by Sheryl Lynn
“How do you know Belinda Caulfield?”
“She’s my sister’s mother-in-law. I’m not a crackpot. I just want to get Penny back.”
“What about the million-dollar reward Mrs. Caulfield is offering for the arrest of her son’s killer? Does that interest you?”
“Only because it can get my sister killed. The police had a really good reason to keep the murder quiet. I don’t even think it was a murder. It was an accident. The kidnappers wanted Julius to pay for Penny’s return. Belinda refused to pay the ransom. I want the kidnappers to know that I’ll pay. I’ll do anything they want.”
The talk show host chuckled. “You sound very convincing, Frankie. May I call you Frankie?”
His condescending tone triggered her temper. She felt the anger rising like a mushroom cloud. “I don’t care.”
“How about I call you a crank? Or a bonehead? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? This is a serious subject. The police in this town don’t give a rat’s behind about the citizens, and you’re wasting my valuable time with your cockamamie story.”
“This coming from a guy whose listeners are kidnappers? You’re the bonehead, Mr. Sams. Do you know they used your voice to make their ransom demands?”
He barked laughter. Howling coyotes filled the earpiece.
“It’s true,” she insisted, trying to be heard over his sound effects. “They recorded your voice and spliced it into a tape. They used you and you want to make fun of me?”
McKennon waved both hands and shook his head violently. He had turned the radio low enough so it didn’t distract her, but he heard both sides of the conversation.
David Sams launched into a rant about how the chief of police was nothing more than a pawn of the mayor and city council. Frankie kept trying to speak, but every time she got a word in, he activated another sound effect, accentuating her increasing frustration with firecrackers and gargling noises. Disgusted, she broke the connection and tossed the telephone on the bed.
“Can you believe people actually listen to his crap?” she asked. The final segment of her thwarted attempt played over the radio. McKennon turned it up. David Sams now warned other potential crackpots who were pretending knowledge of the Bannerman murder that they’d receive the same treatment.
McKennon turned off the radio. “If the kidnappers are listening, they’ll know you’re telling the truth.”
“Right.”
His telephone rang. Both of them froze, staring at the trilling instrument.
McKennon picked it up and frowned at the LCD readout. “The number is unavailable. Probably the police.”
“Go for it,” she said. She envisioned black vans topped with slowly turning antennaes prowling the neighborhood. She wondered how long it took to trace a mobile telephone to its location.
He answered with a crisp, “McKennon, here.” He listened, nodding, then said, “I understand your position, sir, and will take it under advisement.” He disconnected.
“Sergeant Norris,” he said.
“From the state police? He’s in charge of the murder investigation, right?” She remembered too well the interview with the investigator who had gone from solicitous to hostile in record time.
“Word travels fast. People heard you on the radio. He wants you to turn yourself in.”
“Any news about Penny?”
“No mention.”
“Then they can all go to hell.” She plugged in the small, powerful lamp McKennon had purchased and set it up on the desk.
“I have to dump my car. They’ll be looking for it now.”
She cast him a frown. The dirty walls seemed to close in on her. The stink she’d been ignoring now distressed her. “How are we supposed to get around? Roller skates?”
He chuckled. “Let me handle this problem. It’s what I do best.”
She sensed a deeper meaning behind his words. His eyes snared her.
“We’ll work things out. Everything will be okay.”
She nodded.
He smoothed a curl from her cheek. Sensations ruffled through her midsection, and her eyelids lowered of their own accord. “We will get Penny back.”
“That, too,” he said.
She forcibly turned away. How was she supposed to resist him when all he had to do was look her way and she turned into mush? She focused her attention on the ransom note drafts.
Max had planted seven sheets of crumpled notebook paper in Frankie’s trash can. She picked one up as if it were a Fabergé egg encrusted with diamonds. She found a corner and tugged gently, careful not to tear the paper or smudge the penciled writing. She wished she’d remembered to ask for latex gloves. Her hands were sweating. She wiped them dry on her shirt.
With the paper as smoothed out as she could make it, she reached for the next. Behind her McKennon talked on the telephone. She tuned him out, paying him no more attention than she did to the television or the traffic noises. With painstaking care she restored the papers to as close to original condition as possible. No easy task since they’d been squashed. Sitting on the bed and stretching to reach the desk made her back ache. She had to pause every few minutes to knead out the kinks.
“Put your wig on and let’s go,” McKennon said.
She blinked in confusion. While she’d been working, he’d packed up everything in the room except for the papers and the blond wig. He dropped a plastic bag on the desk and rolled a hand, indicating she was to place the papers inside.
“I have work to do.”
“Our ride is here. Ross is taking us to a safe house.”
“You’re kidding?” She gathered the papers into a pile and slid them into a plastic bag. “Ross is outside?”
He gathered all the bags and carried them outside. Frankie peeked out the window. He placed the bags in the trunk of a shiny black Lexus. The tinted windows prevented her from seeing the driver, but she recognized her cousin’s car. Her lower lip began to tremble. Good old Ross. He never let her down. She vowed that from this day forward he’d be a bigger part of life—no matter how discouraging her situation.
She snatched the wig off the lamp shade and hurried into the bathroom. Sally had made it seem easy to put the heavy wig in place. Frankie fought the blasted thing as if it were a wild beast until she managed to get the majority of her hair underneath the netting. Now she looked like a hooker having a bad hair day. She shoved her arms into the Frankenstein coat and picked up the bag of papers.
McKennon gestured from the doorway. “You ride with Ross. I’m stashing my car.”
She paused before stepping out of the cheesy motel room. Not a trace of clouds marred the pristine sky, and warmth barreled from the sun. Melting snow ran in rivers toward street drains.
“You can quit now,” she told him. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” he asked. Dark sunglasses concealed his eyes.
“Turn the Butunal over to the cops and tell them where you found it. The cops don’t want you. If you keep helping me you’ll end up in serious trouble.”
“This is personal. I’m sticking with you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. You don’t care that much about getting even with Max.”
He touched a finger to her chin. “I’m not talking about Max.” Before she could respond, he had her by the arm. He opened the passenger door of the Lexus and all but shoved her inside.
“Hey, Cuz.” Ross’s merry gray eyes took in the blond wig and sweat suit. “Nice look.” He looked past her and said to McKennon, “Ten minutes.”
McKennon shut the door, and Ross drove out of the parking lot.
“How are you doing?” Ross asked.
She fingered the plastic bag, which contained her only hope of proving she hadn’t engineered the murder and kidnapping. “Been better. Does Dawn know what you’re doing?”
“She and I are joined at the hip. All of us Dukes stick together.” He tossed her his version of an admonishing frown. “You shouldn’t have skipped out o
n us. Mom and Dad are worried.”
“I know, but I had to move fast. Good thing I did, too. The cops almost caught me at my place. What’s going on at Elk River?”
“Everyone is looking for Penny. The Feds set up roadblocks, but I don’t think it’ll do any good. Too many roads and back trails. Agent Patrick isn’t happy about potential black marks on her record. She likes being assigned to Colorado. Have to warn you. You are on her permanent list. If she can’t find Penny, she’ll look straight at you for a scapegoat.”
“She’ll have to stand in line.” She held up the bag. “These are drafts of the ransom note. Max Caulfield planted them in my apartment. I need enough time to prove he wrote them.”
Ross whistled in appreciation. He drove toward the neighborhood where he and Dawn lived. “How are you going to prove Caulfield planted the papers and the drug?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.” The truth was, if she couldn’t find Penny, then none of the rest mattered. She closed her eyes and leaned back on the butter-soft leather seat. The cops and Max weren’t giving her time to think at all.
Chapter Thirteen
“Okay, Cuz, this place is about as safe as any in Colorado.” Ross Duke handed Frankie a set of keys. “There’s a Caddy in the garage and plenty of food. If you need anything else I’m only a phone call away.”
Frankie pulled the wig off her head and scratched furiously at her itching scalp. She walked through the condo. Though small, it was luxuriously furnished with white leather sofas, flokati rugs, a gas fireplace with a marble mantelpiece and expensively framed prints on the walls. Heavy silk draperies shut out the world. It appeared immaculate, but smelled dusty. “Is this yours?”
“It’s Connie Haxman’s. She keeps it for her ex-husbands. She doesn’t mind them visiting, but she doesn’t want them staying at her place.” He shrugged as if the socialite’s quirks were of no concern to him. He jerked a thumb at a spiral staircase. “The bedroom is upstairs. There shouldn’t be any reason for anybody to come to the door.” He turned to McKennon.
The big man set his duffel on the floor. “I owe you, Ross.”
Ross chuckled. “Keep my cousin here out of trouble and we’ll be square.” The chuckle turned into a laugh. He pointed at Frankie. “Little Miss Goody Two-shoes. I always knew you had a troublesome streak in you somewhere.”
“Ha-ha,” she said dryly.
Ross sobered. “The attorney will contact you. Cooperate with him.”
“I’ll cooperate with everybody. As soon as Penny is safe.”
After Ross had left them, Frankie moved the graphology supplies to a breakfast counter. A decent work space and good overhead lighting would make the job of studying the ransom notes much easier than it would have been back in the motel room. She pulled the seven sheets of crinkled notebook paper out of the bag.
It occurred to her that even if she proved Max had written these notes, Penny could still die. A wave of fearful melancholy stripped the strength from her body and left her slumped over the counter. Who was she trying to kid?
McKennon rubbed her back in slow, comforting circles. “What is it?”
Plagued by images of Penny’s elfin face dead-white and forever still, perhaps lost for all time in the lonely mountains, she lifted her gaze to him. “Why don’t they call? You said they would call. I am so scared.”
His hand stilled on her back, the pressure light but firm. She could read his expression easily now. He was worried.
“All my life I’ve taken care of her. After my dad walked out Mom didn’t handle things so well. I know she wanted to take care of us, but it was hard for her. When Penny was a baby I’d hurry home from school to change her diaper and make sure she got fed. Mom forgot sometimes. She was depressed. Then she got really sick and I had to take care of her, too. I wanted to be a doctor so I could find a cure for her.”
Memories rushed in, filling her, distancing her. If one word could describe her life it would be fear. Fear of not doing enough, of not being enough, of not being in the right place at the right time. Fear of doing something wrong. Now sickening dread coupled with helplessness created a fear such as she’d never known before.
“What about you?” he asked. “Who took care of you?”
“I took care of myself.”
Then he was holding her, and she hadn’t the strength to do anything except rest limply in his arms. “You’re a good woman. You’ve got a big heart and a lot of guts.”
If only he knew the truth. Good intentions didn’t count when everything fell apart. “I’m scared.”
“I know. But I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”
She lifted her gaze to his face. His dear face, so handsome and strong. Her desperate yearning to believe, to trust, to let him care for her, troubled her. “Okay,” she whispered, but didn’t mean it. She could not mean it. She did not know how.
His telephone rang. The peculiar birdlike trilling made both of them stiffen. He pulled the unit out of the holster and frowned at the readout.
“The kidnappers?” she whispered.
He shook his head and turned away from her. He walked away and spoke in such low tones she could not hear what he was saying. Sensing his need for privacy, she turned to her work. Fear or no fear, she had a killer to discover.
J.T. glanced across the room at Frankie. She lined up the papers then plugged in the little lamp. The determination on her face looked all the more fierce because of her wan complexion and dark bruiselike circles under her eyes. His heart ached for her.
“What does that mean?” he asked the caller.
From Carson Springs Dr. Trafoya said, “I’m not certain exactly, Mr. McKennon. As I’ve explained before, we don’t understand fully what is happening inside a comatose brain.”
Clamping down on his excitement—he’d had too many hopes dashed before—J.T. asked, “Does this mean he’s waking up? He’s never had a pain response before.”
The doctor spoke in his usual noncommittal manner. “The pain response could be caused by some chemical or electrical discharge in his brain. It could be seizures. It could be allergies. It might be a random reflex. I’d like to run a few tests to see if I can duplicate the response.”
“Do whatever you think is necessary.”
“I’m keeping you apprised,” the doctor said. “The probability is that this was a fluke and will not be repeated. The tests probably won’t show anything. Jamie’s prognosis hasn’t changed.”
“I understand.” He finished the conversation and hung up. A pain response. As he did every day when he checked Jamie’s status, the doctor had poked the soles of the boy’s feet with a pin. For the first time in four years Jamie’s foot had twitched. For his own sake, J.T. didn’t want to read any more into the doctor’s words than the doctor had been willing to express. Still, the hopefulness he so carefully controlled leaped wildly in his heart.
“McKennon?”
He opened his duffel to retrieve the phone charger. “Nothing to do with you,” he said.
“You have the funniest look on your face. What is it?”
“It was the hospital. Jamie reacted to pain stimulus this morning.”
Her eyes widened and she shoved wayward curls off her face. “That’s good news?”
He plugged the charger into a nearby outlet and hooked up the phone. He pondered “good news.” In the days and weeks following the accident that had killed his wife and damaged his son, he’d considered every sunrise Jamie survived as good news. When the doctors pronounced Jamie in a coma, he’d considered every twitch and sigh from the boy as good news. When Jamie breathed on his own, that was good news. Every ounce of weight he gained was good news. Then the weeks turned into months and the months into years, and McKennon stopped thinking in terms of good and bad. Jamie survived. Jamie would someday wake up. What happened until he did awaken meant very little.
“It’s different,” he said. “The doctor doesn’t know why it happened. He’s going to run some tes
ts. He says it could be a seizure.”
“Oh.” Her eyes dimmed. “Sorry. Are you going to go see him?”
He wanted to. He missed Jamie. Usually he visited every morning around 3:30 a.m. In the quiet, before rounds began and visitors who kept normal hours arrived, he talked to his son and read him stories and bathed him.
“I’ll be okay alone,” Frankie said. She slid off the stool and padded across the room. “You should be there if something happens.”
He touched her face, exploring with his thumb the strong planes of her square cheekbones. He wanted to make love to her. Muffle some of their mutual pain through mutual pleasure. He eased a corkscrew curl off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear.
She caught his hand. Her skin looked milky-white against his darker, coarser skin. Vivid memories of the long, lean length of her fitted so perfectly against his body tormented him. She pushed his hand away from her face and averted her gaze. Color bloomed on her pale cheeks.
“Go see your son.”
He caught her shoulder as she turned away. She stiffened.
“Are you still angry with me?” he asked.
The color deepened on her cheeks. Her lips thinned. Under his hand her muscles tensed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. I care about you.”
“The only thing that matters is getting Penny back. What you do to me after that doesn’t matter one little bit.”
He dropped his hand. “Do to you?”
She backed a step and raised a hand protectively to her throat. Her eyes were wild and wounded. “You lied to me about Max. For all I know you’re lying now. I don’t know what your agenda is. I want to trust you, but...I...it’s hard.”
He started to protest that he hadn’t lied, except, technically, he had. Lies of omission were lies nonetheless. Desire faded, replaced by shame and anger. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He called himself an idiot for lacking the words to ease her mind and allow her to forgive him.
He’d never been one for talking about what he felt. Nina had talked enough for two people, and he’d always been content to listen. She’d always seemed to know what was in his heart.
