The woman looked at me. “Don’t you have a named beneficiary on the policy? I know that our HR is particular that we keep that up to date.”
“Certainly, but I’m nowhere near that far along. I need to first ensure that it was Betty who was killed and not a foreigner who was identified by her sister.” I made air-quotes to make my point. So far, I thought that my story held water. Besides, bureaucracies always recognized other bureaucracies and sympathized.
She nodded in understanding. “Let me see who is around.” She picked up a phone and called a number. I tried to watch to learn the extension, but her hand blocked my view.
She made a few noises of agreement and then looked at me. “Someone will be out in a minute,” she said, giving me a smile. I thanked her and sat down to wait.
More than a few minutes passed before a larger man came out of the passageway that I presumed led to the offices. “You’re here about Betty?” he asked as he extended a hand. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, Mr.—” I started deliberately. I wanted names and phone numbers if I could get them.
“Mr. Stanton,” he replied. “Jacob Stanton.” I knew from my business days that men immediately responded with their name. It was almost Pavlovian with them.
“Mr. Stanton, I don’t know how much the receptionist told you, but we’re having some issues. A woman claimed the body of Betty Montgomery as her sister’s remains. She had the remains cremated, and now I’m tasked with trying to make a positive identification of the remains as Betty Montgomery. I have pictures of the deceased, and I was wondering if I might talk to you and to your staff to make the said identification. This is incredibly awkward. I have two parties who have made claims, and I need to settle this.”
Stanton nodded several times through my speech. So I hoped that I had a captive audience at this point. “I’ll do what I can. I can tell you that Betty has not been to work since the day of the shooting. Do you have photos that I could identify?”
“Yes.” I pulled out a file of photos I’d managed to print from various news websites of the dead woman with her face reconstructed. They served my purpose well. “The main struggle I’m having in convincing corporate is that no one came forward to claim the body as Betty. That really is a damning circumstance, and one that I need to explain in my final report.”
He nodded. “Honestly, I think that the staff here at NBG were all stunned that Donovan—that’s Betty’s husband—didn’t come forward to identify her. Several of us were sure that he would claim the body, but then that other woman came forward and said it was her sister. Then we just assumed that the photo of the shooting victim was someone else, and she had just resembled Betty.”
I took notes, trying to appear interested and professional. “Did anyone from the office try to contact her husband—I believe you said his name was Donovan? I would need to talk to anyone who called or spoke with him.”
He nodded. “Ann did. She called the day after the shooting and spoke with him. I’ll call for her after we’re finished.”
“Very good.” I took more notes as he spoke.
“So we were satisfied that things were under control, that is, until she was identified as someone else. Then we just let it drop.”
“Yet, she hasn’t been back to work. Did HR contact her or had she made contact somehow? What’s your policy on unexcused absences from work?”
“You’d have to ask HR. Betty did have some accumulated sick leave, so we just thought that she was very ill. It seemed coincidental; weirder things have happened.”
I was amazed at his ability to live in denial. Someone disappears, shows up on TV as a sniper victim, and yet no one took positive action on the matter. It made me worry about what would happen if something happened to me. Would Land just keep the truck going and pretend I was still around? It was all very depressing.
When asked, he gave me Donovan Montgomery’s phone number. I wrote it down on my pad. Stanton seemed to wind down as he gave me the number. Stanton also handed me his own business card, which I tucked in a pocket. He told me to stay put, and that he’d send for Ann.
A woman soon walked out of the office area and past the receptionist. I rose to greet her and shook hands. She was older, the type of woman who was probably the office matron. She would likely send out the birthday cards to the staff and make sure that flowers were sent to family funerals. She would definitely be the one to call the husband of a deceased coworker.
I repeated my stumbling over her name, and she provided “Ann Cummins.” I asked her about the phone call to Betty’s husband. She had apparently wanted to talk about it, because she launched into her story without much encouragement.
“Well, you see. I knew that was Betty. When I saw it on the news, I just knew it. So I called Donovan—that’s Betty’s husband—that very night. I asked him if he’d called the police. He said that he was going to do so as soon as he got off the phone with me. I thought that odd at the time, because I would have called immediately, but you don’t want to criticize. I didn’t think anything about it when the news didn’t report her death the next day. Sometimes I know that they keep a lid on such things, so they can trick the killer into a confession. I remember this time on McMillan and Wife….” She launched into an account of a television show that had aired years before I was born. It had turned on a point where the victim had been misidentified by a woman and the difficulty it gave the police in coming to the correct solution.
By the time she was done with the story, I’d almost lost interest. I redirected the conversation back to Betty’s husband. “Did he say anything else when you called him? I’m really looking for a good explanation for why he didn’t identify her. Beyond his civic duty and helping to find out who killed his wife, he can’t get the insurance until she’s declared dead.”
Ann clucked her tongue several times. “He didn’t really say much. Betty hadn’t come home. He had seen the news and recognized the photo—and then he said he would call the police.”
“Did Betty have any other relatives? Someone else who might report her missing? That could definitely help in closing this matter.”
“She has relatives, but they live in Montana of all places. I doubt very much that they’d hear anything about Capital City in the news. They’d have to actively come to one of our news sites and then read the stories.”
I wasn’t sure why this struck me, but it certainly made the issue of identification easier. Had Betty’s lack of family played a part in her demise, or had that fact just been convenient when the killers decided that they wanted to cover up the death? Again I thought of the money Land had mentioned. I wondered if Donovan Montgomery had been paid off not to report his wife missing. That would have allowed Petra to swoop in and claim the body as she did. Then she could dispose of the remains and make identification and the solution to her murder nearly impossible. Money certainly does make the world go round.
“Has this been of any help?” Ann asked, watching me closely.
I used the same photos that I’d shown Stanton, and she agreed that the person who had been killed on government square was the same woman she had worked with. There didn’t seem to be much disagreement in that.
I thanked her for her time and assured her that I would likely be back to get signed affidavits regarding the identification. She smiled, most likely excited by the fact that she was part of a news story that she could share with friends.
Chapter 12
There had been too many Montgomerys on the directory site I’d consulted before my interviews at NBG, but with his first name and phone number it was easy for me to find out where Donovan Montgomery lived. It shouldn’t have surprised me that it was the ritzy address on the screen. I was sure that Betty Montgomery had made a handsome salary at NBG.
I hadn’t found any way to broach the topic of the food trucks and their permits. I wasn’t sure what department or organization in NBG would be responsible for permits, but I would need to find out and then
develop a story so that I could learn more about the monopoly on food truck permits that they’d created.
I debated about calling Donovan Montgomery first, but I opted to visit him instead. I wanted to catch a less guarded response from him. If I called, then he would have time to come up with a story for me. I wanted to try to scare the truth out of him.
I pulled up into the driveway of the Montgomery home. I had been right. It was an older home, but large—what my mother would have called stately. The drive curved past the door and back out to the street, so that it almost suggested that no one need stop to visit. I pulled up in front of the door and stopped. My Buick looked woefully out of place against this backdrop.
I knocked on the door, and a woman answered. For a moment, I was stunned. Apparently Donovan hadn’t wasted any time in getting a replacement spouse. She cleared her throat, and from the extremely deferential tone of voice, I realized that she was the hired help. “May I help you?”
I smiled at her. “I was hoping to talk to Donovan Montgomery. It’s a somewhat personal matter.”
If I had expected a reaction, I got none. She left the door slightly ajar so that I knew she would return, but I was not given any inclination that I should follow her inside. My place was to wait outside until beckoned.
She returned after what seemed like an eternity, but was only five minutes by my watch. Certainly any element of surprise would be weakened by all the time I had to wait for him to answer my knock.
“Mr. Montgomery will see you in the library,” she said, holding the door open so that I could pass her. I waited since I had no idea where the library was. She led me into a room filled with shelves of books, but I had a vague notion that many of these titles had never been read. They were more for show than pleasure.
I made myself comfortable in one of the upright chairs and waited. It was about another five minutes before Donovan Montgomery arrived.
I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but he was probably one of the best-looking men I’d ever met. Granted that his late wife was a beauty. She had that dark straight hair and finely crafted features that made her look equally at home in jeans or a dress. She’d been thin and stylish.
However, her husband was movie-star handsome. He had dark blonde hair that was slicked back and startling blue eyes. He was thin, but more lithe than beanpole. I was startled for a moment and probably stared at him as he entered. He sat in the seat opposite me and smiled. “I don’t think we know each other, do we?” he asked, brows furrowed.
I would have remembered that encounter, I thought. I took a deep breath. “No, we don’t. I’m working on trying to establish a concrete identification of the woman who was shot in government square. She was claimed by a woman who said that she was her sister; however, it’s come to our notice that the woman bears an uncanny resemblance to your wife, who hasn’t been seen since the shooting.”
He nodded. “At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to the news. I was busy with my own work, and Betty was supposed to be away on business. So I only heard about the news from a colleague. It wasn’t until Betty didn’t come home as scheduled that I began to grow worried.”
I gave him my best smile, trying to look both sympathetic and efficient. However, he didn’t look like he needed sympathy. He wasn’t behaving like a man who had just lost his wife. I wasn’t sure if he was in denial about the event or if he’d known that it was coming. “I believe that someone from your wife’s office called you?”
“Oh shit, you mean Ann? That woman is a pain. She called to tell me that she thought my wife had been murdered. For someone to just call you out of the blue and tell you something like that, well frankly, I didn’t believe it for a second. I just assumed that it was Ann being Ann again.” He shrugged his broad shoulders to show me that he didn’t listen to office gossip. For me, office gossip was just Land and I talking.
“So then, you don’t think it’s your wife?” I asked, wondering what other solution he could come up with.
“Not at first. But she wasn’t answering my calls. She didn’t respond to my texts. So then I decided to check out the story about the woman being shot. I saw the photos of the victim. It could be her. It’s just difficult to tell.”
I nodded. This was not going to be an easy identification. It had been difficult to come up with photos to show the people at NBG. The sniper’s bullet had struck her in the head. As a result, the photos I could get were from artist sketches and renditions. The reality of the victim’s face would have been inconclusive and horrifying.
Now that the remains had been cremated, there would be even less to go on. “Do you have a dentist who could identify the teeth? Or perhaps she had some identifying mark that would have been noticed?”
He rattled off the name of a dentist, and I wrote it down. I wasn’t sure what Danvers was up to with the information I’d sent him about Betty Montgomery, but sending him the contact information for her dentist ought to show him that I was serious about the situation. I could understand him not wanting to admit the police had messed up by releasing the body to a stranger who had cremated the remains, not allowing for any additional tests, but he couldn’t keep this hidden forever. That is, unless he was somehow bought off by NBG or whoever had paid off the Zoz family. I was beginning to worry about my own cynicism, if everyone around me was a suspect or part of the conspiracy.
Donovan Montgomery was looking at me, and I figured I was supposed to say something. “Do you have any photos of your wife that could borrow? I’ve been using her profile photo from the NBG website.”
He rolled his eyes. “She hates that photo. Says it makes her look frumpy. She is really a carefree soul. I guess you wouldn’t expect that of a CFO, but she wasn’t the normal type of executive.” I couldn’t imagine that photo ever being called frumpy, but I guess it all depends on perspective.
I noticed that he was still using present tense, and he sounded on the verge of a full-blown ramble. I recognized it from the times I did the same thing—usually in times of great stress. I didn’t know how to stop one from happening, but I opted to ask a few questions to see if I could change the topic. “Do you two like to travel? You said that she was out of town on business?”
He nodded. Montgomery stood up and pulled a framed picture from a shelf. He handed it to me. He and, presumably, the woman I saw shot were standing together in front of the Eiffel Tower. He handed me a second photo where they were riding together in a gondola in Venice. I sighed, wondering if I’d ever make it farther than the distance that my food truck could carry me. Right now, it seemed as though I would live and die in Capital City.
The ruse seemed to have worked. He’d stopped talking so quickly and so fervently. He was more relaxed when he spoke. “Please, will you let me know the minute you find something out? I have trouble sleeping at night, wondering if she’s alive and if she’s okay.” He took the two photos out of their frames and handed them to me. “I have copies of these. You can keep them, if you think it will help. I just want to know what happened.”
I nodded. “As soon as I know, you’ll know.”
He let me out the door. I sat down in my car and sent a text to Danvers, giving him the name of Betty Montgomery’s dentist. If he hadn’t known before that I was serious, he certainly would now.
Chapter 13
The next day was the funeral for Mariel Mills, and I decided to go. I’d always heard these old wives tales that the murderer always showed up at the victim’s funeral. I wasn’t sure that I believed the story, but at this point, I didn’t have much else to go on. I’d talked to the Montgomery family and the people at NBG. I still needed a way to get in to learn about the food trucks, but I hadn’t come across a good plan of attack yet. I was going to have to use some form of subterfuge to get the information I wanted, if I couldn’t get it from the Zoz family.
Land decided that he wanted to go to the funeral as well, so we closed the truck for the day. We rarely did that, and I highly suspected th
at Land was more interested in ensuring that I did not get killed at the funeral than paying his respects.
He picked me up in his car, which was a sporty model that put my Buick to shame. I wondered where he got the money for a purchase like this. I knew how much I paid him, and how much my aunt had paid him before that. A car like this would mean that he’d never eat again. I wondered again if Land was somehow involved with NBG. They were certainly able to pay him enough to get him to spy on me.
We drove to the funeral in silence. We’d attended funerals together before, like when we were on the reality show, but this was much more low-key, and there were no TV crews trying to ask us questions.
The family had opted to just hold a graveside service. Since we hadn’t been invited, I wasn’t sure who would be attending. If her family had consisted of just her sister and nieces and nephews, it would be a small ceremony indeed.
I noticed a few people standing near the grave as we approached. The ground was soft and a bit soggy from an earlier rain, and I had to tread lightly not to sink into the ground. I’d worn heels, which was proving to be a bad decision all around.
As we approached, Land nudged me with his elbow. I tried to see what he was indicating, but I just saw a group of people waiting for the service.
I looked to him to see what he was trying to tell me. He leaned close and whispered, “Andy Zoz.”
I nearly fell over at the mention of the name. I had not expected the man who had gone into hiding to attend the public funeral of his sister-in-law. If he was really in danger from someone or some group, it seemed likely that they would be attending the funeral as well. Now, rather than a scouting situation for us, it appeared that we might be in the middle of a battle. I tensed, thinking about all that could happen here.
FOOD TRUCK MYSTERIES: The Complete Series (14 Books) Page 40