He went inside and down the hall to his office, for his home also housed his business. He shut the door, grabbed the phone, and placed a call to an old friend in Washington, D.C. The Honda had D.C. tags. Riggs was pretty sure what running the license plate would reveal: either a rental or stolen. The BMW would be another matter. At least he would find out the woman’s name, since it had suddenly occurred to him on the drive home that neither the man calling himself Charlie nor the woman had ever mentioned it. He was assuming the last name would be Savage and that the woman in the BMW was either Lisa Savage’s mother or perhaps, from her youthful looks, an older sister.
A half hour later he had his answers. The Honda was indeed a rental out of the nation’s capital. Tom Jones was the name of the lessee and he had rented the vehicle two weeks ago. Tom Jones! That was real clever, Riggs thought. The address he had for the man would be as phony as the name, he was certain. A total dead-end; he had expected nothing less.
Then he stared down at the woman’s name he had written on a piece of paper. Catherine Savage. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia. Age: thirty. Social Security number had checked out, current address was correct: Wicken’s Hunt. Unmarried. Excellent credit, no priors. No red flags at all in her background. He had a good slice of her past right there in his hand in less than half an hour. Computers were wonderful. And yet . . .
He looked at her age again. Thirty years old. He thought back to the house and substantial grounds, three hundred acres of prime Virginia real estate. He knew the asking price for Wicken’s Hunt had been six million dollars. If she had struck a wonderful deal, Ms. Savage could conceivably have gotten it for between four and five million, but from what he heard the renovation work had easily run to seven figures. Where the hell does a woman that young get that kind of money? She wasn’t a movie star or rock star; the name Catherine Savage meant nothing to him, and he wasn’t that far out of the loop on popular culture.
Or was it Charlie who had the bucks? They weren’t husband and wife, that was clear. He had said he was family, but something was off there too. He leaned back in his chair, slid open a drawer of his desk, and popped a couple of aspirin, as his neck threatened to stiffen up again. It could be she had inherited serious family money or been the extraordinarily rich widow of some old duffer. Recalling her face, he could easily see that. A lot of men would shower her with everything they had.
So what now? He looked out the window of his office at the beauty of the surrounding trees with their vibrant fall colors. Things were going well for him: An unhappy past behind him; a thriving business in a place he loved. A low-key lifestyle that he figured would add lots of quality years to his life. And now this. He held the piece of paper with her name on it up to eye level. Despite having no material incentive to care at all about her, Riggs’s curiosity was at a high pitch.
“Who the hell are you, Catherine Savage?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
You about ready, honey?” LuAnn peeked in the door and cast her gaze fondly on the back of the young girl who was finishing dressing.
Lisa looked around at her mother. “Almost.”
With a face and athletic build that mirrored LuAnn’s, Lisa Savage was the one immovable landmark in her mother’s life.
LuAnn stepped into the room, closed the door, and settled on the bed. “Miss Sally says you didn’t eat much breakfast, are you feeling all right?”
“I have a test today. I guess I’m just a little nervous.” One result of having lived all over the world was that her speech carried myriad traces of the different cultures, dialects, and accents. The mesh was a pleasing one, although several months in Virginia had already started to graft upon Lisa the beginnings of a mild Southern inflection.