Missing Heiress (A Jackie Harlan Mystery Book 2)

by Marti Talbott

  “Probably,” Austin agreed. “The crash didn’t do her face any favors, so the picture of the dead girl isn’t much help. I had Georgia’s picture age progressed and there are some similarities. That’s on the flash drive too.”

  “That’s all they have?” Michael asked. “Just the photo of a dead girl?”

  “That’s it,” Austin answered. “When no one claimed the body, she was cremated. Georgia’s identification was found in a purse several yards away from the body. I guess it could be Georgia, but I sure don’t want it to be.”

  “When was the car crash?”

  “Three years ago.”

  Jackie stood up, walked to the window, took a moment to absorb what she had heard, and then turned to face Austin again. “Didn’t you hire an investigator when you first found out?”

  “I contacted you, but when you said you couldn’t take the case, I hired an old college buddy of mine, Spence Wilkins. His report is on the flash drive too. He didn’t learn much.”

  “Miss Bertrand gave you the name of the boarding school, right? Did Mr. Wilkins go there?” Jackie asked.

  “He did, but they wouldn’t tell him anything. They wouldn’t even confirm that she had been a student there, which I thought was odd. Outside the school, Spence talked to one of the older girls. She remembered Georgia, because she was the only girl who never once had a visitor. She received no cards either at Christmas or on her birthday, and no one came to take her home on holidays.”

  Carl was incredulous. “Not one visitor in what…twelve years?”

  “Poor kid,” Michael muttered. “I’m beginning to hate both Mr. and Mrs. Mathew Connelly.”

  “Not as much as I do,” Austin promised.

  Jackie shook her head. “I sure hope she’s not in a mental institution by now.”

  “Or worse. We should look for mug shots,” Michael suggested.

  Austin gasped. “Mug shots?”

  “Yeah, they would already have her DNA on file. You could take her case and get her out of prison.”

  Austin chuckled. “I see your point. I’m not a criminal attorney, but I know a few good ones.”

  “It would be easier, but I hope she’s not in prison,” said Jackie.

  “So do I. The estate needs her – I need her,” said Austin. “Spence got one more piece of information from the girl at the school. It seems Georgia got a scholarship to an art academy. He found the academy, and they confirmed she was registered to attend, but she never showed up.”

  “Around the time the girl died in the car crash?”

  “Same summer.”

  “So if she is alive, there has to be another Georgia Marie James out there somewhere. It’s not a very common name,” said Michael. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find her.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Austin.

  “James is a very common name,” Carl corrected.

  “But Georgia James isn’t,” Michael argued.

  “How does a woman do that to her own child?” Jackie asked.

  “Wait a minute,” said Carl, “If Nick and his daughter weren’t really estranged, why didn’t he ask Laura about it after he found out? He lived for another week, didn’t he?”

  “I think he might have, but she must have denied it. He didn’t say anything to me about asking her, but then he died before he could, I suppose.”

  “What’s the real story on Laura?” Carl asked. “A mother doesn’t abandon a child without a very good reason.”

  “Laura loves her husband, and her husband loves money – lots of it,” Austin answered. “She does whatever he wants, but the cost to her is high. She started to drink about the time they came back from France and is still a heavy drinker.”

  “Nick couldn’t convince her to leave Mathew?” Michael asked.

  “He tried numerous times. When he started seeing expensive jewelry on the credit card statements, he showed them to his daughter and asked if Mathew had given them to her. The answer, of course, was no, and even that didn’t convince her. Later, we discovered several pieces of jewelry had been returned for cash. It was a pattern we saw over and over.”

  “Once a crook, always a crook,” Carl muttered. “You charge the jewelry to his father-in-law, and then use the cash to pay off your gambling debts. Very ingenious.”

  “Ingenious enough to hide a child for years,” Jackie added.

  “I wish you could see Mathew in court,” Austin said. “He holds his wife’s hand to impress the judge, but it is easy to see that nothing could be more foreign to him. How he keeps her sober enough to be there is beyond me too. Nick would be…” Austin lowered his eyes and didn’t finish his sentence.

  “You feel sorry for Laura?” Jackie asked.

  “I do. She is a lot like her father in many ways, but she didn’t inherit his strength.”

  “How old is Georgia now?” Carl asked.

  “Twenty-two, as near as I can figure,” Austin answered. “We don’t have her exact date of birth.”

  “You didn’t find the hospital in France?” Jackie asked.

  “Not one with a record of Laura giving birth,” Austin answered.

  “Why not just go to the press?” Michael asked.

  Austin puffed his cheeks. “Can you imagine how many phony Georgias we would see if we did that? They’d be lined up around the block. Maybe if she had some sort of mark, a scar or characteristic, we could rule most of them out and go from there. I’ll call a press conference if you think I should.”

  “Let’s leave that option open,” said Jackie.

  “Did your detective try to find Miss Bertrand?” asked Carl.

  “He did, but I swear, Miss Bertrand has fallen off the face of the earth. I tried to find her every way I could too. Nothing on the internet, and there’s no phone listing for her either.”

  “Well, maybe we can find her,” said Jackie. “Maybe she knows something else that could help us find Georgia.”

  Austin looked Jackie in the eye. “Even if we do find Georgia, there’s no way to prove who she is except with DNA.”

  “Do you have the Connelly’s DNA to compare it to?” Jackie asked.

  “I would need a court order and a living, breathing daughter before a judge would give me one…unless you know how to get it without the Connellys knowing.”

  Jackie walked back to her chair, sat down, and studied the look in Carl’s eyes. “If it comes to that, we…”

  “Why all the time me?” Carl asked.

  “Because you look normal and Michael doesn’t,” Jackie answered.

  “I don’t look normal?” Michael asked. “That’s the first I’ve heard of that.”

  Jackie laughed. “Okay then, less suspicious. He can dig in a trashcan without drawing attention, and you’d look like an idiot doing it.”

  “She has a point,” Michael said to Carl.

  “Thanks a lot,” Carl shot back. “I think she means I look like an idiot anyway, so people expect me to dig in trashcans.”

  Jackie grinned. “Perhaps it is your beard.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Carl said, grabbing another sandwich off the tray. “I’m not giving up this beard no matter what you say.”

  “But you look so distinguished without it,” Jackie purred.

  Austin hadn’t expected the best private detective team in the world to be so informal and fun. Jackie dressed the part, but the guys didn’t, and it didn’t matter. They worked well together, and for the first time in months, Austin began to relax a little. It made him smile.

  “We are ignoring our guest,” said Carl, hoping to change the subject.

  “Don’t let me get in the way,” Austin said.

  “Trust me, we won’t,” said Jackie. “Now, where were we? We established that Laura is a drunk, and Mathew gambles all over the world.”

  “Right,” said Austin. “He comes home once a month, and as soon as Laura’s monthly allowance arrives, he’s gone again.”

  “Twenty thousand a month isn’t tha
t much to a gambler,” said Michael.

  “Not nearly enough,” Austin agreed. “Inheriting over a billion should hold him for a year or two.”

  Michael laughed. “I wonder why he hasn’t killed Laura by now.”

  “He can’t,” Austin answered. “If she dies, the trust fund stops and even the deed to the house reverts back to Nick’s estate.”

  “That was clever of Nick,” said Jackie.

  “How did Nick make his fortune?” Carl asked.

  “Real estate, mostly. His father was smart enough to buy up thousands of acres east of Denver at an unbelievably low price. As the city grew, the old man, and later Nick, built subdivisions and shopping malls. The market kept going up and the millions kept coming in. Nick invested in more land and the week he died, his fortune had topped 1.6 billion. It’s still growing.”

  “Didn’t he also start one of the first recycling plants?” Michael asked.

  “He did. He hated seeing beer bottles and cans along the highway, and decided that even if he couldn’t make money, he could get rid of the eyesore. He started out paying people to pick up the cans and bottles. The plant has been expanded three times and now makes a tidy profit, selling the recycled materials to manufacturers.”

  “So if we find her, Georgia gets it all,” said Jackie.

  “And me to help her run it. Before he died, Nick set up a fifty-year retainer for my services. I get it even if she decides to sell everything and move on.”

  Carl said, “He thought of everything.”

  “Except how to find his granddaughter,” Austin admitted. “He would have loved living long enough to see her, but that was not to be.” Austin drank the last of his coffee and then stood up. “The second flash drive contains everything presented in court so far, including Connelly’s private investigator’s deposition. His PI has a reputation for being a little on the shady side.”

  “That’s no surprise considering who hired him,” said Michael.

  “A deposition instead of testifying in court?” Jackie asked.

  “Judge Hawthorn let us do it that way to keep the press from finding out about the trial. All the witness statements were done by deposition instead.”

  “Has the press found out?” Michael asked.

  “They know something is in the wind because the will has not been probated. They also know Nick probably didn’t leave it to his daughter, not with the way things stood between them. I get calls daily from charities wanting to know if their organization is on the list for a donation.”

  Austin walked around the coffee table and handed Jackie his business card. “The board of directors is driving me crazy too. There are several companies and thousands of employees wondering what will happen. Mrs. Harlan, I have two weeks, and if we can’t find her, the judge might rule in the Connellys favor. Please don’t let that happen.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to prevent it,” she said, “and please consider us all on a first name basis.”

  Austin Steel nodded, went back to his chair to grab his coat and briefcase. “Call me day or night if you need anything. I don’t sleep much these days anyway.” With that, he put the lamp back on the end table, left the room, and closed the door behind him.

  *

  Michael shook his head. “Two weeks? My money’s on the Connellys.”

  Jackie headed for her laptop on the table. “Let’s see what we have to work with before we place our bets.”

  “Once a boss, always a boss,” Michael muttered, slowly standing up, and then following her to the table. He sat down, plugged the first flash drive into his laptop, copied it, and then sent copies to the other five computers. He repeated the process with the second flash drive. “What’s first?”

  “I would like you to age Georgia’s picture first,” said Jackie, taking off her jacket.

  “You don’t think Austin’s guy did a good enough job?” Michael asked.

  “He might have, but you are brilliant at aging photographs.”

  “Flattery,” Michael muttered. “First she says I don’t look normal, and now she says I’m brilliant.” He opened the first flash drive, found the picture of Georgia at age six, and then opened his photo progression software. “Jackie loves me, I know she does.”

  Carl chuckled. “You keep thinking that if it makes you happy. You want me to find the nanny? I’ve got a feeling she knows more than she said.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Jackie answered. “I’m going to head into what’s been presented in court so far. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”

  Michael was about to start age progressing the photo when he thought of something. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s see if I can hack into the boarding school records. They should have a recent picture of her.”

  “Good idea,” said Jackie.

  *

  Word that Colleen had been fired spread all over GSTS before lunch, and everyone was being especially quiet. The phones still rang, the machines still buzzed in the basement, and the printers still printed, but the employees wisely kept out of Nicole’s sight and mind.

  Maggie’s coworkers were an interesting collection of people. Half were natives of other countries, and it was anyone’s guess if they were there legally or illegally. A few of them still struggled to speak and understand English, but most were hard workers. Some were a great asset when it came to handling foreign customer service calls. There were, of course, several multilingual people on the nightshift as well as in tech support.

  With her back to the isle that ran between the row of cubicles, Maggie had a small mirror on her wall, strategically placed so she could see who was behind her. Nicole walked past Maggie’s cubical at least once every hour to go outside for a smoke, but she didn’t stop to say anything.

  As soon as Nicole came back and Jim tapped on her wall, Maggie grabbed her lunch sack and went outside. She rounded the corner, and went to the picnic table along the side of the building that sat in the shade of a big oak tree. Since they were taking a late lunch, no one else was there.

  “Nicole changed her hair color again, I see,” said Jim, sitting down on the bench next to Maggie.

  “I know. It’s hard to get used to when she goes from blonde to jet black. Why does she do that?” Maggie asked.

  “She says it’s to keep the man in her life interested.”

  “Oh. She can’t keep him interested any other way?”

  Jim sighed, opened his sack, and pulled out an apple. “I guess not.”

  “Does Hanna keep you interested?”

  “See, there’s the difference. I love Hanna and she doesn’t have to work at keeping me interested. There is nothing better in the world than when Hanna curls up in my arms at night. I never get tired of it and I doubt I ever will.”

  Maggie sighed. “I hope to be in love like that someday.”

  “Okay, but only if I approve of the guy first.”

  “Very well, I shall have you meet every man I fancy until you find the right one.”

  “Deal.”

  Maggie opened her store-bought salad, added the dressing, found the plastic fork, and took a bite. She glanced around to make certain no one could hear, and then asked, “Did you find out why Colleen got fired?”

  “They fired her for not going to the company picnic Friday.”

  “Really? I didn’t go either.” Worried, she set her bowl down and tightly folded her arms.

  “Yeah, but you had a good excuse. You called in sick Thursday and Friday.”

  “They might think that was just to avoid the picnic.”

  “Was it?”

  “No, I was truly sick, although I’m not sorry I was. I hate their picnics. Everyone gets drunk, acts stupid, and says things they wouldn’t say otherwise. Besides, the city buses don’t run that late.”

  “I would have taken you home. Hanna won’t let me drink and drive, you know.”

  “I know, but I thought you weren’t going.”

  “We weren’t, but we went anyw
ay. I was afraid not to and I was right. Eat your lunch little Brit, you’re looking too thin.”

  She crossed her eyes, picked her salad back up, and put another fork full in her mouth. As soon as she swallowed, she said, “Last year, you were sick and I ended up riding home with Nicole. I assure you, I never want to do that again. She nearly had a wreck.”

  “You told me about that.”

  “I probably did. How can they fire someone for not going to a party?”

  “They can’t, not legally. They sure won’t put that down as a reason in her file – that’s just what they told Colleen.”

  “You talked to her?” Maggie asked.

  “She called last night to say she is fine. She already found a new job.”

  “How?”

  “She started looking a month ago.”

  “Good for her. We usually don’t hear from anyone after they walk out the door.”

  “Nicole probably bumps them off so they can’t talk.”

  Maggie playfully shoved his shoulder, “Does not.”

  “Does too…probably.”

  “Have you started looking for a new job?”

  “Sent my resume out this morning.”

  Maggie stuck out her lower lip. “I shall miss you so.”

  “I know.”

  She laughed and when she tried to shove his shoulder again, he leaned away so she couldn’t.

  “How’s that axe-murderer boyfriend of yours?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend; he’s just someone I talk to online.”

  “You need to get out more. I’ve got a friend…”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” she interrupted.

  “Why not? He’s a nice guy and comes highly recommended.”

  “By who? You?”

  “Yes me, and my wife. What more can you ask?”

  “Well, if Hanna says so, then he does come highly recommended.”

  Jim wrinkled his brow. “I can’t see it, but she thinks he is handsome.”

  “In that case…”

  “Then you’ll meet him? We could have dinner at our house.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t want to date anyone just now.”

  “Because of the axe-murderer?”

  “Maybe.”

  Jim chuckled, tossed his apple core in the trashcan and looked to see what else he had for lunch. “Bet he’s a lazy bum, at home sharpening his axe as we speak.”