Weddings Can Be Murder (22 page)

“Hey sweetie,” he called in a drunken slur,
“I’ll help you. Come home with me.”

“Please!” Victoria said to the operator.
“Please …”

The man started toward her and she realized
how it must look, a barefoot woman in a robe out on a cold night.
She dropped the receiver and ran.

Chapter 21

I turned on the TV, as I did every morning
these days, while I scrambled eggs for Ron and myself and listened
to the sizzle of bacon in the microwave. Freckles had made her
rounds of the back yard and now sat with her floppy ears perked in
my direction. Starting my day with the depressing news of the world
was normally the last thing I wanted to do but now that our family
seemed to be right in the midst of it, I had to know what was being
said.

Kent Taylor had been amazingly open with us
but there were a lot of things about the investigation we weren’t
being told. Such as the stunning announcement I caught as Ron
walked into the room.

“
Police are now openly saying they are
searching for the body of Victoria Morgan, the Albuquerque woman
who went missing sometime between this past Friday night and noon
on Saturday, what would have been her wedding day.”

Ron reached for the remote but I waylaid his
hand. I knew the announcer’s gloomy tone was irking him as much as
it was me, but we really needed to know what was happening.

“
Search and rescue teams are combing the
usual sites—the west mesa, nearby arroyos, and the foothills of the
Sandias.”
Aerial shots caught bright-yellow jacketed people
fanning out from some sort of command center. By ‘usual sites’ we
knew the woman meant the places where murder victims are often
found.

A second anchor person came on—a man with
orangey makeup and perfectly sprayed hair. They went through a lot
of back-and-forth speculation about how the search for a body must
mean the police had given up all hope of finding Victoria alive. I
nearly shut the stupid thing off myself at that point.

“
Search and rescue incident commander Bob
Perkins asks that anyone spending time in the outdoors please
report anything unusual they might find. Mountain bikers,
motorcyclists, hikers … we’re showing the hotline number at the
bottom of the screen or you can always call 911.”

When I looked away, the eggs had scorched
but nothing seemed appetizing at the moment anyway.

“All it means,” I told Ron, “is that we need
to work harder than ever to figure out what really happened.”

He seemed shell-shocked. “What really
happened is that someone got into her house and abducted her. If
she was on her own she would have figured out a way to contact
us.”

He had a point—a very depressing point—but I
couldn’t let it get the best of him. I gave the eggs to the dog and
she gobbled them down while I pushed Ron to get his coat and go
with me to the office. Although a couple of the reporters had
figured out the connection with our business and where we went all
day, most of them were still concentrated here near the house. I
supposed they figured they could catch us at more vulnerable times
that way. Who knew?

Sally had already made coffee and turned the
thermostats up when we arrived, bless her. She’d also made some
breakfast burritos that merely needed to be heated in the microwave
and smothered in chile sauce—a much better choice than my own
meager breakfast attempt earlier. I sat Ron at the table and
actually placed a fork in his hand.

“You’d better eat,” I lectured. “You’ve
already lost all the weight you need to.”

The feeble joke landed flat.

“Oh, some lady called right after I got
here,” Sally said. “She said you called her yesterday. I’ll go get
the message slip from my desk.”

I sat down beside Ron and tried to talk
strategy as we ate. My own plan was to go back to the old address
book, hoping like crazy that someone, somewhere would be able to
give me useful information. What that might be, I had no idea and
must admit to feeling like I was spinning my wheels at times.

Sally came back with a written note. The
caller was Carol Ann Henderson, which only vaguely rang a bell—I’d
made so many calls recently.

“I’m calling Kent Taylor,” Ron said. “Can’t
stand getting news from the media and I’m not waiting around for
Ben Ortiz to go through
legal channels
to learn things on
our behalf.”

I understood his frustration. I just prayed
he wasn’t doing or saying anything that would crucify him
later.

As it turned out, Ron didn’t need to call
Taylor. The detective was standing in front of Sally’s desk when I
walked through the reception area on the way to my office.

“Is Ron here?” he asked. “We’ve got some
news that looks positive.”

I didn’t bother with niceties, just shouted
for my brother from where I stood. He came out of the kitchen at a
pretty good clip.

“Where can we talk?” Taylor asked.

I’ll say pretty much anything in the world
in front of Sally, but there wasn’t time to waste telling him. The
three of us walked up the stairs and ended up in my office, since
it’s less cluttered with Ron’s perpetual piles of junk. I took my
desk chair, Ron sat on the cushioned bay-window seat, Taylor
remained standing.

“We got a hit from Victoria’s bank,” he
said. “Someone logged into her accounts. Checked the credit card
balance page and looked at her checking and savings. No money was
moved. This was someone simply scoping out the status. It could
mean Victoria is alive and well somewhere, checking on her own
money to be sure it’s okay.”

Ron and I exchanged a glance.

“When did this happen?” I asked. After all,
there was a chance it happened after our little snoop session.

“Monday morning. There’s been activity on
her internet account since then.”

I looked at Ron. He looked at me. We were
so
busted.

He’d had a rough week, so I took the rap for
it, admitting I had used my key and gone into Victoria’s house.

“Where was the computer? Our team didn’t
find one.” Taylor asked. I almost detected a hint of admiration for
my detecting skills.

I told him about the floor safe. “I didn’t
mean to do anything wrong,” I swore in my best preschooler’s voice.
“We only wanted to help.”

“And what else was in there?” He almost—not
quite—looked amused.

I was on the brink of enough trouble already
so I told him everything—about the passwords, the money and credit
card, the old address book.

He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers.
“Give. Now.”

Ron scooted over to his office to retrieve
the laptop and notebook with the passwords. I got a lecture on
entering a crime scene and contaminating evidence, a talk that
ended with, “You are this close to being arrested for obstruction
of justice, concealing evidence … not to mention breaking and
entering.”

“I didn’t break—I only entered, using a key
given to me by the homeowner. Besides, your team had been there
already. I didn’t know they were coming back right away, that they
weren’t finished yet.”

“Don’t get into semantics with me. You
entered a crime sce—wait a minute. Our techs were finished. They
didn’t go back later. What did you mean?”

“Just as I was leaving—a car pulled up to
the house and stopped. I didn’t wait around, but I assumed your
guys came back.”

His face became thoughtful, his forehead
wrinkles more pronounced.

Ron came back with the computer and other
items, while I reached into my desk drawer where I’d been stashing
the address book whenever I wasn’t using it. See? I really was
being careful.

As I picked up the book something fell out,
a small envelope. It must have been stuck between the final
pages—I’d been through most of the book already. Kent Taylor hadn’t
seen it and for one split second I debated sliding the drawer
closed without letting him know, but then I remembered the
lecture.

I handed him the book as I picked up the
envelope with my other hand. It was once white, a little yellowed
now, the size to contain a notecard. There was nothing written on
the outside but a fifteen-cent stamp had been glued to the upper
corner. Not waiting for permission I opened the unglued flap and
pulled out a single sheet of paper.

“What’s that?” Taylor asked, noticing my
movements for the first time.

I held it out of his reach and scanned the
delicate sheet of feminine writing. It wasn’t Victoria’s, that much
I knew.

“It says, ‘Albert, I wanted to let you know
that you have a daughter, born last week. I’m sorry you wanted
nothing to do with us, that you’ll never know her.’ It’s signed
with only the letter J,” I said.

Taylor held out his hand and took the
letter, scanning it for himself, as if I might have made up the
contents. “Who’s J?” he asked.

I drew a complete blank, but I was getting
used to that when it came to this address book.

“I think Victoria’s mother’s name was Jane,”
Ron said. “She so rarely talks about her mom. She died when Vic was
near the end of high school. Breast cancer, I think. I know it
really hurt Vic that her mother was too sick to attend her
graduation.”

“Do you suppose this was a letter to
Victoria’s father?” I said it more to Ron than the detective.
“Maybe she learned he had died before she could mail it.”

For Taylor’s benefit we went into the quick
explanation of how we’d figured out that Jane must have made up the
story about the father dying in Vietnam.

“It doesn’t mean he didn’t die, though. Just
not in the war.”

Kent studied the letter a moment longer. “I
don’t see how this has anything to do with our case. You want to
keep it with family memorabilia or something?”

I took the thin page, refolded it and put it
back into the envelope, dropping it on my desk. I wasn’t sure what
family memorabilia we were collecting here, especially if it turned
out there would be no marriage. The thought of Victoria permanently
out of our lives—never to help raise Ron’s kids, never to light up
Ron’s face the way she did, never to take me shopping for another
fabulous outfit. My eyelids prickled. I blinked hard and turned
away for a second.

When I turned back, Taylor had tucked the
laptop under his arm, promising Ron that a complete forensic
investigation would be performed on it and if he found that
anything—anything at all—had been erased or compromised, the two of
us would most assuredly be doing jail time.

Chapter 22

Victoria ran until her lungs refused to take
in another scrap of air; her bare feet screamed in pain. The drunk
had taken a few steps after her and called out but she didn’t hear
him now. She slowed enough to turn her head and look back. He’d not
followed her around the corner.

She rested her back against the nearest
building but the glass in the old storefront swayed dangerously.
She had a vision of herself falling through it, unable to get up,
so she moved onward. Nothing in this neighborhood seemed familiar
although she must be within blocks of her home. After running away
into the dark night, her memories felt hazy. She’d lost track of
the alley from which she’d emerged a little while ago, where she’d
left the door to the concrete cellar unlocked. It occurred to her
that she’d not had food or water in at least two days.

A blast of cold air came down the deserted
street and she stumbled ahead, finding an alley with a large
dumpster near the mouth of it. Beside the dumpster sat a large
cardboard box; someone had been too lazy to flatten and put it
inside. She tipped it to its side and crawled in, the small space
and shelter from the wind a blessed relief. She thought of food but
only wanted to sleep. Her eyes closed, the world becoming a black
void.

* * *

“Hey, lady. Lady, wake up!” The voice came
from very far away.

The sense of being jostled. Fear—those
men—had they come back? Flashing lights, more voices. Movement. Her
stomach feeling queasy. Bright lights. Urgent voices.

“…
temp is only eighty-six….blankets! Hot
packs…. Get ’em on her chest.”

“…
feet don’t look good.”

Were they talking about her?

She was home, feeling warm now. The
silver-haired man came in, demanded the evidence. She didn’t know
what he meant, what evidence he wanted. She began to cry, hearing
her voice as a small whimper.

“
Gently with those hands and feet … Crank
up the heat in here! Let’s get some oxygen to her.”

She fell asleep again, despite all those
voices in her head, the sensation of being shoved around. She was
at home with her mother—Mom in a hospital bed set up in their
living room, pill bottles everywhere. She held a bowl of soup,
tried to get Mom to eat some of it. “Victoria, I need you to take
care of something.” Mom’s voice so weak, her body so frail.

“
Change out those packs …”
An
authoritative voice. Was he telling her to do something for her
mother? The regular doctor never said those things.

The living room was overly warm but Victoria
had no choice. Mom was always cold, always shivering. “Baby, I have
to tell you some things … about Florida. It’s a dangerous place for
us … I have evidence of a crime …”

Evidence. That word again. The strange man
wanted the evidence.

“Baby, get the box from my closet. Hide it.
Hide it real good … man with blue eyes … he’ll try to find me but
he wants the evidence.”

“Mom, what are you saying? Evidence of
what?”

“Crimes. Bad things. He went to prison but
he could get out.”

Victoria saw herself walking into her
mother’s bedroom. On the closet shelf, a stationery box, flat,
about nine by twelve inches, made of brightly colored paperboard.
She pulled it down and carried it to the sickbed. Her mother’s face
relaxed.