Page 117 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

“Go,” said the oldest. “I’ll take care of them.” He gave an unpleasant grin, one hand wrapped around the rock Cody had used to incapacitate one of the captors. “I sort of hope they break their zip ties.”

“I do not,” Jackson told him. “But there is help on the way.” He glanced at all three kids, and Cody held out his pack for the older boy. “Stay safe. Hide behind our rock if you want. It’s dry there because the tree kept the water off.”

“No worries,” said the oldest kid, turning his face toward the sky. “A little rain won’t hurt a thing.”

Jackson and Cody took off then, free of their packs and much lighter now.

Particularly since Jackson and Cody had both unzipped their weapons from the compact nylon-and-foam carry cases, and holstered them in the pancake holsters they’d worn just in case.

Jackson hated guns—had always hated them, even when he’d been on the force. But the chafe of the holster in the small of his back was a great comfort to him as the two of them madespectaculartime sprinting through the wet grass and the mud.

ELLERY GLANCEDaround the foyer as they entered, unaccountably disturbed by what he saw.

He understood what the setup was supposed to be. A grand entrance hall, with two staircases rising up on either side to take the family into the private parts of the house. Underneath the first landing, where the staircases met, was a grand door leading to a receiving room, and behind that there was probably a kitchen and a dining room. He figured the receiving room mightbe adjacent to a ballroom used for parties, but while he’d always come from money—and had gone to a few parties in his time—he had no head for the peacocking architecture of the disgustingly rich.

What worried him was the stripped-down furnishings of a house that was being very quickly disassembled, its most expensive items packed away first.

There were two niches on either side of the grand french doors leading to the receiving room, which were bare, although small silk area rugs, each one bearing the four-point imprint of what had probably been a pricey antique display stand, remained.

It was a small detail—but it was a telling one. The house was being stripped, and judging by the hastily rolled rugs—all of which bore the mark of a fine silk/wool blend on the back—stacked against the far wall of the foyer, it was being done in a hurry.

Almost as though the residents had maybe a day’s warning to clean house and get the hell away.

Ellery, Galen, and Taylor all exchanged uneasy glances.

“Perhaps,” Galen said, his drawl as unhurried as it always had been, “we are disturbing the people of this house at an inopportune time.”

Ellery’s mother turned toward the man who had opened the door for them. Thin and nervous looking in real life, Gannett Hoover bore himself like somebody who was used to making his soul disappear. Although he was dressed in a men’s catalogue of leisure clothes befitting a wealthy man in his “rustic country residence”—khaki slacks, loafers, and a cashmere zip-up sweater in an odd color between mauve and granite—Hoover, who should have been a lean, confident man with a politician’s polish, appeared harried and, well, almostgray.

“I’m sorry, Congressman Hoover,” she said, “I know you had some warning we were coming. We weren’t told you were in the process of moving.”

The smile Hoover gave them was a ghastly pulling back of thin lips to expose white teeth.

“Not at all,” he said faintly. “We’re just….” The corners of his mouth twitched up like a muscle spasm. “Cleaning. Spring cleaning. The living room is, uhm, relatively undisturbed.”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Galen shaking his head while trying to appear unalarmed.

Ellery was not that good of an actor.

“Sir,” he said bluntly, “are you well?”

Another one of those terrible smiles. “I’m fine. Fine. My, uhm… wife, she’s not well. She’s usually so good at uhm….” His face fell. “Greeting people. So good. I shall miss her today!” His voice cracked on the last word, and Ellery suddenly knew who one of the women in the bottom of the mineshaft had been.

And that made up his mind. “You know,” he said decisively, “I think we’ll go. We can come back tomorrow.” He spun on his heel and was pulled up short by a squat man, dressed impeccably in a suit, who might have been handsome a lifetime ago.

His once-blond hair was now a translucent stubble, and his sweet, disarmingly round face had gone jowly and hard in prison, but Ellery still recognized Newton Dwayne, aka Conway Schmitt.

“I think you should stay,” the man said, and his voice was absolutely transcendent, a lovely baritone, mellifluous and kind.

The voice of a murderous choir director, and it gave Ellery the shivers.

“Why is that, Mr. Dwayne?” Taylor asked sharply. “We’re here to discuss some of your current business dealings, and you are obviously in disarray. We do realize we’re here at theattorney general’s request, but I’m sure if she’d known there was illness in the house she could have—”

Dwayne made a short slicing motion with his hand in an attempt to cut Ellery’s mother off, but he didn’t really know who he was dealing with.

“We are not your enemy, Mr. Dwayne,” she said, her voice reasonable. “We are merely here to—”

And that’s when he pulled out the gun.

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