Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (19 page)

“Just trying to liven up your day. Must get awful boring in that little box.”

“Not at all,” he said even as he yawned a third time.

“Can you please tell Mr. Rice, Ridley Brone is here to see him.”

He shrugged, lifted a phone to his ear, and muttered something into the receiver. He waited about thirty seconds as if his message was being relayed to Lincoln inside the house, then nodded at an apparent reply. He hung up his phone, stepped out of his kiosk, and leaned down to look through my open window with one of his hands braced against the car.

“Mr. Rice asks that you remove yourself from his property before he has you removed.” He spoke with a glee that suggested he would get to do the removing.

I expected some resistance, and I had a rebuttal.

“Tell him it concerns his daughter.”

The guard sighed, removed his sunglasses, and shook his head. “He asked you to leave. Either you back out, or I put you in the trunk, put your car in neutral, and roll you out myself.”

“Really? You’d do all that? Mr. Rice must pay you very well.”

“That’s it.” He tried to yank the door open, but I had it locked. He reached in through the open window, attempting to unlock the door, and I slammed by elbow onto his wrist.

He staggered back, cradling his hand, but once the initial shock wore off, he charged the car.

I snapped open the lock and shoved the door open just as he reached the car. The door crashed into his knees and sent him to the ground. I got out of the car and walked around him toward the kiosk.

He made a grab for my ankles, so I put a foot on his throat and applied a little pressure.

“What the hell kind of gate guard are you? The man will want to see me, and you are going be very embarrassed when he asks me inside.”

He clawed at my foot, trying to push it off, but had no leverage.

“Stay,” I said and lifted my foot off his throat. He lay gasping while I stepped into the kiosk and picked up the phone.

The phone automatically dialed the house and a nervous woman’s voice answered halfway through the first ring.

“Yes, Charles. What is it now?”

“Actually, Charles has a touch of laryngitis. Would you do me a favor and tell Mr. Rice that Ridley Brone is here to talk about his daughter.”

The clunk I heard was probably her setting the phone down. I glanced out at Charles while I waited. He sat up, rubbing his neck, glaring at me.

I thought about giving him another grin, but figured Charles had had enough of my sarcasm. I wasn’t trying to start a fight. Honest.

I heard the other line pick up, and Lincoln bellowed in my ear, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Where’s my guy out there?”

“Charles? He’s taking a break.”

Charles got to his feet. While staring me in the eye, he kicked the side of my car. If he put a dent in it, I couldn’t tell. Must have blended in with all the others.

“What’s this about Autumn?”

“I need to talk to you, Lincoln. You need to answer some questions I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“You think you can bait me with my daughter to get me to answer some questions?”

“I know where she is.”

Silence.

Charles stood midway between my car and the kiosk, listening now. I think he saw where this was going and realized he could have avoided getting his windpipe pinched by my foot if he’d just told Lincoln what I’d asked him to.

“You there?” I said into the phone.

“So you want to trade my daughter for some questions, is that it?”

He made it sound so harsh. Maybe it was harsh. I didn’t much care.

“Think you can spare some of your time?”

“You better not be screwing around.”

I didn’t say anything, letting him stew.

“Fine,” he said. “Put Charles back on the phone.”

I held the phone out to Charles and grinned. I couldn’t help it. “It’s for you, Chuck.”

Charles smoothed his suit and took the phone. “Yes, sir,” he said into the phone, face reddening. He almost handed the phone back to me before he realized what he was doing.

I stepped out of the kiosk and let him in. I noticed his sunglasses on the ground and picked them up. A second later the gate swung open. I handed Charles back his sunglasses and thanked him.

“Anytime,” he said, almost growling.

I got back in my car and drove up to the house.

I think I’d seen the place up close in the daylight only once, the last time I tried to get to Autumn before leaving Hawthorne. I had made my usual entrance up the back fence and pounded on the door. First a servant answered, then Lincoln when I asked for Autumn.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” he’d said. “I think it’s in your best interests you left her alone.”

And that had been that.

As I approached the house, I tried not to lose my jaw under the brake pedal. Granted, I’d been raised among the wealthy, but there was wealthy, and there was
filthy fucking rich
.

The guy had marble statues flanking his front door. Giant white pillars supported an overhang that shaded a front porch large enough to park a Cessna. The whole building had a presidential feel, and I felt like I was visiting the White House instead of the father of an old girlfriend.

I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think an extension or two had been made on either wing of the house; the place looked a lot bigger than I remembered. I didn’t know what Lincoln did with all the space, especially since he lived there alone. I guess he needed room for all his servants. Then I remembered the separate servants quarters behind the house that I used to sneak by during my nightly visits.

It also occurred to me that I never knew what Lincoln did to earn all that money.

I no sooner came to a stop when a Hispanic man in a navy blue uniform opened the door for me with a smile. I climbed out of the car, he climbed in, and away he went, taking my car off to who knew where.

My parents used to have a maid, a butler, a gardener, and a cook. We never had valet parking.

A woman dressed in a gray pantsuit stood in the open doorway, watching me while I watched my car circle the driveway and cruise off along a paved path in the direction of the eastern wing. Probably headed toward a massive garage with thirty neatly polished foreign sports cars parked inside. My battered Civic would fit right in.

I approached the door and the woman offered her hand.

“I’m Candice Granthum, Mr. Rice’s personal assistant. Please follow me.”

I placed her in her mid-forties, though her body looked like a lean thirty. She sort of reminded me of younger version of Sheila without the flair. Sheila would never wear gray.

Ms. Granthum led me through a foyer I was sure doubled as an air hanger on weekends. We climbed a curving staircase, traveled down a hall hung with paintings I had no doubt were expensive and rare. I thought I spotted a Jackson Pollock among them. Finally, we arrived at a closed door through which I heard strains of “Whole Lot of Love” by Led Zeppelin, and underneath that another sound that could have been gunfire. I assumed he was watching TV while listening to Zep, a musical crime if ever there was one. If you’re going to listen to Zeppelin, then listen to Zeppelin. Don’t muck it up with some crappy action flick.

Ms. Granthum rapped on the door and the gunfire stopped abruptly while Zeppelin played on. A second later, the door opened and Lincoln stood there in a pair of Bermuda shorts and a pink polo shirt with the collar turned up. The hemp necklace still hugged his throat. His hair hung loose over his shoulders, and a gray stubble peppered his cheeks and chin, except for a small bald spot by one corner of his mouth.

Behind him I could see the ton and a half of electronic entertainment delights filling the room. A widescreen television sat in the center of the far wall flanked by a pair of speakers that, put together, equaled the size of the TV. Kitty corner to the television stood a long desk with a computer and a cadre of peripheral equipment including a digital video camera, scanner, and printer.

On the massive television screen I discovered the source of the gunfire I’d heard. He had some sort of videogame system hooked up to the TV. The image on screen showed a frighteningly realistic pair of hands, each gripping an Uzi shown from a first-person perspective. Between frozen muzzle flashes blinked the word PAUSED.

Lincoln noticed what I was looking at and stepped aside to give me a better view. “You like videogames?” he asked.

“I never played them much.”

Ms. Granthum piped in. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be going.”

“Thank you, Candace,” Lincoln said.

She gave me a curt nod and marched back the way we had come.

Lincoln gestured for me to enter the room. I obeyed, and he closed the door behind me.

“Relieves stress,” he said. “I can space out for hours playing one of these games, not worry about a thing.”

I thought of Devon. “I have a friend who would be right there with you.”

Lincoln walked back to the red leather couch set in the center of the room and facing the television. He took a seat without bothering to offer me one.

The Zeppelin song ended. I could hear the CD changer whirr as it shuffled to a new disc. Some Janis Joplin kicked on next.

“I’ve been playing videogames for ten hours a day the last couple days.” He picked up a game controller from the glass coffee table in front of the couch, but he didn’t un-pause his game. He stared down at the controller, stroking one edge with a thumb. “Whenever I stop, I worry about Autumn. I can’t stand it.”

Okay, so the whole videogame conversation had a point.

“I understand, but I’m in an awkward position—”

He threw the controller at the television screen. Amazingly, the screen didn’t break, but the controller snapped into a few pieces, and the game sparked to life. Gunfire blasted from the speakers. Computer-generated men in military garb shot toward the screen. The screen flashed red and eventually went black after a death cry echoed through the room.

GAME OVER scrolled across the dark screen.

“I don’t give a damn about your position,” Lincoln said calmly, as if discussing a business deal. “If you know where my daughter is, tell me.”

I held my ground, but felt at a disadvantage talking to the back of his head. “You have to tell me a few things first.”

He pulled his hair back, lifted it above his head, then let it fall back over his shoulders. “Ask already.”

“You never answered my first question about Doug and you.”

He turned on the couch and looked at me over the back.

“You want to know how we got along? Like any overprotective father gets along with a man who takes his daughter from him.”

“Does that mean not so good?”

“It means I put up with him because Autumn believed she loved him. Then you come along and …” He threw a hand up, disgusted.

I refused to let him put me on the defensive. “Where were you Saturday night?”

He stood and gaped at me. “Are you joking?”

“Have to cover all my bases.”

“What good are you doing my daughter by interrogating me?”

“First off, I’m not sure I care anymore if I’m doing your daughter any good. Second, why don’t you just answer instead of giving me a hard time. The quicker you answer, the quicker you get to see Autumn.”

“You’ll bring her home?”

“I’ll take you to her. You can bring her back yourself if you want.”

He crossed his arms, nodded. “Fine. I was here at home that night. Ms. Granthum will gladly verify that for me.”

I wasn’t sure how much I trusted anyone on Lincoln’s payroll, but I didn’t think I would have to follow up. While part of me believed Lincoln had it in him to murder his son-in-law in the name of protecting Autumn, setting her up as a murder suspect wasn’t the ideal way to save her from a marriage he didn’t approve of.

I just liked grilling him.

I rounded the couch, turned off the TV, and gestured for Lincoln to sit. He kept his gaze locked on me while he slowly lowered himself onto the couch.

I stepped in closer and stayed on my feet, forcing him to crane his neck and look up at me.

“I need to know about Autumn’s dealings a couple years or so after graduation.”

He tried to shift in his seat so he wouldn’t have to strain so much to see my face, but I placed myself too close for him to get comfortable.

“Why? What does that matter?”

“I learned some things today I want to verify. Things I didn’t like hearing.”

“About Autumn?”

I folded my arms and waited.

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you remember her hanging with a girl named Dixie?”

His eyes narrowed. “The Middle-Eastern girl? Very pretty. She loved my Corvette.”

Not the kind of answer I expected. “Did she come over here often?”

“Autumn said the girl didn’t have much of a home life.” He smiled. “She knows I have a soft spot for unfortunate people.”

“You do?” The question slipped out before I could clamp it down.

Lincoln sat up straight, puffing out his chest.

“I’ll have you know I do a great deal of charity work and have been an activist since the early sixties. In fact,” he pointed at me, “I did some anti-war protests with your parents during Vietnam.”

My mind went blank a second.

“
My
parents?”

He caught me off guard and managed to stand. He had about an inch on me, but it wasn’t his height that gave him the advantage. The man knew things about my parents I didn’t, and he realized it, saw the opportunity, and struck to take control of the conversation.

“Trina and Allen were very active in the mid sixties. They used their talents to raise funds for progressive groups across the country. You were just a baby, but they took you everywhere.”

I dug through my memories, but couldn’t find anything that fit what he described. Why hadn’t they ever mentioned this? Why hadn’t Sheila? For a second I thought he might be lying. He spoke with such confidence, though. And the way he gazed off when he spoke, as if re-seeing those old times—he was telling the truth.

“I’d love to tell you more, Ridley,” he said, clapping my shoulder. “But not while my daughter is out there alone.”