Bare Girl Read online

  Carlotta’s eyes widened in appreciation.

  “My, you very smart,” she said as Erin moved into the bathroom.

  Carlotta followed. Erin was beginning to find her presence distracting and annoying. She wondered if Carlotta hovered over her boss like this.

  In the bathroom everything looked in order too. The medicine cabinet didn’t hold any secrets like so many did—no sleeping pills or opiates masked as prescription painkillers.

  “You look for drugs?” Carlotta asked. “She don’t take any. The musicians and actresses, they all take things. Isabel is not like them.”

  “You work for a lot of entertainers?” Erin asked, looking in the cabinet under the sink and finding nothing unusual.

  “No, I wanted to be one,” Carlotta replied. “I go to Hollywood when I younger, and try to do modeling here in New York. I take so many classes I know almost as much as Isabel, but no one want me because I am fat and ugly.”

  “You’re not ugly,” Erin said.

  “Oh, you’re being too nice. I always have been fat and ugly and got much teasing as a child. Everyone laugh when I tell them it is my dream to sing and act. They say I could only be in a comedy to laugh at. It hurt but I don’t listen. I have a good singing voice, you know, but these days singers have to be sexy too. Isabel and other singers like her make it hard for plain people to get famous.”

  Erin wandered through the two guest bedrooms, feeling increasingly at a loss. She indicated a side door at the end of a short hallway.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s my bedroom,” Carlotta said. “She ask me to stay sometimes, especially after a big party when there’s so much cleaning up to do.”

  “You don’t live here full time?” Erin asked, trying to remember the data she had read about the maid in the police report. There had been a rundown on everyone close to Isabel.

  Carlotta shook her head, her greasy skin glistening in the light.

  “No, I live in the country, more than an hour away. Much more quiet and cheap. It’s a long drive, though, so sometimes I stay here.”

  “May I look inside your room?”

  Carlotta shrugged. “Why not?”

  She opened the door and Erin saw a small bedroom and private bath. There was little in there except for a diminutive TV and a small bookshelf. Most of the books were in Spanish, which Erin didn’t know, but they appeared to be books on feminism. There were also a few cheap novels in English. Beside the books was a thick stack of movie magazines.

  Erin’s phone buzzed. Captain Wilson had left a text message. It struck Erin as odd that he didn’t simply call.

  It read, “Come to my office immediately. Don’t call. Must meet face to face.”

  That sounded like a break in the case. Erin thanked Carlotta, went back down the elevator, hailed a cab, and arrived at the police station within twenty minutes.

  Chapter 13

  She found Sergio and the captain waiting for her. They frowned at her when she came in.

  “So what did you find out?” Erin asked.

  “More than you wanted us to,” Sergio snapped.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean,” Isabel’s business manager replied. “You tricked me into hiring you. That private investigator who recommended you wasn’t a private investigator at all.”

  Erin tried to reply but couldn’t think of anything to say. Sergio went on as Captain Wilson stood there glaring at her, arms crossed across his chest.

  “I thought it odd that you seemed confused when I mentioned Edward Waters recommended you. I’m in the entertainment industry, darling, I know how to read faces. And when I mentioned his name it was obvious that you didn’t know who I was talking about. So I did some digging with the help of the captain here. Turns out Waters isn’t a private investigator at all. So what’s going on? Did you set him up to recommend you so you could get the job? But if so, why didn’t you recognize his name? Did he screw up and not give you the alias he was planning to use?”

  Captain Wilson cut in.

  “Impersonating a private investigator is a crime, as I’m sure you know, Mrs. Bond. If you put him up to it then you’re liable too.”

  Erin’s mind raced. She decided a small lie would be better than a big one, and way better than the truth. “Look, I don’t know who that guy is. I looked him up too and couldn’t find any evidence that he’s a private investigator. I figured he was some nut who wanted to be involved in the case. There’s certainly enough of them buzzing around us already. He’s English, and I’m a bit of a celebrity over there because of my childhood kidnapping, so maybe he decided I should be on the biggest kidnapping case of the decade. But I didn’t have time to follow that line of inquiry, and what does it matter? I’ve been helping with the case and my reputation precedes me. I get results. You need all the help you can get on this one. You said so yourself, Captain Wilson.”

  The police officer shook his head. “I don’t need help when it comes from an unreliable source. I don’t know what’s going on between you and this Waters fellow, assuming that’s his real name, and I don’t have time to find out right now. But you can rest assured that I will check up on it later, and if there’s any sign of professional impropriety, I will refer you to the United States Association of Professional Investigators.”

  Erin gulped. That could get her license pulled.

  Sergio gave her a sour look and said, “In short, Mrs. Bond, you’re fired. I’ve changed your open-ended ticket so that you’re returning to Providence this evening. You’ll need to check out of your hotel within the hour. And yes, I’ll be recouping my expenses for this little junket of yours when this case is over.”

  “Now get out,” Captain Wilson ordered. “We have a kidnapping to solve, and we don’t need you wasting our time, Mrs. Bond.”

  Erin turned and stalked out of the office.

  “Ms. Bond,” she grumbled.

  She stormed out of the police station, feeling lost and angry. She’d always figured her past would come back to bite her someday, and now it had lost her the biggest case of her career.

  But of course she couldn’t simply disregard the case any more than she could cut off her own hand. Eddie had told her that one of the other children was the kidnapper. She had to stay on the case, with or without the police’s permission.

  She paused at the foot of the steps as policemen and citizens passed to and fro. What could she do? She still had all the documents the police had given her, so she had all the information they did, although she wouldn’t get any of the new information they discovered.

  First she had to go back to her hotel and check out, wasting time that should be used to find Isabel.

  Her phone rang. Eddie.

  She picked up. “I just got kicked off the case because of you.”

  “Terribly sorry, Erin. I suppose you will be soldiering on?” His voice sounded arrogant but not mocking.

  “Of course.”

  “Well, let’s meet then.”

  “Where and when? I have a lot of questions for you.”

  “And I have some answers for you. I’m right across the street.”

  Erin scanned the opposite sidewalk and saw him standing almost directly opposite her. He smiled and gave a little wave like he was greeting an old friend. Glowering at him, she crossed the street.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I knew you’d come here sometime today and I do enjoy watching the police bustling about. Such busy little beavers, as you Americans say. You are half American now, I suppose?”

  “They checked up on you and found you weren’t a private investigator. That got them suspicious and they shut me out.”

  “Terribly sorry,” he said, giving a mock bow. “What next?”

  “I need to check out of my hotel, check into a cheaper one, and get to work.”

  “I am at your disposal from now on. We’ll be like Holmes and Watson, eh?”

 
; Erin went to her hotel and gathered her things, making Eddie stay down in the lobby. She didn’t trust him enough to be alone with him, but on the other hand she didn’t want to arrange to meet him later. She feared he might not show up.

  She checked into the nearest hotel she could afford and then turned to Eddie, who had stayed silent the entire time.

  “Now what? Tell me what’s going on.”

  Eddie shrugged, smiling. He had maintained his arrogant and confident demeanor for some time now.

  “I wish I could tell you which child did this, but I confess that I don’t know. Let’s sift through the evidence and I’ll see what I can do to help.”

  They walked to a diner.

  “So tell me how you know this is one of the children.”

  “Father told me that shortly after your thirty-first birthday, if all went well, you would be involved in a major case,” he said as they found a quiet booth near the back. “I had been instructed to follow your progress and come over to help you. I suppose the other child was also told to monitor you, move somewhere reasonably close, and then commit a major crime to get you involved. It was my role to make sure you got the case.”

  “How could he be sure it would all work out? A thousand things could have gone wrong. The abductor could have been caught, or I could have been too busy to take the case, or you might not have convinced them.”

  “Father so believed in himself that he was convinced that all would turn out as planned. He believed he was superhuman, and why wouldn’t he? He certainly was a god in his own little world, wasn’t he?”

  “He was a twisted freak,” Erin grumbled.

  Eddie turned to face her. His arrogant façade faltered for a moment. “So was I. Now I’m trying to be something different. I do want to help you, Erin. You see, Father set this up as a struggle between good and evil, with you as the good.”

  “And what’s your role, the evil?”

  Eddie’s façade collapsed even more. He mouthed words that didn’t come out, struggled to control himself, and at last managed to answer.

  “I was given a choice, take the side of good or take the side of evil. The fact that I’m here with you shows which choice I made.”

  Does it? Erin thought. We’ll have to see about that.

  “I was robbed of my childhood,” Eddie whispered, not meeting her eye. “Robbed of much of my inheritance too. I could have lived comfortably off of Father’s money all my life. Might have lived in a lovely seaside home on the Mediterranean and soaked up sunlight for the rest of my life to compensate for the darkness of my childhood. Instead I have a little two-up, two-down in Welwyn Garden City.”

  “What happened to the money?”

  Eddie shook his head bitterly. “Your alter ego got it. Put in a trust fund until the brat grew up. I never knew the account number otherwise I’d have tracked the little bastard down and gone to jail for murder.”

  Erin wondered if he would be capable of it. Certainly not when he was in this sullen mood.

  Eddie gave a helpless shrug. “Anyway, things did turn out the way Father wanted. They always have.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “We look through whatever information you have and see if we can find a pattern. The culprit will have lived in England around twenty-five to thirty years ago and be roughly in their thirties. Father only took quite young children, aged five to seven or thereabouts, and only operated for about ten years.”

  “Why did he stop?”

  “He got cancer. Thought he was dying and didn’t feel he could keep up with the project while his health declined. It turned out he was tougher than all that and survived until four years ago. He regretted losing all that time, although to be fair he was too sick for much of that time to have kept up the work.”

  Erin’s brow furrowed. “Did you live with him all that time?”

  Eddie looked at the table and nodded sadly. “I was born into a prison sentence and only got out four years ago when the cancer finally took him. I’m still in his prison, though, and will be for life. That’s why I wasn’t afraid to contact you. There was the risk that you might call the police despite my threats, but it wouldn’t make much of a difference to me if you did.”

  Erin almost felt sorry for him, but she reminded herself of what he had done, and what he continued to do, and hardened her heart.

  “So let’s get down to business,” she said. “So this man or woman is in their thirties, and once lived in England. Why do you say that and not simply say ‘English?’”

  Eddie gave her a devious smile. “You always were the brightest of the lot, Erin. You picked up on my wording. Yes, I am being quite specific, aren’t I? As you have already guessed, not all the children were English. He took some immigrant and tourist children too. So simply looking for UK citizens will not help you. Erm, I mean us.”

  Erin gave him a cold stare. Just then they were interrupted by the waitress. They both ordered and once they were alone again, Erin picked up the conversation.

  “I have a police database on all the Isabel Enterprises employees, plus people close to her like her maid, the doorman, and building workers both at her flat and at Trident Tower. Let’s get to work.”

  When she pulled out her laptop, Eddie got up from the bench opposite her and slid in beside her so he could look at the screen. Erin tensed at the implied intimacy of that and edged away from him a little.

  Eddie studied her, confident again and with that annoying smug smile of his. Erin gave him a look of utter loathing.

  “Think back,” he said. “Do you recall me doing anything to you? Father made it quite clear that the little girls and boys were off limits as far as such things were concerned, and I wasn’t interested anyway. I have a fair number of twists and turns when it comes to my proclivities, but children aren’t among them.”

  Erin relaxed a little. She still hated being so close to this man, but they had a job to do.

  Assuming he’d cooperate enough to let her do it.

  They scrolled through the database, which had been assembled in a hurry and was not very search-friendly. Trident Tower alone had a couple of hundred employees, Isabel’s apartment building a dozen or so, and Isabel Enterprises added almost fifty more, so the work proved slow and laborious.

  They only found two English citizens, both at Trident Tower. One, the assistant manager for hospitality, was in her fifties and thus too old. The other, a pastry chef, was in his early twenties and thus too young.

  “Damn,” Erin muttered. “No luck. Besides, we don’t even know if the culprit is in this list. It could still be someone on the outside.”

  “I can’t say for sure,” Eddie replied, “because I honestly don’t know, but my feeling is that they’re in here. He or she was instructed to get close. I’d suspect it isn’t a Trident Tower employee at all.”

  Erin nodded. “The press conference was a last-minute thing, so the kidnapper would not have thought to infiltrate the business. Also, Isabel smoked. The general public didn’t know that until it was reported in the stories of her kidnapping. So it has to be someone close. Trident Tower security would have sent Isabel and her security team a building schematic. That’s standard procedure with big name celebrities like her.”

  “So that’s how she knew where to go have her smoke, eh?” Eddie said.

  “Exactly, and it’s how someone close to Isabel got to see the schematic and guess where she would go after her speech. Let’s eliminate Trident Tower from the search altogether.”

  “That will certainly make the search quicker.”

  Eddie smiled at her. “We do work together well, don’t we?”

  “Shut up,” Erin snapped, cutting and pasting the Trident Tower information into a separate file. “Now then, there’s no mention of whether any of these people lived in England, so how do we find out? I’m thinking anyone who has been through what we have might have a criminal record, like the first boy your father took. The police already checked anyone
with any sort of criminal past and eliminated them, though.”

  Eddie rubbed his chin, staring at the computer screen. “Another dead end. We seem to be running into a lot of them.”

  Erin turned and glared at him. “Perhaps if you were more forthcoming with your information we could get further.”

  Eddie raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “I have no more information, only insight.”

  “Give me your insight, then.”

  “If it’s not an Englishman then it must be one of the immigrant or tourist children.”

  “Did your father kidnap any American children?” she asked. Out of the corner of her eye she caught an openmouthed stare from the next table. Eddie saw it too and answered in a quiet tone.

  “No.”

  “Where were they from?”

  Eddie shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “I can’t say.”

  “Meaning you won’t say,” Erin grumbled.

  Eddie let out a deep sigh. “No, I mean I can’t. I’m forbidden. He won’t let me.”

  “He’s dead, Eddie.”

  Eddie shook his head. “Not to me he isn’t. Not to you either.”

  Erin shivered a little. Trying to keep her voice calm and level, she said, “You can defy him now. He doesn’t control you anymore.”

  Just then the waitress came with their orders. Eddie looked up at her.

  “Do you have a drinks menu?”

  The older woman gave him a surly look. “You already ordered coffee.”

  “No, you silly American, drinks.”

  “This is a diner, not a bar.”

  Cursing under his breath, Eddie got up. “Back in a tick.”

  He hurried out the door before Erin could stop him. She watched through the front window as he went to a convenience store across the street and after a couple of minutes emerged with something in a brown paper bag.

  He slid back into the booth with her and gave her a grin. “A bottle a day keeps the father away.”

  Eddie unscrewed a bottle of cheap vodka and poured a disgusting amount into his coffee, spilling some over the brim in his haste. Erin sensed alcohol had a lot to do with his constantly unhinged mental state.