The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [92]
“Oh, no...”
The center drawer of the small sideboard stood partially open, its contents dumped unceremoniously onto the floor. Simon opened the drawer all the way and stuck in his hand. It came out empty.
“The tape is gone.”
“Damn.” Dina slumped back against the wall. “Now we have to worry about someone else knowing—”
“I don’t think so,” he told her, his eyes darkening with anger. “This was no random break-in, in spite of the fact that someone took pains to make it look like one. The person who broke in knew there was a tape and came for it.”
“Who . . . ?”
Simon looked beyond her and waved to the first arriving officer. “Hi,” he called out. “We’re in here!”
“What are you going to tell them?” Dina whispered.
“That it was a random break-in, of course.”
The list of missing items was short, and the list Simon gave to the police was even shorter. He reported the theft of the laptop. “I’m renting here, so I don’t have a lot of personal items with me. There really wasn’t anything else to steal.”
“Except the television.” The young officer wandered back into the living room. “I’ve been wanting one of these wide-screen jobs myself. Nice stereo. Nice VCR. Wonder why they only took the laptop?”
“Maybe that’s all they could carry,” Simon offered.
“You go upstairs?” the officer asked.
“Ah, no,” Simon admitted.
“I’ll just take a look and make sure no one’s up there,” the officer said as another patrol car pulled up out front, lights on but no siren. He waved to the newly arriving officer and waited until he’d reached the front door. “Looks like only a laptop, so far.”
“You in the FBI?” the newly arrived officer asked Simon.
“No.”
“CIA?”
“No. Why?”
“Just asking.” The officer shrugged. “Usually the only times you see a job like this—the place tossed and nothing stolen but the computer—it’s got something to do with the government.”
He followed the first officer up the stairs. Within moments both officers were coming back down.
“Did you have another TV set upstairs?” the first one down asked.
“No, only the one in the living room.”
“Would you come on up and take a look around and let us know if anything’s missing?”
Simon did, but there was nothing out of place.
“Odd, you know, that they only tossed the first floor,” the younger of the two officers noted.
“Maybe he got scared away. Maybe he heard my next-door neighbors come in last night.”
“Maybe he found what he was looking for in the laptop,” the second officer said as he took a notebook from his back pocket. “Now, let’s start at the beginning. . . .”
From the beginning to the end took all of twentyfive minutes. There was not much to tell, Simon explained. He’d gone out the previous morning and returned this afternoon to find his house broken into and his laptop stolen.
“Call us if you find that anything else is missing,” the second officer said as he left, stealing one last appreciative glance at Dina before closing the door behind him.
“So. What now?” Dina asked when both patrol cars had departed.
“First, we check the jacket pocket,” Simon muttered.
“Excuse me?” She frowned.
“I’ll be right back,” he said as he took the steps two at a time.
He was back in a flash, holding a tape in his hand. “All is not lost.”
“I thought you said that the tape was stolen.”
“They only found the copy. This is the original.”
“But someone else has the other. Which means someone else now knows—”
“I suspect that this someone has known all along, so he didn’t need the tape to tell him something he didn’t already know.” Simon slipped the tape into his pocket and took Dina by the hand. “This someone took the tape so that I wouldn’t have any evidence of Kendall’s statements.”
“You think you know who took it?”
“Only one person knew about it.” He locked the door behind them. “Dina, I think it’s time you met Philip Norton. . . .”
The trip back to Georgetown was not the leisurely ride they’d taken earlier in the afternoon. This time around, Simon drove like a man possessed. In less than thirty minutes, Simon was on his way up the steps to Philip Norton’s front