The Hiding Place (30 page)

She stepped forward around Nick and slammed the door in Jordan’s face.

By Monday morning, they had closed up the house, sent in a hold on their mail, told the neighbors they were moving to North Carolina, written an explanatory letter to Claire’s school and packed Nick’s truck with mostly empty cartons. Tara had phoned Carla Manning, who had insisted she had room for the three of them and that a visit—even in sad circumstances—was long overdue. And yes, she’d do anything legal she could to help.

They drove east into the rising sun on the outerbelt until they hit Route 6 E. Then Nick pulled off into a huge service station near the airport, which was full of cars in front and trucks getting diesel out behind. He got a fill-up, then drove behind the station where the monster trucks were idling.

“Okay, mirror,” he said, and Tara handed him her big mirror with a handle she’d jammed in her purse.

“What’s he doing?” Claire asked, and even Beamer peered out at Nick as if he thought he was crazy.

“He just wants to check under the truck to make sure it’s ready to take the trip,” Tara said. They’d decided not to tell her that they had checked the vehicle several times to be sure there wasn’t some sort of homing device on it. They had finally both become not paranoid but practical.

“Touchdown!” she heard Nick call out. He stood up to lean in the window and grin at them. Tara saw he had a small black box in his hand, attached to some sort of large magnet. “Excuse me, ladies, while I just go wash my hands and chat up a trucker or two,” he said, handing the mirror to Tara. They watched as he strolled back to the diesel gas pumps where trucks, both in-state and out, waited while their drivers chatted or paid their bills.

“He’s talking to people,” Claire reported, twisting around to look out the back window, “but he hasn’t washed his hands.”

Nick was learning to pretext, Tara thought. She could help Nick train tracker dogs someday, and he could help her pretext, if and when she ever got back to Finders Keepers.

He soon returned, looking smug. “I have a surprise for each of you,” he told them as he got in and started the engine. “Tara, your surprise is that Jordan is getting a dose of his own medicine, because the device I found on the bottom of my truck is now on a sixteen-wheeler that’s en route to Virginia—close enough to North Carolina. And, Claire,” he said, interrupting what was an obvious spate of questions from the girl, “your surprise is that we are going to Seattle, Washington, instead of to North Carolina, at least for right now. It’s a lot closer. They have a neat aquarium you can visit.”

“But I told Charlee and her mom North Carolina for our trip. And that’s what it said in the note to my teacher! Is this a surprise envelope, and we’re all running away so you guys can get married?”

“You mean elope?” Nick asked with a chuckle, then started to hem and haw his way out of his predicament.

Tara bit her lower lip so she wouldn’t cry. Laird and Jen had run away to Seattle and had gotten married. Now, finally, she was running after both of them. They were welcome to each other—but they had a lot to answer for.

E
arly Tuesday morning, after taking turns driving all night, Tara and Nick made it to Carla Manning’s neighborhood in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, only about three miles from Laird’s neighborhood of Medina. While Nick drove, Tara had studied local maps with her flashlight until she thought her eyes would cross. Claire had been asleep for hours, curled up on the narrow backseat while Beamer sprawled on the truck floor beneath her, gently snoring.

“I can’t believe we’re here,” Tara told Nick. “I’m finally going to face Jen and Laird and get answers.”

“But,” he said as they scanned mailbox numbers in the beams of their headlights, “we’re consulting with Carla first. If she advises against confronting them, no rash moves, no jumping the gun. There, that house,” he said, and turned in the driveway of a contemporary frame home with a big blue spruce in the front yard. In the pearly predawn, they got out and stretched. Tara felt wobbly on her feet. Despite the familiar trees, the area seemed alien, with its relatively flat terrain and the smell of the sea. Even with the early-morning chill, the air seemed moist, not thin and crisp.

A porch light popped on, and a face appeared at the window next to the front door. Tara hadn’t seen Carla for almost four years, but they had always hit it off well, and Carla had been so grateful when Tara located her daughter, Annelise. Almost six feet tall and thin, with long black hair, Carla was a real Amazon who could tackle anything in life—until she’d married a man who almost did her in.

“I’ll carry Claire,” Nick told her. “Go ahead.”

Dressed in baby-blue sweats, Carla met her halfway up the walk with a big hug. “I’ve always hoped for a way to help you,” she told Tara. “I may not look like an attorney-at-law right now, but we’re going to get your ex one way or the other for what he’s done. I’ve taken the morning off, so I can get you breakfast and you can get caught up on some sleep.”

“I’ve been dozing off and on. The only thing I want to get caught up with is you—and then Laird,” Tara told her, stepping back to face Nick as he hefted Claire out of the truck. “Carla, this is my very good friend Nick MacMahon and his completely unconscious niece, Claire.”

“Nick, great to meet you,” she said, patting him on the shoulder since his hands were full. “I’ve got a bed ready for her. And this must be Beamer. He’s beautiful. I had a black Lab once, and it will be great to have a pet around for my girl.”

“You’re a godsend,” Tara told her as they went up the walk arm in arm.

“As you were to me. Come on in. Consider this your home away from home.”

“Oh, no!” Veronica cried when she saw rows of red headlights pop on ahead. As the thick lanes of traffic slowed to a crawl, she hit her fist on the steering wheel. Not only was everything at a complete standstill, but she saw the blinking lights of emergency vehicles up ahead. Drat! She was between exits and, at least temporarily, trapped.

It had been stop-and-go driving as she followed 90 W into Seattle. She should have waited until later in the day when commuters weren’t coming into the city, but she’d already taken too long to make the Denver-to-Seattle drive. The escape part of her journey was over, and she was anxious to deal with Laird. Unfortunately, that meant today was the day that he or Jennifer would call Jordan and tell him where she was. Well, there was one Jordan she would be happy to see, and that was little Jordie. But maybe little Jordie was the problem.

Though she feared she’d get a blast of car exhaust fumes as everyone began to idle their engines, Veronica rolled down her driver-side window and took a big breath of morning air. Yes, she could smell the ocean here. It reminded her of happy childhood days on the shore of Lake Michigan, visiting her grandparents’ cottage near Traverse City. But the shrieks of seagulls overhead and the occasional boom of a distant ferry horn also reminded her of the times she and Jordan had spent here visiting Laird and his new family.

But that’s what was bothering her now. Her family had not told Veronica that Laird and Tara’s baby had been born and lost. They had not even told her about Laird and Jennifer’s baby until she was completely recovered.

So she was also going to use the element of surprise. She wasn’t phoning ahead to find out if Laird was home today. Besides, she figured she’d do better taking on Jennifer, poor pretty girl, so eager to please the Lohans. But above all, she didn’t want Jennifer or Laird to be prepared for her or to tip off Jordan right away.

Somehow, Veronica was going to get the answers she needed, and not only to help Tara. Such knowledge could very well serve as ammunition to blast her way out of the Lohan prison she’d been locked in for more years than she’d like to admit.

Finders Keepers, that was the name of Tara’s private investigating firm.
Finders keepers…losers weepers,
the old rhyme went. But the official Lohan rhyme should be Humpty Dumpty. After all, as high as he was sitting, he had a great fall, and not even the king’s men could put him back together again. One way or the other, Jordan—maybe Laird, too—was about to topple off his great big wall.

By the time the sun came up, Claire was still in bed and Nick was in the shower. Tara and Carla sat over a cluttered breakfast table, drinking coffee, talking about old times and new.

“Now about today,” Carla said. “I figured you and Nick would want to be out and about this morning, and I’ve got to go into the office about noon for a while. So my mother’s coming over to stay with Claire and Annelise. I don’t usually let her miss school, but having a visitor near her age is special. Mom’s still bemoaning the fact that Annelise is in school, since she used to take care of her all the time, so she’s in seventh heaven. If you want, she can take them downtown to the aquarium after lunch.”

“Claire would love it. Nick kind of promised her that.”

“Then that’s settled. Now back to the legal aspects of all this,” she went on, leaning her elbows on the table and cradling her coffee cup in both hands. She’d been taking notes on a long, yellow legal pad as Tara had explained everything to her. Like Tara—maybe like all women—Carla was good at multitasking and never missed a beat when they switched topics.

“I’m listening,” Tara said. “You’re part of the reason I was brave enough to come here.”

“I still don’t think you can force Laird and Jennifer to give a deposition under oath, and one look at a lawyer with you and they’d clam up for sure. Or they’d just get a lawyer to block us, unless we can get some sort of incriminating admission out of one or the other of them. Misleading and lying to you in the past won’t be enough. Of course, the best thing would be to prove foul play and have them indicted.”

“What about a civil suit, if we can’t find evidence for a criminal one?”

“Possibly, but probably not just on grounds of having your deceased child cremated without your knowledge or permission. It was Laird’s child, too, and you were obviously incapacitated. Proving they induced or extended your coma will be tricky unless you can find that Dr. Givern, whom they’ve obviously spirited off to Europe.”

“What about the fact they never registered the birth and death of my child? That’s got to be a crime.”

“That might work, but the fallout would be minimal with their army of lawyers and contacts. The other drawback is that I don’t have a license to practice in Colorado. You might be better off with a local lawyer for that, but you said you don’t want a Denver-area attorney.”

“Even if I could get them on that or win a civil suit decision, making them pay millions would be like me having to cough up a hundred bucks. Still, the publicity would hurt them. They’re paranoid about the Lohan reputation. I did have a wild idea there could be some sort of genetic testing on the ashes in the urn, but I think they’ve been tampered with.”

“You mean Jordan Lohan only let you take the urn from the crypt because it
didn’t
contain your daughter’s ashes?”

“I’m not sure. When the house was broken into, I know the urn was moved, maybe even exchanged for another—oh, damn, I don’t know!” She lifted her arms and rubbed her aching eyes with the heels of her palms. “What I do know is that I need to talk to Jen first, alone somehow. She’s much more likely than he is to slip up and say something. And I do think I can get enough information to go after her physician’s license, although she may not care right now, since she’s wallowing in Lohan wealth and has a son to raise.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” Carla said, rolling her coffee mug between her hands. “Money, position—none of it means a thing if you’re not married to the right person. But throw a child into the mix, living or deceased, and then it gets hard. It doesn’t take long to learn what really counts in life.”

“Sad but so true,” Tara agreed, hunched over her hands, now clasped on the table as if in prayer. “How sad too many women learn that the hard way.”

“Nick seems wonderful, a real blessing in your life, and his little girl has obviously become yours now. When this is all over—I mean, just don’t get hurt here, because you have a great new life waiting for you.”

“But I can’t have that new life until I settle the old one. For Sarah’s sake, as well as mine.”

By late morning, Claire had set out for the Seattle Aquarium with Annelise and her grandmother, Lillian Manning—Carla had taken her maiden name back after her divorce. Nick and Tara were en route to the nearby suburb of Medina with Beamer sitting on the seat between them as if he were the kingpin on their team.

As they talked over possible ploys to get onto the Lohan grounds, they tried to ignore the gray day spitting rain against the windshield. Hoping that Laird was at his office, Tara’s pretext to Jen was going to be that she was desperate to know about Sarah’s birth and death. She would convey no suspicions, bring no accusations. As her former physician and friend, at least Jen owed her an explanation of her daughter’s death.

But that scenario meant they had to get past the front gate and perhaps even a guard. If this frontal assault didn’t work, Tara was going to have to convince Nick that trespassing onto the property was absolutely necessary. No way had they come this far, Tara told herself, not to question Jen and Laird. And if that meant arguing with or defying Nick, it had to be done.

“Damn, the Lohan house isn’t even one of the biggest ones around here!” Tara whispered as they drove past it once, turned around and slowly circled back.

Of redwood and stone, the sprawling house suited its setting in a breathtaking landscape of mature trees and free-form flower beds bursting with late blooms. A small bridge arched over what appeared to be a koi pond. Tara craned her neck, trying to glimpse the back deck and playground area to see if she could catch a glimpse of Jen or her son, but at this first pass, all she saw was a thin man bent over a rose bed.

At least a truck going by slowly was hardly suspicious in this area. They’d seen all sorts of service vehicles: heating and cooling, plumbers, yard care. Other than a few BMWs and other upscale cars with residents on morning errands, the streets were fairly deserted.