Leave it to Frisco to cut through the bullshit. Jo felt her lips twitch in return, grateful that Frisco had apparently forgiven her. It had relieved some of the tightness in her chest to finally be able to talk to her friend. “Thanks, Frisco.”
A frown appeared between his brows. “For what?”
“For being you.” She unlatched her seat belt and opened the car door.
As they strode across the huge parking lot, Jo heard Frisco whistle. “Would you take a look at this place? Looks more like a place built to worship money than a place to worship God. Sure don’t have places like this up on the North Shore.”
Jo looked at the sprawling complex. Frisco was right; it did look more like a corporate headquarters building than a church, with a large center building and several wings spilling to the sides. It was an impressive monument to adoration.
Frisco followed Jo into the building. Here again, everything was done on a massive scale. The large atrium area was filled with light from windows that soared above their heads. Every detail was constructed to draw the eye upward.
Frisco was about to head through an open doorway, when they heard a voice off to their left. “May I help you folks? Worship is not scheduled for another two hours, but you are welcome to go into the private sanctuary just down the hall, if you’d like.”
Jo and Frisco turned to see a tall, powerfully built man walking toward them, dressed immaculately in a dark gray custom-tailored suit, a crisp white shirt and an eggplant-colored tie. He was instantly recognizable. Kent Womack was nick-named “Mountain Man” not because he resembled a person that lived in some back hills country, but because he looked like a mountain. And seemed just as immovable.
According to his professional stats that Jo had read on the drive out to the church, Womack stood six-foot-eleven inches. In his days as an offensive tackle for the Minnesota Vikings, he weighed in at 410 pounds, which made him one of the biggest players in the NFL. Even the mega-church’s interior could not diminish his size. When Jo stood next to him, she had to tilt her head back to look into his eyes.
What Jo saw there was a combination of fear and bone-deep sadness. She thought the pain in his dark brown eyes mirrored her own.
Jo was the first to speak, “No thank you, Pastor Womack. We’re not here to pray. My name is Special Agent Jo Schwann, with the FBI, and this …” She waved her hand in Frisco’s direction, “… is Detective Mike Frisco. We’re here to speak with you in regards to the disappearance of your wife.”
The big man’s eyes filled. “Thank you for coming. Won’t you follow me? If you don’t mind, I would prefer to talk in my office, where we will have some privacy.” The thick carpet muffled their footsteps as he led them down a long corridor.
Womack quietly closed the office door behind them and said, “What can I do to help you find my wife?”
Jo thought the man looked like he was barely hanging on to a thread of control. It made her think about her own worries about John and she found herself empathizing with the giant in front of her. Her voice was gentle when she said, “First of all, Pastor Womack, we want you to know that we will do everything in our power to bring your wife back to you.”
Kent Womack’s chin quivered a bit as he struggled to hold back the tears that threatened to slip from his eyes. His booming voice was raw when he replied, “Please, call me Kent. Thank you for that. Sandra is everything to me. Did you know we were high school sweethearts?”
Womack’s voice cracked on the word “sweethearts” and he reached out for the water glass on his desk, taking a deep swallow.
“No, I hadn’t heard that,” Frisco said.
Jo hated to be abrupt, but time was of the essence, so she said, “Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your wife? Or you, through her?”
“Sandra is loved by everyone who has ever met her. I’m sure I’ve accumulated my fair share of enemies over the years, but I can’t think of a single person who would do such a thing.”
“So, no hate mail or anything like that? I know that both of you have frequently spoken out against some hot-button topics, such as gay rights and abortion, for instance,” Frisco questioned.
“Yes, and we’ve received some pretty ugly letters and emails. But nothing that we deemed threatening.”
Jo looked briefly at Frisco, who raised an eyebrow as if to say, I wouldn’t be too sure of that. “We’ll need to see those notes, just to cover all bases,” Frisco said.
“Of course. We didn’t save all of them, but I’ll give you what we have.”
Jo changed the subject. “What can you tell me about your connection to the Freemonts?”
“We’ve been close friends since college. Tanya and my wife were in a sorority together. We’ve contributed to Lee’s political campaigns over the years …” He stopped for a moment, and then his eyes widened. “Wait. You, um, you don’t think Lee’s murderer took my wife, do you?”
“We’re looking into all possibilities. Were you also friends with Annie McDonald?” Frisco said.
“Um, yes, of course. We were all friends. It was Annie that talked Lee into running for office in the first place.”
“Did you know that Lee Freemont had another family in Baltimore?” Jo asked. She held her breath, waiting for Kent’s response. They still didn’t have proof that the state representative had fathered the Bishop children, but she was hoping they would get some answers, here and now.
The big man’s face turned white and he sank deeper into his chair. He eventually nodded and said, “Yes. I did. I found out at Lee’s first campaign party. He’d been drinking for most of the evening when he pulled Annie and my wife aside and told them. Tanya, his wife, didn’t know a thing about it and he was freaking out that she would find out.”
When he paused, Jo said, “And what did your wife and Annie do about it?”
“They told me. We confronted Lee the next day, when he sobered up. Annie convinced him to offer a settlement to his mistress, so she and her children would quietly disappear from his life. I gave him the money to do it. We couldn’t risk Tanya finding out. She would have divorced him and he would never have been elected. Not with a scandal like that hanging over his head. ”
They were all silent for a moment, absorbing the latest information. Jo took no joy in having been proven correct.
Finally, Frisco said, “When was the last time you saw your wife?”
“This morning, around six. We had breakfast together in our home and then she was coming here, to get things rolling for the day.”
“I have to ask. Since she’s been gone less than a day, what makes you so certain that she’s missing and not just out running errands?” Jo said.
Womack looked Jo in the eyes and said, “Sandra never misses the morning service. Never. She would cut a meeting or appointment short, if that’s what it took to be here at 10:00 a.m. on the dot. Today we were going to hold a special memorial service for Lee Freemont, and she would never miss that.”
Frisco looked up from his notes. “So, she hasn’t answered her cell?”
Womack shook his head and looked down at his hands. Jo was relieved to see a bit of color coming back into his cheeks.
Frisco wrote in his notebook and then looked up. “Did anyone see her here this morning?”
“No, but she always arrives before the rest of the staff and she could have gone back out before anyone saw her. When we realized that she was uh, missing …” Womack stopped and swallowed, struggling to continue.
“Take your time, Pastor,” Jo said.
He nodded and then continued, “Sorry. I … well, by the time we realized that she wasn’t here, we just started calling everyone we know. No one had seen her. Not since the interview.”
Frisco’s head shot up from his note taking. “Interview? Who was the interview with?”
“Marjorie Payne, a reporter for the local NBC station. She was doing a special interest piece on our church, how it was founded, and so on.”
Jo’s heart sped up. Holy G
od! She looked at Frisco, who stood up in his excitement. The detective said, “Pastor, your wife had an interview this morning with Marjorie Payne and you’re just now telling us about it?”
A puzzled look crossed Womack’s features. “I’m sorry. I thought I mentioned it when I reported her missing to the police. Guess I was so frantic that I forgot.” He looked back and forth between Detective Frisco and Jo, the crease between his brows becoming a deep furrow. “Why? Is it important?”
Jo said, “Yeah, it just might be. Do you know where they were meeting?”
“Some coffee shop, over in Minneapolis.” He paused, and looked upward, as though the answer could be found on his office ceiling. “She said somewhere along St. Anthony Main, near the Stone Arch bridge.”
His eyes brightened. “Wait, it’s called The Bean Counter.”
“We’ll check it out. Maybe someone there will remember seeing them. Do you have a recent photo of Sandra?” Jo asked.
Womack grabbed the picture frame on his desk and extracted the picture of his wife. He handed it to Jo, who tucked it in her suit jacket for safekeeping.
Frisco began packing up his notes and then he reached out to the pastor, who stood up from his chair and enveloped Frisco’s hand in his own mammoth paw. “Thank you for your time. We will be back in touch as soon as we know anything.”
Jo stood up as well. She didn’t bother reaching out for the pastor’s hand, because he had crumbled back into his seat. Looking small for the first time since they had arrived, the tears had finally started to flow down his fleshy cheeks. “Please. Do what you can to get her back to me. I’ll … I’ll do anything they ask.”
She patted his beefy shoulder before they walked out of his office. Jo felt the panic rolling off the man like fog on a lake. She thought about her own fears about John. There’s a lot of that going around.
* * *
Frisco raced back through the suburbs and headed for downtown Minneapolis. “I wonder if Freemont ended up using the money he received from the Womacks to kill Karen Bishop,” Jo said.
“Makes sense. Maybe his initial plan was to buy her off, like Womack said. But if she refused, then he might be desperate enough to have her eliminated.”
Jo pulled out her phone. “You know, I could swear Annie McDonald had an appointment in her calendar the day of her disappearance. Remember? We couldn’t figure out who it was because all we had were initials.”
Frisco nodded and said, “Yeah. That sounds right. What were those damned initials?”
“I’ll call my office right now and have them check.”
When her co-worker answered, she said, “Shane. Do me a favor. Dig out the evidence files for Annie McDonald, the op-ed columnist. I’m looking for her day planner.”
“Sure thing. Hang on.”
Jo stopped her leg from jiggling as she waited, listening to the hold music on the FBI’s phone system. Shane finally came back on the line a few minutes later. He said, “Okay, what am I looking for?”
“What’s the notation on her calendar the day before her murder?”
Jo could hear Shane flipping through pages. “Um, it looks like some initials and then 2:00 p.m.”
“Can you make out the initials?”
“N.P. No, wait, I think it might be M.P.”
Jo looked at Frisco and nodded. The detective smirked and high-fived Jo. She said into the phone, “Thanks, Shane. I owe you one.”
Clicking off the phone, she immediately dialed the phone number for State Representative Freemont’s head of staff, Kim Clark.
When she answered, Jo said, “Ms. Clark, this is Special Agent Jo Schwann. Did State Representative Freemont have any appointments the day of his disappearance?”
Jo was surprised when the woman answered without hesitation. “Why yes, he did. He had an appointment with Marjorie Payne.”
Jo’s heart sped up. “Are you quite sure? Don’t you need to check an appointment book to verify?”
“Oh, no. I’m quite certain. Um, and that appointment wouldn’t have been in his planner. You see, they had a standing appointment for the last three months. Ms. Payne was covering State Representative Freemont’s campaign for governor for her TV station.”
If Jo could’ve reached into the phone line to shake the woman, she would have. “Why didn’t you tell us this before? You didn’t think this was important in our investigation?”
Kim Clark’s voice sounded defensive when she replied, “I didn’t think that it mattered. It was most likely a man who killed him. It’s not like Marjorie Payne could have been involved, right? She’s so smart and attractive.”
Jo gritted her teeth. “Ms. Clark, I wish I could press charges against you for utter stupidity.”
When Jo clicked off the phone, she rolled her eyes and muttered, “God, help me.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Turners Bend
March
It was 5:00 a.m. and Chip gave up trying to sleep. He was on his couch along with Runt and Callie. His mother and father, who had finally arrived after midnight, were asleep in his bed. He turned on CNN and muted the sound on his TV. He didn’t need to hear the words to figure out that Masterson’s warning had materialized. There were replays of her press conference in Iowa City, and of Chief Fredrickson’s in Turners Bend, the chief repeating Masterson’s instructions to him almost word for word. There was a recap of the Tracy Trent story, and even clips from his interview with Amy Chang. There was an announcement that the governor of Iowa was sending a National Guard troop to Turners Bend to provide support during the premiere of The Cranium Killer, followed by a trailer for the movie.
His mother emerged from his bedroom in a pink fuzzy robe and matching slippers and went to the kitchen. Her hair was in rollers the size of juice cans. Pots and pans began to rattle and dishes clinked. His father in his matching silk pajamas and robe came and sat beside him. Chip turned the sound back on, and the two of them watched without exchanging a word, until his father uttered, “Quite a media circus isn’t it? Can’t say I’m very happy about the Collingsworth name being associated with all this sensationalism.”
Chip ignored the comment. It was so like his father to make everything about himself and their precious family name, yet he had to agree it wasn’t the kind of press he liked either.
The unmistakable aroma of frying bacon began to fill the house.
“I say, your mother never fixes me bacon anymore, too much salt, fat and nitrates. But I do love a strip or two of crisp bacon. Turn off that brouhaha. Let’s indulge in some breakfast before we get on with this auspicious day.”
Maribelle had outdone herself with buttermilk pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon. “Heaven knows when we will get another decent meal today. You boys eat up. I suppose I should have invited that nice Lance Williams and your agent. She certainly seems to be attracted to him. She was all over him like Saran wrap when she came off the plane from New York. Your father thinks she is quite attractive, don’t you, Doc?”
Ignoring his wife’s comment, Chip’s father reached for a third strip of bacon. Chip followed suit as his mother prattled on and on, as only she could do.
“I brought your tux for tonight, as you requested. I bought a new dress for this occasion, an understated gown, of course. I wouldn’t want to look out of place. Now, your father and I will be at the ribbon cutting. Then we’ll return here to rest and go back to town for the red carpet events. Imagine us on a red carpet, and with Howard Glasser. I remember when he was that cute little guy on the TV series in the ’60s. What was the name of that show? We saw the last movie he produced, didn’t we, Doc? What was the name of that movie? Do you think I should prepare something witty to say, if I’m interviewed?”
She never seemed to notice when no one responded to her questions.
* * *
When Chip and his parents reached town it was so crowded you could barely walk down the street. There was a policeman or guardsman every five feet, and FBI agents roamed around,
their eyes constantly scanning faces.
The ribbon cutting went on as planned. Cameras rolled and flash bulbs popped as Chip and Mayor Johnson held a pair of over-sized scissors and snipped the wide red ribbon. When the Mayor’s speech started to get a little long, Myrtle Bauer gave him the cut-throat sign, and he abruptly ended.
As the ticket holders for the first showing started to line up, Chip gave his parents a quick tour of the theater. The first batch of popcorn was underway, this time without the burnt aroma. The hallway to the restrooms had a strong floral smell. No ‘Out of Order’ sign on the men’s room door. All was right with the world so far.
“What do you think of the renovations?” asked Chip.
“Oh, darling, it’s just like the theater where your father and I used to go when we were dating, isn’t it, Doc? We saw Lawrence of Arabia. I had such a crush on Peter O’Toole. They don’t make movies like that anymore.”
“For once I have to agree with your mother, Son. The theater is quite an accomplishment. You should be very proud of yourself,” his father said.
That morning over breakfast Chip had felt the beginnings of an alliance with his father, and now this. Had the healing process Iver mentioned begun? Could he step-up and meet his father halfway? For the first time, he wanted to try.
Maribelle was off on another tangent, as Chip led them out of the Bijou and down to the Bun.
Chip kept scanning the crowd, looking for Elizabeth Brown, but also looking for Jane. He hadn’t seen her or talked with her for two days. He missed her. He needed her to help him get through this day. There was no place to sit down at the Bun, so he drove his parents back to his house, and took Runt for a walk.
* * *
Shortly after 5:00 p.m. Chip dressed in his tuxedo and glanced in the mirror. Nothing like a custom-made tux to make a guy look classy, he thought. Chip and his parents headed back to town, he and his father in their tuxedos and Maribelle in her black gown. Her dress may have been understated, but her ruby and diamond jewelry reeked of wealth and sophistication.
Rausch & Donlon - Can Be Murder 02 - Love Can Be Murder Page 20