A Penny for Your Thoughts (39 page)

“Go get the police officer,” I said. “There might be fingerprints.”

“I will do it,” Nick said, leaving the room.

“Maybe he shouldn’t, not just yet,” Marion said. “I don’t want anything to distract them from finding Carlos.”

“But this may be related somehow,” I said. “Angelina’s disappearance could be, too.”

Last night Angelina had a secret, romantic rendezvous with Alan. Was it possible, I wondered, that she was somewhere waiting for him now, planning to be a part of his escape?

“Oh, Callie,” Marion said suddenly, one hand to her mouth. “I feel like my whole world is falling apart—first one thing and now another. What’s going on? Is God trying to punish me?”

I put my arms around her shoulders and led her to a chair.

“God’s not punishing you,” I said softly. “He can give you the strength to get through this. He—”

“We found her!”

The policeman was shouting from the living room, and Marion and I both jumped up and ran into the other room. Apparently, the satellite tracking system had located Judith’s Mercedes Benz. It was parked just off the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike toward Quakertown.

Forty-Five

We flew along the Northeast Extension at well over 80 miles per hour, Marion and Nick in my car with me, Derek and Sidra following along in their Jaguar. By the time we reached the exit, it wasn’t hard to figure out where the cops had found the Mercedes—there were already at least five police cars surrounding it in the nearby parking lot of a small shopping center. Judith was facing a uniformed policeman, yelling, while another cop seemed to be inspecting the car. A small crowd had gathered along the sidewalk, watching.

“I want a lawyer!” Judith was hollering as we parked and ran up to the scene. Her eyes were wide and furious, and when she saw us she gasped. “What are you doing here? Mother, tell these
people that I don’t know what they’re talking about! I haven’t seen Carlos all day! I’m not saying another thing until I’m allowed to call an attorney!”

We all just stared at her, stunned that Carlos was nowhere to be found.

“He’s not here?” Derek yelled in horror.

“I’m afraid not,” answered one of the policemen.

“Where’s my son, you monster?”
Sidra screamed, and before we could stop her, she had flown at Judith and knocked her to the ground. She pounded on Judith’s face while Judith howled in pain. The officers stepped in to pull Sidra off of Judith, but it took nearly a minute of wrestling to get her loose.

Everything was chaos with everyone shouting at everyone else. Judith was sitting on the ground now, yelling loudly. The police had herded Sidra and Derek to a nearby police car where they were trying to calm Sidra down. Nick supported Marion, who stood on the fringes of the crowd looking as though she was about to faint.

“Looks like the backseat latch was broken through from the trunk,” one of the officers called out from the car. “The kid must’ve kicked it out himself, and then climbed from the trunk into the backseat.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Judith screamed. “Carlos was never in my backseat!”

“Excuse me,” I said finally, stepping over to the officer in charge. “I’m an attorney. May I speak with her privately for a moment?”

“We just wanna find the kid,” the cop said, his expression pained.

“Is she under arrest?” I asked.

“Not yet. Right now, we’re just trying to ask her some questions.”

“I’m very familiar with the situation,” I said. “Please. Let me speak with her. Just five minutes.”

He looked at me intently for a moment, then down at Judith.

“Five minutes,” he said.

He turned and walked away, joining the other cops examining her car. I walked to Judith and held out a hand to help her up. She took it, brushing the dust from her slacks, picking the rocks from her hair.

“Callie, what is going on?” she whispered furiously. “I’m just sitting in there in the coffee shop, minding my own business, when suddenly every cop in Pennsylvania is surrounding my car. Sirens and lights are going, and they’re screaming at me to come out of the restaurant with my hands up. I did like they said, and the next thing you know, they’re asking things about Carlos and a kidnapping! I don’t know
what
they’re talking about. I haven’t even seen Carlos all day.”

I studied her face, looking into her eyes. The skin around the right eye was swollen and already starting to turn a mottled blue. Whether Judith was being truthful about not seeing Carlos or not, I just wasn’t sure.

In a steady voice, I explained that Carlos hadn’t shown up at school today.

“We found a note he left behind,” I said, “telling us that he was going to hide in your trunk. He thought you were up to something, and he was going to spy on you.”

“In
my
trunk? Of the Benz?”

“That’s right, Judith. You say you haven’t seen him, but I don’t understand how that’s possible, and neither do the cops. Carlos obviously isn’t in the trunk now. And yet there are signs that he was at one point. So when would he have gotten out?”

Judith looked wildly around at the scene.

“A cigarette,” she said, patting the pocket of her blazer. “I’ve got to have a cigarette.”

She found the pack in her pocket and pulled one out, slipping it between two dry lips. With trembling fingers, she lit it and then took a deep drag, pulling it out of her mouth to exhale.

“I was just going out in the country for a drive,” she said, “I never—”

“Don’t bother lying to me, Judith,” I said tiredly, holding up one hand. “I know everything. I know about your affair with Alan Bennet. I know you’ve been terrorizing your sister-in-law and attempting to destroy your brother’s marriage. I know you’ve been raiding the accounts of Feed the Need and pulling the funds into Smythe Incorporated. So don’t lie to me any more—I know too much. Now, where’s Carlos?”

She was speechless, her mouth literally hanging open. After a long pause, she closed her mouth, swallowed hard, then looked at me imploringly, lowering her voice to a whisper.

“Okay,” she said. “Alan and I did those things to Derek and Sidra. And maybe I did have a hand in the money issues with Feed the Need. But I would never, ever in a million years have done anything to harm Carlos. He’s my nephew.”

“Why the vandalism?” I asked. “Why the black roses and the cut up coat and the ruined car paint?”

She hesitated, sucking fiercely on her cigarette. Finally, she blew out a thick stream of smoke and lowered her voice to just above a whisper.

“To distract attention,” she said. “It was Alan’s idea. He said Derek would be less likely to find out about the accounts at work if he were distracted at home. Once we started, it worked so well, we just kept it going. Derek has been, like, in la-la land for two months. He never noticed a thing.”

I just looked at her.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m not proud of myself. But it was just little things—petty vandalism. Not like kidnapping.”

“What about the theft from Feed the Need?”

“We were just restructuring,” she said, but when she saw my face she hesitated then spoke again. “Okay, so we were stripping out funds from Feed the Need. It’s a matter of priorities. We had to find some low-interest—okay, no-interest—money, to bolster up some of our ventures in the clothing business. We didn’t take that much. But Feed the Need is such a monumental waste of money
anyway, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. We would’ve paid it back eventually.”

“What about the faked records, the closed-down district offices?”

Judith shrugged.

“Alan handled all of that. I just gave the authority for the money transfers.”

“Never mind that by stealing from Feed the Need you stole food from the mouths of starving children all over the world.”

“Starving children,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Daddy was ready to kiss away his fortune to starving children. Give me a break.”

I couldn’t even think of a response to that. I wondered what would make a person so totally devoid of conscience.

“That’s all I can say, Callie,” she told me. “I may have done some dishonest things, but I didn’t do anything to my nephew.”

“If you’re telling the truth,” I said, “then answer a few questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“What were you doing here?”

She hesitated a moment before speaking.

“I was meeting Alan. We were going to the Poconos for the weekend.”

“Here? Why meet here?”

“This coffee shop is sort of our ‘special’ place,” she said. “First trip away together and all that. It’s right on the way to the Poconos.”

“Go on.”

“Not much to tell. I went by Alan’s house this morning to get him, and he said he had some things to take care of first. He wanted me to go on up to the condo, and he would come later, but I hated the thought of that long drive by myself. So he agreed to meet me here, outside of our coffee shop. We were going to leave his car in this parking lot and pick it up on our way home Sunday.”

“Tell me every place your car has been today,” I said, wondering where in the chain of events Carlos could’ve gotten out of the car.

“That’s it. From home, to Alan’s apartment, to here.”

“No other stops, no getting gas, nothing like that?”

“No.”

“Did you open the trunk today at all?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I loaded everything late last night after everybody else was asleep.”

“Why all the secrecy?”

“Why do you think?” she replied sharply, inhaling on her cigarette. “I’m Alan’s
boss,
for goodness’ sake.”

I had to sigh. The best I could figure, Alan had tricked Judith, sending her off to the Poconos so he could raid her company’s funds while she wasn’t around. It must’ve thrown him a little when she showed up at his house early this morning, ready to drive off together. But then he had offered to meet her here, telling her he had errands to run first.

A little more fell into place for me then as all that had gone on before began to make sense. Alan had merely used Judith, preying on her competitive urges against her brother to convince her to steal money from Derek’s company and put it into her own. Alan’s ultimate goal wasn’t to drain Feed the Need or to deepen the coffers of Smythe Incorporated. It was to watch the procedure and obtain the codes so that he could eventually move some money himself, this time from Smythe Incorporated into his own hot little hands.

“How long have you been sitting in the coffee shop, waiting?” I asked finally, my arms folded across my chest.

Judith’s face colored.

“A few hours,” she said.

“Long enough to realize he isn’t coming?”

She took the last puff of her cigarette and tossed it onto the ground.

“So he stood me up,” she said, grinding out the cigarette with her toe. “I knew the relationship would burn itself out eventually.”

“Stood you up?” I asked, thinking about the airplane he had been on, the 1.5 million dollars he almost stole from her company. She didn’t even know yet that he had been running away or that he had been shot. I waved to the cops that we had finished our conversation.

“Oh, Judith,” I said before walking away. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Forty-Six

The police took Judith downtown for questioning by Detectives Sollie and Keegan. The rest of us decided to proceed on the assumption that Judith was telling the truth about Carlos, that the child had had only two opportunities to get out of her car—at Alan’s apartment and here. We split up, with Derek and Sidra and several of the policemen and quite a few helpful onlookers deciding to search the parking lot, the shopping center, and the surrounding area. Marion, Nick, and I decided to head to Alan’s apartment and see if we could turn anything up there.

Our drive to Alan’s was a little slower than the high-speed chase we had taken to Quakertown. As we drove, I went over and over the day’s events in my mind. I tried to put myself in Carlos’ shoes, tried to think where a boy who fancied himself a spy might have ended up. I hadn’t a clue.

My greatest fear was that Carlos had somehow slipped out of Judith’s car at Alan’s apartment and been spotted by Alan once Judith was gone. By now, I was convinced that Alan Bennet was
capable of almost anything. I didn’t want to imagine what he might do to a little boy who stood in the way of his well-laid plans.