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HIS DEADLIEST ENEMY

by Kate Wilhelm

ellery queen's mystery magazine march-april 2004

It was a lovely sunny day, last day of March, crocuses up, daffodils emerging, and on the table in her house Constance had seed packets waiting. There was a large bag of starting mix in the back of the car. “Heirloom tomatoes,” she had said to Charlie, who had looked blank. “Not, as prolific as the newer hybrids, but better-tasting,” she had gone on, to a continuing blank look. “How many tomatoes do two people need?”
He had dived behind his newspaper at that. She was smiling slightly as she drove. Thursday, her last aikido class of the week was done, and seeds were waiting. Charlie would be gone until late afternoon on Monday, or possibly Tuesday. Today plant the seeds indoors, a head start on real gardening time. Friday clear straw from the fence where she would plant peas. Saturday shop…
She braked; a van was askew in the road, and a motorcycle half off the road, with a woman with a cell phone and several other people milling about a man on the ground.
Constance stopped and hurriedly got out of her car. “You’re out of range here,” she called to the woman. “How bad is he?”
She ran to the man on the ground and as she started to kneel beside him, she sensed movement behind her. Something was thrown over her head, over her shoulders; she was toppled and caught as the something was pulled all the way down her body to her feet, then drawn close, pinning her arms and her legs. She felt straps or a rope tightening around her. Helpless, she didn’t try to struggle, didn’t bother to scream or call out as she was lifted and carried. She drew in a breath, then tried to hold her breath, but it was pointless. She was already blacking out.
Charlie liked to fish, and he liked going fishing with Hal Mitchum, a good companion, next-door neighbor, pal, but by the time he pulled into the Mitchum driveway on Friday afternoon he admitted silently that he was pretty tired of Hal. They had left on Wednesday, and on Thursday Hal had stumbled in snow knee-deep, caught his foot in a hole, and had broken his leg. Thursday he had been in the hospital and now, Friday, Charlie was taking him home where his wife and however many of his four sons were around could listen to him complain. And Charlie would go home to his nice fire where he belonged, snuggle a bit with Constance, eat good food, and not wade through snow up to his keister. No one had expected the snow, but there it was, and the fish were probably still in Florida.
All four sons met the van in the driveway, with Doris hovering behind them. The boys were all a foot taller than their mother and a hundred pounds heavier—football players. Two of them lifted Hal and carried him, one took the crutches, and the last one grabbed his duffel bag, while Doris wrung her hands and Hal yelled back to Charlie that he would make it up to him, sorry about this, rotten luck, did he want a ride home…
Charlie hoisted his own duffel bag, walked around the house, and climbed the fence to the pasture, where Mitchum’s goats came to see what was happening. He crossed the field, climbed the fence to his own yard, and went to the back porch door. He took his boots off on the screened porch, then entered a cold house where the three cats met him with howls of indignation and rage.
After two steps into the kitchen, he paused. She wasn’t home. He could always tell and never could have said how, but the house was not the same with her gone. Her presence filled it, made it home. Brutus, the evil striped cat, stalked angrily around his feet while Candy, the tortoiseshell, cried piteously, and Ashcan tried to climb his legs. “Where is she, you guys?” Charlie said softly. Their food dish was empty, and the water bowl was dry. He walked on through the kitchen to the other side with cats as close as shadows, and saw a letter propped against a vase of flowers on the table. Seed packets were on the table, and her car keys. He picked up the letter, opened the envelope, and read the note: “Don’t do anything foolish. No police, no FBI. Sit tight and wait for a phone call. Don’t use the phone. She’s safe and comfortable. I trust you had a good fishing trip.”
A lump as hard and cold as an iceberg settled in his stomach as he read it a second time. He let it fall to the table and stood without moving for a time, then shoved Ashcan away and went back to the cat dishes, filled one with food and the other with water to shut up the beasts. After that he prowled silently through the house. There would be a listening device, he thought, something to let them know he had returned. No one would have expected him to enter through the back door. They knew he had gone fishing. Did they know when he had planned to return? He found the small device near the front door on the underside of a low table in the foyer. He didn’t touch it. It was probably voice-activated, or sound-activated, in which case the cats might have set it off with their yowling. If they had, the phone might ring any minute now. He looked at his watch, and continued his silent search. No sign of a struggle, nothing conspicuously missing. She had gone to her class in her gi, had not had a chance to change. Clothes were laid out on the bed, waiting for her.
Without a sound he went through the kitchen again, out to the porch, on to the garage, where the Volvo was parked. Her purse was on the front seat, a bag of potting soil or something in the back and, again, no sign of a struggle. Thursday, he thought then; they had taken her the day before.
Ten minutes had passed from the time he looked at his watch. He sat down at the kitchen table and examined the note again, not touching it this time, although he suspected that no fingerprints would be recoverable. Computer printout, cheap copy paper, cheap envelope, no stamp, no date. Who had known he was going fishing? A handful of locals, that was all. Ransom? He doubted that. Kidnapping was a federal crime, too risky for the meager sum he could come up with. Revenge, he thought then. And God knew he had made enemies over the years, first as an arson investigator, then a New York City detective, and most recently a private investigator.
He went over a mental list, shook his head. The folks he knew who might want to get even would not have written that she was safe and comfortable, and would not have added that bit about fishing. The envelope probably would have contained a bloody finger or ear.
He realized that both of his hands were aching painfully and he looked at his fists in surprise, then forced his fingers to open, to flex. The lump of ice was not melting. He wanted to kill someone.
Ransom, revenge, pure deviltry, what else? In his head he heard a voice: “You’re exactly the person I want, Meiklejohn. I want your expertise.”
“Merrihew,” he said under his breath.
March first. Overnight snow again, and a cutting cold wind. Endless winter, Charlie thought, disgruntled, when he went outside to bring in more firewood. He took the wood to the living room, added a piece to the fire, and went back to the kitchen to give a kettle of chili a good stir. It was his day to cook. Chili, cole slaw, cornbread. Feast enough for the gods, he decided, sniffing, then tasting. Too spicy? Maybe, but it was too late to do much about it. The doorbell rang and in his continuing foul mood he went to see what idiot was out there instead of inside warm and dry.
The man on the stoop was in his sixties, red-faced, but that could have been from the wind. Dressed in a heavy mackintosh, a wool cap pulled low on his head, heavy wool pants, and worn boots. Although he was carrying a large Manila envelope, he definitely was not a salesman type.
“Merrihew,” he said curtly.
Charlie opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Just long enough to get warm. Is there a driver waiting?”
“No.”
Charlie glanced at his boots, dry. He would not have waded in snow in the driveway or walkway to the house. Charlie had shoveled enough snow that winter to build his own ski resort. He motioned toward the living room. “You might want to keep your heavy things on until you warm up.”
Merrihew was already pulling off the mackintosh. He strode ahead of Charlie and tossed the coat onto a chair along with his cap and the bulging envelope he had brought in, then went to the fire and held out his hands to it, facing the flames. He was a heavy man, solid, not fat, as if he worked out regularly.
“Mr. Merrihew,” Charlie said pleasantly, “ten days ago I told your secretary that I am not at present looking for a job. One week ago I repeated that same message to you directly. Nothing’s changed. I’m still not looking for work.”
Actually, Merrihew’s secretary had called and said quite coolly that her employer would consult with Charlie on Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week, and if he would name the day she would make a reservation at the Plaza for him. When Merrihew called he had said brusquely that he would make it more than worthwhile and was keeping Wednesday afternoon open and would expect Charlie at three.
Merrihew swung around and just then Constance strolled in, looking as elegant as always, in a powder-blue sweater, slim black pants, and walking shoes. Her at-home work uniform. “Constance, meet Mr. Merrihew,” Charlie said. “Dr. Leidl, a pleasure,” Merrihew said, inclining his head fractionally.
Charlie raised his eyebrows at Constance and she nodded so slightly that it might have gone unnoticed. Merrihew had done some homework. Constance had a Ph.D. in psychology.
“I want thirty minutes of your time,” Merrihew said. “I’ll pay whatever the going rate is plus a substantial bonus on satisfactory completion.”
With an exaggerated sigh Charlie looked at his watch, then waved toward a chair and seated himself in his Morris chair. Constance settled into the wing chair opposite him, and Merrihew took the green upholstered chair that neither Constance nor Charlie ever sat in. It was not very comfortable.
“My father was a hog farmer,” Merrihew said. “I hated that farm with all my soul. He died when I was sixteen and I inherited three thousand dollars; my mother got the farm. I decided to spend my inheritance traveling and I went to South America, to Peru. I wanted to see Machu Picchu. On a train I kept seeing the mountains cut into tiers, stair steps with stone retaining walls, terraces with crops growing on each level. Corn, potatoes, beans, squash… It fascinated me. Those Indians did that with hand tools, baskets, no wheels, no pack animals bigger than llamas. Centuries later they’re still there, still growing crops, irrigated, drained, cared for, and productive.”
He was gazing at the fire with a contemplative expression. He sat stiller than most people, Charlie thought then, no twitches or adjustments of his position, no hand motions. As still as a buddha. “Something happened to me on that trip,” Merrihew continued. “I didn’t know what it was until years later, but that’s when it started. I talked my mother into giving up the farm, going into the meat-packing business instead, and I made it work. I went to school, architecture and engineering, and began to branch out in other enterprises. I made a lot of money.” He wasn’t boasting. His voice was dispassionate, nearly a monotone. The cats came in and Brutus eased himself into Charlie’s lap, Ashcan into Constance’s. Candy sniffed Merrihew’s feet and legs; he made a shooing motion at her, and she raised her tail and stalked out disdainfully.
“When I was twenty-nine,” Merrihew said, “I went back to Peru, but that time I knew what questions to ask and who could answer. The terraces are marvels of engineering in a landmass that must be the most inhospitable on earth. The Andes are like steeples in many places, nearly vertical in others, but nothing stopped those genius engineers. Wherever they wanted terraces, they carved them out of rock and created them.
“I’m doing the same thing,” he said in a lower voice.
He paused and turned his gaze to Charlie. “Twenty-five years ago I located my mountain and bought the southern flank, all of it. I put together a team of architects and engineers, and we started work on the plans. Eight years ago we started earthmoving. I realized that that was what all the money had been about, to bring to fruition my boyhood dream.”
He began to describe the community he was building and his face changed, became impassioned as he leaned forward with his eyes gleaming. Each terrace was sixty feet wide, houses no more than thirty-five feet deep, backed up by the mountain on the north, clerestory windows, skylights, solar panels. An elevator, an escalator. Each to provide a lift to the next terrace, a people-mover belt to cross the space to the next elevator or escalator, stairs, all covered with clear Lexan. A four-foot-wide walkway winding through gardens along the entire length of each terrace, spectacular views from every level… “From below all you will see will be some retaining walls and endless gardens rising up the mountain.”
Charlie glanced at his watch. Ten more minutes.
Merrihew’s eyes narrowed and he stopped talking abruptly. A moment later, in the same dispassionate way he had started, with the same nearly impassive expression he had worn, he said, “Then the accidents started. Five years ago, two men, two fatal accidents. Four years ago two more. Three years ago, two. Last year, three fatalities. Plus near-fatal accidents each and every year since they started.”
“Accidents happen,” Charlie commented. “Construction is a dangerous occupation. I assume there were investigations.”
“Of course. Locals, state, OSHA, insurance people. I hired my own detectives two years ago. Nothing. But someone is out to destroy it all, to destroy me.” A gleam in his eyes became more pronounced and made him look dangerous suddenly.
Charlie dumped Brutus, stood up, and went to the fire to give it a poke. Sparks flared and he turned back to Merrihew. “Look, it’s hopeless. Accidents, all investigated, that go back five years. There’s nothing anyone can do now. Use more caution on the job, bring in some new superintendents, new foremen, a whole new crew, whatever it takes.“
“I’ve done all those things,” Merrihew said. He stood up. “There’s a person behind it. I want you to go to the site and spend a little time with the accident reports and the investigators’ reports. I’ve looked into you, your past work. I know you push the envelope and get results. I want you, Meiklejohn, your expertise. Just find out how they got killed and who’s responsible. I’ll handle it from there. The end of the month or first of April. The snow will be gone by then. No work’s due to start until late April. You’ll have time to look around, visualize the deaths and how impossible it is that they were all accidents.”
Charlie shook his head. “As I said from day one, no thanks. The end of this month I’m going fishing for four or five days and when I return, it will be tax-wrestling time. After that, my wife and I are due a little vacation. Besides, Mr. Merrihew, it’s hopeless. Teams of investigators worked on it while the accidents were fresh, memories unfogged by time. There’s no point.”
Merrihew stood up and walked to the chair where he had tossed his coat, picked it up, and pulled it on. “I intend to see Merrihew Terraces finished in the next few years. Each time there’s a new death, it’s a setback in time and I don’t have time. I have early symptoms of Alzheimer’s, Meiklejohn, and in five or six years I might not care. But I do now. I’ll be in touch.”
He jammed on his cap and walked to the foyer with Constance at his side. “I’m sorry,” she said, and whether she meant Charlie’s refusal to take the job or Merrihew’s admission of Alzheimer’s was impossible to tell.
After Merrihew left, Constance picked up the bulging envelope and wandered off to her upstairs office and Charlie returned to the kitchen and the simmering chili. He tasted it again. Maybe some yogurt, he decided, wiping his eyes, to temper the fire. He had never heard of doing that, but it seemed reasonable.
At dinner later Constance took a bite of chili and, looking surprised, reached for her wine. Charlie took a bite. “It’s interesting,” he said. She buttered a piece of cornbread.
“His project is amazing,” she said then. “The mission statement says not a single inch of arable land will be used and the development will hold two hundred fifty houses, underground parking, a big clubhouse with swimming pool and gym, guest rooms. Real individual yards plus landscaped gardens. It’s really incredible.”
“He’s a nut,” Charlie said.
She pursed her lips. She knew that after the first call Charlie had looked up Merrihew and had found enough to make him want to have nothing to do with the man. He wouldn’t have anyway, she also knew. Charlie was as incapable of taking orders from such a man as Merrihew was incapable of not giving them.
“And he’s ruthless,” Charlie continued. “No opposition allowed. He squashes opposition the way a sane person would squash a bug.”
“It’s really visionary, a prototype of how to house people without sacrificing any more arable land.”
“He’s a nut. One of the richest men alive. Probably knocked off his own father to get out from under the hog farm. Dangled his mother over a cliff until she agreed to let him run things his way. He wants that mountain to stand for a thousand years with his name linked to it. Immortality. What are we going to do with that chili?”
She eyed it. “Maybe you could freeze it in ice-cube trays and we could bring it out from time to time to use as seasoning.”
A little later they had ham-and-cheese sandwiches and neither of them mentioned Merrihew again, or the chili, either.
Sitting in his cold empty kitchen, Charlie took a deep breath. Merrihew had said he’d be in touch, and Charlie had no doubt that he had kept his word. His fury did not diminish, and the ice in his midsection did not melt, but he was reassured. Merrihew would not harm her, just use her for leverage. He clung to that. It was Friday, and he was not expected home until late Monday or Tuesday. Time to consider his response to Merrihew’s opening move.
As silently as before, he went upstairs, gathered a few things to stuff into his duffelbag, picked up his laptop and the big envelope, returned to the kitchen. He tore open the bag of cat food and put it on the floor, then raised the lid of the toilet. She hated for him to do that, but the cats didn’t object. Then he went out through the porch, back over the fence to Mitchum’s house. He would make up a story for the Mitchums, borrow a car, go check into a motel, and make some phone calls. The goats did not meet him this time. They were getting milked.
Charlie had worked with Ron Shipley in the past and said that if he ever wanted another partner Ron would be it. That night at eleven, Charlie, Ron, and Lucinda Popke sat in a roadhouse near the village of Fall Creek, New Jersey. For the next several days Ron and Lucinda would be Mr. and Mrs. Jackson Callahan, a couple fed up with New York City, looking for a nice place in the country within commuting distance. Ron looked as bland as a minor accountant, reddish-blond hair thinning, wiry build, and an incredible memory. Lucinda was taller than he was, with hair dyed jet black and heavy eye makeup. She probably would chew gum while they were scouting the area, and no one would give her a second thought. People told her things and she talked as if she were paying absolutely no attention and never missed a trick. They would do.
“So that’s it,” Charlie said, pushing an envelope across the table to Ron. He had photocopied all the information Merrihew had left with him. “The construction site is about five miles from here. Who’s sore about the deal? Who loses? Who gains if it’s stopped in its tracks? Rumors, speculation, whatever you can dig out. I want it all.” He had given them the telephone number of his own motel room, ten miles away; they would not meet in public again and he would not come back to Fall Creek again.
Behind Fall Creek the Kittatinny Mountains rose, and up there Merrihew’s dream was being realized. Or not.
Constance felt as if her head were in a giant vise that tightened, relaxed, tightened again. She opened her eyes, then closed them quickly. The pounding was inside her head, in her temples, behind her eyes. After a moment she opened her eyes once more to a dimly lighted room. She was in a bed, still in her gi, her shoes off. Moving cautiously, she pushed herself to a sitting position, then didn’t move again for several seconds. Dizzy. It passed and she saw that the light was coming from another room through a partly open door. Also, there was a blinking red light on a phone on a bedside table. She was so dry, she couldn’t moisten her lips. Her tongue felt swollen and her eyes burned. She doubted that she could answer the phone, not with a mouth full of sawdust.
Moving with care, she got to her feet, but the dizziness was gone and she felt only an intolerable thirst and the pounding headache. She crossed the room to push open the door to a large bathroom. On the counter by the sink was an ice bucket with a bottle of water. Gratefully she opened the water and took a long drink, not bothering with the glass nearby. She drank again and saw a small medicine container, Tylenol. It held two tablets and she swallowed them both.
Holding the water bottle, sipping from time to time, she examined the bathroom. Lavish, with a gold Jacuzzi tub and a separate shower, a thick gold rug, heated towel racks… She went back to the bedroom and turned on a lamp, looked at the blinking light on the phone, but did not touch it yet. The room was luxurious by any standard. King-size bed, carpeting made of pale clouds, dressing table with silver containers of face creams and lotions, a hand mirror, brush, and comb; a chair and another table next to drapes that looked like raw silk… Bifold closet doors, one partly open, and two regular doors. The first one she tried was locked. The other one opened to a living room as richly furnished as the rest of the suite. Another door in that room was locked. There was a television and a rack of movie cassettes, a CD player, music discs, a small refrigerator, microwave. She opened more silk drapes and then a sliding glass door to a balcony with bars. Unrelieved darkness was beyond the bars.
With her headache more manageable, she went back to the bedside table and picked up the telephone. A woman responded almost instantly, in an English accent: “Dr. Leidl, you have not been harmed. The headache will be gone in a few minutes, but if you require medication there is Tylenol in the bathroom, and coffee in the carafe in the other room. I shall call again in half an hour.” The phone went dead.
Constance hung up, returned to the other room, and found the carafe on a table along with a bone-china cup and saucer. She poured coffee and sipped it.
Her headache was easing rapidly and she continued to explore her rooms as she waited for the next phone call. She found her watch on the dressing table: seven o’clock. She had been out for nearly seven hours. Some clothes in the closet—her size. A nightgown in a drawer along with underthings, all her size. She finished the bottle of water and looked inside the refrigerator. More water, wine, cheese, juice. Apples and oranges.
Imprisoned in a four-star hotel. Books to read, current magazines, movies, a house phone, heated towels.
Charlie would be beside himself, she thought, sitting down with a second cup of coffee on a sofa with another telephone on an end table at hand. She was glad that he was fishing, that he didn’t know yet, that he would have a few more days of peace. There probably had been a message with orders for him, and whoever had set this up would not want police and FBI agents brought in. Would he obey such orders? She thought he might, this once, take orders. She thought then of the cats, with regret. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t survive until Charlie got home; they had their own cat door and, clever beasts, they would scrounge from neighbors, do whatever it took, but they would be very unhappy. She amended that: They would be mad as hell.
Exactly half an hour after the first call, the telephone rang. The same Englishwoman said without preamble, “Your dinner has been sent to the anteroom adjoining the living room. Please do not remove any of the silver or china. When you have finished, return to the living room and close the connecting door. If you desire anything else, you have only to lift the phone and advise us. We shall try to make your stay comfortable.” The line went dead.
Constance walked to the door that had been locked earlier, and this time the knob turned and the door opened. She stepped into the anteroom, about as big as the bathroom on the other side of the wall, uncarpeted, and bare except for a chair and a serving cart with a white tablecloth, gleaming silver, crystal glasses, good china, chafing dishes, and a lovely salad in a bowl on a bed of ice. There was another door that she didn’t bother to test. It would be locked. They were taking no chances.
They knew she was trained in martial arts. The way they had caught her, immobilized her, now this. They knew. She glanced at the door she had just opened, and suspected that when she closed it again, it would automatically lock, but at the moment she was too hungry to examine it closely. She started to uncover chafing dishes, to look at the white wine in a cooler, another bottle of red wine, both already opened. She sat down to eat her dinner.
When she finished, she did as she had been instructed, returned to the living room and closed the connecting door behind her; it locked as she had thought it would. She stood by it listening closely. Fifteen minutes later she heard movement behind the door; the other door closed.
By ten that night she knew there was no town or road for a good distance behind her rooms, just impenetrable darkness. She had figured out the locks to the door between the bedroom and living room, and assumed the lock on the anteroom door to the hall was exactly the same, and she knew she could open it, if she could find a tool to use. Where she was was more problematic. If she had been driven in the van she had seen, she could be in Vermont or New Hampshire, even Canada. If they had boarded her on a plane, she could be just about anywhere. She turned on the television—Disney, more cartoons, History Channel… nothing local, no news. When the Weather Channel came in, unblocked, she watched. Temperatures in Fahrenheit. Good. She was still in the states, then. And it was still freezing at night north of Rochester. Thoughtfully, she put an inch of water in a glass and set it out on the balcony.
She took a long bath, thinking hard, and formed what might be a plan, she told herself derisively. She had found nothing she could use as a tool to take apart the door locks.
Up before daylight the next morning, she checked the water on the balcony and found it cold but liquid. And as far as she could see, there was nothing but forest climbing a mountain.
The blinking light, the nice English-accented voice, breakfast. The same instructions as before. In the anteroom she picked up the knife, but knew it would not work to take apart the door locks. The end was too blunt, the screws too deeply recessed. The lock on the door to what she assumed would be a hall was like the others. And that door was locked. The lock to the living room door was different and was new. Not a simple doorknob lock this time. She examined it, and the recess where the bolt would slide in. Then she ate her breakfast.
While she was in the anteroom, someone had entered the bed room, changed the bed, brought in fresh towels, left, all without a sound. She assumed the connecting door had been locked while that was going on. And that was what this day would be all about she told herself: Learn the routine being followed. Watch the shadows in the forest, orient herself so that when she left she would not become lost in a wilderness. There had to be a driveway, access to a road, on the other side of the building, and that was how she planned to make her way out of here.
That morning she mangled silk panties, tore off enough of the fabric to make a wad that would fit into the recess of the bolt; she watched shadows and learned that her windows were facing northeast. She was probably on the fourth floor of the building. It would be hard to make her way down the building if the rest of it was constructed the way the visible part was. Smooth wooden siding, no handholds. She definitely did not want to drop two or more floors to the ground. She eyed the raw silk drapes speculatively then nodded. Not the sheets; the maid would raise an alarm. After lunch, she told herself, she would work on the drapes.
When her lunch was brought in, she tried out the wad of silk stuffed it into the recess with a tag end hanging out, then cautiously closed the door. It did not lock. She opened it again. She didn’t think they would bother to lock the hall door when this one was closed, not with that new lock. Why bother? And if it turned out to be locked, she would try something else, she told herself. As before, she waited until she heard someone removing the serving cart, the other door being closed, then another few minutes. She opened the anteroom door, and stood for a minute or two listening. When she tried the door to the hall, it opened. She didn’t open it more than enough to make certain, closed it again, removed the silk wad, and closed the other door. Now it locked.
Examining the drapes, she knew that she had to have some thing that could cut through the fabric. It was heavy, and raw silk was tough. She had used her teeth to start a tear on the panties. She went back to the bedroom and picked up the hand mirror from the dressing table, took it to the bathroom, thought a moment, then went back to the closet and found a silk shirt. She wrapped the mirror in it, banged it on the counter, and took it into the living room where she carefully opened the shirt and picked up a shard of glass. She had to cut the drapes in daylight. It would be too conspicuous if someone glanced up and saw her destroying them at night, outlined by the light in the room. When she was done, she had cut the silk into eight strips, and with the drapes opened all the way, the fabric bunched, she hoped nothing would be noticeable with a casual glance. The rest would have to wait until the next day.
That afternoon she studied the bars on her balcony. New, like the automatic lock, and strong enough. They enclosed only her part of the balcony. She gazed at the forest, rising out of sight, deciduous trees not leafed out yet, brambles, scattered spruce and fir trees. It would not provide a lot of cover, but that couldn’t be helped. She would have four to five hours, she hoped, a good head start. No one should miss her until lunch, unless someone saw her rope, and that could happen at any time. There were too many unknowns for comfort, but that couldn’t be helped, either. How many people were in the building? Were there watchmen scattered around? Was the building perched on a cliff or something like that? Tomorrow, she told herself.
She got up before daylight the following day, dressed in the darkest clothes in the closet: black velvet pants, gray cashmere sweater, not appropriate garb for a hike in the forest, but her gi, which would provide much more protection, was white and too bulky to wear under the other things. She quickly detached the drapes from the pins and made her rope, tied it securely to a bar, and left the other end within reach of the continuation of the balcony without bars. Then breakfast was brought in.
After the breakfast things were cleared away, she opened the door, took out the wad of silk and closed the door, then went to the other door and listened for several minutes. She opened it a crack, wider, and left her prison. The room next to hers was another luxurious bedroom, empty. She crossed it swiftly, went to the balcony, drew her rope to her, and began her descent.
At that moment Charlie was listening to Phil Stern. “Do you know what time it is? Saturday morning, eight o’clock, for God’s sake!”
“I know what time it is, Phil,” Charlie said softly. “I need that information and I need it today, this morning. You can get it for me.”
There was a slight pause, then Phil asked, “Are you in trouble?”
“Not yet,” Charlie said. “You have this number. Give me a call when you find out.” He hung up. He and Phil went back a lot of years, to college days, and he had done a lot of work for the insurance association Phil worked for. He would deliver. But it would take a little time. He would have to go to his office, do some computer research, call back… Two or three hours, Charlie decided.
He made two more calls: He wanted to know if Merrihew’s corporate jet was still parked wherever he kept it, and if it had made a trip in the past two days. And he wanted to know where Merrihew was at present. Charlie knew he lived in a Manhattan penthouse apartment, but was he there? Now he could only wait for information, and seethe. And worry. What if he was wrong? What if Merrihew was not involved and he was missing the phone call that could tell him what to do to get her back?
Scowling at the telephone, he remembered his own advice to a rookie detective many years earlier: Until you have a solid lead, you go with your hunches. What he couldn’t do was sit in that cold empty house and wait for a call that probably wouldn’t come until Monday.
He picked up the sheaf of accident reports, compiled by one of the biggest private detective agencies in New York City, and began to read.