The Red Queen Dies Read online

  McCabe, both of her feet on the floor, took another sip of her coffee, which was excellent, and set the cup on the table at her elbow.

  “We need to ask about a donation that you might have made to a nonprofit organization back in 2010,” she said. “The organization was called Girls in Science. It was a women’s group that sponsored a two-week summer science camp for girls twelve to fourteen.”

  Thornton raised an eyebrow. “I take it … take it … this organization has some relevance to your murder investigation.”

  “We’ve learned that Sharon Giovanni and Bethany Clark both attended this science camp.”

  “But I’m … uh, pretty sure Vivian wouldn’t have,” Thornton said.

  “No,” McCabe said. “But it did occur to us that your foundation might have made a donation to the group. It would have been a worthy cause and one that you might have supported because of your interest in innovations in transportation.”

  Thornton nodded. “‘Innovations in transportation.’ I like that phrase. Not your usual cop phrase.”

  “Cops aren’t generally illiterate, Mr. Thornton.”

  “No, of course not … of course, not. I meant no offense, Detective McCabe. What I was getting at in my clumsy way is that most cops … in my admittedly limited experience … prefer plain, blunt language rather than multisyllable phrases.”

  “Depends on who we’re talking to,” Baxter said.

  “Yes,” Thornton said, smiling back at him. “And, of course, given Detective McCabe’s wordsmith parents—”

  “Who are not the subject of this conversation, Mr. Thornton,” McCabe said. “Do you recall making a donation to Girls in Science? Or being contacted by anyone from the group?”

  Thornton turned to Ashby, who already had his ORB in his hand. “Anything?”

  “Searching,” Ashby said.

  “While Bruce is doing that, what would it mean if I had donated to this group? With regard to your investigation, that is?”

  McCabe shook her head. “No idea, Mr. Thornton. To be honest, we’re fishing right now. We’re trying to reach the only officer of the organization who is still available, but she’s out of the country with her husband. In the meantime, we’re trying to find out whatever we can about the group and the camp. One of the questions we need to answer is who paid for the camp.”

  “I think I’ve got it,” Ashby said. “A check for twenty-five thousand dollars. March seventeenth, 2010.”

  McCabe tried to keep her excitement from showing. They were finally getting a break or two. “Do you have anything else?” she asked Ashby.

  “No … at least nothing…” He sent a glance in Thornton’s direction.

  Thornton said, “Go ahead with whatever it is. We have no secrets from our friends here.”

  “Ted, the donation wasn’t through the foundation. You wrote a personal check.”

  Thornton frowned. “I did? Doesn’t ring a bell. Do you remember anything about it?”

  Ashby shook his head. “I was a little distracted during that time.” He glanced at McCabe and Baxter. “My father’d had a stroke. I was going back and forth to Wichita to help my mother. He died later that spring.”

  Thornton cleared his throat. “Sorry, Bruce, old man. I should have remembered.” He frowned. “Did I make the check out to this group?”

  “No, to someone named Rachel Kincaid. But the memo says “For science camp.”

  Thornton was still looking puzzled. “Is that it?”

  “You have a notation. Apparently, a memory jogger. Shall I read it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “‘The Naked Jungle.’”

  “Ah, now it comes back to me.” Thornton’s smile widened. “Charming woman. We met at an event, and I asked her what she did. She said she was a biologist and studied army ants. And that reminded me of a movie I’d loved when I was a kid.”

  “Charlton Heston has a plantation in South America,” McCabe said. “Army ants are on the march toward the plantation—”

  “Consuming everything in their path,” Thornton said. “Plants, animals, men. But our hero, Charlton Heston, stands … stands his ground with Eleanor Parker, his lovely bride by proxy. Dr. Kincaid and I had a … a fascinating chat about the accuracy of the movie and her own research on ants.”

  “And then you wrote her a check for twenty-five thousand dollars?” McCabe said.

  Thornton flashed his lopsided smile—his “Oh shucks” smile. “She mentioned that the funding had fallen through for the camp that she and some like-minded women had planned to launch that summer. There was no time for her to go through the usual process of applying to my foundation.” He shrugged. “Actually, I stay out of that anyway. There’s a committee that makes those decisions. But this camp sounded like a good cause.” He glanced at Ashby. “Bruce, we must have the paperwork on it somewhere. She said she’d send it along.”

  Ashby made a note. “I’ll look for it tomorrow. You probably gave it to the accountants.”

  “Who undoubtedly made sure that I received the appropriate tax deduction. So we should be able to … to track that down for you, Detective McCabe.”

  “Thank you, we’d appreciate that.”

  “Is Dr. Kincaid the person you’re trying to reach?”

  “No,” McCabe said, watching his expression. “She’s dead.”

  But it was Lisa Nichols who reacted to the news. “Dead? Dead how?”

  McCabe gave that two beats. “Of natural causes,” she said. “Or, at least, while under a doctor’s care. Did you ever meet Dr. Kincaid, Ms. Nichols?”

  “No, I don’t know anything about her.” She stretched her upper body, like a cat rippling its back. “It was just when you mentioned she was dead … for a moment I was afraid you were going to say she had been murdered, too.”

  Thornton said, “How long ago did she die, if we may ask?”

  McCabe said. “Five years ago. Did you see her again after that evening?”

  “No, that was the only time we ever encountered each other.”

  “So you had no involvement in the summer science camp that you paid for?” Baxter said.

  “None at all. I wrote the check and then forgot about it,” Thornton said. “My forgetting … may have been helped along a bit by the excellent champagne that I seem to recall was being poured that evening.”

  McCabe said, “This event … what kind of event?”

  “A fund-raiser for African famine relief. There was a speaker. A missionary who had worked in the Congo and other countries. I was there because I was one of the honorary chairs. And Dr. Kincaid was there because she had spent time in the village where the missionary had her headquarters.”

  “So the missionary was a friend of hers?”

  Thornton smiled. “As much of a friend as a woman inclined toward sainthood and a woman inclined toward sin…” He shot a glance in Lisa Nichols’s direction.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said.

  “It was only a flirtatious exchange over our champagne glasses, my love. I had a plane to catch.”

  “But you wrote her the check before you said good-bye,” Lisa said, a smile curling her own lips.

  “It sounded like a worthy cause.” He turned his attention back to McCabe and Baxter. “But I will admit … being unattached at the time … that I did have a vague notion of seeing the lady again when I returned from wherever it was I was going.”

  “But that didn’t happen?” Baxter asked.

  “No. By the time I got back, she had slipped my mind. I hadn’t thought of her again until today.”

  Bruce Ashby, who had been quietly sipping his coffee, glanced at his watch. “Ted, if we’re going to make that stop on the way to the airport…”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with, Detective McCabe? As Bruce may have told you, we’re going down to the City this afternoon.”

  “Yes, he did mention that.” McCabe glanced toward the door. “How is Mrs. St. John doing?”

  �
��As well as can be expected. She slept in this morning, and she and Ron are having breakfast up in their suite.”

  “Then we won’t disturb them.” McCabe stood up. “Please give her our best.”

  Thornton stood, as well. “I’ll do that. And please do keep us posted.”

  “I’ll show you out,” Ashby said.

  McCabe nodded at Lisa Nichols. “Sorry to interrupt your morning.”

  Nichols shook her head. “No apology needed, Detective. I just hope you’re able to catch the man who killed Vivian and those two young women.”

  She sounded sincere.

  Back in the car, McCabe checked her ORB. “Hey, they’ve found her.”

  “Who?” Baxter said.

  “Jean Lockhart, the vice president of Girls in Science. She sent us a tag from Brazil with her contact info. She’s standing by for our call.”

  “Great. Maybe she can tell us who the girls were who were involved in the teasing incident.”

  “It was almost ten years ago. I hope she still remembers. If we’re lucky, it’s in a file somewhere.”

  * * *

  They called Jean Lockhart when they got back to the station.

  “No,” she said. She was sitting at a table, with a swimming pool in the background. A glass containing a beverage that looked like iced tea was in front of her. “No file. The last thing we wanted was a paper trail.”

  “Why was that? If there had been an incident—”

  “The girl’s crazy mother was threatening to sue us. We were scared to death she would find out that Ted Thornton was funding us and go after him. All we wanted to do was get through the next few days and then fold our tent and slip away.”

  “When the girl left the camp … we heard that she was picked up by a boy—”

  “Who may have had some ideas. But when he found out she was only thirteen, he dropped her off on a street corner. She called her older sister, and the older sister and her boyfriend went to pick her up.”

  “So the mother’s concern was about what might have happened,” McCabe said.

  “And we agreed with her that what happened shouldn’t have happened. We fired the teaching assistant who let it happen. But the woman was still ranting and raving.”

  “She was probably still scared,” Baxter said. “What happened with the guy in the car could have turned out really bad.”

  “We knew that. And it scared us, too. But none of us could afford to be sued. We had been trying to do a good thing with the camp.”

  “A science camp for girls was a good idea,” McCabe said. “Let’s talk for a moment about the two girls the teaching assistant reprimanded that day before the girl who was being teased ran away. We know that one of the girls called into the hall by the teaching assistant was named Sharon Giovanni. The other girl we are interested in was named Bethany Clark.”

  “Bethany? What did you say the last name was?”

  “Clark. Bethany Clark.”

  “That sounds right. She was the one who was accused by the other one … Sharon, did you say?”

  “Sharon Giovanni. What was it that Sharon said?”

  “Sharon accused Bethany of teasing—harassing would have been a better word—the girl who ran away. She said Bethany had drawn a picture.”

  “That’s what we had heard,” McCabe said. “What did Bethany say about that?”

  “She said she was only playing. That she hadn’t meant to upset the girl … whatever her name was.”

  “Did Bethany’s parents come in?”

  “Her mother came in. And, of course, she took Bethany’s side.”

  “What about Sharon’s mother?”

  “We didn’t call her in. Bethany seemed to be the problem. That is, she seemed to be until the next day, when the other girl’s crazy mother came in.”

  “Why do you keep calling the mother ‘crazy’?” Baxter asked.

  “Because there was something wrong with the woman. She was either half-drunk or half-high on something. And the way she came in ranting … it was over the top, even given what had happened.”

  “Ms. Lockhart,” McCabe said, “would you try one more time to remember the woman’s name or her daughter’s name?”

  “The daughter had one of those made-up names.”

  “A made-up name?”

  “You know how some parents want to use both the father’s and the mother’s name, and they put the two together. A name like that.”

  “Okay. What about the mother’s name?”

  “No idea. The last name must not have been distinctive, or I’d at least remember that much.”

  “That helps. So we’re looking for a common surname and an unusual first name for the girl,” McCabe said. “Would you happen to remember what school she attended?”

  “I’m sure I never knew that. I got called in with the rest of our board after the mess broke out. We had set the camp up, but then we left it to what we thought were the experts. The director had excellent references. She was the one who took charge of hiring the teachers and other staff.”

  “So it was a very hands-off board?” McCabe said.

  “We wanted to do something that we thought was important. But it wasn’t as if we didn’t all have day jobs.”

  “What about the teaching assistant? Anything you can tell us about her?”

  “The director called her in while we were there. She was really distressed and apologetic about what had happened. She said she’d thought the telephone call she stepped out of the room to make was urgent.”

  “Did she tell the board who she called?”

  “Her boyfriend. He send her a text message saying he had an emergency. She went out into the hall to call him back. His emergency turned out to be his lucky pen.”

  “His lucky pen?” Baxter said.

  “He had a job interview that afternoon and he was calling her because he couldn’t find his pen and he thought she had it.” Lockhart shook her head. “I remember that because when I heard it, I thought of what I would have done to him if he had been my boyfriend and caused me all that trouble over a stupid pen.”

  “I guess he didn’t know she was going to get into trouble,” Baxter said.

  “He should have had better sense than to send her a message saying it was an emergency when she was working.”

  McCabe said, “The TA’s name. We believe her first name was Deirdre. Would you happen to remember her last name?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Nothing unusual or—”

  “I don’t think I really heard it.”

  “Does the first name sound right?”

  “Probably … all I really remember about her was that she was a college kid and she looked miserable. I felt bad for her. But she had gotten us into the mess we were in.”

  McCabe said, “Would you have any idea how we might go about finding the camp director?”

  “I don’t really remember how we found her in the first place. I think someone recommended her to Rachel.”

  “That would be Rachel Kincaid, the president of your board of directors?”

  “Yes.” Lockhart grimaced. “If you want the truth, it was a bad experience, and I tried to forget about it. We ended up arguing among ourselves over what we should have done differently. We had been good friends before our little venture into the world of nonprofits.”

  “Have you stayed in touch with any of the other board members?”

  Lockhart shook her head. “There were only seven of us. Four of the seven were advisory. Three of us, the officers, were the working board. We thought that was about all we’d need for a summer camp. We had plans to expand if we pulled that off.”

  “And when you didn’t, the group disbanded?”

  “As quickly as we could.”

  “Was Ted Thornton aware of what had happened?”

  Lockhart hesitated. “We decided not to tell him. We thought if we could deal with the girl’s crazy mother.… Aside from everything else, it was embarrassing. Here we w
ere, competent professional women, and we couldn’t even run a two-week science camp.”

  “Do you think Thornton might have found out in some other way?” McCabe asked.

  “If he did, he never contacted us … unless he and Rachel talked.”

  “We understand that it was Dr. Kincaid who persuaded Mr. Thornton to fund the science camp.”

  “Yes. They met at a fund-raiser and she had a chance to make our pitch for funding in person.” Lockhart reached for the glass. She took a long sip. “Sorry, I should have done this inside. It’s getting hot out here.”

  Baxter said, “We won’t keep you much longer; then you can have a dip in the pool.”

  McCabe said, “Only a few more questions, Ms. Lockhart. Do you think Dr. Kincaid might have told Ted Thornton about the incident?”

  “She was really worried that the mother might push the lawsuit. But the rest of us wanted to wait and see what happened before we talked to Thornton. After all, he wasn’t a member of our board.”

  “Did the rest of the board tell Dr. Kincaid not to involve Mr. Thornton?”

  “I don’t know if we told her that specifically. We talked about it and agreed that we should wait. She never told us that she had told him.”

  “And I gather the girl’s mother calmed down and decided not to sue.”

  “Actually, that was kind of strange.”

  “Strange how?” Baxter asked.

  “We were there for our emergency board meeting when the mother came in and pitched her fit. She said she had already spoken to a lawyer. We were bracing ourselves to be served with papers in a lawsuit the next day.”

  “But you weren’t?” McCabe said.

  “No, not the next day or the day after. We couldn’t decide if we should contact her. We were afraid if we did, we’d get her all stirred up again. We even wondered if she might turn up at the closing event for the camp.”

  “The presentations that the girls were doing?”

  “Yes. We thought she might turn up there and make a scene in front of the other parents. But nothing. Finally, we decided we had no choice but to try to contact her before we closed down operations, to see what she intended to do. But we couldn’t reach her. The telephone number we had was no longer working. No one responded to the e-mails we sent. Finally, Rachel and the camp director went to the address we had on file. The landlord said crazy mama and her two children had left the day after she’d stormed into our board meeting. She took off without leaving a forwarding address.”