Chapter 15
Thursday
It took another day for Maggie’s doctors and the CDC to finally sign off on her discharge.
At four the next afternoon, she left the hospital at last, wearing a seasonally inappropriate summer dress that Declan had brought from her house.
She preferred jeans and flannel shirts these days, yet a dress was what he’d chosen to pull out of her closet when he’d been told she needed a change of clothes.
Leave it to a man to choose something pretty rather than practical.
They drove straight to the Slocums’ house, and when Ben answered the door, his eyebrow lifted at the unusual sight of Maggie in a dress. “Looking good for someone who was just on death’s door, Mags. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“How is Lloyd doing?” she asked quietly.
“Having a tough time. He’s looking shaky, and he hasn’t even had a drink.”
“Any new developments?” asked Declan as they stepped into the house.
“I’ll let Lloyd fill you in on the latest. He’s out on the back deck.”
They walked through the house, which was pristine as always.
Ingrid Slocum was a meticulous housekeeper, as one would expect from a woman who’d spent her career paying attention to details, no matter how small.
But this evening, there was something different about the house, something missing: the scent of cooking.
Whenever Maggie visited the Slocums, there were usually delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen, where Lloyd worked his culinary magic with his spatulas and knives, pots and pans.
Only a few nights ago, she and Declan had dined here on Lloyd’s luscious coq au vin.
Tonight, though, Maggie smelled only furniture polish.
They stepped out onto the back deck, where the potted herbs that Ingrid set out every June were now looking wilted and in need of watering. It was yet another clue that something was amiss in this house. Looking just as wilted was Lloyd, who sat slumped in a deck chair, his head in his hand.
“She’s never done this before,” he murmured. “Never left without giving me a heads-up first. Instead, she leaves me a note. A stupid note!”
“Lloyd,” said Maggie.
He looked up. “Finally. We’ve been waiting for you.”
“We’re going to find her, okay?”
“I can use all the help I can get.”
Maggie sat down to face Lloyd, and she placed her hand on his. Even on this cool fall evening, his skin felt hot, almost feverish. “Can I see this note she left you?”
“Show her, Ben,” said Lloyd. “I found it on the kitchen table when I got home last night.”
Ben handed Maggie the sheet of paper. It was standard printer paper, unexceptional. The message, in blue ink, was in Ingrid’s precise and unadorned handwriting.
I need to leave. I’ll explain later.
Maggie looked up. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” said Lloyd.
Maggie glanced at Ben, who gave a sad shake of his head.
“She left out the most important part,” said Lloyd.
“What do you mean?”
“‘I promise I’ll be back.’ That’s what she’d tell me when she was still with the Agency and she had to leave town for a while.
She couldn’t always tell me where she was going, or why, but she always made that promise, even though we both knew things could go wrong.
I understood the nature of her work, of course I did, but it was our own little mantra.
‘I promise I’ll be back.’ She didn’t write that this time. ”
“Lloyd,” Maggie said gently. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Tuesday morning, when I left for New York. I wasn’t keen on driving all the way down there, just to speak to some knife manufacturer, but she insisted.
She said we needed to know where the stiletto was made.
I told her I could consult him right from our kitchen table, but she wanted it done face-to-face. ”
“Did anything seem different about her? Was she upset, preoccupied?”
“Of course she was preoccupied! The conference was canceled. Her guest speaker was dead in the hospital. And she found a woman with a stiletto in her eye. Anyone would be upset.”
“Even Ingrid?” said Declan.
Lloyd paused. “Well, no. She usually takes these things in stride. Nerves of steel, that woman. But I could tell she was shaken up. Maybe retirement’s weakened some of that old steel.”
I doubt that, thought Maggie. She looked at Ben and Declan, wondering if they were thinking the same thing she was: that the real reason Ingrid had sent Lloyd to New York was to ease her own escape.
“Did you speak to her at all after you left for New York?” Maggie asked.
“No. But then, I was driving all day. I called her that evening from my hotel, and it went to voicemail. I thought she must be busy dealing with the conference disaster. All the speakers were worried about getting sick, plus there was that dead woman in the parking lot. So many catastrophes at once. I thought that’s why she didn’t return my calls.
But when I started getting calls from conference organizers trying to reach her the next morning, I asked Ben to check the house.
He told me her car was gone, and the morning newspaper was still on the porch.
That is not like Ingrid. I dropped everything and headed straight home.
Found that note on the kitchen table. And the house—you know how it is when you leave a place closed up for a few days?
How the air smells different? That’s how it smelled to me.
Like an abandoned house. No sense of life.
No Ingrid.” He shook his head. “Something’s wrong.
Terribly wrong. If she were here, she’d be annoyed with me, but I didn’t know what else to do. ”
“What do you mean?” said Maggie. “What did you do?”
“I called Jo Thibodeau.”
There was a brief silence as Maggie, Ben, and Declan absorbed this unexpected news.
“I know, I know, I should have asked you all first, but I had to do something. Even though Ingrid’s probably not going to be happy with me.”
“You’re right about that,” said Ben. “Ingrid will be annoyed. Bringing the police into this.”
“What else could I do?”
“You could have given her a chance to explain why she’s gone.”
“What if she can’t tell us? What if she’s had an accident and she’s trapped in her car, or lying in a ditch somewhere?
For once, maybe we do need the police, if for no other reason than to have more eyes looking for her.
We like to think we can look after our own, handle our own crises, but I don’t think we can, Ben. Not this time.”
Maggie looked at Ben. “I think Lloyd did the right thing. We do need Jo’s help. And we know we can trust her.”
“On most things, yes,” said Ben. “But we don’t know what we’re dealing with here. This is obviously something Ingrid couldn’t share with her own husband, or she would have.”
The doorbell rang.
“That’ll be Jo,” said Lloyd, and he stood up.
As Lloyd went to answer the door, Maggie, Declan, and Ben fell silent. None of them knew how to proceed when there was so much they didn’t know, so much Ingrid had chosen not to share with them. They were still silent when Jo and Lloyd came outside to join them.
Jo looked around at the subdued group. If this were one of their normal get-togethers, there’d be martinis and a tray of antipasti and the merry sound of ice cubes rattling in the cocktail shaker, but this was not a normal afternoon and the mood was somber.
“We’ll find her, okay? I’ll do everything I can. ”
“So will we,” Ben answered grimly.
Jo took out a pen and notebook. The page she flipped to was already filled with notes, from her earlier phone call with Lloyd. “Has there been any new info since we talked?” she asked him.
“Not a word from her. Nothing,” Lloyd said. “I thought, if we all put our heads together, we’d come up with some answers.”
“My officers are already on the lookout for her vehicle, and we know she hasn’t turned up at any hospitals.
We’ll start searching parking lots around town, and we’ll also check the grounds of the Cod Cove Resort, where she’s been busy the last few days.
” She eyed Lloyd for a moment. “Is there anything I should know about your wife that you haven’t told me?
Any medical condition that could impair her memory or her judgment? ”
“Ingrid?” Lloyd gave a disbelieving laugh. “You know her, Jo. She’s the least impaired of us all.”
“But she has been under a lot of stress these last few days.”
“Of course she has. The conference going off the rails. The Ebola scare.”
“Which I’ve heard wasn’t Ebola at all.” Jo looked at Maggie. “Or they wouldn’t have let you out of the hospital. So what did kill Dr. Maslov?”
“No one’s officially confirmed it,” said Maggie. “But based on the fact there’s an emergency team here from the National Nuclear Security Administration, we believe Dr. Maslov died of acute radiation sickness. After ingesting a radioactive poison.”
It took a moment for Jo to process what she’d just heard. “Okay, let’s back up. I don’t know where the hell you got this information. No one’s told me about it.”
“Because it’s a matter of national security,” said Declan.
“Due to the radiation thing?”
“It’s not just any radiation, Jo,” said Maggie.
“If this was a deliberate poisoning, it most likely involves polonium-210, otherwise known as radium F. Traces of it can be found naturally, in food and tobacco, but it requires a highly purified dose to make you seriously ill. There’s only one country in the world that produces that purified form: Russia. ”
Jo looked around at their faces, as if searching for confirmation that they were serious. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This sounds like something way above my pay grade. It belongs with the FBI. Or the CIA. Or—”
“We have no doubt they’re already here in town,” said Declan.
“You’re telling me some Russian spy is running around here, killing people?”