Two Little Girls in Blue (24 page)

“That's a stupid question,” Mason replied evenly. “He would have kicked me out.”

“You've never been very close to your brother, have you?” Philburn asked.

“A lot of brothers aren't close. Even more half brothers aren't close.”

“You met Steve's wife, Margaret, before he met her. It was at a wedding, I believe. You phoned and asked her for a date, and she turned you down. Then she met Steve in law school. Did that bother you?”

“I never had trouble getting an attractive woman. I have two divorces from smart, attractive women to prove it. I never gave Margaret a second thought.”

“You almost got away with pulling off a scam that would have made millions for you. Since Steve was hired in a job that amounts to a straight path to the top, has it occurred to you that once again he's bested you?”

“Never crossed my mind. And like I said, I never cheated anyone.”

“Mr. Mason, a baggage handler has a pretty exhausting job. Somehow it doesn't seem to be the kind of occupation you'd choose.”

“It's an interim position,” Richard Mason replied calmly.

“Aren't you afraid of losing it? You didn't show up for work all week.”

“I phoned in to say I wasn't feeling well and needed the week off.”

“Funny, we weren't told that,” Philburn commented.

“Then somebody messed up at the other end. I assure you I made the call.”

“Where did you go?”

“I drove to Vegas. I was feeling lucky.”

“It didn't occur to you to be with your brother while his children were missing?”

“He wouldn't have wanted me. I'm an embarrassment to him. Can't you just picture the ex-con brother hovering in the background with the media around? You said yourself, Stevie is going places with C.F.G.&Y. I bet he didn't put me down as a reference on his résumé.”

“You are sophisticated about wire transfers and the kind of banks that will accept them, forward funds, and destroy the records, aren't you?”

Mason stood up. “Get out. Arrest me or get out.”

Neither agent made a move. “Isn't it a coincidence that last weekend you visited your mother in North Carolina, the very weekend that your brother's children were kidnapped? Maybe you were trying to establish an alibi.”

“Get out.”

Walsh took out his notebook. “Where did you stay in Vegas, Mr. Mason, and who were some of the people who could verify that you were there?”

“I'm not answering any questions until I talk to a lawyer. I know you guys. You're trying to trap me.”

Walsh and Philburn got up. “We'll be back,” Walsh said, his tone even.

They left the apartment but stopped at Mason's car.
Walsh took out a flashlight and played it on the dashboard. “Fifty thousand, six hundred and forty-six miles,” he said.

Philburn jotted down the figure. “He's watching us,” he commented.

“I want him to watch us. He knows what I'm doing.”

“How many miles did the mother say was on the odometer?”

“In that wire-tapped phone call she made to him after we left, she reminded him that the stepfather had noticed that his car was coming up to fifty thousand miles, and his warranty would be expiring, so she urged him to get it checked for any problems. Sounds like Frawley senior may be a stickler on car maintenance.”

“Mason's some six hundred miles over fifty thousand on this car. It's about six hundred miles from Winston-Salem. He never drove this car to Vegas for sure. So where do you think he was?”

“My guess is somewhere in the tristate area, babysitting,” Philburn replied.

O
n Saturday morning, Lila Jackson couldn't wait to tell everyone at Abby's Discount how much she had enjoyed the play she and her mother had seen the night before.

“It was a revival of
Our Town,”
Lila told Joan Howell. “To say it was wonderful just isn't enough. I loved it! That final scene, when George throws himself on Emily's grave! I can't tell you. The tears just rolled out of my eyes. You know, when I was twelve, we did that play at St. Francis Xavier. I played the first dead woman. My line was, ‘It's on the same road we lived on. Um-hum.' ”

When Lila was enthusiastic, there was no stopping her. Howell waited patiently for a pause in the narration, then said, “We had quite a bit of excitement around here late yesterday afternoon. Margaret Frawley, the mother of the kidnapped twins, came in here looking for you.”

“She
what?”
Lila had been about to step out from the office to the sales floor. Now she took her hand from the door.
“Why?”

“I don't know. She asked for your cell phone number, and when I wouldn't give it, she said something about her little girl being alive, and she had to find her.
I think the poor thing is having a nervous breakdown. I don't blame her, of course, after losing one of her twins. She actually grabbed me, and for a minute, I thought I was dealing with a lunatic. Then I recognized her and tried to talk to her, but she started crying and ran out of here. This morning I heard on the news that there had been an alert out for her because she was missing, and that the police found her at eleven o'clock last night parked near the airport in Danbury. They said she seemed dazed and disoriented.”

Lila had forgotten about the play. “I know why she wanted to talk to me,” she said quietly. “There was another woman shopping here the same evening Mrs. Frawley was shopping for the birthday dresses last week. She was selecting clothes for three-year-old twins, and she didn't seem to have a clue what size to buy for them. I told that to Mrs. Frawley because I thought it was so unusual. I even . . .”

Lila let her voice trail off. She did not think that Joan Howell, a stickler for doing things according to the book, would like the idea that she had twisted the bookkeeper's arm to phone the credit card company and get the address of the woman who had bought clothes for twins, not knowing their size. “If it would help Mrs. Frawley to talk to me, I'd really like to talk to her,” she finished.

“She didn't leave her number. I'd say, let it go.” Joan Howell glanced at her watch, a clear indication to Lila that it was five minutes after ten and that as of ten
A.M
. she was being paid to sell Abby's Discount Clothes.

Lila remembered the name of the customer who hadn't known the size of the three-year-old twins. It's Downes, she thought as she headed for a sales rack. She signed the slip as Mrs. Clint Downes, but when I talked to Jim Gilbert about her, he told me her name is Angie, that she's not married to Downes, and that he's the caretaker at the Danbury Country Club, and they live in a cottage on the grounds of the club.

Aware that Joan Howell's eyes were on her, she turned to a woman at the sales rack who by now had several pantsuits over her arm. “May I put these aside for you?” she asked. At the customer's grateful nod, she took the garments, and, as she waited, thought about how convinced she had been that it wouldn't hurt to mention the incident to the police. They had been begging for anyone to report anything that might help them find the kidnappers.

Jim Gilbert made me feel like an idiot, she thought. Talked about how many phony clues the police were getting. And because he's a retired detective, I listened to him.

The shopper had found two more suits to try on and was ready to go to a dressing room. “There's an empty one right over here,” Lila told her. I could talk to the police now, she thought, but they might just dismiss it the way Jim did. I've got a better idea. The country club is only ten minutes from here. On my lunch hour I'll drive over, ring the bell of the caretaker's cottage, and I'll say that I realized the polo shirts I sold her were defective, and I wanted to replace
them. Then, if I still feel funny about anything, I will call the police.

At one o'clock Lila took two size 4 polo shirts to the cashier. “Kate, toss these in a bag,” she said. “Ring them up when I get back. I'm in a hurry.” She realized that for some reason she had a compelling feeling of urgency.

It had begun to rain again, and in her haste she had not bothered to take her umbrella with her. Oh, so what if I get wet, she thought as she ran across the parking lot to her car. Twelve minutes later, she was at the gate to the Danbury Country Club. To her dismay, she saw that it was padlocked. There's got to be another entrance, she thought. She drove around slowly, stopping at another locked gate before she found a service road with a bar across it and a box to punch in the code to raise the bar. In the distance, well to the right and behind the club house, she could see a small building which she knew might be the caretaker's cottage Jim Gilbert had mentioned.

The rain was getting heavier. I've come this far, Lila decided, I'm going ahead. At least I was smart enough to wear a raincoat. She got out of the car, ducked under the security arm, and, keeping as much as possible in the shelter of the evergreens, began to jog toward the cottage, the bag with the polo shirts cradled under her jacket.

She passed a one-car garage to the right of the cottage. The door was open, and she could see that the garage was empty. Maybe there's no one home, she thought. In that case, what do I do?

But as she got closer to the cottage she could see that there was a light on in the front room. Here goes nothing, she thought, as she went up the two steps to the small porch and rang the bell.

*   *   *

On Friday evening, Clint had gone out with Gus again, got home late, slept until noon, and now was hungover and nervous. While they were having dinner at the bar, Gus had said that when he'd phoned the other night and talked to Angie, he'd have sworn he heard two kids crying in the background.

I tried to make a joke of it, Clint thought. I told him he must have been drunk to think that there were two kids in this chicken coop. I told him that I don't mind that Angie makes money babysitting, but if she ever showed up with two kids, I'd tell her to hit the road. I think he bought it, but I don't know. He's got a big mouth. Suppose he mentions to someone else that he heard two crying kids who Angie was minding. Besides that, he told me about seeing Angie at the drugstore buying the vaporizer and aspirin. For all I know, he could have told somebody else.

I've got to rent a car and get rid of that crib, he thought as he made coffee. At least I took it apart, but I have to get it out of here and ditch it in the woods somewhere. Why did Angie keep one of the kids? Why did she kill Lucas? If both kids had been returned, we'd have split the money with Lucas, and no one would be the wiser. Now the whole country is on the warpath because they think one of the kids is dead.

Angie will get sick of minding her. Then she'll dump her somewhere. I know she will. I just hope she doesn't . . . Clint didn't finish the thought, but the image of Angie leaning into the car and shooting Lucas was never far from his mind. She had shocked him, and now he was terrified of what else she might do.

He was hunched over the kitchen table, wearing a heavy sweatshirt and jeans; his hair was uncombed; a two-day growth of beard darkened his face; his second cup of coffee sat untouched in front of him. Then the doorbell rang.

The cops! It would be the cops, he was sure of it. Perspiration began to pour from him. No, maybe it's Gus, he thought, grasping at straws. He had to open the door. If it was the cops, they'd have seen that the light was on, and they wouldn't go away.

He was still barefoot when he padded across the living room, his thick feet noiseless on the shabby rug. He put his hand on the knob, turned it, and yanked the door open.

Lila gasped. She had expected that the woman who had shopped for the clothes would be standing there. Now she was faced with a heavyset, sloppy man, who was glaring at her suspiciously.

To Clint, the reprieve of not being confronted by the police was replaced by fear that this was some sort of trap. Maybe she's an undercover cop nosing around, he thought. Don't look nervous, he told himself. If I didn't have anything to worry about, I'd be polite and ask her what I could do for her.

He forced something like a smile to cross his face. “Hello.”

I wonder if he's sick, was Lila's first thought. He's perspiring so much. “Is Mrs. Downes, I mean, is Angie home?” she asked.

“No. She's away on a babysitting job. I'm Clint. Why do you want her?”

This is probably going to sound stupid, Lila thought, but I'm going to say it anyhow. “I'm Lila Jackson,” she explained. “I work at Abby's Discount on Route 7. My boss sent me over to give Angie something. I'm expected back in a few minutes. Do you mind if I step in?”

As long as I give him the impression that people know where I am, it should be okay, she thought. She realized she could not leave until she was sure Angie wasn't hiding somewhere in the house.

“Sure, come in.” Clint stood aside and Lila brushed past him. In a quick glance she saw that there was no one else in the living room, dining or kitchen area, and that the bedroom door was open. Clint Downes was apparently alone in the house, and if there had been children here, there was no sign of them now. She unbuttoned her coat, fished out the bag with the polo shirts, and handed it to him. “When Mrs. Downes, I mean Angie, was in our store last week, she bought polo shirts for the twins,” she said. “We received a notice from the manufacturer that the whole run of two of the shirts I sold her had defects, so I came over with replacements.”