Voices Carry Page 21

  He pretended to debate with himself the wisdom of such a close encounter so soon, but she pulled him closer and wrapped her arms around him, offering the sweetness of her mouth. What could he do but give in to the moment?

  “That’ll be six bucks,” the cabbie glanced over his shoulder, oblivious to the fact that the willpower of one of the FBI’s best-known special agents had just totally unwound.

  “What? Are we here already?” John lifted his head. “Think you could make it once more around the block? Maybe a little slower this time?”

  “Sure, buddy,” the cabbie shrugged.

  “John,” Genna whispered, as if having second thoughts. “Do you really think this is a good idea?”

  “I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in a long time,” he said as he pulled her back to him, and settled in to kiss her again. “As a matter of fact, I’m surprised I didn’t come up with it sooner.”

  “Seriously.” She kept him at arm’s length as she debated the matter. “We’ll be working together.”

  He digested this as if it hadn’t occurred to him before, then smiled at her through the darkness.

  “Only during the daytime,” he held her wrists and guided her arms back around his neck. “The nights are our own.”

  17

  “I need my head examined,” Genna muttered to herself as she flicked on the light in the small entry to her hotel room. “I have no self-control, no willpower whatsoever. I lecture myself on how the only way John and I can work together is if we keep it casual, keep it friendly, keep romance out of the picture. And the first time—the first time—” she tossed her leather bag across the room and it landed with a thud on the dresser “—he gets that close to me, what happens? We’re sucking face in the back of a cab like a couple of sixteen-year-olds, that’s what happens.”

  She stood in the middle of the small room, her hands on her hips, trying to be angry with herself for not reminding John that that part of their relationship was supposed to be over. For wanting exactly what she’d been telling herself for months that she didn’t want. For needing him as much as she always had.

  When she realized that she just couldn’t work up a good enough steam, she dropped to the side of the bed and sat down.

  “You scare me, John Mancini.” She could admit it to him, now that he wasn’t here. “I don’t think anyone ever scared me as much as you do. There’s never been anyone who could hurt me the way you could.”

  But he did hurt you once, and you survived, a small voice inside reminded her. And there’s obviously something still there. For both of you. Maybe you’re cheating yourself if you don’t look close enough to find out what it is that keeps pulling you back to one another. . .

  She blew out a long stream of air and slipped out of her sandals, then walked into the tiny bathroom and washed her face. She stripped off her clothes and slid the soft nightshirt over her head, then turned off the light and drew the drapes back to expose a door, which she unlocked. Stepping out onto the small balcony, she looked out over the city she loved. Half a block away, on the opposite side of the side street, stood the hotel where they’d spent their very first night together.

  “Mancini, you dog,” she muttered, a half-smile on her face. “I’ll bet you requested a room with a street view.”

  She leaned on the railing, permitting the memories of that first night to creep past her defenses. A longing to go back in time to that night, to start over, washed through her. She turned her back on the view and went back into the room and closed the door behind her.

  There wasn’t much use in wanting to go back. You can’t ever go back, she told herself as she climbed into bed. But you can go forward, if that’s what you want.

  She closed her eyes and thought back to the cab ride, to the mind-numbing sensation that had engulfed her when John had begun to kiss her.

  Hormones, she’d told herself at the time.

  More than hormones, her little inner voice had corrected her. Ever so much more than hormones.

  What would have happened if John had insisted that he come back upstairs with her to her room, instead of saying goodnight downstairs and kissing her—a bit briefly, she now reflected—at the elevator? Where might they have ended up, had they gone a few more times around the block?

  Genna reached her arm out and rested it on the pillow next to hers. She sure enough knew where they would have ended up.

  And the thing of it was, she wasn’t so sure that she was sorry that they hadn’t.

  “The thing that struck me about these two women,” Adam was saying the next morning when John’s team had reconvened, “is how nice their lives were. Besides being married to men who really seem to care for them, they both have nice friends.”

  Genna nodded. “I felt the same way. I told John yesterday that it seemed like they’d both always had things pretty good.”

  “Not mine,” Dale Hunter drawled, referring to his notes. “One of my ladies definitely had problems.”

  “What kind of problems?” John asked.

  “She’d been in therapy on and off for years.”

  “Anyone kind enough to say why?”

  “Husband told the investigating officer she’s had periods of depression. Mother is quoted as having said that her daughter has some ‘unresolved issues,’ but she declined to elaborate,” Dale told them. “The other lady here seemed pretty stable, though.”

  “Nothing really outstanding about either of mine, either,” John conceded. “Typical suburban lives. One woman worked part-time, the other was a librarian. Nothing exciting.”

  “Where do we go from here?” Dale asked John.

  “To the home of the victim of your choice,” John replied. “First one, then the other—Dale, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to find out what your victim’s ‘unresolved issues’ might be. Check in as often as you have to. You’re all seasoned, I don’t have to tell you what to look for, what to ask. I just want to know the minute a red flag goes up. On anything.”

  “You got it.” Adam rose and pushed his chair under the table, as if his mother were standing behind him, reminding him of his manners.

  “I hope to see y’all real soon,” Dale told them.

  “So,” John said to Genna when they were alone.

  “So.” Genna raised an eyebrow.

  “So, about last night. . .” He started around the table. Since he’d dropped her off at the hotel, he’d been berating himself for not being able to keep his hands off her. For all but attacking her in the back of the cab. For crying out loud, the plan was slow and easy. And slow and easy did not mean. . . well, it didn’t mean going where they’d been headed the night before.

  “If you apologize, you’re a dead man,” Genna said as she rose from her chair.

  “Huh?” John stopped at the end of the table.

  “I said, if you apologize, you’re a dead man.” She stood in front of him, her files held in her arms in front of her.

  “But. . .” John struggled with words, looking confused.

  “We’ll talk about it when this is over.” She leaned up and kissed him on the mouth. “We have a lot to talk about when this is over.”

  “Give me a hint,” he asked as she reached up to rest the palm of her hand along the side of his face. He turned his head slightly and kissed her thumb. “Is this going to be a good talk or a bad talk?”

  “It’ll be a good talk,” she said, then turned to the door. “I’ll call you when I get to Connecticut.”

  John walked to the door to watch her stride down the hall, wondering just how encouraged he should be. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out the way that woman’s mind worked. The only thing he really knew for certain, he realized as he packed up his own files, was that the taxi ride the night before had been the best investment of twenty bucks that he’d made in a long time.

  Genna sat in her rental car in front of the lovely white clapboard house on the outskirts of Mystic, Connecticut, and tried to digest what she’d l
earned from the despondent husband of Barbie Nelson. That Barbie had left the house at seven forty-five on the morning of her disappearance and dropped off their twin daughters at nursery school. That from there she went to the video store to return some movies, to the library for her weekly selection of two books, and to the pharmacy to have her asthma prescription refilled. It had been a totally routine Monday. The movies were dropped off, books were checked out, but she never did make it to the pharmacy. Wherever she was, Genna hoped she didn’t need her new inhaler.

  Genna checked her watch. It was almost noon. She’d been at the Nelson home for almost three hours, looking at photo albums, asking questions, getting to know Barbie Nelson. She probably would have liked her, Genna thought as she started the car, had their paths ever crossed. She seemed to be a decent woman. Her house was warmly furnished and simply decorated, pleasant but without pretension, and Barbie’s touch was everywhere, from what Genna could see, from the drapes she’d made for the dining room to the stenciling in the downstairs powder room to the cheery flower beds that overflowed with late summer blooms. Even after having been missing for several weeks, Barbie’s presence was still strong. But though Genna had learned about the woman, she’d learned nothing about the crime that had been committed against her.

  John’s instincts are one hundred percent right on, she told herself as she drove to her next appointment. Barbie Nelson was not a woman to have walked away from the life she had so carefully, so lovingly, made for herself and her family.

  At the next stoplight, she pulled the hand-printed note from her purse on the seat next to her and double-checked the directions. Was it left at the next light, or the one after it? Confirming that it was, in fact, the next light, Genna stayed in the far lane in preparation of the turn. It would be interesting to see just what, if anything, Barbie’s mother could add to the story. Surely, there had to be something. . .

  Five minutes later, Genna stood on the front steps of the weathered shingled house and rang the doorbell. Seconds later the door opened and a trim, neatly dressed woman in her early sixties invited her in.

  “Mrs. Benson, I appreciate your agreeing to meet with me. I know this is a very difficult time for you,” Genna said as she was led through the house out onto a screened porch that ran across half of the back of the house.

  “One of the worst times of my life. But, if there’s anything I can do that could help you find my daughter. . .” Sarah Benson held out both hands, palms up, a gesture as much to indicate her willingness to assist as her own helplessness. “Though I have told the police everything I know. Everything they asked.”

  “I’m sure you have, Mrs. Benson,” Genna assured the woman calmly as she seated herself on a white wicker settee and opened her briefcase, preparing to take notes, not for her reference but to preserve what she learned for others. “I’m sure you know that we suspect that Barbie fell victim to the same person who may be responsible for a series of abductions of other women. Right now, what we’re concentrating on is what might connect these women to each other, and therefore to their abductor. So we’re trying to learn as much about these women as possible.”

  Genna rummaged around in her handbag for a pen.

  “Before we start, could I get you something to drink? I’ve just made a pitcher of iced tea.” Mrs. Benson stood in the doorway, her hands folded in front of her, her bearing somewhat stiff and formal. She wore a dark denim skirt and a white cotton twin set, a haunted look and an air of weariness.

  “That would be lovely, thank you,” Genna smiled, accepting the offer to give Mrs. Benson one last opportunity to collect herself as well as to give Genna a few moments to observe her surroundings.

  The screened porch overlooked a backyard that sloped down just ever so slightly three hundred or so feet to a wooden dock that overlooked a tiny slice of an inlet. No boats were tied to the dock, however, though the house next door boasted three. The porch itself was comfortably, if not artistically furnished, with a drop-leaf table painted with birdhouses holding a lamp of clear glass filled with colored stones. A painted basket held magazines, and the latest hardback book by a popular woman writer sat on the wicker coffee table next to a bowl of bright summer flowers.

  “You have quite a view here,” Genna said as her hostess returned with a tray on which sat two glasses of ice and a blue pitcher.

  “Yes, don’t we?” Mrs. Benson moved the book to the floor and replaced it with the tray, then proceeded to carefully pour tea into the glasses. “I never get tired of it.”

  “Then you’ve lived here for a long time?”

  “I grew up here. This house has been in my family for generations.”

  “Did Barbie grow up here, as well?”

  “No.” Sarah Benson sipped slowly at her tea. “We were living in Allen’s Springs—that’s in New York State, dear—when Barbie was born. Her father—my first husband, Bob—had grown up there. We met at college, and after we were married, we settled there. Bob went to work for an accounting firm owned by his father and uncle.”

  “And Barbie is an only child?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you moved back here when?”

  Mrs. Benson paused, as if trying to recall. “Seventeen, eighteen years ago. My father had died, and my mother wanted to move to Arizona to live with her sister. As I said, the house has been in the family for years—I couldn’t bear the thought of selling it—so Barbie and I moved back.”

  “And your husband?”

  “He. . . wasn’t inclined to make the move. He had his business, you see, and, well, it was one of those things.” She took another sip of her tea. “We divorced shortly after the move.”

  “And you remarried?”

  “Twelve years ago, yes. Unfortunately, my husband—Joe Benson, my second husband—died three years ago. Oddly enough,” she cleared her throat, “he died almost two years to the day after my first husband. Both of heart attacks, by the way.”

  “I’m sorry.” Genna said gently.

  “Yes, well, I still consider myself to be a lucky woman. I have my daughter, a wonderful son-in-law, three adorable grandchildren.” Mrs. Benson paused, adding quietly. “I hope I still have my daughter. . .”

  “We’re all hoping for that, Mrs. Benson.” Genna couldn’t help but lean over and pat the woman’s hand. “Mrs. Benson, can you think of anything—especially something from your daughter’s past—that might lead us in another direction? Maybe an old boyfriend who remained in touch perhaps too persistently, someone from school she may have had problems with, a coworker who bothered her. . .”

  “No, no,” Mrs. Benson shook her head adamantly. “Nothing like that. Barbie didn’t date very much in high school, she never really had a steady boyfriend until she met Rich, and they married right out of college. She was a good student, and, really, a very good kid. She never gave me a moment’s trouble, really, when she was in school. And if there was something. . . well, she would have told me, I feel certain. Barbie and I are very close, Miss Snow. If there had been anything, I would have known about it.”

  “And she never mentioned that she felt she was being watched, or that she noticed a strange car or a van?”

  “No. Though a month or so ago, she did say that she’d been bothered by someone calling the house and then hanging up. The police know about that, though. They’d never gotten a lead on that.”

  “Did she say if the caller said anything at all?”

  “No. I asked her about that specifically, and she said that he—or she—never said a word.”

  “Can you think of anything out of the ordinary that Barbie may have mentioned over the past few weeks or months?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but no. There’s nothing. I’ve laid awake every night since she’s been gone, trying to remember something, anything, that might help, but there’s nothing.”

  “I’m sorry to have made you go through this all again, Mrs. Benson.” Genna closed her notebook and slipped it into her briefcase, and taki
ng a card from her pocket, handed it to the woman and said, “If you think of anything—anything, however remote you might think it could be—please call me. You can always reach me at the cell phone number.”

  “I will. Yes, of course, I will.” Mrs. Benson nodded briskly and rose to walk Genna to the front door.

  “Oh. One thing I meant to ask you earlier. Did your first husband remarry?”

  “Yes. Shortly before I did. Why?”

  “Is his second wife still living?”

  “I believe so.” Mrs. Benson stood in the half-opened doorway. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t recall seeing a statement from her in the police file, and I would have expected them to have interviewed Barbie’s stepmother.”

  “Barbie barely knew her. She didn’t care for her, and Doris—that’s the second Mrs. Wright—didn’t care for Barbie, either.” Sarah Benson stepped aside, a clear indication that she expected Genna to step on out. “So I’m not at all surprised that they didn’t call her. I’m sure she’d have had nothing to say.”

  “I see,” Genna said thoughtfully.

  “Miss Snow, do you think that she. . . that Barbie is. . . that she’s still. . .” The woman could not bring herself to finish the sentence.

  “Still alive?” Genna spoke the words the anguished mother could not. “I sincerely hope so, Mrs. Benson. We all sincerely hope so.”

  Genna walked to her car, feeling the woman’s eyes on her back even though the door had been closed behind her before she had reached the street. She sat in her rental car, checking the directions to her next appointment and wondering why there’d been no mention of Barbie’s stepmother in the original police reports. Surely the woman would have been contacted, wouldn’t she?

  Genna was still thinking about it as she pulled up in front of the rambling old colonial style structure that served as the home of the Frog Hollow Day School, where summer camp was in session and Carol Stoddard, Barbie Nelson’s best friend, coached tennis. Parking in the narrow lot, Genna made her way to the courts that lay just beyond the swimming pool. As she approached, a woman in her early thirties, dressed in tennis whites, spotted her and waved.