SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15

“I don’t like this,” Lyle said.

Russ didn’t pause in his march up the stone steps from the parking lot to the Algonquin Waters Spa and Resort. There wasn’t a leaf to be seen on the stairs or the flower beds beside them. The staff probably vacuumed them up when no one was looking. “There’s nothing illegal in stopping by the resort to give our regards to the manager. We’re off duty.”

“Who are you kidding? If we’re not made as plainclothes thirty seconds after we hit the lobby, I’ll eat my shorts. I bet you’re even carrying under that coat.”

Russ glanced down at his navy jacket. “Can you tell?”

Lyle made a noise.

“How ’bout you?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“You?” Russ looked across Lyle to where Quentan Nichols climbed in lockstep with the two Millers Kill police.

“I always carry. I figure it’s like an American Express card. Don’t leave home without it.”

Lyle was right. With phone instructions to look “well dressed, but casual,” they had all turned out in coats and ties. Too dressed up to be end-of-the-season golfers, not spiffy enough to be businessmen.

“And him. I don’t see why he’s gotta be here. You don’t think they’ll remember his face?”

“I’m not trying to sneak us in, Lyle. We just need to not be here in our official capacity. Now can it.” They crossed the portico, Russ and Nichols smiling at the bellhops and the valets, Lyle scowling.

Inside, Russ steered them to the far edge of the reception desk, the one closest to the door leading into the offices. A quick glance reassured him that Ethan Stoner’s child bride wasn’t working this morning. No loud greetings of “Hi there, Chief Van Alstyne.” He leaned on the gleaming rosewood counter. “Good morning. I’d like to speak to Barbara LeBlanc, please.”

The young woman across from him looked at the three of them, stricken. “Is there anything wrong, sir?”

“No. We just want to speak to her. If she’s in.” He had assumed she would be. Saturday at 9:00 A.M. had to be one of the busiest times of the week.

The girl looked doubtful. “May I say who’s asking?”

Lyle sidled up to the counter and gave her a smile to charm the birds out of the trees. “Just tell her Lyle MacAuley’s back. With a … special request.”

“Oh!” The girl blinked rapidly. “I’ll go get her right away.” She vanished through the door.

Russ glanced at his second in command. “It never gets old for you, does it?”

“Nope.”

Barbara LeBlanc emerged from the office, her expression half welcoming, half wary. “Deputy Chief MacAuley? And—” Her gaze slid past Russ to Nichols. “Good heavens.”

Russ stepped forward. “Can we talk in private, Ms. LeBlanc?”

The manager nodded, her eyes still on Nichols. She led the way back into her office. She was in a silk blouse and form-fitting skirt, just like the last time they had been here, and just like the last time, Lyle kept his eyes on her posterior, jerking his gaze up to a respectable height a scant second before she turned and gestured for them to seat themselves.

“First,” Russ said, “let me explain that when Chief Warrant Officer Nichols was here at the end of August, he was working as an undercover investigator.” That was sort of true.

“But—”

“I know. We hadn’t been notified by the army.” Definitely true. “We’ve sorted out the mix-up. We’re here because we’re assisting with the inquiry in an informal capacity.”

“What does that mean?”

What did it mean? He was a terrible liar. He was getting spun in his own gobbledygook.

“Chief Nichols hasn’t yet been authorized to involve civilian law enforcement.” Lyle propped an arm against the edge of LeBlanc’s desk and leaned closer. “I always thought we had it bad. You can imagine what army bureaucracy is like.” He smiled. “He thinks there may be contraband, stolen from the U.S. Army, hidden right here in your hotel.”

Barbara LeBlanc shook her head. “Impossible.”

“I know, I know. He wanted to come in here with a warrant and a bunch of MPs.” Before the expression of horror could settle on the manager’s face, Lyle went on. “Now, the chief and I know BWI Opperman is the largest employer in town. We want to handle things discreetly.”

LeBlanc nodded. She gave Russ a look of melting gratitude.

“So what we’d like to do is this. You allow us behind the scenes in the basement. We’ll take a quiet, low-key look around the shipping dock and the storage areas and that big corridor.”

“Broadway.”

“Broadway, right. If we find anything, we’ll consult with you about the best way to deal with it without kicking up a fuss and scaring off the trade. If we don’t find anything”—he shrugged—“no one’s the wiser.”

Three minutes later, Barbara LeBlanc was opening the heavy door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY that divided the hotel into above and below stairs.

“He’s good,” Nichols said to Russ.

“Uh-huh.”

“I have to get back to reception,” LeBlanc said, “but if you need me for anything, you have my cell number.” More specifically, Lyle had her number. He ran a finger along one bushy eyebrow as she shut the door behind her, leaving them in the spottily lit concrete corridor.

“Let’s start with the shipping dock and work inward,” Russ said.

So they began the job of pushing and pulling and lifting and opening every box, carton, canister, and cart they could find. Russ discarded his jacket in the first five minutes and his tie in the next five. They cleared the shipping dock quickly. Its echoing, oil-stained interior had a few piles of boxes and several heaping laundry carts, but the efficient staff had obviously been moving goods in and out of the area as soon as they arrived.

The storage rooms were fast work as well—they were smaller spaces with industrial shelving up to the ceiling. Two were for the kitchen, stacked with ten-gallon jugs of mayonnaise and garbage cans loaded with cornmeal and flour. Three more looked like the staging room Russ had seen last summer—towers of toilet paper and tubloads of shampoo.

“Anything?” Russ emerged from the last supply closet with the smell of Lysol clogging his nose.

“Nothing.” Lyle sounded personally offended.

They all gazed down the length of Broadway. It ran from one end of the hotel to another. Empty, it would have been as wide as a two-lane road, but the stacks and shelves and dollies crowding either side narrowed it to a concrete gulch just wide enough for a golf cart or a loader.

Nichols put his hands on his hips and whistled. “Looks like the Federal Depository in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

“Why’n the hell didn’t we bring more help?” Lyle asked.

Russ didn’t point out that his deputy hadn’t even wanted Nichols along. He thought for a moment. “Would they have wanted it nearer to the employee entrance, or farther away?”

“I think they’d have to load it wherever there was room.” Nichols gestured toward a teetering jumble of gilt-painted chairs, some with cracked legs, some missing seats. “This is like a bad combination of your gramma’s attic and Home Depot.”

“Okay, then. Lyle, you and Quentan start up at this end. The left side. I’ll take the far end and yell if I need help moving anything. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“About the time I’m due to retire,” Lyle said.

Russ suspected his deputy was right, but he didn’t say anything. He hiked down the corridor and got to work.

Boxes and cartons and bundles strapped to pallets. Vacuum cleaners and lamps and pillows in plastic. Russ looked into and behind and around everything, wondering if the money had been broken down into briefcase-sized packages, wondering if it had gone missing between Plattsburgh and the resort and they were barking up the wrong tree, wondering why he was spending his Saturday here, in a place he loathed, instead of looking at properties with Clare, wondering where she was, what she was doing, what she was wearing—

“Russ! Get up here.” Lyle’s shout snapped him out of his reverie. Jesus H. Mud-Wrestling Christ. Love was making him soft in the head.

He trotted back up the corridor. “Look at this.” Nichols pointed to a narrow door set into the corridor. It must have swung inward, because boxes marked LATEX PAINT and H-455 AC FILTERS were stacked tight on either side.

“Locked?”

“Uh-huh. Deputy Chief MacAuley is on the phone with the manager right now.”

“She’s coming down with the keys.” MacAuley stepped back within hearing range, snapping his phone shut.

Within minutes, they heard the brisk tap-tap-tap of LeBlanc’s heels. She had pulled her chatelaine off her waistband and was flipping through the keys and cards. “Oh.” She stopped when she saw where they were. “I’m afraid that’s just the alcohol lockup. The wine cellar, if you will.” She held up a key. “Do you want to look anyway?”

“Yeah.” Russ tried to keep the doubt out of his voice.

She opened the door. It was, as promised, stacked with crates of booze and racks of bottles. No shrink-wrapped pallet. No stacks of cling-sealed money.

Russ walked away as the manager resealed the room. He listened with half an ear to Lyle, asking her about other rooms, asking her where a bookkeeper or a construction worker might go with no questions asked.

“I’m sorry,” LeBlanc said, “there’s really no order to the storage in this area. It’s just shove it in where you can. If it was important to be able to access something quickly, it would have been unpacked and put somewhere else. The garage, or the tool shed, or the power plant—this is a big complex.”

Important to be able to access something quickly. McNabb delivered a pallet here. He’d want to be able to find it again, no matter what outdated appliances or busted furniture got stacked on top or in front of it. So how would you mark it? Not on the floor. People would notice. Nothing right by the thing—it might get moved. He looked up, to the shadowy space above the hanging fluorescent lights. Cement blocks rose smooth and unmarked to where massive I-beams transected a dim, unfinished ceiling. Pipes and conduits and electrical wires, barely visible but there, open for fast repairs. Hard to reach, unless you were authorized to work in the area, but—he made a tossing motion, as if he had a ball in his hand. You could throw something.

He spotted it. A length of bright orange twine, the stuff you could pick up at any sporting goods store. Each end was tied to what looked to be, in the half-light, a stack of heavy-duty washers. A homemade bolo. Curled around a cold water pipe, hanging a few inches off either side. You’d never notice it unless you were looking straight up—and who would be staring past the lights instead of getting in and out as fast as possible?

“Here,” he said.

“What?” Nichols trotted down the corridor toward him. “How do you know?”

Russ pointed at the dangling cord.

“I’ll be damned,” Nichols whispered.

“Help me move this stuff.” He and Nichols started removing the plastic five-gallon buckets piled like a wall beneath the marker.

“Wait. Look.” Nichols leaned against the stack of boxes to the left of the buckets and pushed. The cardboard tower slid away, revealing a dolly, empty except for a blue plastic tarp. Nichols pulled it toward himself. It rolled easily out into the open corridor.

Peering into the narrow, shadowy space they had revealed, Nichols breathed in. “I think this may be it.”

“Let me see.” Russ replaced Nichols in the gap. He could see white opaque plastic stretched over a cracked and splintered wooden pallet. The corner closest to the wall had been ripped open and resealed with duct tape. Russ tried to reach it, but he couldn’t fit.

“Let me try.” Lyle was five inches shorter and a good fifty pounds lighter than Russ. He squeezed into the angular space sideways. Past the rest of the buckets, he was able to turn toward the wall. He got down on one knee. Russ could hear the ripping sound of tape being torn away.

“Well?” Russ wanted to shove the buckets aside and get in there himself.

Lyle grunted. Stood up. Shifted to the side and edged back toward them. He had a wad of heavy plastic in his hand.

“Well?”

Barbara LeBlanc butted up against Russ. “What is it?”

Lyle stepped free. “This is one of the empties.” He handed Russ the stiff, crumpled plastic, and then, like a magician producing a rabbit, held up more of the stuff, wrapped crudely around stacks and stacks of cash. Twenties, in bricks of five hundred, enough to fill a small suitcase.

“Oh. My. God.” Barbara LeBlanc’s voice was faint.

“Gotcha,” Russ said.