Читать книгу Raising The Stakes - Сандра Мартон, Sandra Marton - Страница 7
ОглавлениеGRAY boarded the flight to New York still tight-lipped with rage.
If anybody had asked him how he’d gotten where he was today, a partner in one of New York’s top law firms at such a relatively young age, he’d have said he’d done it all on his own. Good grades in college had led to his acceptance at Yale Law. A straight A average there and a stint writing for the Law Review had won him a clerkship with a Federal judge and then interviews at a number of important firms. He’d picked the one where he’d figured he’d have a straight shot at the top after putting in the requisite seventy-five hours a week of grunt work for a couple of years. He’d been right. Those years got him noticed; he landed a partnership even sooner than he expected without having to curry favors from anybody. Watching his father go through life as a suck-up had convinced him he’d sooner end up flipping burgers than repeat Leighton’s pattern.
Now it looked as if he’d been blissfully living a lie, that his successes were all traceable to Jonas’s largesse. Okay. Maybe that was an overstatement. He’d made it to where he was on his own, but his uncle’s money was the reason he’d been able to get his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. He was just where he’d sworn he’d never be, beholden to the old man, and now Jonas was calling in the debt.
“Sir?”
But facts were facts. You couldn’t change them; you could only use them to serve your client’s best interests. That was one of the things he’d learned in law school. First, make a dispassionate assessment of a case. Then use your knowledge to get the outcome you wanted. Well, he was his own client right now, and what would serve his interests was to do what had to be done so he could get on with his own life.
Truth was, he wouldn’t have to spend much time dealing with Jonas’s situation. He had all sorts of contacts, including private investigators whose fields of expertise involved tracking people even if the trail was old and cold. Actually he didn’t have to do much of anything personally except give Jonas’s information to one of those people, then sit back and wait for the answers to drop in his lap.
Then, if—and it was a huge “if,” considering that Jonas didn’t even know if this Ben Lincoln actually had a granddaughter—if there was such a woman, and if a P.I. could find her, Gray would meet her, spend ten minutes in conversation before contacting his uncle.
“Mr. Baron?”
What the old man did with his money was none of his business. All he wanted was to erase this debt. Hell had to be going through life, knowing you had an obligation to Jonas Baron.
“Mr. Baron. Sir, would you like to see the lunch menu?”
Gray looked up. The flight attendant, smiling politely, leaned toward him. For the first time since he’d stormed out of his uncle’s library, Gray felt good enough to smile back.
“Sure,” he said, “why not?”
Why not, indeed? A couple of days, maybe a week at the most, and he’d be able to tell Jonas to go scratch.
“Here’s the report on the woman you wanted to find,” he’d say. “And now, uncle, for all I give a damn, you can go straight to hell.”
It was such a welcome thought that he went right on smiling, even after the flight attendant placed the airline’s version of lunch in front of him.
* * *
The next morning Gray phoned Jack Ballard, a P.I. who’d done some good work for him in the past.
“I can come by on Monday,” Ballard said.
Gray said it would be better if he could come by right away. Ballard sighed, said he’d be there in about an hour. When he showed up, the men went through a couple of minutes of inconsequential talk before getting down to business. Gray said he’d been asked to do a favor for a client. He told Ballard only as much of the story as necessary, mostly that he wanted him to locate a woman whose only link to his client was through a relationship half a century old, and shoved Jonas’s still-sealed manila envelope across the desk.
Ballard lifted an eyebrow as he looked at it. “You didn’t open this to see what’s in it?”
Gray shrugged his shoulders. “You’re the detective. Not me.”
Ballard grinned, ripped the envelope open and peered inside. “Well, it looks as if there wasn’t all that much to see.”
Three pieces of paper fluttered onto the surface of Gray’s always-neat desk. One bore notes in what Gray recognized as Jonas’s hand. The other two were black-and-white photographs, the edges torn and yellowed. Ballard reached for the notes; Gray scooped up the pictures and looked at them.
The first was of two men dressed in suits, though neither man looked as if he belonged in one. They stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders and grinned into the camera. The men were in their thirties or early forties, strong and young. Curious, he turned the photo over. Ben and Jonas, Venezuela 1950. The words were scrawled across the back of the picture, again in his uncle’s handwriting.
Gray took another look at the photo.
Yeah, he could see it now. One of the men was definitely Jonas. The mouth, the eyes, the grin…none of that had changed. It was just weird to see him so young. Somehow, though he’d always thought of his uncle as fit and powerful, he’d never imagined him as anything but old. The other man, Ben Lincoln, had lighter hair and sharper features. Except for that, Jonas and he seemed like duplicates, tall and handsome and broad-shouldered, looking into the camera through eyes that said they already owned the world.
The second photo was of a woman. Gray flipped the picture over. Nora Lincoln, someone had printed on the back. She stood in a grassy square, maybe in a park somewhere, hands planted on slender hips, chin elevated in a posture of what seemed defiance. She was a pretty woman or she would have been, if she’d unbent just a little. Her expression was hard to read. Were her eyes cool? They seemed to be. Her hair was long and light-colored. It looked windblown and maybe in need of taming, but another look at those eyes and Gray figured everything about her had probably needed taming.
Two powerful, tough-looking men in the prime of life. And a woman who looked as if she’d be a challenge to either of them. Gray felt a stir of interest. What did these people have to do with a sample of ore from a Venezuelan gold mine?
“Well,” Ballard said, “this sure isn’t much to go on.”
He handed the handwritten page of notes to Gray. Ben Lincoln, date of birth unknown, place of birth unknown, had been married to a woman named Nora sometime around 1950. They’d been divorced early in 1952 and Nora had given birth to a child she’d named Orianna in the summer of that year. Orianna had given birth to a baby girl, too, in 1976 or ‘77. The father was unknown. The child had probably been born somewhere in southern Utah or northern Arizona. That baby girl, if she existed, if all the other information was correct, Jonas had written, would be Ben Lincoln’s granddaughter. But, he’d added, there was no way to be sure. Ben Lincoln had died a long time ago. He’d heard that Nora and Orianna were dead, too.
Gray turned the page over. The reverse side was blank. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Ballard said, and grinned. “This one’s gonna cost a bundle. I’ll have to hire a bunch of guys to do the legwork. There’ll probably be a couple of dozen leads to check out and the odds are good they’ll all go nowhere long before I can find something usable.” He tapped a pencil against his teeth. “We’re talking six figures here.”
Gray tossed the paper on the desk, tilted back his chair and folded his hands over his flat belly. “That’s okay, Jack. Just do it and send me the bill.” He smiled tightly. “Don’t worry about the cost.”
Ballard laughed. “I never do.”
“Good. My client deserves to pay through the nose.”
The investigator chuckled as he scooped the photos and the single sheet of information into the manila envelope, then got to his feet.
“You disappoint me, Gray. Here I thought you defense attorneys were supposed to be protective of your clients.”
“Nobody needs to protect this one,” Gray said. He rose, too, and came around his desk. “As always, this is confidential, okay?”
Ballard clapped his hand to his heart. “Man, you wound me. Aren’t I always the soul of discretion?”
He was right. Investigators didn’t last long if they weren’t discreet but Ballard was even more circumspect than most. It was one of the reasons Gray employed him.
“Yes, you are.” Gray held out his hand. “What I meant was, if you should manage to find this woman, don’t talk to her. Don’t let her know you’re watching her. Just keep everything under your hat. I’m supposed to check the lady out myself. Client’s orders.”
“No problem.”
The men shook hands. “Truth is, though, I suspect you’re not going to come up with anything.”
“The odds are that you’re right, but you know me. I’ll put all the stuff I don’t find into a fifty-page report, fit the report into a shiny binder and your client will be impressed.”
Both men grinned. “Keep me posted,” Gray said, and Jack promised that he would.
* * *
Two weeks later, Ballard phoned late one morning.
“Got some stuff,” he said.
Gray suggested they meet for lunch at a small Italian place midway between their offices.
“So,” Gray said, after they’d ordered, “what do you have? Information? Or fifty pages of B.S. in a shiny binder?”
Jack chuckled. “Information, surprisingly enough. Not enough to fill fifty pages, but solid.”
“You found Lincoln’s granddaughter?”
“No, not yet. But I figured you’d want an update. I found the town where Orianna Lincoln lived and died, and some people who knew her.”
“Orianna Lincoln,” Gray said. “So, even though she was born after Ben and Nora were divorced, he acknowledged the child as his flesh and blood?”
“Careful, counselor.” Ballard sat back as their first courses were served. “You’re leaping to conclusions. All I know is that Nora Lincoln put Ben Lincoln’s name on Orianna’s birth certificate.” He stabbed a grape tomato, lifted it to his mouth and chewed vigorously. “Orianna was born in ‘52, same as your uncle said, in a little town in Colorado. Her mother—Nora—died in an auto accident not long afterward. Orianna was bounced from foster home to foster home, grew up into what you might expect.”
“Her father didn’t raise her?”
“Ben Lincoln? No. He lit out for Alaska in ‘53, died up there in a blizzard a few years later. The kid—”
“Orianna.”
“Right. She grew up, got herself into a little trouble. Nothing much, just some shoplifting, a little grass, a couple of prostitution convictions.”
“Sounds like a sweetheart.”
“Right. NCIC—the National Criminal Investigation Center—has her getting busted for petty crap all over the southwest. Eventually she ended up with some bozo in Fort Stockton, Texas. He walked out on her and the next record we have shows she set up housekeeping in a trailer park in a place called Queen City, up in the mountains in northern Arizona.”
“Alone?”
“Yup.” Ballard speared another tomato and grinned. “But that didn’t keep her from leading a full life, if you get my drift.” The detective took a sip of water, swallowed and leaned over the table. “The lady believed in an open door policy. One man in, another out, no stopping to take a breather in-between. No kids to slow her down until 1976, when something must have gone wrong with her planning. She gave birth to a girl she named Dawn.”
Gray raised his eyebrows. “Classy name.”
“Yeah, and I figure that was all that was classy in the kid’s life. Dawn lived in the trailer with mama until she was seventeen. Then she married a local name of…” Ballard reached into his breast pocket and took out a small leather notebook. “Name of Kitteridge. Harman Kitteridge.”
“In Queen City?”
“Yup, Queen City. Two traffic lights and half a dozen cheap bars. And local branches of every whacko political organization you ever heard of.” He grinned. “Plus some you’re lucky you haven’t.”
Gray put down his fork. “It sounds like heaven.”
“You got that right. Two days there, I was ready to grab a rifle and go looking for black helicopters. Kitteridge lives on the outskirts of town, on top of a mountain. He’s got a cabin up there. Apparently his grandpappy built it with his own hands.” Ballard put down his notebook and turned his attention to his salad. “You can almost hear the banjoes playing in the background.”
Gray nodded, picked up his fork and poked at his antipasto. Just what he needed, he thought glumly, a trip to the ass end of nowhere for a stimulating conversation with Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge. If he’d thought about her at all during the last weeks, he’d imagined a more up-to-date version of that defiant, almost beautiful woman in the photo, but this conversation had put things in perspective. He could almost envision Dawn Kitteridge, country twang, lank hair, bare feet, gingham dress and all.
“Lucky Dawn,” he said, “she got to trade her trailer for a shack.”
“Yeah, she got herself a shack, and a hubby ten years older than she is.” Ballard paused as the waiter cleared away their appetizers and served their main courses. “But she got tired of both,” he said, tucking into his spaghetti carbonara. “She left Kitteridge and the mountain almost four years ago.”
Gray looked up from his pasta alla vongole. “She missed the trailer park?”
“If you mean, did she go back there, the answer’s no.”
“Damn,” Gray said with a little grin, “and here I was, happily anticipating a trip to a sophisticated metropolis called Queen City.”
“Well, actually, I don’t know where you’re going to be taking that trip to meet up with the little lady—that is still your intention, isn’t it? ‘Cause the thing is, she didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”
Gray put down his fork. He’d been telling himself this was all over, that he’d go to Arizona, spend an hour talking with Lincoln’s granddaughter, then fly to Espada and end his unwanted obligation to his uncle.
“Are you saying you don’t know where she is?”
“I’m saying I haven’t located her yet, but I will.”
“Damn.” Gray shoved his plate aside. All at once, he had no appetite. “How much longer will it take?”
Ballard shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. Four years is a long time and when the lady left, she seemed determined to cover her tracks.”
“Kitteridge doesn’t know where she went?”
“I didn’t talk to him. Not yet, anyway. He was out of town but from what I picked up from local chitchat, he has no idea what happened to her.” Ballard patted his lips with his napkin. “Hey, don’t look so sour. I promise, we’ll find her. I’ve got three men looking for her.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Gray sighed, sat back and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “I just don’t want this to drag on forever.”
“You said money wasn’t a problem.”
“It isn’t. Time is my concern. I want to get this done with.”
“Gray, my man, don’t I always deliver?”
It was true. Gray had no doubt that Jack would find Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge. He just had to be patient.
“Yeah, you do. Look, put another couple of people on it, okay? Do whatever it takes to locate the lady.”
“Absolutely.”
“Meanwhile, what’s this Harlan Kitteridge like?”
“It’s Harman. I told you, I didn’t meet him, but I did some checking. He’s got some stuff on his record.”
“Such as?”
Ballard opened his notebook again. “Some DWIs. Two bar fights. He broke up a guy pretty bad in one of them but witnesses said it was self-defense so, you know, case closed. An assault on a woman he’d been living with. Beat her up and she called the cops but when it came to the courtroom, she said she’d hurt herself taking a tumble down the stairs and all she wanted was Harman out of the place.” Jack looked up. “Nothing once he married our girl. Dawn either swings a heavy bat or she reformed him.”
“Yes,” Gray said lightly. “They sound like a real nice couple.”
The bus boy cleared their places. The waiter stopped by. Gray ordered espresso; Ballard ordered a cappuccino and cheesecake.
“So,” Ballard said, “the next thing I’m going to do is fly on back to Queen City and have a chat with Mr. Kitteridge. He’s on his mountain again.”
“I thought you said he doesn’t know where his wife is.”
“I said that’s what the town says. Besides, even if he doesn’t, maybe he can give us some clues. Maybe she talked about wanting to see someplace special. Maybe she has friends in places outside Queen City.” The investigator peered at the slice of cake the waiter put in front of him, then dug into it. “At the very least, he can probably fill in some blank spaces while my guys look for her.”
“That sounds reasonable, I guess.”
“Trust me, Gray. It is reasonable. Just tell your client to keep his pants on, okay?”
Gray laughed. “I’m sure he’ll love the advice, Jack. Anything else?”
“Nope. Oh. Yeah, before I forget…” He patted one breast pocket and then the other. “Here,” he said, and held out a small white envelope.
“What’s this?” Gray opened the envelope. Inside were the photo of Jonas and Ben, and the one of Nora Lincoln. “Ah. The pictures. You don’t need them anymore?”
“Not really. Besides, I made copies. I figured your client might want these back.”
Gray nodded and pocketed the photos. “You’ve done fine, Jack. To be honest, I didn’t think we had a chance of coming up with anything, but you’ve managed to find the girl.”
“Not yet. I found where she lived and who she lived with.” Ballard took a sip of his cappuccino. “She’s still among the missing.”
“Among the…” Gray looked up. “You think something happened to her? That Kitteridge did something?”
“Hell, no. Jeez, you’ve been associating with lowlife too long. No, Gray. I just mean I haven’t located her yet. But I will.”
“Fine. Call me when you do. In fact, call me after you go to Queen City and speak with Harman Kitteridge. I have to admit, I’m curious.”
Ballard grinned. “Your wish is my command, counselor. Say, is this lunch on your client’s expense account?”
“Why?”
“You think I could have another slice of that cheesecake?”
* * *
That night, Gray phoned Jonas and gave him a brief update. When he finished, there was a long silence. Then his uncle cleared his throat.
“So,” he said, “the girl really exists.”
“Yeah. So it would seem. Do you still want her found?”
“Yes, of course. Find her, talk to her, see what she’s like…” Another silence. “This husband of hers. He doesn’t sound like anybody’s idea of Prince Charming.”
“No. He doesn’t.”
“You’re gonna meet with him?”
“No,” Gray said coldly, “I am not. The investigator I hired will do that. There’s no reason for me to talk to the man.”
“You got a good way of seein’ inside people.”
Gray laughed. “Don’t try to con me, okay? If I did, I’d have figured out, years back, that the only way my father could have come up with money for my schooling was by begging it from you.”
“You know, boy,” Jonas said, his voice hardening, “maybe you ought to be grateful he did, otherwise what would you be doin’ right now? Not livin’ high on the hog in New York City, I bet.”
“I’ll call you when I know more,” Gray said, and hung up the phone.
Hours later, he gave up trying to sleep. The old man certainly had a way of getting to the heart of a thing. He’d grown up disliking Texas and despising his uncle, congratulated himself for getting free of both…and now it turned out he hadn’t actually escaped either one.
He went into the kitchen, switched on the light, took the pictures Jack Ballard had given him from the kitchen table and stared at the faces frozen in time.
There was more to this tale than his uncle admitted. Gray had suspected it. Now, he was sure of it. He’d been a lawyer long enough to sense when a client was omitting pieces of a story. Sometimes, you were happy to leave it like that. You wanted the truth, but you didn’t want to hear things that might keep you from doing the best possible job. Defending a man against a charge of murder was a lot easier when you believed he hadn’t actually committed it. There was no murder involved here but something dark and distant was gnawing at Jonas’s innards. And, like it or not, he was being drawn further and further into the situation.
He sat down at the table and stared at the picture of Jonas and Ben Lincoln. Was there a whisper of hostility hidden inside those smiles? And the picture of Nora Lincoln. He touched the tip of his finger to her face. Were her eyes cool, or were they infinitely sad? Maybe that chin wasn’t tilted in defiance but in self-defense.
“Dammit,” Gray said, and kicked back his chair. What did it matter? The story, whatever it was, dated back half a century. And it sure as hell didn’t involve him. He had better things to think about than a dead woman who might have a secret in her eyes and a granddaughter who had run away from a mountain in the middle of nowhere.
The case that had consumed his time for the past few months was winding down. Tomorrow, he’d present his closing argument to the jury. His client would walk free. Gray wasn’t foolish enough to think you could predict how a case would end but sometimes you could make a pretty shrewd guess. His client had been accused of felonious assault with intent to kill; he’d sworn that the witnesses had misidentified him. Gray hadn’t been concerned with the man’s guilt or innocence. That wasn’t his job. His duty was to convince the jury that the witnesses were wrong, that there was reasonable doubt that it was not his client who had committed the crime. Every instinct he had assured him that he’d done that.
He’d be free of the case in a few days. He’d thought about taking a break, getting away from the city and the stress of his job, maybe doing something different enough to get the juices flowing so he’d feel the way he once had about his work. He’d even had a talk with his travel agent, who had given him a stack of brochures about things that ranged from running the rapids in Alaska to mountain trekking in Nepal.
He’d been to Alaska. And there were mountains in northern Arizona.
He looked at the photo of Nora Lincoln. What would she think, if she knew her granddaughter had spent most of her life in a trailer park? That she’d married a man with an arrest history and then left him?
“Life sucks,” Gray said softly, “and then you die.”
He went into his study, flicked on the light, looked up Jack Ballard’s phone number in his address book and dialed it. Ballard answered on the second ring.
“It’s late,” Ballard said in a gravelly voice. “This better be good.”
“Jack, it’s Gray Baron. Look, I’m sorry to bother you at this hour but…” Gray cleared his throat. “You know that trip you were going to make to Arizona? The thing is, my client—well, I have a personal connection to him. And, as a sort of favor, I’ve decided to talk with Kitteridge myself. Uh-huh. I’m going to fly out there, probably within the next couple of days. No, no, I’m not pulling you off the case, Jack. Far from it. I want you to locate Dawn Kitteridge for me. Absolutely. Right. Yes, do it just the way I asked. Find her, but don’t approach her. You just tell me where the lady is and I’ll take it from there. Great. Thanks, Jack. I appreciate it.”
Gray hung up the phone and headed back to bed.
Definitely, he could use the change in routine. He was starting to get curious about where this was really going. Jonas might be dying but he still couldn’t quite accept him as a man bothered by a prickly conscience, especially when it involved something more than fifty years old. And then there was that look in Nora Lincoln’s eyes. Would he see it in her granddaughter’s eyes, too? Gray needed to find out, not for Jonas but for himself.
Three days later, with another acquittal in his files and the directions to Queen City in his pocket, Gray flew to Arizona.
