Vanishing Acts

Chapter 5

The Shelby Case

Walking to her father’s law office after practice, Madison imagined terrible things happening to Marci. Maybe she would be kicked off the team or break her leg. Yeah, that would be best. She would break her leg and have to sit on the bench and watch Madison score the winning goal in the championship game. Then Madison shook the thought away, feeling guilty. No leg-breaking. But someday Madison would show everyone how she could play.

Portland is a small city. The tallest buildings are no more than thirty stories high, and there are very few of those; and the city blocks are short. Kincaid and Kirk, her father’s law firm, was in the heart of downtown. Madison covered the ten blocks from The Grove to her father’s office quickly, not stopping to look at the shops along the way.

The law firm’s waiting room was decorated with oil paintings of French country scenes. Two comfortable armchairs flanked a burgundy leather couch, and magazines were stacked on end tables between the chairs and the couch. Walking to the dark-wood receptionist’s desk, Madison saw Peggy Welles finish a phone call. Peggy was seventy years old and gray haired and had been working as Hamilton Kincaid’s receptionist since long before Madison was born. She was the closest thing Madison had to a grandmother. When Madison was younger, it wasn’t unusual for Peggy to pick her up at school and take her to soccer practice or the law office, since Hamilton was frequently in court, at the jail, or knee deep in work at two-thirty in the afternoon.

“Is this Madison Kincaid, the junior high school student?” Peggy asked with a wide smile. “How was your first day?”

“Okay.”

Peggy took a gander at Madison’s black eye and bruises, but she didn’t freak out because she knew they were run-of-the-mill injuries for athletes.

“I take it you had soccer tryouts after school.”

Madison nodded.

“I’m going to go get you some ice.”

Peggy returned two minutes later and handed Madison a Baggie of ice and a towel.

“Thanks.”

“Think you made the team?”

“I hope so. I’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Are you worried?”

“Not about soccer. I’ve had bigger things on my mind. I’m worried something might have happened to Ann. She might even have been kidnapped.”

“Oh, really?” Peggy said, fighting hard to keep from smiling. This was not the first time Madison had decided that one of her friends had met a horrible fate.

“I haven’t heard from her since she left for Europe, I didn’t see her in school today, and she wasn’t at soccer tryouts. She hasn’t missed tryouts, practice, or a game since we were five!”

“Have you tried calling her?” Peggy asked.

“I’ve left tons of messages on her cell. And her Facebook page is way out of date. Becca, Jessi, and Lacey haven’t heard from her either. Something awful must have happened. I’m sure she got some strange European illness and is in a hospital in Lithuania or she was kidnapped by—”

“I’m sure she wasn’t kidnapped,” Peggy said reassuringly. “There’s probably a simple explanation for why she missed school.”

Peggy was echoing what Madison’s friends were saying, but Madison’s instincts were telling her something completely different.

“Is Dad in?” Madison asked, wanting to change the subject.

“He’s in his office.”

“See you later.”

Madison walked down the hall. The door to Hamilton’s office was open, and she rapped her knuckles on the jamb to get his attention. Hamilton’s office was as disorganized as his clothes. Papers were stacked seemingly at random on his desk, more papers stuck out from between the covers of the law reports that filled his bookshelves, and case files were spread across parts of the floor. Madison was always amazed at how such a sloppy person could be so organized in court. More than once, her father had astonished her when he broke down a witness with a razor-sharp cross-examination or cited a case, chapter and verse, from memory when he was arguing a legal point to a judge.

Hamilton didn’t look up from his work when Madison knocked. To Madison it seemed that most dads would be dying to hear about their only child’s first day at school. Some days Madison felt like Hamilton didn’t even know she existed. She knocked again, harder.

Hamilton looked up, confused. “Hey, honey,” he said, after registering it was Madison knocking. He didn’t seem to notice her black eye. Inwardly, Madison sighed.

“Hey, Dad. How’s the new case going?”

“It’s coming along.”

“Did you find out if Mrs. Shelby was my second-grade teacher?”

Hamilton sighed and rubbed his eyes. “She probably is, honey. She taught at your old school.”

Madison was silent, crestfallen. Poor Mrs. Shelby. “I’ve never known someone who was murdered before.”

“We aren’t sure if she was murdered,” Hamilton reminded her.

“So they haven’t found the body?”

“No.”

“In Max Stone’s The Spy Vanishes, the missing CIA agent was hit on the head and got amnesia. Maybe Mrs. Shelby is wandering around and doesn’t know who she is.”

“I guess that’s possible.”

“Has the crime lab tested the blood on the knife yet? Maybe it’s not Mrs. Shelby’s.”

“Maybe, but the crime lab says that the blood on the knife is Ruth Shelby’s blood type.”

Madison frowned. Then she cheered up. “Don’t a lot of people have the same blood type? Aren’t there, like, only five, and most people have the main one?”

“Actually, there are four blood types,” Hamilton said. “O, A, B, and AB, and they can be positive or negative. Mrs. Shelby is a B negative, which is the second rarest kind, and so is the blood on the knife. A little less than two percent of the population has that blood type.”

“Two percent? That doesn’t sound like that many.”

“Well, yes and no. There are around three hundred million people in the US, so two percent of three hundred million is six million people.”

“Wow, so it could be almost anyone’s blood on that knife.”

Hamilton laughed. “I wish you were on all my juries.”

“Maybe someone with her same blood type came in and kidnapped her!”

Hamilton rolled his eyes, but kindly. “In a few weeks, when we get the result of the DNA test, we’ll know if the blood is definitely Mrs. Shelby’s.”

“DNA tests take that long?”

“Yeah.”

“And they really work?”

“They do. Only one percent of our DNA is different, person to person.”

“So my DNA is ninety-nine percent the same as the president’s or a movie star’s?”

“Yup, but one percent is different enough,” Hamilton said. “The police take a sample of the blood found at a crime scene and a sample of the blood of the victim. If that one percent matches, they have proof that the blood is the victim’s blood, in this case Mrs. Shelby’s. They also can test if the blood is the suspect’s in the same way. The test is pretty accurate. The risk of matching a person’s DNA incorrectly is one in a hundred billion if the test is done properly.”

“If the police don’t have Mrs. Shelby’s body, what will they use to match her DNA with the DNA found in the blood?” Madison knew she was peppering her father with questions, but she was fascinated and wanted answers.

“They searched the Shelbys’ house, and the forensic experts would probably have found hair or some other fluid that can be used for a match. When you live somewhere, you leave your DNA all over—hairs from your head, eyelashes, snot on the Kleenex you always forget to throw out.”

“Yuck! And I do not leave my tissues all over! On TV they always take strands of hair from a hairbrush. That sounds easiest.”

“That’s true, but I didn’t see a hairbrush listed on the evidence sheet attached to the search warrant, so they must be using something else.”

“Well, if we find Mrs. Shelby alive we won’t need DNA or hairbrushes. Has Mark Shelby said if he knows where his wife went?”

“Madison, you know better than to ask that. A lawyer can’t reveal what a client tells him in confidence. But enough about the case,” Hamilton said, ending the conversation. “I have work to do, and you must, too. Why don’t you start your homework in your office?”

Madison was frustrated that her dad had shot her down, and even more frustrated that he forgot to ask about her first day at school and soccer tryouts and that she hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him about Ann. The Shelby case was absorbing him completely. Madison wished she knew a way for Hamilton to be as interested in her as he was in his cases.

Walking down the hall and through the file room, Madison came to the small, closet-sized room that had Madison Kincaid written on a plaque on the door. She had done homework in this office since she was little, but today she didn’t start on her assignments right away. With her best friend and her second-grade teacher both missing, how could she think about math homework? She sat down at her desk and pulled out two legal pads, writing Ann at the top of one and Shelby at the top of the other. Maybe if Madison helped her dad solve the Shelby case, he would pay a little attention to her. She would finish her homework. Then she would crack both cases.

Madison’s office wasn’t very far from the reception area. With the door open, she could hear people talking, though she couldn’t always make out what they were saying. Madison started on an essay for English class. She’d been working on it for half an hour when she heard Peggy ask her father about his visit to the jail to talk to Mark Shelby. Madison knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, but she couldn’t help herself. She got up and crept as quietly as she could into the file room, where the conversation between Peggy and her father would be easier to hear.

“How is Mr. Shelby holding up?” Peggy asked.

“He’s never been in jail before, and he’s scared. Murder is the only charge where you don’t automatically get bail, but I’ve scheduled a bail hearing for Friday and I think I have a good chance of getting him out.”

Friday was a scheduled teacher-training day, and there would be no school. Perfect, Madison thought.

“What does he say happened?” asked Peggy, who was covered by the attorney-client privilege because she was Hamilton’s employee. Unfortunately for Madison, the attorney-client privilege did not cover twelve-year-old volunteer file clerks.

“Exactly what the police reports say he told the detectives. He claims he forgot about his wedding anniversary and planned a golf outing with his friends. His wife was furious when she saw him getting ready to leave, and they had an argument. He says he was angry when he left and his wife was very much alive.”

“Do you believe him?” Peggy asked.

“Yes, but . . . ”

“But what?” Peggy pressed.

“I think he’s hiding something. I just don’t know what it is. But there’s something he’s not telling me. I have my investigator looking into it. There’s something about his story that just doesn’t add up.”

Madison heard Hamilton move toward the door. She scurried back into her office and pretended to be engrossed in her work in case he looked in on her. But she wasn’t thinking about her essay. She was thinking about Mark Shelby, and she was wondering what he was hiding from her father.