Could be.
Mr. Security.
Yes. And that might explain why everybody’s acting so weird.
They’re all in on it?
Well, at least they all know, she said. How could they not know? Mom vanishes one day? We’ve hardly heard a word about her from anyone. Jules’s hated stepmom. He’d want her gone. The twins’ adoptive mom. Maybe they hated her too.
Who knows?
Or at least it would be convenient for them if she were gone.
Eliminates an heir, doesn’t it?
Heiress.
Right.
A whole new bag of motives to play with.
It feels like Christmas.
Who’s been naughty and all that.
Right. Okay. Where to start?
Fire up the laptop, she said.
Good timing, I said, as Starbucks hove into view.
First I called Vinnie Price. Woke him up.
Jesus, he said, is it that important?
Yes, I said. And anyway, that’s an inappropriate question.
He laughed.
I asked him to get what he could get on one Veronica FitzGibbon, nee… nee what? We had no clue. Man, what artful detectives we were turning out to be. Veronica FitzGibbon, then.
Check it out, I said. Get what you can get.
I fired up the laptop.
There was some gossip column stuff on the Internet. She’d had a tiff with FitzGibbon. Public stuff. Yelling and screaming. Cutlery. Glassware. The usual. She’d decided to take a cruise. Get away from it all. FitzGibbon. The big city. The stress. The pollution.
Interesting, I said.
Tres, said Dorita.
Skipped town.
Apparently.
We tracked Veronica through some personal data sites. Not strictly legal. She’d left the country, all right. A Norwegian cruise ship. Off to the Caribbean. From there to Europe.
Vinnie Price called back. There was a credit card trail. She’d spent a bloody fortune along the way. She’d boarded a ship for the return journey. From Marseille.
Then the trail vanished.
Not a sign. No more credit card receipts. No nothing.
I asked Vinnie where the credit card bills went to.
FitzGibbon, he said.
Interesting.
Just because we didn’t have anything after Marseille didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there. It was hardly likely that we’d found all the traces in two hours. Maybe she’d maxed out the credit card, switched to another one. Or cash. But it was curious. Tracing her movements had been so easy. It was like trailing a moose through city streets. A big, wealthy moose. And then, nothing. She vanished.
Dead, said Dorita.
You think?
I do.
Those bones again?
They’re very good bones.
I’ve never denied it. Cheekbones, especially.
You’re too kind.
I am. And it certainly fits the evidence. Still.
Still?
It fits the receipts, I said. The official trail. And there’s a whole lot else it fits. Such as FitzGibbon. They have an argument. She takes off. The whole thing’s on his tab. He’s getting the bills. She’s the love of his life. He gets all misty every time her name comes up. She disappears. All of a sudden, no more charges to the card. No trace of her. She’s supposed to be back. She isn’t. He doesn’t call the cops? He says nothing about it to me? To anyone? It doesn’t compute.
Unless he killed her.
Killed himself in remorse.
Like I said.
Like I said.
Okay, let’s not fight about it. We’ll divvy up the spoils later.
But that would mean the twins were in on it too.
Plausible.
Otherwise, wouldn’t they have raised the alarm?
He could have had some cover story.
She joined the Carmelites.
The ones with the vow of silence?
Right. Except they sing.
Singing nuns? Wow. Sure. Mucho plausible. I’ll check out the singing nun sites on the Internet.
Let’s hold off on that for a minute, I said.
I’m holding.
Let’s remember, Ramon was the source.
So even if he didn’t do it himself, he knows something.
Well, not necessarily. It came through Igor, remember?
True. But let’s stick with the simple explanation.
For now.
For now.
But.
But what?
But if what Ramon knows is that FitzGibbon had killed his wife, why wouldn’t he just come out and tell us? FitzGibbon’s not in any position to exact retribution now.
A good point, Dorita said.
And we can’t ask him, I said. FitzGibbon, that is.
Another dead end. So to speak.
Another fucking brick wall.
Okay. But we’re farther down the road than yesterday.
Maybe. One more dead body that we can’t explain. What a triumph. We had one. We had two. Now we have three.
Told you so.
How did I know you were going to say that?
And they’re all connected.
How do you know that? I asked.
I don’t. But they have to be. It’s just too much of a coincidence. All these bodies piling up. There’s got to be something connecting them.
I think we’re into the realm of speculation here, counselor.
