Innocent Hostage (6 page)
“Oh, I don’t think it will come to that,” Moffat rushed to tell her. “We just want to ask him some questions about…about Tania Kerr.”
“Can I help? I’ve known her for some years.”
Everyone stared at her.
“You have?” Breck asked.
“Mmm. We did our graduate diploma of preschool teaching together.”
And that had been one of the reasons Breck had thought it prudent to leave the parenting up to Tania. Not only was she a natural, she was qualified.
“But Tania never qualified.” Ingrid added.
Breck raised his eyebrows. “What? I didn’t know that.”
“I think you’ll find there’s a lot you don’t know about Tania.”
The men raised their eyebrows. Ouch. The fairy princess didn’t like Tania one little bit. Breck wondered what had happened between them.
“So,” Moffat frowned. “Would you have any idea where Tania might be?”
Ingrid looked down at Kit who was holding tight to her hand. “Sweetie, clean your teeth and wash your hands. Don’t forget to check that your backpack is ready.”
As soon as he was out of hearing, Ingrid looked Moffat in the eye. “Talking about his mother in front of him is about the most callous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve no idea at all where she is. But hasn’t it struck you that Tania has managed to get two men into trouble? Marty got so hyped up he did a stupid thing, and now you’re taking Breck in for questioning over her disappearance. Two birds, one stone. Clever.”
And so are you
, Breck thought.
You know Tania very well.
“I see,” Moffat said, obviously not seeing anything at all.
Miss Rowland took Kit’s hand. “Come on, Captain Kit. You and I have work to do, my man.” And delicate, sweet little Miss Rowland stomped out the door.
****
Breck discovered that Moffat’s animosity had its roots in Harley Max’s admonitions to tread carefully with one of “his men.”
“We got an anonymous tip-off,” Moffat’s 2IC, Detective Peters, explained to Breck when Moffat left the room to collect a video of the interior of Kerr’s house. They’d taken Breck to headquarters to question him. Moffat could just as easily have questioned him at home without all the drama, but Harley Max had ruffled Moffat’s feathers when he’d told him that the tip-off was a crock. Moffat’s own boss, Detective Inspector O’Halloran, had stirred the pot when he’d agreed. So now, not only was Moffat pissed off at his superiors, everyone was pissed off with Moffat.
Detective Peters grinned. “You could steal the Holy Grail now and everyone would turn a blind eye. He’ll have to watch his back in future.” Peters settled in for a gossip, leaning back against Moffat’s desk. “He tried to join the AOS, you know, a couple of years ago. Didn’t get to first base. Couldn’t get the requisite three recommendations.”
Breck snorted. “No surprises there. His temperament wouldn’t be a good fit.”
Peters sighed. “It’s not a good fit around here either. He’s applied for a transfer, which is fantastic.”
Breck grinned.
Moffat came back and Peters subsided.
“We got a call from a disposable cell phone,” he explained to Breck. “The caller said that if we wanted to find Tania Kerr, go and look at your place.”
“I’d already figured that out,” Breck said drily. “And the only one who persists with that idea is Marty Kerr. Better check on his phone privileges.”
“We did. He doesn’t have phone privileges. He made his initial call to a lawyer, and he hasn’t communicated with anyone since then. He’s had one visitor—his brother. But the guy only visited once, on the day Kerr was arrested.”
“How did the brother know he’d been arrested?” Breck asked.
“Christ, it was all over the TV. Big news.”
“I guess.” Breck didn’t know anything about Marty’s brother but he decided right then and there to do some checking of his own.
“So…” Moffat was determined to shake something out of this debacle, “when did you see Tania last?”
Breck shrugged. “Not sure. About three or four weeks ago, I saw her through the window when I dropped a check into their letterbox.”
“What was she doing?”
“Kissing Marty,” Breck said equably. “The lights were on. It was early evening.” He thought for a moment. “I spoke to her on the phone a couple of days before she disappeared.”
Moffat perked up. “Did you ring her or did she ring you?”
“She rang me with the same old.”
“Huh?”
“Same old ‘no visitation for Kit this month because he’s going with Marty to the zoo.’ She used every excuse under the sun to keep me from having Kit for a weekend. There wasn’t much I could do about it.” He struggled to subdue the familiar anger.
“Why couldn’t you? Your lawyer should have sorted that out.”
Moffat spoke with the carelessness of the misinformed. He’d obviously never suffered the trauma of struggling to deal with child access issues. Breck had no intention of airing his dirty linen for Moffat to pick over. He didn’t want anyone to know how scared he’d been to stir the pot, and most of all he didn’t want people to know how ill equipped he was to be a parent. He mumbled that Tania was a great mom apart from her habit of stiffing him.
“Didn’t you want the kid?” Moffat needled him.
Breck breathed in through his nose. “Yeah. I wanted him. What’s this got to do with Tania’s disappearance?”
“Just wondering if she pissed you off one time too many and you decided to take care of her once and for all.” Moffat took a careful step backwards.
Peters rolled his eyes.
Breck squeezed down on his hubris and forced himself not to rise to the bait. God,
how
he longed to leap up and deck Moffat. “Look, Moffat, there’s a couple of things you should know. Tania is given to disappearing. During our marriage she twice disappeared for a few days. The first time she took Kit with her. The second time she left him at home with me. Each time she came back behaving as if nothing had happened. She was a secretive woman but she was a good mom, so I let her call the shots. It seems she did the same thing to Marty. My son mentioned that a week before Marty had his little brainstorm, she left early in the morning, taking the other two kids with her. She came back the next day and even though Marty raved, she refused to say where she’d been. From what Kit told me, it generated a volcanic argument. Those two thrived on arguments.” Breck had no intention of explaining to Moffat about Tania’s little sideline, which was probably what had got her into trouble this time.
Moffat thought for a moment, which made a nice change. He should have thought before thumping on Breck’s door and instituting a search. And he should have thought before dragging Breck down to HQ.
“What exactly were you looking for at my apartment?” Breck asked. Would Moffat tell him?
“Signs to see if Tania had been there or was staying with you, that sort of thing,” Moffat answered, as if that should have been obvious.
Yeah. That sort of thing. Bloodstains. Signs of a struggle.
At least Moffat had one saving grace. He hadn’t tried to interrogate Kit at preschool without an adult in attendance. He’d seen Moffat eyeing Kit as if he was trying to work out how much Kit knew about his mother’s disappearance. Maybe Peters had restrained him. Breck grinned to himself. Anyway, the dragon fairy lady wouldn’t have let Moffat get within an inch of any of her children. Lord, that woman was amazing. She sure fired up when she was in a snit. Which reminded him. “It sounds as though Miss Rowland might know quite a lot about Tania. You could question her again,” he suggested evilly.
Moffat stiffened. “Not if I want to keep my balls,” he muttered.
Breck grinned again. He must buy Ms. Rowland a present.
Chapter Six
A week later, Kit and Breck had their timetable down to a fine art. But a teenage boy threw a spanner in the works. He got hold of his father’s new .223 and took it to show some of his mates how well he could shoot. When he realized the cops were on his tail, he holed up in bush land at the back of the local public school. A really dangerous situation.
Unit Four hadn’t yet had a new team leader appointed, so Breck was in command for the time being. He phoned Jace as he sped to the scene. She assured him that picking up Kit was no problem. That was one thing off his mind.
As soon as he arrived on the scene, he set up the points for his team. “The rifle’s got a Pecar varipower scope. Hardly a challenge at that range,” he muttered to Abe.
Abe grinned. “Be fair. When you were fourteen, you’d have thought you were the cat’s pajamas if you could get your hands on one of those.”
Breck snorted. When he was fourteen his father had spent hours inculcating the old ‘peace not war’ mantra into his son. So much so that Breck was unable to defend himself until he became a cop. He often wondered what his father would have done if someone had attacked his mother. Probably stand there and lecture the assailant till the guy was so bored he’d run away. Breck also believed in peace not war, but he’d seen the other side of the coin too often to know it didn’t always work.
Unit Four took it upon themselves to give the fourteen-year old some advice. He was too frightened to do more than bluster when Abe, Breck and Turkey had quietly come up behind him and relieved him of his weapon. By that stage he knew he’d bitten off more than he could chew and had been almost pleased to see them. As Abe said, “Not all the boy’s fault. His father has had a gun license for years. He should have spent some time telling the kid the gun license was a privilege, not a right.”
Jace reported to Breck that evening while Breck packed a sleepy Kit into the back seat of the SUV. “Ms. Rowland gave me a superior look that said, ‘The parenting didn’t last long, did it?’ So, I got stuck into her. I said you were carrying a heavy load, and doing it well. I told her not to judge people she knew nothing about.”
Breck cringed. He hadn’t told Jace about Ingrid’s helpfulness on the day Moffat had questioned him, and he wasn’t sure Jace was in the mood to listen anyway. He smiled and thanked her. What else could he do?
But his heart was heavy when he delivered Kit to preschool the following day. If Ingrid told him to take Kit elsewhere, he didn’t know what he’d do. Kit loved Ms. Rowland. It was “Ms. Rowland says” and “Ms. Rowland likes us to…” until Breck was absurdly jealous of her influence over his son. Anyway,
he
liked Ingrid. She was a rare woman who’d come to his aid even though she didn’t like him and thought he was a hopeless father. And she was a heck of a good teacher. She was nothing at all like his parents. Somehow he knew that if her kid couldn’t read until he was eight years old, she’d just encourage him and cuddle him and pretend she didn’t care. And once or twice Breck had been late collecting Kit at the end of the day and she’d never said a word.
He approached the gate of the preschool warily.
But Ingrid Rowland came out to greet them, taking Kit by the hand and smiling nervously at Breck. She licked her lips, and then jumped straight to the heart of the matter. “Mr. Marchant, please—”
“Breck,” he said.
“Breck,” she said, the same way she’d said it on the day of Kit’s escape from Marty.
Breck’s toes curled and he damned near forgot to breathe. He found himself grinning like a loon.
You don’t spend enough time around women, Marchant, if this up-tight little munchkin can tie you up in knots. Concentrate.
Meanwhile, Ingrid was warbling on. “Please apologize to Mrs. Carter for me. She caught me at a bad moment yesterday.”
She peered at him from under her lashes. Was she checking to see if he was suitably mollified?
“My stepfather was here looking over his investment.” Her dry tone reminded Breck of autumn leaves crushed underfoot. “He is insisting I raise my fees. We were in the middle of a battle royal when Mrs. Carter arrived to collect Kit. It wasn’t because she was late or because you didn’t come or anything like that.” She smiled down at Kit. “Say goodbye to Daddy and put all your gear away now, Kit,” and off skipped Kit, happy as a cricket with his new Spiderman backpack.
Ingrid Rowland turned back to Breck. “He’s a new person,” she said. “Living with you has worked wonders.”
“D’you think so?” Was she buttering him up? He’d thought recently that Kit seemed more settled and less inclined to be watchful. But he didn’t know enough about the parenting thing to be sure.
Ingrid nodded, strands of hair escaping the business-like scarf tying back her silver-blonde mane. “Very much so.”
“So…” Breck inquired, for some reason wanting to keep her talking, “
Are
you going to raise your fees?”
She shook her head. “Tom doesn’t understand the first thing about preschools. He sees them as a business, which of course they are,” she amended, “but government subsidies apply and he never takes those into consideration. Being a self-made man, he has a certain contempt for reliance on subsidies.” She sighed. “All very well if you’re a millionaire.”
From which Breck deduced that her stepfather was one wealthy hombre. Lucky sod. Was Ms. Rowland just dabbling in preschool work, waiting for Mr. Rich and Right to come along? He didn’t think so. She seemed sincere about ‘her’ children. Sometimes Breck stood and watched her when he dropped Kit off in the mornings, just for the pleasure of watching the sun glint on her blonde hair as she bent down to listen to a whispered confidence from a lisping four year old. Her tone of exasperation when she’d referred to her stepfather had not been lost on Breck. All was not well in the Rowland dovecote.
“Can I help? I’ve known her for some years.”
Everyone stared at her.
“You have?” Breck asked.
“Mmm. We did our graduate diploma of preschool teaching together.”
And that had been one of the reasons Breck had thought it prudent to leave the parenting up to Tania. Not only was she a natural, she was qualified.
“But Tania never qualified.” Ingrid added.
Breck raised his eyebrows. “What? I didn’t know that.”
“I think you’ll find there’s a lot you don’t know about Tania.”
The men raised their eyebrows. Ouch. The fairy princess didn’t like Tania one little bit. Breck wondered what had happened between them.
“So,” Moffat frowned. “Would you have any idea where Tania might be?”
Ingrid looked down at Kit who was holding tight to her hand. “Sweetie, clean your teeth and wash your hands. Don’t forget to check that your backpack is ready.”
As soon as he was out of hearing, Ingrid looked Moffat in the eye. “Talking about his mother in front of him is about the most callous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve no idea at all where she is. But hasn’t it struck you that Tania has managed to get two men into trouble? Marty got so hyped up he did a stupid thing, and now you’re taking Breck in for questioning over her disappearance. Two birds, one stone. Clever.”
And so are you
, Breck thought.
You know Tania very well.
“I see,” Moffat said, obviously not seeing anything at all.
Miss Rowland took Kit’s hand. “Come on, Captain Kit. You and I have work to do, my man.” And delicate, sweet little Miss Rowland stomped out the door.
****
Breck discovered that Moffat’s animosity had its roots in Harley Max’s admonitions to tread carefully with one of “his men.”
“We got an anonymous tip-off,” Moffat’s 2IC, Detective Peters, explained to Breck when Moffat left the room to collect a video of the interior of Kerr’s house. They’d taken Breck to headquarters to question him. Moffat could just as easily have questioned him at home without all the drama, but Harley Max had ruffled Moffat’s feathers when he’d told him that the tip-off was a crock. Moffat’s own boss, Detective Inspector O’Halloran, had stirred the pot when he’d agreed. So now, not only was Moffat pissed off at his superiors, everyone was pissed off with Moffat.
Detective Peters grinned. “You could steal the Holy Grail now and everyone would turn a blind eye. He’ll have to watch his back in future.” Peters settled in for a gossip, leaning back against Moffat’s desk. “He tried to join the AOS, you know, a couple of years ago. Didn’t get to first base. Couldn’t get the requisite three recommendations.”
Breck snorted. “No surprises there. His temperament wouldn’t be a good fit.”
Peters sighed. “It’s not a good fit around here either. He’s applied for a transfer, which is fantastic.”
Breck grinned.
Moffat came back and Peters subsided.
“We got a call from a disposable cell phone,” he explained to Breck. “The caller said that if we wanted to find Tania Kerr, go and look at your place.”
“I’d already figured that out,” Breck said drily. “And the only one who persists with that idea is Marty Kerr. Better check on his phone privileges.”
“We did. He doesn’t have phone privileges. He made his initial call to a lawyer, and he hasn’t communicated with anyone since then. He’s had one visitor—his brother. But the guy only visited once, on the day Kerr was arrested.”
“How did the brother know he’d been arrested?” Breck asked.
“Christ, it was all over the TV. Big news.”
“I guess.” Breck didn’t know anything about Marty’s brother but he decided right then and there to do some checking of his own.
“So…” Moffat was determined to shake something out of this debacle, “when did you see Tania last?”
Breck shrugged. “Not sure. About three or four weeks ago, I saw her through the window when I dropped a check into their letterbox.”
“What was she doing?”
“Kissing Marty,” Breck said equably. “The lights were on. It was early evening.” He thought for a moment. “I spoke to her on the phone a couple of days before she disappeared.”
Moffat perked up. “Did you ring her or did she ring you?”
“She rang me with the same old.”
“Huh?”
“Same old ‘no visitation for Kit this month because he’s going with Marty to the zoo.’ She used every excuse under the sun to keep me from having Kit for a weekend. There wasn’t much I could do about it.” He struggled to subdue the familiar anger.
“Why couldn’t you? Your lawyer should have sorted that out.”
Moffat spoke with the carelessness of the misinformed. He’d obviously never suffered the trauma of struggling to deal with child access issues. Breck had no intention of airing his dirty linen for Moffat to pick over. He didn’t want anyone to know how scared he’d been to stir the pot, and most of all he didn’t want people to know how ill equipped he was to be a parent. He mumbled that Tania was a great mom apart from her habit of stiffing him.
“Didn’t you want the kid?” Moffat needled him.
Breck breathed in through his nose. “Yeah. I wanted him. What’s this got to do with Tania’s disappearance?”
“Just wondering if she pissed you off one time too many and you decided to take care of her once and for all.” Moffat took a careful step backwards.
Peters rolled his eyes.
Breck squeezed down on his hubris and forced himself not to rise to the bait. God,
how
he longed to leap up and deck Moffat. “Look, Moffat, there’s a couple of things you should know. Tania is given to disappearing. During our marriage she twice disappeared for a few days. The first time she took Kit with her. The second time she left him at home with me. Each time she came back behaving as if nothing had happened. She was a secretive woman but she was a good mom, so I let her call the shots. It seems she did the same thing to Marty. My son mentioned that a week before Marty had his little brainstorm, she left early in the morning, taking the other two kids with her. She came back the next day and even though Marty raved, she refused to say where she’d been. From what Kit told me, it generated a volcanic argument. Those two thrived on arguments.” Breck had no intention of explaining to Moffat about Tania’s little sideline, which was probably what had got her into trouble this time.
Moffat thought for a moment, which made a nice change. He should have thought before thumping on Breck’s door and instituting a search. And he should have thought before dragging Breck down to HQ.
“What exactly were you looking for at my apartment?” Breck asked. Would Moffat tell him?
“Signs to see if Tania had been there or was staying with you, that sort of thing,” Moffat answered, as if that should have been obvious.
Yeah. That sort of thing. Bloodstains. Signs of a struggle.
At least Moffat had one saving grace. He hadn’t tried to interrogate Kit at preschool without an adult in attendance. He’d seen Moffat eyeing Kit as if he was trying to work out how much Kit knew about his mother’s disappearance. Maybe Peters had restrained him. Breck grinned to himself. Anyway, the dragon fairy lady wouldn’t have let Moffat get within an inch of any of her children. Lord, that woman was amazing. She sure fired up when she was in a snit. Which reminded him. “It sounds as though Miss Rowland might know quite a lot about Tania. You could question her again,” he suggested evilly.
Moffat stiffened. “Not if I want to keep my balls,” he muttered.
Breck grinned again. He must buy Ms. Rowland a present.
Chapter Six
A week later, Kit and Breck had their timetable down to a fine art. But a teenage boy threw a spanner in the works. He got hold of his father’s new .223 and took it to show some of his mates how well he could shoot. When he realized the cops were on his tail, he holed up in bush land at the back of the local public school. A really dangerous situation.
Unit Four hadn’t yet had a new team leader appointed, so Breck was in command for the time being. He phoned Jace as he sped to the scene. She assured him that picking up Kit was no problem. That was one thing off his mind.
As soon as he arrived on the scene, he set up the points for his team. “The rifle’s got a Pecar varipower scope. Hardly a challenge at that range,” he muttered to Abe.
Abe grinned. “Be fair. When you were fourteen, you’d have thought you were the cat’s pajamas if you could get your hands on one of those.”
Breck snorted. When he was fourteen his father had spent hours inculcating the old ‘peace not war’ mantra into his son. So much so that Breck was unable to defend himself until he became a cop. He often wondered what his father would have done if someone had attacked his mother. Probably stand there and lecture the assailant till the guy was so bored he’d run away. Breck also believed in peace not war, but he’d seen the other side of the coin too often to know it didn’t always work.
Unit Four took it upon themselves to give the fourteen-year old some advice. He was too frightened to do more than bluster when Abe, Breck and Turkey had quietly come up behind him and relieved him of his weapon. By that stage he knew he’d bitten off more than he could chew and had been almost pleased to see them. As Abe said, “Not all the boy’s fault. His father has had a gun license for years. He should have spent some time telling the kid the gun license was a privilege, not a right.”
Jace reported to Breck that evening while Breck packed a sleepy Kit into the back seat of the SUV. “Ms. Rowland gave me a superior look that said, ‘The parenting didn’t last long, did it?’ So, I got stuck into her. I said you were carrying a heavy load, and doing it well. I told her not to judge people she knew nothing about.”
Breck cringed. He hadn’t told Jace about Ingrid’s helpfulness on the day Moffat had questioned him, and he wasn’t sure Jace was in the mood to listen anyway. He smiled and thanked her. What else could he do?
But his heart was heavy when he delivered Kit to preschool the following day. If Ingrid told him to take Kit elsewhere, he didn’t know what he’d do. Kit loved Ms. Rowland. It was “Ms. Rowland says” and “Ms. Rowland likes us to…” until Breck was absurdly jealous of her influence over his son. Anyway,
he
liked Ingrid. She was a rare woman who’d come to his aid even though she didn’t like him and thought he was a hopeless father. And she was a heck of a good teacher. She was nothing at all like his parents. Somehow he knew that if her kid couldn’t read until he was eight years old, she’d just encourage him and cuddle him and pretend she didn’t care. And once or twice Breck had been late collecting Kit at the end of the day and she’d never said a word.
He approached the gate of the preschool warily.
But Ingrid Rowland came out to greet them, taking Kit by the hand and smiling nervously at Breck. She licked her lips, and then jumped straight to the heart of the matter. “Mr. Marchant, please—”
“Breck,” he said.
“Breck,” she said, the same way she’d said it on the day of Kit’s escape from Marty.
Breck’s toes curled and he damned near forgot to breathe. He found himself grinning like a loon.
You don’t spend enough time around women, Marchant, if this up-tight little munchkin can tie you up in knots. Concentrate.
Meanwhile, Ingrid was warbling on. “Please apologize to Mrs. Carter for me. She caught me at a bad moment yesterday.”
She peered at him from under her lashes. Was she checking to see if he was suitably mollified?
“My stepfather was here looking over his investment.” Her dry tone reminded Breck of autumn leaves crushed underfoot. “He is insisting I raise my fees. We were in the middle of a battle royal when Mrs. Carter arrived to collect Kit. It wasn’t because she was late or because you didn’t come or anything like that.” She smiled down at Kit. “Say goodbye to Daddy and put all your gear away now, Kit,” and off skipped Kit, happy as a cricket with his new Spiderman backpack.
Ingrid Rowland turned back to Breck. “He’s a new person,” she said. “Living with you has worked wonders.”
“D’you think so?” Was she buttering him up? He’d thought recently that Kit seemed more settled and less inclined to be watchful. But he didn’t know enough about the parenting thing to be sure.
Ingrid nodded, strands of hair escaping the business-like scarf tying back her silver-blonde mane. “Very much so.”
“So…” Breck inquired, for some reason wanting to keep her talking, “
Are
you going to raise your fees?”
She shook her head. “Tom doesn’t understand the first thing about preschools. He sees them as a business, which of course they are,” she amended, “but government subsidies apply and he never takes those into consideration. Being a self-made man, he has a certain contempt for reliance on subsidies.” She sighed. “All very well if you’re a millionaire.”
From which Breck deduced that her stepfather was one wealthy hombre. Lucky sod. Was Ms. Rowland just dabbling in preschool work, waiting for Mr. Rich and Right to come along? He didn’t think so. She seemed sincere about ‘her’ children. Sometimes Breck stood and watched her when he dropped Kit off in the mornings, just for the pleasure of watching the sun glint on her blonde hair as she bent down to listen to a whispered confidence from a lisping four year old. Her tone of exasperation when she’d referred to her stepfather had not been lost on Breck. All was not well in the Rowland dovecote.
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