Forty Thieves (18 page)

14

The Abels flew from Houston to the Long Beach airport instead of LAX or Burbank, and rented their next car at the airport lot. They drove into Los Angeles on the Long Beach Freeway and then took a series of surface streets to make their way to a new hotel they’d reserved from Houston. They parked in the lower floor of the underground lot, checked in, and took the elevator to their floor.

When they entered their room and locked the door, Ronnie said, “When we come home from a trip it makes me sad not to be able to go into my own house and my own bedroom and flop on my own bed.”

Sid put his arms around her and held her while she rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Sid said. “We’ll have them again. I promise.”

“Will we?” Ronnie said. “I’m worried that having a house makes us too easy to kill.”

“We can make it much harder from now on.”

“I suppose,” she said. “But that house meant a lot to me. Not the things, or the money, or whatever. It was a feeling. In a way the place was me, or at least my memory. A big
part of our lives happened there. I could sit in a room and remember things—sights and sounds from some particular day twenty-five years ago. It feels as though I’ve lost that.”

“Houses don’t matter. We matter, and we’re still okay. At some point this case will be over, and then we’ll either build again on that lot, or find a nicer house and buy that one. The old memories will come back, and we’ll have new ones.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “Don’t forget. You promised.”

“I did.”

She said, “Okay. For now, we live in hotels. If we get to work, we may be able to correct that. We’ve got to start catching up. There are a lot more things to know about James Ballantine.”

Sid said, “You know what this reminds me of? Those cases where some ordinary law-abiding schmuck gets hit on the head, and suddenly his whole personality changes.”

“I know,” said Ronnie. “Getting fired from the university seems to have had a traumatic effect on his brain. And come to think of it, we don’t know he didn’t also get literally hit on the head. He was away by himself for weeks at a time, and then he was single. Nobody would know.”

“We’ve got to take a new look at everything about him,” Sid said. “All this time we’ve been looking over our shoulders and trying to stay alive, so we haven’t even had a chance to figure out who Ballantine really was. Nobody seemed to know anything.”

“And now we’ve got a list of four women who knew him really well.”

*    *    *

At 5:00 a.m. the streets of Los Angeles were already filling up. There was never a time when the roads were empty, but a change of people occurred before dawn, with the last of the night people giving up and going indoors to sleep until their next chance occurred at sundown, and the day people charging out to take their turn. Sid and Ronnie had worked both day shifts and night shifts as police officers, so they were good at recognizing which group a person belonged to. They drove through Griffith Park and up into the hills of Los Feliz, then took a winding road higher until they found the right house. It was modern, tall and narrow, built into a hillside right at the edge of the street. “Nice house, nice neighborhood,” said Sid. “She’s got some money.”

They continued down the street a few hundred feet and then pulled over to the curb, leaned back comfortably against the headrests of their car seats, and adjusted the rearview mirrors so they could watch the house without being noticed from a distance.

“Well, here I am again,” said Ronnie. “Sitting in the car and looking at somebody’s darkened windows while they get the sleep I want and richly deserve.”

“There,” Sid said. “A light just came on upstairs.”

“An early bird. Maybe I’ll like her.”

They watched the house while Kirsten Tilson got up, turned on a light in a textured window near the back of the house that had to be a bathroom, and prepared for her day. At six twenty the upstairs lights went off and others went on downstairs. At seven they all went off. The garage door slid open.

“Watch for her,” Sid said.

The front door opened and a woman came out and walked toward the garage. She could not have looked more different from Selena Stubbs Ballantine. She was short, with long red hair and very pale skin. She wore high heels, but she walked in them without tottering or taking short steps as some women did. Her knee-length skirt was subdued and stylish. Ronnie watched her walk to the car. “Well, she’s sort of a surprise.” She waited, but Sid said nothing. “Isn’t she?”

“I’m withholding opinions.”

“When we blow this case you’ll have a great career in diplomacy.”

The woman got into her black Audi, performed an expert sweep of her left hand to bring her skirt in with her, and shut the car door. The car backed out of the short driveway into the street and then moved forward.

The Abels followed her at a distance, watched her go up an entrance to the Hollywood Freeway and merge into the stream of cars before they entered too.

They followed her to the Intercelleron lot, watched her enter, went past the gate, and kept going. “It looks like we’ve got a woman who also works for Intercelleron.”

“An office romance. How sweet,” Ronnie said, her voice even and unenthusiastic. “Just like us.”

“We never worked in the same station, let alone the same office,” Sid said.

“I don’t mean as cops. I mean now. Of course, we no longer have an office.”

“That’s just temporary.” Sid stopped the car, turned around, and pulled to the curb where they could see the front of the building.

Ronnie took the binoculars from the glove compartment and watched as Kirsten Tilson got out of her car, tossed her head to make her hair hang the way she wanted it to, and strode in the front entrance of the building, past the uniformed guard at the counter.

“Did you see that?” said Ronnie.

“What?”

“That guard looked at her and bowed, practically. She must be important.”

“That could be a problem. She might have underlings we have to get through to talk to her.”

“I’ll look her up in the directory and see what we’re up against.” Ronnie took out her phone, found the e-mail from Hemphill, and scrolled down through the names.

“Here come the
t
’s,” said Ronnie. “And here she is. Damn. She’s not a regular employee.”

“Then what is she?”

“A member of the board of directors.”

Sid took out his cell phone. “Read me her office number.”

Ronnie read the phone number from the picture of the directory while Sid punched in the digits. He put the phone on speaker.

“Intercelleron, Miss Tilson’s office, Ellen Ryder speaking.”

“Hello, this is Sid Abel. May I please speak with Miss Tilson?”

“Can you tell me what this is in reference to?”

“She’ll know my name.
A-B-E-L.
I’m a partner in a company the board is dealing with.”

“Please hold.” There was a sudden lack of sound.

While the assistant was gone, Sid covered his phone. “How did I sound?”

“Dumb,” said Ronnie. “You ended your sentence with a preposition.”

“She asked me what this was in reference to. I was just trying not to embarrass her. I want her to like me.”

“You’re a master of subtlety.”

There was a return of ambient sound, and then another female voice. “Hello, Mr. Abel. This is Kirsten Tilson. How can I help you?”

“I’m calling as part of our investigation of James Ballantine’s death. We would like to meet with you briefly as soon as possible. It won’t take more than an hour of your time.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m surprised by your call. I’m not really the right member of the board—not the one who’s handling this. We asked the CEO to take care of the Ballantine issue, and I think that he assigned Mr. Hemphill to serve as the company’s contact person. Would you like his number?”

“No, thank you,” said Sid. “We need to speak with you personally. We just have a few questions about Mr. Ballantine, and it’s best to do these things in person.”

“Well, I had met Mr. Ballantine, but—”

Sid interrupted. “Yes, I know. We’ll be talking to everyone who knew him or worked with him. If you’d like to do it now, we can be at your office in ten minutes.”

There was a moment of silence. “My schedule is very full when I’m here. I think I’d prefer to meet sometime away from the office, where we won’t disrupt the schedule and distract the office staff.”

“If you’d prefer it, we could meet at your home this evening.”

She was taken aback. “This evening?” She thought for a moment, and then conceded. “I can be available at eight.”

“We’ll be there.”

“Would you like the address?”

“We have it,” Sid said. “See you at eight.” He ended the call.

Ronnie looked at him. “You certainly didn’t give her much space.”

“I didn’t mean to,” said Sid. “We can’t let this investigation get delayed and sidetracked any longer. Every day, we’re putting ourselves in front of people who want to kill us, and seem to have a lot of ways of doing it.”

“Let’s hope that after we’re through interviewing her, she doesn’t become one of them.”

At eight Sid and Ronnie walked up to the front door of Kirsten Tilson’s house. They had arrived just after nightfall and parked near the end of the block so they would see anyone driving along the street from either direction. They watched the house for a half hour before they got out of their car and rang her doorbell.

When she came to the door to let them in, she was wearing a dress in a blue-and-white print that accentuated her red hair and blue eyes, and made her look softer and more feminine than her business clothes had.

The interior of the house was modern and spare, and everything in it looked expensive. There were white stone pedestals of different heights in the foyer, each holding a single object—a celadon vase that was beautiful in its simplicity, a small bronze statue of a Thai dancer in a pointed headdress, a stone mortar and pestle. The bookshelves held antique leather-bound volumes, interspersed with a few eye-catching curiosities—a clear orange glass ball, a
framed daguerreotype miniature of a young girl in a bonnet and dress with pantaloons, a cameo brooch in a velvet box.

She led them through the living room, but didn’t stop at any of the conversation areas with couches and matching chairs. Instead she went up a half story to a room beside a huge window that looked out on a garden with a vine-covered stone wall. There was an asymmetrical polished burl table of some dark alien-looking hardwood. She sat at one end and gestured toward the other chairs beside it. She said, “Thank you for coming all the way here. Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thank you,” said Ronnie.

“Then maybe we should just get right to it,” Miss Tilson said. “What would you like to know?”

Sid said, “Anything you can tell us about James Ballantine will help. There doesn’t seem to be much in the records of his case that’s useful.”

Kirsten Tilson tossed her head, as though to get her hair out of her eyes so she could move forward. “I don’t know very much about him, really. I believe we recruited him away from Indiana University. It was about five years ago, give or take. He seemed to be a nice man, but he was a scientist.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ronnie.

“Since Intercelleron deals in research, we hire lots of them, and they usually tend to be a little shy and nerdy. They don’t open up much, so I don’t really know a lot about his life outside the office.”

Sid looked at Ronnie and she gave a slight nod. Sid said,”One reason we’re here is that we interviewed Mr. Ballantine’s ex-wife. She gave us a list of women she referred to as her ex-husband’s girlfriends.”

“Really. That’s a surprise. He didn’t seem to be the type.” Her mouth had suddenly become dry, so when she said it, there was a slight click of the tongue.

“I have to tell you that you were on the list.”

Kirsten Tilson’s body went rigid, but her face moved. As she tried out various responses, her facial muscles tentatively assumed the appropriate expressions, each in turn—shock, anger, amusement, confusion. That one seemed to suit her best, so her face held it. If she’d had better warning, she might have remembered she was in the presence of two people who had watched many people lie. But she didn’t appear to be aware that her facial muscles had already told them she was constructing a story in front of them. “I don’t know how that could be. I never met the woman. And I sincerely doubt that her husband told her I was his girlfriend. I certainly wasn’t.”

Ronnie said, “I doubt that he did tell her. When the police were through examining his apartment for evidence, they would have released his belongings to his family.”

“I had understood he was divorced from his wife.” She realized she’d revealed too much. “I don’t even remember who told me that. Maybe he wasn’t.”

“He was. His only remaining heirs were his children. Since their mother had sole custody of the heirs, she also had responsibility for everything he had, whether she wanted it or not—his address book, any photos that were on his phone. Any videos.”

Ronnie watched the reaction to the final word. Kirsten Tilson looked as though she had been punched. She turned paler for a few seconds, and then her cheeks reddened. She looked distracted, staring at the table. “I really should send
someone to talk to her and let her know that this is just a misunderstanding.” She looked up at the Abels. “Perhaps you could explain it to her.”

Sid had also seen her react to the word “videos.” He said, “If you’d like us to, we could pass it on. But I don’t think our telling her would have any effect. She was adamant.”

“Well, she’s wrong. You said she gave you a list of names?”

“Yes,” said Ronnie.

Kirsten Tilson extended her hand. “Let me see the list. I can help you eliminate any other misunderstandings and save you some time.”

“We can’t do that,” said Sid. “We’ve got to respect the privacy of the women on the list, just as we’re respecting yours.”

She glared at him. “The board of directors hired you. You work for us.”