“What? No, Sophie. Let me help.”
“Don’t worry. I love to cook, and when we get Deirdre back home and I hire the staff, I won’t be doing much cooking anymore. Besides, will you look at this kitchen? I’d wrestle you to the ground for a chance to cook in this culinary heaven.”
“I know what you mean. My bedroom looks like a four-star hotel room that is actually larger than my entire apartment. And only my hunger could get me out of that four-poster bed. But I never liked cooking much so I was just going to have some toast.”
Sophie gasped in disbelief. “Not while I’m in the kitchen.”
Chelsey found the cream and set it on the counter. “I do miss my mom’s home cooking.”
“Your parents don’t live in the city?”
She shook her head. “No, they’re divorced, but both of them still live in Searcy. That’s an hour away. I wanted to go to the university here in Little Rock, so I got an apartment here. I do try to go home on weekends when I can, but you know how it is at the plant. The schedules are always changing.”
Sophie nodded. “I have to admit, I don’t miss working in that garbage. My sense of smell is finally coming back.”
Chelsey laughed knowingly. “I can’t wait to graduate and get out of there myself.”
“How long until you graduate?” Sophie asked, sliding the sugar bowl over to her.
“I’ve got another year left,” Chelsey replied, picking up the coffee carafe and filling a cup. “After graduation, I am going to party like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like Kenny,” Sophie chuckled.
“I did kind of, didn’t I?” she replied with a grin.
“Well, she’s grown up a lot since her Vegas days,” Sophie said with a prideful look. “But then she’s had to.”
“She has, hasn’t she? Is it bad that I’m glad she has?”
Sophie shook her head. “No, I don’t think it’s bad.”
“I mean, I’m sorry her grandmother was kidnapped, but I’m very attracted to— oh, um, I mean she’s really become a good person.”
Smiling, Sophie nodded perceptively. “It’s all right to be attracted to her. Your secret’s safe with me. Even before she won the lotería, she was a good person. Working two jobs to stay in college and provide for Deidre.”
“I think so, too. She’s so strong, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. Like the way she teases you, but I can see the love for you in her eyes. And her grandmother, I can’t imagine how Kenny is keeping it together, but I admire her for it.”
Sophie eyed her keenly, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I think she feels the same way about you.”
“Wait. Really?” Chelsey’s heart thumped loudly in her chest, her breath caught on her lips. “I had hoped… I mean, um, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Por supuesto no,” Sophie mumbled to herself. Of course not.
Even though Chelsey didn’t speak Spanish, she knew Sophie saw through that. “Well, I’m just glad you’re her friend, Sophie. Without you she would be lost right now.”
“Thank you, but Kenny didn’t bring you in simply because of your forensic knowledge. She connected with you at the plant and it stuck with her. She would be lost without your friendship, as well.” She suddenly dropped the toast and butter knife on the plate. Her mouth gaped open as she turned to Chelsey. “Oh, Dios mío!”
“What, Sophie?”
“It means oh, my God,” Kenny translated as she walked in. She was still wearing the same clothes she had on the night before. “What’s wrong, Sophie?”
“We forgot about the party in two days.”
“Oh, my God!” Kenny exclaimed, taking a step back.
“What do we do?” Sophie asked in a panic.
“Cancel the party, of course,” Chelsey answered. “Do you have a list of invitees? We can divvy it up and call them.”
“Yes, the list is on Deirdre’s desk in the library.”
“Kenny? Are you coming?” Chelsey asked when she noticed Kenny had not moved.
“No, wait a minute. Let me think.”
“What’s to think about?” Chelsey asked.
Kenny’s eyes darted back and forth as if she were calculating a math problem. Finally, a small smile crept over her lips. “We’re having this party,” she declared.
Chapter Seven
The stunned silence that followed Kenny’s declaration was sharply broken when Sophie and Chelsey began talking at the same time.
“Are you sure, Kenny?” Sophie asked.
“What about the kidnapper?” Chelsey asked.
“Are you thinking clearly?” Sophie questioned. “I know you’ve been up all night.”
“Wait, hear me out on this,” Kenny said, holding up her hands to quiet them.
She walked over to the counter and picked up a slice of toast lying on the plate. Biting into it, she frowned. She didn’t like dry toast, but she was hungry and she needed to concentrate. She had indeed been up all night, basically worrying that she wouldn’t find her grandmother in time. There just weren’t enough clues to base even the simplest conjecture on, because she couldn’t use the normal channels like the police database.
“It was something that Grandma said. One of the people who accepted the invitation was Police Commissioner Michael Weathersby. He’s a friend of Grandma’s, and I think I can get him to help us without the kidnapper knowing.”
“How can the commissioner help, if you can’t tell him what’s going on?”
“I don’t know yet, but I feel it’s imperative that I try.”
“But won’t he notice when your grandmother doesn’t show up?” Chelsey asked.
“Not when I tell him she’s in Ireland with her sister.”
“You can’t just lie to the police like that,” Sophie admonished, a stern look on her face.
“Watch me,” Kenny said, winking at her. “If it would help get my grandma back, I’d even sleep with him.”
Chelsey clapped her hands to her face. “Ew! Don’t put that vision in my head.”
Chuckling, Kenny apologized. “Sorry, Chels. Okay, so will you help me?”
“What needs to be done, Kenny?” Sophie asked, handing her another slice of toast with butter and jam on it. “Catering will be here mid-day Thursday to get set up. The band confirmed they would perform, and the party rental people will be here tomorrow afternoon to move furniture and set up cocktail tables. What am I forgetting?”
“Me. Before, it was important that I impress these people. I was doing it for my grandma. But now…”
“But now you want to make a different type of impression, right?” Chelsey asked, looking at the two-toned green-blond hair.
“Yes, exactly. I don’t know how to dress, eat, or even dance at one of these things. I mean, which fork do I use for the salad versus the meat? I’ve seen movies where whole careers were decided on the use of the wrong fork.”
“It’s not that kind of party, cariño,” Sophie said with a smile.
Shaking her head, Kenny asked, “Cariño?”
“It means honey. I’m sorry, but you were just too cute agonizing over a salad fork when there won’t be any. You reminded me of my children.”
“Nah, it’s fine. I probably should have paid closer attention when Grandma asked me about the menu.”
“Yes, you should have,” Sophie chastised. “It’s not a sit-down dinner, it’s a social gathering with appetizers, finger food.”
“Oyster sliders, yum,” Kenny retorted.
Chelsey looked at her curiously. “Really?”
“No, not really. I might puke just thinking about it.”
Both Sophie and Chelsey stepped back.
“I’m kidding, jeez.”
While Sophie and Chelsey continued to chat as they cleared the dishes, Kenny went back to the game room where she was spending most of her time now.
Last night, the computers an
d printer arrived, and it took several hours to get everything set up. Three computers and monitors sat on the new computer benches that lined the wall across the room from the bar and adjacent to the evidence wall. An industrial-sized all-in-one printer stood on the floor at the end of the row of computers. The computer tech had networked the computers and printer together and showed Kenny how to connect to it with her cell phone.
Yet with all the new equipment in place, she still ended up staring at the evidence board most of the night, as she had done since her grandmother had been taken. And as she was back doing that morning.
She focused in on Deidre’s eyes, the lines under her eyes, the specks of light in her eyes… the reflection in her glasses. “Damn it!” Kenny jumped up and ran to the nearest computer. She pulled up a newly installed program that could enhance the pixels to fill in the details of a photo. She brought up the photo of her grandmother. Clicking on her face, Kenny enlarged the photo and then, using the lasso tool, she circled the right eyepiece of the glasses on Deirdre’s face. She typed in a few commands, and the program began rendering the low-resolution pixels into a solid shape of a person’s face.
“Got you, you son of a bitch!”
“Who have you got?” Chelsey asked as she walked into the room carrying two cans of soda in her hand. She handed one to Kenny and looked over her shoulder at the computer screen. “Who’s that?”
“That’s the bastard who took my grandmother,” Kenny explained, popping the top on the can.
Chelsey leaned closer and squinted at the screen. The photo rendering gave a vague outline of a nondescript face. “Are you sure that’s a man?”
Kenny turned her head toward her and frowned. “Well, no, but kidnappers usually are men. Anyway, that’s semantics.” She turned back to the computer. “The point is, I have a face now.” Clicking on another icon, she sent the rendered picture to the face recognition program and clicked on the start button. “I saw a reflection in Grandma’s eyeglasses and I was able to pull this face off it.”
“Did you hack into the police database?” Chelsey asked, watching as faces flashed across the screen searching for a match. “Because I’m not sure that’s something I want to be a part of.”
“No, nothing illegal. It’s something better. Facebook images. You’d be surprised how many people don’t secure their images on Facebook.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of that, but um…”
“Yeah, I know. The chances of finding a match are about the same as winning the lottery. Oh, wait. I did win the lottery.”
Chelsey laughed and nudged her shoulder playfully. “Yes, you certainly did. So, how long do you think it will take?”
Kenny sighed. “Probably longer than I want it to.”
“Well, I’m very impressed that you saw the reflection in that grainy photo.”
“I didn’t actually see it. I saw her glasses and knew there was a chance the person taking the picture didn’t think about their reflection. Luckily, they didn’t use a flash or I wouldn’t have had anything to work with.”
“And now I’m impressed even more,” Chelsey said, unaware that her breast was pushing into Kenny’s shoulder.
Kenny felt the warmth of the soft skin as it molded around her shoulder. She turned her head slightly and inhaled the sweet smell of summer sunshine on Chelsey’s skin. She swallowed back the lump that suddenly sprang up in her throat. She raised her hand timidly to touch her, to feel the warm skin pressed against her, but she stopped herself before she made contact, her common sense returning. What kind of person would she be if she made love to Chelsey while her grandmother was being held hostage? Granted, a few weeks ago she wouldn’t have thought twice about it but then she wouldn’t have been sober, either.
She marveled at the change in herself. It was actually a whirlwind of changes that made her head spin, it all happened so fast. A hardworking student with morals her grandmother was proud of. A multi-millionaire with absolutely no morals or precautions. A little girl who missed her kidnapped grandmother. It was the little girl that drove her to grow up quickly and be responsible. Now she realized, she was responsible for not only her grandmother, but Sophie, Chelsey, and Tobias. As long as they helped her, they would be in danger as well. It was that fear of losing her friends and family that drove her tirelessly, night and day, to end this. After that… no, she couldn’t allow herself to think past finding her grandma.
“Sorry I’m late, boss,” Tobias announced as he walked into the room. “We had an FBI agent guest lecturer today, and I hung around after class and asked him a question about your case.”
“Shit, you didn’t tell him about Grandma, did you?” Kenny couldn’t remember if she had explained the need for secrecy to him.
“No, don’t worry. I didn’t name names,” he quickly replied. Kenny exhaled gratefully. “I explained to him about how my friend was being spied on, so I was looking for bugs in a very large house, but that I had come up empty. He asked me if I checked the garage.”
“And had you, Tobias?” Chelsey asked.
“No, actually, it never crossed my mind. Who would plant a bug in the garage, right? So, I checked it out just now, and look what I found.” He held up his hand with a small, black oblong-device in it. “It’s a GPS tracker. It was up under the fender on your very cool Jaguar. What kind of mileage do you get on that thing, anyway?”
“What?” Kenny was only half listening as she focused on the tracker. She picked it up and was surprised at how light it felt.
Who could have put that there and when? She’d only had the car for a short time and it mostly stayed in the garage when she wasn’t speeding down the highway in it. Except for when… Kenny looked over at Chelsey. No, they couldn’t have done it when she met with her because they were already tracking her. It might have been when she met with Sophie, but she hadn’t left her car either time. She looked over at the grudge list Chelsey had started. “Ted, that bastard!” she exclaimed. “It had to be him. He’s the only one who got close enough to my car.”
Tobias looked at her curiously. “What about the dealer who sold you the car?”
“That’s a possibility, of course. But I remember Ted. He’s the company weasel, and I wouldn’t put it past him. The hairs chilling on the back of my neck tell me it’s him.”
“You think he’s the one who kidnapped your grandmother?” he asked.
“No, he’s not smart enough to pull all of this off.”
“By himself maybe,” Chelsey added. She walked over to the wall and wrote Ted’s name under Eloise’s.
“Wait, there was this one woman, raggedy looking, like she hadn’t had a fix in a while. She claimed to be my mother, but her hands were visible the whole time.”
“It could be the same woman who came into the breakroom the day you hired Sophie.”
“Yeah, it was right after I talked with Soph. I was about to leave and the woman came up to the car. But, like I said, her hands were visible and she never bent down. I don’t think she’s a suspect.
“Still, I’ll add her to the list,” Chelsey said, writing fake mom on the wall under Ted’s name. She turned back to Kenny and asked, “So, do you know where Ted works?”
“Yes, at the plant with us. Can you dust my car for prints?”
“Sure,” Chelsey said, and then frowned. “I won’t be able to match them without the police database, you know.”
“I know,” she replied. “That’s where the commissioner will come in handy.” I hope.
Chelsey turned to Tobias. “All right then. Show me where you found the tracker.”
“And Tobias,” Kenny said, stopping them halfway to the door. “After that, can you back trace the signal on the GPS and find out where it’s transmitting to? We might just catch two sons of bitches with one stone.”
The enthusiasm in Tobias’s eyes was nothing compared to the excitement in Kenny’s heart. Suddenly, things were happening faster as pieces of the puzzle seemed to be coming together. The first ques
tion Kenny had written on the wall was how they knew her every move. She walked over to the wall and wrote in red marker, TRACKER. “Two can play at that game, asshole,” she swore.
Tobias walked back in and over to a computer.
“Tobias, can you trace the tracker without destroying it? I might want to use it later.”
“Sure. The number I need is on the back under the magnet.”
“Good. Now tell me where I can go buy one of those things. I’m going to track the tracker.”
“Huh? Oh, you mean you’re going to put a tracker on the guy you think is tracking you. Sweet. You can get one at any media store. They’re pretty common, believe it or not.”
“I believe it now. Would you tell them where I’ve gone? I won’t be long.”
“Wait, Chelsey’s dusting your car. Besides, it would stick out like a sore thumb. A really hot, rich, sore thumb. Here, use my car. It’s a piece of shit, but it’ll get you there and back.” He dug in his jeans pocket and pulled out the keys, tossing them to her.
“Thanks, I appreciate that,” she said, catching the keys and walking up the stairs. I’m going to catch me a snitch red-handed, and he’s going to lead me straight to the kidnapper.
Chapter Eight
Tobias was right; his car was a clunker. It bellowed thick black smoke from the muffler that sounded like a shotgun blast every time she hit the gas pedal. It had cheap seat covers that hurt her butt and a smell that assaulted her nostrils. It reminded her of the first car she owned, and that made her miss driving her Jaguar. Spoils of the rich took on a whole new meaning for her.
Tobias was wrong about any media store having the trackers. She was at the third store and if they didn’t have it, she was going to give up searching for one. She could order it online and have it delivered the next day. She really wanted to tag Ted before he left for work, but the thought of driving Tobias’s car a minute longer was more than enough motivation to call it quits.
“Please, tell me you have GPS trackers in this store,” Kenny said to the clerk.
“Yes, ma’am. Aisle seven, middle ways down, next to the radar detectors.”
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