Where's Ellen? (Mystery) (MPP A JOE MCFARLAND / GINNY HARRIS MYSTERY Book 1)

by Stuart Safft

  “Heck yes. I’m still amazed at how long you kept on with this case on your own time. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and call it ‘tenacity’ rather than ‘stubbornness.’ I’m convinced that your efforts would have eventually borne fruit.”

  “When I write my autobiography I’ll be sure to describe my superb detective skills and my super-human determination. But between you and me, it might have been a very long time before my efforts generated any results.”

  “Well, I think you did very well,” responded Ginny. “You stuck with this case all this time, meanwhile dealing with all the other cases that were thrown at us by the chief.”

  “Yeah. Well, I can’t really tell you why. You know how sometimes an unsolved case just gets to you and won’t let go no matter how hard you try to forget about it. Well, that’s how this case has been for me.”

  “Understood.”

  “It was surprisingly nice of Special Agent Florio to allow us to pick up the prisoners and to have their man in Rome meet us at the airport. If Martin hadn’t been promoted to their Chicago office, I doubt that he would’ve been as accommodating as Florio was.”

  “My guess,” said Ginny, “is that Florio felt guilty about how they booted us off the case and how shabbily Martin treated us. I bet it wasn’t easy for him to get all the approvals necessary for us rather than the marshals to do this.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. He must have had to call in a bunch of favors.”

  “And the chief was also gracious to let us make this trip, probably his way of saying ‘nice job’ to both of us.”

  “Right” said Joe. “Although I do think it’s a bit weird to mention the chief and use the word ‘gracious’ in the same sentence. He’d agree to anything to avoid actually saying ‘nice job’ to our faces.”

  “Come on, don’t we have to meet Agent Davis in the baggage area?”

  “OK. Let’s go.”

  Karl Davis, the FBI legal attaché from the U.S. embassy in Rome, walked up to Joe and Ginny. “Excuse me. Are you Detectives McFarland and Harris?”

  “Yes, we are,” responded Ginny. “You must be Karl Davis.”

  “In the flesh. Welcome to Rome. Do you have any checked luggage?”

  “No, we’re all set with our carry-on stuff,” answered Joe.

  “OK, let’s get going. Follow me. We’ll whip through Customs quickly and then we have to hike to the other end of this airport to catch the puddle jumper to Foggia.”

  “Foggia?” asked Ginny. “I thought we were going to San Garvazio di Puglia.”

  “We’re going close to San Garvazio, but we’re actually going to Foggia. Foggia is where the regional Carabinieri headquarters is located, and that’s where your suspects are being held.”

  “Oh, OK. That makes sense,” responded Ginny. “Too bad; we were hoping to at least get a quick look at the town where they were hiding out all this time.”

  “Not a problem. We can swing through San Garvazio on our way to Foggia. It’s only a small detour.”

  “Great. We’d appreciate that. Joe, you agree, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” responded Joe. “I’d like to see where they were living la dolce vita these past couple of years.”

  “Do you two know anything about San Garvazio?”

  Ginny replied, “Just the little bit I saw on the Internet as we were arranging our flights. It’s a small town in southeast Italy, about 10 miles inland from the Adriatic Sea.”

  “Yes, I think you’ll find it lovely.”

  “Sounds delightful. Too bad we can’t stay a few weeks and relax there,” said Joe.

  Later that afternoon, following a short bumpy flight and a longer bumpier drive, Karl Davis, Joe and Ginny arrived in San Garvazio di Puglia. They parked, took a short walk through the small town center and stopped, unknowingly, for a coffee at the very same place that Steve, as Charles Johnson, went to for breakfast every morning. Finishing their coffee, they took the relatively short drive up the hill to the driveway, where the heavy gate was blocking access to the villa in which Steve and Ellen had been living, and then back down the hill and onto the road to Foggia.

  “What a beautiful little town,” exclaimed Ginny.

  “Yeah, and that house or mansion or villa or whatever it’s called is amazing, just from our view from the outside,” added Joe.

  “Yes, and what worked to their advantage was that San Garvazio is so small and rather isolated. They were able to live quite openly and freely with very little risk that their existence would become known to anyone outside the village.”

  CHAPTER 33

  It wasn’t long before they arrived at the regional Carabinieri headquarters in Foggia. At Davis’ request, the officer at the front desk telephoned Sergeant Nazzari, who immediately came to the lobby. He led his three visitors to a small area in the corner of the lobby, which offered some quiet and privacy.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Karl Davis, the legal attaché from the U.S. embassy in Rome, and these fine folks are Detectives McFarland and Harris of the Jasper Creek Police Department in Ohio.”

  “Buongiorno. Buongiorno. I am Sergeant Nazzari. Welcome to our small city. As you may know, our jurisdiction covers the entire Provincia di Foggia. This includes the town of San Garvazio di Puglia. It is our honor to have you visit us.”

  “We, and the entire Jasper Creek police force, want to thank you and your officers for your help,” said Ginny.

  “It is our pleasure to help fellow officers, especially those coming from so far away.”

  “Well, we appreciate it very much,” added Ginny. “May we see the prisoners now?”

  “Si. Si, Come with me. They are in one of our interrogation rooms waiting for you.”

  “Great. Thank you,” said Joe. “Could you please have them put in separate rooms? We’d like to speak with them one at a time. Starting with the husband.”

  “Si. Si. Un minuto.” Nazzari called one of his subordinates to have the two prisoners placed in separate rooms.

  “I’ll wait out here,” said Davis. “I’m sure you’d like a few minutes alone with your long-lost friends.”

  Joe and Ginny followed Sergeant Nazzari into the rear of the building where the holding cells and interrogation rooms were located. The door to the room in which Steve was being held was opened from the outside and Joe and Ginny entered.

  “Well, hello, Mr. Sanders. Nice to see you again. It’s been quite a while,” said Joe.

  “Hello.”

  “Before we go any further, we’d like to read you your Miranda rights,” said Joe. “You may have already been read these, but I want to do it again to be sure.”

  “Go for it,” responded Steve.

  Joe took out a frayed, well-folded slip of paper from his wallet and read, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand each of these rights?”

  “Yes, I understand the drill. I did go to law school, you know.”

  “Mr. Sanders, we’d like to thank you for your help,” said Ginny. “It, of course, is up to the prosecutor. But we have made him fully aware of your help, and we’re confident that it will be very beneficial to you when it’s time for your sentencing to be decided.”

  “Yes, that’s nice. But that’s not why I did it. I sent you that fax, Detective Harris, because I couldn’t live with myself anymore. I, in fact we, have always been very ethical people. I couldn’t stand walking around with the guilt, as well as the fear of being caught, every day. I didn’t and still don’t want to get Ellen in any more trouble than she’s already gotten herself, and me, into, but I couldn’t go on living that way. I still can’t believe the plot she concocted nor the fact
that later on I so meekly allowed myself to be drawn into it.”

  “We understand,” said Ginny. “And we commend you for your ethical action. We know it couldn’t have been easy.”

  “Nothing about this whole nightmare has been easy.”

  “We understand that you were not a part of the plan from the beginning. That you only got dragged into it all later on.”

  “Yes, but I surely didn’t fight the temptation hard enough.”

  “Yeah, but to be honest,” said Joe, “I had the right instinct, but for the wrong reason.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This whole time I thought that you were the primary perp or were at least fully involved from the beginning.”

  “Yes. And it turned out that you really weren’t involved and didn’t know anything until way after the initial crime was committed,” added Ginny.

  “Mr. Sanders,” continued Joe. “You won’t have to testify against your wife. In fact, spousal privilege prohibits you from being required to do so. But your sending that fax to Detective Harris indicating where we could find you was an effective way for you to end this nightmare without doing anything that even resembles testifying against your wife.”

  Joe asked Ginny for the fax, which Ginny retrieved from her carry-on case. Taking the fax from a clear plastic folder, Joe put it in front of Steve and asked, “Is this the fax that you sent to Detective Harris? If so, please read it out loud and then sign and date the small piece of paper stapled here to the envelope.”

  Steve first read the fax silently to himself and then read it aloud:

  Detective Harris, the large house in the hills overlooking San Garvazio di Puglia, Italy.

  Sincerely,

  Charles Johnson, a.k.a. Steve S.

  “Yes, this is the fax I sent.”

  “OK, thanks, Mr. Sanders,” said Ginny, who retrieved the fax after Steve signed and dated the piece of paper stapled to the envelope. We’re now going to spend a few minutes with your wife. For your information, during the flight over here, we decided that we would not at this point tell her that we found you two as a result of your fax. You can keep that a secret from her, at least for now, or tell her yourself — whichever you prefer. We’ll be back shortly to begin our trip back to the U.S.”

  “OK,” replied Steve.

  Back in the hallway, Joe and Ginny continued their discussion.

  “It’s too bad,” said Ginny. “He seems like a good guy who just got caught in a bad situation — all caused by his wife.”

  “I agree. But the fact is that even if he wasn’t involved early on, he sure learned to love the Italian lifestyle pretty quick, and he didn’t exactly race to contact us once he found out what was going on.”

  “Come on, Joe. Do you really think most spouses in this same situation would turn in their so-called better half? OK, so it took him awhile, but he did wind up doing the right thing.”

  “I don’t know what most spouses would do. But that’s exactly what they should do, both legally and morally.”

  “Probably so. But we’re not all angels like you are.”

  “I know. And that’s why I hate wearing hats.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a bitch getting the hat to fit right with that damn halo always floating three inches above my head.”

  “Yeah, life must be really tough for angels like you,” said Ginny as she chuckled. “OK, let’s go visit the sweet Mrs. What’s our play?”

  “We need to be a little lucky,” responded Joe. “Since her husband can’t testify against her, we’ll be best off if we can get her to confess. I’m still confident we can build a solid enough case for conviction if we need to by digging through all her actions and the money flows, but a confession would be a whole lot simpler.”

  “And faster,” added Ginny. “As we agreed on the plane, it’s probably best not to even mention her husband’s fax. We’ll let her think that you were successful in tracing some of their financial moves and attempts to collect on her life insurance. If she believes that, she might confess in the hopes of reducing her prison sentence.”

  “Sounds like the plan we agreed to. Let’s do it,” said Joe.

  CHAPTER 34

  Entering the interrogation room in which Ellen was sitting, Joe walked up to her and said, “Hello, Mrs. Sanders. I’m Detective McFarland and this is Detective Harris. We’re with the Jasper Creek Police Department. I am very sincere when I say that it is truly our pleasure to meet you.”

  “Very funny!” fumed Ellen in response.

  “I must say,” said Ginny. “You gave us quite a chase for quite a long time. But, all good things must come to an end.”

  “Yes,” said Joe. “Your high-paid legal team put up a first-class extradition fight, but in the end ‘justice prevailed.’ ”

  “How’d you find us?” asked Ellen. “I thought we had truly disappeared after all this time.”

  “We didn’t have to do much. We just sat back and waited for your greed to do you in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First we’d better read you your Miranda rights. You may have already been read these, but I want to do it again to be sure.” Joe again took out the frayed, slip of paper from his wallet and read Ellen her rights. “Do you understand each of these rights?”

  “Yes, of course I do. I do speak English you know.”

  “Very well,” continued Joe. “Back to your question about your greed. You two had millions of dollars in cash and investments, plus a home probably worth another $1 million-plus, before you started this,” Joe explained.

  “And, then on top of all that, you cheated the insurance company out of $5 million for the so-called ransom for the so-called kidnapping,” added Ginny.

  “Then your greed kicked in above and beyond all that,” continued Joe. “Even though your life insurance policy through Tycon Technologies was cancelled when your employment with them ended, you still had your privately purchased life insurance policies. With the help of the FBI, and their coordination with several other countries through Interpol, we were able to follow the trail you left trying to collect on these private life insurance policies. Your greed wouldn’t even let you wait for the number of years required to pass before you normally could be legally declared dead.”

  “But we didn’t collect on any of these policies,” protested Ellen. “My husband may have tried, but he couldn’t provide the proof of death or the evidence of my having been declared legally dead that they required.”

  “True, but the insurance companies informed us and the FBI when your attorneys made their initial inquiries,” explained Joe. “By the way, you were very smart to have only your husband deal with these attorneys. That way, the attorneys couldn’t be accused, and, in fact, weren’t aware, of being involved in an illegal insurance scam.

  “Pen registers and trap and trace devices were authorized and set up to record all the phone numbers these attorneys called and all the phone numbers from which they received calls. Attorney-client privilege prevented collection of the conversations, but not the listings of every phone number called and called from. This information led us to you in San Garvazio di Puglia. No amount of money was ever enough for you. You surely didn’t need these last few millions, especially while living in this low-cost area. But your greed wouldn’t let you leave any money on the table. You had to try to get your grubby little hands on every last penny as soon as possible.”

  “What do you mean? Those were legitimate insurance policies, and our attorneys followed the letter of the law trying to collect, including the cumbersome process of trying to have someone declared dead after a mysterious and lengthy disappearance,” countered Ellen.

  “Your lawyers may have followed the law, but you surely didn’t. You faked your kidnapping and disappearance,” resp
onded Joe.

  “I did no such thing. I merely went away without telling anyone. And that’s not illegal. As you said earlier, it was my husband, not me, who had the lawyers trying to collect on the life insurance policies.”

  “Yeah, and you probably also claim not to have had anything to do with your fake kidnapping. In any event,” continued Ginny, “Detective McFarland’s patience and stubbornness paid off. For all this time, at his request, your insurance companies were on notice to inform us if and when there were any inquiries or requests for these policies to pay out. Once we were notified, we were able to track the phone calls made. From there, it was relatively easy to identify and follow the trail to you here in Italy.”

  “Damn. I thought we were being so careful, even from the very beginning,” muttered Ellen. “I even realized that I was probably being followed when I was going to meet Steve at that restaurant outside Dayton that time and I decided not to show up.”

  “Well, you were wrong on that account also. We were, in fact, tailing Steve that evening, but we weren’t following you. We had no idea where you were. In any event, despite all the planning you did and the care you took with trying to collect the life insurance proceeds, our interest was strong enough to get this raised to a priority level at Interpol and the various national police forces. Of course, you, or, since you were missing, your husband, not having filed any tax returns for the past two years, despite the massive income from cashing out all the Tycon stock and deferred compensation as well as all your investments and your husband’s equity from his law firm, captured the IRS’ full attention and they joined us in requesting the FBI’s and Interpol’s help.”

  “If you only had had the willpower to walk away from those last few millions, you’d most likely still be living in your little Italian make-believe world,” added Ginny.