Payback Read online

  “And the fact that Stewart Jones and his companion were eating in Herndon and shopping in Reston suggests that they might live somewhere in the general vicinity.” George tapped the receipt. “This is a better lead than you anticipated, Luke. Hopefully, Reston Town Square will turn out to be a plaza with a bunch of shops and boutiques and cafés. I’ll flash Ron’s picture in every store. We might catch a break and have someone recognize him. If we get super lucky, someone’s going to tell me they not only know who he is, they also know where he lives. Maybe he’s a regular customer at Sunrise and they’ll be able to provide us with his current address.” He chuckled at his own optimism. “Well, we can hope.”

  Luke had noticed before that George was amazingly positive for a man who spent his professional life documenting the general sleaziness of humanity. Perhaps his optimism flowed from the fact that he was happily married and had two young kids he adored. He sent the detective a rueful smile. “I hope finding Mr. Jones turns out to be as easy as you’re making it sound, George.”

  “Me, too.” Kate leaned forward, her body language still tense. So far this afternoon, she hadn’t cast a single glance in Luke’s direction. “How long before you can leave for Virginia?” she asked the detective. “Luke told us you’re always very busy, and it might be a few days before you could even start working for us.”

  George smiled at her. “Fortunately for you, I’m much more interested in finding out if Mr. Jones really is Ron Raven than I am in setting traps for dishonest employees and tailing cheating spouses. I’ll turn my current caseload over to my assistants and I’ll leave for Washington’s Dulles airport on the first flight on Wednesday morning. I should be in Herndon by noon. I’ll work through the weekend if need be, but I hope to get back to you with at least an interim report by Friday night.”

  “That’s only two days after you’ll arrive in Virginia!” Paul was clearly startled by the detective’s speed.

  George’s polite smile changed to a grin as he handed over a printed form. “Be grateful I work fast, Mr. Fairfax. That’s my rate sheet, and as you can see, I’m expensive. I’m also darn good at my job, if I do say so myself.”

  Paul glanced at the sheet. “Yes, indeed, you are expensive. But if you can confirm whether Ron Raven is alive or dead, believe me, I’ll consider you worth every penny.”

  Nine

  October 16, 2007

  A very stared at the phone with loathing. The phone stared right back, mutely accusing. This was a ritual that had been going on all day, and so far, the phone was winning. It was way past time to show some backbone, Avery decided, summoning a ferocious scowl. Kate would be arriving for dinner in less than an hour, so if she was going to call Ellie Raven in privacy, she needed to do it now.

  It was humbling to consider what a hard time she was having placing a simple phone call. What in God’s name was her problem? Ellie had demonstrated much more courage back in May. Within days of Ron’s disappearance, she had flown from Wyoming to Chicago and confronted Avery in person. Without ever being rude, Ellie had asked all the questions Avery wanted answered but would never have found the gumption to ask.

  It was past time to prove to herself that she wasn’t a total wimp. Avery reached out to lift the receiver, but once again changed her mind at the last minute. Maybe her reluctance to place the call was a warning sign that her decision to speak with Ellie Raven was inappropriate. Wasn’t there something rather distasteful about Ron’s bigamous wife forcing personal contact onto his legitimate wife? It was bad enough that her relationship with Ron had no legal status. She didn’t need to compound the humiliation by being socially inept on top of everything else.

  Avery gave an impatient shake of her head. Good grief, she needed to stop thinking like her mother. Distasteful. Socially inept. What gutless, limp words. She and Kate were trying to find out whether Ron was alive or dead and she was worried in case her behavior seemed socially inept!

  Finally fired up, she smoothed out the piece of paper where she’d written down the number for the ranch in Wyoming, given to her by her brother, Adam. Inhaling deeply, she snatched the handset and dialed before her brief spurt of courage could desert her.

  A female voice answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  Oh, my God, it was Ellie. It was too fast. She wasn’t ready. Avery wiped her sweaty palm on her tailored, cashmere-blend slacks. Her clothes might be flawless but the rest of her was a mess. She cleared her throat. “Hello, this is Avery.”

  She’d planned to identify herself as Avery Fairfax, but the last name stuck in her throat, refusing to come out. Apparently it still hurt too much to acknowledge to the real Mrs. Ronald H. Raven that she, Avery Fairfax, had never been entitled to the name.

  She forced the silly, painful thought aside, drawing on years of social training to keep her voice steady despite her inner anxiety. “Is this Ellie Raven?” she asked, just as if she hadn’t recognized her rival’s voice immediately.

  “Why, yes, it is. How are you, Avery? This is an unexpected call. I hope nothing’s wrong.” Ellie gave a brief laugh. “Nothing more wrong than usual, that is.” She sounded warm, kind and confident of her place in the universe.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that.” Avery paced the newly bare floor of her living room, careful to avoid the giant splinters sticking up out of the hardwood. She wished she didn’t invariably feel so…shriveled…when she spoke to Ellie, like desiccated coconut in the presence of lush, ripe fruit. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid I’m going to cause you more worry, at least in the short term—”

  “This isn’t about Megan and Adam, is it?” Ellie’s voice sharpened with anxiety.

  “Oh, no! Not at all. They were fine when I spoke with Adam a couple of days ago. I’m calling about…about Ron.”

  “Oh, land’s sakes. Now what? Have those dratted lawyers found something new to torment us with?”

  “It’s not the lawyers. There’s no way to make this less shocking, so I’ll simply cut to the chase. Luke Savarini, a good friend of ours, made a trip to Washington, D.C., last week. When he returned he told us that he’d seen Ron eating dinner at a restaurant in one of the D.C. suburbs. There was a woman with him. A woman in her late thirties. Luke knows Ron well—they worked together for a couple of years—and he was confident of his identification. According to Luke, the man he saw was either Ron, or Ron’s living double.”

  Ellie drew in an audible gasp. “Oh, my heavens! Did your friend speak to Ron? What did he say?”

  “No, they didn’t speak. Ron left before my friend had the chance.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a bit different, isn’t it? I certainly appreciate the heads-up, Avery, but there doesn’t seem any reason in the world to believe your friend is right, does there? A sighting in a restaurant doesn’t seem much to stack up against the weight of evidence law enforcement has produced. I don’t mean to sound flippant, but the police in Miami are quite sure Ron is dead.”

  “The police in Miami seem sure of a lot of things that other people have doubts about,” Avery said tartly. “Luke Savarini isn’t the sort of person to imagine things.” She realized she was getting rather tired of hearing why the police must be right and everyone else wrong. “How sure can anyone be about what happened to Ron and…and the woman he had with him, when there are no bodies?”

  “That’s true, we can’t be sure. But the other evidence all seems to back up the police theory that Ron and the woman are dead.” Ellie hesitated for a moment. “Although, to be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard from somebody who thinks they’ve seen Ron. One of our cousins called from Texas a while back and insisted she’d seen Ron going into the Nieman Marcus store in Houston. We never passed on her story to you because the police convinced us we should ignore her. They said literally hundreds of people have claimed to see Ron in various places. On one particularly busy day in May, Ron was supposedly spotted in New Zealand, Tokyo and Miami—all within the space of about four hours!”

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sp; “Yes, that’s exactly what the police told Luke, too. They informed him they’d received hundreds of reports and interviewed dozens of the most promising informants, but every single sighting proved to be without foundation. The thing is, though, I know Luke Savarini, whereas the police don’t. Luke is a clear-headed businessman with a jam-packed working schedule and an active social life. He’s much too busy to waste time imagining he saw Ron if he didn’t.”

  “He sure sounds like a reliable witness. Still, it’s a bit like all the reports of people seeing flying saucers, isn’t it? Nowadays if a movie star or a politician is doing something they’d much prefer to keep private, you can guarantee there’ll be some Johnny-on-the-spot with a camera, ready to record the misdeed for the world to snicker over. But when an alien spaceship flies into Earth’s orbit—which truly would be amazing news—nobody ever manages to point their camera and get a clear shot of the dang thing.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand your point.”

  Ellie gave another rueful laugh. “Sorry. My children always tell me they hope it’s less muddled inside my head than it seems from the outside! What I’m trying to say is, with all these hundreds of people reporting to the police that they’ve spotted Ron eating or shopping and so on, how come nobody ever manages to click the button on their cell phones and get a picture? Much less actually talk to him?”

  “In Luke’s case, the answer is simple—because Ron ran away.”

  Ellie was silent for a moment. “Your friend…Luke…is suggesting Ron ran away because he knew he’d been recognized?” she asked finally.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. But that’s not all. Luke hired a private investigator before he mentioned one word to me about what he’d seen. He wanted to be sure there wasn’t a simple explanation for what had happened, something that had nothing to do with Ron. Unfortunately, everything the detective turned up suggested that the man Luke had seen was extremely anxious to avoid being found. At the very least, at this point we can say for sure there’s a man out there, calling himself Stewart M. Jones, who looks just like Ron and is taking a lot of trouble to hide his tracks.”

  Avery outlined the remaining details of George Klein’s investigation and explained the reasons why she believed they needed to track down Stewart Jones and resolve the issue one way or another. “It’s my feeling we can’t ignore what Luke saw just because the police keep telling us that high-profile murder cases always attract dozens of fictitious reports,” she concluded. “Luke insists not only that he recognized Ron, but that Ron recognized him, too. And then immediately ran away. I think that instead of listening to the police we need to take Luke at his word, at least to the point of investigating some more.”

  For the first time, Ellie seemed to acknowledge there was a possibility her husband might be alive. “Ron’s cousin insisted the man she saw made a dash for an escape route the moment he recognized her. That’s what your friend is saying, too.” She gulped in an audible breath. “Their stories sound too much alike to be comfortable.”

  “Yes, there do seem to be points of worrisome similarity.”

  “At the time, we dismissed our cousin’s tale as just another example of Tricia Riley being her usual ditzy self. Maybe we should have paid closer attention.”

  “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” Avery offered. “I’ve comforted myself with that thought a lot over the past six months.”

  “Me, too.” Ellie gave a dry little laugh. “Sometimes it even makes me feel a bit better. Although in this case, maybe we’re off the hook for ignoring our cousin’s report. The fact is, there would have been no way to follow up on her story, however hard we might have tried. She chased the man into Nieman Marcus, but she didn’t see where he went and she had no idea where he’d come from, so there were no leads for us to pursue.”

  “It’s different this time,” Avery said. “George Klein, the investigator working for us, believes there’s at least a chance he’ll be able to discover where this supposed Stewart M. Jones is living. And once he does that, we’ll know if Mr. Jones is merely a man who looks a great deal like Ron or if he is, in fact, Ron.” Avery still felt a shiver running down her spine when she expressed that possibility, even though a week had passed since Luke first broke the news.

  “If it really is Ron and he ran away, it means he’s hiding from us.” Ellie’s voice roughened. “He’s hiding from all of us. From you, from me and from his children.”

  The words stabbed and Avery’s stomach swooped. “Yes, I’m afraid it does seem that way.”

  Silence once again stretched out at the other end of the phone. Finally, Ellie spoke again. “After I heard that Ron had most likely been murdered and that there had almost certainly been another woman in his hotel room when he was killed, I thought nothing much worse could happen. Then I learned about you and Kate—that he had another wife and daughter in Chicago, a whole life I knew absolutely nothing about. But it still wasn’t the end of the bad news. To crown it all, when Megan and Adam got back from Belize, I realized Ron had lied consistently about the small part of his life he did share with me. Worse, my own brother was deeply involved in the lies. It’s funny, but after all those betrayals—and, God knows, they aren’t exactly small ones—it still hurts to think Ron would do something as cruel as allowing us to believe he was dead when he wasn’t.”

  “I had the same reaction,” Avery confessed. “I held up pretty well in the days immediately following Ron’s disappearance, despite realizing I’d spent twenty-eight years living with a man who wasn’t my husband. But last week, after Luke told me he’d seen Ron, six months after he was supposed to have been viciously murdered, I went home and cried for three hours straight.”

  She astonished herself by the admission. More astonishing still was how good it felt to acknowledge the truth—to Ellie Raven, of all people. There was something so unforgivably cruel about allowing people to mourn your death when you were actually alive. She felt sick every time she considered the implications. Had Ron—her companion and lover for twenty-eight years—really been that vicious?

  “If it’s any consolation, after about two days, I realized I wasn’t devastated anymore.” Avery could never have admitted as much to anyone else, but she was emboldened by the knowledge that she was talking to the person in the world most likely to share her feelings. “Instead, I was angry with Ron. More angry than I’ve been at any time since he was reported missing. In my opinion, it’s past time for both of us to stop blaming ourselves for what happened and start putting the blame where it belongs—with Ron. If he’s alive, Ellie, he’s not just unfaithful, he’s cruel.”

  “I’m not sure how I feel about the possibility that he could be alive.” Ellie gave a laugh that broke into a sob. “Totally confused would be about right, I guess.”

  “I hope you agree that we should at least try to track down this person Luke saw.”

  “Yes, I do. Absolutely. I appreciate that you’ve hired a detective and taken on the job. Most of all, I appreciate the fact that you called to let me know what was going on. It was kind of you. Thank you, Avery. I’m real grateful.”

  Ellie hung up the phone before she realized that she hadn’t actually said goodbye. She hoped Avery wouldn’t think she intended to be rude; nothing could have been further from the truth. She was just so tired of having her life constantly thrown into turmoil because of Ron that for a minute she’d forgotten her manners.

  She choked back a broken laugh when she realized the drift of her thoughts. She’d just been talking to Ron’s bigamous other wife about the possibility that their mutual husband had faked his own death. It seemed safe to assume that the etiquette books had no section dealing with manners for such an occasion.

  What in the world was she going to do if Ron was alive? They’d spent the past three months actively persuading the courts that he was dead. If that turned out to be untrue, the legal mess would be monumental. Still, leaving aside worries about the legal tangle, how did she feel?
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  In a moment of stark self-knowledge, Ellie confronted the astounding fact that she didn’t much care whether her husband was alive or not. The bottom line was that she didn’t especially want to see Ron again, although that lack of enthusiasm made her feel guilty, damn him! She forced herself to push the guilt away and face her lack of interest head-on. The dogs sidled up to her, instinct alerting them to her misery. She scratched the top of Belle’s head with one hand, and Bruno’s with the other, and they snuffled comfortingly against her legs.

  Her eyes blurred with tears she refused to shed as she watched Harry Ford, the sheriff of Stark County and a friend since grade school, finish his self-appointed task of setting the kitchen table for their dinner. Thank God for Harry! She was so glad he happened to have been here when Avery called, even more glad that he was tactful enough to give her a few seconds of silence to pull herself together.

  With cutlery, place mats and napkins all arrayed to his satisfaction, Harry crossed to her side, pushing the dogs out of the way with the ease of a man who’d spent his life around animals and enjoyed their company without getting sentimental about their place in the hierarchy.

  “Was that Avery Fairfax on the phone just now?” he asked, his eyes narrowing, and the sun lines wrinkling on his forehead as he took in her worried expression.

  She nodded, thinking how kind and dependable his craggy features always looked. He was nothing like as handsome as Ron Raven, but she considered him a thousand times the better man. “Yes, it was Avery.”

  “I hope it wasn’t bad news. She’s never called you before, has she?”

  She looked straight at him, sharply aware that her feelings toward her missing husband had suddenly become clear at the very moment when the facts of her situation were murkier than at almost any moment since she learned Ron had been declared missing, presumed dead.