Dance for the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

off their own prints that they got all of his too, as a matter
of course. I doubt it.”
    “Who would want to
accomplish that?”
    She hesitated, and he could tell
she was preparing to be disbelieved. “What I’m telling
you is not from personal knowledge. It’s what Dennis Morgan
told me. This company, Hoffen-Bayne, got to administer a fortune of
something like a hundred million dollars. They would get a commission
of at least two percent a year, or two million, for that. They also
got to invest the money any way they pleased, and that gave them
power. There are some fair-sized companies you can control for that
kind of investment. As long as Timmy was lost, the trust would
continue. You’re a judge. You tell me what would happen if
Timmy turned up in California.”
    “The court would –
will – appoint a guardian, and probably in this case, a
conservator, if you’re right about the size of the
inheritance.”
    “That wouldn’t be
Hoffen-Bayne?”
    “We don’t appoint
business-management companies to raise children, or to audit
themselves.”
    “Then the power and money
would be in jeopardy.”
    “Certainly they would have
to at least share the control.”
    “And they did try to have
him declared dead.”
    “That’s a legal
convenience. It relieves them of responsibility to search for him,
and also protects them if someone were to ask later why they’re
administering a trust for a client who hasn’t been seen for
seven years.”
    “Then it would have been
even more convenient if he were really dead. They wouldn’t have
had to go to court at all.”
    “Filing a motion is a
little different from hiring assassins to hunt down a six-year-old
and kill him.”
    “Maybe. I think filing the
motion was a trap. I think Dennis Morgan was poking around, and
somebody noticed it. It’s not all that hard to find out what
you want about people: the trick is to keep them from knowing you’re
doing it. Dennis was a respected lawyer, but investigating wasn’t
his field; lawyers hire people to do that. I think they sensed that
if a Washington attorney was interested, then Timmy was going to turn
up sometime soon.”
    “And you – all of
you – got caught in the trap?”
    “Yes.” She stood up.
“You asked me what I think, so you would know where to begin.
I’ve told you. Dennis couldn’t find anybody but
Hoffen-Bayne who would benefit from Timmy’s death – no
competing claims to the money or angry relatives, for instance.
Nobody tried to break the will during all the years while Timmy was
missing. But I don’t know what Dennis got right and what he got
wrong, and I can’t prove any of it. I only saw the police
putting handcuffs on four of the men in the courthouse, and there
won’t be anything on paper that connects them with Hoffen-Bayne
or anybody else. I know I never saw them before, so I can’t
have been the one they recognized. They saw Timmy.” She took a
step toward the door. “Keep him safe.”
    The judge said, “Then
there’s you.” He watched her stop and face him. “Who
are you?”
    “Jane Whitefield.”
    “I mean what’s your
interest in this?”
    “Dennis Morgan asked me to
keep Timmy alive. I did that. We all did that.”
    “What are you? A private
detective, a bodyguard?”
    “I’m a guide.”
    “What kind of guide?”
    “I show people how to go
from places where someone is trying to kill them to other places
where nobody is.”
    “What sort of pay do you
get for this?”
    “Sometimes they give me
presents. I declare the presents on my income taxes. There’s a
line for that.”
    “Did somebody give you a
present for this job?”
    “If you fail, there’s
nobody around to be grateful. My clients are dead.” After a
second she added, “I don’t take money from kids, even
rich kids.”
    “Have you served in your
capacity as ‘guide’ for Dennis Morgan before?”
    “Never met him until he
called. He was a friend of a friend.”
    “You – all three of
you – went