Кей Хупер - Hiding in the Shadows

Kane sat on the arm of the couch near her chair. "And you have no idea what book would be important." He didn't say it derisively or accusingly, just matter-of-fact.

She pressed her fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. "No. But I..."

Her head lifted abruptly, and she stared at him.

"Did Dinah use a day planner? A date book?"

"Two of them. One she kept with her in the jeep, for business, the other one here for personal stuff."

Kane got up and went to the antique desk near one of the windows. He took a black leather book out of the top drawer and came back to hand it to Faith.

"I've been through it a dozen times," he said, sitting on the couch. "So have the police. In the first few weeks, we retraced her steps those last days, trying to find some clue to what happened to her."

He paused. "I never saw anything unusual in there, nothing that drew my attention."

But that would have been the point. Not to draw anyone's attention. Faith examined the book carefully. It was the usual sort of day planner, with an address book and calendar and tabbed sections for appointments and schedules and notes. There was a pocket in the front cover for Dinah's business cards, and several pages of clear plastic sleeves for the cards people had given her.

There was, as far as Faith could see, nothing out of the ordinary. She looked through the sections one at a time, turning each page slowly. It wasn't until she reached the second-to-last section intended for notes that she looked up at Kane.

"There are no pages here. The tab says notes should be in this section, but all the pages are missing."

"I didn't notice that. But it might mean nothing. Dinah could have torn them out one or two at a time, never intending to keep them. People do that."

Faith closed her eyes, thinking. "if I knew somebody might try to get some information I had, that someone could come looking for it, I just might write it down twice. Once in a reasonable place where I could be fairly sure it would be found — and then again somewhere else."

"Where?" Kane asked.

Faith stared down at the planner. "When you're looking for something and you find it, you stop looking. Right?"

"Right. "

She turned the final tab, which was labeled misc, and discovered several lined pages with a scattering of reminders written in Dinah's hand. Faith ran her finger down them slowly.

Get the jeep's tires rotated.

Find out Sharon's birthday.

Have a putting green installed in Conrad's office.

Faith looked up at Kane and repeated that one aloud. "Conrad?"

He smiled slightly. "Conrad Masterson. A financial manager who's also a golfing nut. Dinah was wondering what to get him for Christmas."

"Oh." Faith returned her gaze to the pages. More reminders.

To trace the whereabouts of a catalog order that had not arrived.

To schedule a routine checkup with her doctor.

To return a Stephen King novel to the library.

Faith stopped again at that one. "But she buys his books."

"What?" Kane leaned toward her.

She looked up at him with a frown. "This note says she has to remember to return a Stephen King novel to the library. But she buys his books in hardcover I found half a dozen."

"I found two," Kane said slowly.

"Does she even take novels out of the library?"

Kane had to think about that for a moment. "I don't think so. She used the library for research, but she was always willing to buy a book, even by a new author. Building a personal library was important to her." He indicated the bookshelves throughout the apartment."Obviously."

"Then I think," Faith said, "we should look for more Stephen King novels."

They found the handwritten list of names in the fourth King novel on the bedroom shelves.

There were six names, all men. Five were prominent Atlanta businessmen, two of whom were politically active. The sixth man, Kane told Faith, had committed suicide a week before Dinah vanished.

The third name on the list was Jordan Cochrane.

But what caused Faith and Kane to look at each other in surprise was the single word Dinah had written and twice circled at the bottom of the page: Blackmail

"Blackmail," Tim Daniels said, "is a nasty business, and the kind of dirt men pay to keep under the rug tends to be bad enough to provide a motive for murder."

"Or suicide," Kane said. "One man on the list took care of his apparent problems by blowing his brains out, and it emerged afterward that for about six months before he'd been trying to pay back some money he had borrowed from the company he worked for. It was a lot of money. He would have gone to jail for a long time if the company had found out, and his very churchgoing wife would have been disgraced."

"I'd call him a likely target for blackmail," Daniels allowed. "Assuming somebody found out what he was up to."

"And if he was paying hush money, it was probably next to impossible for him to also pay back the money he'd embezzled. Which probably explains the suicide. Poor bastard was caught in a no-win situation."

"I'd say," Daniels agreed.

"We can also assume that since his name was lumped in with the five others, all these men were probably being blackmailed. Which begs the question..."

"Who's doing the blackmailing?" Faith supplied.

"Exactly."

"It also," Faith noted, "seems to indicate that Jordan Cochrane is on the victim side of the equation."

"That doesn't mean he wasn't involved in Dinah's in murder. Some secrets are worth killing to keep."

"True enough. But there are four other names on that list, Kane. And you said all five share one other connection besides apparently being blackmail victims."

"All are in some way involved in the construction business. The man who committed suicide was too. He kept the books for Mayfair Construction."

"Isn't that the company..."

"Working on the Ludlow building, yes. Or we, when I can put them back to work."

Slowly, Faith said, "Another connection."

"Another connection," Kane agreed.

"I don't much like you waltzing around in my dreams," Faith said to Dinah.

"It's not my idea of fun either," Dinah retorted, very busy with what she was doing. "If you'd only get your head on straight, I could get on with my life."

Faith opened her mouth to remind Dinah once again that she had no life to get on with, but finally just shrugged and stepped closer, watching the other woman curiously. "What are you doing now?"

"I'm fixing it, of course." Dinah was carefully gluing together delicate porcelain pieces of a shattered figurine. It was, Faith saw with a shiver, the figurine of a woman.

"Are you trying to say you put me back together?" Dinah sighed, a bit impatient. "Never mind this. You aren't ready to think about it yet. What you have to do first is understand what that list means."

"The names? It means blackmail, doesn't it?"

Dinah looked at her sympathetically. "This is going to be very hard for the next little while. But you have to get through it. You won't begin to see the truth until you get through it."

"Get through what?"

"There's another body, of course. Once you begin killing, it's so easy to keep doing it. It even seems reasonable to use that means to solve a problem — especially if you've been successful before. And he has. First back in Seattle, and now here."

"Who? Who is he, Dinah?"

"Just remember that the body isn't who it appears to be. Don't let them make that mistake, Faith. You have to be sure who the body is, or you won't have the right answer."

"But..."

"And when you find the bell, make him tell you the truth. He won't want to, but you have to make him. He has pieces of the truth, and you need them."