Roses Are Red

know.”
    “The company is offering a reward for information that leads to a conviction.”
    She shook her head and laughed. “Hah! That sounds like a long, drawn-out affair. Besides, I should trust the word of Metro?”
    I couldn’t deny what she’d said. I waited for her to collect her thoughts. I sensed that she was thinking about just how much she wanted to tell me.
    “I met him in Tom Quinn’s. That’s a local watering hole on Asylum Street near the Pavilion and the Old State House. We talked, and I liked him okay. He was a little too charming, though, which set off my warning alarms. The charming ones are usually trouble. Married man? Fruitcake?
    “Anyway, we talked for a while, and he seemed to enjoy himself, but nothing came of it, if you know what I mean. He left Quinn’s first, actually. Then a couple of nights later, I
met him again
at Quinn’s. Only now, everything’s changed. See, the bartender is a very good friend of mine. She told me this guy had asked her about me
before
the night I met him. He knew my name. He knew I had worked for Metro. Out of sheer curiosity, I talked to him the second time.”
    “You weren’t afraid of the man?” I asked.
    “Not while I was in Tom Quinn’s. They all know me, so I’d get help in a nanosecond if I needed it. I wanted to know what the hell this guy was up to. Then it got pretty clear to me. He wanted to talk about MetroHartford more than about me. He was clever about it, but he definitely wanted to talk about the executives. Who was the most demanding? Who called the shots? Even got into their families. He asked specifically about Mr. Fincher. And Mr. Dooner. Then, just like the other time, he left before I did.”
    I nodded as I finished making a few notes. “You never saw him again, never heard from him?”
    Hildie Rader shook her head and her eyes narrowed. “I did hear
about
him, though. I had stayed good friends with Betsy Becton. She’s one of the assistants to Mr. Dooner, the chairman.
He
calls the shots at MetroHartford.”
    I had seen Dooner in action and I agreed with Hildie. He was the boss of bosses at MetroHartford.
    “This is interesting,” she said to me. “Betsy had met a fella who looked just like my guy from Quinn’s. Because he
was
the same guy. He sat down next to her at the coffee bar in the Borders on Main Street. He chatted Betsy up while they sipped expensive caffe mochas, lattes, whatever. He wanted to know about, guess what?
The executives at MetroHartford.
He was one of the kidnappers, wasn’t he?”

Chapter 78
    DURING THE COURSE OF A LONG DAY, I had learned that nearly seventy thousand people in the Hartford area are employed in the insurance industry. Besides MetroHartford, Aetna, Travelers, MassMutual, Phoenix Home Life, and United Healthcare are all headquartered there. On account of this, we had more help than we needed, and more suspects. The Mastermind might have been associated with any of the insurance companies at some time in the past.
    After I finished for the day at the insurance company, I got together to share notes with the others at a nearby Marriott. The breakthrough for day one was Hildie Rader’s story that one of the crew members had probably been in Hartford a week before the hostages were taken.
    “Tomorrow morning we interview both women, Rader and Becton. Get a composite drawing made from their description. As soon as we have that, we’ll show it around corporate headquarters. Also, have the composites we made in D.C. sent up here. See if there’s a match,” Betsey said. She smiled then. “Things are heating up. Maybe they aren’t so smart after all.”
    Around eight-thirty I left the suite to call Jannie and Damon before they went to bed. Nana answered the phone. She knew it was me before I said a word.
    “Everything is just fine here, Alex. Home fires are burning nicely without you. You missed a delicious pot roast supper. Soon as I knew you were going to be away, I made your favorite dish.”
    I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. “Did you really make pot roast?” I asked Nana.
    She cackled for a good minute. “Of course not. We had prime ribs of beef, though.” Nana cackled even louder. Prime ribs were probably my second-favorite dish — and I was still hungry after the hotel deli food, pastrami and processed cheese on stale rye.
    Nana laughed again. “We had turkey sandwiches. But we did finish up with hot, homemade pecan pie. À la mode. Jannie and Damon are