Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)(74)

“Can you estimate how long it had been in use?”

“I’d give it about a year outside, about nine months inside. I’m figuring that on the amount of use. Huffman used the ’link for texting and calls, and that’s it.”

“Nine months to a year.” Eve nodded. “She got engaged to Caine last summer, and she met Byrd last fall. It fits. All right, Ariel Byrd’s our priority. But right up with her are Keene Grimsley and Special Agent Anthony Quirk, both missing, and it’s not a stretch to presume dead. And Ella Alice Foxx, alive and we presume being held against her will. They’re tied together, so we make those knots.

“Peabody, use my auxiliary and start compiling everything you can on Wilkey’s two older sons, their wives. I’ll take the daughter, the youngest son, and the mother. Yancy, how about you do the same with Gayle Steenberg? She’s going to be Ella’s trainer, her immediate supervisor or whatever benign term they use for keeper in there.”

“I’ve got my portable. I can do a run on her, her family on that.”

“Great. You want coffee or whatever, there’s an AutoChef and a friggie in the kitchen. Feeney, Roarke, McNab, I need Ella Foxx’s data.”

“We’ll get it.” Feeney scratched the back of his neck. “Might take some time, but Roarke’s got what we need in his comp lab here.”

“Roarke, the more I know about Natural Order’s and the Wilkeys’ finances the better.”

“It’s like music to my ears. I’ll set that up on auto in the lab while we find young Ella.”

“Let’s get to it.”

Eve settled in, tuned everything else out.

She started with the mother.

Rachel Leigh Wilkey, née Charles, Caucasian, age fifty-one.

Pattern, Eve thought. Twelve years younger. And married, she noted, for thirty-two years.

She skipped over the offspring, as she already knew, scrolled down to education. And as she expected, Rachel Charles had been a student—Montana U in Missoula—when Wilkey, the roots he’d planted with Natural Order already dug in and spreading, came to town. From a ranching family, she noted, one with an impressive dude ranch as well as a working one. Wealthy then, and wealthy still. Rachel had a brother, older, who’d joined the family business.

She’d studied animal husbandry before she’d dropped out to marry Wilkey.

Six weeks, from what she could put together, after he’d come to her college.

Didn’t pop a kid out—like McNab said—right off though, did she? Eve shut her eyes, did the math. Nope, it took a couple years. The second, right away, but then a four-year gap, then another four years.

Interesting.

She dug down into medical records, then sat back.

“Peabody?”

“Huh? What?”

“Have you looked at medical records on the oldest sons?”

“Not there yet.”

“Look now.”

“Sec.” A moment later, Peabody frowned. “I’m not finding any. I mean none. Not sealed, just nothing.”

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing on Wilkey’s wife after their marriage thirty-two years ago. The standards up to then, then nothing.”

She swiveled to face Peabody. “Their own hospitals, clinics, doctors, and so on. So no records. Not of injuries, illnesses, meds, treatments, in her case, childbirth. Or possible miscarriages or fertility treatments.”

“He said his wife was ill, and on the island in treatment.”

“That’s right, but what sort of illness, what sort of treatment?”

Eve did another quick search. “Her parents and her older brother are alive and well on the ranch in Montana. Maybe they’re members, maybe not. I’m going to find out. I’m about to have a conversation. If you need quiet, I’ll take it elsewhere.”

Peabody sent Eve an amused look. “Dallas, I work in the bullpen.”

“Right.” She used her desk ’link, contacted Montana.

A man with a short, graying beard and a big-ass cowboy hat filled the screen. “New York City? How ’bout that? What can I do for you, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve?”

“Mr. Charles?”

“That’s right. Morgan Charles.”

“I’m investigating a case, and during the course of the investigation I’ve found some potential connections to Natural Order.”

Everything about him went sour, his eyes, his mouth, his voice. “We don’t have anything to do with those crazy fuckers—excuse my language.”

“My data states your sister, Rachel, is married to Stanton Wilkey, who is the head of the order.”

“I know it. I’ve been sick about it for better’n thirty years. It doesn’t mean we’ve got anything to do with it. And I don’t much want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry to bring up difficult feelings, Mr. Charles. Could you tell me the last time you saw or spoke to your sister?”

“More than twenty-five years ago, when they brought their traveling circus to Bozeman. I took my wife and my two kids—had one more after, but two at that point—to see her. I wanted to see my baby sister, to talk to her, to try to mend some fences.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” His mouth stayed so tight, a muscle began to twitch in his jaw. “You might see better if I tell you my wife, the love of my damn life, the mother of my children, is Cherokee.”