Iron Orchid (Holly Barker 5)

When the water was ankle deep he hung the duffel around his neck again and used both hands to gather up and wring out the chute. He shrugged off the pack and stuffed the chute into it, then put the pack on again and started wading down the beach. He wanted no footprints left in the sand.

A few yards ahead he saw a rocky outcropping running down to the sea and headed for that. When he reached the rocks he stepped out of the water and onto them, then began picking his way toward dry land, careful not to turn an ankle. He needed both ankles now.

He walked through some long grass and came to a road. He looked both ways and saw a darkened cottage a couple of hundred yards away. It was very unlikely that anyone was living on the beach at the beginning of winter, but he had to be careful. He was cold, though, and he needed to get dry and change clothes, so he headed toward the cottage.

He walked up to it slowly and noiselessly, he didn’t want to set off some barking dog. People would remember that. He reached the house, put down the chute and the duffel and leaned against the building, catching his breath. He was in excellent condition, but still, at his age…

When he had

rested, he began circumnavigating the house, looking into windows, some of which had blinds drawn. When he reached the back door, he found it padlocked from the outside. Nobody home; gone for the winter. He picked the lock in seconds, and he was inside. He retrieved the pack and his duffel and, still treading lightly, he walked through the house and found it deserted.

He found a linen closet and removed a couple of towels and a thick blanket, then he stripped off his wet clothes in the kitchen and rubbed himself down with a towel. He wrapped himself in the blanket, found a flashlight and began exploring. He found a utility closet housing an electric hot water heater and turned it on, then he ran in place for a couple of minutes to get his circulation going.

After fifteen minutes, when the water from the tap was tepid, he turned off the hot water heater, so that it wouldn’t be found to be warm when the house was searched, found a shower and got clean. He dressed in the change of clothes from his duffel, then he went through the house to see what he could find.

He came back to the kitchen with a suit that was only a little too big for him, a couple of shirts, some underwear and a presentable felt hat from the master bedroom and a man’s Burberry raincoat from the front hall closet. He packed them in the duffel, put his wet clothes and the towels into the washing machine, then he went into the attached garage. There was a ten-year-old Ford station wagon parked there, along with a pair of bicycles. He found a shovel, then he went out behind the house to what, in the summer, would be a very nice garden, and dug a hole four feet deep. He buried the chute, filled the hole, and arranged the soil to match the furrows of the garden, then he went back inside and put the washed things in the dryer.

An hour later, Teddy left the house exactly as he found it, absent the clothes and a bicycle. He strapped his duffel to the rear of the bike and began pedaling toward the lights of Kennebunkport. It was nearly six a.m., and the sun wouldn’t be up until eight.

On the outskirts of Kennebunkport he came to a diner, glowing brightly in the predawn, and out front was a sign proclaiming the place to be a Greyhound Bus stop. He checked the posted schedule: a bus to Boston in forty minutes. He went around to the side of the building, found a Dumpster and deposited the bicycle there. Then he went into the diner, consumed a large breakfast and was outside when the bus arrived.

He paid the driver for a ticket to Boston, then put his duffel in the overhead rack, slipped into a seat, tipped his hat over his eyes and fell soundly asleep. The bus made it to the Boston Greyhound terminal at midmorning, and Teddy bought another ticket for Atlantic City, New Jersey, departing immediately.

Late in the afternoon, Teddy left the bus in Atlantic City, went into the men’s room, locked himself in a stall and, fishing them from his duffel, donned a wig and a mustache. He found a wireless phone store, bought a throwaway cell phone, then phoned the Algonquin Hotel in New York and booked a room. He then took a cab to one of the casino hotels, went to the concierge’s desk and booked a car and driver.

Late in the afternoon, the car dropped him at the corner of 44th Street and Madison Avenue. He went into Brooks Brothers and, telling a salesman that the airlines had lost his luggage, bought two suits, a blue blazer, gray trousers, some shirts, ties, socks and underwear, a topcoat, a new hat and a suitcase. Teddy was a perfect size forty regular, so the only alterations necessary were hemming the trousers. He paid for everything with a credit card that drew on a large sum in a Cayman Islands bank. That done, he changed into a new suit, tossed his old clothes into a wastebasket and left the store carrying his new suitcase and the duffel. He walked the two blocks to the Algonquin, checked in and was escorted to his room.

He unpacked his new clothes, then opened a secret place in the lining of the duffel and dumped everything onto the bed. He inventoried the contents: a second wig and other makeup, four complete sets of identification and credit cards, plus the ones in his pockets, the pieces of a nonmetallic.380 pistol with a silencer that he had built himself, and ninety thousand dollars in used hundreds, fifties and twenties. He locked them in the safe in the closet, had dinner from room service and went to bed.

ONE

HOLLY BARKER TOOK AIM and squeezed off a round. Her father, Senior Master Sergeant, U.S. Army (ret.) Hamilton Barker, looked through his hand scope.

“High and to the right,” he said.

“How high and how far to the right of what?” Holly asked in disbelief.

“An inch high and to the right of dead center,” Ham replied. “That’s not good enough. Push with your right hand, pull with your left.”

“That’s what I’ve been doing since I was eight, when you first taught it to me,” Holly said. She took aim and, this time, made a point of pushing and pulling.

“That’s better,” Ham said.

“How much better?”

“A quarter of an inch off dead center,” he said.

“Oh, please,” Holly said, laughing.

“How did the Orchid Beach town council take your resignation as chief of police?” Ham asked.

“They were appropriately sad, except for a couple who looked relieved. At least they accepted my recommendation of Hurd Wallace to replace me. They’re getting a good man.”

“They’re losing a better woman. What are you going to do with your house?”

“One of my young policewomen is going to move into the guest house and be my caretaker. I’ll need the house to decompress once in a while. Also to remind me of Jackson.” Jackson Oxenhandler, Holly’s fiance, had been killed in a bank robbery two years before, an innocent bystander.

Ham went to his range bag and came back with a mahogany box.