Camouflage(3)

I looked at the photograph. Five-by-seven color snapshot of Virden and a slender brunette taken on a beach somewhere, him in swim trunks and her in a two-piece suit. She had nice features—prominent cheekbones, luminous brown eyes, a generous smiling mouth. The swimsuit accentuated her other physical assets, no doubt the primary ones that had attracted Virden.

“How old was she when this was taken?”

“Let’s see. Thirty-one, thirty-two … yeah, thirty-two.”

“Do you remember her birth date?”

“Birth date.” His face screwed up in thought, smoothed out again. “I’m not very good with dates.”

“The month, at least.”

“June? No, July. That’s right; I remember now because it was a few days after the Fourth. Sixth, seventh, eighth, one of those.”

I asked him a few more questions, and he managed not to annoy me with his answers. So then I told him how much the investigation would cost, resisting an impulse to juice the charges a little. He didn’t bat an eye. Hell, why should he? It was small change compared to what he expected to be privy to once he joined the LoPresti family.

He signed the standard agency contract, wrote out a check for the retainer. “So,” he said then, “how long do you think it’ll take to find her?”

Roxanne Lorraine McManus. Not a common name, and he’d provided a reasonable amount of personal information. “I can’t give you an exact time line, but it shouldn’t take too long. This is Friday … possibly Monday.”

“The quicker the better. For Judith’s sake.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Alive or dead, doesn’t matter which.”

No, not to him it didn’t. As far as David Virden was concerned, Roxanne Lorraine McManus had ceased to exist the day he’d divorced her eight years ago.

* * *

After Virden left, I took my notes and the photograph into Tamara’s office. Skip-traces and missing-person cases are her meat. I’ve learned some computer skills from her and from Kerry, and Jake Runyon is proficient enough when the need arises, but she’s the resident expert. If there’s any information on any subject or person living or deceased available in cyberspace, she can find it as quickly as any professional hacker working today.

She was busy, as always, but she didn’t seem to mind the interruption or being handed additional work. There were a number of different Tamaras living inside her slightly plump young body; there were Grumpy Tamara, Professional Tamara, Tough Tamara, Streetwise Tamara, Philosophical Tamara, Playful Tamara, Sex-Starved Tamara, and a handful of others. But what we’d had for the past ten days or so was a brand-new member of the team: Unflappable Tamara. Or maybe Seriously Adult Tamara. Not exactly serene or cheerful, but exhibiting signs of both, and neither bothered nor shaken by anyone or anything. I liked most of the other personas, but I was developing a particular fondness for this one. No surprises, no put-ons or detailed commentaries on her sex life or lack thereof, and no need for me to shift into one of my own multiple personalities—boss, mentor, father confessor, pacifier—in dealing with her.

The reason for the appearance of this welcome new Tamara had to do with her involvement, both personally and professionally, with a con man calling himself Lucas Zeller. The secretive professional part had been a mistake, one that had nearly cost her her life, and the experience seemed to have had a profound effect on her. She was smart as a whip, but in the six years I’d known and worked with her she’d been unpredictable, not completely grounded, and just a little immature. I had the feeling that none of those applied any longer, that now, at age twenty-seven, she’d learned the lessons that come with full maturity. Seriously Adult Tamara.

She glanced at the photo, read through my notes. “Weird,” she said. “Bet you never had a case like this before.”

“Not even close. At first I thought I’d caught another cutey.”

“Cutey?”

“The oddball cases I seem to get stuck with. Pretty straightforward, once Virden explained his motives.”

“Uh-huh. I didn’t know the Catholic Church could annul marriages that’d already ended in divorce.”

“It’s not common knowledge outside the faith.”

“Three exes and now the dude’s looking to marry number four. This one must have money.”

“Good guess.”

“Greed beats love every time for some guys.”

“He was up-front about it; I’ll give him that,” I said. “I wouldn’t’ve taken him on if it wasn’t a simple trace job.”

“Simple as long as his checks don’t bounce.”