”— Concord and Park’s accountant. I pulled his client list from a state filing. Wiley’s tier-three foundation is on it. A vendor in Lowell I have never seen before is on it. They took an order seven weeks ago for six thousand dollars, routed through the Harcourt family’s general operations fund. The signatory was Henry Harcourt Benton.”
“What does the vendor do?”
“Custom circuit board assembly. The kind a hobbyist gunsmith would order. Or a man building a cellular trigger.”
“Where did it ship to?”
“Residential address in Watertown. I’ll send the deed to Eamon.”
I’d just sat at the desk in the upstairs office twenty minutes later when Eamon called.
“The current owner of record of the house in Watertown is Maria Aguirre. It’s Eleanor’s Maria. She’s owned a house in Watertown under her birth name for twenty-six years.”
“And Eleanor doesn’t know?”
“Unlikely. Eleanor’s household paperwork has her as Maria Reyes. That’s her mother’s maiden name.”
“She kept her real name for the part of her life Eleanor could never see.”
“That’s my read. Dane, we’ve got enough to keep the house under surveillance. Still not enough yet for a magistrate, but we’re getting closer.”
“What kind of surveillance?”
“Hiring a contractor. They’ll have cameras, an unmarked vehicle, and a thermal pass every six hours. No one approaches. That would surface the operation.”
“What would trigger movement?”
“If a person carries that device out of that house in the next ninety-six hours, we take it inside three blocks. We don’t need to enter the house. We only need the house to send something out.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Wednesday morning, oh-five-hundred. The plan we discussed.”
Eamon hung up. Farrow buzzed.
“Köhler wants you. Now. Won’t say what. Asked for you by name.”
Köhler was in the small upstairs parlor with the door closed. He was in a wing chair by the fireplace.
“Mr. Köhler.”
“Mr. Fletcher.”
I sat across from him.
“You wanted to speak with me?”
“I had something to share. Six weeks ago on a Sunday in the Berkshires, Henry brought work to the house. He rarely did that.. He had authorization to sign for six thousand dollars. It was a vendor he didn’t recognize. Maria had told him it was electrical work for the conservatory hall.”
“Did he say the name of the vendor?”
“The first word was Wycliffe.”
It was a match to the vendor in Lowell.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Nothing, but I thought it might be important. You said to share anything I could remember.”