The Bodyguard

Chapter Four

“Yep, deader than a party at my in-laws’ house.” Sheriff Eldon Pitts used a thumb to cock back his cowboy hat. Staring down at Julius’s body he clucked his tongue. He twisted his lips and blew a long, confused-sounding breath.

Hunched against a wall, Frankie knew that with the sheriffs arrival she’d lost what little control she had over the situation. She chewed her lower lip. Both McKennon and her uncle had warned her to keep her mouth shut and to stay out of the way. Not that she had the faintest idea about what to do, anyway. She couldn’t see past being furious at Julius for getting Penny into this mess and terrified about what the kidnappers might do to the girl.

She studied the sheriff. About her height, he had a big face made bigger by a huge mustache that concealed his mouth. He appeared confused, and she wondered if he’d ever dealt with a kidnapping before. Or a murder for that matter. The county population was almost evenly divided between long-established ranchers and those who catered to tourists. Drunk drivers probably made up the bulk of local criminals.

“May I?” McKennon asked. At a nod from the sheriff, McKennon used one finger to lift the comforter high enough to see Julius’s body. “No sign of violence.” He then directed the sheriff’s attention to the wastebasket. “I think analysis will show those syringes contained a barbiturate. Miss Forrest claims her sister doesn’t drink alcohol, so Mr. Bannerman drank the scotch.”

“Booze and downers, a lethal combo.”

“But accidental. They expect him to pay the ransom.”

“Is he rich enough to pay three million?”

“His mother is.”

“Hmm, we have ourselves quite a situation.” The sheriff clucked his tongue again. “Might be a bad thing if those crooks find out they murdered this man.”

Brilliant deduction, Frankie thought sourly. She turned her gaze out the window. Her hope of mustering these men into organizing a search party was dying fast.

“What is your connection to all this, Mr. McKennon?”

“I’m employed by Maxwell Caulfield, Mr. Bannerman’s stepfather. I was assigned as Mr. Bannerman’s bodyguard.”

A twinge of sympathy tightened Frankie’s throat. McKennon couldn’t very well sleep in the cabin with the newlyweds, but Max and Belinda were going to blame him, anyway.

“You didn’t see anything? Hear anything?”

“I slept in the lodge last night.” He’d assumed his mob-enforcer impassivity, but Frankie suspected it cost him dearly to admit this failure.

“I better call the coroner then. State police, too.”

“No!” Frankie pushed away from the wall. “We can’t have cops crawling all over. The press will find out Julius is dead.”

The Colonel touched her arm. “The sheriff has assured me that he will do everything in his power to keep the press from learning of Mr. Bannerman’s demise. We will cooperate with the kidnappers and ensure Penny’s safe return.”

“Not good enough. We have to find Penny right now. We can’t take any chances.”

McKennon cleared his throat, loudly. Frankie pointedly ignored him, but like a gorilla in a house, he was impossible to ignore. Before she could react, he had her by the arm and hustled out of the cabin.

“You squeeze my arm again and I’ll punch you in the nose.”

Shoulders hunched, he tucked his hands beneath his armpits. The wind ripped past them. A tree limb cracked, making Frankie jump. She fumbled with the zipper on her parka.

“You have got to calm down,” McKennon said. “I know you’re scared, but spouting off doesn’t improve the situation.”

“If it was your sister, I’d like to see how calm you’d be.” She narrowed her eyes against the wind slicing her face. Be warm, Penny, she prayed. Be safe.

“We will get Penny back, safe and sound. I promise.”

She didn’t want to trust him; he worked for the man who had ruined her life. He touched her chin with a finger. His warmth startled her.

“I promise.”

His jungle-cat eyes snared her, entrapped her and stilled the breath in her lungs. She tried hard to remember that he worked for Max, he was loyal to Max, and he’d do whatever Max told him to do. Instead, she thought of the way he’d kissed her. He’d meant it as a joke, and so had she, but it hadn’t turned out that way. Like that kiss, his promise seemed real.

Footsteps crunched gravel. Deputy Mike Downes approached the Honeymoon Hideaway. Pressing a fist to her aching chest, Frankie studied the other cabins. She wondered if the occupants noticed the commotion.

Frankie and McKennon followed the deputy into the cabin. The deputy’s parka was mud splattered, and his shoes and lower trouser legs were damp and muddy. Clots of snow fell to the floor and melted into dirty little puddles. He stopped on a rug near the door. Frankie had met the deputy before. As a friend of the family he’d attended weddings of the Duke siblings. She liked his combination of shy boyishness and sharp intelligence.

“They came through the woods, sir,” Downes told the sheriff. “Three of them. Looks to be two men and either a boy or a woman. Three tracks lead away. One looked to be carrying Mrs. Bannerman.”

There had been no moon last night, which meant the kidnappers had trekked blindly through the forest. Imagining such determination gave her chills. “You can tell all that from their tracks?”

He flashed a shy smile Frankie’s way. “I do a lot of hunting, ma’am. They parked about a hundred yards from here on the trail above the lodge. The tracks lead straight to and from. They knew where they were going.”

“Tire tracks?” the sheriff asked.

“Yes, sir. I radioed in for another deputy to guard the scene until the crime techs can get here. If we can set up lights out there we can get photographs. But we best move fast. It’s fixing to snow. I can smell it coming.”

The sheriff looked at the mud oozing off the deputy’s shoes. “All right, everybody out. This scene is past contaminated. Mike, you wait here until the state boys arrive. Nobody else comes in.”

“Wait a minute!” Frankie cried. “He knows how to track. We’ll track the kidnappers. We can find Penny.”

She may as well have been shouting at the wind. The Colonel grasped one arm and McKennon took the other. They bullied her out of the cabin.

“LET ME GUESS,” McKennon said. “The first words out of your mouth were, ‘I hate Julius Bannerman.’” Arms folded, he rested a shoulder against the doorjamb leading to Elise Duke’s office.

Frankie turned an unhappy glare on McKennon’s knowing expression. Of course she’d told the police how much she hated Julius, but McKennon needn’t be so smug about the inevitable results. The state police investigator who’d questioned her about the kidnapping had been solicitous, to a point. He even apologized for requesting she submit fingerprints, shoe print samples and a handwriting exemplar. When Frankie, however, launched into a diatribe about how opposed she’d been to the wedding and how Julius Bannerman had been the lowest scumball to ever prowl the earth, he’d turned hostile. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out her big mouth placed her in the top ten on the suspect list.

Her insistence that the police launch a massive manhunt had gone largely ignored. The only thing her arguments accomplished was getting her banished to Elise’s office. There she sat, alone, frustrated, scared and helpless.

McKennon picked up a carafe from Elise’s desk, filled a mug and offered her the steaming coffee. She accepted with an ungracious grunt. “What time is it?”

“A few minutes after two.”

“What are the cops doing now? Does anyone have any idea where Penny is?”

She settled on a love seat carefully, well aware she’d been wearing the same clothes for days. She felt dirty, exhausted and very much out of place in Elise Duke’s feminine office. Despite it being the dead of winter, fresh flowers were arranged in vases. Elise could find fresh flowers in Antarctica if she had to. The delicate furniture, shining under coats of wax, made Frankie feel even more lost and out of place.

She blew on the steaming brew, forming concentric circles on the surface. “Did the cops call in the FBI?”

McKennon’s pained exhalation told her all she needed to know. This kidnapping was going from awful to ludicrously horrible at warp speed.

“They’ll get her back.”

“How are they keeping this from the media? Elk River looks like it’s hosting a cop convention. What if the kidnappers are watching? What then?”

“I assure you they were bluffing. No way would they hang around.” He poured coffee for himself. “Did the cops ask to search your car?”

“I gave permission.” Seething, she sipped the coffee. “But I told them no way about searching my apartment. Can you believe it? They want to waste time digging around in my stuff. If they want to look that bad they can get a warrant.” The coffee made her belly rumble. Hunger flared, annoying her. “What about you?”

“I gave them permission to search everything.”

She wrinkled her nose in puzzlement. “Are you nuts?”

“You should let them search your place, too.”

“It’s a waste of time and manpower.”

“It’s an inside job, Frankie. The cops know it.”

She almost spilled the coffee. She clutched the cup with both hands. Traces of fingerprint ink smudged the ceramic surface. “What are you talking about?”

He sat beside her and placed a hand on her arm. Bemused, she stared at his hand. An overwhelming need for comforting disturbed her. She’d always been strong and able to cope with any situation. That circumstances had forced her into helplessness alternately frightened and angered her.

She meant to jerk her arm away from his hand. She would stop staring at his long, muscular fingers, as well, and stop studying the way raised veins traced patterns under the skin. She meant to—every intention was there—but she couldn’t rouse the energy to do anything except gaze unhappily at his hand upon her arm.

“For one thing, the kidnappers knew exactly where to go. The tracks led directly to the cabin.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, a limited number of people were aware that the wedding and honeymoon were taking place at the resort.”

A creepy sensation slithered through her body. Anonymous thugs were one thing. Like being struck by lightning, crime by strangers was scary, but impersonal. Being attacked by a friend, though, gnawed holes in the very idea of personal safety. “How limited?”

His brow knit. “The Dukes and the Caulfields, of course. Whoever arranged the reservation for the chapel and honeymoon cabin. Two of Penny’s friends attended the wedding and dinner along with one of Julius’s. They returned yesterday to the Springs. I have no idea who Penny or Julius might have told about the wedding, but since so few were invited I imagine they kept it quiet. All in all, I suspect the number of people who knew about the wedding is small, and the number who knew the details is even smaller. Those are our suspects.”

The man who left the message on Frankie’s answering machine knew. She sat straighter. Her heart thudded heavily.

“What is it?” he asked.

She set down the coffee mug and shifted on the seat to face him. “Who tipped me off about the wedding?”

“What?”

“Some man left a message on my machine. Why did he call?”

McKennon shook his head. “I’m not certain what you’re talking about.”

Fist pressed to her mouth, she concentrated on remembering the exact words the caller had used. “I got back from the grocery store, and there was a message on my answering machine. A man said Penny and Julius were getting married here, and I had to stop it. I called Penny’s dorm, and that’s when I found out she’d dropped out of college. So I got up here as fast as I could.” She stared fiercely into his eyes. “Was it you?”

“No,” he answered without hesitation. “You didn’t recognize the voice?”

“Uh-uh.” Fear crawled through her bones. Somebody knew her well enough to know she would drop everything and race to Elk River. If that somebody was the kidnapper then he was no friend of hers. “But you’re here. There must have been some kind of threat.”

He grunted irritably and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands laced loosely. Frankie rubbed idly at the spot where he’d been touching her.

“Well?”

He snapped his head up and she caught the tightening of his jaw and the heat in his eyes. His show of emotion comforted her. It proved he cared.

“Mrs. Caulfield needed a spy. She tried to buy off Julius and it didn’t work. She couldn’t scare Penny, either. My job was to discover something Mrs. Caulfield could use against Penny.”

“That’s disgusting.”

He lowered his face. “Mrs. Caulfield could have had one of her staff call you. Maybe she thought you’d succeed where she failed.”

The idea of Belinda stooping so low as to need Frankie’s help seemed absurd. “She’s that desperate?”

“Penny’s a serious threat. I overheard several arguments where Julius took Penny’s side rather than his mother’s. From Mrs. Caulfield’s reaction I’d say that was a first. Julius moved out about a month ago. Again, judging by how hard she took it, that was a first, too.”

“Could...?” Frankie paused, loath to speak aloud her deepest fear. She swallowed hard. “Could Belinda be behind this?” Her courage failed her. She couldn’t bear thinking the kidnapping might be a cover for making Penny permanently disappear.