by Lisa Gardner
“We might. But she left with our previous sheriff, Shep O’Grady. You’d have to ask him. He’s not here anymore, of course. Lives somewhere else now.”
“Shep O’Grady.” Mitz made a note.
Luke said, “So what’s this all about, sir? We don’t often get lawyers asking about our former officers.”
“It’s a routine background check.”
“She’s applying for a job?”
“Uh … no.”
“She’s applying for a credit card?”
“I’m a lawyer, Sheriff. I assure you I don’t get involved with credit card applications.”
“Of course, pardon me. So when do you get involved?”
“That’s confidential. Something I will share with Ms. Conner when the occasion arises.”
“Fair enough. I would never ask a man to compromise his principles. Say, just out of curiosity, what is your specialty?”
Mitz, however, was no dummy. “That would also be something for me to share with her when the occasion arises. So Lorraine Conner served as a police officer for how many years?”
“Several,” Luke obliged.
“I understand she resigned last year.”
“Yes sir.”
“A bit of scandal or something? About a fifteen-year-old incident?”
Luke shrugged. “Officer Conner resigned in good standing, Mr. Mitz. We’re all real proud of her.”
“Well,” Mitz said briskly. “That’s good to hear. Of course, as long as I’m in town, you won’t be offended if I ask others the same question?”
“Ask away,” Luke said graciously.
“Yes, well. What about the rest of her family?”
“What about them?”
“She has other family?” Mitz sounded surprised. For the first time, Luke hesitated, clearly caught off guard.
“Not that I know of,” Luke said hastily, abandoning the drawl. “But you asked the question.”
“So she doesn’t have an ex-husband, half-siblings, children?”
“Not that I know of. Why do you ask?”
“Line on the form,” Mitz said curtly. He began to make a note again, but Luke caught his hand. The Andy Griffith routine had vanished. Luke’s face was hard set, and his voice had grown stern.
“These are very personal questions for a routine background check, sir, and even if Rainie doesn’t live here anymore, she’s a good friend of mine. Now I’m asking you one more time, what is this all about?”
“And I’m telling you one last time,” Mitz said stiffly. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
Rainie decided that was her cue. The conversation was going no place, plus good cop was about to beat the crap out of Mr. Mitz, which would give her role a tough act to follow. She came around the booth. She gave the lawyer a big smile. “Hey, Mitz,” she said. “Surprise.” Then she slid into the booth and effectively trapped the man between her and Luke.
“What … what is going on?” Mitz had started stuttering. Perspiration dotted his upper brow and Rainie figured in the last ten seconds, he’d sweat through his tan linen suit. She scooted in a little closer, letting her hand fall to his prized briefcase and stroking the leather almost lovingly.
“You’ve been trying very hard to meet me, Mr. Mitz,” she said.
“Well, yes. I left several messages in Virginia. I didn’t know.… When did you get back in town?”
“Make you uncomfortable?”
“Well, yes. But, but, it’s not bad either!” The lawyer perked up. “I mean, I wish you would’ve called first. I would’ve brought the whole file, been better prepared. But you are here now and I have wanted to talk to you.”
“About my past,” Rainie said knowingly.
“Oh, in all honesty, we know all details about your past. Even the, well, ‘incident.’ I assure you, he’s not concerned about that. Doesn’t bother him a bit.”
“What?” Now it was Rainie’s turn to feel confused. She glanced at Luke. He was shaking his head slightly, equally baffled. Shit.
“You’ve spoken to him, correct?” Mitz was saying in a merry rush. “I gave him your number in Virginia and he promised to call. After all, it seemed more appropriate for him to personally give you the news.”
The hang ups, Rainie thought. Two days of hang ups she’d naively assumed were Mitz. Why is it wrong to assume? Because it makes an ass out of u and me.
“What news?” she heard herself ask.
“The estate, Ms. Conner. The will. That’s what I do, you know. Estate planning. I’m his attorney.”
“Whose attorney?”
“Ooooooooh deeeaaaaarrrr.” Mitz drew up short. He blinked behind his glasses. “He didn’t call you, did he? He said he would, but he didn’t. It’s the wild card, you know. Estate planning, it is an intense, personal experience. You never know how your client is going to react.”
“Mr. Mitz, you start explaining now or I swear I’m going to break every bone in your overly educated body.”
Mr. Mitz ducked his head. He blinked again. And he said in a small voice, “I work for Ronald Dawson. Ronnie thinks—we think—that he’s your father. Which would make you, Ms. Conner, his sole surviving heir.”
26
Portland, Oregon
“You have a father?”
“Not bloody likely.”
“You don’t seem very happy about it.”
“Happy about it? Happy about it!” Four hours later, Rainie stood in the middle of the one-bedroom deluxe hotel suite in downtown Portland and whirled on Kimberly Quincy as if the girl didn’t have a brain in her head. Rainie had made the two-hour drive back to the city in one hour and thirty minutes. She’d cut off two semi’s, flashed half a dozen cars, and nearly rear-ended a police cruiser. Only the fact that the state trooper was a personal friend of Luke’s had saved her from a speeding ticket or worse. She should’ve taken a deep breath then. She hadn’t.
Now she started pacing the living room of the suite, where Quincy and his daughter were registered as Larry and Barbara Jones. Quincy was catching a badly needed nap in the bedroom. Kimberly had been staring blindly at some network’s TGIF TV-lineup before Rainie had burst through the door. Far from being wary of Rainie’s mood, the aspiring psych student seemed grateful for the distraction. Rainie now understood how guinea pigs felt. If Kimberly gave her that deep, probing stare one more time, Rainie was going to start pushing brightly colored buttons in return for pellets. Then she was going to bounce said pellets off of Kimberly’s blond head.
Rainie held up her hand. “One,” she ticked off crisply. “Let’s consider the father-to-be. Ronald Dawson, aka Ronnie. He’s a thug. Better yet, a convicted thug. The man has spent the last thirty years incarcerated for aggravated murder. He was only paroled last year because at the age of sixty-eight, he’s too arthritic to be considered a menace to society. In his thirties, however, he gutted two men in a bar fight with a hunting knife. Oh wait, I’m sorry. According to his lawyer, Carl Mitz, there were mitigating circumstances. Good ol’ Ronnie was so damn drunk, he didn’t know what he was doing at the time. Helloooooooo, Dad!”
“Still, he hired a lawyer to find you,” Kimberly said mildly.
Rainie scowled at her. “Two,” she continued. “Ronnie claims to be looking for an heir to his estate, but it’s not like he did anything to earn the estate. His father had a hundred-acre farm in Beaverton. Ronnie didn’t help on the farm. He drank, gutted, then went to jail. His father worked the farm. His father built the farm. And when the real estate boom hit Beaverton in the early nineties, his father sold the farm to a real estate developer for ten million dollars. Praise be to Grandpa Dawson. Ronnie still sucks.”
Kimberly smiled sweetly. “As they say, you can’t choose your family.”
“To hell with Tristan Shandling,” Rainie said seriously. “Keep talking, girl, and I will kill you myself.”
“Come on, Rainie. This is exciting news. Your mother is gone. You don’t have any aunts, uncles, brothers, or siste
rs. But think about it. You might have a dad! A real, live, anxious-to-meet-you dad!”
“There’s no proof he’s my father,” Rainie snapped. “So he slept with my mother thirty-two years ago. Who didn’t?”
“But you’ll take the blood test, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rainie …”
“I don’t know!” Rainie threw her hands in the air. “You want to know the truth? I don’t like it. I just plain don’t like it.”
“Because he’s a convict.”
“Of course he’s a convict. My mother didn’t hang out with aspiring astrophysicists. Hell, I’m not surprised my potential sire was in jail. I’m just shocked he was ever paroled.”
Kimberly frowned. “So … it’s the money you don’t like? Becoming an heiress to ten million dollars? You’re right, that’s tough.”
“Kimberly, think about it for a moment. What do all children who don’t have parents do? They dream about their missing parents, right? They make up exotic stories. ‘My mommy and daddy are secretly eastern European royalty, forced into hiding to flee the communists. When it’s safe, they’ll come back for me.’ Or, ‘my father was a Nobel prize-winning scientist, killed by evil government agents who wanted to halt his impending discovery of world peace.’ Kids create fables, caricatures of real life. No one’s absent father is ever a thug, or drunken white trash who simply didn’t want to own up to his responsibility. He’s always handsome, dashing, and frankly, rich.”
It took Kimberly a moment, then she got it. “You think this is all fake. It’s too good to be true.”
Rainie finally grew still. She looked at Kimberly and demanded bluntly, “What does Tristan Shandling do? He identifies who the victim wants more than anything in the world. And then he becomes that person. I’ve been without a family for fifteen years, Kimberly. As you said, no aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters. There’s a loneliness in that I don’t think other people can understand.”
“Rainie, you don’t know that it’s a ruse.”
“Think about the timing.”
“Just because you don’t like coincidences, doesn’t mean they don’t happen.”
“And just because it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, doesn’t mean it isn’t Tristan Shandling in disguise.” Rainie plopped down on the sofa, then hit a cushion. Hard.
“You’re scared,” Kimberly said softly.
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m not trying to. It’s just … You’re scared.”
“I was so sure he’d go with law enforcement,” Rainie murmured. “Or maybe a fellow PI. Even knowing how he works, I didn’t see this coming. God, he’s good. I’m sitting here now, and half of me is warning, Don’t fall for it, you’re too smart for this. And the other half of me … Christ, the other half of me is already picking out Father’s Day cards.”
Kimberly took a seat next to her on the sofa. Her long blond hair was pulled back from her face in a rubber band. She’d slept through the long plane ride and she looked better than she had in days. Rested. More composed. It was interesting to Rainie that as their situation grew more dire, Kimberly seemed to actually grow stronger. Young, but rising up to the challenge. Inexperienced, but definitely determined.
“Let’s think about this,” Kimberly said. “What’s the next step?”
“Blood testing. Mitz gave me the name of a lab. They’ll take a blood sample from me and ostensibly test for a DNA match with Ronald Dawson’s.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
Rainie smiled grimly. “Do you know how long it takes for DNA testing? We’re talking at least four weeks, or more probably, a few months. If this is all a scam, it will be over long before then.”
“We can do some checking first,” Kimberly countered firmly. “You said that Dawson’s father sold a farm in Beaverton. Real estate transactions are public records. We can also search for the arrest record of Ronald Dawson.”
“One step ahead of you. Luke already pulled Dawson’s rap sheet. That checks out. Now he’s working on the real estate records.”
“Well, there you go!” Kimberly clapped her hands. She seemed genuinely excited. Rainie shook her head. She wished she could share the girl’s enthusiasm. There was a numbness inside her, though. A sense of dread she couldn’t shake. Or maybe it was simply the stunning realization that she was more vulnerable than she’d ever realized. And even as she told herself she knew better, there was something new and soft growing in her belly. Not numbness. Hope.
Thirty-two years old. The last fifteen years with no plans for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. Always working the holiday shifts because what else was she going to do? Always watching other people go home to their families at the end of the day, moaning about their in-laws, bellyaching about the demands of another family gathering, joking about the bad presents on Father’s Day. Sometimes the whole concept of a family seemed like an exclusive club to her. Other people were members. She was the perennial outsider, the guest who got the pity invite, but never really belonged at the table.
She wished Quincy was awake. She wished.… She would like to talk to him right now. Maybe, she’d even like to lean her head against his shoulder and have him tell her it was going to be okay. You have to have faith, he’d told her. She wished it were really that simple.
“Eight months ago,” Rainie told Kimberly softly, “a man started calling around Bakersville, trying to find my mother. Luke told me about it a few months later, but never gave me the man’s name as it didn’t seem important. The man was Ronald Dawson. Luke still had the name listed in his notes. A few weeks after Ronnie’s first call, the assistant district attorney dropped the criminal charges against me. At the time, I thought Quincy had intervened. In fact, I was really angry with him for it. But I called the ADA after meeting Mitz this afternoon. Quincy never talked to him. The district attorney himself was the one who asked for the charges to be dropped. He’s about to run for office again. And according to the ADA, his campaign recently received a healthy donation from a local citizen—otherwise known as Ronald Dawson.”
“Well there you go, Rainie. The timing isn’t coincidental at all. Ronald Dawson started looking for you nearly a year ago, and you have proof.”
“Tristan Shandling’s been active for at least twenty months. He could still be part of this.”
“But he was focused on Mandy then, and after that, my mother. He can’t be on both sides of the country at once.”
“Sure you can. The magic of the telephone, Internet, cable. Plus, it’s just an eight-hour plane ride. You can visit the West Coast for a day. It’s not fun, but it’s feasible.”
“There are cheaper and simpler ways of targeting you than paying off a DA,” Kimberly countered, “not to mention meddling in a criminal case.”
“I don’t think cheap or simple are particular concerns of Mr. Shandling right now. He’s on the warpath. So what if he runs up the ol’ Visa?”
Kimberly frowned. “Do you, or don’t you, want this man to be your father?”
“I don’t know. I just … I don’t know.”
Kimberly was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Rainie, I never realized you were so pessimistic.”
“Oh God, we have to get you back to college.”
“It’s true! You may be on the verge of something wonderful, but you’d rather steel yourself for the downside than inspire yourself with the good. Oh …” Kimberly blinked. “You and my father, I get it.”
“Oh, no. Don’t you go there right now. I really don’t need this right now.”
She might as well have not spoken. “I was so sure my father was the holdout in your relationship,” Kimberly declared. “I mean, given his distant relationship with his father, his reserve with his own children, his fears of intimacy with my mother. But this time around, it’s not Dad, is it? It’s you. You’re the one who doesn’t trust the relationship.”
“Why do you people insist on speaking of trust as if life were a
Disney movie? Kimberly, my mother beat me as a hobby. My father was basically a sperm donor, who fucked the town whore and moved on. Seventeen years later, my mother’s current boyfriend decided she wasn’t good enough and turned his attention on me. I have trouble trusting people? Hell yes, I have trouble trusting people. My mother was a mean, ill-tempered drunk. And I still loved her. That’s not Disney; that’s a complicated world.”
“My father doesn’t drink.”
“Give him a few days,” Rainie said sourly. “He also didn’t curse or plot revenge until three days ago, and he’s doing a fine job of that now.”
“He would never hurt you,” Kimberly said seriously.
Rainie groaned. “God save me from psych majors. Kimberly, look … I know your father is a good guy. I know he’s different from the others. But knowing isn’t always knowing, if that makes any sense. I mean, it’s one thing to grasp something intellectually. To tell myself that Quincy’s different, that he’s okay, that he won’t hurt me. It’s another thing to change a lifetime way of thinking. To emotionally, really … believe. To genuinely feel safe.”
“I tell myself logically that my mother is dead,” Kimberly said abruptly. “But emotionally, I don’t believe it yet.”
Rainie nodded slowly. Her voice softened. “Yeah, it’s kind of like that.”
“I tell myself it’s not my mother’s fault, or Mandy’s fault, or my father’s fault,” Kimberly said. “But I’m mad at all of them. They left me. I’m the strong one and I’m supposed to take it, but I don’t want to be this strong. I’m angry at them for that.”
“I keep having this dream,” Rainie said. “Two or three times a week, always the same dream. This baby elephant is running across the desert. His mother is dead; he’s all alone and desperate for water. Then these other elephants come, except instead of helping him, they beat him into the ground because he’s a threat to their own survival. He gets up though. He fights to live and staggers after them. Finally they find water. I relax. In my dream, I think the baby is going to be all right. His struggle has now paid off. He will live happily ever after. Then the jackals come and tear him apart. And I wake up with little baby screams still echoing in my head. I don’t know why I can’t stop dreaming it.”