Heart of the Night (11 page)

“I hate clean jobs. They mean that our quarry is smart.”

“Depressing, but true.”

She nodded toward Will, who stood at the kitchen window. “Did he sleep?”

“For an hour or two. No more. He's pretty edgy.”

“No wonder. How about you? Get much sleep?”

“Enough.”

“Was Susan okay?”

“Not bad.”

“What does that mean?”

“She decided to bake a cake at one this morning.”

“That's nice.”

“A rum cake,” Sam said, then his eyes narrowed on Savannah. “Does she always drink, or is it the situation?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“You suppose? She's your sister. Don't you know?”

“I'm not her keeper,” Savannah said a bit sharply, then quickly gentled her tone. “I try to do more, but she denies there's a problem.” She shrugged. “Maybe there isn't.”

Sam said nothing.

“Is she still sleeping?”

“I guess so. She hasn't been down yet.” His gaze shifted. “I take that back. Here she comes.”

Savannah turned to find Susan approaching. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans with an oversized sweatshirt emblazoned with rhinestones that made her face look pale. Her hair had been hastily drawn into a loose, voluminous pony tail. She wore socks but no shoes. Savannah guessed she had just woken up.

“I heard the bell,” she said in a groggy voice. Hesitantly, even a bit painfully, she looked from Savannah to Sam. “Anything new?”

He shook his head in silence. He was intently studying her face.

Uncomfortable with that, she turned to Savannah. “So we just wait?”

Savannah nodded.

“Will you stay here?”

“I'll be back and forth to the office. I've got a couple of appointments I can't change, and, anyway, there are a load of phone calls I can more easily make from there.”

Susan accepted that. She looked too tired and worried to argue. Stuffing her hands in the pockets of her jeans, she said, “It's spooky here. Megan's everywhere. I kept waking up, thinking about her.”

“So did I, and I was across town.”

“Is it better or worse the longer they keep her?”

“I don't know,” Savannah said. She looked questioningly at Sam, but he couldn't help her out.

“A kidnapping is a kidnapping,” he said. “She's been gone for little over a day. We have to assume it'll be at least two or three before she's back. If the exchange hasn't been made by next week, ask me again.”

Susan shot him a look of annoyance.

“What did I do?” he asked.

“You could have been a little more encouraging.”

“You want me to lie?”

She faced him head-on. “At this hour, and with the night I just had, yes.”

“You look pretty good.”

“That's a bald-faced lie. I look like death warmed over.”

“No,” he insisted. “You look good. I like you without makeup.” Barely pausing, he said, “How about some breakfast?”

She made a face. “How can you think of eating at a time like this?”

“I'm hungry. Dinner was a long time ago, and delicious as that rum cake was—”

“I thought I said to lie.” She turned to Savannah and said in a prim voice, “The cake fell. I don't know what happened to it. I've never had that experience before in my life.”

Savannah wasn't about to ask how many rum cakes Susan had made before. She suspected about as many as she had made herself, which was none. She could understand the attempt, though. Doing something would be better than doing nothing, and since the cupboards were full, why not? “Maybe something's wrong with the oven,” she suggested.

Sam smirked.

Susan frowned.

Sensing she'd better quit while she was ahead, Savannah said, “I'm on my way to the office. I'll talk with you later.”

*   *   *

The news at the office was no more encouraging. “Nothing from the lab,” Savannah told Paul when he stopped by shortly after nine. “Nothing from Ginny and Chris. Nothing from the people we put on the phones. And as if that weren't bad enough, the Cat struck again.”

“What does the Cat have to do with this case?”

“Not a thing. Just thought you'd like to know.”

“What did he get this time?”

“Oh, roughly a hundred thousand in jewelry, silver, and art from the Monroe house in Cranston.”

“Are they sure it was the Cat?”

“Who else helps himself and leaves without a trace?”

“Have they questioned Stavanovich?”

“Can't find him.”

“Swell. This is getting embarrassing, Savvy.”

“Mmmm.” She inhaled an exaggerated breath. “Anyway, I've sent Hank out to cruise around. He's got one or two informants who will let him know if they've seen or heard anything about Megan. I even have someone in Corrections looking to see who of our dear friends has been released from prison lately. Beyond that, I don't know what to do.”

Paul was totally composed, more so than any other person she had seen that day. But then, Paul was always composed. Part of it was the image he upheld, part was his experience, and part was the fact that, as attorney general, he was detached from the nitty-gritty details of things. He rarely bloodied his hands in the arena. He had assistants to do that, assistants like Savannah.

“There's nothing to do but wait,” he said.

“It's hard.”

“That's because you're a doer and doers don't usually wait. But we have no choice, Savannah. If we move too far, too fast, or too freely, we're apt to blow this case. Neither of us wants to do that.”

She knew he was right, though she was uneasy with his pointed warning. Paul was, she knew, a political creature, while she was a humanitarian one. One of the reasons their relationship worked so well was that they tempered each other.

In this situation, however, Savannah didn't want to be tempered. Megan was her friend. The political ramifications of the case didn't concern her at all.

“I feel like I'm blowing it by sitting here doing nothing,” she complained. “I wish Will would let us go to the FBI.”

“I doubt they'd do more than you've already done.”

“Maybe not,” she mused. Still, the weight of responsibility was on her shoulders, and it was awesome.

Paul left. Savannah took several phone calls and made several others concerning her upcoming trial. She met with one of the lawyers to discuss preparation of a rebuttal to pretrial motions for an extortion case that was on the docket for a month later. She phoned the Vandermeer house, but nothing had happened.

Frustrated, she called information for the number of WCIC. She jotted it on her pad, stared at it for several minutes, picked up the phone to call, then put the receiver down.

Coincidence. There couldn't be a connection. Or if there was, she had already taken care of it. That was why she had phoned the Department of Corrections earlier. The idea that one or more of Megan's abductors had spent time in Rhode Island correctional facilities, where they might have listened to and been inspired by WCIC, was a shot in the dark, but those shots seemed the only ones she could take.

Temporarily satisfied, she stashed several extra pads of paper into her briefcase and went to the law library. She could be reached there if anything happened, and in the meanwhile, she would be doing research.

By one in the afternoon, though, she was back in her office. Again she lifted the phone to call WCIC. Again she replaced the receiver without pushing a button. Then she took several incoming calls and an hour later she drove to the Vandermeer house. She already knew that nothing had happened, but she wanted to stop in, if only for a short time.

While she was there, Hank returned, but his informants had had nothing to say. “Either they really know nothing, or whoever is involved is so big that they're terrified.”

Savannah chose to believe the first, since the second was truly frightening. “Who's big?” she asked. “Why would someone big get involved in a kidnapping?”

Neither Hank nor Sam had answers for her, and Sam had worse news to report. “We won't get any help from his managers. They haven't seen a thing.”

“We're really striking out,” Savannah murmured and turned toward Will. Exhausted, he had taken to sitting rigidly on the living room sofa with the phone by his side. “How're you doing?” she asked gently as she slipped down beside him.

He eyed her hollowly. “It's my fault. If I'd had the alarm system fixed, this wouldn't have happened.”

“You don't know that.”

“I do. It's my fault.”

“Come on, Will,” she coaxed, “even if the alarm system had been working perfectly, any system can be disengaged if the kidnappers know what they're doing, and Megan's kidnappers knew what they were doing.” She frowned.

Sam verbalized her thought. “But they didn't know the system was broken. They should have tried to disengage it.” He looked at Hank. “You check downstairs. I'll look outside.”

They disappeared.

Susan, who had been standing on the far side of the room with her arms wrapped tightly around her middle, called, “Savannah? Can I talk with you for a minute?” As soon as Savannah had joined her, she murmured, “This isn't going to work. I'm not doing a bit of good here.”

“Sure, you are.”

“I cook. That's it.”

“You soften things up just by being here. It's a woman's touch.”

“I'm not helping Will. He's a zombie. The main thing I'm doing is arguing with Sam.”

“Why does he bother you so?”

“I don't know, but he does.”

“I've always liked him.”

Susan frowned and dropped her gaze. Focusing on one glossy pink fingernail, she asked, “Are you interested in him?”

“Interested? Sure. Sammy and I have been through a lot together. I care about him.”

“Do you date him?”

“No.”

“Have you ever?”

“No.”

“But you invited him to the party at the house last year.”

“Him and about sixty of my other friends and colleagues.”

Susan looked up. “You've never slept with him?”

“If I've never dated him, how could I have slept with him?”

Susan looked back down at her nail. “You said it yourself, you've been through a lot together. Sometimes things just … happen. You could be working on a case late at night, you're both tired and tense, you need an outlet.”

“Sammy and I have never used each other that way.”

“You're sure?”

Savannah gave a soft laugh. “Of course, I'm sure. Susan, what is this? I'd tell you if I had a thing for the man, but I don't. I think he's intelligent and sensitive and very attractive, but he doesn't turn me on that way. And I don't turn him on that way. Neither of us is suffering. Believe me.”

Susan was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “So you think he's attractive?”

“Yes.”

“Even with that hair?”

Savannah nodded. “He's an individual. I respect that.” She paused. Susan was looking sadly across the room. “What is it, Suse?”

But Susan didn't answer. She stared at that distant wall, then shook her head and shrugged. Before Savannah could pursue it, Sam and Hank returned. They said nothing until they reached her side.

“It hasn't been touched,” Hank murmured. “Not from the inside or the outside.”

Savannah shot a glance at Will, who had heard what Hank said and was looking more miserable than ever. He was right, after all. Since the kidnappers had been unaware of the alarm, if it had been on, the kidnapping might have been thwarted.

Unless they'd already known that the system was broken.

Sam, who was thinking the same thing, reached Will first. “When the system went on the blink, did you report it?”

Will looked up blankly.

“It's important that we know,” Savannah said, joining Sam. “If you reported it broken, someone with the alarm company had valuable information to pass on, particularly if that someone knew you hadn't fixed it.”

Will rallied enough to say, “I called. But I got estimates on repairs from three different companies. No one of them had any reason to assume I didn't hire one of the others to fix the system.”

Savannah, Sam, and Hank gave simultaneous grunts of frustration.

Susan wailed, “What are they
waiting
for?”

Sam went to her side and cocked his head toward the door. “Let's take a walk.”

“It's cold out.”

“Put on your fur. You'll stay warm.”

“I'd rather stay here.”

“I need fresh air. I could use some company.”

“Take Hank.”

“Hank's staying with Will.”

“So should we.”

“No,” Sam said with a patient sigh, “we shouldn't. We should work off a little of the tension that's driving you nuts.”

Susan stood straighter. “Nothing's driving me nuts. I'm just fine.”

“Then, do it for me. Please, Susan?”

Savannah gave a weary sigh. “For God's sake, Susan, go!”

“Do you trust him not to rape me in the bushes?”

Taking a step forward, Sam took Susan's chin in his hand. “Lady,” he growled, “the day I resort to rape in the bushes…” His voice trailed off. His thumb crept over the curve of her chin. Eyes holding hers, he dropped his hand and said softly, “Are you coming?”

Savannah didn't wait for Susan's reply. Giving Will's shoulder a squeeze, she walked past. “I'm going back to the office. See you soon.”

*   *   *

“WCIC Providence, may I help you?”

Savannah started to talk, then cleared her throat to make the sound audible. “Yes. I'd like to speak with Jared Snow, please.”

“I'm sorry, but Mr. Snow isn't here at the moment. May I ask who's calling?”