The Final Kill Page 10

Abby widened her eyes. “You think Alicia Gerard is here? And that she’s a murderer?” Abby laughed softly. “That must mean you think I’m harboring a criminal.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s exactly what you said. That Alicia Gerard is here and she’s wanted for murder.”

  “Look, Abby. It’s pretty obvious it was Alicia and her daughter arriving here last night when I was leaving. Please don’t try to deny it.”

  “I don’t know what else to do,” Abby said, meeting his eyes. “She really isn’t here.”

  Ben studied her.

  “Lessing was right,” Kris said irritably. “She’s not going to tell us anything. We need to take her—”

  Ben shook his head. “I’ve known Abby a long time, and I’m not so sure now. I think she’s telling the truth.”

  “And I think you’re being led by your pr—”

  “That’s enough,” Ben said angrily.

  Kris sighed and turned to Abby. “Let’s say she really isn’t here. You must know where we can find her, at least.”

  “Abby,” Ben said, “there’s more to this than murder.” He looked at the FBI woman.

  “It’s true,” she confirmed, sighing. “This is a matter of national security now. It’s also a matter of the utmost urgency.”

  “National security?” Abby said. “What’s going on?” What has Alicia gotten herself into? In fact, what has she gotten me into?

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said. He flicked a look at Kris. “We…well, we aren’t at liberty to discuss it further.”

  “We? You and Grace are working together now?”

  “My name’s Kris,” the agent said in a neutral tone. “Kris with a K. Last name’s Kelley.”

  Abby folded her arms. “Well, Kris with a K, I don’t remember inviting you here.”

  She knew that sounded churlish, but she couldn’t help it. Ben had never come here before to grill her, in his job as a cop. He’d never sat in this reception room like this before, on the edge of the sofa, and not even smiling, as if he were a stranger.

  More important, until last night he’d never had an FBI agent tagging along with him on any cases. Things were changing too swiftly, and she didn’t like the way they were heading.

  It might have been her instinct to protect Alicia, no matter what, that made her dig in her heels. Or it might have been the sudden, swift feeling of betrayal. In either case, she couldn’t hold back her anger.

  “I told you last night that Alicia wasn’t here,” she snapped. “Take it or leave it. I have business to attend to.”

  She rose.

  “Abby, you’ve got to cooperate,” Ben said, rising, too. His whole demeanor was one of frustration and anger. “It won’t go well for you if you don’t.”

  “And what the hell does that mean?” Abby said, looking from one to the other.

  “There are laws now,” Kris said carefully, “that would support us if we were to take you into custody and hold you indefinitely. We wouldn’t even need a warrant. As for this place—” she looked around “—we can search it again, you know, and when we’re through with it, I guarantee it won’t look quite so nice. Or peaceful.”

  Abby was outraged. They were talking about laws that had sprung up since 9/11, many of which she considered unconstitutional. Anyone—the mothers she worked with, or even the woman or man next door—could be held without benefit of counsel, and without anyone even knowing where they were. Mention the word terrorist one too many times in an e-mail, and you never knew when the Men in Black might show up at your door.

  Which, she knew, was probably an exaggeration, but not far enough from the truth for her liking.

  She faced Ben angrily. “You would do this to me?”

  “I wouldn’t want to, Abby, you know that. But it’s urgent that we find Alicia. We think she—”

  “We think she can tell us something more,” Kris interrupted, cutting him off, “about the murder at the Highlands. Let’s say she didn’t do it, for instance. She might have seen something that can lead us to the killer.”

  “So now there may be a different killer,” Abby said disdainfully. “And all you want to do is bring Alicia in and talk to her, so she can help you out with that. Right?”

  “Yes—” Kris began.

  “No—” Ben said at the same time.

  The agent gave him a withering look.

  “Kris is right,” he amended. “That’s all we want from Alicia. You can tell her it’s safe to come to the station and turn herself in. She doesn’t have to hide out here.”

  “I told you, she isn’t here,” Abby said angrily. “And I, at least, am not lying.”

  “So, you’re going to make this hard on yourself,” Kris Kelley said. “Damn, Abby, I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “Just smart enough, Grace, to know when I’m being threatened by a government agent—who, since I’m a taxpayer, is on my payroll.”

  Kris smiled, but her blue eyes were hard as glass. “I just think you should know the situation.”

  “But I don’t actually know the situation, do I? All I know is that you’re trying to trick me into turning in a friend for a murder I don’t believe she committed, so that you can arrest her. Oh, and I do know one other thing—that she damned well isn’t here.”

  Abby turned toward the door. “Now, either arrest me or get the hell out.”

  “Kris,” Ben said abruptly, “tell her.”

  “I don’t have the authority—” she said with a warning look.

  “Then I will.”

  “You can’t do that, Ben! Let’s go.”

  He ignored her. “Abby, please sit down.”

  “I’m fine standing,” she said.

  “Dammit, Abby!” He threw up his hands in irritation. “All right, then, stand.”

  She sat.

  He groaned.

  “I wash my hands of this, Chief Schaeffer,” Kris Kelley said. “If this whole thing goes sour because of her—”

  “It won’t. Abby, listen. This has to be kept absolutely confidential. I know you can do that. But will you?”

  “Go on,” she said noncommittally.

  Ben sighed. “Okay, here’s the way it is. Kris isn’t FBI, she’s CIA. The agency and the bureau are working together, along with Homeland Security, to try to stop a major terrorist attack on the U.S.”

  “A terrorist attack,” Abby said skeptically. “When? Where?”

  “The when is a week from now. They don’t know the where, and that’s where Alicia Gerard comes in. They have good reason to believe that Alicia is connected to the people who are planning the attack. They need to question her—and fast.”

  Abby almost laughed, and would have, had the situation he put forth not been so serious.

  “That’s crazy,” she said. “I’ve known Alicia for years, and I’d have known if she were involved in something like that.”

  Kris took an even more aggressive stance, her hands on her hips and her feet apart. “Did you know her parents came into this country illegally? Did you know that Alicia is illegal, as well?”

  Abby felt a cold chill. “That’s impossible,” she said. “Allie’s been married to H. P. Gerard for years. If that were true, every news agency in the world would have dug it up long ago.”

  “What Kris said is true,” Ben told her. “Alicia’s father has ties to the IRA, Abby. I’m not saying that Alicia’s involved directly, but you know those little jaunts her press releases talk about—the ones where she’s supposed to be talking to a group of librarians, say, in Winsocki? Half of them are canceled at the last minute. Do you know where Alicia goes instead?”

  “There is no Winsocki,” Abby said, thinking fast and playing for time the way she often had when conducting a sticky interview as a journalist. “‘Buckle down, Winsocki,’ was a song in an old movie…with Lucille Ball, I think—”

  “Abby, stop it! I know what you’re doing. Just answer the question, please. Do you know were Alicia goes duri
ng those times?”

  “I have no idea,” she said after a moment. “But I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

  “That’s enough, Ben,” Kris interrupted. “She obviously doesn’t have any information, and the less she knows, the better.”

  “You mean the show is over?” Abby said. “And just when the plot was getting good.”

  But Ben went on. “People who have tried to reach Alicia Gerard during those times can’t get through on her cell phone. And when they call her hotel, she isn’t registered there. When she comes home she uses the excuse that she changed hotels and forgot to tell anyone.”

  Red flags went up. That was almost exactly what Jancy had told her. But how could Ben—or more accurately, the FBI and CIA—know about this? Hadn’t they just begun to search for Alicia last night? After the Highlands Inn murder?

  No. That was just their cover. The terrorism was the real story. How long had they actually been after Alicia?

  She tried for more information. “I take it you got all this about Alicia’s trips from her maid? Or someone else in the Gerard house?”

  “Why would you say that?” Kris asked sharply.

  “Because who else would know all that? And if that’s the case, why haven’t you had her followed long before this? Why wait until you have to go looking for her?”

  Kris didn’t answer, but her face turned a bright pink.

  “Aah…” Abby said. “You have followed her. And I’ll bet my next life that you’ve lost her every time. How impressive, Grace. Our Homeland Security millions at work.”

  “All right, that’s it,” Kris said sharply, turning to Ben. “Let’s go.”

  Ben turned to Abby. “I wish you wouldn’t do this, Ab.”

  “But I told you, I know nothing. Is this the part where you arrest me?”

  “Let’s go,” Kris said again.

  “I’ll show you to the door,” Abby said, feeling childish, but actually not all that bad. There was something about this woman that rubbed her the wrong way, and had from the first.

  “Don’t bother,” Kris said angrily. “We wouldn’t want to trouble you any further.”

  Ben followed her out of the room, and Abby watched through a window as they stepped off the adobe porch and walked down the drive to Ben’s jeep.

  Seeing the two of them working together like that caused a gulf in her heart that she couldn’t explain. It was as if she were on one side of a wall now, with Ben on the other.

  At least she still had her integrity. She hadn’t betrayed Alicia the way Ben had betrayed her.

  An hour later, Ben, Lessing and Kris sat huddled over a table at the Red Lion Tavern in Carmel, discussing the interview with Abby Northrup and whether they should go back to the Prayer House and threaten her with arrest again. If the three of them went, Lessing reasoned, and if they told her the rest—in particular, that Pat Devlin, who was making a doomsday bomb for the planned attack, was Alicia’s father—she might listen more seriously and stop holding back what she knew.

  They could, of course, search the Prayer House and grounds again, and more thoroughly, but with a building and property of that size, it would take a lot of people and time. Better if they could break Abby down instead.

  What Ben, Lessing, and Kris didn’t know was that even as they schemed and chowed down on thick, juicy hamburgers, Abby was well on her way to Las Vegas, Nevada.

  She knew that the FBI and CIA, and maybe even Ben, would be hot on Alicia’s heels—and that when they found her, Allie might disappear into the system for an unknown length of time. Abby couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t believe for a moment that her friend was connected to terrorists—or even that she’d killed that man at the Highlands. But there was certainly something odd about Allie’s movements lately. And for Jancy’s sake, if not for Allie’s own, she had to find her.

  If only there had been any word at all from Alicia—but there hadn’t. All that she knew was what her P.I., Bobby, had told her—that Alicia had been spotted at the airport in San Francisco, boarding a plane to Phoenix. After that, he said, she had disappeared.

  Abby had promised Jancy that everything would be all right, and she’d made a vow when she began her work with Paseo that she’d never break a promise to a child. The children who came to her were on the run as much as their moms. They had left their homes, their friends and everything they owned—toys, books, mementos…all the things that gave a child a sense of security. Even more, they’d been betrayed in the worst way, most of them by abusive fathers.

  It was different with Jancy and Alicia, but in a way it was far more dreadful. What Jancy had seen in that hotel room would be with her all her life, and having her mother leave her afterward, the way Alicia had, would have totaled most girls her age. Jancy had taken it so bravely, it was all Abby could do not to gather her up in her arms and never let go.

  But that instinct came largely out of her own grief, she knew, over never being able to have a child of her own. Because of this, she had learned to restrain herself with the children who came to her. Too much emotion coming from a stranger could be a scary thing for a kid in those circumstances.

  That didn’t mean she could just sit by and do nothing, however. And in this case, she knew something the authorities apparently did not—that Alicia had a close friend from childhood in Las Vegas, and that the two had been meeting three or four times a year for a long time.

  Abby had never met the woman, but she knew her name—Tracy Marcetti—and her whimsical stage name—Willow Tree. The topless dancer had been dubbed Willow Tree by the men she entertained at the Roaring Buck Casino, men who swore she could bend better than any willow, given a pole to twist her lithe, nearly naked body around.

  Alicia had told Abby about Willow a few years ago when they were drinking wine on the bayside deck of a Monterey restaurant, the hot sun and alcohol loosening their tongues. Afterward, a sober Alicia told Abby that she’d never mentioned Willow to anyone else at all, even her husband, Gerry. She swore Abby to secrecy, saying if the media ever got wind of her hanging out in Vegas with a topless dancer several times a year, they’d have a field day, and that could rub off on Gerry. But Willow had done her a very big favor once, and because of that the two women had bonded and become friends.

  Abby never did find out what the favor was, but if anyone knew where Alicia was now, it just might be Willow Tree. And so, just hours after Ben and Kris Kelley’s visit, leaving Jancy in Sister Helen’s capable care, Abby was well on her way to Las Vegas.

  The Roaring Buck Casino was on a side street, several blocks away from the Vegas strip. A molded horse’s rear in bucking mode stuck out through the front window. The window glass was jagged, purposely designed to look as if the horse had bucked and crashed through it from the sidewalk. Upon entering, Abby saw that the horse’s front end was low and in bucking position inside the window. The fake animal was old, dusty, and patrons had tossed their jackets over its head, as if they’d seen enough of the tattered steed.

  The air was thick with smoke and the heavy odor of sweat. People were packed in shoulder to shoulder, blocking her view of the stage. But between the purple and pink lights and the patrons’ cheers and hollers, it wasn’t that difficult to know there was a show going on. Abby took a seat at the bar along the back wall and ordered a glass of Merlot. As the bartender slid it over to her, she said, “Thanks. Is that Willow up there on the stage? It’s hard to see.”

  “Nah, Willow’s on at ten.”

  Abby glanced at her watch, squinting to see the number in the dim light. “A half hour? Where is she now?”

  The bartender looked her up and down. “That depends. What do you want with her?”

  “We’re old friends,” Abby said, smiling and taking a sip of the wine. “I’m in town and I thought it might be nice to see her.”

  The bartender smoothed his jet-black curly hair and leaned on the bar. “Oh, yeah? Well, Willow doesn’t see anybody before she goes on. How about you stay right
here and wait. Have another glass of wine.”

  “Look—” Abby peered at the name tag on his white shirt. “Gary? I don’t have much time. I just want to see Willow and say hi, that’s all.”

  He looked her over again and said finally, “I’ll ask her. What’s your name?”

  “Alicia,” Abby said.

  “Last name?”

  She smiled. “Willow will know. I told you, we’re old friends.”

  “We’ll see about that. Wait here.”

  “Okay.”

  Abby watched him weave in and out of the crowded tables to a door at the side of the stage. She waited a few seconds, then followed him.

  The door opened into a dark hallway filled with smoke and the smell of alcohol. At the far end, light fell across the floor from an open door. Voices were raised—a man’s and a woman’s. Abby walked toward them. Just as she reached the door, a woman with long, curly red hair, dressed in a gold thong and skimpy costume bra, ran out of the room and almost bumped into her.

  “Sorry,” she said automatically, pushing past Abby.

  Abby grabbed her arm. “Hey, Willow. Going somewhere?” The woman was carrying a large tote bag and a jacket.

  “What the—”

  “That’s her,” Gary said from the doorway. “That’s the one who wanted to see you.”

  “Who are you?” the woman asked in a low, frightened voice. She began to back away.

  “I’m Abby. Sorry for the pretense, but Alicia’s my friend. I was hoping you could tell me where she is.”

  “I don’t know any Alicia—” She broke off and squinted, as if trying to see better in the dim light. “Abby? What’s your last name?”

  “Northrup. I live in Carmel, California, and I’ve known Alicia for years. She told me you were friends.”

  Willow turned to Gary, looking undecided. Finally she said, “It’s okay, Gary. You can go.”

  She took Abby’s arm and said, “Get inside.” She half pushed her through the door.

  Abby glanced around and saw that there were posters of Willow on three different walls. Letters and postcards addressed to her were Scotch-taped to a large mirror over a dressing table. Along one side of the room was a rack of costumes, some with feather boas, and some with men’s ties around the same hangar. It didn’t take much imagination to realize how they were used in Willow Tree’s act.