Goodbye Sister Disco (3 page)

“Yeah. People saw him leave with a girl. Cordelia—”

“Penmark. Yeah, I got that. You asked if I recognized the name, though.”

“Well, the thing is, she's rich.”

“So?”

“No, I mean rich. Her father's one of the Forbes 400.”

“I don't read that magazine.”

“He owns some sort of software company. I don't know the name. He's a billionaire.”

“Oh.”

“So, what I'm thinking is, she left with someone else. Or she killed him and took off. Or…”

“Or she was abducted.”

“It seems likely,” Klosterman said.

“For ransom?”

“That, or it's a coincidence.”

Hastings said, “Man.”

He saw a news-channel van parked in front of the house, a handsome young man positioning himself in front of the camera, lights outlining him and throwing a long shadow across the lawn.

Hastings said, “Has the girl's family been notified?”

Klosterman turned to a patrol officer. The patrol officer said, “Yes. Delaney called them.”

To Klosterman, Hastings said, “There'll be a lot of people to interview. Will you call Howard and Murph for me?”

“Yeah.”

Hastings went back to the patrol sergeant, whose name was John Baumann. Each was vaguely familiar with the other, though they had never worked the same detail before. Sergeant Baumann was a younger sergeant; in his twenties, he'd had his stripes less than a year. Hastings believed that Baumann had screwed up this crime scene already by not taking adequate charge, but he still needed the man's help. There was a certain way to discuss this sort of police procedure. Diplomacy, nuance, tact.

“John,” Hastings said, “This is becoming a clusterfuck. Half the guys here don't know where the crime scene sign-in sheet is. Please make sure every cop knows where it is and that they sign it. As for the rest of these people who aren't witnesses and are just rubbernecking, we need to get them the fuck out of here. Now. Also, get barricades set up on the road so we don't have media guys tromping all over the place. The guy that owns this house is some sort of big wheel, so more than likely the chief or deputy chief is going to show up here. If they see this, I'm going to get my ass chewed off. So help me out, okay?”

“Sure, Lieutenant.”

Hastings patted him on the shoulder as he left. “Thanks, John.”

Hastings walked back to the front of the house. Sam Fisher was still talking to the two men he had been talking to earlier. Fisher turned to acknowledge him.

Hastings said, “I need to speak with you.”

Fisher hesitated, but the two men moved away from him.

“Okay,” Fisher said.

“You're aware that the young man is dead?”

“I know,” Fisher said. “It's just a terrible thing. A terrible thing.”

“Did you know him?”

“Yes. He worked for the firm.”

“An attorney?”

“Yes.”

“What did you know about him?”

“He was an exceptional young man. A good lawyer, a hard worker.”

“No trouble that you're aware of?”

“Like what, sir?”

“Drugs, gambling … that sort of thing.”

“No. Not him. He had everything going for him.”

“Did he bring a date here?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“He brought a young lady named Cordelia Penmark. She's Gene Penmark's daughter.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I thought she left with him.”

“Did you see them leave together?”

“No, but I'm sure someone did. They came here together and she was gone when he was gone.”

“Had you met the girl before?”

“No. I met her for the first time tonight.”

“Did he or she have an argument with anyone here tonight?”

“No. In fact, I don't think he had more than one drink the entire night.”

“Excuse me, Officer?”

Hastings turned to see another man who had just walked up.

“Yes?”

“My name is Ross Kaufman. I was talking with them both, shortly before they left. Is the girl dead?”

“Excuse me?”

“The young lady, is she…”

“We don't know. We think she's been abducted.”

The man seemed shaken.

Hastings said, “Did you know her?”

“No. I just met her tonight.”

“You did?”

“She was in the back, smoking a cigarette. And I went out there to have a smoke and started talking with her. I'm a lawyer at Sam's firm.”

“Anything unusual?”

“No. We probably only talked a couple of minutes. And Tom came up and said he was ready to go.”

“Any sort of anger between them, then?”

“Anger? No, I don't think so. I think she'd've rather stayed. But that's speculation.” Kaufman added, “Is she okay?”

“We don't know yet. Would you mind giving me a card, in case I want to ask you some more questions?”

Kauffman handed Hastings a card. A middle-aged man looking distressed, missing the smile of young girl.

Klosterman came over. Hastings turned his back to the attorneys.

“George, we checked the young man's body. His wallet, his money are still on him. He wasn't robbed.”

“Oh.”

“Also, the girl's mother is here now.”

FIVE

The woman was in her late forties. She wore glasses and her hair was long and gray and unfashionable. She did not look like the sort of woman who sat on a billion dollars. She looked like she worked at a library.

This is what Hastings thought, anyway. Like most detectives, he'd take a generalized guess if nothing else was available, and right now there wasn't.

When Hastings was a young patrol cop, he responded to a call reporting an auto collision on I-64 near the Kingshighway exit. It was one of those bad ones involving an eighteen-wheel semi and a car. The car's roof was completely sheared off; the sort of crumpled, twisted thing you see and you know that the odds of the occupant surviving the crash are slim. As he suspected, the woman driving the car had died upon impact, and the only positive thing you could think was that it had happened instantly without the person being burned first.

A few minutes later, a man drove up to the wreck and got out of his car and ran toward the carnage. It was Hastings who stopped him before he could see anything. The man said, “My wife's in there. My wife—is she…?”

“Sir,” Hastings had said, “please step back.”

And the man said, his voice shaking, “She didn't make it, did she?” Knowing in the way people seem to know.

Hastings paused for only a moment, wondering in that moment if someone else could do this, but knowing that he was there and he would have to. And he said, “No, sir, she didn't. I'm sorry.”

It was a nasty, necessary part of this business. Passing on tragedy and watching some poor man collapse with grief. But it had to be done.

Hastings led the woman into Sam Fisher's study, so they could talk alone. They were still standing when he said, “Are you Mrs. Penmark?”

“No, my name is Beckwith. Adele Beckwith. I took my maiden name after I divorced Cordelia's father.” She said, “Where is my daughter, Detective?”

“We don't know, ma'am. She may not have been with the young man when—”

“When he was killed?”

“Yes. The good news is, there's no evidence as of yet that she's been harmed.”

The woman stared at him. “No evidence? She's missing, isn't she?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“We don't. I'm sorry.”

The woman sat down on the couch. She put her face in her hands. Hastings could see that she was trembling.

“Ma'am,” he said, “please don't jump to conclusions.”

She looked up at him, her face screwed up with grief.

Hastings said, “We're working on it.”

“Work—there's a young man out there who's dead. And you don't know where she is. You don't know.”

No, Hastings thought, I don't. Because it wasn't his daughter that was missing. He could empathize, but he couldn't know.

He said, “Can you talk to me?”

After a moment, she nodded her head.

“When is the last time you talked to her?”

“… Yesterday … she called me yesterday.”

“Did she seem okay?”

“Yes … we talked about what we would do on Christmas.…”

“Was she in any distress when you talked to her?”

She struggled and then shook her head.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

“Do you want to talk about this later?”

She nodded again.

“I'm sorry, Ms. Beckwith. We're going to do everything we can to get her back to you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I'm going to bring an officer back here to sit with you. All right? She's going to sit with you for a while. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He went out to the front of the house and pulled Officer Annie Soames aside. To him, it was not a chauvinistic thing to ask a woman officer to comfort a woman. He knew from experience that it worked, and few cops, men or women, would dispute it. He had just escorted Annie inside when he saw Murph running up to him.

Detective Tim Murphy—Murph the Surf—had a build that was almost slight. But he possessed the air of fearlessness and menace that is inherent in Irish-cop DNA. Hastings had once seen him crook a finger at a man twice his size and say, “Come here,” and the man did. Quivering while he did so. In such circumstances, self-doubt was not an issue for Murph.

In front of the house, Murph said, “George. We've got the girl's father on the phone. I think you need to talk to him.”

Hastings followed Murph to the command post that had been set up after Hastings delivered his lecture to the young sergeant. Murph handed him a telephone.

“This is Lieutenant Hastings.”

“Lieutenant? You're the one in charge there?”

“Yes, sir. For the time being.”

“This is Gene Penmark. I'm Cordelia's father.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I've received a telephone call from a man who says he has my daughter.”

SIX

Before he hooked up with Lexie, Gene Penmark had never attended a society event in his life. He did not own a tuxedo. Indeed, he thought he may have worn one to his high school prom, but that had been a long time ago. Gene was like that: brilliant in so many ways, ignorant in others. His had been a world of semiconductors and software, microchips and processors, not art or wine or people. For Lexie, he was a work in progress.

Gene Penmark was married to a woman named Adele when he'd met Lexie Lacquere. Lexie had called him to set up an interview for Channel 9. They had talked for no more than an hour. But in that time, something had been awakened in Gene Penmark. He was not an experienced man. Adele had been his first lover and women had never taken an interest in him. But Lexie Lacquere had taken an interest. At least, he thought so. She was the one who had taken the initiative. She was the one who had asked him out to dinner. Within a few months, he divorced Adele and, as soon as the law allowed, married Lexie Lacquere.

Eight years since and he owned a tuxedo now. An Armani. And he actually seemed to like mixing at the social events. He told Lexie he could not have done it without her.

Tonight they were at the Carpenter home in the Kingsbury section of St. Louis. A three-story mansion near the old Pulitzer house. Jo Carpenter and Lexie were cochairs of the Light Opera of St. Louis. They were a contrast: Jo, fifty-five and looking it, wearing a conservative gray dress with a black satin wrap around her zaftig figure. Lexie, narrow at the waist, her high, artificial breasts flattered by the maroon strapless dress she wore, shoulders tanned and healthy-looking. Feeling good at forty-one, she was. Jo Carpenter was from that social set people called “old money,” such as it existed in St. Louis these days. Old money was not in Lexie Penmark's pedigree. Not by a sight.

But she was learning. Indeed, she was not surprised when a guest tipped her off that Jo's toast earlier in the evening—“Let's be frivolous tonight”—had been stolen from someone else. Lexie refrained from saying
I'm not surprised
or something else damaging. Her satisfied smile said enough, she thought.

The party was pleasant, though. The wine was sipped, the catered food nibbled. Guests stood and talked and mingled and behaved more or less as they were expected to. The Glenns were the Glenns. The Harrises were the Harrises. The Carlsons were the Carlsons. Congressman Hirsch hit on a doctor's wife who was roughly half his age. Pam Willits drank too much and started telling people her first husband was gay, so she knew what she was talking about. Ray Wharton was becoming irritated because none of the conservatives at the party would take his “impeach Bush” bait and give him a fight.

Lexie Penmark enjoyed it all. It was a world she felt comfortable in. People smiling, laughing, talking. She did not think of it as work.

She looked across the room at her husband. He was standing with three other men and a woman. He almost seemed comfortable talking with them. That was good. When she had first married him, he would follow her around at parties. Or expect her to remain with him at all times. As if he was afraid of being alone. She eventually taught him that he would be okay on his own. That if he remained in one place, people would come up to him. It was the way things worked.

He was laughing now. Ugh, Lexie thought. His teeth. Or rather, the set of his jaw. It never looked good when he laughed. It was not flattering to him. And it was probably not something you could have fixed; not a goofy jaw set. Perhaps, Lexie thought, it was better not to think about it.

She saw the smile on his face distracted. His glance down now, as he reached into the pocket of his jacket.