“My name is Ted Robinson. I’m a reporter for the Post in Washington, D.C. We got a complaint and it is being filed as we speak by a parent charging that one or perhaps several of you have been brutalized. Raise your hand if this is true.” Ted was not the least surprised when no hands shot in the air. “The other thing is this. Have any of you been sent to the Hut? If so, raise your hands.” No hands rose in the air. Surprise! Surprise! Ted thought as he looked around, wishing he could wipe the smug look off Szmansky’s face.
“Okay, boys, break formation. Ah, that’s good. Great! Super! Thanks, guys,” Szmansky said, sweat beading on his forehead.
The reporters watched as the kids raced off. Maggie stepped forward. “I’d like to talk finances with you, Mr. Szmansky. We also want to see the buildings, the sleeping quarters, the Hut, of course, and the schoolrooms, the kitchen along with the menus, and, of course, the bathrooms.”
Szmansky drew back, his beady little eyes squinting into the last afternoon rays of weak sunshine. “Don’t you need a warrant for something like that?”
“Only if you have something to hide. I can get one,” Maggie lied. “It might take a few hours to have it delivered while we wait. The point is, I can get one.”
Szmansky’s first thought was The shit’s going to hit the fan sooner rather than later. His gut told him it was the beginning of the end as he knew it. He thought about the Porsche he’d just bought, the sailboat he had up on the Bay, and the summer place he was planning to buy that winter with his six-figure year-end bonus, when the real-estate market really slumped.
“Like I said, Mr. Robinson, there’s nothing hidden here. Go ahead, take the tour. Look at whatever you want. I’m not even going to escort you because I don’t want you saying later on I only showed you what I wanted you to see. You’ve screwed up my day anyway, so go for it.”
The minute the reporters were out of sight, Szmansky was on the phone, his back to the log cabin. The phone rang six times before a strangled-sounding voice answered.
“It’s Szmansky, Judge. There are four reporters here from the Post. They said they were here on a report of brutality. I’ve cooperated, and they already knew about the Hut.” He listened to a rant that ran for two full minutes before he said, “With all due respect, Your Honor, it’s my ass that’s on the line here. If you want me to say that, then I will, and I will also say you told me to say it. I just follow orders. Your orders. Look, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. They can’t prove anything unless those kids talk, and, trust me, not a one of them is going to. Yeah, I’ll call you when they leave.”
Inside the log cabin, the reporters walked around. “That was a little too easy, doncha think?” Dennis said.
“Yep. Way too easy. But we’re here, so let’s give it a thorough going-over. Dennis, check the Hut since you know where it is. See if there’s any bird seed in there. Or if ever there was any bird seed in there. There’s bound to be some on the floor. Espinosa, follow him and take pictures. Maggie and I will do the tour.”
Espinosa held up his hand and told them in hushed tones what he’d told the tallest boy. “He’s a good-looking Hispanic boy. Looks to be about sixteen or so. Make sure he’s behaving normally. I sure as hell don’t want him getting into any trouble.”
Maggie waited until Dennis and Espinosa were out of earshot before she looked up at Ted, and said, “I’m getting bad vibes here. Something’s wrong. Do you feel it, Ted?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ted drawled.
Chapter 17
Pearl Barnes was like a schoolgirl as she settled herself at the round table in the Harbor Inn’s lone suite of rooms. “This is like a hen party, girls!” The others agreed as they pulled their chairs closer to the table. Then they all looked at one another and burst out laughing.
“Well, girls, here we are,” Myra said, fingering her pearls. “The first thing on our agenda is to plan the party for Judge Rhodes. Annie, give us a status update.”
“Well,” Annie said, sitting up a little straighter, “you all know how I like to delegate, and that’s what I did. I called a caterer in Washington that I know, and he will be delivering the food Friday afternoon. We opted for heavy canapés, hot and cold. No one will go home hungry. We have everything from crab-filled shrimp, sweet-potato-crusted lobster, filet-mignon medallions, sesame chicken in a white-wine-caper sauce, and all manner of cold canapés, cheese platters, veggie platters. You name it, and it will be there. I also ordered an ice sculpture with a big fifty carved into it, along with the scales of justice. The space here in the Inn simply won’t accommodate sit-down dinners. I did this all online, by the way. We’ll be serving only champagne and beer. The caterers will send an advance team to pretty up the hall with balloons, streamers, ribbons, and whatever else they decide to use. Of course, there will be a huge retirement banner. I found a DJ who promised to play nothing but Golden Oldies. The party will last three hours.”
The women all clapped their hands in approval.
“Gifts?” Marti asked.
“You’re pretty much the gift, Marti. Having the president, retired or not, at your party, is about all a person could want in the way of a gift. But everyone deserves a package with a big red bow, so the gift will be a month-long trip for two to Hawaii. The judge can take a companion. I think that covers it except for a photographer, who will be Espinosa. Everyone there will want their picture taken with you. I hope you don’t mind. All we have to do is address the invitations and have one of Avery’s men take them over to the courthouse to distribute. We have a list of every person in the courthouse, so no one will get left out. I don’t know if they will all attend or not. I’m thinking they will. Except for the Ciprani twins, that is,” Annie said.
“It will be my pleasure to pose with all the guests,” Marti said. “I really mean that.”
“Of course you mean it; otherwise, you wouldn’t have said it, Marti. I’d like a picture with you myself. Now, if we divide up the invitations, we can have it done in no time,” Nellie said.
“Then what?”
“Then we have to decide whether we drive up to Waterton now or wait till tomorrow to see the house Marti just bought. I’m thinking we should wait till morning. If we leave now, it will be dark by the time we get there, and we’d just have to turn around and come back. Besides, I think we want to be on hand to see and hear what Maggie and the boys have to say when they return. We can certainly all have dinner here, possibly Chinese or Italian. Avery said his people would arrange it. Which makes sense since we don’t want to be seen in public. Yet,” Myra said.
“We need to have a foolproof plan on how we’re going to free all those children at the same time. The camps are twenty-five miles apart and cover a radius of a hundred miles,” Annie said, nibbling on the end of a pen she was holding.
“What’s our time frame here?” Marti interjected. “What about a jamboree sponsored by some do-gooder group that will be delighted to have its name attached to something so worthy that an ex-president is sponsoring it? We pick one camp and have the children brought there. I’m thinking the time frame is going to be crucial, which leaves the question of how soon we move in on the twins. I think it all ought to go down simultaneously. Am I wrong, or am I right, girls?” Marti asked.
“No, dear, you’re right. We really haven’t had much time to discuss an actual plan. Time this go-round is not of the essence. Well, it is when you think of all those children in those camps, but we need to do this right. I for one would like to check out the living quarters of the twins. They have state-of-the-art security in both places, but Avery is on that. Still, we’re going to need a few things,” Myra said vaguely.
“I don’t think Myra and I should attend the festivities on Friday night,” Annie said. “Our pictures have been plastered all over the country, the world, too, as active members of the Vigilantes. It will be better if we stay in the background. Charles is working on legends for us, but even so, we can’t attend.”
“Annie’s ri
ght,” Myra said. “No sense blowing any cover we might be able to use.”
“I think I want to know more about the brother, Peter, the one who supposedly died. Or, at least, the twins had him declared dead. I don’t know why, but I think he has a part in all this. A big part. In a good kind of way,” Pearl said.
“Maggie’s on that. She’s spoken with Peter’s best friend. She’s convinced the brother is alive and that the friend, whose name is Jon Eberly, knows more than he’s letting on. He has an insurance office right on Main Street. A storefront office. If there’s anything to find out, Maggie will find it,” Myra said.
“I have one little worry, girls,” Marti said. “Do you think there is anyone in this town who is smart enough to figure out that ex-presidents do not travel with a contingent of Secret Service agents the way I am? Not to mention I requested the removal of all protection last week, and the request was granted.”
“Not to worry. The Secret Service will not let on you have no protection. Trust me on that. As for the contingent, no, I don’t see a problem. Everyone expects it, our taxpayer dollars at work. Worst-case scenario, they’re moaning and groaning about those dollars.” Annie chuckled.
“By the way, did Maggie’s friend Abner manage to locate any more of the offshore accounts he was certain the twins had?” Nellie asked.
“I think it’s ongoing, Nellie. It’s only been a few days if you stop to think about it. I’m sure he’ll come through the way he always does,” Myra said, confidence ringing in her voice.
A knock sounded on the door, two sharp raps with a gap, then two more sharp raps. “It’s Avery or one of his people with lunch,” Annie said, rushing to the door. She returned with two huge shopping bags filled with food. “Looks like sandwiches, salads, soft drinks, and lots of coffee. Guess we should eat first, then write out the invitations. What do you think, girls?”
“I’m so glad we aren’t back at the farm. Charles disapproves of us talking business over a meal. I find it more satisfying to talk business while I chew, bad manners or not.” Myra laughed. “Let’s talk about those two crazy judges and what we’re going to do to them when we get them alone,” Myra said as she fished around in the bag for a sandwich to her liking.
“I love it when you talk like that, Myra,” Annie said, chomping down on a six-inch-long sub. “And I have a sterling idea for their punishment. We’ll just have to place an order with Charles for a few things and have him overnight it here to the Inn. Listen up, ladies, and tell me what you think. . . .”
As Annie described in exquisite detail the punishment the five of them would administer to the evil Ciprani twins, the others stared at her, their jaws dropping, their eyes almost popping out of their heads. When they high-fived one another, Annie preened like a peacock.
While Myra and the girls devoured their lunch and plotted the downfall of the two judges, Celeste and Eunice Ciprani were pacing the confines of their spacious condominium like wild animals. They snapped and snarled at each other between gulping at the wine in their glasses. They were on their near-empty second bottle of wine, with a third, the cork already removed, waiting its turn on their outrageously priced granite countertop.
Celeste very carefully set her exquisite wineglass down on the kitchen table, making sure the wine didn’t spill. She’d poured too much with her trembling hands. Once again, a stressful situation had overpowered her common sense about drinking excessively due to her diabetic condition. She had to take a deep breath and calm down, but it was hard, with Nessie screeching in her ears. The sickly-sweet smell of the funny cigarette Nessie was smoking wasn’t helping either. She turned around and turned on the exhaust fan over the range.
“Everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Daddy used to say that. I never knew what it meant, and I still don’t know how everything can go to hell in a basket. A handbasket is small. You carry it on your arm. Explain that to me, Cee.”
“Shut up, Nessie. You’re drunk.”
“Like you aren’t?” Nessie screamed. “Look at you! Your hair is standing on end, your face is splotchy, you’re drooling, and you’re wearing only one shoe!”
Nessie was right, Celeste thought as she stared at her reflection in the shiny surface of the Sub-Zero refrigerator. She licked at her lips and made an attempt to smooth her hair back from her flushed face. She kicked off her one shoe, sat down at the table, and primly folded her hands. “Nessie, sit down. Please. And will you please put out that cigarette. We need clear heads here, and we need to talk without screaming at each other. Please, Nessie.”
Nessie blinked, walked over to the sink, and turned on the water. She held the cigarette under the spray, then tossed it into the trash. She lurched her way to the table and sat down. A moment later, she burst into tears. “I saw him, Cee. Clear as a bell. It really was Peter. Don’t tell me I didn’t see him because I did. God, why don’t you ever believe anything I tell you?” she screeched at the top of her lungs.
Celeste nodded. “Enough already, Nessie. I’m sorry I said I didn’t believe you. I believe you saw Peter, and yes, I do believe he came back. What we did was legal. After seven years, you can have a person declared dead. Why he came back at this point in time is something I can’t tell you. Yes, he is going to want his share of things. Fortunately, if that’s what this is all about, and I’m talking about what has been happening, we can pay him off. We certainly have enough money to do that. Peter was never adversarial, so I don’t think he’s going to muck things up now. Unless he has some kind of secret agenda that he’s been harboring all these years. Money was never important to Peter, you know that.”
“Get real, Cee. The first thing Peter would do would be to get in touch with his old friend Jon Eberly, and Jon will tell him everything as he knows it and put his own spin, as well as the town’s, on everything we’ve done. Peter won’t accept that. Peter has integrity. Something you and I misplaced along the way, and don’t try to deny it, Cee.”
“Don’t go there, Nessie. Let’s just not argue, all right? We need to discuss what is going on. Actually going on, not what we think is going on. Can you at least agree with me on that? And I do not want to hear any more about us packing it in and hightailing it.”
Nessie clenched and unclenched her closed fists. Her jaw set stubbornly. “Fine, Cee. Where do you want to start?”
“Well, it seems to me it started with Henry Rhodes’s retiring at the end of the week. There was supposed to be a general party in the cafeteria after court on Friday night. We were both going to go, as I recall. You said you would buy our gift. Then word filtered out that the party was canceled, and suddenly, out of the blue, there is another party being planned by none other than the former president of the United States, along with a retired justice of the United States Supreme Court and another federal judge, whose name escapes me at the moment, but who happens to be married to a former director of the FBI. Do you recall her name, Nessie?”
“Cornelia Easter,” Nessie snapped.
“Yes, that’s it. Moving right along here. The next thing is you hear that the two of us are not invited to this swanky once-in-a-lifetime party for Judge Rhodes. And you hear this in, of all places, the beauty parlor, where everyone in the front room hooted and hollered when they heard you and I were not invited. Which means we are not loved and adored in this town. But then we already knew that. That is a pure fact because you were there and heard the thunderous applause at the news. How am I doing so far, Nessie?”
“Everything you said is correct so far, Cee,” Nessie grudgingly admitted.
“The retirement party is being held at the Harbor Inn, where the president and her Secret Service are staying. She or someone reserved the entire Inn. No one comes or goes unless the Secret Service okays it. We both saw with our own eyes that the entire Inn and surrounding area have been cordoned off. That is another solid fact.
“Fact number three. You yourself heard that President Connor bought our neighbors’ house from their estate in Waterton.
Since it is a fact, we can’t argue it. All we can do is ask why the president picked Baywater to plan a party. Why did she pick Waterton to buy a house? What connection does she have to Waterton, or Judge Rhodes, and Baywater for that matter?”
“Because Justice Barnes knows Judge Rhodes, and in her opinion, anyone who sat on the bench for fifty years deserves something special. Barnes and Easter are friends. Obviously, somehow, some way, they know Judge Rhodes. Just like we know tons of judges from all over the country. Since President Connor appears to be a good friend of those two judges, possibly of Rhodes, too—although I don’t know how that could be—they are all here to throw a retirement party. On the face of it, nothing about the party, other than our exclusion, should raise any eyebrows. Standing in our shoes, however, things look very different, and it is understandable that our eyebrows are up to our hairlines,” Nessie said as she downed the last of the wine in her glass. She poured more, emptying the second bottle.
“Facts and suppositions. But we can live with that. We can also live with being snubbed. Which then brings me back to the fact that the president bought the Matthews house from the estate. Our old neighbors’ house. I told you we should have bought it a long time ago, but you said no, it needed too much work. So now we will never, as in never, have any privacy when we go there weekends. That’s another fact. Now we need to know the why of it. Why Waterton? Why Baywater? They go together like salt and pepper, shoes and shoelaces, sugar and spice. And everything nice,” Celeste couldn’t help adding.
Nessie shrugged as she stared at the cherry-wood kitchen cabinets in her line of vision. “She paid full price for the Matthews property and didn’t quibble. What kind of fool would do something like that? Years ago, we got an estimate of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars just to get it up to almost livable. In today’s economy, and the wear and tear and weathering, the cost has probably doubled. That’s just for renovations.”
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