Chapter 10
10
W arren sat at his kitchen table with his phone and pressed the Find icon to search for the AirTags he had attached to the five cars this evening. When he’d bought them for the trip to Paris six months ago he had named them C 1–3 for his bags and R 1–3 for his girlfriend’s in his phone. As he looked at the displays on his screen, he remembered that the technology communicated with him using any iPhone within thirty feet of the tag. That would probably be fine in the daytime or when the driver was in the car, but right now the tags weren’t transmitting.
Morning began when the phone rang. He grasped it, looked at the screen, and then answered, “Charles Warren.”
“This is Doug McHargue. We found Mrs. Ellis’s car at the airport.”
“A white C-300 hybrid?”
“That’s the one.”
“Have you figured out who drove it there yet?”
“No. We have people going through the surveillance footage from the lot’s cameras to see. Other people are looking through the recordings from the airport terminals and checking with the airlines in case she left it in the lot and got on a plane. They’re also dusting the car for prints and swabbing for DNA. They’ll put a rush on anything that makes it to the lab, but that’s not magic. It takes time.”
Warren said, “I don’t think she drove it there. Do you?”
McHargue paused. “People do weird things all the time, cars get stolen, and people are harmed. I’ll wait for which it was.”
“I’ve been working on Mrs. Ellis’s financial reports, and so far, I’ve found two local men I think have something to worry about in an audit.”
“Can you send me an email with the two names and the simple version of what you know?”
“I’ll do it right now.”
“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.” Warren showered and dressed, then sent the information. He gave Detective Sergeant McHargue the two men’s names, home addresses, and the positions they held at the two companies. He attached to Patrick Ollonsun’s section two pages of Vesper Ellis’s reports from different months recording sales of stock shares and cash withdrawals that had been requested by the late George Ellis within the last year.
The attachments to Ronald Talbert’s page showed sweeps of dividend and interest income that had produced cash. The cash had then been labeled as used for investments, but there were no new shares of anything, either then or on the next months’ reports.
When he had breakfast earlier, he had checked his phone to track his AirTags. It was early, but two of the cars had already moved. One of Talbert’s black SUVs carrying R1 had moved to one of the financial buildings in Century City, and one that was Ollonsun’s C1 was on Olympic Boulevard. They were the two trackers he had identified as Patrick Ollonsun’s and Ronald Talbert’s personal cars.
Now, Warren opened the file again to see if any of the other cars had moved. One of the cars from the home of the Ollonsuns had gone southwest, looking as though it was headed for Malibu. He remembered looking in the windows from the dark shadow beside the pool house and seeing the daughter. He slightly revised his image of the Ollonsun family’s day so it made sense to him. The father had driven the expected vehicle, the black BMW, to his office in Century City very early in the morning. It fit with his image as a vice president of a big investment company. The Lamborghini had seemed to Warren to be what the wife might drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel for lunch at the Polo Lounge or something like that; this AirTag showed the vehicle was heading for the ocean. He rechecked the identifying codes and verified that the car heading for the ocean was the white Prius. That had to be the daughter going to the beach.
The two black SUVs he’d bugged at the Talbert house were both out now. One of them was still at the investment company office in Century City and the other was just pulling up to park at the UCLA hospital in Westwood.
It was all pretty routine and normal, and told him nothing. He stood up to leave for the office when his cell phone rang. He looked at his screen and touched the green oval. “Warren.”
“Hello. This is Vesper Ellis. I’m returning your calls.”
Warren hesitated, and then realized he’d been holding his breath. “We’ve been thinking you—”
She interrupted. “I apologize. I haven’t been able to call. I want you to hold off working on my embezzlement problem for the moment. I think it’s only for a week or so.”
She sounded unnatural. Maybe she was just scared, but Warren had to be sure it was really Vesper Ellis. All he could think of was, “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”
“Iolanthe Burness. Iolanthe, like the nymph. It means violet flower in Greek. All the women in my family were given special names.”
“Are you in danger?”
“I’m alive and unhurt.”
“If you’re still in Los Angles say please.”
“Please listen to what I’ve got to say.”
The call went dead. He said, “Mrs. Ellis?” but he knew he was talking to nobody. He’d gone too far, and the kidnapper had been listening to her side of the call. But then he thought this was the moment when he had to verify the call. In a minute he would be calling the police, and they would need to know if it was Mrs. Ellis, or some other woman impersonating her because she was dead.
Warren set his cell phone down, plugged it into its charger, and used the house phone to call Tiffany Greene.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hi, Tiffany. This is Charlie Warren. I’m just checking again to see if you’ve heard from Vesper Ellis.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. A simple phone call could save a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m going to have to be able to get some more information from these companies directly. While I’ve got you, do you happen to know what her mother’s maiden name was?”
“Why do you need that?”
“You know what she hired me for, right?”
“Yes. She thinks a couple of her financial advisors are robbing her.”
“Right. I have the account numbers, but sometimes they ask for something that’s not on paper. Usually that’s the mother’s maiden name.”
“Her mother had a weird name too. Some kind of a family thing so when they were kids the other kids wouldn’t give them some common nickname, and as adults people would remember them,” Tiffany said. “Let me think for a second. It began with an ‘I.’ Iolanthe. Vesper’s maiden name was Rowan. Her mother’s maiden name I don’t think I ever heard.”
“Well, thanks. That should help.” Warren said. “We’ll talk soon.”
She hadn’t had the whole name, but it was close enough to indicate that the caller really had been Vesper Ellis. He also knew that he had been too aggressive when Mrs. Ellis had called, and the kidnapper had detected the attempt to subvert his plan. Warren didn’t move from his chair or set down the phone as he waited for her next call. It should come right away. This time he would not ask questions, just listen.
Warren waited, but the minutes passed and the call didn’t come. Ten minutes seemed like a long time. When thirty minutes came, then an hour, he felt as though he had taken a blow to the center of his chest. It was hard to expand his lungs to take in enough air.
Had he just listened to her frightened voice and then confidently thrown away her only chance to live through this? The kidnappers clearly did not intend to get fooled by an ad-libbed code that told him her location. As time went by, he was increasingly aware that he hadn’t told the police about her call. He had done what he was supposed to do so far, but maybe getting the police involved had been exactly the wrong thing to do. Things weren’t supposed to work like this.
Every expert had always said that the families or friends of kidnap victims needed to turn their cases over to the police instantly. The police would know what worked, and they probably would call in the FBI, because kidnapping was also a federal offense. But here he was. He’d called the police right away, before he’d even known there had been a kidnapping, and after that he’d gone to great effort and risk to get the police interested in Mrs. Ellis’s disappearance. Now that didn’t seem to have been the right thing to do. What should he do next?
He had a feeling that he should wait for Mrs. Ellis or the kidnapper to call back. He waited nearly two and a half hours, and the call didn’t come. He realized that as long as he had his cell phone he didn’t have to wait in his condominium. He had been preparing to go to work when Vesper Ellis had called. He picked up his cell phone and went out the door.
Warren drove toward his office, and as he drove, he thought about crimes against the weak. He remembered the way he’d felt when he had seen the true extent and nature of Mack Stone’s feelings toward his mother. Stone had devised ways to use her while also taking all her past and future savings so they could never be duplicated or recovered. He’d seen her as a resource to be fully exploited, like livestock. When the real estate broker had told Mack Stone her house wasn’t something he could steal from her, Stone’s impulse was not to just leave, but to punish her by burning the house down on his way out.
Now Warren couldn’t help feeling the same rage about this kidnapping. People who did this captured a living person who had feelings and converted that person into money. The abductors threatened to kill that person unless they were given a certain sum of money, and even after they received the money, lots of them killed the victim anyway because it was easier and safer than letting them go. As he drove, his anger grew until he forced himself to calm down. He needed time to think.
He pulled into the underground lot, parked his rental car in a visitor space, got out, and was suddenly between two men in their fifties or possibly sixties. One of them was Black and the other white. They were both unusually fit, with slim bodies. They both wore dark, conservative suits and neckties in muted colors. Both men produced identical black identification wallets with their pictures, the words Special Agent, a gold badge, and FBI printed on them. As they held the identification up so he could see it, he also saw that they had shoulder holsters with pistols under their coats.
The Black agent said, “Mr. Warren?”
He said, “Yes.”
“Special Agent Stamford and Special Agent Foltz. We would appreciate it if you could spare some time this morning for an interview about the disappearance of Mrs. Vesper Ellis.”
“Of course,” Warren said. “I’d be happy to tell you everything I know.”
“The Bureau has set up a command-and-control post not far from the victim’s neighborhood, where we’re monitoring communications and doing our preliminary interviews. We’ll take you over there and then drop you back here afterward.”
They led him to a large sedan with little chrome or decoration, and he sat in the back seat. He looked at his watch. His call from Vesper Ellis had been hours ago. He was aware that he had better find an excuse for his silence about it.
Agent Stamford drove the car onto the 405 freeway and over the hill to the San Fernando Valley, then along a series of residential streets under big trees—sweet gum, Aleppo pine, camphor, magnolia—and Warren sensed he was getting closer to Vesper Ellis’s house. Agent Stamford turned into the driveway of an unremarkable single-family house in Sherman Oaks. There was a red brick facade and white clapboards around, with an attached garage. Stamford opened the garage with a remote control, pulled all the way in, and lowered the door behind them.
The garage was practically empty. There were no tools, and no stored supplies on the shelves. He tried to get out of the car, but the door had been automatically locked, a safety feature to keep passengers in their places. Stamford touched a button on the driver’s side, Warren’s door clicked, and he let himself out. He was standing by a big sign on two sharpened stakes. He was pretty sure it must say For Sale , but it was facing the wall. He supposed the FBI must make arrangements with real estate companies to lease houses when they needed them on a temporary basis. He thought about asking, but these two didn’t seem likely to want to engage in small talk about bureau procedures.
Foltz led the way, unlocked and opened the side door into the house, went through a mud room with empty coat hooks and into the kitchen. Warren could tell somebody had remodeled the kitchen and replaced the appliances and cabinets. When they reached the marble island in the middle, Stamford said, “Stop here.”
Warren stopped.
Stamford said, “I’m afraid we’re not allowed to let you enter a command post without being searched. Please put both hands flat on the counter.”
Warren complied.
“This won’t take long. Are you carrying anything that might compromise physical or electronic security of this building?”
“No.”
Stamford reached into Warren’s jacket pocket and extracted his cell phone.
“Is it necessary to take my phone?”
“It’s not just a phone,” Stamford said. “It’s also a high-capacity recording device, a camera, a global positioning system, and a radio that can archive unlimited quantities of information in the Cloud.”
Stamford said, “I need to pat you down and check your other pockets. You’re not carrying a firearm or other weapon, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Are you carrying anything that might injure my hands?”
“I’ve got a pocketknife in my right pants pocket, but it’s closed.”
Foltz removed Warren’s car keys, wallet, and pocketknife and put them with the phone on the marble surface of the island. Stamford said, “They’ll be here when you leave. When you do, I have to caution you not to turn on the phone again until you’re back in your office.”
The two guided him into the living room. “Have a seat on the couch.”
Warren didn’t like it much because the couch put him in a lower position than the two straight-backed chairs where they sat. The couch was soft and yielding, so he knew he couldn’t get up easily.
Agent Stamford said, “Vesper Ellis is a client of yours, right?”
“Yes. She was referred to my firm by a friend of hers I had represented a few years ago. She believes someone is stealing money from some investment accounts of hers.”
“Any other connection? Do you have a personal relationship, or are you dating her or anything?”
“Absolutely not. I never met her until a few days ago. As I said, she was—”
“We’ve cleared that up,” Stamford said. “What we need to talk about is you.”
“Sorry?” Warren said. “Me?” He felt a chill up his spine. Did they think he was the one who had kidnapped her? Did they know about her call?
“We have some information that we’d like to discuss with you,” Agent Stamford said.
Agent Foltz said, “We’ll start with what we know about you. In the summer when you were seventeen years old, your mother, Linda Warren Stone, was robbed by her second husband, who specialized in marrying rich women and walking off with their money. McKinley Stone was just what he was calling himself this time. On August 14, the day he realized he’d got as much money as he was going to get, he drove off in the BMW he’d bought with your mother’s credit card. You followed him in a borrowed car to Route 50 in Nevada. Then you drove him off the road into a crash that killed him.”
Warren was good at controlling his facial expressions to conceal what he was thinking or feeling, but this was like a sudden drop in the room’s air supply.
“There was an article about you in the Los Angeles Times when you got your law degree and started practicing. Do you remember that?”
“That article didn’t say or imply I ever drove anyone off a road.”
“It said your widowed mother had been robbed by a con man, and that the culprit had died in a one-car crash, and that you were hoping to start a law practice that stood up for victims,” Foltz said. “Just a coincidence?”
Agent Stamford said, “I want you to think back to the moments right after you ran McKinley Stone off the road into the ditch. You turned around and headed west, back toward California. You were going fast, so you had to swing a little wide on a curve. There was a big passenger bus coming the other way. You kept your head and didn’t let the centrifugal force slam you into the front of the bus. Instead, you accelerated coming out of the turn and shot out of there, just missing the bus.”
“I can’t believe I’m listening to this stuff.”
Agent Stamford said, “You don’t have to deny anything or work out a plea or tell us anything. It’s a free chance for you to learn what we know. While you were heading for the front of that bus, you may have noticed that the bus driver behind that big windshield was a Black man. A handsome Black man.”
Warren’s eyes widened.
“I think he gets it,” Foltz said. He smiled, leaned forward toward Warren, studying him, and then spoke in a raspy whisper. “You’re right, we’re not FBI agents, dumbass.”