Jasmine Cresswell - Missing

Well, the kid had been rich until now, Frank corrected himself. Perhaps she would be rich again when Ron Raven’s estate finally finished winding its way through the probate courts—except that probating Ron’s estate was likely to take half a lifetime once the opposing sets of lawyers started battling in court. Two things you could say for sure about Ron Raven’s messy death: his family was screwed and disposing of his assets was going to make several members of the legal profession rich.

Frank paced for another three or four minutes. If the two women didn’t put in an appearance soon, he’d have to go get them. The Bulls were up against the Detroit Pistons tonight in a playoff game and he had plans to watch with his son. Besides, cooling his heels in this too-fancy living room was giving him a major case of the creeps. Hopefully Kate would return without her mother. He’d much prefer to deliver the bad news to the daughter and let her pass it on.

Frank caught a break when Kate returned a couple of minutes later, alone. “I wasn’t sure if you would still be here,” she said. Her belligerence had gone, replaced by a control that was visibly fragile.

“I couldn’t leave, miss. I still have important information to pass on to you.”

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. My mother is…We’re both upset, as you can imagine. She’ll be with us in just a little while. Could you give me a phone number so that we can call you later with all the questions we forget? My mother…We’re neither of us thinking too clearly right now.”

“Here’s my card.” Frank had one ready and handed it to her. Kate was likely to have more questions than she could possibly imagine, he reflected wryly.

“Thank you.” Kate tucked the card into the pocket of her jeans. Unlike her mother, she was dressed like a regular person, not as if she expected to share afternoon tea with the First Lady. “Tell me, Detective, exactly how much hope do the police have that my father might still be alive?”

“Not very much,” Frank admitted. “The trouble is, if your father is alive, the state of his hotel room suggests that he’s badly injured. So where is he? Why didn’t he call 911? Or if he’s unconscious, why have none of the hospitals reported a John Doe?”

She nodded, reluctantly acknowledging the logic of his analysis. “On the other hand, if my father’s dead, how did the murderers dispose of his body?”

“As I mentioned, the ocean seems like a real good bet.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I was wondering how they got Dad out of the hotel without anyone seeing them.”

Frank couldn’t see any harm in telling her the truth. “When the Miami police searched the hotel, they found a big steel-framed laundry hamper near one of the service elevators. There’s blood on the canvas bag and the blood matches some of the stains found in your father’s hotel room. For now, the police are assuming the killers used the laundry hamper to wheel your father down to the parking garage.”

“They dumped Dad’s body in a canvas laundry hamper?” Kate’s breath caught and her mouth twisted downward. “That’s like something out of a really bad movie.”

Frank could have pointed out that murderers watched the same movies and TV shows as everyone else and usually demonstrated no originality or creative thinking. Instead, he answered mildly enough. “It might be corny, but it seems to have worked. Nobody saw your father or anyone else leave his room. Unfortunately, guests in a hotel don’t pay much attention to a cleaner pushing a laundry cart.”

“If my father really is dead, the person who killed him must have planned ahead,” Kate said. “He couldn’t just hope to find a laundry cart conveniently left in the right place. And how did he know which car my dad had rented, or where it was parked?”

Frank nodded his agreement. “That’s true. The Miami police are working on the theory that your father’s murder was premeditated.”

Although, in Frank’s opinion, that theory raised almost as many questions as it answered. If the murder had been planned in advance, why had it required so much brute force to kill Ron Raven? Why hadn’t he just been shot with a single bullet to his head while he slept? The police had retrieved blood samples from three different people. Presumably at least one sample belonged to the killer. If that was the case, the killer—already injured?—had risked a lot to move Ron’s body. Why? Would an autopsy have revealed clues to the killer’s identity? Frank could only thank God that he didn’t have to find answers to these questions. The cops down in Miami had his sincere sympathy. This case was a mess—and that was before anyone addressed the possibility that Ron had been the killer, not the victim.

Kate gulped in air. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to kill my father.” She leaned toward him, her hands clenched tightly enough for her knuckles to gleam white in the late-afternoon sun. “Who in the world would have a motive for killing him?”

Frank shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss, we’re still waiting for details of the case to come through from Florida. But your father was a businessman who spent the past thirty years making highly profitable deals. Where there’s a lot of money, there’s always the chance of corruption and double-crosses.”

“Not my father,” Kate protested. “Raven Enterprises is renowned for the integrity of its deals. And as far as the personal side of my father’s life is concerned, he leads a boringly normal life—”

“Not quite.” Frank had to stop her there, although the detective in him was intrigued to see how completely Ron Raven had fooled this branch of his family. He wondered if the folks in Wyoming were equally clueless.

“As I mentioned, there’s more information I need to pass on to you, miss. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a tactful way to deliver the news, and I’ve decided there isn’t one. So I’m going to be blunt. Here goes. We have reason to believe your father was a bigamist.”

“A bigamist?”

“Yes, miss.”

“As in having two wives? My dad?” Kate stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief. She gave an uncertain laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’m afraid not. Your father seems to have had two wives and two sets of children. You and your mother here in Chicago and another wife and two more children living in Thatch—apparently that’s a small ranching town in Stark County, Wyoming.”

“My father has two more children as well as another wife?” Kate’s voice spiraled into an incredulous squeak. “Of course he doesn’t! That’s absolutely crazy.”

“Having two wives at the same time is criminal, miss. It’s not necessarily crazy.”

“My father isn’t a criminal.” The realization that her father might have committed a crime seemed to stun Kate even more than the suggestion he had another wife and two more kids. She shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s impossible. Apart from the craziness of committing bigamy in this day and age, how could Dad have kept a second wife and family secret? He couldn’t possibly have spent time with them without my mother finding out.”

She had a good point, Frank thought ruefully, although he’d seen plenty of situations where seemingly upright citizens got away with living secret lives for years. Ron Raven had apparently been one of those talented deceivers who could lie with the ease of an accomplished con artist. Although, come to think of it, what was a bigamist if not a con artist supreme?

“You would know better than I do how your father managed to keep you and your mother in the dark. Perhaps all those business trips he took weren’t actually for business. I couldn’t say. But he has two other children, that I know for sure. A son and a daughter, according to the sheriff of Stark County.”