Conspiracy

44

The Art Room didn’t turn up anything interesting on the other computers. Though it was already after three, Lia decided she would go over to Pine Plains and see if she could talk to the police chief there. His dispatcher said he would be in the office until five and after that would be available at home.

“It’s jess around the corner,” the dispatcher added. “You can walk.”

Forty-five minutes later, Lia drove down the main street of the small town, gazing at the one-and two-story clapboard buildings as she searched for the police station. The town reminded her a great deal of the Connecticut village where she’d grown up. A sleepy farming community for most of its existence, it had recently been overrun with weekenders from New York City, who found the two-and-a-half-hour drive a worthwhile trade-off for relatively cheap real estate and the illusion of a simpler life, so long as that simpler life included Starbucks and a pricey dress shop tucked into a side block behind the bookstore.

Old-timers had made one of two choices: cash in on the newcomers by catering to their whims or slink back and mutter about them behind the closed ranks of old friends.

Lia’s hometown had negotiated a similar clash twenty years earlier; the result was an ambiguous and somewhat uneasy truce, where the old-timers held on to the low-level political and business positions and the transplanted city people ruled everything else.

Lia’s mother and father had feet in both camps, and regarded the transition with mixed feelings. It was not always easy to predict their views, however. As she parked behind the village hall, Lia thought of her father, ostensibly a member of the old-timers’ camp, with eight generations in the local graveyard. He viewed the local police chief, whose family had been in town since the mid-1800s, with twice as much skepticism as he would have shown a newcomer.

Pine Plains’ police chief was about the age of Lia’s father, but there the resemblance ended. Tall and still fairly trim, Christopher Ball had a narrow face set off by a graying brush cut and a tight-lipped smile. He greeted her with a crusher of a handshake.

“I’m with the marshals’ ser vice,” said Lia breezily, showing him the credentials. “I’m following up on the Forester case.”

“So my dispatcher said. I don’t recall the case.”

“Agent Forester. The Secret Service agent who killed himself in Danbury?”

“Oh, OK. Sure.”

“Did he speak to you the day he died?”

“No. He was supposed to show up the next day. We had an appointment. I stayed in the office waiting. Had to have a part-timer come in to do my road patrol because of it.”

“Did he tell you what he was looking into?”

“Not at all.” Ball pushed his chair back and got up. “Service agents out of Danbury told me about it the day after. Or maybe it was Poughkeepsie.”

Ball stared at her. His rising was evidently intended to signal that they were done talking, though Lia didn’t budge.

“So you knew nothing about the threat against Senator McSweeney?”

“I have no idea why your man thought that someone from Pine Plains was involved. I’d’ve been happy to investigate anyone — happy to do it still.”

“When Agent Forester came to talk to you, did he have a notebook with him?”

Something flicked in Ball’s eyes. “He never came to talk to me.” Ball took another step, reaching the edge of the desk.

“Something wrong, Chief?” Lia asked.

Ball frowned. “It’s getting toward dinner.”

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

His frown turned into a full-blown scowl.

“Senator McSweeney has a house near here, doesn’t he?” asked Lia.

“That’s up in Columbia County. Forty-five minutes — an hour, if you drive the speed limit. Most don’t.”

“You deal with him a lot?”

“Are you trying to investigate me, miss?”

“Do you need to be investigated?”

“Get the hell out of my office.”

“Gladly,” said Lia.

“Why’d you antagonize him?” Telach demanded when Lia reached the car.

“Something about him doesn’t jibe,” said Lia.

She pulled out the booster unit for the audio fly she had left in the office and activated it. Lia looked around, trying to decide where to leave the unit. The fly couldn’t transmit very far on its own.

“He’s just a macho ass,” said Telach. “Unfortunately, that’s not against the law.”

“I planted a bug. Are you picking it up?”

“A bug? I didn’t authorize you to plant a listening device, Lia.”

“Since when do I have to ask?”

“Stand by,” said Telach abruptly.