Authors: Janet Dailey
Bannon Brothers (4 page)
“RJâ”
“I have to stop opening doors,” he said conversationally. “I keep catching bullets.”
“That was two years ago.”
“True.” He arranged the old snapshots carefully on the glass, face down. “I could do these in black and white, but I'll lose a lot of detail. I'm thinking you could scan the visuals and send me jpegs. Or burn 'em on a CD.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “All traceable to my computer. No.”
“Then let me have them.” He gathered up the photos with one hand like it was a done deal. “Just temporarily.”
Doris hesitated, not saying yes or no.
“You can always send them into storage later. Just say you forgot or something.”
“What if Hoebel checks up on me?”
Bannon shook his head. “He won't. The man is all memos and no action. And Jolene isn't going to come down those stairs in sky-high heels.”
“You noticed.”
“Years of training.”
With a surrendering lift of her hands, Doris went back to her computer and Bannon took what he thought he would need, as well as the photographs. He got everything into a single big envelope, reasoning that he had entered the building with an envelope and wouldn't attract any notice leaving with another.
“See you,” he called to Doris as he went back up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs, he looked around. There were more empty cubicles than not. The entering cops on the night shift were talking to each other, their backs to him, or staring into monitor screens. He was happy to be ignored as he eyeballed the huge whiteboard where current cases were listed on a grid, their status to the right. Two at the top had been solved. Ten unsolved. Doris was right about the lack of manpower. Most had been on the board for a few weeks.
Needing to breathe and collect his thoughts, he took a roundabout way home that wound through the country. No sunset. The evening sky was shrouded by clouds. Cold air came his way from the quiet, leafless woods that surrounded him. He went over a low bridge, not stopping to look at the river below. But he did wonder if Ann Montgomery's abductor had brought her down it somehow. What he remembered of the police maps in the file showed the same river upstream, not far from the family mansion.
It began to drizzle as he drove on. Bannon pondered the convoluted facts of the old Montgomery case without reaching any conclusions that made sense to him. After a while, he turned off the country road and headed back into town, feeling kind of blue. He hadn't had any time to decompress between coming back from the cabin and picking up the claim forms for the chief to sign that morning. He thought of Erin, the one bright spot in an otherwise mostly depressing day. It was definitely worth finding out more about her. Whatever it took, he would do. Short of acting like a stalker.
The windshield wipers were slapping at raindrops when he pulled into his space in the condo's lot. He took a minute to find a plastic bag under the seat large enough for the envelope with the photocopies. The bag went inside his jacket as a fail-safe to protect the contents. With his free hand, he managed to hoist the large wrapped watercolor of the wild horses. He had to set the painting down to unlock the door of his condo.
Inside he put the plastic bag on the coffee table and then lifted up the painting onto the fireplace mantel, promising himself to unwrap it later and look for a framer's tag on the back, another possible lead to follow, in case someone at the Art Walk committee was reluctant to give him Erin's contact info and last name.
A partially muffled but decidedly impatient yowl came from the direction of the living room's sliding glass doors, followed quickly by the sound of claws on mesh screen. Without hesitation, Bannon altered his course toward the rear patio where a tiger-striped tomcat stood on his hind legs, demanding admission. Bannon took one look at flattened ears and wet fur spiked by the steady drizzle, smiled, flipped the lock, and slid the door open.
Immediately the cat came down on all fours and padded into the living room, grumbling his irritation at being kept waiting when he passed Bannon. “Like you would melt in the rain,” Bannon scoffed.
A pair of golden eyes sliced him a look. In the next second the cat sprang onto the stretch-limo-sized black leather couch and proceeded to rake his tongue over his wet fur.
Bannon watched him for a moment. Big and muscled, the tomcat resembled a boxerâright down to the tattered ears. A year ago, his brother Linc had handed him an open cardboard box. Inside was an injured, scrawny kitten, half-wild.
“He was getting the short end of a fight with some big tom when I rescued him,” Linc had told him. “I thought you two could recuperate together. You know what they sayâmisery loves company. Meet Babaloo, your company.”
Compared to Bannon's, the cat's wounds had been minor, so Babaloo had recovered more quickly than he had. As for the company part, Linc had known what he was talking about. But Bannon wasn't likely to ever admit that to him.
Leaving the cat to his grooming, Bannon doubled back to the kitchen where he opened the refrigerator and surveyed the shelves. Slim pickings. There was a chunk of cheese with suspicious white spots and a wrinkly apple. He picked up both and tossed them into the garbage, then took out a leftover cooked salmon steak wrapped in foil.
Babaloo strolled into the kitchen, nose twitching.
“I take it hunting wasn't very good today.” Bannon unwrapped the salmon, cut off a piece, and tossed it in the cat's food bowl.
The cat demolished his share in two gulps and licked his whiskers appreciatively when he was done.
Bannon grinned. “You were hungry.” He put a dollop of mayo for dipping on a paper plate, then cut the salmon steak in chunks. Cold protein. It would do. He didn't feel like cooking. But he looked at the plate and added a few slices of tomato from a lidded container, for his health.
Taking a bowl from the cupboard, he filled it with ice and jammed three unopened bottles of beer in. It had been a long day; he was entitled.
Back in the living room, he cracked open beer one and set the bottle on the floor to guard against a spill. Next he separated the copied papers from the photos, then sat down and spread them out on the coffee table.
He skimmed.
The wistful quality of the little girl's gaze pulled at him. She clung to her mother in a few shots and shyly peered out from the folds of her skirt in one. The only shot of Ann with her father showed Hugh Montgomery smiling affably into the camera, his hands thrust into the pockets of his expensive suit. He was standing a few feet away from his tiny daughter, who looked up at him. Her uncertain expression said a lot about that relationship.
Bannon put the photos down with a sigh, wanting to look at the drawing of Ann at age three again. Just as he reached for it, the phone rang.
Smiling when he saw the caller ID, he picked up the receiver. “Hi, Mom. What's up?”
“How are you, RJ? It's not like you to not call. Haven't heard from youâ”
He finished the sentence for her. “For a whole day.” He cracked open beer two and kicked back to relax.
His mother laughed. “Okay, I'm a worrywart. Sue me.”
“I don't mind, Mom. Good to hear your voice.” He meant it. She was on her own since his father's death and there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. Which didn't mean that Sheila Bannon didn't drive him crazy now and then.
“Oh, RJ. So what are you doing?”
“Eating.” He waited for what he knew she would say. “Yes, leftovers. How did you know?”
“I just do. Are you alone?”
When the tiger-striped cat sauntered into the room, Bannon glanced his way. “Babaloo is keeping me company. That's about it for excitement around here. I was thinking of watching the Discovery Channel with him. He loves nature documentaries.”
“That's funny. He's a good cat. You should get out more, though.”
“He's fine company.”
“You know what I'm talking about, RJ. Find a girl, have fun again.”
“I did, as a matter of fact. Today. She seems nice. Her name is Erin. I'll keep you posted.”
“What does she do?” Sheila Bannon just had to make sure that his dates didn't make a living wrapped around a stripper's pole.
“She's an artist, mostly watercolors.”
His mother pondered that. “Oh. Well, that's nice. Not much money in it, though.”
“I didn't ask for her tax returns,” he said dryly. “Like I said, I just met her.”
“It's a start. You can't live alone forever.”
“I don't plan to, Mom. But Gina isn't coming back unless there's a big fat diamond in it for her.”
“How do you know that?”
“I told you that story. Not very romantic. She let me know how many goddamn carats she expected. Too many.”
He waited impatiently while his mother said something sympathetic, but not about him.
“I was flat on my back with a bullet in me, Mom, waiting for an insurance settlementâhow was I supposed to pay for a rock like that and in a platinum setting? And from an expensive jewelry store in Washington, DC? You know itâwhere the senators shop for the women they actually sleep with. Not their wives.” He stopped to take a breath. “Sorry. I'm ranting.”
“You never told me the name of the store.”
Was that ever a Mom thing to say. He couldn't figure out why she would want to know, but he named it. “That was the beginning of the end, believe me. It's been a year already, Mom. Can't say I miss her.”
His mother was silent but not for long. “See what I mean? You're getting grumpy.”
“No, I'm not,” he said soothingly. “Look, I gotta go.” He said an affectionate good-bye before she got on his nerves and hung up with a promise to call the next day.
He had deliberately not mentioned anything to her about the favor he was doing for Doris on the Montgomery case. And he probably wouldn't when he saw her this weekend either.
The Montgomery case. Drawing a deep breath, he reached for the top folder and flipped it open to begin his fact gathering. Kelly Johns would likely do her own, but Bannon wanted to be well-armed when he talked to her.
An hour later, he knew a lot more about Montgomery, none of it very good. Montgomery's financial empire had been founded on what was left of the family fortune and bolstered with smart horse trading. Right now the guy was touting a shaky-looking hedge fund that amounted to selling shares of winning Thoroughbreds.
There were several offshore accounts in Caribbean countries and a few in Europe. A joke postcard from Switzerland showed a fat cat in pinstripes kissing a banker. It was blank on the back. Bannon figured that Montgomery had clipped it to his tax returns to amuse his accountant.
On it went. Montgomery had never been investigated or indicted for financial misdeeds, but it didn't take a forensic accountant to see that the man was wildly overextended, a polite term for being in a colossal amount of debt. He owed millions and seemed to be paying his debts off by borrowing millions more from people who were either naïve or plain greedy. That was going to catch up with himâand the luckless investors who didn't do due diligence.
The tax analysis made for dry reading. Then Bannon noticed that the man treated himself to a generous charitable deduction every year for allowing the Wainsville historical society to give tours of the family mansion.
He could understand why the family had pulled up stakes; few would willingly stay in a house after a tragic kidnapping, especially once it was clear that the child was gone forever. Even so, deducting its use by a nonprofit was legal but didn't smell right.
It struck him that Montgomery played every angle for his maximum benefit. Maybe the guy wasn't as rich as the press clippings and Internet mentions made him out to be.
Sliding the financial reports back in the file, Bannon got up to take a break, feeling the mellow buzz of two longneck beers. The wrapped painting on the mantel caught his eye. He was ready to open it and see if he'd actually bought something good or been under the spell of the artist.
The brown paper was noisy when it came off. Babaloo opened an eye but not all the way.
“Disturbed your sleep, did I?”
When the paper dropped to the floor, Bannon pushed it against the wall with his foot. A search failed to locate a framer's tag, and he concluded Erin had probably framed it herself. It looked professional, though. Maybe she'd learned how in her starving artist days, which he suspected were behind her.
He turned back to his laptop, touched a few buttons, and typed in
Erin
,
horse
,
painting
,
Chincoteague
. Bingo. She'd been in a group show out there. But still under just the one name. There was no link or contact info on her. With a defeated sigh, Bannon closed the lid and let his gaze wander over the watercolor.
Erin
,
horse
,
painting
,
Chincoteague
. Bingo. She'd been in a group show out there. But still under just the one name. There was no link or contact info on her. With a defeated sigh, Bannon closed the lid and let his gaze wander over the watercolor.
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