Voices in the Wardrobe (20 page)

“Only selected frequencies or signals. And if you have nothing to hide it should be of no consequence. There will be some glitches, that's to be expected, but—”

“Yeah, like when I was getting your e-mail,” Charlie said.

“What?” bifocals said. “It wasn't in code?”

“Her daughter decoded it.”

“Ahhhh well, we must speak to her then, mustn't we?” Bifocals relaxed back into his smirk.

Charlie, who'd studied no more history than the general required courses in college, tried to remember if it was somebody named McCarthy or something called the Inquisition where religious fanatics tortured witches or, under that pretext, anybody who got in their way. She often listened to NPR on her long commute, but spent many interruptions on her cell, talking to New York before her contacts went to lunch. She had assumed the government just listened in on foreign terrorists abroad or when found in the country.

Charlie rarely voted because she had all she could do to keep her head straight on work, personal, and family matters, so she rarely registered political stuff. A single mom with a scary teen, incipient ulcer, titanium plate in her neck, felonious feline, and a high-stress job can only compute so much without risking insanity. But, as often as she'd run into trouble with official types since her move to California, Charlie wished now she'd paid more attention. Not that she believed one person could make enough difference to change anything, but it is wise to be forewarned when the “rabids” are in charge of anything. Both rabid rights and rabid lefts drove her nuts. And then add the rabid religious and any attempt at reason was useless.

“Now I assume, Mr. VanZant, that you are aware of the vast wealth your previous wife salted away offshore.” The Fed with the bifocals peered over them at Warren with a quick side glance at VanZant's present wife. “And that all the money is to be doled out to your daughter and granddaughter by a trust, with the stipulation that none of the money goes to you or the Sea Spa or several other individuals named.”

“Judith was paid well to promote certain types of medications, but not brands, in her public appearances. I was not privy to exact figures, but was aware that our daughter and granddaughter would be well taken care of should something happen to their mother.”

“She was paid a percentage of royalties for promoting types of medications, which is unethical but not illegal—hormones, anti-inflammatories, mood stabilizers—in other words, happy pills.”

“To relieve misery, not to induce euphoria. There is a difference.”

“Warren,” Sue Rippon interrupted as Caroline VanZant rolled her head back and slid to the floor.

Charlie felt a lot like doing the same.

“Hey, my daughter, my best friend, and my mentor may be out here somewhere dead or alive in pain or in grave danger of one or all those things. Will you guys get real?” Charlie told the studs.

It's your own fault for getting involved with these types.

“I know. Now shut up.”

The studs looked at her and then each other and shrugged, but still with proper squints of hostility, and said almost in tandem, “She talks to herself.”

“Knock it off,” Charlie warned.

They were wandering in the garden of pseudo earthquake Grecian, Roman ruins with two wimpy flashlights and a waning moon to light their way. One of them grabbed her as she was about to sprain an ankle, dislocate a knee, or bust her head missing a ruined step down into the cracked basin where the well-hung Mediterranean boy leaned over the crevice that snaked across the length of the promontory.

After Caroline VanZant did her fainting thing and brought the inquisition to a halt, and Detective Solomon arrived within minutes to report some matter of apparently grave significance—Charlie and “the guys” had the opportunity to slip away and took it. Actually, Charlie took off by herself and they chose to follow. If they got in trouble—it was their choice. She had people out here to look for and intended to do just that before she succumbed like Caroline VanZant had. Besides, she couldn't breathe without getting off that chair and taking action of some kind. Her head throbbed with the need to search for those most important to her.

Mitch fished a coin out of his pocket and dropped it down into the crevice. It didn't seem to ever land or to bounce off ledges either. “I don't see how they can monitor transmissions on selected cell phones in a place so crowded with conversations as Southern California. I mean … if you can't search out and destroy spam before it clogs computer networks … I don't claim to be able to keep up on technology, but it just doesn't ring true.”

Kenny Cowper stepped up on a broken rock ledge so he could look even farther down on the superstar. Night light cast him a faint shadow. “So, you think those guys in there are faking it?”

“I think they believe what they are told to believe because they believe in their leaders and we all believe what we want to, doesn't make them all that different from the rest of us.”

“Like assuming Middle Easterners are national, rather than tribal,” Charlie said. Even she knew that, although she couldn't remember why. “Oh yes I do, a screenplay that never made it,
Wag the Camel.
”

“Charlie, I think you should go lie down somewhere.” Mitch aimed the business end of the flashlight into the crevice, walked toward the sea as far as the night and the condition of the ruins allowed, turned back and stopped to bend closer to the fissure. “Jesus, look at this.”

Twenty-Six

“Friend of mine got an assignment from
The Times
to investigate the problem of government use of technologies that change faster than people can be trained for it. Lots of the bugs are discovered when the new technology is out on the market and by the time it's perfected a new and better product is developed by the same or a competing company. Government moves too slowly when retraining people and can't just fire the old specialists and hire new every time that happens because of seniority issues and those hired because of connections to congressmen, senior staff, and so on.” Kenny Cowper sat on the ledge now and dangled his feet over the side, Charlie and Mitch on the base of a pedestal that no longer supported its statue. The pedestal leaned and they leaned against it. It was almost comfortable.

“Wow, how come you didn't get that assignment?” his agent wanted to know.

“She has better connections than I do.”

Charlie was afraid to find her daughter and friends and afraid not to. Fear and fatigue had brought her to this impasse and she couldn't make a decision, couldn't risk making the wrong one. If any were alive, she could put them in danger of being located, if they were dead it didn't matter. They would all have normally pulled out their cell phones to locate somebody, but were afraid to now. Kenny was the only one who had his on him.

“So your point is?” Mitch insisted. “We worry more about Big Brother or less because the guys in the trenches can't keep up with the advances of spying on us?”

“I don't know. But now that we're trying to monitor communications all over the world it seems likely there'd be gigantic probabilities for error. A whole lot of innocent people could be falsely jailed and charged on inaccuracies in the information gathering. I guess that's already true somewhat—but now it would be on a far grander scale.”

They sat there in pretty much a state of exhaustion waiting for dawn and for an official in some capacity to track them down, tell them what to do or not to do, show him what they'd found in the crevice.

“I vote we take a chance. Do something. Before Charlie wigs-out on us.”

Kenny drew his cell, flipped it open.

“I second the motion. Charlie, we've got to get something moving here.” Mitch put an arm around her shoulders. “I'd sure be relieved if you'd just cry.”

Charlie mumbled Libby's cell phone number, watched Kenny punch it, heard the improbable tinkle of a John Philip Sousa march. It came from the jagged fracture. She could hear her daughter's voice message explain that “Libby Greene” in Libby's voice was unable to get back to him but if he'd leave a name, number, and good reason—she'd make an attempt.

Kenny repunched the number twice and twice it rang from the crevice where Charlie and Mitch were pulling out an assortment of clothes and prescription medicine vials, CDs, and sheets of paper that could be records, too dark to tell. “Careful you don't dislodge it and send it to the center of the earth.”

That's why they hadn't searched the stuff crammed into this section of the opening to begin with.

“Charlie, none of them can have gone down that hole. It's not wide enough for them to fall forever down there.”

“They could be under all this though. Caught up somewhere. Libby? It's me. Can you hear me? Maggie? Luella? They could be hurt or—I am not going to cry. I hate it when I cry.”

“That tough-girl image is rough to maintain, huh?”

“Don't push your luck, Cowper,” Charlie warned.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“This it?” Mitch held up somebody's cell. He opened it and read the lighted screen. “This is it.”

“Stick it in your pocket, Hilsten, and quick. Be sure it's turned off,” Kenny whispered behind them. “Both of you get back to your pedestal. Company approacheth.”

Charlie saw the dance of high powered flashlights before she heard the approach of authorities or reached the pedestal. Kenny was shoving stuff back into the crevice, but slowly and carefully, when he was yanked away.

“You will be happy to know that we have located your daughter's cellular telephone from satellite, Miss Greene,” bifocals gloated. “Take them back to the lodge, deputy,” he ordered just as he tripped on a shadow, misjudging his step down to something that existed only by moonlight and was caught by Deputy Lydia Saucier, the quickest, most agile, youngest, and probably strongest of those close by. He managed to fall on her nonetheless.

Kenny grabbed Charlie's elbow and had her started for the “lodge” before Deputy Lydia could squirm out from under the Fed and a fair way to their destination before Mitch caught up.

“You'd better have Libby Greene's cell on you, Cowper.”

“Dinna worra, 'tis safe wi' me, man.”

“Do you think the satellite found it when we rang it up?” Charlie asked.

“Don't know. How's that deputy doing on the catch-up?”

“She appears to be lagging,” Mitch answered, irritation still evident in his voice. “Seems to be diverted by a conversation on her cell.”

“Good, now heads up. We'll give her a chance to lose us by ducking behind the first shed or cottage we come to. Methinks she's not trying overhard there.”

“Just who was it put you in charge, Steeplehead?” Mitch said in the low flat tones of Eddie Valance in
The Alleys Between Mean Streets
.

“Dinna get your back up, Shorty. Now!” Kenny dropped Charlie's elbow, lifted her by the waist, and she felt like she was flying behind this rundown cottage and then stuffed inside it.

“Charlie, we really don't think you should be doing this—we've pushed some pretty powerful people too far already and we don't know it was Libby driving—”

“Speak for yourself, Hilsten.”

They'd ducked down beside Mitch's car, trying to hide from county and federal authorities and Charlie was leaning across the driver's seat groping for her cell and address book.

“What, you think she should try to run out now? How far do you think she'll get?” Mitch said.

Charlie had insisted upon getting out here and finding her phone to see if Libby had left a message on it before it was taken from her. Nobody seemed to be around to stop them. But just as they walked out the ornate gate, Libby's battered Wrangler sped off out of the lot almost hitting Charlie's truck coming in.

“No, I don't think she should take off now. Doesn't mean you can speak for me. You got a problem with that?”

“Kenny,” Charlie admonished, stuffing phone and address book in her purse.

“Well, I get torqued, I start talking in clichés.”

“That was Libby's Jeep that just took off out of here. Give me her cell,” she told the tall stud and asked the kid who'd driven her truck in for the keys. “You want a ride down to the wye?”

“Charlie, you won't make it to the 101 and—”

“What are you, Hilsten, her daddy?”

“Will you just butt out, whatever-your-name-is?”

“You boys behave now. I'll let you know what's happening when I can.”

“What are they doing?” Charlie asked the kid as the Ram roared out of there.

“Well, the tall one took a swing and the short one ducked and rammed the tall one in the stomach. Last I saw they were both on the ground.”

By the time she'd let him off at the wye to walk back down to the marina and made it to the 101, the sky was lightening, and she had no idea which way to turn. So she headed north, expecting to be pulled over at any minute. Rush hour hadn't gotten off to much of a start yet and most of the night life had made it home to bed. Her bag was still in the back of the cab. She had plenty of gas. The air came cool and pleasantly ocean-scented through the open window. It felt good to be taking some action, doing something instead of being done unto. The terrible ache brought on by finding Libby's cell in that crevice, had lifted some with the sudden disappearance of the Wrangler. It might not be Libby but it might be too and it was even possible she was obeying her mother's orders and heading for Del Mar—although that was a long shot.

Not as long a shot as Charlie and the Dodge Ram making it that far before being pulled over by a sheriff's car or highway patrol but nothing ventured—

She rested her elbow on the window frame and took the first really deep breath in hours, straightened grateful neck, back, and shoulders. “One thing at a time, one thing at a time, one thing at a time.”