One Scream Away (6 page)

“Not a dancer then,” Neil said. And not a college coed. He shook his head, as if jostling all the information would somehow make it fall into place. “Let’s go find out if Elizabeth Denison has Thelma Jacobs on her Christmas card list.”

“I already did. She says she’s never heard of her. And the call at seven-thirty last night was a wrong number.”

“We’re supposed to buy that?” Neil fisted and flexed his right hand through a series of spasms. His heart was thumping fast. Anger, he thought at first, then realized it was adrenaline.

He was hunting again, and Elizabeth Denison was a lead.

Rick opened a folder. “Here’s the autopsy on Lila Beckenridge. She
was
raped, using a Trojan condom, and her right jaw was broken, probably from a kick. And this mark right here”—he slid a photo across his desk and pointed at Lila’s temple—“it’s not dirt or blood. It’s eyebrow pencil.”

“Eyebrow pencil?” Neil looked at the line. Straight as an arrow, and one inch long.

“Revlon, charcoal-black eye pencil, I shit you not. Looks like he drew a line to mark the placement of the bullet. There’s heavy stippling around the top of the line.”

“So the shot was point-blank.”

“Yup. Like Gloria, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And Gloria was raped?” Rick asked.

“With a Trojan. And she was carjacked, beaten, cut up, and left in a woods; her car was wiped down like Beckenridge’s, and a smear of Reese’s Cup chocolate was found on the front seat. But she wasn’t marked with any damned eyebrow pencil.”

Rick shrugged. “So it’s not a hundred percent. It’s still plenty to justify another look. The question is, did you convince the ADA of that?”

“She’s the DA now, and yeah. I have the files on Gloria’s case in my trunk.”

“So let’s sit down with them. Order a pizza or something.”

Neil nodded and started for the door, then narrowed his eyes on Rick. Rick was pretty anxious to dive in—at nine-thirty at night—to a case that barely touched his precinct. It struck Neil that there was an awful lot on Rick’s plate to be beating time with this. It also struck him that there were deep, dark gullies dragging under his eyes.

“Hey, you been home yet?” Neil asked.

Rick thumbed through the yellow pages to P. “Not tonight. Been a little busy.”

“ Uh-huh. And last night? Maggie said you came back here after you dropped me off.”

“Had some work to finish.”

Neil looked around the office and felt his chest tighten. There were little things he’d been too distracted to notice: a blanket folded across the back of the sofa, pillow underneath, dopp kit on the floor with a toothbrush sticking out. His heart dropped. “Ah, jeez, man,” he said, shaking his head. “How long?”

Rick glanced up, then sank against the back of his chair. “A few weeks in the den. The last couple here in the office.”

“Christ.” So it wasn’t just the job pulling Rick under.

Neil came back to the desk and closed the phone book. “Screw a pizza. We can look at paper at your house as well as we can here.”

“Maggie sorta wants some time alone, man.”

“Then she shouldn’t have married you and had four freakin’ kids. Besides, even if you’re not sleeping together, it’s not like you don’t have an extra bed in that house.”

“Hey, I ain’t sharing with a guy who has a penguin on his chest.”

“Bigot. I’ll drive.”

The kids were in bed by the time they got to Rick’s, but Maggie wasn’t. Neil ordered the pizza, adding green olives for Maggie, and the three of them shared it. The tension was right there on the surface; Neil’s heart ached with it. He couldn’t imagine a world in which Rick and Maggie Sacowicz weren’t together. They were the gold standard in marriage.

Eventually Rick dragged a pillow to the den, and Neil read for another hour, then slept, dreaming of his own mistakes. That last phone conversation:
I’m sorry, pumpkin, Daddy has to go back to work, but I’ll be home as soon as I can… Damn it, Heather, I can’t deal with this right now; handle it yourself. I have to find Anthony Russell…

By Monday morning, the adrenaline surge from the evening before had morphed to restlessness. Nothing to do. Neil thought about catching a plane to Seattle or Denver, then remembered the unaccommodating nature of police working an active investigation. He had no place in the investigations of Lila Beckenridge or Thelma Jacobs. If not for the fact that Rick had been asked to look up Elizabeth Denison, they wouldn’t have even known about them.

But he did know and, further, he knew Elizabeth Denison knew something. And while Rick might be bound to playing it safe when it came to talking to her, Neil had no such restraints. He had no badge, no shield, no career to protect.

No rules.

“You look terrible,” Evan Foster said, holding Beth’s chair at his favorite lunch spot. It was a Caribbean grill on Barrett Road, complete with saltwater aquariums and palm fronds.

“Thanks,” she groused, stuffing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve been a little under the weather. Spent the weekend in bed.”

Spent the weekend on the Internet and working through her list was more like it, but she couldn’t tell Evan that. She still hadn’t completely wrapped her mind around what was happening. For almost a year, Bankes had been out of prison. His was one of a rash of overturned convictions that had the internal affairs department of the Seattle PD routing out dirty cops in collusion with a dirty DA.

“If you were sick,” Evan said, “why didn’t you bring Abby over so Aunt Carol could watch her and you could get some rest?”

“I can take care of my own daughter, Evan. I do it all—”

“All the time. Yeah, yeah. A regular Wonder Wo—”

Beth heard no more. Ten feet away, Neil Sheridan was being seated by a hostess. He stretched his long legs out under his table, looked at Beth, and winked.

Her belly somersaulted. Damn him. What was he doing here?

“Beth.” Evan’s voice. “I asked how Abby’s T-ball is going.”

“Oh,” she said, twisting her napkin into tiny cyclones on her lap. “Abby hates it.”

“Then don’t make her do it.”

“It’s good for her,” Beth said. Evan. Concentrate on Evan, not Sheridan. “This is spring break week at school, and I’m going to take her to spend a few days with Cheryl and Jeff. I’m hoping Jeff can coach her a little and get her excited about it.”

“Sure. Let your brother-in-law turn her into a boy for you.”

“I’m not trying to turn her into a boy. I just want her exposed to things—”

“Adam would have exposed her to. So take her to a ball game.”

“I’m not into ball games. That’s the problem.”

“Then let
me
take her to a ball game.” Evan reached into his pocket and held up three tickets. “Orioles, in three weeks. Right behind home plate.”

Beth went silent. “Evan, no,” she finally said. “It might mislead Abby into thinking—”

“That I’m someone special? God forbid.” He slid the tickets back into his breast pocket, his expression changing from charm to genuine bewilderment. “Tell me something. Don’t you get tired of going to bed alone? Of not having anyone in your life who can name your favorite color or deepest fear?”

“You?” Beth asked.

He managed a smile. “Your favorite color is blue. Your deepest fear is loving again.”

Wrong on both counts, Evan, she thought, but wished to God he was right.

The phone in her purse rang. Beth looked. She’d missed a call from the same number earlier when she was dropping Abby off at T-ball, but there hadn’t been a message. She put the phone away. She wasn’t anxious to take calls from unknown numbers these days.

“So tell me about Waterford’s highboy.” Evan was back to business. “Is it any good?”

“The back is made up, on both pieces. Six, maybe eight thousand dollars, tops.”

“Shit.”

“Kerry Waterford is a con artist. I’ve been telling you that.”

“Then it’s gotta be the dolls, Beth. That widow’s dolls better be worth a fortune.”

“They might be. I’ve only seen one so far, but it’s a legitimate Benoit. And early—1862.” She let a sparkle into her eyes. “It almost reminds me of the Larousse dolls.”

“Larousse?” Evan leaned in. He was no doll expert, but he knew of the Larousse collection. It had been held by a wealthy collector’s family for nearly a century.

“Don’t get excited. I checked. The Larousses haven’t sold anything; that collection is still intact in Vancouver. But this one’s still good.”

“Is it in good condition?”

“The blinking mechanism in her eyelids doesn’t work, but otherwise, she’s nearly perfect. Thirty or forty thousand dollars, I bet, even without repairing the eyes.”

“ Cha-ching,” Evan said, smiling now. “How many more are there?”

“I don’t know. The owner is a widow in Boise whose husband had them in an attic. I met her at the Dallas show in September after Kerry tried to con her into buying a fake Benoit. It’s taken me this long to convince her to sell, but she called this morning and said she sent me two more.”

Sheridan’s voice rumbled from across the aisle. Beth blinked. For one shining moment, she’d forgotten about him. Now, he thanked a blushing waitress for a club sandwich and coleslaw, then picked up his glass of water and tipped it toward Beth in a toast.

Her skin shrank two sizes. She spent the rest of the meal torn between wanting to tell Sheridan to go to hell and wanting to plead with him to keep Bankes away. But there was too much at stake for the latter.

When Evan reached for the tab, Beth stopped him and picked it up. “I’ll get it,” she said. “I’m going to stay a few more minutes and return some phone calls, have a cup of coffee.”

Time to have it out with Neil Sheridan.

E
van Foster kissed Beth Denison before he left. Just on the cheek, but that was Denison’s doing—that instinctively feminine maneuver of her chin in the last second. She’d talked about Abby and T-ball and antique dolls, munched salad and breadsticks, and tried not to get caught shooting nervous glances in Neil’s direction. She and Foster had discussed nothing that could be construed as even remotely related to murder or kidnapping. In fact, Beth Denison made such a pretty picture of innocence that Neil began to wonder if his bullshit detector had gone on the blink.

Then his phone rang. Rick. “Denison got a call a little while ago on her cell phone.”

“Yeah, I know,” Neil said. “I’m with her now.”

“You’re what?”

“Not
with
her, exactly. But we’re in the same place. She had lunch with Evan Foster.”

“Did she answer her phone about forty minutes ago?”

“No. It rang and she checked the number, then let it go. Why?”

“That call came from a cell phone in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s the second call from that phone today. It lasted fifty seconds.”

Neil’s hackles rose; he didn’t like the direction Rick was going. “Omaha?”

“The owner of the phone may have gone missing there this morning. She hasn’t been gone long enough to be official, but the family is worried and reported it.”

“No way, man.”

“I’m gonna pull Denison in for questioning, just in case. Where are you?”

Neil told him, his pulse picking up. Another one? He stared at Denison.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Neil,” Rick said. “There’s no crime in Omaha yet. We’re just talking.” Beat. “Neil?”

“I heard you.”

He disconnected just as Denison gathered her purse and stood. She headed past Neil, slowing at his table to slide her tab under his.

Neil might have smiled if he wasn’t so pissed. And confused. He gave her a minute just in case she really was using the restroom, then left enough money for both checks and followed her to the back of the restaurant. He found her in the outer lobby of the restrooms with her back to him, her cell phone pressed against her ear. Checking the message from Omaha, no doubt.

He stepped closer, then stopped. She wasn’t listening to a message.

“So, you got the jewels?” she asked in a hushed tone. “Okay. Take them to the lockbox. I’ll call Vito and arrange for the drop. Be careful. They may be onto us.”

“Cute,” Neil said.

She turned. “Oh, my!” The fingers of one hand splayed over her breastbone. “Mr. Sheridan. I didn’t know you were there.”

“I suppose Vito’s last name is Gambino?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She squared her shoulders, the cell phone dead in one hand. “You’re following me.”

“I stopped for lunch. Don’t you ever run into friends at lunch?”

“You aren’t a friend. You aren’t a police officer, either.”

Neil was impressed. “The lady does her homework.”

“Stay away from me, or I’ll file charges. Harassment, impersonating a police officer.”

“I didn’t impersonate anyone. I used to be FBI. Lieutenant Sacowicz invited me along to talk to you because the man calling you may be the same man I hunted in a murder case several years ago.”

She went suddenly pale, her body rigid as steel. “I told you, I don’t know him.”

Neil took a step closer. “But you’re lying.”

She started past him and Neil reached for her elbow. She exploded. Air hissed between her teeth as her right elbow went for his throat and her knee jammed upward. Neil twisted, blocking the blows out of sheer instinct and no small degree of luck, and in two seconds he jostled her up against the wall, pinning her wrists over her head.

“Let go of me,” she said, breathless.

“What the hell was that?” Neil’s heart was thundering. He couldn’t believe she’d caught him so off guard. More than that, he couldn’t believe she’d reacted so strongly to the mere grasp of her arm or that, even now, crowded against the wall, she seemed to be gauging the details of their positions, considering some fancy Jackie Chan move. An ex–FBI agent and Sentryman, for God’s sake, nearly twice her size. “Bad idea,” he warned. “You may be some sort of black belt or something, but I know every trick you do plus a dozen you never thought of.”

She squirmed and he moved closer—a man holding his lover, murmuring sweet nothings against her ear, in case anyone should see them. Except that holding Beth Denison was like handling fire. “I want answers,” he said.