Chapter 48
Tori shuffled the pages Amy had printed out. There was nothing negative on any of the Livingstons. Her phone rang and she grabbed it. The number wasn’t one she recognized, but it could be whoever took Drew. She tried to swipe the Slide to Answer button, but the feature didn’t respond. “Not again!”
The papers had made her fingers dry. She tried swiping once more as hot tears welled in her eyes. “Why won’t it work!”
“Let me try it.” Scott took the phone and swiped across the screen. The ringing stopped, and Tori snatched it back. “Hello!”
No one was there. She looked up. “What if it was Drew?”
Amy said, “If it was about Drew, maybe they’ll call back. Just make sure your phone isn’t locked.”
What else can go wrong? Tori knew better than to ask that question. She opened the setting on her phone and set the auto lock to never.
Amy opened Jenny’s computer. “While we’re waiting, send me the password to the computer and the Ancestry Line login information.”
That was better than sitting here staring at her phone. She turned to Scott. “You send it. I don’t want to take a chance on missing another call.”
Scott tapped on his phone.
“Got it. I’ll start on it now,” Amy said. She moved to the far end of the table and booted up the computer.
Tori’s phone beeped. “It’s a voicemail. Maybe they left a message.” She clicked on the message and gasped. “It’s Drew!”
She hit replay on the message and put it on speaker. “Tori, please pick up the next time I call.”
“Hit call back and see if it’ll go through,” Scott said.
She tried it, but the call went straight to an automated voicemail.
“He said he’d call again.”
Scott was trying to calm her down, but it wasn’t working. Tori paced the kitchen. Amy looked up from the computer screen. “Did you notice Jenny received this report over a year ago?”
She stopped pacing. “What?”
Amy pointed to the date that was April of last year. “And she corresponded with an aunt listed under her father’s line.”
“You’re kidding,” Scott said. “Did Jenny find out who her father is?”
“I’m pretty sure she did. The aunt’s name is Aubrey Williams—”
“Aubrey Williams? Huey Prescott’s sister? That means—”
“Huey is Jenny’s dad.”
Tori was confused. “If she knew about him, why doesn’t he know about her?”
“I’m assuming the aunt never told him,” Amy said. “According to the messages in her file, when the aunt discovered Jenny worked for Livingston Oil Corporation, she didn’t trust her and accused Jenny of being in the Livingstons’ pocket. I bet she never told Huey about Jenny.”
“Oh, man,” Tori said with a groan. “That’s why he’s still looking for her, and now she’s dead. I wonder if Aubrey is aware of that?”
“Possibly not.” Amy glanced at the computer screen again.
“The only message other than the first one that Aubrey responded to was six months ago. It was kind of heated—Jenny wrote that as soon as her father was out of prison, she planned to contact him, and Aubrey wasn’t happy.
Jenny didn’t respond. Maybe she was waiting for him to be released. ”
Tori paced again, letting her mind sort out the new information whirling through it. Two years ago an interview with Aubrey Williams for the Knoxville TV station had started the wheels turning that resulted in Huey Prescott being released.
She’d hired a private investigator to examine the case, and his report refuted every argument the prosecutor laid out at the trial. The story intrigued Tori, so much so that she’d followed up on the private investigator’s reports and found more proof that Huey Prescott had been wrongly convicted.
In the TV interview, Aubrey Williams had been adamant that someone at the Livingston Corporation had killed Walter Livingston. She’d been so outspoken against the company that part of the video was cut.
Tori stopped at Amy’s chair. “You were the videographer when I interviewed the aunt. Do you remember the section the producer cut?”
Amy looked up from the computer. “I’d forgotten that. Let me think . . . It was something about the Livingstons . . . someone’s alibi didn’t hold up.”
Tori snapped her fingers. “That’s it! And the police brushed her off when she tried to get them to revisit the case.
In the interview, Aubrey accused the police of taking a bribe to not involve the Livingstons.
She was convinced someone at the company killed Walter Livingston and said so.
She wasn’t very happy when that part was cut, either. ”
“The piece did run too long,” Amy said, then she kind of grinned. “But I think the producer would’ve cut it anyway. In my opinion it detracted from the overall piece. Especially since Aubrey Williams had no proof anyone at the company was the killer.”
The question that kept nagging at Tori returned. Where did Jenny get the money in the backpack?
“That’s the same thing I’ve been asking myself,” Scott said.
“I didn’t realize I’d said that aloud. But, what if Aubrey Williams passed on her suspicions to Jenny, and she somehow found proof that implicated someone at the company?”
Scott cocked his head. “You think Jenny was blackmailing someone?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes talking out my thoughts helps me see things clearer.” Tori paced again, still talking. “That was a lot of money we found, and Jenny got it from somewhere.”
“Who has that kind of cash?” Amy asked.
She could think of a few. The Livingstons, for sure—with the convenience stores, fuel stations, and laundromats—they dealt in a lot of cash. Tori blew out a deep breath. She was good at hunches, but this one had more holes than Swiss cheese.
Her cell phone rang, and her heart kicked into overdrive. “It’s the same number.”
“Put it on speaker,” Scott said.
This time an answer or decline button popped up and she punched answer. “Don’t hang up, Drew! I couldn’t get to the phone to answer the first time.”
“Tori. You gotta help me.” His voice cracked. “He’s holding me out at—”
The line went dead.
“Drew!” Every muscle in her body tensed, and she gripped the phone like it was a lifeline.
Scott pried it from her hand. “They’ve hung up.”
A text dinged on her phone, and she grabbed it from him. Tori opened it and groaned. “The kidnapper wants a data drive. And I have until three tomorrow afternoon to come up with it. The kidnapper will call me at that time and tell me where to bring it or Drew dies.” She punched in a text.
No idea what u r talking about.
A reply was instant.
I think you do. The kid knows but won’t tell. 3 tomorrow.
“How can I find something when I don’t know where to start?” She held up her phone. “Can Ben trace this?”
“Probably only to a general area,” Scott said. “It sounded like Drew isn’t being held in town, and there aren’t a lot of cell towers out in the county to triangulate a call. But Ben can try. I’ll call him.”
She nodded and paced the kitchen while he contacted the sheriff. When he finished, she said, “What’d he say?”
“He’s going to try.”
Trying wasn’t good enough. “The text said they’ll kill Drew if I don’t find this data drive. Did anyone record the call?”
“I did.” Amy laid her phone on the table and hit play.
Tori sank into the chair next to her, and the room fell quiet as they all leaned toward the phone. The stress in Drew’s voice broke her heart. He’d lost so much in his young life. And now this.
“Drew didn’t say what he was supposed to,” she said.
Scott nodded. “He was trying to tell us where he was, and like I said, it doesn’t sound like it was in town.”
Tori’s phone rang, and she snatched it from the table. Not Drew, but Megan Russell. She answered. “Is everything all right?”
“Did the Knoxville detective call you?”
The worry in Megan’s voice put Tori on high alert. “No, but my phone’s been dead. What’s going on?”
“Calvin is in Logan Point. He used that credit card again to buy gas and beer there.”
What if Calvin had kidnapped Drew? He blamed Tori for Megan leaving him, and he might think it was a way to get revenge. “Do you think your husband is capable of kidnapping?”
“He tried taking the kids before, but why are you asking that?”
She quickly explained what had happened. “The kidnapper wants a data drive that I have no clue about.”
Megan gasped. “Are you talking about a flash drive?”
“I’m assuming it’s a storage drive. Why?”
“When I was with Cal, I used to write out everything in a journal, and he found it one day. Beat the living daylights out of me. After that I started writing the journal on my computer and saving it to a flash drive.”