CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Riley felt her heart quicken as she hurried out of the enormous closet to meet Bill. He was standing in the bedroom doorway, holding something in his hand.
“What have you got?” she asked.
“This,” Bill said. “I checked the rest of the room, but it’s been polished clean. No prints.”
He handed her a simple ashtray made of blue-gray glass. In its bottom was the silver image of a man holding a spear in one raised hand. She recognized the Roman god Vulcan, but she was puzzled by the circle of scantily clad women dancing around the silver man.
“Where did you find it?” she asked.
“In plain sight,” Bill said, smiling. “Sitting on a dresser right beside a Fabergé egg.”
Morgan had come out of her wardrobe closet and was standing beside Riley. Her expression was puzzled as she looked at the object that Riley held.
“I don’t understand,” Morgan said. “Is this important?”
“Maybe so,” Riley said to her.
“But it’s just an ashtray,” Morgan said.
Riley knew perfectly well why Bill had picked it up, but she let him explain.
“Precisely. Just an ordinary glass ashtray sitting next to a Fabergé egg and surrounded by all kinds of other expensive objects. Tell me, Ms. Farrell—was your husband the kind of man who’d normally keep something like this among a collection of priceless things?”
Morgan squinted at the ashtray. “Why, no,” she replied. “Now that you mention it, I don’t suppose so.”
“Do you have any idea where it came from?” Riley asked.
“No. It isn’t an antique and it doesn’t look like any kind of collector’s item. I suppose it could be from any ordinary store.”
Riley couldn’t picture either of the Farrells shopping at an “ordinary store.” And yet, the ashtray was here, among their luxurious belongings. It was a thing of no value, except for whatever special significance it had to Andrew Farrell. Or to the killer. The thing wouldn’t have been where Bill found it unless it meant something to somebody.
She wasn’t surprised, though, that the police had apparently never noticed it. As far as they were concerned, this was just another object in a house full of objects.
She was glad Bill’s keen eye had spotted the incongruity.
Bill said, “But there’s nothing on it to say where it came from. No message. No trademark.”
Riley pointed to the central image and said, “Well, I can tell you about him—that’s a huge statue of Vulcan that stands on a hill in Birmingham.”
Bill’s eyes widened.
“Birmingham!” he said. “And the first murder was in Birmingham.”
Riley asked Morgan, “Does this mean anything at all to you?”
Morgan shook her head silently. Riley noticed that she was slumping, and her face again showed that look of numb exhaustion.
Riley said to her, “Maybe we should get you out of here.”
Morgan nodded and said, “Yes, if that’s OK with you. I’ve got everything I need … everything I’ll ever want from this place.”
Bill wheeled her big suitcase out of the closet, and Morgan led them to the freight elevator. When they reached the first floor, they all made their way back through the front room. Andrew Farrell’s sons were nowhere in sight. Riley guessed they were pillaging elsewhere in the mansion.
Maurice the butler hurried toward them, relieved Bill of the suitcase, and took it all the way out to the car for them.
Once the suitcase was loaded into the car, Riley pulled the glass ashtray out of her bag and showed it to him.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked.
The butler shook his head.
“My partner found it in the master bedroom.”
With a haughty smirk, Maurice replied, “I can assure you, it was not part of the décor.”
“But do you know where it came from?”
“I do not,” Maurice snapped. Then he softened a bit. “The truth is that I very seldom went to … the master’s quarters. No one was allowed to disturb anything there. Of course the day maids cleaned the room, but they have all been let go.”
“All right,” Riley said. “It’s probably nothing. I’ll get back in touch with you if I need to contact them.”
Maurice gave a brief, courteous nod, and turned to Morgan. The two stood looking at each other awkwardly. Morgan stepped forward as if to give him another kiss on the cheek, but he waved her off. His lips were trembling, and Riley realized that the man was trying to keep from crying.
He shook Morgan’s hand and managed to say, “Goodbye, madam. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to serve you.”
Morgan smiled and said to him, “I won’t miss much about this place, Maurice. But I will miss you.”
This comment seemed to be too much for the butler.
He choked back a sob as he nodded, then wheeled around and walked silently back to the house.
Bill got behind the wheel and started the car. Riley helped Morgan into the back seat, then got in front beside Bill. There was very little conversation in the car as they made their way through Atlanta to the Haverhill Dependency Center, just outside of the city.
When they arrived, Riley was surprised to see that the place looked like some kind of luxury resort, with several large houses nestled in an exquisitely maintained landscape.
The three of them went inside, Morgan carrying the folder her lawyer had given her and Bill pulling the wheeled suitcase. The lobby took Riley’s breath away—a grand room with a high ceiling and huge windows framed by wood paneling. As Morgan got checked in, Riley picked up a brochure and browsed through it.
She could see that the treatments the place offered were all holistic, including yoga, meditation, hiking, acupuncture, Shiatsu massage, and others with exotic names Riley had never heard of. The kitchen offered the kind of gourmet menu that one might expect to find in an expensive restaurant. And of course, there was a swimming pool.
Trendy stuff, Riley thought.
There was no trace of anything resembling a twelve-step program.
She wondered whether all these features really added up to an effective treatment of addiction.
On the other hand …
She sure wouldn’t mind spending some time here herself. Maybe they had something that would cut down on an addiction to work.
Soon Morgan was fully checked in. Clinic employees took her suitcase and led her away. Before she disappeared into a hallway, the thin, elegant woman turned and gave Riley a silent, grateful wave.
Riley felt an unexpected pang of sadness at the expression on her face.
There was still something lost and waiflike about Morgan—something Riley doubted that all the treatments in the world could possibly cure. And now it occurred to Riley that most if not all of the clients in this place were surely as lost and sad as Morgan.
It felt strange to pity a woman who had the resources to spend months at a time in a place like this.
Maybe I don’t envy her after all, Riley thought.
Riley and Bill got back in the rented car and found a place to have burgers. Riley pulled the ashtray out of her bag and turned it over, staring as though she should be able to find some hidden meaning.
“You know,” Bill said, “that thing might not have anything at all to do with the case.”
“I think you made a good catch,” she said. “We need to follow up on it.”
She realized that if others like this turned up at the other sites, they would be onto something. She would run the photo past the police chiefs in Monarch and Atlanta and Birmingham. She would also see if Flores and his team at Quantico could turn up anything on where the thing came from. She photographed the ashtray and sent the pictures off.
They finished their burgers, returned to the hotel where Riley was staying, and checked Bill into a room of his own. Riley sent cheerful text messages to April and Jilly. They had already sent her a string of messages accompanied by cute pictures of the little dog. Apparently Darby was settling in just fine.
It had been a long day—with a new murder that morning, then Bill’s arrival, then getting Morgan out of jail, checking out the Farrell murder scene, and finally getting Morgan into her new quarters.
They were both tired, and intended to turn in early, but first they went down to the hotel bar for a drink. They were sitting in a quiet booth when Riley’s phone buzzed. She wasn’t entirely pleased to see that the caller was Jared Ruhl.
She answered and asked, “What’s going on over in Monarch?”
She heard Jared let out a growl of irritation.
“I’m not in Monarch anymore. I’m back in Atlanta. After we got finished with the crime scene, the local cops just left me on my own, wouldn’t even give me a ride. So I had to take a bus to Atlanta. Can you believe that? The nerve of those guys, dumping me like that!”
Riley couldn’t muster a lot of pity for Jared over the inconvenience of a short bus ride to Atlanta. She could well imagine why the local police in Monarch might be eager to get rid of the rookie cop who was capable of being pretty obnoxious, but she didn’t say so.
“Did anyone find anything new there?” Riley asked.
“Not a damn thing. It was a waste of my time. What’s going on with you and your partner?”
Riley was tempted to tell him they’d found nothing at all. Maybe then she could be through with him.
Fat chance of that.
Jared was surely going to find some way to nag her until she gave him something else to do.
Besides, she reminded herself that he had been useful from time to time. In fact, she probably wouldn’t be here investigating this case if it weren’t for him.
She said, “Jared, I’m going to send you an image. See if you can tell me where this thing came from.”
She sent him the shot of the glass ashtray.
There was a silence, and then Jared said, “You should recognize that. I showed you the Vulcan statue in Birmingham.”
“I know,” Riley agreed. “But what are the dancing girls?”
Another silence followed.
Finally Jared said, “Uh … nymphs.”
“Nymphs?”
Jared let out a snort of laughter.
“The Nymphs of Vulcan,” he said. “It’s a private gentlemen’s club in Birmingham—you know, with exotic dancers and call girls and all, but really posh, really high class, with strictly private clientele, way out of my price range.”
Then he stammered awkwardly, “Not that I … well, you know. The only reason I know about it is I hear guys talk, and they say stuff about …”
“Yeah, I understand,” Riley said.
Jared’s information excited her. If Andrew Farrell had belonged to a gentleman’s club in Birmingham, perhaps Julian Morse had too. It wasn’t even hard to imagine that Edwin Harter might have visited the same club. If any of that turned out to be true, it would be the first connection they’d found among the victims of this killer.
Jared also sounded fired up now.
“So, why are you interested in that place? Have you got some new clue leading there? Are you going there? When?”
Riley stifled a sigh. There was no point in trying to keep Jared out of this.
She asked, “Can you go with us to Birmingham tomorrow?”
“I sure can. Like I told you, I’ve got lots of sick days saved up.”
“This is an official FBI case now,” Riley told him. “I’m sure Captain Stiles will agree to assign you to me.”
“I’ll tell him you requested me.”
“OK, then,” Riley said. “We’ll pick you up at your apartment tomorrow morning.”
When she ended the call, Bill asked, “Who was that?”
Riley sighed and said, “That kid I told you about—the one who called me about Morgan Farrell, the guy I’ve been working with since I flew down here.”
“So he’ll be joining us tomorrow, huh?” Bill said. “I’m looking forward to meeting him.”
Riley almost said …
“You won’t like him.”
But she thought better of it. For all she knew, Bill and Jared might wind up getting along together perfectly. Instead she told Bill what Jared had just said about the ashtray.
“The Nymphs of Vulcan?” he said. “Well, we definitely need to check them out in person.”
*
Early the next morning, Riley and Bill decided that Riley would drive the car to Birmingham. They went by Jared’s apartment and picked him up, but they hadn’t even gotten out of Atlanta before it became apparent to Riley that Jared was getting on Bill’s nerves. Just as he had with Riley, the young cop asked all kinds of questions about Bill’s investigative career. Finally Bill folded his arms and fell into a sullen silence, ignoring the sound of Jared’s voice.
The drive seemed interminable, and Riley breathed a huge sigh of relief as the statue of Vulcan that towered over Birmingham finally came into view. They drove north of the business district until they arrived at the Nymphs of Vulcan gentlemen’s club.
As they parked and walked toward the place, Riley was startled by its appearance. She’d expected a so-called gentlemen’s club to be tacky and possibly rundown. But this building was a new and attractive piece of architecture, with smooth blue-gray slate walls and elegant designs suggestive of the nymphs in its name.
Riley and her colleagues weren’t surprised to find that the business was closed for the morning. They knocked on the impressive and ornate front door until a tall, Nordic-looking, pale, platinum blond man came and let them in. His face seemed so plastic and nonporous that he looked more like a male mannequin than an actual human being.
When the man asked how he could help them, Riley and Bill produced their badges and introduced themselves and Jared.
Riley said to the man, “We were wondering if you’d ever had a client named Andrew Farrell.”
The man shook his head and was obviously about to say no when Riley heard a woman’s voice speaking from inside the club.
“Lars, who is that asking about Andrew Farrell? Send them on in here.”