Houses similar to those she had seen at her first place of captivity stared back at her, their back gardens well kept and stretching in a line as far as she could see. They snuggled up to each other, giving the impression of older row houses, separated from their neighbors by low stone walls or thick, dense hedges. In front of her, looming large and tantalizingly near, sprawled the garden of the house where she was kept. A path of paving stones led around to the left; a birdbath stood near the back hedge. A wooden bench faced it on the right hand side. Although she didn’t know which direction she faced, the sunlight gave the impression of morning, white light illuminating the dew on grass, leaves, and flowers.
Morning. But where was she?
Dena let the curtain fall closed, no better for her knowledge. She could have been anywhere overnight, even out of Derbyshire. How would Michael ever find her?
She pressed her back against the wall and slowly slid down to her buttocks, the pain in her body forgotten as a new realization hit her: she had grabbed the curtain with her teethher mouth wasn’t gagged. Her captor didn’t fear she would call for help. She was alone.
Though tired, she again crawled on her knees to the corner, struggled to her feet, and shuffled back to the window. The room was at ground level. Surely some neighbor would appear eventually in his own back garden—not everyone would be at work. Surely he would hear if she yelled loudly enough.
She measured time in the thuds of unseen doors slamming, the starts of car engines on the street along the house front, the barks of dogs, the distant groan of lorry motors, the twittering of birds.
A figure—hardly more than a shoulder, upper arm and back—appeared in the adjacent back garden barely within Dena’s view. She strained on tiptoes to see more but the figure disappeared. She pressed her forehead against the window, desperate to find the person. A score of heartbeats passed before the figure straightened from its bent over position and revealed itself. It started to turn toward her, then stopped and began walking away. Dena banged on the window with her forehead, oblivious to the dull pain, and yelled.
She’d been shouting for nearly a minute when the door to her room opened, revealing the masked figure. And the inference of trouble.
****
It looks like trouble, Jamie thought, standing at the edge of the lay-by. He’d walked around Dena’s car, noting its condition and the ground in the immediate vicinity. The parched earth yielded nothing obvious—no muddy shoe print, no trail of blood, no lost earring. Still, a team of constables would search the area and the car, since he had reported Dena as a missing person, and bag anything and everything. A clue could come from the most mundane object.
A constable wearing a white paper work suit began a preliminary examination of the car. He held up a small notebook and mobile phone in his gloved hands and called to Jamie.
“You might want to see this.”
“Something important on the page?”
“Could be.”
“Read it to me.”
“If it’s easier, WPC Fischer can hold it so you can read it.”
Jamie nodded as the constable handed the notebook to a young woman who had just finished suiting up. She angled the notebook so Jamie could see the page, holding it and turning pages while he made his own notes. When he had finished, he asked the constable if the notebook had been open when he found it.
“Yes, sir. I picked it up exactly as it lay. Even to the opened page.”
“Was it on the front seat?”
“No, sir. Between the two front seats. Her handbag is on the floor on the passenger side. Her mobile is still turned on.”
“Could it have slipped out of her bag, do you think?”
“May have done, though it would’ve had to have been earlier.”
“Oh, yes?”
“The bag is zipped closed.”
Jamie drew in his breath and stared at the notes he’d made. A list of five names, with summaries of the talks she had evidently had with each person, hinted at her amateur detective game. Had one of these people followed her, perhaps fearing that too much had been said? Did that person kidnap Dena? He grimaced, not willing to consider another alternative.
“You say the mobile is on,” Jamie said as the WPC put the notebook into a plastic evidence bag. “Any indication who she may have been calling?”
The constable punched a few buttons on the phone and said slowly, “No. It’s just on. Her last incoming call—which wasn’t answered—was from McLaren, Michael. Name mean anything to you?”
“What time was that?”
“This morning. Five minutes to six.”
Just before Mike rang me up, Jamie thought.
“Something else, sir.” The constable held up another evidence bag. It contained a set of car keys.
“Hers?” Jamie glanced at the car’s ignition switch. It had no key. A new sense of urgency gripped him.
“Yes. I tried it in the ignition. Anything else, sir?”
“No. That’s fine for now. Thank you.”
The constable nodded and slipped the mobile into an evidence bag.
Jamie walked back to his car, trying to understand what he’d seen. Nothing made sense. No woman would leave her key, bag, and mobile if she voluntarily left the car. He said as much to McLaren when he answered Jamie’s call.
“I’m still at the scene,” Jamie said, staring at the entries in his notebook.
“Do you think she was interrupted before she could complete a call?” McLaren’s voice sounded far away and strained, as though he were afraid to voice his thoughts.
“Could be. Or she could have just left it on. You know—most of us have it on. It’s normal, Mike. We don’t want to miss a call. Especially if we’re expecting the plumber to ring or something like that.”
“But those names she wrote down.”
“Ellen Fairfield…”
“The curator at Rawlton Hall. Right.”
“Ron Pennell…”
“The herbalist at the Minstrels Court.”
“Fay Larkin…”
“Kent Harrison’s fiancée.”
“Dave Morley…”
“Kent’s sporadic singing partner.”
“And Trevor Pennell. Where are you?”
“Still at Dena’s house. Why did she talk to Trevor?”
“Why did she talk to Ellen, Ron, Fay, and Dave?” He paused, expecting McLaren’s response. When none came, he added, “She wanted to help you, Mike.”
The silence, absolute and frightening, filled Jamie’s ear and soul. A tractor growled its way out of the dirt lane and onto the road before Jamie said, “Mike?”
“Yeah.” His reply was barely audible, yet his voice held steady.
“What are you thinking? You’re not going to do anything rash, I hope.”
“Define the word ‘rash’.”
“I’m thinking you need to keep on with what you’re doing, Mike, and leave this to me. You’re in no emotional state to do you, me, or Dena any good.”
McLaren’s retort boomed over the phone. “You wouldn’t say that if it were your wife who went missing.”
“I know I wouldn’t! But you would if our roles were reversed. You would tell me the exact thing. Because you know that’s the proper thing to do.”
“Bloody hell. I’m not a copper any more, Jamie. I don’t care what’s proper procedure and what isn’t. I need to find Dena.”
“We will, Mike. The police will bring in specialist squads now that it’s looking as though Dena was abducted. Your phone, and her dad’s phone, will be tapped and monitored for evidence if the abductor calls. They’ll set up an incident room, search the obvious locations based on the leads from her notebook, they’ll have dogs on standby.”
“I know. I’ve done all that myself when I worked such cases.”
“Great. Then you know to give us some time, for God’s sake! They just started on this. They’ve not done too shabbily, have they?”
A begrudgingly given �
�no” slipped from McLaren.
“And your being or not being a copper hasn’t a damned thing to do with this, and you know it. You wanted to by-pass the police—and I know what you told me, you needn’t repeat it. But the real reason is because you want to find her yourself. You want to repair your fractured relationship in one quick, easy act of heroics and a flash of awe-inducing genius. Commendable but not realistic. Or smart. Dena’s life may be on the line and you want to fly around as a lone Mountie and rescue her. Nice, but you can’t.”
“I’m only saying that I need to do something, for Christ’s sake! I can’t sit around.”
“So you’re going to rush around, break down those people’s doors, grab them by their throats, and shake answers from them. Just who would that be? The people listed in her notebook? You won’t be satisfied to stop there if that doesn’t produce Dena. You’ll branch out and threaten everyone else you suspect even slightly. You’ll look up all the criminals you’ve ever dealt with. You’ll enlarge your interrogation to include their family members because, God help them, someone may be harboring resentment for when you sent his old man down twenty years ago. Only, it took him two decades to figure out how to get to you and kidnap Dena.” Jamie took a breath, aware he may have angered his friend, but knowing he had to voice his opinion.
“So I’m supposed to go home, have a cuppa, do some gardening, and wait.”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong with looking on my own? The cops will never know I’m nosing about. I just might find her faster.”
“The most likely thing you’ll find is that you’ll bring on lies or a lawsuit if you muscle anyone. And that could hinder Dena’s welfare, if she’s held by one of them.” He took a deep breath, letting his words sink into McLaren’s mind. “Am I right?”
“Yeah. As usual.”
“I’m not keeping score, Mike.”
“Go on with your job of work, then. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come over so…”
“I’ll ring you up the minute I hear anything, though you’ll probably get a phone call or visit from someone in the job. You’ll no doubt be formally interviewed, too.”
McLaren made no comment. “Do her notes suggest who may have kidnapped her, or point you in any direction?” He seemed to be pleading for information, to have something on which to focus mentally and emotionally, to use as an anchor in this whirlwind.
“Nothing jumps out at me, no. But this could be circumstantial, you know.”
“Like someone she talked to then talked to someone else.” He stopped.
“I’ve got the names. The constable showed them to me.” He lowered his voice and turned from the police team searching the area. “They don’t have to know I’m on the case unofficially. I’ll keep going and start with these five. I’m close to Rawlton Hall, so I’ll see Ellen Fairfield first. And don’t worry. We may be amazed at what I find out.”
“Just so you find her. I’ll owe you favors for the rest of my life.”
Jamie smiled, rang off, and went to see Ellen Fairfield.
****
McLaren decided to talk to Trevor Parnell. Ashbourne, the town where Trevor taught school, was minutes down the road from Kirkfield. McLaren could question the man and be off to talk to Fay Larkin before Jamie knew what he’d done. He’d be helping Jamie and the police, he convinced himself. Besides, in the nightmare he was living, he needed that activity.
A helpful teacher directed McLaren to Trevor’s classroom, a room in the academic wing of the building. McLaren knocked on the door, then entered. Colored posters of monarchs from the Plantagenet and Tudor reigns gave faces to the names in the history books; maps of the British Isles illustrated the changing territories of wars’ winners; a banner depicting the timeline of one thousand years of major events hung between the two large windows. All in all, McLaren thought, a visual way to learn in this entertainment-demanding culture.
Trevor looked up, plainly startled to see McLaren, but agreed to give him five minutes.
“I won’t deny I was jealous of the scholarship funds that Kent received,” Trevor said, opening a textbook to a marked page, “but I didn’t kill him. If anyone was jealous, it was Fay.”
“Fay Larkin?” McLaren asked, surprised to hear her name linked in this manner to Kent’s case. “Why? She was engaged to Kent. She had her future all sewn up.”
Trevor walked around the room, putting a handout on each student’s desk. “That’s just the reason. She was in love with Kent. And, being in love and attending his singing gigs, she saw firsthand how he attracted women.”
“Women in the audience?”
“And female students. He was good looking. And popular. A deadly combination.”
“Like bees to honey.”
“More like moths to the flame.”
“Scorched.”
“Or burnt to death.”
“Not literally, I hope.”
“No. Just that Fay or Kent made it clear to the attracted female that he was already claimed.”
“Was there any trouble?”
“If you mean, did the women riot and burn his CDs, no. But there are always fans who hang on, aren’t there? Lurk in the shadows, watch from the wings and follow you from performance to performance. They hope for a little more than an autograph, if you get my drift.”
“And Kent?”
“Faithful to Fay, from what I understand. But whether Fay believed that or not…well, you’ll have to ask her. How many fiancées in that position would fully trust her man? Or trust that a fan wouldn’t become a stalker? Even if the stalking doesn’t end in murder, can you trust that it won’t end in kidnapping? Jealousy does strange things.”
“One more point, Mr. Pennell. I believe Dena Ellison talked to you recently.”
Trevor paused at his desk and put down the remaining handouts. His eyebrow lifted and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Sorry, I don’t recall.”
“You don’t recall? You spoke to her on Monday. Not so very long ago.”
“That may be, but I don’t recall the lady.”
A buzz of conversation filtered through the door from the hallway. McLaren stepped toward Trevor, his left hand grabbing the edge of the desk. “I doubt your memory is that poor, Mr. Pennell. Not only do you have to remember the facts of the subject you teach, but you also have to retain students’ names and learning progress, school dates, information about the Minstrels Round, your private social life, and other things as well, I’m sure.”
“Exactly. Case in point, McLaren. Why should I remember one woman, whom I obviously don’t know, amongst everything I have to remember? Why does it concern you?”
McLaren briefly considered telling Trevor that Dena had been abducted, then decided not to. He let the matter slide and thanked Trevor for his time as he made for the door.
****
While he was at the school he decided to speak to Fay Larkin. The drama classroom was in the performing arts wing of the building, a newly renovated section of large rooms and larger fiscal budgets. Several students sat reading, talking, or working on their tablets in the alcoves dotting the hallway. McLaren glanced at each one as he entered the drama classroom.
Fay Larkin, a woman of forty—clothed in sandals, a flowered skirt, and cotton blouse—sat behind at a desk piled with books, various files, a phone, and a computer. A photograph of a newborn wrapped in a Christmassy-print blanket angled out from a corner of the clutter. A whiteboard claimed the wall behind her, and held names and scene descriptions.
“Cute child,” McLaren said after introducing himself and stating the reason for his visit. He was already tired of using Kent Harrison as an excuse; he wanted to scream that he was looking for his love.
“Thank you.”
“I assume you’re Fay Larkin.”
“Yes.”
“Is this an inconvenient time to talk? I’ll be here only a few minutes.”
“No, this is fine. The students are working on individual projects, being
so close to the end of the term. What can I help you with?” She flipped her long braid over her shoulder and put down her pen.
“I understand you and Kent were engaged.”
“Yes, though it seems unreal now.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. It must have been a terrible thing.”
“Thank you. I thought I’d never get over it. You’re so deeply in love that you think you will actually die of a broken heart. But somehow you figure out how to deal with your hurt. Believing yours is special doesn’t mean a thing. And being hurt prior to Kent doesn’t necessarily help you deal with the current grief. Each ache is different. A divorce doesn’t make your current fiancé’s death easier to handle.”
“You’ve been married before, then.”
“Yes. I think that’s what made it so difficult, why the pain of Kent’s death was so acute. After one failed marriage you dream that the second one will be perfect, that you’ve found your soul mate. I thought Kent and I would make the happy-ever-after family. It didn’t work out that way. So now I cling to my other elation, the remnant of another joyful time, brief though it was.” Her fingers traced the top of the photo frame.
“It’s nice that you have a part of Kent to love.”
She straightened the photo, turning it slightly away from McLaren. “It’s not—We adopted.”
“I applaud your decision. So many unwanted children in the world.”
“Yes. It’s a shame.”
He brought the subject back to Kent. “Were you jealous of Kent’s female fans?”
Fay laughed, a quick, light chuckle that spoke of the absurdity of the question. “Heavens, no. I’d been with Kent long enough to see the gaggle of geese around him. That’s how I viewed them—geese. Clucking over him, crowding around him, clamoring for a look from him or for an autograph. I’d seen the fans grow as his popularity and fame increased, so a few dozen more simpering females didn’t threaten me. Besides, I had nothing to be jealous about. I knew Kent loved me.” Her fingers pulled on her earlobe, then toyed with her dangle earring. “You need to find an angry person, Mr. McLaren, if you’re looking for his killer. Someone who hated him. All these fans loved him—or thought they did. They wanted a piece of him if they couldn’t be with him.”
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