Calculated Revenge (10 page)

Laney’s stomach turned. “You told Burns this?”

“Yes. That information alone was enough to charge the nephew with a crime. I figured the rest of the case would unravel from there, and the heat would come off Renee.” He grimaced as if a sharp pain had struck him. “I was right, and I was so tragically wrong.”

“Burns didn’t follow up?”

Noah ran his fingers through his hair. “Like a bull in a china shop. That’s his style.”

“Don’t I know it!”

“Jeffrey was indicted for the Web site, but he got out on bail. Can you believe it? The Hallidays refused to believe any relative of theirs would be involved in child pornography and put up the money.” He shook his head.

“People never want to believe something terrible about someone they love.”

Noah shot her a funny half smile, and Laney pruned her lips.
He was still riding that tired old horse about her family having dirty laundry to hide.

She shifted in her seat. “So if the FBI finally had the right guy in their sights, what happened to put Renee in danger?”

Noah’s expression went distant, his gaze fixed on the road. “She was going to be a key witness in the trial, so the nephew snatched her and ran.”

Laney locked her fingers together. “This creep kidnapped your fiancée?”

“I traced them north to a secluded cabin on Lake Superior,” Noah continued in the same dead tone, as if Laney hadn’t spoken. “I thought I was making progress in talking him into letting Renee go if I allowed him to vanish into Canada, but about that time Burns and his team arrived with all their bells and whistles. Jeffrey lost it. He shot Renee and then himself. The FBI found the body of the kidnapped little girl under the floorboards of the cabin. Case closed, but an innocent woman was dead.”

“Oh, Noah.” Laney wrapped her hand around his arm. The muscles were tight as banjo strings. “I’m so sorry, but how could you think any of that was your fault?”

His glance shot fire. “Renee and I had plans to be together the evening Jeffrey took her, but I postponed our date on an excuse. While an evil man kidnapped her, I was out buying an engagement ring. If I’d been where I was supposed to be…” Noah didn’t finish the thought.

The terrible injustice of those events set sharp claws into Laney’s heart. “You couldn’t have known, Noah.” Sad empathy draped her words. She knew well the litany of what-ifs. “He would have chosen another time, or even killed you and taken her anyway.”

A long breath gushed from Noah’s lips. “I know that, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing I could turn back time and make a different choice.”

Laney barked a laugh. “I hear you.”

A comradely silence fell. She could see now that Noah truly did understand how she felt about her negligence the day Gracie disappeared. Only he’d been doing something noble and good—buying an engagement ring for the love of his life. But she’d chosen selfish amusement over her own sister.

God judged the motives of the heart. Surely, He’d taken account of hers, and she’d fallen severely short. If she couldn’t forgive herself, how could she expect Him to forgive her?

T
he next morning, Laney woke up in a lonely motel room. Yesterday’s conversation with Noah hadn’t done anything to perk up her spirits…or her hopes for getting to know him better. The guy still carried a torch for his lost love. How could she compete with this perfect ghost he held sacred in his heart?

The tasks that loomed before them today didn’t cheer her, either. Going back to the old neighborhood and dredging up bad memories was her idea of torture. Noah had told her about the soil on the backpack coming from the Grand Valley area. That information pretty much confirmed that the pervert had to come back here to retrieve the backpack. If current suspects didn’t pan out, Noah had hinted that one of their old neighbors could be responsible. The thought turned her stomach, but painful memories had to be faced, and questions needed to be asked.

Laney forced herself to get up and shuffle off to the bathroom. Though she’d lived in this town for the first ten years of her life, she’d never been in Grand Valley’s only lodging place. The amenities weren’t five star, but the place was clean and well-maintained. Had Noah found out anything more about Richard Hodge? He’d said he was going to follow up on some ideas last night after they arrived and rented adjoining rooms.
Noah had been impressively thorough at checking out her room’s window and door locks. Then he left her inside and made sure she locked up tight before saying a muffled good-night through the door and heading to his room. Knowing he was near had helped her fall asleep last night, but it hadn’t helped her stay asleep. Every little creak and groan had popped her eyes wide open. No wonder she was dragging today.

After she finished in the bathroom, Laney used her cell to call her folks in Louisville and got a good report that all was well there. Briana was sleeping in so Laney didn’t get to talk to her. That was a disappointment, but at least her little princess was relaxed enough to slumber. She flipped her phone shut, and immediately the hotel phone shrilled. She hesitated with her hand over the receiver. It was probably Noah. She shoved the memory of that other nasty phone call to the back of her mind.

“Good morning!” Noah all right. “Where’s a good place to eat around this burg? I’m starving.”

Laney bit back a smart remark at his chipper morning manner. “If the Pantry Café still exists, that’s probably where you’d like to go. They serve pancakes so huge they overlap the sides of the plate.”

“Sounds like my kind of eating establishment. How soon will you be ready?”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

Twenty minutes later, they hopped into his vehicle and headed toward main street. A partly cloudy day muted the sunshine and reflected her mood.

Laney gazed around. “Oh, that gas station didn’t used to be there.” She looked some more. “And what happened to the Dairy Freeze? My friends and I used to ride our bikes to get the best dip cones there. Oh, man! The theater’s closed, too. It’s a second-hand store now.”

Noah sent her a gentle smile. “Things change after eighteen years. Let’s hope there hasn’t been so much change that there’s no trace left to point us to what really happened back then.”

A cold shudder rippled through Laney. Yes, she wanted justice for Grace, and she and Briana needed to be safe, but what might they find along the route to that end? Did she really want to look into the face of this monster?
God, help me please.
From somewhere she needed to dredge up more courage than she felt right now.

“There it is!” she cried. “At least the Pantry is still here.” They went inside and Laney laughed. “This place is exactly as I remember it. Oh, maybe they’ve put down new carpet and painted the walls, but the tables and booths are right where they’ve always been.”

Noah ushered her to a nearby booth. “As long as those pancakes are the same as you’ve described, I’ll be a happy man.” They took seats opposite each other as his head swiveled this way and that. “The joint is hopping.”

“It always is this time of morning.” Several tables were occupied by older men dressed in jeans or overalls and drinking coffee. Their hearty laughs rang out, along with the clatter of dice from the black cups at each table. “It’s tradition,” she told Noah. “They shake for who buys the java. Most of these guys are retired farmers. In about an hour, it’ll be same song, second verse, only from an influx of businessmen wearing suits or sport shirts and dress pants.”

A waitress in black slacks and a white pullover shirt came with menus, and they both ordered coffee to start off with.

“Do you recognize anyone?” Noah asked.

Laney scratched her brow. “A few faces look familiar, but I’m stumped on names.”

Noah nodded. “Everyone is in groups or pairs and acting like they know other people.”

Laney jerked her chin in the direction of a lone man taking a seat in a booth across the room. “What about him?”

“FBI. I picked up on him following us in his car this morning.”

Laney wrinkled her nose. “How do you do that?”

“Practice.” He flipped the menu open. “Now I’m going to relax and enjoy my breakfast.”

They ordered their breakfasts, and when the cakes came, Noah’s eyes widened. “You weren’t kidding about their size.”

“Did you think I was prone to small-town exaggeration?” Laney laughed. “Did you have any luck on your inquiries about Richard Hodge last night?”

Noah poured syrup over his steaming stack of cakes. “Mostly I sent off a series of e-mails from my laptop. His old employers weren’t going to be in their offices that time of evening.” He glanced up from his food project and a smile flickered in her direction. “I’ll let you know what comes of my efforts.”

“Mysterious man,” she muttered and attacked her pancakes.

A half hour later, Noah drove them over to Laney’s old neighborhood. She got out of the car and stood staring. The same homes she remembered still stood on either side of her block, but all but one sported either a fresh coat of paint or new siding.

Noah came up beside her. “Which one was yours?”

She pointed to a two-story, 1950s-era house sitting in the center of the east side of the block. When they lived in it, the clapboard siding glowed with white paint. Now it was sided in dark tan vinyl, and the landscaping had changed. The sides and front of the house sported blooming bushes set in rocks. Her mother used to plant elaborate flower beds and care for them meticulously. Laney smiled at the memory of her mom, dressed in old shorts and a T-shirt, kneeling beside a flat of pansies, nestling the plants into place. Her family had been happy here, before…She swallowed, jerked thoroughly back to the present.

Laney touched Noah’s arm and pointed to the house with
peeling paint and unkempt yard next to her former home. “I wonder what happened to the Addison’s home. They must have sold it to someone really low rent. George Addison and my dad used to have a friendly rivalry to see who had the greenest lawn and freshest paint.”

Noah nodded. “We’ll start on the side of the block opposite your old home. It’s my pet theory that our perp revisited the scene of the crime in order to retrieve that backpack from wherever he stashed your sister. We want to know if anyone has observed a stranger in the area.”

Forty-five minutes later, they’d spoken with about half the home owners, mostly retirees with the exception of a stay-at-home young mom. No one answered the door at the other houses. The owners were probably at work, so Noah said they’d have to come back in the evening to interview those households.

The nice people they encountered were only too willing to answer their questions, particularly when they found out that Laney was the little girl who used to live across the street. Only a few of the current residents were in place at the time of Grace’s abduction and remembered her family, but sympathy made them accommodating anyway. The FBI had canvassed the area days ago, so everyone knew fresh incidents had reopened the old case. Unfortunately, nobody had noticed strangers lurking around or any unusual happenings in the neighborhood during the past couple of weeks.

Discouraged, Laney walked beside Noah up a cracked and frost-heaved sidewalk toward the dilapidated structure that used to house a family that the senior Thompsons considered their best friends. Laney hadn’t particularly cared for the Addisons’ boy, Watts, but then slightly older boys tended to feel superior and pick on younger girls. Quite possibly he’d grown into a fine man with the passage of time.

Noah led the way up the steps and knocked on the warped
front door. Laney stood behind him and rubbed damp palms on her jeans. This place gave her the creeps, when it used to whisper welcome. No answer came from inside. Laney started to turn away, but Noah knocked again. A few moments later, the muffled clump of footfalls responded from inside.

The door creaked ajar and a scowling face peered out. A pair of bloodshot eyes glared at them above a flabby, bewhiskered jaw. “I’ve got no interest in what you’re selling, especially if it’s some flavor of religion.”

Laney’s heart rate kicked into overdrive. The face was nearly unrecognizable, but she knew that voice. Stepping forward, she held out her hand. “George Addison? Do you remember me? It’s Laney. Laney Thompson. We’re looking for information about—”

“How dare you come here?” George’s face darkened, and a vein in his forehead bulged. Nasty whiskey breath blew into her nostrils. “Hasn’t your family hurt mine enough?” He slammed the door in their faces.

“Who does that man think he is, talking about my family that way?” Laney sat poker-stiff in the passenger seat of the car as Noah drove away from her old neighborhood.

He’d be entertained at her outrage if the situation wasn’t so serious. The gentle lady had a temper when aroused, and look out!—her family was sacred. After George Addison slammed the door, Laney was all for beating it down. He’d never seen her so worked up. But they didn’t need an incident on their hands when their investigation in Grand Valley was barely underway, so he escorted the fuming woman from the premises.

“Do you have any idea what Addison’s outburst meant?” Noah ventured.

Laney crossed her arms. “Of course, I don’t. Our family was never anything but good to his. Maybe he’s mad because we
stopped socializing after Grace was taken. Couldn’t he be the least bit understanding?” She spread her hands. “We were hurting and didn’t know who to trust.”

Noah lifted his brows. “So you did suspect neighbors?”

Her face puckered. “Not the Addisons, really. We were too close with them. But, yes, when the investigation first got underway, the FBI talked pretty tough that the first place they look is a family member. The agents, especially Burns, grilled us like well-done steaks. And then when Mom, Dad and I were exonerated with airtight alibis, they started looking at people in the neighborhood. It wasn’t until everyone in the area was extensively investigated that they concluded Grace’s disappearance must be a case of stranger abduction.”

Noah nodded. She’d grown calmer as she talked. “Don’t you think we need to figure out why Mr. Addison has developed this animosity toward your family?”

“Well…sure.” She shrugged. “But I don’t see how that reason can connect with Grace’s disappearance. As far as I know, when we moved from Grand Valley a few months later, we were still on good terms with the Addisons. They helped us pack.”

“Did your family stay in touch with theirs?”

Laney fell silent. She twiddled her fingers against the car seat. “I—I don’t think so. I never would have written or called their teenage son, but my folks never talked about George and Adelle again after we moved.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

She awarded him a steady stare. “Not really. We were trying to put everything about Grand Valley behind us. Avoiding any mention of that place was the only way we could cope with the pain.”

Noah nodded. “I can understand that.” He turned into the motel parking lot. “I want to check my e-mail, then you can tell me about your former good friends.”

He booted his computer up in the motel office while Laney got a couple of bottles of juice from a vending machine. She’d said her family was close with the Addisons’, but from the way she talked about the son, it was more the parents who were close than the whole family. It would be interesting to explore the dynamics of that relationship. Depending on what they discovered as the reason behind George Addison’s animosity, he might have to talk to Roland and Loretta about their former neighbors.

Laney handed him a bottle of juice, and he thanked her. She settled into a guest chair opposite him and pulled out her cell phone. “I haven’t talked to Briana yet today.”

His e-mail came up. Richard Hodge’s former employers from different communities had responded to his inquiry. Hodge had worked as custodian at a manufacturing plant, then in an office building, then in a nursing home before landing at the school in Cottonwood Grove. The answers from the manufacturing plant and the office building were disappointing—no known physical handicap or problems in his feet. Their responses to his repeated question about reason for leaving employment continued to be vague—relocation.

Noah frowned. There had to be a reason why a young, healthy guy moved from town to town and job to job. He’d thought about that when he hired the man, but Hodge had the most custodial experience, with well-rounded skills in trouble-shooting electrical and plumbing issues, of any of the applicants. Noah clicked on the third e-mail. It was longer than the others. Maybe there’d be some meat here. He’d barely started reading, when Laney thrust her phone at him.

“Bree wants to talk to you,” she said.

He blinked, pulling himself out of investigator mode. “Okay.” He took the cell. “Hi, princess.”

A giggle answered him. “Mama says she can’t wait to get home and see me. You, too?”

“My day is always brighter when I can see you.” The words came out with his whole heart in them. This mother and daughter owned him in ways Renee hadn’t even touched. He hadn’t known it was possible to feel this strongly about anyone, but he couldn’t explore those feelings…yet. “What are you up to today?” He kept his tone light.