Part 19 (1/2)
”I don't care. Why don't you pick?”
”Top,” she said promptly. And then she winked.
They headed further back in the house. Ed and Warren came out of one of the rooms and walked behind them as they reached the end of the hall. There a door opened onto a huge storage room. She saw David, Tommy, and Diane standing in the middle of the room, looking around. The room had shelves built all around the perimeter of the room, stuffed with supplies that the previous owner left behind. Maddy saw rows of canned goods, boxes of MREs and other freeze-dried foods, gas masks, propane and kerosene containers. On the floor sat two small generators. In the middle of the room was a folding buffet table with metal chairs tucked in all around it.
”Holy c.r.a.p,” Warren said. ”I guess we won't starve if the hunting doesn't pan out.”
”We're counting on you two to keep us away from the canned beef stew,” David said. ”The hunting will be plenty good here.” He turned to look at everyone in the room. ”Can you believe this? It's better than I even imagined.”
Diane gave him a hug, but everyone else stood there looking a little sh.e.l.l-shocked. Suddenly, it seemed they really were in Idaho, in a brand new home.
Maddy went to unload her things and make up her little underground room.
Jan was running well ahead of time for her flight to Spokane. She'd traveled so little in her life that she took quite seriously the airline's suggestion that she get to the airport two hours ahead of her flight. She made it through security and found it was still ninety minutes before departure.
O'Hare Airport was a small country in itself and she was locked into the city that was Terminal 3. She found her gate, crowded with pa.s.sengers for a flight just starting to board. She backtracked to a nearly empty gate and took a seat by the window. It was just starting to rain. She checked the weather app on her phone for the third time that morning. A storm was heading toward them. The race was on to see whether it reached Chicago before flight time. Her phone lit up with a call. It was Peet.
”Are you at the office?” Jan asked. ”Do you know if Catherine has left yet?”
She'd had no word from Catherine since the call at the bar the evening before, other than a text telling her she'd meet Jan at the plane. Catherine had not been at the office before Jan left for the airport, but Vivian reported that Catherine had breezed in with a suitcase and was busy on the phone in her conference room.
”I was over there a few minutes ago,” Peet said. ”Catherine was still there.”
”She's not going to make it here on time.”
”Sure she will. Listen, I just got a call back, finally, from Detective Hock in Winnetka.”
”And?”
”He followed up with the Michigan police after I told him what you found up there.”
”And they said there's nothing they can do, right?”
”Actually, there isn't anything they can do. They checked Conlon's house and asked around and agreed that he's left town, but as far as they're concerned there's nothing wrong with that and there's no evidence he has a minor with him.”
”I'm surprised they did as much as that.”
”Hock also said there's been no response on the BOLO he put out nationwide for Conlon's car. He's probably not driving his own car anyway.”
”Okay. We'll be heading to the first property as soon as we land.”
”I've also taken the precaution of telling the Idaho police that you'll be in the state looking for a missing teen, just in case something happens,” Peet said. ”It might help if they have some kind of heads-up about you.”
”Have you found out any more about who the buyers are on some of those properties we identified?”
Jan and Peet had spent time on the phone the previous day with Penny Harper, a real estate agent in northern Idaho who agreed to help them out. Her base was Coeur d'Alene, but the amount of land she helped people buy and sell spread out for hundreds of miles from that city.
”She's on it, but the information takes time to track down. The recent sales aren't recorded with the county yet, so she's contacting the agents who handled the properties we identified. There's no telling whether they'll get back to her or tell her who the buyers were.”
”I'll be wandering around Idaho forever if that's the case.”
”You won't be alone at least,” Peet said. She sounded like she was teasing. ”And a girl's gotta sleep, and stuff.”
”Don't start on that,” Jan said. The funny thing was, she wanted to talk about Catherine. She didn't understand why Catherine hadn't called her again after the short conversation last night. She didn't understand why she wasn't furious about having to play second fiddle. But she didn't know how to talk about this stuff. She only knew how to pretend that everything was okay.
Peet laughed. ”You're so much fun to tease, Jan. I'll call as soon as I hear anything else from Penny.”
By the time the boarding agent had called the last group of pa.s.sengers for her flight, Jan was pacing back and forth at the gate. The storm had held off, but Vivian reported that Catherine had left the office just half an hour ago. What was the matter with her? Did she think they'd hold the flight for her? Maybe Catherine was one of those people who thought everyone could work around her needs and her schedule, to the extent they thought about it at all. She turned to see Catherine walking toward her, wheeling a case behind her and looking more relaxed than she should, in Jan's opinion.
”They've called everyone on,” Jan said. ”We should get in there.”
”Of course.” Catherine smiled. ”I'm surprised you're not already on the plane.”
The plane closed up not long after they were seated. They were in a two across section, far back in coach. Jan put Catherine's bag in the overhead bin after squeezing other people's coats and shopping bags out of the way. When she settled in her aisle seat she saw Catherine looking intently at her.
”We have so much to talk about.”
”You get right to things, don't you?” Jan wedged her laptop bag under the seat in front of her and buckled in. ”Don't you think we should talk about work first?”
”Certainly. Here's how I see it. We're going to Idaho. If you have a plan, I'm fine with it. If you'd like me to consult on a plan, I'm fine with that too.”
”Peet and I worked up a plan.”
”That's fine then.”
They were quiet for a bit while the flight attendants squawked over the PA system and they got underway.
”How upset are you about what happened at the hotel?”
”I don't know if upset is the word I'd use,” Jan said.
”It was ugly and I'm so sorry you had to go through that.”
”Had you just told your girlfriend about me? Is that why she acted that way?”
Catherine sat with her back to the window, angled toward Jan. She looked like she'd lost some of her calm and most of her confidence. ”Part of what I wanted to say to you today is that I'm not going to lie about anything. I hadn't told Ellen about you before you came to the hotel. She simply leapt to the conclusion that I had an out of town lover. I don't know how she could have possibly got wind of that, but we did have a nasty argument on the phone the other day. Any time I make noises about the relations.h.i.+p being at an end, she accuses me of having a lover.”
”Was that such a leap? You've had other lovers since you've been together.”
Catherine kept her eye contact. ”I did take a lover once and Ellen found out about it. All I can say is that it's not like it's a regular habit. It was still wrong to do, but I'm not a player, Jan.”
Jan had interviewed many witnesses over the years and she thought she was a pretty good judge of when someone was lying and when they were being sincere. She thought Catherine was being candid with her, but knew also that she wanted to believe that. Catherine had been a spy, after all, one who'd fooled harder cases than herself.
”When Ellen first found out that I'd slept with someone else, it seemed like the final blow to a relations.h.i.+p that was cracked straight through. Instead of breaking us apart, we stayed together, but rather more in the way that prisoners are kept together in a cell than anything approaching a loving relations.h.i.+p. I felt too guilty to leave her and she felt too angry to let me go.”
”It sounds awful.” Jan found this totally believable, having had a glimpse of Ellen's venom.
”Still, none of that has anything to do with you, and I am so sorry you've been dragged into it.”