people able to reason through a problem even when she was stressed. “You’d be surprised at what trained investigators can discover once they generate a few initial leads. For example, there are security cameras at the marina and in the parking lot where the rental car was abandoned, and the tapes from those cameras are already in police custody. That should help a lot. Unfortunately, there’s no magic shortcut for any of us. The detectives in Miami have to follow each line of inquiry until it runs out. It’s going to take a while for them to have an accurate picture of what really happened but we’ll get there in the end.”
Or not. No point in mentioning the percentage of homicides and missing persons cases that went unsolved despite the best efforts of law enforcement.
“Perhaps my father’s been kidnapped,” Kate suggested. Anything, it seemed, was preferable to believing that her father was already dead.
“It’s possible, miss. But kidnappers usually make a ransom demand soon after the abduction. I assume you haven’t received any such demand?”
Reluctantly, Kate shook her head. “No. Nobody’s called. We had no idea my father was…missing.”
Avery drew in an audible breath and swallowed a sob, her first overt sign of distress. “Excuse me. I have to leave you for a minute.” She turned and walked blindly in the direction from which she’d appeared earlier.
Kate followed her mother, turning to speak to Frank over her shoulder. “I can’t leave her alone right now, but please don’t go. I have so many questions for you still.”
“I’ll wait, miss.” You don’t know the half of it yet.
“Thank you.” Tears poured down Kate’s cheeks. Fighting a losing battle to stanch her crying, she gestured toward the hallway where her mother had just been. “Oh God, I don’t know how she’s going to bear it if he’s really dead. Dad is her whole life.” She turned abruptly and hurried after her mother.
Just what he hadn’t wanted to hear, Frank thought grimly, pacing the luxurious living room. He suspected that accepting Ron Raven was dead would prove easier for Avery and Kate than hearing the truth about how the bastard had screwed them over. Now that he’d actually met the two women, his sympathies were engaged. He definitely wasn’t looking forward to the next fifteen minutes or so. If only Avery Raven had turned out to be the bitch he’d hoped for. Instead, she seemed like a real classy woman who deserved something better than the piece of crap she’d married. The daughter seemed nice, too. Smart as well as beautiful, which made for a hell of a combination, especially when you considered that the enticing package came wrapped in a comfortable supply of money.
Well, the kid had been rich until now, Frank corrected himself. Perhaps she would be rich again when Ron Raven’s estate finally finished winding its way through the probate courts—except that probating Ron’s estate was likely to take half a lifetime once the opposing sets of lawyers started battling in court. Two things you could say for sure about Ron Raven’s messy death: his family was screwed and disposing of his assets was going to make several members of the legal profession rich.
Frank paced for another three or four minutes. If the two women didn’t put in an appearance soon, he’d have to go get them. The Bulls were up against the Detroit Pistons tonight in a playoff game and he had plans to watch with his son. Besides, cooling his heels in this too-fancy living room was giving him a major case of the creeps. Hopefully Kate would return without her mother. He’d much prefer to deliver the bad news to the daughter and let her pass it on.
Frank caught a break when Kate returned a couple of minutes later, alone. “I wasn’t sure if you would still be here,” she said. Her belligerence had gone, replaced by a control that was visibly fragile.
“I couldn’t leave, miss. I still have important information to pass on to you.”
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. My mother is…We’re both upset, as you can imagine. She’ll be with us in just a little while. Could you give me a phone number so that we can call you later with all the questions we forget? My mother…We’re neither of us thinking too clearly right now.”
“Here’s my card.” Frank had one ready and handed it to her. Kate was likely to have more questions than she could possibly imagine, he reflected wryly.
“Thank you.” Kate tucked the card into the pocket of her jeans. Unlike her mother, she was dressed like a regular person, not as if she expected to share afternoon tea with the First Lady. “Tell me, Detective, exactly how much hope do the police have that my father might still be alive?”
“Not very much,” Frank admitted. “The trouble is, if your father is alive, the state of his hotel room suggests that he’s badly injured. So where is he? Why didn’t he call 911? Or if he’s unconscious, why have none of the hospitals reported a John Doe?”
She nodded, reluctantly acknowledging the logic of his analysis. “On the other hand, if my father’s dead, how did the murderers dispose of his body?”
“As I mentioned, the ocean seems like a real good bet.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I was wondering how they got Dad out of the hotel without anyone seeing them.”
Frank couldn’t see any harm in telling her the truth. “When the Miami police searched the hotel, they found a big steel-framed laundry hamper near one of the service elevators. There’s blood on the canvas bag and the blood matches some of the stains found in your father’s hotel room. For now, the police are assuming the killers used the laundry hamper to wheel your father down to the parking garage.”
“They dumped Dad’s body in a canvas laundry hamper?” Kate’s breath caught and her mouth twisted downward. “That’s like something out of a really bad movie.”
Frank could have pointed out that murderers watched the same movies and TV shows as everyone else and usually demonstrated no originality or creative thinking. Instead, he answered mildly enough. “It might be corny, but it seems to have worked. Nobody saw your father or anyone else leave his room. Unfortunately, guests in a hotel don’t pay much attention to a cleaner pushing a laundry cart.”
“If my father really is dead, the person who killed him must have planned ahead,” Kate said. “He couldn’t just hope to find a laundry cart conveniently left in the right place. And how did he know which car my dad had rented, or where it was parked?”
Frank nodded his agreement. “That’s true. The Miami police are working on the theory that your father’s murder was premeditated.”
Although, in Frank’s opinion, that theory raised almost as many questions as it answered. If the murder had been planned in advance, why had it required so much brute force to kill Ron Raven? Why hadn’t he just been shot with a single bullet to his head while he slept? The police had retrieved blood samples from three different people. Presumably at least one sample belonged to the killer. If that was the case, the killer—already injured?—had risked a lot to move Ron’s body. Why? Would an autopsy have revealed clues to the killer’s identity? Frank could only thank God that he didn’t have to find answers to these questions. The cops down in Miami had his sincere sympathy. This case was a mess—and that was before anyone addressed the possibility that Ron had been the killer, not the victim.
Kate gulped in air. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to kill my father.” She leaned toward him, her hands clenched tightly enough for her knuckles to gleam white in the late-afternoon sun. “Who in the world would have a motive for killing him?”
