The Hunt Club (39 page)

But he'd come here for a specific purpose, and much to his satisfaction, Juhle saw that he wasn't going to have the time to take any more inventory of the château and surrounding grounds up here. Just below him, a black BMW Z4 convertible crested the rise beyond the gate.

Juhle backed up a couple of steps until he was lost to the view of the car's passengers. By the time they cleared the promontory and broke onto the olive-shaded area where he'd been waiting, he'd put on his sunglasses and was walking toward them, his badge extended in front of him, his face locked down into impassivity.

His footfalls crunching noisily on the gravel of the parking surface, Juhle walked directly to Carol's side of the car, spoke before it had rolled to a complete stop. “Mrs. Manion? Inspector Juhle from San Francisco homicide. You might remember me. If you could spare some time, I'd like to have a few more words with you.”

“I must insist,”
Ward said. “As you can see, this really isn't a good time, inspector. My wife is really feeling quiteill. We just had to leave the auction preview because of it, and I assure you we would not have done that if it wasn't quite serious.”

The two men stood face-to-face in the circular, vaulted marble foyer. The fact that they'd acquiesced to this point and in essence invited Juhle inside the château represented a colossal logistical error on the Manions' part—if they'd made him stay outside, he would have needed a warrant to enter without their express permission, but once he'd been admitted, it would be a lot tougher psychologically to kick him out.

As soon as they'd come inside, Carol, in the attitude of someone overcome by heat, had collapsed into one of the wing chairs along the walls. Now she rested an elbow on the arm of the chair and, eyes closed, supported her forehead with the first two fingers of her right hand. Juhle's unexpected presence, appearing out of the blinding whiteness of the afternoon, had dealt her the day's second psychic blow and rocked her.

This had been Hunt's intention, the crux of his plan, and clearly it was working.

Juhle kept up the pressure. “Mr. Manion, I've driven all the way up here from San Francisco to ask your wife just a very few questions after which I'll be on my way. But I'm in the middle of the murder investigation of a federal judge, and it's critical that I have your wife's statement. If you'd like to take a few minutes to get her a glass of water or freshen up a bit, that would be fine, but this is really very urgent.”

Ward Manion looked down at his wife, over to Juhle. “This is intolerable. I'm going to call my lawyer.”

“By all means,” Juhle said. “That's your right. But if you've got nothing to hide, the easiest thing might be to just answer my questions.”

Manion raised his voice. “Nothing to hide? This is preposterous! You get out of this house right now. You can't talk to us like this…”

But Carol suddenly got to her feet, came up from behind her husband, and touched his arm. “Ward.”

He whirled, nearly knocking her over. “Carol, sit back down. I've got this…”

“No. No, it's all right. I'll talk to him. I don't need a lawyer. As you know, we haven't done anything wrong.”

“No, of course we haven't. But all this is so…so wrong. They're treating you like a common criminal, barging in like this…” Ward shook his head in disgust. He came back to Juhle. “This is absurd. What do you want to know?”

“What do you want to ask me?” Mrs. Manion said.

Juhle got out his portable tape recorder, turned it on, and put it on the umbrella stand next to the front door. “When was the last time you spoke to George Palmer?”

She sighed heavily, threw a weary glance at her husband, and sank back into her armchair. Finally she raised her eyes to Juhle. “On last Monday afternoon. He called me at my house to invite me to a party.”

It went on
for nearly a half hour. It all came out—the long-ago relationship between Staci Keilly and her natural son Cameron, the connection between Staci Rosalier and Palmer, the photograph, her son Todd's true identity. To everything, her answers were straightforward and unambiguous. She admitted to the incredible coincidence factor. But she really hadn't known who Staci Rosalier was. She'd never heard the name before it had been in the press last Wednesday. If the victim's name had been Staci Keilly, of course, she would have notified the authorities. As to the photograph, naturally she'd noticed some similarity between the boy in the picture and her son Todd, but given the fact that she knew she'd never met this Staci woman—and why would this strange person have a picture of Todd?—she wrote it off as another in what was turning out to be a bizarre string of coincidences. But for the record, she didn't think the other boy looked exactly like Todd, anyway.

Finally, Juhle brought it around to Andrea Parisi, and Carol again said that she'd already told him about her original telephone call to Andrea, the invitation to be the celebrity emcee at the Library Foundation benefit, the appointment that Parisi had never kept. What was the problem?

Juhle hammered at the apparent discrepancies: Why did she wait
three hours
before calling Parisi's office after the time of the meeting when Parisi hadn't shown up? Why didn't she call while she would have been waiting in frustration? Why had Parisi told colleagues at her law firm that their meeting was going to concern custody issues? Given that, did Carol expect Juhle to believe that Mrs. Manion and Staci, Palmer, and Parisi were not already involved in negotiations over the child to whom they both had a claim?

And yet she denied it. With a gathering calm and growing disdain.

As they continued to spar, Juhle could feel the air between them grow thick and putrid. Though his understanding of exactly what had happened and why seemed to shock her, she grew more imperturbable as the interrogation went on.

Finally, Juhle got to the phone call. “Mrs. Manion. You talked to one of our witnesses not two hours ago, and you didn't deny that you called Ms. Parisi on Wednesday afternoon from the Saint Francis Hotel to change your appointment to her office downtown.”

The accusation—and with it the knowledge that Juhle had obviously spoken to the young woman who'd chatted her up in the tent at Meadowood—drew new blood. The facade gave, cracked, came back together. “That's just not true, inspector. I wasn't there.”

“You told our witness you were.”

“I did not. She's either mistaken, or she's a liar.”

Juhle didn't miss a beat. “How do you know it's a
she
?”

“I don't really know, inspector. It had to be a
he
or a
she
, didn't it? I picked one at random. Do you have other witnesses who say they actually saw me at the Saint Francis?”

“We'll find them.”

“I doubt you will, inspector. I very much doubt you will. Because I wasn't there. I was at home waiting for Ms. Parisi.”

At last, Ward could endure it no longer. “Aren't we just about to the end here, Sergeant? If you haven't gotten what you came here for by now, don't you agree it's probably not going to be forthcoming? Obviously, my wife has some inadvertent connection to all these tragic events, but to assume as you appear to that she played even the most minor role in any of them is patently absurd.”

Part of Hunt's plan had been for Juhle to deliver the message to Carol that she hadn't fooled anyone. The truth was out there. People knew what she had done. He had done that. But he couldn't pass up at least taking a shot at getting her to confess.

He went into a crouch to put himself at her eye level, his elbows resting on his thighs and his fingers linked in front of him. He spoke from his heart. “Mrs. Manion,” he said. “You're an intelligent woman. I think you must intuitively understand that it's only a matter of time before this will destroy you. You're not a bad person. You snapped under an unexpected threat to your son's future and your life together and then tried to cover up what you'd done. But you're not the kind of person who will be able to live with yourself, knowing what it is you've done, that you've killed innocent people. You don't want your son to have to live with all the ways this will change you. And you know it will. It already has.”

From her expression, he thought for just a moment that he had her.

“It can be over right now,” he said. “You can end it all right here.”

She seemed to be considering what he'd said. Drawing a breath in sharply, she pursed her lips and blinked rapidly several times. At last, she cocked her head to one side and brought her open hand down over her mouth. Her back went straight in the chair. “Todd is my son, and he is innocent. He loves me.”

And Juhle knew that he had lost.

“I am his mother,” she went on. “I would never let any harm come to him. I will protect him. I am his mother,” she repeated.

Juhle, sickened and depleted, pulled himself up to his feet. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “you're not even that.”

Hunt's base camp
was up a side road that began a few hundred feet north of the Manions' driveway and wound up the western slope facing the château. It was a place Mickey knew of—he'd come up here a few times with female companions to make out—where a turnout that coincided with a break in the topography gave them an unimpeded look and more importantly walkie-talkie access across to the valley, the promontory, and to the California oaks, which grew amid the boulders at the very crest of the ridge beyond the Manions' roof.

On a line, they were less than a half mile from the main house.

Hunt's Cooper and Mickey's Camaro, both excessively visible on the Silverado Trail, were parked on the shoulder of the road. Jason, back from the Meadowood, had parked his purple PT Cruiser well up the street, so that the random Napa County cop, should one appear, wouldn't become suspicious.

Amy and Jason, Hunt and Mickey stood in a tight group in a patch of shade. Juhle had been in the house across the way for about a half hour, and the small talk in the clearing had gotten smaller and smaller until finally it had disappeared altogether. Suddenly, Mickey, who hadn't taken his eyes off the château the whole time, said, “Happening.”

Hunt lifted his binoculars and was watching as Juhle appeared at the front door on his way out. His body language alone told the story, affirmed when nobody accompanied him out.

Juhle got to his car door and opened it, Hunt lowered the binoculars, got his telephone off his belt, and handed it to Wu.

“You ready?”

She'd been game all along. Though her task was simple and straightforward enough, she and Wyatt had discussed it in some detail, and now she took the phone without any hesitation. Still, she did have a question. “You're sure you don't want to wait until Devin gets up here?”

“I'm sure,” Hunt said. “Whatever else happened with Dev and her, you can bet he delivered the message, so we hit her now when it's still in her craw, before she can digest it. And I'm damn sure Dev doesn't want to see this next part. He won't even want to hear about it.”

Mickey said, “The dude's in this far, Wyatt, he's following your lead, he ought to get over it.”

Hunt shrugged. “Yeah, well, it's his job. Everything he's done up to now, it's in his little manual of what he's allowed to do. As we all know, he's got these due-process issues, which fortunately I don't have to worry about.”

“Yeah, but for the record, Amy and I are officers of the court, too. In fact, last time I looked I was a DA.” Jason, all nerves now, wasn't complaining, just stating a fact. “So Wyatt's idea that we don't talk about it, that might be a good thing to remember when this is over.”

Amy put a calming hand on his arm. “Understood. I think everybody gets that, Jason. Let's get this done. Wyatt, what's the number?”

Hunt gave it to her, and she punched it in, the three men standing around her in various attitudes of tension. Hunt, arms crossed, the muscles in his jaw working. Mickey shifting from foot to foot. Jason, hands in his pockets, high color in his face, although his dark eyes were hooded, almost brooding; he chewed at the inside of his lower lip. Nobody said a word.

Amy affected being cool, but her eyes darted from the trees to the sky to the men around her while she waited for the first ring and gave away the state of her nerves. A breeze freshened and blew some of her hair across her face, and almost angrily, she brushed it away. Suddenly, with an audible sigh of relief, she nodded. “Ringing,” she whispered.

Then she nodded. Someone had picked up.

“May I please speak to Carol Manion?” Wu's eyes were closed in concentration. “Yes, I understand that,” she said, “but this is an emergency. I need to speak with her personally.” Another pause. “That won't be possible. Would you please ask? It's actually really urgent. Yes.” And finally, the coup. “Tell her it's Staci Rosalier.”

Wu's knuckles were white on the cell phone. She opened her eyes, caught Hunt's steely gaze, and nodded again imperceptibly. Carol was coming to the phone.

When it came,
the voice was far from the refined contralto Wu had noted at the auction preview. Everything that had happened to Carol Manion today, first with Amy and then evidently with Juhle, had as Hunt predicted finally managed to erode the surface veneer of control and sophistication. The voice rode a wave of dread now that broke and churned in her throat. “Who is this?”

Hunt had told Amy to get right to it, not to give her a chance to hang up. Wu spoke in measured, even tones. “It's Staci Rosalier, Carol. Staci Keilly. Todd's mother.”

“Who is this? Is this the police again? This is pure harassment.”

“It's not the police, Carol. You know it's not the police.”

“Who is it, then? What do you want?”

“I want my son back. But it's too late for that. I'll settle for Andrea Parisi.”

“I'm hanging up.”

“I'll leave you alone if you lead me to Andrea.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Yes, you do, Carol. Don't make me threaten you. I don't want to take Todd and force you to trade, but I will if I have to.”

Now through the line, Carol came across in a clear panic. Wu heard her yelling back through the house. “Todd! Todd! Where are you? Come in here. I need to see you.
Right now!
” She ended in a shriek.

Other noises sounded in the background. Male. Concerned.

Now, back into the phone, no mistaking it, Carol's fear bled out and over into her voice. “He's here. He's fine.”

“I know that. I'd never hurt my own son. But I would take him from you.”

“Tell me who you are!”

“I've told you that. Where is Andrea?”

“I said I don't know! I don't know.”

“All right,” Wu said. “I've warned you. Look out your back windows. I'll call back in exactly five minutes.”

In the dining room
off the kitchen at the château, Carol stood holding the phone, breathing hard, her face gone pale. Ward had come in with the earlier screams, followed by Todd along with the security guard who'd admitted Juhle earlier, and Todd's nanny. Now the four of them hovered in the doorway.

Looking at the phone as though surprised that she still held it, she put it down into its receiver and turned back to the rest of them. “Oh, Todd,” she said, moving toward him, arms extended. “My baby. Are you all right? Tell me you're all right.”

“I'm fine, Mom. I'm good. Are you okay?”

She was down at his level, hugging him tightly. “I'm good,” she said, but her voice broke. Her shoulders heaved and then heaved again. She tried to stifle a desperate sob.

“Carol.” Ward was down next to her. “What's this about? Talk to me.”

But instead she gathered herself, stood, and faced the guard. “Has anyone been here to the house today besides Inspector Juhle?”

“No, ma'am.”

“You're sure?” Her voice snapped at him. “
Don't look at Todd! I want your answer.
Was anybody here?”

Stunned by the violence of the outburst, the guard backed up a step. “No, ma'am. I'm sure. Nobody.”

Ward reached out his hand. “Carol…”

She held up a warning finger to her husband, came back at the guard. “When we drove up, he was outside. Juhle. Had he been out there alone for long?”

“No, ma'am. A minute, two minutes at the most, before you got here. I watched him the whole time.”

“What did he do?”

“He sat in his car for a minute, no more, then got out and walked to where the driveway drops off.”

“And what did he do there?”

“It seemed like he was looking at the view.”

“And that's all? He never went around the back.”

“No, ma'am, he didn't have time for anything like that. You and Mr. Manion arrived about a minute later. Almost immediately, in fact.”

She whirled around to the nanny. “And you've been with Todd all day, too?”

“Sí, señora. Toda el día.”

She turned to her son. “Todd? Is that true. All day?”

The boy, now frightened by his mother's madness, moved a step away toward his nanny. “Mo-om.”

Ward came over and put his arm around his wife, dismissing the others with an impatient wave, wanting to get her away. He walked with her a few steps into the living room, whose enormous west-facing windows featured full-length white drapes now drawn against the afternoon sun. “Who was that on the telephone now that's got you so upset? Is it more of this, this police business?” He reached after her as she moved away. “Carol? Please…”

She had reached where the drapes met in the center of the windows and now threw them open with enough violence that one of them ripped at the runners above. Then, stepping back as if stung, her hands to her mouth, she whimpered through her fingers.

In silver paint on the glass, backward so they could be read from inside, someone had spray-painted the capital letters:
T-O-D-D
.

“Hello.”
Mrs. Manion's voice now barely audible in the cell phone, laced with panic but still managing to maintain a tenuous control.

“Don't interrupt. You can send everyone else away,” Wu said, using the exact, carefully rehearsed lines they'd agreed upon. “No one else has to be involved. This is about Andrea now, not about you. We'll be watching.”

Amy had gone pale,
her hand shaking as she handed the phone back to Hunt—it had grown hot to the touch. “God!” she said, blowing out with each breath. “Oh, my God.”

Jason put his arm around her. “You okay?”

She shook her head no. Blew out again. “Shit. Shit shit shit. That was horrible.”

“It was awesome,” Mick said.

“I think I might be sick.”

“Here.” Jason lowered her to the ground, sat with his arms around her.

Hunt went down on a knee, lifted her chin with his finger. “That was perfect, Ames,” he said. “You did good.”

She nodded, her breath still coming hard, and Jason looked across to Hunt. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

“Now, you guys—Amy and Jason—you take off. You've both done plenty. You get caught in any part of this, your jobs are at least severely compromised if not over. You've got too much to lose.”

“Like you guys don't,” Jason said.

Hunt waved away the objection. “I've changed jobs before. It didn't kill me. I can always do something else. And Devin's a big boy who's here because he wants to be. Everybody else—Mick, Tammy, Craig—they're on the payroll. I'm sure they'll get a huge bonus.”

Mick perked right up. “How big?” he asked.

“Huge,” Hunt said, “unprecedented.” He went back to Amy and Jason. “But you guys are volunteers who've done some great work, and now you've got to get out of here and go home. I mean it.”

“And what are you all going to do?” Amy asked.

Hunt said. “The rest of us, we play this way.”

Juhle and Hunt
had been together at the base camp for three hours since Amy's call to Carol. Now Mickey was back in his car, parked again where the road cut into the Silverado Trail, where he would be ready to tail the Manions should all of them, including Carol, come off their mountain by car and try to make some kind of getaway.

Juhle hung up from the “I'm going to be late” call to his wife and walked over to where Hunt, his binoculars mounted on a tripod in front of him, half-leaned against the hood of his Cooper. “How long you gonna give this?” he asked.

Hunt looked at his watch, at the declining sun, at the château, finally at his friend. “As long as it takes,” he said. “You want, go on home. I'll call you from wherever we find Andrea. You can come out then and get famous.”

“You still think this is going to work?”

“I don't know.”

“It's taking a while.”

“I figured it would. She's got some choices to make. She could come clean to Ward—or mostly clean, enough to get him to cooperate with her. Either that or convince him and everybody else in the house that she can handle whatever it is herself, that she's not having a breakdown. If that's her choice, then she's got to get rid of them, send them out to dinner, say she's got a headache, something. Whatever it is, it's going to take some time.”

“If somebody writes one of my kid's name on my windows, I call the cops.”

“I know, but she won't do that.”

“What if she calls in twenty private security guards or even Shiu, for Christ's sake. Wouldn't that be a fine kettle of fish?”