Breakwater

27

Quinn splashed more champagne into Thelma’s glass, an antique crystal flute that, according to legend, the first Quinn Harlowe had used to drink a toast in celebration of the discovery of a triceratops fossil in South Dakota.

After her close call in keeping herself out of Huck Boone/McCabe’s trunk, Quinn decided she was in the mood to think about dinosaurs. The fiercer the better.

It was early afternoon, but the Society, in keeping with long-standing tradition, shut down at 2:00 p.m. on Fridays from mid-April through Labor Day weekend. A little early in the day for an end-of-the-week drink, but Thelma didn’t seem to mind. She tipped her champagne glass to Quinn. “May your sanity return. Cheers.”

“I’m going to the Breakwater open house, Thelma.” Quinn had taken Gerard’s call with Thelma next to her, opening the champagne, not bothering to disguise the fact that she was eavesdropping. As a result, Quinn now had no plausible deniability. “I’m a neighbor.”

“Lattimore’s going to think you’re his date.”

“No, he’s not. I’m meeting him there. You’re being very old-fashioned, you know. He and I are colleagues. There’s nothing romantic between us. Zip. Zero.”

“You’re both attractive and available.”

“Available.” Quinn wrinkled up her face, trying to keep the conversation lighthearted, which was not even close to how she felt. “I’m not sure I like that word. Think about the layers of different meaning.”

Thelma settled deeper into the slouchy modern chair that Quinn had insisted on adding to her office, although it went with none of the stiff, late-nineteenth-century antiques. “Are you sure you don’t want any of the champagne?”

“Positive. I’m my own designated driver, and a Friday afternoon in Washington in springtime-what are the odds I get to Yorkville in under four hours?”

“Slim to none.” Thelma narrowed her eyes. “You’ll need a champagne-free brain. Do you suppose Oliver Crawford knows Lattimore’s invited you?”

“He says it was Crawford’s idea.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better, Quinn. Why would he invite you to a party after he caught you trespassing?”

“Maybe he understands the emotional state I was in at the time.”

And still am, Quinn thought. Her grief wasn’t as raw and volatile as in the first hours after finding Alicia, and the shock had eased. Digging into Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security had helped occupy her mind as she’d processed what had happened.

Of course, now she was in hot water with the marshals. Were they discussing, even now, what to do about her?

“You’ll notice Lattimore keeps inviting you to parties,” Thelma went on. “The marina party in March, and now this one. And you keep going.”

Quinn changed the subject. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Several friends and I are going birding in the mountains.”

“That sounds like fun. You’ve never married, have you, Thelma?”

“No, I haven’t.” Her eyes sparkled. “Although I came close a few times. Why do you ask?”

“I have no idea. I suppose-” She thought of Huck, but didn’t go there. She smiled at Thelma, who seemed not to have changed since Quinn’s first memories of her as a child. “I suppose I’m just trying to distract you. Any regrets about not marrying?”

Thelma sipped her champagne. “Why, I wonder, do we never ask married women if they have any regrets?”

Quinn shrugged. “I’m not sure we don’t. Isn’t divorce a way of saying they regret having married?”

She sat back, eyeing Quinn. “I have a full life. I realize I have more days behind me than ahead, but that just makes me even more determined to live each one I have to its fullest.”

“If you didn’t have to work-”

“I love my work. This place.” With a wave of one hand, she took in the Octagon Room, with its fireplace and oil portrait, its brass candlesticks, its worn wood floors. “I come to work, and I feel as if I’ve stepped back in time to my grandmother’s day. She used to work here, too, you know. Some days, I swear I can hear her talking to me. It’s very comforting.”

Quinn looked up at her great-great-grandfather’s dour face. “I’m not sure I’d want to hear him talking to me.”

Thelma smiled. “He died before my time here, but in the early days, there were many people who remembered him. They said he wasn’t at all a crazy adrenaline junkie. He was thoughtful, very intelligent. He had a purpose. He knew what he was here on earth to do, and he accepted the risks involved as part of the challenge.” Her plain, frank eyes zeroed in on Quinn. “He didn’t shrink from his duties and responsibilities, whether he’d had them foisted upon him or took them on by choice.”

“Thelma…”

Quinn breathed out, setting the champagne bottle on a stack of cast-off files on her desk. She knew what the longtime receptionist-and adventurer-was trying to say, the point she was driving home in her own not particularly subtle way.

“Quinn, you know what you have to do.”

“I can’t say for sure that Steve was here to search my office. I can’t say for sure he tried to access my laptop files.” She watched the sweat from the champagne drip onto a dry, ancient file. “I don’t want to make trouble for him.”

“I saw him. I don’t know him, of course, but I’d say he’s already in trouble. It’s not your job to save him from any mess he’s gotten himself into. You can’t help him by running from what you know.” She finished off the last of her champagne. “That’s another quality your great-great-grandfather had. He understood and respected his limits.”

“Risk-takers think they have no limits.”

Thelma snorted. “No, Quinn, grandiose idiots think they have no limits. You Harlowes are neither grandiose nor idiots.”

“Just occasionally very unlucky,” Quinn said dryly, getting to her feet.

She hadn’t left anything out in the open in her office that provided any critical information-no names or numbers of her sources, none of her conclusions, especially about Huck. Nowhere had she typed or written a single word about her suspicions about who he was. If Steve had searched her office, he would only have seen cryptic notes, jotted questions to herself.

But there were enough, she thought, for even the most cursory search to confirm that she’d spent some time researching Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security.

“I’ll call T.J. Kowalski on my way to Yorkville,” she said.

Thelma smiled knowingly. “You’re afraid if you call him from here, you won’t get to Yorkville. He’ll stuff you into a hotel somewhere. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into this time, Quinn, but I can guess-” She tilted her empty flute up at the portrait. “I can guess your Harlowe genes are coming out in you.”

“Special Agent Kowalski has his own ideas about what I should and shouldn’t be doing.”

“And you have yours,” Thelma said, as if Quinn had just won her point for her about Harlowe genes.

Quinn ignored any reference to her crazy ancestors. “Thelma-I owe Alicia. My grandfather says I’m a catalyst. I make things happen.”

“Spoken like a true Harlowe.”

“I’m not about to do anything reckless. I want to make answers happen. I want to know why Alicia died. Why she came to me for help, talking about ospreys. Who was in the car that picked her up. Where they went.”

“Understandable, but is any of that the responsibility of a friend?” Thelma’s voice had gone quiet. “Be aware of who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Don’t delude yourself.”

Quinn gave her a cheerfully stubborn look. “You’re just telling me I’ve gone Harlowe because you don’t want me going to that open house.”

Thelma didn’t relent. “I don’t trust Gerard Lattimore. Or Oliver Crawford. You’ll be all alone tomorrow.”

Not alone, Quinn thought. Huck Boone/McCabe would be there.

But if he were here now, she had no doubt he’d be siding with Thelma. “It’ll be fine, Thelma.” Quinn picked up the champagne bottle and refilled her friend’s glass. “Besides, I have to go now-I already know what I’m wearing.”

Quinn had lied to Thelma. She had no idea what to wear to Oliver Crawford’s open house. Choosing an outfit was the least of her concerns, but it gave her something inconsequential to focus on. What dress, what shoes, whether to go dramatic or natural with her makeup were all better than dwelling on undercover marshals and whatever Steve Eisenhardt was up to.

She decided on a simple champagne-colored silk dress with a 1930s shawl, strappy shoes and hot-pink lipstick.

If Huck Boone/McCabe was guarding bodies, she might as well be in hot-pink lipstick.

What a thought. She felt a rush of heat and quickly threw her open-house outfit and enough clothes for the weekend into a zippered bag.

In a few minutes, she was on the road, a stack of work next to her on the front seat. She rolled down the windows and opened the sunroof, letting in as much warm spring air as possible. She loved the freedom of being able to juggle her schedule and-often-work outside her office. Being her own boss had its downside, but not, she thought, today.

Once she cleared city traffic, she called Special Agent Kowalski on her cell phone. She hoped just to leave a message, but he picked up. “Where are you?” he asked her.

“In my car.”

“In your car in Alaska, or in your car in front of FBI headquarters?”

“I’m on the Beltway.”

“Going-”

“About sixty-five miles an hour.”

He took an audible breath. “All right. What’s up?”

“You all need to find Steve Eisenhardt and make sure he’s not mixed up in-” She stopped herself. Did Kowalski know about the undercover marshals? Huck hadn’t been specific with her. “I’m pretty sure he searched my office this afternoon. He just happened to stop by when I was out.”

“Why should I care if he searched your office?”

“Because I had notes out on research I’ve been doing on Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security.”

Silence.

“Nothing I kept in the open would compromise me or anyone else in any way,” Quinn added carefully. “No notes from conversations I had with sources, none of my conclusions-”

“What sources?”

“Just people I know from my work.”

“What conclusions?”

“‘Conclusions’ is too strong a word. Thoughts, questions, speculations-none of that was in the open. Most of it’s in my head or on a password-protected file on my laptop-”

“Which is where?”

“Right next to me on the front seat of my car. It was on my desk this afternoon. Steve could have grabbed it, but he didn’t. He must have known Thelma would never have let him out of the building with it.”

“Thelma’s the receptionist,” Kowalski said.

“I see you’ve been doing your homework, too.”

“Any idea why this Steve character would care if you were researching Oliver Crawford and Breakwater Security?”

“No.”

“Don’t you lock your office?”

“I didn’t think of it. Someone stopped by to see me, and we went out for coffee-I never went back upstairs.”

Just a half beat’s hesitation. “All right. Anything else?”

Quinn bit her lip, considering Kowalski’s reaction. Why wasn’t he asking her who’d stopped by her office? But she didn’t pursue the subject. “Don’t you want to know who Steve Eisenhardt is?”

“You told me you called him after Miss Miller took off in the black sedan.”

“Good memory,” Quinn said, tongue-in-cheek. He wasn’t telling her everything-and he didn’t care that she knew he was holding back. But she had no status herself in any investigation, whether it was Alicia’s death or whatever-whoever-Huck McCabe was hunting in Yorkville.

“Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment.” He didn’t sound grateful for anything. “Where can I find you if I need to talk to you?”

“Yorkville.”

“That’s not a good idea. Why are you headed there?”

“I’m going to an open house at Breakwater tomorrow afternoon.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Oliver Crawford asked Gerard Lattimore to invite me.”

“You like playing with fire, don’t you?”

“Actually, no, I like peace and quiet.”

Kowalski grunted. “Then go pick lilacs and read a book tomorrow. Watch the birds.”

“I had coffee with Huck Boone this afternoon,” she said.

Another two-second silence.

He knows about Huck. Quinn felt her hand on the phone turn clammy. “I’m coming into traffic-I need to hang up.”

She clicked off, tossing the phone onto the seat. Traffic was fine. She just didn’t need another federal agent second-guessing her. If the FBI and the marshals had bad guys to catch, they could go catch them. She’d stay out of their way. In the meantime, Oliver Crawford was her neighbor, Breakwater Security wasn’t going anywhere, and the best thing she could do-Huck had even said so-was to resume her normal routine.

In April, she’d spend the weekend at her cottage.

If invited to a party at the Crawford estate, she’d go in a heartbeat.