Marie Ferrarella - Hero for Hire

“How about your husband’s parents?” Turning, he looked at her again. “Are they still alive?”

There’d been a card at Christmas. And a generous check in lieu of a gift, which would have required time and effort on their parts. But she bore the couple no malice. It was their loss. She’d deposited the check into the account she’d started for Casey with the money from Robert’s life insurance.

“They live in Europe, Mr.—” she corrected herself “—Chad, and are frankly far more interested in their three poodles than in their only grandchild.”

She was trying hard not to show it, but he’d caught a hint of bitterness in her voice. Undoubtedly on Casey’s behalf. “Your husband was an only child?”

“He has a brother—” She stopped abruptly. She wasn’t some soft-brained person to be led from question to question without understanding the direction. “Where are you going with this?” she wanted to know. Surely he couldn’t be thinking of accusing Neil. Casey’s uncle wasn’t exactly an eager beaver when it came to doing anything meaningful with his life, but he adored the boy. “Neil dotes on him. Some monster did this.” She began to sound more like herself to her own ear. Confident. In control. “I don’t know any monsters, Chad. Can’t you get that through your head?”

She was loyal, protective. All good qualities. But at times they tended to make a person blind. He’d learned not to instantly rule out anything on faith. He had to be convinced. Still, he wasn’t about to waste time arguing, either, other than to say, “Well, some monster apparently knows you, Veronica.”

Veronica opened her mouth to respond but never got the chance.

Chad was about to suggest that she take him to the site of the party—Anne Sullivan’s house. He wanted to find out what agencies the woman had employed to supply the food and the entertainment, as well as the names of any regular household help she had. From where he stood, he was looking at all the earmarks of an inside job. This had not been a random kidnapping, but one that had been planned. Someone knew something, and it was up to him to follow whatever trails there were until he came to a scrap of information he could use. It was a little like being a rat following different paths in a maze. One of the paths had to lead to something substantial.

But before he could make the suggestion, a high-pitched, urgent ring came from the purse she was still holding.

Veronica stared down at her purse dumbly for a moment, as if the sound rendered her incapable of thought. And then the words “The kidnapper!” burst from her lips. She had forgotten to cancel call-forwarding when they’d walked into the house.

“Answer it,” Chad instructed quietly.

The urging snapped her back to the world of the functioning. Wrapping her thoughts around a fragment of a prayer, she quickly took out the cell phone, snapping back the lid as she did so. Chad motioned for her to tilt it slightly so that he could hear.

Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe.

“Hello?”

A high-pitched whine preceded the first word. “Took your sweet time answering. I was beginning to think maybe you’d changed your mind about the boy and didn’t care if you got him back.”

She wanted to scream at the person on the other end, to demand the reason he was doing this to her. To Casey. It was everything she could do to keep her voice level. The only thing she could ever remember her father saying to her was never negotiate from a position of fear. The other side could always smell fear.

So she did her best to sound annoyed at the suggestion. “Yes, I want him back. I want him back very much.”

The laugh, metallic, discordant, went right through her. “I’m counting on it.”

Her eyes met Chad’s. She could feel her breathing begin to regulate. Having him here helped her cope. “What is it you want?”

“What do you think?” The sneer transcended the metallic sound.

Her father’s edict began to fade. “I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t hurt him.”

“Hey,” the voice said carelessly. “If he gets hurt, it won’t be my fault.”

A fresh wave of fear assaulted her. Holding the phone in both hands, she angled it closer to her. “What do you mean?”

Very gently Chad moved the cell phone so that they could both hear it again.

The voice on the other end said, “You’re a smart lady. You figure it out.”

“Please, no games, just tell me how much you want and where to bring it.” She disregarded the expression on Chad’s face as he shook his head.

The voice laughed again. “Oh, but I like games, Ronnie. I really do—”

The line suddenly went dead.

“Hello? Hello?” she cried frantically, her voice going up. There was no response. “Damn it, answer me!” Veronica shouted into the telephone.

Chad took the cell phone from her, placing it to his own ear. The line remained dead.

The eyes that met his were bordering on frantic. “I charged it—it can’t be dead.”

“It’s not the phone’s fault.” Chad flipped it closed again and then handed it back to her. “In all probability, he’s just playing with you.”

“Playing with me?” she echoed in stunned disbelief. “Why? Why would he do something like that?” This was about money, wasn’t it? She’d already established to her own satisfaction that it wasn’t anyone out for revenge at some slight.

“To accomplish just what he’s done,” Chad said. “To keep you off balance so you don’t start thinking and piecing things together. Things he doesn’t want you to piece together.”

“Like what?” she demanded.

“That’s what we’re going to have to find out.” He took out his own cell phone and began punching in numbers.

She was so frustrated she could scream. Panicking when she saw him take out his phone, Veronica placed her hand on the keypad. “What are you doing? You’re not calling the police, are you?”

In his estimation, having the police around, except perhaps for a chosen few individuals, was not advisable at the moment. He’d seen too much on the force he’d left behind to be blindly trusting.

“No, I’m playing a hunch.” He drew the phone away from her. “It’s what you’re paying me for,” he reminded her gently. The phone on the other end rang three times. Sam Walters, he knew, was away on a case. But his wife wasn’t. A soft voice filled his ear. “Savannah? Chad. I need a little information.” He thought he heard the sound of laughter in the background. That would be Savannah’s girls, he thought. Two very live wires who rarely slept. He didn’t know how the woman did it. “Can I get you to look up something for me on your computer?”

“If I can,” Savannah replied. “What is it you need?”

He saw Veronica looking at him, undoubtedly trying to second-guess his request. “See if there’ve been any power outages or downed phone lines anywhere between here and L.A. County and Riverside.”

Savannah’s soft laugh filled his ear. “Don’t ask for much, do you?”

“Never more than you can deliver. Call me on my cell when you find out.”

“Will do. New case?”

Savannah had come into Sam’s life when he had set out to find her missing daughter. She knew firsthand what a mother in this situation felt like. He could have used her earlier in his office when Veronica had broken down.

“Yes.”

“Tell your clients they couldn’t be in better hands. Good luck, Chad.”

He smiled. “Thanks.” Breaking the connection, he flipped the cover shut on his phone.

Veronica watched him put away his phone. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she spoke again and found that her lungs ached. “Now what?”

“Now I continue asking you questions.”

She wanted to be doing something. Hitting something. “But the kidnapper…”

He’d seen all he needed to in the boy’s room. Gently he escorted her out into the hallway. “He’ll call again. And we’ll be waiting for him.”

The operative word, she knew, was waiting. She didn’t know if she was going to be able to much longer.

“Who calls you Ronnie?”

Veronica stopped at the head of the stairs and turned to look at Chad uncomprehendingly. “What?”

“The voice on the other end of the line called you Ronnie.” He didn’t see her as a Ronnie. Ronnies were dark-haired women who excelled in competitive sports and laughed out loud when something tickled their funny bone. The woman before him looked far too sophisticated to manage more than a small smile. “Who calls you Ronnie?” he repeated.

Her response was immediate. “Nobody.” And then she stopped, backtracking. Remembering. “Robert did. And sometimes I do—in my mind when I’m frustrated,” she added. “But nobody else does.” That wasn’t altogether true. “Except for Stephanie,” she amended. “That’s my younger sister. She was the first one to call me that when she couldn’t wrap her tongue around ‘Veronica.’” That seemed so long ago now, she thought. She found herself wishing her sister was here, instead of on the other side of the country.

She hadn’t mentioned a sister before. Getting information in dribs and drabs was not something he was unaccustomed to. “And where is your younger sister?”

Veronica could feel herself growing defensive. “In New York. She’s a curator at the Museum of Natural History. And not a candidate for suspicion.” He was wasting time looking in directions that led to dead ends.

He could almost read the thoughts crossing her mind. “I’m just trying to get a clear picture, that’s all, Veronica.”

She was vaguely aware that he’d stopped addressing her formally. “The picture is crystal clear. Someone, not my sister, not my brother-in-law, but someone,” she emphasized, “came to Andy Sullivan’s birthday party and walked off with my son.”

According to her, there had been a great many people at the party. Still, children that age did tend to shy away from people they didn’t know. “Would he go off with a stranger that easily?”

Feeling suddenly weak, Veronica leaned against the wall. She ran a hand over her pounding forehead, but the throbbing continued. The headache was nearly blinding. She should have been stricter with Casey, should have made him more wary of people.

She could feel the sting of gathering tears again and willed them back.

“I wish I could say no, but other than a phobia of clowns, Casey is the world’s friendliest kid. I’ve tried to tell him over and over again not to talk to strangers, but…” Helpless, she tried to ward off the feeling with a shrug.

That one simple gesture transformed her from a regal queen into someone who embodied vulnerability and frailty. Chad felt something distant stir within him, prompting responses that were nearly foreign to him. It made him want to comfort her.

The best comfort she could possibly have would be the recovery of her son. He pushed on. “And there’s no one else who calls you Ronnie?”

Fighting her headache, she straightened again. “No, why? Is it important?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “Might have narrowed the playing field a little. ‘Veronica’ is rather a formal name while ‘Ronnie’ is on a different, more intimate level.”

She gave a laugh, short and without humor. “Which is a polite way of saying that ‘Veronica’ sounds like a snob.”

Memories from her past, cruel ones with taunting children who took painful shyness for aloofness and used insults and gibes to make themselves feel better, surfaced. She pushed them aside. This wasn’t the time for that, or for feeling sorry for herself.