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“Why? Doesn’t everyone want to live in a town with murderous thugs?”
“Stop it. I’m serious.”
“I know you are. I’m glad I arrived when I did, or I’d be a suspect, being the new guy in town.”
“What sort of work do you do, Jack?” she asked.
“I’m retired.”
“From what?”
“I’ve invented things all my life, the sort of gadgets you see in those infomercials on TV.” This was not a lie; those little inventions had made him a comfortably wealthy man, and the continuing royalties went, eventually, into his Cayman bank account.
“Can you make a living doing that?”
“You can if you have a few great sellers and if you’ve negotiated a good royalty agreement.”
“Why did you retire?”
“Oh, I just got tired of it, I guess. A few months from now, though, I’ll get an idea for something, and I’ll be back at work. I’ve retired before.”
“Were you ever married?”
“Yes, but she died four years ago of ovarian cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I, but I’ve had time to get over it.”
“What brought you to Vero Beach?”
“I thought I’d like to live in a place with a warm winter, and I read something about Vero in a magazine or a newspaper, I forget which.” He smiled at her. “So far, I like it just fine.”
Adele looked at the kitchen clock. “Oh, I’ve got to run; I’m showing a house at eight thirty.” She went back into the bedroom and came back ten minutes later, clothed and made up.
Teddy walked her to the door and gave her a kiss. “Later in the week?”
She got out her calendar. “When’s good for you?”
“Tomorrow night, here? I’ll cook you dinner.”
“You’re on.” She ran for her car.
Teddy went back to the table and finished reading the article about the crimes. It made him angry to think there was some animal hurting women out there. He’d like to get a shot at the guy, he thought.
He read slowly through the paper, getting a sense of the locality, when he saw a familiar face in an ad. It was one of the women he’d seen at the airport: “Ginny Barker, Certified Flight Instructor, Private and Commercial certificates,” and a phone number. She must be related to Holly Barker, he thought.
He went to his computer and Googled Holly, finding news stories about cases she had solved when she had been chief of police in Orchid Beach, a neighbor of Vero. He learned that she had retired from the army after a career as an MP and that her father lived here, too. Ginny Barker was his wife. He wondered how Holly had made the transition to the Agency.
It was interesting to know more about a woman he had once taken to the Metropolitan Opera, in New York, when he had been disguised as an elderly Jewish gentleman, retired from the garment industry. He wondered if she’d ever figured out who he was. Probably so, for she had turned up on the island of St. Marks, where he had also fooled her for a while. Then she had taken that shot at him.
He went into the Agency mainframe, to personnel, and read her file. She was getting good reviews from her superiors, particularly Lance Cabot, and had recently been promoted to assistant deputy director. He was impressed.
He made a mental note to himself not to let his disguise slip while he was in Vero Beach. He might run into her at any time. It occurred to him that his ease in fooling her before might be making him cocky, and he didn’t want to start underestimating her now. He would like to know what she was doing back in this area. She couldn’t be looking for him, because he had picked out this town only a day or two before.
Now he knew that she was a pilot, or studying to be one, taking lessons from her stepmother, who was no older than she. Amazing what you could pick up in the local paper, and it didn’t hurt to have access to the Agency mainframe.
Teddy stacked the dishes in the dishwasher and cleaned up after himself. Then he took his briefcase into the little spare room and began to make it his study. He went online and bought a safe from a local company that promised to deliver it the following day. In the meantime, he found some removal boards behind the sleeper couch and stashed his cash, weapons and other supplies there.
