“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.
Meanwhile, I told myself, I wasn’t a kidnapper. I didn’t even play one on TV. The fact that I’d been at Langton yesterday and been captured there on video didn’t actually mean I was a suspect. Not really. Not me: Madeline Carter. Just some flickery black and white image of me as a possible someone. The police were probably clutching at straws and ol’ Purple Twinset’s reportage of our encounter the day before had likely been inflated beyond what had actually occurred.
Well, you did run away.
That voice again.
I flipped the television on in hope — or, more accurately, in fear — of seeing myself. Amid the wash of soap operas, game shows and reruns of old space series, there seemed little likelihood of this occurring before the noon news broadcasts. I left the set on when, finally, I got up to go to my computer.
That in itself was an odd feeling. Again, somewhat surreal: coming back to what was, for me, the most normal of acts and finding myself facing it with trepidation. I have made and lost big whacks — stacks! — of cash over the years with very little emotion attached to it beyond the most obvious. This whole Langton deal was turning into something quite different. Something that, for whatever reasons, had less and less to do with money. Which, as it turned out, was a good thing because when I finally did get down to business, I received an unpleasant surprise.
“Four-seventy-five!” I said it out loud, something that caused Tycho to pad over to see what was up. I was down a buck and a quarter. I didn’t need a calculator to tell me that added up to thirty thousand dollars and change. I sighed. And admitted it: OK, part of it was still about money.
And then another thought: “Oh mom.” Again, aloud. Because this meant that, unless Roddy had miraculously managed to sell high this morning, if my mother was still holding LRG she was now down about twelve grand. I tried not to think about how many months salary at the golf course that was. How many trips to Vegas (and Hawaii and Palm Springs and…). I tried not to feel responsible. But I did.
There are two very strong thoughts on what to do when you’re down that big a chunk of cash with what’s getting to be pretty close to a twenty percent dive that shows every sign of continuing to drop. Some guys I know sell all at the first sign of a serious dip. If it hits a 10 percent decrease, they’re out of Dodge. Me: I’m a little mixed. When it’s other people’s money? Absolutely: sell now. Because 10 percent can turn into 20 can turn into 30 and so on. And, when that happens with someone else’s hard won cash, after a while you’re having to make calls to Urbana (or Whittier or Tecumseh or Great Falls) and that’s never pretty. “Well, yes. I understand that was your life savings and I’m terribly sorry about that. What’s that? Why yes. I do care. I care very much. However, the market does not. It eats people up and spits them out for breakfast if they’re not watching every step and, quite often, even when they are. It does not care whose money it is. The market is a beast that feeds on virgins and the wise and well-prepared. I hope you don’t have to eat dogfood for the rest of your life, however I can’t do anything about it and the market still does not care.”
No, not pretty. So, in cases like that — other people’s money — the old 10 percent rule pretty much rocks. But with my money? At 16 percent and dropping? And a $30,000-plus drop? No thank you. I wanted that money back. All of it. And bailing now would be kissing it good-bye. I set my jaw and held.
And now I noticed that the stock’s sharp drop wasn’t the only new wrinkle. The volume was to the moon. I checked LRG’s price history — an at-a-glance record of the stock’s high, low, opening and closing price as well as daily volume. And the facts confirmed what Sal had told me yesterday. But it was a new day now and things were much worse.
When I made the initial purchase of LRG, the stock’s daily average volume had been a couple of million shares, tops. The volume for today was 14 million and it had been going great guns all day. I opened a screen that showed me the intraday trading graphs: indicating the day’s price and volumes. What I saw was even more disturbing: it looked like two more big whacks of stock had been sold — one just after the bell and one an hour before close — from a single source. They had likely been market sells — in both cases, an order to sell five million shares in one big lump at whatever price the market would give it. And, of course, this had a disastrous effect on a conservative little stock like this one: the price had plummeted under the weight of filling two more big sell orders. Now with that kind of action going on, there was no way someone at that Exchange wouldn’t notice and investigate if things looked fishy. But that seemed too iffy a possibility to bank on. And, after all, it wouldn’t help me now.
So, with the limited resources that were available, I did as much investigating as I could on my own. Although all this activity could mean that a couple of big investors got spooked when Ernie got snatched, it didn’t seem likely. Anyone with that big a stake would know that selling at this particular time could be suicidal. (And if they didn’t know, their broker should tell them!) Especially since Ernie hadn’t even taken over yet when he’d been grabbed: the kidnapping should not be impacting the stock price this greatly.
Although there was no way I could be certain about it, my gut told me this wasn’t an investor. As Sal had said about what he’d seen the day before, this looked like more short action. And, in this case, the short action combined with the current general weirdness around this stock was leading to what could very well turn into a death spiral: a downturn that — because down seems lik
e a sure thing — invites further and further drops to, potentially, the very bottom of the market. It was an unappealing thought. Was there really nothing I could do to help avert it?
When I’m in heavy stock mode, as I am when carefully studying the intradays, very little else can get my attention. I get so fascinated running the numbers back and forth and following graphs and charts and reading press releases and news items that whole chunks of my life pass without my noticing. So it wasn’t until I kicked back a little bit and scratched Tycho’s soft ears and thought about perhaps eating something that the fullness of everything began to hit me: Ernie had been kidnapped.
Who kidnapped the new CEO of a glass company? Some sort of weird Save the Jars organization? It wouldn’t be someone looking for money, would it? In LA there were much better pickings. Anything from high tech to high roller to high society: any kind of high profile if you were just looking for cash. Emily had mentioned a note. I wanted to know about it, wanted to know what was in it. And why did I want to know? Well, there was that thirty thousand bucks, for starters. There was — although this was a minimal point — my past connection with Ernie. And there was the fact that, for better or worse, I’d involved myself in this whole thing up to here. I had a stake now, on several levels. I knew I hadn’t done this thing. But someone had.
And as though thinking about him had conjured him up, suddenly there was Ernie: on the television screen. It was a still photo that looked as though they’d pulled it from some annual report. In the photo he looked older than I remembered him from college, but perhaps slightly younger than he had when I’d seen him at Club Z. I turned the volume up on the set.
The announcer was standing outside the building in Culver City I’d visited the day before. It looked just as it had when I’d seen it, though it had been sans news team then. Obviously, not much was going on, but it was a pretty building and, with the prettier news guy in front of it, the shot worked quite well.
“Though it’s now been over 24 hours since Ernest Carmichael Billings was last seen, police have little to go on,” the newscaster was continuing a story he’d started before I got to the volume.
Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money Page 13