Hothouse Orchid Read online

  “Well, congratulations, Hurd. Who’s replacing you? Anybody I know?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Hurd said. “I expect you recall the circumstances under which you left the army.”

  “Of course.” Holly and another female officer had brought charges against their commanding officer for sexual harassment, attempted rape and rape. Holly had managed to fight him off, but the other woman, a young lieutenant, had not. When the man was acquitted by a board of his fellow officers, Holly realized that she had no place to go in the army, so she retired. The chief at Orchid Beach, Chet Marley, an old army buddy of Ham’s, had offered her the job as his deputy. When he had been killed, Holly had replaced him. “Why do you bring that up?” she asked.

  Hurd unbuttoned his shirt pocket and took out a sheet of paper. “I Googled you,” he said. He unfolded it and handed it to her. It was a newspaper account of the trial and her testimony. “I wish I had done it sooner.”

  Holly scanned it. “It’s accurate,” she said.

  “The city council has hired Colonel James Bruno as the new chief,” Hurd said.

  Holly felt as though someone had struck her. Bruno had been her commanding officer.

  Hurd saw the shock on her face. “It was a fait accompli before I found out who Bruno was; there was nothing I could do.”

  Holly recovered her voice. “How did this happen?”

  “Ironically, the council’s experience with you had been such a good one that they decided to look for another MP officer. Bruno looked good on paper, so they interviewed him. Apparently, your name didn’t come up at the time.”

  “Does the council know now who he is?”

  “I wrote a memo to the chairman, so that it would be on the record.”

  “Is it still Charlie Peterson?”

  Hurd shook his head. “Charlie died last month: heart attack, at his desk. I’m surprised you didn’t see it in the paper.”

  “I guess I’m behind a few issues,” she said. “Who is his replacement?”

  Hurd sighed. “Irma Taggert.”

  During and after Holly’s first meeting with the Orchid Beach city council and during Holly’s entire tenure as chief, Irma Taggert had been a constant thorn in her side. “That horrible pain in the ass?”

  “One and the same,” Hurd said. “She had seniority on the council, and the town’s bylaws made her chairman until the next election, which isn’t until this fall.”

  “Hurd, Irma would have voted to hire James Bruno, even if she had known who he was-maybe because he was who he was.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Hurd said.

  “Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Holly said. “Jim Bruno will use spit and polish mixed with charm to get the people on the force to like him. The man does have charm, I’ll give him that. Then, when he feels secure, he’ll start in on the female officers, and he’ll find a way to get rid of anybody who doesn’t come across. This is going to be bad.”

  “I wish there was something I could do,” Hurd said.

  “You can take the women aside and let them know who they’re dealing with. They need to be warned.”

  “That I can do,” Hurd said.

  “Does he know I’m in town?”

  “No. I don’t think anyone but me knows, except Ham and Ginny, of course.”

  “When does Bruno start the job?”

  “He’s already in the office.”

  “Does he know I was chief before you?”

  “I don’t know, but he certainly will soon. Your name is bound to come up in the normal course of things. Maybe I’ll tell him myself, just to see the look on his face.”

  “I’d be interested to know how he takes the news,” Holly said. “Oh, and don’t mention it to Ham; he might go down to the station and shoot Bruno.”

  “It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper,” Hurd said.

  “I’m having dinner with them tonight; I’ll break it to him and then sit on him if I have to. Ham was at the trial, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “He retired a couple of weeks after I did, and I think it was so he wouldn’t have to serve on the same base with Bruno. Or maybe even in the same army.”

  “I wouldn’t want Ham mad at me,” Hurd said.

  “You’re right about that,” Holly said.

  4

  Holly dressed for dinner in starched designer jeans, a blue chambray work shirt and skinny lizard cowgirl boots. Ham had always liked it when she dressed like a boy. She checked herself in the mirror. Since she had lost the weight and colored her hair a lovely auburn she had liked her looks a lot better. She was a good five-ten in the boots, and Ham liked that, too. She wanted him happy tonight.

  Holly and Daisy arrived at Ham and Ginny’s only ten minutes late, and she could smell the meat roasting on the back-porch grill. Ginny greeted her with a hug at the front door and let Daisy put her paws on her shoulders and give her a big kiss. Ginny poured them both a Knob Creek on the rocks and another for Ham, then they went out on the back porch to watch his beef-burning skills on display, searing the biggest, thickest porterhouse steak Holly had ever seen.

  “Did you shoot that yourself?” Holly asked.

  “I roped it down at the prime butcher’s shop,” Ham replied. “You wouldn’t believe what it cost.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “I charged it to your credit card,” Ham said. Holly had given him a very special kind of credit card, one that tapped into a secret bank account she kept in the Cayman Islands.

  “Figures.”

  “So, what’s happening in your life, baby girl?” he asked.

  “Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” she said, sighing.

  “I always like the bad news first.”

  Holly took a deep breath. “Hurd Wallace is retiring as chief, and the new chief is Colonel James Bruno.”

  Ham dropped the tongs he had been holding and bumped his head on the hot grill when he picked them up. “How the fuck did that pig happen here?” he demanded.

  “Try and relax, Ham; it’s not a conspiracy.” She told him what Hurd had told her at lunch. “Promise me you’re not going to go down there and shoot him.”

  “Don’t you think I have any self-control?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I’ll wait until after dinner to go down there and shoot him.”

  “That’s what I thought. I hope I didn’t ruin your supper, but you wanted the bad news first.”

  “Tell me the good news; maybe it’ll help me get over it.”

  “I got promoted.”

  “To what?”

  “Assistant Deputy Director of Operations-ADDO.”

  “What was it you were before?”

  “Assistant to the deputy director of operations.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Of course there is. Assistant to made me sound like a glorified secretary, though, of course, I was a lot more than that. Assistant deputy director means, I think, that I’ll have some authority of my own.”

  “Authority to what? Assassinate people? Because if that’s the case, James Bruno ought to be your first hit.”

  “No, no, Ham. It just means that when I give an order I don’t have to preface it with, ‘Lance Cabot asked me to tell you to…’ ”

  “Does it mean that if Lance dies you get his job? Because if it does, I’ll shoot him for you.”

  “No, it doesn’t, Ham, and I want you to get your mind off shooting people. You’ll screw up your digestion, and that chunk of cow you’re flaming is going to take a lot of digestion.”

  “I guess Lance’s job is a lot of politics,” Ham said.

  “You’re right, and Lance says I’m shitty at the politics. Not as shitty as he thinks I am, but I could do better, and I’m going to surprise him by doing it.”

  “Pretty soon you’re going to have Kate Lee’s job,” Ham said.

  “Not while Will Lee is president,”
Holly said. An act of Congress had allowed the president to appoint his wife, who was a career CIA officer, as director. Holly looked at Ham closely. “How’s your blood pressure?”

  “Returning to normal,” Ham said, taking a swig of the Knob Creek. “Well, almost normal. I hope Bruno likes to fish, because if he does, I’ll catch him on the water and drown him.”

  “Careful, the BP is going up again. Drink more bourbon.”

  Ham did.

  “You doing any flying?” Ginny asked, by way of changing the subject. Ginny ran her own flying school at the Vero Beach airport.

  “No time,” Holly said. “I miss it, too.”

  “Why don’t you come out to the airport tomorrow, and I’ll give you a biennial flight review and an instrument competency check.”

  “Good idea,” Holly said. “Let me call you in the morning and set it up.”

  “You want your steak rare?” Ham asked.

  “No, I want it medium rare, and that means when I stick it with a fork, I don’t want it to moo.”

  They dined on the huge steak, which Ham had sawed into human-sized chunks, baked potatoes and a Caesar salad along with a big, fat California cabernet. Daisy dealt with the bone.

  Ham, who had been quiet, finally said something. “Tell me, what was the most fun you’ve ever had at your job?”

  “You just want me to tell you some secret stuff, don’t you?”

  “If you really want to. I just want to know if you’re having any fun.”

  “Well, a few months ago I got to pose as an assistant director of the FBI and serve a phony court order on the editor of the National Inquisitor.”

  “You’re shittin’ me!”

  “I shit you not.”

  “God, I hate that rag,” he said. “I hope you gave the guy a really hard time.”

  “Oh, I did, and I savored every moment of it.”

  “I thought the Agency wasn’t supposed to mess around in domestic stuff,” Ham said with false naïveté.

  “Oh, I was never there,” Holly said. “The minute I left his office I ceased to exist, and so did what I did there. Or rather, what I didn’t do.”

  “Just don’t get caught not doing it,” Ham said.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “How was the Farm?” The Farm was Fort Peary, the Agency’s training facility for new officers.

  “Hard but fun. You’d have been proud of my shooting.”

  “I heard,” Ham said. “The best ever scores by a trainee.”

  “You heard? You’re not supposed to hear; we’re talking about the CIA.”

  “I heard. I got a call from your instructor. He was properly awed, and, of course, he gave me all the credit.”

  “He said he knew you, but…”

  “I kicked his ass in the national championships one year.”

  They ate and drank on, enjoying each other. Holly hadn’t had such a good time since she had joined the Agency.

  5

  They ate and drank and talked until nearly midnight, then, after a cup of strong coffee, Holly stood up and said, “If I’m going to sleep in my own bed tonight, I’d better get going.” Ginny came out of the bedroom. “Daisy’s dead to the world on our bed; you want me to wake her up?”

  “Let her sleep,” Ham said. “We haven’t seen her for a long time. I’ll bring her home tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Holly said. “Great grilling, Ham.”

  He handed her something wrapped in aluminum foil. “Take some home; we’ve got enough for a week.”

  Holly kissed them both, looked in on Daisy, who was having a dream, running on her side and making muffled woofing noises, then got into the Cayenne and started home. As she stopped before turning onto the bridge over the Indian River she noticed a car parked on the shoulder to her left: dark color, nothing fancy, like an unmarked patrol car. Its headlights came on, bathing her in bright light, and as she started to cross the bridge, it pulled onto the road behind her.

  She had the odd feeling that she was being followed, and she couldn’t get the idea out of her mind, so she did something unexpected: after the bridge, she turned right onto Indian River Trail, a dirt track that ran about five miles down Orchid Island, parallel to A-1A. It was wild and beautiful in the daytime but completely dark at night, and there was no moon. A deer ran into her headlights, and she slammed on her brakes. It scampered away. She checked her rearview mirror: no headlights behind her. She relaxed and continued down the trail, comfortable at thirty miles per hour.

  She had driven a couple of miles when suddenly very bright headlights came on a few yards behind her. Holly’s first reaction was to accelerate, but instead she just continued steadily down the trail. Then, as she approached a wide spot in the road, a flashing blue light came on behind her. In her rearview mirror she could see a uniformed figure illuminated in the blue flashes. She pulled over to the right and stopped to see if he just wanted to get past her or if this was a traffic stop. She wasn’t particularly worried. How much trouble could she get into going thirty, and, anyway, she had the Orchid Beach chief’s badge and ID the department had given her when she left.

  The car pulled up even with her rear bumper, and she heard the door slam. She looked over her shoulder and was blinded by an extremely bright flashlight. Probably a Surefire, she thought, with the lithium batteries. She switched off the car, rolled down the window and began fishing for her driver’s license in her handbag.

  “Good evening,” a male voice said.

  She turned left and was met by the blinding light. “Good evening,” she said.

  “May I see your driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance?” he asked politely.

  “Of course,” she said, and then something struck her in the head, hard. Only the seat belt kept her from falling into the floorboards. She blinked, trying to see and think again, then she felt a sharp stab in the left side of her neck, and she lost consciousness.

  Ma’am?” a male voice was saying. “Ma’am?” “She’s coming to,” a female voice said. Both voices were young. She realized she was bathed in light from a car parked behind her. She tried to get up.

  “Don’t move around, please,” the male voice said. “An ambulance is on the way.”

  Her head hurt, and she realized that something was pressing on it. She felt and discovered a female hand, holding something against her head. “What?” she managed to say.

  “I said, an ambulance is on the way,” he replied.

  Holly felt oddly uncomfortable; there was a blanket over her, and she seemed to have sand in her jeans. She reached down and discovered that she wasn’t wearing any jeans, only her shirt. From a distance she heard the siren of an ambulance. It would be all right, she thought, and then she passed out again.

  A stab of pain in her head brought her around. She tried to sit up, but someone held her shoulders.

  “Just lie still,” a male voice said. “I’m almost done.”

  She tried to lie still, but he was hurting her.

  “There,” he said.

  “I know this is a cliché,” she managed to say, “but where am I?”

  “Emergency room, Indian River Hospital,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, just great,” she replied. “What were you doing up there? Brain surgery?”

  “Next best thing,” he replied. “Giving you eight stitches in your scalp. Don’t worry, I took as little hair as possible.”

  “What happened to me?” she asked. “Was I in an accident?”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I remember driving away from my father’s house,” she said. “What happened then?”

  “There’s a police officer down the hall talking with the couple who found you,” he said. “We’ll know more soon.”

  “What happened to my neck?” she asked, rubbing it.

  He took her hand away and inspected it. “There’s a tiny wound, like a needle prick,” he said.

  “Where’s my bag?” she a
sked.

  Somebody set it on her belly. “Here it is,” a nurse said, cranking her bed until she was sitting up a little. “Your jeans and underwear are here, too; you weren’t wearing them when the couple found you, and you had no shoes on.”

  Holly found her cell phone and pressed a speed dial button.

  “This better be good,” Ham’s voice said. “You woke me up.”

  “Ham,” she said, “my car is on the Indian River Trail, a couple of miles south of the bridge. Will you bring it to the hospital? I don’t have the keys, so they must still be in the car.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Somebody hit me over the head. Just come to the ER.”

  “Twenty minutes,” Ham said, then hung up.

  Holly closed the phone and looked up. A stocky young man in a police uniform was standing there.

  “Holly? You all right?” he asked.

  “Jimmy!” she said, glad to see him. Jimmy Weathers had been a rookie in her department.

  “A couple found you out on Indian River Trail, lying in the road. You got any idea how you got that way?”

  “None at all,” she said. “I had dinner at Ham’s, and the last thing I remember was driving away from his house.”

  “The kids who found you said there was a car parked behind yours with a flashing blue light. Almost as soon as they saw it, it drove away, and they nearly ran over you.”

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy,” she said, “but that means nothing to me. I mean, I remember some people taking care of me, but I must have passed out. Ham’s going to be here in a few minutes. Will you stay until he comes? Somebody besides me needs to tell him I’m all right.”

  “I’ll help with that,” the doctor said, and she looked at him for the first time. He was fiftyish, athletic looking, with thick salt-and-pepper hair. “You’re going to stay with us overnight; you may have a concussion.”

  “Whatever you say,” Holly replied, suddenly exhausted.

  6

  Holly woke up in a hospital room, and Ham was sitting beside her bed. Ginny came into the room holding two paper cups of coffee.