Reed Ferguson Mystery Box Set 5

by Renee Pawlish

“I went to the pool for a while,” she continued. “And I tried to talk to that young desk clerk about Sagebrush and the mayor, but he wouldn’t say anything.”

  I smiled at her. “Still in detective mode?”

  “Just helping out.”

  “So no problems? No one watching us?”

  She shook her head as she came over and kissed me. “Do you want to go soon?”

  “Sure. I’ll take a shower and we can go.”

  She nodded, then sat on the bed and checked her phone as I went into the bathroom. Half an hour later, we had checked out and we stopped for a late breakfast – or early lunch – at the same café. A different group of patrons was in attendance this morning, mostly farmers nursing cups of coffee and talking, and they were as slyly watchful of us as the crowd at dinner the previous night had been.

  We ate a quiet meal without bothering to ask anyone questions, and we were soon on the road. By now, gray clouds had rolled in from the west, obscuring the sun. I was feeling sleepy, and I had Willie drive. I leaned back and dozed until my cell phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket.

  “It’s Cal,” I said.

  “Maybe he found out something about the trust.”

  “I hope so.” I swiped the screen and answered.

  “It was actually easier to find the Holder trust than I thought,” Cal said, jumping right into the case.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, because it’s named the ‘Holder Trust’ and not something else. But I still had to dig around a while to find it. It looks like there was a lot of money put into the trust initially, but I don’t know where those funds came from. It’s been set up for over forty years. Each of the Holder kids – Jennifer, Marcia, and Toby – get a yearly stipend when they turn twenty-one, and Alvin Holder can sign off on a distribution of money at other times.”

  “Nice.”

  “You’d think, but the stipend isn’t that much. The kids get the bulk of the money when Alvin and his wife die.”

  “What’s the point of the trust? To mitigate tax liability?”

  “That’d be my guess. Here’s the kicker, though. It looks like the trust purchased a house in Denver in 1985, and has been paying bills for the place since that time.”

  I sat up straighter. “So the mortgage, utility bills, and things like that have been paid by the Holder Trust?”

  “Yes.”

  “But nothing points to Marcia Holder owning the house.”

  “Correct.”

  “Is the trust paying for a mortgage or expenses for the other kids?”

  “It paid for some land for both, but that’s it, other than a small yearly stipend for each.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Okay, text me the address.”

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate the help.

  “No problem. Tell Willie ‘hi’ for me.”

  I ended the call and told Willie ‘hi’ as instructed.

  “Good news?” she asked.

  “I hope so.” I related what Cal had said.

  She sighed when I finished. “I hope this isn’t a wild goose chase. Gina really wants to know what’s going on.”

  “Yeah, but if she finds out her father kidnapped her, and kept her from her mother all these years…”

  “That would be traumatic.”

  I nodded, then pointed to my phone and the address Cal had texted. “I’ll drop you off at home, and then I’m going to see if Marcia Holder lives at that house, and try to talk to her.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We listened to music for the rest of the drive, and I watched for anyone following us. If there was someone tailing us, I never noticed. When we arrived in Denver, I left Willie at the condo and headed to the house paid for by the Holder Trust.

  The address Cal had given me was on Emerson Street in the Alamo Placita neighborhood, a nice area of older homes a few miles southeast of downtown. The Holder house was a small, pale-green two-story with a large covered porch, and a huge maple tree in front. It was almost three when I found the house. I parked a few houses down the street and sat for a while in the car.

  On the drive back from Sagebrush – when I wasn’t dozing – I’d mulled over how to approach Marcia Holder, if I established that she lived in this house. Should I come right out and tell her about Gina Smith? Hearing news of her missing daughter after all these years could be exciting, but it could also be deeply upsetting. And given all the mystery surrounding the Holders, and Marcia, what if I didn’t know the whole story? I’d finally decided to play it by ear and see what happened, but now that I was here, I was hesitating. This was not going to be an easy conversation.

  I was still wavering when a woman in khaki shorts and a blue T-shirt came out the front door. She was slender, not very tall, with short brown hair and bangs covering a high forehead. From a distance, she looked a lot like the picture Annette had shown me. I also saw a resemblance to Gina Smith. She walked down the porch steps, glanced at the cloudy sky, then headed south, away from me.

  Out for a walk while it was cool?

  I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to miss my opportunity. I hopped out of the 4-Runner, crossed the street, and hurried after her. She was walking fast as she crossed East Fourth Avenue. I waited for a car to drive by, then followed. Partway down the block was the entrance to Alamo Placita Park, which took up most of the block. The park had a playground and picnic area, but it was best known for its intricately designed floral displays. I’d brought Willie here a time or two, for a romantic walk after we’d gone to dinner. However, I didn’t have time to mull too long on that, as the woman was crossing the grass in the park. She finally slowed down.

  I drew closer and called out, “Marcia Holder?”

  She turned around. “Yes?” She gazed at me, her expression part curiosity, part caution.

  “I’m Reed Ferguson.” Since I’d spooked Jennifer Madisen by telling her I was a private investigator, I decided not to share that information right now. “I’m looking into your baby’s disappearance.”

  I watched her face, waiting for her reaction, thinking she’d be desperate for any news. Why are you looking for her, and what do you know? And most importantly, has she been found?

  “Go away.” With that, she whirled around and stepped up her pace.

  That was not what I expected.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Ms. Holder?” I trotted after her.

  “Leave me alone or I’ll call the police,” she hollered over her shoulder.

  I stopped. “All right,” I said, then reached in my pocket for my phone. “Let’s call them and we can talk about the disappearance of Victoria in 1985.”

  She spun around and held up a hand. “Don’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Who are you?” She walked slowly toward me, alarm etched on her face. “And how do you know all this?”

  Instead of answering, I studied her. “You look like her.”

  “Who?”

  “Gina Smith.” She paled, and then I added, “Or is it Victoria Holder?”

  Now she was as white as a ghost. She stumbled over to the park entrance and sank down onto a flagstone step. I walked over and sat down next to her.

  “Tell me –” She choked up, but then recovered herself. “Tell me what you know,” she repeated firmly as she twisted the hem of her shorts in her hand.

  The sky was dark, the air cool but humid, and I wiped sweat off my brow.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said, then told her everything I’d learned since Gina Smith had hired me. She didn’t say anything when I finished, but gazed around the park. At the other end, people were with their children at the playground, but no one was near us. I doubted she noticed the beautiful flower displays throughout the park.

  She finally eyed me carefully. “My father didn’t send you?”

  I shook my head.

  “No, of course he wouldn’t,” she mumbled. “I have things on him, too.”


  “What do you mean by that?”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “Who sent you?”

  That was an odd thing to ask, I thought but didn’t say. “I was hired by Gina Smith,” I repeated. “She wanted help finding her birth mother.” I left out the part about her suspicions that her father had murdered her mother. “Why are you worried about your father?”

  “What do you know about him?”

  I shrugged. “Everyone in Sagebrush says he’s done a great job managing the city.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t think they like him.”

  She let out a bitter laugh. “He can be personable, and charming, when he wants to be. But underneath he’s a hard man.”

  I shifted position and looked at her directly. “If Gina is your kidnapped baby, why don’t you want to know about her?”

  She took a long time to answer. I waited. “I already do,” she finally whispered.

  I stared at her, stunned. “You’ve been keeping in touch?”

  “With … John?” She shook her head. “Not directly. I’ve watched my daughter from afar.” She thought for a while. I again waited. “I’m not sure how you tracked me down,” she began, “but yes, I had a baby, back in ’85. I met John – that’s how you know him – when I was in high school. He worked at the dairy plant, but I saw him around town and at church. We talked, and I really liked him. We fell in love. It would’ve been a scandal if my father had found out because I was so young and John was much older. And Pastor Sheehan would’ve been irate as well. Then I got pregnant. I wanted to have the baby, and John agreed. Neither of us wanted to get rid of it or give it up for adoption. We really wanted to have the baby and raise it together.” She sighed. “Obviously my family found out, that kind of thing can only be hidden for so long. My mother cried, and my father was furious. He was a very mean, controlling man, and he refused to let me see John after that, but John and I managed to sneak around behind his back.” She frowned. “We talked about running away together, and then, about a month before I was due to have the baby, we did. I won’t tell you where we went –”

  “Russell, Kansas,” I interrupted.

  She gave me an appraising look. “Kudos to you. You’ve done your homework. Yes, we made it as far as Russell, Kansas, and I went into premature labor. We went to the hospital, and John just told them he was a friend of mine. I didn’t know what to do when they asked me my name at the admissions desk. I knew I shouldn’t use my real name. But by that time, labor was coming on pretty hard, and I was so scared, and I guess I just panicked. I gave them my sister’s name: Jenny Madison.”

  I stopped her there. “Madison with an ‘o’?”

  “I guess that’s how they spelled it.”

  “So,” I went on, “even though you were trying to hide your identity, you gave them your sister’s name? Seriously?” This sounded so crazy to me.

  “I know, I know … I told you – I was 17 years old and in hard labor and the baby was coming early and I was running away from home.” She turned a deep red. “It wasn’t smart, I’ll grant you that, but I adored my sister, and her name just popped into my head, so that’s what I told them. John got mad at me for doing that, but at that point, I really didn’t care. They filled out the paperwork, and that was it. I didn’t have a driver’s license or any ID with me, so they just thought I was a dumb teenager without insurance.” She shrugged. “And after Victoria was born, someone came around to get information for the official birth certificate. I didn't name the baby’s father, and I just told them ‘Jenny Madison’ as my name.”

  I held up a hand. “Wait – so your admissions information was under ‘Jenny Madison’, so the legal birth certificate lists that name, but the keepsake birth certificate that Gina found listed your name as ‘Marsha Jenny Madison.” I spelled out Marsha. “Where did that combination come from?”

  She let out a tiny laugh. “Let’s see … how did that happen? It’s kind of hard to remember. I think by that time, the nurses had heard John calling me ‘Marcia’, which was a little weird since I’d given my name as Jenny. So I told one of the nurses that ‘Marcia’ was a nickname of mine. Turns out that she was the one who filled out the keepsake birth certificate for us, and she must have misunderstood my explanation, because she wrote in my ‘nickname’ as my first name on that certificate, that they gave me before we left the hospital. I guess she didn’t even spell it right. I suppose on one of those keepsake things, it didn’t matter so much.” She got a faraway look in her eyes. “I remember her now. That nurse was nice. She had a big, bubbly personality. I think she may have suspected we were lying about a lot of stuff, but she didn’t say anything.”

  “What happened after you had the baby?”

  “Once I was released, we planned to go to the East Coast and vanish. But I needed a few days to rest, so we stayed in a hotel in Russell.” She stared off into the distance, and her voice lowered. A car drove by behind us, and I leaned forward to hear her better. “I’d fallen asleep. The next thing I knew, there was shouting, and someone was fighting, but I don’t remember it all. I found out later I’d fallen and banged my head on the nightstand. I was knocked out and had a concussion, and it affected my memory. I remember hearing my father’s voice. He was screaming it had to stop. The next thing I remember, I was back home, in my room. A prisoner. My father was livid. He said John was gone, and that I was never to see him again. And he kept saying that he would put the baby up for adoption. I begged him not to, but before he could do anything, John came back without his knowing.” She shook her head. “I still don’t know how John sneaked around without anyone knowing. Anyway, we made a plan for John to take the baby and leave. He had everything worked out, like he always did. One night when everyone was asleep, he came by the house and took Victoria. I pretended that she’d been kidnapped, but I don’t think my father believed me. He wanted to know where John was, and I told him John had gone back East. He beat me, but I refused to tell him anything. What really happened was John and I had decided that he’d go to Denver. He created a new identity for himself and for Victoria, got a job, and disappeared within the big city. I have no idea how he managed to do that. I’ve never had the opportunity to really sit down and talk with him about that time. It sounds almost impossible that he could cope with all that. But when he took the baby, he told me that no matter what, he’d take good care of her and that he’d do whatever he had to do to keep her safe and with him. And he has.

  “Anyway, for a long time, I didn’t know anything. Then John got in touch – we’d set up a way for him to leave a message near a big rock in a field west of town – and I knew that he was okay and in Denver. After that, I begged my father to let me move away. I told him I was devastated. There were too many memories in town, and everyone pitied me – that poor, sad girl. I couldn’t stand it anymore. He finally relented, but he wanted the trust to pay for everything.”

  I crossed my arms. “Wait, why wouldn’t your father just kick you out? There was no baby anymore, and you’d already … disgraced him.”

  “He still wanted to control me. And if he paid for things, he could keep tabs on me.”

  “Why would he need to do that?”

  “Because I threatened to tell everyone that he sent people after me, and about him beating me. There was no way he wanted that to come out.”

  “That’s all you have on him?”

  “Well…” She hesitated, then nodded. I wasn’t sure I believed her. Did she have something else on him, something she could blackmail him with?

  “Truthfully, a part of me was okay with him paying,” she said. “I was still young, from a small town. I’d been sheltered my whole life. The big city terrified me. All I wanted was to be able to watch Victoria from afar.” She hung her head. “I let him pay. Maybe that’s bad, but…”

  I mulled that over, then said, “What did your mother or your siblings do about your father and how he was treating you?”

  She laughed without mirth.
“My mother was upset about the pregnancy, but I think more because of what my father might do to her, for letting it happen – like she could’ve stopped us. I don’t know what Toby and Jennifer thought, but they didn’t do anything. They were as scared of my father as anyone else.” She let out another wry laugh. “It’s funny. Toby’s the spitting image of my father, looks and sounds like him, but he’s not mean like my father. I don’t know why he didn’t do anything, except that he had his own problems with drugs, so I don’t know how much he was paying attention to what was happening to me.”

  “I notice you never say ‘Dad.’”

  “He wasn’t one, not really.”

  I let that sink in. “So you moved to Denver, and…”

  “John and I devised a way that I could see him with her,” she said. “They kept to a schedule, and I knew where they’d be on most days. Even so, I hardly saw them, because I was worried that my father had people watching me. But it was something, a way to keep connected with my daughter. I was careful about it, just in case.” She bit her lip. “My father might’ve been spying on me, at the beginning, but I think it stopped since he knew what I could do to him.” She gazed at me. “I live a very quiet life here. The trust pays all my bills, and I don’t do anything to draw attention to myself. And when my father dies, he can’t control the money anymore.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  She nodded. “Once he dies, the trust dissolves and I inherit a third of the money.”

  “Where did all the money come from?”

  “The dairy plant, I guess. Although I don’t know how the plant makes that much, for him to have as much money as he has.” She shrugged. “But what do I know about business?”

  I put everything she said together. It was quite a story. Certainly not what I expected. I wondered what Gina would think of all this.

  “So this whole scheme with John was because of your father?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you never talk to John?”

  “No. We can’t risk that.”

  “Do you still love him?”