The Trophy Wife Page 9

  “Thank God …” Childs collapsed into his chair as if a heavy burden he had been struggling with had finally been lifted. But after a fraction of a second at peace, the anxiety reappeared in his eyes. “But will she be safe?”

  “I think so. Unless somebody screws up. From what you said about the messenger and what we saw in your house, we think that these are rank amateurs. They probably don’t want to hurt anyone. But, on the other hand, they’ll probably spook easily. Quite honestly, there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

  Walter told him about seeing Mitchell Price in the restaurant and launched into the litany of his suspicions. “You think he’d be capable of planning a kidnapping?” Hogan wondered out loud. “He seems pretty much of a straight shooter.”

  “He’d have help,” Walter suggested. “Mitchell Price would never get his hands dirty. But is he capable of setting the whole thing up? Would he have the stomach for it? You’re damn right he would. He’d kill his mother if he thought it was going to get him moved into the big office.” Hogan listened to Walter’s analysis, shaking his head at the details. It wasn’t just the mindless ambition being attributed to Price. Hogan realized that Walter clearly understood his rival’s ambition because it perfectly matched his own. The key to the big office had become the center of both men’s lives. He listened, nodded, and made a few notes. Then he leaned forward confidentially and told Walter that Price, like all the other senior executives, had been put under surveillance the previous day. “We didn’t start following him until he got back from lunch,” Andrew monotoned as he read the information from his notes. “We had a tail on him last night, but all he did was stay home. We’re also bugging his private line, but there have been no significant phone calls, either in or out.”

  Walter’s face fall into the palm of his hand. “Then you really have nothing?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. We’ve picked up a few significant items.”

  Walter’s face reappeared.

  “We’ve identified the messenger. His fingerprints were on everything. He’s a down-and-out lawyer doing public defense work in Newark. He lives near you, but he won’t be there much longer. The bank is foreclosing on him.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing, yet. But we have his phone tapped and we have a guy following him. Maybe he’ll try to contact someone or someone might try to contact him. We’ll wait until later in the day to sit him down and ask him some questions. But we tend to believe your evaluation of him and there probably won’t be a great deal he can tell us.

  “We also found several sets of prints around the shower,’ Hogan continued. “Emily’s and yours, of course, but also several others that, judging by their size, appear to be men’s fingerprints. You haven’t had a plumber in lately, have you?”

  “No … not that I know of. No, I’m sure. I would have seen the bill.”

  “We’re running the prints now. We’ll let you know the moment we come up with something.”

  Walter started to rise. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am …”

  “I’m not finished,” Hogan said. He waited while Walter sat back down. “If you’re really grateful, then do me a favor and tell me everything you know that might bear on Emily’s kidnapping. Like, for example, how long you have been seeing Angela Hilliard?”

  “Angela?” Walter’s eyes went out of focus. He stuttered a few defensive sounds.

  “She was the first one you called after you learned that Emily was missing. And then you went to her apartment last night, as soon as you left the office. So you’re seeing her, aren’t you?”

  The best Walter could manage was a slight dip of his chin.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because Angela … my, eh … relationship with her has nothing to do …” He raised his hands hopelessly. “I wanted to keep her out of it, I suppose.”

  “Not a smart decision,” Hogan told him. “A married man having an affair. His wife with a claim to everything he owns. And then the wife gets kidnapped by someone who knows your job as well as you do.”

  Walter remembered what he had suddenly announced to Angela. “You think I did this!”

  Hogan waved at him. “Take it easy. I don’t think anything. But I should tell you that as far as my investigators are concerned, you’ve become the number one suspect.” He waited while Childs turned away in embarrassment and shuffled to the window. Then he asked, “You want to guess who their second favorite suspect is?”

  Walter’s face was showing his fear. “You can’t mean …”

  “I’ll know better once I’ve been through her place.” He held out his hand. “I assume you have a key.”

  “Dammit, no! Leave her out of this. She couldn’t do such a thing.” Walter was nearly screaming, his voice cracking with emotion.

  Hogan remained calm. “The fact is, she could do it. She knows your job very well. There’s every chance you’ve told her more about Emily’s habits than you ought to. And she certainly has a motive.”

  Walter was sputtering. “But, she wouldn’t know how … where would she find the people … how could she … ?”

  “That is why I’d like to see her apartment,” Hogan answered.

  Walter stared helplessly for a moment. Then he went to his desk, took out a ring of office keys, and snapped Angela’s key off the ring. He couldn’t bare to hand it over to Hogan, so he simply tossed it on the desk.

  “I think she has a security alarm,” Hogan said

  Walter went to his wallet and produced a business card with a security PIN number written on the back. He copied it on a phone memo pad and pushed it in Andrew’s direction.

  “What about a safe?” the security officer asked.

  “No. I told her to get one, but she doesn’t think she needs one. She has a hiding place for her jewelry and a few very personal things.”

  “And where might that be?”

  Walter was showing his irritation. “In her closet. The floor molding pulls away and there’s a space behind it between the wall and the floor. But, I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time. You won’t find anything.

  Hogan took the key and glanced at the security code. “I’d have thought you’d be hoping that I’d find a lead to Emily,” he answered.

  Helen Restivo used the key to open Angela’s apartment door. She went immediately to the alarm, and tapped in the PIN. Then she took a deep breath and let her eyes roam freely.

  The apartment was spacious and tastefully furnished, the decor relaxed rather than impressive. It seemed to be the way the woman wanted to live, rather than the way she wanted her lifestyle to appear. The living room had a small sitting area of the typical sofa and soft chairs surrounding a coffee table. There was a small television on a TV stand, with a remote resting on one of the sofa arms. The longest wall was covered with standing bookshelves, interrupted by a built-in desk that held a personal computer. Most of the books seemed to be business reference volumes and the shelves to the immediate right of the PC were stacked with CDs and floppy disks. The telephone, at the back of the desk, accessed multiple lines and the facsimile and scanner were office quality.

  The artwork was striking. The paintings were postimpressionist, with two good prints of works by Bonnard. There was an original oil by a Mexican painter, done in a primitive style. The statuary, resting on the tables and on the floor, were quality pre-Columbian copies and Indian pottery.

  Helen entered the kitchen from the living room. Small and suitably cluttered, she thought, very much like her own. Women who generally cooked for only themselves didn’t seem to make a big thing out of it. There was a loaf of bread hanging out of the breadbox. The dishwasher door was open and breakfast dishes were set into the baskets. There were several liquor bottles on the countertop near the dining el, all top-shelf brands. Helen noticed the notes tacked to the refrigerator with magnets and reminded herself to copy them before she left. She opened the refrigerator and found a career woman’s store of
stovetop meals and fast foods, along with a dieter’s ration of fruits and raw vegetables. Again, she could have been looking in her own refrigerator.

  Nice girl, she decided. The evidence said “hard working and nonpretentious.”

  She went into the bathroom and searched the hamper, where he found designer underwear and a nearly transparent nighty, and the medicine cabinet where she found contraceptive cream. Helen no longer worried about her underwear and she was pretty sure she had thrown out her old, flattened tube of spermicide along with her diaphragm.

  The closets and dresser drawers described the same woman. A mix of the provocative and comfortable that said she knew how to dress for the sport in which she was involved. But everything was understated. The lady knew her own value. She apparently had no need to be anything but herself. Restivo was relieved that the popular battery-powered sex toys or gaming costumes were nowhere to be found. A decent girl, she decided with a shrug.

  Inside the closet, she pulled the baseboard molding away from the wall and found the secret hiding place that Andrew Hogan had mentioned. She slid out a small jewelry case and found two diamond rings, a sapphire pendant, a pair of diamond earrings, a string of real pearls, and an antique cameo broach. It was a small cache for a very successful young woman, but it all seemed to be fine quality. She found heself liking Angela better and better.

  She set to work in the living room office, starting with the computer and opening the file manager so that she could look into Angela’s written files and downloaded records. It was like paging through a personal diary. There were letters to her mother, her sister, and to a favorite aunt, all in the “I’m fine, how are you” genre. She shared enough of her success so that they would be proud of her, but not so much that they would feel she was leaving their orbit. A thoughtful girl, Helen told herself. Then there were long files of business correspondence, some granting loans and establishing lines of credit, others calling notes and implying legal actions. She was staggered by the amounts of money involved—tens of millions on individual transactions. Helen’s security agency was a very successful company, but numbers seldom reached over six figures. Angela’s business manners came through clearly. She was bright, authoritative, and to the point. Always there was the assumption that she knew more than her client and that the hoard of money she was dispensing put her in the position of power. A real ballbuster! Helen tried to reconcile the InterBank executive with the Angela Hilliard who swapped recipes with her sister. It wasn’t difficult. She had managed to retain her own feminine instincts despite moving in a world of ambitious men. She was glad that Angela seemed able to handle both well.

  Helen found other files that seemed almost a tutorial on international monetary transactions. “Steps to create a transferable fund” was a detailed primer of Walter Childs’s job. “Routing procedures” explained in great detail how routing numbers could aim funds not just to another bank, but to a branch of the bank and a specific account within the branch. “Passwords and IDs” broke down the identity codes that were used to authenticate transactions. There was also a downloaded file on InterBank procedures for monetary transfers, authored by Walter Childs himself. She chuckled at the imprimatur that Andrew Hogan had added to this document in his role as vice president for security.

  But she found Angela’s interest in areas of the bank other than her own very disturbing. It was pretty obvious that she had made a very close study of Walter’s operations, which were exactly the operations needed to deliver the $100 million ransom.

  Helen copied the dozens of e-mail addresses in her electronic telephone directory. Then she connected to Angela’s Internet service and opened up the listing of her favorite sites. Surprise! The lady was a bit of a voyeur, judging by her fondness for photos of the Chippendales. She was also an opera buff who had ordered computerized courses in spoken Italian. And she was apparently planning a trip. She had been in and out of travel services on an almost nightly basis.

  Helen cross-referenced Angela’s discount broker and, within a few seconds, had her trading record up on the screen. Each quarter, for the past year, Angela had put $25,000 into her account, probably a hefty slice of quarterly bonuses. She had traded furiously in a futile effort to latch onto one of the soaring rockets in computers or pharmaceuticals. Most of her investments had floated up with the rising market, almost covering her few big losers and her mounting commission fees. She was down about $30,000 in a year when she could have been up ten or fifteen in even the most conservative funds. Clearly, Angela Hilliard could afford the loss. But if, as the trading record testified, she was in a hurry to make a fortune, she had fallen well behind her schedule.

  Restivo shut down the computer and leaned back in the swivel chair. Angela Hilliard seemed like a nice enough young lady, normal in every respect except for the enormous resources she commanded. More of a gambler than she would have expected, particularly for someone who worked in a bank. Maybe a bit more cold-blooded than her mother and sister would ever acknowledge.

  Could she be part of a scheme to kidnap her lover’s wife? Yes, Helen concluded, and probably for the money as much as for the freedom to marry Walter Childs. There was no question that she knew enough about transferring funds to have set up the ransom scheme.

  But there was no smoking gun. In fact, there was no gun at all. Nowhere in her files was there any reference to Emily Childs’s typical schedule, nor even a hint of any special relationship with Walter Childs. She could be part of the kidnapping, but, by the same token, so could most other women who had risen to management positions in the field of finance. There was nothing glaringly unusual about Angela.

  There was, of course, the possibility that something would turn up in the telephone records Helen’s operatives were examining. And when she set them to calling the e-mail addresses she had copied, they might find themselves talking to people who could handle a kidnapping for a price. But judging by what she had in front of her that didn’t seem likely. She locked the apartment door behind her, hailed a taxi, and rode back to her office on the West Side.

  The messenger who had visited Walter was the center of attention, sitting at the head of the conference room table. He had a delicatessen lunch in front of him, a chicken salad sandwich resting on a nearly soaked-through wrapper, and a paper cup of black coffee. Three of Restivo’s investigators were sitting along the sides of the table, politely asking questions while agreeing with the man that he had done nothing wrong. Helen slipped in quietly and took a chair at the far end, offering an apologetic smile for interrupting the man’s story.

  Thomas Beaty was a night-school lawyer who had kept a modest local practice in wills and mortgages, with a little slip-and-fall whenever the opportunity arose. He had thrown everything into property in the Newark slums, betting on a tip that the buildings were going to be bought by the housing authorities. They were still standing, vacated by a court order, but tied up in a political skirmish that had gone on for three years. Beaty owed money for taxes and mandated repairs, was being sued by a family whose child had blown himself up in one of the buildings, and he had lost his office to a foreclosure. The promise of $10,000 for simply delivering a message had been irresistible.

  Helen’s lieutenants had already established that Thomas Beaty was telling the truth. He knew nothing other than the instructions he had received over the telephone, the down payment that had appeared in his mailbox, and the final payment that had come to him through the mail earlier that morning. His concern had originally been that he was being arrested for a crime and would be sent to prison. Now his only worry was that the private investigators might try to force him to give the money back.

  The questioning had taken a new turn. Now they were trying to learn all that they could about Beaty’s background, hoping to find a point where his path might have crossed with one of the players in the kidnapping. Could he possibly have had a past connection with Walter or Emily Childs? Did he have any dealings with anyone at the bank? Could he have eve
r communicated with Angela Hilliard? Someone had selected him as the messenger. Who could have known him? How could they have learned that he had fallen on hard times?

  “No, never,” he had answered to a question on whether he had ever dealt with InterBank. “Who?” he asked, genuinely bewildered, in response to a question of whether he knew Mitchell Price.

  “What country clubs do you belong to?” one of the investigators asked. Beaty began to laugh. “Or did you belong to?” the investigator corrected. Beaty didn’t play golf or tennis and he did his drinking at a local bar. “What professional associations do you belong to?” Just the Bar Association and once they knew that he had served as courier in a kidnapping, it was doubtful that he would remain a member. Social memberships? Church memberships? Helen’s mind was wandering in the pointless repetition of the trivia of a failed life. Where could winners like the people surrounding Emily Childs have ever crossed paths with a loser like Thomas Beaty?

  “The Urban Shelter,” she heard Beaty say. “I was on the board for a year. I resigned when things began to mount up on me. Embarrassed, I suppose. I was sitting with a bunch of rich people allocating money to the homeless and I was about to become one of the homeless myself.”

  Helen snapped to attention. The organization had been prominent in Walter Childs’s files. “Mr. Beaty, isn’t Walter Childs on the board of the Urban Shelter?”

  Beaty smiled at his own surprise. “Yes. You’re right. I mean, he was on the letterhead. And I guess I must have seen him at some of the meetings. But we never spoke or sat together or anything like that. I didn’t make the connection until just this minute.”

  “Could he have known about your financial misfortune?”

  The man thought. “I suppose so. If he remembered my name, he might have found it in the legal notices in connection with the foreclosures. But he probably wouldn’t have paid any attention.”