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30
ST. LUMIS
CHIEF WILDE’S COTTAGE
MONDAY NIGHT
Savich, Pippa, and Chief Wilde sat in the cozy living room dominated by an oversize ancient sofa, both ratty and charming. Pippa laughed and pointed. “Your mom? Grandmother?”
“Actually, my great-uncle Marlbury’s third wife, Irene. Yeah, I know it’s chintz, that’s the word she used.” He shrugged. “I haven’t gotten around to buying much of anything new.” He stared at the sofa, realizing he’d been in St. Lumis three years and hadn’t even tried to make this rented cottage his home. What he’d been doing was marking time. And for what?
He walked to the fireplace and set a match to the wadded-up newspapers he’d stuffed between logs. He rose, wiped his hands on his jeans. “The fire should get going soon. Odd how quick it’s turned into November.”
He looked at the two FBI agents drinking coffee in his living room and marveled at what life could dish up with no warning at all. He’d told Cinelli the truth. The red box, the puzzle pieces of St. Lumis, the attack on her—he hadn’t realized how much he missed feeling the excitement, the beating pulse of real police work. He hadn’t felt anything like that since he’d left Philadelphia. He looked over at Agent Cinelli, at the drying clumps of hair still sticky with her blood. Her thick French braid was in bad shape, long blond hanks hanging around her face. Every few minutes she shoved the hair behind her ears only to have it slither back. At least she didn’t need stitches. He’d pulled the skin together with butterfly strips. He looked at her hands, covered with ointment and wrapped in soft gauze. Did she feel the same sort of excitement he did after all she’d been through? There was an intense focus in her eyes as she reported to Agent Savich what she’d already told him.
He said, “I recognize you, Agent Savich. I’ve seen you on TV—the Kirsten Bolger case? Most detectives in the squad room were jealous you’d gotten her and not one of us.”
Savich smiled. “It was a team effort, always is. She’d kidnapped one of my agents, Cooper McKnight, and he was the one who ended it in Florida. In a tobacco field.”
“I wish I’d been in on that, too. Sherlock told me how scary it was.” Pippa yawned. “Sorry, guess my exciting day is catching up with me.”
“No wonder. You sure you don’t want to get checked out, Pippa?”
She waggled her fingers at Savich. “No, please, Dillon. The chief fixed me up. I’m sorry I screwed up and got myself bashed in the head and made you come out here. All right, don’t blast me. I can see you don’t want any more apologies from me, so no more mea culpas. Sherlock told me you wouldn’t dress me down if something went wrong, you believed your agents bashed themselves enough. You don’t like to pile on.”
Sherlock had told her that? He said, “You did what I would have done, Pippa. You did well to get away. I don’t imagine your deputy has reported seeing anyone out there, Chief Wilde?”
“I checked a few minutes ago. Davie hasn’t seen anyone. I think this Black Hoodie will keep his distance tonight.”
“Now that I’m here, I want to stay awhile,” Savich said, “go back to that old grocery store in the morning with you, Pippa, have you show me exactly what happened, then talk to Maude Filly, look at her puzzles. The third red box arrived today, and the last part of the puzzle was altered. The hotel window Major Trumbo is leaning out of is on fire.”
Pippa stared at him, said slowly, “That old hotel never burned. Maude may be our best chance to find out what the fire means. As I told you, when I went back to speak to her again, the shop was closed early. I don’t know why, but tomorrow we can sit her down.”
Savich looked at Wilde. “I hope you’ll join us, Chief. This is your town. You’ll catch anything unusual more easily, maybe point us toward someone who could be involved.”
A compliment from a Fed. Wilde was surprised, given the few times he’d dealt with the Philadelphia FBI. He hadn’t warmed to them. At all. But both Cinelli and Savich seemed different. “As I told Agent Cinelli, I can’t place Black Hoodie as anyone in town. And if he’s not a local, someone might have spotted him.”
Pippa said, “Chief, do you have an artist available? I can’t give many specifics since I saw only a part of his profile. When he leaned over me, he didn’t take any chances and pulled a handkerchief over his nose. But I can try.”
Wilde said, “Yes, my artist lives in Annapolis. She’s an amateur, usually does flowers, but I saw a charcoal sketch of her son. She’s good.”
“If you would set her up with me tomorrow first thing, I can work with her, give your officers a general idea of the man to look for. I doubt we’ll be lucky enough for Dillon—Agent Savich—to get enough for facial recognition.”
“From a drawing? How is that possible?”
Pippa said, “Dillon and a colleague at Scotland Yard have developed software that can work not only with photographs but with drawings.” She sighed. “But again, I strongly doubt anything will come of what little I saw of his face.”
How’d she know about that?Savich said, “Still a work in progress, Chief, but it helped on an important case a year or so back. Pippa, I want to go back to Major Trumbo’s B&B with you. I don’t want you alone tonight. I don’t know how secure the B&B is, so if it’s all right with you, I’ll stay in your room.”
Pippa laughed. “Wait till I tell Sherlock I shared my honeymoon suite with her husband. Did you bring a go bag?”
Savich shook his head.
“We’ll ask Mrs. Trumbo if she has an extra toothbrush.” She turned to Wilde. “Do you happen to have an extra gun? Mine’s a Glock nine-millimeter, but a Beretta’s no problem, either. I grew up with one.”
“I’ve got an old Walther P99, semiautomatic, my grandfather’s.”
“That’ll do.”
Savich’s cell rang. He held up a hand. “Sherlock? What’s going on?”
A second later Savich yelled over his shoulder as he ran to the front door, “Chief, keep Pippa safe here with you.”
He ran out.
