Mrs. Pollifax Pursued

Plot

This time, trouble finds Mrs. P. instead of the other way around. On a quiet spring day, when all she wants to do is plant basil in her Connecticut greenhouse, a missing salami leads her to a shocking discovery: a young woman has been hiding in her junk closet for two days, undetected by the ever-watchful Mrs. P. Kadi Hopkirk spills out an improbable story. Since a chance meeting in New Haven with a childhood friend, Kadi has been followed by a dirty white van, the legend CHIGI SCAP METAL misspelled on its side. She's sure the men inside are hell-bent on finding her, and a little experiment performed by Mrs. P. proves Kadi correct. But when, under the cover of darkness, Mrs. P. tries to drive Kadi back home to Manhattan, a dark green sedan gives them a run for their money and - Mrs. P. begins to suspect - for their lives. When Kadi confides that her friend is the son of the assassinated president of Ubangiba, that a guard was escorting him around New Haven, and that this friend, Sammy, passed her something under the table during their meeting, Mrs. P. decides that she does not want those men to catch up with them. Mrs. P. puts in a call for help to her CIA crony, Carstairs, who's got a bee in his bonnet about Henry Bidwell, a wealthy financier kidnapped a week earlier. Before Mrs. P. knows it, what began as a dash to safety expands into an assignment that leads to hair-trigger violence in exotic places. As always, Mrs. P.'s karate is impeccable, and in an affair that grows ever more awful, she remains a lady to the bone.