Revelations (27 page)

“In Wentworth,” Jane added.

“Yes.” There was that same, damn sound in Carol’s voice again—hesitation mixed with fear.

Jane’s eyes traveled to the side. The left, arched door to Bailey’s office was half open. “Ah, I didn’t get to see that room before,” she said, moving several steps toward the office.

“Oh, it’s filthy in there,” Carol stammered, her bony fingers clutched at her black pearls.

Jane put a soothing hand on Carol’s arm. “Well, that’s good. If any mud falls off my shirt, it’ll blend right in.” She gently pushed the door to the office open and walked inside.

The room wasn’t large, compared to the rest of the garish house. Jane figured it took up a measly two hundred square feet. It was trimmed with white-framed arched windows on one side that framed a grove of aspens outside. The other walls held three- and four-foot paintings displaying Colorado mountain landscapes, framed in faux gold and each lit with its own museum light. Bailey’s desk sat to the left. As expected, it was a huge, chunk of wood—the kind of desk you feel lost behind and
that puts as much distance as possible between you and anyone seated across from you. Jane could easily picture Bailey sitting in the antique highback, weathered, leather chair behind the desk, his feet propped up on the glass top displaying his alligator cowboy boots. The desktop was nearly immaculate, as was most of the room, save for a far corner behind the desk that looked to shelter an empty box and packing materials.

“Bailey won’t be back for several hours.” Jane noted how Carol’s pitch was higher and tenser than it was in the entry hall. She moved her slender body around the desk and positioned herself next to his antique leather desk chair.

The way she moved seemed odd to Jane. “Bailey’s an only child?” Jane asked, trying to inflect more calm into the conversation.

“Yes,” Carol replied, but her cadence was even more anxious.

Jane noticed that the leather desk chair looked out of place in the room. Instead of “crafting that Colorado lifestyle” that Bailey droned on about in their first meeting, the chair looked like an out-of-place relic that had occupied a less refined setting. “I’m the oldest in my family,” Jane said matter-of-factly, running her fingers along the smooth edge of the glass desktop. “I have a younger brother, Mike.” Jane heard herself talking and wondered if she’d been possessed by a dim-witted spirit. It seemed that the more she tried to pacify Carol, the more uncomfortable the woman became. Then Jane realized that Carol’s heightened sense of panic set in the minute they entered Bailey’s office. “Is Bailey one of those guys who hates people coming into his private space without an invitation?”

“Yes.” This time, the answer was pronounced and almost defiant for someone as mealy-mouthed as Carol Van Gorden.

“I can’t blame him. I’m the same way, Carol. I don’t like surprises,” Jane mused as she ran her fingers across a ten-inchlong silver cigarette case. Again, the case seemed out of place to Jane in this Colorado-inspired home design. On top of the
silver case, was a wildly engraved
V
with enough flourishes and twirls that it barely resembled the letter.

Carol saw Jane looking at the cigarette case. She reached across the desk and moved it closer to her. “Oh, that’s embarrassing!” Carol declared. “Cigarette smoking is so disgusting! I never thought he should keep it out like this. He doesn’t smoke. Nor do I.” She swept up the case, holding it tightly to her body. “It gives the wrong impression, you know, a cigarette case on display. Nasty,
nasty
habit.”

Jane couldn’t care less what anybody had on display in their private home, so long as it wasn’t a meth lab or child porn. And she sure as hell didn’t care if anybody smoked. In fact, the idea of a cigarette was sounding pretty damn good right now. But the way Carol held that case against her body bothered Jane. Was this woman so worried about appearances that she thought it was necessary to make such a fanfare? Or was there something in the case she didn’t want Jane to see? “My dad had a silver cigarette case just like that on his desk,” Jane said, lying through her teeth. Her father wouldn’t have been caught dead with something that showy. “But he kept photos of my brother and I in it.” That was one helluva of another lie. Jane’s dad never cared a bit to carry or display a single photo of his kids. “What does your husband keep in the case?”

Carol looked faint. She wet her lips several times and rested one hand on the leather chair for support. “Odds and ends,” she said, her voice barely breaching the level of a whisper.

“Can I see what’s inside, Carol?” Jane asked, matching Carol’s soft tone.

Apoplectic
. That’s how Carol appeared as she set the case on the glass top and pushed it toward Jane. Jane leaned forward, picked it up and opened the top. Inside, there were a multicolored variety of paperclips and thumbtacks. Jane moved her fingernail underneath the wooden bottom piece of the box, in search of anything that might be hidden there. But it was sealed tightly. She looked at Carol, who had a nervous smile across her
face.

“Silly, isn’t it?” Carol offered. “To keep office supplies in something like that.”

Jane closed the lid and brushed her fingers across the engraving on top of the
V
. “Shouldn’t this be
V.G
.?”

“I’m sorry?” Carol asked, seemingly not hearing the question.

“Van Gorden?”

Carol shrugged her shoulders. Her face froze in a forced grin that made her look like something between a lunatic and a prisoner facing a firing squad. “I don’t know. It’s from Bailey’s side of the family.”

“Well,” Jane said, carefully setting it back on the desktop, “it’s a beauty!” Jane looked at Carol. “Just like that chair.”

Carol looked down at the desk chair. A look came over her face that Jane couldn’t identify. It was as though the woman was slipping out of her body momentarily. “It belonged to Bailey’s father,” she said in a distant voice.

“His dad wasn’t a doctor, was he?”

“Excuse me?” Carol looked at Jane with distant eyes.

“It’s not a doctor’s chair. The sides and the armrest are pretty beat up. It wasn’t a chair he cared about showing off.”

Carol looked back at the chair, totally dazed. “Yes. You’re right. You really do have a knack for detail, don’t you? That must come in handy with your line of work.” She looked off to the side, utterly lost. The sound of the phone ringing broke the awkward silence. Carol jumped, bringing herself back into her delicate body. It rang a second time before she picked it up. “Hello.” She waited a few seconds. “Hello?” She hung up. “Wrong number I guess.”

Jane recalled that when they first visited the Van Gordens, the phone was ringing when Carol opened the door. Later, when Bailey arrived at the door and Carol asked about the phone call, he said it ‘rang twice’ and was a wrong number. “I know I already asked you this, but you’re not being bugged by
media calls, are you?”

“No, thank goodness.”

“Does the phone ring two times a lot and then nobody’s there?”

“It’s happened before.”

“Just recently?”

“Recent in what way?”

“Since Jake’s disappearance,” Jane stressed.

“No, it was happening before that.” Jane started around the desk. Carol stiffened. “What is it?!” she exclaimed, backing up a few steps toward the corner of the room.

Jane put a reassuring hand on her arm. The woman was completely overreacting to Jane’s movement. “It’s okay, Carol. I just want to check the caller ID, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s fine,” she said, but she shook her head.

It was one of the most common
tells
in body language; answering a question in the affirmative but letting your body demonstrate your real feelings. Jane had nailed countless perps by noting that giveaway. “You’re sure it’s okay if I check?” Jane asked again, wanting to see if she produced the same reaction.

“Yes, of course,” Carol uttered, repeating the same damn shake of the head.

Jane hit the backward arrow on the Caller ID box, displaying the last number called. “Unavailable,” she said out loud. “That’s convenient.” She turned to Carol. “Ever notice when this has happened before if it always comes up as
unavailable
…or is there a number?”

“I honestly have never checked it out.”

Well, finally
, Jane thought.
A completely honest statement in one full breath from Carol. Somebody send up a flag.

“Why are you here, Detective?”

Jane realized that for Carol to even utter such an inquiry, it took all the courage she could muster. This was not a woman who wanted to appear rude or presumptuous. And, after all, the only reason Jane was there was because she knew Bailey wasn’t.
“Well…”

“Is there something new regarding Jake’s case?” Carol fiddled with the hem of her cashmere turtleneck. “I don’t mean to sound like a gossip, but I got a call a few hours ago from a friend in town who said she saw several police cars heading down the highway, past where Jordan Copeland lives.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I just wondered if you found…” She choked on her words.

Jane put a hand on Carol’s arm. “You would have been called.”

Carol nodded, tears streaming down her face. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Carol kept her head down but touched Jane’s arm with her shaking hand.
It’s the perfect time to jump
, Jane thought. “Carol, if you know something that might help us in
any
way…”

Carol took an even more defined step back toward the corner of the room where the empty box and packing materials lay in a heap. “I don’t know anything!” She avoided Jane’s gaze and turned her head to the side, toward the corner of the room.

Jane stared at the empty box. It was about eighteen inches long and twelve inches wide. The perfect size for a pair of expensive cowboy boots, Jane surmised. But the way Carol seemed to point her head toward the box even when she said,
I don’t know anything
, troubled Jane. “Every second counts right now, Carol.“

Carol looked Jane straight in the eye. “I said
I don’t know anything
! Now, I really do need to get on with my day. If there’s nothing else I can help you with…”

Jane was getting tired of being abruptly asked to leave people’s homes and property. She let out a tired breath and walked out into the entry, followed by Carol. But before she got to the door, she turned. “One more question. Bo Lowry told Sergeant Weyler that you and your husband withdrew a reward fund two nights ago. Why did you do that?”

Carol took a hard swallow. “My husband didn’t want every crackpot in the world calling up Chief Lowry and offering false
clues just to get money.” The words fell like stone from her lips.

“Yeah, but, people with genuine information
will
talk for the right amount of money. It’s worth sorting through the wingnuts to get to the cream…”

“No! My husband has made the decision and we are sticking with it,” Carol stammered as she moved Jane to the door and opened it.

Carol was the victim personified. Victims, Jane thought, were the bottom feeders of bad luck. The more they stewed in their suffering, the more they attracted a world that validated their misfortune. Jane did her best to make eye contact with the woman but it was useless. Even trained thieves and seasoned liars learned to look a cop in the eye occasionally. It was the ones who were new to the game who kept their heads hung.

 

Jane didn’t cross the threshold at Town Hall until a little past 12:30 pm. The receptionist buzzed her in with a wave and a questionable glance at her mud-encrusted shirt. Right before she rounded the corner of Bo’s office, she nearly ran straight into Vi who was carrying a file folder and heading to her desk. Jane quickly realized that she had an impromptu opportunity. She asked if she could see Jordan’s file, for no other reason but to find out what mysterious page Vi had torn off the front of the file. When Vi handed her the file, there was only a staple on the front with a torn fragment of paper at the top.

“What’s missing here?” Jane asked, pointing to the staple.

“An internal cover page.” Vi’s answer was polished and succinct.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t do that at Denver Headquarters? I thought that was protocol.”

Jane had never heard of any “protocol” at DH that required a facing page on the outside of all files. And if it did exist, there’d be no reason to rip it off and hide it away in a top desk drawer—unless it had seriously confidential information in it.
If
that
was the case here, it didn’t make sense that Vi ripped the front page off of both Jake and Jordan’s file. And furthermore, if Bo brought them into solve this case in a timely fashion, shouldn’t any and all confidential information be brought out into the open? Jane assured Vi that they didn’t follow that practice. “Can I ask what’s on the page?”

“Sure,” Vi replied graciously. “It’s the date the file was opened, the contents inside the file, initials of who has read the file and the date they read it and how many photos are in the file.”

For a small-time police department, this place sure felt a need to be as thorough and anal as possible with their filing system. Funny thing was, Jane realized, for a town that basically had no crime, it seemed ridiculous that they would go to the trouble of creating such a front page on each file. And furthermore, as far as Jane could tell, the only two people reading said files were Vi and Bo. Was it really necessary for them to “sign off” on it each time they read it? Vi’s story was as phony as they come but Jane gave the woman credit for the way she delivered the lie. She talked quickly, with authority and didn’t smile too much while she was doing it, so it didn’t come off as disingenuous. She was well trained, Jane decided, and this wasn’t her first horse in the deception race. “You know, I would love for Sergeant Weyler to get a copy of that front page so we could incorporate it in our filing system back at Headquarters. Could I see one of them?”