by Alice Sharpe
“She dated someone from Staar?”
He nodded.
She didn’t want to talk about this. “Why didn’t you get your Harley back?” she asked.
“I like the truck.”
“Sure you do.”
“I’m evolved, remember? Don’t you want to know who Fran was seeing?”
“No. I’m tired of gossip. I can’t believe she actually told you such a thing. Pillow talk?”
“Damn it,” he said, stopping suddenly and grabbing her wrists. “Knock it off, Hannah.”
She closed her eyes. “Okay. Sorry.”
“No, it wasn’t pillow talk, it was Fran talk.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “The woman rarely shuts up. I know it’s going to hurt you but it’s better you find out from me.” He took a deep breath. “She was seeing David.”
“My David?”
“Your David. He was two-timing you.”
She ran her fingers over her face, messaging her temples for a moment. She should be furious, right? Livid at David, maybe at Fran, too. The fact was she felt very little of anything. Fran could have had David lock, stock and barrel if he’d survived.
Was this why Fran had been so curious about Aubrielle’s paternity? If she’d loved David, knowing another woman had his child would have hurt.
“That’s not all,” Jack said.
There was more? “Okay,” she said, resuming walking. More then ever she wanted to get home. He bypassed his truck to stay with her. “Fran said a lot of people from the foundation went to Ecuador before the ambush on a semirelated trip. Some funding issue. Santi, Hugo, Harrison Plumber, some guy named Jenkins.”
“They went to Ecuador at the same time as David? Did Fran mention that?”
“No. Who’s Jenkins?”
“He’s the CPA. How could I have not remembered they went? There was just so much going on at the time. My grandfather’s illness, my mother’s fourth marriage, David and me falling apart—”
“As long as we’re comparing notes,” Jack interrupted, “I went out to see the guy who killed David.”
“The trucker?”
“Mitch Reynolds. He and his family live in a pretty ratty part of town, out over the bridge past an old rock quarry. His house looks like a asthmatic wolf could blow it over.”
“So?”
“So, there’s a very large, very expensive red SUV parked in his driveway and before you say he had a visitor, I checked the registration.”
“He probably owes a fortune on the thing.”
“No. He bought it with cash. The guys at the dealership are still talking about it. There’s a new RV parked by the side of the garage, too. And get this, one of the guys at the dealership mentioned that Reynolds occasionally worked out at Staar.”
“A lot of people work here once in a while.”
“No doubt. But it connects him.”
This man’s talents were obviously wasted guarding a baby. “On the other hand, what does a new car this year have to do with David’s death a year ago?”
“He bought it two weeks after David died. It made a big impression on the salesman. He’d read about the accident in the newspaper.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
“I’m saying it looks as though Reynolds may have been paid to run into David. I’ll have to figure out a way to talk to him, see if he was on his regular route. We already know he worked on and off again at Staar.”
“I don’t know, Jack.”
“The call that morning to David might have been a setup,” he continued. “If he and a partner arranged the ambush and then if David took all the GTM money and the partner wanted it back or wanted to shut David’s mouth, it could explain everything.”
“Except someone warning me to knock off what I’m doing—‘or else,’” she said. “Yeah.”
She’d stopped moving to listen. Walking again, she said, “People get windfalls. A relative dies, whatever. Maybe the trucker just spent his on toys.”
She stopped talking when she got a glimpse of her grandmother’s car. It twinkled in the sunlight as though paved with diamonds. “The windshield!” she cried as the cell phone in her handbag rang. She grabbed it by habit, still gaping at the car. Jack stepped past her to survey the damage.
“Hannah, it’s me, Grandma,” Mimi said.
“Grandma. You aren’t going to believe what’s happened now.” A silent pause cut through Hannah’s distress. “Grandma? Grandma, what is it?”
Mimi’s voice caught as she whispered, “Come home quickly. Aubrielle is gone.”
Chapter Nine
“What do you mean, gone?” Jack demanded as Hannah slid into the truck next to him. He was in gear and taking off up the hill before her door was completely closed.
She sat staring straight ahead, her arms wrapped around each other. He could feel her body trembling. They were twenty minutes away form Allota and that was driving with all the stops out. “Hannah? Tell me what your grandmother said.”
She turned stricken eyes at him. “I could barely understand her. Something about a fire.”
“What did she say when you told her to call the police?”
“She said the note said ‘No cops.’”
“But she still has to call them,” he argued.
Hannah shook her head. “She refused. She said I would understand, just to hurry.”
“You call them,” he said.
Again she shook her head. “No.”
“But—”
“Grandma said the note implied this was a warning, Aubrielle would survive only if the police weren’t called. Drive faster.”
He drove faster, halfway hoping some alert highway patrolman would chase him down so he could enlist aid. His mind raced—the obvious: he shouldn’t have let Hannah fire him. He’d left the child in danger—why had he allowed that?
He slid a look at his frantic passenger. He knew she was beating herself up for leaving the baby with her grandmother and friends. No doubt her grandmother was sick that the baby had been taken on her watch.
But the bottom line was if amoral jerks wanted to wreak havoc on normal people, it was damn near impossible to stop them. Hadn’t that been the final lesson of the ambush in Tierra Montañosa? Didn’t every suicide bomber reinforce that one fact?
“It’s so foggy and cold,” Hannah whispered as they sped down the hill toward Allota.
“We’re almost there.” Those were the last words either of them spoke until they pulled onto Mimi’s street. A fire truck was parked close by, its crew coiling up hoses, and for a second, Jack felt like scratching his newly shorn head, trying to figure out where a fire truck fit into this debacle. Then Hannah pointed at what was left of the old abandoned car across from Mimi’s house. Reduced to a smoldering black frame, acrid smoke still hung in the air around it.
Mimi and two other women erupted out of Mimi’s house as Jack pulled into the driveway. Hannah had her door open and had jumped out before he could fully stop the truck. By the time he stepped inside the house, just the two friends were visible. They met his gaze and nodded anxiously toward the hall.
He kept going, heart pounding, pausing at the doorway to the nursery. Hannah and Mimi were standing inside the room, Hannah comforting Mimi as her stricken eyes searched the empty room for her child. A pain shot right through the middle of his chest.
Though now filled with three adults, the fact the baby who belonged here was missing made the place feel abandoned. Hannah met his gaze, her eyes swimming in tears that rolled down her cheeks when she blinked. She held out a piece of white paper. He made his way around her in order to peer over her shoulder at the note, which was written in a weird loopy font most computer printers could produce.
“This is a last warning,” it read. “Any further attempts to blackmail me will result in immediate and irrevocable measures taken against your baby. You are being watched. Do not contact the police. Use your head (what was good for you is good for me) and you’ll know where s
he is—this time. One hint of police involvement and you’ll never see your baby again.”
“What does this mean?” Hannah cried. “Blackmail? I’m not blackmailing anyone.”
“We’ll think about that later,” Jack said, driven by nerves to pace the small pink room. The empty crib and open window were like pointing fingers.
“I shouldn’t have fired you,” Hannah said, meeting his gaze over her sobbing grandmother’s head.
He looked at her tear-streaked face and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have left.” He took a deep breath. Going to Mimi, he took her hands and led her to the rocking chair where she sat down heavily. “Quick now, Mimi, tell us exactly what happened.”
Mimi’s hands fluttered helplessly on her lap as she spoke. “The girls and I were in the living room,” she began. “Aubrielle had just taken the milk Hannah left for her and had gone to sleep, so I put her in her crib. Then Barb noticed a commotion outside, and we realized the old wreck across the street was on fire.”
“Did you see anyone hanging around?”
“No. No one. Barb called the fire department and they were here within minutes and we watched as they arrived to put out the fire and then I got a feeling I should check on Aubrielle and she was…she was…gone.” At this point, Mimi’s tears started anew. She wiped at her papery cheeks with a tissue. “I shouldn’t have allowed myself to become distracted. I should have kept her right in my arms.”
“It’s not your fault,” Hannah and Jack said in unison.
She shook her head.
“Hannah, think,” Jack said. “The comment the kidnapper made about you knowing where Aubrielle is, that the place was good enough for you so it’s good enough for them. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” she said, her hands clenched at her sides. “I’m not blackmailing anyone. How can that make sense?”
“Look at it from the point of view of whoever is doing this. We’re going to have to make some leaps here and if we can’t come up with something very quickly, we’re going to have to call the cops. Let’s think of the main people who keep coming into the picture.”
“What do you mean?” she cried and he could see nerves and fear clouding her head.
“Think, honey,” he said firmly and softly. “People like Fran, for instance.”
“But Fran was with you this morning.”
“When did this happen?” he asked Mimi.
She shook her head. One of the friends said, “Sometime in the last hour,” from the doorway.
“Fran left Staar well over an hour ago,” Jack said. “She said she had an appointment.”
The woman at the door said, “If you don’t need Mimi, let me and Barb take her into the kitchen and make her something warm to drink.”
Hannah hugged her grandmother again and they both watched the older woman leave. “I’ve been so incredibly selfish putting her in the middle of my mess,” Hannah said. “We have to get Aubrielle back safe or Grandma will never forgive herself.”
He nodded. He knew Hannah would never forgive herself, either, and frankly, neither would he forgive himself.
“Why would Fran do all this?” Hannah said. “Why would she think I would blackmail her?”
“We’ll leave the why for later. Opportunity, yes. How about Hugo Correa? Fran mentioned he wasn’t in today.”
“He was leaving when I arrived,” she said quickly. They were both talking fast, words spilling out.
“And Harrison Plumber?”
“By the time I left he was already gone. I don’t know when he left.”
“Who else?”
“I can’t think of anyone else. It’s impossible to think any of these people would—”
“Think,” he interrupted her, a sense of pressing urgency building in his chest. He kept feeling the way Abby had nestled against him when he walked around town the day before, kept seeing her eyes focusing on his lips when he spoke to her. She was so tiny and so innocent. “Think of each of these people and something you might have shared with them recently. Something you planned or organized. Don’t try to relate it to this.”
“Like what?” she cried.
He threw up his hands. “A restaurant. A movie theatre you suggested. A—a store…”
Her gaze on the carpet, she struggled for a few seconds, then blurted out, “I volunteered to pick up dry cleaning for Harrison Plumber a few mornings ago. He was running late to catch a flight and it was on my way. Things like that?”
“Okay, what else. How about you and Fran?”
“She’s the one who suggested I meet her at the beach car park yesterday but that was only because Hugo had papers he needed signed. Other than that, outside of work, I can’t think of anything. Wait, I arranged flowers for a reception a few weeks ago. I used an old friend’s shop and Fran complimented me on my choice.”
“Okay, good. We have a dry cleaner and a florist and the car park. That leaves Hugo Correa.”
With the mention of the Correa name, her gaze darted away. “I can’t think of anything,” she said.
He was familiar enough with her expressions that he knew something else was troubling her. “Out with it. Hurry.”
“It’s nothing. He just acted odd this morning. I think he knows about me and David, that he heard the stupid rumor and that he’s angry. It doesn’t matter, none of this matters. We have to do something. We’re wasting time.”
“Maybe he was mad at something else,” Jack said, but he agreed with her, they had to act. Going off without a plan seemed like a bad idea.
“The thought of her alone, maybe outside—”
“That’s it, of course, that’s where we start, at the most dangerous place, the beach. If she’s inside, she’ll be safe, but outside in this cold fog…”
His voice trailed off as Hannah twirled on her heels and took off down the hall, her footsteps pounding the floor as she ran. By the time he caught up with her, she was on her way out the front door, yelling assurances at her grandmother, who watched the departure from the kitchen doorway.
He moved close to Mimi. “I need a blanket and binoculars.” As she opened the closet and produced both, he added, “Mimi, there’s an outside chance whoever took Aubrielle is waiting for us to leave and get far away from the house and then return her, probably by leaving her at the front door. If that happens, don’t try to catch this person or even figure out who they are, just get the baby back and call Hannah, okay?”
Eyes huge, the older woman nodded.
Twenty seconds later, he stuffed the blanket and binoculars behind the seat with the shotgun he’d taken from Hannah’s grandfather’s gun case and climbed into the truck. Hannah cast him a look that broke his heart. Her occasional catches of breath fueled his anger. Pushing that deep inside, he concentrated on one thing: finding Aubrielle.
Later, when it was over, that’s when someone would pay.
HANNAH SAW LINDY’S FLORIST as they came to the end of Main Street. In Hannah’s mind, the three places they’d discussed loomed like dots on a map leading ever farther away from Allota. The florist shop in town, the beach south of town, the long stretch of oceanfront road and finally the dry cleaners in North Fort Bragg. It would waste time to bypass one in favor of another and then to have to loop back.
And if the baby was at none of these spots, what then? Risk the police?
“I’ll be right back,” Hannah said when Jack stopped for a red light. She climbed out of the truck, leaving him gaping after her.
The woman who ran the shop had gone to school with Hannah’s mother. Her oldest daughter, Jill, and Hannah were friends. As soon as Lindy saw Hannah race through the door, a smile of greeting creased her face.
“Hannah, I just got a postcard from your mom. Imagine her soaking up the Mediterranean sunshine while we’re stuck in this dreary—”
“Have you seen her?” Hannah gasped.
“Your mother? Not since her wedding—”
“No, not my mother. My daughter. Aubriel
le. Did anyone leave her with you?”
“Of course not,” Lindy said, brow wrinkling. “Why would—”
That’s all Hannah heard. She found Jack parked across the street, waiting. Dodging midday congestion, she darted across the road and slid into the truck.
“Nothing?” he asked as he pulled back into the stream of traffic.
“No. Go to the beach car park.”
The few minutes it took to travel that far stretched out like a mini-eternity. Jack slowed down to enter through the gate and Hannah’s heart continued to sink.
This close to the ocean, the fog was sitting damn near on the ground despite the brisk wind. “Go to the north end,” she directed and he pulled up close to where she’d parked twenty-four hours before.
But unlike the day before, nothing was in clear-cut sight today. The Dumpster was a hulking green shape off to the left, the cinder-block bathrooms to the right a set of dull gray rectangles. Even the parked cars loomed like ghosts and the mist-draped rocks rose like the gun-metal claws of an encroaching monster.
By unspoken agreement, they both moved toward the county Dumpster, as though needing to investigate the worst thing first. Hannah’s heart thumped against her ribs as she caught a whiff of rank odor. The thought someone would leave a three-month-old baby in such a contraption made her queasy. On the other hand, it would be relatively warm out of the fog-swirled wind…
Jack stepped in front of her and lifted the lid. She could tell he was trying to protect her but the truth was there was no way to shield her if her baby was in this Dumpster. No comforting words, no consolation. Aubrielle was her flesh and blood—
His flesh and blood, too…
The thought flashed into her head and she chased it away. In the next instant, she held on to the edge of the metal container and peered inside.
There was nothing in it but a few random fast-food containers and the contents of an ashtray or two. Jack closed the lid with a loud bang and they both took a steadying breath.
“The restrooms,” he said.