Missing
Jasmine Cresswell
For twenty-five years, multimillionaire businessman Ron Raven played the loving husband and father– to two very different households.But when Ron disappears, his deception is revealed. Now both families are left with questions, while the man who holds the answers is…MISSING. Megan Raven is desperate to save her mother's Wyoming ranch, used as collateral on a three-million-dollar loan– money that disappeared with Ron.Worse, the loan is being called in by Georgia bank manager Adam Fairfax– brother to Ron's other wife. Brought together by their families' turmoil, Megan and Adam head south of the border in search of the missing millions. But what they find is a whole new web of lies, secrecy and greed.
Jasmine
Cresswell
Missing
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author gratefully acknowledges the
contributions of four outstanding storytellers:
Diane Mott Davidson, Constance Laux,
Emilie Richards and Karen Young.
For Maggie Osborne, who first decided
Ron Raven should be a bigamist,
and for Marsha Zinberg, editor extraordinaire,
who always loved this story.
Prologue
June 8, 2004, Fairfax, Georgia
Adam Fairfax stepped out from behind his desk and greeted his brother-in-law with a smile, a warm handshake and a friendly thump on the shoulder. “Ron, it’s good to see you. How was your flight?”
“No major problems for once, but I travel too much and the flying’s getting real old, if you want to know the truth.” Ron Raven clapped the younger man on the back and pumped his hand. “You’re looking fitter than ever, Adam, damn you. Still running those marathon races of yours?”
“Half marathons these days. It’s all I have time to train for. But I guess I can’t complain. My work schedule’s a stroll in the park compared to yours. Every time I speak to Avery or Paul they tell me you’re on a plane or just getting off one.”
Ron sighed. “Seems that way to me, too, and flying’s no fun these days, that’s for sure. Shuffling through those security lines in your socks is about as enjoyable as watching mold grow on the shower wall.”
Adam reached into his top desk drawer and pulled out the loan agreement that had been ready for his brother-in-law’s signature for the past week. “It must be stressful, too, even when you’ve learned all the insider tips for making the process a bit easier.”
“You’re right, it’s very stressful. My blood pressure’s through the roof.” Ron looked momentarily gloomy, then chuckled. “But that sister of yours is something else. A tyrant who looks like an angel. Avery’s determined to keep me healthy even if we both die in the attempt. She tells me I’ve gotta eat lots of fish and green leafy vegetables and then I’ll live to be a hundred. I told her that if all I can eat is fish and vegetables, why the hell would I want to live that long?”
Adam laughed in sympathy. “But Avery doesn’t listen, of course.”
“Of course not. Just keeps serving the damn spinach. And salmon. That’s her other biggie. I’m surprised you didn’t tell me my skin’s turned orange from all the salmon she makes me eat.”
“That’s my sister for you.” Adam gestured for Ron to sit down. “Beneath the Southern charm, she’s just like our mother—as stubborn as a mule.”
“Well, that’s not unique to Avery, or even your mother! I swear stubborn is built into the female DNA.” Ron chuckled. “Still, I wouldn’t be without ’em, not for all the tea in China. You should try getting married, Adam. Workaholics like us need women to keep us in line.”
“The hell we do.” Adam smiled. “Listening to you always reminds me of all the reasons I’m happy to be a bachelor.”
“You just haven’t met the right woman,” Ron said. “Trust me, you’re gonna fall hard one of these days and then you’ll wonder how you held out so long.”
Adam pulled a wry face. “Has my sister deputized you as her front man? You’re parroting her lines.”
“Well, shoot, Adam, you caught me out. But what do you expect? I’m just a western cowboy. I’m no match for a steel magnolia like your sister. When she gives me orders, I salute and say, Yes, ma’am,” Ron replied. “I’m a brave man, but I’m not stupid.”
Adam sighed. “I’ve learned there are few things in this life harder to resist than the genteel nagging of a Southern lady. I should just give up and marry the next woman Avery parades in front of me.”
“Don’t.” Ron was suddenly serious. “Ignore the nagging, genteel or otherwise.” He stabbed his forefinger into the desk for emphasis. “Despite what I said earlier, don’t marry to satisfy anyone except yourself. I’ve seen what happens when a man marries to please his family and it isn’t pretty.”
“At the moment, I’m in no danger of marrying, period. Running the bank hasn’t left much time for socializing this past year. And speaking of socializing, I hope you have time to stay for lunch today.”
“I was planning on it. Thanks.”
“We’ll go to the Oak Room.” Adam gave a conspiratorial glance. “Their beef is the best in town—and I promise not to report back to Avery if you order French fries.”
“You’re a mighty fine brother-in-law, Adam. Knew I could count on you for more than money.” Ron grinned as he drew out a stack of papers from his briefcase, and Adam grinned back, appreciating his brother-in-law’s camaraderie. Both men were perfectly well aware that Ronald Howatch Raven, founder and senior partner of Raven Enterprises, Inc., could raise money wherever the hell he wanted and that Adam, in fact, was very much the junior partner in this deal, even though he was the man handing over the money.
As the president of the First Bank of Fairfax, a once-rural farm community now located on the far southern rim of Atlanta’s commuter belt, Adam was more accustomed to loaning a few thousand bucks to open a beauty salon or family restaurant than three million dollars to help transform a vast Wyoming cattle ranch into an upscale vacation resort. He was well aware that he would never have been given the opportunity to participate in Ron’s latest real estate venture if not for the fact that his older sister happened to be Ron’s wife.
Adam was honest enough to admit that there were certain ironies involved in authorizing this loan to his brother-in-law. He’d taken over the presidency of the bank from his great-uncle fifteen months ago, a few days after his thirty-first birthday. He recognized that he’d been given the job chiefly because of his name and heritage and was considered a foolish whippersnapper by a significant minority of the board. He’d spent a lot of the past year persuading managers and shareholders that the First Bank of Fairfax was only going to survive if they stopped making loans to friends and relatives and started making loans to entrepreneurs with a decent business plan. Adam hadn’t counted on the fact that the most exciting business plan to cross his desk would come from his brother-in-law.
“Here are the latest architectural drawings for the Flying W project,” Ron said, pushing a stack of papers across Adam’s desk. “Thought you’d like to see them, just to keep abreast of what’s going on. And here are some photos I took myself of the precise area where we’re going to build the lodge. We can look at the plans in more detail over lunch, and you’ll see how we’re going to use the Silver River to define the footprint of the main lodge. As I mentioned before, the river’s perfect for fly fishing.”
“And makes for great views, too, for the visitors who don’t care to fish.” Adam picked up a picture of the river, foaming with white water, from the many calendar-worthy snapshots Ron had spread out on the desk. “Damn, but this is beautiful country.”
“Between the river and the Tetons, I’d say we’re going to wow the tourists. This is a can’t-fail project, in my opinion.”
“I agree. The development potential of this location is fantastic.”
Ron pulled a face. “Fact is, the ranching operation should have been shut down years ago, but I’ve been too busy to take care of the arrangements. To be honest, I don’t get back to Wyoming as often as I should.”
“You’ve always said that your ranch manager is excellent. That must make it easier to keep everything ticking.”
“You’re exactly right.” Ron nodded reflectively. “If the Flying W ranch manager hadn’t been so good, I’d have been forced to move forward with the redevelopment years ago.”
“Has your manager found a new job? Ranching isn’t exactly a growing industry these days.”
“He’s going to be fine.” Ron didn’t elaborate on the fate of his ranch manager. “Anyway, you’ll be pleased to hear I’ve had no trouble raising the rest of the capital we need to fully fund the project. I anticipate that we’ll be breaking ground within the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, the building season isn’t long, but I’m optimistic that we’ll have at least the main building under roof before winter sets in.”
Adam stacked the photos into a neat pile. “I’m delighted that the First Bank of Fairfax can share in the development of the resort and I appreciate your willingness to include us among your investors. I’m convinced that, over the next decade, luxury accommodation with access to surrounding wilderness will become more and more popular as a vacation destination.”
“You’re singing my song,” Ron said. “I’m real happy to have this chance to work with you, Adam. Hope it’s the first venture among many. You have the paperwork on the loan ready to go, I take it?”
“Yes, I have everything waiting for you to sign.” Adam twisted the file folder around on his desk.
Ron held up his elegant Mont Blanc pen. “If you have the papers, I have the pen.” He put on a pair of reading glasses and flipped through the five double-spaced pages, skimming. “I assume this is a duplicate of the agreement you couriered to me last week?”
“Yes. The only changes are the two you suggested.” Adam referred to his notes. “They’re both on page three. We’ve substituted the revised wording you requested regarding precisely when and how the loan can be called.” He smiled. “As long as you don’t die, we’re being very generous.”
“Give me a minute to check through this one more time.” Ron hadn’t turned an inheritance of a hardscrabble ranch and less than fifty thousand dollars into a fortune of several million by being careless about the documents he signed.
He read in silence for ten full minutes, concentrating fiercely, and then glanced up, his friendly expression returning. “Everything looks to be in order.” He extracted another sheet of paper from his briefcase and pushed it across the desk. “Here are the instructions as to where you should wire the three million. You’ll see that I’ve provided you with both my personal account number and the wire-routing number for my bank.”
“Thanks.” Adam slipped the instruction sheet into the Flying W Development loan file. “The funds will be transferred Monday, and they’ll be available immediately. Let me call in our notary public and we’ll get these documents signed.” Adam pressed his intercom button and spoke to his assistant. “Gayle, could you step into my office to witness Mr. Raven’s signature, please?”
Gayle Tummins came into the office in less than thirty seconds, her official record book tucked under her arm. Ron initialed each page of the loan agreement in triplicate, signing with a flourish. Adam added his signature to each copy and Gayle completed the formalities with her notary seal, her license number and her own signature.
Ron thanked the clerk and then turned to Adam with a big smile. “Okay, now that’s taken care of, we can move on to the fun stuff. Let’s go to the Oak Room and order ourselves a couple of prime steaks and some honest-to-God, artery-clogging French fries.”
Adam reached for his sunglasses. “Sounds like a great plan to me. Shall we walk? It’s less than three blocks and it’s not too hot today.”
“Lead the way, since you’re the man who knows where we’re going.” Ron was happy to let Adam precede him. He needed a few seconds to conceal the adrenaline rush that always accompanied a successful scam. Not that this was a scam, exactly. He fully intended to pay back the money, as soon as Las Criandas started to generate some profits and he had access to funds that wouldn’t be scrutinized either in Chicago or Wyoming. It was damn annoying to have so much money and not to be able to access any of it when you really needed to. He should never have taken on Paul Fairfax as his partner. True, the guy was a moron—which helped—but even a moron would notice three million bucks missing from the partnership accounts.
Ron followed Adam across the marble-floored bank lobby, giving a friendly nod to various clerks and tellers, his amiable expression concealing the intensity of his focus. He always tried to create the impression that he’d succeeded in business more by good luck and fortunate friendships than because of a sky-high IQ and a bone-deep instinct for profitable deals. He was not in the least averse to having his brother-in-law underestimate him. Adam Fairfax was acquiring quite a reputation in Atlanta banking circles as an outstanding manager and a fine, intuitive judge of character. In Ron’s opinion, Adam was the smart one in his family. Paul was all showmanship and no brains. Adam, it seemed, was going to be a very different sort of businessman—which wasn’t good news, from Ron’s point of view. He had to make sure there wasn’t a single note in his pitch that was off-key. God forbid if Adam should ever become suspicious. Lately, there’d been altogether too much suspicion going around.
Ron always appreciated the feeling of power that came from deceiving people, and after a bad start, this project to raise three million bucks was turning out to be one of his more satisfying ventures. He loved the symmetry of it: Ted Horn needed to be paid off, and he was using Ellie’s land and Avery’s brother to rustle up the necessary funds. Playing off one end against the other and both ends against the middle. What you might call a real satisfying game plan.
None of which, of course, had anything to do with development plans for the Flying W. Although one of these years he might even get around to building the resort, if he could ever manage to talk Ellie into giving up the ranching life. Now that he’d written up the business plan, the idea of a wilderness-vacation resort struck him as potentially a hell of a lot more profitable than raising cattle. The location of the Flying W, reasonably close to Jackson Hole, was a huge factor in its favor.
“You’re looking very pleased with yourself,” Adam commented as they exited the bank.
“I’m thinking about the steak I’m going to order,” Ron said. “Medium rare, with horseradish on the side. Hell, what red-blooded American male wouldn’t be looking happy?”
Adam laughed.
Sometimes pulling off a scam was almost too easy, Ron decided, blinking as they emerged into the full glare of the midday sun. Especially when your mark was somebody as honest as Adam Fairfax. He’d discovered over the years that it was the honest folk who were far and away the easiest to deceive. Ellie, for example. And Avery, too, despite her superficial sophistication. Pity he couldn’t tell anyone what a brilliantly smart deal he’d just put in place.
Adam Fairfax might not know it, but he’d just saved his brother-in-law’s cheating ass. Ron was duly grateful.
One
May 2, 2006, Thatch, Stark County, Wyoming
Harold J. Ford, Sheriff of Stark County, wished like hell that he were somewhere else. Almost anywhere other than here would feel pretty good to him right now. Despite the spring sunshine and budding wildflowers, the familiar road leading to the Flying W ranch struck him as slightly less appealing than the frozen tundra of Alaska in midwinter. Unfortunately, there had been no stray cows or broken tractors to slow him down and he’d made the journey out from town in record time. He was now less than half a mile from Ellie Raven’s front porch and he still had no clue what he was going to say to her.
He braked to give a couple of white-tailed prairie dogs time to scurry across the rutted gravel driveway, then drew his official Jeep Cherokee to an unusually quiet and sober stop on the patch of blacktop in front of the Flying W’s machine-storage shed.
A pair of quarter horses were munching grass in the side pasture and he gave them an envious stare. One of the horses stared back, new spring grass dangling from the side of its mouth, the picture of equine contentment. Lucky damn horse. Harry sighed. Some days it really sucked to be the sheriff of Stark County.
Ellie, thank God, must be working in the kitchen out back, as she didn’t come to the door to greet him. Another brief reprieve. Harry threw a frustrated punch at the steering wheel. Unfortunately, bruising his knuckles did nothing to sharpen his brain function. He rubbed his sore hands, mentally rehearsing a couple of possible opening lines before giving up with a disgusted exclamation. Jesus, how was he going to find the words to tell Ellie about her husband? Everything he’d come up with since he got the call from the cops in Miami seemed insulting, patronizing or just plain heartless.
Megan, Ellie’s daughter, came to the front door and whistled for the dogs, waving when she saw him. Harry waved back, finally forcing himself to step out of the car. He gave the dogs an absentminded pat as they bounded past him.
It was a big relief to discover that Megan was at the ranch. Harry had called her apartment in Jackson Hole before he left town, but he’d reached her answering machine. Then he’d called the fancy ski lodge where she worked. They’d told him she wasn’t scheduled to come in again until Wednesday, which wasn’t surprising since this was the off-season: too late for skiing and too early for the summer crowd. Harry had been afraid Megan might have left for a minivacation in Denver or Salt Lake City. Unless you were fascinated by watching cows swat flies, Stark County didn’t provide much in the way of entertainment for a young, single woman. But Megan, thank God, was here and he’d count that as a blessing. At least Ellie would have her daughter right beside her when he delivered the news.
“Hi, Harry. What’s up?” Megan greeted him with a smile, not waiting for an answer to her own question as she butted the front door open with her hip and shooed the dogs inside. She was a dynamo of energy, packed into a curvaceous five-foot-two-inch package. Conversations with Megan tended to be conducted at warp speed. “How is it that every time Mom bakes one of her chocolate-fudge cakes, all the neighbors know to come calling?”
Harry didn’t joke as he usually would. “I’m here on official business, Megan. May I come in?”
“Of course.” Megan shot him a glance that was still more surprised than worried. She gestured him inside. “Official business, huh? Has there been another report about wolves in the area?”
“Plenty up near Yellowstone, but nothing in this county, or I’d have heard about it. We’re hoping the one Jerry Hotchkiss spotted last month was the proverbial lone wolf.” Harry realized he was babbling and clamped his mouth shut. Tucking his uniform hat under his arm, he followed Megan into the living room. Ellie had told him about the new sofa and chairs she’d ordered online—her first Internet purchase—and they had been delivered since the last time he stopped by the ranch. The sofa loomed big and golden in the middle of the room, and the copper-colored armchairs flanked the massive brick fireplace where before there had been empty space. Maybe that was why the familiar room suddenly looked so alien.
“If it’s not wolves, what’s going on?” This time Megan clearly expected an answer. “You look upset, Harry.”
“Yeah, I’m upset. This is going to be very difficult. Fact is, I’ve been given some bad news to pass on.” There was nothing for it but to say what had to be said. “Could you ask your mother to come in here, please?”
“You’re scaring me, Harry.” Megan finally looked alarmed. She drew in a shallow, nervous breath. “Has something happened to my father? Or my brother?”
Her spectacular green eyes darkened with foreboding when he didn’t interrupt to reassure her. “Oh my God. There’s been an accident, hasn’t there? Is it Liam? Or Dad?”
“Something like that.” Before he had time to say more, Ellie pushed open the swinging door that led from the kitchen straight into the living room. Harry found himself thinking that nowadays builders would consider a door like that a lawsuit waiting to happen. Then he realized he couldn’t avoid looking at Ellie for the rest of the afternoon, so he shifted his gaze to meet with hers.
Her green eyes, slightly more hazel than Megan’s, were warm, friendly and unreservedly happy to see him. “Hi, Harry. What’s up? I didn’t expect to see you this week.”
He cleared his throat. “Hi, Ellie.” He didn’t ask how she was doing or make a comment about the weather, and she immediately responded to his somber mood. Her smile switched off with the abruptness of a snuffed candle.
Her hand went to her throat. “Harry, what is it?”
“I’m sorry, Ellie, but I’m not here on a social visit. Truth is, I just finished a long phone call with a detective sergeant in Miami.”
“Miami?” She tilted her head in a frightened question. “That’s where Ron was going on Sunday morning.”
“Yeah, I know.” Now that the moment couldn’t be delayed any longer, Harry spoke crisply, standing straight, draping himself in the mantle of his professional obligations. He needed to handle this like the sheriff of Stark County, not like a friend who’d known Ellie since the eighth grade. And he definitely shouldn’t handle it like a man who had always thought Ellie deserved a better husband than Ron Raven.
“I’m sorry, Ellie, but there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll give it to you straight. The police in Miami called me because they think that Ron has met with an accident. There’s signs of a struggle in his hotel room.” The sheriff breathed deeply. “Fact is, the police believe there’s a chance that he’s dead.”
“No! That’s impossible! Not Dad!” Megan’s protest was harsh with shock, but Ellie said nothing. She stood rock still, except for her forefinger, which tapped in a quick, erratic rhythm against her throat. Harry had expected her to sob uncontrollably and he’d been terrified he’d have to comfort her, which almost guaranteed he’d end up saying all the wrong things. Like, I hope he is dead. You’re better off without the bastard. Or, you could have married me and saved both of us from choosing the wrong person. Her unnaturally restrained reaction struck him as even worse than his imaginings.
Megan wasn’t anywhere near as controlled as her mother. Tears running down her cheeks, she put her arm protectively around Ellie’s shoulders and hugged her close, ignoring her mother’s unyielding stiffness. She rocked her gently back and forth and Ellie didn’t resist, although she didn’t respond, either. But the fact that Megan was comforting her mother at least made it easier for Harry to resist the urge to walk over and hug Ellie at the same time as he yelled insults at Ron. Goddammit, Ellie was a good woman, one of the best, and she didn’t deserve what was coming down the pike.
Unlike her mother, Megan soon recovered her wits enough to ask the obvious question. “What do you mean, the police in Miami think my father is dead? Don’t they know? How can you be confused about whether a person is alive or dead, for God’s sake?”
“The police haven’t found Ron’s body—” Harry corrected himself out of deference to the fragile hope that Ron might still be alive. “I mean, they haven’t found Ron yet, so they can’t be a hundred percent sure what’s happened to him. He’s definitely missing from his hotel. The cops are pretty sure he must be either seriously injured or dead, but they’ve checked all the hospitals in southeastern Florida and he’s not a patient anywhere—”
Ellie spoke for the first time. “Ron was staying at the Doral Beach Hotel. He called me from there on Sunday night.”
Harry’s heart skipped a beat. “What time was that, Ellie?”
“I don’t recall exactly. I was reading when the phone rang and I didn’t pay much attention. Maybe nine o’clock my time? Ron mentioned he was about to go to bed.”
“That would make sense. Nine here is already eleven o’clock in Miami.” Harry reached automatically for his pen, then decided this wasn’t the moment to be scratching down notes.
“Ron was fine when we spoke,” Ellie said. “I’m sure he’s still fine.” Her tone of voice dared Harry to contradict her.
Harry cleared his throat, which seemed to have developed a permanent frog. “Apart from you, Ellie, the Miami police haven’t been able to find anyone who spoke to Ron after eight-thirty eastern time on Sunday night.”
“Why is that such a big deal?” Megan’s petite frame vibrated with the force of her frustration. “If there wasn’t an accident—if there’s no body—why do the police believe Dad might be dead? I thought adults could go missing for weeks without law enforcement taking any interest. Dad’s been out of touch for less than thirty-six hours. Why are the cops making a mystery out of something so trivial?”
There was no way to avoid describing the gruesome crime scene, so Harry did his best to lead them there gently. “Your father checked into the Doral Beach Hotel around seven on Sunday night. I guess he called down to room service and ordered breakfast for six-thirty the next morning—”
“That would be for yesterday morning,” Megan clarified. “Monday, right?”
“Right.” Harry nodded. “Ron also made arrangements with the hotel parking valet to bring up his rental car at seven-fifteen on Monday morning. He told the valet he needed to be at the airport by eight because he was taking the ten-thirty flight to Mexico City and security clearance for international flights eats up so much time these days—”
“Did Dad tell you he was going to Mexico City?” Megan asked her mother, cutting across Harry’s painstaking explanation. “You didn’t mention to me that he was leaving the country.”
Ellie blinked. “What? Oh, yes. Ron told me he had important meetings arranged in Mexico City. He expected them to last four or five days. I have the name of his Mexican hotel written down somewhere….” Her gaze wandered around the room, as if she expected the note about Ron’s hotel to materialize out of the ether.
“Did Dad say when he would be coming home from Mexico?” Megan asked.
Ellie focused her attention on her daughter with visible effort. “No, he didn’t specify an exact time. He said he had to stop off in Chicago to report on his meetings and check in with his business partners, but he hoped to get back here by the end of next week and he’d confirm later. I never expected to hear from him yesterday when he was traveling.”
Megan’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Why would Dad go to Mexico on business? He always claims there are so many opportunities within the States that there’s no need for him to go overseas.”
“This was something new,” Ellie said. “He’s looking into an investment opportunity for an old friend from college. Something like that. I don’t know the details.”
“We never know the details,” Megan muttered. “Dad’s great on sticking to the big picture and leaving everyone to guess about the rest.”
I’ll just bet the bastard left them to guess, Harry thought angrily. As for Ron’s excuse that he’d be stopping off in Chicago to brief his business partners—what a load of bullshit. Talk about the wisdom of hindsight! If only people around here had known earlier what the son of a bitch was really up to.
Ellie ignored her daughter’s comment. She turned her gaze toward Harry, but her eyes were blind, as if she looked inward to some unshared memory. “I expect Ron will be calling any minute now. He probably changed his plans at the last minute. You know how he does that.” Ellie subsided into silence again, her finger still tapping against her throat.
Megan bit her lip, visibly choking back the urge to crush her mother’s hope that the two of them could expect to hear from Ron at any minute. “Did my father actually catch the flight to Mexico?” she asked. “Is that why there’s so much confusion? Maybe Dad has gone missing in Mexico and there’s a communications problem with the police there?”
The poor kid looked so damn hopeful. Harry shifted from one foot to the other, easing the stress. None of them had thought to sit down, as if shock had deprived them of the ability to make ordinary movements. “No, that’s not it, I’m afraid. The police down in Florida are sure Ron never left the country. Screening is intense on international flights these days and the cops are one hundred percent confident your dad hasn’t flown out of the country.”
“Then maybe he was delayed in Miami,” Megan suggested. “Or he might have been called to an urgent meeting somewhere in the States—”
“That seems real unlikely. Let me explain why the cops in Miami are worried.” Harry gulped in much-needed air. “Here’s what happened. The room-service waiter arrived with Ron’s breakfast at six-thirty yesterday morning as requested but nobody answered the door. Eventually, the waiter got one of the maids to open up your dad’s room. They immediately realized something was wrong.”
“Why?” Megan demanded.
“One glance was all it took to see that there had been a struggle,” Harry said, deciding they needed to know the unpleasant truth. “The phone was ripped out of the wall and smashed. The TV was damaged. Several pieces of furniture had been overturned and there was blood in several places. Most of it smears near the bed.”
“A…lot of blood?” Megan asked. The hostility had vanished from her voice, replaced by stark fear.
“Enough blood that everyone was immediately worried for your dad’s safety,” Harry admitted. He chose not to tell either of the women that a quick preliminary test showed the blood had come from at least three different people, suggesting a minimum of two attackers and a brutal fight. Or it was possible that the blood might have come from one attacker and two victims, raising the embarrassing possibility that Ron Raven hadn’t been sleeping alone.
That was an avenue Harry definitely didn’t want to explore with Ron’s wife and daughter. He hurried on with his explanation. “Even before the hotel security staff could initiate a search of the premises, they had word from the parking valet that your father’s rental car had gone missing. The valet was afraid the car had been stolen since they still had possession of the keys, but the car itself was nowhere to be found.”
“Why did they assume the car had been stolen?” Megan asked. “My father could easily have had a second set of keys.”
“But he didn’t,” Harry said flatly. “The Miami police have checked with the rental company. They only gave your father one set of keys. Besides, the car has already been found. It was abandoned in a restaurant parking lot close to the ocean, about ten miles from the hotel. There was a set of keys left in the ignition.” Keys that had been polished to a high gloss, obliterating any possibility of fingerprints. Keys that were so shiny it seemed likely they’d been cut within the past twenty-four hours.
“There were more blood traces in the trunk of the car,” Harry said when neither woman spoke. “The evidence suggests pretty clearly that a body had been lying in there.”
“In the trunk of the car?” Megan asked, her voice very small. “Oh my God.”
Harry gave her hand a quick squeeze. “I’m sorry, Meg. Real sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Except that it clearly wasn’t okay. Struggling to regain control of herself, Megan cast a quick glance toward her mother. Ellie’s face was paler than the first snow in winter, but she met her daughter’s eyes and delivered a ghastly caricature of a smile.
Realizing that her daughter was temporarily silenced, Ellie finally managed to look Harry right in the eyes and issue a challenge. “Just because there was a body in the trunk of Ron’s rental car doesn’t mean the body was Ron’s.”
“That’s true,” Harry said with admirable restraint. He didn’t point out that if the blood wasn’t Ron’s, then he was soon likely to be considered the fugitive suspect in a murder case.
“It could be anyone’s blood in that car,” Ellie persisted. “Miami has a big problem with drugs, doesn’t it? I just read an article the other day about all the cocaine that’s still coming in from South America, despite the millions of dollars our government is spending in an effort to stop the drug runners. It could have been some drug lord who got shoved in the trunk of Ron’s car, for all we know.”
Harry didn’t bother to comment on the improbability of Ron Raven disappearing at the precise moment as drug dealers stuffed somebody else’s dead body into the trunk of his rental car. “The investigators in Miami have sent blood samples to the crime lab for testing,” he said diplomatically. “They’ve ascertained that the blood in the hotel room and in the car trunk is from the same person, so we do know that much. But they plan to run more tests, of course. Unfortunately, the labs are always overworked and understaffed and the forensics will take time, even though the Miami cops have put a rush on it.”
Megan was a smart woman and would normally have wanted to know how the crime lab was going to identify the blood as belonging to her father given that he wasn’t available, alive or dead, to provide a sample for comparison. Since neither of the women picked up on the problem, Harry decided he could wait another few hours before mentioning that he would need a DNA-test swab from Megan, or from her brother, Liam. With that, the lab would eventually be able to determine with near hundred percent certainty whether or not some of the blood in the Miami hotel room belonged to her father.
Harry finally crossed to Ellie’s side and did what he’d been wanting to do from the moment she walked into the room—touch her. He took her hands and rubbed his callused thumbs gently over her knuckles. They were very small hands and he felt a sharp tug in his gut.
He drew in a breath that was embarrassingly shaky. “I’m sorry, Ellie, but it’s not looking good for Ron. I have to be honest with you, the cops in Miami have listed Ron missing, but it sounded to me as if they were searching for a body. We can hope, of course, but the state of Ron’s hotel room suggests that he is either injured or…dead.”
And if the bastard turned up alive, he’d better not come into Stark County or Harry would personally kill him.
Ellie made a small, choked sound of distress and the tears finally began to flow. She fumbled in the pocket of her jeans for a tissue and wiped fiercely, but the tears kept coming back.
Megan, her own eyes brimming with tears, tried once again to comfort her mother. “Come and sit down,” she said. “Mom, your hands are freezing. Do you want me to light the fire?”
“No, that’s not necessary.” Ellie blew determinedly. “I’ll be all right, Megan, but don’t fuss. I can’t…handle people hovering over me right now.”
“Why don’t we leave your mother alone for a couple of minutes,” Harry suggested to Megan, relieved that Ellie had given him such a perfect opening. He’d been wondering how the hell he was going to separate the two women long enough for him to tell Megan the rest of what needed to be said.
Megan shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave Mom—”
“Yes, it is,” Harry insisted. “I expect Ellie would like some tea. It’ll warm her up. Help me make some, Megan. I’m a coffee man myself and I do a lousy job with tea bags.” Harry knew he was babbling again, but he was desperate enough to grab Megan’s hand and almost drag her toward the kitchen.
“Harry, no! Whatever she says, Mom shouldn’t be alone—”
“Come with me,” he said, speaking into Megan’s ear, his voice low but his tone leaving no doubt that he was giving an order, not making a suggestion.
Megan finally realized that there was more bad news to come and her resistance ended. As soon as they were safely in the kitchen, she swung around to confront him.
“What is it?” she asked. “What is it you don’t want Mom to hear?” She swallowed. “Do the cops suspect Dad was with another woman? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
She was on the right lines, but still miles away from the scummy truth. Here goes, Harry thought. Now, dammit, I have to tell her the rest of it.
Two
May 2, 2006, the Windemere, Lake Shore Drive,
Chicago, Illinois
Detective Sergeant Franklin Chomsky had been with the Chicago police for twenty-two years, which gave him enough seniority that he rarely got called on to do the crap stuff anymore. It must have been at least six years since he’d last been dispatched to deliver a notification of death. However, this particular notification was a doozy, and the people involved were sufficiently prominent that he’d been fingered for the job.
“I need somebody who isn’t going to screw up,” the captain had said. “You’re it, Frank, so get going. You need to haul ass if you’re going to get to the Windemere before the TV crews arrive.
“The cops in Miami are sure the guy is dead, right?”
“He’s either dead or badly injured. If he’s injured, he ought to have turned up at a hospital by now, or been spotted by cops bleeding in an alley. There was one hell of a lot of blood in the hotel room. On the whole, the cops in Miami seem to believe he’s dead, but you can allow the wife to hope if you like.”
“I’ll give it to her straight. Lots of blood. Trashed hotel room. Luggage still in the room. No body. Prospects for finding a live Ron Raven not too great.”
“Yeah, sounds about right. And don’t forget it’s always possible that the wife is the person who offed him. God knows, she has a motive. Check out her alibi for Sunday night.”
Frank had changed his street clothes for a clean uniform and hauled ass as instructed. So here he was at the twin towers of the Windemere, one of the most upscale residential buildings in the city. The view of the lake from the higher floors must be spectacular, he thought, parking his squad car neatly between the No Parking signs. A million bucks for a one-bedroom on the ground floor and eight million for the penthouse, he figured. No wonder the captain didn’t want this death notification screwed up.
Frank made his way into the lobby and flashed his badge at the security guard who sat behind the reception desk. The guy wore a braided uniform that looked as if it had been dreamed up by a gay designer for a Princess Diaries knockoff.
“I’m here to see Mrs. Avery Raven,” Frank said, flashing his badge. “Official business. What number is her apartment?”
“Mrs. Raven’s residence is on the twenty-second floor, in our west tower.” The security guard peered down his long nose, not happy to have a lowly cop polluting his lobby, much less demanding admission to the inner sanctum.
“Great. How do I get to the west tower and Mrs. Raven’s residence?”
“The elevator lobby is to your right, over there. I’ll unlock the elevator so you can go up.” The guard looked pained at the need to make this major concession.
Frank checked the guy’s name tag. “Thanks, Steve.” He had dealt with humanity in too many different stripes, shades and indignities to be anything more than mildly irritated by a security guard with a poker up his ass and a bad smell under his nose. “You still didn’t tell me the number of Mrs. Raven’s apartment. I need it.”
“There isn’t a number,” the guard informed him. “Take the elevator marked West Tower to the penthouse floor. It opens straight into the vestibule of Mrs. Raven’s residence.”
Frank had seen apartments with their own private-elevator entrances on TV and in the movies, but he’d never actually visited such a place in person. This was going to be a new experience for him, in more ways than one. He hadn’t heard of Ron Raven or Raven Enterprises until today, but the captain claimed the company was some big-ass deal, generating a ton of tax dollars for the state of Illinois. Judging by the fancy place where the guy had lived, the captain was right. The property-tax dollars gushing out of this building probably paid the salaries of at least a couple of dozen cops.
Frank nodded goodbye to the security guard and crossed the gleaming floor to the gilt-trimmed alcove that housed the elevators. You could decorate a medium-size cathedral with the amount of gold leaf on the walls and ceiling, he thought, impressed against his better judgment. There were no buttons to summon the elevators, only a slot for key cards, but thanks to the security guard, the doors to the west tower elevator glided open within seconds of Frank standing in front of it.
“I’ll let Mrs. Raven know you’re coming up,” Steve said. “Can I tell her what this is about?”
“Nope. Just that it’s official business.” Even if the pompous little prick hadn’t pissed him off, Frank wouldn’t have humiliated Avery Fairfax Raven by broadcasting her personal business to the security guard. Although he wouldn’t be able to protect her privacy for long. Somebody in the Miami Police Department would have talked by now. There hadn’t been a juicy celebrity murder for at least a year, and this was so much better than a run-of-the-mill killing—a perfect story to whet the voracious appetites of the tabloids and cable news. He figured the Ravens had another hour or two at most before the media were all over the story.
The family-values talk-show hosts were going to have a field day, Frank thought cynically. As for the cable news outlets, they ought to be able to milk at least a week’s worth of moral indignation and high ratings out of this. Especially if the cops down in Florida didn’t manage to find the body. Then all the conspiracy theorists would ooze out of the woodwork, suggesting that Ron Raven wasn’t really dead, or that he’d been involved in some shady deal with the government, and the CIA or the FBI had eliminated him when he threatened to talk. Frank wondered why left-wingers always obsessed about conspiracies and right-wingers always obsessed about public morals. You’d think that every once in a while, something would come up that would cause them to switch obsessions, but it never seemed to happen.
Frank stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse. The doors closed with a discreetly muffled thud. Very nice, he thought as the dark mirrors reflected back a flattering image of him in his dress uniform. Even the elevator was designed to make the residents feel good about themselves. He felt a twinge of sympathy for Avery Raven when he realized it was quite likely she would soon find herself with no money and no home. He hoped she turned out to be a real bitch, so that he didn’t need to feel sorry for her.
He stepped out on the twenty-second floor and was greeted by a tall, slender, blond woman with huge blue eyes and boobs that were either a generous reminder from God of what he intended women’s breasts to look like or else a gift from one of the best plastic surgeons in the business.
Frank found himself momentarily speechless. Damn, but she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen outside the pages of a magazine. She was also not a day over thirty, most likely younger. For some reason, he hadn’t considered the fact that Avery Raven might be in her twenties.
He swallowed over the bad taste in his mouth. Fifty-six-year-old Ron Raven had apparently been getting it off with a woman almost three decades his junior, but that didn’t make a jot of difference to what he needed to do.
Concealing his distaste, Frank took off his uniform hat and tucked it under his arm. “Mrs. Raven? I’m Detective Sergeant Franklin Chomsky with the Chicago Police Department. I’m afraid I’m bringing you some bad news about Mr. Raven.”
The young woman’s polite smile vanished. “What is it?” Her hands tightened around the magazine she was holding—Gourmet Today, he noticed automatically. “Has something happened to my father? Has he been in an accident?”
Her father. Of course! This gorgeous woman must be Ron Raven’s daughter, not a snatched-from-the-cradle trophy wife. Jeez, he’d been on the job so long that his opinion of humanity had apparently sunk even further into the sewers than he’d realized.
Frank didn’t answer her questions. “May I come inside, Ms. Raven? That is your name, I assume?”
“Yes, I’m Kate Raven.”
“Is your mother home, Ms. Raven? I need to speak with her, if she is.”
“My mother got home a few minutes ago, as it happens.” She started to gesture him inside, then suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute. Show me your badge, please.”
He showed her his police ID and she read it carefully before standing to one side and letting him in. “I’ll get my mother, if you’ll wait here.”
Frank nodded to acknowledge the instruction to wait. Kate had conducted him into what he guessed must be the formal living room, a vast space defined by a vaulted ceiling, a marble floor and fancy columns that lined a hallway and hinted at more rooms fading off into the recesses of the apartment. A grand piano, a wall filled with books and a dozen pieces of antique furniture still left enough space to permit twenty or thirty guests to circulate around the room with no danger of knocking priceless knickknacks onto the ground. And as he’d guessed, the floor-to-ceiling windows on the east side did look straight out over Lake Michigan. The view was every bit as spectacular as he’d imagined.
How the other half lives, Frank thought, more amused than envious. Personally, he’d swap all these damn spindly legged antiques for a flat-screen TV and a couch where you could put your feet up in comfort to watch the ball game. Not to mention a table where you could stash a can of beer without wondering if you just destroyed five hundred years of polish.
He heard the sounds of two sets of footsteps approaching and he turned away from the view of the lake, focusing his attention on what lay ahead. Kate Raven came back into sight, followed by a woman who was equally tall and attractive, and looked no more than forty. This must be Avery Fairfax Raven. Clearly, since Kate was her daughter, Avery was older than she appeared—late forties at the very least—but she’d aged real well. From what he’d observed on the job, the rich nearly always did.
In her youth, Avery must have been as stunning as her daughter. She was still a beautiful woman, with light brown hair, smooth cheeks, sensuously full lips and a forehead devoid of wrinkles. She either had fabulous genes or generous injections of Botox and lip collagen kept her blooming. She was wearing a cream silk blouse, tailored chocolate-brown slacks and a single strand of pearls—presumably her definition of a casual outfit for an afternoon at home. His wife wouldn’t get that fancy for a funeral, Frank thought wryly.
“Detective?” Avery Raven’s voice was low and musical with a charming hint of a Southern accent. Everything about her appearance and manner breathed aristocrat. She paused a few feet away from him, outwardly composed. If he hadn’t been a cop for so many years, Frank would never have caught on to the fact that she was clasping her hands to prevent them from shaking.
“I’m Avery Raven,” she said. “My daughter indicated you need to speak with me, Mr. Chomsky.”
Frank wasn’t surprised that she had remembered his name. In the movies and on TV, the rich rarely noticed the little people. But in his experience, the classier and more educated a person was, the more likely that they had the ability to file away personal details with a precision that rivaled his computer on one of its good days.
“I’m real sorry to intrude, but I’m afraid I have bad news to report.” No point in beating about the bush.
Avery’s cheeks lost a little color but she exhibited no other sign of alarm. “Kate said you have information about…my husband.”
“It’s about Ronald Howatch Raven,” he agreed. “Mr. Raven’s Illinois driver’s license showed this as his home address.” His Wyoming license, of course, told a different story, but Avery wouldn’t pick up on the subtle distinction. Not unless she knew the truth about Ron Raven, which seemed unlikely. Frank was keeping in mind his captain’s warning that this woman had motives to kill Ron Raven, but if she was the murderer, he’d eat his best uniform hat.
“Yes, this is Ron’s home,” Avery said, betraying a first hint of impatience. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”
“I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am, that the police in Miami believe Mr. Raven may have come to harm. He’s missing from his hotel room, and the indications are that he has met with foul play.”
“Foul play?” It was Kate who asked the question. “Do you mean—he’s dead?”
“It’s a possibility, miss. I’m sorry.”
“Oh my God, no! Dad can’t be dead! Mom, didn’t you speak to him last night?”
“No, not last night.” Avery stared straight ahead as she answered her daughter’s question. “We spoke on Sunday. Ron called as soon as he arrived in Miami because he knew I was meeting friends for dinner.” Avery relapsed into silence. She fixed her gaze on Lake Michigan, her classically faultless profile containing no hint of what she was feeling.
Frank addressed himself to Kate. “According to the police in Miami, your father hasn’t been heard from since eight-thirty on Sunday night.”
Avery said nothing in response to this information and her face remained a blank mask. Kate, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have perfected the upper-class skill of hiding her emotions. Her cheeks paled before heating to a fiery red and her eyes filled with tears.
“My father was supposed to fly into Mexico City yesterday morning and there haven’t been any reports of a plane crash. He’s probably in Mexico—”
“I don’t believe so.” Frank spoke quietly but firmly. It was best not to leave these women with false hopes. “The police in Miami are quite sure Mr. Raven didn’t catch his flight. Whatever happened to your father seems to have happened here in the United States.”
Avery Raven brought her gaze back from the lake. “How can you be so sure he didn’t catch his scheduled flight, Officer?”
“The police in Miami have liaised with Homeland Security, ma’am. Controls are tight these days, and the authorities are confident that Mr. Raven didn’t board a flight out of the Miami airport anytime in the past forty-eight hours.”
Kate started to protest again, so Frank quickly provided them with details of the wrecked hotel room, the search of local hospitals and the ominous trails of blood, indicating that at least three people had lost traces of blood in Ron Raven’s hotel room. He ended up telling them about the rental car that had been found abandoned in a restaurant parking lot close to a busy marina, the Blue Lagoon, in Coral Gables.
“What’s the significance of that?” Kate demanded. She sounded hostile, which Frank understood. She was keeping her fear and grief at bay by refusing to accept the official explanation for her father’s disappearance.
“The police in Miami believe that whoever attacked your father may have disposed of his body in the ocean, miss, which would be a very convenient way to insure that we never find it. There are forty-eight boats docked at the marina, and several of them were taken out either late last night or early this morning. It seems likely that somebody at the marina will have seen something.”
“Only if my father really was taken out to sea,” Kate pointed out. “What if he never went anywhere near the marina? What if the rental car location is just a red herring?”
“Then we’ll find that out, too, eventually. Right now, the investigative team is checking on any preexisting links between your father and the people who dock boats at the marina. They also need to check whether any of the boats were taken out last night without the owner’s permission—”
“If the owner didn’t give permission, then there’s no way to find out who actually did take the boat out to sea and we’ll be no further forward,” Kate interjected.
Frank was impressed with her logic. Apparently she was one of those rare people able to reason through a problem even when she was stressed. “You’d be surprised at what trained investigators can discover once they generate a few initial leads. For example, there are security cameras at the marina and in the parking lot where the rental car was abandoned, and the tapes from those cameras are already in police custody. That should help a lot. Unfortunately, there’s no magic shortcut for any of us. The detectives in Miami have to follow each line of inquiry until it runs out. It’s going to take a while for them to have an accurate picture of what really happened but we’ll get there in the end.”
Or not. No point in mentioning the percentage of homicides and missing persons cases that went unsolved despite the best efforts of law enforcement.
“Perhaps my father’s been kidnapped,” Kate suggested. Anything, it seemed, was preferable to believing that her father was already dead.
“It’s possible, miss. But kidnappers usually make a ransom demand soon after the abduction. I assume you haven’t received any such demand?”
Reluctantly, Kate shook her head. “No. Nobody’s called. We had no idea my father was…missing.”
Avery drew in an audible breath and swallowed a sob, her first overt sign of distress. “Excuse me. I have to leave you for a minute.” She turned and walked blindly in the direction from which she’d appeared earlier.
Kate followed her mother, turning to speak to Frank over her shoulder. “I can’t leave her alone right now, but please don’t go. I have so many questions for you still.”
“I’ll wait, miss.” You don’t know the half of it yet.
“Thank you.” Tears poured down Kate’s cheeks. Fighting a losing battle to stanch her crying, she gestured toward the hallway where her mother had just been. “Oh God, I don’t know how she’s going to bear it if he’s really dead. Dad is her whole life.” She turned abruptly and hurried after her mother.
Just what he hadn’t wanted to hear, Frank thought grimly, pacing the luxurious living room. He suspected that accepting Ron Raven was dead would prove easier for Avery and Kate than hearing the truth about how the bastard had screwed them over. Now that he’d actually met the two women, his sympathies were engaged. He definitely wasn’t looking forward to the next fifteen minutes or so. If only Avery Raven had turned out to be the bitch he’d hoped for. Instead, she seemed like a real classy woman who deserved something better than the piece of crap she’d married. The daughter seemed nice, too. Smart as well as beautiful, which made for a hell of a combination, especially when you considered that the enticing package came wrapped in a comfortable supply of money.
Well, the kid had been rich until now, Frank corrected himself. Perhaps she would be rich again when Ron Raven’s estate finally finished winding its way through the probate courts—except that probating Ron’s estate was likely to take half a lifetime once the opposing sets of lawyers started battling in court. Two things you could say for sure about Ron Raven’s messy death: his family was screwed and disposing of his assets was going to make several members of the legal profession rich.
Frank paced for another three or four minutes. If the two women didn’t put in an appearance soon, he’d have to go get them. The Bulls were up against the Detroit Pistons tonight in a playoff game and he had plans to watch with his son. Besides, cooling his heels in this too-fancy living room was giving him a major case of the creeps. Hopefully Kate would return without her mother. He’d much prefer to deliver the bad news to the daughter and let her pass it on.
Frank caught a break when Kate returned a couple of minutes later, alone. “I wasn’t sure if you would still be here,” she said. Her belligerence had gone, replaced by a control that was visibly fragile.
“I couldn’t leave, miss. I still have important information to pass on to you.”
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. My mother is…We’re both upset, as you can imagine. She’ll be with us in just a little while. Could you give me a phone number so that we can call you later with all the questions we forget? My mother…We’re neither of us thinking too clearly right now.”
“Here’s my card.” Frank had one ready and handed it to her. Kate was likely to have more questions than she could possibly imagine, he reflected wryly.
“Thank you.” Kate tucked the card into the pocket of her jeans. Unlike her mother, she was dressed like a regular person, not as if she expected to share afternoon tea with the First Lady. “Tell me, Detective, exactly how much hope do the police have that my father might still be alive?”
“Not very much,” Frank admitted. “The trouble is, if your father is alive, the state of his hotel room suggests that he’s badly injured. So where is he? Why didn’t he call 911? Or if he’s unconscious, why have none of the hospitals reported a John Doe?”
She nodded, reluctantly acknowledging the logic of his analysis. “On the other hand, if my father’s dead, how did the murderers dispose of his body?”
“As I mentioned, the ocean seems like a real good bet.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I was wondering how they got Dad out of the hotel without anyone seeing them.”
Frank couldn’t see any harm in telling her the truth. “When the Miami police searched the hotel, they found a big steel-framed laundry hamper near one of the service elevators. There’s blood on the canvas bag and the blood matches some of the stains found in your father’s hotel room. For now, the police are assuming the killers used the laundry hamper to wheel your father down to the parking garage.”
“They dumped Dad’s body in a canvas laundry hamper?” Kate’s breath caught and her mouth twisted downward. “That’s like something out of a really bad movie.”
Frank could have pointed out that murderers watched the same movies and TV shows as everyone else and usually demonstrated no originality or creative thinking. Instead, he answered mildly enough. “It might be corny, but it seems to have worked. Nobody saw your father or anyone else leave his room. Unfortunately, guests in a hotel don’t pay much attention to a cleaner pushing a laundry cart.”
“If my father really is dead, the person who killed him must have planned ahead,” Kate said. “He couldn’t just hope to find a laundry cart conveniently left in the right place. And how did he know which car my dad had rented, or where it was parked?”
Frank nodded his agreement. “That’s true. The Miami police are working on the theory that your father’s murder was premeditated.”
Although, in Frank’s opinion, that theory raised almost as many questions as it answered. If the murder had been planned in advance, why had it required so much brute force to kill Ron Raven? Why hadn’t he just been shot with a single bullet to his head while he slept? The police had retrieved blood samples from three different people. Presumably at least one sample belonged to the killer. If that was the case, the killer—already injured?—had risked a lot to move Ron’s body. Why? Would an autopsy have revealed clues to the killer’s identity? Frank could only thank God that he didn’t have to find answers to these questions. The cops down in Miami had his sincere sympathy. This case was a mess—and that was before anyone addressed the possibility that Ron had been the killer, not the victim.
Kate gulped in air. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to kill my father.” She leaned toward him, her hands clenched tightly enough for her knuckles to gleam white in the late-afternoon sun. “Who in the world would have a motive for killing him?”
Frank shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss, we’re still waiting for details of the case to come through from Florida. But your father was a businessman who spent the past thirty years making highly profitable deals. Where there’s a lot of money, there’s always the chance of corruption and double-crosses.”
“Not my father,” Kate protested. “Raven Enterprises is renowned for the integrity of its deals. And as far as the personal side of my father’s life is concerned, he leads a boringly normal life—”
“Not quite.” Frank had to stop her there, although the detective in him was intrigued to see how completely Ron Raven had fooled this branch of his family. He wondered if the folks in Wyoming were equally clueless.
“As I mentioned, there’s more information I need to pass on to you, miss. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a tactful way to deliver the news, and I’ve decided there isn’t one. So I’m going to be blunt. Here goes. We have reason to believe your father was a bigamist.”
“A bigamist?”
“Yes, miss.”
“As in having two wives? My dad?” Kate stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief. She gave an uncertain laugh. “You’re joking, right?”
“I’m afraid not. Your father seems to have had two wives and two sets of children. You and your mother here in Chicago and another wife and two more children living in Thatch—apparently that’s a small ranching town in Stark County, Wyoming.”
“My father has two more children as well as another wife?” Kate’s voice spiraled into an incredulous squeak. “Of course he doesn’t! That’s absolutely crazy.”
“Having two wives at the same time is criminal, miss. It’s not necessarily crazy.”
“My father isn’t a criminal.” The realization that her father might have committed a crime seemed to stun Kate even more than the suggestion he had another wife and two more kids. She shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s impossible. Apart from the craziness of committing bigamy in this day and age, how could Dad have kept a second wife and family secret? He couldn’t possibly have spent time with them without my mother finding out.”
She had a good point, Frank thought ruefully, although he’d seen plenty of situations where seemingly upright citizens got away with living secret lives for years. Ron Raven had apparently been one of those talented deceivers who could lie with the ease of an accomplished con artist. Although, come to think of it, what was a bigamist if not a con artist supreme?
“You would know better than I do how your father managed to keep you and your mother in the dark. Perhaps all those business trips he took weren’t actually for business. I couldn’t say. But he has two other children, that I know for sure. A son and a daughter, according to the sheriff of Stark County.”
Kate made little pushing motions with her hand, as if to hold the astonishing news at bay until she could assimilate it. “What are their names? How old are they? Are they little kids?”
“No, they’re grown-up, but I don’t have any more details. I’m sorry. We’re waiting for the sheriff in Wyoming to fax us documentation. Normally, we’d have held off notifying you until we had more complete information, but in this case we decided it was important to warn your mother before reporters get wind of the story. We didn’t want your mother to turn on the TV and hear the news of Ron Raven’s death that way. Especially the part about him having two wives.”
Kate’s expression darkened from incredulity into horror. “Oh my God. You think there are going to be news reports about this?”
“I’d say it’s a certainty. You’d better be prepared for the media to make a circus out of your family’s private business.”
Kate sent him a pleading look. “There has to be some way to stop journalists from reporting that my father’s a bigamist. That would be slander, wouldn’t it?”
“No, miss. It’s not slanderous to report true facts that emerge in connection with an official investigation of a crime.”
“But you’re assuming my father has another wife and I’m telling you that’s not possible! There’s been a mistake. He adores my mother and she adores him right back. I’d have a hard time believing he’d ever been unfaithful to her, much less that he was married to another woman.”
Frank didn’t attempt to argue with Kate, just reached into his pocket and removed a carefully folded fax. “I don’t have birth records for your father’s other children, but I do have this copy of your father’s marriage certificate. It was sent to us by the sheriff of Stark County. You’ll see the name and the date. Eleanor Mary Horn and Ronald Howatch Raven.”
She took the fax, her hand visibly shaking. He stood in silence, letting the marriage certificate speak for itself.
“Maybe this is a forgery.”
“I doubt it, miss. Like I said, it was the sheriff himself who sent it to us. Besides, there’s other evidence. When the police searched Mr. Raven’s hotel room they discovered two wallets locked in the room safe, and both wallets belonged to your father.”
“The fact that my father owns two wallets doesn’t seem grounds for leaping to the conclusion that he’s a bigamist.”
“The two wallets didn’t cause the police to leap to any conclusions at all, although he did have two completely different sets of family pictures and credit cards in each wallet. Still, the cops in Miami just followed procedure. The driver’s license in each billfold provided a different address, one in Wyoming and the other one here in Chicago. Therefore the detective sergeant in charge of the investigation contacted law enforcement authorities in both locations to ascertain if Mr. Raven had family either in Stark County or in the Chicago area. It was routine police procedure at that point, since there are plenty of law-abiding citizens with two homes. When the request came in to us, we ran the information we were given through our state data systems and reported back to Miami that our records showed that Mr. Raven lived here in downtown Chicago with his wife, Avery Fairfax Raven. Only thing is, Wyoming reported back similar information, except with a different wife.”
“My father owns a ranch in Wyoming.” Kate ignored Frank’s comment about the second wife. “The ranch is an old family property, first bought by my great-great-grandfather, and now run by a professional manager—”
“You’ve been there?”
“Of course I have! I went there two or three times in the summer when I was a kid.”
Frank wondered how Ron Raven had pulled those visits off. There must have been a good bit of juggling and sleight of hand to make sure nobody ever mentioned the other wife and kids. Still, it wasn’t his business to find out how Ron Raven had worked his scam. He just needed to get Kate to accept the truth about her father.
“How about more recently, miss? Have you been to the ranch since you grew up? And how about your mother? Has she visited the ranch recently?”
“We’ve neither of us visited Wyoming in at least ten years.” Kate subsided into a tense silence.
I’ll just bet you haven’t, Frank thought. “Doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange?”
“My mother isn’t the type of person who enjoys spending time on a ranch. She’s not a rural sort.” Kate rushed on, before Frank could make a comment to the effect that her mother’s tastes had nothing to do with the fact that Ron Raven’s daughter had almost never visited a ranch that had been in the family for three generations.
“The point is, I’m not surprised Dad has two separate IDs. Probably it was easier for him to keep his accounts for the ranch separate from the rest of his expenses—”
“Ms. Raven, your father didn’t simply have two separate sets of credit cards and two different driver’s licenses and two different sets of family photos. I’m telling you he had two separate families, as well. And the ranch isn’t run by a professional manager, by the way. It’s run by your father’s wife. His legal wife.”
“His legal wife?” Kate’s voice cracked. “What do you mean?”
Frank grimaced. “Look at the marriage certificate, miss. Your father married Eleanor Horn fifteen years before he married your mother.”
Kate looked again at the marriage certificate and her cheeks lost color. “There must have been a divorce.”
“I doubt it, miss. My precinct captain heard from the sheriff of Stark County just a few minutes before I came to see your mother. It turns out the sheriff knows Ron Raven personally. He’s an old friend of the family, in fact, and he was as shocked to learn about you and your mother as you are to learn about the wife and children in Wyoming. The sheriff personally confirmed that your father has been married to a woman called Eleanor Horn for thirty-six years. The sheriff was at their wedding, which took place at the local community church in Thatch in front of at least a hundred witnesses and there’s never been a divorce. As far as everyone in Wyoming is concerned, Ron Raven lived at the Flying W with his wife Eleanor, and the only reason he traveled to Chicago was on business for Raven Enterprises.”
“If you’re right, that would mean my mother is just my dad’s…mistress.”
Frank was surprised by the old-fashioned word. But in the rarefied world where Kate and her mother lived, perhaps it wasn’t such an outdated concept. “I’m afraid that’s what seems to be the case,” he acknowledged. “Although I’d advise you to check with a lawyer to find out what your legal rights might be. If your mother genuinely believed she was married, she might have a legal claim to some portion of Mr. Raven’s estate. Not that I’m qualified to be making statements like that.”
Kate stared at him in silence. Clearly, until that moment she hadn’t considered the possibility that there might be financial consequences from her father’s bigamy. Then she laughed, although there wasn’t a trace of amusement in the sound. “Well, I guess that makes the perfect icing on the cake, doesn’t it? You’re saying my mother is going to find herself penniless, along with all her other problems.”
“Hopefully Mr. Raven made provisions, miss.”
Kate gave another short laugh. “Right. Why wouldn’t he, when he’s behaved impeccably in every other detail of his relationship with us?” She bit off another angry comment and walked to the window, staring out over the vast expanse of water, although Frank had a suspicion she wasn’t registering much about the magnificent view.
She finally swung around to look at him again. “How am I going to tell my mother? My God, how in the world am I going to tell her?” She asked the question as much of herself as of Frank.
“How are you going to tell me what?” Avery paused at the entrance to the living room, her hand resting on the back of a silk-covered chair. “Is it more bad news? Have they found Frank’s body?”
“No, nothing like that,” Kate said, hurrying over to her mother.
You had to give the girl credit, Frank reflected. She might flinch, but she didn’t shirk. She took Avery’s hands into a protective clasp and he could see the rise and fall of her chest as she drew in a deep breath to steady her voice.
“Mom, there’s absolutely no way to make this sound less awful than it is, so I’ll give you the straight-up, no-frills version. Detective Chomsky claims that in the course of their investigation into Dad’s disappearance, the police have discovered that he’s a bigamist.”
“A…bigamist?” Avery said the word as if she didn’t quite understand its meaning.
“Yes. They claim Dad has another wife and two children who live in Wyoming.”
“Another wife?” Avery pressed her hand against her chest. “Another wife and two children?”
“Yes. But that’s not all. Apparently Dad married this other woman thirty-six years ago and never divorced her. That means…that means she’s his legal wife. Here’s a copy of their marriage certificate. It seems you and Dad were never really married.”
Avery’s hands tightened their grip on the silk chair back. She glanced down at the fax Kate held out to her but didn’t touch it. “I can’t take it in. Are you telling me that Ron already had a wife when he married me? That my parents invited two hundred guests to witness a fake wedding ceremony?”
“I’m afraid it seems that way.”
The blood drained from Avery’s face, leaving her so pale Frank was sure she would faint. But she was tougher than she looked. He could see the effort she exerted not to pass out.
“Of course the police have made a dreadful mistake,” Avery said, echoing her daughter’s earlier statement. “They’ve confused his name with another Ron Raven, or something like that.” Her eyes made a silent plea for Kate to agree.
“Maybe they have. I hope so. We’ll get our lawyers to check it out, but Detective Chomsky seems quite certain of his facts. He says Dad was definitely married to…to the woman in Thatch thirty-six years ago. It’s a small town…well, you know that already…and the sheriff out there is a personal friend of the family. He was at Dad’s wedding to this woman. The sheriff knows the children, too, and he seems certain that there was never any question of a divorce.”
“Thirty-six years?” Avery’s lips were bloodless. “Ron was married to another woman for thirty-six years?”
“It seems that way.”
“How could he?” Avery asked, her voice low but shaking with anger. “How could Ron do this to us? And where was this woman when Ron took us to visit the ranch?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even begin to guess at his motives. Most of all, I can’t wrap my mind around the sheer stupidity of it. This isn’t the Victorian era. Why in the world didn’t he get a divorce before he married you?”
“I have no idea.” Avery was still alarmingly white, but her voice was stronger. “However, it’s fortunate for all of us that he appears to be dead, because otherwise I’d kill him.”
Three
May 4, 2006, Thatch, Stark County, Wyoming
Megan heard the sound of a car braking to a halt alongside the porch and the pounding inside her head instantly grew worse. She peeked through a crack in the living-room blinds, her stomach knotting at the prospect of seeing yet another reporter parked on the driveway.
The car was a red Ford Freestyle, not one of the roaming TV-satellite vans that had been tormenting her for the past day and a half. Unfortunately, the absence of a broadcast antenna wasn’t necessarily good news. She’d discovered that print journalists could be every bit as aggressive as their on-air counterparts.
Tucking her gingham shirt into her jeans, Megan prepared herself to walk outside and repeat for the umpteenth time that she had no comment. The trick, she’d found, was to head off the journalists before they could bang on the door and disturb her mother. The next trick—even more difficult—was to get rid of them without losing her temper and providing them with juicy copy.
A tall man got out of the car, dressed in a gray business suit, his thick, light brown hair blowing in the late-afternoon breeze and his tie hanging loose around his unbuttoned shirt collar. The sun was shining through the window into Megan’s eyes and it took her a second to recognize her brother.
“Liam!” She ran out of the house, flying down the porch steps, the dogs bounding at her heels. “Liam!” She hurled herself into his arms, hugging him as hard as she could, caught off guard by the rush of her own emotions.
Liam wasn’t usually what you’d call a warm-and-fuzzy kind of a guy and she felt his split-second hesitation before he hugged her back. But for all his reserve, his voice was deeply affectionate when he spoke. “Hey, squirt. You look great, especially considering everything that’s going on.”
He patted Bruno and Belle, who thrust their muzzles against his legs and whimpered ecstatically, tails thumping. “How are you holding up, Meggie?”
“Better now that you’re here.” Megan not only loved Liam, she’d worshipped him as her hero, ever since she was three and he was the twelve-year-old big brother patiently leading her around on the pony their father had just bought as her birthday present. Still, she didn’t know him as well as she would have liked. With their nine-year age difference, Liam had been off to college by the time she was starting fourth grade and he’d almost never visited the ranch over the past few years. He lived in Denver and she’d spent time with him there as often as she could, but she always sensed a barrier that allowed her to get just so close and no further. Despite that, the bond between the two of them was important to her. She suspected it was equally important to Liam, for all that he was so emotionally guarded.
“It’s really good to see you.” Her voice, embarrassingly, was thick with emotion. “I didn’t realize how much I needed you until I saw you getting out of the car.”
Liam ruffled her hair, then uncharacteristically dropped a kiss on the top of her head, an easy spot for him to reach since he was a good ten inches taller than her five foot three. “I never expected to live long enough to hear my kid sister admit that she needed me.”
“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Megan acknowledged.
“I can imagine.” Liam’s words sounded more ironic than sympathetic, but he crooked his finger under her chin and tilted her face up, using his thumb to brush away the tears that kept welling up in her eyes despite her best efforts to contain them. Unlike her brother, she was cursed with emotions that bubbled over at the slightest provocation.
He knew how much she despised her own easy tears and, with welcome tact, he bent down and gave the dogs his full attention, allowing her a moment to regain control. “Hey, Bruno. Hey, Belle. Hate to tell you guys this, but you’re getting fat.”
The dogs ignored the insult and licked his hands in slobbery friendship, clearly remembering him fondly, although it was at least two years since they’d last seen him.
“Okay, you’re great dogs, both of you, and now I’d like my hands back.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground. The dogs, who considered Megan’s commands no more than playful suggestions, instantly quieted. They seated themselves with their front paws on top of Liam’s shoes, tongues lolling out of the side of their mouths as they panted their enthusiasm for his return.
Liam turned his attention back to Megan. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, squirt.”
“That’s okay—”
“No, it’s not. As usual, I was unavailable when you needed me.” He took off his tie and shoved it in the pocket of his suit jacket. “I wasn’t ignoring you, Meg.”
“It never occurred to me that you were. When I didn’t hear from you last night, I assumed you weren’t home.”
“You were right. I didn’t get your message until this morning. Then I had to reschedule my court appearances for the next few days before I could leave Denver. I tried to call on my way to the airport, but the ranch phone was constantly busy and your cell number kept switching me to voice mail.”
“I took the ranch phones off the hook because I got tired of telling reporters that I had nothing to say, and cell phones still don’t work out here so I can’t pick up my messages.”
Megan asked no questions about Liam’s absence the previous night, although she could make a pretty good guess as to why he’d been away from home. If her brother had been running true to recent form, he’d spent the night with some gorgeous woman he would almost certainly never see again.
In high school, Liam had been a jock more interested in football and skiing than girls. During the entire seven years he spent in college and law school, he’d dated no more than half a dozen different women. Then he’d moved to Denver, taken the bar exam and joined a partnership of criminal-defense attorneys. He’d gone out with a fellow lawyer for over a year and Megan had expected to hear at any minute that the two of them were engaged. Instead, their relationship abruptly ended. Overnight, Liam seemed to acquire the ambition to have sex with every attractive single woman in the state of Colorado. Megan wished he could find a woman he liked enough to settle down, but since her own relationships seemed to have all the depth and staying power of wet tissues, she wasn’t exactly in a position to criticize.
“I hoped the ranch might be too far off the beaten track for TV crews to waste time driving out here.” Liam leaned into the rental car and took out a soft leather duffel bag. With a skill acquired in childhood, he stuck out his foot and blocked the dogs from jumping into the backseat. “Obviously I underestimated the news appeal of Dad’s disappearance.”
“It’s not just the fact that he’s disappeared. It’s the fact that he was a bigamist. You don’t get too many of those nowadays.” Megan stopped Bruno from chasing a rabbit by scratching the precise spot behind his ears that guaranteed to make him squirm in ecstasy.
Liam pulled a face. “Just how bad have the reporters been?”
She gave a short, hard laugh. “Somewhere north of rabid. A crew from Channel Six drove down from Jackson Hole within a couple of hours of our hearing the news. The producer demanded an exclusive interview. He informed me that we owed him an interview because Channel Six is our local station and the people of Wyoming have a right to know how Mom feels about Dad’s other wife and daughter!”
Liam muttered an expletive beneath his breath. “I trust you told him precisely where he could shove his demands.”
“I sure did, for all the good it did me. The crew from Jackson Hole was only the first, and not even the most pushy. I’ve developed a whole new sympathy for movie stars who punch out paparazzi. Living with these people in your face 24/7 would be enough to drive anyone crazy.”
“Since you’ve been sweeping reporters off the front porch all day long, I guess you won’t be too surprised to hear that when I drove into the ranch a roving camera crew was busy setting up shop at the entrance gates.”
Megan sighed. “Not surprised, just sick to death of having to deal with them. I finally called Harry a couple of hours ago and asked for help. He came right out, thank God, and ordered them to clear off our land. Unfortunately, I guess there’s no way to stop people parking on the public road outside the boundary fences.” She shaded her eyes from the sun and stared down the long driveway. “I don’t see anyone coming.”
“Hopefully we won’t. I told the crew I was the family lawyer and threatened to have them arrested for trespassing if they drove so much as their front wheels onto ranch property. They seemed to listen.”
“Maybe they’ll get bored and go away if there’s no activity.”
“In your dreams.” Liam clearly didn’t think there was a chance in hell that the reporters would leave.
“The neighbors might refuse to talk.” Megan was more wistful than optimistic. “They’re a pretty nice bunch of people and they don’t have much patience for big-city folk.”
“Yeah, but there’s always one neighbor who’s dying to see himself on TV and won’t care what lies he needs to invent as long as his story gets him on camera.”
“You’re probably right. Unfortunately.”
“Count on it. And even if the reporters can’t squeeze any good copy out of our neighbors, you can bet Dad’s other family in Chicago will have plenty of so-called friends who are only too willing to gossip for the cameras.”
Megan shrugged. “Personally, I’d be thrilled if the media gave up on us and fixated on them. At least Mom would be left in peace.”
Liam sent her a sympathetic glance. “They’re victims, too, you know.”
She sighed. “I know. One day I may start to empathize with them, but right now I can’t. There’ve been too many shocking revelations and too little time to absorb them.” Megan was reluctantly fascinated by the idea that she had a half sister, but she wasn’t yet ready to cope with the tumultuous emotions precipitated by her existence.
“Have you seen pictures of them?” The question was torn from her against her better judgment. She’d been loath to switch on the TV today not only for fear of seeing herself and the ranch house plastered all over the airwaves but even more for fear of being inundated with images of her father’s other family.
Liam nodded. “You can’t avoid seeing them. The story of Dad’s disappearance was the lead story on every channel when I walked through the airports in Denver and Jackson Hole.”
Megan grimaced. “Complete with pictures of the ranch, I suppose?”
“’Fraid so. Along with endless shots of the penthouse in downtown Chicago where Dad’s other wife apparently lives. The media are fascinated by the contrast between the two homes.”
Megan drew in a quick breath. “I don’t mind being portrayed as a country bumpkin if that means the journalists get bored with us sooner.”
“That’s good, because they already have you and Mom typecast as exactly that. Apparently Avery Fairfax is big on the social scene in Chicago—she’s chaired several important charity events and the TV stations have photos and file footage of her looking incredibly sophisticated and glamorous. Mom comes off sounding as if she’s Mrs. Homebody from 1950. It makes for great copy and who cares if there’s no truth to the images they’re creating?”
“In a way, the distortions protect Mom’s privacy, so I’m not sure she’ll mind.”
“Maybe not. Although the cable news channels keep mentioning the fact that the penthouse where Avery and Kate are living is currently valued at six point five million dollars, whereas Mom’s house would probably sell for less than fifty thousand. That might irritate her somewhat.”
Megan brushed the information aside. “Thank goodness the journalists don’t dig deep with their research. The truth is, some resort-development company offered Mom more than a million dollars for the Flying W land only a couple of months ago.”
Liam didn’t look impressed. “A million dollars for six thousand acres, as opposed to six point five million dollars for five thousand square feet of Avery’s penthouse. That would pretty much piss me off if I were Mom.”
She couldn’t let herself get caught up in anger over the money, Megan decided. There were so many other things her father had done that were more worthy of her rage.
“What do they look like?” Part of her wanted desperately to know. Another part of her wasn’t ready to give substance to her cloudy mental images of her father’s second wife and her half sister.
“Tall, blond, very photogenic,” Liam said. “Actually, the daughter has facial features that are a lot like Dad’s. The same wide-set eyes and high cheekbones.”
“Your features are a lot like Dad’s, too.”
“I know.” Liam shrugged. “Unfortunately, I can’t change my face short of plastic surgery and I’m not willing to grant Dad that much importance in my life.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant if you and…Kate…both look like him—she must look like you. Especially since she’s tall.” Megan drew in an unsteady breath. “She probably looks more like your real sister than I do.”
“Maybe.” Liam gave her a quick, reassuring grin. “But she’s a stranger despite the biological link, whereas you’re the annoying kid that for some crazy reason I’ve loved since the moment Mom brought you home from the hospital. Looking mighty wrinkled and unappetizing if you must know, although Mom tried to make the best of you with a frilly hat and cute socks.”
She answered his smile. “And that’s your way of reassuring me? If so, I have to tell you, your charm offensive needs work.”
“Hey, I’m your brother. It’s the best I can do. Besides, think about what Kate is going through right now. She doesn’t even have a sister or brother to share her frustrations with. We’re the lucky ones.”
“I promise to feel sorry for her sometime soon. Right now, I can’t. I’m too busy alternating between feeling betrayed and totally, incredibly stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid,” Liam said. “Dad was criminally deceptive. Don’t take his crimes onto your shoulders.”
“I’m working on it.” Megan managed another smile although she could feel it wobble at the edges. “Let’s go inside. You must want to see Mom. She’ll be so glad to know you’re here—”
Liam put out his arm, preventing her from walking into the house. “Talk to me for a minute longer before we go into the house. Somehow it’s easier not to get eaten up with anger out here in the fresh air. How’s Mom holding up?”
Megan considered for a moment. “She broke down when she first heard about Dad’s other wife, but now I’m not sure what she’s feeling. You know how she tends to keep people at arm’s length by occupying herself with some chore or other? That’s what she’s doing right now. She won’t let me get close enough to offer real sympathy. Just scurries off insisting she has some vital new task that has to be attended to. Immediately, of course.”
“She’s always been the queen of busywork,” Liam said, his expression showing his frustration. “It’s very effective as a distancing mechanism and it’s driven me crazy for years.”
“Me, too.” Megan gave a rueful smile. “I wish she’d bend her steel spine a little and confess that she needs a friendly shoulder to cry on. Or at least admit that she’s angry as hell at Dad.”
Liam whistled to call Belle back from chasing a squirrel. “Has she? Admitted that she’s angry at Dad, I mean?”
“Not to me, that’s for sure. To herself? Who knows.”
“Is she in denial? Clinging to the hope that Dad isn’t dead?”
Megan shook her head. “She resisted the idea that he was dead for a couple of hours, but she’s definitely not in denial anymore. Every report that comes in from Miami seems a bit more conclusive. She spent the morning going through papers, sorting out relevant documents to establish that she’s Dad’s legal wife and we’re his legitimate children. Then this afternoon she started working on organizing a prayer service for Dad—”
“Right after she’d spent hours trying to prove she was actually married to him?” Liam’s voice rose incredulously. He shook his head. “Why am I surprised? It’s so typical of Mom to ignore the fact that the son of a bitch totally screwed her over.” His mouth tightened. “What she ought to be doing is celebrating the fact that he’s met the end he deserved.”
Megan flinched at the venom in her brother’s tone. “Nobody deserves to be murdered.”
“I’ve reminded myself of that several times since I got your message, but I can’t pretend I’m in deep mourning—”
“He was a great dad when we were growing up,” Megan protested.
“Yeah, I guess. But anytime I start to feel grief-stricken, I just take another look at the TV images of Avery and Kate. Somehow, that dries all the emotion right up.”
Liam’s rage at their father was palpable, and Megan could certainly understand why. Oddly, she wasn’t angry with their father, at least not yet. She had enjoyed growing up on the ranch and Ron had been a loving parent, despite his frequent absences. Did she have to discard hundreds of happy childhood memories because they were now tainted by the knowledge that her father had been a liar? It was going to take her a while to come to terms with the fact that her idyllic childhood on the ranch had been sustained only at the cost of a series of lies spanning more than twenty-five years.
Megan turned the conversation back to the subject of their mother, which was marginally easier to deal with than her own confused feelings about their father. “Despite the brave facade, I’m pretty sure Mom is devastated. But she’s told me in no uncertain terms that she can handle everything herself, including the arrangements for the prayer service. I suggested that maybe since we don’t have Dad…since we don’t have his body…we could use that as an excuse not to have any sort of memorial service.” She raised her shoulders in a frustrated gesture. “Mom told me to butt out.”
Liam gave a disbelieving shake of his head. “Has Mom considered that it might be a tad awkward to throw a prayer service for a man who hasn’t yet been officially declared dead? Not to mention the even more awkward fact that he was a bigamist when he was alive? What in the world does she expect our neighbors to say when they try to offer their condolences?”
Megan drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t believe she’s allowed herself to think through the practical realities. Part of the problem is that she didn’t sleep last night, so she’s exhausted, and of course you can guess how she reacted when I suggested taking a sleeping pill. The other problem is that she’s walled herself off so completely that she’s getting no input from anyone. She refuses to see anyone except Harry, and although she accepts that Dad is likely dead, she won’t talk about the fact that he seems to have been violently murdered, much less ask at least a few questions as to why. Most especially she won’t talk about the fact that he had another wife and daughter. Last night she cut me off every time I tried to discuss Dad’s bigamy. This morning she flat out told me not to mention those women in Chicago again. Almost as if they were the people to blame instead of Dad.”
“The past few hours have obviously been even rougher for you than I imagined.” Liam dumped his duffel bag onto the swing and put his arm around her. “The truth is, I haven’t been pulling my weight for the past several years. You’ve been left alone to deal with family crises far too often.”
“You’re giving me way too much credit,” Megan said. “I’ve been nowhere near as close to Mom and Dad as you’re assuming. Jackson Hole is only ninety miles from here, but it might as well be on another planet in terms of lifestyle.” She sent him a regretful sideways glance. “I had no more trouble burying myself in my work at the hotel than you did burying yourself in becoming Denver’s most successful divorce lawyer. Somehow, I’ve managed to kid myself for the last five years that if I kept my sights fixed on the goal of being promoted to assistant manager at the hotel, all the problems in my life would be resolved.”
And now that she’d spelled out what she’d been doing, she realized how pathetic her coping mechanism had been. She could have given an ostrich advanced lessons in head-burying, Megan reflected ruefully.
Liam was quiet for a moment. “I guess we’re the poster kids for our dysfunctional family—”
“I guess we are. But until I heard the sheriff say that Dad had another wife and daughter in Chicago, I never even realized we were dysfunctional. How dumb is that?”
“Not dumb necessarily. We were carefully conditioned by our parents—both of them, not just Dad. We were taught not to probe too deeply into the family dynamics and we obeyed our training. You have to keep reminding yourself that Dad’s the person who screwed up, not us.”
“Why do you think he didn’t just divorce Mom?” Megan asked. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s a bigger mystery than who killed him.”
“Who the hell knows? It can’t have been lust, can it? Not for twenty-five years.” Liam’s voice was harsh. He swiveled around on the porch steps and looked out over the land to the distant pasture where a few heifers grazed. “Do you think Mom knew about Dad’s bigamy before he died?” he asked.
“Good heavens, no! Absolutely not!” Megan was shocked by her brother’s question.
“Why are you so sure?” he asked. “The two of us grew up accepting what we were told about Dad traveling a lot on business and getting caught at the airport in snowstorms so he couldn’t make it home for Thanksgiving and so on and so on. But Mom was an adult. How could he have scammed her?”
“Well, he worked hard at it, I guess, and he was a really good liar—”
“Twenty-five years of lying and she never twigged? A quarter of a friggin’ century?”
Megan felt her stomach knot even tighter as she searched for an explanation. “When he was here, he always seemed so happy and committed. There was no reason for us to wonder if he might be leading a double life. Even now, knowing the truth, I have a hard time accepting that he was deceiving us.”
“He was definitely deceiving the two of us. But Mom? She’s a smart woman. How come she never noticed there was something totally screwed up about her marriage? I love Mom, but I can’t buy into that level of blindness.”
Megan threw the question back at him. “If she’d discovered the truth, why would she have stayed?”
“Maybe for some of the same fucked-up reasons Dad didn’t get a divorce.”
“Such as?”
“Follow the money,” Liam said cynically. “If there’s one lesson being a divorce lawyer drums home, it’s that when married couples behave weirdly, there’s always money involved. Money—or power that potentially leads right back to money.”
Megan rejected that idea at once. “Mom couldn’t care less about that. Good grief, Liam, I’ve never met anyone less motivated by money than Mom!”
“I agree that she doesn’t care about cash in the bank or the stock market, but what about the ranch? More than a third of the land that’s now part of the Flying W came from her family, remember. That’s over two thousand acres of her direct family heritage at stake.”
“True, but any divorce settlement would take that into account.”
Liam conceded her point. “Yes, Dad would have had a hard time selling the ranch without her consent, however expert his lawyer was in finding loopholes in marital property law. But the ranch has no practical value without money to run it.”
“Why do you say that?” Megan shot him a puzzled glance. “Flying W cattle are in huge demand.”
“Even so, the cattle operation barely breaks even,” Liam said flatly.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. And with the threat of mad cow disease cutting into semen exports, the ranch is soaking up money. With a halfway competent divorce lawyer, Dad could have divvied up their assets so that Mom was left without a penny to run the cattle operation. Maybe she kept quiet and pretended not to know anything about his other wife so that she wouldn’t be forced to watch the ranch fall back into wilderness.”
Her mother loved the Flying W enough that she might have stayed in an unhappy marriage to protect the land, Megan conceded silently. But in a marriage where she knew her husband was married to another woman?
She shook her head, vehement in the strength of her denial. “Mom is way too honest to live in that sort of a sham marriage. She’d never condone bigamy, not for a moment, let alone for almost thirty years. I’m sure Mom had no clue. When Harry and I told her about Dad’s wife in Chicago, she was devastated. It took her a good fifteen minutes to get any of her protective barriers back in place even though the sheriff was with us and she clearly hated breaking down in front of him. She didn’t know Dad had another wife and daughter. I’d stake my life on it.”
Liam still looked doubtful. “I would never have believed a man could pull off that sort of deception without complicity from one wife or the other,” he said.
Megan thought for a moment. “Maybe the wife and daughter in Chicago knew.”
“Maybe. Although the same question applies. Why would they tolerate it?”
“I can’t imagine. But then, we don’t know the first thing about them, so we can’t possibly guess at their motives.”
“The bottom line is that like any other scam artist, Dad exploited the fact that we trusted him.” The bitterness was back in Liam’s voice. “I dare say he exploited the same thing with his other family.”
Megan looked at her brother. “Was that a random question you asked just now, or is there some specific reason why you thought Mom might have known about Dad’s bigamy?”
Liam remained silent a moment longer. “I knew,” he said at last. “I figured she must have known, too.”
“You knew?” Megan gripped the porch railing to steady herself. “You knew that Dad was a bigamist?” Her mouth was so dry that the words seemed to stick to her tongue. She felt betrayed all over again, first by her father and now by her brother. The betrayals were so huge that they annihilated all that was familiar, leaving her without signposts to guide her through the landscape of what had once been her relationship with her family.
“Yeah.” Liam gave a terse nod. “I’ve known for a few years.”
Megan’s world shattered and re-formed in a different pattern. So many things that had been difficult to understand about her brother suddenly became clear. His decision to leave the practice of criminal law and open his own firm specializing in divorce took on a whole new meaning. Talk about an in-your-face insult hurled at their father! And no wonder Liam had barely visited the ranch over the past few years. Obviously, he had been doing his best to avoid contact with his parents.
“How did you find out about Dad’s other family?” Megan demanded. “Have you seen them? Met them?”
“No, I’ve never met them.”
“Talk to me,” she said tersely. “Don’t retreat into one of your usual damn silences. Why did you keep quiet about something so incredibly important?”
“I was trying to protect Mom. And you.”
“Protect me?” Megan’s emotions had been in turmoil for forty-eight hours and Liam’s crazy excuse was enough to send anger boiling to the surface. “How the hell does it protect me if I’m allowed to go on believing a massive lie?”
She could see her brother retreat even further into himself as he always did when the emotional atmosphere heated up, but he did at least answer her. “You’re talking with the advantage of hindsight. I was making decisions and trying to guess the consequences for everyone—”
“In another month, I’ll be twenty-seven years old! For heaven’s sake, Liam, I’m not a kid sister you’re permanently obliged to protect. I’m an adult.”
“Sometimes habits die hard—”
“That’s a pretty pathetic excuse.”
“Cutting you out of the loop was an insulting decision, I see that now.” Liam gave an apologetic shrug. “I seem to have made a bunch of bad decisions over the past few years. But I was trying to do what seemed right. At least believe that….”
“You should have told me,” she repeated and turned away, still struggling with her anger.
He touched her on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Meg.”
She moved away from him. “You’ve been lying to me for years, at least by omission. That’s hard to forgive.”
“Don’t let this force a wedge between the two of us.” Liam’s voice had lost all trace of its usual ironic edge. “Dammit, that’s exactly what I was trying to avoid by remaining silent.”
“It’s bewildering—make that infuriating—to discover that two of the people I trusted most in the world were lying to me.” Megan shoved impatiently at her hair, feeling as if her entire body was misaligned and out of sorts. “I hate that you kept me in the dark.”
“I didn’t want to put you in a position where you would have been forced to lie to Mom. It was bad enough for me, and I only saw her a couple of times a year.”
“I wouldn’t have lied to Mom. I’d have told her the truth.”
“Yes, you probably would have done,” Liam said. “And that’s a big part of why I didn’t confide in you.”
“Why were you so determined to shield Mom from the truth? I don’t understand why you covered for Dad. Or why you felt Mom was in such great need of protection.”
“You think of Mom as a pillar of strength….”
“Yes, of course. Because she is.”
“She’s a pillar of strength here at the ranch, surrounded by everything she loves. Without the ranch, she’d wither away.”
Megan gave an impatient shake of her head. “You underestimate her. Just as you underestimated me.”
“Maybe. I wasn’t willing to put Mom’s happiness to the test and Dad exploited that vulnerability. Basically, he blackmailed me into keeping quiet. He warned me not to make him choose between his wives, because he swore that he’d choose Avery.”
Each new revelation seemed to bring a little more pain than the last. If Avery had been Ron Raven’s favorite wife, had Kate been his favorite daughter?
Megan pushed away the insidious jealousy. “How did you find out about his other family, anyway?”
“By chance. And even then, I practically had to be beaten over the head with the evidence before I put the pieces together.” Liam was visibly relieved to change the subject, even if only slightly. “Six years ago, I went to Atlanta for a business meeting. The night before I was due to fly home I happened to run into Dad at a political fund-raiser for one of the local senators—”
“In Atlanta?”
Liam nodded. “Avery’s family is from Georgia, and she was with him at the party. It was obvious that she and Dad knew each other well. It was equally obvious that he was desperate to shepherd her away before I could speak to her. She’s a beautiful woman, a few years younger than Mom, and I assumed they were having an affair.”
“Why didn’t you confront them before Dad could hustle her away?” Megan demanded.
“I was with the senior partner of the law firm where I worked in those days, and we were being hosted by one of our most important clients. I didn’t want to expose my own father in front of a client, so Dad managed to make his escape.”
“Did you confront him later?”
Liam nodded. “But only after some internal debate. Naturally, the truth never crossed my mind and I wasn’t sure if it was my place to shove my nose into my parents’ marriage by accusing Dad of having an affair. In the end, I made a special trip to Chicago, just to talk to him. He assured me the ‘affair’ was already over. That being caught by me at the fund-raiser had made him realize the risks he was running and how much he cherished his relationship with Mom. And so on and so on, through the laundry list of lies.”
“And you believed him?”
“At the time.” Liam’s smile was bitter. “You won’t be surprised to hear that Dad lied very convincingly. It was another two years before I found out that Avery was much more than a passing affair—that our father had actually gone through a formal marriage ceremony with her and that they had a daughter a few months younger than you.”
“How did you find out those important details?” Megan heard the shake in her own voice. She wasn’t sure if the tremor was caused by anger or something more complicated and even more painful.
“Again, by accident. I was sent unexpectedly to Chicago by my law firm. They needed me to take depositions for a criminal case we were working on. The witness I was sent to interview had offices in Oakbrook—“
“In Oakbrook?” Megan repeated. “That’s where the offices of Dad’s company are located.”
Liam gave a tight, angry smile. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. In fact, I was working only six or seven blocks away from where I believed R & R Investments was headquartered. So when I finished taking the depositions, I decided to drop in on Dad and invite him to dinner. We’d been estranged since the incident in Atlanta, and I figured it was time to get our relationship back on track.”
“I remember the offices,” Megan said. “Dad took us there the summer you graduated from high school. I was in fourth grade and I spent at least an hour making Xerox pictures of my hands on the copying machine. Then Mom and I went back for another visit years later when I was about to start college. Dad suggested that we might like to come to Chicago and do some shopping. He said it would be a good opportunity to meet his office staff and his partners.”
Liam laughed, the sound harsh. “You have to give the guy credit. He sure had outsized balls. And you met his staff, of course? And his partners?” Her brother’s questions were heavy with sarcasm.
“Well, yes, we did—”
“No, you didn’t,” Liam said, his fists clenching. “You met a bunch of actors. Both times. Both visits.”
“What?”
“I guarantee that every so-called employee you were introduced to during that visit with Mom was an out-of-work actor, hired for the day. Just like they were the time you went there with me. R & R Investment Partnership isn’t even the real name of Dad’s corporation.”
“What’s his company called?” Her dry, cracked lips had to be forced to shape the words.
“The company is called Raven Enterprises, and the head office isn’t in Oakbrook. It’s miles away, northwest of Chicago, in Schaumburg, near O’Hare airport.”
Megan shook her head, which did nothing to clear the fog of befuddlement. “Dad actually set up a fake company and a fake set of offices just to deceive us?” She sat down on the porch bench because her legs suddenly wouldn’t hold her up.
“He didn’t keep the fake company active on a permanent basis. Just long enough to convince us that we’d visited the headquarters of his company—the mythical R & R Investments.”
Megan rubbed her forehead although she’d given up hope of banishing her headache anytime soon. “But even if he hired actors to play his employees, how did he have access to office space?”
“That was easy. He owns the building in Oakbrook and leases it out. He invited us there when he was between tenants. He even had an automated phone service set up so that if Mom or any of us called there, we’d be greeted by a message supposedly from R & R Investments.”
A shiver crawled down Megan’s spine. She’d learned a lot that she didn’t like about her father over the past couple of days, most of it pretty major stuff. It was odd that these relatively trivial deceptions bothered her so much. “It makes his dealings with us seem so calculated. So petty and…cruel.”
Liam’s eyes glittered, dark with anger. “The extent of his lying takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? It was quite a shock for me when I arrived unannounced at the Oakbrook offices and discovered the employees of an import-export firm working at the address I thought was the headquarters of R & R Investments.”
“What in the world did you do? Did you assume there was some sort of honest mistake?”
“No. Not for an instant.” Liam shrugged. “I guess at some level I’d been suspicious of Dad for a while—”
“You suspected he was a bigamist?” Megan heard the incredulity in her voice.
“Not that, but I was pretty sure he was lying to us about something important. To be honest, I’d begun to worry that maybe his business wasn’t a legitimate legal enterprise.”
Megan drew in a quick, nervous breath. “Is it?”
“As far as I know, yes, and I’ve researched the whole setup with a fair degree of intensity. We don’t have to worry that Raven Enterprises is a front for organized crime. Which, under the circumstances, has to be considered a major plus.”
It was a measure of how far she’d traveled in her view of her father that Megan wasn’t entirely reassured. “I hope you’re right.”
“I have a lot of experience researching criminal business enterprises. I was a criminal lawyer, remember? Last time I ran a check, I can pretty much promise you that Dad’s business partnership was clean. He’s a shrewd, successful businessman.” Liam corrected himself. “He was a shrewd, successful businessman.”
Megan seized the hope that none of her father’s business dealings had taken place on the shady side of the law and clung to it. Given that Ron Raven had been murdered, it struck her as depressingly possible that he’d been involved in at least a few ventures that wouldn’t have passed muster with the Better Business Bureau. A criminal deal gone wrong struck her as one of the more likely causes for murder.
She drew in a shaky breath, reverting to their previous topic of conversation. “I don’t quite see how you made the leap from realizing that Dad had deceived us about his office address to the fact that he was a bigamist.”
“Obviously, from the moment I walked into the Oakbrook offices it became clear that Dad had been doing some heavy-duty lying. I decided not to approach him and ask for an explanation. I figured that was likely to trigger nothing but more lies. Instead I initiated a full-scale investigation, tackling the problem exactly as if he were a suspect in a criminal case.”
Megan grimaced. “Which he was, more or less.”
Liam nodded. “Yep, he was. Once I got serious, it was only a matter of hours before Dad’s entire web of deception started to unravel. For example, it took me two minutes with a Chicago phone book to discover that there was no company called R & R Investments listed, but that a company called Raven Enterprises was headquartered in Schaumburg. A phone call to Raven Enterprises was all it took to discover that Ronald Howatch Raven was the senior partner. Once I knew that, the rest of his lies began to disintegrate. Amazingly fast, in fact. Dad pulled off his twenty-five-year scam basically because none of us questioned him. A couple of inquires, though, and it was all over.”
“I guess he could never risk having us visit his real office because of his other wife and daughter. They probably dropped in all the time, given that they live right in Chicago.”
Liam nodded. “I’m sure that was one reason he needed to keep us away. The other is that Dad’s business partner, Paul Fairfax, is Avery’s older brother.”
“Oh, no. Oh my God.” Megan couldn’t say anything more. She gripped Belle’s collar so tightly that the dog yelped in protest. Her world, which had seemed totally ordinary only a couple of days earlier, now seemed like a horror movie made by a director who specialized in creating bizarre alternate realities.
“Yeah, that about sums up how I felt when I found out. Speechless, alternating with disbelieving curses. Of course, Dad was deceiving his business partner as well as you and me and Mom. He wanted to keep Paul Fairfax away from us as much as the other way around.”
Megan stared at the distant mountain range. For once, the grandeur of the Tetons provided no solace. “I’m starting to get so angry with him that it scares me.”
Liam turned toward the mountains, following her gaze. His expression became even more bleak. “Now you understand how I’ve felt for the past few years.”
Megan put her arms around Belle, controlling a sudden shiver. “Probably ninety percent of everything Dad ever told us was at least partly untrue.”
“And the other ten percent was a lie by implication.”
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me what you’d found out. And Mom.” Megan drew in a shaky breath. “Good grief, Liam! How could you keep this from her? She absolutely deserved to be told.”
“When I finally learned the whole truth—especially that Dad had another daughter—I tried to force him to face up to his responsibilities and come clean to both his families.” Liam lifted his shoulders, the gesture more despairing than dismissive. “He was very good at applying emotional blackmail. Like I told you, he claimed that if he had to choose between Mom and his other wife, he’d choose Avery. And that he’d not only leave Mom penniless, he’d make sure that she couldn’t keep the ranch.”
The spitefulness of that threat was another blow to the loving image of her father that Megan had been clinging to despite the revelations of the past forty-eight hours. “Well, at least that’s one thing that’s worked out to Mom’s advantage.” She finally recognized the same note of bitterness in her voice that she’d heard earlier in her brother’s. “Since Dad is dead, presumably Mom is going to inherit the ranch.”
“I sure as hell hope so. Who knows how Dad may have written his will.” Liam swung away, his body rigid with tension. “Goddammit, I’m a lawyer and I haven’t the faintest idea what my mother’s financial and legal situation is right now. For all I know, Dad left every penny he owns to Avery Fairfax.”
“If he did, surely Mom has grounds to fight.”
“Absolutely. But we could be in and out of court for years, and in the meantime, the ranch would go belly up. If Dad’s left all his cash to Avery, it’s going to be a real fight to keep sufficient operating funds for the ranch to survive.”
Megan bit back the urge to scream imprecations at her dead father. She was so emotionally drained that she felt exhausted. “What a hideous mess. I’m so furious with Dad that I’m numb.”
“Trust me, however angry you are with him, you’re nowhere near as angry as I am with myself.”
“A little while ago you told me not to blame myself for Dad’s sins. Now I guess I’m saying the same thing to you. The truth is, he put you in an impossible situation and then manipulated your feelings for Mom in order to protect himself. Put the blame where it belongs, Liam. With Dad. Right slap bang with him.”
Four
Sunday, May 7, 2006, Thatch, Wyoming
A prayer service for Ronald Howatch Raven’s safe return was held immediately following regular Sunday services at the hundred-year-old Community Church located at the far end of Thatch’s Main Street. Most people were pretty sure that Ron was dead, but the failure to find his body meant that neighbors felt obligated to at least pretend they wished for his speedy and safe return.
Meanwhile, the story of his disappearance kept perking along in the national press. Media outlets were currently salivating over the information that bloodstains from three different people, one most likely female, had been identified as present at the crime scene. Almost equally as intriguing, a boat from the Blue Lagoon Marina had been put to sea without the permission of its owner and had been returned after a trip of some forty-five miles. A cop in Miami, a fan of Fox News, had let drop to his favorite talk-show host the fascinating tidbit that a security camera from the marina showed a masked person, sex indeterminate, using a furniture-moving dolly to transport first one and then another long, black-wrapped object onto the boat. The cop commented that the objects looked mighty like body bags to him and to everyone else who’d seen the video. In light of these images, the Miami police were working on the theory that Ron Raven’s dead body had been disposed of at sea, possibly along with that of a female companion, identity as yet unknown.
The fact that it now seemed likely that there had been a woman with Ron Raven at the time he died provided fodder for a multitude of cable news programs. The delicious possibility that Ron had been husband to three women was chewed over by talk-show hosts and social-commentary pundits with relentless bad taste. The prize for idiocy—hotly contested—went to a congressman who opined that Ron Raven’s bigamy at least showed respect for the institution of marriage, in a society where too many people thought it was okay to cohabit without the formality of getting married.
There were already a half-dozen blogs, much visited, devoted to the juicy details of Ron’s bigamous life and the puzzle of his death. Theories about the murder abounded, and only the fact that both Avery and Ellie had watertight alibis prevented them becoming favorite suspects. The tabloids, of course, assumed that they were guilty anyway, despite the alibis.
MSNBC and CNN, annoyed at being scooped by Fox, scrambled to generate their own catch-up revelations. Meanwhile, they kept the pot stirring by interviewing a variety of clueless witnesses, most of whom seemed to be connected to Ron’s disappearance more by virtue of their vivid imaginations than because of any concrete information in their possession.
In view of the annoying reluctance of either widow to speak to reporters, high ratings had to be sustained somehow, and Ellie Raven’s decision to hold a prayer service for her husband was counted as a blessing by news outlets everywhere. No less than thirty-five camera crews were on hand to record Stark County’s tribute to Ron Raven and lots had to be drawn to determine who would be privileged to film the service from the two available spots in the upstairs organ loft.
The Reverend Dwight D. Gruber, pastor of Thatch Community Church for over twenty years, rose magnificently to the occasion. The choir, his personal pride and joy, performed “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace” with poignant beauty. Better yet, he achieved the remarkable feat of urging everyone to pray for Ron’s safe return without ever quite mentioning the disconcerting truth that all the evidence suggested the man was already dead and feeding the sharks somewhere off the coast of Miami.
Even this omission paled into insignificance in comparison to the astounding fact that in twenty minutes devoted to recounting the highlights of Ron’s life, Pastor Gruber made not a single reference to the truth that the guy had been a bigamist. A bigamist, moreover, who had disappeared from a hotel room occupied not only by himself, but also by an unknown female companion. Who said that small-town pastors had few oratorical skills?
In addition to the camera crews, the church was bursting at the seams with Ellie’s friends and neighbors. These folk appreciated their pastor’s efforts to put the best possible gloss on the sordid reality of Ron Raven’s life. Ellie was deeply respected in the community, and the residents of Stark County had spent the past week doing their best to remain aloof and dignified despite their collective moment of glory in the glow of the national-media spotlight.
The official consensus among Stark County residents was relief that The Other Wife and her daughter hadn’t attempted to crash the prayer service. Still, Billy Carstairs summed up the feelings of many attendees when he admitted to his wife that he couldn’t believe Ron had been dippin’ his wick into two honeypots—could even be three—with nobody in Thatch any the wiser. He allowed as how it sure would have been interesting to catch a close-up view of the rival family. Sorry as he was for Ellie and her kids, Billy would really have liked to see what Ron Raven’s two wives had to say to each other.
But with no rival wife on the scene, and reporters banned from the church meeting room after the service, Ellie’s neighbors resigned themselves to being on their best behavior. The etiquette for a prayer vigil loomed over by the specter of an absent and bigamous wife, not to mention a possible dead mistress, had to be considered a challenge, even for people who’d known each other for a long time and liked each other pretty well.
For the most part, the men considered their duty had been done when they turned up and listened to Pastor Gruber’s sermon without a single one of them bursting into guffaws of laughter. The women, however, felt obligated to do something more than merely keep straight faces while listening to the pastor’s farcical eulogy. They’d risen to the occasion by preparing a quantity of casseroles, cookies and Jell-O salads that ensured the caloric requirements of everyone in Stark County could be met for several days simply by grazing the laden buffet tables in the church meeting room.
Unfortunately, the bountiful array of food didn’t quite obviate the need to find something tactful to say to Ellie and her kids, but the residents of Stark County were a resilient lot, accustomed to dealing with drought, blizzards, insect plagues and the intrusive hand of the federal government. Determined to do what was right, they formed themselves into a tidy line and slowly wound their way past Ellie, Liam and Megan, mumbling their somewhat sincere wishes for Ron’s safe return—they figured it was just possible she was going to miss the bastard—and their much more sincere offerings of any sort of help they might be able to provide.
Ellie looked ravaged, showing every one of her fifty-five years, but she accepted the good wishes and thanked people for their offers of help with quiet dignity. Liam, tall and even better looking than his dead father, stood at his mother’s side, his city-slicker suit and fancy striped silk tie reminding everyone that he had at least three strikes against him. First, he’d moved away and taken up residence in a big city. Second, he was a lawyer, and third, he hadn’t come back to Thatch more than a handful of times in the past five years. However, his excellent memory for names and faces reassured people that he hadn’t totally forgotten his roots. Despite the fact that he looked a lot like his dad, the neighbors were willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt and accept that in character and morals he took after his mother.
After half an hour of listening to her neighbors’ well-intentioned lies, Megan realized that she wasn’t coping with the multiple hypocrisies of the occasion anywhere near as efficiently as her brother. She wished she could imitate Liam’s expression of bland and friendly courtesy, but the task was beyond her. The urge to scream became increasingly powerful with each hand she shook. Grateful as she was for the support of their neighbors, she could imagine all too vividly the pity lurking behind the polite, Sunday-go-to-church faces. She hated to be pitied—but she hated even more that she felt pitiable. As each excruciating minute slithered by, it took an increasing amount of willpower not to run from the room.
She finally gave up. “I have to get a drink,” she murmured to Liam. “Would you like some punch? A cup of coffee?”
He shook his head, leaning down to speak softly in her ear. “You okay?”
“More or less. I need some breathing room. Can you stay here with Mom for a few minutes?”
“Not a problem. Take however much time you need.”
Megan helped herself to the alarmingly bright red punch, dry-mouthed enough to sip gratefully. Pastor Gruber was bearing down on her, accompanied by his wife, and she avoided them by dodging behind a mobile book cart. She was thankful for the lies of omission in the minister’s sermon, but she couldn’t take any more pretense. She’d zoomed past her cutoff level for bullshit concerning Ron Raven at least twenty-four hours ago.
There was no escaping outside, she realized. The camera crews were lined up, waiting to pounce, so she’d just have to suck it up and be polite to her neighbors for another hour. Please God, it wouldn’t be more than another hour before this preposterous prayer service was over. What would any of them do if her father actually returned? she wondered. Turn him over to the cops?
She spotted Cody Holmann, the lawyer her parents had used for years, walking purposefully toward her. Cody was probably as restful a person to talk to as anyone, she decided. He was a slow-moving but kindly man in his mid-sixties, who was still known in some local circles as Young Cody in order to distinguish him from his ninety-two-year-old father, Cody Holmann Senior.
There was no risk that he would want to discuss legal business with her, Megan decided. Liam had already met with Cody on Friday afternoon and the news from their meeting had been mostly positive. Ellie’s financial and legal situation was complicated by the fact that Ron Raven hadn’t yet been officially declared dead. However, Cody was confident he would be able to find a judge willing to authorize payments from Ron’s accounts to cover living expenses for Ellie and salaries for the two full-time ranch employees. In addition, Cody had been able to confirm that the copy of their father’s will in Ellie’s possession was an exact duplicate of the document he had drawn up for Ron three years earlier.
Amazingly, after all the startling revelations following their father’s death, it seemed that the disposition of Ron’s estate was going to generate few surprises. The provisions of their father’s will turned out to be more or less what Megan and Liam would have expected. Most importantly, the ranch had been left to their mother, along with an annual income that would be sufficient to subsidize the cattle operation in bad years.
Despite the basically good news, the clarity of the will didn’t remove all their worries. The family in Chicago wasn’t mentioned and Cody warned that Avery Fairfax and her daughter would most likely protest their exclusion. Liam agreed that a lawsuit was almost inevitable. In their professional opinions, even if the courts dismissed Avery’s claims, they were likely to view Kate’s situation sympathetically. She had been raised to believe she was Ron Raven’s legitimate daughter, as well as his only child, and she was an innocent victim of her father’s bigamy. Cody believed that a substantial award to Kate was entirely possible. Still, Liam and Cody were both confident that Ellie would eventually be left in sole possession of the ranch, and that the courts would ensure she had sufficient income to continue living comfortably while any legal challenges wound their way through the justice system.
Megan had been relieved to learn that, at least in terms of making financial provision, her father had behaved decently toward their mother. Ron’s total silence regarding his Chicago family ought to have been welcome, but Megan had found herself fighting the impulse to feel sorry for them. She wasn’t quite willing to admit that Ron’s other wife and daughter deserved better treatment than they’d received, but she’d worked out in her own mind that if the fancy Chicago penthouse where they lived turned out to be titled in Avery’s name, she wouldn’t be altogether unhappy.
“Megan, how are you doing?” Cody reached up to touch a couple of fingers to the brim of his Stetson, then remembered he wasn’t wearing what amounted to the uniform headgear for men in Stark County. He let his hand drop awkwardly to his side. “We don’t get all the neighbors together like this nearly often enough. I’m sorry today’s gathering was for such a sad occasion.”
“Yes. The neighbors have been great. We’re grateful for their kindness.” Megan searched for something more to say and came up flat empty.
Cody abandoned his fleeting attempt to pretend the circumstances were normal. “Discovering the truth about your dad has been a hell of a shock to me,” he said. “Can’t begin to imagine how much of a shock it’s been for you and your family.”
Megan wasn’t sure they had discovered the truth about her father. She had a depressing suspicion they’d merely lifted off the outer layer on a Chinese box of multiple deceptions.
“We’re coping with a lot of unanswered questions, that’s for sure,” she said. “There are dozens of decisions Mom needs to make, but it isn’t easy when we seem to be missing so much vital information.”
“Wish I didn’t have to add to your troubles.” The lawyer scratched his head, visibly uncomfortable. “I guess there’s no point in beating around the bush, Megan. I’ve got another problem to add to your list.”
“The Chicago family is fighting the will already?” She drew in a quick, shallow breath. “They couldn’t even wait until the weekend was over?”
Cody grimaced. “Worse than that. Fact is, I received a special-delivery package yesterday afternoon. A set of documents that came from a firm of fancy lawyers in Chicago. I thought I recognized the name of the firm, but I looked them up just to be sure. Fenwick Jaeger. They’re a sixty-year-old law firm, entirely reputable. Twenty active partners, another forty associates and God knows how many paralegals. The covering letter came from somebody called Walter Daniels, senior partner. I decided not to trouble your mother with the details of his communication, at least until after today’s services, but I’d like to give you a heads-up.”
Megan’s stomach lurched in anticipation of disaster. “What were the documents Mr. Daniels sent you?”
“A will.” Cody cleared his throat. “Your father’s will.”
“But we already have his will.” Megan’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.
“This is another will, with completely different provisions from the one I drew up for Ron. Mr. Daniels claims it’s the last will and testament written by your dad. By Ron Raven,” Cody added, as if she might have lost track of who her father actually was.
She and Liam had obviously rejoiced way too early about her mother’s financial security, Megan thought bleakly. From the way Cody was shuffling his feet, he clearly didn’t like the provisions of this new will.
“Do the documents look authentic to you?” she asked.
“As far as I can tell, they’re the real thing. Format’s impeccable and it looks like Ron’s signature to me. Of course, we can dispute it—”
“The signature or the will?”
“Either. Both. Don’t know where that might get us. Like I said, Fenwick Jaeger aren’t exactly fly-by-nights. I doubt if we’re going to prove that this is a forgery. They have their reputation on the line in sending this to me. No way they’d knowingly be party to any hanky-panky.”
Hanky-panky? Megan was too worried to find the lawyer’s quaintly old-fashioned turn of phrase amusing. How about total betrayal, if he needed words to describe Ron’s behavior toward his wife of thirty-six years? “What are the provisions of the Chicago will, Cody? Are we going to want to dispute them?”
“Yes,” he said flatly.
Megan’s hand was shaking enough that she had to put down her punch. “Give me the main points.”
Cody actually winced. “From our point of view, there’s only one main point. You, your mother and your brother aren’t even mentioned.”
Her mother wasn’t mentioned? A shiver ran down Megan’s spine. “If Mom isn’t named as a beneficiary, what happens to the ranch?”
Cody stared down at the floor, then up to the ceiling. Apparently he found the help he was seeking in neither place. “It’s not good, Meg. According to the Chicago will, your father’s other daughter gets the ranch. That would be Kate Fairfax Raven. She gets the land, the breeding stock, everything.”
Megan stared at the lawyer, literally incapable of speech.
“We can fight,” Cody said quickly. “We’ll fight those particular provisions tooth and nail, trust me.”
“How could he?” Megan was suddenly ice cold with fury. The rage that she’d been struggling to hold at bay ever since hearing of her father’s bigamy spewed out with volcanic force. “How could he give my mother’s property away like that? He had no right!”
Cody laid his hand on her arm. “We’ll certainly make that argument to the probate judge. Don’t know exactly where it will get us. The fact is, none of the Flying W land ever belonged directly to Ellie—”
“What do you mean?” Megan realized her voice was rising and that they were surrounded by people who didn’t need to hear this latest installment in the humiliation of Ellie Raven. She forced herself back under control. “The whole eastern third of the Flying W ranch has been owned by Mom’s family since 1886!”
“Yes, but that’s the problem. It was owned by her parents and her grandparents, not by your mother herself. Ron bought the land from Ellie’s dad and the money he used for the purchase came from his business interests.” Cody lifted his shoulders, the gesture apologetic. “It’s not a slam dunk to get a probate judge to agree that Ellie has any intrinsic right to that land, Megan, let alone the remaining two-thirds of the property. Remember, the majority of the land that makes up the Flying W ranch was your father’s, long before he married your mother.”
“The ranch isn’t just a business. It’s my mother’s home. It’s her life.”
“I realize how much the Flying W means to Ellie, but the ranch was set up years ago as a business with your mother’s full consent. That makes a difference to the legal situation. I’ll fight for her. I consider her a friend as well as a client and I’ll fight hard. But, bottom line, the judge may well decide that the ranch should be sold and the money divided up among the claimants. I’m being honest with you, Megan. In my best judgment, we’re in for a bruising fight.”
“When is the Chicago will dated?” she asked, surprised she could ask such a coherent question in view of her simmering fury. “Did my father sign it before or after he signed the will in my mother’s possession?”
Cody cleared his throat again. “Well, that’s another of the odd things about the situation. The Chicago will is dated the precise same day as the one I drew up for your dad three years ago.”
“The same day?” Megan stared at him. “How could Dad have signed a will in Chicago at the same time as he’s signing one here in Wyoming? That’s crazy.” She experienced a flash of hope. “The Chicago will must be a forgery.”
“I don’t believe so. Like I said, your father’s signature looked authentic to me, and the will was properly witnessed and notarized. Have to say, too, that Fenwick Jaeger are too experienced a firm to mess up something as important as the date on a legal document.”
“Then how is it possible that both wills were signed the same day? Thatch and Chicago are fourteen hundred miles apart!”
“Well, it sure doesn’t seem like it could be chance,” Cody acknowledged. His expression suggested he’d prefer to be breaking stones on a chain gang rather than having this conversation. He coughed again. Constricted throat muscles seemed to be an inevitable accompaniment to people trying to discuss Ron Raven, Megan reflected bitterly.
“Guess your dad must have deliberately set out to ensure both wills got signed on the same day,” Cody said. “I checked my appointment calendar and your dad didn’t come in to my office until late in the afternoon—he was my last appointment. If Ron signed the Chicago will first thing in the morning he could have flown back to Jackson Hole and arrived here in Thatch just in time to sign another will in my office that same day. There’s a one-hour time difference between here and Chicago, remember.”
Why in the world would her father have done something as bizarre as sign two wills on the same day? Megan wondered. To cast doubts on the legitimacy of both wills so that his estate would have to be divided up among the two branches of his family by the courts? Or merely to ensure that he caused as much trouble and inconvenience as possible? From what she’d learned over the past few days, she was almost willing to believe the latter.
Cody tried to smile. “There’s one positive aspect of this situation. The will I drew up was signed later in the day than the one the Chicago lawyers have just sent me. Must have been. He couldn’t have arrived back in Chicago during business hours. Totally impossible, even by private jet. That means the will I drew up—the one in your mother’s possession—probably represents your father’s last will and testament—”
“And therefore it’s the one that will hold up in court?”’
“We’ll make the argument.” Cody lifted his shoulders in a defeated shrug. “The existence of another will signed on the same day suggests, at the very least, that your father was ambivalent about his wishes. Any probate judge is going to take the existence of the other will into account in deciding how to dispose of your father’s assets. But here is one more fact that’s in your mother’s favor. She’s your father’s first and legal wife. You and Liam are his legitimate children. That counts for something, even today. But, to be frank, not as much as it would have thirty years ago.”
“Don’t tell my mother about this other will,” Megan said. “Please, Cody, promise me that you won’t burden her with this right now. She’s still struggling to come to terms with all the other bombshells that have been lobbed at her over the past week. She doesn’t need to be worrying that she might lose the Flying W as well.”
“I can’t make that promise, Megan. Wish I could. But I’m your mother’s lawyer. I have an obligation to inform her of all legal developments in regard to her husband’s estate.”
“Give Liam and me a few days to decide how to proceed,” she pleaded. “We’ll fight the Chicago will, of course. Not for me, I don’t care. At this point, I’m not even sure that I want any of Dad’s money—” She broke off. “We need to fight for Mom’s sake. We can’t let the ranch go to…to the women in Chicago. That land’s been in my mother’s family for a hundred and forty years. It’s insane to suddenly hand it over to the child of her husband’s mistress!”
“Maybe not insane,” Cody said, avoiding her eyes. “But certainly vindictive.” He allowed the word to hang in the air, resonating painfully between the two of them.
It was almost as if her father had hated her mother, Megan reflected. Had he? Had he hated his Wyoming children, too? Had his bluff good cheer and seeming pride in her achievements concealed resentment? She closed her eyes, squeezing away the stupid tears that seemed determined to flow whenever and wherever it was most humiliating. She swallowed hard, forcing the tears to stop when she felt the light touch of Cody’s hand on her arm.
“Are you okay, Megan? Although that’s a damn-fool question under the circumstances.”
“Yes, I’m fine.” She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes. “Please don’t tell my mother about the other will.” She glanced across the room to Ellie, who was looking unspeakably weary as she attempted to keep up a conversation with Pastor Gruber and the choir director.
“I won’t tell Ellie today,” Cody conceded. “I can’t promise more than that. Tomorrow morning I plan to call Mr. Daniels at Fenwick Jaeger and explain that we believe we have Ron’s most recent will and that its terms vary substantially from the document he sent me. As soon as I’ve spoken to Mr. Daniels, I’ll be in touch with your mother. I have an obligation to report to her on the situation.”
Megan drew what comfort she could from the twenty-four-hour delay. “I’ll talk to Liam tonight and explain what you’ve told me. I’m sure he’ll call you first thing tomorrow morning.”
“If not, I’ll be stopping by at the ranch. Good day to you, Megan.” Cody touched his fingers once more to his nonexistent hat and walked away.
Five
Megan had known that Liam would be upset when he heard about the existence of another will, but she hadn’t anticipated the depth of his self-blame.
“It’s not your fault that Dad wrote a will leaving everything to the Chicago family,” she said when they finally managed a few moments alone on the porch. “For heaven’s sake, Liam, why are you responsible for the fact that Dad seems to have been pretty much a major asshole?”
“Because I knew about Avery Fairfax,” Liam said, leaning down to scratch Bruno’s belly. “I knew and I still kept Dad’s secrets. Dammit! I let him manipulate me precisely because I wanted to prevent this sort of thing happening—and now he’s screwed Mom over anyway. The son of a bitch must be laughing in hell.”
“I don’t think you get to laugh in hell,” Megan said. “That’s kind of the point.”
“He’ll be the exception.” Liam stared broodingly at a cloud of dust on the horizon. The dust resolved itself into a small panel truck, barreling down the driveway at a spanking pace.
“God, I hope that’s a reporter.” Liam got up from the swing. “I’m so in the mood to punch somebody out.”
Judging by his scowl, Megan was pretty sure her brother wasn’t joking. She ran down the porch steps in order to prevent him from throwing the threatened punch. Violence might soothe Liam’s feelings for a couple of seconds, but she could just imagine the vicious media reports if he was hauled into court on assault-and-battery charges.
As soon as the dust cloud settled, she realized the truck was from a package-delivery company. A middle-aged man climbed out, extending a special-delivery envelope toward her. “Ms. Raven?”
“Yes, I’m Megan Raven.”
“This package arrived in our Jackson Hole office yesterday and should’ve been brought out right away.” The man’s voice was high-pitched, making him sound oddly tense. “We were shorthanded and didn’t get to it. Sorry about the delay.”
“That’s okay. Thanks.” Megan took the package and turned to go, but Liam grabbed the envelope from her and scanned the shipping label.
“This isn’t designated for Saturday delivery, much less Sunday,” he said.
To Megan’s surprise, the driver immediately looked guilty. “I don’t know anything about that,” he mumbled.
Liam squinted at the corner of the label. “According to the date and time stamp, it only arrived at Jackson Hole airport four hours ago.”
“Is that so?” The deliveryman shot an anxious glance in the direction of his van, feet scuffling in the dust. “I was just told to bring it out here—”
“I’ll bet you were. But who told you?” Liam shoved past the deliveryman and leaned into the panel truck, hauling out a man who’d been hiding in the windowless rear compartment, camera angled to take pictures through the front side window. The photographer tumbled out, clutching his camera to his chest.
“Whoever you are, you’re trespassing.” Liam’s voice was lethal in its cold fury. “The sheriff has already warned members of the media about staying off our land.”
The photographer apparently wasn’t smart enough to realize that Liam’s cool tones masked blazing anger. He held up an ID card and smiled with patent insincerity. “Hi, there. I’m Brad Stratford with Media International. No hard feelings, I hope? I have some questions for your family—just to set the public record straight, you know? I asked Kevin here to deliver this package right away so that I could—”
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