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“Maybe someday I’ll take vows and all that,” Jancy said, her fingers twisting in the veil as if it were hair. “It must be easier than living in this stupid world.”
“Well, if that’s what you want,” Abby said, sitting beside her.
“All my life, I’ve wanted to be like Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story,” she said.
“Really? All your life?” Abby smiled. “You’re fourteen, Jancy. When did you see that movie?”
Jancy blushed. “Last year, on video. But you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I became a nun at eighteen.”
“You?”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised. It was a temporary fling,” Abby said.
“Wow. I never would have thought that you…I mean, my mom told me about you once, and I thought you were rich. You know…one of those society matrons.”
Abby laughed. “A society matron? God forbid.” “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Have you informed your parents of your plans to become a Bride of Christ?” Abby asked.
“Once. We were driving by a convent and I told my dad. But he pointed at bars on the windows. He said they lock the nuns up in there.”
Attaboy, Gerry. Keep the kid off that vocational track.
“It does seem that way to some,” Abby said. “But actually, in those convents where there are bars on the windows it’s because the nuns want to lock the world out.”
“Really? On purpose?”
“On purpose.”
Jancy seemed to think about that. “Those people last night were looking for us, weren’t they? Mom said if they catch us they’ll lock her up.”
Abby saw no point in telling her anything but the truth. “They said you and your mom had something to do with a man who was found dead at the Highlands Inn last night. They want to question her. And you, too, since you were with her.”
She let that sink in a moment before she asked bluntly, “Did Alicia kill him, Jancy?”
The girl gave a small jump. “No way! We just found him like that!”
“Can you tell me how you and your mom ‘just found him like that’?”
Jancy shook her head and didn’t answer.
“You must know you can trust me by now,” Abby said. “I won’t repeat a word to anyone.”
Jancy hesitated, but then it began to pour out. “He…the guy…he was some sort of reporter. I don’t remember his name, but that’s what Mom said. Some old guy.”
“Old?”
“Fifty, at least.”
Abby tried hard not to smile. “So did your mom know this guy well?”
“I guess. He was eating in the restaurant, and so were we. Mom went over and talked to him. I don’t know what they talked about, but he seemed pretty mad. He got up and walked out, and when she got back to our table she was mad, too. I wanted to go into Carmel and walk around the shops after dinner, but she said no, she had business to take care of. So I sat in the lobby while she made a phone call, and when she got done she said we were going to visit somebody.”
She wiped her eyes, as if to clear them of unpleasant images. “It was awful. We went outside and up the driveway to some room that looked like a private condo from the outside. You know, not in a hallway like a hotel. Mom knocked on the door. Nobody answered, but the door was open a little, so Mom pushed it open more and we went inside. She called out a couple of times—”
“What name did she call?” Abby asked.
Jancy shook her head. “I can’t remember. I wasn’t really listening, because I felt like somebody could walk in any minute and shoot us for trespassing. All I wanted to do was get out of there.” She took a breath, and her voice began to shake. “Then we saw him. This guy, the same one in the restaurant, that reporter. There was one of those big square tubs with jets right in the middle of the bedroom, and he was there—”
She gave a shudder. “There—there was blood in the water all around him. It looked like somebody had—had cut his throat.”
“My God, Jancy! What a horrible thing to see.”
She began to cry, covering her face with her hands.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Abby said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Look, I just have one more question, then we’ll table all this and do whatever you want. Okay?”
Jancy nodded and wiped her face on her sleeves.
“Did your mom call the police?” Abby asked. “Or did someone else?”
“I think it was the maid. She came in with towels or something, and when she saw us and this dead guy, she started screaming. She ran out, and Mom said she’d tell the police about us and we had to get away as fast as we could.”
“And that’s when you came here?” Abby asked.
“Yeah. Mom said this was the one place in the world she knew I’d be safe.”
Abby started. “She said it just that way? That you’d be safe?”
“Yeah, just like that. At the time I didn’t think it was odd, but now…I guess we’re thinking the same thing, huh?”
“I guess we are,” Abby said. And kudos to this bright little girl for figuring out that Alicia had planned to leave her daughter with me all along.
Now the question was: Why?
6
Eleven men and one woman—Kris Kelley—sat around an interview table in the Carmel police station. It was just before dawn.
“Pass these along, please,” said a twelfth man, who was clearly in charge. He stood at the end of the table, passing slender blue folders to the man on his right.
The lead agent was over six feet tall, with a ruddy tan and eyes like polished nickel. His taut physique was that of a man in his twenties, belying his actual age of fifty-six. The deep lines in his face and the untouched gray hair were the only telltale signs that Robert James Lessing had lived a difficult life. Those who didn’t know him might assume he belonged to a country club and played tennis every day—an incorrect assumption that served him well in his work.
He took a seat at the long table next to Ben Schaeffer. “You’ve all met Carmel’s chief of police?” he asked the assemblage.
They nodded. Every eye scanned Ben, but no one smiled. Lessing turned to Ben. “I understood the sheriff would be here, as well.”
“He will be,” Ben said. “Soon as he can. MacElroy’s putting together a tactical team.”
“All the more reason he should be here,” Lessing said with an edge.
“This is the way it’s done in Monterey County,” Ben replied coolly. He didn’t much like being here, either. “Granted, we don’t have many murders in Carmel, but this one at the Highlands seemed routine—at least, until you folks showed up. The sheriff is following standard practice in bringing together a tactical team from the various law enforcement agencies in the county.”
Lessing spoke dryly. “The murder at the Highlands Inn was anything but routine, Chief.”
“Yeah, I’ve pretty much figured that out.” Ben looked at the other agents, who were busily writing in pocket-size notebooks. “And since I’m already on the tactical team,” he continued, “maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell is going on. You’ve got agents swarming all over the place, knocking on doors in the middle of the night—”
“One specific door,” Lessing corrected sharply. “Which, aside from the fact that you’ve been kind enough to lend us your facilities, is the only reason you are privy to this conversation.”
Ben stifled his anger. This was his ground they were stomping all over, and he hadn’t loaned them his facilities willingly. The fact of the matter was, they’d commandeered them.
It only made matters worse that they had come down on Abby and the Prayer House that way.
“My hospitality—and my facilities—” he said, his brown eyes fixed on the agent with an unmistakable warning, “won’t last long if you don’t tell me what you’re really here for and what the hell you want.”
“I thought I’d made that clear,” Lessing replied. “We’re here because of the murder at the Highlands Inn. And, of course, we’d like your cooperation.”
“That still doesn’t tell me a damned thing,” Ben said. “To begin with, you’ve admitted that the murder at the Highlands was far from routine. I already knew that. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here. As I understand it, the victim was a journalist for a Washington, D.C., newspaper. A Woodward-and-Bernstein type, probably digging into some sort of government secrets. My guess is he got too close to the truth about someone or something, and got his throat cut before he could write a book about it. As I hear it, that’s not exactly something new.”
Lessing sighed and glanced at Kris Kelley. “There are a few people here other than Chief Schaeffer who haven’t been filled in yet. Would you like to do the honors? I really don’t think we can wait any longer for the sheriff.”
Kris nodded and stood, smoothing her skirt. Ben knew she couldn’t have slept much all night, any more than anyone else. Yet she looked crisp and fresh in a beige suit she’d somehow managed to change into. He couldn’t help noticing it was almost the same color as her collar-length hair. He supposed she was nice looking, especially with that great tan. Abby’s dark hair and creamy complexion were just the opposite—
He shook himself mentally. What the hell am I doing?
“As some of you know,” Kris said, “the woman we’re looking for is Alicia Gerard, the wife of multimillionaire H. Palmer Gerard. So far, we’ve discovered that the victim was attempting to blackmail Ms. Gerard, and that she was seen having an angry conversation last night with him at the Pacific’s Edge restaurant in the Highlands Inn. A short time later, she was observed knocking on the door of the victim’s room, a room he’d reserved for three nights. Last night was his second night there.”
She cleared her throat and took a sip of water, then began again. “At ten-twenty or so last night, the hotel maid walked into the room and found Alicia Gerard and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Jancy, standing over the victim. He was lying in a whirlpool tub and his throat had been slashed. In fact, he was nearly beheaded. It was a brutal crime.”
She paused and swallowed hard, as if the scene she’d witnessed the night before was too dreadful to return to, even in her mind. “The minute Alicia and her daughter saw the maid they ran, but the maid later identified them from photos we found in the victim’s room—”
“Hang on,” Ben said. “Since when do maids deliver clean towels at ten-thirty at night?”
“Way ahead of you,” Lessing said. “The victim called and asked for them. Said housekeeping hadn’t cleaned the bathroom that morning. Kris?”
The agent began again. “The photos were of Alicia Gerard and her daughter, Jancy—candid shots taken on the street, at a mall, one of Jancy outside her school. Obviously taken by someone who’d been observing them over a period of time. The husband, H. P. Gerard, wasn’t in them.”
“Hold on,” Ben said. “H. P. Gerard’s wife is who you were looking for at the Prayer House? So this reporter guy is viciously murdered at the Highlands Inn, presumably by the wife and/or child of one of the biggest movers and shakers in this country, and all of a sudden a lightbulb goes on and you say, ‘Oh, that’s where the killers are! At a convent out in Carmel Valley.’” He laughed shortly. “Yeah, that makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.”
Agent Kelley answered him in a scathing tone. “It does if your girlfriend is one of Alicia Gerard’s oldest friends—and if your girlfriend takes in women and children on the run.”
“Which you wouldn’t even have known if I hadn’t—”
“Confirmed it for us,” she said firmly. “We knew about Abby Northrup’s work long before you decided to enlighten us, Chief Schaeffer. We hardly had to rely on you to inform us—”
“Like hell,” Ben said, interrupting angrily.
“Easy,” Lessing said quietly. “Let’s keep personalities out of this.”
“This is not about personalities,” Kris said sharply. “It’s about not having an outsider at our meetings.”
“Chief Schaeffer is hardly an outsider,” Lessing reminded her, “any more than you are. And so far he’s been cooperating fully.”
“Fully? You may think so, but—”
“I cooperated because you told me that Abby and the Prayer House were in danger,” Ben said, interrupting again. “There wasn’t even time to find out who you were after.”
It was the fear that Abby might be hurt that had made him screw up, dammit. What a fool he was, confirming their suspicions about Abby’s work with Paseo when he’d made a promise a year ago never to tell a soul. And now, because he’d thought it was his duty to do so—and that the suspect might be a danger to Abby and the Prayer House—he’d blabbed to the damned FBI.
Abby would never forgive him.
“I’ve had enough,” he said, standing. “You’re welcome to stay here until you’re done, but I’ve got work to do.”
“Chief—” Lessing raised a delaying hand.
“No. From everything you’ve said so far, this is nothing but a plain and simple homicide. If that’s the case, I sure don’t need you to help solve it. In fact, it looks to me like you’re wasting taxpayers’ money with all this hoopla, but hey, don’t let me stop you.”
He stormed out, slamming the door. Papers on the table scattered from the breeze it created.
Lessing looked at Kris Kelley. “We’ve got to tell him,” he said heavily. “Everything.”
“Oh, hell,” she sighed. “I’ll go get him.”
7
Ben didn’t have to wonder long if his bluff had worked. He had barely leaned back in his chair, boots on his desk, when Kris Kelley sailed into his office.
“Look,” she said tightly, as if saying the words might choke her, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. We need you back in there.”
“You look,” he said, swinging his feet off the desk and planting them firmly on the ground. “This is my town. If anything bad happens to it or the people in it—”
“I know, I know,” she said irritably. “I’m trying to apologize, Chief!”
“And I appreciate that. But if you and the gang in there want any further cooperation from me, you’ll have to damn well tell me what’s really going on. You can’t expect me to sit there and listen to bunk about it being only a homicide when there’s a gaggle of government agents sitting around my conference table.”
Kris half smiled. “A gaggle?”
He didn’t smile back.
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “You’ve got it. We’ll tell you everything. But you’ll have to swear not to repeat anything you hear in that room. Not to anyone you work with, your friends, Abby Northrup…no one.”
Ben almost told her to forget it. For a few minutes in there his pride had been hurt, and he’d wanted to force them to take him into their confidence. Now that he’d won the point, though, he’d probably be better off to walk away and wash his hands of the FBI. Tell them to get the hell out of here, and let the chips fall where they may.
The only thing that kept him from doing that was the thought that being on the inside might be the only way he could protect Abby.
Hoisting his six-foot-two frame out of the chair, he rested his hands on his hips. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”
