Ghost on the Case (Bailey Ruth #8)(7)

In my past missions, I’ve learned a bit from Adelaide’s police, especially Chief Sam Cobb and his stalwart second-in-command, Hal Price. I know a thing or two that would surprise Mike Shayne, including how voices on a phone can be electronically altered so the caller is unrecognizable.

“The voice said Sylvie was in a safe place but bad things could happen to her. If I wanted her to come home, I had to get a hundred thousand dollars. I said I didn’t have that kind of money. The voice said, You can get it out of the safe. I said I didn’t have a key, and the voice said the garden door will be open. The deadline to have the money was twelve o’clock. I had to get the money, and then I’d get a call about where to bring it, and if I did, Sylvie would be safe.” She looked at the clock and pressed her lips tightly together.

Susan followed instructions, but no call came at midnight. She turned to me with haunted eyes. “They didn’t call. Maybe nothing matters now. Maybe she’s—” She lifted her hands, pressed them against her cheeks. “She’s silly and wild and kind of goofy and sweet, and I never know what she’s going to do next, and now someone has her and I don’t know what to do.”

“Call the police.”

Susan grabbed my arm. “The caller said she’ll die if I tell anyone, she’ll bleed to death. I can’t call the police.”

“You won’t save her by sitting here doing nothing.”

“Maybe”—her voice was wobbly—“there’s been a delay. Maybe I’ll get a call in a minute or two. I’ll take the money wherever they say, and they’ll let Sylvie go. I have to wait. There’s nothing else I can do.”

She was too distraught for me to point out that everything has a beginning. Someone knew Susan Gilbert could open a safe and take a box full of money. Someone unlocked the door to that large, masculine room. “How did the kidnapper know you could open that safe?”

“I work for Wilbur Fitch.” She spoke as if that simple answer was all I needed to know.

“Wilbur Fitch?”

She looked surprised. “Don’t you know Wilbur Fitch?” She blinked when I shook my head. “Everyone in Adelaide—” She broke off, swallowed. “I know you said something about Heaven, but you don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

I looked into her eyes, nodded decisively.

She lifted a hand to her face, fingers touching a cheek. “All right. If that’s how you want to play it. You’re from Heaven”—clearly she didn’t believe me, had no idea how I’d arrived, knew only that I didn’t seem bent on notifying the police about the box from the safe—“so here’s the truth. Funny, I have a feeling I’m supposed to tell you the truth. And maybe the phone will ring in a minute and I can take that money wherever it has to go and Sylvie will come home. Right now I might as well talk to you. My name is Susan Gilbert. I work for a really, really rich man. Wilbur Fitch owns a lot of Adelaide, what isn’t owned by the Chickasaws. He’s a self-made man. Never went to college. I don’t think he finished high school. But he hung around a computer shop, and that’s when computers were just getting started and they cost a lot. He worked in the back, and he must have spent all his time figuring out about whatever’s inside the console or whatever they call it.” She waved a hand as if the inner workings of computers didn’t matter to her. I felt the same way about light bulbs and television sets. They worked and I couldn’t care less why. “Anyway, the store owner let Wilbur haul off all the useless pieces, but Wilbur figured out he could salvage this and that, and he started selling the stuff all over the country. From that he made a contact in China, and the first thing you know, he’s buying up old shacks and warehouses all over town and filling them with discarded computers from everywhere and hiring kids with horn rims and baseball caps to sort through the stuff and package it up and off it goes. Long story short, he’s worth maybe fifty million dollars.”

“Why those bundles of fifties in his safe?”

She glanced at the table with the chess set and gloves and shoe box. When she looked back at me, her face was furrowed and her gaze uncertain. “How do you know what kind of bills are in the box?”

“I’ve been beside you ever since you received the call telling you to get the money. You didn’t use your lights when you backed out of the drive. You turned them on after you drove around the corner. You drove to this huge mansion, but you went in a back way, parked by a pav—”

She scarcely breathed. Her eyes were huge. “How did you see all of that?”

For an answer, I disappeared.

She pressed the back of one hand against her lips.

“I’m still here.” I made my voice cheery. “Think of me as your unseen companion.” Colors swirled and I was back beside her. This time I chose a pink turtleneck, gray slacks, and pink leather ankle boots. I like to lighten up the fall, though I’m fond of russets and oranges as well. I smoothed my hair and beamed at her. Possibly I looked a bit windblown, but that’s always the norm in Oklahoma.

She reached out, gripped my arm. “Okay. You’re here now. You weren’t a minute ago. Maybe you can come and go. Maybe I’m nuts. Maybe I’m making you up because I’m scared to pieces and that damn phone doesn’t ring and Sylvie’s gone. If I’m making you up, then sure, you know everything I did because I know what I did so my imaginary person knows what I know. But if you aren’t some kind of figment of my imagination and you can go anywhere, go find Sylvie.”