Anna kept working the phone on their way to York, and the results kept getting stranger.
With no phone number or street address for Audra Vollmer, they decided to call the local police for help.
“The Currituck County Sheriff’s Office looks like the best bet,” Anna said, scrolling a website. “The sheriff is a woman. Looks like the no-nonsense type.”
She called the headquarters in the town of Maple, and spoke to a Sergeant Crosley while Henry listened. Anna explained who she was and said she was trying to reach one of their older residents, Audra Vollmer, because she was concerned for her safety.
“Oh, we’re well aware of Miss Vollmer. She’s been down here a good while now. Keeps to herself and likes it that way.”
“Right, and I don’t want to disturb her. But, like I said, I’m worried about her, so if you knew some way to get in touch. Maybe a phone number?”
“I wouldn’t worry about Audra. She’s got quite the security apparatus out on her island.”
“Her island?”
“Yes, ma’am, out in Currituck Sound. Don’t even know if it has a name, so we just call it Audra’s. Tell you what, though. The boat from our beach patrol unit over in Corolla usually runs by there a couple times a day, so if you’d like we could check on her next time through and pass along your name and number.”
“That would be great.” Anna gave him her particulars, as Sergeant Crosley put it. “Oh, and if you could please add that I’m the daughter of Helen Shoat.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
The connection ended.
“Security apparatus?” Anna said.
“Probably just cop speak for a nice alarm system.”
“Nothing that Delacroix and Gilley couldn’t get through in about ten seconds.”
They drove on in silence, worried they’d be too late, and their mood didn’t improve much when they saw Claire Saylor’s house. It was a fine-looking, two-story stone home with black shutters and a slate roof, on a wooded lot with azaleas and boxwoods. There were neighbors to either side, but all the greenery made it feel secluded, which, under the circumstances, didn’t seem like a good thing. The driveway was empty, the garage door was shut, and all the curtains were drawn.
“Looks dead,” Henry said, as they eased into the driveway.
“Poor choice of words.”
They strolled to the porch, listening for any sounds of life from within. Anna knocked.
“Who is it?” It sounded like the young woman Anna had spoken to earlier. Henry saw movement behind the peephole.
“Anna Shoat. I’m here with my friend.”
“Just a second.”
Muffled consultation, same as before, followed by a brief delay before the lock finally rattled. The door flew open, and they immediately found themselves staring down the barrels of two revolvers—one on the left, one on the right, held by two policemen.
“Hold it right there,” the cop on the right barked. “Keep your hands where I can see them and walk slowly through the door.” They stepped inside. The second cop holstered his gun and came forward to frisk them.
“What the hell?” Anna said, but Henry warned her off with a look.
“Just do as they say,” he said.
“Smart man,” the second cop said. “They’re clean.”
“Check their IDs.”
He took Henry’s wallet from his back pocket and got Anna’s from her handbag.
“Checks out. Same names she gave over the phone.”
Only then did the other cop lower his gun and call out over his shoulder.
“You two can come out now.”
A swinging door flew open and a young man and woman appeared from the kitchen, wide-eyed and moving cautiously toward the living room. They sat on the couch while the cops stood guard.
“Take a seat,” the man said, gesturing toward a couple of chairs that someone had brought in from the dining room. A fair amount of planning seemed to have gone into preparing for their arrival.
“Sorry about all that,” the first cop said. “But after what happened this morning we’re all a little skittish. And until we know more about what’s going on…”
“What happened this morning?” Anna asked.
The young woman answered.
“They found her car. Over at the mall, York Galleria.”
“Claire’s?”
She nodded.
“The door was open.” She paused and shut her eyes a second. “There was blood on the front seat. But no Claire.”
Anna put her hands to her mouth and lowered her head. Too late. Probably for Audra as well. Every last member of the Sisterhood, gone.
“When do they think all this happened?” Henry asked. “I’m Henry Mattick, by the way, and this is Anna Shoat.”
“Skip and Susan Turner,” the man on the couch said. They all shook hands and settled back into their seats.
“Are you her daughter?” Anna asked.
“Oh, no. We’re the neighbors, from next door. Friends, too. I don’t think Claire has ever mentioned any kind of family. As for when this happened, yesterday I was out picking tomatoes from our vegetable garden, and Claire came over to chat. She invited us to dinner and then asked if Skip and I could help keep an eye on her place for the next few days. She said she was going to run over to Sears and be back around six for dinner.
“Well, I said yes, we’d love to. So, six o’clock rolls around and we knocked at the door, and nobody answered. We checked around back in her garden and she wasn’t there, either, and the whole house was locked up. We waited a while and then opened our bottle of wine and sipped it out on our front porch, figuring she’d show up all in a whirl with a big take-out order or something.”
“She’s been known to do that for dinner parties,” Skip added, smiling.
“Yes. But after an hour or so we figured it must have slipped her mind, or maybe she got tied up on something else. I did look out the window just before we went to bed and noticed there still wasn’t a light on, and that worried me a little. But I figured she must have come home without us noticing, and went straight to bed.
“Anyway, first thing this morning I walked over here and the place was still locked up, and when I checked the garage her car wasn’t there, so that’s when I called the police. And they told me they’d just found her car over in the parking lot at Sears, with the door ajar and the dome light on and, well, you heard the rest, about the blood and everything.”
Her voice was breaking by the end. Skip put his arm around her, gave her a hug, and she shook her head.
“I let the police in to search,” Skip said. “Claire gave us a spare key. We’ve tried her cell phone, but there’s no signal, and they didn’t find it in her car.”
“What’s she like?” Anna asked. “Claire, I mean.”
“She’s great. Like no one we’ve ever met.” She turned toward Skip and he nodded.
“I mean, look at this place,” he said. “The paintings. The rugs. The prints and artifacts from God knows where. She never dwells on it, but enough little dribs and drabs come out along the way for you to realize that she’s been pretty much everywhere.”
“I think she might even have lived in Paris for a while,” Susan said, her eyes going wide.
“She did,” Henry said. “For at least thirty-four years, as far as we’ve been able to tell.”
The Turners’ mouths dropped open in such perfect synchronization that it was like watching a couple of marionettes. Henry had to hold back a laugh.
“That long?” she said.
“Yeah. Then there’s the whole CIA thing.”
“CIA?” Their mouths remained agape.
“She worked for them in Paris.”
It took a few seconds for the implications to sink in.
“You don’t think that all this has anything to do with…?”
“Possibly,” Henry said.
“Like the Russians or something?” Skip said.
“Or maybe some kind of terrorists?” Susan said.
“No, no. We think it’s, well…”
“A little more domestic,” Anna said. “And personal. But it’s nothing you or the other neighbors would have to worry about.”
“How did you guys get involved?” Susan asked.
“My mom used to work with Claire, ages ago, over in Europe. But I didn’t find out any of that until she and my father were…they were killed a few weeks ago. And that’s why we came looking for Claire.”
“Your parents were killed?” Susan asked, her voice almost a whisper.
“It’s a long story,” Anna said. “But it might be connected.”
“Wow,” Skip said. “But what about you guys? Are you in danger?”
Anna and Henry looked at each other.
“Get back to us in a week or so and we’ll let you know.”
They laughed uneasily as the two cops returned from the kitchen.
Skip then asked, “Do the police know about all this? The whole CIA thing?”
The first cop stopped in his tracks.
“CIA?”
“Another long story,” Anna said. “Where would you like us to start?”
“How ’bout at the beginning.”
He got out a notepad and settled onto an easy chair while the other cop stood behind him.
Anna told the story in broad brushstrokes, focusing more on the Sisterhood letters and what they’d discovered recently about Gilley and Delacroix than on her brother and her parents. The whole time, Skip and Susan Turner stared as if they were at the movies, raptly attentive. When Anna finished, the cop with the notebook whistled and said, “Maybe it’s time to get the feds involved.”
“Shit,” his partner said. “Pardon my French. You’re probably right. But that’s not our decision to make.”
“We better go report all this in. And how ’bout if I get some cell numbers for both of you. Will you be around a while longer?”
“Probably,” Henry said. “But we’re easy to reach.”
The policemen said goodbye. It felt like the end of a dinner party, when the guests begin drifting home. But now Susan, having had time to digest everything, was more curious than ever.
“Why York?” she said.
“Excuse me?” Anna replied.
“I mean, I’d already wondered that a few times about Claire, but now even more so. Why would a woman who’d spent thirty-four years working in Paris for the CIA, and who’s been just about everywhere, why would she end up here, of all places?”
“Did she have family here?”
“Not that she’s ever said.”
“Was she ever married?”
“If she was, she hides it well. I mean, it’s a nice neighborhood and everything, but we wouldn’t be here, either, if it wasn’t for Skip’s job.”
“No idea,” Henry said.
Anna shrugged.
Another mystery, another anomaly.
“I guess we should all go,” Susan said. “Leave this place in peace.”
Henry looked at Anna, and they both thought the same thing at once.
“Actually,” she said, “do you mind if we have a look around first?”
Susan and Skip exchanged a glance as if suddenly suspicious. Then Anna explained about the most recent letter in the correspondence between the three women, the one in which Claire acknowledged receipt of “the parcel” from Anna’s mom, and pledged to guard it with her life. Not only did Susan and Skip consent, they eagerly joined in. It wasn’t every day in the suburbs of York that you got to search the home of an ex-spy.
They proceeded quickly but respectfully, taking care to not make a mess. It was indeed an elegant house. The closet in the master bedroom was its own revelation. A vast and stylish wardrobe for any and all occasions, from dresses to gowns to shoes of every variety, everything in its place. This was no farmhouse wife, like Helen Shoat. This was someone who had remained in close touch with the wider world.
“Tell me something,” Henry asked Anna. “Does this look to you like the closet of a woman who shops at Sears?”
“More to the point. Does this look like the closet of a woman who would admit to her next-door neighbor that she shops at Sears?”
They smiled and moved on.
But they found no strange records, no letters, no inexplicable correspondence. No papers at all, in fact, except the commonplace homeowner detritus of bills and warranties and receipts.
The only oddity was a brand-new reel-to-reel tape recorder, still in the box it had come in, although the packing materials had been removed, indicating it may have been used at least once. They found it just inside the stairwell leading from the kitchen to the basement, perched on the landing as if she’d recently set it aside for storage.
“Oh, that thing,” Susan said, laughing. “She came over a few weeks ago asking if we had one she could borrow. We didn’t, of course. I don’t think anybody has one of those anymore. So she went online, and the nearest place you could buy one right away was at some specialty audio store down in Baltimore, fifty miles away. So off she went. She never did say why she needed it.”
But Henry and Anna had stopped listening to Susan. They were too preoccupied by the idea that Claire had suddenly needed a reel-to-reel tape recorder.
“The parcel, don’t you think?” Anna said. “It must be a tape.”
“And the timing’s perfect.”
“Let’s keep looking.”
They checked inside the box for the recorder. But there was no tape mounted on the spindles. Nor did they find any tapes—or any nine-by-thirteen padded envelope—down in the basement, or up in the attic, or anywhere else. Like Helen Shoat, Claire Saylor must have kept her correspondence with the Sisterhood in a safer and more sacred space.
They were about to give up when Henry said to Susan Turner, “You mentioned that you had a spare key. Did she have one for your house?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know where she keeps it?”
“Sure. She showed us.”
They followed Susan into the kitchen. She rummaged through a wicker basket where keys and other odds and ends were piled together, and quickly located a key with a red ribbon attached.
“Right here.”
Henry pulled the basket across the counter and poked around. Seconds later he plucked out a small, numbered key that looked exactly like the one for Helen Shoat’s UPS letter box.
“Look familiar?” he said.
Anna smiled.
“Henry and I have an errand to run. But we may need to get back in a little later to use that new tape recorder. Would it be all right if we borrowed your key to the house?”
Skip looked hesitant, but a smile from Susan did the trick.
“Just drop it off in our mailbox when you’re done. But only if you promise to tell us later what you found.”
“Deal.”
They looked up the nearest UPS Store, which was only a few miles away. The mailbox was the same size as Helen’s. The key fit. The only item inside was a nine-by-thirteen padded envelope that had been shipped from Stevensville, Maryland, about two weeks earlier. The parcel. Claire had either stashed her Sisterhood letters somewhere else or had taken them with her, in which case they might be gone for good.
Inside the envelope were two documents, one of them folded and rubber-banded to an old cassette tape, plus two smaller padded envelopes, both labeled “Alt-Moabit Safe House,” and both marked with the same date from October 1979. “Afternoon” was written on one, and “Night” on the other.
“My mother’s handwriting,” Anna said. She opened them. Each held a reel of audiotape. They ran to the car.
“What are the documents?” Henry said, as they made their way back to Claire’s house.
“The one that was clipped to the cassette looks like a transcript from an interview, probably from the cassette. It’s dated about ten days after those others, from October of ’79. Good God!”
“What?”
“The transcript says the interview was recorded in Paris. And my mother did the interview. With somebody named Marina. No last name.”
“A cryptonym, maybe? The right people would probably know exactly who she was. What were they talking about?”
“Robert, it looks like. Kevin Gilley. From something that had happened earlier that year.”
“An assassination?”
“No.” Anna’s voice trailed off. She had turned to the second page and was scanning the words as fast as she could. “Looks like it’s about something that happened to Marina personally.”
“Something Gilley did?”
“Yes, she…This is terrible.”
“What?”
“He raped her. In a safe house in Marseille. She says it here. Oh, God, and it’s very graphic. He fucking raped her! One of his own agents, and in a CIA safe house.”
“That would explain why he’d go looking for your mom. Killing people with Agency sanction? They’ll cover for you on that until your dying breath. But raping your own agents as a personal sidelight?” Henry shook his head. “This stuff must be the ammunition they were talking about—Claire, Audra, and your mom. They were just waiting for the right moment to use it.”
Anna’s eyes got wide, and she turned to look out the back window of the car.
“Anything interesting back there?” Henry asked.
“No. But I’m not sure I’d know the difference. We need to find someplace safe for all this stuff.”
“We need to find someplace safe for us, don’t you think? And what should we do about the Turners, not to mention the cops? If all of them start yakking, then everybody will know exactly what we’re up to.”
“And we’ll be as dead as my mom and dad.”
They drove on in silence a few seconds longer.
“You know,” Anna said, “when we were sitting around Claire’s house with the Turners, all of this felt like a big treasure hunt, or a manhunt, my chance to even the score. I’ll bet my mom and Claire felt that way, too. They probably took a lot more precautions than us, and look at what it got them. Audra, too, for all we know.”
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
“What’s the other document?” Henry asked.
She shuffled through the papers, trying to refocus.
“It’s a field report from Claire, from March of ’79. She seems to have walked in on a rape. Gilley and some agent at another safe house, this one in Paris.”
“So he was a serial offender.”
“And from the looks of it, no one ever did a thing about it.”
They were in a somber mood as they pulled up in front of Claire’s. Henry drove around the corner to park out of sight like the cops had done. They doubled back on foot, and crossed through the Turners’ backyard.
“Don’t open any blinds or curtains,” he said. “We’ll play the tape in the basement.”
They set up the recorder on top of the washing machine. It was a little spooky down there, with deep shadows and a few cobwebs, plus a damp, earthy smell. The only light was the glow of an overhead 60-watt bulb with a chain pull.
They decided to proceed chronologically. Anna took the reel marked “afternoon” and set it on the spindle. She threaded the tape through the channels and onto the uptake reel, which, in her nervousness, led to some fumbling and swearing. Finally, everything was ready to roll.
Anna drew a deep breath.
“Here we go.”
She pressed the button for play.