Safe Houses

by Dan Fesperman

  Bewildered silence. Anna reached down to the stack of letters and began going through them slowly, one after another.

  “Maybe there’s a way,” she said, plucking out the one postmarked from York the previous August, almost a year ago to the day.

  “Here we go. Listen. ‘I will now dare to send you a cornball holiday snapshot in the coming season.’ Mom kept last year’s Christmas cards. I saw them in a box in her closet.”

  They walked quickly down the block to the Shoat house. The smell of disinfectant was still strong in her parents’ bedroom. Anna went straight for the closet, avoiding any glance at the headboard or the bloodstained wall, and reached above the thin line of dresses to a box on the overhead shelf. She carried it past Henry, saying, “Let’s do this in the kitchen.” He gently shut the bedroom door behind them.

  They found the two Christmas cards easily enough in the stack of a few dozen. The one postmarked from Currituck, North Carolina, was in a plain white envelope, and the card was staid and sober, showing a snowy church with a wreath on the door. There was a signature, “Warmly, Audra,” but there was no return address. The one from York, Pennsylvania, was in a red envelope, with a decidedly secular card featuring a crashed sled and an angry Santa. As CDG had promised, there was a photo enclosed—a spirited-looking woman in a Santa hat, standing with martini in hand in someone’s kitchen, where a party seemed to be in progress. The signature, “Love, Claire.” It, too, had no return address.

  Anna’s mouth flew open in surprise. Henry smiled.

  “Do those names ring a bell, Miss Anneliese Audra Claire Shoat?”

  “How the hell did I not figure that out earlier?”

  Then she picked up the two letters and looked again, as if seeking tracings in invisible ink.

  “Why did she never tell me?”

  “Too dangerous?”

  “That’s the charitable explanation.”

  “But we’re still stuck. Not even a last name to go on.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Anna dug deeper into the box. She pulled out a handwritten list of names and addresses, maybe three dozen in all. Some were crossed out, some had been revised. They were in two columns, one labeled Friends, the other Family.

  “Of course,” Anna said, finding the names almost instantly. “She listed them under family.”

  “The Sisterhood,” Henry said.

  Claire Saylor lived on Smallbrook Lane in York. Audra Vollmer’s mailing address was a bit more vague, a post office box in Currituck, but at least now they had her full name.

  They walked back to Henry’s and went to work. Audra Vollmer remained maddeningly elusive. A search for her name turned up no phone number, no street address, and no property records. Claire Saylor, on the other hand, was an easy mark, which they grimly realized also made her an easier target for Gilley and Delacroix. Her phone number popped up almost immediately.

  “Shall I do the honors?” Anna said.

  “Put it on speaker. I just hope she’s okay.”

  A man’s voice answered after the third ring.

  “Hello?” He sounded tentative, uncertain.

  “May I please speak to Claire?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  Anna paused ever so briefly before saying, “A friend.”

  “Just a moment.”

  They waited through a few seconds of muffled consultation. It sounded like someone had put a hand over the mouthpiece. Finally, a woman answered.

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Claire?”

  “Who’s calling?” Anna looked at Henry with a puzzled expression. This was a young voice, probably closer to their age.

  “My name is Anna, Anna Shoat. My mother was Helen Shoat, or Helen Abell as you probably knew her. Is this Claire?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know you. Can you say why you’re calling?”

  Henry shrugged and shook his head, having no idea how to proceed.

  “I’m calling because we’re worried that you might be in danger.”

  “We?”

  “My friend Henry and me. Am I speaking to Claire?”

  “Just a moment.” Another muffled interval. What in the hell was happening?

  “It would be better to talk face-to-face,” the woman said. “How soon can you be here?”

  Henry, who had already checked the mileage, mouthed the words, and Anna repeated them.

  “About two hours, if traffic’s okay.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “Don’t answer that,” he whispered. “Hang up.”

  “We’ll see you in two hours,” Anna said.

  She frowned, hesitated, and then hung up just as the woman was saying, “Hello? Hello?”

  “Well, that was disturbing,” Anna said. “There were clearly other people in the room, and that definitely wasn’t Claire. She sounded very cagey.”

  “So did you. Maybe they’re as wary as we are.”

  “Or maybe Claire was with her, and was just being careful.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Only one way to know for sure.”

  They locked up the house and headed for York.

  53

  Anna kept working the phone on their way to York, and the results kept getting stranger.

  With no phone number or street address for Audra Vollmer, they decided to call the local police for help.

  “The Currituck County Sheriff’s Office looks like the best bet,” Anna said, scrolling a website. “The sheriff is a woman. Looks like the no-nonsense type.”

  She called the headquarters in the town of Maple, and spoke to a Sergeant Crosley while Henry listened. Anna explained who she was and said she was trying to reach one of their older residents, Audra Vollmer, because she was concerned for her safety.

  “Oh, we’re well aware of Miss Vollmer. She’s been down here a good while now. Keeps to herself and likes it that way.”

  “Right, and I don’t want to disturb her. But, like I said, I’m worried about her, so if you knew some way to get in touch. Maybe a phone number?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about Audra. She’s got quite the security apparatus out on her island.”

  “Her island?”

  “Yes, ma’am, out in Currituck Sound. Don’t even know if it has a name, so we just call it Audra’s. Tell you what, though. The boat from our beach patrol unit over in Corolla usually runs by there a couple times a day, so if you’d like we could check on her next time through and pass along your name and number.”

  “That would be great.” Anna gave him her particulars, as Sergeant Crosley put it. “Oh, and if you could please add that I’m the daughter of Helen Shoat.”

  “Will do, ma’am.”

  The connection ended.

  “Security apparatus?” Anna said.

  “Probably just cop speak for a nice alarm system.”

  “Nothing that Delacroix and Gilley couldn’t get through in about ten seconds.”

  They drove on in silence, worried they’d be too late, and their mood didn’t improve much when they saw Claire Saylor’s house. It was a fine-looking, two-story stone home with black shutters and a slate roof, on a wooded lot with azaleas and boxwoods. There were neighbors to either side, but all the greenery made it feel secluded, which, under the circumstances, didn’t seem like a good thing. The driveway was empty, the garage door was shut, and all the curtains were drawn.

  “Looks dead,” Henry said, as they eased into the driveway.

  “Poor choice of words.”

  They strolled to the porch, listening for any sounds of life from within. Anna knocked.

  “Who is it?” It sounded like the young woman Anna had spoken to earlier. Henry saw movement behind the peephole.

  “Anna Shoat. I’m here with my friend.”
<
br />   “Just a second.”

  Muffled consultation, same as before, followed by a brief delay before the lock finally rattled. The door flew open, and they immediately found themselves staring down the barrels of two revolvers—one on the left, one on the right, held by two policemen.

  “Hold it right there,” the cop on the right barked. “Keep your hands where I can see them and walk slowly through the door.” They stepped inside. The second cop holstered his gun and came forward to frisk them.

  “What the hell?” Anna said, but Henry warned her off with a look.

  “Just do as they say,” he said.

  “Smart man,” the second cop said. “They’re clean.”

  “Check their IDs.”

  He took Henry’s wallet from his back pocket and got Anna’s from her handbag.

  “Checks out. Same names she gave over the phone.”

  Only then did the other cop lower his gun and call out over his shoulder.

  “You two can come out now.”

  A swinging door flew open and a young man and woman appeared from the kitchen, wide-eyed and moving cautiously toward the living room. They sat on the couch while the cops stood guard.

  “Take a seat,” the man said, gesturing toward a couple of chairs that someone had brought in from the dining room. A fair amount of planning seemed to have gone into preparing for their arrival.

  “Sorry about all that,” the first cop said. “But after what happened this morning we’re all a little skittish. And until we know more about what’s going on…”

  “What happened this morning?” Anna asked.

  The young woman answered.

  “They found her car. Over at the mall, York Galleria.”

  “Claire’s?”

  She nodded.

  “The door was open.” She paused and shut her eyes a second. “There was blood on the front seat. But no Claire.”

  Anna put her hands to her mouth and lowered her head. Too late. Probably for Audra as well. Every last member of the Sisterhood, gone.

  “When do they think all this happened?” Henry asked. “I’m Henry Mattick, by the way, and this is Anna Shoat.”

  “Skip and Susan Turner,” the man on the couch said. They all shook hands and settled back into their seats.

  “Are you her daughter?” Anna asked.

  “Oh, no. We’re the neighbors, from next door. Friends, too. I don’t think Claire has ever mentioned any kind of family. As for when this happened, yesterday I was out picking tomatoes from our vegetable garden, and Claire came over to chat. She invited us to dinner and then asked if Skip and I could help keep an eye on her place for the next few days. She said she was going to run over to Sears and be back around six for dinner.

  “Well, I said yes, we’d love to. So, six o’clock rolls around and we knocked at the door, and nobody answered. We checked around back in her garden and she wasn’t there, either, and the whole house was locked up. We waited a while and then opened our bottle of wine and sipped it out on our front porch, figuring she’d show up all in a whirl with a big take-out order or something.”

  “She’s been known to do that for dinner parties,” Skip added, smiling.

  “Yes. But after an hour or so we figured it must have slipped her mind, or maybe she got tied up on something else. I did look out the window just before we went to bed and noticed there still wasn’t a light on, and that worried me a little. But I figured she must have come home without us noticing, and went straight to bed.

  “Anyway, first thing this morning I walked over here and the place was still locked up, and when I checked the garage her car wasn’t there, so that’s when I called the police. And they told me they’d just found her car over in the parking lot at Sears, with the door ajar and the dome light on and, well, you heard the rest, about the blood and everything.”

  Her voice was breaking by the end. Skip put his arm around her, gave her a hug, and she shook her head.

  “I let the police in to search,” Skip said. “Claire gave us a spare key. We’ve tried her cell phone, but there’s no signal, and they didn’t find it in her car.”

  “What’s she like?” Anna asked. “Claire, I mean.”

  “She’s great. Like no one we’ve ever met.” She turned toward Skip and he nodded.

  “I mean, look at this place,” he said. “The paintings. The rugs. The prints and artifacts from God knows where. She never dwells on it, but enough little dribs and drabs come out along the way for you to realize that she’s been pretty much everywhere.”

  “I think she might even have lived in Paris for a while,” Susan said, her eyes going wide.

  “She did,” Henry said. “For at least thirty-four years, as far as we’ve been able to tell.”

  The Turners’ mouths dropped open in such perfect synchronization that it was like watching a couple of marionettes. Henry had to hold back a laugh.

  “That long?” she said.

  “Yeah. Then there’s the whole CIA thing.”

  “CIA?” Their mouths remained agape.

  “She worked for them in Paris.”

  It took a few seconds for the implications to sink in.

  “You don’t think that all this has anything to do with…?”

  “Possibly,” Henry said.

  “Like the Russians or something?” Skip said.

  “Or maybe some kind of terrorists?” Susan said.

  “No, no. We think it’s, well…”

  “A little more domestic,” Anna said. “And personal. But it’s nothing you or the other neighbors would have to worry about.”

  “How did you guys get involved?” Susan asked.

  “My mom used to work with Claire, ages ago, over in Europe. But I didn’t find out any of that until she and my father were…they were killed a few weeks ago. And that’s why we came looking for Claire.”

  “Your parents were killed?” Susan asked, her voice almost a whisper.

  “It’s a long story,” Anna said. “But it might be connected.”

  “Wow,” Skip said. “But what about you guys? Are you in danger?”

  Anna and Henry looked at each other.

  “Get back to us in a week or so and we’ll let you know.”

  They laughed uneasily as the two cops returned from the kitchen.

  Skip then asked, “Do the police know about all this? The whole CIA thing?”

  The first cop stopped in his tracks.

  “CIA?”

  “Another long story,” Anna said. “Where would you like us to start?”

  “How ’bout at the beginning.”

  He got out a notepad and settled onto an easy chair while the other cop stood behind him.

  Anna told the story in broad brushstrokes, focusing more on the Sisterhood letters and what they’d discovered recently about Gilley and Delacroix than on her brother and her parents. The whole time, Skip and Susan Turner stared as if they were at the movies, raptly attentive. When Anna finished, the cop with the notebook whistled and said, “Maybe it’s time to get the feds involved.”

  “Shit,” his partner said. “Pardon my French. You’re probably right. But that’s not our decision to make.”

  “We better go report all this in. And how ’bout if I get some cell numbers for both of you. Will you be around a while longer?”

  “Probably,” Henry said. “But we’re easy to reach.”

  The policemen said goodbye. It felt like the end of a dinner party, when the guests begin drifting home. But now Susan, having had time to digest everything, was more curious than ever.

  “Why York?” she said.

  “Excuse me?” Anna replied.

  “I mean, I’d already wondered that a few times about Claire, but now even more so. Why would a woman who’d spent thirty-four year
s working in Paris for the CIA, and who’s been just about everywhere, why would she end up here, of all places?”

  “Did she have family here?”

  “Not that she’s ever said.”

  “Was she ever married?”

  “If she was, she hides it well. I mean, it’s a nice neighborhood and everything, but we wouldn’t be here, either, if it wasn’t for Skip’s job.”

  “No idea,” Henry said.

  Anna shrugged.

  Another mystery, another anomaly.

  “I guess we should all go,” Susan said. “Leave this place in peace.”

  Henry looked at Anna, and they both thought the same thing at once.

  “Actually,” she said, “do you mind if we have a look around first?”

  Susan and Skip exchanged a glance as if suddenly suspicious. Then Anna explained about the most recent letter in the correspondence between the three women, the one in which Claire acknowledged receipt of “the parcel” from Anna’s mom, and pledged to guard it with her life. Not only did Susan and Skip consent, they eagerly joined in. It wasn’t every day in the suburbs of York that you got to search the home of an ex-spy.

  They proceeded quickly but respectfully, taking care to not make a mess. It was indeed an elegant house. The closet in the master bedroom was its own revelation. A vast and stylish wardrobe for any and all occasions, from dresses to gowns to shoes of every variety, everything in its place. This was no farmhouse wife, like Helen Shoat. This was someone who had remained in close touch with the wider world.

  “Tell me something,” Henry asked Anna. “Does this look to you like the closet of a woman who shops at Sears?”

  “More to the point. Does this look like the closet of a woman who would admit to her next-door neighbor that she shops at Sears?”

  They smiled and moved on.

  But they found no strange records, no letters, no inexplicable correspondence. No papers at all, in fact, except the commonplace homeowner detritus of bills and warranties and receipts.

  The only oddity was a brand-new reel-to-reel tape recorder, still in the box it had come in, although the packing materials had been removed, indicating it may have been used at least once. They found it just inside the stairwell leading from the kitchen to the basement, perched on the landing as if she’d recently set it aside for storage.