by Mary Birk
“But we’d hardly see each other.”
“Of course, we would. It wouldn’t be that different from now.” Because Anne was working on refurbishing the grounds at Dunbaryn Castle, Reid’s family home, as well as on remodeling one of the wings for Reid and Anne’s own use, they frequently made the trip up to Dunbaryn on the weekends.
“But now we’re together during the week as well. In the scenario you’re proposing, I only see you and Michael on weekends.”
“The only other solution is for me to commute from here to there during the week, and spend weekends driving back and forth to Dunbaryn.”
“Let’s talk about it if you get the job.”
“You wouldn’t really mind, would you?”
Of course, he’d mind. “Couldn’t you postpone going back to work for a while?”
“Who knows when I’ll get another chance at a job like this?”
Reid decided to try another tactic. “It’s just I’ve been putting off a trip I need to make to Paris until we got settled in, but I need to go soon, and I’ll need to be there a few weeks. I was hoping you and Michael would come with me.”
“Paris? Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh, no, what horrible timing! I’d love to go, but I can’t if I get the job.”
He sighed. “You really want it, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“How long would the job take?”
“A few months.” At his frown, she added, “I promise to be as efficient as I can be so that we’re away from each other as little as possible.” Her face looked like that of a girl guide making a solemn pledge.
“I don’t like the idea of us being apart so much.”
“Come on, Terrence, don’t be grumpy. I’ll make it up to you when we’re together.” She pulled the covers up around his chest and snuggled into him.
“What about Michael?”
“I’m going to talk to Claudia MacTavish again about her thoughts on a nanny. None of their children are babies, so having an au pair works for her, but I’m not comfortable about doing that for Michael long-term. We’ll want someone older, someone with experience with babies.”
“Definitely.”
“They’d have to come with me to the job every day, or at least until he’s weaned. By the middle of the summer, he’ll be finished with me, and on to bigger and better things.”
“Are you thinking steak and baked potatoes?”
“Not quite yet. Or is that a hint? Are you hungry?”
“Getting there. How about you?”
“I could eat.”
“I’ll take you out, or I can do steaks on the grill, if you like. The rain’s let up.” He leaned back on the pillow and lazily played with her hair.
“Steak sounds wonderful.” She traced her finger around his face. “Terrence, couldn’t I just ask Walter’s estate manager about getting some shots of the garden for my portfolio?”
“Absolutely not. Stay away from Lynstrade Manor.”
“It wouldn’t take long. I’d take Sebastian and a photographer with me, and we’d be in and out in a few hours.”
“I repeat, absolutely not.” A plaintive wailing from the room down the hall interrupted them. Reid leapt out of bed, put on his shorts. “I’ll get him.”
Good timing, Michael. End of discussion, he thought, as he sprinted down the hall.
MONDAY, MARCH 29
Chapter 3
DETECTIVE Constable Allison Muirhead sat at her desk, assiduously perusing the case files in preparation for the upcoming meeting on the nanny kidnappings. The most recent American au pair to disappear, Elizabeth Frost, known as Lizzie, had vanished Wednesday. Oddly, the first report that she was missing hadn’t come from the Gundersons, the family employing her, but from another au pair, an Icelandic girl. After the local police took the report from Maria Ragnarsdötter, they’d checked with Lizzie’s employers, a well-to-do couple in the Glasgow burbs. According to them, the girl had expressed an interest in traveling around Europe, and they’d assumed she’d changed her mind about watching their five children, and just taken off.
Allison had already been through the file twice, but she wanted to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. In the two years she’d been with the High Street team, she’d only let the Superintendent down once, but that had been huge. The memory still made her cringe. Though he never mentioned it, Allison didn’t know if she’d ever truly regain his trust.
Harry never mentioned her disgrace either. Detective Sergeant Harry Ross, alternatively her mentor and tormentor, could have used what he knew about the whole mess to make Allison’s life miserable, but so far, he’d kept his gob shut. Of course, he found plenty of other things to tease her about. She was used to the incessant harassment of her older brothers, and she was well able to handle herself, but still, it was tiresome.
Allison glanced around the empty High Street offices. They’d been given this storefront building for the team’s headquarters after it had been confiscated for some illegal activity or the other. She loved the location, situated in a central part of Glasgow, and tucked right into the neighborhood, instead of in some sterile police office building.
The main floor housed all the team detectives’ desks. Harry and Allison’s desks faced each other, Oscar Browne’s desk was off to the side, and Frank Butterworth’s desk, modified to accommodate his wheelchair, did double duty as a reception desk, though the front door was always kept locked, so a reception desk was rarely necessary.
The Superintendent’s private office, a large conference room, and a small kitchen claimed the balance of the main floor. Their records and reference materials were kept in the basement, and the upper floor was home to banks of computer stations for use during those investigations requiring them to bring in more personnel. Oscar was often tucked away up there, and with Frank being mostly downstairs in the records section, and the Super in his office, usually Harry and Allison had the main room to themselves.
Right now, Harry was out for lunch, so Allison was able to study the files without interruption. She read on. The missing girl’s mother in California, alerted by her daughter’s friend, had contacted the Gunderson family. Unhappy with the family’s reaction to her daughter’s disappearance and the local Scottish police’s failure to take it seriously, she’d contacted the FBI, who’d put it together that Lizzie Frost was the third American au pair to have gone missing in the Glasgow area since January.
When the Superintendent called yesterday to tell Allison he was temporarily pulling Harry and her off the follow-up to the Von Zandt operation to help with the kidnapping investigation, she’d been elated. She was tired of everything to do with Walter Von Zandt. It was beyond frustrating to work on an investigation, have the man dead to rights, and then have the brass let Von Zandt cut a deal and let all their work go for shite.
Allison munched on a cheese sandwich while she finished going through the files in front of her. As she read, she pulled the pieces of bread apart and stuck in the dill pickle slices she’d packed separately. She wasn’t overly impressed with the piss-poor attention that had been given to the American girls’ disappearances by the local constabularies, but she could understand how it happened. Each girl’s disappearance had been treated as a simple one-off missing persons case. Routine inquiries had been made, and the disappearances were chalked up to the probability that the girls had gotten fed up with watching other people’s children for squirrel’s pay. Nannying was babysitting, pure and simple, even when it was in another country.
The first girl had gone missing at the end of January, the second in February, and the third last week. One a month. The first two had disappeared from the outlying burbs, and Lizzie Frost from Glasgow proper, so the cases initially had been worked separately by three separate constabularies, and no one noticed the similarities until Lizzie Frost’s mother contacted the FBI.
Allison popped a vinegared crisp into her mouth. She could see how the local police h
ad concluded that the first two girls had just gone walkies. They each simply disappeared one day, with no witnesses to say exactly when and where they were last seen. And their luggage was gone. Lizzie Frost’s luggage was gone, as well, but in her case, there was more—she’d failed to show up at a meet with a friend at the cinema, and there were witnesses who’d seen her leaving a café with a young man not long before that.
Everyone who’d worked in the restaurant where Lizzie Frost was last seen had been interviewed. Only two had noticed Lizzie, and their stories matched. A young man with dark hair had approached the girl. The girl hadn’t seemed to know him at first, but then smiled and talked to him, and eventually followed him out the door.
The next witness report came from Maria Ragnarsdötter, the Icelandic au pair. The older girl had waited at the cinema for Lizzie, who was supposed to be bringing along a friend, a girl named Rosie. Maria waited from two o’clock until the film was to start at half two. She finally went inside, assuming her friend and the other girl would join her when they arrived. But when the film ended and Lizzie still hadn’t appeared, Maria called the house where Lizzie worked and discovered that no one had seen the girl since that morning. By the next day, with still no word from Lizzie, Maria, frustrated with Lizzie’s employers’ lack of concern, went to the police herself.
The police file had a photo of the two friends together. Maria Ragnarsdötter, tall and thin, with hair an almost white-blond, and Lizzie, petite, with hair a more golden blond. Maria, at twenty-two, was only a year younger than Allison herself, and much older than the sixteen-year-old Lizzie. Maria and Lizzie had met in the neighborhood park when they were there watching their young charges. Maria reported that Lizzie was devoutly religious. Because Lizzie found bad language, sexual explicitness, and violence offensive, Maria said it had been difficult to even find a film Lizzie would agree to watch. The one they’d planned to see that Wednesday, a drippy story about some children and their adorable (of course) dog, would have been the first film Maria and Lizzie had ever seen together. Maria knew nothing about the girl Lizzie was supposed to be bringing with her, except her name.
Lizzie Frost’s thin file ended there. There’d been no ransom demand. No body had been found and no notes or letters received. The earth seemed to have opened up and swallowed the girl whole, exactly as it had the other two girls—both also American au pairs, and neither with any known connection to Lizzie Frost. The files on Susan Clark and Kristen Daly were even thinner than the one on Lizzie.
Until Lizzie, there’d been nothing to suggest the other disappearances were abductions, or that anyone else was involved. But someone should have suspected something was wrong. None of the girls’ families had any reason to think their daughters had been planning to leave their jobs. Nor had they heard from them since they’d disappeared.
Maria’s story about Lizzie planning to bring someone named Rosie along to the cinema also raised questions. No one the police interviewed had ever met Rosie. Still, the Strathclyde police hadn’t treated the disappearance as suspicious. Instead, they’d seemed to buy the idea that Lizzie had left on her own. But now, things had changed. Now, they had Lizzie Frost’s abduction on film.
The telephone beside Allison rang. She didn’t bother to look at the caller i.d. screen; she rarely got random calls. Anyone calling High Street was someone known to them, and if they called her extension, known to her. She swallowed the last of her sandwich, and reached to pick up the phone.
“DC Muirhead here.”
“Allison?”
“I told you not to call me at work.”
Eddie Michaud’s voice was determined, but nervous. “You don’t want me to call you after work, either.”
“Maybe you should take a clue from that, DS Michaud.”
“I was wondering if you might want to see a film this weekend.” When she didn’t respond, he hurriedly went on, “Or get a meal, or something.”
The first time she’d met Eddie, he’d been an obnoxious prick, but she’d stood her ground, and he’d started to respect her. Unfortunately, he’d also started to ask her out all the time. She almost preferred the way he’d been before. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about what would happen if she ever said yes. It would only take a few dates for him to realize she wasn’t what he thought. That’s all it ever took. Other than Ian, who’d lasted a record three months, three dates was usually all it took for her to doom a relationship.
She chewed her pen, mulling over the problem. It wasn’t a good idea to go out with someone from work. Of course, she knew that. But she was kind of attracted to Eddie, and she rarely had time to meet anyone anywhere else. Ian hadn’t been a cop, but that had been a fluke. One of her girlfriends had introduced them. She doubted that would happen again. Ian hadn’t given her good reviews.
She heard the front door open, and saw Harry breeze in. Damn, she didn’t need to be caught on a personal call by him.
“Allison? Are you still there?” Eddie’s voice sounded forlorn, making her feel guilty.
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry I bothered you at work.” She could tell Eddie was about to hang up.
Allison felt like a complete doobie. Did she really want him to quit calling her?
Harry threw off his jacket, looked down at his watch. “You’ll want to cut the chatter, birdie, we’re meeting now.”
She ignored Harry, put on a matter-of-fact voice, and said into the phone, “Saturday, then?”
A moment of shocked silence, then, “You’ll go?”
“Didn’t I just say so?” She needed to get off the phone before Harry started teasing her.
Eddie’s voice, happy now. “Yeah, yeah, you did. Shall I call round for you at your place?”
“I’ll meet you.” She didn’t need the news burning through the telephone wires from her mum to all her idiot brothers, which is exactly what would happen if Eddie picked her up at home. What she needed was to get out of her parents’ flat so she could have a regular, grown-up life.
“Where then?”
“Outside the cinema on Renfrew.”
“Brilliant. Which film do you want to see?”
“Let’s decide then. I’ll meet you at half-seven.”
“Aye.” Eddie laughed, happy in his victory. “Saturday, then. Half-seven.”
Harry, his freckled face drawn down in a frown, did a mock tapping of his foot until she hung up. “Get a move on, Muirhead.”
She rolled her eyes, collected her papers for the meeting, and followed him to the conference room.
Chapter 4
DESPITE THE LATE MARCH COLD, the neighborhood park was full of children and their mothers or nannies. The sun was out, Anne supposed, somewhere behind the clouds, as there was a slightly brighter blob of grey overhead. Even northern California had more sun.
Michael, covered with warm fuzzy blankets, lay happily in the elaborate navy-blue pram his paternal grandparents had given them for Christmas. Even at four months old, he seemed to love being outdoors, and kept kicking off his blankets. He was like his father; the cold didn’t bother him at all. Anne couldn’t understand how she’d failed to realize how cold it was in Scotland so much of the time. She looked around at the laughing children running and playing, chasing each other, squealing when they got caught. The cold didn’t seem to bother them, either.
“I wonder if I’ll ever get used to the weather here.” Anne pulled the hood of her camel-colored wool coat up over her head with gloved hands. “I’m freezing all the time.” She glanced over at the chunky, well-groomed woman sitting beside her. “Aren’t you cold?”
Claudia MacTavish shook her head, keeping watchful eyes on her own three children racing around the playground. “It’s not been a bad spring as things go. Besides, we’re leaving for Majorca the day after our Easter party. A week in the Spanish sun makes the Scottish spring easier to take.”
Claudia’s husband, Peter, along with John Stirling, had gone to boarding school with Terrence
. Claudia was about the same age as the men, maybe a year younger, so about thirty-six, almost ten years older than Anne. Other than their husbands being friends, she and Claudia had little in common. Anne hadn’t yet had the time or opportunity to make many friends on her own, what with having a young baby and going back and forth to Dunbaryn so often. All her social life, what little there was of it, came through her husband. Eventually, when she wasn’t so busy, Anne supposed she’d find friends closer to her own age, friends with whom she had more in common, but for now, Claudia was it.
“Terrence said he’d take me somewhere warm, too, but he’s had a hard time getting away.” Until now, she thought, remembering the offered Paris trip. She blew out a breath, and watched the little white cloud it formed hover before dissipating. “And if I get the Loch Etive job, we won’t be able to take a vacation anytime soon.”
“You’re going there tomorrow?”
Anne nodded, lifting Michael out of his pram and sitting him on her lap so he could watch the other children playing. Soon he’d be one of them, running around, playing. She brushed her face against his hair, loving the sweet baby smell of him. “For a site visit, so I can put together a bid.”
“Have you found a nanny?”
“Not yet.” She hadn’t actually started looking for a nanny, though it’d been officially on her things-to-do list for a month. She just wasn’t ready to turn so much of Michael’s care over to someone else.
“Did you try the agency I recommended?”
“Not yet.”
“You’d better call soon. Once school lets out for the summer, it’ll be impossible to find anyone. All the best nannies will have been snapped up.”
Claudia, a part-time solicitor, seemed to take for granted the concept of having a nanny. She’d probably grown up with armies of nannies and housekeepers like Terrence had. Anne’s mother hadn’t even had a cleaning lady. Anne rubbed her gloved hands together, trying to generate enough warmth to bring her numb fingers back to life.