Hothouse Orchid

36

Teddy Fay sat at his computer, looking at a digital map of Vero Beach. He found James Bruno’s street. It was a few blocks from the local airport. Teddy printed out the map, then got into his car and followed it to Bruno’s neighborhood.

He turned off Indian River Boulevard, drove past a large church and found himself in a neighborhood of ranch houses that appeared to have been built in the 1950s. They were well-kept, their lawns mown and their flower beds tended, but Teddy suspected that when demand for land grew in Vero, this would become a neighborhood of teardowns, with single houses bought up, razed and their lots combined to accommodate larger, more ostentatious houses.

Teddy found Bruno’s house. There was no car in the carport, but Lauren had said that Bruno worked odd hours, so Teddy had no way of knowing when to expect Bruno to be at home. He drove past the house, then turned right at the corner and right again, to put him behind Bruno’s property.

He found himself looking across a concrete drainage channel that had only a small stream of water flowing through it. After a tropical storm or a hurricane, Teddy reckoned, this would be a raging torrent.

On the other side of the hedge was a tall, ill-kempt hedge with a number of gaps in it that was the rear border of Bruno’s property. Through the gaps, Teddy could see a weedy backyard and the back of the house, whose trim needed painting. This had all the ear-marks of a rental, since the other houses on the street were so well kept, but it looked good to Teddy. It would have old hardware and easy locks.

It was late afternoon, and people were arriving home from work, a lot of them probably from the Piper aircraft factory only a few blocks away. A light airplane flew overhead, then made a turn toward the airport. There were lots of students studying at the flight safety school, which trained hundreds of new pilots every year.

Teddy drove away from the neighborhood and stopped at a large home-building supply store, where he bought a few things, then stowed the paper bag in the trunk of his car. Then he headed toward the Publix market on US-1 to pick up a few things for dinner.

Holly was coming out of the market, carrying two bags of groceries, when her cell phone vibrated. She set the bags down on the sidewalk and took the phone from its holster. “Hello?”

“It’s Josh. Don’t cook; I’m bringing dinner.”

“Now you tell me? I’m just coming out of the market with a bunch of stuff.”

“We’ll save it for another time. Have you got red wine at home?”

“Yep.”

“Then I’ll see you at seven. Bye-bye.”

Holly returned the phone to its holster and bent to pick up her bags. As she did a gray-haired man got out of a silver Toyota and came toward her across the street, heading for the market.

As he passed, he gave her a little smile, and she smiled back, as people in Vero and Orchid Beach usually did in their small-town, neighborly way. Holly continued to her car.

Teddy had recognized her immediately but had not altered his course to the market. It was as good a time as any to see if she would recognize him. He passed her with a smile, and she smiled back. Inside the store, he stood behind a stack of canned goods and watched her through the window. She opened the rear door of her car-a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, he noted-put her groceries inside, got into the car and drove away without a second glance at the market.

That went well, he thought, and he wondered how a woman on an Agency salary could afford a car that cost around a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe he would look into that.

Holly drove home, let Daisy out onto the beach and put her groceries away. She showered and changed, then went downstairs to watch the news before Josh came.

Teddy put his groceries away and started a roast chicken. Then he went to his computer and found a meandering route through several cities, until he found an idle machine in San Diego, California. From there he logged on to the Agency mainframe, then navigated to personnel, where he opened Holly Barker’s file.

He read through the file slowly, from Lance Cabot’s initial letter of recommendation for her hiring, through her training at the Farm, where she had done exceptionally well in every category and had run up the highest pistol score in the history of the Agency. He made a note not to put himself in a position, as he once had, where she might have an opportunity to shoot at him. He felt lucky to have gotten away with the leg wound.

There had been a break in her training at the Farm, when she had been transferred to special duty in New York, under Cabot. He was clearly her rabbi at the Agency, and she had chosen him well, if, indeed, she had done the choosing. This was the period when Teddy had met her at the Metropolitan Opera, when he was disguised as an elderly Jewish gentleman, retired from the garment trade. A short time later, she had come uncomfortably close to him again, but he had managed to escape from the city.

He noted that she had recently been promoted to assistant deputy director, again under the aegis of Lance Cabot, and that she had, accordingly, received a substantial raise. Still, her Agency income didn’t seem to support the purchase of an expensive German SUV with a 500-hp turbocharged engine.

He went to her original application and read, in fairly telegraphic form, of her progress through her army career and her hiring as chief of police in Orchid Beach. Then he came to her financial disclosure form.

“Ahhhh,” he said aloud to himself. The woman had a substantial estate, amounting to nearly three million dollars, nearly all of it inherited from her fiancé, who had been killed as an innocent bystander in a bank robbery the day before her wedding. Teddy felt sorry that she had experienced such pain, but her personal wealth accounted for the ownership of the Cayenne as well as for her Orchid Beach house.

Teddy logged off the mainframe and closed his computer. What an interesting woman she was, he thought. It was a pity that he couldn’t know her better. Still, from what he had just read, he knew more about her than most people.

He went back into the kitchen, checked on the roasting chicken, and began preparing the rest of their dinner.

He couldn’t do what he wanted to tonight, because Lauren would be there. Jim Bruno would have to wait a little.