by Janet Dailey
She told him the price.
“Well worth it.” He would have paid double. Bannon dug in his back pocket for his wallet. He pulled out several twenties and waited to hand them to her. She wrapped the framed picture in brown paper and string, adding a cardboard tube for a handle as he watched.
“Thanks,” he said. “That’ll make it easy to carry.”
She took the money and stuck it into her jacket pocket, then extended a hand. “You’re welcome. I’m Erin, by the way.”
“Erin. Okay.” He waited for a last name, which she didn’t offer. And there were no business cards on the table. “I’m RJ Bannon,” he said easily. “Nice to meet you. Are you going to be here tomorrow?”
She shook her head. “The Art Walk is for one day only.”
“Did the sign say that? Too bad.” He let the matter of her last name go for now. He could always get her full name from the event organizer, and maybe even a phone number. An e-mail address for sure.
She passed the wrapped painting over the table. “Is this for yourself or for a gift?”
“Myself.” He took it from her, handling it with care, but the corner knocked over a smaller, postcard-size watercolor of a solitary horse. It lay flat on the table and he looked down at it, searching for something he hadn’t thought of until that moment. A full signature, if it was legible.
Yes, there was one in the right-hand corner—but it was just her first name. He got the unspoken message. She went by Erin, just Erin, professionally. Maybe she had her reasons. Considering how that lanky guy had been staring at her, Bannon respected those reasons.
“Oops.” She righted the watercolor, but not before she caught the odd look on his face. “Don’t worry,” she reassured him. “No harm done.”
Bannon set his purchase on the edge of the table, letting the wrapped painting lean against his chest. “Good,” he said. “I’ll take that one too. It’ll be a present for a friend.”
She looked happy to hear that and wrapped it up just as quickly. “There you go. Can you manage both?”
He gave her the last of his twenties. “Sure can. And thanks again, Erin. Uh, see you around. I assume you get into Wainsville now and then.”
“Sometimes.” She nodded and seemed about to say something more when an older couple came over. Oblivious to his presence, the friendly woman started to chat with Erin while her white-haired husband looked at the thickening clouds above and flipped up the hood of his nylon windbreaker.
Bannon saw the first drops of rain hit the brown paper wrapping and realized he’d look like a fool if he hung around. Erin got busy throwing a light plastic tarp over her artwork and someone with an Art Walk badge ran over to help her. The visitors streamed back to their cars and he went with them.
Whistling, he slid the wrapped paintings into the well between the back and front seats so they wouldn’t bang around. He was feeling good, even confident. Finding Erin again wouldn’t be too tough. But right now he had to get back to the station.
CHAPTER 2
Moving fast in the downpour, Bannon closed the distance between his parked car and headquarters in long strides. The yellow daffodils bent their heads, hammered by the steady rain as he went past them and through the front doors. The cinder-block building was almost deserted. Late in the afternoon, the people on the day shift cleared out in a hurry. But he knew Doris would still be there. He went down the basement stairs, the small wrapped watercolor in his hand.
Doris glanced up when he entered. She was sitting at the table, the documents from the Montgomery file spread out in front of her. “Back for more? You’re a glutton for punishment.” She straightened in her chair and rubbed her neck wearily. “I’ve been glued to this since you’ve been gone. Big mistake.”
“Take a break.”
She managed a smile. “That’s good advice. Did you get your errands done?”
“Yeah.” He’d almost forgotten that white lie. “I went by the Art Walk. Thanks for the tip.” He patted his stomach. “I scored some pie.”
“Did you bring me some?” she asked with mock annoyance.
“You said you didn’t want anything to eat. But I got you a present. You like horses, right?” He held up the wrapped package.
“I like to bet on horses. Other people can ride them. What’s that?”
RJ handed it to her. “Open it and find out.”
Doris slid off her swivel chair. “It isn’t my birthday, is it? Am I getting so old that I forget my own birthday?”
He smiled. “Just open the damn thing.”
Doris laughed and took her time, unpicking the knot in the string with care. The watercolor of the horse glowed under the overhead fluorescent lights, a touch of nature in the ugly basement. “That’s really nice, RJ,” she said with pleased surprise. “It’s not a print, is it?”
“No, it’s an original.”
“Local artist?”
“She didn’t say, but I think so.”
“Aha. She.” Doris put the small framed painting where she could see it and studied him for a moment. “Was she pretty?”
“Damn straight.”
“That’s what I thought.” She grinned. “Still, it’s a beautiful little painting. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
“So, are you going to see her again?”
RJ only shrugged.
“You don’t have to stay, you know,” she chided affectionately. “Go chase girls. Leave me in the basement to suffer.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself?”
Doris got up, stretching a little. “A little.”
RJ glanced at the table and the rows of files. “Let’s just do what we can in an hour and call it a day, how about that?”
“All right with me.” Returning to her workstation, Doris clicked in and out of various programs as he handed her documents she asked for from the Montgomery files. He deliberately didn’t read them. Right now he didn’t want to be ensnared by the grim futility of the kidnapping case. He’d much rather be tracking down a certain artist with dark hair and incredible blue eyes.
He handed the faded reward poster to Doris. She used the staple remover to unclip the bank document from it, pulling the thin metal prongs out with a hard yank.
“It’s just plain wrong for all this dough to go back to Hugh Montgomery,” she muttered. “The money ought to be given to Ann’s mother if no one’s going to claim it.” She slid the first page of the bank document into the scanner and closed the lid firmly. “Did you read the fine print in the trust?”
“I glanced at it. Fine print or no fine print, Montgomery can’t be accused of stealing his own money,” Bannon reasoned. “And he doesn’t have to give it away if the trust is set to expire in another year. Considering the girl has never been found and the police are about to close the case on it, it’s a logical end.”
“It may be logical, but it still sucks,” Doris grumbled and picked up the last page of the bank document to slide it in the scanner. “Especially this.” She waved it in emphasis. “I’d bet anything Montgomery set up this trust as a tax shelter. It’s like he had a feeling that Ann was never coming back.”
“How much does anyone really know about Montgomery?” RJ asked.
“Not enough. But I doubt he’s the pillar of the community he pretends to be,” Doris said.
“Maybe so. But he hasn’t broken any laws, right? Anyway, what happened to Mrs. Montgomery?”
“No one knows, RJ. I doubt that she uses the name anymore.”
RJ shot a sideways look at his older colleague. “Did you ever see Luanne after she married him? You know, go out for coffee, have a chat, something like that?”
“I ran into her in town once in a while,” Doris answered after a beat. “It wasn’t anything we planned, but we would catch up and laugh about old times. That kid was cute as a button.”
“So you met Ann.”
Doris took a deep breath. “Yes, I did.”
“What do you remember about them?”
He watched her with close attention.
“Ann and her mother? They were both sweet. Even though she was getting written up in the society pages, Luanne was shy and kind of naïve. I know she didn’t tell me everything, but I didn’t like what I heard about her and Hugh Montgomery. All he cared about was his money.”
“And after Ann was abducted,” Bannon said bluntly, “what happened between the two of them? If you know,” he added.
“Nobody really knew much, but everyone had an opinion. Montgomery was devastated. He coped by throwing himself into his work. He was cold to Luanne, so cold that her heart got broken twice. He shut her out completely.” She heaved a sigh and crossed her arms over her chest as if she was protecting her own heart from some unknown danger. “That’s what men do.”
Bannon thought about his dad, who had sometimes shut all of them out. That was part of being a cop. He himself wasn’t as good at it, though. His mom had done some sensitivity training on him and his brothers.
“Let’s get back to the money,” he said. Seemed safer. “He put up plenty of it to get his daughter back,” Bannon reminded her. “Interest or no interest, that reward had to be a record.”
“Believe me, he could afford it,” Doris said. “By the way, I found the records of a few attempts made to claim it.”
Bannon nodded. “Bound to be.” He hadn’t noticed those records himself, but with a reward like that, it was a given that there would be a large number of claimants.
“Montgomery had his people check out every one, I’ll grant him that,” Doris added grudgingly. “You wouldn’t believe who comes out of the woodwork for a million.”
“Yes, I would, so what else don’t I know?”
“A lot.” She looked down at the heaps of manila folders and the papers spilling out of them. “What’s the use? I shouldn’t get caught up in it again.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Bannon agreed. He spoke bluntly, but with a gentle tone. “At this point, about all anyone might learn is what happened to Ann, maybe locate her remains. We have the technology to read disturbed soil decades later, you know that—hell.” He broke off when he noticed her stricken expression. “Never mind.”
Doris didn’t seem to be listening. “There wouldn’t be much to bury after all this time,” she whispered.
“But with DNA testing—” He realized a little too late that there were tears in her eyes she was valiantly holding back.
“What are they going to test if they don’t find anything, RJ? The air?” she asked quietly.
“I’m sorry.” Bannon held up his hands in a silent gesture of surrender.
In all his time with the Wainsville police, he had never seen Doris Rawling get emotional about anything. But she was now. In an attempt to cover it, she moved away from her computer and started fussing with the files on her end of the table. Busywork. His trick. It was useful. He turned in his chair to pull together the Montgomery folders.
An hour went by before he glanced her way. Doris had cut a substantial pile of material down to size and seemed like her old self again.
Deciding it was safest to stick to business, Bannon asked, “Is that FBI profiler report over there?”
“No, it’s somewhere by you,” she said crisply.
RJ finally found it and flipped through grainy, photocopied photos of convicted criminals and psychological profiles, then skimmed the stapled pages of the profiler’s assessment.
“Nothing definitive in here. Could have been a man, could have been a woman,” he muttered, frowning. “From here, from away. Maybe middle-aged. Maybe not.”
Doris pushed her half-glasses back up her nose to look at him. “The profiler didn’t have much to go on except for the sightings. People were calling in for months, coming in to give reports.” She indicated the file those reports were in and RJ located it. “I haven’t read them myself.”
More out of idle curiosity than anything else, Bannon picked up the file and skimmed its contents, interested only in the high points. As expected, there was nothing of any real value there. He leafed through it again, checking dates, then closed the folder and gave it a toss onto the table.
“I can see why this is headed into cold case storage,” Bannon declared, then paused long enough to check the dates in another file. “It’s been nearly eighteen years since there’s been anything that remotely resembles a lead to follow.”
“Of course there hasn’t been a lead,” Doris shot back. “Nobody’s looked at any of this in years. So how could there be any new information? It’s been forgotten . . . and that isn’t right,” she ended with a telltale tremor in her voice.
“And it would take a new lead to keep this case active,” Bannon admitted, thinking out loud. On the heels of his comment came a possibility that had the corners of his mouth lifting. “I think I know how to accomplish that.”
Doris turned to him, suddenly hopeful. “Are you going to investigate it, RJ? On your own?”
The question was met with a short, negative movement of his head. “There’s a slim-to-none chance that I could turn up something solid enough to warrant reopening this case. Actually, I had someone else in mind.”
Totally puzzled, Doris frowned. “Who?”
“The bane of all law enforcement,” he said with a smile. “The media, of course.”
Understanding dawned in her expression. “That blond television reporter you dated for a while. What was her name?” She snapped her fingers, trying to recall it.
“Kelly Johns,” Bannon filled in the blank for her. “And I didn’t go out with her all that long. By the third date, I could tell that she was looking at me as a ‘confidential source’ in the police department.”
Doris sniffed disapproval. “My mother always said not to trust anyone with two first names.”
Bannon let that little pearl of wisdom pass without comment. “Kelly just happens to be ambitious as well as intelligent.”
“Not to mention gorgeous,” she inserted, a little cattily.
Bannon just smiled. “She is easy on the eyes.”
“What makes you think you could talk her into looking into this?”
“Simple. The anniversary date of Ann’s abduction is coming up. It should make an interesting feature—missing child of local Virginia aristocrat, two-million-dollar reward. Old or not, that’s the kind of stuff the media feasts on.”
From her expression, it was obvious Doris conceded that point. Almost to herself, she mumbled, “I hope you split up with her on friendly terms.”
“I know I’ve been accused of lacking diplomatic skill, but I’m smart enough to know that you never want to make an enemy of anyone on that side of the police tape.”
“Thank goodness for that,” she declared, then watched in bewilderment while he pulled folders out of the stack and started a different pile. “What are you doing?”
“Before I contact her, I need to make sure I have the facts straight in my mind.”
“But, RJ, you aren’t on active duty,” Doris protested. “You can’t take original documents out of here until you’re officially back on the force.”
“I know that.” He picked up the new stack and carried the folders to the copy machine. “I’m only asking you to let me have this stuff overnight.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Clap, clap.” Bannon pretended to applaud. “I admire your character. How did we get this far?”
“I really shouldn’t.” She held out a hand. “Give me that stuff back.”
“Too late. It all started with a fateful step,” he intoned. “I saw your name on the door to the basement. And down I went. And there was the Montgomery file.”
“RJ—”
“I have to stop opening doors,” he said conversationally. “I keep catching bullets.”
“That was two years ago.”
“True.” He arranged the old snapshots carefully on the glass, face down. “I could do these in black and white, but I’ll lose a lot of detail. I’m thinking you c
ould scan the visuals and send me jpegs. Or burn ’em on a CD.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “All traceable to my computer. No.”
“Then let me have them.” He gathered up the photos with one hand like it was a done deal. “Just temporarily.”
Doris hesitated, not saying yes or no.
“You can always send them into storage later. Just say you forgot or something.”
“What if Hoebel checks up on me?”
Bannon shook his head. “He won’t. The man is all memos and no action. And Jolene isn’t going to come down those stairs in sky-high heels.”
“You noticed.”
“Years of training.”
With a surrendering lift of her hands, Doris went back to her computer and Bannon took what he thought he would need, as well as the photographs. He got everything into a single big envelope, reasoning that he had entered the building with an envelope and wouldn’t attract any notice leaving with another.
“See you,” he called to Doris as he went back up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, he looked around. There were more empty cubicles than not. The entering cops on the night shift were talking to each other, their backs to him, or staring into monitor screens. He was happy to be ignored as he eyeballed the huge whiteboard where current cases were listed on a grid, their status to the right. Two at the top had been solved. Ten unsolved. Doris was right about the lack of manpower. Most had been on the board for a few weeks.
Needing to breathe and collect his thoughts, he took a roundabout way home that wound through the country. No sunset. The evening sky was shrouded by clouds. Cold air came his way from the quiet, leafless woods that surrounded him. He went over a low bridge, not stopping to look at the river below. But he did wonder if Ann Montgomery’s abductor had brought her down it somehow. What he remembered of the police maps in the file showed the same river upstream, not far from the family mansion.
It began to drizzle as he drove on. Bannon pondered the convoluted facts of the old Montgomery case without reaching any conclusions that made sense to him. After a while, he turned off the country road and headed back into town, feeling kind of blue. He hadn’t had any time to decompress between coming back from the cabin and picking up the claim forms for the chief to sign that morning. He thought of Erin, the one bright spot in an otherwise mostly depressing day. It was definitely worth finding out more about her. Whatever it took, he would do. Short of acting like a stalker.