to the barely veiled venom. Then he saw her draw herself up taller in her chair. She said easily, “No, ma’am. No more attempted kidnappings and believe me, I know how lucky I am. I have a man who loves me and a grandfather who loved me, too.”
Good, Rebekah was standing up to this intimidating woman, but they were getting off track. Savich said, “We’re here to talk about a number of things, Mrs. Clarkson, and we can begin with Zoltan. You said you’d never met her, but we ran a facial recognition program and found a photograph of the two of you together at a benefit for the Spiritualist Society in Baltimore earlier this year.”
For only a brief instant, Gemma’s face went blank, then she shook her head and said smoothly, “Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do recall meeting her. We run in some of the same circles, contribute to some of the same causes. But that doesn’t mean I hired her to do anything nefarious. From what you told me, she tried to help Rebekah communicate with her grandfather, and even if she misrepresented what was happening, it wasn’t illegal, was it? Some believe; some don’t.”
“Ah, but you knew what Rebekah’s grandfather would say, what he didn’t know, what he would ask for.”
“That is nonsense. How would I know such a thing?”
“From the private nurse who attended Congressman Clarkson in the last months of his life at the sanitarium.”
A patrician eyebrow went up. “I hired many nurses to attend him. What’s your point?”
Savich said, “Mrs. Clarkson, we know there had to be a trigger point, a recent one, when you realized Rebekah knew about the Big Take. She never believed it was real, at least not until after her meeting with Zoltan. I doubt your husband ever told you about the Big Take, but you found out about it regardless. From Nate Elderby.
“The trigger point was Heather Aubrey, the private nurse you hired three months before your husband died. She told you what Rebekah knew. Heather Aubrey, like all the other private nurses you hired over the years, presented herself at your office once a week to give you reports about the status of your husband, who his visitors were, what the doctors were saying. No doubt you usually heard all the same answers from the nurses throughout the years Congressman Clarkson lay in a coma at the Mayfield Sanitarium.
“But what a surprise when Mrs. Aubrey told you one incredibly valuable piece of information. That’s when everything began to fall into place.”
Gemma said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nurse Aubrey was nice enough, appeared genuinely upset when Johnny finally died. She never told me anything I didn’t already know. He was unresponsive, and Rebekah was there visiting three, four times a week, hanging all over him. There was nothing more, Agent Savich. And when he finally drew his last breath, it was a formality.”
Savich continued, “We spoke to Mrs. Aubrey, and she repeated to us what she told you. I imagine you tried not to show your excitement, but she saw it, nevertheless, and wondered.”
Griffin turned on his cell phone recorder. “I’m sure you’ll recognize Mrs. Aubrey’s voice.”
54
They listened to an older woman’s voice speaking in a soft Virginia drawl:
My visits with Mrs. Clarkson were always short, and I understood because I knew they had to be very tedious for her after so many years with her husband in a coma. There was never much to say, only that Rebekah visited her grandfather often, always spoke with me, asked me questions. Such a kind girl, I always thought, a lovely girl. I was told by the Mayfield nursing staff that Rebekah had been coming there for years whenever she could. She’d talk to Mr. Clarkson as she stroked his hand, tell him what she was up to, and then she’d repeat one of the wild adventure stories he’d told her when she was a child.
It was the strangest thing, Agents, but when I happened to mention that story you asked me about, the Big Take story, on my last visit to Mrs. Clarkson before he died, she got very intense, and her eyes fastened on my face. She wanted to know everything her granddaughter said, so I told her what I remembered. It was her favorite of all his stories, and she’d recited a poem he’d written for her about it, about where he’d hidden the Big Take. As I said, it