Chapter 15

 

I sat in my Jeep outside the Brackman home a few minutes, deciding what to do next. The other email, the one from Ginny Fields, might be worth a follow-up. Her address was way across the city, so I called the number I’d gotten from Victoria’s guest list. The call went to voice mail so I left a brief message and clicked off, fairly certain I’d never hear back from her—my same old worry about the reception any of Ron’s family would receive from friends of Vic’s who’d had an earful of the news. Halfway back to the office, my phone buzzed.

Not a fan of cell phones and driving, a quick glance showed Ginny Fields’s number and I hit the button to accept the call anyway. I tapped the speaker button and set the phone on the console beside me.

“Ginny Fields here. I received a call from you.”

“Yes, Ginny. Thanks so much for getting right back to me.” I gave the quick introduction, approximately the same thing I’d said to Emily earlier. “I’m on the road right now, maybe twenty minutes from your address. I wonder if we might meet for a few minutes? I’m trying to track down any type of useful information about Victoria.”

A long pause.

“I don’t know what I can tell you, Charlie. She decorated my house and worked for some of my neighbors.”

“But you became friends. You were invited to her wedding. You wrote to let her know about your husband’s surgery.”

“Well, all that’s true. How did you know about my email and the surgery?”

“My brother and I are Victoria’s family. We’re scared to death and we’re trying to find answers. Can you spare me even a little time? I can meet you somewhere—just name it.”

A sigh she didn’t bother to conceal came across the airwaves. “Well, okay. I’m just finishing some shopping at ABQ Uptown. Meet me at the Starbucks there.”

Good—a lot closer for me. “I’ll see you there in ten minutes.”

Although I would have preferred a more private setting and a friendlier invitation, I was at the point where I would take what I could get. I spent an extra couple of minutes finding the coffee place and a parking slot. I hoped Ginny wouldn’t be a stickler and leave before I got there. Lunch hour had slid right past me and my energy for dramatics was severely lagging.

I recognized her by the pile of shopping bags surrounding her chair. Plus, she looked like the Tanoan type, with chic casual clothing and a pricey manicure. She’d chosen a table in the corner farthest from the two other patrons of the shop. I grabbed a high-octane something-or-other, although it was probably the last thing I needed. To convince myself I was making a healthy choice I added a thick slice of banana nut bread to my order since it was the only thing in the whole place resembling fruit.

“Ginny? Thanks so much for meeting me,” I said while the barista whipped my coffee to pure frothiness. She sent a tight smile my way and went back to something on the screen of her phone.

I took my seat across from her and offered to split the banana bread. She gave one shake of the head. Silly me. She was obviously one of those women who’s always on a diet, despite her size six figure.

“So, as I mentioned on the phone, Ron and I are partners in a private investigation firm and we’re trying to work along with the police and hotline folks to get any leads on what may have happened to Victoria and where she is now.”

“I have to say I was shocked to hear it. I’d RSVP’d with regrets on the wedding invitation. My husband is still recovering from surgery and we’re having to curtail our social engagements for a few weeks.”

“I hope he’s mending well?”

“Oh, yes. He’s feeling much better, thank you.”

“So the first you heard of the wedding being cancelled was on TV. That must have been startling.”

“And, of course, the things they’re saying about the groom. I’d never met him, but of course Victoria was obviously very taken with him.”

Taken with him? Okay, I guess that’s one way to say head-over-heels in love. I sent Ginny a prim little smile of my own.

“My brother is devastated, of course. To have something happen to his bride just hours before the ceremony …”

“So, what can I do for you? I’m afraid my recent contacts with Victoria consisted of a lunch about three weeks ago and my one email, simply because she’d asked about my husband.”

“I’d gotten the impression you and she became friends after she decorated your home. I was hoping maybe she’d said something in recent days, maybe told you if anything was worrying her.”

“Well, I’ve referred several influential friends to Victoria as clients. They all seemed happy with her work, except Ida Van Horn, who is something of a pill anyway. She threw a bit of a fit over a delay with the fabric for her sofa. I supposed Victoria was concerned about that, since she would be going away on her honeymoon, which would delay the job even further.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of threats, danger … something life-and-death.” I was beginning to tire of this self-indulgent line, where a late fabric delivery was as important as a missing person.

“Afraid not. As I said, Victoria and I were more on an occasional-lunch level than real confidants.” She took the last sip of her coffee and began to shuffle in her seat, clearly as impatient to be out of my company as I was hers.

I managed to stick one of my business cards into the top of her designer handbag as she stood up. “If you think of anything—anything at all she might have said that could help us find her—please give me a call.”

At last Ginny seemed to take me seriously. She sent me a genuine smile and patted my shoulder as she scooted by. “I do hope you get the answers, and I really want it to turn out that Victoria comes home safely.”

She walked out and I saw her slip into a Mercedes parked at the curb. I doubted she would give our conversation a second thought. What a difference between this ‘friendship’ of Vic’s and the relationship with Emily Brackman. The woman with triplets had given me more time and information than this society lady. Ah well, that was simply the state of the situation. I sat there a while longer, savoring my snack and coffee—both of which were very good—and making a few notes.

The only thing I’d gotten from Ginny Fields was the name of Ida Van Horn, and since this was a current client of Victoria’s it seemed well worth the effort to contact her. I called the office and asked Ron to look at the wedding list I’d left on my desk to see if the Van Horns were invited guests. They weren’t.

“Hold on a minute,” he said.

I didn’t remember that our phone system played classical music while a person waited. We must have chosen it for its soothing qualities. At least it worked that way on me.

“Would the listing be a Ralph Van Horn on Tanoan Drive?”

“It’s gotta be.” I wrote down the address he gave me. I miss the old days of carrying a phone directory in my car, since I’m still not great at finding everything in the world on my cell phone.

Rather than risk a rebuff over the phone from the woman known to be a “pill” I decided to head that direction and take my chances at her front door. I negotiated my way out of the shopping center’s parking maze and stuck to major streets, heading east on Academy to Tanoan’s residential entrance. A man stepped out of the guard house, asking my name and my reason for being there. I was afraid he would phone the Van Horns to be sure I had an appointment, but he just wrote something on his clipboard and let me through.

I followed the winding road where dozens of manor houses sit snugly near their fellow McMansions. Seems any of them would be more comfortable with a little acreage on which to breathe rather than standard city lots. But that’s just my take on it. The address numbers led me around two curves before I came to the Van Horn place, a Spanish colonial reminiscent of those I’d seen in old Hollywood movies where stars of the ’30s lived. I wouldn’t say it exactly fit with its modern, boxy neighbors but it had a lot more character.

The beveled-glass door was answered by a woman in her late seventies who stood a smidge over five feet, even with her elegant peach-hued French roll and modestly high heels. Even at home, here she was in her Chanel suit and double strand of pearls.

“Oh my, yes, we know Victoria,” she said when I gave the quick reason for my visit. “Ralph and I adore her. Do come inside.” And here I’d been worried about getting an earful about sofa fabric.

Ida didn’t seem like much of a stinker to me. Another way in which Ms. Fields and my perceptions differed.

“We’re just having a little happy hour,” she said, picking up her highball glass from the console table near the front door and leading me through nicely proportioned rooms with Saltillo tile and thick area rugs.

“Ralph, we have a guest. Make her a drink.” Maybe the prickly personality had drowned in that glass.

She turned to me as we entered a solarium with a bar across one end of the room. “What would you like, dear?”

With my recent consumption of both tea and coffee I already felt as if my teeth would float, but I agreed to a small glass of sherry. Ida’s own glass contained a martini and Ralph topped it off for her with a heavy dose from a shaker.

I begged use of the powder room before I picked up my glass, returned five minutes later and took a seat in the chair they offered, a blocky thing that was far too deep and soft.

“As I mentioned, I’m Victoria Morgan’s sister-in-law—well, I would have been as of Saturday.”

“Oh, dear, I imagine your family is worried sick.”

“Yes, we are. My brother and I are trying to find out if there’s anything we don’t already know about how Victoria spent the past few days, anything that might have been worrying her, something she might not have wanted to trouble us with. Really, almost anything could be a clue for us.”

She gave me a slightly blank look. I’d better phrase this more directly.

“When was the last time you saw Victoria?”

“Oh, well, I guess that would have been last Wednesday or Thursday. She was supposed to have some fabric for me but it didn’t come in. I guess she wanted to give me the news in person because she stopped by. It was right after my tennis lesson, so that would have been Wednesday morning.”

“Did she talk about anything other than your decorating job? Maybe mention a phone call or anything?”

Ida shook her head. “She talked a little about the wedding. I had already told her Ralph had other plans that day.” She took a hefty slug of the new martini. “Now that I think about it, she did receive a phone call while she was here. Normally, she’ll ignore the phone when she’s with me. She’s the most polite young woman.”

From behind his whiskey glass, Ralph nodded.

“Did she do that—ignore the call?” I asked.

“Well, I had gone off to the kitchen. She was in the salon, measuring for the new drapes, so I guess she knew I didn’t need her right that minute. I heard the phone, then I heard her speaking. It didn’t last long. Less than a minute.”

“Did you hear what was said?”

She gave me a long look. “I don’t eavesdrop.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. I thought maybe you walked into the room or something and might remember.”

“Well, I was passing by the door. I heard her ask ‘Who did you say this is?’ and then she got kind of short with him. Said ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ and hung up. When I went in there she was rummaging through her purse and came up with a pen. She jotted down a name.”

I wondered if whatever she’d written the name on was still in the purse. Not that it would do me a lot of good since the police had it now.

“I asked her if everything was all right,” Ida said. “She seemed very distracted after that.”

“You said she got short with him on the phone. Are you sure it was a man?”

“Oh yes, she told me that. She said ‘That was odd, some older man. I’m sure I’ve never heard of him before.’ Then she put the pen and paper away and went back to the measurements.”

“And she was distracted?”

“Definitely. She had to measure three times and then she went off and left her tape measure here. I still have it, if you want to take it back.”

If only the forgotten item had been the phone itself. It could have given us a world of information.

 

* * *

 

I got back to the office to find Ron dozing at his desk. Sally would have left at one o’clock. Freckles danced in my path as I made my way through the rooms. She was more than ready to have her dinner.

“We should go home,” I told him. “Maybe stop at Pedro’s on the way.”

He admitted he’d spent most of the afternoon staring at Victoria’s computer screen without gleaning any solid information. This is not like my brother.

“I don’t want to face those microphones again,” he said. His face and posture seemed ragged.

“Maybe they’re gone by now.”

But when we switched on the office TV it was still the top story in Albuquerque and had now made the national networks as well. I could only imagine the new influx of vans, satellite dishes and cameras. It made me want to avoid home, too, but we had to go there sometime. Sleeping at the office held no appeal.

“Come on. We’ll get out of our cars and walk right past them.”

Ron made the stop at Pedro’s after I phoned our take-out order. I’d created a stir with the reporters but I’m pretty quick and dashed right past them and into the house. The curtains remained closed but I peeked around the edge and was ready with my hand on the knob when Ron made his own run for the front door.

We ate Pedro’s fabulous green chile chicken enchiladas but had to settle for homemade margaritas, since Pedro can’t do those up to go. While we ate, I filled Ron in on my afternoon—the visits with Victoria’s friends and customers, the phone call from the mysterious man who’d obviously worried her.

“Are you sure she never said anything about that call to you?” I asked.

He thought about it but shook his head. “Nothing. Do you suppose there was something going on that I never picked up on?”

“Doesn’t make any sense. This was an older guy, for one thing, and the call was very short, according to Ida Van Horn. Plus, it is absolutely not like Vic to sneak around. She would have been up front and told you.”

“So, why didn’t she? If she was upset about something, that’s what she’s supposed to talk to me about, to share with me.”

He had a point. Spouses should share. I couldn’t imagine keeping anything of true importance from Drake. I cleared the Styrofoam containers, washed the silverware and glasses, spoke briefly with my hubby who sounded tired but happy to have had a productive day. I wished I could say the same. I went to bed with repetitive thoughts rattling around in my head.

What could someone have said during such a short call to upset Victoria so much?