Donovan looked at his notes from the conversation with the IRS agent. Catherine Savage had been born in the United States, in Charlottesville, Virginia, in fact, and then left the country as a young girl when her father’s business had taken him overseas. As a young woman living in France, she had met and married a wealthy German businessman who was a resident of Monaco at the time. The man had died a little over two years ago and his fortune had duly passed to his young widow. Now, as a U.S. citizen with control of her own money, all of which was passive, unearned income, she had begun paying her income taxes to her homeland. The documents in the file were numerous and legitimate, the IRS agent had assured Donovan. Everything was aboveboard. As far as the IRS was concerned, Catherine Savage was a responsible citizen who was lawfully paying her taxes although residing outside the United States.
Donovan leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head. The agent had also provided Donovan with another piece of interesting news. The IRS had very recently received a change of address form for Catherine Savage. She was now in the United States. In fact, she had returned, at least according to her records, to the town of her birth: Charlottesville, Virginia. The same town where LuAnn Tyler’s mother had been born. That was far too much of a coincidence for Donovan.
And with all that information in hand, Donovan was fairly certain of one thing: LuAnn Tyler had finally come home. And now that he was so intimately familiar with virtually every facet of her life, Donovan felt it was time that they actually meet. How and where was what he started to think about.
Chapter twenty-two
Sitting in his pickup truck parked on the side of a sharp bend in the road, Matt Riggs surveyed the area through a pair of lightweight field binoculars. The tree-filled, steeply graded land was, to his experienced eye, impenetrable. The half mile of winding asphalt private road running to his right formed a T-intersection with the road he was on; beyond that, he knew, sat a grand country estate with beautiful vistas of the nearby mountains. However, the estate, surrounded by thick woods, couldn’t be seen from anywhere except overhead. Which made him wonder again why the owner would want to pay for an expensive perimeter security fence in the first place. The estate already had the very best of nature’s own handiwork for protection.
Riggs shrugged and bent down to slip on a pair of Overland boots, then pulled on his coat. The chilly wind buffeted him as he stepped from his truck. He sucked the fresh air in and put a hand through his unkempt dark brown hair, working a couple of kinks out of his muscular frame before donning a pair of leather gloves. It would take him about an hour to walk the front location of the fence. The plans called for the fence to be seven feet high, made of solid steel painted glossy black, with each post set in two feet of concrete. The fence would have electronic sensors spaced randomly across its frame, and would be topped by dangerously sharp spike finials. The front gates, set on six-foot-high, four-foot-square concrete monuments with a brick veneer, would be of similar style and construction. The job also called for a video camera, intercom system, and a locking mechanism on the huge gates that would ensure that nothing less than the head-on impact of an Abrams tank could ever open it without the permission of the owner. From what he could tell, Riggs didn’t expect such permission to be granted very often.
Bordered by Nelson County on the southwest, Greene County to the north, and Fluvanna and Louisa counties on the east, Albemarle County, Virginia, was home to many wealthy people, some famous and some not. However, they all had one thing in common: They all craved privacy and were more than willing to pay for it. Thus, Riggs was not entirely surprised at the precautions being undertaken here. All the negotiations had been handled through a duly authorized intermediary. He reasoned that someone who could afford a fence such as this, and the cost was well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably had better things to do with his time than sit down and chat with a lowly general contractor.
Binoculars dangling around his neck, he dutifully trudged down the road until he found a narrow pathway into the woods. The two most difficult parts of the job were clear to him: getting the heavy equipment up here and having his men work in such cramped surroundings. Mixing concrete, punching postholes, laying out the frames, clearing land, and angling sections of a very heavy fence, all of that took space, ample space that they would not have here. He was very glad to have added a healthy premium to the job, plus a provision for a cost overrun for exactly those reasons. The owner, apparently, had not set a limit as to the price, because the representative had promptly agreed to the huge dollar amount Riggs had worked up. Not that he was complaining. This single job would guarantee his best year ever in business. And although he had only been on his own for three years, his operation had been growing steadily ever since the first day. He got to work.
The BMW pulled slowly out from the garage and headed down the drive. The road going down was lined on either side with four-board oak fencing painted a pristine white. Most of the cleared land was surrounded by the same style of fencing, the white lines making a stunning contrast to the green landscape. It was not quite seven in the morning and the stillness of the day remained unbroken. These early morning drives had become a soothing ritual for LuAnn. She glanced back at the house in her rearview mirror. Constructed of beautiful Pennsylvania stone and weathered brick with a row of new white columns bracketing a deep front porch, a slate roof, aged-looking copper gutters, and numerous French doors, the house was elegantly refined despite its imposing size.
As the car passed down the drive and out of sight of the house, LuAnn turned her eyes back to the road and suddenly took her foot off the gas and hit the brake. The man was waving at her, his arms crisscrossing themselves as he flagged her down. She inched forward and then stopped the car. He came up to the driver’s side window and motioned for her to open it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the black Honda parked on a grass strip bordering the road.
She eyed him with deep suspicion but hit the button and the window descended slightly. She kept one foot on the accelerator ready to mash it down if the situation called for it. His appearance was innocent enough: middle-aged and slight of build, with a beard laced around the edges with gray.
“Can I help you?” she asked, her eyes attempting to duck his gaze at the same time she tried her best to note any sudden movements on his part.
“I think I’m lost. Is this the old Brillstein Estate?” He pointed up the road toward where the house was.