Hiding in the Shadows (6 page)

Blinking behind his thick glasses, Conrad said miserably, “I want to help, Kane. You know I do. And if I thought there was anything, anything at all, in Dinah’s financial dealings that might help find her, I would have said so to you or the police long before now.”

“But you won’t show us her file?” It was Bishop who asked, his voice level.

“I can’t do that. As long as there’s no proof otherwise, I have to assume she could walk in that door any minute. And given that, I have to keep her files confidential. I can’t give you details—I just can’t. And the judge agreed with me when the police tried to get a warrant, Kane, you know she did. Unless you or the police come up with information that indicates Dinah’s disappearance was somehow connected to her financial dealings, my hands are tied.”

“Legally tied,” Kane noted.

“I have to protect my clients’ privacy.”

Kane drew a breath and tried to remain patient, knowing only too well that he would want his own affairs treated exactly the same way. “Okay, Conrad. But think. Surely you can tell us if there was anything
unusual, say in the last few months. You’ve had time to think about it.”

“Yes, but … unusual how? Dinah left her investments to me for the most part, you know that, Kane. Occasionally she sold stocks against my advice for quick cash, usually because she was trying to help somebody—”

“What do you mean?” Bishop interrupted.

Conrad considered the question and whether he would be breaching confidentiality, then decided to answer frankly. “Just that. She’d do a story on a home for battered women, and then call me to sell some stock so she could give them fifty thousand to remodel or hire a better lawyer, something like that. She’d do a story on a poor congregation losing its church, and right away pour tens of thousands into their rebuilding fund.”

He smiled with wistful fondness. “I could always tell. She’d have that note in her voice when she called, so determined you could call it hell-bent, and I’d know she’d found another wounded soul or bird with a broken wing. She’s given millions over the years. Even before her father died, she used most of the income from her trust fund to help others.”

Kane swallowed. “I … never knew that. She never said anything about it.”

“No, she wouldn’t have. It wasn’t something she talked about. She once told me that her father had taught her a lesson she’d never forgotten—that you helped people without shouting about it, because just the act of helping them made you and your own life better. She believed that. She lived up to that.”

Bishop glanced at Kane, then said coolly to Conrad,
“With that in mind, don’t you think she’d want you to help us find her? So she can help more people, if nothing else. The trail is cold, Mr. Masterson. And she’s been missing for five weeks.”

Conrad bit his bottom lip. “I wish I could help, Agent Bishop. You have no idea how much. But—”

“Had she come to you recently and asked you to sell stocks without any explanation, or without an explanation you considered reasonable?”

“No. She always had a reason, and, after all, it’s her money. She’s free to spend it however she pleases. Usually, it was her stories and learning about somebody in need that started it for her. Something that got her passionate and made her get involved.”

Bishop frowned. “Did she talk about her stories to you before they were written, Mr. Masterson?”

That question surprised Kane; it was not one he would have thought to ask. But the investment manager’s answer surprised him even more.

“Sometimes,” Conrad said, clearly unaware of having said anything remarkable. “She’d come in here and talk, and days or weeks later I’d read one of her articles and there’d be the things she told me about.”

“How about recently?”

It was Masterson’s turn to frown. “Let’s see. She told me about that murder out in Buckhead about six months ago.”

Both Kane and Bishop nodded; that article and its outcome had already been thoroughly checked out.

“And a few weeks after that she was talking about that political scandal she covered, all those goings-on in the lieutenant governor’s mansion.”

Kane said, “Which, like all good scandals, ended with a miserable whimper instead of a bang.” Bishop lifted a brow at him, and Kane explained. “They paid the girl off and she suddenly remembered it was somebody else with his pants down around his ankles. Then she decided she’d rather live elsewhere, and moved out to California.”

He looked back at Conrad. “But that was more or less just reporting, and everybody knew what was going on. What else did she talk about?”

Conrad pursed his lips in thought for a moment, then an arrested expression crossed his face.

“What?” Kane demanded instantly.

“Well … let’s see, it must have been around the first of August or thereabouts when she came in looking really upset. Said she felt rotten and the heat made it worse. It was terribly hot that day, just dreadful. I asked her what was up, and she said she’d just stumbled across what looked like a really big story. She said …”

He closed his eyes, the better to concentrate. “She said heads were going to roll, no doubt about that, and what made it worse was that it appeared somebody she liked an awful lot might be involved. I said involved in what, and she shook her head and said it was big, very big. Then she got a look on her face I’d never seen before, sort of cautious and very worried.” He opened his eyes and peered at them. “She wasn’t—isn’t—cautious, you know. Reckless if anything. Always prone to rush in without thinking if somebody’s in trouble.”

“I know,” Kane said.

Bishop looked at him, then at Masterson. “Sounds
like it might be political. Did she tell you anything else?”

He brooded. “No, not that day. And I didn’t hear from her again for weeks. She called me about a month later, very … subdued. Said she wanted me to free up half a million.”

Bishop blinked. “And you didn’t find that request unusual?”

“It wasn’t the largest amount she’d needed, if that’s what you mean. But it was big enough that I asked her if she was sure she wanted to do that, since it’d mean selling a few things better kept awhile longer. She just said somebody had gotten hurt because of her, and she had to take care of the matter.” He shrugged. “I did as she asked, freed up the money, and wired it to her bank.”

Kane frowned. “There was no deposit that size into her account in the last six months.” Dinah’s bank had been more cooperative than Conrad in releasing information to the police.

Conrad hesitated, then said, “Well, it wasn’t her regular bank. She used another one for this sort of thing. And a lawyer other than her usual one to arrange things, I believe.”

“Will you tell us which bank, so we can verify this?” Bishop asked.

After a few moments, Conrad nodded. “I suppose I can do that.” He jotted down the name and address of the bank on a piece of paper.

Bishop took it.

“What about this other lawyer, Conrad? Who was it?” Kane asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t know. She just mentioned once
that it was sometimes handy to have two attorneys on retainer, one for public stuff and one private.”

“And you have no idea exactly what she intended to do with that half million?”

Conrad shook his head. “I never asked how she planned to help this friend of hers. And … that was the last time I spoke to her.”

A few minutes later, driving away from Conrad’s office, Bishop said, “You know, it occurs to me that half a million dollars to help a friend is a bit excessive. Didn’t you tell me this friend of Dinah’s had been in a car accident and has been in a coma since?”

“Yeah.” Kane paused, then muttered, “Oh, shit. I should have gone by to see her. Dinah went twice a week, regular as clockwork.” His guilt was obvious.

“Isn’t she in a coma?”

“Yes. I looked in on her that first week, when I went to talk to the hospital staff about Dinah’s visits. They couldn’t tell me or the police much we didn’t already know, and Faith Parker certainly couldn’t help. I gather they aren’t expecting her to come out of it.”

“Then,” Bishop said, not uncaring but matter of fact, “she wouldn’t know if you visited or not.”

“I said something like that to Dinah once,” Kane confessed. “And she gave me the oddest look. She didn’t say anything—but she didn’t have to. I kept my mouth shut about it after that.”

Bishop looked at him. “Dinah told Masterson this woman had been hurt because of her. Was that true?”

Kane shook his head. “Only in that she was driving to meet Dinah when it happened. But she felt responsible and nothing I could say made any difference. Said if it hadn’t been for her, her friend would never have been
driving that afternoon, and so would never have run her car into an embankment.”

“She lost control of it?”

“According to the police report. I asked about it as a matter of course, after Dinah disappeared. The police couldn’t see a connection, and I couldn’t either. Just a common traffic accident, caused by carelessness.”

“And she was a good friend?”

“It certainly sounds that way, although I can’t remember Dinah ever mentioning her before the accident. Not that it’s all that unusual for her to have old friends I’ve never heard of. Especially if they’re work related.”

“And was Faith Parker work related?”

“Dinah was so upset about the accident, I didn’t ask too many questions. All I know for sure is that Faith never appeared in any of Dinah’s stories, at least not by name.” God knew he was familiar with Dinah’s backlog of work; he had spent long hours reading and rereading everything she’d written, looking for clues to her disappearance.

“I don’t like coincidences,” Bishop said grimly. “A friend of Dinah’s, possibly someone related to her work, rams her car into an embankment and ends up in a coma, an accident about which Dinah feels excessively guilty—to the tune of half a million dollars. A few weeks later, Dinah herself disappears. Now, there may be absolutely no connection between the two things, as the police believe. But I think we’d better make sure.”

“How? If Faith Parker is in a coma, who do we ask?”

“We’ll have to look more closely at the police reports of the accident, maybe take a look at the car, too. Talk to her doctors again, the nursing staff again.”

“And ask them what?” Kane was baffled. “According to the staff, Dinah spent her visits in that room talking to her, not to anyone else. And they don’t seem to know anything about Faith’s background or history.”

“Maybe with a different set of questions to ask, we’ll get different answers,” Bishop assured him.

Kane valued Bishop’s intuition as much as he did his investigative training—maybe more so. And he was eager to try anything that might help to point them in a new direction.

“It’s worth a try,” he agreed. “And maybe Dinah’s other lawyer can tell us something as well.”

“Maybe. At the very least, we can verify that Dinah really was giving money to worthy causes.”

Kane frowned. “You think it could be something else?”

“No, but it never hurts to be sure.” He smiled slightly as his friend shot him a look. “Dinah was—is—too smart to pay blackmail money even if she had done something to be blackmailed for, which I very much doubt. But it’s possible that someone took advantage of her and she found out about it later, after the money was handed over.”

Kane nodded slowly. “Dinah would have been furious, would have wanted to get her money back and punish whoever had deceived her. She wouldn’t have been afraid to face up to whoever it was and threaten retaliation, even prosecution. But then—”
He broke off, and Bishop didn’t have to hear the words to know how his friend had silently finished that sentence.

In that case, getting Dinah out of the way for some amount of time wouldn’t help. Unless she disappeared permanently
.

Bishop knew that Kane had been clinging to what was very likely an unrealistic hope. That if she had an unknown enemy, that person had wanted Dinah out of the way only for a while. That she was being held hostage somewhere, undoubtedly furious and bored but safe. That somehow the crisis would be resolved and Dinah would be released unharmed.

Bishop knew better. He didn’t want to know it, but he did. Within hours of his arrival in Atlanta, his training and experience told him that it was only a matter of time before Dinah’s body was found.

But he wasn’t about to offer that cold knowledge to Kane. Stranger things had happened, and there was always a chance, however slim, that Kane was right. Bishop wouldn’t take that away from him.

There was time enough for brutal reality if and when it had to be faced.

In the meantime, investigating possibilities was one way of keeping Kane busy. He needed to feel he was doing something to help the woman he loved. And they had to find out what had happened, whether or not the information could help Dinah now; if she was already dead, somebody had killed her, and that somebody was going to pay for it.

Before the silence could grow too large and become filled with paralyzing thoughts and fears, Bishop said, “I still think blackmail is
unlikely, but it’s something we need to look into. And the connection between Dinah and this friend of hers. Since the police didn’t see a connection and moved on, I doubt they’ll look again, especially now.”

“Why especially now?”

Bishop shrugged. “I have a feeling they’re going to have their hands full now that your reward has been announced.”

“You still don’t think that was a good idea, do you?”

“I think a million dollars is a hell of a lot of money. And I think there are quite a few people willing to make something up if they think there’s a hope in hell of getting that money. It could just muddy the water, Kane.”

“Or it could inspire whoever might be holding Dinah to tip the police as to where she can be found.”

“Yes, it could. Especially since you worded the statement to make it plain the money would be paid only if Dinah is found alive and well.”

Kane changed the subject. “Getting back to the second lawyer, do you think he’ll be willing to talk to us?”

“I don’t know. He’ll be bound by attorney-client privilege, but given Dinah’s disappearance, he might be willing to set that aside in her best interests. We won’t know until we talk to him. Assuming we can find out who he is.”