Georgia called Kelly with what she’d learned from Remson. Over the phone, she heard him call out to Joan.
“Hey, Joanie, text me a link to the bio of Jackson Hyde, Republican from Pennsylvania.” The text alert dinged less than thirty seconds later.
“She’s efficient,” Georgia said.
“Don’t I know it.” Then he was quiet, apparently skimming the bio. “Well, it is interesting. But I don’t know what it means.”
“I don’t either.”
“Lemme think about it. So what was Remson like?”
“The guy folded like a paper airplane.”
“Must have been your superior interrogating skills.” He cackled. “But data mining isn’t something to ignore. I’m sure the FBI would be interested in what the company is up to.”
“Maybe they already know.”
“Could be. But I’m thinking a voluntary info dump from us might loosen their tongues about Jarvis. Maybe even ‘beef jerky.’” He cleared his throat. “You know the Bureau has more than they’re letting on.”
Georgia squirmed and stared out the rental car’s windshield. “Yeah. But give me another day. I’m about to pay Carl Baldwin’s assistant a visit. You never know. Maybe we can hand the Bureau a nicely wrapped package tied up with a bow.”
There was a pause. Then Kelly said, “Your job isn’t to solve the crime, you know. Just to investigate.”
“I know.”
“Sure you do. Okay. Call me tonight.”
“I will. Oh. Tell Erica the hotel is lovely. But traffic is horrible in this city. It takes forever to get anywhere.”
“Yeah, everyone’s looking for their fifteen minutes, but in DC the traffic makes them stretch it to an hour.”
Georgia followed her GPS to the Kalorama neighborhood. She was surprised at the affluence on some streets, the third world look of others. Obama lived nearby, she knew. She wondered if she might bump into him. She was admiring the buds on the trees and the tentative sprouts that would be daffodils and tulips in a few days, when she checked her side-view mirror. She’d picked up a tail. She tried to pin down the car and model, but she couldn’t. All she knew was that it was American-made, a sedan, and dark gray, maybe blue.
She turned the corner and drove around the neighborhood. The tail stayed with her. She should exit the area, ditch the tail, and come back later. But that would mean driving through unbearable DC traffic. She gritted her teeth and drove to Connecticut Avenue, heading back in the direction she’d come. Damn the tail. It was still there. She checked her rearview. Two people in front, the passenger smaller than the driver. A woman?
Were they from DataMaster? It was possible. Video cameras surveilled the entire parking lot. A decent corporate security force would have homed in on her license plate, discovered it was a rental, perhaps even that a woman named Georgia Davis had rented it. Then again, that was a lot of work to do just because a PI talked to an employee at lunch. She kept driving. She had no idea where she was, but a sign said she’d reached Woodley Road. She turned left, and eventually emerged into a lovely residential area with what looked like a mansion on one side. As she drove past, she saw it was a school. With a French name.
Only in Washington.
She checked for the tail again. Still there. Damn it. She reached Cleveland Avenue. It was the first avenue she’d seen that wasn’t named for a state. But it was a city. Or was it a president? History had never been one of her strengths.
She drove down the avenue, which was on an incline. At the bottom of the hill it merged into Calvert Street, a corner of which was occupied by a school that actually looked like a school. It was time to ditch the tail. Luckily, providence intervened. Just ahead on the right was a hotel, the Omni Shoreham. She accelerated, turned sharply into the hotel driveway, and pulled up at the entrance. She climbed out as if she was in a hurry, tossed the valet her key, and told him she’d be staying for a couple of days.
She raced inside, took out her cell, and arranged for a new rental car, told them where this one was, and waited forty-five minutes. When she was ready to take a cab to the new rental place, the tail was gone.