The Daughter-in-Law (40 page)

Jack nodded. Then he rambled on in a stream of consciousness. “Nicole must have been with Farr when he picked up the money.
She knew all about it. Then later, she heard from Pam who was still being held. So Farr never called his people.” He turned to Greg Lambert. “He has our money and he still has our daughter ...”

Greg returned the look of confusion. “If he had Nicole, why did he let her go? And if he let her go, why is she heading for Newport where his people are waiting?” He threw up his hands. “None of this makes sense.”

“What makes sense,” Alexandra said, “is that we have to get to Newport.”

Lambert made a phone call to arrange for a helicopter. They would be picked up at the Fifty-ninth Street heliport. The flight to the Newport house would take only an hour. Then he told his people to contact the police in Newport who could be on the scene in a matter of minutes.

“No!” Jack cut him off. “No police. I don’t want Pam in the middle of a shootout. And we can’t land on the lawn. We have to land away from the house and then get there in an ordinary car. Something that won’t look like us. That will at least get us onto the grounds. And then call your fucking friend Jimmy Farr. Tell him we’re heading up and that Pam better be in good shape when we get there.”

“Remember how we’re playing it,” Greg cautioned. “Jimmy doesn’t know the people who are holding her.”

“We’re not playing games anymore,” Jack answered. “Tell him that if anything happens to Pam, I’ll kill him. Tell him that I was a thug when he was still stealing little kids’ lunch money.”

SEVENTY-FOUR

N
ICOLE REACHED
the top of the bridge with its stunning view down the east shore of Narragansett and out into Rhode Island Sound. But her focus was on the road immediately ahead and, with a glance to her mirror, on the road behind. One last check to be sure that no one had pulled up behind her, and then a slow search ahead for whoever might be waiting. Pam had been clear: they were watching the bridge and the road down to Ocean Drive. Her captors would know if she brought reinforcements.

She had kept a sharp lookout ever since she left the city in order to be certain that she wasn’t being followed. Greg Lambert might well have been watching where her car was parked. Or Jack, once he understood that Farr hadn’t released his daughter, might well have called in the police. People following her would think they were coming to Pam’s rescue. But if Pam were right, they would be sealing her fate. If they saw police, they would get rid of the evidence.

Now, as she turned off the bridge in Newport, Nicole had a new concern. Someone might not want Pam rescued. She was still baffled by the ease with which Jimmy had collected from someone in the family, and still surprised that he hadn’t ordered Pam’s release. Jimmy, she figured, wasn’t alone in the kidnapping and wasn’t completely in charge. Someone else, with a different agenda, might be calling the shots.

What was obvious was that Jimmy had never expected Pam’s phone call. He had Nicole under his control and was about to take away what he thought was most of her money. The last thing he would have allowed was for Pam to change the signals. So, it seemed likely that whoever was holding her had no idea of what Jimmy was up to. But if not Jimmy, then who? Who else would bring her back and then entice her to a closed house on a secluded coastline?

She saw no one. Not a single suspicious character lurking along
her route. Not one car in the nearly empty street behind her. And there was the house ahead of her, the gate thrown wide open with no one guarding it. Nicole slowed and drove past, peering through the gate and up the driveway. There was nothing, not even a parked car. The house seemed to be deserted. She doubled back and looked in again. No one was there.

She turned through the gateposts and rolled quietly down the driveway. Slowly, the entire house came into view. Only a few weeks ago the grounds had been crowded with guests with giant tents set over improvised banquet halls. Now, the property seemed to have been abandoned. Down the hill she could see the dock where the launches had landed from the yachts moored offshore. Now there was a single yacht, a large cruiser with an enclosed pilothouse and saloon tied to one of the moorings. Its tender, a small outboard launch, was tied to the dock.

Nicole stopped in the driveway and then carefully turned the car so that it was pointing toward the gate. Then she got out and went up the steps to the house. The door was locked. She hesitated, then walked around to a window. The inside was in darkness with just the beams of light through the western windows offering illumination. There were dust covers on the furniture. Paintings had been taken down from the walls. The Newport house’s short season had ended and the house was closed until the next season began. But they still might be inside, waiting for her. Nicole tried the doorbell and then listened at the intercom. There was no response.

She turned on the porch and saw the yacht floating peacefully no more than fifty yards offshore. She remembered that when she first came to Newport, with Jonathan in the off-season, that there was no boat. He had told her that the Donner’s northern fleet wintered at a marina. If the house had been closed, then the yacht should have been gone. Nicole kept her eyes fixed on the boat as she walked down the hill to the dock.

The launch was an open whaler, lightly tied with just bow and stern lines. There was a red fuel can under a seat, with a fuel line leading back to the engine. The key was in the ignition switch on the console. The whaler, like the yacht, was still in use. Someone had been riding back and forth between the dock and the mooring. That meant that someone was ashore, probably in the house and looking down at her right that instant. It also suggested that Pam
was out on the yacht, probably being held captive by another member of the team. She had said that if something went wrong, all they had to do was take her to sea and drop her overboard.

She looked up at the house trying to catch a shape in a window or the movement of a curtain. There was nothing. She turned back to the yacht, swinging innocently as it pointed toward the offshore breeze. Nicole stepped down into the whaler, turned the key, and heard the engine catch instantly. She slipped the lines off the dock cleats and brought them aboard. Then she eased the throttle ahead.

There was no one moving about on the yacht and there seemed to be no one in the pilothouse. But the gangway was down, sloping from the deck to a small landing platform. Apparently, she was expected. She eased the whaler in close, cut the engine, and threw one of the lines over a cleat. She tied off the second line and then made her way slowly up the ladder, expecting to see a face peering down at any second. But no one appeared. When she stepped across onto the deck she seemed to be boarding a ghost ship.

“Anyone aboard?”

No response. All she could hear were the waves lapping against the side. She made her way aft, then opened the door and stepped into the saloon.

The interior was finished in teak and wood tones. She was in a lounge with a sofa and two deep upholstered chairs surrounding a table. There was a bar to starboard with bottles and glasses behind the shelf rails, and a television console was to port. Ahead was a dining table surrounded by eight chairs.

“Pam!” She heard her voice echoing forward, past the galley and into the pilothouse. “Pam!” she called again.

“Here,” came a muffled response. “I’m down here.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

T
HE HELICOPTER
lifted gently and then swung out over the river. Greg Lambert sat next to the pilot and was on the radio making arrangements for their arrival in Newport. Jack and Alexandra were in the rear seat, each staring out a window, each lost in private thoughts. The copter moved east, crossing the river and continued inland to avoid the LaGuardia flight patterns. It climbed as it made its way past the Long Island bridges, and then east out over the Sound. The pilot aimed it directly at the Rhode Island coast.

Greg leaned back over the seat. “Okay, we’ll be landing at the police compound on the far side of the peninsula. It’s about a mile east of the house. The police have an unmarked sedan for us, but the driver will be one of their officers. They have a SWAT team standing by, but they won’t approach the house until we’re inside the gate.”

“Damn it, I said no police!” Jack snapped. His temper was at an explosive edge.

“They’re not going near the house unless we call for them,” Greg told him. “But damn it, Jack, they can’t just let a bunch of civilians wander into a crime scene.”

Jack growled, but he didn’t argue.

Alexandra didn’t join the conversation. She leaned to one side, her chin resting on the back of her hand, her nose pressed to the window, seemingly fascinated by the passing Connecticut coastline. But her thoughts were ahead to their landing at Newport and their arrival at the house. She had no doubt that Pam was there. Nicole had no reason to lie about where she was heading. Jimmy Farr had reached them in their car with the address where Pam would be found. It was their Newport house. But that was all that she was sure of. Whoever was holding her daughter had no knowledge of Jimmy Farr’s involvement. And the motive for the kidnapping wasn’t money. The motive was her daughter-in-law. So who
would have planned it, and what did they hope to gain? Those were the questions that tormented her.

She was also confused about Nicole. All the evidence she had run down pointed to a lowlife whose only interest was money. The girl had lied her way into her son’s life and lured him off to his death, just to get her hands on his fortune. Then she had compromised her husband to assure a generous and swift payment. She had done exactly what Alexandra had predicted. She had taken the money and run.

But then she came back. With everything she wanted within her grasp, she had turned around and put everything at risk. Why? Was it only because Pam was in trouble and needed her? Because that didn’t fit the profile that Alexandra had so carefully drawn. There had to be something else. Some other reason. And if Jack knew, he wasn’t letting on.

The radio crackled and a distant voice asked for Greg Lambert. Greg took the handset. “Yeah . . . what. . . when did that happen?” He listened anxiously, his expression alternately pleased and disappointed. “I thought we had an agreement...” He hunched his shoulders. “Yeah . . . I understand...” And then, in a loud voice, “No! Don’t do anything! We’ll just have to hope that this doesn’t matter.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Jack demanded.

Greg held up his hand while he signed off. Then he said, “The police picked up some guy who was watching the houses on Ocean Drive. They thought he might be casing a house for a robbery.”

“Jesus!” Jack slammed his fist on the seat back. “I thought the police—”

“It was just a patrol car. The police chief didn’t tell everyone on the force about our problem. This guy just happened to spot someone loitering in a car and did what he’s supposed to do. But here’s the important part: the guy works at Jimmy Farr’s club. One of the bouncers.”

Jack’s eyes widened. “Then Jimmy did have her!”

“Looks that way,” Greg said. “Probably called his people off and left Pam where we could find her. Then he told us where to look.”

“Well, then let’s land right on the property. If they’ve left her there then there’s no one to stop us.”

Greg nodded in agreement and turned to the pilot.

“No, wait!” It was Alexandra suddenly involving herself. “None of that explains why Pam called Nicole. Pam said she was in danger long after Farr had picked up his money.”

Jack thought, and then answered, “Pam probably doesn’t know that they’ve left...”

“Even when she was free enough to make a telephone call? And if there were no one with her, why would she have called Nicole? Why not you, Jack? Or me?”

“I don’t know,” Jack admitted, and looked to Greg Lambert.

“You’ve got a point,” Greg told Alexandra. “Maybe we better leave things just as they are. We’ll go in quietly without the police.”

SEVENTY-SIX

“N
ICOLE, IN
here.”

She was halfway down the steps to the cabin level, but she still

couldn’t pinpoint the voice. Pam was in a cabin, behind a steel door,

and her voice was echoing through the empty passageway.

“I’m coming,” Nicole called. “Keep talking so I can find you.” She reached the bottom step and turned into the passageway. She

was face-to-face with Ben Tobin.

The sun was low in the west when they flew past the mouth of Nar-ragansett Bay. They stayed well out over the water until they were past the house. Then they turned inland, crossed over the coast, and settled down into a cloud of dust that obscured the waiting police cars. Greg took the lead, running directly to the ranking police officer and then introducing Alexandra and Jack. They could scarcely hear one another until they were away from the landing pad.

“We’re holding the guy who was watching the house,” the police lieutenant explained. “He hasn’t called anyone, so we’re pretty sure that no one knows we’ve got him.”

“Any activity at the house?” Greg asked.

The lieutenant shrugged. “We’ve been keeping clear, just as you asked. But we’ve got a SWAT team aboard a bus waiting to roll, and there’s a police boat just around the point. So if there’s anyone in there, he’s not going to get away.”

They slid into the car, a midsize sedan painted medium gray. The driver was a police sergeant wearing a sports shirt, looking completely innocent except for the sawed-off shotgun on the seat next to him. There was a tiny microphone pinned to his shirt collar, and he wore a receiving button in his ear.

“We’re just going to drive up to the house, and through the gate.
There’s a parking area by the garage where you can let us out,” Lambert instructed. Then he turned to Alexandra and Jack in the backseat. “I think you should stay in the car with the officer. Give me a few minutes to look the place over.”

“I’m going with you,” Jack insisted. Lambert argued that he might just get in the way but Jack would have none of it. “It’s my daughter they’re holding.”