Enemies Closer (15 page)

She just looked at him for a moment, then slowly nodded her head. “Ben, are you thinking she could have left on her own?”

Ben didn’t respond. The money in her account opened up a lot of possibilities.

“Because she
didn’t
, Ben. Not for thirty-seven thousand dollars. Not even for thirty-seven million dollars. Maddy would never do this to her friends and family and she would never leave Dovetail. That restaurant is like a first-born child to her.”

“Clara, I know Maddy didn’t leave because she wanted to, but what if she was scared about something and went into hiding?”

“No,” said Clara with unwavering certainty, “because my sister knows that if she disappeared, I would come looking for her. And that would put me in harm’s way. She would never put me in danger.”

He looked at her intensely, then closed the small space between their lips and kissed her once. Gently. And then again. “Okay,” said Ben without skipping a beat. “Then we have to figure out why this money is in her bank account. There must be a correlation.”

Clara’s eyes had dropped closed and now they fluttered open. “Okay,” she said, “right. What’s the connection?”

“With every single one of Maddy’s passwords and user names neatly typed and labeled on a sheet of paper she keeps by her computer, it wouldn’t be hard for someone else to make deposits into her bank account.”

“Why would anyone want to deposit money? Take it out, I can understand.”

“To make it seem like she had done something illegal and then took off.”

“Right,” said Clara, “I probably should’ve thought of that.”

Ben laughed. “I’d hate to think that our first dinner together would turn into a lecture series about how to steal, frame, defraud and embezzle, but I do know a thing or two about abusing money.”

“I promise you, Ben, it won’t be the thing I remember most about our first meeting,” Clara said, and she hooked a finger in the collar of his shirt and kissed him.

The kiss was far from gentle as Clara wrapped her hand around the back of Ben’s neck and opened her mouth to him. His hands curved around her slender waist and he pulled her close. Every atom in Clara’s body shivered and quaked as she pressed her breasts against him and then slowly removed her hand and pulled gently away.

“That’s the thing I’m going to remember most.” She winked at him. “That, and you walking gallantly into my crisis like my knight in shining armor.”

Ben was staring at her mouth with a dopey smile, and when she finished talking he kissed her again, this time nearly pulling her into his lap. After a few seconds he murmured, “Happy to hear that, Miss Gardner.”

“I don’t think there’s anything else we can accomplish tonight,” said Clara, “do you?”

“No, I don’t.” He brushed a long strand of hair away from her face and touched his nose to hers. “I’d better go home.”

Clara was still in his lap and she could feel that he did not want to go home. “Or you could stay here.”

“Or I could stay here, but I should go home.”

Clara wasn’t going to beg, but she didn’t understand. “Why?”

Ben reluctantly slid her off of his lap and turned on the sofa to face her. “Your sister has been telling me about you for months, and honestly, I figured someday you would come to town, we’d all have dinner together, no sparks would fly and Maddy would finally shut up about it. But when I walked into Manny’s today and saw you talking to the waiter, sparks
did
fly.”

Clara’s expression softened. She was feeling distinctly less rejected but distinctly more perplexed. Batting her eyelashes flirtatiously she said, “Ah, now it all makes sense.”

Ben ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to risk losing those sparks because you’re vulnerable right now.”

Clara
was
vulnerable right now, she knew it, but she still felt like he was patronizing her. “I’m still a grown-up, Ben. I can make my own decisions.”

Ben put his hands on her shoulders and looked her right in the eyes. “I’m not trying to make a decision for you, Clara. I’m making a decision for me. And I don’t want to miss out on a real relationship with you because we slept together when you were scared and angry and grateful for my help and maybe want the comfort of sex more than sex with me specifically.” He waited for his words to sink in and added, “I really, really don’t want to go home tonight. But I know it’s the right thing to do.”

“Maybe for you,” said Clara, a little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I am in need of some tenderness.”

He smiled back. “Plus your sister would kill me if I took advantage of you at a time like this.”

“That’s absolutely true,” agreed Clara, leaning her head against his broad shoulder and sighing. “She would be appalled.”

Ben kissed her forehead. “What time are we getting started tomorrow?”

Clara perked up. “Tomorrow? You’ve done more than enough, Ben, really, but as long as you let me, I’ll happily take advantage of your help.”

“Please do,” he said, “and you’re not taking advantage. Maddy has become a good friend, and I want her back safe and sound.”
Not to mention,
he thought,
I’d like to make you happy, Clara.

Clara checked the time. It was nearly one in the morning. “Is eight too early?”

“Absolutely not. I’ll bring breakfast and we can make a plan.”

At the door she kissed him delicately on the lips and was just pulling away when he pulled her body against him and kissed her greedily. With that, he left the apartment and Clara closed the door behind him, feeling a little weak in the knees.

Chapter Thirteen

S
aturday morning came too quickly for Detective Jerome Kincaid. He had stayed late at the precinct looking more closely into Eddie Perkins’s past. He had also checked out Michelle, and found some things of interest, but no red flags. At seven-thirty he was on his way to pick up his partner but when he knocked on the door, Carlisle’s husband greeted him warmly and brought him into the kitchen for a strong cup of coffee while he waited for Judy. “Kids still in bed?” asked Kincaid as he added milk to his coffee.

“Peacefully asleep,” said Judy, who was coming through the kitchen door, looking much better rested than her partner. “Our teenager will sleep till noon if we let her, but Troy should be up any minute. That one still has no idea that weekends are for sleeping in.” The three of them made cheerful small talk for a few minutes while Jerry finished his coffee and then the two detectives took their leave.

Buckling herself into the unmarked, Carlisle said, “Where to?”

“We gotta meet Iverson and Tanaka at the station.”

“Did you find anything interesting on Eddie last night?”

“Some things that might come in handy, but nothing we can use to search his properties.”

“Properties?”

“I checked property records in and around Seattle. He doesn’t own any commercial real estate outright, but he and Michelle have a country home about an hour and a half north of town. Some of his investments are public record and seem to be involved in commercial real estate, but I can’t tell. We would need a search warrant and a forensic finance guy – or gal,” he added when Carlisle punched him in the arm. “
I
can’t make sense of any of it. And I’m not even sure his corporate holdings are relevant at this point. The house up north is interesting, though. Skagit County.”

“He could’ve stashed Maddy Gardner there.”

“Or buried her body. I hate this, Judy, but it’s not looking good for Maddy. She’s been missing for four days and a few hours, we’ve only been looking for her for two days and the last time anyone laid eyes on her she was getting into a car with a person or persons unknown. She hasn’t contacted anyone; she hasn’t used her cell phone or her credit cards; she left her restaurant and her cat unattended. And one of her employees was just murdered.” He hit the steering wheel hard with the palm of his hand.

“Keep the faith, Kincaid. That’s our job. I’ll get the sheriff’s department to send a patrol out to Eddie’s country house,” she said as she pulled out her cell to call dispatch.

“Already done. This morning.” He shook his head at Carlisle’s expectant look. “Nothing suspicious.” He sighed heavily and went on, “Eddie also owns a house in Orange County that he rents out. It’s in one of the gated communities down there and is currently rented to a family of four. Plus, I can’t see him dragging Maddy kicking and screaming down to California.”

Carlisle agreed. “Anything else?”

“He grew up in LA County, went to public school. His first driver’s license has an address in Brentwood, so his parents had money. They’re both deceased. Probably left him a wad, because he’s been living well ever since. He has two speeding tickets in King County, but otherwise, he’s been a good boy since coming to Seattle.”

“That we know of.”

“That we know of.”

Carlisle’s phone started ringing. This time she recognized the area code. To Kincaid she said, “Beantown. It’s Clara.” Into the phone, she said, “Hello, Miss Gardner.”

A minute later, she was off. “She wants to bring Maddy’s computer in today. Said they didn’t find any stalkers, but they did find some anomalies in her checking account.”

“Anomalies?”

“That’s a quote. She said they’d be in around ten-thirty.”

They were just rolling into the precinct parking lot. It was quarter past eight and the parking lot was sparsely populated on a Saturday. They went through the back entrance to the station and headed straight for Homicide Division. Iverson and Tanaka were in the incident room looking at the preliminary autopsy report.

“You must’ve pulled in some big favors to get that done so fast,” said Carlisle.

“It’s just the prelim,” Iverson replied.

“The ME is working on it now?” asked Carlisle.

“Should’ve just started. And I didn’t have any favors left, so I just begged. It’s the only murder they have on the books, so I got it bumped. I’m heading down in a few to observe.”

“Not me,” said Tanaka. “The only time I like to see a sharp knife in use is when I order sushi.”

Carlisle smiled. “Anything new and noteworthy in the prelim?”

“Nope,” said Tanaka without lifting his head from the report. “Time of death is three o’clock yesterday afternoon, give or take. She was alive when she was struck on the head. Multiple blows to the occipital and parietal bones. Cause of death as yet undetermined. She was also struck on the back and shoulders while she was alive. Injuries are consistent with blunt and sharp force trauma. Not a knife though, more like a blunt object with edges.”

“Like a scary-looking crystal candlestick?” asked Iverson. “Perhaps the one we found with bits of Miss Burns’s hair and scalp on it?”

“The ME has left that undetermined for the time being, but safe to say. Blood spatter is consistent with her being beaten where we found her. Toxicology results pending.” Tanaka perused in silence for a few seconds. “She has a tattoo. Bald eagle on her hip. Weird. Weight to height ratio on the high side of normal range. That’s it for now.”

“Mr. Green with the candlestick in the dining room,” Iverson summarized.

“That’s about it, unless the doc finds a surprise,” said Tanaka.

Kincaid filled them in on Scotty, their witness, and gave them the details on Eddie Perkins.

“We got a time of death, anyway,” grumbled Iverson. “Maybe that’ll rule out one or two of our suspects. I’m going to the coroner’s. I’ll catch up with you in an hour,” he said to his partner, “then we’ll go grill Eddie.” To them all he said, “These fucking restaurant people are impossible. They work day and night and we got a murder at the beginning of the weekend when they’re fighting for time to take a piss between orders. We gotta get enough to either arrest someone or at least call him in on suspicion so we can pull him
out
of the restaurant and put him
into
an interrogation room.”

“Or her,” said Kincaid.

“Fuck you, Kincaid. Or her. Either way, we need to get him
or her
out of the restaurant and into the frying pan, so to speak.”

“Amen,” said Tanaka as the door closed behind his partner. “You heard him, Missing Persons. Give us a break in our case so we can solve it.”

“Right,” said Kincaid, “Clara Gardner and her new boyfriend are coming in.”

“New boyfriend?”

Carlisle stepped in before Kincaid could open his mouth again. “Friend of Maddy Gardner. Until last night we thought he was the last person to see her alive. He and Clara found the witness and when they introduced him to us, there was a little flirting going on.”

Tanaka’s eyes were wide and he formed a dramatic O with his mouth. “What the fuck, Carlisle. It’s him. Friend of the missing sister, last person to see her alive, gloms onto the
not
missing sister in an effort to
help
. Why don’t you have him under a bright light? Are you losing your touch? He did it!” To Kincaid he said, “Is he good looking? She has a soft spot.”

By now Kincaid was laughing and Carlisle was scowling. Kincaid said, “Witnesses have Maddy leaving him alone at the restaurant. He’s got an alibi for the next couple of hours. He ran into a friend outside a bar near Gigi’s Bistro where he and Maddy ate dinner. Friend confirms it. Bar staff confirms it. Particularly the lady bartender because, yes, Ben is easy on the eyes. He has an alibi for Susan’s murder.” He shrugged.

“What’s his alibi for Susan?” asked Tanaka.

“Me. Carlisle. He came in to the station yesterday so we could grill him. Called us on his own. Volunteered his time.”

“Maybe time of death is off? What if the ME got it wrong?”

Kincaid replied in an even tone, “He was in client meetings until noon, when he met with the sister, then another client meeting, then here. And the ME is never wrong. He didn’t do it.”

“Damn,” said Tanaka, “for a second I thought I had it solved.”

“Yeah,” said Kincaid, “if only it were that easy.”

“So we’re focused on Eddie Perkins?”

Carlisle replied, “He doesn’t have an alibi for Monday night. He drives a car matching the description our witness gave of the car that picked up Maddy outside her apartment Monday night. He has an arrest record for assault and fraud. The bartender at Dovetail says he thinks something was going on between Eddie and Susan. He’s the best we got, but I don’t know if it’s enough for an arrest.”

Carlisle said thoughtfully, “A judge isn’t going to look at the arrests because he wasn’t charged. The rest is circumstantial. We could try our luck, but even if we get the warrant, if we can’t make it stick it won’t look good. Plus, Maddy is still out there somewhere. If Eddie snatched her and has her tucked up somewhere, bringing him in will only give him incentive to shut his mouth and let her die chained to a basement wall or wherever she is. No Maddy, no abduction.”

“Do you really think she could still be alive?” asked Tanaka with genuine interest.

Kincaid said, “Yep. There’s no hard evidence to the contrary and our job is to keep looking until we find her. No matter what.”

Madeline Gardner was determined not to die today. Her right hand was cuffed to a chain that locked around a support post in a dank cellar with a dirt floor. Apart from being underground, she had no idea where she was, or how long she’d been there. Her last memories before waking up chained and sick to her stomach were of leaving her condo to go to dinner, but she couldn’t remember with whom she had dined or where or anything at all after that. Now she sat with a dirty sleeping bag pulled up to her shoulders, eating one of the Twinkies she’d found in a crate of supplies left by her kidnapper.

“Keep it together, Maddy,” she told herself just to hear a voice in the darkness. There was a little ambient light in the cellar from a ground-level window on the other side of the basement The low light gave her a sense of space, but was too faint to show her any detail of the room beyond her immediate surroundings. There were a dozen gallon jugs of distilled water, four now empty, and an old wooden crate of nonperishables – crackers, snack cakes, granola bars, a jar of creamy peanut butter. The quantity made her both worried that she was meant to stay here for a long time, and afraid of what would happen to her once the water ran out. No one had come to see her since she had awoken, dazed and confused, however many days ago it had been, and her cries of terror and anger had gone unanswered in the darkness.

Ten feet of chain tethered her and she had been able to empty the chamber pot provided her at an arm’s length beyond that, but still the smells of loam and human waste, of mold and rotting wood, gave her a sense of doom.

What a disgusting way to die,
she thought while she chewed the last bite of her Twinkie.
There must be a way out.
But she had tried everything to free herself from the thick iron handcuff that bound her – apart from chewing off her own hand – all to no avail. Besides, even if she did get free, she couldn’t see a stairwell or ladder in the old basement. In fact, she couldn’t even make out a hatch door in the ceiling. Her only means of egress seemed to be the tiny window, but it was high on the plank wall and she didn’t know if she was tall enough to crawl through.

Once again, Maddy tried to think through the events leading up to her incarceration. She was certain she’d been drugged because when she’d awoken here her mouth felt like it was full of cotton, she was nauseated and her head pounded with the worst hangover she’d ever experienced.

She remembered Monday morning. Mondays were her only true day off since opening Dovetail and they were precious to her. Beginning the day with a long run along the Puget Sound boardwalk, afterward she had showered and made scrambled eggs with real cream. Then she’d spent an hour happily scouring her
Cook’s Illustrated
magazines and scratching her cat, Bea, behind the ears. She had walked to a small local grocery store for orange juice and milk, a pound of espresso beans, a loaf of whole wheat bread and a few other supplies to fill her cupboard for the busy week ahead.

She’d cleaned her apartment. It had been a stretch to buy the seven-hundred-square-foot space only six months after she’d moved to Seattle, but her parents helped with the down payment and she had always been able to meet the mortgage and association fees on her own. Thinking of her parents now, of her sister, Clara, sent hot tears rolling down her cheeks. Maddy had never before wondered if she would see them again. Even during her father’s recent hip surgery, she had never doubted that he would come through it healthy as a horse. Now her loved ones felt so far away. She wondered who was taking care of her cat, did her family know she was missing, how was her restaurant surviving without her?

Forcing herself back to the task at hand, she searched her memory for the details of her last day at home. She had returned from the grocery store, put away the food. She did laundry and ironed her white chef’s coats for the week. Changed the sheets on her bed.
Some day off,
she thought,
I just did chores all day.