A Killing Sky Read online

  “I just want to make sure my sister's okay, Mr. Pavlicek, and I don't want my parents or the police or anybody else—especially Jed—to find out about this.”

  Confidentiality, under the right circumstances, was something I could handle, but were these the right circumstances?

  “How come all the secrecy when it comes to your parents?” I asked.

  “I'm sorry. I'd rather not discuss any more of this over the phone. Is there someplace we could meet?”

  I picked up a number two pencil and started drumming it on the copies of the articles on my desk. Maybe I'd had crazier calls. I just couldn't remember one. Most likely Cartwright Drummond had gotten cold feet about the boyfriend. Maybe she'd been too embarrassed to admit this to her sister and gone to spend the night somewhere else. Then again, why would she be carrying around these old newspaper clippings? One of the high-tech spy catalogs I get sells a little device you can hook to your phone and, its makers claim, use to determine whether or not the party on the other end is telling the truth. Not for the first time I wished I'd had such a gizmo. Trouble was, like everybody else, I feared being replaced by a machine.

  A road grader, or something that sounded very much like it, roared by outside. I haphazardly flipped through my appointment book. Wouldn't you know? No pressing crimes, no other damsels in emergent distress. Nothing but an arrangement to spend an hour or two hunting that afternoon with my daughter, Nicole—we'd be flying Armistead, my red-tailed hawk. We were nearing the end of the season, the wind was down today, and I didn't want to miss the chance.

  “I could meet you at a restaurant down here on the mall,” I said. “The Nook? Say in about an hour?”

  “Okay. I'll be there. But—”

  “But what?”

  “You haven't mentioned anything about money.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  “I can offer you five thousand dollars.”

  “Whoa. Hold on now. I charge seventy-five bucks an hour, plus expenses.”

  “All right.”

  Fauntleroy was-still staring, but Filbert and Flaubert seemed to have perked up a bit at the mention of money.

  “If this is a hoax, tell Toronto, or whoever put you up to it, that I said you are very good.”

  “I promise, Mr. Pavlicek,” she said. “No hoax.”

  2

  “She's for real,” Marcia D'Angelo said. Her soft Southern drawl oozed conspiracy. “She called here a couple of hours ago.”

  Thw-aack. A Granny Smith apple, the target of her knife, split in two. She stood in bare feet at the butcher-block table in her kitchen, dressed in a flannel shirt over cutoffs that nicely displayed her shapely legs. The heat was turned up high. The public schools might have been out on spring break, but my girlfriend's idea of fun—while a number of her students and fellow teachers were reclining down in Tropicanaville—was to stay home and clean out all her closets and drawers. To think, if only I could have talked her into joining the crowd in Florida, instead of chasing down lost celebrity children, I could have been snuggling right there beside her, rum swizzle in hand, warm sand between our toes.

  “I was afraid that's what you'd say,” I said. “What did she tell you?”

  “She said she was worried about the way her sister has been acting lately and that she'd found an item she wanted someone to check into, an old newspaper article or something. Didn't want me to tell her mother and especially not her father. So I thought about it and sent her to you.”

  Not exactly the spin I'd been given, but I let it pass. “Why me?”

  “She wanted someone she could trust. And it's the kind of thing you do for a living, isn't it? She made it sound like she and Cartwright were having a disagreement. Seemed like she was just after information.”

  “That's all she told you?”

  “That's all. Why? Is there something more?”

  I avoided her gaze. “You know this family well, then?”

  “Of course. I've known them for years. Karen and I met at the office when I worked on Drummond's first campaign. We really clicked and have kept in touch ever since. She and the girls are good people.”

  “Tor Drummond parades around like he's the next Bill Clinton. How come you never mentioned them before?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I just didn't think you'd be interested.”

  “You worked for Drummond's campaign?” She snickered, tossing her hair. She was wearing it in a semishag cut, a look I favored. “Were you on staff?”

  “That was a long time ago. And I was a volunteer. There's a difference. Believe me.”

  She finished cutting the apple into wedges and sat down next to me with the lithe, subtle movements of a dancer. I suppose she was a dancer of a sort—she had talked me into the ballroom and swing classes offered at one of the county middle school gyms. Marcia, hardly trying, moved better than anyone else in the room.

  “So what's up with Cassidy and Cartwright?” she said. “You still haven't answered my question.” She stared at me across the table.

  I was on thin ice here. I swallowed my bite of apple. “It could be nothing,” I said, “but I don't think so.” A phone call to the D.C. police had already confirmed that the hit-and-run described in the article was still an open case—not that anyone was paying much attention to it after all this time.

  “Oh?”

  Somewhere I was supposed to find a balance between professional and personal obligation. “It might be serious,” I said.

  She put down the bite she had been about to put in her mouth. “You're not kidding, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  She started to push her chair away from the table to stand up. “I need to call Karen,” she said.

  I put out my hand to stop her. “Don't,” I said.

  Her eyes turned smaller. I'd seen the look before, thankfully not too often. Reluctantly, she sat back down.

  “I'm meeting Cassidy in half an hour down at the Nook,” I said. The Nook was a small family restaurant on the downtown mall. “I'll find out the details and determine just how serious we're talking about.”

  “But this is my friend, Frank. These are her daughters.”

  “And they're also adults, if I'm not mistaken. Cassidy Drummond may be about to become my client, and she's asked me not to reveal what she's told me to anyone else.”

  Now I had her curious as well as angry.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “You know I can't do that, Marcia. Not when the client asks for confidentiality.”

  “But I'm the one who sent her to you.”

  I said nothing.

  She glared at me. “Don't do this, Frank. Turn it over to someone else, some other private investigator.”

  I was stunned. “Why?”

  “You don't want to have anything to do with Tor Drummond.”

  “Why not?” She was probably right, but now she had me curious.

  “You—you didn't grow up around here like I did. You don't understand.”

  “I didn't move into town yesterday, you know. What don't I understand?”

  “The Drummond name goes back generations. Tor Drummond, despite his many obvious failings, still has a lot of old friends.”

  “So? Just because I'm an old Yankee doesn't mean I can't figure out Tor Drummond. Besides, it's his daughter I'm dealing with.”

  “What about the police?” she asked. “If it might be serious, shouldn't you be talking with them?”

  “If it gets to that point.”

  She said nothing. All at once her eyes began to tear up.

  “What's wrong?” I reached across the table and grasped her hand.

  She shook her head and pulled her fingers away. It's something Marcia and I seem to share a knack for. Tiptoe up to the past—then turn away. My own history is discomforting enough without trying to exorcise all her demons. But right then and there I felt like I needed to. We'd been over marriage notes, compared divorces, our experiences raising kids—talking about
all of that had never been easy. Here came a new and heretofore unknown chapter. I wasn't about to drop it.

  “It might help if you could tell me more about your experience with Tor Drummond,” I said.

  “Who cares about Tor? He made his bed a long time ago and he has to lie in it. Haven't Karen and her daughters been through enough?”

  Those alarm bells were sounding again.

  “You've obviously known them for a long time.”

  “Huh.” She tossed her head again.

  “I've read what the newspapers have to say about the congressman. The way things are going he might even manage to get himself reelected.”

  “Good for him. For all the good it did his wife and children.” She dabbed at a corner of her lips with a paper napkin and threw it down on the table.

  “What's the congressman like in person?”

  She shook her head some more and rolled her eyes. “You really want to know?”

  “Yeah, I do. If it helps me figure out what's going on with his daughters.”

  “I think Torrin Drummond is the most tortured individual I have ever known.”

  “Tortured?”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “On the surface he's brilliant. Caring demeanor. Incredible gift for putting his thoughts into words—”

  “And underneath?”

  “Underneath?” She seemed to be summoning up memories she would just as soon have left buried. “Underneath he's nothing but a selfish little boy.”

  “That doesn't make him much different from most of the rest of us selfish little boys.”

  She fixed a listless stare on a point on the wall behind me. This was not the Marcia I knew and loved.

  “Except that most boys grow up eventually and learn how to control their impulses,” she said. “I'm not sure this boy ever has.”

  3

  Cassidy Drummond entered the restaurant like a slumming princess and looked around tentatively. I recognized her from the last time I'd seen her photo in the paper. Almost innocent green eyes, hair more strawberry than blond, little or no makeup. At the moment, she seemed to be doing her best to look like any other student. She wore blue jeans and some kind of heavy sweater under a well-worn L. L. Bean shell. On her feet were Tevas and wool socks. Something about her reminded me of my daughter, Nicole, who was a student at the university herself.

  I was seated in a back corner booth, decked out in my usual cold-weather hunting attire: lined combat fatigues and a shabby but functional Boston Celtics sweatshirt under a khaki traveler's vest. I smiled when she looked at me and stood up. She made a beeline in my direction, extending her hand.

  “You must be Mr. Pavlicek.”

  “You weren't a hoax.” I took her slender hand in my own and we shook. Her skin was cold.

  “I told you,” she said. She unzipped her jacket and took it off as we slid into the booth opposite one another. The waitress came over to refresh my coffee and poured a cup for Cassidy as well before buzzing on to another table. “You're taller than I expected. You look like you're dressed for camping.”

  I shrugged. “My daughter and I may try to get a little hunting in later on.”

  She nodded. If it bothered her or if she were curious about it, she didn't let on. She took a test sip of the steaming coffee. “I just got off the cell with Marcia. She said you dropped by to see her.”

  “Had to check you out,” I said.

  “I guess I must've passed the test.”

  “I wouldn't be here otherwise.”

  “Marcia doesn't seem too happy with you.” She had that right.

  “For every wound there is a healing,” I said.

  “Somebody famous say that?”

  “Not that I'm aware of.”

  “Anyway, thanks for not giving me away.”

  “Doing my job.”

  “Marcia also told me you were a really good detective.”

  “Investigator is the proper word. Officially, the only detectives in Virginia are those still on the force.”

  “Investigator, then. Whatever.” She seemed to have a barely contained nervous energy about her as she dumped sugar and cream into her coffee.

  “Still no word from your sister?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay. Let's start where we left off. If you really think your sister is missing, why all the secrecy?”

  She crossed her legs. Her foot began tapping reflexively on the floor. She kept her eyes on me, but she said nothing.

  “If I'm going to work for you, Miss Drummond, rule number one is you need to be honest with me.” I waited.

  Finally she said, “I told you about her boyfriend.”

  “Right. She went to dump him. I should be able to check that out easily enough.”

  Her voice dropped to a more intimate tone. “What if … what if I told you I suspect my father might have something to do with Wright being gone too?”

  Instinctively, I glanced around the restaurant. Not too busy this time of day. None of the few other patrons appeared to be paying us any attention. “I'm listening.”

  “Well … it's not like I have any evidence or anything—”

  “What do you have, then?”

  “Wright has been acting a little strange lately.”

  “Oh?”

  “It's just that she and I have always been so close, you know? She's always been my best friend. But lately—lately it seems like there's been this distance between us. I mean, when we were in Kyoto, we weren't staying with the same family or anything, but we would meet together every day.

  “Then, about a week ago, she started making excuses, saying she was too busy. She missed three days in a row. Yesterday on the plane, when I tried to talk to her about it she just got mad at me, told me I should mind my own business. I thought it might be about Jed, her boyfriend. I told you, I think he's crazy. He might do anything. But now I'm not so sure.”

  “Why is that?”

  She looked around the room herself for a moment and lowered her voice even more. “Last night after I went to bed I couldn't sleep, even though I was really tired—it must be the change in time zones. Anyway, I came down to the kitchen about one o'clock to get something to eat. I had to pass by our father's office— it's a separate room built off the landing between the first and second floors. His light was on, and he was on the phone with someone. I don't think he knew I was there. That was when I heard him say something that made me wonder.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Cartwright might have to go away for a while.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. I was afraid he might hear me on the landing, so I just went on down the stairs. When I went back up to my room later, the light was off and he'd gone to bed.”

  “It might've been just a passing remark,” I said. “Without knowing the context, I have to say he could've been talking about anything. Who knows? Maybe an internship or something.”

  “But who would he be talking to at one o'clock in the morning?” she said. “And why hasn't Cartwright come back? Or at least called me?”

  “You said your father's getting ready to leave for a trip, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Won't he become suspicious if Cartwright isn't around to see him off?”

  “No, she told him she had some stuff do this afternoon over at the university. And it's like I said earlier on the phone. Dad and Wright haven't gotten along lately. Even being away on our trip didn't help. They had an argument last night over dinner.”

  “About what?”

  The waitress swung back by and asked if we wanted more coffee. We both took refills and waited until she left.

  Cassidy's voice was just above a whisper. “Wright wants Dad to drop out of politics. Says it's the whole reason our family's not together anymore.”

  “What does your mother have to say about that?”

  “She stays out of the argument. I don't think
she cares anymore.”

  “How about you?”

  “I pretty much agree with Wright, but I don't think it'll do much good. Dad's always been more married to his work than he ever was to Mom.”

  “You've been through a scandal and a divorce,” I said. “Why would Wright care now whether or not your father tries to stay in politics?”

  “I don't know. I just think it's weird.”

  I thought it over. “It seems more likely, from what you've told me, that your sister's boyfriend may be involved. If—and it's still a big if—it turns out she's really missing, that is—”

  “She's gone, I'm telling you. She would've called me.

  “Tell me more about this boyfriend. What's his full name?”

  “Jed Haynes.”

  I took out my notepad and wrote it down. “You said he's a swimmer on the university team. What year?”

  “He's a third-year, and he's very good at swimming, like nationally ranked or something.”

  “How long have he and your sister been dating?”

  “About six months. Since we all came back to school in September. She met him at a party. They saw a lot of each other until we left for Japan in January.”

  “They been sleeping together?”

  The question seemed to catch her off guard. Her eyes cut away from me again, and her hand came up to scratch at her ear. “Some,” she said. “I guess.”

  “Jed belong to a fraternity?”

  “No. I don't think so.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He shares a house with a bunch of other guys. I can give you the address.”

  “Okay. You said you talked with him earlier and he thought you were making up an excuse for Cartwright. Did he seem agitated?”

  “Jed's always agitated.”

  “Sounds like a potential world leader. Do you have any idea where he might be in the next couple of hours?”

  She shrugged. “Class, maybe? No—wait. I know he has swim practice around four. I remember Wright telling me, because she said if she couldn't catch up with him last night, she'd have to try to go see him then.”