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Eight

Hope was a double-edged sword. It could empower and destroy. In some ways, hope was worse than closure. Especially when bad news came on the tail end of sparked optimism.

Zach hoped that his and Paige’s assurances wouldn’t serve as harbingers of such destruction to Gordon Kelter, but staying positive would be necessary, even if statistics pointed out that the odds weren’t good for Jenna Kelter returning home safely.

The Kelters’ bungalow was bright yellow and terracotta orange. They walked along the concrete path leading to the front door. It was patterned to look like square tiles. The whole place certainly looked low-end except for the beaming silver Mercedes in the driveway. Paige pointed to it.

“If it weren’t for the car, I would have guessed Gordon blew his lottery winnings,” she said. “Then again, maybe that represents what’s left. Personally, I’d be running from this neighborhood and settling into a house with an ocean view.” She stretched out her hands. “The Biscayne Bay out my back door. Ahh, that’d be the life.”

Zach smiled at her. “Not sure how far sixteen mil gets you in this city, but it should definitely get them out of this zip code. Maybe he’s been waiting for his wife to get out of prison.”

“Patient man, if that’s the case.” A mild breeze blew a wisp of her red hair across her face, and she swiped it away before she stepped up onto the front landing. It had an overhang but there was only room for one of them to stand under it. Zach remained on the staircase. Paige knocked, and they waited.

Gordon answered the door, his gaze sweeping over them. “FBI?”

Zach nodded, and Gordon stepped back to let them enter. The place felt cramped between the bold choice of red-painted walls and oversized furniture.

Zach wiped his shoes on the mat. “Mr. Kelter—”

“Gordon is just fine,” he quickly corrected.

Cool, calm, and casual, like his wardrobe: He wore a loose-fitting T-shirt and baggy shorts. Strange, given the circumstances: his wife missing and the FBI being in his home. In fact, there was no indication the man was stressed or upset about his wife’s disappearance at all. No worry lines creasing his brow. No rushed movements or rapid blinking. No aversion to eye contact. It was possible Brandon’s theory about the husband could hold more merit than Zach had originally thought. Then again, Gordon’s alibis had been confirmed already.

For what times, though? They didn’t know when Jenna went missing. And if Gordon was behind her disappearance, what’s to say he didn’t feed Marsh the wrong times intentionally?

“I’m Agent Zach Miles, and this is Agent Paige Dawson.”

“Here—” Gordon led them to a living room at the back of the house “—sit where you’d like.” He’d said it like there were numerous options, but there was a couch and a recliner—the latter of which he sat on. Zach and Paige took spots on the couch.

Toward the back of the room, there was a small table being used as a desk, a computer and a monitor sitting atop it. A browser window was open and showed what looked like a menu with a background image of lobsters. Zach made a mental note of the restaurant’s name from the header of the page. Magical Bar & Grill.

Gordon shot up to his feet. “I should have offered you something to drink. Do you—”

“I’m fine, thanks.” Paige turned to Zach.

“Me too,” he said.

Gordon dropped back into his chair with a whoosh.

“You got here quickly. I just reported her missing. Guess that’s what happens when it’s Walter’s niece who’s in trouble.” He tapped the arms of the chair. “He’s the mayor.”

Gordon’s dislike for the man was clear in his tone of voice. “We’re not here because of him. We’re here because—”

“Walter always gets his way, and he probably only ‘cares’—” He added finger quotes, then slowly lowered his hands, Zach’s statement finally sinking in. “You’re not here because of him?” Gordon’s features darkened, and he swallowed roughly.

Zach shook his head.

“Tell me she’s going to be—” Tears filled Gordon’s eyes, and he covered his mouth, let his hand fall. “I’m trying to hold myself together. Keep my head.”

“You’re dealing with a difficult situation right now. It’s understandable for you to feel emotional,” Paige told him.

Gordon blew out a breath and nodded. He palmed his cheeks. “I thought maybe someone kidnapped her for a ransom… You know, to get to my money. But if that was the case, the cops would be here, tapping the phone line. I’ve seen those movies before.” Gordon’s shoulders lowered; he was shrinking by the second. “The FBI… You investigate…”

“We’re here to bring your wife home safely,” Paige offered up the first sprinkling of hope gingerly.

Zach looked at her, but obviously Marsh hadn’t filled Gordon in on her suspicions about Jenna being abducted by a serial killer. Though it was probably for the best at the onset of an investigation like this.

“So you will save her?” Gordon directed this to Zach.

He hated making promises he couldn’t keep. The one he made to himself flashed to the front of his mind, but now was not the time to dwell on it. “We’ll do everything within our power to find her and bring her home alive.”

Gordon’s eyes widened. “You’re here because you think some killer has her? And the odds aren’t good, are they?” He ran his hands down his face, elongating his features. “You can tell me. I can handle the truth.”

“Every case is different,” Zach said. People often asked for the facts, but they never really wanted to know them.

Gordon sat back in his chair and rocked a few times. Silence fell over the room with the exception of a humming ceiling fan.

“Would you run us through your wife’s schedule yesterday?” Paige requested.

“I told Detective Marsh everything I know. Don’t you have access to her files?”

“We do,” Zach told him. “But it’s best that we hear it straight from you. There may be small things that you didn’t mention before or that stand out as important now.”

“Well, it was Sunday, so she wasn’t up to much.”

“Was it normal for her to have low-key Sundays before she went to prison?” Paige asked.

“Pretty much.”

“So yesterday Jenna…” Paige prompted.

“She read in the morning—” Gordon nudged his head toward the back of the house, and Zach figured he was referring to an outside patio or deck “—and went to church for the twelve o’clock mass. That’s what she told me anyway.”

“You’re wondering if she told you the truth?” Zach latched on to Gordon’s doubts. They didn’t know for sure that a killer had Jenna. Maybe she had left her husband. Though Zach didn’t want to entertain the consequences for Jack with the FBI director if that turned out to be the case.

As if Gordon were reading Zach’s mind, he said, “If she left me, that would be easier to take than thinking of her in danger.”

“What church did she attend?” Paige asked.

“A Catholic one,” Gordon punched out, then added, “St. John’s. They’re on Northeast First Avenue.”

“I take it you’re not religious?” Zach asked.

“Oh, heavens no.” He slapped his hand on the arm of the chair for emphasis.

“Do you know if she had any plans after church?” Zach inquired, preferring to hear Gordon’s answer directly and not just run with what was in the file.

“She told me she was going out for dinner with girlfriends.”

“Do you know with whom specifically?” Zach asked.

“No,” Gordon said quickly.

Gordon appeared ticked off by the fact that he didn’t know, and Zach would wager Jenna hadn’t told him who she was meeting up with. The marriage wasn’t as solid as it might appear at first impression. Though Jenna’s serving time in prison wouldn’t have helped with that situation. “Who did she normally hang out with?” Zach asked.

“The few I know of are Carrie, Leigh-Ann, and Stella.”

“That’s Carrie Hayes, Leigh-Ann Marble, and Stella Bridges?” Zach pulled from memory.

“Yes.”

“Did she typically go to church with them?” Paige inquired.

“I know Carrie and Leigh-Ann attend. Don’t know about Stella.”

“Did Carrie or Leigh-Ann typically pick her up for church?” Zach asked, trying to see if he could establish a pattern from before prison.

“She drove herself before the accident, but after that a friend started picking her up.”

That made sense because with Kelter’s conviction, her driver’s license would have been permanently revoked. Zach leaned forward. “Do you know which friend?”

“I don’t know,” Gordon said, defeated. “If she told me, I wasn’t listening.”

“Going back to the three women you mentioned, was it usual for her to go out with them on Sunday?” Paige asked.

“Yes, but it was different things all the time—drinks, dancing, catching movies.” Gordon was biting on the inside of his cheek, and his face was flushing a bright red.

So much for low-key Sundays…

“Did she regularly do anything or go anywhere besides church on Sundays?” Zach asked, trying to see if Kelter had any sort of fixed schedule on Sundays.

“Don’t think so,” Gordon stated. “I don’t even know if she went out with all three women or one or two of them or mixed it up.”

“Okay.” Zach nodded.

“Besides dinner, did she have any other plans with her friends yesterday?” Paige asked.

Gordon’s eyes flashed pain and betrayal. “She told me they’d be going to the movies.”

“Did she say which one?” Zach inquired. There’d been mention of the movies in the interview notes but not a specific one.

Gordon’s mouth contorted into a squiggle, and he hitched his shoulders. “She might have, but I was angry that she was going out at all, so I wasn’t really listening to her.” Regret flickered in his eyes. “It’s been over four years since we’ve spent any real time alone together, but I started feeling badly for yelling at her about leaving and tried to call her to apologize.”

“And when was that?” Zach asked.

“Maybe a few hours after she’d left. She wasn’t answering her phone. I called Carrie and Leigh-Ann. They said they hadn’t heard from her. Hadn’t seen her at church, either.”

“What about Stella? Did you try her?” Paige asked.

Gordon shook his head. “I don’t know her number and neither did Carrie or Leigh-Ann. I asked them.”

It was possible that Jenna’s friend Stella—or another friend who Gordon didn’t know about—had picked her up and the two of them went somewhere. It was also conceivable that Jenna had gone missing right from her front walk. “What time did she leave the house?”

“Eleven thirty.”

“Did you see anyone pick her up?” Zach asked, hoping Gordon would give them something to go on.

Gordon clamped his mouth tight and shook his head. “Too angry to care at the time.”

“Fair enough,” Zach said. They would reach out to Stella Bridges to see if she had picked up Kelter and check Kelter’s financials. If she took a taxi or driving service, something could show there. At least they’d narrow down the list of options. While her financials would be coming in soon, it might prove faster to just ask Gordon if any unexpected charges had come through. If they were lucky, it might provide them with some clarity on when and where she went missing. “Have you seen any charges from yesterday show up on Jenna’s card?”

Gordon nodded. “One. I noticed it just minutes before you got here. It was dated yesterday—a purchase at some bar. I can’t believe she’d lie to me after all we’ve been through. Tells me she’s going out with friends, but they don’t see her? Who was she with? What was she doing?”

Zach wasn’t about to make any guarantees the marriage was sound, but he offered Gordon what he could. “It’s possible that someone stole her credit card. What bar was it?” His gaze went to the computer monitor.

Gordon’s followed, and he nodded. “Magical Bar & Grill. It’s on the river. I looked it up. I have no idea what she’d be doing there,” Gordon added.

“And there’s nothing saying that she was there,” Paige stated.

“Nice of you to say, but I think she’s cheating on me.” The words were sour, despondent.

“Well, let’s not assume that,” Paige told him.

Gordon shot her a glare. “And why not? She told me she was going to church but didn’t. She’s been gone for years, why should I assume I know who she is anymore?”

Tingles ran up Zach’s back and neck. Sure, Gordon was under stress, but his moods rolled over faster than a hooker. “Did you have any reason before seeing this charge to believe she was cheating on you?” Hopefully, he’d encourage some rational thinking. He certainly hoped that Gordon hadn’t entertained these thoughts before. Otherwise, what were they doing here? Jenna could have just run off.

“Not that I can recall. But remember, she’d been in prison for four years.”

“That must have been difficult for you,” Paige empathized.

“You have no idea.”

“Yet you stuck by her.” Paige smiled at him.

“She’s my wife, Agent,” Gordon responded with a lick of heat. “And if the blame for her accident rests on anyone’s shoulders, it’s mine.”

Interesting twist in the conversation… “Why do you say that?” Zach asked.

“If I hadn’t come into the money, she wouldn’t have been out celebrating at Henry’s.”

Zach knew from the file that Henry’s was a restaurant and jazz club. “But she was the one who got behind the wheel,” Zach reasoned with delicate caution.

“When you come into a bunch of money, it makes you feel invincible, like you’re untouchable. The rules no longer apply to you.” Gordon paused for a moment and rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “That’s how she explained herself to me. No matter how you paint the situation, it was the money.” Gordon added the latter part with contempt, as if he loathed having won the lottery. “Stella’s just lucky Jenna dropped her off at home before the accident. The passenger side of the vehicle was demolished.”

Zach recalled reading about that in the file. When questioned by police, the friend, Stella Bridges, had admitted to being drunk herself. “Were Jenna and Stella close?”

“I’d never heard of Stella before that night, and to date, I still haven’t met her. Ask me, she’s an enigma. Apparently, she is to Carrie and Leigh-Ann too. They don’t have her phone number, as I told you.”

Paige shrugged her shoulders. “Even if the three of them hung out from time to time, it doesn’t mean Carrie and Leigh-Ann were close with Stella.”

“Was it common for Jenna to drink until she was drunk?” Zach recalled Gordon’s earlier mention of Jenna drinking with friends on Sundays before she’d gone to prison.

“She had a weakness for red wine. One glass led to a bottle, led to two bottles,” Gordon replied.

“And did you drink with her?” Zach asked, resisting the urge to raise an eyebrow.

Gordon reached beneath the collar of his T-shirt and pulled out a chain with a bronze sobriety chip dangling from it. “Ten years sober. And I’ve had no draw to go back to the stuff.” He dropped the medallion against his chest. “I can’t believe she was at a bar yesterday. She just got out of prison,” he added with a hint of disgust.

“That doesn’t mean she was drinking alcohol—that is, if she was there,” Paige reminded him.

“I’m still wondering if I’m being played. Maybe she just ran off on me.”

Gordon had certainly charted the gauntlet of possibilities, from a kidnapping for ransom to his wife leaving him. He seemed to have lost sight of the other likelihood, the reason the FBI was here: someone had abducted her, and she was in grave danger.

“Detective Marsh told us that Jenna received hate mail that you’d have for us,” Zach said rather abruptly. He felt for the man, but he wasn’t here to pat Gordon on the shoulder and tell him everything would be okay.

“Yes. Give me a minute.” Gordon left the room and returned with a three-inch stack of envelopes. From the looks of it, quite a few hadn’t even been opened. He extended them to Zach, who snapped on a pair of gloves before taking the mail from Gordon.

“You really think she was targeted because of her accident?” Gordon asked, dismissing the idea of Jenna leaving him again. The man was really grasping to make sense of why his wife hadn’t returned home.

“We think it’s possible,” Paige confirmed.

Gordon paled. “We had some guy come to the house once. He was banging on our door, yelling that she was a killer. He never came back and he didn’t destroy any property, so I never reported it.”

It was unlikely Zach’s next question would get them anywhere, but Gordon’s answer would be worth noting. “Do you remember what he looked like?”

Gordon quirked an eyebrow. “This was not long after the accident first happened, so no.”

“Understandable,” Zach said, though he couldn’t truly relate, seeing as he had an eidetic memory. He pulled out his business card, hesitating as he considered if he should ask Gordon what he was about to. The truth was, they could get the information themselves, but it would take longer, and if Kelter had been taken by a killer, especially the one Marsh feared, they were running out of time. “We’re going to need you to call your credit card company and find out the date and time the charge was actually made at Magical Bar & Grill.”

Gordon took Zach’s card. “Sure.”

“Please let me know what you find out. As soon as you can?” Zach added, feeling a little bad for asking Gordon to do this. The poor man had enough to deal with.

Gordon’s gaze was fastened on the card in his hand, and his eyes glazed over.

“Mr. Kelter?” Paige prompted.

He lifted his head and sniffed. “Yeah…”

“Just stay strong. We’re going to do our best to find your wife and bring her home safe. And you’ve been a big help.” Paige got to her feet.

“I’m glad you think so, because I feel like…” His chin quivered.

The man’s shock was giving way to grief. Zach and Paige offered to call friends or family for him, but Gordon told them he’d be fine. Then they saw themselves out.

“What do you think?” Paige asked as they walked to the car.

“For starters, I think their marriage was far from perfect.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt there are skeletons in the Kelters’ closets,” Paige said. “I know I tried to reassure him, but maybe she did run off.”

“Well, that’d certainly be better for her than our initial suspicion.”

Paige nodded. “And marginally better for Gordon. Horrible for Jack, though. I wouldn’t want to be the one explaining all this to Hamilton.”

The FBI director could be vicious. “That makes two of us.”

They loaded into the SUV and buckled up. Zach passed off the mail to Paige once she put on a pair of gloves, and they headed back to the station.

“If we run with a theory that Kelter had a lover on the side, we’re probably going to have to assume that relationship survived prison, too. Not impossible, but unlikely,” Paige said.

“If it was love, it would have lasted. They say that love stands the test of time,” Zach waxed poetic.

Paige stuck a finger in her mouth. “Gag me.”

Zach changed lanes, signal and all, and still got honked at for his trouble. “In all seriousness,” he began, “we have her phone records coming to us, but if she was in this other relationship, it might not hurt to check her visitor logs from the prison, too.”

“Look at you.” Paige smiled at him.

With her expression, Zach appreciated how delicate and fickle the balance of life truly was. They’d just left a man who wasn’t sure if his wife would ever come back to him alive, and they were experiencing moments of lightness. Not necessarily wrong, but not altogether fair. That was life. And in their world, the darkness met the light all the time. Thank goodness, because otherwise the darkness would consume them.