Stuart Woods - Hothouse Orchid

“All right,” Hurd said, “we’ll keep you out of the official record on the case.”

“Thank you, Hurd. I appreciate your understanding.”

Hurd got to his feet, and Lauren followed him out the front door. Holly waved them off, then turned back into the house. She had to shower and change before Josh came for her.

Josh arrived, and they took their drinks outside to Holly’s deck and sat down in comfortable chairs to watch the light change on the ocean as the sun went down.

“I ran into the county ME at the hospital this afternoon,” Josh said. “He told me something interesting about one of your crime victims, the one you found on the beach.”

“Tell me,” Holly said.

“He checked for needle marks on her neck, and he found how the Rohypnol had been administered. It wasn’t by needle, it was by gun.”

“I don’t follow,” Holly said.

“A vaccination gun,” Josh explained. “Surely you had one of those used on you during your years in the army.”

“Yes, you’re right,” she said, “but I remember those things as attached by hoses and electrical cords to things.”

“There’s a version that holds a vial of something and is powered by a fairly small battery, the way power tools are these days.”

“Still, it wouldn’t be something you could stick in your pocket, would it?”

“If you had a big enough pocket,” Josh pointed out. “It would be easier to deal with than a hypodermic syringe. You’d just press it against the neck and pull the trigger.”

“Where would a perpetrator obtain one?” Holly asked.

“Probably from the manufacturer or maybe even from a medical supply store-there’s a big one in Vero Beach.”

“Okay, I buy it.”

“It makes the perpetrator more interesting, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Holly said. “It also adds another way to find him. The police could visit that medical supply store in Vero and find out whom they’ve sold the things to. Anybody who wasn’t a doctor or a hospital purchasing agent would stand out as a suspect.”

“I think maybe I should have been a cop,” Josh said. “I enjoy knowing about this stuff, even if I am a couple of steps removed from the process.”

“Well,” Holly said, “maybe you did miss your calling, but it wasn’t as a cop.”

“Really? What should I have been.”

She laughed. “A porn star,” she said.

Josh blushed. “First time I’ve been told that,” he said.

“I don’t believe it. When you’re carrying around that sort of equipment, it gets noticed.”

“Okay, it’s been mentioned,” he admitted, “but nobody ever suggested I should have been in porn films.”

“You know what I think you need?” Holly asked.

“What?”

“Another audition.” She took his hand and led him into the house and upstairs.

“We’ve got a dinner reservation in half an hour,” he said.

“We’ll manage,” Holly said, unzipping his fly.

Teddy Fay awoke as the sun’s rays struck his face. His right arm was numb. Adele Mason’s head lay across it, and her leg was thrown over his. Gently, he extricated his arm and lifted her knee so that he could recover his leg. He slithered silently out of bed, walked to the window and looked out, opening and closing his hand, trying to get his circulation going. The sun had just broken the horizon. He closed the venetian blinds, walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

He shaved, got into a shower, soaped up and then rinsed in cold water. He tiptoed into the bedroom, found some shorts in a drawer and put them on, then he went into the kitchen. He had managed a trip to a grocery the day before, and he put on some coffee and fried bacon in the microwave while he toasted a couple of English muffins and scrambled some eggs.

“Smells good in there,” Adele called from the bathroom.

“Breakfast in five minutes,” he called back, then he heard the shower running.

She came into the kitchen wearing only a towel and kissed him on a shoulder. “Jack, do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

“Sixty,” he lied. “How about you?”

“Forty-nine,” she replied.

“You look wonderful,” he said, emptying the eggs onto two plates.

“You are wonderful,” she said, “at least in bed.”

“Thank you ma’am.” He laughed.

“Oh, I forgot something,” she said, hurrying from the room. She came back with the local newspaper. “I called the paper yesterday and got you a subscription; I always do that with a new client.”

“Thank you,” Teddy said and set the paper on the little table.

They washed down their breakfast with fresh orange juice and finished it with coffee.

Teddy sat back in his chair and picked up the paper. “My goodness,” he said, “according to this you’ve got a serial rapist/murderer in this town.”

“I’m afraid so,” Adele said, “and I hope it’s not going to be bad for business.”

“Why? Doesn’t everyone want to live in a town with murderous thugs?”

“Stop it. I’m serious.”

“I know you are. I’m glad I arrived when I did, or I’d be a suspect, being the new guy in town.”

“What sort of work do you do, Jack?” she asked.

“I’m retired.”

“From what?”

“I’ve invented things all my life, the sort of gadgets you see in those infomercials on TV.” This was not a lie; those little inventions had made him a comfortably wealthy man, and the continuing royalties went, eventually, into his Cayman bank account.

“Can you make a living doing that?”

“You can if you have a few great sellers and if you’ve negotiated a good royalty agreement.”

“Why did you retire?”

“Oh, I just got tired of it, I guess. A few months from now, though, I’ll get an idea for something, and I’ll be back at work. I’ve retired before.”

“Were you ever married?”

“Yes, but she died four years ago of ovarian cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I, but I’ve had time to get over it.”

“What brought you to Vero Beach?”

“I thought I’d like to live in a place with a warm winter, and I read something about Vero in a magazine or a newspaper, I forget which.” He smiled at her. “So far, I like it just fine.”

Adele looked at the kitchen clock. “Oh, I’ve got to run; I’m showing a house at eight thirty.” She went back into the bedroom and came back ten minutes later, clothed and made up.

Teddy walked her to the door and gave her a kiss. “Later in the week?”

She got out her calendar. “When’s good for you?”

“Tomorrow night, here? I’ll cook you dinner.”

“You’re on.” She ran for her car.

Teddy went back to the table and finished reading the article about the crimes. It made him angry to think there was some animal hurting women out there. He’d like to get a shot at the guy, he thought.

He read slowly through the paper, getting a sense of the locality, when he saw a familiar face in an ad. It was one of the women he’d seen at the airport: “Ginny Barker, Certified Flight Instructor, Private and Commercial certificates,” and a phone number. She must be related to Holly Barker, he thought.

He went to his computer and Googled Holly, finding news stories about cases she had solved when she had been chief of police in Orchid Beach, a neighbor of Vero. He learned that she had retired from the army after a career as an MP and that her father lived here, too. Ginny Barker was his wife. He wondered how Holly had made the transition to the Agency.

It was interesting to know more about a woman he had once taken to the Metropolitan Opera, in New York, when he had been disguised as an elderly Jewish gentleman, retired from the garment industry. He wondered if she’d ever figured out who he was. Probably so, for she had turned up on the island of St. Marks, where he had also fooled her for a while. Then she had taken that shot at him.