“It was a defense mechanism. He’s a mama’s boy. Mommy didn’t show up at his wedding, and she didn’t come running to his side when the band started playing ‘There Goes the Bride.’ Instead of accepting the fact that the old Mrs. Gibbs doesn’t give two shits about the new Mrs. Gibbs, Jamie would rather convince himself that his mother was the victim of foul play.”
“Or he was trying to convince us that she’s a victim so we won’t look at her as a suspect.”
“Is she a suspect?” I said.
“She has a motive.”
“And we have an eyewitness who ID’d Bobby Dodd with Erin,” I said.
“What if Bobby and Mom are in this together?”
It didn’t make a lot of sense, but when you’re trying to solve a crime, logic doesn’t always apply. I’ve seen more than a few preposterous theories turn out to be right. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s say Mom and Bobby are in cahoots. Make a case for it.”
Kylie smiled. Unraveling a mystery was as much a passion as it was her job. “All right,” she said. “We know that Bobby is obsessed with Erin. They’re soul mates, destined to be together forever. He loves her. He’s not going to kill her. So he needs a place to hide her long term. Do you think he’s going to chain her to a pipe in some rat-infested basement?”
“I’ve tried it,” I said. “The girls are never impressed, especially the ones, like Erin, who are accustomed to much finer accommodations. Bobby is definitely going to have to step up and spring for a five-star hidey-hole.”
The joke fell flat. She kept going, hell-bent on making her point.
“Zach, you read McMaster’s file on Dodd. He hasn’t had a real job in years. He’s got no credit history to speak of. I don’t know what kind of cash flow he has, but judging by that rented room he was living in, it can’t be much.
“Kidnapping someone like Erin is expensive. Planning it, executing it, keeping her well fed, well taken care of, and under wraps for an undetermined amount of time—you can’t run that kind of operation on a shoestring. It takes a lot of money to become invisible. And Dodd is a loner, so it’s not like he has a best friend bankrolling his obsession.”
“So you’re suggesting that he found an unlikely friend who saw Bobby as a way to get rid of Erin and who has the resources and motive to do it?”
“Exactly,” Kylie said. “Veronica Gibbs.”
“Interesting theory. Can I shoot one little dart at it?”
“You can try.”
“A lot of people online are pointing fingers at Veronica. Jamie brushed that off, saying that if his mother had orchestrated it, Erin would have been taken long before the wedding. It makes sense.”
“Don’t you see the brilliance in that?” she said. “That’s like Jamie saying, ‘My mom couldn’t possibly have stolen your Mercedes. She only steals American cars.’ We can’t ignore Veronica just because the kidnapping didn’t go down the way Jamie wants us to think she would do it.”
“We’re not ignoring her. We may not have a shred of evidence connecting her to the kidnapper, but she’s at the top of the list of people who would like to see Erin disappear. We’re definitely talking to her.”
“No time like the present.”
“Fine with me,” I said. “I’ll call McMaster and find out where she lives.”
“Don’t bother,” Kylie said, pulling up to a hydrant in front of a building at Ninety-Second and Park. “We’re there.”
CHAPTER 16
THAT WAS FAST,” I said, opening the car door. “It’s like you read my mind.”
“I figured you really didn’t want to go back to the barn and watch a bunch of other cops try to crack this case before we do,” Kylie said. “Plus we owe it to Jamie to find out if his mother’s been kidnapped.”
The doorman assured us that Mrs. Gibbs was alive and well. “She’s expecting you,” he said.
“She’s expecting us?” Kylie said.
“Well, yeah. Her assistant rang down and told me the cops would be showing up. I mean, you’re here about the whole Erin Easton thing, right?”
“We’re in a hurry,” Kylie said, not answering the question.
“Right. Mrs. Gibbs is in penthouse A and B. You want to go to A, which is the office. B is her private residence. It’s off-limits. Like at the White House,” he added in case we didn’t get the point. “I’ll ring up and let them know you’re on the way.”
The elevator was manned. The operator nodded politely but said nothing as we rode up. It was a lonely job, especially on the graveyard shift, and I guessed that the absence of small talk was Veronica’s idea, not his.
The doors opened up into a vestibule where a highly polished antique table sat on a thick Persian rug. An oversize vase was filled with enough fresh flowers to set me back a week’s pay. There were two industrial-strength metal doors, one on either side of the room, and our elevator man pointed at the one marked a.
“Ring the bell and look up at the camera,” he said.
We did. We heard an electronic click, and the door unlatched. The operator gestured for us to go through.
“Wait in there,” he said.
We stepped in and the door clicked shut. I heard the elevator head back down.
It was well after midnight, but the lights were on, soft music was playing, and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee was in the air. About fifteen feet from the door, a meeting was in progress behind a glass wall. Two men and two women were seated at a table facing a cork wall where six photos, each one of a beautiful woman, were hanging. There was an animated discussion going on, accompanied by head-nodding and some laughter, and finally one of the men pulled a photo from the wall and turned it facedown on the table.
“Another grueling late night at the model agency,” Kylie said.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” a voice said. A dark-haired woman in her early thirties walked toward us. “I’m Adriana Stevens, one of Ms. Gibbs’s assistants.”
We introduced ourselves and gave her our cards.
“We knew somebody from the police would be coming, but we didn’t know when,” Stevens said.
“I realize it’s late,” I said, “but clearly we didn’t wake anybody up.”
“Oh, it’s not late. It’s Monday morning in Europe, and Veronica is on a videoconference call.” She glanced down at her iPad. “How much time do you think you’ll need with her?”
“We don’t know,” Kylie said. “You understand this is a police investigation into the disappearance of her daughter-in-law.”
Stevens put a finger to her lips. “Oh God, please don’t say that.”
“Don’t say what?”
“Daughter-in-law,” Stevens whispered. “Veronica would go ballistic if she ever heard you refer to that woman as family.”
“When can we talk to Mrs. Gibbs?” I said.
“Her calendar is jammed until morning.”
“Excuse me? Doesn’t she sleep?”
“Not like normal people. She has this remarkable body clock. She naps for a few hours, and she’s fine. That’s why she has three assistants. We work in shifts.” She glanced at her iPad again. “Veronica grabbed about three hours of sleep this afternoon from four to seven, which means she’ll be good to go till noon. I can squeeze you in before her breakfast meeting at seven a.m.”