Jasmine Cresswell - Missing

Kate made little pushing motions with her hand, as if to hold the astonishing news at bay until she could assimilate it. “What are their names? How old are they? Are they little kids?”

“No, they’re grown-up, but I don’t have any more details. I’m sorry. We’re waiting for the sheriff in Wyoming to fax us documentation. Normally, we’d have held off notifying you until we had more complete information, but in this case we decided it was important to warn your mother before reporters get wind of the story. We didn’t want your mother to turn on the TV and hear the news of Ron Raven’s death that way. Especially the part about him having two wives.”

Kate’s expression darkened from incredulity into horror. “Oh my God. You think there are going to be news reports about this?”

“I’d say it’s a certainty. You’d better be prepared for the media to make a circus out of your family’s private business.”

Kate sent him a pleading look. “There has to be some way to stop journalists from reporting that my father’s a bigamist. That would be slander, wouldn’t it?”

“No, miss. It’s not slanderous to report true facts that emerge in connection with an official investigation of a crime.”

“But you’re assuming my father has another wife and I’m telling you that’s not possible! There’s been a mistake. He adores my mother and she adores him right back. I’d have a hard time believing he’d ever been unfaithful to her, much less that he was married to another woman.”

Frank didn’t attempt to argue with Kate, just reached into his pocket and removed a carefully folded fax. “I don’t have birth records for your father’s other children, but I do have this copy of your father’s marriage certificate. It was sent to us by the sheriff of Stark County. You’ll see the name and the date. Eleanor Mary Horn and Ronald Howatch Raven.”

She took the fax, her hand visibly shaking. He stood in silence, letting the marriage certificate speak for itself.

“Maybe this is a forgery.”

“I doubt it, miss. Like I said, it was the sheriff himself who sent it to us. Besides, there’s other evidence. When the police searched Mr. Raven’s hotel room they discovered two wallets locked in the room safe, and both wallets belonged to your father.”

“The fact that my father owns two wallets doesn’t seem grounds for leaping to the conclusion that he’s a bigamist.”

“The two wallets didn’t cause the police to leap to any conclusions at all, although he did have two completely different sets of family pictures and credit cards in each wallet. Still, the cops in Miami just followed procedure. The driver’s license in each billfold provided a different address, one in Wyoming and the other one here in Chicago. Therefore the detective sergeant in charge of the investigation contacted law enforcement authorities in both locations to ascertain if Mr. Raven had family either in Stark County or in the Chicago area. It was routine police procedure at that point, since there are plenty of law-abiding citizens with two homes. When the request came in to us, we ran the information we were given through our state data systems and reported back to Miami that our records showed that Mr. Raven lived here in downtown Chicago with his wife, Avery Fairfax Raven. Only thing is, Wyoming reported back similar information, except with a different wife.”

“My father owns a ranch in Wyoming.” Kate ignored Frank’s comment about the second wife. “The ranch is an old family property, first bought by my great-great-grandfather, and now run by a professional manager—”

“You’ve been there?”

“Of course I have! I went there two or three times in the summer when I was a kid.”

Frank wondered how Ron Raven had pulled those visits off. There must have been a good bit of juggling and sleight of hand to make sure nobody ever mentioned the other wife and kids. Still, it wasn’t his business to find out how Ron Raven had worked his scam. He just needed to get Kate to accept the truth about her father.

“How about more recently, miss? Have you been to the ranch since you grew up? And how about your mother? Has she visited the ranch recently?”

“We’ve neither of us visited Wyoming in at least ten years.” Kate subsided into a tense silence.

I’ll just bet you haven’t, Frank thought. “Doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange?”

“My mother isn’t the type of person who enjoys spending time on a ranch. She’s not a rural sort.” Kate rushed on, before Frank could make a comment to the effect that her mother’s tastes had nothing to do with the fact that Ron Raven’s daughter had almost never visited a ranch that had been in the family for three generations.

“The point is, I’m not surprised Dad has two separate IDs. Probably it was easier for him to keep his accounts for the ranch separate from the rest of his expenses—”

“Ms. Raven, your father didn’t simply have two separate sets of credit cards and two different driver’s licenses and two different sets of family photos. I’m telling you he had two separate families, as well. And the ranch isn’t run by a professional manager, by the way. It’s run by your father’s wife. His legal wife.”

“His legal wife?” Kate’s voice cracked. “What do you mean?”

Frank grimaced. “Look at the marriage certificate, miss. Your father married Eleanor Horn fifteen years before he married your mother.”

Kate looked again at the marriage certificate and her cheeks lost color. “There must have been a divorce.”

“I doubt it, miss. My precinct captain heard from the sheriff of Stark County just a few minutes before I came to see your mother. It turns out the sheriff knows Ron Raven personally. He’s an old friend of the family, in fact, and he was as shocked to learn about you and your mother as you are to learn about the wife and children in Wyoming. The sheriff personally confirmed that your father has been married to a woman called Eleanor Horn for thirty-six years. The sheriff was at their wedding, which took place at the local community church in Thatch in front of at least a hundred witnesses and there’s never been a divorce. As far as everyone in Wyoming is concerned, Ron Raven lived at the Flying W with his wife Eleanor, and the only reason he traveled to Chicago was on business for Raven Enterprises.”

“If you’re right, that would mean my mother is just my dad’s…mistress.”

Frank was surprised by the old-fashioned word. But in the rarefied world where Kate and her mother lived, perhaps it wasn’t such an outdated concept. “I’m afraid that’s what seems to be the case,” he acknowledged. “Although I’d advise you to check with a lawyer to find out what your legal rights might be. If your mother genuinely believed she was married, she might have a legal claim to some portion of Mr. Raven’s estate. Not that I’m qualified to be making statements like that.”

Kate stared at him in silence. Clearly, until that moment she hadn’t considered the possibility that there might be financial consequences from her father’s bigamy. Then she laughed, although there wasn’t a trace of amusement in the sound. “Well, I guess that makes the perfect icing on the cake, doesn’t it? You’re saying my mother is going to find herself penniless, along with all her other problems.”

“Hopefully Mr. Raven made provisions, miss.”

Kate gave another short laugh. “Right. Why wouldn’t he, when he’s behaved impeccably in every other detail of his relationship with us?” She bit off another angry comment and walked to the window, staring out over the vast expanse of water, although Frank had a suspicion she wasn’t registering much about the magnificent view.