Home Free - Fern Michaels [92]
Myra made a face. “Why didn’t I know any of this?”
Annie made a face right back. “In order to know things, you have to ask questions. It’s called being nosy, Myra. I am nosy. Therefore, I get the news, the scoop, the information I am now telling you.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Anna de Silva. That’s terrible. What’s even more terrible is, you admit to it. What else do you know?”
“Nothing. I’m going to bed.”
Disgruntled, Myra followed her friend up the stairs. She looked at the big four-poster and longed to have Charles with her. She sighed. Charles was Charles and was doing what he loved to do, even if it was the middle of the night. She turned the dials on the electric blanket on her side of the bed. “When you can’t have the real thing, improvise,” she muttered as she prepared for sleep.
It was 5:00 a.m. and still dark when Avery Snowden and three of his men arrived at Kilbourne Place in a rusty pickup truck with a plow hitched to the front. Metallic signs on the doors read SANITATION DEPARTMENT. A second truck was behind him with identical metallic signs but no snowplow attached. The game plan was to plow out the cars on the street so Mr. OO wouldn’t be tempted to stay home. While Avery maneuvered the plow, the occupants in the other truck watched the brownstone with eagle eyes.
“The lights went on at exactly the same time on floors two and three. At five twenty. The first floor stayed dark,” one of his men reported.
As Avery worked the plow, he listened to his operatives report. “That’s because he probably controls the switch for the third floor. No one lives on the third floor. Don’t argue with me, Simpson. Just keep your eyes on the front door, and you peel outta here the minute the dude starts up his car. I’m going to plow the road now.”
By six o’clock, the street was completely plowed, but the cars were blocked with the exception of two, one registered to Owen Orzell and the second one to Joel Jessup. It was still dark out, but there was no sign of life or light on the first floor. At 6:15, the lights on the second and third floors went out.
“Look sharp, lads!” Avery ordered as a tall, thin man walked out of the door of the brownstone. He looked around, shook his head, and made his way down the snow-covered steps by holding on to the railing, then picked his way carefully to his car. He was dressed in a camel-colored shearling jacket. He wore stout rubber boots and a black watch cap pulled low over his ears. A plaid scarf was wrapped and draped around his neck. He pulled on gloves he had in his pockets.
It took Mr. OO a good fifteen minutes to scrape the snow off his windshield and the back window. All the while the car was running, with the heater going full blast. From time to time, he stopped to look around as the street came to life and residents came out to ready their cars for another day of work.
Avery moved his truck with the plow slightly forward and got in front of the gray Saturn Mr. OO was driving. The second sanitation truck had been joined by a third truck, equally battered and junky-looking. “Just in case he makes one of us,” Avery said into the mike on his collar.
The moment all three trucks moved into traffic, a small black car slid into Mr. OO’s parking spot. Two men bundled up for the weather got out and walked up the steps to the brownstone. It was just turning light when the door opened. The two men stood a moment to see if an alarm would sound. None did.
Inside, they split up, going from room to room. One of the men snapped pictures; the other one looked through everything, being careful not to touch anything, per Snowden’s instructions.
It was a comfortable apartment, but it had only one bathroom and three bedrooms, one of which was an office. The kitchen was big enough to hold a round table and four chairs. The dining room had a complete set of furniture, as did the living room. The furniture was neither new nor old. It looked used and comfortable. A seventy-six-inch television set hung on one wall. The bookshelves were full of technical and financial