Margaret Truman's Allied in Danger

by Margaret Truman

  Annabel asked, “Is it possible it was a hate crime directed at a black family in a white suburb?”

  “That’s always possible,” Brixton agreed, “but it’s too much of a coincidence that it coincided with my appointment with him.”

  Smith said, “This letter that Mr. Dimka left doesn’t pull punches. He ties Bright Horizons to the Nigerian financial scams, and even implicates SureSafe, the security firm. It almost sounds from what he’s written that Bright Horizons functions as an enforcing arm for SureSafe at certain times.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Portland. “SureSafe is evil. The Frenchman who heads it in Nigeria, Alain Fournier, is the guy who killed my son.”

  Mac and Annabel exchanged glances before Mac said, “Dimka mentions this warlord in southern Nigeria, Agu Gwantam. He seems to be at the crux of much of this. You mentioned him to me, Robert, and a friend I had drinks with, Ralph Cleland—he’s the Nigerian financial scams expert at the Commerce Department—also mentioned Gwantam.”

  “What’s the next step?” Annabel asked.

  “I’ll get hold of Zeke at MPD and see if he can get a fix on the car,” Mac said.

  “I feel like I should try and make contact with Dimka’s wife,” Brixton said.

  “It might be too soon for that,” Annabel counseled.

  Portland’s cell phone rang. He excused himself and took the call in a far corner of the room. When he returned he said, “That was Conan, my boss at the embassy. He wants to see me. I’d better get over there. He’s probably wondering where I’ve been.”

  Portland and Brixton left, Portland to meet with his superior, Brixton to tie up loose ends in his office.

  Smith called Chief of Detectives Zeke Borgeldt. After some preliminary chitchat—they’d been friends for a long time and often enjoyed nights out with their spouses—he gave him the license plate information that Brixton had provided.

  “Why does he want it?” Borgeldt asked. He and Brixton had butted heads on more than one occasion, and while he respected Brixton’s work as a private investigator, their personalities often clashed.

  Smith gave him a capsule recap of the burning of Dimka’s house in Virginia, and how Brixton had caught sight of a man leaving the scene.

  “How is my favorite private eye?” Borgeldt asked sarcastically.

  “Robert is fine, Zeke. He sends his best.”

  Which wasn’t true but it seemed the thing to say.

  “I’ll run the plate,” Borgeldt said, “but tell me more about this house fire. You say Brixton claims it was torched deliberately?”

  “Not only that,” Smith said, “the owner of the house, a Nigerian expat, Ammon Dimka, was murdered before the house went up. Brixton and a friend of his were supposed to meet with Dimka. They arrived just as the fire started and in time to drag Dimka from the inferno. Somebody had bashed his head in.”

  “I’m glad it’s Virginia’s problem and not ours,” Borgeldt said through a laugh. “I’ll run the plate and call you.”

  Borgeldt phoned Smith an hour later.

  “It’s a rental,” he said.

  “Who rented it?”

  “A phony name, phony license, paid cash.”

  “Can whoever processed the rental give a description of the man who rented it?”

  “I already asked, Mac, knowing you’d want that. The agent says that she doesn’t remember what he looked like, just that he wore a bright yellow shirt.”

  “That matches up with what Brixton saw,” said Smith.

  “Great. We can pull in every guy who owns a yellow shirt. Sorry, Mac.”

  Smith thanked him and turned to another legal matter on his docket.

  In the meantime Portland went to the British Embassy, where his boss, Conan Lester, awaited his arrival.

  “How are you, David?” Lester asked.

  “Fine.”

  “The trip to London worked out?”

  “It seemed to. What do you hear from across the pond?”

  “Freddie Tompkins was impressed with you. He told me that you’d met with a former SureSafe operative named Kelsey.”

  “Right. Kelsey is a mess personally, but not so much that he wasn’t helpful to me. He claims that he saw my son Trevor shot in the head by Alain Fournier, SureSafe’s top guy in the Niger Delta.”

  “Yes, Tompkins told me. Look, let me be blunt. You know that I hold you in high regard and that I lobbied to have you join the staff here at the embassy.”

  “And I’ve appreciated what you’ve done for me.”

  “The problem is that we’ve had a series of incidents here at the embassy, protests of our government’s actions in the Middle East, verbal attacks—at least they’re only verbal at this juncture—about the festering problems between the UK and Ireland and Scottish oil.” Portland started to speak, but Lester cut him off. “You obviously have something weighing heavily on you, David. Your son’s murder was horrific, and I can only wonder how I would react while trying to make sense out of it, bring those responsible to justice.”

  Portland knew where Lester was heading.

  “I want you to take a leave of absence from your post. You can keep your apartment, and I’ll be able to keep you on salary for a month, maybe two—but no longer.” He held up his hand against what he assumed Portland was about to say. “I don’t have any choice,” he added, “aside from canning you, which I don’t want to do.”

  “Conan,” Portland said, coming forward in his chair, “you don’t have to explain. I understand the situation you’re in and the decision you have to make. Frankly, I considered asking you for a leave of absence. I need time to sort out this thing about my son. It’s on my mind day and night and gets in the way of my job here. Hopefully, I’ll get to the bottom of it a lot sooner than a month.”

  Portland left Lester’s office feeling as though a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He’d felt guilt about time away from his job at the embassy and was relieved that he was now free to pursue the circumstances of Trevor’s murder.

  He went to his apartment and called his ex, Elizabeth, at her office. Her secretary answered.

  “This is David, her former husband. I need to speak with her.”

  “I’ll see if Ms. Sims is available,” the secretary replied imperiously.

  “Free for dinner?” Portland asked pleasantly when Elizabeth came on the line.

  “No. Why?”

  He laughed. “Do I have to have some deep, dark reason for asking my ex-wife out to dinner?”

  “What’s this really all about, David?”

  “Let’s see. First, I’m on a leave of absence from my job at the embassy. I’m free to pursue what happened to Trevor full-time. Second, I spent part of my day at an arson and murder scene in suburban Virginia that might tie in with Trevor’s death. If that isn’t enough, I’d enjoy sitting in a candlelit bistro with the lovely Elizabeth Sims.”

  She laughed despite herself.

  “Seven? You choose the restaurant. Not only will I gladly pick up the tab; you’ll benefit from what I’ve learned about what happened to our son.”

  She started to correct him—Trevor was his son, her stepson—but didn’t.

  “All right,” she said. “But you pick a place.”

  He thought back to having had drinks with Brixton at the Watergate Hotel, and perusing the menu for its Aquarelle Restaurant. It was out of his price range, and the dishes sounded heavy on the sauces, but what the hell?

  “The Aquarelle at the Watergate,” he said.

  Elizabeth’s silence said much.

  “You’re sure?” she said.

  “Hey, don’t worry. I’ll wear a suit.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “Sure you don’t want me to pick you up?”

  “No, I—I’ll see you there at seven.”

  Had he been able to see Elizabeth following the phone call, he would have known that she was enthusiastic about dinner with her ex. Although there was nothing tangi
ble to point to, she’d spent the day strangely apprehensive about what was going on at the law firm of Cale, Watson and Warnowski.

  CHAPTER

  34

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Cameron Chambers, CW&W’s chief of investigations, prepared to leave his office. He’d met late that afternoon with Marvin Baxter, the tech expert, to pay him his fee for tapping Elizabeth’s and David Portland’s phones, and to receive Baxter’s initial report of what the taps had produced. They rendezvoused at a fast-food outlet in downtown D.C.

  Chambers had never liked Baxter. He considered him a devious nerd who’d carved out a living eavesdropping on unsuspecting people. Not that Chambers hadn’t benefited from Baxter’s expertise while with the Washington MPD. And, of course, there was the George Abbott case, concerning which he had to admit when it was over that Cale had been right about the young lawyer’s treason. Still, there was something distasteful about tapping phones, especially that of someone like Elizabeth Sims, who, from everything Chambers knew, was a loyal member of the law firm’s staff.

  In Chambers’s eyes Baxter looked like the weasel he was. He was short, slender, always dressed in a jacket and tie and wearing glasses with lenses the thickness of soda bottle bottoms, and his high-pitched voice matched his appearance. There was also an air of intellectual superiority about him that was off-putting. But his personal feelings about Baxter didn’t matter. Walter Cale was Baxter’s rabbi, and Cale called the shots.

  “Here’s your retainer,” Chambers said as he handed Baxter an envelope containing cash he’d picked up from the law firm’s accounting department on his way to the meeting.

  Baxter took it without comment.

  “So, what have your taps learned so far?” Chambers asked, not attempting to mask his indifference.

  Baxter pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and made a show of smoothing it on the tabletop. “There isn’t much, of course,” he said, “because I’ve just started, but Mr. Portland called Ms. Sims at her place of employment.” He cited the precise time the call had taken place. “Mr. Portland has arranged to have dinner with Ms. Sims at Aquarelle, at the Watergate, at seven this evening.”

  Chambers felt a stab of jealousy.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “I have nothing as yet from Mr. Brixton’s phone, but—”

  “Brixton? I didn’t ask for a tap on his phone.”

  “Mr. Cale ordered it.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Cale said that Mr. Brixton and Mr. Portland are friends.”

  “So what?”

  “I do what I’m told to do.”

  “Why are you talking to Cale? I’m your contact.”

  Baxter’s smile was self-satisfied. “He called me and—”

  “You take orders from me,” Chambers said.

  Baxter’s small grin remained fixed. “I don’t care who hires me,” he said, “as long as I get paid.”

  Chambers glared at him. “I’ll discuss this with Mr. Cale in the morning,” he said.

  “Sure. Thank you for the advance. I suggest that we meet here every day at this time.”

  “I’ll set the time and place for us to meet,” Chambers snapped. “Is there anything else?”

  “I’ll have more tomorrow when we meet.”

  Chambers got up abruptly, leaving his untouched soft drink on the table. He left the restaurant without another word to Baxter and went directly to his office, where he closed the door and pondered the situation.

  His emotions and thoughts ran the gauntlet, from anger that Cale had usurped his authority with Baxter to a nagging displeasure that Elizabeth would be with her former husband at the romantic Aquarelle.

  He considered calling Walter Cale and arranging a meeting at which he could voice his displeasure about being blindsided by Baxter. But after some reflection he abandoned that idea. The truth was that no matter how distasteful some of Cale’s actions could be, he was the man in charge. He was the boss.

  CHAPTER

  35

  Portland knew that his only suit needed cleaning and pressing, but there was no time for that before his dinner date with Elizabeth. He hung the suit in the shower and allowed the steam to eradicate the worst of the creases. Satisfied that the suit was presentable, he matched it with a clean white shirt and burgundy tie and headed for the Watergate complex, where he waited for Elizabeth to appear. He watched a succession of taxis discharge passengers, expecting each to have delivered her. Finally, at a few minutes past seven, she arrived.

  “Sorry, David,” she said as she pushed through the doors and crossed the lobby. “The driver got held up by an accident, just a fender bender, but you know how that can be.”

  “You’re only five minutes late,” he said.

  “I like to be early.”

  “Yeah, you always were one of those people,” he said, wondering whether it sounded judgmental. Her smile said it didn’t.

  “I was surprised that you chose Aquarelle,” she said.

  “I had drinks here with a pal,” he said. “Maybe you’ve met him. Robert Brixton. He does freelance work for the chap who heads up your investigative office.”

  “Yes, I did meet Mr. Brixton at the party they threw for me when I made partner.”

  “I’m impressed, you making partner and all.”

  “So you’ve said. We have a reservation?”

  “I didn’t make one,” he said, “but I’m sure they can accommodate us.”

  The maître d’ escorted them to a table for two in a corner of the candlelit, sedate room where he snapped open a white linen napkin and dropped it with a flourish on Elizabeth’s lap after holding out her chair.

  “Drink?” Portland asked.

  He knew that she was wondering whether he would order something strongly alcoholic, considering his addicted past.

  “White wine,” he told the waiter.

  She smiled and ordered a vodka gimlet, straight up. “I need to unwind,” she said, as though justifying her choice.

  “You used to drink scotch,” he said.

  “I still do on occasion,” she said.

  “I’m off the hard stuff,” he said.

  “That’s good.”

  Had they been able to read each other’s minds, they would have known that both were in a relaxed mood. The restaurant’s seductive ambiance, flickering candles, comfortable chairs, and hushed noise level were conducive to relaxation. Behind them, visible through giant windows, was the Potomac River, the full moon’s rays dancing on the river’s ripples. The subdued lighting cast a particularly flattering glow over her naturally beautiful face and auburn mane.

  Portland had decided after making the date that he would avoid, if possible, injecting topics into the conversation that might spoil what he hoped would be a pleasant, nonconfrontational evening. He was still in love with Elizabeth Sims, and harbored fantasies that they would one day be together again. She was, as far as he was concerned, the most beautiful female on earth. Adding to her natural beauty was a keen mind that saw through phonies and enabled her to make prudent decisions. He’d known from the earliest days of their breakup that he’d caused the marriage to unravel, and often questioned how it might have been different if he’d been different. He didn’t suffer any illusions about the possibility of rekindling their romance, but it was nice to contemplate.

  While he’d pledged to himself to keep the evening lighthearted and noncontroversial, he was, at once, eager to tell her what he’d learned from Matthew Kelsey about how Trevor had died, of his experience with Brixton at Ammon Dimka’s murder and arson scene, and of his contentious meeting with Sir Manford Penny at XCAL’s London headquarters. “Focus on her and be a good listener,” he’d reminded himself on his way to the Watergate. “Don’t make a mess of things like you usually do.”

  “So,” he said, “what’s new in your life, Liz?”

  “Busy,” she said. “The firm keeps me hopping, lots of travel.”

  “You’re i
n London a lot.”

  “Yes.”

  “I just got back from there.”

  “I know. Manford Penny told me that you and he had—well, I suppose you could term it a discussion.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Portland that Penny would have filled her in on their set-to.

  Portland laughed. “That ‘discussion’ wasn’t especially pleasant. I suppose he considers me a loose cannon.”

  “He had a few choice things to say.”

  “I’m sure he did. I’m surprised he reported it to you.”

  “It came up in conversation,” she said.

  “That’s old hat,” he said pleasantly. “Let’s stick with Elizabeth Sims. How are things at the law firm?”

  “As busy and complex as ever,” she said. “The XCAL account keeps me hopping. There are so many issues to be resolved, not only here in the States but wherever we have operations.”

  “Like Nigeria?”

  “One of our biggest and most challenging operations,” she said. “Manford—Manford Penny—has his hands full with all the upheaval going on in the delta.”

  It just came from his mouth.

  “I don’t like the guy,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Penny. Sir Manford or whatever he’s called.”

  “He’s XCAL’s UK chairman,” she said. “He’s an important part of the company’s management.”

  “Yeah, I know that, and I still don’t like him. He’s a fop, a quarter-inch deep.” Portland winced. “But let’s forget him. Tell me more about you and what you’re doing.”

  Elizabeth cocked her head and leaned back in her chair. “Why would you be interested in my work, David?”

  “Hey,” he said, “I just want to use this evening as a way to get to know each other again. Naturally, I wonder what you’re doing with your life, how things are going, whether you’re happy. After all, you were my wife.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “I loved you.”

  She adjusted herself in her chair.

  “Maybe I still do.”

  She lowered her eyes.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’m not trying to come on to you. I just want you to know that even though we split up I appreciated what I had, and I’ll always be grateful for the way you and your folks brought up Trevor.”