SUNDAY MORNING
“Papa, Marty wants to know why I’m staying with Gran.”
Sean and Savich were sitting in his mother’s light, airy kitchen, Savich eating a late breakfast of spinach crepes, one of his mom’s specialties, and a side of scrambled eggs. Sean was chowing down on Cheerios with his requisite sliced banana on top. Sherlock had said she wasn’t hungry and excused herself to spend time with his mother in the living room, giving her an update on what had happened yesterday, well out of Sean’s hearing.
Savich swallowed a bite of eggs, laid his hand over his son’s small one. “It’s almost your grandmother’s birthday, Sean, and that’s what she wanted for her present—you.” Thankfully, Sean knew very well his grandmother’s birthday was next week.
Sean preened. “I’m a birthday present? That’s awesome.” Then he looked worried. “Don’t we have to give her something else, Papa? I spent all my money yesterday at the book festival.”
“Your present to her doesn’t involve buying her anything. All you have to do is keep your room straight, enjoy yourself, and not be a pain in the butt. Senator Monroe is taking you to your day camp again tomorrow, then Gabriella will pick you up and bring you back here. Your grandmother said if it was okay with Marty’s parents, she could come back here with you tomorrow after camp and have dinner. Senator Monroe will be here to take her home. What do you think?”
“Since I’m a present, do I have to wash the dishes?”
“It’s nearly her birthday, Sean, so it’d be nice for you and Marty to help. Clear the table, like you do at home.”
Sean said thoughtfully, “I’ll tell Marty it’s her job to clear the table.” He gave his father a beatific smile. “I’ll be the boss.”
It was close, but Savich didn’t roll his eyes. Sean telling Marty what to do? He’d like to see that. He said, “That’s something you can work out with Marty. Now, after breakfast, you and Gran and Senator Monroe are going to Christ Church.”
“I like going there. It’s old, Papa. Gran told me it was old even when she was young. She says we can snuggle in with all those people who sat where we’re sitting. She says lots of them were politicians, but what can you do?”
Savich laughed.
“Will you and Mama come with us?”
“Not this time. Your mother and I have some important work to attend to.”
Sean forgot about Christ Church. He gave his father a long, serious look. “Are you going to catch that man with the big chocolate bar in Mr. McGurk’s tent yesterday? Mama told a lady to grab me and Marty, and she ran after him.”
No hope for it. “That’s right. He wasn’t a nice man, Sean, and we need to find him.”
“And then I’ll get to come home?”
When had Sean gotten so grown-up? “Yes, then you’ll come home. So enjoy your stay here in Gran Disneyland. It won’t last much longer.”
* * *
It was quiet in the Hoover Building at noon on Sunday, the immense hallways echoing Sherlock’s and Savich’s footsteps. They walked into the CAU and saw Agent Lucy McKnight and two agents on loan from the Criminal Division, Dirk Platt and Jerry Barnes, manning the Victor Nesser hotline phones. The agents looked up when Savich said, “Thanks, guys, for coming in to handle the hotline.”
They answered with some good-natured bitching, but only because neither agent had gotten any worthwhile calls that merited follow-up, one a Nesser sighting in Anchorage, one from San Diego. Dirk said, “Amazing how fast this guy can move. One woman claimed she saw Victor driving over the Mexican border. When I told her it couldn’t be possible, she asked if I was single.”
“I’m the one with the luck,” Agent Lucy McKnight called out. “Wait’ll you hear what I’ve got.”
Dirk’s phone rang. “Lots of folks out and about on a Sunday,” he said, and picked it up. “Hotline, Agent Comptom. What do you have for me?”
When Lucy hung up from another call, she said, “Do you know my no-good husband is off fishing with his father and brothers at Cape Hatteras, like they do every single year? Okay, okay, so listen to this call I just got: a park ranger, Gina Clemmens, at Greenbrier State Park in Maryland is pretty certain Victor Nesser tried to get into the park late yesterday. Greenbrier is about sixty miles east of Willicott. She had to turn him away because there were no campsites left. I asked her if she was in the kiosk until she closed down the gate, and she said yes, of course. Then she backed up, said she did take a bathroom break, but it wasn’t more than ten minutes. When she came back, she was on the gate for another half hour, then closed it down.”
Savich said, “Still, Victor could have driven in while she was on break and parked out of sight, maybe away from the parking lot, taken his camping equipment into the woods for the night, and left this morning.”
“Exactly. Ranger Clemmens said she saw some camping equipment in the backseat of the car. A Kia, she said, dark green, with a Virginia license plate she didn’t write down, since she’d turned him away.”
Sherlock said, “Did the ranger see a woman in the car?”
“I asked her, but she said she didn’t notice anyone else. But she guesses there could have been someone hunched down in the backseat with all the camping gear.”
Lucy gave them a fat smile. “But I haven’t finished. Two minutes before you guys walked in, I got a call from a Mr. Norm Chitter, of Norm’s Fish and Bait in Bowman, Maryland, right outside Greenbrier State Park. Victor was in his store to buy some junk food, saw himself on the TV, ‘turned paler than a week-old trout’—his words—and ran. Dropped a box of Milk Duds on his mad dash out of the store.”
Sherlock heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness he didn’t shoot Mr. Chitter.”