Finder's Fee (16 page)

“What certainty do I have now? My house is charred rubble, my husband is dead, and my son is missing.”

“Still, Ida, it's unwise.”

Judith spoke up. “I think she should come with us.”

“Are you daft? You know how difficult this is.”

“No, I'm not daft.” Judith leaned over the table to keep her voice from carrying to the other patrons. “You're not thinking this through. We can't stay here much longer and we haven't learned all that Ida has to say. She may have more information.” Judith nudged the woman with her foot. She jerked.

“That's right. I'm not telling you any more unless you let me come along.”

Luke started to speak, but Judith cut him off. “Not only that, she can identify you. You introduced yourself to her at her home. If the police get hold of her, they'll have names and descriptions for both of us. If she claims we kidnapped her, then we have bigger problems. If she implicates us in the kidnapping of her son, then the FBI gets involved. Right? The FBI has jurisdiction over child abduction. It's bad enough having local cops from two cities — ”

“Three cities,” Luke said. “If your pilots filed a flight plan, then they know the jet is here and the locals will be notified by a phone call.”

“Okay, three cities.”

“But it's hard enough for two people to stay invisible, especially when one has had her face on television for years. Three people might be impossible.”

“Think, Luke. If we find Abel, do you think he's going to run into our arms because we look like a nice couple? He's been abducted from his home. He wants to see his mother.”

Ida's face set like stone. Judith couldn't tell if she was acting or if a strength and intelligence previously masked by sorrow was now coming to the surface. Either way, she was playing the part well. Judith just hoped she had chosen the right side.

“I know when I'm being worked.” Luke's frown turned into a scowl.

Judith answered the scowl with a grin. “You are, but you know that taking Ida is the right decision.”

“I don't think she'd turn on us, but you make a good point about Abel responding to his mother better than to us, and about our need to hear the rest of Ida's story.” He leaned back and his shoulders rounded. “You win.”

Once again, Ida seemed on the verge of tears, but Judith saw something new in the woman: resolve.

“What now?” Ida asked.

“We leave but once outside the restaurant, we split up.”

“Split up?”

Luke raised a hand. “Not completely. They're going to be looking for three people, one man and two women. We stick out like coal on snow. You two walk together, I'll stay a few steps behind. We are never to lose sight of one another. And speaking of sticking out, Judith, you need to buy a hat, or scarf or something, and some shades. Disguise yourself the best you can. Don't — I'm serious about this — do not use any
credit card or debit card. Got it? They're looking for you and any transaction other than cash can be traced. Do you have any money?”

“Enough.”

“Okay. I'm going to get more cash from an ATM machine. No one has identified me yet so I think I can get away with it. Once they do, all my plastic gets tossed.”

“Understood.” Judith took a deep breath. “Let's go.”

Luke threw two twenties on the table and the three walked into the concourse of the airport.

Sam Pennington taxied the Piper Arrow 180 aircraft to the runway and waited the final clearance to take off from the Fresno Chandler Downtown Airport. He had wanted to be in the air sooner, but the local cops and fire investigators had an endless stream of “just one last question.” Finally satisfied, they gave him his leave and he returned his rental car and rented the single engine aircraft. At 120 bucks an hour most people would have choked at the expense, but Pennington didn't care. It wasn't his money he was spending.

The tower radioed his clearance and Pennington put the craft into motion. An experienced private pilot, he felt the thrill of acceleration and lift and soon exchanged the view of the ground for the blue of the central California sky. Soon he'd be at altitude and traveling at 130 knots.

His destination had been easy to determine. People like Judith Find didn't travel in commercial airliners. A couple of phone calls and two or three lies got him the information he needed. What he didn't know was why Judith Find had been at his target's house in the first place and who the man with her might be. Pennington liked things clear and in the proper order, but life — especially his life — seldom cooperated.

“In due time,” he said to himself and banked the airplane in the direction of San Diego.

It bothered him that they had flown to San Diego. How had they known? How could they know that his employers set up camp in the city? Something was missing. No, not something — someone. Could there be another player? If so, who?

He had a few hours to consider such things and to plan his next step.

Pennington wasn't sure how things would progress but he was certain it wasn't going to be pretty.

F
ifteen minutes after they left the restaurant the threesome stood at the curb of the terminal, melded into the mass of humanity moving in and out of the building. Judith and Ida stood twenty feet away from Luke. Judith had taken his advice and purchased a powder blue cap with the words Sea World stitched over the brim and a pair of sunglasses. One look in the mirror had told her she personified a Southern California tourist.

Judith raised a hand and a green-and-white cab pulled to the curb and a tired-looking man exited the driver's seat and moved to the trunk.

“No luggage. We're not in town for long.” Judith opened the backseat and Ida slipped in. The driver, a dark-skinned
man with a scruffy swath of stubble across his face looked puzzled. “Oh, and there are three of us.”

Luke stepped to the open door and waited for Judith to seat herself in the back. He joined her. The driver returned to his spot and closed the door.

“Where to?”

“Can you recommend a good hotel?” Luke asked.

“Sure, there's lots of them around here — ”

“In the north county.”

“You want me to drive you all the way to the north county? Inland or oceanside?”

“How about someplace in between.”

The cabbie thought. “Lot's of people like the Marriott chain. There's also Holiday Inn …”

“Marriott is good. One of the larger ones.”

The cabbie nodded with assurance. “You might want to call ahead and see if they have rooms available. Those places can fill up quick.”

Judith cut her eyes to Luke. Neither of their cell phones worked any longer. “I think we're good, but thanks for the suggestion.”

“It's your fare, mister.” The cab pulled away.

Terri felt as if she had put in a fourteen-hour day and it was only 5:30. Since receiving a call on her private cell phone from Judith, she had worked at a feverish rate to correlate information never meant to be correlated. She had made calls, spoken to shippers, installers, billing, and more. Once she had gathered all the information she could begin to sort through it. Fortunately, she was a whiz with computers. She didn't know how they worked, nor did she care, but she did know how to make them obey.

Most of the employees had left for the day, and the forensics crew had finished their work in her office and Judith's. Terri, however, felt more comfortable in the third-floor conference room, one of the smaller meeting rooms used by midlevel managers. Here she had access to a laptop, the Internet, and thanks to Judith's unflagging trust in her, accounting documents protected by passwords.

At first, the task of finding what homes had purchased both the Persian rug and the Blocked Maple design of laminate flooring seemed impossible but she got a break. The flooring never made it out of the testing phase. Only a few outlets stocked the material. Since it was being tested, the outlets kept close records. There weren't many to keep. Very few people wanted it.

The area rug was a different matter. More of them sold but there was good news on that front as well. Retailers kept close tabs on their stock. With laser scanners and sophisticated database software, most could keep track of buying trends not only of the neighborhood the store served but of the individual buyer. By comparing addresses, Terri found what she was looking for.

There was only one address that fit the bill.

Terri wondered how Judith knew that.

She had nothing to do now but wait for another call.

“Something isn't right.” Karen Rose sat in the passenger side of the KTOT news van, staring at the near empty parking lot of Find, Inc. Only a handful of cars were visible, including the Lexus convertible parked in the CEO's spot.

“Reporter's intuition?” Cindy Chu struggled to stretch but the confines of the driver's seat limited her efforts. They
had been sitting for forty minutes trying to decide their next move.

“I suppose. You have those times when you've seen things, listened to what people have to say, and still have a feeling that everyone else is wrong.”

“All the time. The way I figure it, I'm right and they're wrong.”

“That's what I like about you, Cindy — your enormous, blind confidence.”

“At least you didn't say arrogance.”

“I'd never say anything like that — at least not while I'm confined in a small space with you.” Karen opened a file on her lap. The first thing she did after leaving Dwayne's office was scour the Net for any information she could find on Judith Find and Find, Inc. She found lots of information, very little of it useful.

“She's all image.”

Cindy looked puzzled. “What?”

Karen held up the printouts. “She's all image. Go to the Find, Inc., website and you get a short bio about Judith, lots of media pictures, some downloadable video, and a billion pages of products. Every other site I went to had nothing but good to say. No dirt. No rumors. No complaints. The company is sound, the stock is solid, profits every quarter. She's spick-and-span; a business Barbie.”

“Did you expect her dark secrets to be posted on the web?”

“No, but I expected a little more humanity. With people like Martha Stewart there are those that love her or hate her. With the Find woman, there's almost nothing but fluff.”

“Maybe that's a good thing.”

Karen closed the folder. “Maybe. Let me ask you something. You're at a house and it blows up but you get away; what's the first thing you'd do?”

Cindy bit her lip as she thought. “I guess that'd depend on whether or not I'm the one who blew it up.”

“Why would a wealthy, well-known woman blow up another person's house?”

“Maybe she had some kind of grudge or was being blackmailed.”

“Judith Find has millions of dollars.”

Cindy shrugged. “So? Millionaires can be blackmailed.”

“If you had millions of dollars and were highly recognizable, would you blow up a home? I mean personally?”

“I see what you're getting at. You're saying she'd hire someone to do it.”

“Exactly. Her mental elevator would have had to snap for her to personally travel to Fresno and do the deed, especially since she could wave enough money around to capture the attention of every criminal mercenary in three countries.”

“But there was a man with her. Maybe he forced her to do the deed. You know, like the rich kid from the newspaper family and that anti-something-or-other group.”

“Patty Hearst and the SLA?”

“Yeah, her. Maybe someone found a way to force her to do something she wouldn't normally do.”

Karen gave it some thought. “No dice. The SLA wanted attention. No one is claiming responsibility. There's got to be something else.”

“Did you check to see if she has a criminal record?”

“Pure as the driven snow as far as I can tell. I checked for articles and other news reports on her but nothing. It's like a PR firm controls the media around her.”

“They don't control us.”

“And here we sit in an empty parking lot looking at a locked building and a parked car.”

“It's a shame the janitorial crew wouldn't let you in.” Cindy chuckled. “What kind of world is this when even the maintenance people have unshakable integrity? Don't they know how difficult that makes our jobs?”

Karen reran everything she knew so far and came up with the same mystery and no new answers. “I've got a bad feeling about this, Cindy.”

“You think we're going to get in trouble? Sued by a major corporation?”

“No. I think Judith Find is the one in trouble. I don't know what kind or how severe but I'm willing to bet my paycheck the woman is in way over her head.”

“You can't broadcast psychic feelings over the television airwaves. The station owners might have something to say about that.”

Karen gazed through the window at the empty Lexus. “What have you gotten yourself into, lady?”

U
se the phone in the lobby.” Luke sounded tired.

“Why?” Judith asked. She
knew
she was tired.

“Because when you use a phone in a hotel room, it's routed through a computer switchboard and recorded, just in case you're making long-distance calls.”

It made sense and the fact that it did worried Judith. Was paranoia contagious?

Judith, Luke, and Ida sat in the lobby of the Triton Hotel. The cabbie had dropped them off at the entrance to the Marriott on La Jolla Village Drive and they stepped into the lobby, went to the bar, and sipped sodas for twenty minutes. They then exited the lobby, hailed another cab, and chose a different hotel. Judith needed no explanation. She held the same fear as Luke. The cabbie would return to the airport and the police, if they were on the ball, would interview as many drivers as possible, assuming that they had either rented a car or taken a taxi. Sooner or later, they would connect with the man who drove them to the Marriott. The police would arrive a short time after that. They couldn't stay in the Marriott, and Luke never intended that they would.