guests home.”
“Did it occur to you to contact the police?” It seemed only fair I give her the same treatment I gave Mark’s mother. “Do you wish you had?”
Just then a man walked into the room. For a second I mistook him for my photographer, Malik Rahman. He had the same physical characteristics, height, weight, dark hair, and swarthy complexion. But I’d purposely come alone because I wanted Mrs. Post to relax and feared a camera would make her clam up. She introduced the man as her son, Roderick, who lived in a new wing of the house built over the garage.
“I asked him to join us,” she explained.
Mrs. Post and Madeline shared the same facial features and complexion. I remembered Libby, Madeline’s maid of honor, remarking that Roderick took after his father in appearance. Malik’s father was from Pakistan, but I knew very little about Mr. Post’s roots.
Because Mrs. Post was a widow, I didn’t feel I should pry too deeply into her husband’s background this early in our relationship. I know from personal experience that widows don’t like virtual strangers digging for details about their deceased husbands. As for me, Hugh’s death was Google-able by anyone who cared to learn how the governor’s bodyguard was killed in the line of duty.
After a closer look, I recognized Roderick as the man driving Mrs. Post’s car outside the station the other day. Roderick appeared to have overheard the last part of our conversation concerning whether the family had or should have contacted the police when Mark vanished.
“Just tell her the truth, Mother,” he said.
“Tell me what?” I asked.
The two of them looked at each other. He nodded, seemingly to encourage her, so she began to speak.
“I thought it best to wait when Mark didn’t show up for the ceremony.” She looked me directly in the eye like she had nothing to hide. “We didn’t know what we were dealing with at first, and I didn’t want to risk complicating matters by involving law enforcement or the media.”
“How would that complicate matters?”
Roderick shook his head at my apparent naïveté and Mrs. Post paused before giving me a lesson in the disadvantages of being rich.
“We had to consider the possibility that Mark might have been kidnapped for ransom.”
That one, I didn’t see coming.
Her theory put a whole new spin on his disappearance and the behavior of the Post family. Vivian and Roderick explained how their waiting game unfolded. First they waited for word from Mark. When they heard nothing, they waited for word from kidnappers. When they heard nothing, they just kept waiting.
Ransom kidnappings are rare in this part of the world, though Minnesota’s had some whoppers with lasting impact.
Like seventy-five years ago, when the Barker-Karpis Gang snatched the president of Hamm Brewing Company (better known now for its advertising jingle and bear mascot than its foamy refreshment). They held William A. Hamm Jr. prisoner in their gangster hideout until they’d collected a ransom of a cool hundred grand.
A perfect plan—almost.
Except the FBI crime lab used a forensic breakthrough to crack the case. Now called “latent fingerprint identification,” scientists painted the ransom notes with a silver nitrate solution to raise the invisible fingerprints and prove the kidnappers’ identity.
Four decades later, kidnapping was again on the front pages in Minnesota. Virginia Piper was abducted from her home by two masked men. Her housekeeper was taped to a chair. A note demanded one million bucks in twenty-dollars bills—the largest ransom in U.S. history back then. She was discovered two days later, chained to a tree in a state park, after her retired investment-banker husband paid up. The case was never solved and very little of the ransom—just four grand— was recovered.
Every major anniversary, some journalist or another tries to unlock the mystery. I’d even taken a crack at it myself during a long-ago
“Did it occur to you to contact the police?” It seemed only fair I give her the same treatment I gave Mark’s mother. “Do you wish you had?”
Just then a man walked into the room. For a second I mistook him for my photographer, Malik Rahman. He had the same physical characteristics, height, weight, dark hair, and swarthy complexion. But I’d purposely come alone because I wanted Mrs. Post to relax and feared a camera would make her clam up. She introduced the man as her son, Roderick, who lived in a new wing of the house built over the garage.
“I asked him to join us,” she explained.
Mrs. Post and Madeline shared the same facial features and complexion. I remembered Libby, Madeline’s maid of honor, remarking that Roderick took after his father in appearance. Malik’s father was from Pakistan, but I knew very little about Mr. Post’s roots.
Because Mrs. Post was a widow, I didn’t feel I should pry too deeply into her husband’s background this early in our relationship. I know from personal experience that widows don’t like virtual strangers digging for details about their deceased husbands. As for me, Hugh’s death was Google-able by anyone who cared to learn how the governor’s bodyguard was killed in the line of duty.
After a closer look, I recognized Roderick as the man driving Mrs. Post’s car outside the station the other day. Roderick appeared to have overheard the last part of our conversation concerning whether the family had or should have contacted the police when Mark vanished.
“Just tell her the truth, Mother,” he said.
“Tell me what?” I asked.
The two of them looked at each other. He nodded, seemingly to encourage her, so she began to speak.
“I thought it best to wait when Mark didn’t show up for the ceremony.” She looked me directly in the eye like she had nothing to hide. “We didn’t know what we were dealing with at first, and I didn’t want to risk complicating matters by involving law enforcement or the media.”
“How would that complicate matters?”
Roderick shook his head at my apparent naïveté and Mrs. Post paused before giving me a lesson in the disadvantages of being rich.
“We had to consider the possibility that Mark might have been kidnapped for ransom.”
That one, I didn’t see coming.
Her theory put a whole new spin on his disappearance and the behavior of the Post family. Vivian and Roderick explained how their waiting game unfolded. First they waited for word from Mark. When they heard nothing, they waited for word from kidnappers. When they heard nothing, they just kept waiting.
Ransom kidnappings are rare in this part of the world, though Minnesota’s had some whoppers with lasting impact.
Like seventy-five years ago, when the Barker-Karpis Gang snatched the president of Hamm Brewing Company (better known now for its advertising jingle and bear mascot than its foamy refreshment). They held William A. Hamm Jr. prisoner in their gangster hideout until they’d collected a ransom of a cool hundred grand.
A perfect plan—almost.
Except the FBI crime lab used a forensic breakthrough to crack the case. Now called “latent fingerprint identification,” scientists painted the ransom notes with a silver nitrate solution to raise the invisible fingerprints and prove the kidnappers’ identity.
Four decades later, kidnapping was again on the front pages in Minnesota. Virginia Piper was abducted from her home by two masked men. Her housekeeper was taped to a chair. A note demanded one million bucks in twenty-dollars bills—the largest ransom in U.S. history back then. She was discovered two days later, chained to a tree in a state park, after her retired investment-banker husband paid up. The case was never solved and very little of the ransom—just four grand— was recovered.
Every major anniversary, some journalist or another tries to unlock the mystery. I’d even taken a crack at it myself during a long-ago
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