Stalking Steven

by Jenna Bennett

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Steven!” Diana shrieked.

  “Is he back?” Was he dead?

  I stopped myself before asking.

  “He’s been kidnapped!”

  Kidnapped? “What do you mean, kidnapped?” How could he be kidnapped? Who’d want to kidnap Steven?

  “Just get over here!” Diana told me, her voice so high and shaky I could barely understand the words. “I’m calling the police.”

  She hung up in my ear. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and picked up the pair of jeans I had dropped on the floor when I went to bed last night. If I wasn’t going to have time for a shower this morning, I might as well wear them again.

  I had to bring Edwina, of course. I loaded her in the car, and we took off out of the garage on two wheels—by then it was past six-thirty—and shot up the street. Two minutes later, I squealed to a stop at the sidewalk outside Reservoir Park and let Edwina out. She did her business, I deposited said business in the trash can by the gate, and we got back in the car. And headed for Richland at a more sedate, but still rapid clip.

  By the time I got there, Mendoza’s sedan was already parked out front. And if he’d been woken from dead sleep earlier than usual, you couldn’t see it by looking at him. He looked as fresh as a daisy, well-rested, clear-eyed, and turned out in one of his nice suits, this one a navy blue paired with a pale blue shirt and a striped tie. The knot was perfect. So were his shoes. Just as if he’d been polishing them when Diana called.

  “Ugh,” I said.

  He arched his brows. “Good morning, Mrs. Kelly.”

  “Nobody should look that good before seven in the morning.”

  He didn’t respond—although his mouth twitched—and I added, “Diana called me. She said Steven’s been kidnapped.”

  Mendoza sighed and stepped out of the doorway. “You might as well come in.”

  I looked over my shoulder at Edwina, who was eying Mendoza adoringly from the front seat, her doggie tongue lolling out.

  “Leave her there,” he told me.

  “Will you go say hello to her?”

  He rolled his eyes. “If I have to.”

  “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

  He looked less than thrilled, but he nodded.

  “Make sure she doesn’t pee on the seat,” I told him as I ducked past him into the house. “She does that when she gets excited.”

  “Of course she does.”

  Of course she did. I hid a smile. “Where’s Diana?”

  “Kitchen,” Mendoza said, on his way down the stairs to say hello to the dog. I watched him walk over to the car and greet Edwina, who looked close to heavenly rapture at his arrival, before I headed down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  It was like déjà vu all over again to walk through the door. Here I was, wearing the same clothes I’d been wearing yesterday. And there was Diana, wearing the same yoga pants and T-shirt she’d changed into yesterday. The only thing missing were the containers of Chinese food. Diana must have put the leftovers away, or maybe Mendoza had taken them with him.

  Either way, here we were again.

  Diana looked up when I walked through the door, and her face twisted. “Gina.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and walked over to give her a hug. “What happened?”

  She took a breath. “I was sleeping. Finally. The first part of the night, I just twisted and turned. Hoping that I’d hear Steven come home.”

  I nodded. I’d had a few days like that, too, after David moved out. Hoping—and halfway not hoping—that he’d come to his senses and realize that he didn’t want to throw away eighteen years of marriage on a girl who’d barely started elementary school when he married me.

  Needless to say, he didn’t. And then he died.

  But we were talking about Steven.

  “I guess I fell asleep eventually. And then someone rang the doorbell.” She shifted on the barstool. “It took me a second or two to realize it, I guess. I knew I’d heard something, but you know how it is. It takes a moment to realize what it was. And then it happened again.”

  The master bedroom looked out over the backyard and the garage, not the front. “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Ran down the stairs. By the time I got there, whoever had been there was gone. But there was a note on the mat.”

  It was sitting on the island in front of her. She nudged it toward me. I used the tips of my fingernails to unfold and hold it open, just in case Mendoza planned to have it tested for fingerprints.

  If you want your husband back, it said, in spiky block letters, bring a hundred thousand dollars to the Arena at eleven tonight.

  “And do what with it?”

  “Excuse me?” Diana said.

  I pointed to the letter. “Bring a hundred thousand dollars to the Arena, and… what? Leave it under your seat? Put it in one of the trash cans in the lobby? Throw it out on the ice? I’m sure whoever wrote the note doesn’t plan to come up to you and introduce herself, so you can be sure you give the money to the right person. What are you supposed to do with it?”

  Diana shrugged. “Maybe there’ll be more instructions there.”

  Maybe. “This smells weird,” I said.

  Her nostrils vibrated. “I don’t smell anything.”

  There was nothing to smell. Not even coffee, which—if I’d known about it—I would have stopped on the way to pick up.

  I headed for the coffee machine on the counter to remedy the oversight. “Not physically. It feels weird. I mean, what are the chances that Steven takes up with this girl, and suddenly he’s kidnapped? And why a hundred thousand dollars? I mean, it’s a lot of money. You probably don’t have it sitting around. Unless you do?”

  “I can come up with it by eleven tonight,” Diana said. “Or eleven this morning. But I don’t have it tucked away in my lingerie drawer, if that’s what you mean. It’ll necessitate a trip to the bank.”

  So the same type of scenario as if someone had asked me for a hundred thousand dollars. It’s not something I keep around in cash, but I could get my hands on it without too much trouble if I had to. David had had money, and I had inherited a third of his estate, so as long as the banks were open, I could liquidate enough cash to fill a small duffel with a hundred thousand dollars pretty easily.

  So could Diana, it seemed. And that was part of what smelled. “Why so little? I mean, you’re a lawyer. Steven’s a tenured professor. You live in an expensive house in a very nice area.” Even if perhaps they’d bought the house when it was worth less than it was now. “It stands to reason that you’d have money. A hundred thousand dollars doesn’t seem like enough.”

  So did that tell us something about the kidnapper? He or she was someone to whom a hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money?

  Or someone who hadn’t thought the consequences all the way through?

  Given the penalties for kidnapping, I’d need to get a lot more than that to make it worthwhile, personally. Kidnapping is a felony that carries a sentence of several years on up to a lifetime in prison, depending. Not something I’d want to risk for a measly hundred grand.

  “Given what we know,” I said delicately—or maybe not that delicately, “is Steven worth a hundred thousand dollars to you?”

  “That’s a moot point,” Mendoza’s voice said from behind me. When I glanced over my shoulder, he was leaning against the door jamb. I had no idea how long he’d been standing there. “We don’t ever recommend meeting the kidnapper’s demands in cases like this.”

  “What do you recommend? Filling a backpack with newsprint?” That’s what they do in the movies, isn’t it?

  Mendoza ignored me, just removed himself from the jamb and came into the kitchen. “I’ll take the note with me, if you don’t mind. And see if I can get any prints from it.”

  Diana nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Not go to the bank and take out a hundred thousand dollars in cash,” Mendoza sai
d.

  I cleared my throat, and they both turned to me. I smiled apologetically. “Not to butt in where I’m not wanted…”

  Mendoza gave me a jaundiced look.

  “But maybe that’s exactly what you ought to do. What if Steven is watching the account? He probably has online banking, right? What if he’s watching, to make sure you take out the money? And if he sees that you’re not, he, or she, or they, probably won’t show up at all tonight. And you’ll miss your chance to catch her. Or him. Or them.”

  This last was directed at Mendoza, who gave a slow nod. “She has a point.”

  Diana didn’t seem to like this idea. “Are you suggesting that Steven has something to do with this? That he’s in on it?”

  “I have no idea what’s going on,” I said. “But he went to the house in Crieve Hall to see the blonde… to see Anastasia Sokolov willingly. Nobody held a gun to his head then. And there’s nothing to indicate that he didn’t leave the house willingly yesterday morning. Right?”

  Diana nodded.

  “So maybe he has some reason for wanting a hundred thousand dollars. And a reason for wanting you to believe it’s not him who wants it.”

  “So he can give it to the tramp,” Diana said grimly.

  Or so they had some seed money for running away together. But I wasn’t going to point that out. Instead, I glanced at Mendoza, silently throwing him the ball.

  He said, “It’s possible. If Steven is part of this, and he’s watching the bank accounts, it would probably be best to withdraw the money. He’ll see the withdrawal, and believe you’re getting the money turned into cash in order to give it to him. Or her. Or them. It will ensure that he’ll show up at the drop point tonight.”

  “Or her,” I said. “Or them.”

  Mendoza nodded. “Safer to make it look like we’re complying with the request.”

  “I’ll go to the bank this morning,” Diana said. “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “I’ll take the note in for fingerprinting. While I’m there, I’ll send out a BOLO for both Steven and the blonde, using the name we have and the drawing.”

  A BOLO, for the uninitiated, is a police acronym for Be On the LookOut. Mendoza would make sure every police officer and squad car in Nashville had seen Steven’s face and that of the blonde, and would keep an eye out for them.

  “It’s been twenty-four hours,” Mendoza added, “so you can file an official missing person’s report on Steven. Although with the note, it’s pretty well moot.”

  Pretty well. Whether Steven was behind it or not, with a ransom note, Mendoza had to take Steven’s disappearance seriously. And I assumed that if it was discovered that Steven was behind it, there would be charges to follow.

  I hoped there would be. Part of me was pretty sure he was in on it, and that the whole thing was some sort of convoluted ploy to get a hundred thousand dollars out of the bank without his wife knowing that he was the one who wanted it. But the other part was a little less sure. If he wanted a hundred thousand dollars, he could just get it himself. It was his. There was no reason to scare Diana this way.

  “I guess I’ll go to the office,” I said. “Unless you want me to stay with you? For moral support, or whatever.”

  Diana shook her head. “Is something going on?”

  Not really. At least not yet. I told her, “Last night, Zachary made the suggestion that the Russian girl looked like a stripper. I told him to look for Russian strip clubs.”

  Diana’s eyes widened. “You sent Zachary—sweet, innocent Zachary—out to case strip clubs?”

  Mendoza hid a smile.

  “He’s not that innocent,” I protested, although I admit I squirmed a little. “He’s over eighteen. He said they’d let him in. And he seemed excited about it.”

  Mendoza’s grin widened.

  “Why wouldn’t he be?” Diana muttered, and raised her voice. “Let me know what he says. If he finds out anything.”

  I nodded. Mendoza did the same. And the two of us headed out to let Diana get ready for work and her trip to the bank.

  Chapter 10

  Mendoza left us with a last scratch behind the ears for Edwina—nothing but a nod for me—and I climbed into the Lexus next to the dog, and headed for Music Row.

  Morning rush hour had started while I was inside Diana’s kitchen, so the trip took at least three times longer than it had going the other way earlier. But when I got there, the office itself was still empty and closed. It was too early for Rachel, and since Zachary’s car wasn’t in the lot, I assumed he’d gone home to his mother’s house to sleep last night, after cruising the Russian neighborhood looking for strip clubs.

  Given his excitement over the assignment, he’d probably stayed out much too late, and wouldn’t be coming in until noon.

  Which left me with very little to do.

  While Edwina squatted on a patch of dirt, I let myself into the lobby and turned on the lights.

  Everything looked the way it had last night when I left. Not that I had expected anything different.

  I scooped some food into Edwina’s bowl and refreshed her water, and left her to eat while I headed down the hall to my own office.

  The email account yielded little of interest. An offer for free paper with purchase of ink and toner from the office supply store we use, which I forwarded to Rachel. A reminder that I had a doctor’s appointment a week hence, along with a—separate—suggestion that an online order of Viagra might seriously change my sex life for the better.

  My sex life is non-existent at the moment, and has been since David left me for Jackie-with-a-q. I had a strong suspicion that it would take a lot more than an order of Viagra to fix it.

  I didn’t expect much from the office phone—everyone who knows me, knows my cell phone number—but when I picked it up, the canned voice told me we had a message. I pushed the button to play it back and leaned back in my chair to listen.

  It took a second, and then a male voice came on. “Yeah. Um… Gina. This is… um… Steven.”

  He said it as if there was a question mark at the end. I sat bolt upright in my chair as he continued.

  “Steven Morton?” As if I hadn’t already figured out that part. “I know we haven’t actually met, but… um… I recognized you yesterday. And the detective. Mendoza. Diana helped him with his divorce a couple of years ago.”

  Or more accurately, she’d helped Lola, Mendoza’s wife. I’m not quite sure how the two of them ended up being friends through it all. It would have made more sense for Mendoza to resent Diana.

  “She’s probably worried,” Steven continued, his own voice betraying a hint of worry, too. “And I can’t call her. So I thought maybe you could tell her—”

  At that point, there was a noise in the background. Maybe a door opening? Or someone walking into the room? I heard a female voice, but not what it said.

  “Nothing,” Steven said, and then the line went dead. I deduced he’d disconnected the call so the woman he was with—Anastasia?—wouldn’t realize he was talking to anyone.

  If he was on his cell phone, all she had to do was check his calls to see what he’d been doing, of course. But maybe he wasn’t.

  I thought about dialing *69. That’s still a thing, right? But what if the phone rang back there, and Anastasia realized that Steven had called someone last night? If she hadn’t realized it already?

  So I called Mendoza instead. “Will the telephone company tell me who called me, if they didn’t leave a number?”

  There was a moment’s silence while he must be sorting through my question and figuring out what I wanted. “Who called?”

  “Steven,” I said.

  “From where?”

  “That’s what I want to know. He left a message on the office machine in the middle of the night. If he wanted to talk to me, I have no idea why he didn’t call my cell phone instead…”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to talk to you,” Mendoza said. “Maybe he just wanted to leave a messa
ge.”

  Maybe.

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much.” I repeated the few sentences Steven had said. “Here. It’s on the recording. I’ll play it back and let you listen to it yourself.”

  I made sure the recording was ready to go, and then held my cell phone up to the other phone while it ran. When the recording had finished, I put the phone back to my ear. “That’s it. I guess the blonde came in at the end. Or someone did. I couldn’t make out what she said, but Steven said ‘Nothing,’ and hung up, so she probably asked what he was doing, or something like that. I have no idea what happened after that.”

  “And how would you?” Mendoza said. “Did you try dialing *69?”

  I told him I hadn’t. “I was afraid the phone would ring back there. And that something bad might happen.”

  “Try it now. You’re on your cell phone, right?”

  I was. So with that in one hand, I pushed *69 on the desk phone and waited. The phone rang, and rang, and rang. Nobody picked up.

  After a minute—or maybe it only felt like a minute but was actually less—I spoke into the cell phone. “Did you hear that?”

  Mendoza grunted.

  “If I call the phone company, will they be able to tell me where Steven called from? Will they want to? Or is it better if you do it?”

  “I’ll probably need a subpoena to access phone records,” Mendoza said. “It’s better if you ask.”

  “You could just go there in person. As long as the receptionist is female, you’ll get all the records you want.”

  He didn’t respond to that. “Let me know what you find out.”

  He didn’t give me time to say anything. I refrained from sticking my tongue out at the phone screen and went to dig up the number for the telephone company’s customer service line.

  Getting the information I wanted took much longer than it should have, of course. I spent a long time on hold. And when someone finally answered, she said she couldn’t help me. In accented English, so Mendoza probably couldn’t have gone to where she was even if he’d wanted to. I was probably talking to India. I was tempted to ask, but instead I asked to speak to a supervisor, and spent more time on hold. When the supervisor came on—if, indeed, it was the supervisor, and not just the customer service rep in the next cubicle pretending to be the supervisor—I was annoyed.