“I have no idea. When we spoke, she seemed very interested in the unpleasantness at your house last summer. The murder, the subsequent—”
“She could have read about all that in archived newspapers or HPD reports, so why contact you?”
“She told me she’s gathering background on those who attended the wedding and she certainly couldn’t call that austere Detective Kline for information considering how the two of you are...
“It’s
“You have an intimate relationship with him, I assume, and I’m sure in the law enforcement world that makes for communication difficulties between police people,
Apparently having Jeff followed to locate me hadn’t provided Aunt Caroline with enough dirt about the two of us to satisfy her curiosity. She was fishing for more.
“Quit the games and tell me what Fielder said.” Her mouth tightened into a pucker and she averted her gaze, obviously miffed I wasn’t about to discuss my private life with her. “She wanted to know if you’d planned this vacation to Jamaica and when you were coming back. And I’m being totally forthcoming when I say that she
“Is that all?” I cut in.
She fiddled with her three-karat diamond ring. “I came here with the best of intentions. If someone were investigating me, I would certainly want to know the details.”
“And you’ve told me next to nothing. Is there more?” I said.
“No.”
I stood. “Then thank you and good night. I had a long flight and I’m tired. You remember the way out?”
She took her time leaving, all the while trying to pretend none of her probing into my life and talking about me to Fielder was of any consequence. But it was. It bothered the hell out of me. Fielder had been digging through my past and was keeping track of my whereabouts. So who had told her I’d gone to Jamaica? Surely not Kate. She would have mentioned it the minute I called her earlier today. That left Jeff. Maybe it was a small thing, maybe he didn’t think his discussing me with his old girlfriend Quinn mattered, but it did. It mattered too much.
So without thinking, I picked up my phone and called his cell.
He answered on the second ring, saying, “Hey, Abby. Are you at home?”
“Oh, I’m home all right. And I just found out you’ve been talking to Fielder about me. I don’t like that, Jeff. I stay out of your cases and you can just stay out of mine.”
Silence followed. A sickening silence, the kind that washes over you like dirty water. I’d made a mistake. A bad one.
His voice was as cold as liquid nitrogen when he finally answered. “We’ll talk some other time, okay?”
Click.
I squeezed the receiver and shut my eyes. This foot in mouth disease of mine was gonna kill me yet.
13
Though I was dead tired, sleep did not come easily. I’d been such an idiot to call when I was still hot from my encounter with Aunt Caroline. I tossed and turned and finally at three A.M. I called Jeff again and got his voice mail. I apologized several times in a rambling sleep-deprived monologue that probably made me sound like an even bigger jerk than before. At least I was able to get some rest afterward, but I wondered about Jeff. How much had I pissed him off? How much sleep had
The next morning I showered and ran a few errands, cat food and coffee being the priorities. Around noon I arrived home with three bags of groceries. Or should I say three bags of comfort food along with the cat chow and coffee—chips, jalapeños, salsa, ice cream, and regular Coke—and all in quantities far greater than one female should consume in a year’s time. So what? I would drown my troubles in saturated fat and sugar.
But when I’d polished all this off, I had a bellyache so bad it felt like my bloated gut had broken one of my ribs. And this self-indulgence did not make my phone ring or cure my guilt at being such a bitch to a guy who deserved so much better. So I left another message on Jeff’s cell—this one short and sweet, offering another apology.
This personal drama had knocked me off track and I knew it. Time to get to work. After I took some Alka- Seltzer, Diva and I headed for the office.
I got on-line and typed “missing persons” into the search feature in the
I was riveted to the article with unblinking attention. This connection was no coincidence. It couldn’t be. I printed out the article and reread it, then sat back in my chair, rubbing between my brow with thumb and index finger. A woman named Laura Montgomery, who had worked for B&B as an accountant, was indicted for fraud, and it was this fraud that led to the company’s descent into bankruptcy. But that wasn’t what made my heart pound and my mouth go dry. Two days before trial, Laura Montgomery disappeared. And not long after that a woman named Blythe Donnelly buys a house with cash in Jamaica—a woman who happened to be an accountant with a six-figure Grand Cayman bank account. That woman then shows up at Megan’s wedding twenty years later, wearing winter clothes right off the rack—clothes she would not need in Jamaica. Surely she came to see her daughter get married—a daughter who had grown up in the house of the same man Laura Montgomery betrayed. How the hell did that happen? This was crazy and complicated and made me feel like someone had just piled rocks on my shoulders.
My stomach was churning by now, the nausea an irritating distraction. I had to find out more. Trying to ignore the gurgling in my gut, I got back to work, this time plugging Laura Montgomery’s name into the newspaper’s archive search engine. Plenty of hits turned up. She’d been twenty-four when she skipped bail, and one article speculated that her embezzlement of close to half a million dollars in B&B funds had been the work of a very intelligent woman and that her escape to the unknown had been part of the plan all along. The last article mentioning her name appeared in 1988 and detailed the reemergence of James Beadford in Houston as an oil company supplier of stainless steel—the newly created Beadford Oil Suppliers. The headline read, “Businessman Bounces Back After Employee Runs Off with Everything.” According to the piece written three years after Montgomery left Dallas, no trace of her had yet been found.
But I still couldn’t be positive Montgomery and Donnelly were the same person since photographs were not archived on the site. Surely pictures existed. And there had to be a mug shot of Montgomery, too. Angel mentioned some friends in Dallas who might help and I called him, leaving a message when he didn’t answer his cell phone or his office number.
Now what?
And then I remembered the phone call from Graham Beadford and that got me to thinking. Laura Montgomery worked for B&B, so Graham would have known her. Was that why he called me? Because he’d recognized her at the reception? So why wait until now to tell me? And why call me rather than Fielder? Those questions needed answering pronto.
Since I had no idea when Angel would get back to me on the pictures of Montgomery, I decided to call Graham and set up the meeting he’d requested. He didn’t answer in his hotel room, and I got no response at the Beadford house, either—and that was probably a lucky break. If Roxanne answered, she’d surely ask what I wanted with him. Nobody was home anywhere, probably because James Beadford’s funeral had been scheduled by now. Perhaps everyone was at the visitation. The obit would have provided those hours.
But before I could log on to the
