Where there’s a lot of money, there’s always the chance of corruption and double-crosses.”
“Not my father,” Kate protested. “Raven Enterprises is renowned for the integrity of its deals. And as far as the personal side of my father’s life is concerned, he leads a boringly normal life—”
“Not quite.” Frank had to stop her there, although the detective in him was intrigued to see how completely Ron Raven had fooled this branch of his family. He wondered if the folks in Wyoming were equally clueless.
“As I mentioned, there’s more information I need to pass on to you, miss. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a tactful way to deliver the news, and I’ve decided there isn’t one. So I’m going to be blunt. Here goes. We have reason to believe your father was a bigamist.”
“A bigamist?”
“Yes, miss.”
“As in having two wives? My dad?” Kate stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief. She gave an uncertain laugh. “You’re joking, right?”
“I’m afraid not. Your father seems to have had two wives and two sets of children. You and your mother here in Chicago and another wife and two more children living in Thatch—apparently that’s a small ranching town in Stark County, Wyoming.”
“My father has two more children as well as another wife?” Kate’s voice spiraled into an incredulous squeak. “Of course he doesn’t! That’s absolutely crazy.”
“Having two wives at the same time is criminal, miss. It’s not necessarily crazy.”
“My father isn’t a criminal.” The realization that her father might have committed a crime seemed to stun Kate even more than the suggestion he had another wife and two more kids. She shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s impossible. Apart from the craziness of committing bigamy in this day and age, how could Dad have kept a second wife and family secret? He couldn’t possibly have spent time with them without my mother finding out.”
She had a good point, Frank thought ruefully, although he’d seen plenty of situations where seemingly upright citizens got away with living secret lives for years. Ron Raven had apparently been one of those talented deceivers who could lie with the ease of an accomplished con artist. Although, come to think of it, what was a bigamist if not a con artist supreme?
“You would know better than I do how your father managed to keep you and your mother in the dark. Perhaps all those business trips he took weren’t actually for business. I couldn’t say. But he has two other children, that I know for sure. A son and a daughter, according to the sheriff of Stark County.”
Kate made little pushing motions with her hand, as if to hold the astonishing news at bay until she could assimilate it. “What are their names? How old are they? Are they little kids?”
“No, they’re grown-up, but I don’t have any more details. I’m sorry. We’re waiting for the sheriff in Wyoming to fax us documentation. Normally, we’d have held off notifying you until we had more complete information, but in this case we decided it was important to warn your mother before reporters get wind of the story. We didn’t want your mother to turn on the TV and hear the news of Ron Raven’s death that way. Especially the part about him having two wives.”
Kate’s expression darkened from incredulity into horror. “Oh my God. You think there are going to be news reports about this?”
“I’d say it’s a certainty. You’d better be prepared for the media to make a circus out of your family’s private business.”
Kate sent him a pleading look. “There has to be some way to stop journalists from reporting that my father’s a bigamist. That would be slander, wouldn’t it?”
“No, miss. It’s not slanderous to report true facts that emerge in connection with an official investigation of a crime.”
“But you’re assuming my father has another wife and I’m telling you that’s not possible! There’s been a mistake. He adores my mother and she adores him right back. I’d have a hard time believing he’d ever been unfaithful to her, much less that he was married to another woman.”
Frank didn’t attempt to argue with Kate, just reached into his pocket and removed a carefully folded fax. “I don’t have birth records for your father’s other children, but I do have this copy of your father’s marriage certificate. It was sent to us by the sheriff of Stark County. You’ll see the name and the date. Eleanor Mary Horn and Ronald Howatch Raven.”
She took the fax, her hand visibly shaking. He stood in silence, letting the marriage certificate speak for itself.
“Maybe this is a forgery.”
“I doubt it, miss. Like I said, it was the sheriff himself who sent it to us. Besides, there’s other evidence. When the police searched Mr. Raven’s hotel room they discovered two wallets locked in the room safe, and both wallets belonged to your father.”
“The fact that my father owns two wallets doesn’t seem grounds for leaping to the conclusion that he’s a bigamist.”
“The two wallets didn’t cause the police to leap to any conclusions at all, although he did have two completely different sets of family pictures and credit cards in each wallet. Still, the cops in Miami just followed procedure. The driver’s license in each billfold provided a different address, one in Wyoming and the other one here in Chicago. Therefore the detective sergeant in charge of the investigation contacted law enforcement authorities in both locations to ascertain if Mr. Raven had family either in Stark County or in the Chicago area. It was routine police procedure at that point, since there are plenty of law-abiding citizens with two homes. When the request came in to us, we ran the information we were given through our state data systems and reported back to Miami that our records showed that Mr. Raven lived here in downtown Chicago with his wife, Avery Fairfax Raven. Only thing is, Wyoming reported back similar information, except with a different wife.”
“My father owns a ranch in Wyoming.” Kate ignored Frank’s comment about the second wife. “The ranch is an old family property, first bought by my great-great-grandfather, and now run by a professional manager—”
“You’ve been there?”
“Of course I have! I went there two or three times in the summer when I was a kid.”
Frank wondered how Ron Raven had pulled those visits off. There must have been a good bit of juggling and sleight of hand to make sure nobody ever mentioned the other wife and kids. Still, it wasn’t his business to find out how Ron Raven had worked his scam. He just needed to get Kate to accept the truth about her father.
“How about more recently, miss? Have you been to the ranch since you grew up? And how about your mother? Has she visited the ranch recently?”
“We’ve neither of us visited Wyoming in at least ten years.” Kate subsided into a tense silence.
I’ll just bet you haven’t, Frank thought. “Doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange?”
“My mother isn’t the type of person who enjoys spending time on a ranch. She’s not a rural sort.” Kate rushed on, before Frank could make a comment to the effect that her mother’s tastes had nothing to do with the fact that Ron Raven’s daughter had almost never visited a ranch that had been
