card. “Use my cell number. I’m staying in a hotel in South Bend.”
She looked at the card, raised skeptical eyebrows at him. “I’m not making any promises. We’ll see is all I’m saying.”
Keith left it at that. He’d accomplished the first stage of his plan. The next move was up to Mrs. Orrick and her daughter.
Outside, dusk had brought with it a noticeable drop in the temperature. He got into his car, turned around and drove down the long drive, away from the farmhouse in need of seemingly endless repairs.
Careful not to get out of range of Ben’s latest gadget, he parked a short distance up the country road that served as the main route into this part of the county. He checked the settings, tucked the earpiece into place and waited for Mary Orrick to do what any mother would.
Less than ten minutes after Keith had left the house, someone inside, Mary Orrick no doubt, placed a call on a cellular phone. Three rings later, a soft female voice answered. “Hello.”
“They sent someone new this time.”
Silence.
Keith analyzed the one word the other female had uttered in greeting. He couldn’t conclude with certainty that the woman was Ashley Orrick since he didn’t have a voice pattern with which to compare it, but his instincts were leaning that way. He watched as the small screen on the handheld computer relayed the signal to one of Ben’s contacts. All he needed was ninety seconds and that same contact would triangulate the exact location of the woman Mrs. Orrick had called.
Thank you, Ben.
“Not Brody?”
Again Keith played the cautiously chosen words over and over, committed each nuance of sound to memory. In his opinion, there was now no question about the woman’s identity.
“No,” Mary Orrick said. “A Keith Devers. He’s from some private investigations agency in Chicago. He brought papers showing a high six-figure number Van Valkenberg’s people are ready to pay in back child support, if you can believe that. But the real kicker he delivered is the estate papers. I think maybe Van Valkenberg’s dead or on his deathbed.”
“He can’t be dead, Mother. It would have been in the papers.”
Mother. Definitely Ashley.
“Come on,” Keith muttered as he watched the small LCD screen. “Give me a location.”
“True. But I’m looking at these papers. They name Jamie as the sole heir to his estate.”
Jamie. She’d changed the boy’s name.
“This could be a trap.”
“I know,” Mary relented with an audible sigh. “But I had to tell you, honey. This could mean your freedom and Jamie’s is close at hand.”
Keith tensed. Freedom? What the hell did that mean? He knew the two women likely hated the guy, but damn, wishing him dead was cold.
A series of high-pitched tones alerted him that the location had been acquired. South Bend? It couldn’t be that simple. No way.
“Send me the papers the usual way. I’ll take a look and we’ll go from there.”
The two exchanged good-byes wrought with palpable emotion. Keith jerked out the earpiece and focused on driving. He could be at the address in forty minutes. He hoped like hell she would still be there.
How could she have been living that close all this time and not have been discovered by Van Valkenberg’s people? It didn’t make sense. Brody didn’t appear incompetent by any means.
Keith would know soon.
Forty-five minutes later, Keith sat outside a twenty-four-hour diner in South Bend.
“This can’t be right,” he murmured. Would Ashley Orrick have the nerve to work in the open in a place like this?
Keith had a very bad feeling that something was way out of sync here.
He got out of his car and surveyed the crowded parking lot. Every instinct warned that solving this case wasn’t going to be anywhere near this easy. But the location was all he had.
Floor-to-ceiling windows made up the length of the front facade of the diner. Booths, tables and even the long counter fronted by bar stools looked to be occupied. Four waitresses weaved around the maze of customers. Not one looked like his target, but all looked harried.
Since he knew this wasn’t the only restaurant in town, he could only assume, judging by the crowd, that the food must be above average. But it wasn’t the food he was interested in.
As he moved inside, he pretended to scour the place for an open table or stool, surveying each waitress a little more closely. Nope. Not one matched Ashley Orrick’s description. That didn’t mean she wasn’t in the back working in the kitchen in some capacity. For that matter, she could be here having dinner. Just in case, he scanned the faces of customers a bit more slowly. No one caught his eye.
Noting the arrow pointing to a side corridor and the location of the restrooms, Keith made his way through the diner. He bypassed the men’s room and took a chance. He knocked on the door of the ladies’ room. When no one answered, he stuck his head inside and checked the stalls. Empty.
With a quick glance toward the diner to make sure no one was headed that way, he moved past the restrooms and the emergency rear exit, to the door marked Employees Only. He pushed into the kitchen and had just enough time to scrutinize the crew scrambling to fill orders before anyone noticed his presence and realized he didn’t have any business poking his head through the door.
“Hey!” A short, stout woman shouted. “You can’t be back here!”
“Sorry.” He shrugged, tried to look embarrassed. “Bathroom?”
“The door marked Men’s Room,” another woman said with a smirk.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, then quickly made his exit amid a rumble of laughter.
He returned to the dining room, located an unoccupied bar stool and made himself comfortable.
“You ready to order?”
He glanced up at the waitress waiting on the other side of the counter. A bottle blonde, tall, slim. Looked as if she’d worked one shift too many.
“Coffee.” He pushed a smile into place, glanced at her nametag. Gina. When he was just a kid, his mom had been a waitress. Honest work, he remembered her saying. Honest but hard. As an adult he’d always left big tips.
“Cream? Sugar?” She had shored up a faint smile in answer to his, but it appeared as mechanical as her one-word queries.
He shook his head. “Black.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing else.”
A few moments later, she set the mug of steaming coffee in front of him and moved on to the next customer. As he savored the coffee, he watched the
