by Keene, Susan
CHAPTER 12
I was the last one to arrive at Ryan’s estate. Everyone had on jeans and sweaters. The men sported baseball hats with the logos of their favorite sports teams. The mood seemed much lighter than earlier in the day.
Ryan had laid out a meal for every taste. If you couldn’t find something to eat, you just weren’t hungry. On the range, there were two kinds of soup and a pot of chili simmering. There were burgers, ham sandwiches, humus, chips, wings, spaghetti, salad, fruit, and on and on.
Everyone filled his or her plate and perched around the room. The women were at the table, except for Sarah who jumped up on the island next to Tim. He was telling an involved story about Michael and Roomy, and the one that got away. One by one, everybody quieted down and began to listen. It was reminiscent of the movie The Big Chill.
As the evening wound down, my confusion grew. We all had some valid points. Maybe it wasn’t a trip. It could have been something as simple as dinner or a ballgame. No one knew anything about a crime or the witnessing of one. We all agreed we were a close enough group we would have known anything important that happened to one or more of us. What a dilemma.
I stayed behind to help Ryan clean up. He had little to say.
“Why so quiet?” I asked him.
He backed up to a kitchen wall and, with his back against it, slid down so his rear-end was low as he rested on his heels. He tented his fingers near his handsome face.
I smiled at him. He looked away, as if he didn’t know what to do next. “It’s getting so complicated. I didn’t think about it being an ordinary evening out with friends when something could have happened. Maybe whatever happened didn’t seem important to them. Maybe they angered someone and didn’t even know it.”
“I know. A thought occurred to me. Maybe Lizzy wasn’t involved. I don’t think she’s dead.”
As if on cue, my phone beeped. I had a text message. I read it and then put the phone on the floor and slid it over to Ryan. It bounced off his foot and he picked it up. After he read it, he shook his head. It read: Didn’t believe me? Said I’d be back. Now I’m all over the papers and TV. Not good. Reminds me of 08. Hope u r feeding my cat.
He read the text again slowly and aloud before sliding the phone back to me. “What does it mean?”
“Damned if I know. I guess she’s alive, the kidnapper, if there is one, is upset the police are involved. The cat reference is a way to let us know it’s her, and I think 08 refers to 2008 but nothing about that year pops into my mind.”
So much had happened in the last six years. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It said something horrible could happen, would happen, or did happen and we needed to find out which.
“I don’t think we should tell Roger. I think his interference could get her killed. We need to rack our brains. What happened in 08? It sounds like something that made the newspapers.”
I checked my phone for the time, and it let me know it was twelve-thirty a.m.
“It’s after midnight. Let me take you home. We can explore this in the morning when the newspaper archives are available to us.”
“Just Google, Lizzy Smith and 2008 and see what comes up.”
“Good idea.” He walked to the table and opened his laptop. “This is amazing, 21,894 entries about Lizzy Smith and 2008. Guess we’ll start at the beginning.”
I walked over behind him, put my hands on his shoulders, and leaned down so my face was next to his neck. We began to scan the page.
Twenty-five-year-old artist Lizzy Smith sells painting for a record $478 thousand. Lizzy Smith books showing in Malan. Lizzy Smith linked with playboy millionaire Tommy Darden. Lizzy Smith, Lizzy Smith Lizzy Smith, page after page, entry after entry.
“We need to actually go to the Post-Dispatch and look up 2008.”
“Look up biggest news stories of 2008 in St. Louis area. It will save us a trip.” Ryan turned his attention back to the computer as I pulled a chair up next to him and sat down.
“What about Roger and the publicity. We don’t want to get Lizzy hurt by having everyone out looking for her.”
“Your guy, Roger, seems to play by the book. I can’t imagine him putting out a false statement saying she’s been found.”
“He might not go that far, but he might tone it down a little. Thank goodness you didn’t post a reward.”
Ryan looked at his feet. “I have it in the works. I just didn’t have time to tell you about it.”
“Cancel it. It’ll have every cowboy in the area out looking to score a few easy dollars. Anymore, looking for reward money is like geocaching, everyone is doing it.”
I watched him get up. He looked like a wrestler in expensive clothes. His body said he went to the gym regularly. I’d never seen it or heard about it. His hair curled at his neck in a well-planned casual look. Wealth and charm eked out of him, mostly because he was raised with money and didn’t have a pretentious bone in his body. His hair had begun showing a touch of gray a couple of years ago, but it looked sexy on him. Ryan’s eyes were his best feature, though. They flashed when he got excited, dulled when he got upset, and ravaged me when we made love. I blushed in spite of myself.
We were getting ready to read the stories we searched for when a terrible sound came from the patio near the French doors. Ryan went to check it out. He couldn’t find anything.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Instinct told me something wasn’t right.
The minutes ticked by. Nothing happened and then every light in the house went out. Ryan got up to see if the streetlights on Delmar were out. They shined brightly back at him. Now what?
“Stay put. I’m going to the basement to see what happened.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Darkness and I had never been friends, and it got worse after Michael’s death. I felt myself tense up and tried to breathe deeply to relax. When that didn’t work, I fondled my gun.
It took Ryan less than a minute to come back upstairs, but before he did, the lights flashed back on.
“Someone flipped the switch on the electric panel.”
“How do you know a circuit didn’t get too hot?”
“There’s evidence someone’s been down there, and it wasn’t me. The window on the west side was open and the box that has a wire latch, jimmied. I need to get some men on the perimeter. I usually have the alarm set this time of night, but when I’m up I feel like I’m a big boy and can take care of myself.”
He began making phone calls. I went back to the computer and tried to look up 2008 again but the WI-FI no longer worked. I looked around at all the windows and glass around us and gave a shudder. First Michael, then Roomy, and then Andy all murdered, Lizzy missing but sending weird texts, and now someone in Ryan’s house. I needed to think.
“We can finish this in the morning. Your WI-FI won’t come on and I’m too tired to think. I’m going home.” I walked over to a coat rack near the back door and slipped on my jacket.
“I’ll drive you. I don’t want you to drive alone tonight. If you want your car at the penthouse, one of my men will drive it there. I hired more security to watch the rest of the group, and you.” Ryan pushed a button on his phone and two men appeared at the back door. He spoke with them in muffled tones. Then he turned to me. “Doug will drive your car to the penthouse. I need your keys.”
I reached in my jacket pocket and tossed them gently his way.
After the men left, Ryan walked over to me and took me in his arms. We stood like that for several minutes. “We had better go.” He held me at arm’s length and looked at me. “I’d like to stay with you tonight.”
“No, it’s late and I need to be alone. There’s a lot to absorb. I think best alone.”
He took my hand, led me to his truck, and helped me navigate the step as I climbed in.
We rode to my apartment in silence. I thought about how nice it would be to have his warm body next to mine while I tried to sort this entire mess out. However, it was a habit
I didn’t want to get into, in case I couldn’t break it later.
CHAPTER 13
R yan and Doug insisted on coming up with me to check out the apartment. I tried to dissuade them but to no avail. Ryan tried the doors to the balconies. Each bedroom had a small private space of its own, and then off the living room and dining room area a massive deck reached out over the city. Within ten minutes, they declared me safe. They left together.
Instead of sleeping, I grabbed a legal pad from my desk and started a timeline. Michael was murdered July 16, 2011, Roomy on July 29, 2013, and Andy on April 2, 2016. If Lizzy’s text was indeed from Lizzy, and the hint ’08 meant 2008, what happened then to make someone want to kill them now? There had to be a connection? Michael was a stockbroker at Stiffel-Nicholas; Roomy, an actuary for Met Life; and Andy, a veterinarian. Lizzy painted.
To my dismay, I’d left my laptop at the office. My search for whatever might have happened would have to wait. If it had enough significance, I kept thinking, it would pop into my head.
I knew the answer lie in the fortune-cookie fortune. The fortunes looked real because they all had lucky numbers on the back. Oh, my. Were the numbers the same? Did they mean something? I ran to the living room and grabbed the file Roger had given me. It contained everything from the three murders. Michael’s case lay on top. I hesitated several minutes before I opened it. The picture of his body, dead in the morgue lay on top. I turned it over so I didn’t have to deal with it.
Michael Eugene Nash, age 29, COD: single gunshot to the back of the head. Tears welled in my eyes. Where was my professional distance? After throwing the file back on the table, I went to the kitchen and made a cup of coffee, took a hot shower, put on my favorite PJs, and, with a new resolve, picked the file up again. This was necessary. Maybe we were all in danger.
I took a deep breath and approached it like a scientist. It was now five-thirty. The sun came peaking over the balcony. I felt good and I was as awake as if I had slept for days. I began. What could I learn from these files if I looked at them like a cop and not a grieving widow or a close friend?
Michael had twenty-six dollars in his front shorts pocket and nineteen cents in coin in his other one. The note was found in his shirt pocket. The shirt lay some five feet from the body. The bullet entered the back of his head and went out through his right eye. Death was instantaneous. There were no signs of a struggle.
His watch was on his right arm, he was left handed, and nothing at the campsite was disturbed, nothing taken, no witnesses. The numbers on the reverse side of the fortune were 8-11-14-26-49-52. Could they mean anything?
Roomy’s files stated he died as a result of drowning. There was water in his lungs and multiple bruises on his body. Maybe someone held him under water and he struggled. The coroner’s note said his injuries were consistent with his body hitting the pier repeatedly and most of them were post mortem. His wife, Alicia, said he went for his evening walk along the Mississippi river as he did every night. Bo, their Irish setter, always went with him. The dog came back several hours later. They found Roomy’s body three days later under a pier nine miles downriver. Later, they found the fortune cookie taped to the steering wheel of his car, which he kept, parked in a garage a block from his house. I panicked when I saw the picture of the reverse side of the paper. The numbers were 8-11-14-26-49-52. Why had no one noticed that before?
Andy’s file showed his death caused by a single bullet wound to the heart at close distance. Both Michael and Andy were killed with a 44 magnum. The ballistics weren’t back on the bullet that killed Andy. My hands were shaking when I found the photograph of the fortune-cookie fortune. The numbers all but jumped off the page at me, 8-11-14-26-49-52. What did it all mean?
Lizzy was the wild card. What did she have to do with anything? How and why did she send messages? Was Lizzy a good person or a bad person? What did any of this have to do with her? Out of nowhere, exhaustion circled me. I gathered the files and headed toward the bathroom. I splashed my face with cold water. I was shocked out of my concentration by the sound of my cell phone in the other room.
I didn’t get there in time. I didn’t know who would call me before eight. I checked my caller ID. It was Amy. I called back.
“Hi, where are you?”
“Still at the house,” I said. “I’ll be there right away. Are we busy today?”
“Not too bad. How’d it go last night?”
“There’s a new lead. Well, not a new lead. A lead we didn’t notice before.” I was babbling. “I’ll be there right away. Tell you then.”
Now the intercom buzzed. I pressed the button and a fuzzy picture of Ryan came on the screen.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I parroted back.
“Can I come up?”
“It’ll slow me down. Give me two minutes, and I’ll be there.”
“Okay.”
The image reflecting back at me from the mirror unnerved me. Dark circles ringed my eyes. I grabbed for a ponytail holder and tried to gather as much of my unruly thick red hair into it as possible, grabbed a pair of pale green slacks, and sort of jumped into them with one leg while I looked for a shirt with the other hand. I settled on a darker green one and vaguely wondered if I looked like a leprechaun. Oh well, I needed something to detract from my eyes. This would do it. Folks would be laughing so hard at the outfit they wouldn’t notice how tired I looked.
The elevator door sprang open when I pushed the button. Two minutes later, I joined Ryan in the hall.
“You look terrible.”
So much for tact.
“Thanks. I needed that.”
“No. You look nice, but did you sleep last night?”
“No.”
“Well, you wear it better than I do.”
I looked him over. He had on a pair of gray tailored slacks that hugged his thighs and accentuated the muscles under them. The sport coat covering his broad shoulders was charcoal and a pale yellow polo shirt peeked out from beneath it. He always gave the appearance of being much taller.
I was secretly pleased he didn’t tower two feet over me. “I have so much to tell you.”
“You can tell me over breakfast.”
I needed to turn him down again.
“I can’t. Amy and I have a ritual about breakfast. The first one there gets bagels and latte. Her feelings are already hurt because she feels left out. I don’t want to make things worse.”
“Okay, I’ll drop you off at your office and go eat breakfast. You can do your Amy thing, and we’ll talk in about an hour.”
“No!” It came out like an order. “Sorry. I want you to come in with me. I’ve discovered something, and I need your input.”
“What?”
“Wait until we get to the office, I can tell you both.” I held tight to the files, as if they were precious diamonds.
“Hi, Amy.” I said in greeting as I walked into the office.
She was grinning from ear to ear.
“You’re in a good mood,” I mused.
“Not exactly. You look like a leprechaun.”
“Really. Ryan didn’t mention it.”
I turned around as he chuckled.
She grinned at him over my head. “He wouldn’t.”
“I’ll go change, but only because it isn’t St. Patrick’s Day.”
I started shedding my jacket as she picked up the two lattes from her desk and a bag I figured contained breakfast and followed me to the office. Ryan sat in the waiting room. I flung the closet door open and picked out a beige tailored leather jacket that zipped up the front.
“Better?”
“Much.”
“Ryan, come in here. I’ll share my bagel,” I yelled at him as I explored the bag.
“I’m ready for this clue you found.”
“Well, I don’t know why no one noticed it before, but the numbers on the flip side of the fortune-cookie fortune are the same on all three notes. The numbers are eight, eleven, fourteen, twenty-six,
forty-nine, and fifty-two.”
“Do they mean anything to you?”
“Since one of them is an eight, I thought maybe it might represent ’08. The only other numbers that could be in a date is the eleven, the fourteen, and the twenty-six, and of course, the eight.”
“This could be significant.” Ryan pulled the desk calendar toward him and wrote the numbers big and bold with a pen he took from his pocket.
We all stared blankly.
“Wasn’t fifty-two your badge number when you were a cop?” Amy asked.
“Yes, it was. What can it all mean?”
“We need to find out what happened on November 14, 2008 or November twenty-sixth. The fifty-two might be your badge number, but it might be something else. I am not coming up with anything pertaining to forty-nine or to fifty-two, if it isn’t your badge.” Ryan underlined the numbers again and again as he spoke.
“Listen, your gourmet breakfast is making me hungry. I am heading to Freda’s for breakfast and then to the newspaper to look up these dates. I’ll get back to you ladies as soon as I have something--one way or the other.”
“Thanks,” we both said in unison.
Amy looked in my direction. “We need to tackle the Wright case today or lose it.”
I nodded in agreement.
CHAPTER 14
A s if on cue, Don Wright called. “My wife has changed her routine. She said she had a meeting, and I followed her. She’s headed in the direction of the Sunlight Motel, right now.”
Amy pushed the button to put him on speaker. “Are you sure that’s where she’s going? There are a lot of things in that direction?”
He was sure and offered to follow her for us so he could be really sure.
“You go ahead and go to work. We’re on our way. The last thing we need is for her to see you or your car.”