Chapter 42

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Will opened the door at the Ridgecrest Motor Inn in Bayard, Nebraska just a smidge.

"Who goes there?" he whispered threateningly through the crack.

"It's us, Will."

Will's eyes narrowed. "Us who?" he demanded. "What's the password?"

"The password is 'this is the FBI, you lunatic, open the damn door.' "

Will chuckled and glanced over his shoulder at Laura, who was seated on one of the room's concave double beds. "Company's come!" he beamed, throwing open the door.

Outside stood three figures, their faces shadowed in hooded ski parkas. A low, chilling wind whistled across the parking lot behind them.

They strode into the room, closed the door behind them, and locked it.

"Agent M," Will shrieked, throwing his arms around the battered FBI agent. "A good deal of water has gone under the bridge since the last time I saw you." Before Mike could respond, Will practically pushed him out of the way, and encircled Faye in an enormous hug.

"My darling!" Will sighed. " My brave, brave girl. . .suffering so wretchedly! Witness protection program, indeed!"

Then, Will warily regarded the third figure, whose tousled black hair and beard set off the paleness of his skin. "Well, hello, Mr. Computer Hacker. May I please thank you for all the help you've been giving us?"

"my name is seamus," he said, low. "but you can call me vampyr."

A plastic smile covered Will's face. "Of course I can!"

Laura came to the visitors and bustled them out of their coats. It was all so oddly homey, Will thought, this reunion in a ramshackle hotel on the Nebraskan prairie, under such unflinchingly bizarre circumstances.

"Did you get here all right?" Laura asked, as the Mike and Faye settled down on the edge of the bed, while Seamus positioned himself in a rickety armchair by the window.

"Once I managed to convince my superiors that I needed three plane tickets to Omaha, it was a piece of cake," Mike smiled tentatively. "You can't believe the red tape I had to go through."

"Try us," Will said, smiling sweetly.

"Did anyone follow you?" Laura asked, peeping through the worn plastic curtain on the window.

"I doubt it," Mike answered. "They might've tried, but the traffic in this town is a disaster.Between all the tourists and the National Guard--"

"We had to go through three roadblocks to get here," Faye added. "They aren't letting anyone else into the town."

"it's like Close Encounters of the Third Kind," vampyr added, in quiet observation.

"That's because of the riot last week," Will answered, nodding. "It was chaos around here. Tear gas, riot gear, billy clubs, the whole nine yards. They won't even let anyone in a mile radius around Chimney Rock any more."

"But," Faye added, "that doesn't matter, because you've got the clue."

Will shrugged his shoulders, like a five-year old about to launch into a tantrum. "But what good does it do us? Here we are, stuck on the prairie, with a clue that makes absolutely no sense!" He threw himself on the bed for effect.

"You're sure that he can be trusted?" Mike asked, quietly.

"Who?" Laura questioned, her brows knitting.

"Will's friend. David Nimoy."

Will rolled onto his side. "Ex-friend. Ex-friend!"

Laura scowled at Will. "Will is apparently forgetting that David was really nice to us after we found the clue at Bannerman Castle. And I think he was the one who sent the press to North Carolina instead of here, initially."

"He's trying to win back my affections," Will said, dryly. "He shan't have them! He shan't!"

The rest of the group ignored Will's theatrics.

Laura looked intently at Faye. "Tell me again what he told you." Their conversations in the last week had been furtive and veiled, as they had all feared tapped phone lines.

Faye drew a legal pad out of her backpack. "He said that as the helicopter lifted up over the top of Chimney Rock, he saw a number painted on the side of a rock outcropping. The number was rendered in some sort of iridescent paint, which seems to make it invisible during daylight hours."

"Maybe it's like the stuff they put on highway reflectors," Will volunteered, "during the day it's dull, but when you shine a light on it--"

"And the number," Faye continued, "as we all well know, was 119."

Laura sat with her arms folded. "There's got to be something more to it. Where is the blaring, cheesy pop song? Where is the inevitable snatch of doggerel? Where are the floods of popcorn? There's got to be something else up there that we need."

"He didn't see anything else," Faye lamented, shaking her head. "All he saw was the 119. Admittedly, it was dark, and he was in a moving helicopter. There could be plenty up there that he didn't see."

Laura drew a thick stack of meticulously written notecards off of the bedside table. "Well, I've checked everything in the book. There is no page 119. The book is too short. I checked the 119th word in the text of Sooner Than Never. It's 'waking.' The 119th word from the end of the novel is 'the.' Not much to go on there."

Faye leafed through her legal pad. "Vampyr and I did a date check on both January 19--1/19--and November 9--11/9-- and absolutely nothing spectacular seems to have happened in the lives of Simon or Lily Waterbury on either of those dates."

"What about Sebastian Moffatt/Philip Huffmann? Or Louise Huffmann/Vesper Shillington? Are any of those dates their birthdays? Or their alleged birthdays?" Will questioned.

"Nope," Faye stated simply.

"nothing in any of their lives revolves around the number 119," vampyr huffed. "No addresses, no Social Security numbers, no apartment numbers, nothing."

"Oh, God, what are we going to do?" Will pouted. "We can't stop now, we're nearly there."

"What if," Laura mused, "it was like a signpost. The chapter which points to Chimney Rock has all that weird imagery about the blighted, wasted land. What if you need to go 119 paces away from Chimney Rock to find the clue?"

"We can't get that close to it," Will sighed. "We'll never know."

"What if it's counting miles?" Faye proposed demurely. "What's 119 miles away from here? Is that enough mileage to get you back to Beaver Creek?"

"Not all the way," Mike answered. "That could take you any number of places. . . Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado. . ."

vampyr rummaged in his rucksack, took out a battered Rand McNally atlas, and began leafing through it.

"Mr. FBI," Will said flatly, sitting up on the bed, "do you have enough organizational clearance to get us past the National Guard?"

"I can't," Mike said quietly.

"My, but I find that difficult to believe," Will challenged, his eyes glittering. "A man who works for the FBI and the CIA can't get past a bunch of weekend warriors from Omaha."

"Will!" Laura snapped. "Be nice!"

"It's all right, Laura." Mike turned toward Will. "As I told you before, the government is very touchy about letting anyone know that we are at all involved with this. They don't want anyone from the Federal government anywhere near Simon Waterbury. That's part of the reason why they agreed to 'adopt' the two of you."

"Adopt, my foot!" Will fumed. "We haven't seen a penny of cash from dear old Uncle Sam! We've been in this fleabag for three weeks, and the rates are astronomical. There's only two hotels in town, and they're charging us a fortune. We're running out of cash, risking life and limb, and reporting to a government that might take the prize money away from us!"

Mike stood up. "Do I need to remind you, Will Gilbert, that you assaulted a Federal agent last spring? Would you like to see the scar? Don't bitch at me, Will. I've saved your asses--"

"OK," Laura barked. "That's enough. There is no point in us fighting. Will, if Mike thinks that we need to proceed with caution, that's what we're going to do."

Will stared at Mike. "What do you know about Amber Waves of Grain?"

Mike blinked. "What?"

Will wriggled triumphantly. "The night you came and released me from your idiot partner in San Francisco, you asked me about something called Amber Waves of Grain. What do you know about it?"

Faye turned to Mike. "What is he talking about?"

Mike looked from face to face around the room. "It's not Amber Waves of Grain. It's Amber Waves of Greed. It's the book that Simon Waterbury was working on when his wife disappeared. It was never published, and all of the manuscripts have vanished."

"So?" Will asked. "Why does it matter?"

"Simon was making some pretty rough accusations against the government--accusations which might be true. They won't even tell me what it's about."

"They who?" Laura demanded.

"The government. The FBI. The CIA. Apparently, they know what was in the book. They don't want anyone to find out about it. That's why I was assigned to Sooner Than Never in the first place. . .to alert them if anything dealing with Amber Waves of Greed comes up in the hunt. The FBI doesn't give a proverbial rat's ass about Lily Waterbury. They're just concerned about the book."

"Amber Waves of Greed," Laura mused. "I wonder if that has anything to do with the images of the blighted lands of Lady Violet's father?"

No one knew the answer to that.

*****

"We should get out of here," the Square-Jawed Man murmured, staring out the car window at the lamplit window of Will and Laura's room. "That Fed gives me the creeps."

The Man in Armani rolled his eyes. "He has no idea who you are. You hit him over the head with a shovel in a pitch-black graveyard. He didn't see you."

Bull-Neck belched quietly. "They're gonna move tonight. I can feel it. They're gonna sit in that hotel room until they figure it out. Why else would they have called in the Feds?"

"We don't even know if they know the clue, stupid," Fair-Hair rolled his neck, trying to work out the kinks. "As far as we know, only the Japs have gotten anywhere near the clue. And they had no idea what it meant."

"Fat lot of good it will do them, over in Osaka," Square-Jaw chuckled. It had been relatively easy to squeeze details out of the two men from Takamoto. He had paid off one of the National Guardsmen, posed as an emissary from Takamoto, and gotten everything he needed to know from them. The look on their faces when he falsely revealed that he was "a reporter from The Washington Post" had been priceless. The two had been deported to Japan shortly thereafter.

"Maybe it's the number of a bus station locker," Bull-Neck announced suddenly.

"Maybe what is?"

"119. I saw this movie once where--"

"Shut up." Armani sighed. "We'll just sit here until Gilbert and Dial, or someone else, figures out the damn 119. And then, we'll follow them."

*****

Shilah moaned and writhed under Vesper's heavy damask comforter, her dark hair plastered to her face.

"your name is Philip Huffmann, and you are a murderer. . ."

The voices in the dream were hazy, out of focus, just as they had been on the night she had taken a bullet for her employer.

"you had an affair with Lily Waterbury, and later killed her. . ."

In her dream, Shilah battered her small fists on a impossibly large bathroom door, which stretched into a dark and threatening sky.

"the final clue in the Sooner than Never hunt isn't a location. It's a person. It's you."

Suddenly, a net descended on Shilah, knocking her to the cold stone on which she stood. Impossibly heavy, she twisted under it and knew she was on her way to jail.

She sprang out of the dream, gasping for breath, the ornate bedclothes twisted about her. Her bandaged shoulder throbbed painfully. It was dark outside.

Stifling a small yelp, Shilah reached for the bedside table and turned on the cut-glass lamp.

She had always known that Vesper was not who she pretended to be. She had always known that Vesper was really a man. She had always known that, on occasion, Vesper would put on male clothing from a hidden closet in the laundry room and go out into the world as a man.

But it hadn't bothered her. Shilah had quite a remarkable life, for a mildly retarded high-school dropout from Queens.

In exchange for light cleaning and minimal cooking, she had secured a life which most girls her age in the City would kill for.

She lived in a fancy apartment in a ritzy neighborhood.

She got to spend someone else's money on food, clothing, Necco wafers, scratch-off lottery tickets, and the various and sundry other novelties which momentarily distracted her.

She got an occasional night off, when she usually went to play Bingo or to stroll around the trinket stores in Chinatown.

She got to sit at home all day long and watch talk shows. Jerry Springer, Leeza, Oprah, Ricki Lake, Montel. . .they had all taught her everything she needed to know about the world. Most of all, they had taught her that there were lots of people in the world like Vesper--men who dressed up as women--and that they were, for the most part, decent, caring, misunderstood individuals who wanted to be loved and understood just like anybody else.

But every once in a while, even on the talk shows, one of them turned out to be a low-down, stinking dirty, bad-blooded dog. Maybe Miss Shillington was one of those.

Shilah shuddered at the thought.

Could Miss Shillington, who had cared for her, nurtured her, supported her, and been her one true friend really be a monster in disguise?

Was what that poor lady who had fallen off the fire escape said true?

Certainly, Miss Shillington had had her flashes of temper at Shilah. . . throwing things at her, berating her, and once locking her in the closet for cleaning the marble bathtub with paint thinner.

But could she be a murderer? Could she?

Shilah drew the thick comforter up under her chin, a flash of pain emanating from her wounded shoulder. A thin trail of a tear traced itself across her cheek.

She needed to talk to someone. She needed some guidance. But who could she talk to?

Somewhere, off in the cavernous apartment, she heard a door slam. She mopped her eyes and straightened up the bed, thinking that her mistress might be home.

But the door to the bedroom didn't open.

Often, in the last week, she had heard strange noises in the loft, at all hours of the day and night. But after what had happened when Nina Kellogg came to visit, she kept to the bedroom, cowering in terror lest she be discovered by a violent intruder.

She turned off the light, pulled the covers up over her head, gabbled a hasty prayer, and then wondered what she should do until she drifted into an uneasy, restless sleep.

*****

Vesper sat at her desk, pouring over stock information via the Internet, when the door to her office swung open and filled with the pudgy, unsteady shape of Simon Waterbury. The billionaire had been drinking.

"Burning the midnight oil, Ms. Shillington?"

She hastily closed the website she had been looking at and smiled icily at him.

"Well, darling, you know, since that--since Nina. . .dropped out of sight. . . there's simply so much to be done."

He smiled at her. . .that odd, insincere smile which was the only one he ever showed her now. He swaggered across the room and sat on her shapely, plum-colored sofa.

"Yes. . .Miss Kellogg. . .such a terrible tragedy."

Vesper's eyelid began to twitch. She didn't want to talk to Simon about Nina. Especially when he was drunk.

"Well," she cleared her throat. "Thank you for all of your help, darling. . .with the press, I mean." Oddly, Simon had been incredibly supportive after the break-in, and had pulled many strings to keep the story out of the media's hungry eyes. The story which had been reported to the press was that a disgruntled Waterbury employee had attempted to break into Vesper's house with a gun, and had fallen from a sixth-floor fire escape in the process.

Simon stared at her, and then emitted a strange, barking laugh. "Come now, Vesper. We can't tarnish the company image. Not just yet."

Vesper began to feel sick. "Well, I. . .thank you, Simon."

"Sometimes I miss the old days, Vesper. I do. When you used to come up for an evening of fun and games."

Vesper's gorge rose in her throat, viscerally remembering Simon's bizarre fetishes. His favorite activity had been for her to hurl rotten vegetables at him while he sat naked on the floor, singing old ditties from Gilbert and Sullivan. Never once had she done any sort of conventional lovemaking with him, nor even been undressed in front of him.

Never once, that is, as her present self.

"Simon, I have a lot of work to get through tonight. And you look as though you're in a rather sad shape. Would you like me to call Milton and have him help you get upstairs?"

He regarded her strangely. "No, that won't be necessary." He grinned suddenly. "Are you excited for the Thanksgiving parade next week?"

"Overjoyed."

"Good." He chortled. "Good!"

"Good night, Simon."

He moved towards the door, then stopped suddenly. "Oh. I've been meaning to tell you. Don't make any vacation plans for December. Company policy. No one is getting any time off until New Year's Day. And I want you to be with me when Sooner Than Never ends."

She winced, having visions of spending the turn of the century in Simon's penthouse with a pile of fetid eggplant.

"You'll have the best seat in the house, Vesper, in front of the Sooner Than Never billboard overlooking Times Square. . .providing that no one wins before then." He winked at her.

She shivered.

"You'll get plenty of time to rest after the millennium hits. We both will."

Then, he left.

Almost instantly, the phone rang, causing her to jolt in her chair.

"Vesper Shillington."

"How do you make the damn sound system turn on? I've pressed all the buttons and the stupid thing won't work!"

Vesper's nose wrinkled. "I thought I told you not to call me here."

"I thought I told you I'll go to the police if you aren't nice to me."

Vesper bit her lip. "Switch the entertainment system to Auxiliary, turn off the power on the white noise system, and use the remote control to play your silly CDs."

"Thank you!" the woman cooed. "I've got a hot boy from Wall Street due here in ten minutes, so keep your distance."

"Any luck with your. . .kitty?" Vesper grimaced at her own feigned concern.

The voice moaned pathetically. "No! Oh, my poor kitty. . . the detectives are still looking for him."

"I'll see you later."

"Not if I can help it." The woman hung up.

Vesper wearily set down the phone. The strange woman who had showed up at her apartment a week ago was a problem. Not a red alert, bona-fide crisis, as Nina Kellogg had been, but a problem none the less.

The loud, flamboyant woman claimed to be a friend of Chad Bismarck's, who she claimed she had met in a homeless shelter somewhere in the city. She claimed to know all of Vesper's secrets. The woman did know some of Vesper's dotted past, but she didn't know all of it. And she knew that she didn't know all of it. She knew that she didn't know enough to solve Sooner Than Never. Yet.

So, rather than blowing the whistle and calling the police, the woman had demanded cash and use of Vesper's home, biding her time in a rather puzzling and haphazard way. Apparently, her cat was missing and she needed to hire detectives to track it down. And, the woman liked to impress suitors with Vesper's large and expensive home. Her paltry and idiotic demands made her seem somewhat less of a potential adversary to Vesper, but only slightly.

She came to Vesper's loft, nearly every day, armed to the teeth and wearing a Medic-Alert in case Vesper tried to pull any fast ones. The woman was certifiably crazy, Vesper had decided, and would appear a lunatic if she went to the authorities. So Vesper played along.

If she had had time, if she hadn't recently had a police investigation in her home, she would have gotten rid of the woman. Quickly. But her situation was too precarious for that. If she had had time, and didn't have the police breathing down her neck--she could have followed the woman to her home, or hired her own detectives to do it. But the strange, nameless woman was too much of a loose cannon, and Vesper simply tried to appease her.

For now.

*****

Leia Freitag fluffed her auburn bangs in the gilt-edged mirror in the hallway of Vesper's loft. A queer giddiness had overcome her since she had accosted Vesper over a week ago. For the first time in her adult life, Leia's life had become worthy of a soap opera of its own.

The phone rang on the table in front of the mirror. She snatched it up.

"Paul, honey, is that you?" Now that she had a home health aide to look after Chad, she spent her days at a tony gym in the financial district, handing out Vesper's phone number to handsome young powerbrokers as they did their crunches.

"I need to speak to Christian Redding. Please connect me."

Leia's mind raced. "Christian Redding" was one of the names Chad babbled incessantly. Perhaps he was one of Vesper's male personalities.

"Christian no ees here rrright now, may I make message?" she cooed, faking a hybrid German, Russian, and Spanish accent.

"I'll call back later."

"No, wait." Leia's eyes sparkled. "Mr. Redding want me make good messages."

"Just tell him to call Takamoto."

The line went dead.

Takamoto?

Who the hell was Takamoto?

*****

Laura and Faye lay on the bed, scrutinizing every detail of the "Nebraska" chapter of Sooner Than Never. Vampyr sat in his armchair by the window, typing away at his palm pilot which he had plugged into the phone outlet. Mike sorted through notes on the floor, as Will paced the room like a lion in a cage.

"Maybe it's a flight number," Will suggested suddenly. "How can we find out what has the flight number 119? Maybe that will take us to the next clue!"

"already checked that," vampyr said absently.

Laura rubbed her eyes and sat up. "Ok. I admit it. I'm beat. I have no idea on earth what Simon is trying to say. Either we get to Chimney Rock, or I think we're permanently stalled."

Faye, ever the picture of perkiness, tried to bolster the sagging spirits in the room. "You can't give up. You can't. Remember, it took you a whole month to find the clue in Chicago. . .but you did it in the end."

Laura smiled wearily. "Yeah, but that was before we new any of this stuff about Lily Waterbury and the Huffmanns. Speaking of which, Mike, have you turned up anything else on Philip and Louise?"

Mike's face was immovable. "Not really."

Will stopped his pacing. "You know what's weird? I keep expecting that Philip Huffmann, or Sebastian Moffatt, or whatever the hell his name is, to show up one day. Out of the blue."

Laura shuddered. "I hope he doesn't. He's a murderer, Will."

Will beamed. "I know. So I'll just play along with him, get him all hot and bothered, and then, BAM! Agent M can spring out of the closet--the literal one, I mean--and slap the cuffs on him. And then, we can go to New York and watch Vesper Shillington, nee Louise Huffmann, get dragged away in a straitjacket screaming."

Laura rolled her eyes. "We still have no evidence, Will."

"Evidence, schmevidence."

Mike looked up at Will. "Will, if Philip Huffmann ever does show up again, do not attempt to get him, as you say, all hot and bothered. There's been some weird stuff going on--"

Laura stiffened. "Weird stuff? What kind of weird stuff? You didn't say anything about weird stuff--"

Mike shrugged. "I didn't want to tell you. . .there's nothing conclusive. . ."

Laura stood up, towering over Mike. "Mike, what happened?"

Mike sighed. "Philip and Louise Huffmann's mother died a few months ago."

"So?"

"She fell down her cellar stairs. According to the police in Centralia, it was a simple accident. I did my own investigation, though, and I think she was pushed."

Laura sat down on the bed, shaking. "Do you think she was pushed by Philip or Louise?"

"It's very possible."

Laura was turning green. She turned to Will. "Will, didn't you say that Fern Findlay called Vesper Shillington when she was trying to find us and tell us about Gertie Huffmann?"

Will nodded, slowly.

"Oh, God," Laura breathed. "Vesper must have figured out that someone was on to her, and she or Philip went and murdered that poor woman."

"Correction," Will said dully. "Vesper must have figured out that WE were on to her. Fern called Vesper looking for US."

They sat in silence for a moment. Will said quietly, "Point well taken, Mike. If Philip Huffmann shows up again, I'm running."

"Can't we go to the police? Can't we do something?" Laura questioned. "Oh, God, this is exactly why I didn't want to do this anymore. I should have taken that job in Nashville when I had the chance."

"Calm down, Laura," Mike said. "Gertie Huffmann may have fallen. I managed to get my hands on Vesper Shillington's fingerprints, and they didn't match any of those found in the Huffmann house. Again, there's not a shred of evidence."

"She could have worn gloves," Faye said quietly. All these revelations were news to her.

"That's right," Will agreed. "I bet that she-devil doesn't make a move without gloves."

Laura was shivering. "Are we going to have to enroll in the witness protection program?" she asked Mike, in dead seriousness.

"More importantly," interrupted Will, "are there any other little details that you've been hiding from us? You know, random little murders, top-secret government exposes, death threats--"

"I just want to protect you two," Mike said calmly, looking at the floor. He decided he wasn't going to tell them about the "accident" at Vesper's New York apartment.

"Protect us?!" Laura fumed. "Our friends and families are in terrible danger! Those psychopathic siblings know that we're on to them. We could--"

"cheyenne," vampyr said quietly from the corner, not glancing up from his palm.

"What!?" Laura whirled to face him.

"cheyenne, wyoming. it's exactly 119 miles from Chimney Rock, as the crow flies. exactly."

Faye sat up, slowly. "But pup, there are hundreds of places that are exactly 119 miles from Chimney Rock."

Will sensed something in Faye's voice, an affection towards the morose computer nerd. "Hey," he asked, smiling, "are you guys an item or something?"

"Oh, my God," Laura said suddenly. "Cheyenne!"

vampyr smiled. "uh-huh."

"Oh, my God!" Laura repeated. "Cheyenne, 8/14/28!"

Will looked at her, annoyed. "What in hell's name are you talking about, my little linnet bird? A moment ago you were fearing for our lives, and now--"

Laura began dancing around the room. "8/14/28!"

"Oh!" Faye exclaimed, suddenly remembering something. "Cheyenne, 8/14/28!"

Will raised his hands to his temples. "Somebody tell me what's going on around here, or I'll scream!"

Laura ran to him, and pulled his arms down. "Remember, Will? The very first clue. The anchor by the crack in the road in Centralia."

Will's face was blank. "It was that poem. . .how did it go?"

Mike began to repeat it from memory: "Out of the fiery forge comes earth/Empedoclean wonder! Two elements remain to choose/ in which the dead do slumber." Suddenly, his eyes widened. "And then, there was that inscription on the plaque, that said--"

"Cheyenne, 8/14/28!" They all chanted it like a cult.

"Whoa," Mike breathed. "We've got to get you guys out of here and into Wyoming."

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