Afton had actually met Mickey when one of his Jaguars, driven by his secretary, Mona, had been carjacked right in the middle of rush-hour traffic in downtown Minneapolis. She’d been called in to help deal with the traumatized secretary, who couldn’t stop blubbering and waving her arms in desperation.
When Mickey arrived at the scene, Afton had found him hunky, attractive, and sweetly charming. Traits she’d always thought impossible in someone who owned a car dealership. And in the end, it turned out her instincts had been right.
*
TRUE to her word, Afton made the drive in an hour and a half, forgoing the ritual stop at Toby’s for a take-home box of their famous sticky rolls. She arrived at police headquarters in downtown Minneapolis by eleven o’clock, dumped the SUV at one of the curbside spots reserved for police officers, of which she was not technically one, and headed inside to meet her boss.
“About time,” Thacker said as Afton strode into his office still dressed in black leggings, boots, and a neon green fleece pullover. He sucked down the final dregs of his coffee, grimaced, and depressed the button on an old-fashioned intercom. “Angel,” he barked. “Is everyone ready for the briefing?”
“They’re waiting for you,” came his secretary’s muffled voice. Even she had been pulled in this Sunday morning.
“Good,” Thacker said, brushing past Afton. “Let’s get to it.”
*
THE Minneapolis Police Department was a perpetual hive of activity. Officers dressed in blue hurried between rows of desks and ducked in and out of cubicles. Detectives in weekend casual sucked cups of black coffee and pecked at computer terminals. Interview rooms, which lined the perimeter of the detectives’ area, were used for interrogations and sometimes staff meetings during periods of high activity. Today, the high-profile Darden case dominated activity in the department.
Afton followed Thacker into a large, fluorescent-lit conference room, where the murmur of conversation throbbed like a beating heart. Two uniformed officers sat hunched at a table with four detectives. They were all shoving paper around, jotting notes, and looking generally stressed.
All heads jerked up when Thacker entered. Deputy Chief Gerald Thacker was dressed as if he were attending a shareholders meeting at a Fortune 500 company. Plaid Joseph Abboud sport coat, black slacks, and high-polished black oxfords. Once the detectives in their khakis and thermal pullovers had surveyed Thacker, their eyes turned to Afton. This wasn’t unusual. She was used to their stares, and it was starting to get old. She just wished she could be looked upon as another member of the team, not as a little sister, chickie-poo, soccer mom, or forbidden fruit. Only Thacker and Max Montgomery, one of the veteran detectives, treated her as if she really belonged here, and for that she was grateful.
“Okay,” Thacker said loudly. “To catch everybody up, here’s what we’ve got so far.” He stood at the head of a battered wooden table covered with cigarette burns in a stuffy room that had probably been painted pea green sometime around the end of the Eisenhower Administration. Probably the only thing that had changed in the room in seven decades was that you weren’t allowed to smoke there anymore.
“We got the call around midnight last night,” Thacker continued. “The Dardens had just come home from a charity event . . .” He snapped his fingers at Max Montgomery.
“Carrousel to Fight Cancer,” Max said.
“Hosted by the Edina Country Club,” Thacker said. “Anyway, they arrived home to find their babysitter hog-tied and hysterical, and their infant daughter missing. Two uniformed officers responded immediately and secured the scene. Then Montgomery and Dillon here”—he nodded toward Max Montgomery and Dick Dillon, who were sitting side by side across the table from Afton—“got the callout.”
Detective Dick Dillon, a short man with a florid complexion, cleared his throat messily and paged through his notes. He popped a pair of bifocals on his rotund face and picked up the story. “So Max and I showed up at the scene, immediately separated the parents, and commenced with interviews. Crime scene techs arrived and worked over the baby’s room, her crib, the front door, and hallway.”
“Anything missing?” Thacker asked. “Besides the baby?”
“Pink blanket,” Dillon said. “Anyway, our guys also grabbed the Dardens’ computers and are mining the data down in the geek cave.” He paused. “As far as the parents go, Mom is totally beside herself. Dad not so much. Guy seems guarded, but that could just be good old Nordic stoicism.”
Like a good partner, Max Montgomery recognized his cue and stepped in with his own assessment. “The babysitter, Ashley Copeland, wasn’t a lot of help. She was pretty freaked out and was able to give only a rudimentary description of her assailant.”
“You don’t think she knew him?” Thacker asked. “That she let him in?”