Stone Cold (13 page)

On an impulse she swayed her hips a little more than she usually would as she strode between the tables to the rest–room and was both surprised and delighted to catch the eyes of several male diners.

She barely made it into the rest–room before she threw a hand over her mouth to catch her own delighted giggles. She hurled her handbag onto the counter in front of the mirrors and rested one hand beside it as she bent over and laughed.

‘Somebody’s having a good night.’

Kathryn looked up to see a young girl emerge from one of the stalls, her pupils dilated and a dreamy look on her face. Expensive clothes, designer label handbag, expertly dyed hair. She had “rich–kid” written all over her and cocaine smeared across her left cheek, but her smile was genuine and filled with playful curiosity.

Kathryn spilled the beans before she could even think about it. ‘I just gave my boyfriend five minutes to either propose or leave.’

The girl’s eyes widened and she chuckled. ‘Ain’t you the woman, honey!?’

Kathryn managed to gain control of her mirth, and then she looked at the girl. ‘You look like you enjoy a laugh. Would you mind doing me a favour?’

‘You got it, girl.’

***

16

Kathryn strode out of the rest–room as though she was being announced at the Oscars and a big band was playing. More heads turned as she swayed her way between the tables, focused only on Stephen and his furtive features as she closed in on him like a falcon hunting a hare.

Stephen shifted in his seat, his second glass of wine already drained. An awkward smile slapped itself across his face as Kathryn set her handbag back down on the table and slid silkily into her chair.

‘Well, Mister Hollister?’ she asked. ‘What will it be?’

Stephen, one hand pinching the stem of his wine glass, swallowed thickly before replying.

‘I think that…’

‘You have to
think
about it?’

Her voice was just loud enough to raise attention to them again. Stephen’s eyes swivelled left and right and he raised his spare hand to placate her, still unwilling to release his pride anchor.

‘Would you rather I rushed in and made a fool of myself?’

‘You mean you’re not making a fool of yourself now?’

‘I…,’.

‘Save it,’ Kathryn cut him off before he could say anything more. ‘I suspected that you would be like this, so I’ve saved you the trouble.’

‘Wait,’ Stephen said as Kathryn shot to her feet. ‘Don’t leave, I want to…’

Kathryn raised her hand to silence him.

The girl from the rest–room appeared right on cue, a microphone in her hand. She passed it to Kathryn, who spoke without hesitation into the microphone as the tinkling of the background music in the restaurant suddenly faded out.

‘Ladies and gentlemen.’

The sound of her own voice amplified across the restaurant startled Kathryn, and she hesitated before she gained control again, asserting her confidence over Stephen, who was sitting in terror on his chair and holding onto the table edge as though for his very life.

A hundred people were now all watching her attentively as she spoke. Cocaine Girl giggled as she hurried out of the way.

‘I hope that you don’t mind me interrupting your meals,’ Kathryn said, her heart fluttering in her chest as she tried to keep her voice calm. ‘I wanted you all to know that my partner Stephen, who’s sitting here, and I have been together for three years and that we’re at such an important point in our lives. I’ve just started a new job that I really love, and Stephen’s working as hard as he can to help support us. So, I want this to be a very special night.’

Kathryn turned to Stephen, looked down at him and dropped her voice an octave as she spoke.

‘Stephen, you said that my new job has changed me. You’re right. I’ve decided to take control of my life and do the things that I want to do. I guess we don’t really know who people are until they’re forced to reveal themselves, and I don’t want to hide any more. I want this to be the very first night of my new life. I’m not much for tradition, so…’

Kathryn reached down to her handbag and retrieved from within a small, elaborate box. A ripple of whispers fluttered through the assembled diners as Kathryn popped the box open and revealed a sparkling silver ring with a small, cleanly–cut diamond.

Stephen’s eyes widened and she saw the colour drain from his face as she moved around the table and offered the box out to him.

‘Stephen,’ she said softly into the microphone, ‘make this the first day of our new life.’

Stephen stared at the ring as though it were a thermo–nuclear device. One hand reached up furtively from the table and plucked the ring from the box as Stephen almost fell from his chair onto one knee. Kathryn saw conflicting emotions race across his features like raging seas as he mastered whatever he was really feeling and forced a smile onto his face.

His words, when he spoke, were thin and reedy compared to Kathryn’s mighty microphone–amplified oratory and barely audible even in the silence that surrounded them.

‘Kathryn Stone,’ he gasped, ‘will you marry me?’

Kathryn looked around her at the rapt diners watching them, and then gave a small shrug as she glanced at Stephen. ‘Maybe.’ A ripple of laughter tinkled through the restaurant as Kathryn smiled brightly and thrust her outstretched hand straight into Stephen’s face. ‘Of course I will!’

A blast of thunderous applause flooded the restaurant as Stephen slid the ring onto her finger and got unsteadily to his feet to put his arms around her.

‘Can we just eat dinner now?’ she heard him say in her ear above the tumultuous applause surrounding them.

Kathryn stood back from him, her face flushed with excitement. ‘Just one last thing,’ she said, and nodded over his shoulder.

Stephen turned, and Kathryn hugged him tightly to her as Cocaine Girl’s camera flashed brightly. Kathryn felt Stephen’s entire body stiffen as the photograph was taken.

‘They’re going to put it up in the restaurant bar for
everyone
to see,’ Kathryn smiled as she held Stephen tightly beside her. ‘Right up until we get married. Isn’t that great?’

Kathryn could not hear Stephen’s response above the clapping.

***

17

‘Wow,’ Maietta said as she climbed from the vehicle.

‘Yeah,’ Griffin replied. ‘That about covers it.’

They stood in front of the broad Colonial–style house, fronted by perfectly–manicured lawns that glistened with frost in the pale glow of the sunrise. The threatening rain clouds of the previous day had vanished, the sky a pearlescent dome as cold as ice above them.

The pool car they were driving was marked with Ventura Air’s logo on the doors and Griffin looked resplendent in his pilot’s uniform, the darkness and the cap’s low peak helping to disguise his identity.

‘We’re in the wrong job,’ Maietta said as she adjusted her cap, apparently uncomfortable in the uniform.

‘What do you think?’ Griffin asked. ‘Me captain, you my co–pilot?’

‘Bullshit,’ Maietta snapped. ‘I’ll take the left hand seat.’

Griffin smiled, but he pinched the corners of his eyes as he shut the car door and rubbed his face with his hands.

‘You okay?’

‘Long night.’

Another night had passed painfully slowly in the wake of Angela’s departure. Jesus, at the one point in his life when he had believed that things just
couldn’t
get any worse… He dragged a hand down his face, felt his stubble thick on his chin. He needed to get himself sorted out, he knew. It wasn’t like he couldn’t see what was happening to him or was oblivious to his decline, and yet somehow whenever he decided it was time to do something about it all then something else more important got in the way.

‘Want to talk about it?’ Maietta asked.

Griffin saw in the windows of some of the other houses the occasional movement, people watching from within. Easy way to change the subject.

‘Pity we can’t question the natives.’

Maietta nodded as she glimpsed a woman watching from a window in a house on the opposite side of the street move out of sight again. ‘They might have seen something.’

‘Maybe,’ Griffin replied. ‘But we can’t take the chance right now that one of them isn’t involved somehow.’

‘Well, the security company confirmed that nobody on its staff had any access to the alarm codes,’ Maietta said. ‘The occupants are always required to enter new, personal codes once the system has been fitted in order to activate the system. All of their fitters and maintenance staff have cast–iron alibis.’

‘That rules out a presence, not assistance in the crime,’ Griffin pointed out.

‘Not much we can do about that,’ Maietta replied, ‘until we have a suspect.’

They walked up the garden path and climbed the steps to the front door. The door opened for them and they walked inside, the man who had let them in careful to remain out of sight.

A broad foyer greeted them, a grand staircase facing them that split half way up and climbed to opposite landings above the foyer. Two doorways to the left and right in the foyer led to the living room and dining room, and two corridors either side of the staircase led to the rear of the house and presumably the kitchen.

‘Kinda pokey,’ Maietta quipped.

A sergeant dressed in casual attire appeared and gestured with a jab of his thumb toward the living room to their left.

‘Owner of the house is in there.’

‘Forensics cleaned up?’ Griffin asked. ‘Find anything?’

A small forensics and technical team had been sent into the house under cover of darkness, while Dale McKenzie was out, to both check the house for evidence and install a phone–monitoring system.

‘Just the spilled blood. It’s being analysed as we speak, but chances are it’s Sheila McKenzie’s.’

Griffin nodded as he followed Maietta into the living room. Sumptuous carpets inches deep, couches yards long, an immense fireplace large enough to sit in and a plasma screen mounted on one wall that would have shamed a small–town cinema. Dale McKenzie sat on the enormous couch, his hands clasped in his lap.

On the coffee table, a phone was wired to a laptop computer being monitored by a technical officer. If the abductors called about the ransom, it would give law enforcement a chance to pin down their location.

‘Detectives,’ McKenzie said, standing and glancing at their uniforms. ‘Anything yet?’

‘Nothing,’ Griffin said, ‘but we’re investigating every possible avenue.’

Dale McKenzie was wearing casual clothes after his day on duty, but Griffin could tell that he was hiding considerable emotional strain.

‘Of course,’ he replied quietly.

Griffin had to maintain the essence of a man isolated on his own, to keep McKenzie as far from any suspicion of police activity as possible. The men in the house with him would be gone soon and would monitor his phone line remotely.

‘This won’t take long,’ Griffin assured the captain. ‘You have a flight to take?’

‘Daily schedule to Las Vegas,’ McKenzie replied, ‘due out in about an hour.’

‘Just stick with your normal routine,’ Griffin said. ‘Anything changes, the abductors are going to suspect you’ve come to us and that could become a real problem. You just keep holdin’ it together, okay?’

McKenzie nodded. ‘It helps not to be sitting about here,’ he said. ‘I feel better if I’ve got something to do.’

‘Okay, I’ll make this quick,’ Griffin said, checking his notes. ‘You were away from home for just over forty–eight hours during the period in which your wife was presumably abducted.’

‘Presumably?’ McKenzie echoed. ‘I showed you the ransom note, remember?’

‘Yes sir I do, but a ransom note does not necessarily mean that there is a ransom
demand
.’

McKenzie’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Griffin. ‘You still think that Sheila is somehow behind all of this?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Griffin pointed out. ‘We have to explore any possible motive or outcome. It’s what I imagine you’d want us to do?’

‘I want you to find my wife!’ McKenzie snapped. ‘How the hell could I have anything to do with this?’

‘Sometimes there’s a partner involved,’ Maietta said. ‘Somebody who can do the dirty work while providing a convenient alibi for the brains behind the crime.’

McKenzie stared at her for a long moment.

‘And supposing I was the brains behind some kind of bizarre abduction scheme, and a benefactor paid on my behalf for my wife’s liberation? What then? I couldn’t launder the money, because I wouldn’t know where to start. I couldn’t spend it, because to do so would expose me as the guilty party. I would be utterly unable to touch a single dime.’

‘Patience,’ Griffin said, ‘is a virtue.’

‘And mine is running out,’ McKenzie snarled as he stood and jabbed a finger hard into Griffin’s chest. ‘My wife is missing and yet again you’re standing here questioning a victim!’

‘Don’t do that,’ Griffin said as he batted McKenzie’s hand aside. ‘You don’t want to end up in a cell yourself, right?’

McKenzie backed off, apparently surprised by the threat. Maietta moved in, taking her cue naturally from Griffin. Good cop, bad cop.

‘Mister McKenzie we’re not here to accuse you, we’re here to find answers and if we miss something, your wife might not return. Do you understand?’

‘I’m not an idiot,’ McKenzie snapped, clearly trying to restrain his anger and keep his voice down. ‘I know what you have to do, but these theories make no sense at all and you’re wasting what time we have. Forty eight hours, isn’t it? Before the chances of an abductee surviving their ordeal are drastically reduced? It’s been more than twenty four already, we’ve had no contact from the abductors and you’re no closer to finding my wife than when I first called!’

Griffin slipped his notebook into his pocket and looked the pilot in the eye.

‘Is it possible, captain, however unlikely, that your wife might somehow have leaked the security codes from your alarm system to somebody else?’

‘I doubt it,’ McKenzie replied. ‘Sheila is very paranoid about security, especially at home.’