Morning phone calls brought Hannibal a number of surprises. First he learned that Anita was recuperating at Blair’s house. Blair had decided that she shouldn’t be alone, and this way Henry could keep an eye on her. Then he learned that Blair had taken the morning off to work from home. That would save Hannibal some driving time, since he had originally intended to meet with both Angela and Blair. Henry met Hannibal at the door of Blair’s vertical mansion.
“Good morning sir. Very good to see you again. Please come in.”
“I’ll make you a deal, Henry,” Hannibal said, stepping across the threshold. “If you’ll stop calling me sir, I’ll stop treating you like some servant who shouldn’t stick his nose into Ms. Cooper’s business. What do you think?”
Henry pursed his lips, weighing his options for a moment before choosing one. “Very good, Mr. Jones,” he said after a pause, but his smile seemed more genuine and Hannibal accepted the small step.
They climbed a long flight of stairs and walked down a hallway under a small cut-glass chandelier toward what Hannibal assumed was a guest room. Henry raised his hand to tap at the door when they heard a scratching noise from the bathroom beyond. The door stood open and Hannibal walked past Henry to look inside. He found Anita kneeling in front of the bathtub, scrubbing it out.
“That can’t be good for those ribs,” Hannibal said.
Henry was behind him a second later. “Ms. Cooper. Really!”
She turned and stood, straightening her short apron in front of her. “Really yourself, Henry. I can’t just lie here all day and let this place fall farther and farther behind.”
Hannibal didn’t even know how to describe the absurdity of the scene, but his smile seemed to break through their conversation. “Ahh, domestic discord,” he said, not realizing the pun until he had said it. “Could you take a little break so I can fill you in on the news?”
“Have you found my father’s prize?” Anita’s face brightened like a child’s on Christmas morning as the men trailed her to her temporary room. To Hannibal’s surprise the room held two comfortable chairs in addition to the full size bed and dresser. The scent of jasmine filled the room, and he wondered if that was always the case or if its present occupant had introduced it. Anita bounced onto the bed, not looking at all like a woman who had been beaten badly enough to be hospitalized. Hannibal sat in one chair. Henry chose to stand.
“Tea?” Henry asked the room.
“Oh, please,” Anita said.
“And coffee,” Henry added, nodding toward Hannibal.
“Uh, sure.”
Henry wafted away without a sound, and Anita stared at Hannibal until he realized he shouldn’t wait for Henry to return.
“Well, to directly address your question, no, I haven’t found what was stolen from you. But I do now know what it was.”
“Oh, I’ve had such childish fantasies,” Anita said. “Like it was a treasure map to hidden gold, or a ton of stock in the pharmaceutical company, or even the deed to some island he bought over the years.” In her glowing eyes Hannibal could see the innocent youth that Rod Mantooth could not resist dominating.
“In fact, it was nothing so exotic, but perhaps something even more valuable and certainly it was way more important. Your father apparently discovered the formulation for a drug, or maybe a vaccine, that would actually enable a cure for drug addiction.”
“You mean like methadone?” Anita asked.
“No, not a substitute, but something that would make an addict not need his drug any more. I’ve consulted an expert who tells me that the value of such a discovery could be astronomical.”
“An actual cure?” Anita asked. “You mean like if you’ve been using crack every day you could take this stuff and you could kick crack just like that? Why, that would be a Godsend to all of humanity! Henry, did you hear?”
Henry had just placed a tray on the table beside the bed. He handed Anita her cup, then offered a second to Hannibal. “Just that your father is a hero, Ms. Cooper. I expected no less.”
“There’s more,” Hannibal said, sipping his coffee. “I don’t know where Mantooth is, but I do know how to find him soon. He’ll be returning to the repair shop where he got the crazy car built in a few days. I’ll be there to greet him.”
Anita’s reaction was a curious combination of fear and elation. Her mouth formed the “O” of stunned surprise, but her eyes reflected a reluctance to even consider the possibility that Rod might be captured or hurt.
Standing to the side, Henry stayed silent, standing with a saucer in one hand and the handle of a cup in the other. Hannibal knew that he was fully engaged, but his face was as passive as a tax investigator at an audit. Hannibal considered recommending him to the Treasury Department for secret service work. He was very good at being present but somehow remaining invisible.
Anita’s eyes suddenly focused like a laser on Hannibal’s glasses, as if to center her mind on one thought and blot out all others. “My father did something no one else was able to do.”
“That appears to be the case,” Hannibal said. “Everyone I’ve interviewed has told me that he was a brilliant man.”
“He was a genius,” Anita said, her smile spreading to envelope her face again. “The best pharmaceutical biochemist in the world. Mr. Blair was right. His discovery will change the world. You will get it back, right?”
“I’m certainly going to do my best,” Hannibal said, not sharing her smile. “Meanwhile, I think I need to go brief Mr. Blair himself. After all, he’s paying the bills.”
Ben Blair’s home office was both smaller and simpler than Hannibal expected. The cherry wood desk appeared to take up most of the space, with three tiers of open shelves in place of a traditional hutch. The phrase "organized disorder" came to Hannibal’s mind as he stepped in. Papers and computer discs covered the desk and all three shelves, even crowding the flat screen monitor, but Hannibal suspected that Blair knew what each was, and that every sheet of paper was exactly where it belonged. An acoustic guitar standing in the far corner struck him as the one incongruous note.
Hannibal stood quiet while Blair tapped at a keyboard with steady intensity, like a virtuoso charging through the end of a Dvorak sonata. When he reached the finale, he released a big breath and turned his easy, boyish smile on Hannibal. The straw thatch on his head was uncombed and one could hardly guess that seconds ago this man in a faded Planet Hollywood tee shirt and shorts was directing a billion dollar empire through his simple Dell computer.
“So, Mr. Jones, what do we know that we didn’t know forty-eight hours ago?”
“Well, as I just told Anita, I’ve caught a break in the search for Rod Mantooth. He left his car at a shop for repair and I’ll be alerted when he returns for it.”
Blair waved Hannibal to a chair. Not until he sat did he realize that Blair was burning incense in the room. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the scent was called chamomile. Hannibal got a mental picture of Blair, relaxing like a sixties hippie, strumming a tune in his incense fogged room, maybe getting high.
“That’s not catching a break,” Blair said, crossing his right ankle over his left knee. “That’s due diligence. I knew you were the right man for this job.”
“Thanks. I think it will do a lot for Anita’s self-esteem if this man is made to pay for hurting her.”
Blair nodded. “Unfortunately, it might be impossible to prove that he’s committed a crime. What about the property he stole? Do you think you’ll be able to recover it? Or is there any evidence that he’s already sold it?” Blair maintained his usual casual attitude, but the fingers of his left hand drummed a rhythm on the desk and his right foot, shook frantically in space.
“Interesting that you didn’t ask if I’ve learned what he took. But, you’ve known all along, haven’t you? Or at least suspected, right?”
Blair’s smile didn’t drop, but it hardened. “I’m not sure I get your meaning.”
“It never occurred to me that you knew anything about your cleaning woman’s father,” Hannibal said, “but Anita says you knew enough to tell her that he was a genius. I’m thinking you suspected from the beginning that the only thing he’d hide for her that could be of great value was some new pharmaceutical breakthrough. Then I remembered that among your holdings is an on-line pharmaceutical company.”
Blair lowered his foot to the floor and sat forward just a bit. “Whatever Cooper came up with has to be of great value, based on what he told her. Someone is going to make a great deal of money from his discovery. Now it’s out there where anybody might capitalize on it. I’m the only one who would make sure Ms Cooper gets her fair share of the wealth a new wonder drug will generate. But I can’t do that unless the formula is recovered.”
“How very altruistic of you,” Hannibal said, standing. “Well, you’re my client and I will do all I can to protect your interests. But you should know that Anita has retained an excellent business attorney who will make sure her interests are protected as well.”
Blair’s smile returned to its former lightness. “Ah, this would be Miss Santiago, right? She’s with Baylor, Truman and Ray I believe, one of the finest business firms in Washington. I’m quite sure that we will work quite smoothly with them on this matter, once you’ve recovered Ms Cooper’s prize.”
Any response Hannibal might have considered was pushed out of his head by the ring of his cell phone. Blair indicated that he should take the call, so he pulled his phone out and pushed the button. At first all he heard was distant sobbing.
“Hannibal? Sarge. I don’t know what to do.”
Hannibal didn’t think he had ever heard desperation in Sarge’s voice before.
“What’s going on, man? Where are you? Is that Marquita in the background? Is she all right?”
“I brought her down to Virginia Beach to relax a bit. Now she’s freaking out,” Sarge said, his voice pumping fear into the telephone. “I’ve just now calmed her down enough for her to tell me why. She saw him Hannibal. She spotted Rod Mantooth down here.”