This Doesn't Happen in the Movies (5 page)

“Reed, it’s Amanda.”  She gasped, her breathing coming out in sharp spurts.

“Just the lady I wanted to talk to.  Have you called the credit cards companies yet?”

“You’ve got to come out here!  Right away!”

“Why?”

“I received a ransom note.”

CHAPTER SIX

“We’ll take this in for fingerprint analysis and let you know what we find out,” Detective Jimmy Merrick said to Amanda.  She stood in the middle of the room, rubbing her hands over her arms as if she couldn’t get warm.  “If you hear anything at all, call me right away.”

I was standing in the Ghering’s spacious living room, listening to Merrick, a tall, red-haired guy in wrinkled gray pants, white shirt and blue sport coat, his tie askew, wrapping up his interview with Amanda about the ransom note.

I had arrived just as the detectives were finishing.  Merrick had the ransom note in a Ziploc bag, but he begrudgingly showed it to me after I showed him my driver’s license, verifying who I said I was.  He wasn’t at all impressed with my presence, but Amanda made a scene about the police interfering with her right to hire an outside investigator.  Merrick shrugged his shoulders, but offered little in the way of information.  His partner, Randy Cash, had already gone.

“You want one last look?” Merrick said to me, holding up the baggy.  Sarcasm dripped like sap at his offer.

“No, I think I’ve got it committed to memory,” I said with just as much bite in my tone.  If I couldn’t remember the note, I should get out of the business, for it consisted of two lines.  The first said, “One million - cash.”  The second, “We will be in touch.”  Printed on white paper, almost certainly done on a computer.  Hardly anyone used a typewriter anymore.  The note, paper, and print type were so common that I didn’t expect any possible clues from it.

“Mrs. Ghering,” Merrick nodded curtly to her and turned to leave, almost running into the massive Christmas tree.

“Thanks for your help,” I said, acting on Amanda’s behalf as Merrick sidestepped the tree on his way to the entryway.  I felt like a butler escorting him out.

“Watch yourself.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

Merrick held the door open, and he met my eyes with a cold gaze.  “Watch yourself with her.  She’s not what she seems.”

“How would you know?”

“Too many years on the job.”

I searched his face, but nothing accompanied the warning.  His face had the expression of a corpse.  “Thanks for the tip,” I said.  Merrick stepped out into the cool night.  I watched the detectives drive off in a white four-door sedan, then walked back into the living room and sat down.

“Now you see why I hired you,” Amanda said as she slumped down into a leather chair across from me.  She picked up a martini glass from an mahogany end table and swished the last droplets around, then tossed the drink back.  With the other hand she twirled a curl of her hair, pulled it straight, then let it flop back onto her forehead.  I had watched her do the same nervous motion while the detectives talked to her.

“They seemed competent,” I said.

“Ha!” she spat at me.  “They’re not going to do anything.  Pat the poor woman on the hand and leave.”  She managed her words carefully, in the way heavy drinkers do so no one knows they're drunk.

“They don’t have much to go on,” I said.  I knew from our earlier phone call that upon returning from the country club, she'd discovered the note slipped partway under the doormat on the front porch.  It had been folded in half, delivered without an envelope.  She had called me right away.

“Does this mean that Peter’s dead?” she asked, a hazy look on her face.

I stood up and walked over to her, taking her glass away.  “I doubt it.  In most cases, if the kidnappers ask for ransom, they keep the hostage alive so they can get the money.  Kind of like leverage.”  I had no idea if this was true, but it sounded comforting.  It seemed to work for her.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, standing up.  She grabbed the glass from me and walked a shaky path to a minibar at the far end of the room.  She set the glass down with a clunk, poured Stolichnaya vodka into it, added a dash of vermouth, dropped a green olive in the concoction, and meandered back to her chair, sipping the drink as she went.

“Can you come up with that kind of money?”

“I don’t know.  I may have to involve his parents.”

“They don’t know anything?”

“Of course not.  We don’t talk to them much at all, the holidays mostly.”  She sucked the olive from the glass.  While munching on it she said, “I didn’t see any need to worry them, not when I didn’t know what was going on.”

“But you thought he was dead.  That’s seems like a good reason to involve them.”

“Why tell them anything when I didn’t know for sure?  They’d be angrier at me for upsetting them needlessly if it all turned out okay.”  She tipped her head back and finished off the vodka.  Her words were becoming more slurred.  “You don’t know Peter’s parents.  They’re as insensitive as he is.  Was.  Oh god.”  She turned her head to the side and let out a sob, then recovered enough to head back to the minibar.

“What about your parents?”

“My parents certainly don’t have that kind of money,” she said as she mixed yet another martini.

“Do they know what’s going on?”

She guzzled the drink down and said, “No, and I don’t intend to tell them either.  Not until this is resolved.”  She turned to face me, leaning against the bar for support.  Anger and alcohol turned her face splotchy red.  “If you must know, Peter and I don’t have much contact with our families.  They resented our getting married, and the rift begun then remains.  That’s the way they want it, so I haven’t told them anything.”

I watched her, contemplating this beautiful woman with a growing pity.  Amanda Ghering, at the present moment, was a pathetic, drunken mess.  I sighed as I watched her twirling her hair.  I had a lot of questions about what was going on, but I decided against asking anything now.  I stood up.  “I don’t know what we can accomplish at the moment.  I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She turned her wet, mascara-smeared eyes to me.  “Please, don’t go.  It’s so lonely here.”  She reached a bejeweled hand out to me.

“I thought you didn’t have affairs.”

She smiled.  “There’s a first time for everything.”

I was flattered, but as I looked into her hazy eyes, I knew that now was definitely not the time.  I shook my head at her and left.  As I opened the front door, I glanced back.  She was walking back to the minibar, fixing another drink.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The next morning I slept late, ran some errands, and didn’t get to the office until after lunch.  And to my surprise, Amanda was pacing in the hall, waiting for my arrival.  She looked like leftovers after a month in the frig, wearing the same slacks and blouse from last night, the curl in her hair flattened, her eyes puffy and bloodshot, her face the color of ash.  She was a walking hangover.  And I didn’t feel sorry for her.

“It’s about time you got here,” she fired at me.  “What kind of detective are you?”  She traipsed past me and tapped her foot while I unlocked the inner office door.  Once inside, she eased down into the chair and said, “You have some explaining to do.”  I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I have some explaining to do?”  I was prepared to confront her, but she was not following the plan I had in my mind.  “What’s going on here?”

“What did you tell the police last night?”

I sat back, staring at her.  “I didn’t tell the detectives anything.  You did all the talking.  Or don’t you remember?”

“Don’t be fresh with me,” she clipped her words.  “I know perfectly well what I said to them.  Why wouldn’t I?”

“Maybe because you were trying to crawl into a vodka bottle while they talked to you.”  I matched her intensity.  “Do you mind telling me what this is all about?”

She slammed her purse down onto the floor beside the chair.  Lipstick and a pocket mirror flew out of it.  “I got a call this morning at eight o’clock.  It was Detective Merrick.  He’d like to ask me more questions about the note.  If that would be okay.”

“So?”

“So,” she mimicked me.  “He practically said that I wrote it, that I knew more about Peter’s disappearance than I was telling them.  He grilled me for half the morning.”  She pointed a finger at me.  “You told them something to put the suspicion on me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.  “I didn’t talk to them at all.  I was with you the whole time.”

“You saw them to the door.”

Apparently she hadn't been in a total blackout.  Or her selective memory was better than I thought.  “Where Detective Merrick warned me," I said.  "About you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said, and I quote, ‘things aren’t always what they appear.’”  I pointed at her.  “That you might not be what you appear.”

Her eyes became slits, warily contemplating my.  “What does that mean?” she finally asked.

“You tell me.  I know you lied to me.”

“About what?”

“Now who’s being fresh?” I said while she glared at me.  “The plane ticket.  Peter used his ticket from New York to Philly.  And the police told you that.”

“I must’ve made a mistake.”

I didn’t detect anything that made me think she was lying again.  “Why are the police suspicious of you?  Are you hiding something from them?  From me?”

“The police always suspect the spouse.  You should know that,” she snapped.

“Would you like to start this conversation over?”  I let Amanda think about that while I fixed her two of the most well-known hangover remedies known to man: coffee and water.

“Thank you.”  She accepted the coffee and ignored the water.  I set the glass on a table beside the chair and went back to my desk.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, sitting down and crossing my arms.

She gulped the coffee.  “Okay.  The truth is, I knew about all the women.”

“You told me that.”  My patience was slipping away.

“Yes, but I wanted to put some kind of suspicion on them.  Whoever they were.”  The coffee seemed to be perking her up.  “Peter ruined our marriage.  I wanted the women to pay as well.”

“Maybe they already had.”

“I have no way of knowing that.  I figured if I said that Peter didn’t make it back to Denver, you’d have to go searching elsewhere to find him, and in the process, you’d have to bring these other women into the open.  Expose the affairs to their husbands or boyfriends.”

“But you had no way of knowing if these women were in relationships.”

She shrugged her shoulders.  “Some of them had to be.”

I stared into her blue eyes, trying to find some feeling floating behind the hangover glare.  Nothing but a cold stare.  No emotion for her husband, certainly none for anyone with whom he was involved, or the unsuspecting partners.

“Tell me what the police told you,” I said.  “The first time you talked to them.”

“Except for the thing about the plane tickets, I told you everything.”  She paused to sip more coffee.  “The police didn’t do anything.  They filed a missing persons report.  I gave them a picture of Peter and his itinerary, and they said a detective would look into it.  After a day, Detective Merrick called me and said the plane ticket was used to Philadelphia, but not back to Denver.  If Peter did fly back here, nobody knows about it.  They did some checking at the airport, and with the airlines, but nobody specifically remembers Peter being on that flight, or any other.”

Amanda’s monologue was one helluva lot more than she had shared when I first met her.  “What about the credit cards?” I asked.  “Which ones did he use?”

She averted her eyes.  “I haven’t looked into it yet.”

I shook my head slowly at her.  “You sound an awful lot like someone who doesn’t want to find her husband.  Is there anything else you’d like to do to make this harder for me?”

“I am trying to help you,” Amanda said, pouting.  “You’ve got to believe me.”

I stood up and came around the desk, handing her the phone.  “Then call the credit card companies.”

“Now?”

“Now.”  I held the receiver closer to her.  She set the empty cup down and took the phone gingerly, as if it might shock her.  “The numbers are on the back of the cards.”

“You don’t have to treat me like a child,” she fumed, cradling the phone in her lap while she dug around for her wallet.

“Then quit acting like one.”

I received a steely glare for that one.  She selected five credit cards out of a deck.  “These are the ones he carries.  He uses the American Express for business.  I have that card, but don’t use it.”  I gestured to the phone.  “All right.  You don’t have to get pushy.”  As she dialed a number she said, “This part of you I was not told about.”

“Darn.  I thought my charm was never-ending.”

I watched her while she called the numbers, jotting notes on a pad I provided her.  I read what she wrote after she completed the last call.

“He used AmEx on the seventh, paying for his hotel in Philadelphia,” I said.  That was a week ago, which meant that he’d spent the weekend with Sheila instead of returning to Denver.

“You didn’t make the other charges?”  I pointed out some charges on the list.

She shook her head.  “No, I rarely use these cards.”

“The Discover card was used at a gas station in Pennsylvania last Saturday,” I said.  “That could fit with what Sheila said.  But why use the Discover card if he’s got AmEx for business?”

Amanda’s head jerked up and she grimaced.  “When did you talk to Sheila?”  There was poison in her voice.  “What did she say?”

I smiled.  “That’s right.  I haven’t told you that.”  I sighed in an exaggerated manner.  “I was going to tell you last night, but you didn’t seem up for it.”

“I was upset, okay?  Stop harassing me about it.”

“I talked with Sheila late yesterday afternoon.  She told me about her and Peter, how they would meet on occasion, in Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, or New York.  Whenever and wherever it was convenient for them.  She spent last weekend with Peter before dropping him off at the airport on Monday morning.  That’s the last she’s seen or heard of him.”  I left out the part about appreciating Peter’s sexual prowess.