and feed her.”
“Nice of you to do that.”
“Oh, they paid me. They insisted on that. Mr. and Mrs. Dabney were very kind, Mrs. Dabney especially. I saw a lot more of her. Mr. Dabney was always working or traveling. Momma and I would be long gone before he got home from the office.”
“Do you know where Mr. Dabney traveled to?”
“Why?”
“We’re looking into his death as well.”
“I heard he killed himself.”
“He did. But we still have to figure out why.”
“Oh, well, I’m not really sure where he went. I think a lot of places in this country, different states. One time I was helping Momma put his luggage away after he came back from a trip and the airline baggage sticker was still on it.”
“Do you remember the initials of the airport on it?”
“No. But I do remember it wasn’t an American airline. I just can’t remember which one it was. But I remember Momma telling me that he traveled a lot overseas too.”
“How did she know that?”
Kaine smiled. “When she was little, Samantha got ahold of her daddy’s passport and hid it in the kitchen. They were looking all over for it. Momma found it in the sugar bin. She had to open it up to clean off the pages and get all the grains of sugar off it. And she said it was full up with stamps and stuff from all the countries he’d been to.”
“Did your mother ever tell you anything out of the ordinary about the Dabneys?”
“Out of the ordinary?” Kaine gave him a penetrating look. “Where is all this going?”
“To the truth, I hope.”
“The Dabneys are good people.”
“I’m sure they are, but Mr. Dabney did murder someone.”
Kaine’s expression changed to one of bewilderment and then sadness. “I still can’t believe he did it. He would have been the last person in the world I would have thought was capable of that. And him killing himself? And leaving Mrs. Dabney? They were so much in love. They were the perfect couple.”
“Well, looks can be deceiving.”
Decker glanced down at the box. “What’s in there?”
Kaine smiled. “This was my old bedroom. It was just Momma and me. I had a brother, but he died when he was a baby, and my daddy passed when I was four.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She kept some of my stuff. I’ve got two daughters, so I thought they might want it, but they’re getting a little old for some of it.”
“You mean toys?”
“Yeah.”
She stepped back and opened the door more fully. Decker saw a neatly made bed, a white chest of drawers, and two tall shelves packed with items.
“These days if you can’t hook up to the Internet kids don’t want it. Dr. Seuss books, Easy-Bake Oven, puzzles. And even dolls. Now it has to be that American Girl thing. Do you know how much those cost? Mine were way cheaper and just fine. All you had to do was use your imagination.”
Decker was only half listening. On one shelf he was staring at a series of dolls all lined up in a row.
“Are those your old dolls?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that they’re exactly like the ones the Dabney daughters have?”
“Are they? Well, I guess that makes sense.”
“Why?”
“Because the Dabneys bought them for me.”
CHAPTER
“And when the kids got older and the dolls stayed on the shelf, Dabney probably turned to another technique,” said Bogart. “Like Berkshire and her use of the book.”
Brown said, “So this guy has been spying and selling out this country for well over thirty years?”
“Looks to be,” said Bogart.
“You would have thought he would have been caught at some point,” noted Milligan. “I mean, other spies, even ones who got away with it for years, were eventually found out.”
“We know about them because they got caught,” pointed out Decker. “There could be lots of spies out there who were never caught.”