Wherever She Goes(67)

When I knock, I hear sounds within, but no one answers. I put my ear to the door. It’s gone quiet.

I knock again. Ellie leans to look through the picture window, and I reach to pull her back.

“Careful,” I whisper. “I don’t like the sounds of—”

Footsteps patter across the floor inside. A lock turns. Then another. A small, white-haired woman throws open the door with, “Ellie!”

She opens the screen and ushers us in. “I was out back reading. Then I heard the bell and saw your friend through the peephole. I thought she was selling something. Come in, come in.”

She keeps prodding us until we’re in the living room. Then she hugs Ellie.

“It is so good to see you,” she says. “Are you here visiting Kimmy?”

Ellie looks at me. I wince. The older woman looks from me to Ellie.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, her words slow, her back tightening.

“When did you last hear from Kim?” I ask.

She settles onto the sofa, her hands fluttering. “Oh, I’m not even sure. We get together now and then. But it’s been a few weeks. Is she all right?”

“She . . .” I look at Ellie, but she’s frozen. “I’m sorry, but she’s been killed. That’s why Ellie’s here. We thought you knew.”

Beth stares at us. “Killed? An . . . accident?” Her voice rises in a way that says she hopes that’s what I mean, but she knows better.

“She was murdered,” I say. “It was in the news.”

She looks at me blankly, and I remember we’re in Chicago, not Oxford. I’m sure Kim’s death made the news here, but not the way it had at home. Kim hasn’t been identified officially either. There’s no reason Beth would know.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “So you haven’t heard from her in weeks?”

She nods, but even if I didn’t know better, I’d see the lie in her expression.

“I know that’s not true,” I say gently. “I have phone records. I know she spoke to you twice before her death. Once on the Friday before she died and once the Sunday before.”

I can’t prove the number was Beth’s. Not yet. But I must sound convincing, because she goes still.

“It was about Brandon, wasn’t it?” I say. “You were supposed to take him.”

She glances at Ellie.

“I know about the house,” I say. “Your country place. That’s the address Kim gave Ellie for picking up Brandon if anything happened to her.”

Beth exhales. “Yes,” she says. A moment of silence then, again, “Yes. I was supposed to take Brandon in an emergency. Kim called me two weeks ago. She was worried, and she wanted to make sure I was around, in case she needed me to take Brandon. Then she called back a few days later and said she’d found another way. She said everything was okay, but she was taking Brandon away for a while, just until . . . his father left town.”

“His father was in town to open a new club.”

She nods and seems relieved that I know who Brandon’s dad is. “She was worried with Denis being in Chicago, but she found a solution. She said she had something Denis wanted, and if she gave it to him, everything would be fine. She’d do that and then take Brandon on vacation until Denis left Chicago, just to be safe. That’s the last I heard from her.”



Beth offers coffee after that, but neither of us is in the mood to socialize . . . and I don’t think she is either. Ellie tells Beth that she’ll let her know about funeral arrangements.

Beth has no idea who might have Brandon. We’re all holding out hope that Kim really did make alternate arrangements. Better and safer ones that she didn’t dare tell Beth, for fear even that would endanger Brandon.

That is our hope. That he is with someone, and that person has Ellie’s number but has chosen not to contact her until they know what’s going on with Kim’s murder. Solve that first. Put Denis Zima behind bars. Then Brandon will be safe.

Yet, according to Beth Kenner, Kim thought she already had a way to keep him safe. She said that Zima wanted something from her, something that was presumably not Brandon himself. If she handed that over, Zima would stop pursuing.

I’ve presumed that Kim was on the run all these years to hide Brandon from his father. What if, instead, she was in danger because she took something else when she left.

When I broke ties with Ruben, I’d considered preventative measures against future blackmailing. Hack his own computer. Tape an incriminating conversation. Gather some intelligence I could use if he ever came after me . . . as he eventually did with Paul. I’d decided against it because that is a dangerous game. I already knew things I could threaten Ruben with. Gathering extra would only make him all the more determined not to let me walk away.

What if Kim took out her own insurance policy? Her getting pregnant was like me getting shot—a wake-up call, probably fueled by a generous dose of panic. We needed to escape. Immediately. Yet neither of us was a wide-eyed na?f. We knew who we’d gotten mixed up with, and we knew our past could come back to destroy us. So we went into hiding. But I’d left knowing I had a small insurance policy against Ruben and deciding against a larger one. What if Kim—being younger and more desperate—grabbed the big insurance policy before she left . . . only to realize later that having it further endangered her child.