Page 24

Missy didn’t necessarily obey all traffic signs, signals, or speed limits as she travelled to meet Chuck.

It was highly important they get into Oliphant’s house and out again quickly, before the rogue agent or agents could mobilize and destroy possible evidence. Since Baskins could only keep Fleischerman busy for just so long—and who knew how much time Georgio would spend on the trip up and back from the wilds of Maine—they had the smallest window of opportunity to get things accomplished.

Not even an hour later she drove slowly past the nicely maintained suburban home that had been Oliphant’s. Missy perused his driveway for cars. Seeing none, she found a small turnaround spot on the road a few hundred feet away where she could still see the house in question. She parked her car off to the side, and shutting off her ignition, turned in her seat and gazed at the outside of the home. What she saw was a surprisingly traditional colonial with all the middle-class bells and whistles that came along with it. The man’s yard was neat, he had some artsy thing hanging from a tree, and it looked like the residence itself had just received a fresh coat of paint.

For a moment, Missy wondered if Oliphant was married, but she quickly dismissed it. She had seen the man hitting openly on women at various Bureau gatherings without trying to hide the fact. It had always seemed creepy, his smarmy approach to the female sex, but as long as he hadn’t aimed his attention at Missy—which he hadn’t—she’d been able to ignore his boorish behavior. As had so many other smart women.

The care that had been taken of the home’s appearance, probably had to do with a team of landscape people or a steward of some kind.

A knock on Missy’s window had her jumping. She turned her head abruptly.

Well, shit.

She placed a hand to her rapidly beating heart as she caught sight of Smalley, then pushed open her door.

“Cripes, Chuck. You scared the crap out of me,” she scolded.

“Hell-of-an agent you are,” he scoffed grumpily. “If I’d had a gun, you’d be dead right now.”

“I don’t think so,” she countered. “I knew I was safe. I had you made a few minutes ago.”

His brows went up as if he didn’t believe her.

“You parked your car down a side-street three houses back,” she continued, “and last I saw, you were sneaking your way into the woods toward what I assume was a back egress to Oliphant’s property. There were no other people around; no cars with anyone in them. Nothing and no one in the area but you. So… I was safe. Where the hell did you come from, anyway?” she grumbled.

“I snuck up using that hedgerow as cover.” He pointed to some lush greenery between Oliphant’s home and the next.

Missy didn’t want to admit that if Chuck had been a bad-guy, he definitely would have gotten the drop on her, but kudos to him. “Okay. Fine. I suck,” she huffed. “Now, are we going in, or what?”

“Yeah. There’s a window around the rear that isn’t locked. I’ll give you a boost in, and you can open the door off the deck for me.”

“Any alarms?” Missy questioned, following behind him as they made their way toward the back of the property. They needed to be extremely careful. The last thing they wanted was for the local police to come down on them for their friendly little B some plated, some not.

Then there were the brightly colored jewels Oliphant had encrusting the damndest things; the backs of dining room chairs, a very loud looking coffee table, flatware that had been laid out. And again, the gems on all of them looked to be genuine.

Missy’s head was on a swivel as she made her way through all the over-the-top opulence and went to open the back door for Chuck, snapping quick pictures with her phone on the way toward him.

“Wait ‘til you getaloaduv Oliphant’s brothel,” she snorted. “I guess since the man couldn’t be outrightly flamboyant with his money, he spent his money covertly, picking up black-market, high-end items with which to decorate his outwardly middle-American, inwardly gilded slice of heaven.”

“Gross.” Chuck stated, looking around in disgust.

He’d used precisely the word Missy would have, to sum things up.

“Exactly,” Missy concurred. “Now. Where should we start?”

Chuck didn’t mess around.

“You take this floor, I’ll take the second,” he directed. “Then we’ll switch off to make sure we don’t miss anything. Remember, Baskins told us not to mess the place up in case our suspects come by—which they will—to do their own recon.”

“You got it,” Missy assured him. “I’ll snap more pictures of anything remotely suspicious, and if I find a computer or computers…?”

Chuck reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of thumb-drives. “Take a few of these. Download from any hard-drives you see.”

“Smart.” Missy grabbed some of the small storage devices, then went off to explore while Chuck did the same.

By the time she’d cleared the third room, Missy was incredulous.

How many big screen TV’s does one man need , she asked herself? There were actually two in his living room alone. Expensive crap lay everywhere; watches, gold chains, every device known to man still in boxes that read, “As Seen on TV”. If it all hadn’t been placed in such an orderly fashion, she’d say that Oliphant was a hoarder, but “too much money to burn” was closer to hitting the nail on the head where his spending was concerned.

Missy opened every drawer and looked under each piece of furniture. She explored closets, glanced behind pictures for possible hidden safes, and scuffed up area-rugs looking for hidey-holes in the floor.

Nothing.

Frustrated, she went to the bottom of the stairs just as Chuck was coming down.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” she responded. “No computers, no caches of paperwork, nada.”

“Same,” he grunted.

“Is there an attic?” she pondered.

“Yeah. I pulled down the stairs and went up for a quick look, but the place is only home to insulation and mouse droppings.”

“Nice.” Not. “I may have to skip that.”

They traded places, did their thing, then reconvened on the first floor where they confirmed each other’s non-findings.

“Basement, then?” Missy asked.

“It’s the only option left,” Chuck agreed, and without conferring, they walked directly to a door that they’d clearly both opened during their independent searches; where they’d seen the stairs leading down.

Missy went first, and Chuck followed.

Unlike the rest of the house, the basement was…plain. And sparse.

There was a washer and dryer against one wall, with a few items of clothing and some towels folded neatly on top. On one side of the large, open area, stood a workbench with some basic tools. The water heater and furnace took up a minimal amount of space, and a bunch of clothing in plastic bags hanging on a long rack against one wall was the only other thing down there at all.

The floor was cement, as were the walls.

It looked like they’d hit another dead end, but…

Missy’s brain suddenly sparked to life. “The upstairs footprint is larger on that side of the house than the basement appears to be,” she said, pointing toward the hanging clothes.

“Fake wall?” Chuck questioned, his eyebrows raised.

“Let’s hope so.” Missy walked over to the area in question and shoved the clothing aside.

Cinderblocks .

At first glance, the wall of masonry didn’t look like anything too suspect, except that the rest of the basement was made from poured concrete.

“Why would this one wall be block-construction?” she pondered.

“Look.” Smalley pointed to a seam that didn’t quite match up. “Maybe it’s not a real wall.”

“A secret room? You think?” Missy marveled. “That’s right out of a dumb spy movie.”

“Maybe Oliphant was a dumb spy,” Chuck countered without a twitch of his lips.

“Touché,” Missy snickered, and started looking for a mechanism that would open the ill-fitting pieces.

Several minutes in, she’d had no luck.

“I’m going to go with the old-fashioned method,” Chuck stated, walking over to pick up a crowbar from the workbench.

“Wait,” Missy told him as he came back and was about to place the end of the prying implement into the crack. “We’re not supposed to be here, remember? We need to pad that tool so none of the cement crumbles and gives us away.”

Grabbing a thin dishtowel from the stack of clean laundry on the dryer, she was attempting to stuff it in the small crack as a buffer, when her fingers hit something small and pointy.

With nothing to lose, she gave the protrusion a firm tap. The wall seemed to separate a bit more, and…

“Damn. It’s just a facade that looks like the rest of the blocks,” Smalley marveled.

Missy hooked her fingers into the gap and gently pulled.

A section of cement-facing, less than an inch in depth, approximately three feet wide and six feet tall, swung easily away. A flat plywood door lay behind.

“Looks like we’ve found the Holy Grail,” Missy grinned.

Even Chuck, normally taciturn, couldn’t hide his glee. “Looks like it. You want to do the honors?” He made a courtly gesture toward the recessed door where a small ring-opener was carved flush into the wood.

Missy smiled, reached forward to tease out the round pull, and tugged.

Shit.

The door didn’t budge, and Smalley actually laughed this time, but good-naturedly. “It’s a pocket door, Missy. It slides.”

It was then Missy noticed the lack of hinges, and she wanted to smack herself in the head. “Thanks. I guess I was too excited to notice.” Was she losing her edge? She hoped not. Being predominantly on desk-duty these days might have dulled her edge in the field.

“Second time’s a charm.” She grabbed the latch again, and this time the door slid.

An automatic light went on inside.

Chuck whistled.

“It looks like we’ve found the Holy Grail.”

On one far wall, atop a long wooden desk, sat a bank of three computers. Several filing cabinets also dotted the room, but the thing that caught both their attentions at once was the large rock that sat atop one of the cabinets.

It was big. Very big, and had clearly been cracked or cut down the middle for display purposes.

Missy was no expert, but she assumed that the bright flecks, flakes, and veins running throughout the rock were gold.

“Is that…?” she questioned.

“Oh, yeah,” Smalley confirmed. “Definitely gold quartz. Oliphant must have kept it as a display piece to remind him how rich he was getting off his ill-gotten gains.”

Missy shook her head in awe, but remembered to pull her phone from her pocket and take several pictures of it.

“You want the computers or the files?” Smalley asked, once she was finished.

“I’ll do files. I’m better with paper, and you’re the computer expert.”

They both got to work rapidly, since they’d already wasted so much time on the upper floors of the house. Who knew how long they had to get everything documented and get out; how much time Baskins had bought them?

With that in mind, they used an economy of movement, uncovering potentially damning documents to photograph, and down-loading off hard drives.

Nothing was over-the-top protected, thank goodness. Oliphant, in his arrogance at having his lair hidden away, hadn’t thought to safeguard his system beyond some basic passwords, no doubt believing the false wall would be enough.

Wrong.

Smalley easily accessed the hard-drives.

Twenty minutes later, after finishing up, neither Missy nor Smalley could be sure what, exactly, they’d been able to access, or if any of it would help. But they didn’t dare waste a moment more reviewing the things they’d purloined. That would happen, in detail, once Smalley was safely back at the office with everything in hand.

They went back out the way they’d come in, and bid each other goodbye before sneaking to their respective vehicles, knowing they’d meet up again tomorrow morning to do the “real” walkthrough with Baskins.

Of course, by that time, they hoped they wouldn’t have to. Baskins was posting two agents here—within the hour—for surveillance, and with luck, they’d catch someone trying to break in.

That could wrap the case up, then Cobble would be safe.

Missy hoped that was how things would go down, but she wouldn’t hold her breath.

Getting into her car she quickly sent everything she’d taken pictures of, to Smalley before taking off.

She wasn’t going to mess with any of it herself, tonight. She was headed back to Cobble. If Baskins’ surveillance didn’t produce any results, it would be her last night alone with Cobble before they had to “out” him. Then, until the case was closed, he’d be placed somewhere as yet unknown to even Missy. She’d be with him, but there’d be other people around by then, for sure.

Regardless, at least for one night, Coble was entirely in her hands.

And she was going to take advantage of it.