And The Bride Vanishes

by Jacqueline Diamond

  From the bed, Yuri shouted something incomprehensible, or perhaps it was in Litvonian. Armand patted his arm, and the old man subsided.

  Beside Linda, Felice’s forehead creased. For a moment, she glared at her husband and at Yuri as if she hated them. Was she, too, having a reaction to Janet’s disappearance, or had Yuri said something that upset her?

  Linda had never seen her friend’s mother show such open hostility to anyone. Felice had always been an island of calm; in their teen years, she was the one Linda had turned to when her own mother ran out of patience.

  Felice had fulfilled the traditional role of homemaker, always putting the well-being of others first while displaying a quiet undercurrent of strength. After losing an infant son to meningitis, she had volunteered many hours at Inland’s shelter for abused and abandoned children.

  Now, perhaps due to Yuri’s scheming, Felice faced the unthinkable possibility of losing her daughter, as well. If there was any way Linda could help, she vowed silently, she would. In the process, she felt sure, she would be helping Wick, too.

  The three of them reached the bed. Gaunt and sunken, the old man was hardly recognizable among the bandages and wires that hooked him to machines. But his eyes were open and he was staring at Armand.

  “What did he say?” Harvey demanded.

  Yuri’s gaze swung to him. With a shaking hand, the man pointed and began shouting again.

  “Speak English!” Harvey said.

  “He can speak whatever language he wants,” snapped Janet’s father. “Get out of here, Harvey.”

  The captain stood his ground for a moment, then swung around and retreated. Linda felt some of her tension ease.

  “The nerve of that man!” Armand Capek’s thin face contorted with anger. “First he tries to kill my uncle, then he marches in here to question him!”

  “I’m the one who fetched him,” Felice answered coolly. “I don’t care who has the answers or how we get them. I want my daughter back.”

  “You can’t think Uncle Yuri would endanger Janet!” Armand returned his attention to the bed and said something in Litvonian.

  To Linda’s surprise, Yuri responded in English. “Bring Janet. Bring her here.”

  “She’s gone,” Felice said. “Do you have any idea where?”

  “Gone?” Yuri’s eyes blazed in deep sockets. “She’s taken it? I can trust no one!”

  “Taken what?” asked Armand.

  “I asked…to hide it…trust no one,” mumbled the old man, his eyelids drooping. He seemed to fall asleep in midsentence.

  Armand and Felice stared at Yuri. The uniformed officer swallowed uncomfortably. “I need to report this.”

  “He gave Janet something to hide?” Armand said. “But that could be dangerous. Why would he do that?”

  “Because he cares for no one but himself!” The words sounded as if they were wrenched directly from Felice’s heart. “He never has. You and Janet refused to see it. You believed everything he told you, every lie about what he was and why he came here. All the time, he risked our daughter’s life by giving her that—that dossier to hide for him! And now she’s been kidnapped!”

  Armand shook his head, dazed. “He is family. My mother adored her big brother. How could I refuse him when he needed us?”

  Felice backed away, as if Yuri were a snake that might strike at any moment. “I said he was no good. I said we should not get involved. But you would not listen to me!”

  She was shaking so hard Linda feared she might faint. “This isn’t helping Janet,” Linda said. “You need to calm yourself.”

  The tall woman took several deep breaths. “Come with me. We must talk. You are the only one I can trust.”

  The policeman was reporting into his cellular phone as they retreated. Linda wondered what investigators would make of the news that Janet had the dossier. And what Harvey would make of it.

  Felice led the way into the rest room. There were two sinks and three stalls, all empty.

  “Did you know about this?” she asked.

  Linda shook her head. “I’m not sure Janet knew, either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Surely Yuri didn’t give her the dossier and explain what it was,” Linda said. “He probably told her it contained financial papers. But I don’t see why he didn’t just hide it himself.”

  “He always said someone would come after him,” Felice reminded her. “He must have thought his house would be searched.”

  “Surely he could have made several copies, so if he lost one, he’d have others.”

  Bitterness twisted Felice’s face. “This is not only information to sell. This is poison. Anyone who has seen it, who might remember these names, could be killed.”

  The true ugliness of what Yuri had done finally hit home. “He knew he was making Janet a target just by putting this in her hands?”

  “Yes.” Their eyes met in the mirror. “Linda, you must help me. And my daughter. Please.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” She thought about reassuring her that Janet was with Wick, but realized Felice might not find that reminder comforting.

  “Did Janet mention it to you, this thing that her great-uncle gave her to hide?”

  Linda searched her memory for any wisp of conversation whose significance she might have failed to grasp at the time. “I don’t think so.”

  “You know her better than anyone, even me.” The woman’s will to reach her daughter was almost palpable in the enclosed space of the rest room. “Please think hard. Wherever she has put it, her captor will make her take him there.”

  “Wick hasn’t taken her captive.”

  “Someone has. Or they will.”

  “A safe-deposit box?” Linda guessed. “That would be the logical place.”

  “Did Janet have one?”

  “She never mentioned it.”

  “We must go to her house,” Felice said. “I do not think the dossier itself would be there, but if she has a safe-deposit box, perhaps we will find the key.”

  If it was there, Linda thought, they might be heading straight for a rendezvous with the killer. “Maybe we should leave this to the police.”

  “No,” Felice said. “I am still not certain why Harvey shot Yuri. Who knows where his loyalties lie?”

  Maybe Linda was picking up a little Litvonian paranoia herself, but after her unnerving encounter with the captain earlier, she was inclined to agree.

  Besides, what if, somehow, Wick turned up at Janet’s house? And what if the police drew the wrong conclusion? She might be giving Harvey an excuse to shoot her husband.

  “We’ll check it ourselves,” she assured her friend’s mother, and they hurried out, taking a side exit from the hospital to avoid the media.

  IT HAD BEEN LESS than a week since Wick left the trailer, but already it seemed to sag on its supports as if it had given up hope. Midday sunshine beat down on the silver roof with such ferocity that he expected the metal to melt.

  He parked Mina’s car in the scant shade of the trailer and went to unlock the door. When he turned, Janet was already helping Mina across the rocky ground.

  Lifting the elderly woman in his arms, Wick carried her up the steps. A blast of heat met them when they entered, and as he made his way down the center aisle, he broke through a couple of thick spiderwebs. It hadn’t taken long for nature to begin laying its claim.

  Mina felt heavier than he would have expected, and he realized that it was her weak heart, not her general condition, that made her fragile. Maybe it was a result of those aerobics classes, but he suspected she might be strong enough to recover if given a chance.

  But she didn’t seem to care about her own health. Caught up in the events of the past week, she had thrown in her lot with her new friends. The realization touched him deeply.

  “It’s awful in here.” Janet cranked a window, which opened a few inches and then stuck. “Is there a fan?”

  Wick nodded toward a battery-operated device p
erched on the rear couch. “For all the good it will do. But there’s water in the tank. You can fill the spray bottle under the sink and cool yourself with that.”

  They maneuvered around each other while Wick got Mina settled for a nap. After switching on the puny fan, Janet misted them with water. It was lukewarm and dried the instant it touched their skin.

  “I’m afraid this wasn’t a very good place to go,” Wick said.

  “I wasn’t aware we had anything to choose from.” Janet twisted her long blond hair into an impromptu knot and spritzed water on her neck. She had broad cheekbones and a square jaw, and bore a slight ethnic resemblance to Mina. He supposed Mrs. Barash, too, must once have been a handsome woman.

  He was grateful that Linda didn’t have to endure this heat in her condition. Much as he wished she could be with him, he knew she was better off elsewhere.

  Mina’s chest rose and fell shallowly but steadily. “She’s an amazing woman,” he said.

  “Apparently so.” Janet kept her voice low. “This dossier—how big would it be?”

  Wick hadn’t given it much thought. “I’ve been picturing a sheaf of papers, but that seems rather old-fashioned, doesn’t it? It could be on a microdot or a computer disk.”

  “If Uncle Yuri smuggled it out of Litvonia, it must be fairly small,” Janet mused aloud. “It might even fit in a regular-size envelope.”

  “You sound as if you have some idea where it is,” Wick said. “Do you?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Where is it, Janet?”

  She gave him an assessing look. “Let’s wait until Mrs. Barash wakes up. We’re all in this together, wouldn’t you say, Wick?”

  The balance of power had shifted subtly, he realized. Janet did know something, but she wasn’t about to reveal it until it suited her.

  He had the sense that she had taken charge of the situation. Maybe, Wick thought, Janet wasn’t as innocent a bystander as he’d thought.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Linda was surprised to find Janet’s house relatively undisturbed. There was no yellow police tape around it, and inside, only a few drawers in the kitchen looked as if someone had rummaged through them.

  Of course, there was still no evidence that a crime had been committed, she reminded herself. Harvey probably knew where Janet hid the extra key, so he wouldn’t have needed to break in. He must have come here as a private citizen, seeking clues to his girlfriend’s whereabouts.

  Why hadn’t he seized the chance to turn the place upside down? Either he didn’t believe the dossier was here, or he wasn’t the killer and didn’t care about the dossier. At this point, Linda couldn’t begin to sort out whether the evidence pointed more toward Harvey’s guilt or innocence.

  “I’ll start with the kitchen,” Felice said. “You go through the bedrooms. Look for a bank receipt, a safe-deposit key, whatever catches your attention.”

  Half an hour later, having gone through both bedrooms and the bathroom, Linda came out and found Felice in the dining room. “If she’s hidden something, I can’t find it.”

  Felice slammed a drawer shut in the built-in cabinet. “Yuri must have instructed her not to leave clues lying around. Damn him!” It was the strongest language she’d ever used in Linda’s presence.

  Maybe they should go right to the source. “I know where she has her checking account,” Linda said. “We could ask the bank if she’s got a box there. The police might be able to get a search warrant.”

  “No, no, no. We have approached this the wrong way. I was too upset to think clearly.” Felice drummed her fingers on the table. “Yuri would not have wanted such a valuable item kept where the authorities could seize it. It is not in a bank vault. I’m sure of it.”

  “I guess I haven’t learned to think like a Litvonian yet,” Linda admitted. “Where else would she hide it?”

  “Somewhere that she felt was safe, where she could get it easily. Not at the police station, surely,” Felice muttered. “Not at our house, either—I clean too thoroughly. And obviously Yuri didn’t want it on his estate.”

  Linda wished Mrs. Barash were here. Their intrepid friend always seemed to glean some idea from one of her movies. “Maybe it’s in a public place, like a locker at the bus station.”

  “For a few days, perhaps, but he must have brought the dossier with him to Inland two years ago,” Felice said. “At a bus station, someone could break in or the authorities might make a random check.”

  “I don’t suppose she would keep it in her car.” It was a wild guess. “At least it’s private, and she’s the only one with a key.”

  “A key!” Felice jumped at the idea. “Think hard. To what other place would Janet have a key?”

  The answer was so obvious and yet so unthinkable that Linda could scarcely catch her breath. Her chest tightened at the realization that she might have been so close to what they were seeking and never suspected it.

  “My parents’ cabin at the lake,” she said. “We used to go there on the weekend. I gave her a key.”

  JANET HAD FOUND the transistor radio in the cupboard. Wick hadn’t realized until now that he and Linda had left it behind, but he was glad they had.

  At the front of the trailer, they turned it on low. It wasn’t a long wait for the news.

  Not only had Janet’s disappearance been discovered, but so had Mina’s. It didn’t surprise him that police had identified the car parked in front of her house as the one he’d been driving all week. The next revelation, however, caught him off guard.

  “A list of names and addresses has been retrieved from Wick Farley’s car,” the announcer said. “The list, which police believe was taken from Granville Lyme’s home, apparently is not the spy dossier sought by Litvonian authorities. However, it does link Farley even more strongly to the murders of Granville Lyme and his son, Avery.”

  A prowler, possibly the killer, had taken the list from Mina’s porch Saturday night, he recalled. Either Harvey had planted it in Wick’s car this morning, or someone else had hidden it there during the past few days.

  At the other end of the trailer, Mina sat up. Before Wick could offer help, she got to her feet and walked shakily toward them.

  Harsh sunlight revealed skin pulled so tightly across her skull that it looked transparent. “You’re ill,” he said, escorting her to a seat.

  “I’m not going in yet,” she said. “Just imagine me lying helpless hooked up to a machine. Someone could kill me like that!” She snapped her fingers. “Janet, you must think hard. Did your great-uncle give you anything to hide, anything at all?”

  The blond woman nodded resignedly. “He said it was financial information. I suspected he might have taken money that didn’t belong to him, but I never thought—”

  “What you thought won’t matter to this murderer.” Mina sat on the edge of the seat. “Where is it?”

  Janet told them.

  FELICE CAPEK pulled her large sedan away from the curb with scarcely a glance at the side-view mirror. “We must hurry.”

  “They’ve probably picked it up already,” Linda said. “Janet’s been gone for hours.”

  “She would not trust your husband so quickly,” Mrs. Capek said. “She was angry that he took you the way he did. And Avery’s death was terrible for her.”

  Wick had had more than five hours to explain himself, Linda thought. But surely, if Janet refused to cooperate, he would have let her go by now.

  There was nothing further she could do, so she settled back in the passenger seat. It had only been a week, she realized, since the last time she left Janet’s house. It seemed like a year.

  In that time, she had come to know more about her husband than ever before. New bonds had been forged, and new wounds opened. They had lost Avery, a dear friend. They had made another friend, Mina, but the old woman’s heart must be under a terrible strain.

  Linda wished she knew what was going on. Whose idea had it been to persuade Janet to go with them? Had they figured out y
et who the killer was?

  Perhaps he had found them. But she couldn’t let herself dwell on that possibility.

  Once they found the dossier, where would they go? Whom could they trust? Would Wick see any reason to stick around or would he seize the chance to disappear at last?

  She just wished she could figure out how the list got into his car. If she hadn’t believed in him so strongly, it might have made her doubt him. The pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit—but they formed a portrait of Wick.

  Whether he was caught or turned himself in voluntarily, he would almost certainly face murder charges. The evidence against him was compelling. In a way, she couldn’t blame him if he fled.

  “Look in the side mirror,” Felice said. “Do not turn around. Do you see anyone following us?”

  The rectangular reflector showed only the length of Felice’s own car. “I can’t tell. What kind of vehicle is it?”

  “I don’t know makes of cars very well,” Janet’s mother admitted. “It was blue. Very ordinary-looking.”

  Linda rolled down her window and angled the mirror so she could see better. At this midday hour, the street was full of vehicles. Several of them fit Felice’s description. “How long has it been following us?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I noticed it the last two times we turned. There! That blue one—no, it’s green.”

  Linda couldn’t tell which car she meant. “The station wagon?”

  “No. Behind it.”

  The woman might be overwrought. Or she might really have seen something.

  Linda kept watch for two more blocks, until a sedan turned from behind the station wagon and pulled into a supermarket lot. The car was brown. “Was that it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Felice said. “I don’t see anything now. Maybe it was my imagination.”

  From the center of town, they headed northeast to the road that skirted the lake. With every mile, Linda felt her fears growing.

  There was something wrong with the events of the past few days. She kept feeling as if she were being watched, perhaps even that an unseen hand was manipulating her.