Swift Justice (33 page)

“You mean I’m a dumpy, middle-aged woman who doesn’t look like a threat,” she said drily but with a hint of a smile.

“Not looking like a threat is helpful in this line of work,” I temporized, “and nobody wearing pink tiger stripes is dumpy. Look, Gigi, what I’m trying to say—”

“Does this have anything to do with that lawyer who came by this morning offering to buy out my share of the business?” she asked. Her foot tapped nervously beneath the desk, and I wondered what kind of shoes went with pink tiger stripes. I resisted the urge to look.

“Yes,” I said bluntly.

Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes darkened with hurt. “You want me to sell—”

“No! God, no! I want you to stay.”

“You do?”

“Honestly, in the best of all possible worlds, I’d own this business free and clear all by myself,” I said, “but if I have to have a partner, I’d rather have you than anyone else.”

The truth surprised me. Gigi had grown on me in the couple of weeks we’d been together. Yes, she irritated me, and I doubted I’d ever come to appreciate her decorating style or fashion sense, but she did relate better than I did to some of the people we interviewed—okay, a lot of them—and her society contacts had already paid off. Maybe, if we put some thought and effort into it, we could make more money together than I’d been making on my own or than she’d make as a hairstylist.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say that. Because you know what? I like being a PI!” Her face glowed. “When Les left and I realized I’d have to go back to work, I’d’ve just as soon shot myself, if it wasn’t for the kids. I didn’t know anything except hairdressing and nails, and the thought of massaging Tina Brandenburg’s scalp or pumicing Jemima Danforth’s feet made me want to curl up and die. It took years to get that crowd to accept me when I married Les—they copied my accent, and I
can’t tell you how many redneck jokes I had to pretend to laugh at—so just the thought of working in a salon made me throw up. Literally.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that. Going from being one of the in crowd to little better than a servant would be more than a saint could bear.

“So when I found the partner paperwork for Swift Investigations, I felt like my guardian angel had swooped down to save me. I know I kind of thrust myself on you,” she added more tentatively, “but I didn’t have any PI training or useful skills, so I thought the only thing I could do was pretend to be confident and try to learn, learn, learn as fast as I could. Instead, I just kept screwing up. I’m sorry.”

Resisting the urge to turn this into an apology fest, I said briskly, “There are several places we can send you to get some useful training in surveillance techniques and skip tracing and the like. The budget’s tight, but we can probably finagle it somehow, especially if we continue to get process-serving work. And I promise I’ll make more of an effort to include you in what I’m working on, to help with some on-the-job training.”

“That’d be great!” Gigi breathed. “Now, about my gun—”

“We’ll go to the range tomorrow,” I promised, “and see about some lessons.” It was probably my civic duty to call the range owner and warn him, but I was sure he, as a small business owner, carried insurance against the possibility of one customer accidentally winging another. I’d look in my storage room tonight, see if I could dig out the Kevlar vest I hadn’t worn since leaving the OSI.

I stood, hesitating for a moment, wondering if the musty smell making my nose wrinkle was coming from Bernie.
“Thanks for not selling out,” I said. “I know Johnson must have offered you a lot of money, and, well, I appreciate it.”

“Some things are more important than money,” she said. “At the opening of the new art museum building last year, Seth Johnson was making up to Kendall, running his hand up and down her arm, eyeing her like she was a mouse and he was a rat snake. Rat is right—she’s only fourteen! I wouldn’t sell that man a bite of roadkill stew if he was starving.” She nodded her head emphatically. “What did you do to make him so angry?”

I told her about the encounter at the Wild West Casino Night. Her eyes got bigger and bigger, and she caught her breath when I reached the part about Johnson grabbing me. Her only comment when I finished, though, was “You bit his finger? Gross me out, as Kendall would say. Did you get a rabies shot?”

We both dissolved into laughter. Our giggles were drowned by the phone. Still chuckling, Gigi picked it up. “Swift Investigations. For you,” she said, handing the receiver across her desk.

“Swift.”

“Charlie, she’s gone!” Melissa’s frantic voice clawed at me. “Olivia’s been kidnapped!”

“I only went in for a minute, and when I came back, she was gone,” Melissa cried.

“Slow down,” I said calmly. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened. Inside from where?”

She drew a ragged breath. “After you left, I decided to shut up shop for the day and go home. I was doing some gardening in the front yard, pulling weeds. Olivia was in her bouncy seat. The phone rang, and I went in to answer it. I was back in under a minute, a minute and a half at most, I swear! And she was gone.”

“Have you called the police?”

“No! No, I can’t do that. They’ll take her away.” Sobs echoed down the phone line.

I let the stupidity of that statement hang in the air between us for a moment. “Olivia’s safety is the most important thing, right? Trust me when I say the police are best equipped to deal with this.”

“This is your fault! No one knew I had the baby except
you. Who did you tell about Olivia?” Melissa said, accusation and fear and anger tangled in her voice.

My conscience pricked. Jacqueline Falstow. I hadn’t told her where Olivia was—I had all but led her to the Lloyds’ door. I could just see her cruising the neighborhood streets in the area where we’d had our run-in, looking for a baby the right age. Had she seen Melissa with Olivia? A worse thought crept into my head. Maybe she’d followed me this morning from the Humane Society to her husband’s job site, then to Designer Touches. I didn’t think I’d been followed, but I couldn’t be sure. The phone book would have yielded Melissa’s address. Jacqueline was definitely smart enough to put two and two together and come up with Olivia. A shiver ran down my spine. Was she really desperate enough for a baby to risk a kidnapping charge?

Gigi was waggling her brows and mouthing “What?” at me. I grabbed a pencil and wrote
Olivia kidnapped
on a slip of paper. She cocked her head to read as I wrote and gasped when she caught on. I turned my back to her to concentrate on Melissa.

“Who was on the phone?” I asked.

“What?”

“The phone. When you went inside to pick it up, when you left Olivia alone, who was on the phone?”

“It was a wrong number. Some guy looking for Wanda Something. What’s it matter?” She sounded impatient, on the edge of relapsing into hysteria.

A ploy, maybe, to separate her from the baby? If so, the kidnapper had to have been nearby. “While you were gardening, did you see any vehicles? Were there any pedestrians?”

“I don’t know!”

“Think, Melissa!” My voice was a verbal slap, telling her to pull herself together. “Every minute we waste lets the kidnapper get another mile down the road. Was there anyone at all on the street, especially anyone you didn’t know?”

Silence, broken only by her ragged breathing, was the only response for thirty seconds. Finally, she said, “There was a man walking a Rottweiler, but I’m pretty sure he just moved into the house on the corner. A couple of cars went past, and a pickup truck, I think. I wasn’t really watching the road . . . my back was mostly to it.”

“You’re doing well,” I told her. “Was one of the cars a Lexus, by any chance?”

“I don’t know! Why? Do you know who it was?” She seized on my hesitation like a baseball fan grabbing at the last World Series ticket.

“Maybe,” I finally admitted. “I’ll check it out. But you need to call the police, Melissa. If I’m wrong about who’s got the baby, the police are the only ones with the resources to find her, put out a multistate alert, get the word out to the airlines and bus companies.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, crying again. “All I want is for Olivia to be safe.”

“I’ll call,” I said. “You stay home, by the phone. The police will be out there to talk to you ASAP, and maybe there’ll be a ransom call. I’ve got my cell if you need to reach me.”

Hanging up before she could protest, I dialed Montgomery’s number. “Thank God,” I said when he answered.

“What is it, Charlie?” he asked, my voice telling him this wasn’t the time for banter.

I filled him in as quickly as I could.

“We’ll get detectives over there pronto,” he said, “and we’ll probably have to call in the FBI. What’s the address?”

I gave it to him and listened as he relayed it to someone. When he came back on the line, I said, “I know who took the baby, Montgomery. Jacqueline Falstow. It had to be her.” I explained.

“Slow down,” Montgomery commanded. “You have zero evidence that this Falstow woman took the baby. You’re not even sure she knew where the baby was.”

“Who else could it be? Surely you’re not going to suggest it was a random thing? Coincidences like that just don’t happen.”

“Sure they do.” He talked louder to be heard over my sputtering. “I’m not saying this is a coincidence, but I can’t get a warrant for the Falstows’ house on what you’ve got. There’s not a judge in the county that would sign it.”

“Then I’ll find another way in,” I said. “I feel like it’s my fault. I’ve got to do something.”

“Don’t do anything stu—” he started to say, but I hung up. Whirling, I crossed to the small safe, worked the combination, and withdrew my H&K 9 mm, ejecting the cartridge and slamming it back in with the heel of my hand.

“I’m coming with you.”

I had forgotten Gigi. She stood between me and the door, purse slung over one shoulder, a look of determination on her face. I didn’t have time to argue with her. “We’ll take your car,” I said. “Jacqueline Falstow might recognize mine.”

“Let’s roll.” Gigi charged out the door ahead of me, purse braced under her arm like a battering ram. With her pink
tiger stripes, all she needed was kitty ears on her head to look like a refugee from
Josie and the Pussycats: The Golden Years.

Riding in the Hummer conferred a feeling of power. We were above most of the other traffic and could look down on weary commuters tuning their radios, sipping their Big Gulps, picking their noses, and dozing at stoplights. The mass of steel enclosing us would ward off artillery shells, I was pretty sure, and be unfazed by a head-on collision with a foreign aluminumobile. I understood for the first time why Les had bought this car.

“Kinda cool, isn’t it?” Gigi said.

“Yep,” I admitted, gripping the dash as Gigi cut in front of a station wagon and accelerated. “What kind of gas mileage does it get?”

“About a half mile to the gallon.”

I gave Gigi directions to the Falstows’ and fell silent, plotting my strategy for when we arrived. Unfortunately, I came up with nothing more radical than ringing the doorbell and asking to see Olivia. I was plotting contingency courses of action when Gigi swung the car into the circular driveway and skidded to a stop. I braced myself against the door and shot her a look.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Les says—said—I drive like a NASCAR reject with Parkinson’s.”

Ouch. Nice guy, that Les. Not that he was wrong in this case. I got down from the Hummer and waited for Gigi to come around from the driver’s side before ascending the steps to the front door and ringing the bell.

“Are you going to use your gun?” Gigi whispered from a step below me.

“No.” My gun would stay tucked into my purse. I wasn’t even sure why I’d brought it. I focused my ears on sounds coming from within the house but heard nothing. Certainly not approaching footsteps.

“No one’s home,” Gigi said after several long moments. “What do we do now? Break in?”

“That would be illegal,” I said crushingly, cupping my hand against the glass panels beside the door, straining to see inside. Nothing.

“I’ve got lock picks,” Gigi said helpfully, jangling a key ring loaded with slim metal instruments.

I stared at them, then raised my eyes to hers. “Where did you get those?”