Valley of the Lost

by Vicki Delany

  There was, however, one old acquaintance who seemed to keep up with what Moonlight was doing. Lucky reached for the thin Trafalgar and District phone book.

  “Meredith? This is Lucky Smith.”

  “Lucky?” Meredith’s voice was wary. And so, Lucky, thought, it should be after the way she’d disgraced herself by her recent involvement with that unspeakable television person.

  Lucky tried to sound as if their past problems were forgotten. “Sorry to bother you at home, Meredith, but something’s come up, nothing serious mind, and I need to find my daughter quickly. She’s gone out and not taken her cell phone.”

  “Are you okay, Lucky? Your husband?”

  “Yes, yes. Everyone’s fine. I thought that well, being on the police beat at the paper and all, you might have heard from Moonlight recently. Today I mean. Sometime today. Since noon.”

  Lucky could hear Meredith thinking. “No. Sorry. But if I do hear from her, I’ll let you know.”

  “Just ask her to call home. Thanks.”

  “Are you sure there isn’t something I can help you with, Lucky?”

  “Nothing at all. Everything’s perfectly fine. Bye.”

  Lucky disconnected. The dial tone rang in her hand. She couldn’t think of anyone else to call. In other circumstances she’d be afraid that Moonlight had gone back to Vancouver, to sit in an alley in the Downtown Eastside, or to Calgary, to mourn by Graham’s grave.

  But she wouldn’t have taken Miller with her.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Sergeant John Winters leaned on the railing and ripped a strip of meat off a rib with his teeth. Ray Lopez walked across the deck.

  “Nothing,” he said in a low voice. The party swirled around them. Eliza laughed at something Gale Denton said. “Not at the hospital, the station. The Mounties haven’t heard anything. I even called the guys in Nelson. No luck. Do you know any of her friends?”

  “Only Christa Thompson. Lucky might have called her. Check. Molly doesn’t have a car, and they live outside of town. Find out if Molly took her mom’s car, or anyone else’s.”

  “Those sort of questions’ll worry her mother.”

  “Almost as much as they’re worrying me. I’ll ask Barb if there’s a quiet room we can use. No use in worrying everyone else.”

  Lopez pulled his cell phone out as he went back into the house.

  Paul Keller crossed the deck carrying a paper plate wet with meat juices and salad dressing. “What’s going on, John?”

  “We need to talk, Paul. Let’s find someplace private.” He put his half-finished plate down, and wiped his fingers on the seat of his jeans.

  Keller’s plate joined his. Winters spoke to Barb in a low voice, and she led him to a room off the kitchen. “Problem, Paul?” she asked, holding the door open to the TV room.

  “Work,” he said. “Ray’s out front, making a call. Show him where we are, will you, please.”

  “Sure thing.” The door shut behind her.

  “Explain,” Keller ordered his lead detective.

  “Molly Smith. It might be nothing. And if it wasn’t for the fact that the baby’s also missing, I wouldn’t give it another thought.” Winters rubbed the face of his watch as he filled the Chief Constable in.

  The door opened. “Christa Thompson knows nothing,” Lopez said. “Lucky called her already. She also called Meredith Morgenstern, who, as you can imagine, knows less than nothing, but that’s unlikely to stop her from speculating.”

  “Lucky called the paper?” Keller sat on the butter yellow leather couch. A flat-screen TV filled one wall.

  “She and Molly have a history. Lucky’s getting desperate,” Lopez said. “I can hear it in her voice.”

  Outside, the party had gone quiet. Everyone knew something was up.

  “Lucky says there wasn’t a car at the house when she left,” Lopez said. “She checked Molly’s gun safe—it’s locked. Her cell phone is on a table in the family room. Her keys to the house are hanging on a hook by the back door where she usually leaves them.”

  “Someone might have dropped by and picked Molly up,” Keller said.

  “Looking at things one at a time, we have nothing,” Winters said. “An adult woman who’s been missing for a couple of hours, if that. She seems to have taken her foster sibling with her—nothing wrong there. But Lucky says the lasagna was burning in the oven, indicating that Molly intended to come to this party until something changed her mind at the last minute. Very last minute if she didn’t even switch the oven off. No note from Molly saying that she had to take the baby to the hospital or something.”

  “I can’t start a full-scale search based on that, John,” Keller said.

  “Agreed. But there is one thing we’re overlooking.”

  “What?”

  “Jennifer Watson. AKA Ashley Doe. The woman caring for the baby who is now missing was murdered not much more than a week ago.”

  “You think that has something to do with this?” Keller asked.

  “We’ve come up almost completely blank on Ashley. After a week of digging, I don’t know much more than her name. Jennifer Watson: a common name at that. She has no police record, no history, not much of an identity, thus no motive I can find for her death. We know one thing, and one thing only about her—she was caring for a child that was not her own.”

  “You think someone wants the baby?”

  “I think I dropped the ball on this one. It never occurred to me to consider that someone killed the mother to get the kid.”

  “And Molly,” Keller said, “has the kid.”

  “Last we heard,” Lopez said, “she had the kid.”

  “All right,” Keller said. “We start a search for Molly Smith.”

  “I’ll get Vancouver trying to dig up more on Jennifer Watson. She was a druggie and a hooker at one time. It’s possible, likely, that even if she was never arrested formally enough to be fingerprinted, the police knew her. I know people I can drag away from their Sunday evening. Ray, get back onto the baby angle. Someone must be missing him—he had to come from somewhere. Go around to the Smith’s. Find out if anything unusual happened while Lucky had Miller.”

  “Something unusual at the Smith home,” Keller laughed without humor. “That won’t be hard to find. I’ll notify the Mounties and the Trafalgar Police to be on the lookout for a suspected officer in danger. Do you want the Mountie’s search dog out?”

  “That might be an idea. Change of plan. Ray, you contact Vancouver. Drop my name all over the place if that’ll help get some action. I’ll take the Smith home. Ask the dog handler to meet me there, Paul. It’s remotely possible that Molly left on foot.”

  “You know you’re going to have egg all over your face if she comes home with the baby under one arm and a pizza under the other.”

  “Egg, I can handle. I’ll ask Barb to call a taxi for Eliza. Ray?”

  “Madeline too. I’d say this party is officially over.”

  ***

  “This is getting ridiculous,” Al Jacobi said, slamming his foot onto the brakes at the last possible second to avoid rear-ending a cheerful yellow Mini.

  “Traffic’s always bad at this spot.”

  “Not talking about the damned traffic. I mean the Allenhart case. It’s not as if we’ve nothing else to work on.”

  Detective Rachel Ferguson shrugged. It might be a Sunday afternoon, but Allenhart’s lawyer wanted a personal update on the progress (or lack thereof) of the case. Allenhart Enterprises owned approximately half of the Pacific Northwest, probably owned half the politicians as well. And the politicals told the police when to jump.

  The city was covered in low-lying clouds. They could see nothing but the road in front of them. Ferguson closed her eyes as Al cursed and swore at the traffic.

  “And on top of it all, he’ll complain that we’re late.”

  Puget Sound lay off to their left, somewhere, hard to see in the fog. They reached their turn-off and the car jumped forward. Houses got larg
er and large properties spread themselves out. Soon the houses themselves disappeared from view, and all they could see were long winding driveways disappearing behind ghostly trees. Al slowed and pulled off the road, lowering his window. He pressed the buzzer at a tall, heavy gate. “Jacobi.”

  He might have said, “Abracadabra.” The gates opened with silent majesty and they drove through.

  Manicured lawns ran to their left and right, as far as Ferguson could see.

  Ricardo Gallo, the chauffeur, was standing on the front steps of the house, waiting, when Ferguson and Jacobi drove up. “You’re late,” he said.

  “You’re lucky we came at all,” Jacobi said.

  Gallo’s massive shoulders shifted under his black jacket. “Not my problem. He’s waiting in the library.” He turned and walked into the house, without waiting to see if the detectives would follow. They did.

  The sound of Ferguson’s heels clicking on the floors echoed through the empty, quiet house. Notably, she thought, Gallo had said ‘he’, not ‘they’ were waiting.

  Gallo held the door open for the detectives and closed it, without a sound, behind them.

  George Dowds, the family lawyer, looked up from the papers on his lap. “Please,” he said. “Take a seat.”

  They did so. The library was decorated in calming shades of mauve and sea green. Most of the books lining the walls appeared to be well-thumbed.

  “Mr. Allenhart would like an update,” Dowds said.

  Rachel Ferguson cleared her throat. “We’ve not yet managed to locate the girl.”

  “If we’d been allowed to circulate her picture and description…” Jacobi said.

  Dowds waved a well-manicured hand. “I shouldn’t have to keep reminding you, Detective, that Mr. Allenhart has requested that this affair be handled as discreetly as possible.”

  Ferguson jumped into the conversation before Jacobi could, once again, offer his opinion of that ‘request’.

  “Will we be meeting with Mr. Allenhart?”

  “I’m afraid he had a very bad night. I will, of course, make a full report of this conversation to him later. People don’t just disappear off the face of the earth, Mr. Jacobi, not in this age of hyper-security. I’d like to be able to report to Mr. Allenhart that you’ve made some steps toward finding her.”

  Detective Rachel Ferguson knew that some people could disappear quite well if they wanted to, but she refrained from saying so, and let Al dance around Dowds’ questions, while trying not to admit that they hadn’t made a single bit of progress since their last meeting.

  Murder amongst the ultra-rich would normally have thrown the newspapers into a frenzy. But so tight was Richard George Andrew Allenhart’s empire’s control over the media and the legal profession that little more than the bare details got to the attention of the public. R.G.A. Allenhart was 92 years old, bedridden after a stroke, and lived in paranoiac isolation approaching that of the fabled Howard Hughes. Protected by almost as much money.

  She’d only met the old man once. He’d been dressed in a somewhat tattered multi-colored robe, with leather slippers on his feet, reclining in a comfortable armchair beside the big bedroom window. He had said nothing, and his body didn’t move once, but he had kept his piercing black eyes on her face the entire time as his lawyer answered the officer’s questions. A nurse hovered at the old man’s shoulder, and in the distance Rachel could see boats sailing on the blue waters of the sound.

  Richard Allenhart had been married to Eleanor Browne for sixty-four years. The union had been childless, yet, by all accounts, happy. When Eleanor died of cancer, Allenhart, trapped in his grief, became a recluse. Eleanor had done good works all her adult life, and was particularly involved in charities helping homeless and drug-addicted women and their children. Richard continued to support Eleanor’s causes, without ever leaving his house.

  One night about a year ago Ricardo Gallo, the chauffeur, came across a young woman awkwardly trying to pick up johns on the street corner. He’d brought the girl home to his boss. Katie was her name. Katie Watson.

  Young Katie had liked the old man, and he’d liked her, and so she moved in. Allenhart was more than ninety years old, and supposedly mourning his wife. Nevertheless Katie was soon pregnant.

  The day Katie gave birth, at home, to a healthy boy, the lawyer was summoned. The will rewritten. Everything left to the baby, who was graced with the name Richard George Andrew Allenhart II.

  On the day of the birth, the day Allenhart instructed his lawyer, he was in very sound mind. Although not all together sound body. Imagine screwing the old guy. Must have been like making it with King Tut. Ferguson couldn’t repress a shudder. She glanced up to see if anyone had noticed her mind wandering. But Jacobi was still talking, and Dowds was watching him.

  Whether Allenhart, or his sperm, had been up to the job —Ferguson suspected the chauffeur had a hand in the business—didn’t really matter. Allenhart was the name written in the line for father on the birth certificate, and the baby was named in the will. Paternity, and thus inheritance, was legally cut and dried.

  Less than a week later Allenhart suffered a massive stoke. It didn’t kill him, but left him severely physically incapacitated and unable to speak. Round-the-clock nursing staff was hired. Katie and Richard Jr. continued to live in the house. One of the nurses told the police she suspected the girl nursed the old man as well as her baby. Ferguson shuddered again.

  Then, one sunny afternoon, an intruder broke into the house, while Katie and her baby were there alone, except for Allenhart upstairs in the bedroom suite he never left. Katie’s head had been bashed in. Her baby hadn’t been seen since.

  Jacobi got to his feet. His cheeks were burning. “You can tell Mr. Allenhart,” he said, loudly and distinctly, “that we are confident of apprehending the suspect shortly.” Ferguson also suspected that upstairs, trapped in his failed old body, Allenhart was listening.

  He was old enough, rich enough, influential enough, to indulge his whims, even when it comes to the police.

  But he did want the person who had murdered his young lover caught.

  And most of all, his son back.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A few yards before the road reached the Smith driveway there was a small lay-by, half hidden by bushes and thick undergrowth. Meredith Morgenstern pulled her Neon in as tightly as she could. She climbed out, pushing aside grasping twigs and dead branches. The rear end of her compact car stuck out, but the path dropped sharply into the bush, and she daren’t drive in any further.

  So Molly Smith had gone walkabout. And not only her mother, but the police were worried. After talking to Lucky, who hadn’t fooled Meredith for a minute that she wasn’t desperately worried about her daughter, Meredith decided to take a drive past the police station. Where she saw cars gathering; Detective Lopez running in. Meredith knew that the police department pot luck was today. It should still be going on. But Lopez had left the party in one big hurry.

  What, Meredith wondered, was Smith up to? Maybe she’d gone bad and the cops were looking for her to arrest her. That would be a juicy story. Although, to be honest, Meredith couldn’t imagine Moonlight Smith turning dirty after less than a year on the job.

  Meredith had pulled into a parking spot across the street from the station, wondering what to do next. As she watched, uniformed men ran for a patrol car, and it pulled into the street, siren breaking the peace of the afternoon, red and blue lights flashing. Meredith followed.

  The car had gone straight to the Smith house.

  ***

  Lucky Smith opened the kitchen door for the police. She was glad John Winters had come. Glad that he’d taken the strange, sudden disappearance of Moonlight seriously. As he walked into the kitchen she head a patrol car, coming down the highway and turning into their road. It was a Trafalgar City Police car. More sirens and an RCMP SUV pulled into the driveway. A Mountie leapt out, and opened the back door of his vehicle. A dog, a big German Shepherd, jumped
to the ground.

  Sylvester threw himself against the kitchen door with a chorus of aggressive barks. The old wooden door was heavily marked with scratches.

  “Better put your dog away, Lucky,” Sergeant Winters said, “as long as the police dog’s here.”

  Lucky felt the blood draining from her face. Cadaver dog. She’d recently read something about cadaver dogs—whose job it was to search for human remains. She felt Winters’ hand on her arm. “And then you can have a seat,” he said, his voice gentle. “Would you like a glass of water?”

  She shook her head. “That dog…”

  “That’s a search dog,” he explained. “It’s possible Molly left on foot, and if so, he’ll try to track her.”

  Lucky sucked in a lungful of air. She felt foolish at the way she’d leapt to assume the worst. She grabbed Sylvester by the collar. He resisted at first, but she spoke to him sharply, and he allowed himself to be dragged away from the door. She pushed him into the pantry off the kitchen. Packages of dog food and treats were stored there. When he finally calmed down and realized where he was, he’d have a grand feast.

  “Where do we start?” Lucky asked.

  “You searched Molly’s room? Found nothing out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Does she often leave her cell phone behind when she goes out?”

  “Never. You’ll be wanting something of Moonlight’s for the dog to sniff. I’ll be right back.” She ran out of the room. Clumps of hair had worked themselves loose from the clip and flowed around her head.

  Winters opened the door at the dog handler’s knock. He was tall, bulky, young, and good looking. His black hair was cut short, and his brown eyes were dark and troubled.

  “Thanks for coming,” Winters said. “Mrs. Smith’s gone to get something of Molly’s to show your dog.”

  “We don’t work that way.”

  “I know, but it gives her something to do. I’m not going to tell her it isn’t necessary.”