I could see Arianna struggling for control. I sat there with her and waited. Somewhere nearby a sprinkler started, the wet rhythm it created was slightly soothing. The scent of flowers and things growing wafted to us. Birdsong rippled through the air.
“Ernest had said he couldn’t meet me at the airport that first day. He had meetings. I’d have to find my own way to Brentwood. That wasn’t unusual, I’d take a cab. But Marcus and I had enjoyed such a nice chat on the plane and he offered to give me a ride home — to my new home, which should have been Ernest’s job! He was so charming, Marcus was. So… irresistible.
“I’d never had an affair before, but we practically started it on that very first day. Marcus seemed so smitten by me. And I think that affected me more deeply than anything. No one had felt that way about me for so long. No one had shown me that I was beautiful,” I looked at her lovely face but I could see she wasn’t acting now either. “No one had made me feel as though I mattered. Not for a long time.” Her voice slid to a whisper. “And then Marcus. I loved him. I thought he loved me.”
“But you said Ernie didn’t know about Marcus.”
Her head snapped back up, a glint in her eye. “Don’t you see? That’s what’s so frightening. What if Ernie did that too?” she hissed. “What if he gave Marcus to me, knowing that he would take him away.” She seemed to be warming to her theory, working it out even as she spoke. “What if Ernie selected him for me?” her voice broke. “Sent him to me. Maybe… maybe even paid him to be with me, just so he could take him away? Take him away and use him in his own place. Like this.”
What Arianna was suggesting was horrible. Beyond belief. Yet it fit with the things I’d been theorizing earlier. And it fit with what Alex Montoya had said: that the corporate psychopath was capable of anything. Even this.
Previously, I wouldn’t have thought Ernie capable of premeditated murder, not really. Maybe if — as I had supposed yesterday — maybe if you were to get in his way. But to find a man physically similar to himself and then manipulate the situation in this incredibly twisted way, was that even possible? I’d underestimated him. Again.
“And then there’s Paul,” I was hardly aware that I’d said it aloud.
“Paul?”
“Westbrook. The business card.” She just looked at me questioningly. “The name really doesn’t mean anything to you?”
She shook her head. “Just the card. Should it?”
And so I told her everything I knew and even everything I thought I knew. And the things I’d learned from Arianna today just made my theories seem all the more likely.
“Wait then,” she said after a while. “What you’re suggesting is that Ernest and this Westbrook person were manipulating things — together — all along.”
“In a sense,” I nodded. “Yes. Though when I think about it now, I believe it must always have been Ernie who was the manipulator: the puppeteer, almost. And that he’s probably been using Paul as keenly as he’s ever used anyone. Including us. Maybe Paul just stayed useful to him longer.” And, being the sycophant that he was, he’d probably made sure he stayed useful, as well.
“I find it inconceivable that I wouldn’t have known about Paul. About him being such an important part of Ernie’s life.” She paused as though thinking this through, then said more forcefully, “I would have known.”
I spoke softly to her. Gently. “Think about what you’re saying. We’re talking about someone that you suspect put you together with a lover that he had every intention of killing at some point.” I thought of Alex again. “I think your husband is capable of anything.”
“But it’s done now, isn’t it, Madeline?” Her voice was pleading. Hopeful. “It’s done. Finished. There’s nothing more that we can do.”
I watched her carefully before I answered, yet there was no manipulation in her eyes. Just hope. She wanted me to agree with her. She wanted to be right. But she wasn’t right. At some level she had to have known it.
“Arianna, he’s out of control. They’re out of control. Someone has to stop them. And, between us, you and I seem to hold all of the keys: all of the things that put these pieces together. That’s why we have to go find that sheriff again and tell him everything we know. The police have to be involved in this. If we don’t tell them, Paul and Ernie are going to get away.”
You don’t know the condition of your moral fiber until something like this happens. Not really. I hadn’t had the opportunity to check mine in a long while, so it surprised me how badly I now wanted this thing done. It would no longer be enough for the stock price to ooze back up and for things to get more or less back to normal. I thought of Arianna’s poor cooked lover. I thought about me trekking through the forest in a panic after watching what had been merely a display. And distraught pensioners in Urbana? They had nothing on this. I wanted Ernie and Paul behind bars — forever if possible — and if my hand was partly responsible for their apprehension, so much the better.
I guess, though, that if Arianna was doing her own moral fiber check at this point, she saw something different. “It would be better,” she said in a surprisingly calm voice, “for me, anyway, if they did get away. As long as they got far away and never came back.”
I was mystified by this for a moment. I studied her closely and she suddenly looked very young to me. Young and vulnerable. And I thought about what all of this would mean to her. The way things stood — the way Ernie had set things up — she would be the beautiful, bereaved widow of one of the most interesting businessmen in the country. A businessman who died tragically, more or less, in the line of duty. A hero, almost.
However, if the truth was what she and I suspected, and that truth became known, she would be a social pariah, at least for a while. The wife of a disgraced — and likely imprisoned — con man. I could imagine the Hamptons rippling with whispers already. And it would all come out: the markets he’d manipulated, the companies he’d “helped.” The fiscal fallout alone would be tremendous.
And I thought about the burned corpse we’d come down here to identify. Arianna’s lover. He represented both a promise and a threat from Ernie. Marcus’ body had been disfigured in a way that would make him difficult to identify. If Arianna left it alone, agreed that — yes — this was her husband, there was a good chance that Marcus would be buried as Ernie, which meant the real Ernie would have to disappear. Forever. So the promise: Don’t say anything and you’ll never hear from me again. The threat was also in that horribly disfigured corpse. It said as clearly as anything: Look what I am capable of. Anything. Silence is the best course.
I reached over. Smoothed Arianna’s hair as a mother would a child’s. Then I pulled her, gently, to her feet. She didn’t resist. “I know it would be better, Arianna. But we have all the missing pieces, you and I. We have to tell them what we know. We have to.”
She studied her lap, tears streaming quietly down her cheeks, and said, “I know.”
And when we got to our feet, we did so with resolve. We both knew there were things that had to be set in motion.
*
I don’t think the sheriff ever really knew what hit him. One minute he thought he had a resolution: the kidnapped CEO of a corporation found dead in his jurisdiction. A door closed, a case wrapped up. The next minute he had nothing but questions, plus a potential John Doe on one of his slabs. While we talked to him you could see a rough day getting rougher. I felt a little sorry for the guy.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” he glared at Arianna accusingly.
“We weren’t sure,” I cut through the glare. “And what we’ve been telling you must sound so outlandish, we felt we had to be certain.” One way or another, it was the truth.
“You’re right about one thing: it certainly is outlandish.” The hat was back off, and he ran his fingers agitatedly through his hair. “But if what you’re suggesting is true — and I’m not ready to concede that it is — but if it is, it seems very likely that your husband and his
compatriot are no longer in my jurisdiction.” What he didn’t say: Why the hell didn’t you take this to the LAPD and make it their problem?
“That’s true,” I said. “But, once we felt we knew what was going on, we thought we’d best go to the authorities right away. And we were here,” I pointed out. “So that was you.”
More hair-raking. “What a mess. I’m not even sure where to start. I’ll contact LAPD right away, of course. But — again — if what you say is true, we don’t even know where the hell the two of them might have gotten to.”
I started to agree, but Arianna surprised me again, saying in a quiet voice, “I… I think I may know where they’ve gone.” Both of our heads turned towards her. “Ernest took up flying recently. He said it calmed his nerves. Eased his stress.”
“Does he have a plane?” I asked.
“No. But he has access to them. At Santa Monica airport.”
The sheriff looked pleased for the first time. It was a good expression on him. I thought he should wear it more often. “I would suspect, then, that that’s just where he’d go.”
I was not in a position to see things play out. Not really; not up close. There are things in life you need to know, other things you don’t care to find out. Truthfully, this situation was neither of the above. Not that it mattered. Sometimes resolution comes whether you’re looking for it or not.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It’s very warm here. The water, like the sky, is very blue. Sometimes, from a distance and when the sun hits it at just the right angle, the sand looks like ice. When Steve first suggested Ensenada, I thought he was kidding. To a Pacific Northwesterner who’d come to LA by way of the East Coast, Ensenada, Mexico sounded incredibly exotic, not to mention unbelievably expensive, something I’m really not into right now, all things considered.
“No, it’ll be fun. And cheap,” he assured me. It was only about a four hour drive, he said. He had the use of a friend’s seaside casita. The little house usually gets rented out by the week to rich Americans for astronomical amounts of money, but there’d been a last minute cancelation which had resulted in a call to Steve: did he want it for two weeks, at a rock bottom rent-it-or-it’ll-be-empty rate? Steve said yes. And then he called me.
I’ve decided I like Ensenada. I could stay here a long time: it almost makes even Malibu look like the rat race. Yesterday we went horseback riding on the beach — I felt like we were in a movie — and then we went to Hussongs Cantina for dinner and drinks and to commiserate with each other’s sore rear ends from all the riding. I think Steve was a little more sore than I was, which we determined probably had something to do with the fact that boys generally have less fatty padding on their posteriors. Not that mine is huge, but it’s not as bony as his.
Today we haven’t done anything. At all. Well, nothing that could appropriately be included on a postcard to my mother. We rolled out of bed around one in the afternoon, Steve scrambled us some eggs for breakfast — I made the coffee — and then we worked off our breakfast by sitting in the jacuzzi.
After our grueling hottub-sitting, Steve said he was going into town on an errand. He was all mysterious: said there was something he had to get. He came back with an emery board and three different shades of nail polish. He plunked me into a lounge chair on the terrace, gave me a pedicure and then painted my toenails. Painted is an understatement: when he was finished, each nail looked as though it had a leopard pelt. Ten little masterpieces. Very strange and strangely relaxing. Steve looked pleased with himself. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he smiled, admiring his work.
“You are too weird,” I told him, but I was smiling. And my nails look amazing. I wish Emily was here just so I could show them off. Maybe I can take a picture, send it to her in e-mail.
I love Ensenada. One of those things I didn’t know I needed until I was here. I haven’t even missed the markets. Though, with most of my money tied up in LRG stock for the foreseeable future, there’s really not a lot I can do right now. I’ve made a couple of phone calls since we’ve been here. Scanned a couple of newspapers. Now that all the shit has hit and the business writers have had a party with LRG, the stock is beginning to recover, but it’s going to take a while for it to even get back to where it was.
Steve has been helping with that, indirectly. It’s funny how things work out. While the coast guard was fishing Ernie out of the waters off Baja — not far from where I am now, when I think about it — Steve was doing what he does. That Thursday, Steve signed the biggest contract of his career. Even as we cavort in sunny waters just a few steps from the little house, Langton’s factories are gearing up to produce all of the jars for Doctor Gelkii’s International Jams and Jellies. And I mean all of them. The Sultry Single Malt Marmalade from Scotland, the Sassy Saskatoon Berry Jam from Canada, the Luscious Lemon Curd from England and the Grab Your Grape Wine Jellies from Napa. And others, all with names too ridiculous to remember.
Closing the sale meant a bonus for Steve and, the sale coming as it did at a critical time in the company’s history, Langton agreed when Steve asked for a couple of weeks off. I saw the Langton news release come down the pipe about an hour before Steve called me:
LANGTON REGIONAL GROUP CLOSES DOCTOR GELKII’S DEAL WORTH $18.9 MILLION
Since all of the recent news around Langton had been doom, gloom and scandal — and the stock had been appropriately rocked — closing this deal at that moment meant a lot to the company. And it was reflected in a happy and immediate little hike in the share price, despite the fact that, while the ink was drying on the Doctor Gelkii’s contract, the newspapers were beginning to choke with stories about the CEO who never got to the office.
For a couple of minutes it looked like Ernie had gotten away. Later on, when I lined up all the dates and times and did a little figuring, I realized that about when Arianna and I were driving down to San Bernardino to view what turned out to be her lover’s body, Ernie and Paul were taking off from Santa Monica airport in a chartered plane. It surprised me that he could file a flight plan and everything without it alerting anyone, but it turns out that when you’ve been kidnapped and are in the process of being pronounced dead, it’s just not the same as when you’re plain old wanted by the police. I guess people don’t generally check to see if you’re still among the living. Go figure.
They had chartered a Piper Arrow Retractable in Paul’s name at Santa Monica Airport and filed a flight plan indicating Las Vegas as their destination. Of course, they never made Vegas, but — it later turned out — they left the plane at Fallbrook Community Airpark, a field so small they don’t even sell fuel. The whole plane/Vegas thing must have been a smokescreen: to put the watchers off if they happened to be looking in their direction.
Ernie and Paul had a car waiting at Fallbrook which they drove to a marina in San Diego where a boat had been purchased in Paul’s name two months before. The money had probably come from Ernie, one way or the other, but it didn’t show up on paper that way and, in the long run, it turned out the paper trail was all that mattered.
The boat was a 37-foot Sea Ray Sundancer. There’s been speculation in the news about why it was that boat and not something bigger, which they could certainly have afforded, especially if everything had gone as planned. Which it didn’t. The Times reporter suggested that, since the 37-foot Sundancer is a “handy little boat” — that’s the way she said it, although to most of us it would be considered a small yacht — it could be piloted easily by only one person without a crew and it was small enough to not attract attention in most marinas. But the boat had been equipped with digital satellite and all sorts of high tech equipment. Paul could have completed his trades from that boat quite easily. They had emailed a couple of crime reporters anonymously, telling them about Ernie’s “demise” in San Bernardino — it had to have been them, no one else would have known to do it. The pair of them would have been counting on the news of Ernie’s death to rock the stock price just a little lower, then —
before anyone could get organized enough to start DNA testing Marcus’ body — the two of them, safely at sea or in some southern port — could start buying LRG stock, covering their positions and, basically, completing their deal. So they could have done all of that from the boat. They just didn’t get the chance.
San Diego in general, but the area where the marinas are in particular, is close enough to Mexican waters to throw stones into. Paul and Ernie — or perhaps Paul alone — would have taken trips in the boat to get a feel for how easily an American-registered yacht could pass into Mexican waters. On those test runs it would have been ridiculously easy. Rich Americans are welcome in that part of Mexico and their boats ferry them to various marinas and resorts on the Pacific with a sort of carte blanche. Boat owners spend big bucks, it kind of goes with the territory.
But those test runs would probably have been during the day, maybe even on the weekend. Rich American yachters don’t try to slink out of port in the middle of the night. When they do, the authorities surmise that said boat owners are up to no good and, in the waters between the US and Mexico, there’s plenty of no good that boaters can get up to. Because of this, the watchers are sophisticated and experienced. While you might think you’re running in and out of various ports undetected, there are forces on both sides of the border keeping their eyes on you. Or maybe, for Paul and Ernie, it was just plain bad luck.
It was actually a U.S. Coast Guard vessel that flagged them down: they hadn’t even gotten out of American waters. I can imagine it: “Prepare to be boarded.” Here everything gets a little hazy, but you can imagine these two — this particular two — high on adrenaline and feeling this close to pulling off the biggest score — the master score — of their lives. And everything is in place. Everything has been going like clockwork, just as planned. And then, in a heartbeat, the jig is up. Ernie, of course, was supposed to be dead. But Paul, as far as the two of them knew, wasn’t wanted by anyone: there was nothing that they knew about to connect them to each other. Whatever their thinking was, Ernie hit the water: or was pushed. It was night, they would have figured that he could float around in his lifejacket or cling to the dark side of the boat until the heat had cleared off. Or maybe Paul got suddenly tired of playing second string to a showy hitter.
Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money Page 29
