by Sharon Potts
“We know that.”
“And that in the courthouse, Mr. Cole made a scene and swore they would get even with my mother?”
He flattened his hands against the table. “What kind of scene?”
She was back in control. “Cole shouted across the room at my mother. Called her a murderer.”
“I see.” He reached into his pocket and tapped something into his phone. “I’ll make sure Detective Gonzalez knows about that. The police are following up on the Coles.” He met her eye. “Is there anything else you want to ask about to confirm we’re doing our job?”
She ignored his sarcasm. It was time to ask the questions that really mattered. “Has anyone gotten a ransom demand?”
“You mean other than you or your mother?”
Her face heated up again. Was it possible he knew about the note her mother had received and was playing her?
“You would obviously know if you had been contacted, and I imagine your mother would have told you if she had.” His tone was gentler. For some reason, he was retreating from their little sparring match. “And, no. No one’s contacted your brother, his wife, or the Simmers, but we’re monitoring their cell phones and e-mail accounts.”
“Not mine or my dad’s?”
“Not at this time,” he said. “We only got a court order for family members who were likely to be contacted with a ransom demand.”
Aubrey looked at the pizza crust in her hand so that Smolleck couldn’t read her face. “What about regular mail? Are you checking that?”
“Obviously,” he said.
She tried to keep her voice neutral. “Did one of your people bring the mail in today and check it?”
She followed his glance back at the FBI crew inside the brightly lit family room. “Yes,” he said.
“There were a lot of people in the house today,” Aubrey said. “FBI, police. Are you keeping track of everyone? Have they all been background-checked?”
He stiffened. “Do you have any reason to believe someone tampered with the mail?”
This wasn’t going the way she wanted. She needed to back off before she inadvertently revealed anything about the ransom note. She met his gaze. “Special Agent Smolleck. We don’t know who took Ethan or why. I want to be sure my mother and I aren’t in any danger sleeping in our own home.”
“Is that what you’re really worried about?” He didn’t look away.
Blood pounded in her ears. “What I’m really worried about is getting Ethan back.” She stood up. “And I hope you are, too.”
She hurried out of the patio before he could ask her any more questions, because it was becoming clear that all her expertise in analyzing human behavior was worthless in a sparring match with a master.
CHAPTER 13
Diana left the park and stood on South Bayshore Drive waiting for traffic to break. A number of cars sped past, heading toward downtown Coconut Grove. Probably people heading out to dinner or going home after working late.
She couldn’t go home.
Not yet.
Not with the FBI creeping around.
She flagged down a passing taxi and got in. It was a little past seven, and Jonathan wouldn’t arrive in Miami for a half hour or so, but she could wait for him at his apartment.
She gave the driver his Brickell Avenue address, a couple of miles away, then called Aubrey to tell her where she was going so she wouldn’t worry. There was no point in calling Smolleck. Her phone had GPS if they were interested in locating her. Instead, she texted Jonathan to meet her at his apartment. He’d see the message when his plane landed.
She pressed “Send,” and shuddered. Jonathan and the FBI now knew where she would be. Did whoever was threatening her know, too? The taxi turned onto Brickell Avenue and headed toward downtown, passing luxury high-rises that overlooked Biscayne Bay. She was uncertain about what she would do when she saw Jonathan. Whether she would tell him about the note. He had a brilliant mind; maybe he could help figure out who had sent it and what to do next.
She was jolted out of her thoughts as the taxi stopped in front of Jonathan’s towering building, a recently built condo with all the amenities of a five-star hotel. She’d been surprised the first time Jonathan had brought her here. The building’s modern marble facade didn’t fit her image of the unassuming man who loved to talk about economic theory and ancient civilizations. But Jonathan had explained that he’d bought the condo shortly after his wife died. A place with twenty-four-hour room service had been a good choice for a widower who didn’t know how to cook and had no interest in learning.
She paid the driver, then walked through the high-ceilinged lobby filled with abstract art to the elevator bank. She input the security code, and the private elevator zipped her up to Jonathan’s apartment on the forty-second floor. In the outer foyer to the apartment, she input the code again and was hit by a blast of icy air as she opened the door. She shivered as she turned on the lights, which bounced off white-marble floors, white furnishings, and white walls. There were a few bursts of crimson from strategically placed paintings and heavy glass paperweights on the coffee table and on the shelves on either side of the gigantic flat-screen TV.
A decorator had designed the interior, clearly with no understanding of the sensibilities of the man who would be living here. A man who loved books, not television, and who wore ten-year-old suits, not the latest fashion. But maybe Jonathan had wanted something devoid of warmth and personality when his wife died after battling cancer for several years.
Diana glanced at the rectangular Lalique crystal tray on the entryway table. It was an antique piece with three compartments, a piece the decorator had been very pleased with. But Jonathan had altered it to serve his own purposes. With a labeling gun, he had made blue stickers that he’d affixed to each compartment that held his keys: Car, House, Office. What’s wrong with labels? he’d asked when the horrified decorator saw his handiwork.
Diana picked up the keys to the black Ford SUV, which he’d owned forever and had no intention of getting rid of. She put the keys down, turned the A/C up to seventy-five, then went into the bedroom and got Jonathan’s burgundy sweater from his closet. He was a small man, and the sweater was only slightly large on her. She could smell his scent on it, the aftershave he often used. Eau Sauvage. He had once told her he’d been wearing it since college, which didn’t surprise her at all.
She heaved open the balky balcony door and stepped outside. The wind was strong out there, so she closed the door behind her to keep it from blowing everything around inside.
The balcony was narrow, barely wide enough for furniture, but it wrapped around the entire apartment. She leaned against the balustrade, taking in the impressive view.
To the north were buildings that had once been the skyscrapers of Miami but now looked like mere toys relative to the new construction. To the south, the bay stretched off into darkness until it reached the bridge from the mainland to Key Biscayne. She could see the lights of the cars crossing, like two rows of tiny diamonds.
She looked down at the engagement ring Jonathan had given her, with its halo of diamonds.
Did someone really believe she would kill Jonathan in exchange for Ethan’s life?
She held on to the railing. Directly below was a square of green, where she and Jonathan sometimes sat. She was overcome by a powerful wave of dizziness. She pulled herself back. The wind whipped her hair around. Forty-two stories up.
No one would survive a fall from this height.
Could she do it to save Ethan’s life?
She looked out toward the black bay, at the tiny lights on the bridge. They began to blur.
Was saving her grandson worth the price of Jonathan’s life?
A rolling noise behind her startled her.
“Here you are, darling.” Jonathan was beside her in one stride. He hugged her against him. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She buried her head against his neck and felt the light scratch of his evening whisker
s, smelled the Eau Sauvage and his own scent that she had come to love. He was wearing an overcoat. He had come from Washington to be with her. Because he loved her.
She cupped his gentle face with her trembling hands and looked at him. A few wrinkles on his freckled skin, mostly laugh lines behind the horn-rimmed glasses, around his hazel eyes. The wind blew a few reddish-gray hairs across his bald spot.
“I’m here now, darling,” he said. “I’ve come to take care of you.”
The pressure and pain that had been building since Ethan disappeared rose to the surface, and the terror she had held back broke loose.
She clung to the man she loved and whom she had, for one brief instant, considered killing.
And for the first time since her grandson had gone missing, she began to cry.
CHAPTER 14
The shower hadn’t cleared her head. Aubrey was annoyed that she had opened herself up to Smolleck’s scrutiny, but at least she had taken a couple of things away from her talk with him. For some reason, the FBI continued to be interested in her parents’ past. Smolleck had also brought up something disturbing about her father—his unwillingness to take a lie detector test.
She thought about her mother’s odd behavior at the park when Aubrey had suggested Dad may have left the note. Mama’s language was too emphatic, too defensive.
Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I protect him?
It had reminded Aubrey of the stonewalling she’d gotten as a child when she’d asked her parents whether anything was wrong. She’d always retreated, afraid to upset them further.
But she was no longer a child.
Although she was satisfied her father hadn’t been directly involved in Ethan’s kidnapping, she sensed he knew something. Something that might help them get Ethan back.
She dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved jersey, then went into her mother’s bedroom. She grabbed the extra set of car keys Mama always left for her in the top drawer of her dresser, then hurried down the stairs, hoping not to attract the attention of the FBI team.
Smolleck would expect some explanation of where she was going and why, and a visit to her father might arouse his suspicions further.
She left the house and walked around to the driveway where her mother’s old red BMW 325i convertible was parked. She backed out of the driveway, maneuvered her way through the narrow streets to US 1, then headed toward South Beach.
When she’d called her father earlier, he had told her that he and Star were staying at a time-share, and invited Aubrey to come up for a drink. She wasn’t happy about seeing Star again but didn’t want to suggest someplace else and risk having her father change his mind. She had to confront him and try to unravel this mess before someone got seriously hurt.
The traffic was light, and she drove the old car just over the speed limit. She remembered when her mother had gotten it, shortly before Aubrey’s eighth birthday. Mama had put the top down and taken Aubrey and Kevin for a ride across the bridge to Key Biscayne, singing along to an oldies station, then stopping at the marina for conch fritters and Cokes.
It had been a great day.
It was also the only time Aubrey could remember her mother taking the top down.
A short time after Mama had gotten the car, everything changed in the Lynd household. Her parents began fighting, then Mama had gotten sick and stayed in bed for what seemed like weeks or months to Aubrey, though it had probably only been a few days. Years later, she realized Mama had been suffering from a vertigo attack, and she’d wondered whether Jimmy Ryce’s kidnapping and murder had changed Mama, too.
It took Aubrey twenty minutes to get to Meridian Avenue in Miami Beach: a pretty, tree-lined street of old pastel-colored apartment buildings and narrow houses. The address her father had given her was of a three-story, mustard-colored art-deco building that looked more like someone’s residence than the luxury time-share she’d been expecting. It was across from a neighborhood park, which was enclosed by a chain-link fence.
She found a spot by the park and crossed over to the building, which was surrounded by tall hedges and heavy foliage. Decorative, wrought iron bars covered the windows and front glass door. Definitely not a place her dad, whose taste ran to modern, would choose. A narrow, warped garage door was on one side of the entrance, but weeds grew in the pebbled driveway, as though the garage were rarely used.
Aubrey examined the old-fashioned intercom system by the recessed front door that had a buzzer for each of the five apartments. She pressed the one for “100” to announce her arrival and noticed the outer door was slightly ajar. She was immediately buzzed into a small foyer with a dull terrazzo floor. She glanced around, noting a staircase that led up to the other apartments, a utilitarian doorway on the left that probably provided access to the garage, and a hallway that went straight through to a rear door. Beneath a row of mailboxes sat a cardboard box with several short metal pipes—probably a plumbing project in one of the apartments.
The door to the right opened, and her father came out, his white hair damp and neatly combed as though he’d recently showered. He’d changed out of the light-blue button-down he’d had on back at the house and was wearing a short-sleeved, untucked shirt with a pattern of palm trees.
“Come on in,” he said. “We’re glad you called.”
She hated that he included Star in his welcome, but at least he didn’t seem angry with her after their quarrel earlier.
She stepped directly into the living room, which smelled of overcooled air and looked as if it had been furnished in the eighties with catty-corner rattan sofas in a tropical print, a matching rattan dining-room set, and a shelving unit covered with knickknacks made of seashells and pastel-colored glass. A ceiling fan hung in the middle of the living room, and another in the small, open kitchen which, judging from the mica countertop, hadn’t been updated in many years. The one concession to the present was the flat-screen TV on the wall opposite one of the sofas.
“I know,” her father said, as though reading her mind. “It’s not the usual time-share property, but it’s very convenient, and Star was able to secure it for us for as long as we need it.” He touched her shoulder lightly. “And the bar is fully stocked, so what can I get you?”
“Is she here?” Aubrey asked, looking toward a closed door beyond the kitchen that was probably the bedroom.
“Star’s off buying some snacks for us, but she should be back any minute.” He went into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. “So what’ll it be? A cocktail? Wine?”
“Wine’s good,” she said, speaking over the hum of a noisy, in-wall air-conditioning unit. “Doesn’t matter what kind.”
He took three wineglasses down from a cabinet, then opened a bottle of red and poured it.
She watched his competent movements, his frown of concentration. She remembered him making her scrambled eggs one Saturday morning when Mama had gone to the hospital to check on a patient. How delicious those eggs had tasted.
He came back into the living room and handed her one of the glasses, which was filled almost to the brim, then sat on one of the sofas.
She took a seat on the other sofa and set her wineglass on the bubblegum-colored mica coffee table, next to an ashtray made of seashells and a remote for the TV.
Her father took a long sip of wine. “Pretty tough watching that press conference tonight, wasn’t it?”
“Tougher for Kev,” she said softly. Although going to the park with her mother had been crucial, Aubrey regretted that she had missed seeing her brother. Missed being there to support him. He still hadn’t responded to her texts, but the best help she could give him would be to find Ethan and get him home safely.
She leaned toward her father. “Dad. I need to ask you something.”
“Sure. Ask.”
“Smolleck told me you refused to take a polygraph test.”
His white eyebrows rose. “What business does he have talking about me to you?”
“It just came up,” she said. “
Why didn’t you take it?”
He studied her. The whites of his blue eyes were laced with red. They’d been clear when she’d seen him earlier, and she wondered whether he’d been crying, or perhaps drinking. “There’s no legal requirement to take it,” he said. “And no point for me. I was in California when he was taken.”
“But they use it to eliminate suspects. Not taking it raises questions.”
“For whom?” His face got red. “You think I kidnapped my own grandson?”
“I think the FBI is interested in you for some reason.”
“Then they’re a bunch of morons,” he said. “Why are they wasting their time?”
“Smolleck asked me questions about your past political interests.”
“What?” He put the wineglass down on the table a little too hard. “And this is supposed to be connected to Ethan’s disappearance?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Could there be a connection? Were you ever affiliated with any groups that might try to use Ethan as leverage?”
“Affiliated? What the hell are you talking about, Aubrey?”
“I’m trying to understand why Smolleck was asking about you. He brought up Columbia University. He asked if you knew Jonathan there.”
Her father’s eyes widened, then he looked away quickly. He picked up his wineglass and swirled it. He was hiding something.
“Did you know Jonathan before he started dating Mom?”
He shook his head, then took a sip of wine.
“Did something happen when you were at college? Something connected to the accident Mom was in?” She was grasping at straws, throwing at him the questions Smolleck had asked her, because why would the FBI care about those things? And why was her father acting as though he were holding something back?
Her father took in a deep breath. He looked like he was about to explode. Then he let it out. “Why are you here, Aubrey? What the hell are you doing?”
