by Lisa Unger
“Military?” she asked him.
“Marines,” he answered, not seeming to wonder why she had made the observation. “My father, too. I had to bounce a quarter on my bed from the time I was old enough to make it myself. The guys make fun of me, but people don’t realize how much time it wastes if you’re disorganized. And when you are talking about missing children, there’s no time to waste. Every minute, they’re further away from being found.”
Lydia nodded and seated herself in an orange faux-leather and chrome chair, noting the coordinating gold shag carpet and wood-paneled walls. Very seventies.
“So six, almost seven weeks into the Tatiana Quinn case, and what are you thinking? Are you going to find her?”
“I have to say I honestly don’t know. Usually by now, I would say, No way. But something keeps me going—and not just the fact that Nathan Quinn pulls some big puppet strings in this department. Something else. Keeps me up nights.”
He ran down the details of the case for Lydia and Jeffrey, starting from the first night, the false leads due to the million-dollar reward, and then the mysterious bus driver. He seemed to become more tired as he went on. Lydia and Jeffrey paid close attention, following along on the board the detective had set up to track all the events, leads, and tips his team had explored, hoping their fresh eyes and ears might pick up on something that the team had missed. But Lydia wasn’t optimistic, having already determined that Detective Ignacio wasn’t a man to miss the smallest detail. She sensed his dedication to his work in his welcome. Most cops worried about somebody stealing their thunder, being the one to break the case. They held things back from Lydia, not wanting her to think of something they hadn’t. But Detective Ignacio, she could tell, was hoping she would. He cared about Tatiana more than he did about his own glory, and that was refreshing to see.
“You said you had something for me, Ms. Strong,” he said when he had finished. “Believe me, I could use a break.”
She put the evidence bag on his desk. “Do you have a cassette player?” she asked.
He pulled a beat-up old RadioShack tape player out of his desk. Lydia hesitated.
“It’s not fancy, but it works.”
“I’m sure. But this is the only copy I have of the tape I’m about to give to you, and if the machine shreds it, we’ve lost the only lead you might have.”
“Good point. Come with me.”
He led them down a gray-carpeted hallway, past glass-walled offices, through some cubes, and into an impressive audiovisual room. They walked past rows of top-of-the-line computers, carrels holding television monitors with video and DVD players, and finally reached a glass-enclosed room that held a number of cassette and CD players. Headphones hung from hooks along the wall. The detective closed the door behind them, and they each pulled up a chair.
“Well, you can’t say that the Miami Police Department isn’t in step with the times,” commented Jeffrey.
“We have our problems, but that’s not one of them,” answered the detective. He looked at Jeffrey a second and then said, “Were you at one time an FBI agent, Mr. Mark?”
“I was. I left the Bureau to start my own private investigation firm, Mark, Hanley and Striker, Inc.”
“I’ve heard of it, of course. You know, they still teach that case of yours at Quantico. I had the privilege to attend the class they give for interested local detectives. That’s quite a thing to have your first case be one of the highest-profile serial-murder cases of the century.”
“Well, I can’t take credit for solving the case. It was really Lydia,” Jeffrey said, glancing at her uneasily. He was relieved to see that she didn’t have that glazed-over look in her eyes that she usually got when this conversation came up, that look that said she’d checked out emotionally.
“That’s right,” said the detective after an embarrassed pause. “Ms. Strong, I’m sorry to have brought that up.”
“It’s all right,” she said. And Jeffrey could tell that it was. She had been dealing with the memory of her mother’s murder much more easily since the Angel Fire case. “Call me Lydia.”
“Call me Manny. And that case last year,” said Ignacio, as if thinking aloud, “that was both of you, as well.”
“Again, it was mostly Lydia.”
“We make a good team,” Lydia said, smiling—something she did a lot more of these days.
She took the tape out of the evidence bag with tweezers and managed to get it into the machine without touching it. She pressed the play button, and Tatiana’s voice filled the room. They were quiet as they listened to the frightened girl, and Lydia thought she saw Detective Ignacio mist up a bit. He rewound the tape and listened to it a second time.
“What’s she saying there? Is it Albanian?”
“It must be,” said Lydia. “And this,” she said after he had pressed the stop button with a sigh. She handed him the note that had arrived with the tape, and he read it.
“It could have been the maid, Valentina Fitore, who sent this to you,” he said after a moment. “Her English is a little shaky, and I’ve had the feeling she’s been hiding something all along. But when I questioned her, I got nothing. You know, the tactics that you use to get information out of U.S. citizens don’t always work with people from countries like Albania, places that are controlled by organized crime. The American police look like Boy Scouts; our prisons look like Club Med compared to the hell they’ve seen in the Balkans. I got the sense she wanted to talk but was more afraid of something else than she was of me. When did you receive this?”
“I got it in the mail the day before yesterday. It was forwarded to me from my publisher. The postmark on the envelope is October first. You can hold on to it, if you want. Have it analyzed.”
“Absolutely. Prints, DNA, hair, fibers, handwriting analysis—the whole shebang. But let’s make a dub of this tape and take it over to Jenna Quinn and see what type of reaction we get out of her. Or maybe this isn’t even Tatiana. Just another dead end.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at the stucco ceiling. Then he pulled a blank tape from a box on the table and put it in the cassette player, next to the original. A high-pitched squeal emitted from the machine as he dubbed the tape.
“If Valentina doesn’t speak much English,” said Lydia, “she couldn’t have written this note.”
“That’s true.” He shrugged. “Maybe someone helped her.”
“Will I be able to talk to Valentina?” asked Lydia when the machine had quieted down.
“You’ll probably be better off talking to her when she’s not at the Quinns’.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she’s terrified of them.”
“Do you think they had something to do with Tatiana’s disappearance, Detective?”
He shook his head slowly, raising his thick eyebrows. She noticed him running his fingers under the edge of the table.
“I just don’t know,” he said. But something in his eyes gave Lydia a different answer. She didn’t press him. “So,” he said, “what’s your interest in this case? Are you in this for the long haul, or are you just satisfying your curiosity? ’Cause I wouldn’t resist the help if you’re planning to come on board.”
Jeffrey shot Lydia a warning glance, then said, “Let’s just say we are considering the possibility.”
“Good enough,” said Ignacio, rising. “I can use all the help I can get. You’ll come along to the Quinn residence?”
“Sure,” Jeffrey replied.
“What type of research have you done on the Quinns?” asked Lydia when they’d left the audiovisual room and were back in his office, where he grabbed his car keys.
“It’s been pretty extensive,” he said as he scribbled something on a piece of paper and slid it across the desk at her. It read “Not here.”
Lydia and Jeffrey exchanged a glance and she nodded.
“We had an encounter last night, Detective. A kind of unfriendly greeting.”
“Really,” said the detec
tive, looking at his phone and then his watch. “We should get moving—only two hours before Jenna Quinn’s weekly manicure appointment. You can tell me about it on the way.”
Outside, the detective sat in the backseat of their Jeep for a few minutes as Jeffrey relayed the details of their encounter the night before. In turn, the detective told them how his research on Nathan Quinn had been cut short. “Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I feel like I’m under surveillance. You know, on the one hand, it’s like the brass is on top of me to solve this case. And on the other, they’re trying to keep me from finding out what really happened to this girl,” he said, the frustration he’d been reining in at the precinct showing now.
“Well, maybe we can help each other, Detective,” said Lydia.
He smiled grimly, nodding his head, and reached for the door. “Just don’t disappear on me like the private detective that Nathan Quinn hired. One minute, this guy is all over me, following up leads, traveling to New York after that Greyhound driver thing; the next thing, he’s gone. Stopped returning my phone calls a couple days ago. He just dropped the case. Left a message finally night before last saying it was a dead end and he had better things to do.”
“That’s weird,” said Lydia. “Did you follow up?”
“No,” he said with a cheerless chuckle. “I have too much on my plate to chase after Stephen Parker, PI.”
He left the Jeep and then led the way to the Quinns’ in his Taurus. On the way over, Lydia called Craig in New York.
“One more thing to add to your search,” she said to him. “Find out what you can on Nathan Quinn, his connections, associations, et cetera. Any shady business dealings. You know the drill.”
“You got it,” he said. She could already hear the soft tapping of his fingers dancing across the keyboard.
“Is your uncle still freaking?”
“He’s not even here today.”
“Yeah? Where’s he at?”
“I don’t know,” he said, sighing. “Don’t care as long he’s off my back.”
“Jacob’s not in today,” Lydia reported to Jeffrey after she had hung up with Craig.
“His wife … Myra’s been having some problems. Jacob’s been vague.”
“Health problems?”
“I think so.”
The conversation ended when they made a left off the highway and onto the bridge that led to Snug Island. The ocean waters of the Intracoastal Waterway glimmered on either side of them, and Lydia rolled down the window to take in the salt air.
A nervous, wide-eyed Valentina Fitore barely contained a gasp as she opened the door and saw Lydia standing between the two men. The small woman, who looked to be approaching sixty, had the shadow of prettiness on her face. She still might have been an attractive woman, but Lydia could see years of hard living, sadness, and struggle in her tired eyes and wrinkled skin. Bending over in physical labor had left her in a permanent slouch, and her hands were cracked and dry. But there was something delicate and ladylike about her, something that made Lydia want to reach out and comfort her. She wore an English maid’s uniform—black skirt and blouse, an apron of ruffled white cotton. Someone’s idea of what the maid should wear, thought Lydia, someone vain and controlling.
“Good morning, Valentina,” the detective said kindly. “Is Mrs. Quinn at home?” His tone indicated that he already knew the answer.
“Yes, I’ll see. Please wait,” she said haltingly, trying to shut the door and have them wait on the stoop.
“It’s awfully hot, Mrs. Fitore. Do you mind if we wait in the foyer?” the detective asked gently but firmly, pushing his way into the house.
“Oh …” she said. She stepped back, appearing confused and unsure of herself.
“Do you know who this is, Mrs. Fitore?” asked the detective, pointing to Lydia.
The maid put her head down and said firmly, “No. No.”
“Okay,” Ignacio said quietly, patting her shoulder lightly. “Go get Mrs. Quinn. Tell her it’s important that she see us immediately.”
Twenty minutes passed as the three stood in the round foyer. Lydia paced a bit while Jeffrey and Detective Ignacio chatted quietly about the detective’s visit to Quantico. She circled the glass and wrought-iron table that sat in the center of the room, stopping to look at a replica of David that stood in a small portico above a fountain on the wall at the base of the stairs. She glanced up the dramatic staircase, which made her think of the one in Tara in Gone With the Wind. She half-expected to see a woman in a sweeping ball gown come dancing down to greet them. An enormous crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. For all the opulence of the foyer, there was no elegance to it. Each object was chosen to communicate wealth, but each competed with the others—the antebellum luxury of the staircase, the Renaissance grandeur of the David. Expensive but tacky. The objects people chose to decorate their homes communicated as much about them as the words they chose to construct their sentences. Whoever had decorated this room wanted people to know immediately upon entering that the Quinns had more money than God.
“Hello!” Detective Ignacio yelled suddenly, making Lydia jump, then laugh a little. She liked him. “Hello, Mrs. Quinn! Detective Ignacio here. I need to speak with you.” The maid rushed out from the hallway, frowning, her finger to her lips.
“Shh, Detective. Just a minute. Mrs. Quinn come in just a minute.”
“What kind of woman takes twenty minutes to come to the door when a detective arrives to tell her that he has a lead in her missing daughter’s case?” Lydia whispered to Jeffrey.
Jenna Quinn appeared at the top of the stairs. Radiant in a pink Chanel suit and black patent-leather pumps, her hair expensively frosted and pulled into a French twist, nails and makeup impeccable, Jenna put on the perfect mask of breathless apology upon reaching them. But Lydia could see that it did not reach her eyes, which were as cold and as soulless as stone.
“I’m so sorry, Detective. I was in the shower. Please come in. Sit down,” she said, leading them into the library, which was to the right of the foyer, and indicating a leather sofa and chairs.
She was in the shower, but she took the time to dry and put her hair into a twist, apply makeup, choose the Rolex, a diamond bracelet and matching earrings, Lydia was thinking as the detective introduced her and Jeffrey to Jenna. Jenna gave Lydia a weak fingertip handshake, which was one of Lydia’s major pet peeves. Meant, she assumed, to communicate a dainty femininity, it instead communicated guarded pettiness and a passive-aggressive personality.
Jenna batted her eyelashes a bit and smiled shyly at Jeffrey as she offered him her fingertips. Jeffrey greeted her the same way he greeted everyone, with respect but distance, and a smattering of suspicion. Lydia loved that Jeffrey was impervious to manipulation. When he had no noticeable reaction to her subtle flirtation, Jenna turned her attention back to the detective.
“Do you have news about my daughter, Detective?” she asked, widening her eyes in a look that Lydia suspected was a bad impression of hope. She then seated herself behind an enormous mahogany desk across the room. On either side of the desk sat two onyx statues of greyhounds, their musculature carefully sculpted, their teeth bared.
The ceilings must have been twenty feet high. A gigantic brass and frosted glass chandelier hung down from the center of a compass that had been painted on the ceiling. A narrow staircase wound up one wall to a catwalk and a full story of bookshelves stocked with what looked to be hundreds of leather-bound editions.
“Possibly,” the detective replied, getting up and moving toward the desk, closing the distance she had placed between them. As he removed the tape from his pocket, Lydia noticed for the first time that he held the tape player she had seen in his office in the crook of his arm, concealed under his suit jacket. “Miss Strong received this tape in the mail. It was sent by an anonymous party. I wanted to play this for you and see if you can offer us some insight.”
“I’d be happy to.” She smiled up at him and shifted in her chair.
Lydia was having trouble figuring Jenna Quinn out. She was putting on a show, probably the same lady-of-the-manor one she put on every day. Lydia could see by the way her eyes darted about, and by the way she kept smoothing her skirt, that she was nervous, uncomfortable. But the true essence of her personality was buried under a carefully constructed facade. Maybe even Jenna didn’t know the real woman under the shell of cosmetics and expensive clothes.
The detective placed his RadioShack tape player on the desk. All three of them had their eyes on her as the tape played. Jenna sat as still and perfectly coiffed as a mannequin. When the tape ended, there was an expectant silence.
“That’s not my daughter,” said Jenna finally.
“Are you sure, Mrs. Quinn?”
“I think I know the sound of my own child’s voice, Detective,” she answered primly. She turned a cold gaze on Lydia, who matched it and was gratified to see Jenna shrink back just slightly before she asked, “Where did you get this tape?”
“When she speaks in Albanian, what’s she saying?” asked the detective, ignoring her question.
“It’s hard to understand,” said Jenna, looking at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, Mrs. Quinn. Give us a break,” he said, his tone more coaxing than exasperated.
She was silent for a second. And then she said, “The girl talks of her mother. She says her mother is weak and foolish, always pulled this way and that by the men, always believing their lies.”
“That’s harsh,” said the detective, wincing dramatically. “Any truth to that, Mrs. Quinn?”
“As I said, that’s not my daughter. I am just translating the words of this strange girl for you, as you asked,” she said, indignant. “Where did that tape come from?”
