by B. J Daniels
When Flint had arrived he’d noticed the freshly scrubbed kitchen, as well as Anvil’s bruised and bloodied knuckles. Anvil hadn’t been able to repair the section of Sheetrock before he’d called to report Jenna missing. But he’d certainly covered his tracks on everything else.
Over the weeks that followed with no word from Jenna, more facts had emerged. It seemed that Jenna had more secrets than just a lover. She’d become pen pals with some inmates at Montana State Prison, taken up shoplifting and stealing from the family grocery budget. She’d also begun wearing makeup and had bought herself some sexy undergarments—things apparently out of character.
When her car turned up in a gully, Flint had become more convinced that Anvil hadn’t just taken his temper out on a wall. The state crime investigators had been called in, but they’d found no evidence to prove that Anvil had killed her.
Since then Flint had been waiting for someone to stumble across her shallow grave. The DCI had gone over the Holloway farm with cadaver dogs and found nothing. Anvil had sworn that he didn’t kill her. Not that anyone in town believed him. But with four mountain ranges around the valley and miles and miles of wild country, Jenna could have been buried anywhere.
Flint suspected that someone had finally found her body when he took the call.
“I should have called you months ago,” a man said.
“You know something about Jenna Holloway’s disappearance? Who am I speaking to?”
Silence. A crank call?
“Kurt Reiner. Jenna’s been staying with me.”
Flint had to sit down. “Jenna Holloway is with you?”
“I know I should have called, but she was too afraid of him finding her if I told anyone where she was.”
“She was that afraid of her husband?”
“Her husband? No, man. It was some dude who was threatening her.”
He tried to get his head around this. Jenna was alive? Had been alive since the night she disappeared back in March? “Where has she been all this time?”
“Sheridan, Wyoming. We’ve been renting a place down here.”
Flint rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m confused. So why did you decide to call me now?”
“A little over a week ago, she saw the man who’d been harassing her back in Montana. He was in town. She’d been telling me that she’d felt as if someone had been watching her. I figured she was imagining things or getting tired of being with me, you know what I mean? Anyway, the next night she freaked. She saw him standing across the street, watching our second-floor apartment. I ran down, but by the time I reached the corner, he was gone, roaring away in his van. So the next day—”
“Wait. A van?” He thought of what Alma Ellison had told him. “What color van?”
It took Reiner a minute to answer after being interrupted in the middle of his story.
“A brown one. So, anyway, a couple days ago I came back to the apartment and...” His voice broke. “She was gone and the place was a mess as if there’d been a fight. And now she’s missing. Really missing this time.”
A brown van. What were the chances it was the same van his neighbor had seen earlier today driving by his house? Sheridan, Wyoming, was about six hours away, no big deal for those who lived in these large Western states. Still, it was a stretch to think it could have been the same van.
“You didn’t happen to get the plate number on that van, did you?”
“Naw. It was an older-model panel van.”
“Wyoming plates?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Montana plates?”
“I really didn’t notice since the back of the van was so dirty. But now that I think about it, they were some different colored plate, not Wyoming or Montana. That’s all I know.”
Flint raked a hand through his hair. Why did he think there might be a connection? He knew who had taken Maggie and she didn’t drive an old brown van. She drove the newest, largest black SUV they made.
Still, both women were from Gilt Edge. Jenna had her hair done at Maggie’s shop by the other stylist, Daisy Caulfield, but the two had known each other. He wouldn’t be a good lawman unless he checked this out.
“I need to talk to you more about this,” Flint said. “Can you come up to Gilt Edge?”
“Sorry, but I finally landed a pretty decent job. Even if I could afford to drive all the way up there—”
“Did you talk to the local police?”
“Couldn’t really do that under the circumstances, you know. I kept hoping she’d turn back up. That’s why I didn’t call until now. I didn’t want any trouble with the law.” Also, the local law probably wouldn’t have much interest since Jenna had pulled this disappearing act already up in Montana.
“I probably shouldn’t even have called you,” Reiner said.
Flint spoke quickly, afraid now that the man might hang up. “Did Jenna tell you anything more about this man?”
“No. Just said he scared her and wouldn’t leave her alone.”
Flint thought of the prison pen pals Jenna had been writing before she’d disappeared the first time. Something definitely had been going on with the woman.
“Listen, you did right by calling me.” He tried to think of what to do. No way could they send an officer down there. Nor did he think the local law in Sheridan would be much help on this one. And he couldn’t go himself. He had to stay here in case there was a break in Maggie’s disappearance.
“Tell me what hours you work and where you live. I’ll send someone to take your statement.”
“I don’t know, man.”
“I’m not sending a cop. It’s a private investigator I know. I’ll have him contact you. Don’t worry. It’s someone I trust with my life—and yours and Jenna’s.”
Reiner sighed. Flint could tell that he was regretting this call. “Okay.”
Flint jotted down the information. “Give me your phone number. I’ll get right back to you.” He disconnected and called Curry Investigations in Big Timber, Montana. Former Sweet Grass County sheriff Frank Curry answered on the second ring.
CHAPTER FIVE
FLINT CAUGHT FRANK and his business partner–wife, Nettie, just before they were leaving for the day. From his office at the sheriff’s department, he filled them in on the Jenna Holloway case. He’d met them both on a state investigation some years ago when Frank was sheriff. A big man, Frank looked like an old-timey lawman with a gunfighter mustache.
He’d heard that Frank had retired and opened his own investigation business with Nettie. He admired the two of them doing that since they were both in their sixties. Most people their age were headed for their recliners.
“I got a call from a man in Sheridan, Wyoming, who says he’s been living with Jenna Holloway since March—but that now she has disappeared again,” Flint told them. He held the phone tighter. “I’d go check this out myself, but Jenna is not the only one missing. The woman I’ve been seeing, Maggie Thompson, is also missing. My undersheriff is doing everything possible to find out what happened. The DCI has been called in.”
“What can we do to help?” Nettie asked from a phone extension at their office.
“Kurt Reiner believes Jenna was taken by a man in a brown van a couple days ago. A brown van was seen on the same street where Maggie disappeared earlier today.”
“You think the cases might be connected,” Frank said.
“I think it’s a long shot at best. But both women are from here. If this man knows anything about Jenna Holloway and her disappearance...” His voice broke. “I can’t leave here in case—”
“We can go first thing in the morning,” Nettie said. “Just send us the information.”
“I really appreciate this,” Flint said. “Truthfully, I don’t think Maggie was taken by some man i
n a brown van. I think my ex-wife did something to her and it scares the hell out of me. But my ex is allegedly away at some spa, and this information on Jenna, who disappeared last March, just came in. When the man mentioned a brown van...”
“I understand. We’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve talked to Kurt Reiner,” Frank said.
He swallowed the lump in his throat, unable to voice his gratitude. He trusted this longtime sheriff, having heard nothing but good news about him. Nor was Frank’s wife any slouch when it came to investigating, he’d heard.
“We’ll start with Jenna,” Frank said. “Then we’ll see where you are on Maggie’s disappearance. We understand time is of the essence. If you need anything...” He read off their cell phone numbers.
“Thanks, Frank. I knew I could count on you. I’ve emailed everything I have. As soon as I hear from you verifying that Jenna was the woman living with Kurt Reiner, I’ll go out to the Holloway farm to talk to the husband. Anvil might have heard from her and just not called me. Or he could be involved. At this point, it’s all up in the air.”
“We have the photo of Jenna and the information you just emailed. We’ll be in touch.”
* * *
TEN O’CLOCK THE next morning, Frank sat down across from Kurt Reiner. Reiner was dressed in jeans, sneakers that had seen better days and a ragged T-shirt with a logo of some band Frank had never heard of. Somewhere around forty-five with a neck tattoo of a snake and a variety of other tattoos on his pale skin below the sleeves of the T-shirt, Reiner appeared to be trying to look younger. His eyes were steel blue with thick lashes in a pockmarked face that wasn’t quite handsome.
But there was something about him that Frank thought might appeal to a woman either looking for trouble or running from it. A quiet mousy woman who’d married a farmer ten years her elder might have looked at Reiner and thought he had something she’d missed out on. Especially since she’d apparently been drawn toward the wilder side of life before her disappearance.
The first thing Frank had done when he’d met Reiner at a local café was show him the photo.
“Yep, that’s Jenna,” the man had said. “Except now she’s a blonde.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a photo of the two of you, would you?”
Reiner nodded. “I figured you’d want proof.” He dug out his cell phone and swiped for a photo. It was a selfie of him and Jenna in a bar. While not great resolution, there was no doubt it was Jenna—even blonde.
What struck Frank was that she looked younger than she did in the photo Flint had gotten from her husband. He took a photo of the pair and texted it to Flint to let him know that they had a positive ID while Nettie made polite conversation to distract Reiner.
“So how did you and Jenna meet?” Frank asked after the three of them were seated at a back table out of the way. Reiner had suggested the place, wanting to meet in public. Frank got the feeling that he was worried a half-dozen cops would be waiting for him.
Now Reiner shifted uncomfortably in his chair and shot a look toward the door. “So you’re a private dick?”
“Nettie and I are licensed private investigators, yes,” Frank said. “No one is going to arrest you.” He’d told him this on the phone but clearly the man had trust issues. He could tell that Reiner wished he’d kept his mouth shut about Jenna.
“You care about her,” Nettie said. “That’s why you’re here. Are you in love with her?”
Reiner blinked, his expression softening as he looked at Nettie. “She was sweet, you know? The kind of woman who takes care of a man.”
Frank wondered how she’d taken care of him, but let his wife take the lead. Nettie had a sense for these things. He’d learned to trust her instincts long ago.
“You must miss her.”
Reiner’s blue eyes filled with tears as he nodded. He swallowed convulsively, his Adam’s apple going up and down for a minute. “That’s why I called. If some...bad dude has her...”
“Then let us help her,” Nettie said. “We’re going to need to know everything she might have told you about the man, but let’s start with how you two met.”
He nodded. “She was writing to my brother, Bobby. He’s in prison in Deer Lodge.”
Flint had said she’d been writing to prisoners at Montana State Prison, but when she’d disappeared none of those men had been released, so they were cleared as suspects.
“He told me about her and that she needed help, so...” Reiner shrugged. “So I wrote her and we met. I had to help her, you know?”
“But when you met her, there was something about her that stole your heart,” Nettie said.
Reiner smiled. It was a good smile. Frank could see how a woman looking for a radical life change could have fallen for this guy. He had a certain charm.
“She told you about her husband?”
“He seemed like an okay dude. I think she felt bad for hurting him, but she had to get out of there since this other dude had started freaking her out.”
“There was someone after her?” Nettie asked.
“He followed her home one day from town, she said. She saw him drive by the farm real slow and then come right back by. She said that if her husband hadn’t come back on his tractor when he did...”
“She saw the man again?” Frank asked.
“He drove by the next day and later that night. Then one morning, he drove his van up in the yard. He must have thought that her husband was gone. But he wasn’t. Anvil, right?” Frank nodded. “He went outside to see what the man wanted and the dude took off.”
“Did she know who he was?” Frank asked.
Reiner shook his head. “She said she never got a good look at him. Just had a bad feeling, you know?”
“Why her, do you think?” Frank asked.
“Who knows how dudes like that pick their targets, but she was terrified of him.”
Frank glanced at Nettie. He could tell that she was thinking the same thing he was. Why would the woman be that terrified of someone driving a van who’d possibly followed her home once and drove into the yard another time? He could understand concern. He could even understand fear. But terror? Not unless she had some other reason to fear the man behind the wheel of that van.
Which meant she knew him. And if he was the one who’d abducted her... Well, why else would he come looking for her in Wyoming unless there was more to the story? If that was even what had happened to Jenna. The woman seemed to have a habit of disappearing.
* * *
FLINT TOOK A shower at the sheriff’s office and put on the clean uniform shirt and jeans that Mark had gotten him from his house. He’d been up all night, dozing only a little in the break room at the office. He felt wired, terrified one moment, and confident the next that they would find Maggie alive, and soon.
In the meantime, he knew that if he didn’t work, he’d go crazy. While Mark canvassed the neighborhood, Flint was holding down the fort. He kept thinking that someone would call with news about Maggie. By now, word would have traveled around the county. Someone had to spot her.
Mark had called to say that Celeste hadn’t turned up. Wayne hadn’t heard from her, other than an email from a Paradise Valley spa confirming her reservation for last night. She hadn’t shown, though. No one knew where she was, but Mark had a BOLO out on her, as well as Maggie. Someone was going to spot her as well, Flint told himself. They would find Maggie. Then Celeste would spend the rest of her years behind bars for abducting her.
He just prayed that Celeste wouldn’t kill her. Mark had called earlier to tell him that it appeared Celeste had taken the gun her husband had purchased for her since it hadn’t been found in the house. As hard as he tried to think about anything else, he could feel the clock ticking.
When he’d received the texted photo of Jenna from Frank, he felt sick. All
this time, Jenna had been hiding out in Wyoming with a man? He wondered how Anvil would take this news—if he didn’t already know.
On his way out to the Holloway farm, Flint couldn’t get the photo of Jenna and Kurt Reiner off his mind. Jenna was smiling in the snapshot. She looked so different from the photo her husband had given him back in March. For one thing, she’d bleached her hair blond and she was clearly wearing makeup. He hoped he wouldn’t have to show this photo to Anvil. It was going to be hard enough on the man when he learned that his wife had been shacking up with a lover in Wyoming all this time. He didn’t need to see how happy she looked.
He thought about the first time he’d driven out to the Holloway farm. Anvil had called him to say his wife was missing. He’d known little about the couple, since they stayed to themselves and seldom came into town.
He’d seen Jenna in passing in town when she’d made the trip in for groceries, but other than a nod to each other, they’d never even spoken. Jenna had seemed...painfully shy. Now, though, he wondered if he’d misread not only her, but also the entire situation.
It was clear now that Jenna had planned her escape from the farm. From her husband. From even the law. She’d done it systematically. Flint had changed his view of her since seeing the photo of her and Reiner. He realized he needed to know a whole lot more if there was any connection between Jenna’s and Maggie’s disappearances.
Thinking about Jenna kept his mind off the panic he felt when he thought of Maggie. He told himself that once Mark found Celeste... But he felt wired one minute and exhausted the next. He kept praying that Maggie was alive. That Mark would find her before it was too late.
While he tried to concentrate on doing his job, the thought of Maggie being missing hung at the back of his mind like a physical pain that never went away. When he thought of her, his heart would pound and he’d feel sick to his stomach. Not being part of the investigation was driving him crazy.
He knew he should be glad that there’d been a break in the Holloway case for the distraction. Otherwise he would be pacing the floor at the sheriff’s department, waiting for word. Mark had promised to call the moment there was any news.