The Hunt For Hawke's Daughter. Jean Barrett
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“Safe,” she whispered.
Which, Karen thought unhappily, is exactly what I went and convinced myself Michael was. Safe, dependable. And because I trusted him, I very foolishly didn’t ask questions. What have you been hiding from me, Michael? What awful secret are you protecting?
Devlin, recognizing her fear, offered a comforting, “Being a bigamist doesn’t necessarily make him dangerous, Karen. Although…”
“What?”
“Why commit bigamy at all? Doesn’t make sense in this situation. I mean, if a guy risks having two wives at once, it’s because he manages somehow to shuttle back and forth between them. But in Ramey’s case he walks away completely from the first wife before he goes on to acquire the second one. Why didn’t he just divorce the first wife and save himself the threat of jail? And if he is going on to a third identity…”
“Why take Livie along? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Devlin? Why have Livie with him when she’d only complicate his new life?”
“Yeah, it always comes back to that, doesn’t it? Which means we have to try to figure out that why, because without it we may never learn the where.” It was Devlin’s turn then to express a sudden restlessness. “Let’s get off this boat. I need to stretch my legs.”
The vessel made regular stops along the river, discharging passengers and picking up new ones. Several moments later, its whistle tooting, it pulled into another landing. Karen and Devlin went ashore and began to stroll along the broad, tree-lined river walk with its busy bars and boutiques.
Devlin was silent as they walked. She assumed he was busy sifting through what little information she had been able to provide, putting it all in some kind of order. Karen knew he was very good at what he did. He had described some of his cases to her back in Colorado. Like everyone else in the family firm, he had a specialty. The other members of the Hawke Detective Agency consulted him in that area whenever necessary, just as he drew on their particular skills. Devlin excelled in finding missing persons. Karen was counting on that talent.
“There’s something here that’s giving me a lot of trouble,” he finally said. “Assuming Ramey is neither a fool nor a lunatic, he must realize that you’ll move heaven and earth to find your kid.”
“Which makes it even harder to understand why he’d go off with her.”
“Unless we look at it from another angle, one that isn’t so straightforward.”
“What does that mean?”
“Suppose he has no intention of keeping Livie with him permanently. Suppose he’s just—for want of a better word—borrowed her for a time. Didn’t you tell me he left most of her clothes behind? That could indicate he was planning to return her. Maybe he meant to have her back before you even knew she was gone, before you had any reason to be alarmed.”
“But I have learned she’s missing, and I am alarmed.”
“Yeah, because you came home ahead of schedule. Just when were you supposed to return from Atlanta?”
“The trade show ends late tomorrow. I was to fly out the next morning, Friday, which was a change from my original plan around Sissy Baldwin and her latest house, but that has no bearing here since—”
“Whoa!” Stopping her, Devlin drew her out of the stream of pedestrian traffic and off to one side of the walk. “Now run that by me again. What original plan?”
She explained it to him. “Dream Makers has this client, Sissy Baldwin. She’s a tiresome woman, but she’s good for business.”
“Rich?”
“So rich that she can afford to indulge her hobby. Sissy collects houses, and she hires us to redesign them. Her newest toy is this historic row house in Savannah. When she learned I was going to be in Atlanta for the trade show this week, she invited me to come down to Savannah on Friday. I was supposed to spend the holiday weekend as her guest discussing possibilities for the house.”
“Through the Fourth on Monday?”
“Yes, and then we’d fly back here on Tuesday. But, Devlin, there’s no point in my telling you all this, because I canceled that visit my first morning in Atlanta. With what I was going through about ending my marriage, there was no way I could spend a weekend with Sissy Baldwin.”
“And what about your husband? Did you inform him that you wouldn’t be staying on through Monday?”
“Yes, certainly. I phoned him at his office right after I called Maud at Dream Makers. Well, I didn’t speak to him directly. He was tied up with a client or something. I told his assistant, Bonnie, and she promised to give him the message.”
“What if he somehow didn’t get that message? What if he still thinks you’ll be in Georgia through the Fourth, and he has all that time to use Livie without you being aware that he’s taken her?”
“Use her? Dear God, for what?”
“I don’t know. It’s only a possibility, maybe a wild one. But in my work you examine all the possibilities, because more often than not, one of them turns out to be right.”
Karen felt her insides tighten all over again with fear. “I don’t know how I’m going to stand this,” she said in a small voice. “It just seems to get worse.”
“I can’t promise you it won’t be rough. Just keep hanging on to the thought that she’s going to be safe and that we are going to get her back.”
Did he earnestly believe that? she wondered. Or was it just his professional way of calming a client?
“Come on,” he urged, “let’s keep moving. Even a useless action is better than none.”
She fell in step beside him again. They continued along the river walk, moving in the direction of the lot where they had left his car. As they walked, he reviewed in a speculative murmur what she had told him on the paddle wheel boat about Michael and her.
“Conventional. That’s the word you used about how the two of you got together, isn’t it? Including the way you dated, even your marriage. All very conventional.”
“You make it sound like it was something deliberate.”
“Maybe it was.”
“To what purpose?”
“Conventional lifestyles draw no attention. I mean, the guy even looks bland in that picture I showed you. Good-looking maybe, but bland all the same. Speaking of which, do you have any current photos of him back at the house?”
Karen shook her head, explaining how the few that existed were destroyed. “Yes, I know,” she said. “It was no accident, was it?”
“Probably not. But you are carrying that picture of Livie in your wallet. Let me have it, please.”
She produced the photograph from her purse and handed it to him. He took it without glancing at it. His gaze was busy in another direction, searching the shops they passed. At this season along the popular river walk nearly all of them were open late.
“What are you looking for, Devlin?”
He didn’t answer her until a moment later. “That,” he said, pointing to a convenience store featuring a small office service open twenty-four hours a day.
Standing beside him at the counter inside, after supplying him with a description of Michael’s car, she watched him as he addressed a fax message to his mother at the home office in Chicago.
“Ma will post the particulars, along with Livie’s photo, on the Internet,” he explained. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Though out of necessity he’d been referring to Livie by name since the boat, she noticed that nowhere in his message to his mother did he make any mention of his paternal connection with her. And