*
After another grueling day of work and suspicious looks from his fellow Burners, Devine took the train back to Mount Kisco.
As he walked home from the station, a black sedan pulled up.
“Get in,” said the driver.
Devine got in and found himself sitting next to Campbell.
“The chatter we’ve been relying on died out completely,” said the retired general.
“When exactly?”
He told Devine the precise time it had happened. “Thoughts?”
Devine explained to Campbell his theory regarding Montgomery’s being the unwitting messenger using the color of her bikini to signal someone on the 6:20 train to either halt or start back up the Area 51 operations.
Campbell nodded knowingly. “That’s the way they used to do it in the old days. Not bikini colors, mind you, but person-to-person communication using a signal or system that would raise no suspicion whatsoever. A folded newspaper with the below-the-flap part showing, a different-colored flower left in a vase in a window, a light left on or off. In ’Nam we would tie different-colored bandanas around trees, change the meaning frequently, and the Viet Cong never figured it out. But why did they pull out the red bikini and grind Area 51 to a halt?”
“Stamos’s murder. Cowl sent the order to Montgomery to wear the bikini before the cops even knew she was dead. So he either killed her or found her body and panicked. But if Stamos did call Cowl that night, the police will be able to tell from her phone records.”
“Okay, what’s your next move?”
Devine told him about Elaine Nestor and his planned trip.
Campbell nodded. “Make it count, Devine. My old soldier’s instincts are telling me that we are running out of time.”
CHAPTER
56
THE NEXT MORNING DEVINE CALLED in sick and then met Montgomery at the train station. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and black ankle boots. He passed her his spare helmet, she climbed on, and they set off for Connecticut.
When they arrived at the address, they saw that Elaine Nestor’s cottage was small but quaint, with gray cedar shake siding, white trim, and beds filled with colorful summer flowers. Hers was the only house on the macadam rural road.
When they knocked on the door a woman answered. She was in her late forties with graying hair cut short on the sides with one long bang in the front and black-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck. She looked more like a caricature of a librarian than a hard-charging financial journalist digging up dirt on the wealthy and powerful. But her features were alert and her eyes bright and probing.
“Elaine Nestor?”
“Yes. Who are you?” she said. He saw a phone in one hand and a wooden mallet in the other. But when she saw Montgomery standing next to him, she relaxed just a bit.
“My name is Travis Devine. This is my friend, Michelle. I work at Cowl and Co—”
That got the door slammed right in his face.
Should’ve seen that coming, idiot.
He glanced at Montgomery, whose expression said pretty much the same thing.
He called out, “I read your article on Brad Cowl. The one that got your career torpedoed. I just wanted to tell you that you were right.”
The door slowly opened, but Nestor’s look remained suspicious. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
“Have you read about the murders?”
“Of course I have. And what do you mean I was right?”
Devine had prepared what he was about to say on the ride up. “I think Cowl is running the biggest money-laundering scheme in the history of the world. And would you like your career back?”
Nestor stared at him for an uncomfortably long moment.
“Would you both like some coffee?” she said brightly.
Three cups of coffee later Nestor was still shaking her head. “ ‘Area 51’？ Really?”
“Really,” said Devine. “As crazy as it sounds.”
“It doesn’t sound crazy. People will do anything to make money. But you took a huge risk doing what you did.”
He looked at Montgomery, who was fingering her coffee cup and looking pensively out the window into the rear garden. “I had incentive enough,” Devine said.
Nestor said, “You asked me about Brad Cowl, and I told you what I thought. He’s a slick operator and can talk a good game, but if he knows the difference between an LBO and HBO, I’ll run naked down the street. And he did inherit a lot of money and he blew it on coke and women, and shady investment types who took him to the cleaners, and I have the receipts to prove it. He’s a front man, plain and simple, and I wrote all about that in my article. And then I got my ass handed to me and basically run out of town on a rail. It’s just history repeating itself. Anyone who had the temerity to question Bernie Madoff’s guaranteed returns got the same treatment for decades.”