Innocent Hostage (30 page)
“Sounds to me as if
you
should have a grudge against Tania, not the other way around,” Hull commented.
“You’d think so. But that’s not the way Tania saw it. She gave them a spiel about her childhood and apparently they sent her to a private clinic for a couple of months to recover.” Ingrid curled her lip. “She had them wrapped right around her little finger.”
“So several years later when I enrolled Kit at your preschool, I played right into her hands,” Breck said, groaning. “I’m so sorry, Ingrid. If only I’d known…”
She patted his hand. “You weren’t to know. For years I’ve hidden the fact that the registration of the preschool hangs in the balance and that I’m at the mercy of a bunch of inspectors.” She grimaced. “My mother and stepfather would have a fit if they knew that their investment was shaky.”
Harley Max shifted in his seat. “Leave it to me. I’ll sort things out with the Education Board. Once they hear about the real Tania, I guarantee there’ll be no more snap inspections.”
Ingrid smiled at him gratefully. He might have been late to the party, but he was coming through when she needed him most.
Breck asked what everyone was wondering. “So where do we go from here?”
“Tony and I will carry on questioning Angela,” Raker said. “She’s lawyered up, so it won’t be easy to sift through the facts. The sisters created such good smokescreens that we’ve got great gaps in our knowledge. Apparently they lived with the great-aunt until Tania went to university and Angela then became a full-time caregiver for the aunt. It seems the aunt was mainly confined to a wheelchair. Reading between the lines, I’d say that Angela was unemployable. Can’t see any employer lasting for more than five seconds through one of Angela’s rampages. She hasn’t mentioned a career or any job applications. Just said she went straight from school to looking after the aunt.”
Ingrid frowned. “That doesn’t seem right. She’s twenty-six by my reckoning. Looking back, I think she took Tania’s place often during our preschool training. There were days when Tania suddenly became irritable and resentful. Her personality didn’t change so much as become more of the same. Yet both Angela and Tania managed to cope on a day-to-day level with the work, so you can’t say that Angela is totally unskilled.”
“It might pay to see if Angela has spent some time in long term mental therapy,” Breck suggested. “That would explain the missing years and months.”
Hull nodded. “One thing we’ve learned is that the twins were orphaned at a very early age. After the parent’s car crash, the great-aunt applied for custody of them. They were only two. Lord, that poor woman must have had her hands full.”
“And got murdered for her pains,” Ingrid murmured.
Breck, who was sitting beside her, stretched out his hand and took hers. She saw her father glance at them and look swiftly away. She grinned to herself. Breck was becoming more relaxed around Harley Max, which was a good thing. She did not want any awkwardness between them in the years to come.
“It looks as though Tania was the brains of their little schemes and Angela supplied the brawn if it became necessary. Unfortunately Tania couldn’t control Angela towards the end,” Raker said. “She literally bludgeoned Tania to death, and would have done the same to you, Ingrid, if she’d found you. Just as well you crawled into the bushes.”
Ingrid shuddered. “I managed to escape from the house while she was chasing Tania, but then I didn’t know what to do. Kit and Mrs. Marchant were still inside, and I wanted to try to get them out. But I had no idea where Angela was.”
“She was outside casting around looking for you. Fortunately we found you first.”
“Thank Constable Chambers for me, would you, Detective Raker? He was wonderful. He knew just what to say and do.”
“I’ll tell him. He’s a promising individual.”
“Is that Andrew Chambers?” her father inquired.
“Yes. And you can keep your hands off him,” Raker retorted. “No need to encourage him to join one of the AOS squads. We need him where he is. Anyway, he’s never expressed an interest in joining your mob.”
Harley Max examined his fingernails as if nothing could be further from his mind.
“Your father poaches all the good ones,” Senior Sergeant Raker explained to Ingrid.
She grinned. If the team was at the stage of bickering and cracking jokes, then everyone was recovering. She knew they’d pussyfooted around some of the facts so as not to upset her, but ultimately everything would have to come out in the open so they could tidy up any collateral damage caused by the twin sisters.
“How is Billy Kerr?” Breck asked.
“Shattered.”
“Yeah. I guess that pretty much sums it up,” Breck agreed. “I feel sorry for him, even though he probably had a hand in the death of his brother. But he’s not the brightest bulb in the pack and he’s been coerced by those sisters into doing things he’d never have imagined all on his own.”
“That’s why they never tried the old switcheroo when Tania and you were married,” Hull commented. “You’d have picked up on it, but Billy and Marty were none the wiser. Angela only got in on the act once Tania married Marty Kerr.”
****
Two hours later Breck and Ingrid arrived back at his apartment, wrung out from sifting through the complicated mess that had been Tania and Angela Briscoe’s lives. Ingrid flung herself down on the sofa, heedless of bruises. “Thank goodness that’s over. When will you collect Kit from Jace’s place?”
“Soon. Abel started his new job today, and poor old Jace is juggling a baby, a two-year old, and Kit. Before I do that, you and I are due a little talk. No. A
big
talk.” He sat down and tucked his arm around her. “Miss Rowland—or should that be Miss Max?”
“You know that old saying? I don’t care what you call me, just call me.”
He grinned and rubbed his thumb in circles over the top of her hand. The tingles started up, same as ever. Probably on Level Four by now. God, she had it bad.
“Well now, Miss Rowland, I seem to remember you accepting my hand in marriage.”
“Yes, I remember something like that. Of course I was on medication at the time.”
“Hah! You don’t get out of it that easily.”
Laughing, she threaded her arms around his neck. “Got no desire to get out of it.”
His hands smoothed up and down her back as he moved in for one of those deep kisses that turned her brain to molasses and lit fires where no man had ever been able to light them before.
He sighed and held her tighter. “Ingrid, you are the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’ll always want you in my life. But—”
“But?” She kept her head down.
“I have a bunch of responsibilities that could make things difficult for us. There’s Kit, my mother, a new job…”
She put her hand across his mouth. “So what? Everyone has hurdles they have to get over. We’ll just have one or two more than most. We both have good jobs. Best of all, Kit is a fantastic kid. My dad is on our side too. When your mother recovers we can find something for her to do so she’s not totally reliant on us now that your father is, uh, not around.”
Breck snorted in amusement. “That’s a nice way of saying I have a jailbird for a father.” He shook his head. “Who would have thought it? Whoever could have anticipated that the great know-it-all, Jeremy Marchant, would get sucked into Tania Kerr’s schemes? What was he thinking? Hell, what was Tania thinking? I can’t see how my father would have been of much use to her.”
Ingrid shrugged. “She might have wanted to use him as another way to keep a hold over you.”
“Then she didn’t do her homework. My father and I rarely encounter each other. How could he possibly have any influence over me? We exist on different planets. I can see why she wanted to use Kit to screw money out of me, but that’s where it stopped. When we were married, okay, I lent her a cloak of respectability I guess. But after our divorce, what use was I to her?”
Ingrid looked down at her feet. “You’re a cop. And cops can be turned. You could have been very useful in some of her schemes.”
“Hah! If she’d tried to milk me for information, I’d have told her to piss off.”
“I know that, and you know that, but Tania didn’t think like we do. I bet she was sure she could inveigle you into supplying information.”
Breck’s forehead creased. “But what schemes did the sisters have afoot that needed information from the cops? They were small time blackmailers, not drug dealers or human traffickers.”
“Perhaps they planned on er…growing their business,” Ingrid suggested.
Breck grinned. “You sound like a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Anyway, to hell with them. Y’know, I lay in bed last night wondering how to juggle everything in my life without short-changing us. You and I deserve some time together.”
“We do. Any suggestions?”
“First things first.” He eased her to one side and poked his fingers into his shirt pocket.
“A ring!” she exclaimed with delight. “You have a ring for me, haven’t you?”
“So much for surprises.” He opened the little silver box. “If it’s not right, we’ll change it straight away. Be honest. Say what you think.”
Before looking at it, she ran a hand down the side of his face. “If you chose it, it will be just right.”
It was.
“Oh!” A simple baguette cut emerald. No diamonds. No muss. No fuss. “Breck, you are so damned
clever
.”
“Sometimes.”
“Always. You understand people. You get them, their motivations and stuff like that. You’re gonna make a hugely successful detective.” Clutching the ring-box in one hand, she wreathed her arms around his neck, tugging his face down. “And best of all, you get me.” She planted a lush kiss on his lips, and then as he started to respond, drew back with a giggle. “You should have seen the expression on your face when I used that magic word ‘clever.’ Nothing wrong with being clever, you know.”
He rubbed one hand over his thigh. “Uh, Ingrid. I spent a lot of years being told I was dim-witted, so it’s taking me a while to adjust.”
“Yup. And it’s time you got over it. Now how about sliding this gorgeous ring onto my finger?”
He looked at her for a minute, and then gave one of his slow, bone-melting grins. As he slid the lovely ring on to her finger, he murmured, “One day I will be as good for you as you are for me. I’m working on it.”
“Silly man.” She nestled her hand into his, and the emerald glowed and smiled between their twined fingers. “I wouldn’t be here now if you weren’t the best thing that’s happened to me.”
****
Breck thought back to the day several months ago when he’d responded to the AOS call-out only to discover that his own son was the subject of the emergency.
He stroked Ingrid’s hand and wondered how he’d managed to luck out. He’d found himself a fantastic woman, his son was on a level road to a secure childhood, and he’d engineered a reconciliation with the mother who’d been a stranger to him for more than a decade.
The icing on the cake was a career that held a promise of success and enjoyment.
Life didn’t get much better than this.
“What are you thinking about?” Ingrid was watching his face.
“Us.”
She snuggled closer. “Right answer.”
you
should have a grudge against Tania, not the other way around,” Hull commented.
“You’d think so. But that’s not the way Tania saw it. She gave them a spiel about her childhood and apparently they sent her to a private clinic for a couple of months to recover.” Ingrid curled her lip. “She had them wrapped right around her little finger.”
“So several years later when I enrolled Kit at your preschool, I played right into her hands,” Breck said, groaning. “I’m so sorry, Ingrid. If only I’d known…”
She patted his hand. “You weren’t to know. For years I’ve hidden the fact that the registration of the preschool hangs in the balance and that I’m at the mercy of a bunch of inspectors.” She grimaced. “My mother and stepfather would have a fit if they knew that their investment was shaky.”
Harley Max shifted in his seat. “Leave it to me. I’ll sort things out with the Education Board. Once they hear about the real Tania, I guarantee there’ll be no more snap inspections.”
Ingrid smiled at him gratefully. He might have been late to the party, but he was coming through when she needed him most.
Breck asked what everyone was wondering. “So where do we go from here?”
“Tony and I will carry on questioning Angela,” Raker said. “She’s lawyered up, so it won’t be easy to sift through the facts. The sisters created such good smokescreens that we’ve got great gaps in our knowledge. Apparently they lived with the great-aunt until Tania went to university and Angela then became a full-time caregiver for the aunt. It seems the aunt was mainly confined to a wheelchair. Reading between the lines, I’d say that Angela was unemployable. Can’t see any employer lasting for more than five seconds through one of Angela’s rampages. She hasn’t mentioned a career or any job applications. Just said she went straight from school to looking after the aunt.”
Ingrid frowned. “That doesn’t seem right. She’s twenty-six by my reckoning. Looking back, I think she took Tania’s place often during our preschool training. There were days when Tania suddenly became irritable and resentful. Her personality didn’t change so much as become more of the same. Yet both Angela and Tania managed to cope on a day-to-day level with the work, so you can’t say that Angela is totally unskilled.”
“It might pay to see if Angela has spent some time in long term mental therapy,” Breck suggested. “That would explain the missing years and months.”
Hull nodded. “One thing we’ve learned is that the twins were orphaned at a very early age. After the parent’s car crash, the great-aunt applied for custody of them. They were only two. Lord, that poor woman must have had her hands full.”
“And got murdered for her pains,” Ingrid murmured.
Breck, who was sitting beside her, stretched out his hand and took hers. She saw her father glance at them and look swiftly away. She grinned to herself. Breck was becoming more relaxed around Harley Max, which was a good thing. She did not want any awkwardness between them in the years to come.
“It looks as though Tania was the brains of their little schemes and Angela supplied the brawn if it became necessary. Unfortunately Tania couldn’t control Angela towards the end,” Raker said. “She literally bludgeoned Tania to death, and would have done the same to you, Ingrid, if she’d found you. Just as well you crawled into the bushes.”
Ingrid shuddered. “I managed to escape from the house while she was chasing Tania, but then I didn’t know what to do. Kit and Mrs. Marchant were still inside, and I wanted to try to get them out. But I had no idea where Angela was.”
“She was outside casting around looking for you. Fortunately we found you first.”
“Thank Constable Chambers for me, would you, Detective Raker? He was wonderful. He knew just what to say and do.”
“I’ll tell him. He’s a promising individual.”
“Is that Andrew Chambers?” her father inquired.
“Yes. And you can keep your hands off him,” Raker retorted. “No need to encourage him to join one of the AOS squads. We need him where he is. Anyway, he’s never expressed an interest in joining your mob.”
Harley Max examined his fingernails as if nothing could be further from his mind.
“Your father poaches all the good ones,” Senior Sergeant Raker explained to Ingrid.
She grinned. If the team was at the stage of bickering and cracking jokes, then everyone was recovering. She knew they’d pussyfooted around some of the facts so as not to upset her, but ultimately everything would have to come out in the open so they could tidy up any collateral damage caused by the twin sisters.
“How is Billy Kerr?” Breck asked.
“Shattered.”
“Yeah. I guess that pretty much sums it up,” Breck agreed. “I feel sorry for him, even though he probably had a hand in the death of his brother. But he’s not the brightest bulb in the pack and he’s been coerced by those sisters into doing things he’d never have imagined all on his own.”
“That’s why they never tried the old switcheroo when Tania and you were married,” Hull commented. “You’d have picked up on it, but Billy and Marty were none the wiser. Angela only got in on the act once Tania married Marty Kerr.”
****
Two hours later Breck and Ingrid arrived back at his apartment, wrung out from sifting through the complicated mess that had been Tania and Angela Briscoe’s lives. Ingrid flung herself down on the sofa, heedless of bruises. “Thank goodness that’s over. When will you collect Kit from Jace’s place?”
“Soon. Abel started his new job today, and poor old Jace is juggling a baby, a two-year old, and Kit. Before I do that, you and I are due a little talk. No. A
big
talk.” He sat down and tucked his arm around her. “Miss Rowland—or should that be Miss Max?”
“You know that old saying? I don’t care what you call me, just call me.”
He grinned and rubbed his thumb in circles over the top of her hand. The tingles started up, same as ever. Probably on Level Four by now. God, she had it bad.
“Well now, Miss Rowland, I seem to remember you accepting my hand in marriage.”
“Yes, I remember something like that. Of course I was on medication at the time.”
“Hah! You don’t get out of it that easily.”
Laughing, she threaded her arms around his neck. “Got no desire to get out of it.”
His hands smoothed up and down her back as he moved in for one of those deep kisses that turned her brain to molasses and lit fires where no man had ever been able to light them before.
He sighed and held her tighter. “Ingrid, you are the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’ll always want you in my life. But—”
“But?” She kept her head down.
“I have a bunch of responsibilities that could make things difficult for us. There’s Kit, my mother, a new job…”
She put her hand across his mouth. “So what? Everyone has hurdles they have to get over. We’ll just have one or two more than most. We both have good jobs. Best of all, Kit is a fantastic kid. My dad is on our side too. When your mother recovers we can find something for her to do so she’s not totally reliant on us now that your father is, uh, not around.”
Breck snorted in amusement. “That’s a nice way of saying I have a jailbird for a father.” He shook his head. “Who would have thought it? Whoever could have anticipated that the great know-it-all, Jeremy Marchant, would get sucked into Tania Kerr’s schemes? What was he thinking? Hell, what was Tania thinking? I can’t see how my father would have been of much use to her.”
Ingrid shrugged. “She might have wanted to use him as another way to keep a hold over you.”
“Then she didn’t do her homework. My father and I rarely encounter each other. How could he possibly have any influence over me? We exist on different planets. I can see why she wanted to use Kit to screw money out of me, but that’s where it stopped. When we were married, okay, I lent her a cloak of respectability I guess. But after our divorce, what use was I to her?”
Ingrid looked down at her feet. “You’re a cop. And cops can be turned. You could have been very useful in some of her schemes.”
“Hah! If she’d tried to milk me for information, I’d have told her to piss off.”
“I know that, and you know that, but Tania didn’t think like we do. I bet she was sure she could inveigle you into supplying information.”
Breck’s forehead creased. “But what schemes did the sisters have afoot that needed information from the cops? They were small time blackmailers, not drug dealers or human traffickers.”
“Perhaps they planned on er…growing their business,” Ingrid suggested.
Breck grinned. “You sound like a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Anyway, to hell with them. Y’know, I lay in bed last night wondering how to juggle everything in my life without short-changing us. You and I deserve some time together.”
“We do. Any suggestions?”
“First things first.” He eased her to one side and poked his fingers into his shirt pocket.
“A ring!” she exclaimed with delight. “You have a ring for me, haven’t you?”
“So much for surprises.” He opened the little silver box. “If it’s not right, we’ll change it straight away. Be honest. Say what you think.”
Before looking at it, she ran a hand down the side of his face. “If you chose it, it will be just right.”
It was.
“Oh!” A simple baguette cut emerald. No diamonds. No muss. No fuss. “Breck, you are so damned
clever
.”
“Sometimes.”
“Always. You understand people. You get them, their motivations and stuff like that. You’re gonna make a hugely successful detective.” Clutching the ring-box in one hand, she wreathed her arms around his neck, tugging his face down. “And best of all, you get me.” She planted a lush kiss on his lips, and then as he started to respond, drew back with a giggle. “You should have seen the expression on your face when I used that magic word ‘clever.’ Nothing wrong with being clever, you know.”
He rubbed one hand over his thigh. “Uh, Ingrid. I spent a lot of years being told I was dim-witted, so it’s taking me a while to adjust.”
“Yup. And it’s time you got over it. Now how about sliding this gorgeous ring onto my finger?”
He looked at her for a minute, and then gave one of his slow, bone-melting grins. As he slid the lovely ring on to her finger, he murmured, “One day I will be as good for you as you are for me. I’m working on it.”
“Silly man.” She nestled her hand into his, and the emerald glowed and smiled between their twined fingers. “I wouldn’t be here now if you weren’t the best thing that’s happened to me.”
****
Breck thought back to the day several months ago when he’d responded to the AOS call-out only to discover that his own son was the subject of the emergency.
He stroked Ingrid’s hand and wondered how he’d managed to luck out. He’d found himself a fantastic woman, his son was on a level road to a secure childhood, and he’d engineered a reconciliation with the mother who’d been a stranger to him for more than a decade.
The icing on the cake was a career that held a promise of success and enjoyment.
Life didn’t get much better than this.
“What are you thinking about?” Ingrid was watching his face.
“Us.”
She snuggled closer. “Right answer.”
A word about the author…
Our family was all born in New Zealand and now live in Queensland, the sunshine state of Australia. Nobody else in my family writes, but in the latter part of the nineteenth century, my antecedents published newspapers and were authors. Blood will out, as they say.
I’ve always written—poetry and short stories as a child; then later on in life as our kids grew older I began writing novels, probably to counteract the stultifying boredom of being a legal executive. Later still, when I discovered I loved recruitment, my twelve-hour working days were made even longer by a sudden drive to write and write and write, usually between 8 p.m. and midnight. I was doing two things I really loved, and the hours involved became irrelevant.
I’m glad TWRP has offered to publish
Innocent Hostage
because I think readers will enjoy reading a suspense novel set in New Zealand, a place of fragile beauty and hard-working people.
Find me at: www.vonniehughes.com
~*~
Other Vonnie Hughes titles
available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.:
LETHAL REFUGE
Thank you for purchasing
this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
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