“Now what, Lance?”
“There’s a bit of a flap in St. Marks.”
Kate Lee massaged her temples. “Oh, God.”
“Let me explain what’s happened.” Lance gave her the rundown on Croft’s murder and Tiptree’s detention.
“What a mess,” Kate said.
“It gets worse,” Lance replied. “Holly Barker thinks Teddy Fay did it.”
“I’m sorry, my mind just boggled; I’m unable to follow her logic.”
“She may have a point. First, Croft was shot in the head with an exploding bullet, apparently from outside the Markstown jail building, an expert shot, and that sounds like Teddy. Second, Holly points out that anyone hiding on the island would have to bribe Croft to remain safe, and that’s a motive for Teddy.”
“Could Teddy know about Bill and Annie Pepper’s arrest?”
“I don’t see how he could.”
“I can see him being angry with Croft, if he knew.”
“If Holly is right, then that settles the question of whether Teddy is on the island. Now we have to find him.”
“You want to keep Holly there longer?”
“No, but I don’t have a choice. Sutherland has shut down all transportation from the island; nobody can leave until he says so. If we tried to bring some sort of pressure to allow Holly and her group to leave, it might bring suspicion to bear on her.”
“Do we have any idea what identity Teddy is using?”
“There are the three men I told you about. Bill Pepper was caught trying to get photos of them from government computers, so we could circulate them here to see if any of Teddy’s former coworkers could make him. If somebody can, then we’ve got a chance of…detaining him. Holly is trying now to learn if Pepper downloaded the photos before he was arrested.”
“From what you’ve told me, there’s no way to connect any of these men to Holly.”
“No.”
“Unless she has contact with them and one of them is arrested.”
“Well, yes.”
“Order her to have no contact with them, to ask no questions of anyone about them.”
“Certainly.”
“There’s another problem,” Kate said.
“Yes?”
“What happens if one of these men is Teddy and Teddy is the shooter and they catch him? I’m sure that Colonel Croft was not the only man in St. Marks who knows how to extract a confession from a suspect.”
“Director, do you have any reason to believe that you and I are being recorded at this moment?”
“I have every reason to believe that we are not,” she replied.
“If Teddy is arrested by the St. Marks police, then we have to kill him before they can question him.”
“That’s pretty brazen of you, Lance.”
“Think about it: if Teddy is, ah, persuaded to reveal his true identity, and if Sir Winston Sutherland chose to make an issue of a former Agency operative as murderer, then we have a flap of major proportions on our hands. If the American press got hold of that, I think it’s safe to say that the outcome of the next election might be in doubt.”
Kate Lee turned and gazed out the window at the Virginia landscape.
Lance waited for her to speak; he had said all he intended to.
“Lance,” she said finally, “you are authorized to use whatever means you feel are necessary to prevent Teddy Fay from falling into the hands of Sir Winston Sutherland’s police.”
“May I have that in writing, Director?”
She turned and looked at him. “Certainly not,” she said.
“I may not be able to handle this without the cooperation of Hugh English,” Lance said. “May I confide in him?”
“Certainly not,” she replied. “But you may use whatever resources we have on the island without Hugh’s knowledge.”
“I’m afraid that would not be possible; we’ve seen that already. Hugh would have to be…out of the picture. Unless he is, I would not have the freedom to operate.”
Kate’s face was expressionless. “You’re right,” she said finally. She pressed a button on her phone.
“Yes, Director?”
“Please ask Hugh English to join me in my dining room for lunch at noon,” she said. “Don’t take no for an answer.” She disconnected and turned to Lance. “You’re invited, too.”
37
Holly drove quickly out of the inn’s grounds and toward the Peppers’ house.
“Slow down,” Stone said. “We don’t want to attract the attention of the police.”
Holly made a determined effort to drive more slowly.
“That’s better; we’re just a couple of tourists out for a drive.”
Ten minutes later Holly turned into the Peppers’ driveway. The small car was parked where it had been before, but this time the front door was ajar.
Holly and Stone got out of the car and approached the front door.
“I don’t know if we can eat this,” a woman’s voice said from inside.
“Just heat it up, it’ll be fine,” a male voice answered.
Holly rapped on the door. “Hello?”
Bill Pepper came into the living room with some sort of electronic device in his hand. When he saw Holly, he tapped an ear.
“Hi, Bill,” Holly said, “I’m Ginny Heller, a friend of your sister’s in Miami. She asked me to drop in on you and see how you were doing.”
“Hi, Ginny,” Pepper said, but his attention was on the device in his hand. He walked toward the telephone in the living room, picked it up and started unscrewing the mouthpiece.
“This is my friend Stone; we’re traveling together.”
“Hi, Stone.”
“Hi, Bill.”
Pepper took a small disk from the phone and held it up, then he put it on the stone floor and stomped on it. “There,” he said, consulting the meter on the device in his hand, “that’s the lot. Now we can talk.”
“Good,” Holly said.
“I hear we’re flying out of here tomorrow with you.”
“I’m afraid not. Sutherland has locked down the island; nobody leaves until Croft’s assassin is found.”
Annie Pepper came into the room. “Hello,” she said.
“Annie, this is Holly Barker and her friend Stone Barrington. You saw them at the inn earlier in the week.”
“Of course,” Annie replied.
“Annie and I had already left the police station when the Croft hit happened,” Pepper said. “I think we were in a cab by then. I didn’t hear about it until I called Lance.”
“Thomas Hardy told us,” Holly said.
“Thomas knows just about everything about everybody on this island,” Pepper said.
“Would you like to stay for lunch?” Annie asked. “I’m heating up last night’s dinner; I was arrested while I was cooking it, but it seems to be okay.”
“Sure, if it’s no trouble,” Holly said. “Bill, business first; did you get the housing applications for Robertson, Pemberton and Weatherby downloaded before the cops came?”
“Yes, but they’re on my laptop, and they confiscated it. I forgot to demand its return when we got out of jail, so I was going to call Jim Tiptree and ask him to retrieve it.”
“Has he been released?”
“The ambassador is working on that now, I think. There’s no way they can make him complicit in Croft’s murder. The sergeant on duty heard Croft suggest to Jim that they go outside. I think maybe Croft’s office is bugged, too, like everywhere else.”
“Our cottage at the inn is bugged,” Holly said. “We were thinking of ripping them out, as you’re doing.”
“What the hell? Croft’s not around to listen anymore.”
The phone rang, and Pepper picked it up. “Hello? Hi, Jim; are you out? Good; I didn’t think they would have any reason to hold you. Listen, in our haste to get out of there, I didn’t get my laptop back from them; do you think you could handle that? There’s something on it that I need. Don’t worry, it’s encrypted; they’ll never be able to get into it. They caught me downloading the stuff from the government computer from their end. Great, Jim, and thanks; give me a call when you’ve got it, and I’ll come get it. Well, all right. Thanks again.” He hung up. “Jim’s going to send somebody over there for the computer and have it delivered here.”