Last Words

21

“Vanessa, any chance you might have seen Mickey Forbes today?” Beck had dialed her shop as soon as he got into the car. He leaned back against the headrest and exhaled loudly. “When was that?”

“Where did you go?”

“What time did he leave…?”

From the driver’s side, Mia could hear Vanessa’s protest.

“Because I need to talk to him, that’s why. Where did he go when he…Thanks. And Ness? Stay clear of him for a while, okay?”

Mia figured his ears were still ringing after he hung up the phone.

He caught her glancing in his direction, and said, “What? You think I was a little heavy handed? She’s my sister, and he’s…” He paused.

“He’s what? A guy who’s interested in her?” She stopped at the light. “It’s obvious from your conversation that she was with Mickey this morning.”

“They had lunch at Lola’s.” Beck rubbed his chin. “She said he got there around noon and left about an hour and a half ago. Went back to the car dealership.”

“So which way?” she asked. “Should I make a U-turn or go straight? I’m assuming you still want to talk to Mickey.”

“Yeah. Take a right at the next light…”

Mickey Forbes was front and center in the showroom when they arrived.

“Hey, Beck. I just got the message you called. Let me guess…you’re in the market for something to replace that old Jeep of yours. I just got a really nice Saab in on Friday, guy traded it in for a Jag. It’s right over…”

“I’m not looking for a car, Mickey.” Beck lowered his voice. “Is there someplace where we can talk?”

“Sure. Right on in here.” Mickey pointed toward an open door. “How’s it going, Agent Shields? Nice wheels you have there, Lexus is a fine car…”

Mickey ushered the pair into his office and closed the door.

“What’s going on, Beck?” Mickey sat on the edge of his desk.

“I understand that Mindy Kenneher, one of the victims, was a customer of yours,” Beck said. “How come I had to hear that from Steve at The Coffee Counter, and not you?”

“I wasn’t aware of it myself.” Mickey shrugged. “I just heard about that this morning, from Lisa. She said Steve told her about that girl coming in one day with a bag with our name on it. I told Lisa I’d have the store manager go through all the sales slips starting back in April so we could see who waited on her.”

“You can tell that?” Mia asked.

“Yeah. I’m afraid my system is a little old fashioned, but there’s a method to my madness. We hand write our slips, whether it’s cash or credit, so that we have a record of the customer. That way, we know what they bought and when.”

“What do you do with that information?” she asked.

“The names all go on a master list for sales, promotions, that sort of thing. If we know someone has bought a lot of fishing gear, for example, when we have something special, we give him or her a call. We try to keep our service specialized, you know?”

“And what did Mindy Kenneher buy?” Beck asked.

“We don’t know. My manager was scheduled to be in at two, but I spoke with him and asked him to get in as soon as possible and asked him to make finding her slip his priority. I told Lisa I’d give her a call as soon as I had something. She said she’d want to talk to the salesperson, maybe they’d remember if someone was with her at the time.”

“I need you to call everyone in and ask them to take a look at the photo.”

“Sure, Beck, but my staff always turns over at the end of May. I lose all the college kids who work here part-time during the school year when they go back home. I don’t hire part-timers again until the fall, so I don’t know that they’ll be much help.”

“What time did Lisa leave The Goal Post?” Beck changed the subject. He’d have to wait for the sales slip.

“Around eleven, I think it might have been. We were just about finished talking when her phone starting ringing. She just said for me to call her as soon as I had something, then she answered the call and left the store.”

“Any idea who she was speaking to?” he asked.

Mickey shook his head. “No idea. I didn’t hear her say a name.”

“Did you see which way she went when she left the store?”

“No, I had an appointment to meet a customer at eleven, so I left pretty much when she did.”

“Thanks.” Beck stood abruptly.

“Sure.” Mickey looked from Beck to Mia, then back to Beck. “Is there something else going on here that I’m not picking up on?”

“Nah. Nothing else going on, Mick.”

“Is Lisa all right?”

“Is there a reason she wouldn’t be?”

“No. I just…you’re asking all these questions about her, that’s all.”

“Nice of you to be concerned.”

“Hey, we’re old friends, me and Lisa. We go back a long way, Beck.”

“Right.” Beck opened the door. “Don’t forget to call me as soon as that slip turns up…”

Beck and Mia walked to her car in silence. She put the key in the ignition, then turned to him and said, “You think he’s a suspect.”

“Until I know better, everyone’s a suspect.” He snapped his seatbelt.

Beck stared out the window for several minutes while Mia drove, then took his phone from his pocket and dialed.

“Hal, did you speak with Todd? Has he heard from Lisa?”

Mia braked to avoid hitting the car ahead of them which had made a left turn without signaling.

“When you’re done there, I want you and Duncan to make another search of those abandoned buildings down around the river. Make it every abandoned or empty place in town. And get Garland to run a list of the properties and their owners. Thanks…”

He hung up and seemed lost in thought.

“So, what did Hal have to say? Has Todd heard from Lisa?” She slowed as the cars in front of her began to stop.

“Hal said he caught Todd just as he was leaving to pick the kids up from the babysitter to drive them over to his sisters. He said they do this every summer. His kids stay with the aunt and uncle and cousins for a week or so, then everyone goes to the grandparents for a week. Todd’s parents own a very jazzy horse farm. According to Lisa, it’s really a showplace. Acres and acres of farmland, dozens of horses. They breed thoroughbreds.” Beck reached for the radio dial, then stopped. “Would you mind some music?”

“No, go ahead. Anything is fine.” She rolled down her window and stuck her head out. “Looks like there’s some road construction up ahead. Everything’s stopped.”

“Damn, I forgot they’re repaving this section.” He looked around. “We’re stuck now. The last turn off was about a quarter mile back.”

“So what else did Hal say?”

Beck scanned through several stations until he found something he liked. “Todd told Hal he’d just spoken with Lisa right before Hal got there. Said the connection was really bad and all he understood was that she was interviewing some witnesses and she’d be back to the station when she was finished to write up her reports. Then he said the call cut off.”

“Sounds like Lisa needs a new phone.”

“I guess so. The important thing is that she’s okay.”

“Did you think she wasn’t?”

“I don’t know.” He thought it over for a few seconds, then said, “I guess knowing how this guy is-how clever and how slick-for a while there, I felt as if she’d disappeared, too. It was just a bad feeling I got when no one was able to contact her. She’s a really good cop, like I said.”

“And a good friend, I’d guess.”

“Yes. She’s a good friend.” He nodded. “She was the first woman officer Hal hired. She was here when I started.”

“Do you think she resented that you were brought in over her?”

“Lisa?” He seemed surprised by the question. “No. She didn’t want the job, made no bones about it. Her kids were still real young then, and she’s always made them her priority. The kids and Todd, that’s what she lives for. She loves the job, there’s no doubt in my mind, but it’s always been second for her.”

“Smart woman.”

“Very.” A song came on that he apparently didn’t like, because he started scrolling through the dial again. “I think the only person who resented me for a while was Duncan. I think he’s always wanted to be chief, but he’s never really reached that level of competency, you know what I mean? Administratively, that is. He’s a good cop but a piss poor record keeper and as Hal said, he just isn’t a leader. He’s come around since then, though. We get along just fine now.”

“You must have been a police officer somewhere before you came to St. Dennis,” she said, craning her next to see if any of the cars were moving. They didn’t appear to be. “You must have proven yourself to have even been considered for the job here, even if…”

“Even if my father was the retiring chief and head of the search committee?” He finished the sentence for her. “Yes, I’d been in law enforcement for years.”

He seemed reluctant to say more, but Mia was curious and persistent.

“Where?” she asked.

“I was with the Newtown police department here in Maryland for six years, and before that I was in the service.”

“Which branch?”

“What difference does it make?”

She smiled. “That means Special Forces.”

He turned up the radio and acted as if he hadn’t heard.

“So which was it?” she asked.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

“Only when I absolutely have to.” She slanted a glance at him, but he ignored her. “So what about these abandoned places you told Hal to look into?”

“St. Dennis is full of them. Down by the river, there are some old oyster shacks, some old buildings where boats were built and stored about a hundred years ago. They were used for different things through the years, then were boarded up. They’re pretty ramshackle, for the most part. On the other side of town, we have an area that’s about to be up for renovation. There are a few places that have been vacant for a while. The owners are waiting for the right market to sell, I guess.”

“Sounds like the perfect place to keep a woman chained up.”

“We did check them out last week, but only from the outside, so I want to take a closer look. If I wanted to keep someone hidden for a few weeks and not attract any attention, I’d be thinking hard about one of those buildings.”

“And you think he’s keeping them in St. Dennis?”

“Pretty certain. Daley and Meyers have said they’ve searched high and low in their respective towns, and nothing’s been found. Of course, neither Cameron nor Ballard has the number of vacant buildings that we have.”

“Why is that?”

“They’re newer towns. St. Dennis is a couple hundred years old. Our buildings have been around longer, and some of them have been used for different purposes over the years. We’ve gone through a period of renovation and restoration, and now we’re being discovered, so the old properties are increasing in value. And the other towns are not built on the water, the way we are. For generations our people made their living from the bay, so it follows we’d have old buildings near the water that are no longer being used because the businesses they served are gone.” He seemed to think that over, then added, “There are some old crabbers’ shacks out near the bay, past Sinclair’s Cove. I think I asked Duncan to look into them but I don’t remember that he said he did.”

He took out his phone as the traffic started moving.

“Garland,” he said, “I need Duncan. Is he around? Find him for me, please. And call the mobile phone service. It looks like Lisa needs an upgrade.”

“Well, that should make Lisa happy. Getting a new phone, that is.”

“Hey, I live to please.” He played around with the radio dial for a minute, then said, “She’s almost like a sister to me, maybe even more like a sister than my sister. I’ve actually known Lisa longer than I’ve known Vanessa.”

“That must have been quite a surprise,” Mia said, “finding out you had a sister.”

“When it comes to Maggie, anything is possible. That woman is always full of surprises.”

“Like bringing you here unannounced to Hal?”

“Yeah, that was a good one,” he said dryly. “Pissed me off more than you could imagine, her dragging me here, never saying a word about where we were going or what she intended on doing. Just telling Hal that I was his problem, turning heel and walking away, leaving me standing there…”

Even now, years later, the pain in his voice and in his eyes was unmistakable.

“Looks like it turned out okay, though. With Hal, I mean.”

“Only good thing she ever did for me.” He nodded. “Still, you have to have something seriously wrong with you to do that to your own kid.”

“But in the end…”

“In the end, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. She really couldn’t handle me. And I guess that last time I got into trouble was the last straw, as far as she was concerned. And Hal was a terrific dad. Just took to it straight away, never questioned for a second whether I was his or not. Here he was, a small town cop, living alone…”

“He never married?”

“Nope. Always said the only woman he ever loved was my mother.” Beck shook his head as if the thought was incomprehensible to him. “How crazy is that?”

“She must have had something going for her. Hal’s no fool.”

“Yeah, well, he is when it comes to Maggie. I swear, if she walked back into St. Dennis today, he’d let her.”

“She must have had a reason to do what she did, Beck.”

“Oh, she had a reason, all right. Her new husband didn’t like me.” His face hardened. “And I guess when you have to decide between your kid and your meal ticket, your stomach is going to win out every time. At least, for some it will.”

“This new husband, he was Vanessa’s father?”

“Right. One mean son of a bitch.”

“But Vanessa told me they split up before she was born.”

“Guess he didn’t like kids, his or anyone else’s.”

“Was he abusive?”

“Abusive?” Beck frowned. “What made you ask that?”

“I don’t know.” Mia shrugged. “I was just thinking, she brought you to Hal right after she married this guy. Then, before she even had Vanessa, she split with him. Maybe she was trying to protect you. Both of you.”

“And her reason for sending Vanessa out here?”

“Maybe she just thought it was time you got to know each other.”

“More likely she was trying to get Vanessa out of her hair.”

“Vanessa was an adult when she showed up here in St. Dennis.”

“Maybe having a daughter in her twenties was cramping Maggie’s style. Who knows what goes through that woman’s mind?” He shook his head. “I for one don’t want to know.”

Mia was thinking that Beck very much did want to know, but she figured it wasn’t her place to point that out. Instead, she said, “So where to now?” as they headed back into town.

“It’s late afternoon. Just drop me off at the station,” he replied. “Are you staying at Sinclair’s Cove again tonight?”

“No.” She shook her head. “But it would probably make sense if I did until the case is solved. I think when I get home tonight I’ll pack enough things for a few days.”

She turned on to Kelly’s Point Drive.

“Just pull into the lot and take off, why don’t you? Get a jump on the traffic,” he suggested. “And maybe by the time you get here in the morning, we’ll know what Lisa and Duncan have been up to all day.”

“If you’re sure…” She stopped in front of the door.

“Positive. Go on home.” He gave her arm a quick squeeze, then opened the door and got out. He leaned into the car and added, “I was in the army.”

“Delta Force,” she said softly.

Beck smiled and said, “Get a good night’s sleep.”

“Will do.” She waved and he slammed the door.

Looking forward to a night in her own bed, Mia headed for the highway, the Bay Bridge, and home.