Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money (17 page)

I padded around my apartment doing things as
I dried off — a habit I’d picked up since moving to a warmer,
moister climate. Plus living on a cliff just about guarantees total
privacy. In Malibu it just feels right to me to not wear clothes to
do things that would have seemed unthinkable in New York. I’d
started a pot of coffee and was shuffling through my clothes
looking for my most comfortable track pants when the phone rang.
Still, even now there are some things I can’t do undressed and
talking on the phone is one of them. (The other thing is eating hot
food: I just find all of the possibilities too distressing.) I let
the call go to voicemail while I pulled clothes on, thinking I knew
who it was and not sure if I was ready to take the call anyway.

And I was right. When I played the message
back, Emily’s voice began on a sigh. “Madeline. Shit,” she sounded
unpanicked. Resigned. “Where the hell are you? And why can’t you
carry a cel phone like a normal person? Well, I’ve left you all the
details on the other messages and I’m not going to reblab them now
but, as I guess you’ll figure, I’m just talking on and on and on in
the hope that if you’re actually there and screening and you’ll
pick up the phone and...”

I hung up the phone and dialed her right
back.

“Emily... I’m here. I just got out of the
shower.”

“So... are you completely freaked, or
what?”

“Or what, actually,” I smiled. “Well, pretty
much the opposite, when I think about it.” There was dead silence
for a moment. “Emily?” I said. “You still there.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m here. I was just thinking
about the meaning of the words you just said.”

I think I must have actually pulled the
phone away from my head and looked at it questioningly, just like
they do on TV, before I pulled it back in close and said
“Whaaat?”

“I guess what I mean is: HOW COULD YOU NOT
BE FREAKED?”

“Jesus, Em. He was sweet and everything. And
it was very nice, but, I’m thirty-five-years-old. I have, you know,
been down this road before.”

Another silence. And then Emily’s voice
again. Ultra patient this time, as though she were talking to a
much-loved but slightly learning deficient child. “OK. Madeline.
Have you listened to your messages yet?”

I was blank for a second. And then the
blinking light caught my eye. Messages. “No, I haven’t. I just
walked in the door and hopped straight into the shower. I was going
to call you right away and...”

“Never mind, Madeline. It’s cool. Just...
shit,” that word again. “I dunno. I don’t feel like explaining the
whole thing again. Just listen to them and call me back, OK?”

“That’s dorky, Em. Just tell me,
already.”

“But...”

“Come
on
, Emily. I’m just not in the
mood.”

She sighed. A resigned sound. “Where to
start... OK. Well, after you left, I spent most of the evening with
these three really charming women. I think you saw me with them?
Turns out they’re all wives of executives — I don’t think that
company has any girl executives, do you?”

“Not so many, maybe. But equal opportunity
employment is not why you left 72,000 messages on my machine,
right?”

“Anyway,” Emily ignored the barb, “we were
drinking, laughing, you know: getting pretty chummy. I’m not sure
who they thought I was or maybe after a while they didn’t care
because... guess what?”

“I am not going to guess what,” it was
possible I didn’t sound too friendly just then. I was tired and
beginning to get annoyed. Emily didn’t care.

“Well, it’s all a big secret, but your old
boyfriend has been kidnapped.”

This woke me up. “Kidnapped? No way. Who
kidnaps the CEO of a
glass
company?” But Sal’s words came
back to me: “not missing friendly.” Kidnapping would definitely
qualify.

“Well, that’s what Melissa and Cindy and
Vera were saying,” Melissa, Cindy and Vera were no doubt Emily’s
new buddies. “His wife reported that he left for work in the
morning, but he never showed up. And it’s not like Langton does any
high tech or secret-y stuff. I asked.””

I thought about what Emily had said. “But
that’s a big leap, Emily: from not showing up for work to
kidnapping. How do they know he didn’t just run away to
Bolivia?”

“Bolivia?” Emily said.

“Or wherever. It was the first place that
popped into my head.”

“Bolivia was the first place that popped
into your head?” Emily repeated, sounding incredulous.

“Forget Bolivia, already. I just meant, how
do they know he didn’t just take off with a mistress or
something.”

“There was a note. Melissa’s husband
described it to her. The way she told it, the note looked just like
the ones in the movies: like it was made out of cut up magazine
letters or something.”

Which seemed weird to me. In the age of
laser printers, who’d bother making an art project out of a ransom
note? But I didn’t think it was weird enough to comment on just
now: there were too many levels of oddness to hone in on just
one.

“What do they want?”

“The note didn’t say! Just that they’d
better keep it quiet and that someone would be contacted shortly.
Or else.”

“Or else what?”

“They didn’t say that either. Just: Or
else.”

“That’s odd, Emily. Don’t ransom notes
usually go to the family?”

Emily paused, thinking. “You know, you’re
right. And he hadn’t even started with the company, so... that
is
weird. Do you think that means anything?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It might, I
guess. Or it might just mean they figured the company would be the
most direct route. Or the most untraceable. When did they get the
note?” I guessed they would have gotten it early West Coast time
yesterday, about the time of the trading halt. If Ernie hadn’t been
missing they wouldn’t have bothered with that: if it had been a
nooner or a golf game or a meeting, there would have been no reason
to stop the stock trading. But a kidnapping that might leak to the
press at any time? For
that
you stop trading.

Emily confirmed my guess: the note had
landed early the day before. “But here’s something else I don’t
get: the wives club said the note instructed Langton to keep the
kidnapping quiet, but it’s all over the news this morning.”

“Is the stock trading?”

“Geez,
you
don’t know? You really did
just get home, didn’t you?”

“I told you I did. But is it? Trading, I
mean.”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t even gotten around
to thinking about that part yet.”

“I should go and check.” I had a sudden
burning desire to get off the phone and get on the computer. What
the hell
would
the kidnapping of a shiny new CEO do for a
company’s stock price? The stock market is a fickle master:
depending on how the wind was blowing on Wall Street today,
anything was possible.

“Wait, there’s more.”

“More what?” I asked, distractedly, already
booting my computer and preparing to download news releases.

“More. News. I don’t even know how to tell
you this next part. You sure you don’t want to listen to your
messages?”

“Emily,” I said warningly.

“It’s just too weird, Madeline. Oh hell:
I’ll just tell you. They have a suspect in the kidnapping. Photos
and stuff. Someone they think might be part of, like, a group or
something.”

“Well, that figures. He’s a pretty important
guy. They probably have a lot of people on it. That’s a good thing,
Emily.”

“But it’s
you.
”

This barely registered. It just didn’t make
any sense. How could it be me? That’s what I said: “How could it be
me?”

“I guess it was your run in with Miss Prissy
Twinset. That’s where it looked like the photos came from,
anyway.”

“They have
photos
?”

“Bad ones,” Emily assured me. “Black and
white. Like off a security camera, which is what I’m thinking it
must have been.”

“But you knew it was me.”

“Sure:
I
knew. I’m not sure anyone
else would recognize you though.”

“Like my mom?”

“I don’t think it’s exactly a CNN story,
Madeline. Local news right now. What are you going to do?”

Do. That was the first instant it came to
me: I had to do something. Society has expectations of you in
situations like this. Like, if you see an old lady with packages, a
poodle and a walker struggling across the street, you help her. And
if you were implicated in the kidnapping of a CEO, you...

“Turn myself in?” The very thought of it
floored me. Visions of a million reruns of
Law and Order
danced through my head: grimy cells, bad food and good cop, bad
cop. Even as I said it, it didn’t sound like a good idea. Emily
agreed. She said so.

“I mean... you didn’t do it, did you?”

“Emily!”

“Sorry. I had to ask. And they’re not
actually looking for, you know,
you.
Just someone who
infiltrated the company headquarters yesterday. Someone who, well,
happens to be you, but...”

“Oh God.”

“I know. It’s kind of a mess, isn’t it?”

The really weird part was I
felt
like
I had made it all happen even though, in actuality, I had just been
thrashing around not accomplishing much of anything.

“Look, Em, I’m going to go and think about
stuff. I need to digest it all. And, you know, maybe see if I can
catch a glimpse of myself on television. Christ: this isn’t how I
wanted my fifteen minutes of fame.”

Unaccountably, Emily giggled. I did as well.
Because as perilous as the situation was, viewed from a certain
angle, there were definitely humorous sides. Our giggles turned to
laughter. And it helped. Actually, it helped a lot. Helped put
things back into perspective. I
wasn’t
a kidnapper. I was a
lapsed stockbroker with more time on my hands than perhaps I’d
previously realized. I got off the phone feeling a lot better.
Calmer.

I walked over to my computer, preparing to
do what I do. Emily’s laughter — the laughter we’d shared — still
rang in my mind, along with the ridiculousness of the whole
situation... when a knock on the door stopped my heart.

The moment I heard the knock I
knew
it had to be the police. Who else could it be? I don’t know a lot
of people in LA — especially people who would drop by unannounced.
My little guest house, as I’ve said, hangs under the deck of a
large house and, collectively, they hang off a cliff. Even the most
ardent Jehovah’s Witness wouldn’t make this trek without an
invitation and the last place a lost pizza boy would come ask for
directions is my door. And, since we’d just gotten off the phone, I
knew Emily was at her place in Huntington Beach, an hour away if
traffic was good, so it couldn’t be her.

So my heart stopped. And the knock came
again. More insistent. I resisted the urge to jump out the window —
it’s a long drop — and it didn’t even occur to me to hide. They’re
three
small
rooms. Then I noticed that Tycho wasn’t barking:
his tail was wagging which only meant...

“Madeline? Are you in there?”

It was Tyler. And the relief that washed
over me was so large, I nearly passed out with it. The big relieved
grin on my face faded when I saw the look on Tyler’s. He looked
wiped, as though he hadn’t slept, and he was so pale he was
gray.

“Tyler, what is it?” I didn’t have to ask if
something was wrong.

“Is she here, Madeline?” His voice sounded
taut enough to break. “Tell me she’s here.”

I shook my head not understanding. “Tasya?”
I ventured.

His shoulders sagged with disappointment,
but he came deeper into the guest house, plopping himself on one of
my kitchen stools as his daughter did every time she came through
the door. “No,” he shook his head. “Not Tasya. Jennifer.”

“Jennifer?”

“She didn’t come home last night. And we
noticed that you didn’t either so we’d been hoping she was with
you.”

“Oh Tyler, no. I’m sorry. But no: I haven’t
heard from her since,” I paused a beat, trying to remember the last
time I’d talked to the teenager, then blanched guiltily when I
remembered. “Oh Tyler, yesterday. I saw her yesterday. Just before
noon. She wanted to talk to me and I didn’t have time right then.
I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault,” he said softly. “She tried
to talk to me about that time, too. She got me on my cell. I was in
a meeting, told her I’d call her back.”

“But Tyler, maybe it’s nothing. I mean,
she’s seventeen, right? There are a lot of places she could be
without it being bad. Have you tried calling her friends?”

Tyler nodded. “I’ve tried any place I’d
expect her to be.”

“What about her mom?”

“Lena? God. No, that’s a last resort. If she
even gets wind that Jen’ is missing...” he let his words trail off
as though even contemplating this scenario was too painful. “Maybe
I wouldn’t be this freaked if Jennifer was a different kind of kid.
But she’s always so good about letting me know where she is. In
fact, she gives
me
shit when I don’t show up when I’m
supposed to.”

“Listen Tyler, it’s not even noon yet. It
must be hard not to worry, but give it a few hours. Maybe she’ll
turn up in the afternoon with a huge hangover and a good
story.”

He looked relieved, but only slightly. Like
I was offering him the promise of a rope and he was opting to hang
on. “It’s good advice, Madeline. I know I can’t call the police or
anything until she’s been missing for twenty-four hours, so I might
as well cool my jets.”

When the door closed behind Tyler, I melted
onto the couch and vegged for a minute, trying to get the leftover
pounding of my heart under control. The day was turning surreal and
it wasn’t even lunch time. I tried not to think about Jennifer for
the moment. I’d meant it when I told Tyler to wait it out for the
time being. Seventeen-year-olds can be as capricious as... well...
anything. There is no metaphor equal to the task: there is nothing
as potentially capricious as a seventeen-year-old girl. I felt
fairly confident that Jennifer, would, as I’d told her father, turn
up later in the day, tired and sorry and perhaps even with a story
to tell.