Payback Read online

  Kate read through the two single-spaced pages. Their investigator had clearly been busy. He’d visited Sunrise, and discovered that it was a boutique selling gifts from Central America, ranging from specialty coffees and candies, to pottery handcrafted in Guatemala. Unfortunately, the nature of the store meant that few customers were regulars and nobody had recognized the picture of Ron Raven.

  George had enjoyed better luck at the Mercedes dealership. He’d shown around multiple pictures of Ron Raven, and after some hesitation, one of the salesmen had agreed the man in the photos might be Stewart Jones. The same salesman had further identified Mr. Jones as an Australian diplomat on temporary assignment to Washington, D.C. He confirmed that Mr. Jones had recently sold a three-month-old Mercedes to the dealership. According to the salesman, Mr. Jones told them he’d been transferred back to Australia for an unexpected promotion, so nobody had given the early resale a second thought. In fact, the salesman pointed out with pride, Mr. Jones hadn’t lost much money on the deal, since Mercedes vehicles held their value so well.

  Some heavy-duty persuading on George Klein’s part had convinced the salesman to part with the dealership’s last-known address for Mr. Jones. Not surprisingly, the address turned out to be the same as the one appearing on the car’s title documents, the ones George had already traced for Luke.

  George had inquired if Mr. Jones had a wife or companion with him when he sold the car. The salesman confirmed that there was a Mrs. Jones and volunteered that she was an attractive, dark-haired woman in her early forties. He even managed to recall that her name was Heather. She had seemed pleasant, but she hadn’t said much. The salesman was adamant that Heather had spoken without a Hispanic accent and he didn’t think she was foreign. George had pressed the point, but the salesman stuck to his guns. The woman had seemed like a regular American to him and her name, Heather, certainly wasn’t popular in the Hispanic community. So much for the theory that “Mr. Jones” might be traveling with Julio Castellano’s niece. The e-mail finished with the information that George planned to return to his wife and kids in Chicago for the remainder of the weekend, since there were no obvious leads to follow, and he would look forward to receiving further instructions when Paul and the rest of Ron’s family decided how to proceed.

  Kate looked up from the report and took a sip of her lukewarm coffee. “What are we supposed to conclude?” She tapped the printed pages. “Have you spoken to George since you got his report?”

  Paul nodded. “We had a brief conversation a couple of hours ago. He hasn’t managed to come up with anything really new.”

  “So what’s his honest-to-God opinion, minus all the professional humming and hawing in his e-mail? Does he think there’s still a chance this Stewart Jones person is my father, or does he think Luke made a mistake?”

  Paul pressed his fingers against his temples, massaging a headache that was almost visible. “Bottom line, I’m guessing George has major doubts about Luke’s story. He didn’t come right out and say that, mind you. After all, Luke is the person who recommended him in the first place, so we’re dealing with some loyalty issues, as well.”

  “The woman—Heather—sounds like the one Luke saw, don’t you think?”

  Paul shrugged. “Kinda, sorta. Luke guessed the age of the woman he saw at midthirties. The salesman suggests Mrs. Jones was in her early forties. It might be two takes on the same woman. Or it could be two different women.”

  “Luke and the car salesman both described the woman as petite and dark-haired.”

  “And there can’t be more than a hundred thousand women in the D.C. area who are fortyish, small boned and dark haired.” Paul sighed. “The fact is, George Klein has put in a fair bit of work on our behalf and we’ve learned almost nothing that we didn’t know before he left for Washington.”

  “We have a car salesman who identified a picture of my father as Mr. Jones,” Kate pointed out.

  Paul shrugged. “But we always knew the man Luke saw looked like Ron, didn’t we? Otherwise Luke would never have suggested he’d seen him.”

  Her uncle was right, of course. Finding a car salesman who said Mr. Jones looked like a photo of Ron Raven didn’t really take them any closer to uncovering the man’s true identity. Kate shook off a cloud of depression. “Did George Klein recommend any new line of investigation when the two of you spoke?”

  “He suggested it might be worth spreading the net wider—showing the pictures of your father to more people in the hope of snagging a current address.” Paul scowled at his paper coffee cup. “I don’t know…. It seems a bit pointless to me.”

  But if they had no other leads to follow, what were their other choices? Kate wondered. “Don’t you think we should do everything we possibly can to find Mr. Jones? Even if it seems like going over the same ground with different players.”

  “Yes, I guess we should.” Paul sounded less than convinced. “But we could have George Klein running around for weeks and in the end we might achieve nothing except to have our lives thrown into turmoil by the constant uncertainty.”

  “Then your conclusion is that we should end the investigation now?”

  Paul winced and stirred the dregs of his coffee. “That would be logical, wouldn’t it, in view of what I just said? But I confess I haven’t a clue what to recommend. I’ve been puzzling over this for the past four hours and all I’ve done is give myself a headache. That’s why I brought the e-mail to you in person instead of just forwarding it. What’s your opinion? It sounds as if you believe we should push a bit harder.”

  Kate leaned back, staring abstractedly at the line of customers snaking their way toward the counter. “Yes, I guess I do think we should go the last mile. The possibility that Dad is alive—that’s huge. I don’t feel ready to call it quits.”

  Paul nodded in agreement. “I see where you’re coming from. Still, I’m not sure what going the last mile would mean at this point. Since the leads we gave George Klein don’t seem to have panned out, what do we do next? Our options are telling George to go over the same ground one more time, despite the fact that he’s been more than thorough. Or he could ask questions in other stores near where Sunrise is located. Another possibility is to suggest he should switch his attention to this Heather woman. Although I haven’t an idea in the world how we would set about tracing her.”

  Kate gave a bleak smile. “When you put it like that, we don’t have much to hang on to, do we? Maybe George will have some brilliant new idea up his sleeve. Investigating is his profession, after all.”

  Paul raised his coffee cup in a toast. “I can certainly drink to that. Here’s hoping George is full of brilliant ideas. He seems good at his job so far, so I’m willing to hope.” He looked unconvinced by his own optimism. “In the meantime, why don’t you share this report with your mother and see what she wants to do? We can only hope she has a strong opinion one way or the other, and that would let you and me off the hook in terms of deciding whether to forge ahead or call a halt. For right now, the best I can suggest is that you should discuss the situation with Avery over the weekend and then give me a call first thing on Monday. After that, we’ll either talk to George Klein on the phone, or arrange another meeting. I do have to go out of town next week, but I’m flexible about when.”

  “Have you forwarded this e-mail to Luke?” Kate was annoyed to discover that she couldn’t mention Luke’s name without her cheeks growing hot. “Does he have an opinion about what to do next?”

  Fortunately her uncle was busy stuffing his napkin into his empty coffee cup, ready to throw it away, and he didn’t look at her. “I forwarded the e-mail, but I haven’t heard back from him. Was that the right thing to do?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Her voice, apparently, wasn’t quite as brisk as her words. Paul looked up, his gaze kind but concerned. “I know the two of you were dating a while back and I thought you’d prefer it if I kept Luke informed, rather than forcing you to get in touch. I suggested that if
he had any comments, he should send them to me. But I don’t want you to feel I’m cutting you out of the loop.”

  “Thanks, although there’s no need for you to be so tactful.” She forced a bright smile. “My relationship with Luke was never serious enough for the breakup to be a big deal.” The lie came out sounding smooth, but inside her stomach knotted.

  Apparently she’d done a better job of hiding her feelings this time and Paul seemed satisfied. “That’s good, then.” He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “Julia and I have a dinner party tonight, so I have to run or I’ll be in her black books. Tell your mother to give me a call anytime if she wants to discuss the situation.” He pulled a wry face. “I’ll try to come up with something clever and insightful to suggest. But here’s the bottom line, Kate, at least as I see it at this point. Despite our desire to uncover the truth, it’s possible we’ll have to accept that we’ll never know whether or not Luke saw your father.”

  “Never know if Dad is alive or dead?” Kate’s stomach plummeted. “That would be worst of all.”

  “Yes, it’s not a very satisfactory outcome, to say the least.” Paul patted her hand, clearly trying to reassure, but his smile didn’t quite cover the worry in his eyes.

  Kate pushed away the remains of her mocha latte, which was cold and flat. Pretty much the way she felt. “Say hi to Aunt Julia for me. Tell her to give me a call next time she’s coming into the city and we’ll get together for lunch or something. It’s been ages since I saw her.”

  “Will do.” Paul gave her arm another encouraging squeeze. “Don’t get down in the dumps, sweetie. Enjoy your weekend and I’ll wait for your call on Monday morning. Give your mother a hug from me, will you? Tell her not to work too hard on fixing up her house.”

  “I will, but she won’t listen. She’s anxious to get her office set up.”

  “I know, but that little business of hers can get off the ground just as well after Christmas as before.”

  Kate reminded herself that her uncle couldn’t help being a dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist. There was no way he would ever take Avery’s attempts to start her own business seriously. She should simply appreciate him for the good qualities he had instead of grumbling to herself about attitudes he would never change.

  She felt a surge of gratitude for the amount of time and energy her uncle had spent on Avery’s affairs since Ron disappeared. She walked arm in arm with him to the door and left him with an affectionate kiss on the cheek. “Drive safely, Uncle Paul. I’ll talk to you on Monday.”

  Eleven

  October 20, 2007

  K ate smothered a yawn and tried to think of a tactful way to ask Will Fairchild to take her home before they ordered dessert. This was their third date, and she’d realized a couple of hours ago that she should never have accepted his invitation to dinner. Will was Chicago’s youngest alderman and an aspiring congressman. He was also great to look at and seemed a decent-enough guy. Unfortunately, she’d run out of things to say to him somewhere in the middle of date number two. The truth was, she would never have come out tonight if she hadn’t been busy convincing herself that seeing Luke Savarini hadn’t caused even a minor blip on her emotional barometer.

  Studying the menu with more attention than it merited, she acknowledged that Will didn’t deserve to have his feelings hurt because she was a self-deceptive moron with major hangups about a dead affair.

  Settling on a pomegranate sorbet for dessert, she resigned herself to toughing it out for another hour at least. Unfortunately, since tomorrow was Sunday, she didn’t even have the excuse of a 6:00 a.m. start at the bakery as a reason for putting an end to their date.

  Her cell phone rang just as the waiter walked away with their dessert orders. Normally she would have ignored the call and switched off the ringer. But listening to Will explain the intricate details of the city council’s recent vote on municipal water purification was a bit more than she could endure in her current restless state. She ignored his frown and checked her phone, gratefully taking the call when she saw it was from her uncle.

  “Uncle Paul, this is unexpected. What’s up? Did Mom call you about the investigation? She said she would.”

  “No, I haven’t spoken to your mother, but I have terrible news. Just terrible. George Klein is dead.”

  “Oh, no!” It felt as if a fist had slammed into her gut. “My God, how did he die? Was it a car accident?”

  “It wasn’t an accident at all. It’s hard to take in, but it seems he’s been murdered. He was mugged in a parking garage at O’Hare airport. He was dead when the paramedics got there. The cops estimate he’d been dead for quite a few hours. His body was stuffed in a corner behind a pillar and nobody found it for a while.” Paul’s voice wasn’t quite steady.

  “Murdered? Oh my God! I can’t believe it!”

  “I’m afraid it’s true. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is terrible. Just terrible.”

  Will was looking at her with a mixture of concern and disapproval. His politician’s antennae had apparently been turned on by her mention of murder and he made no effort to pretend he wasn’t listening to her call. Avoiding his gaze, she murmured an apology and headed for the lobby where she could continue the conversation in private.

  “When did this happen?” she asked her uncle. “You said the police think he was killed several hours ago.”

  “Right, they’re estimating late yesterday night.”

  “That would be when his plane got in from D.C.”

  “Yes, it would. His wife had already reported him missing this morning, but the police didn’t do anything, of course. They never do until at least forty-eight hours have passed.”

  George Klein was an acquaintance, not a friend, but Kate realized she was shivering in shocked reaction to the news of his death. “Oh my God, that poor woman! They have kids, too, don’t they? I saw pictures of two young boys on his desk when we were in his office.”

  “I don’t want to think about his wife, much less his kids.” Paul’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “It’s terrible,” he said yet again. “Just terrible.” Shock seemed to have reduced his vocabulary to a single stock expression of grief.

  Kate recovered from her initial surprise enough to wonder how her uncle had heard the news. “Did you see a report about the murder on television? Is there any chance they’ve made a mistake?” Although it was hard to imagine what that mistake might be.

  “No, I didn’t see it on TV. The police called me. Unfortunately, there’s no chance of a mistake.”

  “The police called you?” Why on earth would the cops call her uncle because George Klein had been killed? The connection between the two men had been trivial, at least from a law enforcement perspective. “Good heavens, how did the cops even find out that we knew him?”

  “The muggers took George’s wallet and his money,” Paul explained. “When his body was first found, the police tagged him as a John Doe. But when they stripped the body at the morgue, they found one of my business cards that had slipped through the lining of his jacket. Since the muggers had left no other identification, the police called me. They told me they didn’t know who it was they’d found, just that a dead body had been found at the airport and he had my business card.”

  “Oh my God!” No wonder her uncle sounded so upset. “Did they ask you to identify George’s body?”

  “Yes, they did, since they had no other lead. That’s an experience I never want to repeat.” Paul broke off abruptly and then said nothing more for a few seconds. “The police drove me to the morgue a couple of hours ago. They took me right to where the body…to where they had him in a drawer. Now they’re driving me home. I’m in a police car right now. And feeling a bit shaky, to be honest.”

  “I’m so sorry, Uncle Paul. Is Aunt Julia home? Will you be all right?”

  “Julia’s gone to visit our daughter, but I’ll be fine.” Paul tried, not very successfully, to sound upbeat. “It’s just tha
t I’d never seen a dead person before. Not in real life. Amazing, isn’t it? I’m fifty-three years old, and I’d never seen a dead person. I guess that makes me lucky.” His voice trailed away. Clearly, at this precise moment he was feeling anything but lucky.

  “Are you sure you don’t want company? I could come—”

  “No, really, I’ll be fine.” He drew in a deep breath. “The experience was more draining than I expected, that’s all. The morgue looks clean and impersonal, but the bottom line is that you know inside all those drawers are people who’ve died violent or unexpected deaths. People who had families and friends who love them. That’s a brutal fact no amount of stainless steel and disinfectant can disguise.”

  Will came into the lobby and mouthed a silent question, inquiring if there was a problem. Kate shook her head, wishing he would go away. She spent another few minutes trying to console her uncle and was glad to hear him sounding a bit more cheerful when they finally hung up.

  “What’s happened?” Will asked as soon as she stopped talking. “Can I help?” He kept his expression scrupulously polite, but she could tell he was irritated and feeling neglected.

  She didn’t have the mental energy to soothe him. “I just heard a friend has been murdered,” she said. “I’m sorry to cut the evening short, Will, but I have to leave.” If she stayed, she was likely to end up provoking a fight that he didn’t deserve.

  “Murdered? Are you sure?” Will stared at her askance. He was probably thinking that her friends weren’t any more respectable than her family, Kate reflected ruefully. First her bigamist father disappeared in scandalous circumstances, now a friend had been murdered. By this time tomorrow, he would undoubtedly be grateful that she’d removed herself and her squalid associates from his life.

  “Yes, I’m afraid I’m sure. My friend was mugged. He was robbed and then killed at O’Hare airport.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What a dreadful way to lose a friend, or anyone for that matter.” Will showed genuine regret and sympathy, but then his alderman reflexes kicked in. “It’s surprising, too, because O’Hare actually has an excellent safety record. Their crime statistics are on the low side, given that it’s the world’s busiest airport. Law enforcement there is extremely efficient—”