by Tami Hoag
“I didn’t see any point in upsetting you with it,” Seabright said. “Look at you. Look what it’s done to you.”
“I found it today,” she said to me. “My daughter’s been kidnapped. Bruce didn’t think I should know about that.”
“I told you, I will handle it, Krystal,” he said through his teeth.
Krystal looked at me, tragic, pathetic, terrified. “In our family, we leave the decisions to the person best equipped to make them.”
I looked hard at Bruce Seabright. He was perspiring. He knew he could intimidate a woman like Krystal, but he could not intimidate me.
“I’m going to ask you one last time, Mr. Seabright. And before you answer, know that the Sheriff’s Office can pull your local usage details from the phone company and verify the information. Have the kidnappers called?”
He put his hands on his hips and looked up at the ceiling, weighing the pros and cons of denial. He wasn’t the type to openly defy the cops. If he took my word on the phone records, and thought about what would happen if the Sheriff’s Office became involved . . . his public image could be damaged . . . I held my breath.
“Last night.”
A strange sound of anguish wrenched out of Krystal Seabright and she doubled over the back of a fat leather chair as if she’d been shot.
Seabright puffed himself up like a furious pigeon as he tried to justify his behavior. “First of all, I think the whole thing is a hoax. This is just Erin trying to humiliate me—”
“I’m up to my back teeth with men and their persecution theories today,” I said. “I don’t want to hear yours. I saw the tape. I know the kind of people Erin has been mixed up with. I wouldn’t be willing to bet her life against your fear of embarrassment. Who called? A man? A woman?”
“It sounded like the voice on the tape,” he said impatiently. “Distorted.”
“What did it say?”
He didn’t want to answer. His mouth pulled into that pissy little knot I wanted to slap off his face.
“Why should I tell you any of this?” he said. “I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know who you’re working for. I don’t know that you’re not one of them.”
“For God’s sake, tell her!” Krystal cried. She slipped around the side of the leather chair and crawled into it, curling herself into a fetal position.
“And how do I know you’re not?” I returned. “How does your wife know you’re not?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Seabright snapped.
“Ridiculous isn’t the word I’d use to describe it, Mr. Seabright. Erin has been a source of considerable irritation to you. Maybe you saw a way to eliminate the problem.”
“Oh my God!” Krystal cried, putting her hands over her mouth.
“That’s absurd!” Seabright shouted.
“I don’t think the Sheriff’s Office will think so,” I said. “So you’d better start coming up with the details.”
He heaved another sigh, the put-upon patriarch. “The voice said to put the money in a cardboard box and leave it in a specific spot at the Equestrian Estates horse-show grounds out in Loxahatchee somewhere.”
I knew the area. Twenty minutes from Wellington, Equestrian Estates was an as-yet-undeveloped development. More or less wide-open spaces with a show grounds used only several times a year.
“When?”
“Today. Five o’clock.”
“And did you leave the money?”
“No.”
Krystal was sobbing. “You killed her! You killed her!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Krystal, stop it!” he snapped. “If she’s really kidnapped, they aren’t going to kill her. What would be the point?”
“The only point is to get the money,” I said coldly. “They’ll try to get it whether she’s alive or not. Did they promise you would see Erin at the drop site? Did they say you’d be able to pick her up somewhere else if you came through with the cash?”
“They didn’t say.”
There was no guarantee Erin wasn’t already dead. If the kidnapper was ruthless enough, she might have been killed in short order after the abduction to eliminate her as a possible witness later, and simply to make the kidnapper’s life easier. Or that might have been the point all along—to eliminate her—with a dummied-up kidnapping plot thrown over it for camouflage.
“Have they called since?”
“No.”
“I find that hard to believe. If I was expecting three hundred thousand at five in the afternoon and it didn’t show, I’d want to know why.”
He lifted his hands and walked away to a window where half-opened plantation shutters let in the darkness. I watched him and wondered just how cold a man he was. Cold enough to knowingly throw his stepdaughter to a sexual predator? Cold enough to have her killed? Maybe.
The one thing I had difficulty accepting was the idea of Seabright relinquishing control in any kind of collaborative scheme that would leave him vulnerable. But his only other choice would have been to dirty his hands himself, and that I didn’t see at all. Conspiracy was the lesser of evils. Conspiracy could always be denied.
My gaze fell on Seabright’s desk, immaculate in its organization. Perhaps I would see a file lying there labeled: KIDNAP ERIN. Instead, I stopped at the telephone, a Panasonic cordless with a caller ID window on the handset. The same phone I had in Sean’s guest house. I went behind the desk, sat down in the leather executive’s chair, and picked up the phone. The caller ID light on the base was blinking red.
“What are you doing?” Bruce demanded, hurrying back across the room.
I pressed the search button on the handset, and a number appeared in the display window. “I’m taking advantage of the miracle of modern technology. If the kidnapper called you on this line from a phone that wasn’t blocked, the number will be stored in the memory of this unit and can be checked against a reverse directory. Isn’t that terribly clever?”
I jotted the number on his spotless blotter, scrolled to the next stored number, and noted it. He wanted to snatch the phone out of my hand. I could see the muscles working in his jaw.
“My clients and business associates call me here,” he said. “I won’t have you harassing them.”
“How do you know one of them isn’t the kidnapper?” I asked.
“That’s insane! These are wealthy and respectable people.”
“Maybe all but one.”
“I don’t want people dragged into this mess.”
“Do you have any enemies, Mr. Seabright?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“You’ve never pissed anybody off? A man in land development in south Florida? That would be astonishing.”
“I’m a reputable businessman, Ms. Estes.”
“And you’re about as likable as dysentery,” I said. “I can’t believe you don’t have a list of people who would be pleased to see you suffer. And I’m only thinking of your immediate family.”
He hated me. I could see it in his small, mean eyes. I found the notion satisfying, the feeling mutual.
“I will have your license number,” he said tightly. “I have every intention of reporting you to the proper authorities.”
“Then I would be stupid to give it to you, wouldn’t I?” I said, making note of another call. The phone reported having stored thirteen numbers since last having been cleared. “Besides, I don’t see that you’re in any position to complain about me, Mr. Seabright. I know too much you’d rather not read about in the newspapers.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m always amazed when people have to ask that question,” I said. “Do you owe money to anyone?”
“No.”
“Do you gamble?”
“No!”
“Do you know a man named Tomas Van Zandt?”
“No. Who is he?”
“Did you arrange for Erin to get the job working for Don Jade?”
I noted the last of the stored phone numbers and looked up a
t him.
“What difference does that make?” he asked.
“Did you?”
He seemed nervous again. He straightened a humidor on the desktop a sixteenth of an inch.
“It would be quite a coincidence if Erin had simply stumbled into a job with the trainer of the client you sold a hugely expensive property to.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” he demanded. “So I might have mentioned she was looking for a job with horses. So what?”
I shook my head, tore the page of numbers off the blotter, and stood. I looked at Krystal, still huddled in the leather chair, eyes glassy, locked in her own private hell. I wanted to ask her if she thought it was worth it—the house, the clothes, the car, the money—but she was probably suffering enough without me accusing her of selling out her own child. I gave her one of the cards with my phone number on it, and laid one on the desk.
“I’ll run these numbers and see what I come up with,” I said. “Call me immediately if you hear from the kidnappers. I’ll do what I can. In my professional opinion, you should call the Sheriff’s Office, the detective division, and ask to speak directly to Detective James Landry.”
“But they said no police,” Seabright said, a little too happy to comply with that demand.
“Plain clothes, plain car. No one will know he isn’t a Jehovah’s Witness.”
Seabright pouted. “I don’t want other people making decisions for my family.”
“No? Well, contrary to your egomania, you are not best equipped to make these decisions,” I said. “You need professional help with this. And if you don’t want to accept it, I’ll cram it down your throat.”
Chapter 19
Two-forty A.M. Bruce Seabright couldn’t sleep. He didn’t try. He had no desire to share a bed with Krystal tonight, even though he knew she was unconscious. He was too agitated to sleep, or even to sit. He had spent an hour cleaning his office: polishing the fingerprints from the furniture, wiping down every item on the desk, spraying the telephone with Lysol. His inner sanctum had been breeched, contaminated.
Krystal had come in here without his knowledge and pawed through the mail on his desk, even though he had told her very specifically never to do that. He always handled the mail. And Molly had come in and taken the videotape. He had expected better of both of them. The disappointment was bitter in his mouth. The order of his world had been upset, and now that bitch private investigator was trying to take over. He wouldn’t stand for it. He would find out who she was working for, and he would make sure she never worked again.
He paced the room, breathing deeply the scents of lemon oil and disinfectant, trying to calm himself.
He never should have married Krystal. That had been a mistake. He had known her eldest daughter would be a problem he would end up having to deal with, and here he was.
He opened the television cabinet, pulled a video from the shelf, and popped it in the VCR and hit play.
Erin, naked, chained to a bed, trying to cover herself.
“Look at the camera, bitch. Say your line.”
She shakes her head, tries to hide her face.
“Say it! You want me to make you?”
She looks at the camera.
“Help me.”
Bruce ejected the tape and put it in its cardboard sleeve. He went to the small secret wall safe hidden behind a row of books on real estate law, opened the safe, put the tape inside, and locked it away. No one else would see the tape. That was his decision. He was best equipped to make it.
Chapter 20
I have never been hindered by the belief that people are basically good. In my experience, people are basically selfish, and often cruel.
I slept for three hours because my body didn’t give me a choice. I woke because my brain wouldn’t let me rest. I rose and fed the horses, then showered and went to my computer in a T-shirt and underpants and started tracing the phone numbers from Bruce Seabright’s phone using a reverse directory on the Internet.
Of the thirteen numbers, six were unlisted with a Wellington prefix, four came back with names, one came back to Domino’s Pizza, and two calls had come from the same Royal Palm Beach number, also with no listing. Seabright claimed the kidnapper had called only once, but I didn’t believe him. He’d been a no-show for the drop. I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have gotten a call after that.
I dialed the Royal Palm number and listened to it ring unanswered. No cheerful greeting: Kidnappers R Us.
I dialed the unlisted numbers, one by one, getting answering machines and maids, and waking up a couple of very cranky people who would no doubt be calling Bruce Seabright’s office to complain about his new assistant.
I dialed the Sheriff’s Office, wending my way through the various receptionists to get to Landry’s voice mail, at the same time checking my e-mail for word from my FBI contact on the inquiry to Interpol. Nothing yet. As I listened to Landry’s message and jotted down his pager number, I considered calling Armedgian to hasten a response, but decided not to press my luck. Any info from abroad would just be corroboration. I already knew Van Zandt was a world-class sleaze.
Was he bold enough to try kidnapping? Why not? He’d been just a step away from it with Irina’s friend, Sasha Kulak. If Bruce Seabright had set up Erin’s job through Trey Hughes, it stood to reason Van Zandt could have found out Erin was connected to the Fairfields developer. Developers take in a lot of money, he might have reasoned. Why shouldn’t he be entitled to some? Motive: greed. He knew the girl, knew the show grounds, knew when people would be around and when they wouldn’t. Opportunity.
Means? I knew Van Zandt had a video camera, so he could have made the tape. The distortion device would have disguised his accent. What about the white van? Where had it come from, and if Van Zandt had been running the video camera, then who was the guy in the mask?
Scum finds its own level. There were plenty of people skulking in the shadows of the show grounds who could have been persuaded to do just about anything for money. Decent people might not have been able to find them, but Tomas Van Zandt was not a decent person.
The truly disturbing possibility of Van Zandt as the kidnapper was his possible connection to Bruce Seabright and Seabright’s lack of action on the ransom demand. But if Seabright was connected, then why would the videotape have been addressed to Krystal? And why would he have tried to hide it from her? If the projected outcome was in fact to get rid of Erin but make it look like a kidnapping gone wrong, Seabright needed corroboration on his end. It didn’t make sense for him to keep it to himself.
His lack of action couldn’t be denied, whatever his motive. I was willing to bet he had yet to act, despite my threat.
I dialed Landry’s pager and left my number. Avadonis Farms would come up in his caller ID. That gave me a better shot for a return call. He would have taken one look at my name and hit the erase button.
While I waited for the phone to ring, I poured a cup of coffee, paced, and considered other angles. The fact that Erin had cared for Stellar and Stellar was dead; the possible connections to Jade, with his shadowy past. The fact that Erin had been involved with Chad Seabright; the fact they had been seen arguing two days before her disappearance. She’d dumped him—for an older man, Chad said. She’d had a thing for her boss, Molly said.
The phone rang. I scooped it up and answered.
“This is Detective James Landry. I received a page from this number.”
“Landry. Estes. Erin Seabright has been kidnapped. Her parents received a videotape and a ransom demand.”
Silence on the other end as he digested that.
“Do you still think it’s not a case?” I asked.
“When did they get the demand?”
“Thursday. The stepfather was supposed to make the drop yesterday. He took a pass.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a long story. Let’s meet somewhere. I’ll fill you in, then take you to them.”
“That won�
�t be necessary,” he said. “I’ll get the details from the parents. Thanks for the tip, but I don’t want you there.”
“I don’t care whether you want me there or not,” I said flatly. “I’ll be there.”
“Hindering an official investigation.”
“So far, hindering has been your area of expertise,” I said. “There wouldn’t be an investigation but for me. The stepfather doesn’t want to do anything. He’d be happy to say ‘oh well’ and hope the perps dump the girl in a canal with an anchor around her waist. I’ve got a three-day jump on you and an in with the people the girl worked for.”
