Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [37]
“A private investigator? Did he say why?”
“Something to do with a photograph of a black girl and you that was taken at a retreat at the school.”
“What black girl?”
He shrugged. “Louise something. He wants you to call him first thing tomorrow. It sounded important.”
Mitzi said nothing as she turned and stared into the mirror.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“What? No, nothing’s wrong. I can’t imagine what it’s all about.” Her laugh was forced. “A picture with a black girl taken when I was a student there? God, that’s aeons ago.”
Her husband climbed into bed and returned to a book he’d started nights earlier. Had he looked over at his wife, he would have seen the changed face that peered back at her from the mirror. It hadn’t changed because she was now without makeup, or because of fatigue she felt after the party and the long day leading up to it.
The change came from within.
CHAPTER 13
Emile Silva cupped a mug of steaming black coffee in his hands as he stepped out onto his secluded rear patio. It was two days since he’d played tourist and visited Washington Harbour. The cooler weather had held, although that morning’s forecast called for a return of heat and humidity later in the day.
He wore a red silk kimono over his nakedness, and flip-flops. The coffee was to his liking. Silva was a coffee snob who took pains to buy and to mix what he considered the perfect brew. A pair of cardinals that called his property home flew between trees, causing him to smile and to imitate their call. Life was good. He’d slept well and felt rested, ready for the day, which would involve an hour of strenuous exercise followed by an alternating hot and cold shower. His meeting wasn’t until eleven that morning, plenty of time for him to continue cataloging his extensive CD collection before he needed to leave.
He chose to drive the Porsche that morning. The feel of its powerful engine and the control he exerted through its manual transmission was orgasmic. He took Western Avenue, crossed the Potomac on the Chain Bridge, and proceeded southeast on the Washington Memorial Parkway until reaching his destination, a relatively new two-story modern office building a few miles south of the Pentagon. While it had all the trappings of any other small office building in the area, it differed because of its lack of large windows. The stucco structure had only a pair of narrow vertical windows flanking the entranceway, and horizontal ones of the same size across the second level.
He swiped his card in a reading device at the door, entered, and walked down a hallway to a rear office in which two men sat leaning over papers on a low, oval coffee table. They looked up at Silva’s arrival. One closed the folder they had been reading.
“Good morning, Emile,” he said.
“Good morning to you.”
“Coffee?”
Silva’s grimace delivered his answer.
“It went well?”
“Of course,” Silva said as he took a hard candy from a bowl on the table.
“He was hospitalized,” said the other man.
“Two, three days,” Silva said. “He’ll be gone. You told me to be here this morning. You have another assignment for me?”
“Yes. Dexter has the details.”
Silva followed them down a set of stairs to a basement room. The use of a card as well as a key was necessary to gain access to it. It was a windowless space with thick concrete walls and soundproof baffling on all surfaces. Heavy locked metal cabinets lined one wall; a workbench ran the length of the opposite one. A folding metal table surrounded by four folding metal chairs sat in the middle of the room. A short, slender bald man with thick glasses and wearing a tan suit sat in one of them.
“You have your bags packed?” he asked in a pinched voice that matched his appearance.
“They’re always packed,” Silva replied.
“Good. You’re needed overseas. Here is what it involves.”
• • •
At George Washington University Hospital, Afran Mutki was fading fast. His wife had brought him there from the hotel in which they were staying when he complained