by B. J Daniels
“Bigfork.”
He looked up. “What were you doing over in the Flathead?”
“After I got upset about Flint and...and Maggie moving in together, I left town. I didn’t get very far when I realized I didn’t feel like going to a spa. So I decided to drive over to our house on the lake.”
“Did you make it?” he asked, hoping for something he could prove was true.
“No. I ended up spending time with this man until I got the messages from Wayne...and I turned around, drove back as soon as I could, but with the storm...”
“Where did you spend the night?”
“In the man’s trailer.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t know how to find him or the trailer.”
“It was late, dark, and I was...was drunk.” She raised her eyes until she was looking right into his. “You can understand why I didn’t want anyone to know.”
Mark studied her. He’d always thought he was good at catching a lie, but Celeste was in a class of her own. He wanted to believe the Billings story about the man in the brown van, but Wayne could have told her about the van that was seen in Flint’s neighborhood since he’d been questioned about what colored vans he owned with his many businesses.
“I’m going to let you go for now,” he finally said. “But if I find out that any of this is a lie...”
“It’s not. I swear.”
He looked at her, wondering how many times she’d sworn something was the truth as she lied through her teeth.
But what if this time she was telling the truth? If Celeste hadn’t taken Maggie, then maybe an ex-boyfriend had.
After Celeste left, Mark walked back to his office. How much did Flint know about Maggie Thompson’s past? It was time he found out.
* * *
IT WAS LATE by the time Flint reached the Flathead Valley. The lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, shimmered in the moonlight. He forgot how beautiful it was here. That he and Celeste had come here on their anniversary only made this trip more painful. It was the perfect place for his ex to hide the woman he now loved.
There was little traffic this time of the night as he drove the narrow road that skirted the east side of the lake and the steep Mission Mountain Range. Signs offering Flathead cherries caught in his headlights as he drove the winding road. The cherry stands were all closed this time of year. In fact, much of the place looked closed for the winter. He doubted Wayne and Celeste used their lake house more than a few weeks in the summer—if that.
He was guessing that it had been something she’d asked Wayne for. Just another way to turn the knife in Flint’s back. When they’d come here on their honeymoon, Celeste had said her dream was to own a place on the lake—knowing they would never be able to afford one on his sheriff’s salary.
Every once in a while as he drove, he would catch sight of Christmas lights in one of the lake houses below the highway. The decorations made his heart hurt. He couldn’t bear to think about Christmas this year if it was without Maggie.
His navigation system in his pickup told him he was almost there. Just another quarter mile. He slowed, watching for the turn. It still came up almost too quickly. He was glad there wasn’t any other traffic as he hit his brakes and pulled off.
The road through the pines dropped radically toward the lake. He drove slowly, his navigation system telling him that he’d arrived at his destination. He turned it off, his nerves already on edge. His headlights cut through the darkness of the night and the pine trees as he told himself Wayne probably had installed some kind of security system. There could even be a caretaker. Or at least a close neighbor who would report seeing someone at the house.
But as he reached the end of the road, he saw that there were no close neighbors. The house sat on a point. He couldn’t see another light nearby. All he could see was the lake in the moonlight and remember one night on his honeymoon of walking along the shore thinking that he was the luckiest man in the world.
He cut the truck’s engine and was instantly surrounded by the darkness of the trees. Only a little moonlight fingered its way in. He opened his pickup door as quietly as possible and stepped out, closing it softly. He’d brought some tools to break in, but he decided to have a look around before he dug out more than a crowbar.
The boardwalk from the parking pad to the house was bathed in moonlight. A breeze came up off the water, putting a chill in the winter air. There were patches of snow around, but nothing like Gilt Edge this time of the year.
As he reached the back door, he noticed that the boardwalk went on around the front of the house. He took it, even though it exposed him. The house wasn’t as large and ostentatious as he’d expected. In fact, it looked like something he would have bought if he could have afforded it. The deck out front was wide and hung out to the edge of the water. He could imagine the view from there in the summer.
He walked the rest of the way around the house, trying doors as he went. All of them were locked, just as he’d suspected they would be. He tried seeing inside but the drapes were drawn. Behind the house, he spotted a shed.
With crowbar in hand, he headed for the shed, all the time praying he wouldn’t find Maggie’s body inside. The door was padlocked. He used the crowbar, and it didn’t take him long to break in.
As he opened the door, he turned on his flashlight, and taking a shuddering breath, he shone it inside. The shed was filled with the usual lake accoutrements, lawn chairs, floats, water skis, leaf blower and barbecue. No body.
Flint took a breath and waited for his heart rate to return to normal before he turned toward the house. On his walk over, he’d decided which door would be easiest to break in through, but as he neared it, he changed his mind, and with the crowbar he smashed a small window next to the door and reached in and unlocked it.
It was cold inside the house. He could see his breath as he moved quickly from room to room. From the outside he had seen that there was only a partial basement. He found the door to it, turned on the light and stopped to listen before descending the steps.
The basement was smaller than it appeared from the outside of the house—only enough room for the furnace, hot-water heater and a little storage. Maggie wasn’t being held down here.
Upstairs again, he looked around before taking the stairs to the second floor. He found a sitting room, several more bedrooms. He was about to give up, telling himself that this trip had been a waste of time, when he came to a door that was locked.
Locked? Why would a room be locked? He glanced behind him, thinking of all the expensive stuff he’d seen around the house for any thief to pick up. So why lock this one room?
“Maggie?” His voice came out a croak. “Maggie?” Her name had such a lonely, lost sound in the empty dark house that he couldn’t bear to say it again.
He stopped to listen, pressing his ear against the door, but could hear nothing over the pounding of his heart. He tried the knob again and then, using the crowbar, broke the knob and pushed open the door. Cold musty air rushed back at him as he shone his flashlight into what was clearly a child’s room, and he felt his heart drop.
* * *
MARK HAD ENOUGH to do without dealing with this. “A domestic dispute?”
Harp didn’t look up. He was cradling his swollen, bruised and bloody hand in his lap. “I asked her to marry me.”
“And she said no?”
“She didn’t say anything at first. Then she yelled no and locked herself in the bathroom. I was trying to talk to her—”
“With your fist?” The undersheriff shook his head. “We’re already short manpower and now this? How bad is your hand?”
“I think something’s broken.”
Mark swore. “Great. Go to the emergency room. All I need right now is a deputy on medical leave.” But as he considered whic
h deputy it was, he thought maybe it was for the best. Harp was trouble, hero or no hero.
“I’ll still be able to work,” Harp said as he lumbered to his feet.
“How do you figure that? Can you pull your gun and shoot it? If they cast your hand, you might not even be able to drive legally. Let me know what the doctor says. Now get out of here and be damned happy that you didn’t get through that door and lay a hand on your...possible fiancée or you’d be behind bars right now.”
“You mean the way the sheriff is behind bars?” Harp muttered under his breath.
Mark bit down on his tongue. He didn’t want to get into it with Harp. He hadn’t slept and with each passing hour was more worried that they wouldn’t find Maggie alive. “Don’t push it, Harp. You’ll lose.” Fortunately, Harp had the good sense to keep going.
After Harp left, Mark reached for the mail distractedly. He was still bowled over by what Celeste Duma had told him—and still wasn’t sure he believed a word of it. He remembered that he’d been about to call Flint when Deputy Harper Cole had come in.
He tried his number. It went straight to voice mail. He frowned, suddenly worried. Flint had been adamant about being kept in the loop. He left a message for the sheriff to call him as soon as possible.
As he started to push the mail aside again, he noticed one envelope in particular that jumped out at him. There was no return address. No postage stamp. His name was printed on it and the word PERSONAL in caps.
He had a feeling about it. Feeling a little foolish, he pulled a pair of latex gloves from his desk and reached for the letter opener. Carefully he tore it open, turned the letter out on his desk and swore.
* * *
FLINT STARED AT the little-yellow-chicks wallpaper, the crib with its tiny quilt thrown over one side, the bassinet against one wall and the white rocker with a bookshelf beside it and a dozen children’s books all lined up. Everything was brand-new.
The room smelled more musty than the rest of the house. He stared at it, seeing what it meant. He could feel the disappointment like an ache in this room. Had Celeste been pregnant? Had she lost the baby? Or was this just wishful thinking? No, he thought. This wasn’t a room about hope. This was a room for a child she’d already come to love. A child she must have been carrying.
He hadn’t known. Somehow he thought he should have. So if she’d lost the baby... Had she also lost all hope of having another one? But why not pack all of this up? Why keep a reminder of what could have been?
Flint felt physical pain at the thought of Celeste coming into this room, leaning over the crib railing to pick up the stuffed teddy bear, to grieve.
His phone rang, making him jump. He quickly closed the door and tried to shake off the compassion he felt for a woman he’d recently wanted to kill.
“Cahill,” he said into the phone without checking the caller ID.
“Where are you?” his undersheriff asked.
It took him a minute to find his voice. “Is it Maggie?”
“No, we haven’t found her, but I need to see you. Can you come down to the office?”
“I’m not in town.” He didn’t want to admit where he was. He’d felt no guilt for breaking a window to get into the Duma house to look for Maggie. But seeing that room felt like a violation.
“Flint?”
“I’m fine. Tell me what’s happened.”
“We have another suspect. What do you know about Maggie’s past relationships?”
He swore under his breath. “Nothing. She didn’t... That is, I know there was a man and it wasn’t good. Are you saying an old boyfriend might have taken her?”
“He might have been at the house that day. He also might have been driving a brown van.”
Flint closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. The lake house suddenly felt very cold, the darkness heavy with a density he hadn’t felt before. He pushed off the wall and started walking toward the door, needing to get out of there, needing to get home.
“I have no idea who he might be,” he said as he exited the house and headed for his pickup.
“Well, we have a lead we’re following up on, but there’s more.”
Flint heard the hesitation in the undersheriff’s voice. It was something he hadn’t wanted to get into on the phone. It made him stop just feet short of his pickup. His blood ran cold, the night closing in on him. “What?”
“I just received a ransom demand for fifty thousand dollars for Maggie’s return.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE BAD NEWS was that several bones in Harp’s hand were broken and Mark wasn’t going to let him be on duty. He’d screwed up again and was furious with himself. No surprise, the undersheriff hadn’t taken it well. Add to that the pain and having his hand in a cast clear up to his elbow. On top of that, he’d had to stay in a motel, since when he’d called Mark, the undersheriff had told him not to go back to Vicki last night.
So even with the pain pills, he’d had a rough night with little sleep. He kept going over it in his head, trying to figure out why the woman had acted the way she had. It made no sense. She was the one who’d been talking marriage, babies, all that female crap that made his stomach roil.
And when he’d finally decided to bite the bullet, that was the way she reacted? As far as he knew, she was still locked in the bathroom.
Last night he’d definitely thought about ignoring Mark’s order and going over to her apartment and demanding to know what the hell was wrong with her. But he suspected it would end up in a fight. If the friggin’ neighbors called the sheriff’s department again...
He’d thought about calling Vicki, but Mark had also warned him not to do that, either. Sleep on it. Trust me, it’s the best thing you can do. Everything is much clearer in the morning.
Harp had hoped that was true. But this morning, he had other things on his mind. He’d had plenty of time in the emergency room of the hospital to think about his future. He’d screwed up. Again. But he’d been thinking there might be a way to fix it.
He’d find Maggie Thompson.
The sheriff’s department was a madhouse with DCI. He walked in as if he knew what was going on. He hadn’t realized how out of the loop he was until he heard the FBI might be called in because a ransom note had been received.
He found his inside source on her break. “What’s going on?” he asked as he took a chair next to her. Gail Anderson was in her late fifties and the night dispatcher. She liked to bowl, drink beer and carry tales, so the two of them had always gotten along.
She filled him in, just as he knew she would, keeping her voice down and their heads together.
“What are you doing here?” the undersheriff asked, suddenly sticking his head in the break-room doorway.
“I was going crazy just sitting around,” Harp said. “Isn’t there something I can do here?”
Mark shook his head. “You’ll just be in the way. Go home.” With that, he left.
“You get a raw deal around here,” Gail said.
“I just need to prove myself to them,” he said. “What do you think happened to Maggie?”
“I’d go with the former boyfriend, though the sheriff’s ex is definitely a piece of work. One or the other has her. But the question is, where would you hide someone? We have a tail on the ex-wife, so if she took Maggie, she can’t go take her food or water. Of course, she could have an accomplice. A woman like that can probably talk a man into doing just about anything.”
“Or maybe she acted alone. I get the feeling from what I’ve heard that she’d just as soon see Maggie dead anyway. So if she wasn’t planning on going back to wherever she hid Maggie...she wouldn’t be worried about getting caught.”
Gail agreed. “She’s the kind of woman who would eat her young.”
Harp gave a little la
ugh, thinking about his own kid. He wasn’t sure having it with Vicki was the best idea. She didn’t seem real...stable.
“Did they get a plate number on that brown van that was seen in the neighborhood, the one they now think the ex-boyfriend was driving?”
She shook her head as she wadded up her lunch sack and stood to toss it in the trash.
“What about the bar where the two were seen together?”
“Allegedly seen together,” Gail said and chuckled. “Bud’s Bar and Casino. It sounds nicer than it is, I heard.”
Right now, a cold beer sounded good, and since he had time to kill, why not drive to Billings?
* * *
ON THE DRIVE back to Gilt Edge, Flint went over everything Maggie had ever told him about her past. He knew little. He’d always thought there was some man who she’d gotten away from, but she’d never said it in so many words. It had been more of a feeling. Now he blamed himself for not asking, but at the same time, he knew she hadn’t wanted him to know.
This old boyfriend? How dangerous was he? If he had Maggie...
He still wasn’t convinced that Celeste hadn’t taken her. But Mark seemed to have changed his mind. Flint thought that was foolish. Unless Celeste had come up with an alibi. But a ransom note? That did not sound like Celeste. Unless she was trying to cover her tracks.
“It’s got to be a hoax,” Flint said to himself. “Just someone thinking they can cash in on this.” He’d driven most of the night, pulling over at a truck stop to get something to eat and some coffee. He knew he was too tired to make any sense out of this, especially when he knew so little.
The sun was up and climbing as he reached Gilt Edge. He swung by the sheriff’s office, not surprised to find Mark behind his desk. The undersheriff looked as exhausted as Flint felt.
Mark motioned him into a chair. “Where have you been?”
The two of them knew each other well enough that Mark wouldn’t believe he’d just left town for the heck of it. Also, he wasn’t going to keep anything from the undersheriff.
“I went over to the Dumas’ lake house. I thought Maggie...”