"Thanks, Drew," I said before hurrying out.
"Hey, wait on a second," he said, hurrying after us. He pressed his hand against the wall as I tried to open the door. Shoot, we needed a passcode in order to get out. I stared at him.
"Drew, I need to go," I said. "I need to find Callum. He must be seeing another woman. Clearly, he's been with her for the past two days!" I tried to make the tears come again, but they wouldn't. And Drew no longer looked convinced. "Please," I said, pressing against the door in vain. Was he going to call the cops? I couldn't deal with another run-in with the Belldale Police Force.
Just let us get out of here.
"Ah!" Pippa screamed, clutching her bulging belly.
"Pippa, what is it?" I screamed. She was wincing in pain and breathing heavily.
"I...I think it's the baby!" she cried.
My heart started beating faster and I was about to panic. Then she shot me a little wink. Right. I knew what game she was playing now. "I need to get out of here!" she yelled. "I need to get to a hospital!"
Drew looked alarmed. He quickly punched the code into the door and let us out.
"Thanks, Drew!" I called over my shoulder as I sprinted to my car. He just shook his head at me and closed the door before returning to his post.
Back in the car, Pippa's hysterics dried up as quickly as my tears had. But my heart was still beating pretty fast. "Come on," Pippa said, locking her seatbelt into position. "There's twenty kids waiting for us."
I told the entire story to Harrison, well, as much as I needed to anyway. He didn't need to know all the finer details, or the specific measures we'd used.
"See?" Harrison's voice was dark and heavy. "Callum has Angel."
There was evidence against Callum Jones, sure. But being AWOL for two days wasn't solid enough. There were countless reasons he might have been away from his apartment. Women, for one, by the sounds of it.
"Let's not jump to any conclusions," I said calmly. "Where would Callum be holding Angel, for one thing? He's not in his apartment. We know that for a fact."
Harrison was quiet for a moment. "I don't know," he finally had to admit. "But I just know that he has her."
What he had was a hunch, not knowledge, but I didn't want to say that. He was clouded by emotion. "Harrison, when was the last time that anyone heard from or saw Angel? I know it was two days ago—well, almost three now—but what time was it in on Tuesday? The last time she had any contact with anyone."
Harrison was very quiet. I took it that he was thinking and waited for his answer.
Simona barreled out the back door again.
"Rachael!"
I put a finger up to my lips to shush her. "Just one moment," I mouthed. She looked like she was bursting to say something, but this conversation was urgent. And I could hardly explain that to Simona. I felt a little annoyed with her actually. All she was doing was trying to wrangle a bunch of hyperactive kids. I was dealing with a matter of life and death.
I put the phone back to my ear. Harrison had finally gotten clear with his answer. "The last record of her talking to anyone was with her best friend, Anna. They'd been texting. The last text Anna received from her was at 4:05, Tuesday evening."
"Rachael!" Simona cried. "I really, really need you! You have to come back inside."
"I'll just be a second!" I snapped back. "This is important!”
"RACHAEL! One of the kids is sick. Really sick."
Chapter 5
I was frozen. The lobby stood before me glowing with red and white, and full of flashing lights and worried parents. Wounds and coughs and illnesses and...germs.
Where was Pippa when I needed her? Oh, right, she was off sick as well.
I know everyone hates hospitals—well, unless they are totally crazy—but I was refusing to even step foot inside the lobby. I was rooted in position like a tree that had been standing there for a thousand years.
"It wasn't your fault," Simona said. "Well, wasn't our fault. It had nothing to do with the food, Rachael. He was just diabetic and had lied to his mom about taking his medicine."
I nodded slowly. The last thing I needed was another scandal or death at the bakery. But that wasn't what I was worried about. Not the blame, anyway. I was worried about this poor kid that had gotten sick while I should have been in charge.
"I should have been inside," I murmured.
"You were...busy," Simona said. I think she was trying to be sympathetic, but was finding it difficult. And without a good way to explain to her what I'd been doing, it wasn’t hard to understand why.
"I don't think I can go inside," I said. Not to the emergency room. My phone was buzzing in my hands. Four missed calls from Harrison. Three from Pippa.
"Simona," I said, staring at her. "I know this is a lot to ask, but can you handle this for me?" I looked straight into her eyes. "Stay with the mom and make sure the kid is all right, and call me the second you know anything." She looked a little unsure and I didn't have a good way of convincing her that I really, really needed to go and it wasn't just due to my germ phobia.
There were other kid's lives in trouble. Pippa's baby.
Angel Styles.
Simona nodded reluctantly. "Sure," she said with a heavy sigh. "I'll let you know the second there's any news."
"Thank you," I said, dashing off, but making a mental note to give Simona the promotion to assistant manager as soon as Pippa was officially off work for maternity leave. I watched her walk back into the emergency room as I sat in my car and retuned Pippa's phone call.
"Is everything all right? Pippa, is it the baby?" I was a little worried that our play-acting with Drew earlier in the day had forced some bad karma to spring back on us.
"Yes, it’s fine," she said, laughing. "I told you it was just a dizzy spell. I'm just calling to check that everything is going all right with the party in my absence. You got everything under control?"
I closed my eyes and hung my head while the emergency room glowed in front of me. "Everything is good," I said, trying to sound cheery. "Please don't worry. I'll be home soon."
There was another call coming in. Harrison. I couldn't deal with any more of his theories right then. I got it, he thought that Callum Jones did it. I needed a second to get my own thoughts straight on the matter.
Still, I answered the phone. "What's going on Harrison?"
He was quiet for a moment, so I filled the space. "Don't worry, we're going to try and figure out where Callum Jones is, but I still think..."
"No," he said, interrupting me. "There's something else I think you ought to see, Rachael. How soon can you get here?"
I'd stopped and picked up Pippa on my way, and we were headed to uptown Belldale to the gated community where Harrison Styles lived. Pippa shook her head as she looked at the large three and four-story mansions. "All this money and he can't afford to pay the ransom to get his daughter back?" Pippa muttered.
"Maybe he's in debt," I commented. I didn't think it was our place to judge Harrison's ability to get the ransom money. I was sure that if he could get it, he would. He wouldn't leave his daughter in danger if there was something he could tangibly do, would he?
I'd been in the neighborhood before, but that was to visit his late ex-wife's house. Olive Styles. She'd lived right at the top of the hill in the biggest house of all. By comparison, at only two stories tall, Harrison's was perfectly modest. I thought it was a little strange for him to have lived so close to his ex-wife, though. But I suppose the fancy neighborhoods in Belldale were limited. This was the only one in fact.
We had to buzz in through the gates, but Harrison let us in right away. I felt self-conscious about my banged up car next to Harrison's BMW in the driveway.
"Maybe he could sell that," Pippa whispered as we headed to the door. It was getting dark now.
"BMWs don't cost three million dollars," I replied.
Harrison ushered us into his house.
"I need to show you something."
&n
bsp; His foyer and the staircase were brightly illuminated by chandeliers and flood lights. Quite a contrast to our own dingy house on the far side of town. It was almost blinding.
He led us to a small study with plush carpeting.
"I had to force Angel to move her computer in here after some trouble," he explained, pointing towards a large desktop Mac. "After her mom died, she was acting out a lot, and talking to a bunch of guys, getting involved with them online. And I didn't like her holing up in her room chatting with them, so I made her move the computer downstairs where I could keep an eye on her."
Pippa and I exchanged a little look and I had to fight back the urge to laugh. Didn't he know that teenagers had smartphones these days? They had little computers in their pockets all day long, so there was little chance of him being able to monitor every little thing she did online. Besides, wasn't Angel eighteen? Seemed like some pretty strict parenting for an eighteen-year-old.
I just looked at Harrison. "So this is the only computer she uses?" I asked, unconvinced.
His face was stony. "I thought so. I'd taken her cell phone—her fancy one, I mean—and given her one that was supposed to just be for texting. But she'd gotten hold of a new phone behind my back."
I looked at Pippa. None of this was surprising. She was an eighteen-year-old girl who wanted her freedom. I knew that Angel had lived with her mother before she'd died, and probably had ever since her parents’ divorce. Harrison was probably just at a loss for what to do with a grown woman for a child when she'd come back to live with him. He was still treating her like a five-year-old girl.
But it wasn't really my place to judge. "What did you want to show us, Harrison?"
He nodded towards the computer. "I've been going through her history..." Pippa and I exchanged looks again. I suppose it was understandable. She was missing. It wasn't exactly the time to respect her privacy.
He walked over to the computer and switched on the screen. "She's been chatting to some guy online," he said with disdain. It looked like moving her computer downstairs hadn't had much of an impact on that aspect of Angel's life then.
"Well, she is a teenage girl," I pointed out. "Almost nineteen, right?"
Harrison shot me a look. "I should still know what she's doing. And what guys she's talking to or seeing."
I nodded a little, being diffident to him. He was the client and the parent, after all.
He pulled up some kind of very long instant message exchange between Angel and some guy with the handle of AriesBoy. He scrolled back up and I saw dates that stretched weeks into the past.
"This is her boyfriend," Harrison said, letting out a heavy sigh.
"Is it?" I asked, leaning forward. I felt like I'd spent the entire day leaning forward to look at computer screens.
Harrison gritted his teeth. "Yes," he said. "You should read some of these messages."
I grimaced.
"So, what, then?" I asked. "Do you know who this guy is? Her boyfriend?"
Harrison stared at me. "I have a pretty good idea," he said.
"Who?" I asked.
"Callum Jones."
My mouth dropped open. "Do you have any proof of that?"
Harrison shrugged. "No proof. But it all makes sense."
I was standing with my hands on my hips by this stage. I was keen to hear this. "How does it all make sense?"
Harrison clearly did not like people disagreeing with him, or questioning him. He stated it as if it was fact, "Because I know. I'm her father. I know when my daughter is seeing someone."
I blinked a few times. Being her father wasn't exactly relevant here. I could see I was losing him. He was getting irritated with me and was shutting down. "I know," I said gently. "But how do you know the guy she is chatting with is Callum? Isn't he like, fourteen years older than her?"
Harrison's face was stony. "Yes. But that didn't stop him from flirting with her whenever he came over here to do work. Or to attend a party at the house."
Okay, now we were getting somewhere. Pippa and I were still exchanging secretive looks. So, Harrison Styles thought this Callum Jones was involved with his daughter.
Had he really only just confirmed his suspicions after looking through his daughter's chat history, though?
Or did he have a sneaking suspicion long before that? Say, before he even fired Callum Jones? Was that the reason he had fired Callum? Something wasn't adding up here.
"Can you print off these chat transcripts for me?" I asked Harrison.
"Sure. That's why I called you here."
You could have emailed, I thought. But he didn't seem to know that much about technology. Maybe he didn't know how to load the entire conversation into a file and email it. He seemed to be having a little trouble with the printer, even. Pippa stepped over to help him. Within a few minutes, the pages finally began to spew out.
Whether it had been entirely necessary or not, I was glad that Harrison had invited us because it gave me a chance to see his place up close.
"Can I use the bathroom?" I asked while the pages printed out. That would give me a chance to go snooping.
Harrison looked a little unsure. It was like he could read my mind. "There's one just two doors down," he said pointedly.
I smiled. "Right. No problem."
I found the bathroom easily. It was even more blinding than the rest of the house with its white marble, but I quickly skidded past it and headed to the bottom of the staircase. With a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being followed, I climbed the stairs and began a search for Angel's bedroom. It wasn't that Harrison wouldn't have given us access to it if we'd asked—in fact, he'd probably have been happy to—but I wanted to get a good look at it without his prying eyes over my shoulder, and without him trying to control the narrative.
Her bedroom was fairly modest, smaller than the room she'd had at her mother's house. At least, I thought it was. I'd only seen her other bedroom one time, and I'd also been snooping that time as well. Still, I would have expected a bigger bedroom for an eighteen-year-old. This one didn't even have a bathroom attached. A bit strange for the Belldale Upper Class.
Maybe she just wanted to escape from this place.
I walked around the room. It had a sort of minimalist aesthetic. It wasn't piled high with books or junk, and there were no clothes strewn around the room. Just a bed—very comfortable, I sat down on it for a moment—dresser and set of drawers, with a bookcase near the wall that was only about half full.
Maybe she never actually unpacked her stuff after the move.
It didn't have a very 'lived in' feel, and there weren't many personal touches. I spotted a picture frame on the bookshelf and wandered over to pick it up. It was a photo of Angel with her arm around a very blonde-haired Anna with the beach glimmering behind them. They were both grinning, young girls without a care in the world. Happier days.
There were no photos of any boyfriends.
I pulled a drawer open absentmindedly and saw a journal laying there. Without thinking, I opened it to a random page.
My dad is such a nightmare.
"Rachael, what are you doing?"
I spun around and saw Harrison standing in the doorway with a face like thunder.
"I...um... I got a little..."
He rolled his eyes and stepped into the room. "What are you doing in here, Rachael? There's no way you got lost."
I held his gaze. "I did."
"I think it's time for you to leave."
I grabbed the journal and shoved it inside my jacket. He never saw me.
"What's going on?" Pippa whispered to me as we were ushered unceremoniously out the door. She was carrying a thick pile of printed paper while I was trying not to drop the journal squirreled away inside my jacket.
I waited until we were back in the car to answer her question. Harrison watched us from the living room window, the curtain pulled back enough to reveal his scowl.
"He caught me."
"Doing what?"<
br />
"I'm not sure what he thought he was catching me doing actually," I said quietly. "Don't you think it's a little strange, Pippa, that a man who wants us so desperately to find his daughter doesn't want us looking through her room?"
"Oh. So that's what you were doing. Snooping through her room." Pippa shook her head a little. "You could have just asked, you know."
"I'm not so sure I could have," I murmured. I let the statement hang in the air for a minute. "Do you think any of this is adding up, Pippa?" I still hadn't started the ignition. I was kind of enjoying sitting there in Harrison's driveway while he glared at me though the window.
"What do you mean?" Pippa asked. "Shouldn't we get going? It looks like you've annoyed him."
I interrupted her. "Think about it, Pippa. Why would Callum kidnap Angel if she is his girlfriend?"
Pippa shrugged. "To keep her all to himself? Because he is thirty-two and she is eighteen, and it's wrong? Because he's a creep?"
"Yeah, it's pretty wrong," I agreed. "But that doesn't mean he'd kidnap her. Far from it. The much more reasonable explanation is that Angel and Callum have run off together."
I stared back at Harrison, through the window, who still hadn't taken his eyes off us.
"What are you saying?" Pippa asked quietly.
I let out a soft sigh. "I'm saying, Pippa, that I think we might have been taken on a wild goose chase. I think that Harrison fired Callum because he was seeing his daughter, and I think that Callum and Angel have run off together, and Harrison just wants us to find her. I think she's just run away from home." I felt the journal stabbing into my lungs. "The whole kidnapping thing is completely bogus."
Pippa let out a slow "ohhh" and slumped. "So he's just wasting our time?"
"Well, he's not being honest with us. But I doubt that Angel's life is in any immediate danger."
"And those text messages he got, from the supposed kidnapper?" Pippa asked.
"Private number, remember," I commented. "And no distinguishing linguistic features."
Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 7 - 9 Page 3
