Racine Taylor is staying at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Interesting.
I called to ask if I could see her, and she told me to meet her at the hotel bar. So here I am, waiting.
She’s late.
Fifteen minutes so far, and just when I wonder if she’s going to show up at all, in walks a woman who makes every head turn.
Her hair is flaming red, and her eyes are blue. She’s dressed in tight black pants and a leopard-print blouse.
She’s Kelly’s mother, all right. Her features aren’t as fine as her daughter’s, but there’s a definite resemblance.
I rise, hold up my hand, and wave to her from the small table where I’m seated. She comes toward me, seeming to relish all the eyes on her.
I hold out my hand. “Racine Taylor?”
“Yes, I am. And you must be Leif Ramsey.”
“Guilty on that charge. Please, have a seat.” I hold out the chair for her.
“Aren’t you the gentleman,” she says.
“I try to be.” I take a sip of my drink. “Are you hungry?”
“Goodness, no. I don’t eat bar food.”
Interesting to know. “A drink then?”
“I will never pass up a drink.”
I signal to our server.
She comes quickly. “Can I get you another, sir?”
“I’m good for now, thank you, but I think the lady would like to order a drink.”
“Of course. What can I get you?”
“Champagne cocktail please,” Racine says.
“Coming right up.”
I smile at the server and then turn back to Racine. “It’s nice to meet you. As I told you on the phone, I work for the Wolfe family.”
“Yes. I assume you’re here to talk about my daughter, Kelly.”
“I am. I was wondering if you could tell me why you want to see her.”
She widens her heavily made-up eyes. “Because I’m her mother.”
I take another sip of my bourbon and then clear my throat. “Kelly doesn’t want to see you, Ms. Taylor.”
She smiles. “Please, it’s Racine.” Then her smile fades into…something unreadable. “Why wouldn’t she want to see me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know her very well. I was hoping maybe you could shed some light on that question.”
“It’s absolutely terrible what happened to my daughter.” She sniffles, though her eyes don’t glisten with any tears. “She needs her mother now. More than ever.”
“She’s had the best care,” I say. “A year at a retreat center, and now she’s living in housing provided by the Wolfe family while she continues her therapy.”
“She doesn’t need therapy. She just needs her mother.”
“I see. Why don’t you and I have a talk, and maybe I’ll be able to convince her to see you?”
“I’m not sure what there is for us to talk about. I’m her mother.” She narrows her gaze. “Do you have children, Mr. Ramsey?”
“Please call me Leif, and no, I don’t have any children.”
She eyes my left hand. “Married?”
“No.”
She smiles. “Now that is decidedly good news.”
Oh my God. Is this woman going to hit on me? Kelly is twenty-eight years old, so this woman must be at least forty-eight, maybe older. She’s not unattractive—I mean, she’s Kelly’s mother—but she has a kind of hardness about her that I can’t quite place.
“Is it?” I ask.
Maybe I can get some information out of her if I let her think she has a shot.
“I’d say it is.” She winks. “Wouldn’t you?”
I smile. “I think it could be.”
The server arrives with Racine’s champagne cocktail, and she holds up her glass.
“To a memorable evening,” she says.
“To a memorable evening it is.” I clink my glass to hers. I believe this will be a memorable evening, although not for the reason she’s hoping.
“Can you tell me a little bit about Kelly?” I ask.
“I’m sure you know way more than I do. I haven’t seen her since… Well, you know.” She chokes up. Or attempts to.
“I only met her a few days ago. The Wolfes asked me to focus solely on her security, to protect her.”
“Protect her? Isn’t that what they’re doing?”
“There’ve been some threats against her,” I say.
Racine gasps. “No! Who would threaten my child?”
“She thinks it’s one of the other women from the island, but we don’t agree.”
“Who do you think it is?”
“We don’t know. Whoever it is has used text messages from burner phones that can’t be traced.”
“If Kelly thinks it’s this woman from the island, she’s probably right. Kelly is a very good judge of character.”
“Is she?”
“Yes, definitely. She has been since she was a child. If my daughter didn’t like someone, I took it seriously.”
Interesting. Does Racine have any idea how her daughter feels about her?
But I feel like I’m getting somewhere.
“Would you like to go somewhere a little more private?” I ask.
She takes another sip of her champagne cocktail. “What are you suggesting?”
“Dinner? In your room?”
She sets her drink down harshly. “My goodness. I’m not the kind of woman who—”
I place my hand over hers. “I’m not suggesting that at all, Racine. However, it’s kind of noisy here in the bar, and I’m not sure if it will be any quieter in one of the restaurants.”
“Goodness, we couldn’t get into the restaurants anyway. Not without a reservation.”
“Room service then. My treat.”
Her shock at my outrageous suggestion dissipates. “In my room? All right.”
I take another sip of my drink. “Good. I’m looking forward to it.”
* * *
Racine’s room turns out to be a suite. What the hell does this woman do for a living? Or maybe the Wolfes are putting her up. I should’ve asked.
I glance at the room-service menu and decide on the New York strip. I hand it to Racine. “Whatever you’d like. I’ll see that you’re reimbursed.”
“Please, don’t worry a thing about it.” She scans the menu. “I’m going to start with the Beluga caviar. And then a house salad, and the rack of lamb. What are you having?”
“The New York strip, rare.”
“Excellent.” She picks up the receiver on the phone. “I’d like to order some room service please. She rattles off our selections and adds a bottle of champagne. Dom Perignon, no less.
“There, should be here in about half an hour.”
Great. Now, how do I get her to spill her guts in half an hour without having to touch her?
I will not touch her. First of all, even though she looks a lot like Kelly, I’m not even remotely attracted to her. And it’s not her age that is getting to me. It’s her attitude—flirtatious one minute, appalled the next. And then there’s Kelly. Kelly doesn’t want to see her mother, and there must be a damned good reason. This is the woman who raised Kelly, who helped form her personality. Kelly went through hell on that damned island, but what happened before?
Her words haunt me.
I haven’t been anyone’s responsibility other than my own. No one has ever taken care of me, and I don’t need anyone to take care of me now.
Time for some investigation. “So,” I say, “what do you do for a living, Racine?”
“I’m actually not working,” she says. “An unmarried aunt of mine passed away last year, and I’ve been living off of the estate she left me.”
That explains this posh hotel suite. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She nods. “Yes, it was difficult to lose her, but I’m adjusting.”
“She must’ve left you a healthy estate.”
“She did. I’m very fortunate.”
“What did she do for living?”
“She was a hedge fund manager,” Racine says. “A very successful one.”
“I’d say she was,” I say. “If you can afford Dom Perignon.”
“They say money can’t buy happiness,” Racine chuckles. “But it sure is fun trying.”
“Is that why you want to see Kelly? To help her financially?”
“Of course. And to see her. She’s my daughter. My one and only.”
“What about her father?”
“Her father’s not in the picture.”
“Oh?”
Racine says nothing, just drops her gaze to her lap.
She’s not going to talk about him, whoever he is.
“Was he ever in the picture?”
“No.” She doesn’t raise her head.
“What about Kelly? Was he ever in the picture for her?”
“No, he wasn’t.” This time she raises her head. “I don’t talk about him. Not to you, and not to anyone,” she snaps.
“All right. I’m sorry to bring up a sore spot.”
She turns her frown into a smile. “Don’t worry about it. I just get a little testy where he’s concerned. I had to raise Kelly on my own, and although I worked as an accountant, things were always tight for us.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I’m also not quite understanding. If Racine was an accountant, she wasn’t wealthy, but she certainly was making enough money for a family of two to live a pretty good life. I sense there’s a story there.
“Kelly didn’t have it easy,” Racine says. “She desperately wanted to play volleyball, but I needed her to work, to help.”
Kelly’s tattoo. A volleyball surrounded by wilted roses. “That must’ve been difficult for her.”
“It was, the poor thing. I didn’t have the money to send her to college, either, so she worked as a waitress at a local diner before…” Racine looks down, sniffling.
But something isn’t gelling with her story. The sniffle sounds forced. And I bet—
“Racine, look at me.”
She looks up. Her face is peaked, but as I suspected, not one tear glistens in the whites of her eyes.
“I know this must be difficult for you to talk about,” I say.
“Yes, it is. I miss her so much, too. That’s why I came here. To see her.”
“I’d like to facilitate that.”
“Would you?”
“Of course. I care about Kelly. I’m watching over her. Why wouldn’t she want to see you, Racine?”
She shakes her head, sniffling again. “I wish I knew. I wish I knew so many things.”
I nod. So do I.
My phone buzzes. It’s Buck. “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to take this. Do you mind if I step out into the hallway?”
“Not at all.”
I rise, leave the suite. Just to be safe, I walk toward the elevators. “Hey,” I say into the phone.
“I got a report in. On Racine Taylor.”
“Give it to me. I’m with her now, in her hotel room.”
“What the hell are you doing in her hotel room?”
“She wasn’t talking. And she’s, you know…into me, so I thought—”
“Do not do that.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not touching her with a ten-foot pole. I’m just going to let her think that I might.”
“Whatever, dude. Apparently Racine Taylor came into some money about five years ago.”
“Five years ago? She told me it was a year ago. She said her aunt died.”
“Did she give you a name?”
“Not yet.”
“See if you can get a name out of her, but I’m betting that’s not where this money came from. There’s a deposit of half a million dollars into her bank account on November fifth five years ago, and then, almost like clockwork, another half mil every three months after that for a year.”
“Man.”
“Not only that, but somehow she got into some investment portfolio with some hot stocks and made a killing. She’s worth about thirty million, Leif.”
“That explains the Waldorf and the Dom Perignon.”
“Damn.”
“I know, right?” I shudder as the thought of Racine selling out her only daughter consumes me. “Do you think there’s truth to my theory? That she’s the one who sold Kelly out?”
“The timing is a little off. Kelly was taken in May of that year. The first payment didn’t come until about six months later.”
“Right.” I scratch my head. “With Aspen and with Katelyn, payment was immediate, and it was also a lot less than two million dollars. Something’s not adding up.”
“So I guess we scratch that theory out.”
“Yeah.” Though the thought still pesters me like a swarm of gnats.
“See what you can find out about her.”
“Hey, did she ever work as an accountant?”
“No. In fact, she and Kelly were on food stamps when Kelly was a kid. Looks like she kicked Kelly out of the house when she turned eighteen, before she even graduated from high school. A friend took her in.”
My heart hurts. “Are you serious?”
“Totally serious. Kelly’s personality is becoming more understandable with everything I find out about this woman.”
“I’ll say. And we don’t even know how Racine treated her.”
“I know. So far nothing on that. There will never be anything on that unless social services got involved. If Racine didn’t leave any marks on Kelly, and Kelly didn’t report her mother, there won’t be any record.”
“There are other kinds of abuse besides physical,” I say. “You and I know that better than anyone.”
“For sure. It’s a mystery. See what you can find out. I get the feeling that this woman, Racine, is not at all what she appears to be.”
“What she appears to be is a spendthrift who wants to get into my pants,” I say. “I will get something out of her. I’ll be in touch.”
“You be careful,” Buck says.
“I always am. The Phoenix rises from the ashes, so no need to worry about me.”
I end the call, walk back to Racine’s suite, and knock.