Dead Watch

he was whistling as he put together the temporary change of address, and smiled at her when she said good-bye.
    With the chores done, she stopped at Pat’s Tea House for a scone and a cup of tea. Pat was a friend, a fellow horsewoman, and came over to chat, as she always did: “How’s everything?”
    “Delicious,” she said. “Listen, can I borrow your phone to call Washington? I left my cell at home.”
    “Absolutely. Stop in the office when you’re done.”
    She made the call, thinking all the time that she was being paranoid. They wouldn’t be watching the phones. Would they?

    She was back at Oak Walk at one o’clock, sent Sandi to get Lon and Carl. When the three were assembled in the kitchen, she told them that she was going to Washington and didn’t know when she’d be back.
    “With the controversy about Lincoln and with the Watchmen visiting this morning, I think I’d better move into town for a while. So you three will be running this place. Deborah Benson will deliver your paychecks on Fridays. If you need to buy anything big, call me, we’ll talk, and I’ll have Deborah issue a check. I’m going to leave three thousand in cash with Lon. If you need to buy small stuff, use that, and put the receipts in the Ball jar on the kitchen counter. I’ll leave the keys for the truck and the car with Lon.”
    They had questions, but they’d done this before.
    “Any idea when you’ll be back?” Lon asked.
    “I’ll check back every once in a while, just to ride, if nothing else. But it could be a while before I’m back full-time—probably not until we find Linc,” she said.
    When she was satisfied that the farm would be handled, she ate the cold schnitzel sandwich, opened the safe and removed and packed her jewelry, packed a small suitcase with clothes she wanted to take to the city, went to the security room, took the tape out of the security cameras, and put in a new one.
    She spent another hour on Rochambeau—Rocky—an aging gelding that had always been one of her favorites, then cleaned up, put on her traveling clothes, and wandered around the house at loose ends, until four o’clock, when she heard the gate-buzzer chirp. She looked out the front window down the lawn where the driveway snaked up from the road. Two cars were coming up the hill, a gunmetal gray Mercedes-Benz sedan and a black Lincoln Town Car.
    She went out on the porch when the cars stopped in the driveway circle. A chauffeur got out of the Benz and waited. Another chauffeur got out of the Town Car and held the back door. A young woman got out, followed by a slightly older man, both carrying briefcases. Madison met them at the top of the porch stairs.
    “Hello,” the woman said. “I’m Janice Rogers, this is Lane Parks, Johnnie said to say hello for him. He will see you tonight.”
    “Two cars?” she asked.
    “Johnnie thought a convoy would be better,” Rogers said. “If you’re really worried . . . it would make it more complicated for anyone to interfere with us.”
    “Good. Let me get my things,” she said.
    The trip into D.C. took a little more than three hours. Her attorney, Johnson Black, was waiting on the porch when the Benz pulled up to the town house, alerted by the two junior attorneys in the Town Car. Black was dressed like his name, in shades of black, under a black raincoat, but with a brilliant jungle-birds necktie.
    She got out, the chauffeur popped the trunk to get her luggage, and she walked up the sidewalk and Black kissed her on the cheek and said, “Quite an adventure.”
    “The kind I don’t need.”
    “Randall James is coming over tonight, if you don’t mind. He wants to talk about those tapes—he wants you on his show tomorrow.”
    She was fumbling for the keys to the front door, found them. “You think that’d be the thing to do?”
    “Well, I’ll have to look at the tapes, but so far, the press is acting like we’re just bullshitting about Linc and Goodman. This could change things. Depends on the tapes . . .”

    Randall James had a noon gig as the Washington Insider on the local ABC outlet. The show got to the right demographic.
    James showed up at nine o’clock, an unctuous man with careful black hair, a sharp nose, and a dimple on his chin. He would, she thought, lie for the pure pleasure of it; but he had the demographics.
    He sat in the chair, watching the tapes, checking her profile from time to time. When they were done, he said, “I’ll put you on right