Double Take

last thing Dix needed. Savich held her until she was together again.
    He pressed her back. “You look beautiful, and my tea’s nicely steeped. Let’s talk about Atlanta, okay?”
    Ruth and Savich had no sooner handed out the drinks when the front door burst open and three kids came tearing in, two of them reeking of teenage testosterone and a sugar high, Sean so excited he was bouncing up and down. Lily and Simon followed behind them, smiling and exhausted.
    Savich sent a thank-you to his sister and her husband.
    Rob said, “Hey, Dad, Fatal Vengeance II —we had to cover Sean’s eyes a couple of times, but it was cool.”
    Rafe said, “Well, not enough blood and guts, but it still wasn’t too bad.”
    “Mama, the popcorn was great and I told the hero just how to cut the bad guys down.”
    “It was a bad girl, Sean,” Rob said. “She was gorgeous but bad to the bone, Dad. She was tough, moved real cool, you know? Just like Ruth.”
    When the hoys finished their blow-by-blow, Sean said with great relish, “Then she got her head blowed off.”
    Ruth said, “Fourteen large popcorns, Lily?”
    “Maybe twenty,” Simon said, laughing. “Don’t worry, the movie was more action-adventure, not all that much gore.”
    “Yeah, kind of tame,” Rob said and headed toward the bowl of popcorn on the table in front of his father.
    Before Dix and Ruth and the boys headed out, Savich said to him, “I’ll e-mail you everything I’ve got. Then you and Ruth can visit David Caldicott in Atlanta.”

CHAPTER 21
    SAN FRANCISCO
    Sunday morning

    Julia held a protesting Freddy close as she wiggled farther toward the wall beneath the kitchen table. “Don’t move, Julia! Keep Freddy quiet if you can.”
    Cheney, SIG drawn and ready, walked quietly to the closed kitchen door, pressed his cheek to the wood, and listened.
    He looked back to see Julia straining to hold Freddy still. Freddy suddenly stiffened in her arms and hissed again.
    Cheney went through the maid’s quarters to a back door that gave way onto the enclosed garden. He listened, then opened the door onto the overcast morning.
    The backyard was large, the back wall lined with huge oak trees. It didn’t lead to another backyard, but to an alley. It was filled with flowers nearly ready to bloom, trees and hedges and an ivy-covered fence. He saw no movement. He pressed himself against the wall right outside the closed door and listened.
    Nothing.
    He walked quietly back into the kitchen, and shook his head at Julia. She whispered, “Freddy’s hissing toward the front of the house now.”
    Cheney moved quickly toward the front hallway, pulled up, and listened again. He heard the front door rattle, then open. He heard footsteps, heard men speaking, then a woman’s voice.
    They weren’t trying to be quiet. They were coming toward him.
    Cheney came out of the kitchen, raised his SIG and said, “All of you, hold it right there.”
    The woman threw up her hands and shrieked.
    One man tumbled over the over, both of them nearly stumbling onto the Italian tiles.
    The woman yelled, “Oh God, it’s the man who’s trying to murder Julia! Mrs. Masters told me all about you the minute we got home. Is my poor Freddy all right? I’m his mother!”
    To Cheney’s surprise, both men rushed forward, the woman right behind them, swinging her big red purse. He ducked.
    Julia yelled, “No, no, don’t hurt him. He’s an FBI agent!”
    SFPD Officers Blanchin and Maxwell burst through the front door after them. Everyone simply froze where they stood. What had taken the cops so long? Cheney wondered. After all, they’d been assigned to watch the house.
    Not long after Blanchin and Maxwell withdrew, their guns back in their belts, muttering between them, Julia sitting in the living room, cozy on one of the sofas next to an older man she’d introduced to Cheney as Wallace Tammerlane. Tammerlane was holding her hand, whispering quietly to her. Thankfully, Freddy’s mother, still clutching her huge red purse, and Freddy himself had left right after the two officers.
    Julia introduced both of the men as psychic mediums. Great, just great. Psychic mediums, which meant that in addition to the woo-woo, they also claimed to speak to the dead. More like con artists. The older man, Wallace Tammerlane, looked up, studied Cheney’s face and frowned, then said something quietly to the other man, a younger man, about Julia’s age. They looked like father and son, both wearing casual