Wanted Woman. B.J. Daniels
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at the time. There was no sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle. Visitors had to be buzzed in. That’s why the cops were actively looking for Norman.
“You told me on the phone you had important information for me about my father’s plane crash,” she said, keeping her hand clamped on the saddlebag, keeping her tone neutral.
He nodded, a jittery nod that set her teeth on edge. “It wasn’t an accident. The same person who murdered Iverson killed your father.”
She felt shock ricochet through her. Then disbelief. “It was determined an accident. Pilot failure.”
Norman shook his head. “A week before the crash, your father came into the office. He seemed upset. Later, after he left, I overheard Iverson on the phone telling someone he couldn’t talk your dad out of it.”
“That’s not enough evidence—”
“I was there three nights ago, I heard them talking about the plane crash. Iverson had figured out that the plane had gone down to keep your father from talking. He threatened to go to the Feds. I heard them kill him—” Emotion choked off the last of his words.
“You actually heard someone admit to murdering my father?”
He nodded, his Adam’s apple going up and down, up and down. She watched him, shock and pain and anger mixing with the grief of the past two months since the single passenger plane had gone down on a routine business flight. She fought to keep her voice calm. “You said they?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “Did I? I only heard one man talk but—” He frowned and looked away. “I remember thinking I heard two people coming down the hall after the elevator opened.” He was lying and doing a poor job of it. Why lie about how many killers there were? “You believe me, don’t you?”
She didn’t know what to believe now. But her father had liked Norman, thought he was going to make a good lawyer someday. Good lawyer, an oxymoron if there ever was one, her father would have joked. “Norman, how did they get in? The building was locked, right?”
He nodded, looking confused. “I guess Iverson buzzed them up. All I know is that I heard the elevator and—” He looked behind her again as if he’d heard something. “I somehow knew not to let them know I was there.”
A foghorn let out a mournful moan from out beyond the city.
“You’re telling me Clark didn’t know you were still in the office?”
Norman fidgeted. “I’d fallen asleep in the library doing some research for him. The door to his office was closed. Earlier, he’d told me to leave, to do the rest in the morning. I guess he thought I’d left by the door to the hallway. The elevator woke me, then I heard voices arguing.”
Just seconds before he’d said he’d heard two sets of footsteps coming down the hall after the elevator opened. No wonder Norman hadn’t gone to the police. His story had so many holes it wouldn’t even make good Swiss cheese.
“You heard them arguing?” she asked.
He nodded. “Then I heard this like…grunt and glass breaking—” He closed his eyes as if imagining Clark Iverson’s body, the lamp he’d grabbed as he went down shattered on the floor next to him, his eyes open staring blindly upward, a knife sticking out of his chest at heart level, just as he’d looked when his secretary and Maggie had found him the next morning. Just as he must have looked when Norman saw him.
“You didn’t see the killer.”
“No, I told you, I just ran.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” It was the same question the cops wanted to ask him.
Norman closed his eyes tightly as if in pain. “After they killed him, they rummaged around in his desk drawers, in his file cabinets. I could hear them. I was afraid that at any minute they’d come into the library and find me.” Another look away, another lie. “I just ran. I took the stairs, let myself out the back way and I’ve been running ever since. If they find me, they’ll kill me.”
“Did you recognize the one voice you heard?”
He shook his head.
“But you heard what were they arguing about.”
“Iverson said the secret wasn’t worth killing people over.”
“What secret?”
Norman squirmed, his gaze flicking past her. “An illegal adoption.”
She felt a chill come off the ocean as if she already knew what his next words would be.
“You were the baby,” Norman said, the words tumbling over themselves in their struggle to get out. “Iverson wanted to tell you the truth. That’s why they killed him. He said your father had found out and was going to tell you.”
“Found out what?” So her parents hadn’t gone through the proper channels. So what? “I’m twenty-seven years old. Why would anyone kill over my adoption no matter how it went down?”
“It was the way you were…acquired,” Norman said. “Your father had found out that you were kidnapped.”
Kidnapped? She’d always known she was adopted and that was the reason she looked nothing like her parents. Nor was anything like them.
Mildred and Paul Randolph had always seemed a little surprised by their only child, a little leery. Maggie had come into their life after they’d tried numerous adoption agencies, they’d told her. She’d been a miracle, they’d said. A gift from God.
Maybe not quite.
Although well-off financially, her parents weren’t the ideal adoptive candidates. Her mother had been confined to a wheelchair since childhood polio and her father was considered too old. He’d been fifty when Maggie had come along. But, according to both Mildred and Paul, they’d finally found an agency that understood how desperately they wanted a child and had given Maggie to them to love.
No child could have asked for more loving parents. But they’d been horribly overprotective, so afraid something would happen to her, that Maggie had become fearless in self-defense. By the age of twenty-seven, she’d tried everything from skydiving and bungie jumping to motorcross, heli-skiing and speedboat racing.
Her parents had been terrified. Now she realized they’d been afraid long before their only child had become a thrill-seeker. Now she knew why she’d seen fear in her father’s eyes all of her life. He’d been waiting all these years for the other shoe to drop.
It had finally dropped. He’d found out she was kidnapped and couldn’t live with the knowledge.
She heard a board creak behind her, heavy with a tentative step. “Norman, you have to tell the police what you told me. They’ll protect you.”
“Are you nuts? You can’t trust anyone. These people have already killed twice to keep their secret. Who knows how influential they are or what connections they might have.”
He’d seen the killer and knew something he wasn’t telling her. That’s why he was so afraid. Well, maybe the cops could get the truth out of him. “Norman, I called the detective on the case after I talked to you. Detective Blackmore.”
“What?” He looked around wildly. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” He grabbed for the saddlebag. “Give me the money. I have to get out of here. Quick. He’ll kill us both if—” Norman broke off, his gaze riveted on something just over her left shoulder, eyes widening in horror.
She heard the soft pop, didn’t recognize the sound until she saw blood bloom across the shoulder of Norman’s jacket. The second shot—right on the heels of the first—caught him in the chest, dead-on.
His grip on the saddlebag pulled her down with him as he fell to the weathered boards, dropping her to her knees beside him.
“Oh, Norman.