Jake Grafton turned his hand over.
“So Keren could have been given the first drink of the chemical at any time in the preceding few weeks,” Toad said.
“Correct. At a party, a luncheon, a dinner, whatever. It could have been in anything he ate or drank. And that everyone else ate or drank.”
“Then aboard ship…”
“The second chemical could have been in the food when it came aboard, maybe in the ship’s water tank. Probably the food, which would be consumed or thrown away. When Keren had ingested a sufficient dosage and chemical reaction was complete, his heart stopped. And no one aboard the ship knew anything about it. They were all innocent.”
“Wouldn’t this stuff still be in his body?” Toad asked.
“Probably. If the pathologist had known what to look for. Zero chance of that.”
“But why did the body go into the water?”
“That’s a side issue,” Jake Grafton said. “Nothing in life is ever neat and tidy. Someone panicked when they found him dead. You can make your own list of reasons. Maybe the British found out who threw him overboard and kept quiet to protect the dead man’s reputation. Extraordinarily wealthy man, pillar of the community, why smear him after he’s dead? The British think like that.”
“But later they said Keren committed suicide. That’s certainly frowned on by the upper crust.”
“If you have a corpse floating in the ocean and no proof of murder, what would you call it?”
“He was a Jew from the Levant,” Toad said carefully.
“Emigrated to Britain as a young man. Poor as a church mouse.”
“Then he made hundreds of millions and the Mossad was right there when he died to snap a photo of a CIA agent. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Toad said, eyeing the admiral.
“Not me,” Jake Grafton said with finality. “I have no reason to go prying into someone else’s dirty little business. And no levers to pry with even if I were foolish enough to try.” He tossed Toad’s summary at him. “Put this into the burn bag and let’s get back to work.”
On Friday evening Jake took Callie and Amy to a movie. Afterward they stopped for ice cream. It was a little after eleven before Amy wheeled the car into the driveway and killed the engine. Jake got out of the passenger seat and held the rear door open for Callie.
“Well, Mom, what’d’ya think?” Amy asked.
“You drive too fast.”
“I do not! Do I, Dad?”
“Wasn’t that a great movie?” said Jake Grafton.
“Dad!” Amy exclaimed in anguish. “Don’t avoid the issue. Oooh, I just hate it when you do that!”
From the porch — this rambling three-story brick built in the 1920s still had its porch — Jake waved to the federal protective service guard standing on the corner under the light, then opened the door with his key.
“You two are just so narrow bandwidth,” Amy continued, “so totally random.” Still talking in a conversational tone of voice, she made for the stairs and started up. “It’s like I’m stuck in an uncool fossil movie, some black-and-white Ronald Reagan time warp with all the girls in letter sweaters and white socks and the boys in duck’s ass greasecuts—”
“Amy Carol,” Callie called up the stairs. “I’ll have none of that kind of language in my house.”
Her voice came floating down. “I’m the last kid in America growing up with Ozzie and Harriet…”
“You’re very narrow bandwidth, Harriet,” Jake told his wife, who grinned.
“What does that mean?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know,” her husband confessed. He kissed her on the forehead and led the way to the kitchen. After Callie made coffee and poured him a cup, he took it upstairs to the study.
He flipped on the light and started. A man was sitting behind the desk. Another sat on the couch.
Automatically Jake’s eye went to the door of the safe. It was still closed.
The men were in suits and ties. The man on the couch had blond hair and spoke first. “Come in and close the door, Admiral.”
Jake stood where he was. “How’d you two get in here?”
“Come in and close the door. Unless you want your wife and daughter to hear this.”
Jake obeyed.
“Want to tell me who you are?” he said.
Now the man behind the desk spoke. “You haven’t hit the right question yet, Admiral. Ask us why we’re here.”
Jake remembered the coffee in his hand and sipped it as he examined the visitors. Both under forty, but not by much. Short hair, clean-shaven, reasonably fit.
“Get out of my chair,” he said to the man behind the desk.
“Admiral, that confrontational tone is not going to get us anywhere. Why don’t you sit down and we’ll—”
Jake tossed the remainder of the coffee at the man’s face.
The liquid hit the target, then some of it splashed on the desk. The man grunted, then wiped his face with his left hand. He stood up slowly. As he got fully erect the blond man on the couch uncoiled explosively in Jake’s direction.
Jake had been expecting this. He smashed the coffee cup into the side of the blond man’s face with his right hand — the cup shattered — and followed it up with a hard left that connected with the man’s skull and jolted Jake clear to the elbow. But then the man had his shoulder into Jake’s chest and slammed him back against the bookcase. The other man was coming around the desk.
Jake tried to use a knee on his assailant’s body. No. He tried to chop with both hands at the back of the man’s neck. He succeeded only in getting himself off balance, so his blows lacked power.
The man from the desk drew back a right and delivered a haymaker to Jake’s chin.
The admiral saw stars and lost his balance completely.
When his vision cleared he was on the floor, the blond standing and the other man kneeling beside him. Blondie was using a handkerchief on the side of his face. When he withdrew it Jake could see blood.
“You’ve had your nose in a matter that doesn’t concern you, Admiral. You’re not Batman or Jesus H. Christ. This visit was just a friendly warning. You’ve got a wife and kid and it would be a hell of a shame if anything happened to them. Do you understand me?”
“Jake?” It was Callie’s voice. She was outside the door. She rattled the knob. The men had locked it. “What’s going on in there, Jake?”
“What matter?” Jake asked.
“The same thing that happened to Nigel Keren could happen to you. It could happen to your wife. It could happen to your daughter.”
Outside the door Callie’s voice was up an octave. “Jake, are you all right? Jake, speak to me!”
“Be a hell of a shame,” Blondie said, “if your fifteen-year-old daughter died of heart failure, wouldn’t it? A hell of a shame. And you’d have only yourself to blame.”
“Jake!”
“Think about it,” the first man said, then stood up. He unlocked the door and pulled it open.
“Excuse us, please,” he said to Callie and walked by her for the stairs, the blond man at his heels.
Stunned, Callie stared after them, then rushed to Jake, who was getting up.
He was still dizzy. He leaned on the bookcase. “Make sure they leave,” he told his wife and pushed her gently toward the door.
He sagged down onto the couch and lowered his head onto the arm. His jaw ached badly. He felt his teeth. One seemed loose.
When Callie came back he was sitting at his desk. “Jake, who were those men?”
“I dunno.”
She started to speak and he held up his hand. She cocked her head quizzically. He held a finger to his lips. Then he reached for paper and wrote: