Murder on the Potomac by Margaret Truman Page B

and examined its contents. It was filled with thick envelopes, each secured with a rubber band. He plucked one from the bag and ran his fingers over it, as though his fingertips could determine its contents and worth like a bar-code reader at a supermarket checkout counter. He dropped the envelope into the bag and went to the paneled wall next to the clock where he gently pressed the lower corner of one section. A portion of the wall swung open. Behind it was a safe. Cheong dialed the combination, opened the door, and dumped the contents of the canvas bag on top of dozens of other envelopes.
    Process reversed, he went to the larger outer room, dropped the empty shopping bag on a table in the corner, and left.
    He walked to his office at the Tankloff Investment Advisory Group, picked up a briefcase and overnight bag he’d left there that morning, and told his secretary he would be in Philadelphia the following day for a meeting and would not be reachable that night. He checked his messages—nothing that couldn’t wait until he returned, including a call from Suzanne Tierney.
    He retrieved his red XJS Jaguar convertible from the parking garage beneath the building and turned on the radio. At 107.7 was an FM station that played middle-of-the-road oldies. And not Chinese oldies. He smiled his slight smile, positioned Porsche sunglasses on his nose, and checked himself in the rearview mirror. With James Taylor’s “Your Smiling Face” playing a little too loud, he headed out of the city. It was good to get away.

14
    Saturday Morning
    If recent events in Wendell Tierney’s world could have affected the weather appropriately, there would have been a torrential downpour accompanied by tornadoes. It was the Saturday of his cruise up the Potomac. But such a link didn’t exist except in the minds of mythologists. The day dawned sunny and breezy, perfect for mildly nautical meanderings on a peaceful river. Turbulence was all in the mind.
    Guests for the cruise were played on board by a bagpiper in full Scottish regalia, a tip of Tierney’s hat to his heritage, as well as to a departed friend, publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes, whose cruises on his yacht,
The Highlander
, had been as passionately coveted by business movers and shakers as dinner invitations to the White House were to those seeking political favors.
    Mac Smith took his wife’s arm as they climbed the gangplank to the
Marilyn
. Tierney’s yacht wasn’t as large as the famed Forbes ship, but it was no dinghy. The
Marilyn
was a 105-foot beauty with a twenty-three-foot beam, whose draft of only four feet made it possible to navigate relatively shallow portions of the Potomac. Built in 1989 by Derecktor Shipyards of New York and christened
Lady Frances
, it was bought by Tierney the following year through the Bertram Yacht Company of Miami and renamed. “She’ll do over thirty knots,” he’d told Mac and Annabel during their last cruise together. “Double most yachts her size. Cruise at twenty-four. Susan Puleo did the interiors.” The name meant nothing to the Smiths. Keeping up with the world of international designers was not one of their many interests.
    They declined a uniformed waiter’s tray of mimosas and Bloody Marys and made their way to the large, open aft deck where other early arrivals had congregated. Sarah Walters spotted them immediately. She was chairwoman of the National Cathedral’s chapter, the equivalent of a board of directors at secular institutions. “Mac, how delightful to see you,” she said, extending her hand. “And Annabel. Wendell certainly has good taste when choosing shipmates.”
    Walters’s husband, Fred, a tall, overweight, jowly man with the veined cheeks and watery eyes of a heavy drinker, was an undersecretary in the Defense Department. He lifted his drink in salute.
    The Walterses had been standing with two other couples. The black man, Joe Dorsey, headed the D.C. Urban League. His wife, Tammy, extraordinarily