Chapter 21

 

I turned on the TV, as I did every morning these days, while I scrambled eggs for Ron and myself and listened to the sizzle of bacon in the microwave. Freckles had made her rounds of the back yard and now sat with her floppy ears perked in my direction. Starting my day with the depressing news of the world was normally the last thing I wanted to do but now that our family seemed to be right in the midst of it, I had to know what was being said.

Kent Taylor had been amazingly open with us but there were a lot of things about the investigation we weren’t being told. Such as the stunning announcement I caught as Ron walked into the room.

“Police are now openly saying they are searching for the body of Victoria Morgan, the Albuquerque woman who went missing sometime between this past Friday night and noon on Saturday, what would have been her wedding day.”

Ron reached for the remote but I waylaid his hand. I knew the announcer’s gloomy tone was irking him as much as it was me, but we really needed to know what was happening.

“Search and rescue teams are combing the usual sites—the west mesa, nearby arroyos, and the foothills of the Sandias.” Aerial shots caught bright-yellow jacketed people fanning out from some sort of command center. By ‘usual sites’ we knew the woman meant the places where murder victims are often found.

A second anchor person came on—a man with orangey makeup and perfectly sprayed hair. They went through a lot of back-and-forth speculation about how the search for a body must mean the police had given up all hope of finding Victoria alive. I nearly shut the stupid thing off myself at that point.

“Search and rescue incident commander Bob Perkins asks that anyone spending time in the outdoors please report anything unusual they might find. Mountain bikers, motorcyclists, hikers … we’re showing the hotline number at the bottom of the screen or you can always call 911.”

When I looked away, the eggs had scorched but nothing seemed appetizing at the moment anyway.

“All it means,” I told Ron, “is that we need to work harder than ever to figure out what really happened.”

He seemed shell-shocked. “What really happened is that someone got into her house and abducted her. If she was on her own she would have figured out a way to contact us.”

He had a point—a very depressing point—but I couldn’t let it get the best of him. I gave the eggs to the dog and she gobbled them down while I pushed Ron to get his coat and go with me to the office. Although a couple of the reporters had figured out the connection with our business and where we went all day, most of them were still concentrated here near the house. I supposed they figured they could catch us at more vulnerable times that way. Who knew?

Sally had already made coffee and turned the thermostats up when we arrived, bless her. She’d also made some breakfast burritos that merely needed to be heated in the microwave and smothered in chile sauce—a much better choice than my own meager breakfast attempt earlier. I sat Ron at the table and actually placed a fork in his hand.

“You’d better eat,” I lectured. “You’ve already lost all the weight you need to.”

The feeble joke landed flat.

“Oh, some lady called right after I got here,” Sally said. “She said you called her yesterday. I’ll go get the message slip from my desk.”

I sat down beside Ron and tried to talk strategy as we ate. My own plan was to go back to the old address book, hoping like crazy that someone, somewhere would be able to give me useful information. What that might be, I had no idea and must admit to feeling like I was spinning my wheels at times.

Sally came back with a written note. The caller was Carol Ann Henderson, which only vaguely rang a bell—I’d made so many calls recently.

“I’m calling Kent Taylor,” Ron said. “Can’t stand getting news from the media and I’m not waiting around for Ben Ortiz to go through legal channels to learn things on our behalf.”

I understood his frustration. I just prayed he wasn’t doing or saying anything that would crucify him later.

As it turned out, Ron didn’t need to call Taylor. The detective was standing in front of Sally’s desk when I walked through the reception area on the way to my office.

“Is Ron here?” he asked. “We’ve got some news that looks positive.”

I didn’t bother with niceties, just shouted for my brother from where I stood. He came out of the kitchen at a pretty good clip.

“Where can we talk?” Taylor asked.

I’ll say pretty much anything in the world in front of Sally, but there wasn’t time to waste telling him. The three of us walked up the stairs and ended up in my office, since it’s less cluttered with Ron’s perpetual piles of junk. I took my desk chair, Ron sat on the cushioned bay-window seat, Taylor remained standing.

“We got a hit from Victoria’s bank,” he said. “Someone logged into her accounts. Checked the credit card balance page and looked at her checking and savings. No money was moved. This was someone simply scoping out the status. It could mean Victoria is alive and well somewhere, checking on her own money to be sure it’s okay.”

Ron and I exchanged a glance.

“When did this happen?” I asked. After all, there was a chance it happened after our little snoop session.

“Monday morning. There’s been activity on her internet account since then.”

I looked at Ron. He looked at me. We were so busted.

He’d had a rough week, so I took the rap for it, admitting I had used my key and gone into Victoria’s house.

“Where was the computer? Our team didn’t find one.” Taylor asked. I almost detected a hint of admiration for my detecting skills.

I told him about the floor safe. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” I swore in my best preschooler’s voice. “We only wanted to help.”

“And what else was in there?” He almost—not quite—looked amused.

I was on the brink of enough trouble already so I told him everything—about the passwords, the money and credit card, the old address book.

He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers. “Give. Now.”

Ron scooted over to his office to retrieve the laptop and notebook with the passwords. I got a lecture on entering a crime scene and contaminating evidence, a talk that ended with, “You are this close to being arrested for obstruction of justice, concealing evidence … not to mention breaking and entering.”

“I didn’t break—I only entered, using a key given to me by the homeowner. Besides, your team had been there already. I didn’t know they were coming back right away, that they weren’t finished yet.”

“Don’t get into semantics with me. You entered a crime sce—wait a minute. Our techs were finished. They didn’t go back later. What did you mean?”

“Just as I was leaving—a car pulled up to the house and stopped. I didn’t wait around, but I assumed your guys came back.”

His face became thoughtful, his forehead wrinkles more pronounced.

Ron came back with the computer and other items, while I reached into my desk drawer where I’d been stashing the address book whenever I wasn’t using it. See? I really was being careful.

As I picked up the book something fell out, a small envelope. It must have been stuck between the final pages—I’d been through most of the book already. Kent Taylor hadn’t seen it and for one split second I debated sliding the drawer closed without letting him know, but then I remembered the lecture.

I handed him the book as I picked up the envelope with my other hand. It was once white, a little yellowed now, the size to contain a notecard. There was nothing written on the outside but a fifteen-cent stamp had been glued to the upper corner. Not waiting for permission I opened the unglued flap and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

“What’s that?” Taylor asked, noticing my movements for the first time.

I held it out of his reach and scanned the delicate sheet of feminine writing. It wasn’t Victoria’s, that much I knew.

“It says, ‘Albert, I wanted to let you know that you have a daughter, born last week. I’m sorry you wanted nothing to do with us, that you’ll never know her.’ It’s signed with only the letter J,” I said.

Taylor held out his hand and took the letter, scanning it for himself, as if I might have made up the contents. “Who’s J?” he asked.

I drew a complete blank, but I was getting used to that when it came to this address book.

“I think Victoria’s mother’s name was Jane,” Ron said. “She so rarely talks about her mom. She died when Vic was near the end of high school. Breast cancer, I think. I know it really hurt Vic that her mother was too sick to attend her graduation.”

“Do you suppose this was a letter to Victoria’s father?” I said it more to Ron than the detective. “Maybe she learned he had died before she could mail it.”

For Taylor’s benefit we went into the quick explanation of how we’d figured out that Jane must have made up the story about the father dying in Vietnam.

“It doesn’t mean he didn’t die, though. Just not in the war.”

Kent studied the letter a moment longer. “I don’t see how this has anything to do with our case. You want to keep it with family memorabilia or something?”

I took the thin page, refolded it and put it back into the envelope, dropping it on my desk. I wasn’t sure what family memorabilia we were collecting here, especially if it turned out there would be no marriage. The thought of Victoria permanently out of our lives—never to help raise Ron’s kids, never to light up Ron’s face the way she did, never to take me shopping for another fabulous outfit. My eyelids prickled. I blinked hard and turned away for a second.

When I turned back, Taylor had tucked the laptop under his arm, promising Ron that a complete forensic investigation would be performed on it and if he found that anything—anything at all—had been erased or compromised, the two of us would most assuredly be doing jail time.