"Her name is Alicia and she lives near Livorno, Italy. That's where her family is. She and Dad divorced when I was just a kid. I lived with her in Italy nine months out of the year and the other three months with Dad. I came back to the United States to go to college at Vassar. I've only seen her once a year for the past seven or eight years."
"Does she know about Emma's kidnapping?"
"I don't think so, not unless she read about it in an Italian newspaper, and I strongly doubt the story made it there. I saw no reason to worry her."
"Your father hasn't remarried."
"Oh yes he has, nearly three years ago. Her name's Eve and she's two years younger than me."
"You said that Emma's musical. Does she play the piano or something yet?"
"Don't want to know about Eve, huh? I don't blame you. She'd take one gander at you and lick her chops, but not while my dad was looking. One of my mother's old friends called me and filled my ears with tales of Eve Lord. My mother's friend is a Sunday school teacher, so I guess she's trustworthy. Although maybe she wanted Dad for herself. Who knows? Emma plays the piano."
"I'll buy her one of those two-octave portable pianos tomorrow. I'd like to hear her play."
"Thank you, Ramsey."
"Why haven't you seen your father for three years?"
He swore he could see her stiffen from across the room. He said, "Was it because he'd hurt your husband?"
"You're good at your job."
"Yeah, I am, but this hasn't a thing to do with my job. I'm not being nosy, Molly, just trying to figure out what's going on here. Help me."
"That was part of it."
"That's a lie. I can hear it in your voice."
"All right. Louey said he'd take Emma away from me if I ever saw my father again. He called him a son of a bitch, as I remember."
"Why?"
"Louey hated my father because he found out about him."
"Found out what?"
She sighed deeply. "Louey beat me."
He started to jump out of the chair, grabbed his leg, and sank back down. "That scrawny little fucker beat you? As in he hit you?"
"Yes. Don't think I'm some sort of victim here. I told him if he ever touched me again I'd kill him. To be honest, I don't know if he believed me, but I believed me and I'm sure he must have picked up on that."
"If he had a brain he picked up on it really fast."
"This was three years ago. What happened was that one of my friends found out and called my father. Mason came to Denver and personally beat the daylights out of Louey.
"He told Louey that if he ever touched me again, he'd kill him. So Louey knew that he was in deep trouble, but he hated being helpless, so he told me not to see my father again."
"Would you have killed him if he'd hit you again?"
"Probably not, but I would have left in a flash. That first time, he was drunk, he'd gotten a bad review on his newly released CD, Danger Floats Deep, and was really angry. That same day I got a notice from a magazine that they wanted to buy some of my photos. He was jealous, which is ridiculous, if you just think about the relative proportion of things. But it didn't matter. Louey took his anger out on me."
"I don't remember hearing a thing about Louey Santera being hurt."
"No, there was no coverage on it. My dad had a doctor come over and check him out. I kicked Louey out the next year."
"Ah," he said. "What took you so long?"
She sighed, realizing how easy it was to talk to him. "I wanted to try to make a go of it for Emma's sake. Not a smart idea. Actually, when he did officially leave, it was just a formality since he'd moved out of the house and in with one of his girlfriends." Then she laughed. "My father made sure that Louey gave me more money in the settlement than Louey even had at the time. He was royally pissed, but there was nothing he could do about it. He tried the threat again, about Emma, but I wasn't buying it. I told him I'd kill him if he tried to take Emma, and this time, he believed me."
"Why didn't you see your father again? After you and your husband split up?"
"There are two truths. The one I tell people if they ask is that Eve doesn't want to be seen with a stepdaughter who is older than she is. And a step-granddaughter? Please."
"And the other truth? The real truth?"
She began rubbing her arms. 'To most people, if they've even heard of my father, they just think he's a very rich successful businessman. He's in Silicon Valley, into communications, he owns lumber mills in the Northwest, he has a chain of restaurants in the South, lots of other enterprises. He's never been convicted of or indicted for anything. His accountants are top-notch, so he'll never go down on a tax-evasion charge. People like you know that he's a lot more than that. He's a kingpin in extortion, gambling, prostitution, just about everything except drugs. He hates drugs.