Stone Cold by Dean Crawford

‘although I suppose it’s possible to make enemies anywhere in business. As for the financial situation, yes, times have gotten harder for luxury goods since the economic collapse, but we were coping and I was flying extra hours to support us. We’re struggling more than we used to, but it isn’t a crisis.’
    Griffin steeled himself.
    ‘Is it possible, Dale, however remotely, that your wife might seek to stage her own abduction in collaboration with a second party in order to obtain her life insurance policy?’
    Dale’s jaw almost dropped as he stared at Griffin, and the detective heard Maietta suck in a soft breath of air.
    ‘You seriously think that she would rig something like this?’ McKenzie gasped.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Griffin replied. ‘That’s why I’m asking you.’
    ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ McKenzie snapped. ‘Absolutely not. Sheila built her business up from nothing, she’s no quitter. She’d fight for every last inch of that premises, not risk jail or years’ of living in hiding. And besides, who would gain from it? I’m the beneficiary and I sure as hell don’t want to see Sheila’s business go down the can.’ McKenzie scowled as he glanced at his watch and stood. ‘I have a flight to catch.’
    ‘Thank you for your time, Dale,’ Griffin said as he stood from the table. ‘Sorry again for the hard line, it’s over now and you’re free to go.’
    McKenzie turned to leave, his coffee untouched. He shook Griffin’s proffered hand, and Griffin recognised all too clearly the shadows of restrained grief in the pilot’s eyes.
    ‘Do you think that you can find her?’ McKenzie asked, his anger subsiding rapidly. ‘Before…’
    ‘They want money,’ Griffin cut him off, ‘not blood. We’ll find her.’
    *
    ‘He didn’t do it.’
    Griffin slapped his notebook down on the Formica table as soon as McKenzie had left.
    ‘I agree,’ Maietta said as she pushed off the wall. ‘He looked shifty though.’
    ‘He’s nervous,’ Griffin admitted, ‘anxious, afraid maybe, but he sure ain’t guilty of this.’
    Maietta’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was hiding something.’
    Griffin looked at her. ‘Say what?’
    ‘He kept dodging questions.’
    ‘What makes you think that?’ Griffin asked. ‘He answered everything damned straight, far as I could see.’
    ‘Yeah, but it was the way that he answered,’ Maietta insisted. ‘It’s the dip of their eyes, to the right and down, that betrays the liars, we both know that. They have to think about what they’re saying. He wouldn’t look you in the eye all the time and kept his head down when things got difficult.’
    Griffin shrugged.
    ‘Doesn’t look much that way to me. Sure, I thought he seemed a little awkward but he wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t know where his wife was.’
    Maietta did not answer other than to tilt her head in acquiescence.
    ‘What now?’ she asked as they left the room and began making their way back toward the airport terminal.
    ‘We get Dale’s house wired for sound in case the abductors make a call. We should probably sneak in for a look ourselves, and forensics have got to get in there somehow and dust for fingerprints and such like.’
    ‘That’s not going to be easy if the abductors are watching the home. Sure we could get one person in wearing a pilot’s uniform, but a forensic team?’
    ‘We’ll have to think of something,’ Griffin insisted, and rubbed his temples. ‘You know, there’s a hell of a lot about all of this that doesn’t add up. Dale comes home, walks into the house, finds the note, calls us. By then his wife had already been gone for a few hours at least because the bed wasn’t slept in and only one day’s mail was lying on the doormat. So how come they haven’t made contact with Dale yet? Where are the instructions for leaving the money? The abductors can’t achieve much if they don’t receive their ransom.’
    ‘Maybe these guys are real pros,’ Maietta suggested.