Murder at the Pentagon Read Online Free PDF Page A

isn’t being broadcast outside their offices. Strictly information blind for the troops. Which, of course, must be driving the press crazy. It’s all over TV, radio, and the papers, but they just keep repeating the few facts they know, which are damned few.”
    Annabel felt a chill that was not the result of the central air-conditioning that pumped cool air into the house. She wrapped her arms about herself and said, “Eerie, the whole business of Dr. Joycelen being murdered inside the Pentagon.” She said to Margit, “You must feel on edge being there.”
    “A little. But there’s more than twenty thousand of us. I suppose that the victim was a man of Dr. Joycelen’s stature contributes to it.”
    “To say nothing of how it could have happened in one of the most secure buildings in the world,” Smith added. “Gives credence to the adage that you can never make anything completely secure. Or anyone.”
    Margit said, “What I imagine we’re all thinking is that because security is so tight—and there’s no doubt that it is—the murderer obviously had to be someone with clear access to the building.”
    “Which means, of course, that Joycelen was done in by one of your own,” Foxboro said.
    “I’d rather not think about that,” Margit said.
    “Hard not to,” Foxboro said.
    Margit glanced at him; was he about to take a dig at the military establishment? He was fond of doing that, and they’d had words in the past, resulting in his promise to curtail the tendency. He knew what she was thinking, smiled broadly, and pulled her closer to him.
    Margit, Jeff, Annabel, and Rufus watched with appropriate respect as Smith browned the beef on all sides in the skillet. He then transferred it to the oven: “Should take about twenty minutes,” he said, “just enough time to enjoy a relaxing drink together. Old American custom, although we allow young Americans to play, too.”
    Glasses refilled, they repaired to the living room, where, for no apparent reason, Margit started to giggle. The others looked at her. “I feel like I’m back in law school,” she said.
    Annabel smiled. “I wouldn’t mind being back in law school.” She’d been a tough-minded but fair divorce attorney when she met Mac Smith after his wife and son had been killed by a drunk driver on the Beltway. Smith was, at the time, one of Washington’s most respected trial lawyers. Not long after meeting Annabel, and after many long, soul-searching conversations with her, he closed his practice and accepted his present post at the university. Annabel had enthusiastically supported his decision, which certainly made it less taxing, and taxable, for him. Then, about a year later, they had a similar series of conversations, only this time it was Annabel voicing her desire: to stop practicing law and to pursue what had become a fervent interest in pre-Columbian art. She disposed of the cases she had and rented a small, pretty storefront in Georgetown in which she established a gallery devoted to her passion. It did well, and she eventually took over adjacent space to accommodate the growing number of pieces she’d successfully obtained. Of course, not only Mac’s but their combined income was dramatically cut, but as Smith often said, the first debt to be paid was the one they owed themselves, and now and then to society. Not only criminals should do so, he pointed out. Neither of them ever regretted the decision.
    “How about you, Mac?” Annabel asked. “Still view Margit and Jeff as students?”
    “Certainly not, although I do feel a little older sitting with former students, one now a major in the air force and a helicopter-flying lawyer of all things, the other a trusted key aide and brain-truster to one of our country’s prime legislators.”
    As in Washington it’s wont to do, the conversation turned to local gossip. Each of them had enough contributions to that theme to make it lively, and there was much laughter until Smith raised his