Through all of it, Cassie marveled at what kind of life Althea had had that she knew so much about federal agents that she knew just what they would do. And the bigger question was, Why hadn’t they changed their tactics in the last fifty years?
It had been easy for Cassie to find her car parked with the others in back of the garage. Althea had bought a MINI Cooper in Fort Lauderdale, payed cash for it, and had placed it in someone else’s name. It was hidden out of sight from the house. The only car that Charles allowed in front of the house was a silver Mercedes.
One of the guests saw Cassie as she ran around the side of the house to her car. He had been playing one of the people who’d been riding when Florence Myers was murdered, and Cassie didn’t remember his name. She feared that he’d sound the alarm and give her away, but he gave her a look of envy, then raised his hand in farewell. It looked as though all the guests would be there for a while as they answered questions about Charles’s murder.
Her little car started right away, and she sped down a narrow dirt road that led out the back of the estate. The front driveway had a helicopter, three police cars, and an ambulance on it, but the back was the service entrance and empty.
She’d written down Althea’s directions about how to get to the local airport, and although she got lost a few times she was there in forty-five minutes and the plane was waiting for her. Standing in front of it was a man with red hair and a beard, and when he saw Cassie’s car, he waved.
She smiled back at him and felt that she had just pulled off a major coup. She had escaped Jeff, Thomas, and a small herd of police. She was sure that later there’d be lectures and recriminations, even penalties, but at the moment it felt wonderful to be free of all of them. And that house, she thought. It was good to be out of that house where so much bad had happened. The image of Charles Faulkener on the bed was still in her head, and the sunshine felt good.
“Just on time,” the man said. “Exactly like Althea said you would be. I’m Bruno.” He held out his hand to shake hers.
“Cassie,” she said, shaking his hand and grinning at him. All she could think was that she’d made it. She was sorry she was going to miss the look of shock on Jeff’s face when he found her gone, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Get on board,” Bruno said. “I’ll get you two started in just a minute.” Turning away, he walked toward the little building at one side of the runway.
“Two?” Cassie said aloud, then thought that Althea had probably bummed a ride for her on a prescheduled flight.
She climbed the stairs onto the plane and when she stepped through the door, she halted. Jeff sat there, a magazine in his hand, a paper bag on the seat beside him.
Cassie couldn’t move, just stood there, staring at him. He didn’t look up but picked up the bag. “I bought some bagels and doughnuts,” he said. “But I guess that now that you’re a fitness fanatic you don’t eat doughnuts. And I got you some milk. I hope it’s still cold, but it’s been a while since I got it. It took you longer than I expected to get here.”
He looked up at her. “If you don’t come inside the plane, we can’t leave.”
All Cassie’s good feelings of having escaped left her. She took a seat across the narrow aisle from him, sat down heavily, then took the bag and opened it. She pulled out a custard-filled doughnut slathered in chocolate icing, and a bottle of milk.
Bruno got on the plane, shut the door, and sat down in the pilot’s seat. “You two okay?”
“Fine,” Jeff said. “Just great. How about some doughnuts, Bruno?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Cassie ate in silence, staring straight ahead. Jeff went back to reading his magazine. A half hour into the flight, she turned to him. “How did you find out?”
“Are you speaking to me?” he asked.
“Get off it! How did you find out that I left?”
“Easy. I’ve lived with you, remember?”
Cassie glanced at the pilot and saw that he was concentrating on flying the plane, and besides, it was too noisy for him to hear. “What is that supposed to mean? You’ve never ‘lived’ with me.”
“Enough to know you. And I’ve certainly found out a lot about you in the last few months. I couldn’t see that a woman who’d hide in a cabinet in some man’s house while he sat there and watched TV would docilely wait for the police. Especially since she might fear that they’d take away her precious key. After the way you dug around on the floor looking for that thing I knew you’d do whatever you could to find out about it.”
“I didn’t think you were looking at what I was doing when I was ‘digging around’ as you call it.”
Jeff smiled at her. “I was looking at a lot of things.”
Cassie took a bagel out of the bag. “Althea told you where I was, didn’t she?”
“She told Thomas, but, truthfully, I think she wanted to tell. She didn’t want you to go to Hinton alone.”
“And of course you think that I can’t do anything on my own. No doubt you think Florence Myers’s murderer is still there. He’s probably a hundred and twelve by now and just waiting for someone to go to a bank that doesn’t exist in a town that doesn’t exist and open a safe-deposit box that’s empty.”
“Actually,” Jeff said as he looked inside the bag, “Hinton has been renamed Fairmont.”
“Fairmont?” Cassie asked, eyes wide, then leaned back in her seat and smiled. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Having met Althea, I’m not surprised either, but we did miss it. It’s a tiny place, with just a couple of stores, a church, and a bunch of farms. The Hinton Bank is now the Bank of Fairmont and it’s a savings and loan. They deal mostly in farm equipment, but they still have the safe-deposit boxes in the back.”
Cassie looked at him. “Are you telling me that the rent on that box has been paid for all these years?”
“Yes. After Hinton died, all his effects were given to Althea. Ruth wanted nothing to do with him. Some of the clothes Althea lent me for this weekend belonged to him. In his papers was the bill for the box, but no key. She set up an account at the bank that gets enough interest to pay the rent for the box. It’s just sat there for over sixty years, paying itself from the account.”
“Waiting for the key to be found,” Cassie said.
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “After the murder, Faulkener was pretty much in a rage at Althea and wouldn’t let her back in the house, so she couldn’t get the key.”
“In all these years, surely she could have found some young actor to go to one of Charles’s mystery weekends and dig up the floorboard.”
“I don’t think she cared,” Jeff said. “She’s led a very busy life, so maybe she didn’t think about whatever had been put under Faulkener’s bedroom floor.”
“What sparked her interest now?”
“I don’t know. Probably boredom. Or maybe it’s the years. Charles Faulkener is older than Althea.”
“Not that I believe you, but why were you sent to the weekend?”
“Leo has been assigned to Charles’s case for years and—”
“Leo is a CIA agent too,” she said, more a statement than a question. What she’d seen of the man was beginning to make sense. “Tell me, was there any robbery of Althea’s jewels?”
Jeff grinned. “No. Sorry. I made up the whole story. But you helped us catch a robber—and murderer. I didn’t like your methods, but you did it.”
Cassie nodded. She was almost becoming used to everything she’d been told being a lie. “Okay, go on.”
“Leo knew that Faulkener had recently been diagnosed with cancer and that this would be his last chance to find out the truth about the murder. He always said that the key to finding out what happened lay in Althea and what she knew. He’d been heard to say that all he cared about was living long enough to outlive Althea Fairmont.”
“Why did he hate her so very much?” Cassie asked.
“She told him he couldn’t act,” Jeff said.
Cassie smiled. “Ah, now I see.”
“Anyway, Charles agreed to tell what he knew if Althea would tell what she knew. Leo was the liaison between Althea and Charles. I think you already figured out that Roger Craig was Althea’s attorney….” He raised his eyebrows in question, and Cassie nodded.
“Althea got all the gossip from Roger so she knew about…well, about us, so she said she’d only tell what she knew if I would go on the mystery weekend and play Hinton.”
“And this was before she met me,” Cassie said, then turned in her seat. “Who shot at her that day?”
“No one. She sent her staff away, then fired into the air. I guess she figured it was time to meet you and Dana.”
Cassie leaned back in the seat and thought about how what had happened in the last year had been choreographed by Althea. “Was she really a spy?”
“Big-time. She spied through every war we had. She was brilliant at getting secrets from anyone. That woman has—”
Cassie raised her hand to stop him. “I don’t think I want to hear. Whatever she did in her personal life, she’s still one of the greatest movie stars of all time. She was brilliant on the screen.”
“And even more brilliant off of it.”
Cassie bit into her bagel. “I wonder who killed poor Charles?”
“We have him in custody.”
“Already?”
“Already,” Jeff said. “He was on the list you found and he was easy to identify once we had his name. Remember the young men who carried your suitcases to your room?”
“He was one of them?”
“Yes,” Jeff said. “Of course he was just a hit man. His shoes fit the prints we saw in the attic. He led us to a warehouse full of—” He gave Cassie a quick look. “Charles Faulkener was not a nice man.”
Cassie nodded. Her instincts about him had been right. She closed her eyes for a moment. The noise of the propeller plane roared around them and they’d had to nearly shout to be heard. In spite of what she’d said, she was glad that Jeff was with her. Seeing Charles Faulkener with his throat cut had upset her a lot, and she didn’t relish being alone.
The little plane landed on a long, straight dirt road. Bruno turned off the engine, opened the door, and pulled down the steps. “Sorry, folks, but this is as close as I can get.”
At the foot of the stairs, Cassie looked around. All she could see for what looked like miles was flat farmland. There wasn’t a building in sight. “Where’s the town?” she asked Bruno.
“That way,” he said, pointing toward what looked like nothing. “A couple of miles. You shoulda had a car meet you here.”
“No time to arrange it,” Jeff said as he gave the man several fifty-dollar bills. “Thanks a lot. We’ll take it from here.”
He grabbed his duffel bag, slung the strap over his shoulder, Cassie got her case, and they walked to the edge of the field, then waved as Bruno took off in the plane. The silence after he left let her hear every insect buzzing. In the far distance was the sound of a tractor.
“So now what?” Jeff asked.
“You do have a sense of humor,” Cassie said. “Why didn’t you get your agency to send a helicopter for us or at least a car?”
“And fill out all those expense papers? No thanks. I have no idea how I’d explain a trip to look inside an old safe-deposit box. And Florence Myers is of no interest to the government, so they won’t pay.”
“So I guess we walk,” Cassie said.
“Looks like it.”
They set off down the hot, dusty road in silence. “I’d like you to tell me about Lillian,” Cassie said after a while.
Jeff hesitated, but after a few minutes, he began to open up. He told Cassie how they’d met when they were very young, and how they’d known from the first moment that they’d get married someday.
She thought back to that day so long ago. “I remember how much you loved her.” She took a breath. “You were doing security work then.”
“Just something my father asked me to do. He was helping out a friend of his who was there that weekend, but Dad had been wounded and—” He smiled at Cassie’s look. “Dad was a field agent. Don’t let his love of gardening fool you. He loved being in the thick of it. If guns fired, Dad was there.”
“Your poor mother,” Cassie said softly.
“Yeah. We’re hard on wives,” Jeff said with a grimace, then smiled. “Did you know that your mother met my father once and made a pass at him?”
Cassie’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “ Mymother? Margaret Madden?”
Jeff chuckled. “Yeah, your mother. You didn’t get here by the stork dropping you down a chimney, you know.”
Cassie stopped walking and her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Did they—I mean—”
Jeff looked at her a moment, then smiled and started walking again. “Naw. Never. You’re not my sister, if that’s your fear.”
“Might as well be,” she said under her breath.
“Cassie,” Jeff said, frustration in his tone, “I think we should get something straight between us.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
Jeff took his bag off his shoulder and set it on the dusty road, then he reached for her, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her. At first his lips touched hers lightly, as though he meant to release her quickly, but he had eighteen months of pent-up desire in him and the object of that desire was in his arms. His kiss deepened, and he pulled her closer.
As for Cassie, she was at last kissing the man she loved. She leaned into him, trying to get as close as she could.
Later, she wondered what would have happened if a beat-up old pickup carrying four teenage boys hadn’t come tearing down the road. They blew the horn and hung out of the cab and out of the back and yelled as they flew past, dust and dirt flying.
Cassie and Jeff broke away from each other, laughing and coughing at the same time.
“I guess we’re getting close to town,” Jeff said as he picked up his case out of the dirt. “Listen, Cass—” he began.
But she cut him off. “I know, you think I’m a child and—”
“You?” he said. “You a kid? Kids don’t take on responsibility the way you do. Kids can’t be as good a mother as you are. Kids aren’t as unselfish as you have been in taking on Althea’s problems and trying to solve them.”
“Since when have you felt this way?”
“Since you left and I had time to nearly go crazy with missing you,” he said softly. “Look, about that—” He nodded toward where they’d just been. “I want to wait. I want us to get all of this done before we go any further. And I think I owe you a courting.”
Cassie smiled because he sounded just like his father. “Are you talking candlelit dinners? Trips to amusement parks where you win me prizes? Dates? Just plain, ol’-fashioned dates?”
Jeff laughed. “I guess we haven’t had much of that, have we?”
“Try none. Look!” she said and pointed. “It’s a store. I’ll put money on it that they have Nehi cola.”
“We can only hope. Race you.”
They arrived on the front porch of the little wooden store out of breath and thirsty. On the porch was an old white cooler that was filled with ice and several flavors of Nehi cola. Cassie pulled out a peach one and Jeff took grape.
“Traditionalist,” she said, and he laughed, then went inside the store to pay.
There was a gray-haired man behind the wooden counter. “I didn’t hear you drive up,” he said, then smiled, “so I guess it was you on that plane that landed out in the field.”
“Ah, small towns,” Jeff said. “I almost forgot what they’re like.”
The man rang up the colas on the cash register along with two bags of Fritos that Jeff tossed onto the counter. “So why are you here in Fairmont?”
Before Jeff could answer, Cassie said, “We’re writing a book about small towns that have interesting histories. We heard that this place used to be called Hinton and that y
ou changed the name because of a murder. Do you know anything about this?”
“If you know all that, then there ain’t much for me to tell, is there?” the man said.
Cassie smiled. “Sorry, but there was something about you that made me think you were a good storyteller. Excuse me.” She looked at Jeff, who had his head down. “Did you get me some of those burnt peanuts? I love those things.”
“I reckon I can tell a story a good as anybody else,” the man said. “Trouble is that today people don’t have time to listen.”
“Try us,” Cassie said.
21
“ RATS!” JEFF SAID,looking inside the motel room. “Two beds.”
“Don’t even pretend to regret it,” Cassie said. “You had your chance in Williamsburg. Now I’m going to hold out for that courting you promised.”
In the three hours since the plane landed, they’d done a lot. With the help of the man who owned the little store, they’d called a local dealer and rented a small car, then checked into a motel. But before that, they’d listened to a story that told them not much more than they already knew—but everything had been twisted over the years.
Proudly, the man running the store said he was much too young to know all the details firsthand, but his grandmother had told him some things. Some movie star back in the 1920s had stolen the name of the town for his own, then he’d killed half a dozen people. In a moral furor, the residents had changed the name of the town to Fairmont.
“After Althea Fairmont,” Cassie said.
“I never heard that,” the man said. “My granny told me it was an old Irish name that meant ‘beautiful mountain.’”
Neither Cassie nor Jeff replied to that. They’d just looked at each other, marveling at how history could be distorted.
Now they were in the only motel within a hundred miles. Most of the rooms had permanent residents, and washing hung across the porch, but they were told that this room was kept for travelers.