U Is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone 21)

“But you were convinced her life was at stake.”

“Let’s put it this way: we weren’t in a position to argue the point. I wasn’t going to take the chance and neither was Patrick. He was convinced Shelly and Greg were behind the scheme, but that didn’t mean Rain was safe. We had no idea how far they’d take it. Patrick withdrew the money from four different banks. He managed to stall delivery while he made a quick trip to the plant to photocopy the bills. It was a time-consuming job and he had to do it while the office staff was gone for the night. While he was about it, he marked the back of each with a fluorescent marker he used when he exported inventory. The bills looked fine, but the kidnappers might have been suspicious.”

“Were the marks visible?”

“Under a black light, sure. Every kid seemed to have one in those days. If my guess is right, they’d have worried about putting that many marked bills in circulation, which can’t be as simple as it seems.”

“Couldn’t they have passed the bills in small lots? Maybe not locally, but somewhere else. Seems like Los Angeles would have been the natural choice.”

“Yes, but what fun would fifteen thousand dollars be if it was spread out like that? Patrick notified the local banks about the marked bills when Mary Claire was kidnapped. None of the money ever surfaced as far as we know.”

“Avis referred to Rain as the ‘practice child.’ ”

“Of course. She was their rehearsal for Mary Claire. If you know anything about her disappearance, you’ll recognize the . . . what do they call it . . . the MO. We didn’t believe they’d harm Rain, but we were frantic they’d refuse to return her. She was ours. We’d formally adopted her, but if they absconded with her, we’d have no way of getting her back. They had no permanent address, no phone, no employment.” She shrugged. “We did as we were told. We received another call, telling us where to drop the ransom.”

“Which was where?”

“Near the back entrance to the Ravine. One of them kept me on the phone while Patrick drove over with the gym bag and tossed it out on the side of the road. Then he came home. The other kidnapper must have picked up the money and counted it, making sure the entire amount was there. They told us to wait an hour and then we’d find her in the park off Little Pony Road. She was asleep on a picnic table, covered with a blanket, so they weren’t entirely heartless. I don’t know what would have happened if they’d realized Patrick marked the bills before we had her back in our keeping.”

“She’d been drugged?”

“Clearly. She wasn’t completely out, but she was groggy. She was fine once the sedative wore off, whatever it was. She’d been properly looked after. Fed well, at any rate, and she was clean. We had her examined and there was no evidence of sexual abuse. Thank god for that.”

“What did she tell you about what went on?”

“Nothing coherent, bits and pieces. She was four—not what you’d call a reliable witness. The only thing she was upset about was that she didn’t get to keep the kitten. Aside from that, she wasn’t traumatized. No nightmares and no psychological problems in the aftermath. We were thankful she came out of it unscathed. To Patrick’s way of thinking, this was further support of his conviction that Greg and Shelly had a hand in it.”

“If the two of them took her, wouldn’t Rain have said so?”

Deborah shook her head. “One of the kidnappers wore fake glasses with a big plastic nose attached and the other dressed like Santa Claus. We’d taken her to see Santa on two previous occasions so she was used to seeing him. He made her promise to be a good girl and she was.”

“Here’s what I don’t get. If they’d already picked up the fifteen thousand, why kidnap a second child?”

“I can tell you Patrick’s theory. When Mary Claire was taken the ransom demand was twenty-five thousand dollars. Add twenty-five to the fifteen we paid for Rain’s return and you’re looking at forty thousand dollars, which is what Greg and Shelly wanted in the first place. That’s hardly proof, but I can’t believe the total was a coincidence.”

“It does seem like an odd amount. Too bad they weren’t satisfied with what they got the first time around,” I said. I let a short silence fall while I thought about what she’d told me. “How soon after Rain’s abduction was Mary Claire kidnapped?”

“A week or so. By then we had the house on the market and we were looking at places in gated communities down south. The minute we heard about Mary Claire, we went to the police and told the detectives everything we knew. The FBI had been called into it by then. We gave them Greg and Shelly’s names and descriptions, plus a description of the school bus along with the license plate number. None of this ever made the papers. They did put out an APB, but there was never any sign of them.”