Speaking in Tongues

hundred dollars from my bedside drawer.”
    Bett blurted, “Nonsense. She wouldn’t take . . .”
    “It’s gone,” Tate said. “She’s the only one who’s been here.”
    “What about credit cards?” Konnie asked.
    “She’s on my Visa and MasterCard,” Bett said. “She’d have them with her.”
    “That’s good,” Konnie offered. “It’s an easy way to trace runaways. What it is we’ll set up a real-time link with the credit card companies. We’ll know within ten minutes where she’s charged something.”
    Beauridge said, “We’ll put her on the runaway wire. She’s picked up anywhere for anything on the eastern seaboard, they’ll let us know. Let me have a picture, will you?”
    Tate realized that they were looking at him.
    “Sure,” he said quickly and began searching the room. He looked through the bookshelves, end-table drawers. He couldn’t find any photos.
    Beauridge watched Tate uncertainly; Tate guessed that the young officer’s wallet and wall were peppered with snapshots of his own youngsters. Konnie himself, Tate remembered from some years ago, kept a picture of his ex-wife and kids in his wallet. The lawyer rummaged in the living room and disappeared into the den. He returned some moments later with asnapshot—a photo of Tate and Megan at Virginia Beach two years ago. She stared unsmilingly at the camera. It was the only picture he could find.
    “Pretty girl,” Beauridge said.
    “Tate,” Konnie said, “I’ll stay on it. But there isn’t a lot we can do.”
    “Whatever, Konnie. You know it’ll be appreciated.”
    “Bye, Mrs. Coll—McCall.”
    But Bett was looking out the window and said nothing.
    •   •   •
    The white Toyota was staying right behind the Mercedes, Aaron Matthews noted. He wondered if it was the same auto he’d seen in the Vienna Metro lot when he was switching cars. He wished he’d paid more attention.
    Matthews believed in coincidence even less than he believed in luck and superstition. There were no accidents, no flukes. We are completely responsible for our behavior and its consequences even if we can’t figure out what’s motivating us to act.
    The car behind him now was not a coincidence.
    There was a motive, there was a design.
    Matthews couldn’t understand it yet. He didn’t know how concerned to be. But he was concerned.
    Maybe he’d cut the driver off and the man was mad. Road rage.
    Maybe it was someone who’d seen him heft a large bundle into the trunk of the Mercedes and was following out of curiosity.
    Maybe it was the police.
    He slowed to fifty.
    The white car did too.
    Sped up.
    The car stayed with him.
    Have to think about this. Have to do something.
    Matthews slid into the right lane and continued through the mist toward the mountains in the west. He looked back as often as he looked forward.
    As any good therapist will advise his patients to do.

Chapter Six
    The rain had stopped but the atmosphere was thick as hot blood.
    In her stylish shoes with the wide, high heels, Bett McCall came to Tate’s shoulder. Neither speaking, they stood on the back porch, looking over the back sixty acres of the property.
    The Collier spread was more conservative than most Piedmont farms: five fields rotating between soy one year and corn and rye the next. A classic northern Virginia spread.
    “Listen to me, Tate,” the Judge would say.
    The boy always listened to his grandfather.
    “What’s a legume?”
    “A pea.”
    “Only a pea?”
    “Well, beans too, I think.”
    “Peas, beans, clover, alfalfa, vetches . . . they’re all legumes. They help the soil. You plant year after year of cereals, what happens?”
    “Don’t know, sir.”
    “Your soil goes to hell in a handbasket.”
    “Why’s that, Judge?”
    The man had taught the boy never to be afraid to ask questions.
    “Because legumes take nitrogen from the air. Cereals take it from the soil.”
    “Oh.”
    “We’ll plant Mammoth Brown and Yellow for silage and Virginia soy too. Wilson and Haerlandts are good for seed and hay. How do you prepare the land?”
    “Like you’re planting corn,” the boy had responded. “Sow them broadcast with a wheat drill.”
    Out of the blue the Judge might glance at his grandson and ask, “Do you cuss, Tate?”
    “Nosir.”
    “Here. Read this.” The man thrust into Tate’s hand a withered old bulletin from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration. A dog-eared chapter bemoaned the rise of young