Allison (A Kane Novel)

by Steve Gannon

  “As soon as we make any progress, you’ll be the first to know,” Kane replied patiently. “At present I’m just trying to put together the pieces, and your cooperation would be helpful.”

  Mrs. French shot her husband a look as cutting as an arctic morning. “As I said, Crawford, we’ll do anything we can to assist,” she reiterated firmly.

  “Thank you, Mrs. French,” said Kane.

  “Call me Beth. Please.”

  “All right, Beth. Let’s begin with the twenty-four hours prior to Jordan’s disappearance.”

  “That was all in the statement we gave Detective Peyron,” Mr. French objected again. “Don’t you people talk to one another?”

  Kane frowned. “I read his report. Now I want to hear it from you.”

  Mrs. French gave her husband another gun-barrel glare. “Crawford, if it’ll help, we’ll go through it as many times as it takes.”

  Mr. French glowered back. “Fine,” he said, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “It’s just that I blame myself for what happened. And now I feel so damned helpless …”

  “You blame yourself?” asked Kane. “Why?”

  “Because I should have installed better security around the house. Hell, there are areas in the backyard where anybody could climb over the fence from the next street.”

  “Accusing yourself won’t bring her back,” Mrs. French pointed out. “Let’s get on with this.”

  When her husband didn’t reply, Mrs. French reached for a pack of Parliament cigarettes, lit one, and inhaled deeply. “We discovered Jordan missing early Saturday, so I’ll start with Friday morning,” she began, exhaling a cloud of bluish smoke. “That was June thirtieth, the day after her birthday. We’d all been out late the night before, and she had trouble waking up for her makeup-call at the studio.”

  “Christ, Beth, do you have to smoke in here?” grumbled Mr. French.

  Mrs. French took another drag on her cigarette. “Yes, Crawford. I do.”

  “Let’s get back to your daughter,” suggested Kane. “Where were you on the previous evening, Thursday night?”

  “We all went out to dinner to celebrate her birthday,” Mr. French answered tersely.

  “Where?”

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  “I don’t know right now,” said Kane, cutting Mr. French off. Although sympathizing with the Frenches’ loss, Kane was quickly losing patience with Jordan’s stepfather. “Maybe somebody saw her and followed her home. Where did you eat?”

  “The Ivy,” Mr. French answered. “On Robertson.”

  “I know the place. Go ahead. You went to The Ivy for dinner on Thursday night, and Jordan had a hard time waking up Friday morning.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. French continued, picking up the story. “Jordan is shooting a feature—” She paused, then started over. “Jordan was shooting a feature film at Paramount. The principal photography had to be completed during her Brandy hiatus, which was due to end mid-August. Things were hectic, to say the least. Her call-time was five in the morning, so we had to be up at a little after four.”

  “You went with her to the studio?”

  “Always. Anyway, that morning she wouldn’t get out of bed. She felt hot, so I took her temperature. It was a hundred and one. She had a cough, too.”

  “She had a sore throat?” said Kane, not recalling the coroner mentioning the presence of inflammation in Jordan’s nasopharynx or throat. “So you called the studio and said she wouldn’t be coming in,” he continued, making a mental note to review the autopsy findings.

  “Jordan made the call.”

  “Detective Peyron’s report stated that Jordan had her own private cell phone. Was the call to the studio made on it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did she ever use your house telephones, or your cell phones?” asked Kane. He had already procured a warrant to check all calls made on Jordan’s private house line and her cell phone; confirmation that she had occasionally used her parents’ phones would enable him to do the same with those as well.

  “Sometimes.”

  Kane pulled a notebook from his pocket and made an entry. “Fine. Go on. What did she do all day?”

  “Mostly she stayed in bed, at least while I was home,” Mrs. French continued. “I was gone for a few hours taking care of personal items. I’m on the LA Museum board and active in a number of charities, though I haven’t had much time for them lately.”

  Kane turned to Mr. French. “What about you? When did you leave for work?”

  “I got back from a bike ride a little before seven, showered, and left around seven-thirty,” Mr. French answered, unconsciously scratching an angry rash on the back of his left hand. “Poison oak,” he explained, noticing a quizzical glance from Kane. “I mountain bike two or three times a week. Took a spill into a patch of it last Wednesday.”

  “Looks nasty. Did you talk with Jordan before you left?”

  “When Beth told me she was sick, I looked in on her. She was sleeping.”

  “And you didn’t see or talk with her again till you got home that night?”

  “No. When I got home, she was in her room watching TV.”

  “Any visitors that day?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did she eat anything that evening?” Kane asked casually, beginning to weave critical questions into the parents’ recap of Jordan’s last twenty-four hours.

  “She didn’t join us for dinner, but she may have fixed something for herself later,” Mr. French answered.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Jordan liked preparing her own meals.”

  “All right, go on. Tell me about that night.”

  Mr. French shook his head. “There’s not much to tell. We went to bed around ten. I checked on Jordan before turning in. She was asleep. The next morning she was gone.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything?”

  “No. Our bedroom is on the second floor at the other end of the house.”

  “No sounds of a struggle?”

  “No.”

  “Do you own a pet?” Kane persisted, remembering seeing a chain-link dog run beside the garage.

  Mr. French sighed impatiently. “We had a German shepherd. Greta. She died last year.”

  “So you didn’t hear anything?”

  “No,” snapped Mr. French. “How many times do we have to say it?”

  “What about Jordan? The guy smashed her window to get in. She must’ve heard something.”

  Mr. French shrugged. “She was taking cold medicine. Maybe it made her too drowsy to wake up.”

  “All right. In any case, whoever broke into her room came over the fence or through the gate,” reasoned Kane. “I saw a keypad out by the speaker. Who has the entry code?”

  “Our maid, for one,” answered Mrs. French, grinding out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray and reaching for her Parliament pack, defiantly ignoring a look of disapproval from her husband. “You don’t think she might have had something to do with it?”

  “I’m investigating all possibilities. Who else knows how to get in?”

  Mrs. French lit a fresh cigarette. “Well, there’s my tennis coach. The landscape company has the code, too. That’s about it, except for close family friends.”

  “I want to speak with everyone who knows how to open that gate,” said Kane, levering himself from the armchair. “Friends included. I’d appreciate it if you would write out a list for me right now, Mrs. French. While you’re doing that, I need to confer with Detective Deluca. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Leaving the parents in the living room, Kane made his way back to the entry, arriving in time to see two SID officers carrying a plastic-wrapped mattress out the front door. At the far end of the driveway, he also noticed a CBS news van outside the gate. Standing with a group of people beside the van was a man whom Kane recognized as Brent Preston, one of the network reporters who had shown up at the reservoir on the day Jordan’s body
had been discovered. Kane stared a moment, his eyes narrowing. Then, grumbling under his breath, he strode down a hallway to the right, passing an enormous kitchen and a wood-paneled den on the way. When he arrived at Jordan’s bedroom he found Deluca standing outside in a flower garden, leaning in through an open window.

  Stopping in the doorway, Kane glanced around the brightly decorated bedroom. Posters of rock bands and classic movies covered the walls; bookcases crammed with stuffed animals and CDs bracketed the window; a desk and computer flanked the bed. Near an adjoining bathroom, the doors to a walk-in closet stood open, revealing neatly arranged shelves stacked with sweaters and blouses, poles laden with skirts and dresses, and racks displaying at least a hundred pairs of shoes.

  Deluca sat on the sill and swung his legs into the room. “Appears the guy got in through here,” he said, fingering a gouge in the window frame. “Used something to jimmy the window.”

  “Seems like that would have made a some noise,” Kane noted, inspecting the damaged frame.

  “Yeah. Seems that way,” Deluca agreed. “You see the news van out front?”

  Kane nodded.

  “Damn, how do those dirtbags find out so fast?”

  Kane shrugged. “Who knows? So what else do you have left to do?”

  Deluca passed a palm across his chin, rubbing a coarse stubble that typically darkened his face before noon. “Not much. We’ve taken Jordan’s clothes, mattress, bedding, address book, letters, and so forth. Everything but her computer. That’s next.”

  “Find anything Peyron missed?”

  Deluca nodded. “There were a couple of messages on Jordan’s phone service, but they could have come in after Peyron was here. When I checked her house line, I got those beeps. You know, the ones you get when the phone company records calls for you.”

  “What were the messages?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have Jordan’s access code. Want to ask the parents for it?”

  Kane thought a moment. “No. They probably don’t know. Anyway, Banowski’s at GTE right now getting Jordan’s phone records. Contact him and have him pick up her messages, too.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just wind this up. And make sure nobody talks with the media on the way out.”

  “No problem.”

  Upon returning to the living room, Kane found Mrs. French at an antique desk completing the list he had requested. Mr. French stood with his back to the room, staring out the window. “I see the news hounds have arrived,” he noted with disgust, turning to face Kane. “Are your men finished?”

  “Nearly.” Kane crossed to the desk. “Are you done with that, Mrs. French?”

  Jordan’s mother made a final notation and handed her list to Kane. “I think that’s everybody,” she said. “I included their addresses and telephone numbers. Is there anything else you need?”

  Kane folded the paper and shoved it into his pocket. “As a matter of fact, there is,” he said. “I want you and your husband to do two things for me. But before we get into that, I have to explain something.” He spread his hands apologetically. “You won’t like what I’m about to say, but there’s no getting around it. In any murder investigation involving a child, the parents always have to be ruled out as suspects. Now, I realize you have been cooperating and that you want the killer found as much as I do, but this has to be done.”

  “There’s a murderer out there, and you’re investigating us?” snarled Mr. French. “You think we had something to do with Jordan’s death?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said ruling you out as suspects has to be done so the investigation can proceed.”

  “And how do you intend to rule us out?” Mr. French demanded.

  “As I said, I want you to do two things,” Kane replied. “First, in order to exclude any forensic evidence that didn’t come from the killer, we need to get blood and hair samples from both of you. Second, I would like you to voluntarily submit to polygraph exams.”

  “You want us to take lie detector tests? Christ.” Mr. French’s nostrils flared. “All right, if that’s what it takes to light a fire under your investigation, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I’m glad you understand,” said Kane. “When can you come down to the station?”

  “The funeral is on Sunday, and we have family flying in from back East,” answered Mrs. French. “Would sometime next week be acceptable?”

  “That would be fine.” Kane handed her his card. “Call when you’re ready. And thank you for your cooperation. I’ll be in touch.”

  With that, Kane turned and headed for the front door, thinking that although Mr. French had been less than cordial, he understood the man’s frustration. And despite Mrs. French’s veneer of Beverly Hills snobbery, toward the end he had found himself starting to like her.

  “Detective Kane?” called Mrs. French.

  Kane turned to see that Jordan’s parents had followed him out. “Yes, Mrs. French?”

  Jordan’s mother swallowed, seeming close to tears. “I … I want you to know that we loved our daughter,” she said, taking her husband’s hand.

  “I know you did,” Kane said gently.

  “No, you don’t,” said Mr. French. “You don’t know us from Adam’s cat. But we did love her, and we always will. I know you don’t like me, Detective, and I don’t blame you. I’ve been acting like an asshole. I admit it. But I can’t help myself. I want whoever killed Jordan caught. And when he’s caught, I want to see him punished. We didn’t kill our daughter,” he added quietly, putting an arm around his wife. “For Christ’s sake, find the person who did.”

  *

  “C’mon, Mom. There has to be more to it than that.”

  “Hold on, Ali,” my mom’s voice came over the phone. “I have something on the stove.”

  Sitting in my dorm room, I gazed pensively out the window, waiting for my mother to come back on the line. Minutes earlier I had watched the latest Jordan French coverage on the CBS Evening News. The lead story had been the police search of the Frenches’ estate, this time executed with a search warrant in hand. It was an exclusive CBS network story, and one that I knew was again attributable to me.

  I still hadn’t reconciled my feelings regarding the role I had played in Brent’s recent on-air exclusives—first the ransom note disclosure, and now this. I believed that the public had a right to know what was going on in Jordan’s murder case, as long as it didn’t interfere with the police investigation—and I didn’t see how anything I had revealed so far would make any difference in the long run. Plus I hadn’t actually divulged anything I had been told in confidence; my revelations were just bits and pieces I had either picked up or concluded while hanging around my dad. True, I knew was in a unique position because of my father’s connection to the case, and from an ethical standpoint that’s where things got sticky. I also knew how my father would view things if he ever found out the role I’d played, which was probably unavoidable. After all, he was a detective. He would undoubtedly suspect my involvement in the leaks once he learned that I was working for CBS, and I couldn’t put off telling my parents about my new job much longer.

  “C’mon, Mom,” I repeated when she came back on the line. “What exactly did the doctor say?”

  “I told you, he said I’m fine.”

  I sighed, still staring out the window. “What about your nosebleed on the plane? And your fainting spell and being tired all the time?”

  “There was a slight problem with one of my lab tests,” Mom admitted. “Low platelets or something. I probably need to start taking Geritol. Dr. Porter said there’s nothing to worry about, but he wants me to see a blood specialist for more tests.”

  “More tests? What kind of tests?” I asked, detecting what I thought was note of concern in my mother’s voice.

  “Ali, I’m fine. Dr. Porter just wants to be on the safe side. I’m going back tomorrow. Travis is dropping me off at the clinic in Santa Monica, and your dad’s driving me home.”
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  “Why does Dad have to drive you home?”

  “Because Dr. Kratovil requested it, that’s why.”

  “Dr. Kratovil?”

  “She’s a hematologist. Ali, you’re getting all worked up over nothing. We’ll talk about this tomorrow night at dinner. You’re still coming, aren’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said, recalling that I had promised to join the family for dinner on Wednesday.

  “You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?”

  “Of course not,” I said quickly, deciding that I needed to start writing things down. I have a great memory for facts and figures, but appointments are sometimes a different matter—especially if they involve something I don’t want to do. “Actually, uh, I have some news to announce tomorrow night myself,” I added, deciding that whatever the consequences, I couldn’t put off telling her about my job at CBS any longer.

  “Oh? What?”

  “I’ll tell you at dinner. Look, why don’t I pick you up at the doctor’s office on my way to Malibu?” I suggested, changing the subject. “Save Dad the trip.”

  “Your father wants to do it. But thanks.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night, then.”

  “Okay, honey. Don’t be late.”

  11

  Catheryn glanced up as a door beside the reception counter opened into the waiting room.

  “Mrs. Kane?”

  Nervously, Catheryn closed a magazine that she had been futilely trying to read for the past half hour. She reached beside her for her husband’s hand. “Yes?” she said, looking up at the nurse who’d spoken.

  “Dr. Kratovil would like to see you and your husband now.”

  Attempting to hide her apprehension, Catheryn rose from her seat and followed the nurse down a long corridor, Kane at her side.

  Catheryn had arrived at the hematologist’s office earlier that afternoon, minutes before her two-thirty appointment. Kane, who had taken time off from work and arrived shortly after Travis dropped her off, had waited in the reception room while Catheryn underwent a procedure that had turned out to be far more involved than she’d expected. Following a review of her records and a check of the blood smears sent over by Dr. Porter, Dr. Kratovil, a slight woman in her late thirties with hazel eyes and a sympathetic smile, had asked Catheryn to undress and put on a hospital gown. The doctor left the room briefly while Catheryn changed. Upon returning, the doctor examined Catheryn carefully, paying special attention to the bruises on her arms and thighs. Afterward she instructed Catheryn to lie on her side, stating that it was going to be necessary to obtain a bone-marrow aspirate and biopsy from Catheryn’s left hip.