CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE BAD NEWS was that several bones in Harp’s hand were broken and Mark wasn’t going to let him be on duty. He’d screwed up again and was furious with himself. No surprise, the undersheriff hadn’t taken it well. Add to that the pain and having his hand in a cast clear up to his elbow. On top of that, he’d had to stay in a motel, since when he’d called Mark, the undersheriff had told him not to go back to Vicki last night.
So even with the pain pills, he’d had a rough night with little sleep. He kept going over it in his head, trying to figure out why the woman had acted the way she had. It made no sense. She was the one who’d been talking marriage, babies, all that female crap that made his stomach roil.
And when he’d finally decided to bite the bullet, that was the way she reacted? As far as he knew, she was still locked in the bathroom.
Last night he’d definitely thought about ignoring Mark’s order and going over to her apartment and demanding to know what the hell was wrong with her. But he suspected it would end up in a fight. If the friggin’ neighbors called the sheriff’s department again...
He’d thought about calling Vicki, but Mark had also warned him not to do that, either. Sleep on it. Trust me, it’s the best thing you can do. Everything is much clearer in the morning.
Harp had hoped that was true. But this morning, he had other things on his mind. He’d had plenty of time in the emergency room of the hospital to think about his future. He’d screwed up. Again. But he’d been thinking there might be a way to fix it.
He’d find Maggie Thompson.
The sheriff’s department was a madhouse with DCI. He walked in as if he knew what was going on. He hadn’t realized how out of the loop he was until he heard the FBI might be called in because a ransom note had been received.
He found his inside source on her break. “What’s going on?” he asked as he took a chair next to her. Gail Anderson was in her late fifties and the night dispatcher. She liked to bowl, drink beer and carry tales, so the two of them had always gotten along.
She filled him in, just as he knew she would, keeping her voice down and their heads together.
“What are you doing here?” the undersheriff asked, suddenly sticking his head in the break-room doorway.
“I was going crazy just sitting around,” Harp said. “Isn’t there something I can do here?”
Mark shook his head. “You’ll just be in the way. Go home.” With that, he left.
“You get a raw deal around here,” Gail said.
“I just need to prove myself to them,” he said. “What do you think happened to Maggie?”
“I’d go with the former boyfriend, though the sheriff’s ex is definitely a piece of work. One or the other has her. But the question is, where would you hide someone? We have a tail on the ex-wife, so if she took Maggie, she can’t go take her food or water. Of course, she could have an accomplice. A woman like that can probably talk a man into doing just about anything.”
“Or maybe she acted alone. I get the feeling from what I’ve heard that she’d just as soon see Maggie dead anyway. So if she wasn’t planning on going back to wherever she hid Maggie...she wouldn’t be worried about getting caught.”
Gail agreed. “She’s the kind of woman who would eat her young.”
Harp gave a little laugh, thinking about his own kid. He wasn’t sure having it with Vicki was the best idea. She didn’t seem real...stable.
“Did they get a plate number on that brown van that was seen in the neighborhood, the one they now think the ex-boyfriend was driving?”
She shook her head as she wadded up her lunch sack and stood to toss it in the trash.
“What about the bar where the two were seen together?”
“Allegedly seen together,” Gail said and chuckled. “Bud’s Bar and Casino. It sounds nicer than it is, I heard.”
Right now, a cold beer sounded good, and since he had time to kill, why not drive to Billings?
* * *
ON THE DRIVE back to Gilt Edge, Flint went over everything Maggie had ever told him about her past. He knew little. He’d always thought there was some man who she’d gotten away from, but she’d never said it in so many words. It had been more of a feeling. Now he blamed himself for not asking, but at the same time, he knew she hadn’t wanted him to know.
This old boyfriend? How dangerous was he? If he had Maggie...
He still wasn’t convinced that Celeste hadn’t taken her. But Mark seemed to have changed his mind. Flint thought that was foolish. Unless Celeste had come up with an alibi. But a ransom note? That did not sound like Celeste. Unless she was trying to cover her tracks.
“It’s got to be a hoax,” Flint said to himself. “Just someone thinking they can cash in on this.” He’d driven most of the night, pulling over at a truck stop to get something to eat and some coffee. He knew he was too tired to make any sense out of this, especially when he knew so little.
The sun was up and climbing as he reached Gilt Edge. He swung by the sheriff’s office, not surprised to find Mark behind his desk. The undersheriff looked as exhausted as Flint felt.
Mark motioned him into a chair. “Where have you been?”
The two of them knew each other well enough that Mark wouldn’t believe he’d just left town for the heck of it. Also, he wasn’t going to keep anything from the undersheriff.
“I went over to the Dumas’ lake house. I thought Maggie...”
Mark swore. “You’re determined to get thrown in jail.”
Flint shook his head, remembering the baby’s room. “She wasn’t there. I would have told you, but it was something I needed to do myself.”
Mark sighed. “I talked to Celeste again. She was headed for the lake house but apparently ended up getting drunk and going home with a man at the bar outside of Bigfork, and yes, her alibi checks out. The bartender remembers her and knows the man she went home with. She was with him until she returned to town.”
He shook his head. “It sounds like a planned alibi to me. It still doesn’t mean that she didn’t have Maggie with her and stashed her somewhere.”
“We’ve had a tail on her ever since she returned,” Mark said. “She hasn’t left the house except to come down here to the sheriff’s department for questioning.”
Flint felt his heart drop at the thought of Celeste hiding Maggie somewhere and just leaving her there to die. “She must have someone working with her.”
“I considered that,” Mark said noncommittally.
“You know how Celeste is. She could easily have met some man and gotten him to do her bidding.” Mark looked even more skeptical. “She would have told him it was a practical joke or whatever. Maybe she offered him money. You have to understand, there isn’t much this woman wouldn’t do to get what she wants, and she wants Maggie out of my life.”
Mark nodded. “Then you are going to love hearing this. Three weeks ago, Celeste says she saw Maggie with a man at a bar in Billings. The two, according to her, seemed to have a history and were arguing, the man trying to get her to come back to him. Celeste thought he might have driven a brown van.”
Flint shook his head. “You aren’t buying into this, are you? She’s just trying to save her own neck.”
“Maybe, but we’re looking into it.”
“Wait. Are you thinking the same thing I am? If Celeste tracked down this man, she might have gotten him to help her.”
“It crossed my mind after what you just said,” Mark agreed.
Celeste was a known liar. He couldn’t believe anything she said and neither should his undersheriff. “Wait. When was this alleged meeting in the bar?” he asked after Mark finished telling him everything Celeste had said about this old boyfriend of Maggie’s. “This could all be a lie.”
“Three weeks ago.”
He looked out the window, thinking how much he hated this time of year. It was still snowing, and after several days of it, he felt as if it might never stop. Days like this made him want to move to Arizona. He craved the sun, needed that warmth right now because he felt chilled to the bone.
Three weeks ago. The words played in his head. At first he thought he could prove that Celeste was lying, that Maggie couldn’t have gone to Billings. This had to be just another Celeste story.
But then he remembered. Three weeks ago Maggie had gone to a product show in Billings. But Celeste could have found that out. Celeste could have... He swallowed. Celeste could have come up with this whole story. But the lawman in him was reminded of the neighbor who’d seen the brown van go past. Another little detail Celeste could have added for good measure.
Flint thought back to three weeks ago when Maggie had returned from Billings for what she said was a salon product meeting.
So three weeks ago they’d been dating, but he wouldn’t say they’d been all that close. Weeks before that, Maggie’s salon had been broken into and someone had started a fire on the back porch of her house. Celeste, but unfortunately, he had no proof of that.
He’d seen Maggie before she’d left for Billings and after she’d come home. She hadn’t kept the trip from him. Something about salon products. Or at least she’d made it sound like that. And maybe that was what it had been. Maybe she hadn’t lied. Maybe she’d run into the man while down there. Or maybe she’d been planning to meet him the whole time.
He hadn’t questioned her about the trip. Because he’d trusted her. Before this moment, he would have said Maggie was the last person on this earth who would lie to him.
Now he shook his head at how naive he’d been. He’d seen a change in her before she went and when she’d come back. There’d been a distance. But he’d blamed it on the things they’d been through with his ex, when maybe the whole time, it had been the old boyfriend.
Maggie wouldn’t have liked keeping it from him. Other than that, she wouldn’t have anything else to hide, he assured himself. It wasn’t like she had been considering going back to the man.
Or had she? Was it possible that after Celeste saw him at the house, Maggie had left with the man?
He shook his head. From what Celeste had reported that she’d overheard of the conversation, the man had been trying to get her back and Maggie wasn’t having it.
“If he was trying to get her back...” Flint said and stopped. Maggie had definitely argued with someone and gotten hurt. “You think he abducted her?”
“Possibly.”
“She wouldn’t have left with him.” He saw Mark’s expression and he knew that, like him, he was thinking of Jenna Holloway. A woman could sometimes leave with the worse man for her.
“If Celeste and this man joined forces...” He could see that happening, Celeste offering to help the man, telling him that Maggie wasn’t serious about some sheriff in some Podunk Montana town. “Where would he have taken her? Billings? Is that where he was living? Or somewhere closer to Gilt Edge?”
“That’s what we are looking into,” Mark said. “Once we know who he...”
Flint nodded. “Celeste swears she doesn’t know? What did the man look like?” He listened to the description. As far as he knew, he’d never seen the man. If the man even existed. Silently he cursed his ex-wife. She lied about so much. This could be a lie, as well. Another dead-end lead that would keep them from finding Maggie.
“Have you been able to verify this incident at the bar?”
Mark nodded. “I talked to the bartender, a man named Brian Bateman. It’s the kind of bar where this happens more often than not, but he remembered because of Celeste and her friends. He didn’t want any bloodshed with them in the bar. He could tell that they weren’t the usual clientele.”
“Had he seen the man before?”
“Yes, said he comes in after work sometimes but was never a problem before that. The bartender’s description matched Celeste’s. Also, his description of Maggie matched.”
Flint put his head in his hands for a moment. “If this man has Maggie, and Celeste orchestrated this whole thing...”
“You have to remember that he was reportedly trying to get her back. So there is a good chance he won’t hurt her—if he has her.”
Flint wondered about that.
“She never mentioned this man?” Mark asked.
“No,” he mumbled into his hands, then lifted his head. “That’s not true. I think he was the reason she came to Gilt Edge. In order to get away from him.”
Mark nodded. “It could be the same man, but we don’t know that.” The undersheriff sighed. “Then there is this.” He handed him the bagged ransom note.
The sheriff read it twice and looked at his watch, having lost track of time.
“How soon do I have to come up with the money?” There was no way he could raise that much money on his own.
“I’m waiting for the kidnapper to contact me again.”
“It could be to throw us off who really has Maggie,” Flint said.
“Maybe. Or this person might have her. I suspect, like you said, it could be someone who doesn’t know where Maggie is, trying to cash in.”
“Even so, I can’t raise fifty thousand dollars, not unless I got the family to put up the ranch. I can’t ask them to do that.”
“We need to ask for proof of life first.”
Proof of life. He bit the inside of his cheek to fight the pain. He wanted to argue that a kidnapper didn’t have Maggie. That Celeste and this old boyfriend of Maggie’s had thrown in together to do this. But he couldn’t.
It was all supposition with no proof. He was still a lawman. The truth was he had no idea where Maggie was or who had taken her or even if she was still alive.