Suspicious (On the Run)

by Rosett, Sara

  Zoe claimed an upper bunk and went right to work, using the hostel’s free Wi-Fi. “Hopefully we won’t be in the room much.” She typed in a search, clicked on a result, and leaned back in satisfaction. “There. McKinley’s Twitter feed. I knew he’d have one, and he updates frequently.”

  “How helpful,” Jack said.

  “Isn’t it?” Zoe scrolled through his recent tweets. “He posted all day yesterday about skiing in Garmisch. His last tweet today says, ‘Just arrived in beautiful Ischgl. Can’t wait to sample the nightlife!’ That was twenty minutes ago. It looks like he rarely goes over an hour during the day without tweeting, so I bet he’ll post something soon. In the meantime, I can do some other searches…” Zoe’s voice trailed off as she typed, scanning websites for information about McKinley’s role in the ski tournament. She vaguely heard Jack and Harrington discussing the need for more cell phones.

  “Well, look at this.” She turned the laptop around so they could see the picture, an action shot of a couple of guys running across a green field.

  Harrington said, “Rugby. Amateur league, by the look of the uniform.” He leaned closer and pointed to the player sprinting across the turf with the ball gripped to his side. “That’s McKinley.”

  “Yes, it is,” Zoe said. “See anyone else familiar?”

  Jack reached around Harrington and touched the screen. “In the background, one of the spectators…is that Amy?”

  Zoe smiled. “Yes, I think so. I tried to zoom in, but it gets too blurry to distinguish any features.”

  “Where did you find this?” Harrington asked.

  “On a tabloid magazine’s website. Since he wasn’t tweeting, I decided to check the web, see what else I could find. It’s from a profile the tabloid ran about him when he became host of the Celebrity Insider. The caption says he played on an amateur rugby team in his teens.”

  Zoe scrolled through the comments on the picture. “One of the comments is from ‘AmyB.’ She congratulates McKinley on doing better in life than he did in rugby then,” Zoe’s voice quickened. “She linked to her Twitter account. Oh, she posted a photo.” Zoe clicked and another photo opened.

  McKinley stood in the middle of this picture, his hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, his shirt streaked with grass stains, and his arm draped over Amy’s shoulder. Her expression was a cocky, lopsided grin that was at odds with the timid, bumbling persona Zoe had encountered in Rome.

  “She’s younger,” Jack said, “but that is definitely her.”

  “And the other person?” Harrington asked, indicating the young man on McKinley’s other side. He wore the same uniform, but his looked crisp and clean. Not a grass stain in sight.

  “Amy’s description says, ‘Terrance, Chris, and me after their big loss in the finals.’”

  “Chris?” Jack asked.

  “Short for Christopher. McKinley’s first name,” Zoe said.

  Harrington sat down on a bunk. “So there is a connection between Amy and McKinley that goes back…what do you think? Four, five years?”

  “At least,” Zoe said.

  Jack leaned against the frame of the bunk bed. “So they have a background, a history. That’s good information to take to the police. Anything else interesting in her Twitter feed?”

  “No. She hasn’t updated it in months,” Zoe said. “I’ll keep looking. She might have a blog or an Instagram or Pinterest account.”

  “Okay, the more information we can get on her and McKinley the better.” Jack looked to Harrington. “We better get those burner phones in case we have to separate tomorrow.”

  “Yes, good idea,” Harrington said. He’d taken a washcloth from the shelf over the sink and was polishing the brooch. Zoe noticed that he carefully wiped each surface and then didn’t touch it again with his fingers. He wrapped the brooch in the cloth and returned it to the glove. “I also need to arrange to mail this.”

  “I’ll stay here.” Zoe was already clicking her way through another search.

  Jack tossed her the cell phone. “You keep this. We’ll get two more.” Zoe waved them out the door and went back to her computer.

  Twenty minutes later, she’d discovered Amy loved boots, expensive purses, and geometric line drawings. She took a break from wading through Amy’s Flickr photostream to check McKinley’s Twitter account.

  She tensed when she realized it had been updated, a full ten minutes earlier. McKinley was at a bar. She quickly plugged the name into the search engine and mapped it. He was only a few blocks away. Zoe checked her watch. She had no idea how long it would be before Jack and Harrington returned. If they’d gone out to buy gloves or a hat, they probably could find one in the first shop they came to. But she had a feeling that a burner cell phone would be a little bit harder to come by, considering that most of the businesses she’d seen on the way in were either ski rental stores, clothing shops, or jewelry boutiques. She couldn’t wait on them. She scribbled a quick note for Jack, stuffed the cell phone in her pocket, and left.

  ***

  The bar wasn’t hard to find, but the minute Zoe saw it, she began to worry about how she’d locate McKinley. Crowds spilled out of the door and music pulsed through the air. Beyond the cluster of the town’s snowy roofs, the lit ski runs glowed, slashes of white through the darkness. Zoe joined the line and was trying to edge her way inside, when she saw McKinley leaving. She realized she shouldn’t have worried about finding him. McKinley enjoyed attention and soaked up being recognized. It took him ten minutes to work his way through the crowd outside the bar, stopping to take pictures and sign autographs. Zoe noticed he lingered with the prettiest girls, but when he finally tore himself away from his fans, Zoe was glad to see he was alone.

  She loitered in the line waiting to get inside the bar until he was through the parking area. When he turned onto a bridge over a wide frozen river layered with snow except for a thin ribbon of water that cut its twisty way through the ice, Zoe set off behind him. The street had been cleared of snow, but a wet sheen coated the surface, reflecting the bright neon signs and the twinkling white lights that outlined some of the hotels and businesses.

  The water swooshed by under her feet as Zoe crossed the bridge, keeping McKinley in sight. It was quieter on the other side of the bridge with fewer people about and less businesses, but it wasn’t completely deserted. A tiny car bristling with skis mounted on the roof lumbered by.

  Zoe was glad there was another person, a man toting a snowboard on his shoulder, striding along between her and McKinley. After the raucous atmosphere outside the bar, the silence seemed magnified, and Zoe was very aware of the cadence of her footsteps. But McKinley appeared to be unconcerned about anyone on the road with him. He pulled out his phone. Zoe could see the whitish glow of the screen. It looked like he was sending a text as he walked.

  Her phone rang and she jumped. She fumbled with the unfamiliar phone for a second, and it rang again before she could find the right button.

  “We’re back,” Jack said. “I found your note. Where are you?”

  “I’m following McKinley.” Zoe kept her gaze on the back of McKinley’s head as she talked. He hadn’t shown a flicker of interest in the loud ringtone. “He left a bar. We crossed a bridge over the river, and now we’re in a more residential area.”

  “Do you know the name of the street?”

  “Hang on, I’m passing a cross street now. Dorfstrasse.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “I’m fine. You don’t need to hurry over here. I’ll see where he goes, then come back to the hostel.”

  “You think I’m going to let you follow anyone around alone at night?”

  “Why not,” Zoe asked, bristling.

  “Because it’s dangerous. Don’t get all irritated. If the situation were reversed what would you do? Sit and wait for me to come back, or come find me?”

  Zoe twisted her lips to one side. He had a point.

  “And what if he gets in his car and drives
away?” Jack asked.

  “Okay, okay. There’s no way I’d sit and wait for you, but I’m sure he’ll stop at one of these guesthouses. This looks like a dead-end road, so don’t park our bumblebee of a car too close. It’s pretty noticeable.”

  “Don’t worry. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s keep a low profile. Besides, I left the hat behind. That should help.”

  “Funny. Your dislike of that hat is a little irrational. I’ll call you when he stops and tell you where we are.”

  Faintly, Zoe heard the sound of a car engine turnover and the ding of the seat belt reminder. “No need. I’ll find you,” Jack said.

  The road curved and split. McKinley kept to the right. Instead of the posh hotels in the center of town and the bright glow of fluorescent light from shops, the area had small two- and three-story gästehauses, bed-and-breakfast type places. Only a few streetlights cast feeble circles of light on the cars parked along the banks of snow that edged the road. A trio of young women chatting in German, their long curls bursting out from under their knit caps and floating around their shoulders, made their way up the street toward the lights and music of the town.

  When McKinley reached a two-story gästehaus near the end of the road, he opened the front door, which threw a shaft of light across the cleared walk to the piles of snow. The snowboarder who had walked between McKinley and Zoe had stopped and was attaching his board to the roof rack of a car. In the moment that McKinley opened the door, light washed over the snowboarder, reflecting off the thick, dark-framed vintage glasses perched on his beaky nose. McKinley closed the door, cutting off the channel of light. As she walked on, Zoe sent a quick text to the phone number Jack had called from. Copying the gothic script painted on the building, she texted, “Gästehaus Maria.”

  The snowboarder slid into the car and slammed the door with a thud that resounded along the quiet street. Zoe kept her stride and passed the gästehaus, continuing until she came to a cleared driveway between it and the next building, which appeared to be a shared driveway for the two buildings. She strode up the driveway as if she had a car parked in the long lot that stretched behind both buildings. Once she was away from the street and in the shadow of the other building, she stopped, not sure what to do next.

  The gästehaus was too small for her to go inside without drawing attention. If McKinley had been staying at one of the five-star places on the main road, she probably could have slipped in and followed him to his room, but there would be no inconspicuous shadowing of him inside the gästehaus. She supposed she could stay where she was loitering in the shadows, but it was awfully cold. Her nose and ears were numb, and she really, really wished she’d splurged for a pair of gloves when she had the chance. She balled her fists in her pockets and shifted back and forth as she watched the gästehaus, her breath creating clouds as she exhaled.

  A flight of stairs hugged the gästehaus and opened to a terrace, which was covered in several inches of snow. Above the terrace, a continuous balcony stretched along the second story. Three glass doors opened onto the balcony. The one in the middle glowed with light. The other two were dark. She’d decided to casually meander up the street and check out the other side of the gästehaus when a light came on in the room to the right of the center door.

  A shadow danced across the thin lace curtains, grew larger, then the door opened and McKinley stepped out onto the balcony. He paused to light a cigarette, then walked to the glass door next to his room and tapped.

  After a moment, the door opened.

  A woman’s British accented voice carried clearly through the still air. “Ugh, stay out there with that thing.”

  “And good evening to you, too.” McKinley propped his shoulder against the doorframe.

  ***

  Snuggled under the feathery duvet in her hotel room, Gemma thumbed through her notes on her phone while sipping from a mug of hot cocoa. She finished off the drink and tossed her phone down with a sigh.

  She was going to have to call Nigel and tell him she was in Germany and that the extent of her discoveries were a shaving kit, suitcase, and an abandoned car. She rubbed her eyes and leaned back onto the pillows. No matter how hard she looked, there was no link between Harrington Throckmorton and the fence, Terrance Croftly.

  There should be something. With all the research she’d done on Croftly, she couldn’t find a single reference to Throckmorton. And, Throckmorton’s extremely detailed files on the country home robberies didn’t have one mention of Croftly. Odd, that bit, that there were no notes on what he planned to do with the gems. After reading his extensive scribblings about the robberies, she almost expected to find a list of stolen gems with notations on possible fences and value amounts. If he kept detailed notes on everything else, then why not on the disposal of the gems? Of course, it could be that he kept that information on him and not in the apartment, which would explain its absence.

  A few other things about the situation bothered her. If Throckmorton double-crossed his partners, the Andrews couple, and set them up to take the fall for him, why would Throckmorton blithely rent a car in his own name when he left Rome, leaving the police an easy trail to follow? Was he so confident that the theft would be pinned on the Andrews couple? Wouldn’t he realize speculation would extend to him as well?

  And where were Jack and Zoe Andrews? It was easy to understand why they’d disappeared. Alessi had made it clear they were primary suspects. If they were smart enough to vanish without leaving a trace, why hadn’t Throckmorton done the same thing?

  She picked up her phone again, but this time went to Facebook. Time for a break with some mindless social media. She responded to a friend request and scrolled through her news feed. She was checking out her friend Liz’s photos of a new chair she’d bought for her townhouse when something clicked in her brain. Gemma sat up straight, as the hazy impression of familiarity she’d had earlier when she looked at the list of attendees at the exhibit opening suddenly came into focus. She knew where she’d seen one of those names before—during a search of Croftly’s social media accounts. She pulled up Croftly’s Facebook page and went to his friends list. “Bingo,” she murmured.

  She threw off the duvet and lunged for the room’s phone. She dialed Alessi’s number. When he answered, she said, “What do you have on Amy Beck?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  McKinley had blocked Zoe’s view into the room when the door opened. By the time he shifted to lean against the doorframe, the woman had withdrawn out of Zoe’s line of vision. Zoe couldn’t be absolutely sure without seeing her, but the voice sounded young, more like Amy Beck than Mrs. Davray.

  The female voice continued, the words more muted, but still distinguishable. “You’re late.”

  McKinley took a long drag on the cigarette before replying. “I knocked on your door this afternoon as soon as I checked in. No answer.”

  “You’re late.”

  “This wasn’t part of the plan. I got here as soon as I could.”

  “I know. You had a pressing engagement with a ski run in Germany. You really should remember that your Twitter feed is public.”

  McKinley tossed the cigarette over the balcony, stepped inside the room, and closed the door. Without consciously deciding to do it, Zoe moved quickly back down the driveway and along the cleared path to the gästehaus. If she could find out for sure who was in the room with McKinley, at least see her, maybe get a picture, it would help them when they went to the police.

  She skirted the building to the staircase, which was deep with snow. The terrace wasn’t in use during the cold weather, so the steps hadn’t been cleared. She dashed up them, her feet crunching loudly through the iced-over snow. The sound seemed to carry across the valley.

  The portion of the terrace against the building and directly under the balcony had less snow, so Zoe walked along, hugging the wall in relative silence. She passed directly under the room where McKinley and the woman were and continued until she came to the edge of
the terrace. A white iron fence enclosed the terrace and connected directly to the building. Zoe looked overhead, trying to judge the distance between the top of the fence and the balcony. It looked doable. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but doable.

  Before she allowed herself to think about it anymore, she glanced around as she dusted a layer of snow off the bannister. A dog barked sharply in the distance while a car hummed along the street, but the back of the building was inky dark and deserted. The only thing beyond the parking area behind the building was the steep and heavily forested rise of the mountain. A few houses dotted a lonely road that twisted away among the trees, but it was fairly quiet. During the day, the view would be stunning.

  Zoe hopped onto the railing and carefully stood up, bracing her hand against the rough stucco wall for balance. She swiveled so that she was facing the terrace then swept her hand over her head. Her fingertips brushed wood. Okay, so more than a stretch, but only about two inches.

  She blew out a breath and hopped. Her hands dislodged a fine layer of snow as she gripped the lower edge of the balcony. She hung there for a moment, her heartbeat thudding in her ears, her bare fingers digging into the grooves of the wood. After another calming breath, she swung one leg out, braced her foot against the wall and levered herself up until she could transfer her grip to the decorative cutouts in the balustrade. In a few seconds, she was over the railing, the wood creaking and groaning as she transferred her weight.

  She crouched low, hunkered down against the railing, the rough wood rubbing against the fabric of her coat with every breath. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if someone had come to investigate the noise. She certainly didn’t want to go back down, and the balcony didn’t go all the way around the building. It ran across the back of the building and ended at the far side in a dead end.

  But no one opened a door, and now that Zoe was on this level, she could hear the murmur of voices, so she slowly unfurled herself and inched along the balcony. She stopped short of the light pouring out of the middle room. She couldn’t see the whole room, but she didn’t need to. Amy perched on the edge of one of two single beds, her arms crossed and her chin down, a thunderous look on her face as she watched McKinley stroll around the other single bed.