CHAPTER FIVE
FLINT CAUGHT FRANK and his business partner–wife, Nettie, just before they were leaving for the day. From his office at the sheriff’s department, he filled them in on the Jenna Holloway case. He’d met them both on a state investigation some years ago when Frank was sheriff. A big man, Frank looked like an old-timey lawman with a gunfighter mustache.
He’d heard that Frank had retired and opened his own investigation business with Nettie. He admired the two of them doing that since they were both in their sixties. Most people their age were headed for their recliners.
“I got a call from a man in Sheridan, Wyoming, who says he’s been living with Jenna Holloway since March—but that now she has disappeared again,” Flint told them. He held the phone tighter. “I’d go check this out myself, but Jenna is not the only one missing. The woman I’ve been seeing, Maggie Thompson, is also missing. My undersheriff is doing everything possible to find out what happened. The DCI has been called in.”
“What can we do to help?” Nettie asked from a phone extension at their office.
“Kurt Reiner believes Jenna was taken by a man in a brown van a couple days ago. A brown van was seen on the same street where Maggie disappeared earlier today.”
“You think the cases might be connected,” Frank said.
“I think it’s a long shot at best. But both women are from here. If this man knows anything about Jenna Holloway and her disappearance...” His voice broke. “I can’t leave here in case—”
“We can go first thing in the morning,” Nettie said. “Just send us the information.”
“I really appreciate this,” Flint said. “Truthfully, I don’t think Maggie was taken by some man in a brown van. I think my ex-wife did something to her and it scares the hell out of me. But my ex is allegedly away at some spa, and this information on Jenna, who disappeared last March, just came in. When the man mentioned a brown van...”
“I understand. We’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve talked to Kurt Reiner,” Frank said.
He swallowed the lump in his throat, unable to voice his gratitude. He trusted this longtime sheriff, having heard nothing but good news about him. Nor was Frank’s wife any slouch when it came to investigating, he’d heard.
“We’ll start with Jenna,” Frank said. “Then we’ll see where you are on Maggie’s disappearance. We understand time is of the essence. If you need anything...” He read off their cell phone numbers.
“Thanks, Frank. I knew I could count on you. I’ve emailed everything I have. As soon as I hear from you verifying that Jenna was the woman living with Kurt Reiner, I’ll go out to the Holloway farm to talk to the husband. Anvil might have heard from her and just not called me. Or he could be involved. At this point, it’s all up in the air.”
“We have the photo of Jenna and the information you just emailed. We’ll be in touch.”
* * *
TEN O’CLOCK THE next morning, Frank sat down across from Kurt Reiner. Reiner was dressed in jeans, sneakers that had seen better days and a ragged T-shirt with a logo of some band Frank had never heard of. Somewhere around forty-five with a neck tattoo of a snake and a variety of other tattoos on his pale skin below the sleeves of the T-shirt, Reiner appeared to be trying to look younger. His eyes were steel blue with thick lashes in a pockmarked face that wasn’t quite handsome.
But there was something about him that Frank thought might appeal to a woman either looking for trouble or running from it. A quiet mousy woman who’d married a farmer ten years her elder might have looked at Reiner and thought he had something she’d missed out on. Especially since she’d apparently been drawn toward the wilder side of life before her disappearance.
The first thing Frank had done when he’d met Reiner at a local café was show him the photo.
“Yep, that’s Jenna,” the man had said. “Except now she’s a blonde.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a photo of the two of you, would you?”
Reiner nodded. “I figured you’d want proof.” He dug out his cell phone and swiped for a photo. It was a selfie of him and Jenna in a bar. While not great resolution, there was no doubt it was Jenna—even blonde.
What struck Frank was that she looked younger than she did in the photo Flint had gotten from her husband. He took a photo of the pair and texted it to Flint to let him know that they had a positive ID while Nettie made polite conversation to distract Reiner.
“So how did you and Jenna meet?” Frank asked after the three of them were seated at a back table out of the way. Reiner had suggested the place, wanting to meet in public. Frank got the feeling that he was worried a half-dozen cops would be waiting for him.
Now Reiner shifted uncomfortably in his chair and shot a look toward the door. “So you’re a private dick?”
“Nettie and I are licensed private investigators, yes,” Frank said. “No one is going to arrest you.” He’d told him this on the phone but clearly the man had trust issues. He could tell that Reiner wished he’d kept his mouth shut about Jenna.
“You care about her,” Nettie said. “That’s why you’re here. Are you in love with her?”
Reiner blinked, his expression softening as he looked at Nettie. “She was sweet, you know? The kind of woman who takes care of a man.”
Frank wondered how she’d taken care of him, but let his wife take the lead. Nettie had a sense for these things. He’d learned to trust her instincts long ago.
“You must miss her.”
Reiner’s blue eyes filled with tears as he nodded. He swallowed convulsively, his Adam’s apple going up and down for a minute. “That’s why I called. If some...bad dude has her...”
“Then let us help her,” Nettie said. “We’re going to need to know everything she might have told you about the man, but let’s start with how you two met.”
He nodded. “She was writing to my brother, Bobby. He’s in prison in Deer Lodge.”
Flint had said she’d been writing to prisoners at Montana State Prison, but when she’d disappeared none of those men had been released, so they were cleared as suspects.
“He told me about her and that she needed help, so...” Reiner shrugged. “So I wrote her and we met. I had to help her, you know?”
“But when you met her, there was something about her that stole your heart,” Nettie said.
Reiner smiled. It was a good smile. Frank could see how a woman looking for a radical life change could have fallen for this guy. He had a certain charm.
“She told you about her husband?”
“He seemed like an okay dude. I think she felt bad for hurting him, but she had to get out of there since this other dude had started freaking her out.”
“There was someone after her?” Nettie asked.
“He followed her home one day from town, she said. She saw him drive by the farm real slow and then come right back by. She said that if her husband hadn’t come back on his tractor when he did...”
“She saw the man again?” Frank asked.
“He drove by the next day and later that night. Then one morning, he drove his van up in the yard. He must have thought that her husband was gone. But he wasn’t. Anvil, right?” Frank nodded. “He went outside to see what the man wanted and the dude took off.”
“Did she know who he was?” Frank asked.
Reiner shook his head. “She said she never got a good look at him. Just had a bad feeling, you know?”
“Why her, do you think?” Frank asked.
“Who knows how dudes like that pick their targets, but she was terrified of him.”
Frank glanced at Nettie. He could tell that she was thinking the same thing he was. Why would the woman be that terrified of someone driving a van who’d possibly followed her home once and drove into the yard another time? He could understand concern. He could even understand fear. But terror? Not unless she had some other reason to fear the man behind the wheel of that van.
Which meant she knew him. And if he was the one who’d abducted her... Well, why else would he come looking for her in Wyoming unless there was more to the story? If that was even what had happened to Jenna. The woman seemed to have a habit of disappearing.
* * *
FLINT TOOK A shower at the sheriff’s office and put on the clean uniform shirt and jeans that Mark had gotten him from his house. He’d been up all night, dozing only a little in the break room at the office. He felt wired, terrified one moment, and confident the next that they would find Maggie alive, and soon.
In the meantime, he knew that if he didn’t work, he’d go crazy. While Mark canvassed the neighborhood, Flint was holding down the fort. He kept thinking that someone would call with news about Maggie. By now, word would have traveled around the county. Someone had to spot her.
Mark had called to say that Celeste hadn’t turned up. Wayne hadn’t heard from her, other than an email from a Paradise Valley spa confirming her reservation for last night. She hadn’t shown, though. No one knew where she was, but Mark had a BOLO out on her, as well as Maggie. Someone was going to spot her as well, Flint told himself. They would find Maggie. Then Celeste would spend the rest of her years behind bars for abducting her.
He just prayed that Celeste wouldn’t kill her. Mark had called earlier to tell him that it appeared Celeste had taken the gun her husband had purchased for her since it hadn’t been found in the house. As hard as he tried to think about anything else, he could feel the clock ticking.
When he’d received the texted photo of Jenna from Frank, he felt sick. All this time, Jenna had been hiding out in Wyoming with a man? He wondered how Anvil would take this news—if he didn’t already know.
On his way out to the Holloway farm, Flint couldn’t get the photo of Jenna and Kurt Reiner off his mind. Jenna was smiling in the snapshot. She looked so different from the photo her husband had given him back in March. For one thing, she’d bleached her hair blond and she was clearly wearing makeup. He hoped he wouldn’t have to show this photo to Anvil. It was going to be hard enough on the man when he learned that his wife had been shacking up with a lover in Wyoming all this time. He didn’t need to see how happy she looked.
He thought about the first time he’d driven out to the Holloway farm. Anvil had called him to say his wife was missing. He’d known little about the couple, since they stayed to themselves and seldom came into town.
He’d seen Jenna in passing in town when she’d made the trip in for groceries, but other than a nod to each other, they’d never even spoken. Jenna had seemed...painfully shy. Now, though, he wondered if he’d misread not only her, but also the entire situation.
It was clear now that Jenna had planned her escape from the farm. From her husband. From even the law. She’d done it systematically. Flint had changed his view of her since seeing the photo of her and Reiner. He realized he needed to know a whole lot more if there was any connection between Jenna’s and Maggie’s disappearances.
Thinking about Jenna kept his mind off the panic he felt when he thought of Maggie. He told himself that once Mark found Celeste... But he felt wired one minute and exhausted the next. He kept praying that Maggie was alive. That Mark would find her before it was too late.
While he tried to concentrate on doing his job, the thought of Maggie being missing hung at the back of his mind like a physical pain that never went away. When he thought of her, his heart would pound and he’d feel sick to his stomach. Not being part of the investigation was driving him crazy.
He knew he should be glad that there’d been a break in the Holloway case for the distraction. Otherwise he would be pacing the floor at the sheriff’s department, waiting for word. Mark had promised to call the moment there was any news.
But he also knew that he was too involved in this one, even if the DCI didn’t force him to take a leave of absence. As he pulled up in the yard, the front door of the house opened and Anvil appeared. Worry burrowed the farmer’s brows. Anvil held a dish towel in one hand, a cup in the other.
There was a time when Flint would have thought the man was worried that Jenna’s body had turned up and he was about to go to prison for murder. But Anvil didn’t look worried. He merely looked mildly curious. From the beginning, the farmer had sworn that his wife had run off with another man. As it turned out, he’d been right.
Still, Flint doubted Anvil was ready for this news, he thought as he climbed out of the patrol car and started toward the porch steps.
“Sheriff?”
“I’ve got some news about Jenna.” He pulled his coat around him to ward off the cold wind coming out of the snowcapped mountains. Low clouds hung over the peaks with the promise of a winter storm by noon. Christmas was only days away, and without a doubt, it was going to be white. Just the thought of Christmas without Maggie... He felt his stomach roil. “Mind if we step inside?”
Anvil shoved the door open and moved aside to let the sheriff enter. The first thing that struck him was how clean the house was. Anvil hadn’t just cleaned up after the incident with his wife. He’d continued to do so. The house looked spotless. Flint had to wonder if it had ever been this clean when Jenna was taking care of it.
Also, Anvil looked more kept up. He seemed to be dressed better. There’d definitely been a change in the man. Some local women had noticed it after Jenna disappeared. The women were convinced that Anvil had done away with his wife and was looking for another one just because he started wearing jeans instead of overalls. At least the last half of that still might be true, Flint thought.
“Coffee?” Anvil asked as he put down the cup he was holding and moved to the sink to carefully fold the dish towel and hang it over a rack.
“Sure,” Flint said, studying the man’s back. The news he had was a double-edged sword. He feared it would draw blood from a man who had already been put through the mill over Jenna’s first disappearance.
Not only had Anvil found out disturbing things about the woman he’d spent twenty-four years with, but also he’d lost her. The worse part was that most everyone in the county still believed that he’d killed her.
* * *
“WHEN JENNA DISAPPEARED, what did she take with her?” Nettie asked in the Sheridan, Wyoming, café.
Reiner looked up at her in surprise. “You mean did she take her clothes and stuff?”
“Did she?”
“No.” He looked insulted. “She was...abducted. I told you, the apartment was torn up as if she’d struggled. I was at work. I came home and she was gone.”
“None of her things were missing?” Frank asked.
The man seemed to consider that. “Her purse was gone, some of the money I kept in the apartment for groceries. I figured that’s where she was headed when whoever took her showed up at the apartment.”
“How much money was missing?” Frank asked.
Reiner looked as if he didn’t want to answer. “She took all that was in the drawer. Maybe a couple hundred. Maybe less.” He looked sick. “You’re thinking she bailed on me, but you’re wrong. She wouldn’t have done that. You don’t know her like I do.”
Frank wondered if her husband of more than twenty years had told Flint the same thing when she’d disappeared back in March. He doubted either man had really known this woman.
“She ever talk about her past?”
“You mean like her husband?”
“More like old boyfriends before or after her husband,” Nettie said.
Reiner seemed to think for a moment. “She mentioned growing up in some hellhole in North Dakota. Her parents were really strict. She said she never saw them touch each other. Seriously, not a hug, a kiss, even hold hands. She wondered how they’d conceived her.”
“Where was this in North Dakota?” Frank asked.
“Some wide spot in the road.” He frowned as if thinking. “Radville. That’s right, because she said it was anything but rad. I thought that was pretty funny. She had that kind of sense of humor.”
“Did she say why she left there?” Nettie asked.
He shrugged. “Who wouldn’t? She might have said that her parents were glad to see her go. They didn’t want her dating. I think they wanted her to become a nun. Not really, but you know what I mean.” He laughed. “Jenna a nun? Jenna was the horniest woman I’d ever—” He stopped, his gaze going to Nettie. “Sorry.”
“So she had a sexual appetite?” Nettie asked.
“Boy howdy. I got the feeling she hadn’t had any in years, if you know what I mean.”
Frank thought he did. “She like it kinky?”
Reiner colored and shot Nettie a look before turning back to him. “Seriously?”
“Nettie can handle it,” he assured the man. “Jenna like it rough?”
Looking embarrassed, Reiner looked away and said, “I think it was all that pent-up stuff from first her parents and then that straitlaced old man she was married to.”
Frank had to smile to himself. He’d called Anvil Holloway an old man and Holloway was nearly ten years Frank’s junior. He saw that Nettie was amused since even at their ages there was nothing wrong with either of their own sexual appetites.
“What about friends?” Nettie asked. “Surely she had a friend back home that she kept in contact with.”
“Dana,” he said with a nod. “Apparently she didn’t escape Radville. Jenna felt bad for her, talked about helping her out, you know?”
“Like sending her money?” Frank asked.
“She sent her some. I didn’t mind.” He looked defensive. “She didn’t send much. Like I said, I didn’t mind giving it to her.”
“She call her?” Nettie asked.
He shrugged. “A few times. But I don’t see what—”
“We’re going to need Jenna’s cell phone number.”
“She didn’t have one. She used mine.”
“Then we are going to need it and your passcode,” Frank said. “Sorry. We’ll get it back to you as soon as we’re done with it. I can give you money for a new phone.”
Reiner looked as if he might leap up and make a run for it. But after a moment, he reached into his pocket, brought out the phone and laid it on the table with a gesture that said, “I have nothing to hide.” Nettie wrote down the passcode, and turning on the cell, she keyed it in. Seeing that it worked, she pocketed the phone.
“Dana have a last name?” Frank asked.
Reiner shrugged. “I never heard it mentioned.”
“What about friends since the two of you have been living here in Wyoming?” Nettie asked. “Friends from work maybe?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t have a job. We thought it best, you know, under the circumstances.”
“What did she do all day?” Frank asked.
“Hang. Watch TV. She cooked,” he said, brightening. “She was a great cook.” He looked at his watch. “I really need to get to work.”
“We’ll keep in touch, but if you hear from her, call me,” Frank said, sliding his business card and a hundred-dollar bill across the table. “You did good calling the sheriff. We’ll find her.”
Reiner looked like a man badly beaten with regrets. “Right.”
“We’ll mail your phone to your apartment address,” Frank said to the man’s retreating back and got a dismissive wave.
“A waste of postage,” Nettie said. “You know he’s taking off. Won’t be hearing from him again.” She brought up the photo of the man and Jenna on the cell phone.
Frank sighed. “I think we got all we could from him,” he said, watching through the window as Reiner drove away in an old compact car, the back bumper covered with stickers.
The sky was a dull gray as they stepped out of the café and walked toward their SUV. The cold air smelled as if it might start snowing at any moment.
“We need to know more about Jenna,” Nettie said as she climbed into the passenger side of the SUV.
“My thought exactly.” Frank smiled over at her as he slid behind the wheel. They’d always had this wondrous connection. She smiled back. It still amazed him how much he loved this woman and had since he was a boy. He’d lost her to another man for a while, but getting her back was the smartest thing he’d ever done. She fulfilled him in every way. Having her as a partner in their investigative business was just the cherry on top.
So far their business was doing better than even he’d hoped. Which he thought proved it was never too late. Never too late for love, he thought, looking at Nettie. Never too late to take a chance on something you loved doing. And the two of them loved investigating. That was, he did. Nettie loved snooping into other people’s business, he thought with a smile.
“Jenna knew who was after her,” Nettie said after Frank called the Gilt Edge sheriff’s cell, only to have to leave a message. “This man is someone from her past.”
“Some bad history there. You think the man was blackmailing her?” Frank asked, looking over at her.
“Could explain the money she was taking from her grocery budget back in Montana. Might also explain the prison pen pals.” She nodded. “Actually, I’m betting she was looking for someone to take care of the problem for her.”
Frank chuckled. “Where would a woman go to get help with some man she said was terrorizing her? Prison. I like it.”
“Instead she got the brother of one of the men and either decided to leave with him or really was abducted by the man from her past.” Nettie chewed at her lower lip for a minute. “Doesn’t explain the sexy undergarments or the shoplifted makeup unless... She could have thought that she was going to have to give her possibly ex-con hired killer something, and she didn’t have much money, from what Flint has told us.”
“You think she was looking for someone to kill the man after her?”
Nettie shrugged. “At least threaten him.”
As he started the SUV, he chuckled. He loved the way Nettie thought. “That all makes a strange kind of female sense.”
“Women are pretty practical thinkers. If we need something, we try to figure out how to get it. Womanly wiles are usually a last resort.”
“Then I’d say Jenna was desperate, wouldn’t you?”
“Definitely. It would explain why she took off with Reiner. It wouldn’t have taken her long to figure out that he wasn’t tough enough to take care of the man after her.”
“So then what?” Frank said.
“Once she saw the old boyfriend, assuming that’s who the man in the brown van is, she realized Reiner wasn’t going to take care of the problem for her. So what would she do?”
“Run again.”
“Or call his bluff. What do you think the old boyfriend wants?” Nettie asked thoughtfully. “It’s got to be more than money.”
“Love? Revenge?”
Nettie had wrinkled her nose at the first one. “I’m wondering how he found her in Wyoming when law enforcement couldn’t find her even with a BOLO out on her.”
“You’re thinking she contacted him?”
“Or Kurt did. Jenna could have gotten the old boyfriend’s number from her friend Dana. She calls it on Kurt’s phone. He sees a number he doesn’t recognize and calls it, giving away her location. Reiner’s definitely feeling guilty about something. It’s why he called Flint. But it could be because he didn’t protect her. Or it could be because he got scared and didn’t want to be involved in whatever happened next. I would love to have seen his face when he realized she’d taken all his money. If either of them called the old boyfriend, it could be on the phone—or at least the bill.”
“That would be a stroke of luck, but let’s remember we’re just assuming this man is an old boyfriend,” Frank said.
Nettie chuckled. “If Reiner saw a number on his phone he didn’t recognize, called it and a man answered, I’d say that was what he would have assumed, as well.”
“Think Reiner would have been angry enough to hurt her?” Frank asked.
Nettie shook her head. “I think he really cared about her. He’s the kind of man who would take her back.”
“Like the husband. Flint said Anvil had said he just wanted his wife back.”
Nettie looked thoughtful as they drove out of town. “Makes you wonder who Jenna really is. Certainly not the woman her husband thought he married. Nor the one Reiner thought he was saving. I hope I get to meet this woman.”