-slung midnight blue Lexus, gathering his official attitude. He had no doubt that this was the right place. The license plate on the Lexus read KITYCAR1. So the owners had wit and ego to spare. He didn’t know anything about the residents except their obvious financial security. Was this Dean’s last victim? If so, Hannibal might be no closer to tracking him down, but he accepted that as the way the job worked. You followed every lead. Detective work, unlike the romance of the movies, was in fact all about legwork.
The door’s chimes echoed like bells in a church steeple. Hannibal imagined house workers scurrying like bats at the summons, but it was soon clear his image was mistaken. A minute is a long time to stand at a door. In that time he decided no one was home. The parked Lexus didn’t mean anything. Owners of a house like this might well have a third vehicle, an SUV probably, and the owners would be off in that one. Oh, well, it was still good to have seen the place. He’d return later.
But he was only two steps away from the door when he heard it open, and a voice said, “Can I help you?” It was an older man’s voice, commanding but very disciplined. A butler’s voice, Hannibal thought.
When he turned, that image dissolved. The tall man at the door wore sweat pants and running shoes. A towel hung around his neck, and upper body shone with drying perspiration. His bare chest displayed solid muscles and very low body fat. If not for some telltale sagging skin around his waist, it could have been the body of a thirty-year old, onto which someone had spliced a deeply cleft face with a full shock of white hair. Hannibal recalled actors like Charlton Heston and Charles Bronson whose faces looked ugly to him, but were always described by women as having character. This man’s face had character to spare, and charisma and the kind of energy that almost pushed you over.
“I was just finishing my workout,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”
“Sorry to disturb you,” Hannibal said, pulling out a card. “My name is Hannibal Jones, and I was looking for Langford Kitteridge.”
“You selling something?”
Hannibal smiled. “No sir, I…”
“Then come on in. Looking for Langford Kitteridge, eh? Well, you found him.”
Hannibal followed Kitteridge across a living room he normally wouldn’t try to navigate without a map and a guide, into a kitchen many restaurants would be proud of. Kitteridge pulled down a skillet from among the collection hanging above the center island. He carried the pan to the refrigerator and dropped a chicken breast into it.
“Some lunch?”
“No thank you,” Hannibal said from the doorway. “I won’t take up much of your time.”
“I look busy to you?” Kitteridge asked. He covered the chicken breast with a cooking spray and turned it over. Then he lit the gas stove under the skillet. It was early for lunch to Hannibal, but the buttery smell and the crackle of frying called out to his stomach. Kitteridge turned to him, smiling with teeth too even to be real. “Well, now that you’ve found me, what are you planning to do with me?”
Hannibal liked this lively old man already, the way he always liked people who chose living over existing. He wished he had encountered the lady of the house instead, though. If his theory was right, there might be a hurt in store for Mister Kitteridge. “Sir, I’m trying to locate a Dean Edwards. Does that name mean anything to you? Young fellow, blonde hair, kind of a round face…”
“Yes, yes I know the boy,” Kitteridge said, flipping his chicken breast with a fork. The new top side was blackened, the way Cajun chefs do catfish. “One of Joanie’s foundlings. Hangs around here now and again. Crashes in the guest apartment over the garage from time to time. In fact, I think he’s been staying there the last couple of days. She even lets him drive her car sometimes. He in some kind of trouble?”
“You expect him to be?”
“Hey, you’re the one come looking for him, eh?”
Smoke began to fill the room, clouding Hannibal’s path to the answers he needed. “My client just needs to talk to him about some plans they made. Do you have any idea how I might find him? Or perhaps your wife might know.”
Kitteridge looked confused as he slid his steaming prize onto a plate and turned to stand at the island. Then, as if a new thought had struck him he said, “Oh. Yes, I see. Joanie. Sorry, son, there is no Mrs. Kitteridge. At least not yet, heh heh. Joanie’s my niece. She’s lived with me since we lost my brother, her father, in Vietnam. And yep, it’s a pretty sure bet she knows where he is. She hired him over at KCS.”
“I’m sorry. KCS?”
Kitteridge dumped salsa on his chicken and attacked it with a knife and fork. “Kitteridge Computer Systems. So sorry. Guess I assumed you knew who I was. I started the company, but Joanie runs it these days. In those damn towers in Falls Church. Sure you won’t split this with me?”
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