by Karen Leabo
She wandered around the shop. There was a beat-up piano in the far corner. She sat down to play. Fumbling at first, because she hadn’t played in years, she suddenly picked up the thread of a haunting melody she couldn’t remember the name of. Some Bach thing, probably. It matched her mood.
She’d forgotten how pleasurable playing the piano could be. She closed her eyes, able to play by feel, and let the music wash over her.
When she finished, she found Ryan sitting beside her on the edge of the bench, watching her with acute intensity.
“How many years did you take lessons?” he asked.
“Nine, maybe ten. A long time.”
He reached for the keyboard and struck a series of chords. “I took them for six. My mother made me. I was never as good as you are, though.”
“I’m not good,” she protested. “I’m rusty as an old barn-door hinge.”
“Maybe so, but you have a feel for the music. You don’t just play the notes, you...express them.”
She laughed. “My teacher never said that. She said I was lazy and I didn’t practice enough, that I abused my God-given talent by neglecting it.” She wrinkled her nose. “I couldn’t stand my teacher. Mrs. Toffler. I quit piano lessons as soon as I was allowed. But I did enjoy the playing,” she said wistfully:
“Interest you folks in a piano?”
Christine jumped. Mr. Franklin, obviously none the worse for wear, even though Larry and Ryan had no doubt questioned him to within an inch of his life, stood behind them. “This one here has a wonderful sound. Stays tuned too. Make a nice wedding present, Mr. Mulvaney, and it costs less than that two-carat ring. Bring you a lot of pleasure, especially given that the lady plays like an angel.”
Christine found herself blushing—not due to the compliment, but because of the reference to her and Ryan and wedding presents all in one breath. Surely he hadn’t jumped to the conclusion that she and Ryan were engaged, but then, she supposed they hadn’t exactly explained why they were hanging around together.
“Thank you,” she said, “but we’re not really in the market for a piano.”
“Well, if you ever are, come see me. Best prices in town.”
They both thanked the pawnbroker, then headed out. “Can you think of any more leads we can follow up?” she asked as soon as they were in the car, seat belts fastened.
“I’ve about blown my wad. Unless—I really hate to ask you this, but is there any way you can get me in to see your father?”
Chapter 12
Christine’s stomach churned. She didn’t want to see or talk to her father until her feelings weren’t so raw. She might do or say something she’d regret, something she couldn’t ever take back. “Why don’t you just call him?” she suggested hopefully.
“I tried that. At his office, at his home.”
“You have his unlisted home number?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yup. Getting unlisted numbers is a snap if you know who to ask. Anyway, I didn’t even get past the first line of defense. His policy is, he’s not talking to reporters. He gave his official statement to the Guardian and one TV station, and that’s all us vultures are getting.”
Oh, why was her father being so obstinate? Was it because he had something to hide? Because he was afraid of what he might inadvertently reveal to a sharp reporter? Why didn’t he come up with a reasonable story and stick to it, something he was eminently good at? By hiding under a rock like a snake, he was giving rise to all kinds of speculation. Christine had avoided looking at any TVs or newspapers since she saw her dad on the news last night, but from the way people reacted to her, she figured the coverage was massive and unflattering.
“I’ll call Gerald, his secretary, and try and get you an appointment,” she said:
“That’d be great.”
“You don’t have to be grateful,” she said. “Chances are, if he refused once, he’ll refuse again. Anyhow, I’m doing it for him, not you. I want him to explain himself in some fashion that won’t make him sound like a coldhearted political machine.”
“I’m afraid he sounds worse than that. You might tell him that he can’t do himself much harm by talking to me. It’s already pretty bad.”
“Even without mentioning Michelle?” she asked cautiously.
“I didn’t write about Michelle, because you were right—an illegitimate child from thirty years ago doesn’t have anything to do with the current story. I didn’t even mention it to Fran.”
“Thank you, Ryan.” Her personal pendulum was swinging toward adoration again. He could charm the socks off an earthworm. “What about Dad’s drug problem? Is that in the story?”
He worried his lower lip with his teeth. “I haven’t decided about that one, yet. It seems to fit into the big picture, though. Without it, some things don’t make sense.”
Christine sighed. She supposed she’d known all along that the drug-addiction problem would come out sooner or later. Maybe she’d even secretly hoped Ryan would be the one to reveal it. She was tired of carrying the burden of such a secret on her shoulders.
“Where’s your cell phone?” she asked abruptly. Might as well get this over with,
“Right here.” He reached under his seat and retrieved a leather case, which he handed to her.
She pulled the phone out of the case, switched it on, dialed her father’s private number...and put the call through. Her hand was shaking. It was just Dad, she tried to tell herself, but that didn’t work. “Dad” had become someone she didn’t know.
“Greenlow residence,” Gerald’s wary voice announced.
“Gerald? Hi, it’s Christine.”
“Christine.” He sounded cool. Gerald had always been friendly toward her, if a bit reserved. Had her father turned him against her? “Your father’s not here. He’s at his office.”
“That’s all right. It’s you I wanted to speak to, anyway.”
“Me?”
“Yes. There’s a reporter who wants to interview Dad—”
“Senator Greenlow isn’t speaking with reporters,” Gerald said in a way that made Christine think he’d repeated the same sentence a dozen times that day.
“Let me explain,” Christine said patiently. “I think Dad will want to talk to this particular reporter. He’s been working on an in-depth story about my kidnapping and Dad’s role in it, and things look pretty bad for the senator. If he hides behind his no-comment smoke screen, it’ll look as if he really does have something to hide.”
She paused, letting Gerald digest her request.
“Did it ever occur to you, Christine, that he might just have some things to hide? This little stunt of yours will ruin his whole career—”
“No, Gerald, listen to me. This was no stunt. I was kidnapped by these radical environmental guys. Dad chose to believe the kidnapping was a fake. I’m sure he had valid reasons, but he needs to explain to the public what those reasons were. Otherwise, people are going to think he didn’t even care whether I lived or died.” She said this as casually as she dared—as if she didn’t doubt his love, but others might.
There was another pause. Christine crossed her fingers, hoping that Gerald would see reason. If he agreed to schedule an interview, her father would probably go along with it. Gerald had been his secretary for more than ten years, and her father trusted him implicitly.
“What exactly does this reporter want to ask? Could I approve the questions ahead of time?”
“Um, I don’t know. Let me ask.” She turned to Ryan. “Can Gerald approve the questions ahead of time?”
Ryan seemed to be thinking hard about that. Was this one of those things that reporters didn’t do, she wondered, like allowing a source to read a story before it was published?
“All right,” he finally said. “I’ll give him a list of my questions. I reserve the right to ask all of them, but if there are any the senator doesn’t want to address, he can simply say, ‘No comment,’ and I’ll move on.”
Christine relayed Ryan�
�s answer to Gerald:
“I suppose there’s no way out of this,” Gerald finally said. “I can give this reporter fifteen minutes, either Thursday morning at seven, or Friday—”
“Oh, no, Gerald, it has to be tonight,” she said. “He’s got a deadline.”
“There is absolutely no way—”
“Then the story will go to press as it is,” she said. “Come on, Gerald, you can always fit fifteen minutes in here or there.”
“Then have the jerk here at six tonight,” he said, with very un-Gerald-like rudeness. “He might have to interview the senator while he’s dressing for the opera this evening.” He hung up with a haughty sniff.
“Six o’clock tonight,” she told Ryan.
He smiled. “Great. You’ll come with me?”
“No. I’ll get you through the front gates. The rest is up to you. And, Ryan...”
“Yes?”
“Give him a chance to explain, to make you understand. I won you over. Maybe he can, too.”
It was doubtful Senator Stan Greenlow could win him over, Ryan thought as he cooled his heels in an overdecorated anteroom in the Greenlow mansion, waiting for the great man to make an appearance. The man had ignored a ransom demand for his daughter, and that was impossible to justify, in Ryan’s mind. Sure, he would claim he’d believed the whole thing was a hoax, but hadn’t he considered the possibility that he could be wrong? Shouldn’t he have notified the police, just in case? Instead, he’d just turned a deaf ear to the men who threatened to kill his daughter.
There had to be a reason. And Ryan was determined to find out what it was.
Finally the senator made an appearance, resplendent in evening wear. He was still a handsome man at fifty-two, one of those guys who had eased into middle age gracefully, with thick, silvering hair and laugh lines around his eyes.
But there were subtle signs of dissipation, too—a certain floridness in his face, a slight paunch, not quite masked by his cummerbund, a nervous tic on the right side of his face.
He appeared clear, though, and plenty alert—not tranquilized.
“Good evening, Senator Greenlow,” Ryan said, with all the politeness he could muster. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Apparently my daughter convinced my secretary that I should,” Stan said, quickly shaking Ryan’s proffered hand, then dropping it as if it were a snake that might bite. “You’re...in contact with her? Is she really all right?”
Ryan resisted making the bruising comeback that was on his lips. Like. Why are you showing concern now? “She’s alive and healthy,” Ryan said. “But she’s having to rely on strangers. For some reason, the assets in her bank accounts have been frozen.”
“Oh, I did that,” Greenlow said dismissively. “There are few ways a man has control over his grown-up daughter. Money is one of them.”
“It hasn’t changed her mind, you know. She’s still not coming home.”
“Is this what you’re here for?” Stan said suspiciously. “To torment me with groundless threats from Christine?”
“No. I’m here to get some answers to a few questions. You saw the questions earlier. Is there any area you’d like to start with?”
“Yeah. Where’d you get your information?”
“You should know better than to ask a reporter that question. But I will tell you that Christine supplied me with a lot of the facts, and I have every reason to believe she’s been telling me the truth.”
“That girl wouldn’t know the truth if it bit her in the butt. She’s lied to you, just like she has to everyone else.”
Ryan hadn’t expected such open animosity from Greenlow. “So you’re denying you have a problem with abusing prescription tranquilizers?”
“Unequivocally. I don’t even take tranquilizers.”
Okay. Ryan would return to that question later. “Let’s just work our way down the list of questions, then.” Without waiting for agreement, he added, “Why didn’t you pay the ransom that was demanded for the safe return of your daughter?”
“There was no ransom demand.”
“The phone company verifies that three phone calls from a cellular phone were made to your private line—one on the evening your daughter disappeared, two the next day. Can you explain who made the calls?”
“I don’t remember. It could have been anyone. I don’t keep a phone log for that line, as it’s used for personal calls only. But almost everybody has a cell phone these days.”
Fair enough, Ryan thought. A nice, pat answer. And he didn’t believe it for a second. Ryan switched tactics. He took out his notes and read from them, detailing seven separate occasions in recent history when Stan Greenlow had voted against environmental concerns. “Can you sum up your views on protecting the environment?”
“I’m a probusiness person,” he said. “Like everyone else, I think it would be nice to clean up the air and water and leave the spotted owls alone, but not at the expense of business. American business is what makes this country strong, it’s what keeps food on our tables. I believe in letting business self-regulate. Americans need less government interference.”
Good answer, Ryan thought. What clever PR person thought that one up? “When your daughter called you around noon yesterday, what did she tell you?”
“She told me she was safe, that there’d been no kidnapping, that it was all a mistake and not to worry.”
“And your response?”
“I was angry with her for trying to manipulate me, naturally. I’m afraid I lost my temper. Do you have children, Mr. Mulvaney?”
An image flashed through his mind of golden-haired babies who looked like their mother. Like Chrissy. Alarmed at his turn of thoughts, he shook his head to clear it. Where had that come from? “No, sir, I don’t.”
“Well, if you did, you’d know that they try your patience sometimes, even after they’re grown. Christine has always had me wrapped around her little finger. I’ve been that way since she was born. She uses it to her advantage sometimes, but this will not be one of those times. You can tell her that, since you’re apparently...close to her.”
“She doesn’t want anything from you, except the truth,” Ryan said slowly, succinctly. “Those ransom demands were made. I know that’s true. Why didn’t you respond?”
“I’ve already answered that question. You’re violating our agreement by harping on the same question. So either we move on to a new subject, or this interview is over.” He said this with little emotion, not even raising his voice—as if he knew he had the advantage here.
So far he did, Ryan thought as he struggled to get his temper under control. But he wasn’t done yet.
He went through a few more routine questions, double-checking small but significant things Chrissy had told him. Greenlow answered, looking at his watch more and more frequently. Ryan decided he’d better go for the jugular before he was kicked out and missed his chance.
“About those tranquilizers. I interviewed a certain pharmacist who swears—anonymously, of course—that you have a long-standing prescription for a drug called Sulvenaze, which you have refilled every couple of weeks, fifty tablets at a time. Do you still want to stick by your story that you don’t take tranquilizers?”
Finally, Ryan had silenced the senator. He stood there swallowing, licking his lips, his eyes darting around as if he expected his guardian angel to swoop down and save him. Eventually he found some words.
“If a pharmacist told you that, he was lying. And if you print one word about tranquilizers, I will sue—you and whatever rag you write for. I have very deep pockets, Mr. Mulvaney. Even if you believe you’re correct, even if you think you can beat me, defending such a suit costs a lot of money. You’ll run out before I do. Think about it.” With that parting shot, he swept out of the room.
The threat made Ryan break out in a cold sweat. No reporter wanted to face a libel suit. But he wouldn’t back. down now. He’d seen the fear in Stan Greenlow’s eyes; he’d even smelled it. Thank goodness
he’d thought to ask Chrissy the name of the pharmacy her family used, and lucky for him there’d been a chatty pharmacist on duty. The pharmacist had been all too willing to dish with him, sling a little mud on the senator, so long as she could remain anonymous.
Greenlow had stood strong with his story about there being no ransom demand. The story sounded feasible—until such time as the kidnappers were caught and they revealed that they had, in fact, called the senator from a stolen cellular phone, using the number extracted from Christine.
Then ol’ Stan would look like the lying son of a bitch he was. Ryan only wished he could figure out why Stan had been so eager to keep the kidnappers’ identities a secret from the rest of the world. What was he hiding?
Ryan gathered his things, preparing to leave. The door to the anteroom opened a crack, and he expected to see Gerald, nose in the air, ready to throw him out into the street. Instead, a tiny woman appeared in the doorway, looking roughly the same age as his great-grandmother Donnelly. She had snow-white hair pinned into a tight bun on the very top of her skull, pulling tight the wrinkles that would otherwise have been in her forehead. She had wrinkles everywhere else, very thick glasses, and a stoop to her walk that made Ryan believe she’d spent too many years leaned over, scrubbing floors or toilets.
Behind the glasses, however, her unblinking blue eyes appeared sharp. “Mr. Mulvaney?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Connie, Christine’s maid. She called a while ago and asked me to pass along a few things for her.”
Ryan had been there when Christine called. He’d been so consumed with thoughts of the senator and his comeuppance that he’d forgotten all about seeking out Connie. Thank goodness the wizened little maid had decided to find him instead. She held out a brocade-patterned traveling bag.
Ryan took it. “Thank you, Connie. Do you have a few minutes to talk to me?”
Christine had said not to bother, that the staff was trained never to talk to the press, under penalty of termination.
“Oh, yes, I’d love to talk to you,” Connie said eagerly, coming fully inside the room and closing the door.