Noah's Rainy Day (26 page)

“And now?” Streeter asked. I knew he was testing me, trying to figure out if his influence in my becoming an agent was a worthy one. Up until now, I’d forgotten all about my desire to impress him and was just doing what came naturally. Now, I was wondering if I’d said anything I shouldn’t have. Doubting myself.

I decided to just say what was on my mind. “Unless Max has become a better actor, I think he has a few suspects in mind who might end up wearing some concrete shoes before the sun rises and we’ll never know about them. That’s my belief.”

“You really think so?” Gates asked.

I nodded. “He’s an asshole, but I forgot to mention, he’s also quite connected.”

Streeter pursed his lips. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

I’d forgotten. After all, Max was able to get me assigned to the case.

“We need to talk with the nanny as soon as possible,” Gates suggested.

“We’re already on it. We’ve got people headed to her family’s house in Manchester as we speak,” Streeter assured him.

“What was your gut feel about those two?” I asked him.

Streeter cleared his throat. “People respond in these situations very differently each time, rarely how you would expect. My experience is that the worse the circumstance, the less predictable the response by loved ones of a victim.”

Tony added, “But I agree with your assessment of the Williamses, Liv. They both seemed genuinely concerned.”

“I hate to say this, but I had wondered whether Max had staged this whole event for some self-serving purpose,” I mused. “Now I just don’t know.”

“Why? To what end? For money?” Gates asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. At first I thought he might have staged this to hide assets in the divorce. After eavesdropping, I think he really is concerned about what happened to little Max. But then I started wondering again. I guess it was the way he decided to fly everyone back to New York in such a hurry. My mind went somewhere slippery. Like what if he had staged the abduction. And little Max is somewhere here in town. Max wouldn’t want any witnesses to whatever he plans to do tonight. Maybe he plans to collect little Max. To make sure he’s safe.”

Both men stared at me.

“Well, for one thing, the nanny and Max may be in cahoots here, Streeter. The Max I knew wouldn’t hesitate to hire the nanny to get little Max out of the country and blame it on someone else, just to save himself a few bucks on child support in the divorce. No matter what he’s saying. Although my read is that it would be a long shot and wishful thinking, since that would mean the boy is alive and well somewhere. That would explain why Max sent everyone back to NYC.”

Streeter said nothing. I couldn’t tell if he thought I was crazy or if I was proving myself worthy and helpful on this case as I’d hoped.

“Or another option is that Max paid someone else to abduct little Max. Okay, say a kidnapper calls demanding ransom. Max pays it, gets his son back, and all of a sudden the divorce settlement owed Melissa goes down considerably, since his net worth drops by that sum of cash. The fact that he so adamantly denied that would be his intent is exactly why it made me want to look at it from that angle.”

Tony stared at me like I was crazy. “Remind me to warn the poor bastard you decide to marry not to cross you.”

Streeter chuckled.

“Am I missing something?”

Streeter wrapped an arm around my shoulder, still laughing. “Not a thing, Liv. What Tony’s trying to tell you is that you have a fertile mind.”

“Fertile as in bullshit?”

I might have enjoyed the feel of Streeter’s arm around me if it weren’t for the fact that I’d just noticed Jack was in the room. He must have come in while we had our backs to the door mopping up the mess.

He wasn’t smiling and I suppose my smile appeared a bit guilty.

I slid out from under Streeter’s arm. “Jack, did you get the beret?” Awkward. Noticing what he was holding, I said, “You brought food? For us? Thanks!”

I took the bags of burgers from him and set them on the table.

Gates said, “I’m famished.”

Jack took a step toward the table, eyeing Streeter. “You were talking about the boy’s father?”

Streeter nodded, taking a bite from one of the sandwiches Jack had brought. “Thanks, Linwood.”

I said, “We were talking about the interviews of him and the mother. We were speculating about either the father or mother’s involvement in little Max’s abduction.”

“I heard your speculation about the creative way he might hide money in a divorce.”

“He already has more money than he knows what to do with, so I’ll start getting suspicious if there’s a call for an inordinate amount of ransom,” I said, glad Jack had picked up a sandwich and joined the conversation.

“Kidnappers tend to keep demands reasonable to improve the odds of getting paid,” Jack said.

“Exactly. Which is why I said I’ll really start wondering if the amount is super high.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” Streeter said. “No ransom call.”

“Yet,” I said. “Like Max said, maybe the kidnapper wants them to go through Christmas morning without their son, to make them more apt to pay the ransom.”

Jack said, “Statistics support what Liv’s saying. Eight hundred thousand kids under the age of eighteen are reported missing every year and a quarter of them are abducted by family members. A fraction of those who end up missing, like only a hundred or a hundred twenty, are abducted by the stereotypical kidnapper asking for ransom or intending to keep the child for themselves. Or to kill.”

“How do you remember all this? The statistics?” I asked, chomping another bite from the burger.

“He’s a walking encyclopedia,” Tony added.

Jack shook his head, grabbed his sandwich, and walked over to the windows.

I grabbed mine and followed him. “And the shoe polish? How does that fit in?”

“I think it means whoever has the child doesn’t intend to kill him. Right away, at least.”

“I agree,” Streeter added. “Did you find any prints?”

“Dodson and Michelle are working on it. Our top priorities are to test the bottle of shoe polish, the smudge print on the beret, and the paper towels with the black dye and hair.”

I leaned into Jack and whispered, “You okay with all this?”

He nodded once.

“I didn’t say anything. About earlier,” I whispered, hoping that would make up for the compromising position I’d found myself in with Streeter when Jack found us.

“Thanks,” he said, kissing me on top of my head.

His kiss made me feel warm and I knew he held no grudge.

“What about Melissa? What motive would she have for little Max to be taken?” Gates asked, unwrapping a second burger.

“Publicity? Freedom?” I asked. “Or more likely, to torture Max.”

“You told them we advised that they both sit tight and wait for some information, any information, before they started talking with the press,” Tony said to Streeter. “You made yourself perfectly clear what the Bureau recommended. So publicity is out of the question.”

“And wouldn’t freedom for Melissa require that the child disappear forever?” Streeter asked.

I noticed the pain in Jack’s face and wanted to say something comforting, knowing I should wait until later. In private. His authentic expression of torture made my mind’s eye flash to the strange woman riding the underground trains earlier. The woman—riding the trains back and forth, back and forth, who avoided my eyes when I recognized her—seemed to have the same expression on her face. Haunted. Tortured.

Streeter answered his own question, “That just doesn’t sound right for some reason. No mother thinks like that, unless she’s psychologically twisted. I didn’t sense that about Melissa.”

“Aldo?” I asked.

“Maybe, but even Max said although he’d like to believe Aldo was behind this, he didn’t really think him capable of it.”

“Odd that Melissa didn’t bring Aldo Giottani,” I commented. “Do we have the list of passengers on the plane from New York? Aldo wasn’t on that same plane, was he?”

I was thinking of the distraught woman on the underground train, the one I first thought of as a bag lady until I realized she must have a plane ticket since she was on the secure side of the airport. Had she turned away from me embarrassed because I’d caught her following me watching Beulah work?

Streeter moved to his computer and hit a key, the printer whirring to life. He handed me a single sheet. “I haven’t looked at it yet, but the team didn’t see his name or any other they recognized, but knock yourself out. Maybe a name will jump out at you because you knew Max in the past.”

I scanned the list.

“What do you make of their request to hold a press conference?” Tony asked.

Streeter explained, “It may not make sense to us. But it does to them. Maybe the cameras are their comfort zone, the only way for them to regain control over this situation. During the interviews with us, they had no control.”

“Speculating isn’t getting us anywhere,” Tony said. “Who’s on our short list of suspects right now—Kevin Benson, his girlfriend, Max Williams, Melissa Williams, Aldo Giottani, and Nanny Judy. Who else might have had either motive or opportunity?”

My eyes went to the bottom of the list, to little Max’s name, and worked backward from W for Williams. “You’ve ruled out Benson and I’d bet it’s not the mother. Or Max, if I was being truthful.”

“And you forgot it could be a stranger,” Streeter said. “The nanny seems the most likely, which is why I initiated a search for her hours ago. She seems to have the most to lose by not being in the boy’s life. The question I want answered is if one of these people
is
responsible for the child’s abduction, then where is he? Who has little Max? What are they covering up? And who’s lying?”

My eyes flicked toward Jack, then back to the list of passengers on the same plane as little Max from NYC, when my eyes landed on a name near the top of the list. A name I knew well. My fingers fished for my cell phone and with shaky fingers I punched in numbers.

“What is it? Liv, are you okay?”

I ignored Streeter, listening as the phone rang. She’d been sleeping. “Where are you?”

“Boots? What’s wrong?”

“Just tell me, where are you?” I asked.

“In bed. At Mom and Dad’s. Why? Is this about Max’s son?”

“Yes. Max is here in Denver now. We’re working on it. We’ll find the little guy,” I said, relieved to know she was nowhere near Denver. “Since when have you been home?”

“Uh … since last Friday. It’s like four in the morning, right? What’s going on?”

“Have you traveled anywhere since last Friday?”

“No, why?”

“I just wanted to know if you had heard about Max’s son. And to tell you I was working the case. That’s all,” I lied.

“We’ll keep praying for that little guy. No one deserves that worry, not even Max.”

“Good. Go back to sleep. Merry Christmas.” I hung up and stared at Streeter, shoving the list toward him, pointing near the top of the list.

“Ingrid Bergen,” Streeter’s voice rumbled.

“The famous actress? The one in
Murder on the Orient Express
?” Gates asked.

“Not Bergman. Bergen. My sister Ida. Ida Ingrid Bergen. She uses Ingrid as her stage name. She’s an actress, model, and opera singer. I just called her and she’s been in Rapid City, South Dakota, all week. Someone rode on the same plane using my sister’s name. Or it’s one helluva coincidence that someone has the same name.”

Streeter said, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

I SNUCK BEULAH INTO
Noah’s room, hoping he’d be sound asleep. But I found Noah in bed staring out the window. Wide awake. I reached over to his bedside monitor and flicked it off. I felt his forehead to see if he had a fever and checked his diaper to see if he needed changing. His eyes were tracking, not listless, so I didn’t think he’d had a seizure, but he seemed wiped.

I was exhausted, my mind racing with everything that had happened and with the idea that someone had posed as my little sister on a flight with her ex-fiancé’s son. Again, it was too close to home, too close to my family. I climbed into Noah’s bed under the covers with him and held him as we faced the window.

“What are you doing, Peanut? It’s six o’clock in the morning.”

He moaned softly and smiled in the fading moonlight.

“Waiting to see Santa?”

He didn’t smile. I noticed his full stocking at the foot of the bed. “Oh, he already came. Did you catch him with your secret spy recorder?” Noah didn’t smile. “Did you try?”

He smiled. Then I watched as his face grew still.

“Something’s up. Are you okay?”

He still didn’t smile. I noticed him staring out the window.

“You’re not. Is it something you saw?”

Noah’s smile flickered.

“What did you see out there? A mountain lion? Did I scare you with my story yesterday?”

Nothing.

“Of course not. You’re brave. Or is it what you didn’t see out there? Are you upset you didn’t see Santa Claus?”

Still nothing. I stared in the same direction. He was staring at the window across from his, the only room of the neighbor’s house with no window covering, the darkness within yawning.

“Did you see something at the neighbor’s house tonight? Santa putting a lump a coal in the creepy guy’s stocking?”

That made him smile, but it quickly faded.

“Seriously, did something happen over there last night? Something that’s bothering you?”

Noah smiled. I stared at the house. It was dark, the shades drawn on all windows except the one across from Noah’s room. No movement. “I wish I had night-vision goggles.” He smiled. “Then I could see what you saw.” He smiled again. “Did he scowl at you or something like he did last year when I gave you that flashlight? Asshole.”

Noah’s sigh was a mixture of elation and sadness, but the smile was there. Relief. I leaned my head against the headboard, my chin resting against his forehead. His skin felt warm. I was finally relaxed. Relieved. Noah always seemed to have a way of calming my nerves while reenergizing me. I loved being with him.

“Well, don’t let him bug you. He’s not the boss of you, kiddo.”