Jasmine Cresswell - Missing

Liam’s eyes glittered, dark with anger. “The extent of his lying takes some getting used to, doesn’t it? It was quite a shock for me when I arrived unannounced at the Oakbrook offices and discovered the employees of an import-export firm working at the address I thought was the headquarters of R & R Investments.”

“What in the world did you do? Did you assume there was some sort of honest mistake?”

“No. Not for an instant.” Liam shrugged. “I guess at some level I’d been suspicious of Dad for a while—”

“You suspected he was a bigamist?” Megan heard the incredulity in her voice.

“Not that, but I was pretty sure he was lying to us about something important. To be honest, I’d begun to worry that maybe his business wasn’t a legitimate legal enterprise.”

Megan drew in a quick, nervous breath. “Is it?”

“As far as I know, yes, and I’ve researched the whole setup with a fair degree of intensity. We don’t have to worry that Raven Enterprises is a front for organized crime. Which, under the circumstances, has to be considered a major plus.”

It was a measure of how far she’d traveled in her view of her father that Megan wasn’t entirely reassured. “I hope you’re right.”

“I have a lot of experience researching criminal business enterprises. I was a criminal lawyer, remember? Last time I ran a check, I can pretty much promise you that Dad’s business partnership was clean. He’s a shrewd, successful businessman.” Liam corrected himself. “He was a shrewd, successful businessman.”

Megan seized the hope that none of her father’s business dealings had taken place on the shady side of the law and clung to it. Given that Ron Raven had been murdered, it struck her as depressingly possible that he’d been involved in at least a few ventures that wouldn’t have passed muster with the Better Business Bureau. A criminal deal gone wrong struck her as one of the more likely causes for murder.

She drew in a shaky breath, reverting to their previous topic of conversation. “I don’t quite see how you made the leap from realizing that Dad had deceived us about his office address to the fact that he was a bigamist.”

“Obviously, from the moment I walked into the Oakbrook offices it became clear that Dad had been doing some heavy-duty lying. I decided not to approach him and ask for an explanation. I figured that was likely to trigger nothing but more lies. Instead I initiated a full-scale investigation, tackling the problem exactly as if he were a suspect in a criminal case.”

Megan grimaced. “Which he was, more or less.”

Liam nodded. “Yep, he was. Once I got serious, it was only a matter of hours before Dad’s entire web of deception started to unravel. For example, it took me two minutes with a Chicago phone book to discover that there was no company called R & R Investments listed, but that a company called Raven Enterprises was headquartered in Schaumburg. A phone call to Raven Enterprises was all it took to discover that Ronald Howatch Raven was the senior partner. Once I knew that, the rest of his lies began to disintegrate. Amazingly fast, in fact. Dad pulled off his twenty-five-year scam basically because none of us questioned him. A couple of inquires, though, and it was all over.”

“I guess he could never risk having us visit his real office because of his other wife and daughter. They probably dropped in all the time, given that they live right in Chicago.”

Liam nodded. “I’m sure that was one reason he needed to keep us away. The other is that Dad’s business partner, Paul Fairfax, is Avery’s older brother.”

“Oh, no. Oh my God.” Megan couldn’t say anything more. She gripped Belle’s collar so tightly that the dog yelped in protest. Her world, which had seemed totally ordinary only a couple of days earlier, now seemed like a horror movie made by a director who specialized in creating bizarre alternate realities.

“Yeah, that about sums up how I felt when I found out. Speechless, alternating with disbelieving curses. Of course, Dad was deceiving his business partner as well as you and me and Mom. He wanted to keep Paul Fairfax away from us as much as the other way around.”

Megan stared at the distant mountain range. For once, the grandeur of the Tetons provided no solace. “I’m starting to get so angry with him that it scares me.”

Liam turned toward the mountains, following her gaze. His expression became even more bleak. “Now you understand how I’ve felt for the past few years.”

Megan put her arms around Belle, controlling a sudden shiver. “Probably ninety percent of everything Dad ever told us was at least partly untrue.”

“And the other ten percent was a lie by implication.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me what you’d found out. And Mom.” Megan drew in a shaky breath. “Good grief, Liam! How could you keep this from her? She absolutely deserved to be told.”

“When I finally learned the whole truth—especially that Dad had another daughter—I tried to force him to face up to his responsibilities and come clean to both his families.” Liam lifted his shoulders, the gesture more despairing than dismissive. “He was very good at applying emotional blackmail. Like I told you, he claimed that if he had to choose between Mom and his other wife, he’d choose Avery. And that he’d not only leave Mom penniless, he’d make sure that she couldn’t keep the ranch.”

The spitefulness of that threat was another blow to the loving image of her father that Megan had been clinging to despite the revelations of the past forty-eight hours. “Well, at least that’s one thing that’s worked out to Mom’s advantage.” She finally recognized the same note of bitterness in her voice that she’d heard earlier in her brother’s. “Since Dad is dead, presumably Mom is going to inherit the ranch.”

“I sure as hell hope so. Who knows how Dad may have written his will.” Liam swung away, his body rigid with tension. “Goddammit, I’m a lawyer and I haven’t the faintest idea what my mother’s financial and legal situation is right now. For all I know, Dad left every penny he owns to Avery Fairfax.”

“If he did, surely Mom has grounds to fight.”

“Absolutely. But we could be in and out of court for years, and in the meantime, the ranch would go belly up. If Dad’s left all his cash to Avery, it’s going to be a real fight to keep sufficient operating funds for the ranch to survive.”

Megan bit back the urge to scream imprecations at her dead father. She was so emotionally drained that she felt exhausted. “What a hideous mess. I’m so furious with Dad that I’m numb.”

“Trust me, however angry you are with him, you’re nowhere near as angry as I am with myself.”

“A little while ago you told me not to blame myself for Dad’s sins. Now I guess I’m saying the same thing to you. The truth is, he put you in an impossible situation and then manipulated your feelings for Mom in order to protect himself. Put the blame where it belongs, Liam. With Dad. Right slap bang with him.”

Sunday, May 7, 2006, Thatch, Wyoming

A prayer service for Ronald Howatch Raven’s safe return was held immediately following regular Sunday services at the hundred-year-old Community Church located at the far end of Thatch’s Main Street. Most people were pretty sure that Ron was dead, but the failure to find his body meant that neighbors felt obligated to at least pretend they wished for his speedy and safe return.

Meanwhile, the story of his disappearance kept perking along in the national press. Media outlets were currently salivating over the information that bloodstains from three different people, one most likely female, had been identified as present at the crime scene. Almost equally as intriguing, a boat from the Blue Lagoon Marina had been put to sea without the permission of its owner and had been returned after a trip of some forty-five miles. A cop in Miami, a fan of Fox News, had let drop to his favorite talk-show host the fascinating tidbit that a security camera from the marina showed a masked person, sex indeterminate, using a furniture-moving dolly to transport first one and then another long, black-wrapped object onto the boat. The cop commented that the objects looked mighty like body bags to him and to everyone else who’d seen the video. In light of these images, the Miami police were working on the theory that Ron Raven’s dead body had been disposed of at sea, possibly along with that of a female companion, identity as yet unknown.