A Place of Hiding

In California, Jim Ward was engaged in a “meeting of the partners,”


St. James was told when the call went through. Alas, the meeting was being held not in the office but at the Ritz Carlton hotel. “On the coast,” he was told with some importance by a woman who’d identified herself as “Southby, Strange, Willow, and Ward. Crystal speaking.”

“They’re all uncommunico,” she added. “But I could take a message.”

St. James didn’t have time to wait for a message to get through to the architect, so he asked the young woman—who seemed to be munching on celery sticks—if she could help him.

“Do what I can,” she said cheerfully. “I’m studying to be an architect myself.”

Good fortune looked down on him when he asked her about the plans which Jim Ward had sent to Guernsey. It hadn’t been that long ago that the documents had left the offices of Southby, Strange, Willow, and Ward, and as it so happened, Crystal herself was in charge of all post, UPS, FedEx, DHL, and even Internet transmittals of drawings. Since this particular situation had differed so radically from their usual procedure, she remembered it all and would be only too happy to explain it to him...i f he could wait just a moment “ ’cause the other line is ringing.”

He waited, and in due course her cheerful voice came back on the line. In the normal way things were done, she told him, the plans would have gone overseas via the Net to another architect, who’d carry the project on from there. But in this case, the plans were just samples of Mr. Ward’s work and there was no rush to get them there. So she packaged them “like always” and handed them over to an attorney who showed up to claim them. That, she’d discovered, was an arrangement that had been made between Mr. Ward and the client overseas.

“A Mr. Kiefer?” St. James asked. “Mr. William Kiefer? Was that who came for them?”

She couldn’t remember the name, Crystal said. But she didn’t think it was Kiefer. Although...wai t. Come to thi nk of i t, she didn’t recall the guy’s giving a name at all. He just said he was there to pick up the plans that were going to Guernsey so she’d handed them over.

“They got there, di’n’t they?” she asked with some concern. They certainly had.

How had they been packaged? St. James asked.

Regular way, she told him. Oversize mailing tube of heavy cardboard.

“It didn’t get wrecked on the way, did it?” she asked with equal concern. Not in the way she was thinking, St. James said. He thanked Crystal and rang off thoughtfully. He punched in the next number and had immediate success when he asked for William Kiefer: In less than thirty seconds, the California attorney came on the line.

He disputed Crystal’s version of events. He hadn’t sent someone to pick up the architectural drawings at all, he said. Mr. Brouard had told him explicitly that the plans would be delivered to his office by someone from the architectural firm when they were ready. At that point, he was to make arrangements for the couriers to carry the plans from California to Guernsey. That’s what happened and that’s what he did.

“Do you recall the person who delivered the plans from the architect, then?” St. James asked.

“I didn’t see him. Or her. Or whoever it was,” Kiefer answered. “The person just left the plans with our secretary. I got them when I came back from lunch. They were packed up, labeled, and ready to go. But she might remember...Hold on a minute, will you?”

It was more than a minute during which St. James was entertained by piped music: Neil Diamond misusing the English language in the cause of maintaining a dreadful rhyme scheme. When the phone line crackled to life again, St. James found himself talking to one Cheryl Bennett. The person who brought the architectural plans to Mr. Kiefer’s office was a man, she told St. James. And to the question of whether she remembered anything particular about him, she giggled. “Definitely. You hardly ever see them in Orange County.”

“Them?”

“Rastas.” The man who brought the plans was a Caribbean type, she revealed. “Dreads down to his you-know-what. Sandals, cut-offs, and a Hawaiian shirt. Pretty odd-looking for an architect, I thought. But maybe he just did their deliveries or something.”

She hadn’t gotten his name, she concluded. They didn’t talk. He had headphones on and was listening to music. He reminded her of Bob Marley.

St. James thanked Cheryl Bennett and soon rang off. He walked to the window and studied its view of St. Peter Port. He thought about what she had said and what it all might mean. Upon reflection, there was only one possible conclusion to be reached: Nothing they’d learned so far was anything like what it appeared to be.





Chapter 28