Dead Giveaway

23

I would have liked to take Thaddeus home, but the nurse in the prison clinic said he should go straight to a hospital because of his soaring blood sugar. Jeff and I tried to convince him the hospital in Huntsville would be best—it was close—but he insisted he wanted to see his own doctor at the Medical Center in Houston.

By the time we reached downtown, I could tell the insulin shots I'd helped Thaddeus give himself weren't doing much good. He was sleepy, thirsty and a little confused when I wheeled him into the emergency room.

Meanwhile, DeShay had called Jeff to tell him they'd drawn a case and he was waiting in their unmarked car at the hospital. At least I'd had time to tell Jeff what I'd learned from Lawrence before he left with his partner.

When I was allowed into the emergency room cubicle to see Thaddeus, he had an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Scary to watch. And did I feel guilty. The stress must have been too much. I asked him if I could call Joelle to help him out, and he said that would be good. Thaddeus wanted her to check on his house while he was hospitalized. During my cab ride home, I ordered the biggest bunch of yellow roses my florist could pull together and had them delivered to the room I'd been told he would be admitted to.

It was nearly eight p.m. when I arrived at my house, and Diva played pitiful this time, rubbing around my still sore ankles seeking attention. Bet she knew it hurt.

After stuffing down a cheese sandwich, I took a glass of wine into my office and sat behind my computer. Diva tried the keyboard trick—her I sit on this thing, you'll give me all your love approach. I lifted her off and onto my lap, then booted up.

After typing up notes of my interview with Lawrence, I sat back in my chair thinking about Sara Rankin's disappearance. Would she have come back to save Lawrence with an alibi if she could have? My gut said yes. She'd already committed to abandoning her life as a preacher's daughter, and that made me think she wanted to be with Lawrence more than anything.

What would make her not come back to save him, then? She had to have been hurt or sick.

If I put the events in chronological order, Sara first ran off in March, not long after finding out she was pregnant. But Lawrence and Sara didn't make up the mission trip story to explain her disappearance—the Rankins did. Then, come May, they spread the word she'd fallen from a cliff and her body wasn't found. They told one lie to begin with. Did they change to another in May? Or were they telling the truth after finding the daughter who'd been missing for several months, maybe found her suffering from a head injury and on life support?

Important questions. It all came back to the Rankins. What did they know that they weren't telling me? And who was following my every move, destroying any link that might exist between Verna Mae and the person who placed that baby in her care so many years ago?

Jeff always says the higher the stakes, the bigger the crime, and in this case the biggest crime had not been an abandoned child. It had been Verna Mae's death. What happened after Will and I left her the day we visited her home? What went through her mind? What tipped her world so much that she fell off? She knew about Sara. I'd learned that much before the storage unit went up in flames.

Yes. She knew Sara, so why not her parents? Parents with money who could have been paying Verna Mae's bills all these years. What if she went to see the Rankins the day she was killed? What if for some reason she'd decided to tell everyone she knew about a dead girl and an abandoned baby? Clear her conscience after years of stalking and obsession? Seeing Will in the flesh, talking to him, touching him—were those the things that tipped her world? Could be. Her wishing was over. He'd come home.

I could picture Andrew Rankin's emotional face and his wife's smile. Saw them as wearing masks. If I stripped the masks off, what would I find beneath? Grieving parents who took their grandson and gave him away—and in doing so broke the law? Maybe. I didn't know. I wasn't sure they even knew about a grandchild. Mrs. Rankin was too slick to give me much of anything, and the pastor was too close to insanity. And I'd been a little slow on the draw about asking the right questions.

I sipped on my wine, stroked my purring Diva. She was content, but I sure wasn't. Could the Rankins have found their daughter? Tracked her by guessing she had Lawrence's car? Learned she was pregnant? She could have even been in Mexico, exactly where they claimed she'd gone. It's a great place to hide and was an even easier escape destination back then. The story about her fall from the mountain could be true, she was injured and, yes, add half-truths to lies by omission and some of this scenario made sense.

But why the huge cover-up? Why were the stakes so high for these people? These were the questions that reminded me Verna Mae hadn't been the only one murdered. This had to do with Amanda Mason, too. Was that why Simpson's notes were stolen? Why I'd been followed and nearly killed. Yes. This had to do with her.

I picked up the phone and called Jeff, grateful to hear his voice and not a machine. "This is about Amanda Mason as much as it is about Verna Mae's murder," I said, so eager to get this out, my words ran together.

"Slow down. Have you learned anything new?"

"No, I'm just certain Lawrence was set up. It's the only thing that makes sense."

"Talking to him today convinced you he's truly innocent, huh?"

"You don't think so?"

"I have a little different take on this. From what you told me, Washington had even more reason to be looking for money than a sick mother," Jeff said. "He had a kid on the way. He saw Amanda Mason with cash in her hands and he wanted it."

"Could you trust me on this? He didn't do it, Jeff."

"I take it there's more you want to tell me?"

"I think the Rankins are the money machine, the ones who paid off Verna Mae. But I haven't quite figured all that out yet."

"That's the problem. Before we go into that church with badges blazing, we have to figure it out. We need evidence. You understand that?"

"Oh, I get it. I just want you to believe me about Lawrence, okay?"

"With the gun still out there, I do tend to believe you. It's time for me to step in tomorrow, interview the pastor and his wife, especially if Rankin's the man who left you to fry in that storage unit."

"He's too puny, but he has this man working for him. I only know him by B.J. He could have been the one."

"You have more than initials?"

"He's the pastor's assistant or something."

"Can you do some computer magic, find out his name? Then I can check him out, see if he has a rap sheet. I'd do it myself, but I'm kind of tied up here with a DB."

"You take care of your dead body. I'm on B.J. like a bird dog on a duck." We said good-bye and I disconnected.

I got busy on the B.J. task and found the church website easily—reverentlife.org. I was at first struck by the glitzy presentation—Flash media, color photos of all the pastors and assistant pastors, not to mention scrolling Bible verses. But I felt the hairs raise on the nape of my neck when I read the words above the picture of "Pastor-Teacher Andrew Rankin." It said, "Our church is a safe harbor for those in chaos, a place of forgiveness for the guilty, and a haven of hope for the hopeless."

A place of forgiveness for the guilty, huh? From the way he acted both times we met, I was beginning to think he might be more guilty than grieving.

I searched every inch of that website looking for B.J.'s picture or even a name that began with B. No one but the pastors rated names and pictures on the site, and the "contact us" e-mail box offered only a generic address to their church mail.

I checked my watch then refocused on the monitor. The site calendar said the church library was open until eleven p.m., and I saw that the choir was meeting from eight to ten as well. There'd be plenty of people leaving about the time I got there if I left right now. I could ask around, see if I could get B.J.'s name or maybe find it in the library. Those bound leather volumes had helped me once already.

This was simple. Just a few little questions. No badges blazing, I told myself, as I stood and placed Diva in the warm chair I was abandoning.

Late evening traffic was light on the freeways and I reached the church in less than thirty minutes. Sure enough, streams of cars were pouring from the lot. Some colossal choir, I thought, searching for a parking spot close to the sanctuary. I was reviewing my opening line, considering something like, "Have you seen B.J.? And by the way, does the guy have an entire name?" when that handicapped-equipped van once again nearly took me out. Olive, the nurse's aide, was at the wheel.

That woman's dangerous, I thought, not smiling as I stared her in the eye. She maneuvered around my stopped car with another apologetic wave.

That's when it hit me like a plank to the skull.

She's the one in the picture at the storage unit. The person I thought might be Verna Mae's friend or sister. The one I'd seen before someone burned the place to the ground.

Okay. I could go find out about B.J. or I could talk to her. I liked the idea of talking to her a whole lot better, considering B.J. had muscles and maybe owned a gun that killed a few people.

My turn to play follow the leader, and she was easy to follow—seemingly as clueless to my pursuit of her as she was to minor details like double yellow lines.

We were heading toward the NASA area, but turned off at Pearwood, a small town with acreage lots where home owners could walk out the front door and feed their horses. A woman had been abducted and murdered in these parts about five years ago. I shivered a little, remembering all the publicity, the face of her devastated husband, who, in the end, turned out to be the one who killed her.

This was ranchland with dirt roads, plenty of fields and lots of trees. An easy place to hide a body. Better check in with Jeff, I decided, keeping a reasonable distance from the van on the narrow two-lane road.

But it was DeShay who took my call. "Jeff's got his hands dirty right now. You don't want the details. Can I give him a message?"

"Tell him I'm in Pearwood. I'm following a woman who works for the church. I plan to ask her a few questions when she stops, presumably at her home."

I heard DeShay relay this information and then I heard Jeff in the background say, "Shit."

"Does that response adequately convey his feelings?" DeShay said.

"Tell him it's just some ditsy lady," I said. "I want to ask her about—wait. She's pulling into a driveway. We turned off FM 2005 onto Bluebonnet Road. The house is about a half mile on the right. Tell him I have now checked in with the courtesy call he always seems to want when I'm out late on a case."

"I'll relay the first part, but not the last. He's holding one big-ass bloody knife right now. You take care out there, Abby." DeShay disconnected.

I folded my phone shut, slowed to a near crawl and waited for the van lights in the driveway up ahead to go out. I then sped up and a few seconds later pulled into the driveway. I started to get out, but another car came barreling down the road toward the house. I got back into the Camry and locked my doors, realizing I'd been concentrating so hard on tailing the van, I again hadn't paid much attention to anyone following me. Stupid idiot. When the car sped on down the road into the blackness beyond without even slowing down, I breathed a sigh of relief.

This little scare, however, reminded me to take my .38 from the glove compartment. I was in a strange place about to meet with someone who probably wouldn't be too happy to know I'd followed her home.

The house was a one-story log cabin—though not really a cabin. It was big, at least a couple thousand square feet. Could a nurse's aide afford a place like this? Then it dawned on me that this might be a shutin parishioner's home. Awkward to knock on the door and say, "Hi. I'm a PI who's been hanging around the church asking annoying questions. You want to talk to me?"

The house had a porch along the front with a wheelchair ramp, so I figured I was right, this wasn't Olive's house. Now what?

Light flowed from a side window, illuminating a small garden. No drapes pulled yet. Maybe I could take a peek inside before I knocked on the door.

I slipped from behind the wheel and eased my door shut so as not to alert anyone in the house. Gun at my side, I quietly made my way toward the garden. The little plot was bordered by stones and I had to step over them. My feet sank into newly laid pinebark mulch and the smell wafted up around me. I nearly sneezed but held it in. Flattening against the logs, I looked in the window.

It was a living room, but very open, sparsely furnished, with wood floors. I moved closer to get a better look after I spotted Olive talking to a woman standing with the aid of a walker—one of those kind with a basket and wheels. The woman was tall and thin, with dishwater blond hair drawn back in a ponytail. She was looking down. I spied a wheelchair in a corner.

Olive was visiting a handicapped parishioner after all. Maybe I should wait until—

But then Olive walked away, out of my sight, and that's when the woman with the walker looked straight at the window.

I gasped. Not a quiet gasp, either.