Free The Trophy Wife by Diana Diamond Page A

away an intruder had known perfectly well who was in front of the pistol when they pulled the trigger. Disappeared children too often turned up buried in the backyard of the family home. And in the cases of missing wives, husbands often proved to have the best motives.
    As soon as Hogan had described the case, Helen Restivo’s radar had locked onto Walter Childs. She certainly planned to look into the obvious motives, like the wife having a substantial estate of her own that Walter would inherit, or a major insurance policy that named him as beneficiary. That kind of information, quite frequently tied together with gambling debts, bad investments, or other losses that generated a need for a quick infusion of cash. Or the often present
other woman.
Many a man who wanted to change wives saw little sense in leaving behind all his material goods as part of a divorce settlement. Probably, Helen thought, it would be something as routine as one of those scenarios.
    But she was more fascinated by the well-publicized runoff for the leadership of InterBank. One of the senior people would win the gold ring and become the planet’s leading financial figure. The others would feel that they had been exposed as failures even though they would still be five-million-a-year executives. She guessed that Walter Childs had reached that elite level where he wouldn’t know what to do with more money and could have any woman he wanted without expending more than pocket change. Childs, she was nearly certain, wanted something far more significant.
    â€œHow,” she asked herself, “could a senior vice presidentparlay the loss of his wife into the top job?” The answer was obvious as soon as Andrew Hogan explained the bank’s policy of no negotiations. If Childs sacrificed his wife to the interests of the bank … if he in effect announced that his concern for the bank’s depositors went beyond his concern for even his own wife … then how could they hope to find a more dedicated man to trust with InterBank’s fortunes? Was it possible that he had dragged the bank’s security officer into a charade, pretending to try and save his wife? And then, at Andrew Hogan’s Friday deadline, would he tearfully do the heroic thing and refuse to transfer the money as the kidnappers had supposedly ordered. Helen was playing a hunch that Walter himself might be the kidnapper and that he wouldn’t be overjoyed if they were to turn Emily up alive.
    Walter stepped out from behind the doors of an elevator, his eyes darting suspiciously from side to side. For an instant, he seemed genuinely frightened, but then he squared his shoulders and stepped out purposefully, looking involved and important. Helen checked his face against the black-and-white security photo that she had palmed in her good hand. Then she wandered out the door, settling a few hundred feet behind Walter. She wasn’t so much interested in Walter’s route. She knew where he was headed. What was important was the people in the streets around Walter. If what Childs was claiming were true—if Emily had really been taken away by an unknown person—then that person could well be standing in the street somewhere between here and Casper’s restaurant. Or, like Helen herself, the person might begin to follow Walter, seeing him to the door of the restaurant and waiting for him to claim his table as the signal that he would be paying the ransom.
    She was looking for anyone else who might be paying attention to her suspect. She planned to follow Walter all the way to the door and then station herself across the street to see if anyone was interested in who took the table in the window. And then she planned to take particular note of anyone who left shortly after Walter. The kidnapper, if there wasone, would certainly make himself known by his interest in Childs. Helen’s problem was recognizing that interest.
    Andrew Hogan was standing in