His face was expressionless. “We’ll have to discuss it later. I have Agent Sloan on the line.”
“What?”
He pressed a button again and she saw he was using the small black secure phone the g-man had given him.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Sloan. Miranda just walked in.”
Instinctively she closed the door and sat down.
Parker looked up at her as if nothing had happened. “I’ve been filling the Agent in on the results of our assignment last night.”
“So you think this Eustace DeBow is our man?” Sloan said.
No time for office politics now. She took a seat. “We don’t have definitive proof, but I have a team preparing to go up there with us as backup.”
Sloan fumed and cussed under his breath. “You can’t do this on your own, Ms. Steele. It isn’t protocol.”
“We know what we’re doing,” Parker said.
“Nonetheless, I’m in charge of this mission.”
“Miranda is in charge of this case, Sloan. I have complete faith in her.”
Parker had always been proud of her, had always thought she had potential. But he’d never said anything so boldly in favor of her before. It took her breath.
Time to act the part.
“There’s no need to be concerned, Agent Sloan,” she said into the speaker. “My team is made up of consummate professionals. As Parker said we know what we’re doing.”
“And as I said, this plan of yours does not conform to protocol.” Again she could hear Sloan cussing in the background. At last he came back on the line. “My men will be there in Dalton this afternoon. You can work with us or separately. Your choice.”
“Then I suggest your men listen to me.”
She gave the g-man a rough outline of the plan, coordinated the time with him and warned him that his people better not screw things up. DeBow could be perfectly innocent.
Then she returned to the lab and helped everyone get ready for the operation.
A little before one-thirty the van was tricked out with surveillance equipment, the team was locked and loaded inside it, and she was settled next to Parker in the Mazda.
Miranda brushed the lap of her slacks to straighten them. She’d changed three times this morning, trying to get the right outfit for a “tea.” In the end she’d settled on her go-to black suit and a pair of flats. You never knew if you had to run.
Parker was in his standard dark blue work suit and tie, looking handsome and classy as ever.
They were ready.
As she stared out the window at the trees surrounding the Imperial Building and thought of DeBow’s fingers on her skin last night, once again an icy little shiver crawled up her spine.
She ignored it.
“Let’s go,” she said to Parker.
And with a nod he turned the ignition and they headed for parts north.
Chapter Forty-Six
He was in the smaller kitchen upstairs brewing his favorite lemon tea. Freshly baked scones he’d made just this morning were warming in the oven. It was going to be a delightful get together.
At the sound of heavy footsteps, he looked up as the Cossack came through the door.
“Are you ready?” he asked the big man.
“I am.”
“You have the drugs prepared?”
“Just as you specified. Twice the dosage we gave the teacher.”
“Excellent. And the boy?”
“I’ve locked him in his room.”
The room was on the third floor at the end of a long hall. No chance of them hearing him. He would have drugged him but he couldn’t risk nerve damage at this point. “Everything packed?”
“Just as you ordered.”
After he was finished with his guests, he and little Dylan would be going on their trip. He was upset that they would have to leave so much earlier than he’d planned, but it would all work out for the best. They’d be in San Francisco by tomorrow. He would show the boy the Golden Gate bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, take him on cable car rides. And he would teach him all the skills he would need to please his new master.
“A question.”
“I’ve told you. You are to fly to Ontario. Chekhov from Central Command will meet you at the airport. He’ll have your new assignment.” He was glad to be leaving the Cossack behind. Starting over again in California wouldn’t be so bad.
“You are sure they will show up?”
“Of course. I left the woman detective enough hints she’ll at least be curious.”
“Very well, but I have a concern, sir.”
“What is it, Doroshenko?”
“How are you going to…how shall I say it? Handle these detectives. They are formidable as I understand.”
A reasonable question. Smiling he looked down at his tea and gave it another stir. It was almost perfect. It lacked only his secret ingredient. And once added, the lemon flavor would disguise it completely.
He chuckled to himself. He chuckled again, his laugh nearly a giggle this time. He was getting excited, feeling the thrill he always did at the start of a big project.
It gave him such a rush.
“Don’t you worry about that, Doroshenko,” he said with another giggle. “I have that part all taken care of.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Parker’s Mazda hugged the curvy road giving Miranda’s stomach a pull.
She gazed out at rolling acres of old wooden barns and horse farms and hills in the distance. Her ears began to pop.
“We’re at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains here,” Parker said.
“Guess so.”
They’d been driving over an hour and a half and she felt like she was sitting on an anthill.
Doubt peppered her thoughts. All she was going on was supposition and those strange sensations she often had on a case. What if they were wrong this time? What if she was making a mistake? Not only would she be harassing a young man who’d suffered a terrible loss, the real kidnapper might have already left the country.
A glance in the side mirror told her the van with Becker, Holloway, and Wesson wasn’t far behind. Her intrepid team. At least two of them were on her side. There hadn’t been time to talk to Holloway. She had to trust he’d behave as a professional.
“I hope this works,” she said aloud.
“We’re bound to learn something,” Parker said as he turned onto a narrow, barely paved road.
He was being reassuring, but he had to have his doubts, too.
They went a little farther and then he pulled along the side of the road. The van pulled up about thirty feet behind them.
So much for worrying about the neighbors seeing it. There were none.
She studied the building that matched the address on her card.
The home was massive.
A three story multi-color stone structure done in rich autumn hues. With a charcoal roof, dozens of gables, and several chimneys it had the look of an English manor house.
It was set well back from the road. A curving brick wall about five feet high seemed to wind around the entire property and disappear into the surrounding woods. In the front yard an artful display of colorful hedges encircled a fish pond.
A minute later a black van rolled in from the other direction and pulled to the roadside about thirty feet in front of them. After another minute or so, the little black cell phone Sloan had given Parker buzzed.
Parker reached for it. “Yes?”
“I’ve established contact with your team.”
Good for him. If she was wrong about DeBow she could be embarrassed in front of her team and the FBI at the same time.
“All we’re going to do is go inside and visit with DeBow,” she said to Sloan. “We don’t need a swat team.”
“That remains to be seen, Ms. Steele.”
“Don’t make any moves unless I say so. You could blow it for us.”
“I understand that. Do you have a code word?”
&nbs
p; “A what?”
“You’re wired aren’t you?”
He had talked to Becker. They’d decided to go with just one wire to cut down on interference.
“Yes,” she told him.
“What word will you say to signal us if you get in trouble?”
She hadn’t thought about that. “Help?”
She could almost hear Sloan grimacing. “‘Help’ it is. Be careful.”
“Always am.”
Sloan hung up.
Miranda took a moment to steady herself and look over the house again. She couldn’t decide if it was welcoming or foreboding.
“It’s three o’clock. Are you ready?” Parker asked.
She straightened her shoulders and nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Parker pulled up the circular drive and they got out and ascended the steps to the front door.
Chapter Forty-Eight
DeBow answered the door himself.
His hair was just as neatly styled as it had been last night and he wore black slacks with a dark blue dinner jacket and a red ascot at his throat.
He grinned in surprise at them. “Mr. Parker, Ms. Steele. I didn’t think you would come.”
Parker flashed him an elegant smile. “A client canceled at the last minute and so we were able to leave work early.”
“We would have called to let you know,” Miranda said, “but there was no number on the card.”
“Oh, never mind about that,” he said with a laugh. “I’m delighted to see you. Both of you. I’m fairly beside myself. It’s been so long since anyone’s visited me. Please come in, won’t you?”
He led them into a high narrow foyer with a marble floor edged with hardwood. It contained several interesting arched niches where greenery sat in old pottery that looked like it had come from ancient Greece.
Over a grand marble staircase the lighting was iron filigree, giving the place a medieval castle feel.
DeBow bounced on the toes of his dress shoes. “I’m so excited I’m not sure what to do first. Let’s go sit in the library. Oh, no. Let me show you my collection first. Would that be all right?”
He seemed overly excited. Was that because he lived alone and never had guests? Or was the trouble he’d had as a teen resurfacing? She wasn’t sure, but it set Miranda’s nerves on edge.
DeBow put his hands to his cheeks and spun around. “Oh, my. Where shall I start? I know. In here.”
He ushered them into a large living room filled with overstuffed sofas and chairs in muted gray tones in a terracotta background. Persian rug on the floor. Potted ferns along the windows, another iron medieval style chandelier hanging from a domed ceiling.
DeBow moved to a side table with gaudy golden legs and picked up a square black box. He pressed a switch on the box and held up a finger.
From somewhere in another room a whistle sounded, a bell clanged, and a small train came clacking in from an opening in the corner near the ceiling. Its rails stretching overhead, it ran along a cream colored shelf mounted above the crown molding.
Miranda craned her neck to watch it. “A toy train,” she smiled, genuinely impressed.
“Oh no, Ms. Steele.” DeBow seemed a little insulted. “Not a toy train. A model railroad. There’s a big difference.”
Touchy, wasn’t he?
Still Miranda stared at it openmouthed as it rounded the far corner. She counted fifteen cars. Boxcars and tank cars and coal cars with little bits of shiny black coal in them. One car carried several stacks of tiny automobiles. Actual steam puffed from the stack of its engine as it moved along. It was modeled after an old fashioned freight train.
“It’s so realistic.”
“The engine is a G Scale steam engine. It belonged to my father.”
“It must mean a lot to you,” Parker said.
“Yes, it does.”
It chugged over a set of sconces along the far wall and through a small tunnel that had been carved into the opposite corner of the room, leading out of it.
“C’mon,” DeBow said with childish glee and trotted across the floor.
They followed him through the door and into a formal dining room.
Here stood a table that could seat six but from what DeBow said about company Miranda suspected he ate meals alone in here. A glorious spray of flowers and candles making up the centerpiece was upstaged by the train hooting and puffing over the valance on the windows, it rounded another corner then chugged its way over the mantelpiece. Tooting its horn it clacked through another opening above another door, and they followed it into a library. Here there were tiny trees along the tracks and carefully crafted rocky hills in the corners of the room.
Miranda wanted to stop and study the scenery, but the engine chugged on.
“We have to keep up,” DeBow laughed.
They chased the train through a music room, a library, a drawing room, then down a long hall and back into the foyer. There it clattered its way along the wide marble staircase.
“I had to be careful with the grading here. It’s three percent, mountain grade, but the engine is strong. C’mon.”
They trotted up the stairs after their host and around a ninety degree turn the steps made on their way to the next floor. Here paintings of mountains along the upper part of the walls made up the train’s backdrop.
But in the rooms on the second floor the scenery became more realistic.
There were little houses and buildings painted with immaculate detail. Weathering, rock facings, realistic water, even an asphalt road.
A little town sat in the corner of a drawing room. A refinery for the coal stood along the tracks, waiting to unload supplies. Farther back were shops and a courthouse and a theatre with little cars in a parking lot. In another corner sat a green and yellow depot, an old-fashioned station with little figures on a tiny bench reading the newspaper. Along the wall beyond the depot spanned a silver trellis so detailed it looked like a real one.
As they moved from room to room the seasons changed, too. One was full of greenery. In the next the trees turning gold and red. Then they became bare as winter in the next. There was artificial snow along the tracks here. Finally came spring with tiny dogwoods in full bloom.
In a cozy sitting area in the last room DeBow sank into a chair laughing as he gasped for breath like a little boy at a birthday party.
“This is amazing,” Miranda said taking a seat in a high back armchair. “You did all this yourself?”
“Yes, I did it all.”
Parker settled into a rose patterned chair next to her. “It must have taken you a long time.”
“I’ve been working on it since the house was built. A little over eight years now.”
Miranda watched the train as it came through for another round. Time to get some data. “Your house is eight years old?”
“Yes. My father left me this property up here in Dalton. I think he wanted me to do something like this with it.” A faraway look came into his eyes.
She hadn’t intended to make him sad. “I’m very impressed.”
“Thank you. The project would have gone faster but I’m such a stickler for details.”
“I can see that.”
DeBow sat up with a jerk. “What a bad host I am. I haven’t offered you any refreshments.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” Parker said.
“Oh, I insist. I’ll be right back.” He shot up and hurried off through a door.
As their host disappeared Miranda gave Parker a wary look. She was having second thoughts about DeBow again. He seemed so harmless.
Looking very serious Parker held her gaze a moment, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
She wondered what Becker and the rest of the team were thinking down in the van, listening to them chase toy trains around from room to room.
She got up and strolled to a window.
It faced the back yard, which stretched out toward hilly woods beyond. Down below she could see more track wind
ing around an artful arrangement of rocks. There were little houses there and little artificial trees and a small lake.
The word “obsessive” came to her mind.
“He’s got more out there in the back,” she told Parker.
“Oh, yes. The gardens.”
She spun around to see their host carrying a silver tray laden with tea things.
“I’ll have to take you out there after we’ve had our refreshments.”
He set the tray down on an antique coffee table and began to pour tea from a silver pitcher into elegant china cups with a dainty rose pattern that matched the chairs.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Just plain, thanks.”
As Miranda returned to her chair, he handed her a cup. “It’s already got a dash of honey. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Sounds good.” She took a sip.
It was tangy and tart. Lemon flavored with a hint of sweetness. Kind of like hot lemonade but she liked it.
She balanced the cup on her lap while DeBow handed another to Parker. She wasn’t used to drinking tea in the middle of the day. Must be an English habit he’d picked up in boarding school.
DeBow offered her a dish of little round cakes sprinkled with powdered sugar. “I do hope you’ll try one of my scones.”
She took one and bit into it. It was tasty and fresh. “You baked these yourself?”
“Yes. I always cook for myself. I have a cleaning staff who comes in once a week but I do my own cooking, since it’s just me.”
Again he had that sad look in his blue eyes. Her heart went out to him.
They were wrong. She was wrong.
How could DeBow have time to run a kidnapping ring and groom young boys when he’d been working on this train project? It was Fenton Emmett who was their suspect. The representative had lost his sister in that train wreck that had taken DeBow’s family. Maybe he blamed the senator for that.
They’d have a little tea then excuse themselves. They had to get busy and go after the real culprit.
She took another sip and as she did she heard Parker ask something. But for some reason she couldn’t make it out. He sounded like he was underwater.
She turned her head.
The Boy Page 19
