Stone made his way back to the fork and took the other route. The road rose quickly as they made their way, and soon it was more humid, and the vegetation changed. “St. Marks seems to have a rain forest,” Stone said. “I never knew that.”
They passed a construction crew working on the road. “Looks like they started at the top and worked their way down,” Holly said as the road wound back and forth toward the peak over new tarmac.
They passed a few houses, most of them set close to the road, but as they climbed, the houses got larger and were set farther back. Near the top of the mountain they came to a roundabout with a parking area. Stone pulled over, and they got out of the car and looked at the view. They could see all the way back to English Harbour and could have counted the yachts in the marina if they had wished.
Holly put a hand on Stone’s shoulder. “Don’t turn around, but there’s a gate on the other side of the roundabout, and a driveway going up a little higher. When we walk back to the car, follow the road with your eye, and you’ll see a bit of rooftop in the trees. I’ll bet that’s Irene Foster’s place.”
“Does Irene have money?” Stone asked. “Because this has got to be prime real estate up here, and Thomas said she renovated the place. I wouldn’t think she could do that on a government pension.”
“I’ll ask Lance when I talk to him later today,” she replied. “Why, do you think she’s getting money from Teddy?”
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
“Teddy has never been strapped for funds. He’s an inventor, has a bunch of patents on various things, including some of that stuff you see sold on the television shopping channels, choppers and slicers. Word is that over the years, he’s gotten nice royalty checks every year, and after his so-called death, they were paid to an offshore bank.”
“You said Teddy has a history of always having an escape route?”
“That’s right. When they found him at the cottage in Maine, he got out through a tunnel and made his way to the little airport there before they could catch up to him. That’s why the navy fighters were ordered after him.”
“Well, as far as I can tell, there’s only one way up and down this mountain, and that doesn’t augur well for an escape plan.”
“Good point.”
They looked at the view for a few more minutes, then drove back down Black Mountain.
“I’ll ask Thomas about other routes up and down the mountain,” Stone said. “He’ll know.”
Back at the cottage, Holly produced a satellite telephone and went outside to call Lance. She returned after a few minutes. “Irene has some savings besides her pension and an inheritance from her father, for a total of a little over two million dollars,” she said.
“That ought to be enough to buy a house here and renovate it,” Stone said. “We’ll ask Thomas; he probably knows what she paid; he seems to know everything else around here.”
They had lunch served by Jacob on their terrace, and in the middle of it their telephone rang.
Jacob came out of the house with a cordless phone. “It’s Mr. Hardy for you,” he said, handing the phone to Stone.
“Hello?”
“I thought you’d like to know that Irene Foster just came into the dining room for lunch,” Thomas said, “and she’s with a man I’ve never seen before.”
9
Stone and Holly walked into the dining room, took seats at the bar and, without looking around, ordered piña coladas. They made a point of gazing into each other’s eyes and touching a lot, then Holly turned toward the tables and leaned against the bar.
“See them?” Stone asked.
“Give me a minute,” she said. “It’s crowded.” She looked some more. “Don’t turn around, but I’ve got ’em. I think.”
“Well, is it they, or is it not?”
“Okay, it’s Irene. I’ve never seen the guy before.”
“Describe him.”
“Don’t know about height; he’s sitting down. Mid-fifties, reddish brown hair, gray at the temples. It’s like that color when men use something to cover the gray? I don’t know why they bother, it’s so noticeable. He’s heavier than Teddy.”
“People gain weight.”
“They don’t grow hair,” she said. “From here, it doesn’t look like a wig, and the first time I saw Teddy-both times, I guess-he was wearing wigs. But his colleagues at the agency said he had been going bald for years, and the last time they saw him, he was nearly completely bald on top.”
“Hair transplants?”
“On St. Marks? Before that, I don’t think he had the time; he was a busy fellow, killing people.”
“Did he really kill the speaker of the house, Efton?”
“The FBI thinks so, but there was no physical evidence to connect him to the crime. The Agency thinks he killed that Supreme Court justice, the young one who died in the auto accident.”
“The one who drove off a mountain in Maryland?”
“Right.”
“And a Secret Service agent was driving his car?”
“An SUV.”
“Why does the Agency think he was murdered? I never read anything about that in the papers. It was an icy road in the mountains.”
“It took nearly a year to figure it out, but the secret was in the chip that controlled the car’s electronic stability system.”
“A faulty chip?”
“Not faulty; altered.”
“Altered how?”
“The stability system works by applying the brakes selectively to the wheels when it senses a skid. It does it faster than a human can, and it can brake just one wheel. The chip had been altered so that when it sensed the skid, it applied the brakes not to the correct wheels but to the opposite wheel or wheels. So instead of defeating the skid, it made it immediately worse. The driver couldn’t keep up with it.”
“Are they sure it wasn’t a manufacturing fault?”
“No, but this sort of thing had never happened before.”
“That the chip company would admit.”
“Right.”
“Well, it’s a very clever way to murder somebody, but that kind of attempt would have a very low success rate. I mean, the killer would have to know that the car would be in conditions conducive to an accident.”
“It was public knowledge that the justice had a house in the mountains, and the weather report for the day is all the information Teddy would need.”
“Okay, I buy it. Can I turn around and look at these people now, please?”
“You can look at the guy up close; he’s headed this way.”
Stone turned and looked at the man, who had come up to the bar on the side opposite from Holly. She was right about his hair; colored, but real.
“Morning,” the man said to everybody.
“Good morning.”
“Bartender, do you have any Alka-Seltzer back there?” the man asked.
“Yes, sir.” A glass of water was placed on the bar and two tablets began to fizz.
“I’ve got to stop eating my own cooking,” the man said. His accent was mildly southern.
“You’re eating your own cooking on vacation?” Stone asked, grateful for the opening.
“I came in on a boat last night,” the man said. “Sailed it down from Lauderdale.”
“Singlehanded?”
“Yep. A lot of fun.”
“I’ve done a little of that. I sailed a fifty-footer from here to Lauderdale a few years back.”
“Mine’s smaller than that,” the man said. It’s a Hinckley Bermuda Forty.”
“Nice boat. Easy to singlehand?”
“Well, I improved the deck layout a little for singlehanding, and GPS sure makes the navigation easier.”
“How’d you pick St. Marks?”
“Well, I was going sailing, anyway, and…” He stuck out his hand. “By the way, my name is Harry Pitts.”
Stone shook the hand. “Stone Barrington.”
“Lady I used to go out with has a place here, so I dropped in to see her, thought I’d rest up for a week or two. Where you from?”