Page 139 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Chapter 67

Raina Kirk put the updated files relating to the contract for the murder of Helen Spencer into a large envelope. She wrote the address with a neat hand. She would drop it off at the post office later.

She removed the remaining files from a locked cabinet and put them into her briefcase.

The files weren’t the only items in the case. There was also several thousand dollars in cash.

She closed the briefcase and locked it. She left it sitting on her desk while she crossed the room to put on her coat and the adorable little felt hat that she had bought the day before. With its upturned brim and high crown trimmed with a jaunty feather, it was currently the height of fashion. The instant she had spotted it in the department store window she knew it was exactly the hat for her.

She glanced at the telegram on her desk. It had been delivered early the previous morning before Graham Enright had arrived at the office. Fortunately she had been there to receive it.

REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT JULIAN ENRIGHT DIED IN A CAR CRASH IN BURNING COVE, CALIF. THE REMAINS ARE BEING HELD IN A LOCAL MORGUE. FOR DETAILS CONTACT DET. BRANDON, BURNING COVE POLICE DEPARTMENT. CONDOLENCES.

She picked up the telegram and took one last look around the office. All was in order. The plant in the corner had been watered. The desktop was clear. The typewriter was covered. It was an office that any secretary could be proud to call her own.

It was time to leave.

She crossed the room and opened the door of her employer’s inner sanctum. Graham Enright was in the same position he had been in when she last peeked into the office—slumped over his desk. The delicate china cup from which he had taken his last swallow of coffee lay in pieces on the polished oak floor.

Graham Enright had been dead since yesterday morning. The body was quite cold.

She put the telegram on the desk.

Satisfied, she left the inner office, closing the door very quietly, as she always did. A well-trained secretary never slammed doors. She pulled on her gloves, picked up the briefcase, her handbag, and the envelope, and let herself out into the hall.

With luck it would be quite some time before Graham Enright’s body was discovered—days, perhaps. The janitors were called in only to clean when authorized to do so by Graham Enright himself, who always supervised the process.

When someone eventually did find the corpse, the assumption would be that a grief-stricken Enright had taken his own life after learning of the death of his only son and heir.

Anyone who thought to check the secretary’s calendar would learnthat, shortly before his death, Graham, a generous employer, had sent her off for a monthlong visit to relatives in Pennsylvania.

There were no relatives in Pennsylvania or anywhere else for that matter, but no one would think to question that tiny, insignificant fact, Raina thought.

When you discovered that you were working for a family of contract killers, you learned that details were important. They often made the difference between life and death. She had been planning her departure from the firm for some time, merely waiting for the right moment. The news of Julian Enright’s death the day before had prompted her to hand in her notice that same day. She had done so with a cup of coffee laced with cyanide.

Graham Enright had died without ever seeing the telegram. He did, however, have a moment to realize that his secretary had poisoned him. She had seen the fury and outraged disbelief in his eyes just before he collapsed. That was an Enright for you, she thought. Both of them, father and son, had always assumed that they were smarter and more ruthless than those around them.

She took the elevator down to the lobby and went outside. The new car she had purchased with some of the cash from the firm’s discretionary fund was parked on a side street. She put the briefcase into the trunk alongside her suitcase and got behind the wheel.

She stopped at the post office and hurried inside to mail the envelope containing the Helen Spencer file. It was addressed to the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There was enough material in the envelope to point the FBI to the agent of a foreign government who had commissioned Enright & Enright to retrieve a certain notebook, no questions asked. What the FBI chose to do with the information was up to them.

Raina walked out of the post office, got back into her sharp new car, and drove away from New York.

She had given a great deal of thought to her destination. In the end she concluded that any town that knew how to deal with the likes of Julian Enright was her kind of town. Burning Cove sounded like the perfect place to start her new life.

According to the map, the road to the future started in Chicago. Route 66 would take her all the way to California.

Chapter 68

There were two armed guards at the front gate of the compound, but it was three o’clock in the morning, so they were working hard to stay awake with coffee and low-voiced discussions of sports and women.

The intruder had studied the layout of the Saltwood Laboratory earlier in the day from the cover of a stand of trees. He had determined that the weakest point of entry was the loading dock gate. There was a serious-looking lock but it presented no problems. He was good with locks. He had brought along a set of wire cutters to deal with the alarm system, but in the end he didn’t have to use them. He simply opened the device and unplugged it.

He found a side door, picked another lock, disarmed another alarm, and then he was inside the darkened building. He had brought a flashlight with him. The metal shielding around the bulb ensured that the device cast only a very narrow beam.

He made his way past several doors markedAuthorized Personnel Only. Curious, he opened a couple at random and saw shadow-filled lab roomscrowded with workbenches. An assortment of instruments and mechanical equipment was arrayed on each bench. White lab coats and goggles designed to protect the eyes dangled from wall hooks.

He continued down the hall and turned the corner into another wing lined with office doors. When he located the one markedDr. Raymond Perry, Executive Director, he picked the lock and entered the reception area.

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