Glow (Glimmer and Glow #2)(50)
“Alice . . . I don’t think Stout and Cunningham actually masterminded the kidnapping.”
“You think someone else planned it? That they were hired to do it?”
He met her stare. “Yes,” he said with quiet conviction.
She chafed her hands over the roughened skin of her arms.
“I’ve always thought that Cunningham and Stout had been fed information about Addie’s habits and activities. They chose the ideal circumstances to snatch her. Someone would have had to hole up in the woods for days on end in order to observe and understand the moment when Addie was most vulnerable and when their escape would be easiest.”
“But that’s what they did, right? Staked out the area in order to determine the prime moment?”
“That’s what they would have had to do, but there’s no evidence to show they actually did that. If they had, they would have left traces . . . evidence of their presence while they spied for days, maybe even weeks, in the woods and on the grounds. It had been a dry hot summer before the kidnapping. There was no rain or wind that would make evidence vanish. The FBI combed the woods and grounds on the estate following the kidnapping. They never found anything to indicate that Stout and Cunningham had been hiding out repeatedly to discover the best moment for the kidnapping, they just suspected they must have. Somehow. The agents did locate where they thought the escape vehicle had most likely been parked on a side road just past the bluff, but there was no indication of several trips, no multiple tire tracks. There was a single trip on the day they successfully took her. Plus, the riding lesson I planned for Addie that day wasn’t our typical routine. Someone must have told Stout and Cunningham when and where the ideal moment presented itself.”
“Who?”
He shook his head, his mouth clamped together. Alice sensed his profound frustration at his inability to answer her. “Any number of people could have informed them from the camp—employees and campers who were frequently at the stables, anyone that the Durands conversed with about Addie and her activities, like Alan’s and Lynn’s friends and confidants. Personally? I always had my suspicions about Kehoe, but never had anything solid to go on. I never said anything to the agents, because my suspicion seemed pretty groundless. I told Jim Sheridan about my concerns, but Jim has never really been on board with that. The problem is, I can’t figure out a motive. Whoever did it not only had the means to hire Cunningham and Stout, they must have anticipated the outcome of the whole thing. As Jim has always reminded me, Kehoe couldn’t benefit in any way from Addie being taken.”
“So why do you suspect him?”
“I’m not sure,” Dylan admitted uneasily. “It’s just a feeling I have about him.”
“Well, he certainly doesn’t like you much.” Dylan glanced over at her. “It’s kind of hard not to notice. He was running the camp back then, wasn’t he?”
He nodded. “I was a camper here for the first time during the second year the camp ran, and Kehoe was already the head guy. It was because of all the good work he did here that he was promoted to VP of human resources in that time period.”
“What did Kehoe think of you back then?”
“What did he think of me when I was twelve, thirteen . . . fourteen years old? Very little, I’d guess. I don’t remember many personal interactions with him at all. He was decent not only to me, but all the kids, as I recall it.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids and shook his head. “Maybe it’s just paranoia on my part when it comes to Kehoe, and the bad vibes I get from him are solely due to his dislike of me. Like Jim always tells me, Kehoe would have absolutely no motive for kidnapping Addie.”
“Who did benefit monetarily from Addie being taken out of the picture? Who was the Durand’s heir before Addie was born?” Alice asked.
“Lynn and Alan were both only children. Their parents were all dead. Alan’s mom and dad died in a small plane crash when he was twenty-four. Lynn’s mother died when she was twelve of breast cancer, and her father had a heart attack a few years before she had Addie. They had made a few personal bequeathals in their original will to friends and distant cousins, but they weren’t considerable amounts, given the worth of the entire estate. Certainly not enough money that someone would take such an extreme risk of going to jail, at least in my opinion. Every one of that handful of original beneficiaries was wealthy in their own right, and couldn’t have thought the bequeathals much of anything aside from a kind remembrance from Alan and Lynn. The FBI did do a cursory investigation of each beneficiary, but found nothing connecting them to the kidnapping. Before Addie was born, Alan and Lynn had planned for Durand to go public when the last of them died, and for the bulk of their personal wealth and the proceeds from the stock sale to be donated to charity.”
So . . . Addie had no close living relatives. Alice squashed down with effort the feeling of loneliness that descended upon her. She forced her brain to focus.
“What about the charities Alan and Lynn favored? Isn’t it possible that somebody was angling to get more money for their cause by taking Addie out of the picture?”
“The FBI considered that, too. But nothing ever panned out as a significant connection or motivation in that direction, either. Besides, although Alan’s plans were for Lynn and him to give the bulk of their estate to charity, he hadn’t promised the money to specific organizations at the time of Addie’s kidnapping. He didn’t specifically designate charitable beneficiaries until he rewrote his will after Addie’s kidnapping.”