Kayleigh grabbed her phone and dialed. She slammed the disconnect button. “Voicemail. Who was going to pick them up? Why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you go?”
“Had that meeting with the congressman. I sent Ritchie. All right, I’ll give him a call.” Bishop found his mobile and placed a call. “Hey. Me. What’s the story? Where are they? … Who? Who d’you think I mean? Suellyn and her kid, that’s who … What?”
Every eye in the room was locked on him.
“When? … Oh, fuck.” He disconnected. “Okay, well, what happened was he got a call from a friend of yours.” A glance at his daughter. “He was going to give them a ride here.”
“Who?” Kayleigh cried. “Who the hell was it?”
“Ritchie doesn’t remember the name. But whoever it was knew the flight number, knew their names. Said you’d rather he picked them up.”
Sheri said, “But if it was him, Edwin, how’d he know Ritchie was going to pick them up?”
Bishop’s eyes bored into the carpet at his feet. “Well … shit.”
“What, Daddy? What!”
“This morning, we had breakfast at the Herndon Café, Sheri and me. We were pretty much alone in the place, pretty much had it to ourselves. Except there was somebody else, sitting nearby, his back to us. Tall fellow, black hair. Couldn’t see him. He coulda overheard me talking to Suellyn and calling Ritchie, giving him the information. I doubt it but coulda happened.”
“What time?” Dance asked.
“I don’t know. Nine-thirty, ten.”
Dance reflected: Edwin was at the movie theater about eleven. The timing could work.
Sheri Towne stepped up to Kayleigh and touched her shoulder tentatively. Dance noticed the singer’s lips tighten. Sheri stepped back.
“But how would he know Ritchie?” Kayleigh asked. “To get his number and call him?”
“Could he be connected to you on your site or in the press?” Dance asked.
“Maybe. He’s listed on the last albums, he was one of my assistants and drivers. In the acknowledgments.”
Dance said, “With all the research Edwin does, sure, he could’ve found out.”
Kayleigh began to cry. “What’re we going to do?”
Dance called Harutyun and told him their concern. He said he was going to check something.
As she waited her eyes were on Bishop. He was fuming; Sheri kept a bit of distance. Dance wondered who the anger was directed at. She guessed it would be Ritchie. Bishop seemed the sort to blame everyone but himself for the problems in life.
Harutyun came back on after an interminable five minutes. “Video at the airport. A woman in her thirties and little girl got into Edwin’s Buick. About thirty minutes after the flight from Portland landed.”
Dance looked at the expectant faces. She told them what the deputy had said.
“No!” Kayleigh screamed. “No!”
“And. Agent Dance … Kathryn,” Harutyun was saying on the line. “Just heard from the fire team. There’s only one body inside.” He hesitated. “Not too big. Could be a teenager—boy or girl—or a woman. Can’t tell; body’s burned down to the bone. At least, if it is the sister, the little girl’s still alive. But that also means he’s got her. And that, I don’t even want to think about.”
Chapter 27
KAYLEIGH PLACED YET another frantic call.
“Answer, answer, answer,” she whispered. She grimaced. “Suellyn, it’s me. Call me right away. I mean immediately. There’s a problem.” She looked at the screen. “How do I mark it urgent?” Her voice broke. “I don’t know how! How do I mark it urgent?”
Dance took her phone, examined the screen and hit a button.
And Dance had given her opinion that stalkers tended not to target family members.
What was going on in Edwin’s mind, if he had in fact kidnapped the two? Had he been so incensed about the arrest that he’d snapped? Had he started stalking Bishop that morning to learn what he could and found out about the arrival of Kayleigh’s sister and niece? In the car maybe he’d confessed his love for Kayleigh and enlisted Suellyn’s aid to win her over. When the woman refused, he’d killed her and taken the girl. Maybe he intended to raise her, treating her like a young Kayleigh of his own. Dance was a tough policewoman, yes, but she was a mother too and she simply didn’t want to face that scenario.
“Please,” Kayleigh begged once more. “Isn’t there anything you can do? Track her phone or something?”
“That can be done. It takes time. But sure. I’ll order it.”
Not sharing with anyone, least of all Kayleigh, that if the body in the shed was Suellyn there would be no phone left to track.
Dance was speaking to TJ Scanlon about contacting the woman’s provider, when Darthur Morgan called from the entryway, “Another car coming. Well, what on earth’s this?”
Dance wondered what that cryptic comment might mean.
A moment later there was the clunk of car doors closing and the sound of a vehicle accelerating away on the gravel drive.
Then the front door opened and in walked a woman in her thirties and an adorable little golden-haired girl of about six, in a pink dress. She held a stuffed plush toy. She ignored everyone in the room except the singer, whom she ran to and hugged. “Aunt Kayleigh, look! We went to this neat museum and we brought you a stuffed redwood tree!”
Chapter 28
KATHRYN DANCE SMILED a greeting to the woman she’d been introduced to—Suellyn Sanchez, Kayleigh’s sister—and walked to the door. She noted the big red Buick speeding away.
“It was him,” Kayleigh whispered, also looking out the window and struggling to put on a calm facade so as not to worry the little girl.
Suellyn embraced her father—a seemingly pro forma gesture. She greeted Sheri too, more affectionately than Kayleigh had. “What’s with the police? Is this about Bobby?”
Kayleigh, however, glanced icily toward her father and turned her attention to Mary-Gordon. “Honey, let me show you some new games I got for the next time you visited. Just for you.”
“Yay! … Where’s Freddie?”