The hotel bar was on my left as I headed to the front door. I glanced in idly, the way one does. The bartender was watching an NBA game on the TV, desultorily wiping glasses, as bartenders everywhere do when trade is slow. The only customers were a quartet of men deep in conversation in the corner. They looked up as I peered in, and their faces congealed, as if I’d brought an arctic wind with me.
I wouldn’t have stopped to stare if they hadn’t looked so furtive, but after a second I realized that the oldest man in the group was Nathan Kiel. This morning he’d been wearing a sweat suit and slippers, but here he was all decked out in a shirt and tie. It took a moment longer, but I also recognized the man on his left. When I’d seen Colonel Baggetto at Fort Riley four days ago, he’d had on khaki with lots of medals and ribbons, but tonight, like Kiel, he was in civvies.
When I started toward the table, the colonel got to his feet, frost melted, smiling as if I were his long-lost sister. “Ms. Warshawski. I thought I recognized you. We met a few days ago—”
“At Fort Riley.” I smiled but couldn’t emulate his warmth. “I didn’t recognize you at first without your birds and medals and stuff.”
“Even colonels get to take nights off, which means shedding the plumage. Come and have a drink.”
He placed a hand on the small of my back, propelling me toward the table. The touch was light, but there was muscle behind it. He pulled a chair over for me, but I didn’t sit, just nodded to his drinking buddies. One of the strangers was perhaps my age or a bit older, with the leathery skin of someone who spent a lot of time outside. The other was young, young enough to be Kiel’s grandson. I had a fleeting thought that I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t place him.
“Dr. Kiel. And . . . ?”
Baggetto performed introductions. The leathery face was Bram Roswell. “He does something important at Sea-2-Sea, so important that I can never figure out what it is. And this is Marlon Pinsen, who’s a student here. Gentlemen, this is Ms. Warshawski—sorry, I’ve forgotten your first name. She visited me at the fort a couple of days ago.”
Roswell nodded at me, not interested, but young Pinsen half stood, with a respectful “How do you do, ma’am?”
“I’ve been in so many places in Lawrence this week that I can’t remember whom I’ve seen where,” I said to Pinsen. “But we’ve met, haven’t we?”
“I don’t think so, miss . . . ma’am,” he said, after a pause that lasted a hair too long.
“Best not to admit it if you have met her,” Kiel said. “She’ll start imagining she has a right to tell you how to live your life. Whose business have you been interfering with this evening?”
“Someone who was past any advice, good or bad,” I said. “I discovered Doris McKinnon’s dead body on her kitchen floor. I didn’t realize that you knew her.”
“I? You’re badly mistaken. Which seems habitual with you.”
I put my chin in my hand, exaggerated Rodin Thinker. “You’re right. This morning when I mentioned that I’m in town looking for Emerald Ferring, you didn’t react. You must not have realized that Lucinda Ferring was her mother. Not a common name, but perhaps you didn’t know your lab tech’s surname.”
“You came to me with wild questions about my daughter. Forgive me if those seemed more important than someone who worked for me decades ago.” Kiel’s voice dripped heavy sarcasm.
I nodded judicially: good point. “Did you stop at the hospital to see your daughter on your way here? I know it’s hard for you and Mrs. Kiel to get over there, but I visited her at the end of the afternoon.”
“How is she doing?” the young man, Pinsen, asked.
Again the nagging thought crossed my mind that I’d seen him before, but it came and went so quickly I couldn’t hold it.
“Not well. She’s breathing on her own. That’s the best the ICU nurse could tell me.”
“The dead woman at the farm,” Roswell said. “How did you know to look for her?”
I stared at him, astonished. “Why do you care?”
His leathery skin darkened. He didn’t answer immediately but seemed to be fishing for words. “Her land abuts one of our experimental farms. If a killer is running loose, I want my farmhands to be on the lookout. The sheriff tells me it was the black kid from Chicago who killed McKinnon.”
“You’re sure you don’t want a drink?” the colonel interjected.
“I’m over my limit, and my dog is waiting for me,” I said. “The black kid from Chicago, Sheriff Gisborne said? There’s a specific youth he knows about?”
“Don’t play games, Warshawski,” Kiel said. “You’ve broadcast all over town and the university that you’re here hunting for a fugitive couple.”
“People tell me you’re a careful and knowledgeable scientist,” I said. “So you know how important it is not to use language carelessly. The people I’m looking for have disappeared. They are fugitives, but not from justice. Their friends believe they are in danger, either from a trigger-happy lawman or from the people who killed Ms. McKinnon.”
I turned to Roswell. “Why did the sheriff report Ms. McKinnon’s murder to you? As far as I can tell, the story hasn’t even made the local news. Are you some kind of special deputy or Gisborne’s nephew?”
Roswell swirled what was left of his drink and drank it down. “Dr. Kiel has already said you like to butt into other people’s business, and I see what he means. Why the sheriff chose to call me has nothing to do with you, but if you know where your missing friends are, you’d do well to produce them.”
I laughed. “You sound like someone out of one of those old westerns where the town bully tells the sheriff to ‘String ’em up. They’re half-breeds, no better than savages, and they belong on the end of a rope.’”
Baggetto held up a hand. “Whoa, let’s put away the heavy artillery and the drones and so on. Bram, we’re concerned at the fort because the woman Warshawski is trying to find is the daughter of one of our own. He died at the Battle of the Bulge, so we want to make sure no harm comes to his daughter. We’re here to give Ms. Warshawski any help she needs.
“Ms. Warshawski, Bram has an interest in what happens at the McKinnon farm because there are patents involved in the crops they’re experimenting with. They want to know of any criminal activity in the area, so the sheriff’s office sends them security alerts.”
“Then he’s got the right person’s ear.”
I headed for the door, but Baggetto got up to walk out to the street with me.
“Sorry if Roswell was a bit heavy-handed there. Sea-2-Sea execs get goofy about security because their corporate history includes hippies running amok in their operations back in the Vietnam era. Not to mention bomb threats from people who are opposed to genetically modified food.”
“Yep. As a nation we get hysterical over anticorporate protesters, but if a state government pollutes a city’s drinking water, the law-and-order brigades are strangely quiet.”
Baggetto shook his head. “I’m not going to debate politics with you, Ms. Warshawski. I just want to assure you that if the army can do anything to help you locate Emerald Ferring, all you have to do is call me.” He handed me a card with his cell-phone number on it.
I stuffed it into my jeans pocket and opened my car door. Peppy stuck her head out. “Is that why you drove over to Lawrence? I gave your CO’s secretary—the captain, Arata is it?”
“Arrieta,” he corrected.
“Right. I gave Captain Arrieta my contact information. You could have texted or e-mailed me.”
He laughed. “I came here to help out young Pinsen—he’s the senior cadet in the Army ROTC up on the hill. I’m giving a lecture there tomorrow, the Signal Corps and modern intelligence intercepts. You’re welcome to sit in.”
“That’s your specialty? Modern intelligence? I ought to sit in. The modern detective is probably like the modern army officer: these days we do most of our work at computers, not out on the ground.”
Baggetto bent to scratch Peppy’s ears. “You seem to be covering a fair amount of ground, Ms.— What can I call you? My name is Dante.”
I thought of all the names I’ve been called during my life, from the “Iffy-Genius” taunts of my childhood to “Pit-Dog,” “Donna Quixote,” or “Interfering Bitch.” I said, “Vic will do. . . . My mother used to quote Dante to me. She was Italian.”
He shook his head again, this time with regret. “I’m third-generation. I can order five different kinds of pasta, but that’s about it.”
I climbed into the car. Baggetto shut the door for me. “Good night, Vic.” He sketched a salute.
“Night, Dante.”
I drove off, thinking of the pet names my mother used for me. My father called both of us his pepper pots, because we were so hot-tempered. My mother used to quote Dante only to me, saying that her love for me was l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle—the love that moves the sun and all the other stars.
I felt a spurt of anger toward the Kiels: they were both living into old age, they still had their daughter. Didn’t either of them know what they were squandering?