Payback Page 3

  There was a definite question in his cousin’s voice and Luke repeated his story about seeing an old friend he’d lost touch with. “I’m not sure if I’m enthusiastic enough to track him down through a credit card bill, but I appreciate Merrie’s gesture. Tell her thanks from me, will you?” He deliberately downplayed his interest, since he could only imagine how Bruno would react if Luke repeated his claim to have seen a supposed murder victim eating dinner on the other side of the dining room.

  Bruno seemed satisfied with Luke’s explanation, and left to go back to the kitchen after another profuse round of good wishes and goodbyes.

  Luke smoothed out the charge slip, scrutinizing the scanty information as he and Anna made their way back to her car. The charge of forty-three dollars and change had been made earlier in the day at an establishment called Sunrise. There was no indication of what sort of establishment Sunrise might be.

  “What’s the name on the charge slip?” Anna asked, clicking her key to spring the locks on her car.

  Luke held the slip up to the light. “Stewart M. Jones.”

  “You see!” Anna looked relieved. “I told you the man you saw wasn’t Ron Raven. Now you can relax and stop obsessing about seeing dead people. I feel as if I spent the past hour living in an outtake from The Sixth Sense.”

  The fact that the name on the charge slip read Stewart Jones proved nothing at all about the identity of the man Luke had seen in Bruno’s, as his sister must realize. If Ron had faked his own death, he wouldn’t be opening charge accounts under the identity he’d just been at great pains to get rid of.

  Anna must be afraid that he was seeing visions of Ron because he was hung up on his failed relationship with Kate, Luke decided. As it happened, his sister was way off the mark. He wasn’t fixated on Kate—far from it. Their affair had ended in nothing less than misery and he sure as hell wasn’t wasting any time regretting its end. Kate might be beautiful and sexy and have the same career interests as he did, but their personalities were polar opposites. Not to mention the fact that her concept of faithfulness bore no relationship to his.

  He realized now that their character differences had mattered almost as much as the betrayals. As their affair started to unravel, their differences worked to the surface, causing unbearable friction. His frustrations had boiled over into the sort of noisy Italian explosiveness he’d spent most of his adult life learning to control. Kate had reacted to each of his displays of temperament with a deeper and deeper retreat into icily silent WASP disapproval.

  Even the memory of those last few weeks was enough to make Luke feel slightly sick, quite apart from the horrors of the final denouement. Allowing his sister’s comments about the real identity of Stewart M. Jones to slide past unchallenged, Luke tucked the charge slip into his billfold and took his seat next to Anna in the car. He returned the conversation to family, food and the imminent birth of their youngest sister’s first baby and made sure he kept it there.

  For all his silence, Luke’s conviction that he’d seen Ron Raven remained strong. But six months had already passed since Ron disappeared, and Luke decided he could afford to wait until he got back to Chicago before notifying the authorities that, far from moldering in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, Ron Raven was alive and well, and seemingly enjoying life in one of the more prosperous suburbs of Washington, D.C.

  Three

  Chicago, October 10, 2007

  T he Miami police department didn’t even bother to be polite when Luke called to inform them that he’d seen the supposedly dead Ron Raven eating dinner in Herndon, Virginia, a week earlier. Dismissed by a bored clerk—his call never made it as far up the hierarchy as a real cop—he tried again with the Chicago police.

  Smarter this time around, he directed his call to a detective sergeant whom he’d met eighteen months earlier when Luciano’s was being remodeled. The cop had been assigned to find out who was stealing construction materials from the restaurant site and Luke figured the two of them had a good rapport.

  Their rapport apparently didn’t extend far enough for the cop to believe Luke’s claim to have seen Ron Raven. His tale was received with greater politeness, but with the same bored disbelief demonstrated by the police department in Miami. The bottom line was that cops in both places had fielded hundreds of reports alleging that Ron Raven was alive, and the fact that Luke described himself as an old friend and business acquaintance of the deceased carried no particular weight.

  “Has it occurred to you that maybe you’ve received so many reports because Ron Raven is alive and people really are seeing him?” Luke finally asked, no longer bothering to hide his frustration.

  “No,” the cop responded baldly.

  “That’s it?” Luke asked, incredulous. “Just no?”

  “What do you want me to say?” The detective sighed. “We receive reports like this every time there’s a murder that attracts a lot of TV coverage. And when there’s no body to be buried, you can guarantee that half the weirdos in the state are going to claim they’ve seen the deceased.”

  It was sobering to realize that from the detective’s point of view he was simply one more wing nut craving notoriety. “But you’ve dealt with me before!” Luke protested. “You know I’ve met Ron Raven because it was right in your report about the thefts from the construction site. You needed a record of who was providing financing for the restaurant and I told you then—almost three years ago!—that I had a revolving line of credit with Ron Raven.”

  “That’s true.” The cop’s voice added a layer of impatience to existing boredom.

  “And it isn’t as if I’m calling you when Ron Raven’s disappearance is being hotly reported by the media. They moved on to fresh meat weeks ago. Months ago, in fact.”

  “I’m sure you believe what you’re telling me, Mr. Savarini—”

  “But you don’t believe me, and you have no interest in conducting any sort of follow-up investigation.”

  “No, I don’t.” In view of their past acquaintance, the cop relented enough to expand on his reply. “Look, here are the facts. I pulled up the case notes while you were talking and I’m reading them right off my computer. In the three months the investigation was on active status, we took reports from a hundred and twelve people claiming to have seen Ron Raven. Do the math. That’s around ten supposed sightings a week. Miami police have taken hundreds more. On top of that, six callers told us they’d committed the murder, and another three identified themselves as the woman who’d been in the hotel room with Mr. Raven. We followed up on all six confessions and interviewed all three women who claimed to have been in the Miami hotel room. Our detectives concluded the closest any of those people had come to seeing Ron Raven was via the TV screens in their living rooms. That was your tax dollars at work, Mr. Savarini, from May until the end of July. A complete waste of time and police resources. Be grateful the case has been put into inactive status. Except for the warrant outstanding against Julio Castellano, of course. Now, if you thought you’d seen him, I’d be more interested.”

  “The fact that crazy people like to confess to murders they didn’t commit proves nothing about whether I saw Ron Raven in Virginia last week.”

  The cop no longer sounded bored, only impatient. “We have forensic evidence that proves Julio Castellano, a twice-convicted murderer, was in Ron Raven’s hotel room,” he snapped. “We have bullets and blood-spatter patterns in the hotel room, in the exact places forensic experts would expect if the victims were shot while they were running from the bed. We also have security video of two bodies being wheeled onto a yacht. Based on discrepancies between the ship’s log and data collected from the yacht itself, experts have calculated that the boat traveled a total of thirty-five nautical miles that night without knowledge or permission of the owners. Trust me, Mr. Savarini, we know exactly what happened to Ron Raven the night he disappeared. He was murdered. He’s dead and his body—what’s left of it—is at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

  It
was depressing to hear Anna’s arguments repeated more or less point by point. Luke realized that announcing he had the number of the car in which “Ron Raven” had driven away from the restaurant was going to get him nowhere. The chance of the Chicago police department agreeing to run the numbers was somewhere south of zero. He cut short what was clearly a useless exercise by thanking the cop for his explanations and hanging up.

  It was approaching 11:00 a.m., almost time for him to leave for work, and way past time for him to stop obsessing about a sighting that apparently nobody cared about except him. He was sweaty after his morning run, and he retreated to the bathroom to take a shower in preparation for the long hours ahead. He’d be lucky if he was back in his Lincoln Park condo before two or three in the morning, and that was assuming the night produced no major crises at any of his restaurants.

  Luke let the water pound in a scorching stream over his head and body. The cops were convinced they had the case of Ron Raven’s disappearance wrapped up, despite the minor detail that they hadn’t actually managed to arrest the alleged murderer. Who was Luke to persist in the claim that he’d seen Ron eating dinner in Herndon, Virginia, when the rest of the world was happy to accept that the guy had long since become an all-you-can-eat buffet for the Atlantic fishes?

  Even if he was right and the rest of the world was wrong, he had no good reason to hurl himself against the brick wall of police indifference. The eight months he’d spent dating Ron’s daughter didn’t justify sticking his nose into Raven family business months after his affair with Kate had ended. God knew, he had enough problems within his own family to keep him occupied for the next lifetime or two. He sure as hell didn’t need to take on anyone else’s family problems.

  But, dammit, he’d seen Ron Raven! The annoying conviction remained, despite his efforts to wash it down the shower drain. Luke reminded himself of all the reasons why this was a totally lousy time for him to set off on some idiotic quest to convince the world that Ron was alive. The sous-chef at his newest restaurant in suburban Winnetka had sliced open his thumb yesterday, which meant that Luke would be putting in ten long hours of intensive labor tonight, instead of merely checking in for a couple of hours before transferring to his flagship restaurant in downtown Chicago. The Food Network had called yesterday and asked him to tape a show for their upcoming series on America’s most exciting new chefs. Somehow, his already crammed schedule for next week had to be expanded to include eight hours of interviews, with a camera crew trailing him while he cooked and the network expert analyzed everything from his fall seasonal recipes to his underlying technique.

  Luke turned off the shower and shook water from his body. Clearly, he didn’t have time right now for pursuing ghosts, literal or metaphorical. Nevertheless, he found himself grabbing a towel and padding wet-footed back into the spare bedroom that served as his home office. Tucking the towel around his waist, he grabbed his Palm Pilot and retrieved a phone number for George Klein, a private detective he’d hired over the summer to identify a dishonest Luciano’s employee.

  George greeted him warmly, a soothing change after the indifferent cops. “Luke, it’s good to hear from you again. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, but I need your help. Nothing to do with the restaurants, thank God. Either the security systems you put in place are working or I’ve managed to hire some really loyal and honest employees. I hope it’s the latter.”

  “I do, too. There’s nothing I like better than to install protective systems that never get activated. So, how can I help you?”

  “I’m hoping you can run a license number for me. It’s a Virginia plate, and I need to know who the car is registered to. Do you have any contacts in Virginia?”

  “A couple. Hopefully, they’ll come through for me. Give me the plate number and I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “I’m not sure of the final digit. I was reading the license in the dark and I couldn’t see whether it was AB7 4K3, or AB7 4K8. What I want to know is the name and address of the owner. The car was a silver gray Mercedes coupe, by the way. I don’t know if that makes a difference.”

  “Absolutely. It’s a big help.” George Klein was far too discreet to inquire why Luke wanted to track down a Virginia license plate. “I’ll have both sets of numbers run through the DMV database, and if my contacts are still good, I should be able to get names and addresses for you before the end of business tomorrow.”

  George called early the following afternoon, tracking Luke down at the smallest and least formal of the three Luciano restaurants, a trattoria in Oakbrook. He informed Luke that the vehicle registered as AB7 4K3 was a Hyundai, owned by a woman. Her name was Jennifer Parker and she lived in Reston, Virginia.

  “Based on your description of the vehicle as a gray Mercedes, I assume that’s not the person you’re looking for,” he said.

  “No, I’m trying to trace a man,” Luke said. “He’s an old friend and we…um…lost touch.”

  George Klein was kind enough to ignore Luke’s lame attempt to justify his snooping. “The vehicle registered as AB7 4K8 is a Mercedes CLK 550 coupe,” he said. “The color is listed as Evening Pearl. That sounded more like the vehicle you’re looking for.”

  “Yes, it sure does.”

  “Apparently it was sold last week. The system caught up with the change of ownership only a couple of hours before I checked, so we got lucky. It’s currently registered to a Mercedes dealer in Arlington, Virginia. I figured you’d want to know the name of the previous owner—”

  “Yes, I sure do.”

  “It was a man called Stewart M. Jones.”

  Luke’s breath caught at the now-familiar name. It might be sheer coincidence that Mr. Jones had sold his car right after Luke chased him down in the restaurant parking lot. But the hasty sale could also mean that Ron Raven was so determined not to be traced that he’d been willing to part with an almost-new Mercedes to avoid discovery.

  “Do you have an address for Mr. Jones?” Luke asked the detective.

  “I do. Mr. Jones gave his place of residence as McLean, Virginia—2737 Elm Court to be precise.”

  “Thanks, George. I really appreciate the swift service. Can you do one more thing for me? Find out if Stewart Jones is still living at Elm Court.”

  “I figured you might want that information.” George Klein sounded pleased with his forethought. “I already checked with the owners of the building. According to them, Elm Court is a short-term rental place but it’s pretty upscale, mostly catering to diplomats and international businessmen. Unit 6, which is where Mr. Jones was living when he registered his car, rents for five thousand bucks a month, furnished, weekly maid service included. That’s not out of sight for the D.C. area, but it’s obviously not cheap, either. Mr. Jones stayed there for only one month and left three months ago, with all his bills paid up. From the point of view of the management company, there was nothing in the least remarkable about his stay or his departure. They screen all tenants, of course, and Mr. Jones passed the screening without a hiccup.”

  If Ron Raven were alive and wanted to conceal that fact, then Washington, D.C. would be an ideal city for him to hide in, Luke reflected. Nobody noticed strangers or transients in the D.C. area because the city was full of them. From Ron’s perspective, there were few cities in the United States that would offer better prospects for lucrative business deals, combined with plenty of comfortable places to hide.

  The fact that “Stewart Jones” had passed a standard credit check didn’t surprise Luke in the least. Ron Raven had been running background checks on prospective clients for three decades and he would certainly know all the danger points he needed to protect himself against. On top of that, he’d been concealing his bigamous lifestyle for twenty-eight years. Never confiding fully in anyone, procuring duplicate documents and spinning stories to obscure the truth would be second nature to him. Now that he thought about it, Luke realized Ron Raven was almost uniquely qualified to disappear and reemerge with a new ide
ntity.

  Unfortunately, the more convinced Luke became that Stewart Jones and Ron Raven were the same person, the more difficult it became to imagine how he was going to track the guy down. On top of that, he would soon have to consider the issue Anna had raised last week: Would he be doing the Raven family any favors by telling them he’d seen Ron? Or would he be heating up an emotional pot that had just started to cool down from the traumatic news of Ron’s death?

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Mr. Jones left a forwarding address,” he said to George Klein.

  “He left an address, but it’s in Australia. In Adelaide, to be precise. I haven’t followed up. I figured I’d talk with you first before going to that expense.”

  “Stewart Jones’s forwarding address is in Australia?”

  “Yes. You sound surprised.”

  “I am.”

  “I take it you didn’t know that Mr. Jones is an Australian diplomat?”

  “An Australian diplomat?” Luke stared blankly at the contract with a seafood vendor that he’d been reading before he picked up the detective’s call. Ron Raven clearly had acting abilities his family didn’t know about if he’d managed to pass himself off as an Australian.

  “Luke? Are you there?”

  “Sorry, you surprised me, that’s all. I assumed…Mr. Jones…was an American.”

  “Perhaps he is. If you’re a person trying to hide, adopting a foreign identity is a great first step.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because superficial identity checks in the States are all set up around social security numbers. An Australian diplomat doesn’t have an American social security number, meaning that credit checks are a lot more difficult. Not to mention more expensive.”