“Sounds like he’s escalating. He kidnapped your parents? That’s a pretty desperate move.”
Lauren looked around, as if everyone in the restaurant was leaning in to hear the story. “He kidnapped them eight months ago, and that’s when he started having me do all these crazy things. That was his game: if I failed to comply, he’d hurt my parents somehow.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I did and was terrified my parents would end up dead because of it. He very convincingly made it look like they’re sailing around the world and impossible to reach. I couldn’t convince the police they were missing in the first place. People at their condo building also said they were sailing. I knew there would be a price to pay for contacting the cops. Tim hit me with some of his hardest assignments, and my parents were punished as well. He made it clear if I were to do the same again, he’d kill John and Helen.”
“He’s not joking around,” Stan said.
“Not in the least.”
“What about private investigators?”
“I’ve tried that before, too, and it earned my parents three days without food. Tim quickly picked up on the surveillance by the investigator. It’s the reason I’m nervous about hiring you.”
“Anything else I should know?” Stan asked. He had the demeanor of a tradesman talking about building a back deck.
“Somehow I feel he’s switching tactics and my parents are in greater danger than ever. He’s no longer making me carry out those assignments and he’s started coming into the office, which he hasn’t done in a long time.”
“Why?” The server came by and asked if they’d have anything else. Stan ordered blueberry pie. Lauren asked for more black coffee.
“After my parents retired and put me in charge of the company, Tim, who was named vice president of operations, became a real pain in the ass at the office. He was driving our good people away, not doing his work, flirting with our female staff. I had no choice but to fire him. He seemed to not accept my authority to do so and kept showing up to work. I had to threaten him with a court order to get him to leave.”
“And recently he’s been showing up again,” Stan said.
“He assaulted our new VP of operations, who’s everything Tim was not in that position.” Lauren paused. “Tim told me the other day he was thinking differently about the whole situation—meaning what to do with our parents—and it made me think he’s considering finishing it. It also made me realize he’d never release them alive. I may have been able to amuse Tim for a while. The assignments he gave me were a completely absorbing hobby for him. But now I have no role to play. At least none he’s told me about yet. I think he could kill them at any time.”
“If he kills them to keep quiet, he’ll have to do the same to you.”
Lauren had no reaction to this possibility. It didn’t seem to matter. “I suppose.”
“And everyone thinks they’re sailing around the world?”
“Yes,” Lauren said.
“How long does that take, do you think? Taking a boat around the world, I mean.” Stan was halfway through his pie. Lauren was growing inpatient.
“I suppose about a year, if you don’t drown or get captured by Somali pirates.”
Stan leaned back and looked her in the eye. “Tell me exactly what you want me to achieve for you.”
“First and foremost, find my parents. If we can get Tim charged for their kidnapping, that would take him out of my hair for a good long while. If we could get the evidence we need to get him charged with my partner Kelly’s murder, that would put him out of my life for good. That’s what I’d like.”
Still Stan looked unperturbed. “I think it would be good to pool resources with Josie, to the extent she can. We have a long-standing relationship. I trust her.”
“Strangely, so do I,” Lauren said. “I have no real objection. These are two distinctly different matters—my parents’ kidnapping and the misguided investigation to clear my name. I don’t think there’s a conflict.”
Lauren quite liked the idea. Since their morning interview, her thoughts about Tim had been interrupted often by thoughts of Josie Harper. Inchoate, but definitely buzzy. She didn’t know exactly what to think about her, but she could feel how her body reacted to her.
Lauren drank more coffee as she listened to Stan lay out his initial plan for finding her parents. Any plan would make her nervous as hell. So much could go wrong. As she drove the short distance from Old Town to her office building she answered a call from Tim. The temptation to let it go to voicemail was nearly irresistible, but she forced herself to pick up. Things seemed to be changing rapidly now. She needed whatever information he was willing to give her.
“What do you want?” She didn’t hide her displeasure.
“Hello to you, too!” Tim chirped. He sounded triumphant. It reminded her of when he ran cross country in high school, usually one of the boys bringing up the rear. But one day he came in third in a regional race. She’d never seen his face glow as it did when he was announced the bronze medal winner and he ran to his mother to crow about his victory. It was the only time John and Helen had come to one of Tim’s events. Then the results were challenged by the parents of another runner and it turned out Tim had cut a hundred yards off his course and a couple of people had witnessed it. The bronze medal was taken out of his hands and his face crumpled into something unrecognizable. Lauren tried to comfort him, but he threw her off. His mother offered no condolence and looked disgusted as he wailed about how unfair it was. Lauren felt something close to sympathy for him. She could imagine how that would feel, though it would never have happened to her, of course. She walked off with the gold in any event she entered, athletic or academic.
“Why do you sound so happy?” Lauren said. “Did you just discover Lincoln’s autopsy photos?”
“This is so much better than that, though I would pay a lot for Lincoln’s autopsy photos. I wonder if any were taken?” He seemed to be waiting for a reply. When none came, he said, “I discovered something last week that affects both of us. I thought about telling you when you were here earlier today, but I was still contemplating it. It’s pretty wild.”
Lauren sighed, something she’d done an awful lot of over the past eight months. She anticipated he’d discovered another way to embarrass her. “Give me the bad news,” she said.
“I went to the parents’ condo last week, as I do every month to let the management know John and Helen are okay and to pay the assessments. While I was in the condo, I spent a little time going through some of their documents, which I hadn’t done before. I figured whatever I found would be something favoring you and fucking me over. But I forced myself to open the safe in Dad’s study. It took me forever to hack his computer and find the combination. When I got in, I found the usual stuff—bearer bonds, investment account numbers, and their most recent will. And guess what?”
“I don’t know. They left me more money than you? I can even it up with you, if that’s your problem,” Lauren said.
“That’s what I thought I’d find, too,” Tim said. “But in fact, everything’s split down the middle. The big surprise is the recent codicil they added to their will. Recent being right before I kidnapped them. Really, it makes my idea of kidnapping them seem almost prescient. The codicil says if, upon their deaths, the board of directors votes to remove either of us from the company, the shares of both siblings must vote with the board. They laid the groundwork for your removal, basically, since I’m already gone. It’s as if they knew you’d be arrested for murder, that your behavior would become erratic, that your numbers would plunge.”
Lauren’s heart started thumping. She’d parked in her garage spot but continued to sit in her car, waiting to hear how Tim planned to use the new information. The thought of losing the company had never entered her mind. Her job kept her grounded, even if she felt less enthusiasm for it than she had before Tim’s blackmail began. It was what she controlled, what she c
aptained, what she did to keep books being published and people employed. Clearly her parents had seen her greater talent for the job when they promoted her upon their retirement. What could make them want to risk someone less competent taking on the title?
Tim stayed silent, again waiting as Lauren processed the information. “I’m a little surprised you aren’t waving this away,” he said. “You probably never imagined the board wanting anyone but you. But things haven’t been normal, have they? You’ve not exactly been executive of the year potential lately.”
“What are you talking about?” Lauren reached into her purse for a cigarette, though she hadn’t smoked for ten years. She’d kill for one now.
“Let’s look at it from the board’s point of view, which I’ve spent quite a bit of time doing over the last several days. What they see is a formerly effective CEO—that would be you—who has just been released after spending six months in the county jail, and who, on top of that, has been acting very peculiarly. They heard about you dragging your VPs to the Kitten Lounge. And let me say again that your defiant act of switching a strip club for a drag club was brave, but stupid. John and Helen went without food for three days, and believe me, they were furious. Let that be a reminder.”
Lauren ignored most of this speech. “Not one board member has complained to me about any of that,” Lauren said, defending her crazy actions as if they were her idea and not Tim’s doing.
“It’s true the board is able to overlook a lot in a family-run business. They pretty much have to. But with John and Helen giving them more power, there’s one thing a board is unlikely to overlook,” Tim said.
Lauren knew the numbers from the last three quarters were bad. A dip in performance for a quarter or two wasn’t cause for panic, but three quarters made everyone extremely nervous. She had a plan she was putting in place to get things back on track, but what if it was too late as far as the board was concerned? She had also assumed when her parents died, she’d have the majority of voting stock; now it appeared Tim’s shares would be equal to hers, and their power gutted by the voting power the codicil would give the board. With their death a real possibility now, she saw how she could easily be removed.
Lauren’s fidgeting hands froze midair as the realization hit her that Tim might choose now as the time to kill her parents, making it look like they were lost at sea. With more shares left to him in the will than he thought, he wouldn’t want them to have the opportunity to change it again.
“What if I were to resign as CEO and persuade the board to put you in charge? Would you let Mom and Dad go?”
Tim scoffed. “Frankly, I haven’t decided what to do with them yet. I’m not saying I’m going to kill them, but I’m not saying I’m not either. Same rules apply—if I get wind of any third party knowing about this, trying to pin a kidnapping on me, I will most definitely kill Mom and Dad, either directly or by simply not giving up their location to the authorities should it come to that. Your instructions are to do nothing.”
Tim hung up abruptly. Lauren still held the phone to her ear, waiting for him to say what a massively funny one he’d pulled over her. But it wasn’t only Tim that had dropped this news on her like a fishnet. It was her parents who’d created the net in the first place. Lauren was shocked to the bone. They wanted to give their son an opportunity, on the off chance he’d become a new man. Or they wanted a mechanism in place in case she became a terrible CEO. Perhaps that was what the board now considered her to be. There was a reason she’d not been made chairman of the board. Lauren knew the danger to her parents had just increased substantially, but she was also deeply hurt. They apparently supported their daughter as long as profits were up. Lauren felt like she’d been dumped.
She backed out of her spot and turned for home, her workday over. She couldn’t possibly keep up her act of a competent, take-charge leader today. Eva would see her distress in a second. She called Eva and told her she wouldn’t be back and then sped toward home.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Josie was almost out of her mind with boredom. She sat in her car, down the street from Tim Wade’s house. Occasionally she’d drive down the alley to see if it still looked like Tim was in the coach house. She had no idea what he was doing up there. All she knew was he was doing something and she was doing nothing.
She took her next reconnaissance on foot and got nothing from it. As she was returning to her car, she saw a blue sedan drive by. She and the driver looked at each other—the driver smiled; Josie frowned. What the hell was Stan Waterman doing here? She jogged to her Toyota as Stan’s car continued down the street, not slowing a bit as it passed Tim Wade’s house. Before Josie was able to close her door, her phone was ringing. The number was unfamiliar, but she had no doubt who it was.
“Josie, my girl. We’re going to have to give you a few lessons. Did I just see you walking from Tim Wade’s alley?”
“I didn’t know you’d become my training officer.” Josie sounded peevish, but she was more embarrassed by her faux pas.
Stan chuckled. “No, those days are over for both of us, I’m afraid. But it looks like we’re focusing on the same subject. I’d rather not have you blow my chances of keeping a tail on this guy.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you be following Tim Wade?”
“Because Lauren Wade hired me to.”
Josie clamped her mouth shut and closed her eyes. She felt the sharp sting of rejection, as if it would have made sense for Lauren to hire her instead of Stan. “She told me because you were already involved through your investigation into Kelly Moore’s murder, she wouldn’t mind if we pooled resources and knowledge. We need to get together to talk.”
Now Josie felt the relief of an addict when the needle hits the vein. Maybe she was wanted after all.
She and Stan agreed to meet at Nookies to talk things over. She found him already perusing the sixteen-page menu.
“I’m sick of all the food here,” Stan said.
“How’s that possible? You could never work your way through that menu, not if you want to stay alive.” Stan shrugged and continued to ponder his choices. Josie shifted in her seat.
“I’ve been looking at Tim as the murderer of Kelly Moore, but from what I can tell, Lauren couldn’t have cared less if I’d been looking at the Man in the Moon as a suspect. So why is she suddenly having you keep surveillance on Tim? Did something happen? I mean, you’d think I’d be the first person she’d call if that were the case…”
“Josie. Slow down. I can’t tell you if I can’t get a word in edgewise.”
Josie clamped down on her jaw. Again. She hadn’t been aware her racing thoughts were slipping out of her mouth. She wouldn’t have stopped talking if Stan hadn’t interrupted her. She conducted a quick review: medication—yes. Sleep—no. Tiredness—none at all. Racing thoughts—more so each day. Increase in goal-directed activity—she would hope so. Excessive involvement with pleasurable activity—not so far, but the possibility was presenting itself. Even by her own analysis, Josie could see she was hypomanic. But unlike the full-blown mania of the year before, she wasn’t coming off as batshit crazy and she could hide the most obvious of her symptoms. At least she thought she could.
She kept her mouth shut as Stan explained Lauren’s dilemma with Tim, the kidnapping of her parents, the efforts to find them. Her mouth dropped open despite herself.
“Stan, you have to let me in on this. I know I can help find the parents and get this guy locked up. Lauren must be going through hell.”
“I think he’s been tormenting her so long she doesn’t remember what normal is,” Stan said. “And there was the jail time, too.”
“But we can’t go about surveillance the way I did today. Even I can see he’d catch on to it, though he seems to spend most of his time in that damn coach house. You’d think Lauren would act more stressed than she does. My guess is she’s about to crack,” Josie said.
“Agreed,” Stan said. “We need another body or two t
o pull this job off. I’ve got Tommy looking for a garage or apartment we can use to watch the back of the coach house without Tim seeing us. We’ll see him if he goes out back and we’ll have a car on the street ready to follow him. The person in the car should see him if he goes out front, but my guess is he nearly always uses the back.”
“Who the hell is Tommy?” Josie said.
“My supposed associate. You know, the one who washed out of the department.”
Josie scowled. “Two washed-out cops ought to impress Lauren.”
“Tommy knows how to keep a watch, Josie. Keep an open mind, that’s my watchword for everything in this business.”
Stan’s phone rang and he spoke a few moments before hanging up.
“That was Tommy,” Stan said. “He’s just rented a garage apartment across the street. Some kid who’s only too glad to crash on a friend’s sofa for the dough we offered him.”
Josie sat back on the bench. The restaurant was nearly full. A speeding server took their order and then trotted to her next task. Josie kept one eye on her.
“That was fast work of him,” she said.
“You’ll like Tommy. He’s not much of an intuitive thinker but he’s a good plodder. We’re going to need at least one more to man this properly. I’ll work on that.”
“All right. What do you think of the kidnapped parents thing?” Josie asked.
“It’s tough,” Stan said. “There aren’t any ransom demands for us to work with. He has the parents very effectively hidden. In eight months they haven’t been able to break free. My guess, based on what video Lauren’s seen of them, is they’re in some crappy, isolated house, somewhere within a couple of hours’ distance from here. He has to go out there to replenish their food, make sure they’re still there.”
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