by Kay Hooper
“This isn’t the hallway I saw in that memory,” she told Kane. “At least, not this floor.”
“My guess is that they all look virtually alike, but we can check a couple on the way down.”
As Kane had predicted, the other floors they checked were all but identical, and by the time they reached the lobby, Faith was certain it was not this building she and Dinah had been in when she had found … whatever it was she had found.
A morning filled with questions, and precious few answers.
Faith said, “I think we should talk to Dinah’s other lawyer, Mr. Sloan. Especially since you didn’t know about him before.”
“I definitely want him to explain why he didn’t come forward when Dinah disappeared,” Kane agreed grimly.
They got into the car, and for a moment he stared through the windshield without moving.
“Kane?”
A muscle tightened in his jaw. “I don’t—I can’t feel her anymore.”
The desolation in his voice went through Faith like a knife and left her aching. For him, for Dinah. And for herself.
“She’s gone further and further away from me with every day that’s passed. I think about it, and I realize I can’t remember the sound of her voice. I glimpse a blond woman on a street corner and my heart stops, yet I have to concentrate to remember her face.”
“Kane—”
He turned his head and focused on her. “I have to find her,” he said. “Before I lose her completely.”
There was nothing she could say to that except, “We’ll find her, Kane. We will.”
After a moment he nodded, accepting that reassurance because, she thought, anything else was simply unbearable.
“Yes,” he said.
She kept her voice steady. “I have Mr. Sloan’s card, so I know the address of his office.”
Kane started the car, his actions automatic. More coolly now, as though he regretted the impulsive, emotional confidence, he said, “I’m willing to bet he won’t tell us anything useful.”
“Maybe, but it’s a base we have to cover.”
“Agreed. But I know lawyers. He won’t talk.”
As it turned out, Kane was only half right.
Edward Sloan was in his early fifties but looked ten years younger. He was trim and athletic, dressed well without ostentation, and had the trained, evenly modulated voice of an orator. And despite visibly restless clients in his outer office, he agreed to see Faith and Kane immediately.
“How can I help you?” he asked when they were seated before his sleek, modern desk. The question might have been directed to both of them, but his eyes were on Faith.
So she was the one who replied. “Mr. Sloan, do you have any idea if Dinah Leighton was working on a particular story when she disappeared?”
“No. She never talked to me about her work.”
Kane said, “She used your services whenever she wanted her actions to remain very quiet.”
“Is that a question, Mr. MacGregor?” Sloan smiled faintly. “Yes, I was her confidential attorney.”
“Did she—does she use you only to arrange financial deals?”
“Almost exclusively. Miss Leighton’s family attorneys tended to view her philanthropy with a great deal of unease, from what she told me. I had the virtue of complete personal disinterest in her and in what she chose to do with her money. She told me what she wanted done, I did it.”
“Like the financial arrangements for me,” Faith said.
“Exactly so, Miss Parker.”
“You never asked her why she did it?”
“As I said, my value to Miss Leighton lay in my discretion and my disinterest. It would not have been to my advantage to ask her questions.”
Kane tried another tack. “Okay, then tell us this. Did you notice, in the course of performing your duties for Miss Leighton, anything out of the ordinary? Anything that might give us some idea of what happened to her?”
“You must know I can’t talk in specifics about Miss Leighton’s business affairs,” Sloan replied immediately.
“I’m not asking you about her business affairs,” Kane said with just enough patience to make the effort noticeable. “I’m asking you if you know anything—if you saw or heard anything—that might help us to find your missing client.”
This time, there was a pause. A rather deliberate one, Faith thought. Her heartbeat quickened as she gazed at the lawyer’s face. He knows something. He knows something, and he’s just been waiting for somebody to ask him. But nobody had asked, because his relationship with Dinah had not been a public one—and Sloan was not a man who would ever volunteer information. Which explained why he had not come forward when Dinah had vanished.
“Please, Mr. Sloan.” Faith knew her voice was unsteady. “Please help us if you can. Did anything unusual happen in the days before she disappeared?”
“Just one thing.” His voice was composed. “Two days before she vanished, Miss Leighton asked me to recommend a good private investigator, one who specialized in missing persons.”
Faith looked at Kane in confusion, and it was he who said, “Did she say why?”
“The only thing she said to me, Mr. MacGregor, was a rather cryptic remark to the effect that she needed someone to look for a corpse.”
“And that’s all he’d tell you?” Bishop asked.
“That’s all.” Kane wedged the receiver between his ear and shoulder, reached for a legal pad on the coffee table, and scowled at the notes he’d jotted down earlier. “Just that Dinah wanted to hire a P.I. specializing in missing persons because she needed someone to find a corpse.”
“Did he know if she actually hired the P.I.?”
“He said that when Dinah disappeared, he called the two people he’d recommended, and neither had heard from her. I’m inclined to believe him. For one thing, news of the reward has been played up heavily in the media, and I doubt very much that a professional investigator would pass up the chance to make a million bucks if he had any knowledge at all about Dinah.”
“That is a point.” Bishop paused. “Where’s Faith?”
“I dropped her off at Haven House. There’s a woman there who seems to have known both Faith and Dinah months ago, and Faith wanted to talk to her. Understandably, men aren’t welcome there, so I’ve been checking out a few other things. Faith’s bank, where she has no safe deposit box. Dinah’s other bank, where the manager was very cooperative and is even now sending Richardson all the records.”
“Did you take a look at those records?”
“Yeah. And they verify what Conrad told us, that Dinah used that bank account the way she used Sloan, to handle those bequests and donations she wanted to keep quiet. Guy’s team will go over all of it with a fine-tooth comb.” He paused. “Since you’re still at Quantico, I assume you’ve been able to look into that restricted file?”
“I’m not still at Quantico,” Bishop said, then went on before Kane could ask him anything about that. “But, yeah, I found out why the files on the murders of Faith’s mother and sister are restricted.”
“Why?”
“Ties in to what you told me about her former husband and the abuse. It seems that he was, and still is, under suspicion for the crimes. The theory is that abuse escalated to open violence when she dared to divorce him, and that she escaped being killed only because she was unexpectedly called in to work that night.”
Grim, Kane said, “That doesn’t explain why information about the investigation is restricted.”
“Yes, well, it makes sense when you learn one more salient fact. Faith’s ex-husband, Tony Ellis, is an FBI agent.”
Katie was at school, but Faith left new sheet music on the piano for her. Kane hadn’t asked any questions when she’d requested the stop at a music store; she’d told him the gift was for a child, and he had made a couple of suggestions as to what might appeal to a budding young pianist.
Eve—last names weren’t offered, which Faith assumed was one of Haven H
ouse’s policies—turned out to be a not very tall, solidly built woman of about twenty-one, with wary brown eyes that had already seen far too much. She was watching over a small group of toddlers when Karen took Faith down to the roomy nursery in the basement of the house to introduce her. The children’s mothers, the director had explained, were working, or job hunting, or busy with lawyers or police attempting to divorce, arrest, or prosecute abusive husbands.
But it was late in the day, and even as Faith was introduced to Eve, women of various ages were beginning to arrive to claim their offspring.
Karen suggested she take over the nursery to give Eve a chance to talk to Faith, and they went upstairs to the second-floor sitting room near Eve’s bedroom.
“So you’ve lost your memory.” Eve’s voice was a little abrupt, but not unsympathetic, a tone explained when she added, “Happened to me once. Got knocked into a wall and out cold. When I came to, more than six months were a total blank.”
Faith winced. “Did you eventually remember?”
Eve shook her head. “Not really. But I pieced most of it together, talking to people. I guess that’s what you’re doing?”
“Trying to. Can you help me?”
“We weren’t close,” Eve said frankly. “Friendly, just not confiding. So I don’t know much, except that you were very angry.”
“Angry? Not frightened?”
“I don’t think you were as afraid of your ex as some of us were. Maybe because he was so far away, or maybe because you had other things on your mind. I think you and Dinah were up to something.”
Faith blinked. “Up to something?”
“Yeah. A story of some kind. I don’t know what it was about, but I got the feeling Dinah was trying to hold you back in some way. To keep you from doing something she didn’t think you should do. I think she was worried about you.”
Faith wondered again if it was her fault that Dinah was in such danger, and was conscious of a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. But all she said was, “Were you close to Dinah?”
Eve’s rather immobile face softened. “She talked to me a lot for her story. And, after, she gave me the money I needed to go back to school. I got my GED, but I wasn’t going to do anything else until Dinah convinced me it was the best thing for me to do. I’m studying computers,” she finished proudly.
Faith smiled at her. “That’s great.”
“Yeah, I think so. I have a future now. Dinah said—” She broke off and bit her lip.
“What did she say, Eve?”
The younger woman hesitated, then said slowly, “I’ve thought about it since she disappeared, and crazy as it sounds, I think she always knew she’d—she didn’t have a future of her own. She seemed almost sad when we talked about my plans. Once, she said I had so much to look forward to, and that she wished she’d be here to see it.”
“Maybe she was … just planning to go away,” Faith said.
“I don’t think so. You didn’t see her face the way I did, hear her voice. I think she could see the future sometimes, that she knew about things before they happened. She never said so, but once she warned me not to go back to a certain club I liked, and later I found out my ex had been there looking for me. I heard her tell Andrea she should go see her mother, and just a couple of weeks later the poor lady died of a heart attack. And there were other things. The way she looked at Katie and the other kids. The way she moved really fast to arrange things whenever she donated money to Haven House or one of us, as if she knew she had to hurry.” Eve shook her head. “I think she knew she didn’t have much time left.”
Faith suddenly remembered what Bishop had said about Dinah. She was precognitive, able to … tune in to future events, to predict the turn of a card or the throw of dice.
Had Dinah seen her own future?
SEVEN
The sky darkened early with a November storm, one of those weather systems that seemed to circle a place warily, thunder rumbling and lightning flashing, while it decided if it wanted to strike.
Kane wondered if it was an omen, and tried not to let himself believe that. But it was hard not to. The night and the storm had closed in, cutting him off and making it impossible for him to be out doing something, anything, that might help him find Dinah. He hated the night.
It was impossible to sit still. He had learned weeks ago that when he was barred from doing anything to help Dinah, he had to keep himself busy with mundane activities. It kept him grounded. Kept him sane. At least, he hoped it did.
He dug into the freezer for one of the homemade meals that were occasional weekend projects for him. Dinah had teased him that he went on cooking jags on weekends only because he wanted to make her look bad, but the truth was that there was a streak of practicality in his nature and a strong sense of self-reliance, and he regularly practiced the skill of cooking just as he regularly practiced his other skills. Because one never knew when such things would come in handy.
It was after seven, and the storm was rumbling closer, when Faith emerged from the bedroom. She had retreated there soon after they returned from the shelter, obviously upset by what she had learned there, although she had told Kane it was “nothing useful.”
He suspected she had discovered more details of her own past and personality, but even so it bothered him that she hadn’t wanted to discuss it. In the weeks since Dinah had vanished, he had begun to realize just how much of herself she had been unable or unwilling to share with him. That, coupled with his deepening sense of loss, his increasing feeling that Dinah was slipping further and further away from him, made him want to hold on even tighter to the only connection to her he had left: Faith.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to move into the guest room now that Bishop’s gone?” she asked abruptly, obviously speaking more to fill the silence than for any other reason.
“I’m sure.” He didn’t offer a reason, not wanting to admit that either bed was useless to him anyway, since he spent his nights pacing the floor until exhaustion finally drove him to close his eyes for an hour or two.
Faith shrugged. “Something smells good.”
“Irish stew. My own version, anyway.” A boom of thunder interrupted him, and he waited it out before adding, “Perfect night for it, I thought.”
“Isn’t it a little late in the year for this kind of storm?” Faith wondered, automatically picking up the plates and silverware he had stacked on the counter and going to set the table. She was just as restless and edgy as he was, a fact he had noticed before now.
“Maybe, but it’s not so unusual. According to the weather reports, it’ll probably storm all night.”
“Great.”
He checked the bread baking in the oven, then looked across the room at her. “Do storms bother you?”
“Just a bit. More if there’s wind.”
“Dinah’s just the same,” he said, keeping his tone casual. “A feline trait, she calls it. Never having owned a cat, I have no idea what she means by that.”
“I do. Means we hate change and low-pressure systems.” Thunder boomed suddenly, and Faith jumped. “Damn,” she murmured a little sheepishly.
“You’re wound pretty tight,” Kane noted.
“I’ll be all right once the storm actually arrives. It’s all this rumbling around beforehand that gets on my nerves. The table’s set. Can I do anything else?”
“You can pour the wine. I’ll have this ready in just a few minutes.”
It wasn’t until they were sitting at the table with the meal before them that Faith finally said, with obviously forced nonchalance, “Did you hear from Bishop about that restricted file?”
Kane nodded slowly.
“I can see from your face I’m not going to like it. Let me guess. My abusive ex had something to do with the murder of my family?”
“Is that a guess?” he asked.
“Educated. I’ve been talking to the women at the shelter, remember. Been hearing a lot about violent men. So I had to wonde
r about the violent man in my past.” She paused and seemed to brace herself. “Did he kill my mother and sister?”
“He was—and is—suspected. But the police haven’t found any evidence, Faith, and he not only passed a couple of lie detector tests but also told the same story under some kind of experimental truth serum.”
“Truth serum?”
“Noah said to forget we heard that.”
She smiled, but it was an effort. “Okay, so what story did he tell?”
“He claims that after you left him in L.A.—where you two had lived for the ten months of your marriage—he didn’t hear from you again until he was served with divorce papers. At which point he says he got calmly on a plane for Seattle, intending to talk to you about the situation. He also says he checked into a hotel in Seattle, called your mother’s house, and learned that you were working. So he says he stayed at the hotel and didn’t have a clue what had happened until the police rousted him out of bed the next morning.
“The police, on the other hand, believe that blind rage overcame him when he was served with the papers. That even though phone records show he did call your mother’s house, he could have driven out there, still enraged, killed your mother and sister, and burned the house to the ground. There wasn’t much forensic evidence, nothing to say who’d done it, but Tony Ellis had motive and no real alibi, so—”
“Tony Ellis. Is that his name?”
Kane heard in her voice a loss he could barely comprehend. At least he knew what he had lost; Faith was daily—almost hourly—discovering bits and pieces of her life, good and horrible, that had vanished from her mind.
“Is it his name?” she repeated steadily.
“Yes. I’m sorry, Faith.”
She shook her head and looked down at her plate for a moment, then slowly shifted her fork from her right hand to her left. “I’m glad I don’t remember him,” she said almost absently. “But I’m still confused about why that file is restricted.”
“Ellis is an FBI agent.”
She looked up swiftly. “Ah. Now it makes more sense. Covering for one of their own?”
