by Karen Rose
A tall, curvy blonde hopped out of the Mini Cooper and tapped a code into the security panel mounted on the big iron gates. Getting back into her car, she drove through the gates, but they didn’t close behind her.
Not giving himself time to second-guess, he followed her through, but stopped just inside while she continued up to the house. The driveway curved, so she couldn’t see that he’d driven in after her.
He inched his car up the drive until she was once again in view. She’d gotten out of the car and was stalking up to the front door. She rang the bell, then waited, arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping.
Grant got out of his car and, after hesitating a moment, slowly approached the woman, who was now banging on the front door with both fists and screaming for Richard to ‘Open up, you fucking asshole!’
Either Richard wasn’t home or he was deliberately not answering the door. Given the woman’s wrath, Grant wasn’t sure he’d have answered the door either.
‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ Grant said, and the woman spun around, a gasp on her lips and her hand pressed to her heart.
‘Fucking hell,’ she hissed. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
Grant tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I take it that you’re trying to talk to Mr Fischer?’
She snorted in a very unladylike way. ‘Give the man a gold star,’ she said sarcastically, then narrowed her eyes. ‘Who are you?’
He nearly gave her his real name. Then he thought of all the pains Wes had taken to hide his identity. If this woman was a cohort of Richard’s, and if Richard was somehow involved in Wes’s disappearance, Grant would follow his brother’s example. ‘Lin Jackson.’ It was his father-in-law’s name, but it was the best he could do with a split second’s warning.
I’m an accountant, for God’s sake. Wes is the creative one. So sue me.
‘Sergeant Lin Jackson,’ he added when the woman gave him a so-what? look.
‘Oh.’ She nodded, appearing satisfied. ‘You’re just the person I need to talk to. That bastard has my diamond earrings.’
‘Oh dear. And you are?’ He took out his phone and prepared to note the name.
‘Dawn Daley.’ She leaned in to watch him type it in. ‘D-a-l-e-y. Make sure you spell it right. I want those earrings. They were my mother’s.’
‘He stole them?’ Grant asked carefully.
‘Yes!’ Dawn grimaced. ‘Well, not exactly. I left them on the nightstand in his bedroom yesterday. When he kicked me out.’
‘You live here, then.’ Which was how she’d known the security code.
She grimaced again. ‘Well, no. I would have liked to, of course, because the house is a fucking mansion, but Richard Fischer is a fucking asshole.’
‘I got the asshole part,’ Grant said dryly. ‘So you were his house guest.’ This woman had been inside the house. She’d been with Richard. She could give him information. ‘How well do you know Mr Fischer?’ he asked.
She looked embarrassed. ‘Not well. I kind of met him Friday night.’
Friday night. The night of the poker game. Excellent. ‘On his boat?’
She nodded. ‘Paid a mint for that ticket, too. The Friday-night cruise tickets are expensive, but I was hoping to meet him. I . . . work for the casino.’ Another grimace. ‘I wait tables.’
So she’d wanted a leg up the corporate ladder and instead she’d gotten kicked down a few rungs. The lady had a bone to pick. Wes had often told him that this made otherwise hostile witnesses more cooperative.
‘Why are Friday nights expensive?’ he asked.
‘Because the boat leaves the dock on Fridays. It can only carry a certain number of people. I guess they charge admission to make up for the losses.’
‘Do you ever work on Fridays?’
‘No. Only a few servers work Fridays – the most senior people. I’ve only been there a year. I always wanted to know what made Fridays so special. So I saved up and bought a ticket.’ She shrugged, trying for nonchalance, but Grant saw the disappointment in her eyes. ‘Richard saw me at the bar and decided he’d take me home.’
‘Was it worth it? The ticket price, I mean,’ he added when her penciled brows shot up her forehead.
‘Oh.’ She laughed. ‘Not really. The clientele is richer. I saw a lot of fur coats, which I didn’t know was even still a thing.’ She wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘The bar jacked up the booze prices, I can tell you that. I nursed a twenty-five-dollar martini until Richard came downstairs and spotted me, then he bought the drinks.’
Downstairs? ‘What’s upstairs?’ Grant asked, tilting his head and trying to look mildly curious. Hopefully secret poker games requiring a special invitation.
‘The suites. There are only like ten of them and they’re hella expensive, but the boat is really old, so people like to spend the money to stay there.’
‘Was he alone when he came down?’ Grant asked with a sly wink, implying that there might have been another woman but hoping that there would have been several poker players.
‘Yes,’ Dawn said. ‘I mean, it wouldn’t have stopped me if he had been with someone, but he hadn’t. He smelled like smoke.’ She wrinkled her nose again.
Grant remembered seeing the ‘No Smoking’ signs everywhere when he’d been on the boat the night before. ‘The casino allows smoking?’
‘No, and that makes for a lot of angry people, I’ll tell you. They take it out on the servers. Filthy-mouthed fuckers who don’t tip for shit.’
‘Maybe the upstairs guests can smoke.’
She shrugged. ‘I asked him that, because the smell of smoke was heavy in his jacket. He kind of laughed and said that those clients were rich enough that they could do anything they wanted. Wish I’d bagged one of them. None of ’em could be a bigger asshole than Richard.’
Grant made himself chuckle, even though he wanted to be sick. Wes was posing as a rich man. He’d sold heroin for the cash to play a role. Had Wes really come to Cincinnati looking for their sister, or had he succumbed to the temptation that taunted vice detectives? Had he become one of those men who believed he could do anything? Like shoot a detective with an unregistered gun?
He forced his mind back to his search. Dawn didn’t sound like she’d know about the poker game he was seeking, but he needed to find a way to ask. ‘That sounds like it’s over my pay grade. Are the upstairs rooms for sleeping or for gaming?’
She gave him a narrow-eyed stare. ‘Why?’
‘I’m curious. I’ll never be able to afford that kind of game, but I’ve played in Vegas a few times.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said brusquely. She started for her car, but he shifted so that he stood in her way.
‘One more question, Miss Daley. Please. Who does work on Friday nights?’
Her eyes narrowed further. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m searching for someone,’ he said honestly. ‘They might have been on the riverboat at some point. But no one I’ve talked to during the normal hours has seen her.’ He wasn’t sure why he’d substituted her for him at the last moment, but he was glad he had, because Dawn’s eyes softened.
‘This is personal, isn’t it?’ she asked.
You have no idea. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He drew a breath and steeled himself. ‘My baby sister.’
‘Let me look at her photo. Maybe I’ve seen her.’
His hand genuinely trembling, he found the photo of his sister on his phone. ‘This is her.’
Dawn studied the photo intently, but ended up shaking her head sadly. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t seen her either. You should ask Scott King. He works most days, but always on Fridays. He’s the security manager.’
Grant hadn’t realized how tightly he was holding his shoulders until they relaxed a little. Talking to the security manager might be a better idea than trying to talk t
o the riverboat owner. ‘Thank you,’ he said sincerely. ‘I appreciate it.’
He began to turn back to his car, but had one more question. ‘If you don’t live here, how did you know the security code?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I watched Richard type it in. He was so high by the time we got here that he didn’t notice that I was watching him.’
‘You drove with him when he was high?’
Her smirk was matter-of-fact. ‘It was the only way to get into the house. Are you going to report my earrings?’
He nodded. ‘Of course. Daley – D-a-l-e-y.’
She smiled. ‘Yes. They’re dangly earrings with diamonds. Diamond chips, actually. Clip-ons. They’re not worth much, but they were my mom’s.’
Grant’s eyes unexpectedly stung. He’d make sure Wes reported them when he found him. ‘I hope you get them back,’ he murmured, then got into his car and drove back to Wes’s apartment.
Harrison, Ohio
Sunday, 17 March, 1.15 P.M.
‘Thanks for fucking nothing.’ Ending the call, Cade tossed the burner phone to his kitchen table in disgust. ‘Un-fucking-believable,’ he snarled. Not a single reporter knew who the woman was. Or if they did, they wouldn’t tell him.
The fuckers kept telling him to ‘read about it on my blog page’, or ‘watch the video on our website’. He had, and none of those had anything about the kid other than what he’d gotten from that first report. Assholes.
He rubbed his head, sighing. Part of it might have been that he’d scared them. Not the few at the beginning, because he’d been nice to them – so damn nice – but they hadn’t told him squat. He might have gotten a little hostile with the others.
Still. He gritted his teeth. ‘So much for freedom of goddamn information.’
He was becoming more confident that the kid knew something. If the press was to be believed, the cops were being very tight-lipped.
He saw me. Cade knew it. But this was a fourteen-year-old kid. He needed to be sure before he pulled the trigger.
He pressed his thumbs into his skull, forcing himself to think. What did he know? ‘Not fucking much,’ he grumbled. Just that the kid’s name was Michael Rowland, he was Brewer’s stepson, and his mother was a haggard bitch who was either lying through her teeth or stupid, because her teenage son had not killed her child-selling bastard of a husband. I did.
He knew that Michael had probably been hiding that night, because Cade hadn’t seen him. He replayed the video report in his mind. He knew that the kid was a freshman at Albert Sabin High School. And that he was deaf.
Oh. Wait. If he’d talked to the cops, he’d have needed a translator or whatever those people were called. He pulled his tablet close and did a search on sign language translating services. There were only two that were local.
He scanned the page, looking for what, he didn’t know. He’d know it when he saw it. He hoped.
Okay, they were called ‘interpreters’. Both companies provided them for all kinds of different things – schools, hospitals, doctor and other medical professional visits, and legal proceedings.
Legal proceedings. He’d known that he’d know it when he saw it, and there it was. Only one person in each of the interpreting services was certified to interpret in court. So he was down to two people. He’d try one, then the other.
He frowned at his screen. How should he go about hiring an interpreter? Clearly he couldn’t just call and say he was the client. Could deaf people even use the phone? How did that even work?
Luckily there was an FAQ section that covered what he needed to know. Michael wouldn’t have hired his own interpreter, even if he had been an adult. The responsibility of hiring and payment of interpreters was that of the provider.
In this case, the court or the cops. Cade thought about it. If he were an attorney, he could call on behalf of his client. He could be Dennis Kagan again, the ID he’d been carrying yesterday. He’d told only the CSU tech his name, and that guy was dead, so he wouldn’t be repeating it.
As for his ‘client’? He grabbed the phone book that had come with the old pedo’s house and opened it at random. He closed his eyes, poked at the page, then opened his eyes. ‘David Peele it is.’
The FAQ also covered the confidentiality the client could expect from the interpreter, and Cade realized that they might refuse to tell him anything.
But that wouldn’t be a huge deal. Cade knew how to get information out of people.
Now which service to call first? He flipped a coin, then dialed.
‘How can I help you?’ a cheery female asked.
‘Hi, my name is Dennis Kagan. I’m an attorney and need to hire an interpreter for my deaf client. He’s being held at the police department off Ezzard Charles Drive. I’ve never done this before. How do I go about hiring someone?’
‘Oh dear,’ the woman said. ‘Our court-certified interpreter is out of town this weekend. We’ve been referring clients to the other interpreting service. If you have a pen, I can give you their number.’
‘Not necessary. I can see them here on my computer. I did a search. Thank you.’ He ended the call feeling suddenly cheery himself. He dialed the other number and repeated his spiel. This time he was rewarded.
‘Our interpreter will meet you at the police department in one hour,’ a more reserved voice told him.
Cade nearly asked them who to expect, but then spotted the certified legal interpreter’s photo on the company’s website. His name was Andrew McNab and he appeared to be early thirties and slender.
This shouldn’t be too hard at all.
Cincinnati, Ohio
Sunday, 17 March, 3.10 P.M.
John Brewer had been such a sonofabitch, Diesel thought, barely managing to suppress a growl. An abusive, conniving, manipulating sonofabitch. He was glad the man was dead, because he wanted to rip Brewer’s head from his neck.
But he needed to keep his cool, for Michael’s sake. The boy had cried his eyes out while holding on to Diesel like he’d never let go, but eventually his sobs had quieted. Dani had given him a cup of tea and assured him that Joshua was napping comfortably in his bed upstairs.
Diesel hadn’t even been aware of Dani carrying Joshua up from the basement. His sole focus had been the boy crying for the innocence that had been so cruelly ripped away from him. And from fear that his world was about to come to an end.
‘Temporary,’ Michael had whispered in a voice that was a little slurred, but understandable. The whispered word had been his response when Diesel had assured him that everything would be okay, that he was safe in Dani’s house.
Temporary. In that moment, Diesel had known exactly how the boy felt.
But now Michael was napping on the sofa, Hawkeye sprawled at his side, half in his lap. And Diesel had returned to work.
Only to find that John Brewer had been an even bigger sonofabitch than he had already known.
‘Her name was Laurel,’ Dani said abruptly, jerking his attention from the numbers he’d been scowling at for the past hour. ‘LJM. The L is for Laurel.’
Diesel looked up from his laptop. Face cupped in her hands, Dani sat with her elbows propped on the kitchen table, staring at the list of more than eighty LJM companies she’d written out longhand.
They’d worked in silent harmony after Meredith had taken her leave, with breaks for hot tea or for Dani to stir a pot of chili she had cooking on the stove. Or for her to check on Joshua as he napped, or to drape a blanket over Michael when he’d fallen asleep, clutching Hawkeye as desperately as he’d clutched Diesel.
It was so domestic, it almost hurt. Because Diesel wanted this so much. Wanted the homey kitchen, the dog, the kids, the quiet Sunday afternoon with Dani Novak. He wanted her. He wanted it all.
‘Okay,’ he said simply, unsurprised that she’d figured out the med student’s name. ‘How do you know?�
� Because they were still waiting on Jeremy O’Bannion to give them a lead on medical students with those initials.
‘Laurel is the only name that appears multiple times. Laurels Awards & Trophies, LaGrange Lacrosse Laurels, and Laurels Lilies, Rosemary & Poppies.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘The first few times I read over these names I took laurel to mean either an award or a plant.’
‘So did I.’
‘Well, one of the businesses does refer to awards – the LaGrange Lacrosse Laurels. They must have won some kind of championship. I guess my brain put in commas instead of apostrophes for the other two businesses. These two actually refer to “Laurel’s”, as in the possessive.’
His chest warmed with pride. ‘Nicely done, Doctor.’ He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, but she pulled away, her back going stiff.
Her head dipped once, but she didn’t smile. Her eyes had become colder, her expression remote. Something had changed since that morning and he didn’t like it. They were back to the way they’d been all those months after she’d told him to find someone else.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured politely. ‘If Jeremy can’t find her, I figure we can dig into the records from her high school to get her last name. If she graduated from college two or three years ago, she must have attended high school four years before that. And if she did play lacrosse, we can get her name. She may have been on the dance squad, so we can cross-check.’
Diesel did a quick Internet search. ‘LaGrange High School has a dance team and they’re called the Dancing Divas, so LG Varsity Dancing Divas makes sense.’ He bristled with the excitement that always accompanied a hunt. It was better than feeling ragey at Brewer’s malice. Or numb at Dani’s obvious rejection. ‘That could work.’
‘Once we get her last name, either through Jeremy or the high school, we’ll be able to trace the Brothers Grim.’
‘That assumes they are her actual family. “Brothers” could mean a lot of things, although it’s a place to start.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Whoever they are, they can lead us to the vengeance dude.’