Roses Are Red

for J. Walter Thompson or Young and Rubicam in New York.”
    She puckered her mouth and looked as if she’d just bitten into a lemon. “
Dr.
Janelle Cross. Remember where you heard it first.”
    “Don’t worry,” I told her, “I won’t forget any of this.”
    Around one o’clock I went over to the crisis center at the FBI field office on Fourth. After the meeting with Pollett and Burns, I knew we’d be working late. A conference room had been commandeered on the third floor. More than a hundred agents were working out of there. Also, about sixty detectives from D.C. and the surrounding areas.
    We had a few more suspects up on the walls now. They were all bank robbers with the skills and experience to pull off big jobs. I studied the list and made notes on a few of them.
    Mitchell Brand was a suspect in several unsolved robberies in and around D.C. Stephen Schnurmacher was the person behind at least two successful bank heists in the Philadelphia area. Jimmy Doud was a bartender in Boston who’d never been caught but who had robbed dozens of banks up in New England. Victor Kenyon had been concentrating his efforts in central Florida. They all did banks, and they hadn’t been caught yet. They were smart, and good at what they did. But were they masterminds?
    Everything about the long session on Fourth Avenue was intense, and intensely frustrating. I made some calls about the suspects, particularly Mitchell Brand, since he worked out of D.C. It was nearly eleven-thirty when I looked at my watch for the first time all night.
    Betsey Cavalierre and I hadn’t gotten the chance to talk since I’d arrived that afternoon. I drifted her way to say good night before I left the building. She was still going at it. She was talking to a couple of agents but gestured for me to wait.
    Finally, she walked over. She still managed to look fresh and alert, and I wondered how she did it.
    “Metro has a couple of leads on Mitchell Brand,” I told her. “He’s violent enough to be involved in something like this.”
    Suddenly, she yawned. “Longest day of my life.
Whew!
How’s Jannie doing?” she asked. I was surprised and also pleased by the question.
    “Oh, she’s doing good;
great,
actually. Hopefully, she’ll come home soon. She wants to be a doctor now.”
    “Alex,” she said, “let’s go have a drink. This is a shot in the dark, but I get the feeling that you need to talk to somebody. Why won’t you talk to me?”
    I must admit, the offer caught me completely off guard. I stammered out a response. “I’d like to, but not tonight. I have to go home. Rain check?”
    “Sure, I understand. It’s okay. Rain check,” she said, but not before a look of hurt had passed over her face.
    I never expected that from Agent Betsey Cavalierre. She had shown concern about my family. And she was
vulnerable.

Chapter 55
    THIS WAS THE PLACE, the time, the opportunity.
    The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, on Connecticut Avenue near Seventeenth.
    It was as busy as ever that morning, busy and important looking. The Mayflower has been the site of every presidential inaugural ball since Calvin Coolidge. The hotel had been completely renovated in 1992, with architects and historians working together to restore it to its earlier grandeur. It was a popular place for corporate conferences and board of directors meetings. That was how the Mastermind knew about it.
    A blue-and-gold chartered tour bus had been waiting in front of the Mayflower since a little before nine. It was scheduled to leave at nine-thirty and would be making scheduled stops at the Kennedy Center, the White House, the Lincoln and Vietnam memorials, the Smithsonian Institution, and other favorite tourist spots around Washington. The bus company was called Washington on Wheels. The corporate group on board was from the MetroHartford Insurance Company.
    Sixteen women and two children were on the bus when the driver, Joseph Denyeau, finally shut the door at nine-forty. “All aboard for various museums, historic sites, and
lunch,
” he announced into his microphone.
    A corporate assistant named Mary Jordan stood up in front and addressed the group. Jordan was in her early thirties, attractive and likable, supremely efficient. She was courteous to the important women on the bus without fawning over them or sounding obsequious. Her nickname at MetroHartford was Merry Mary.
    “You all know the itinerary for this morning,” she said. Then she smiled brilliantly. “But