Second Shot: A Charlie Fox Thriller

by Zoe Sharp

  “How can you keep that kind of a secret from someone you’re living with for all that time?” I said.

  Sean shot me a sly glance. “Some people are very good at keeping secrets.”

  I ignored the jibe and reached for my crutch, struggling to my feet. “Well, there’s one way to find out.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll ask her,” I said.

  Twenty

  Frances Neagley drove me over to the Lucases’ house just before three that afternoon and walked slowly beside me across the slippery driveway. She was the one who rang the front doorbell when my courage might otherwise have deserted me.

  The timing was deliberate. We knew that Lucas would be at the surplus store taking care of business for another couple of hours, giving us initial time with Rosalind alone. Mind you, there was always the chance she wouldn’t let me through the door to begin with.

  It seemed to take a long time for her to answer the summons of the bell. By then I’d got thoroughly cold feet in every sense of the words. I think I was actually shivering when she opened the door and stared blankly at the pair of us. Perhaps that was what made her take pity on me. Her gaze flickered over Neagley, standing close alongside me like she expected me to fall at any moment.

  There was a long pause while the three of us stood there immobile. Then Rosalind stepped back and held the door farther open. “You’d best come in and sit before you collapse,” she said, her voice giving no clues on warmth.

  “Thank you,” I said, limping past her into the hallway Neagley looked around the interior with professional interest, smiling at Rosalind’s assessing stare.

  “This is Frances,” I said by way of introduction. “She very kindly brought me over—there’s no way I can drive yet.”

  Rosalind nodded at that, accepting it on one level, questioning it on another. She gestured for us to follow her through into the living room area. I looked round, hopeful, but it was empty

  “How’s Ella?” I asked.

  A brief smile escaped across the corner of Rosalind’s thin lips. “She’s still very upset, naturally,” she said, “but we’re making progress with her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs, probably watching a little TV in her room.” Rosalind paused, frowning.

  Probably? You mean you dorit know?

  “I’d take it as a favor if you didn’t ask to see her, Charlie,” she went on. “I think it might… unsettle her too much.”

  Something reached into my chest and squeezed at my heart with very cold fingers. “I understand,” I said, expressionless.

  “Thank you,” she said with another small smile. “Can I offer you and your … friend some coffee?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Lucas, that would be great,” Neagley said, her voice coolly polite. “You have a lovely home.”

  “Thank you, we like to think so,” Rosalind replied, but her eyes had narrowed slightly, as though she was still trying to get a handle on Nea-gley’s exact role.

  Rosalind was still frowning as she moved across to fuss with the coffee machine in the kitchen area. I sat, taking the soft leather armchair near the fireplace, so I was sideways on to Rosalind and facing the window, laying the crutch down beside the chair. Neagley remained standing.

  “So, I understand Ella’s father has been in touch with you since the accident,” Rosalind said smoothly, making it sound like Simone had died in a car crash. “Would he have anything to do with your visit? Because if you’re here on his behalf, I have to tell you that we don’t feel that young man would make a suitable parent for Ella.” Her voice was prim.

  “Matt has been in touch,” I said with classic understatement, “but the main reason we’re here is about your husband.”

  “My husband?” Rosalind said. She was measuring coffee grounds into the top of the machine and that might have been why she sounded distracted, but I didn’t think so. Her hand faltered slightly. “What about Greg?”

  “You told me you’d been married for fifteen years,” I said, watching her pour in cold water and close the lid. “How long had you actually known him before that?”

  She frowned. “A year or so,” she said at last, cautious, as though I was out to trip her but she was unable to see how that answer might do it. “Why?”

  “You remember that day at the store when Mr. Vaughan issued his little challenge to me, and afterwards I got that photo message on my phone?”

  “Yes, it was an old picture of Greg,” she said. Her shoulders were too tense, I noticed. She saw me watching her and dropped them abruptly. “Funny how people change,” she said, sounding almost breathless. “I almost didn’t recognize him.”

  “No, Rosalind,” I said gently, “the reason you didn’t recognize him was because the man in the picture wasn’t your husband.”

  She went very still. “So who was it then?”

  “Greg Lucas.”

  “But-”

  “Has your husband ever been violent towards you, Mrs. Lucas?” Nea-gley cut in smoothly.

  “What?” Rosalind shook off her confusion and flushed, outraged. “No, of course he hasn’t! What kind of a question is that?”

  “Back when he was in the military in England, Greg Lucas was a violent man,” I plowed on, taking up the thread, relentless. “Not just as a part of his career, but in his personal life. He beat his first wife and regularly put her infant daughter—Simone—in the hospital.”

  “I-I don’t believe you,” Rosalind said stiffly, but she was white-faced and tense enough to splinter if you’d dropped her.

  “No? Well, the facts bear me out,” I said. Neagley opened her shoulder bag—the one with that short-barreled revolver inside—and pulled out a sheaf of paperwork. We’d detoured to get it copied at the Bob Duncan Photoshop on Main Street on the way over. She held the papers up for Rosalind to see and, when the other woman made no move towards her, put them down on the coffee table.

  “Eventually,” I went on, “Simone’s mother decided she’d had enough. She got out from under. But Lucas wasn’t giving up that easily. He tracked her down. She’d made a new life for herself, taken up with a new man. A guy called John Ashworth.” I paused, let that one sink in on Rosalind, saw the merest twitch in the muscle of her cheek. “The thing was, he wasn’t really a new man. You see, she’d been having a relationship with him since before Simone was born. We don’t know how long for, but it had to be at least nine months, because John Ashworth—John Simon Ashworth, I should say—not Greg Lucas, was Simone’s real father.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Rosalind said, but she had to put a steadying hand out for the kitchen worktop. “Greg passed the DNA test. The police confirmed it—he’s definitely Simone’s father. And Ella’s grandfather.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “But at the time of her conception Greg Lucas was in prison for assault. There’s no possibility of mistake—we’ve checked,” I added, when she opened her mouth to pursue that line. “It’s documented fact.”

  Rosalind didn’t speak right away. She moved slowly round from the kitchen, walking like an automaton, her eyes fixed on the paperwork Neagley had placed on the table. Unable to resist its lure any longer, she snatched up the pages and scanned down them quickly, taking it all in. When she’d finished, her hands were shaking.

  “What does this mean?” she asked, almost a whisper.

  “It means,” I said, “your husband may not be quite the man you thought you married.”

  “It also means that sooner or later the cops in England are going to ask for him to be sent back over there,” Neagley put in helpfully.

  Rosalind’s head came up sharply. “What for?”

  “Well, Greg Lucas was not the type to happily let another man assume his identity,” I said, “so, what do you think happened to the original?”

  ‘And when that private investigator from Boston, Barry O’Halloran, first came looking for him, your husband must have thought the game was up,” Neagley said, her voice flinty. “I
s that why Barry had his ‘accident’?”

  Rosalind’s mouth opened, gaped rather like a drowning fish, then closed into a thin hard line. “Get out,” she said, her voice low and harsh. “Get out now.”

  I glanced at Neagley, who shrugged. Time for a tactical retreat. Perhaps later, when Rosalind had had a chance to read through the damning evidence again, and reflect, she might come round. But not now.

  Now she was hurt and angry and liable to lash out at the nearest thing that could feel pain. Neagley must have sensed that in her, too, because she moved in close to me.

  I reached for the crutch I’d laid next to my chair and struggled to my feet, feeling Rosalind’s eyes on me very keenly while I battled with balance and damaged muscles.

  “I don’t stand to gain anything in this, Rosalind,” I said once I was upright, a last-ditch effort to win her over. “But I do care what happens to Ella.”

  “Like hell you do,” Rosalind bit out. “You’re after the money, you greedy little — “

  I saw the blow coming but couldn’t do much to counter it. The palm of Rosalind’s hand struck me flat across the cheekbone with surprising force. The power of it knocked me back so that I stumbled into the chair I’d just vacated, and overbalanced. Neagley made a grab for me and managed to slow my descent, but not prevent it. I fell backwards across the arm of the chair, landing on the seat. I jolted my back, but the fear of falling did more damage than the actual event. For a moment I just lay there gasping.

  “Charlie!”

  I heard the sound of my own name without initially registering the voice that cried it. Ella must have come downstairs unnoticed while we were arguing. Before I knew it, the tiny figure had threaded her way between Neagley and Rosalind and launched herself on top of me. I gave a grunt of pain and pushed her away weakly Rosalind hoisted the little girl off. Any other time I would have been heartbroken, but I felt only relief.

  “Charlie’s hurt, Ella,” Rosalind said. She looked straight at me. Payback time. “Your mummy hurt her. That’s why your mummy got hurt, and the angels came and took her up to heaven.”

  You bitch! Tou utter, utter bitch ...

  Ella’s confusion was writ large across her features. She turned a gaze on me that was suddenly wary and close to accusing as the connections formed and hardened. No doubt this wasn’t the first time Rosalind had fed her this line. Ella took a minute step back, sneaking her hand into that of the woman she’d learned to call Grandma, looking to her for reassurance.

  “Is that why you hurt Charlie?” Ella asked, wide-eyed, frowning.

  For a moment Rosalind just gaped at her before she turned and glared at me, defiance and anger and guilt all written there, as though it were all my fault for pushing her too far and letting the child see me do it.

  “She didn’t hurt me, Ella,” I said, managing to produce a rough facsimile of a reassuring smile even though one side of my face was stiff and smarting. “I slipped and fell, that’s all. Don’t worry.”

  “I want you both to leave now,” Rosalind said with dignity. In the kitchen the coffee machine was still making gurgling noises, but I didn’t think we were going to get that drink, after all.

  “All right,” I said quietly. “But think about what we’ve told you, Rosalind. You can’t make a fight of this. Better to give in with good grace, don’t you think?”

  Rosalind stiffened her shoulders. ‘And what would you know about that?”

  She followed us to the door, but keeping her distance, Ella clinging to her hand as though her life depended on it and chewing a strand of her hair. On the front step I turned and smiled down at her.

  “Bye, Ella,” I said, a part of me still hoping for some sign of remembrance, of the affection she’d previously shown me.

  Ella just stared, confused and uncomprehending, until the closing door cut her off from my view. And that, I realized, stung far more than a slap to the face could ever do.

  They’re on the run,” Matt said, sounding confident for the first time. “With what Mr. Armstrong’s told me, it’s only a matter of time before I get Ella back.” The underlying relief bubbled up through his voice, struggling to be contained. He was almost jubilant.

  We were sitting in the bar at the White Mountain Hotel, having just had dinner at the Ledges Dining Room there. A young woman was playing a mix of soft jazz on the grand piano that stood on a raised platform between the two rooms, and a sports channel was showing highlights of last season’s baseball on the flat-screen TV behind the bar. One of the teams was the San Francisco Giants and Neagley’s eyes kept sliding to the action. I remembered her saying she was from California and guessed that she hadn’t switched her allegiance when she moved east.

  We made an odd party in such elegant surroundings. I was still in the sweatpants that were all I could comfortably manage, and Matt always had that slightly untidy air about him. The kind that seems to make otherwise quite sensible women want to smooth his hair and do his laundry. Only Sean and Neagley looked as though they’d dressed for the occasion.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Matt,” Sean warned now, reaching for his glass. He’d had wine with the meal, but now he’d moved on to mineral water. “This thing’s a long way from over yet.”

  “Why—what are they going to do?” Matt asked, unwilling to have his celebration squashed entirely. He looked round at the three of us, who must have appeared pessimistically subdued by comparison.

  Neagley shrugged. “Who knows?” she said quietly, swirling her scotch round in the bottom of her own glass. “They’ve proved they’re capable of plenty so far.” And I knew she was thinking of her dead partner. We might never find out whether his death was an accident or not.

  Matt gave her a rueful smile and squeezed her arm as though he read her thoughts. There was something intimate about the gesture that stopped short of invasive. He seemed to have a heightened female empathy. I could imagine he got more attention than his looks would have suggested. And Simone had been jealous, I remembered. Corrosively so.

  Funny, when I’d first met Simone that day in another restaurant, some three thousand miles away, I’d thought of Matt as the enemy, someone from whom I had to protect my client and her daughter at all costs. Now he was the one we were all fighting for.

  I glanced over and found, despite his apparent jubilation, Matt’s eyes were misty. We’d had to tell him, again and again, every tiny thing we could remember about Ella’s appearance today and he’d been storing it away ever since, hugging the memory close like a blanket. “My baby,” he said and his voice wavered a little. He took a swig from the glass of Sam Adams in front of him. “My God, I miss her.”

  Into the silence that followed that statement came the trilling of my mobile. I rooted in my jacket pocket, ignoring the pointed stares from other diners at nearby tables. Irritation with the mobile phone, it seemed, was universal.

  I fumbled the phone open awkwardly with my left hand. “Hello?”

  “Charlie?” said a man’s voice. “It’s Greg Lucas.”

  “Is it really?” I said, skeptical, mouthing his name to the others. “That, it seems, is a matter of opinion.”

  I heard his annoyed expulsion of breath. “Can we put that matter aside for the moment?” he snapped. “This is serious.”

  More serious than what happened to the real Greg Lucas?

  “Go on,” I said.

  “It’s Ella,” he said, his voice rising. He stopped, got control of it, and added, “She’s gone.”

  “What?” Now it was my turn to snort. Then I was speaking fast and low. “I don’t know what the hell game you’re playing, Lucas — “

  “For God’s sake,” he burst out, anger and anguish distorting his voice. “This is no game! I got back from the store and found Rosalind absolutely distraught. She said you’d been round to see her this afternoon. They came and took Ella, right from the house, just after you left.”

  “Who took her?” I demanded. The others had been listening to my side
of the conversation and all three of them tensed at that. Matt started to speak but I waved him quiet. I waited, but Lucas still didn’t respond. “Who took her?”

  At last he said, reluctantly, “We think it’s Felix Vaughan. From what Rosalind said, it sounded like a couple of his guys. They turned up while we were out shopping this morning, trying to scare us, I think. Looks like they got bored with that and went for the real deal.”

  “Have they said what they want?”

  “What do you think?” Lucas said, acid now “Money. Ten million dollars. They left a note when they took her. If we go to the cops, they mail her back in pieces.”

  “Are you at the house?” I said, struggling to fish my crutch out from under the table with my right hand. Sean was already on his feet. “We’ll come now.”

  “No!” Lucas said sharply “They might be watching the house. I-I can’t risk that.” I had to hand it to him, he sounded genuinely shaken. But then, whatever his identity, he was Ella’s grandfather, after all. “We’ll come to you.”

  “What if they try and call you?”

  “They have my cell, and they said they’d call tomorrow, anyway. Where are you?”

  I glanced at Sean. He seemed to understand my unspoken question and gave me a brief nod. “We’re up at the White Mountain Hotel,” I said.

  “OK, we’ll meet you up there,” he said, then added with a bitter twist to his voice, “personally, I’d rather meet you in hell, but Rosalind seems to think you may be our only chance of getting Ella back alive.”

  It was already dark outside. We waited in the car park with the lights of the hotel behind us. It was dazzlingly cold, with the monolithic slab of Cathedral Ledge looming up into the star-cast sky above. I’d picked out the constellation of Orion hanging high and bright above the trees as we came out. We sat in the Explorer with the engine running and the air con set to full heat, but I was shivering violently nevertheless.

  Ella.

  I recalled, starkly, her terror when the press photographers had ambushed her in her mother’s kitchen. The brush of her lips against my neck afterwards. An urge to rampage against the men who’d taken her now was so strong I had to clasp my hands tight in my lap to keep them from acting. So this must be part of what it’s like—maternal instinct. I’d thought that particular emotion had passed me by.