Chapter 7 - THE RETREAT FROM CHEVY CHASE
The house in Chevy Chase didn't look like a crime scene; it looked like an estate sale where the owner hadn't died yet, just disappeared into an institution.
Miles and I parked the F-250 at the curb between two identical black Mercedes sedans that belonged to the Alexandria legal team. The lawn was that perfect, chemically treated emerald green that doesn't have a single dandelion or clover, smelling of wet fertilizer and cedar mulch.
I wasn't in uniform today. I had on my faded Levi’s, my work boots, and an old grey Army PT shirt with the sleeves cut off at the seams. Miles had his tool roll in his left hand—the heavy canvas one with the oily leather straps that he used for tractor differentials.
We walked up the stone steps. The heavy oak front door, with its polished brass knocker shaped like a colonial pineapple, was unlocked.
Inside, the house smelled of cardboard boxes, packing tape, and Eleanor’s lilies that had started to go yellow in their silver vases.
Helena was in the front parlor, sitting on the floor with three plastic laundry baskets full of designer shoes. She had a roll of bubble wrap between her knees and a bottle of pinot grigio on the rug beside her. The bottle was three-quarters empty.
She didn't look up when the screen door slammed.
“The silver’s already inventoried,” she said, her voice thick and flat, like she had a cold she couldn't shake. “Reid’s lawyers from the maritime firm took the flatware this morning. They said it was covered by the secondary retainer.”
“I didn't come for the silver, Helena,” I said, walking through the foyer into the hall that led to the den.
She scrambled to her feet, the bubble wrap squeaking under her knees. “You can’t just walk through here like you own it! This house is in Mother’s name!”
“Not anymore,” Miles said, stopping in the doorway of the parlor, his broad shoulders filling the frame. “The state of Virginia put a tax lien on the deed at ten o'clock this morning. Four hundred and eighty thousand in back assessments on the Goochland timber, plus interest. The bank in Richmond froze the mortgage account.”
Helena stared at him, her eyes wide, the mascara smudged into two dark, bruised circles under her lower lids. “You’re lying. Reid has forty million in the offshore account.”
“Had,” I said, turning around to face her. “The Department of Justice froze the Grand Cayman accounts four hours after the committee adjourned. Jonah gave the account numbers to the special agent in charge of maritime procurement. The money’s not Reid’s anymore, Helena. It belongs to the federal court until they figure out how much he stole from the naval dock contracts.”
She dropped the shoe she was holding—an eight-hundred-dollar pump with a red sole that hit the hardwood with a hollow *clack*.
“What am I supposed to do?” she whispered. Her voice wasn't Chevy Chase anymore; it was the voice of an eight-year-old who had dropped her ice cream in the sand and was waiting for someone to buy her another one. “I have two semesters left at Georgetown. The tuition’s due on the fifteenth.”
“State schools take credits from Georgetown,” I said. “And the registrar at George Mason has an evening program. You can work the desk at the library like Jonah did.”
“I’m an Archer!” she screamed, her face contorting, the veins in her neck standing out like blue cords. “I don't work a library desk! I don't live in a cinderblock hut in North Carolina with grease on my hands!”
“You’re not an Archer, Helena,” I told her, my voice dropping into that quiet, cold floor that had kept me alive through four jumps and eighteen years in this house. “You’re just Reid’s clerk. And the firm went out of business.”
I walked into the den.
The mahogany desk was clear. The brass lamps were gone. The leather chairs had been covered in grey drop cloths that made them look like headstones in a family plot.
Standing by the custom wet bar, holding a tumbler of scotch without any ice, was Reid.
He wasn't wearing his suit. He had on an old, high-necked cardigan that was missing the top button, and his trousers were bagged at the knees. His hair was dry, unbrushed, sticking out above his left ear like the feathers on a dying crow.
He looked at me through the amber liquid in his glass.
“The girl who wouldn't eat the soup,” he said. His voice was cracked, dry, like two stones rubbing together in a dry creek.
“The soup was cold, Reid,” I said.
He took a slow sip. His hand trembled—just once, a tiny, rhythmic flutter that made the crystal clink against his signet ring. “They’re going to indict Jonah too, you know. He signed three of those Cayman vouchers in ninety-eight. He didn't tell you that, did he?”
“He told me,” I said. “He signed them because you told him Eleanor was dying of breast cancer and needed the money for experimental treatments in Switzerland.”
Reid’s eyes flickered. Just for a fraction of a second, the gray water in them shifted, revealing the bottom of the ditch where he had lived for forty years.
“It worked,” he murmured. “It worked for thirty years. I built this house on that timber, Morrison. I bought your mother’s pearls with the rights from the south ridge. Every meal you ate in this house was paid for by the wood my father told me not to cut.”
“And it tasted like dirt,” I said.
I walked to the corner of the den, where the mahogany credenza stood against the wall. The brass handle that had scarred my shoulder when I was seventeen was still there, polished bright by twenty years of maid service.
Miles walked in behind me. He didn't look at Reid. He set his canvas tool roll on the marble top of the wet bar with a heavy, metallic clink.
He pulled out a heavy twelve-inch crescent wrench and a flat pry-bar.
“What is he doing?” Reid asked, his voice rising, that old, shrill authority trying to claw its way back through his throat. “This furniture is subject to the federal attachment! You can’t touch it!”
Miles didn't answer. He jammed the pry-bar behind the mahogany backing of the built-in shelves, right where the paneling met the floorboards.
*CRACK.*
The old pine lath behind the mahogany splintered with the sound of a dry bone breaking.
“Miles,” I said.
“I got it,” he grunted.
He reached his thick, scarred hand into the wall cavity, right into the dark space between the studs where sixty years of lime dust and spider webs had settled. His fingers felt around the iron box Reid had buried there in nineteen-eighty-four—the one Jonah had told us about during the drive up Route 29.
He pulled. The nails gave with a sharp, screaming screech that sounded like an artillery shell grazing a tin roof.
The box came out. It wasn't silver. It wasn't brass. It was an old army ammunition can from the Korean War, olive drab, the stenciled lettering—*7.62MM BALL M80*—faded into a pale, chalky yellow.
Miles set it on the floor between Reid’s feet.
“Your father’s journals,” Miles said, wiping his hands on his Levi’s. “The real ones. Not the ones you filed with the historical society.”
Reid looked down at the ammo can. He didn't touch it. His chest was heaving under the wool cardigan, his breath coming in short, shallow rattles that sounded like dry leaves in a gutter.
“He hated me,” Reid whispered. “He always loved Jonah. Jonah was the scholar. Jonah had his mother’s eyes. I was just the one who kept the books.”
“No, Reid,” I said, stepping between him and the box. “You weren't the one who kept the books. You were the one who stole the pencil.”
I picked up the ammo can by the wire handle. It weighed thirty pounds—thirty pounds of cold paper, dry ink, and thirty years of truth that had been locked in the dark while my mother wore her pearls and Helena played with pom-poms.
“Where are you going?” Reid asked as we reached the doorway. His voice was small now, no louder than the crickets behind the house in Fayetteville.
May you like
“Back to the division,” I said without looking back. “We’ve got a jump at zero-six-hundred on Friday. And the wind’s coming out of the north.”
---