“So he’s telling the truth,” Gates said. “He’s not our guy.”
“Appears that way to me. What about the girlfriend?” I asked.
Gates and I had joined Streeter at the table.
“She most definitely is not a fan of Kevin Benson. And although he apparently told the truth about losing the boy at the Buckhorn and then looking for him, I’m not convinced that there isn’t a greater force at work here, a plan to deceive and distract.” Streeter added, “The shoe polish would be a strong indication that the abduction was planned, whether it was a random or specific victim.”
The door opened and in came Phil Kelleher.
“Are they ready?” Streeter asked.
“They’ve been ready for nearly two hours and are getting snippy. East conference room,” Kelleher said.
“Both of them?” I asked.
“All of them,” he said, his tight smile revealing something that looked like disgust.
When we approached the closed door on the other side of HQ, Streeter whispered in my ear, “Go on. You know the guy.”
“Crap,” I mumbled. “Can’t I go downstairs and look for little Max instead?”
Gates laughed. Streeter shook his head and motioned toward the door.
I opened it. To all of them. Officer Lou was right. Throw in a football and a whistle and we’ve got ourselves a game. There must have been twenty people in the room, half sitting along the wall on one side, half sitting along the wall on the other. His and hers. I felt like it was a mutual firing squad. I walked over to a man at the end of the table, sticking my hand out, saying, “Max.”
His black hair was still thick and wavy. A dimple punctuated his white, toothy smile, brilliant as a game-show host’s. And his suit was tailored to hug the biceps and pectorals he worked so hard to build. Ever the charmer, Max hadn’t aged one bit.
“Agent Bergen,” Max responded.
No one had ever called me that before. My cheeks burned. I felt silly dressed in grubby jeans and a baseball cap surrounded by an entourage of custom-tailored suits and couture purses. Until we shook hands, that is. His grip was painful against my raw palm. And his expression was vacant, as if I were a total stranger. I figured he was just being an asshole as usual and nodded at the dozen suits crowded around him.
I was tempted to announce to Max where my hands had just been a half hour earlier, picking through miles of garbage, but why spoil the surprise for the rest of these beautiful people? So instead, I asked, “Who are all these folks?”
“Business associates,” Max said, looking past me and shaking Streeter’s hand.
“This is Special Agent Streeter Pierce and Denver Police Chief Tony Gates. Chief Gates, Agent Pierce, this is Max Williams and his business associates.”
“Maximillian Bennett Williams II,” he said, correcting me before releasing Streeter’s hand and grabbing Tony’s.
“Oh, excuse me. Maximillian Bennett Williams II and his business associates.” I nodded with exaggeration toward Streeter. He suppressed a smile. I bit my tongue and zipped my lip so I wouldn’t add “the asshole to whom I was referring earlier” to my introduction. Instead, I walked down to the other end of the room, meeting each member of his entourage and then hers. I ended up face-to-face with the only woman in the room who could possibly be Max’s wife and shook her hand.
“I’m Special Agent Liv Bergen. And you are Mrs. Williams?”
The Barbie-doll blonde extended a limp-fish handshake, not unlike flight attendant Kevin Benson’s earlier. I didn’t squeeze it hard, though, because I was pleased that it was her hand, not Ida’s, that Max had taken to be his. She was Mrs. Asshole.
Her teeth were equally as perfect as Max’s; their dentist surely spent most of his winter months in the Bahamas after all the work he must do for them. Her eyes were wide and bright, the makeup she wore perfectly applied. I wondered if it had been painted on, knowing she’d been crying. Or maybe it was reapplied over and over. I just didn’t understand makeup all that much. Being the closest I’d ever been to a supermodel—my sister Ida excluded—I must say Melissa Williams was absolutely gorgeous. I imagined she was always that way, even without makeup. She had a killer body, sculpted taut and smooth, and her eyes commanded my full attention.
“Melissa,” she said. Shooting a quick dagger of a look in Max’s direction, she added, “And these are my friends.”
Point taken. Max had business associates. Melissa had friends. And there you have it, the continental divide that might otherwise be known as the Williams party.
“I’m so, so sorry for the strain you both must be under tonight, and we appreciate you flying into Denver to answer some questions,” Streeter said to everyone in the room after introducing himself to Melissa. “Let me start by thanking all of you for wanting to help us find Mr. and Mrs. Williams’s son. We’re going to need everyone’s cooperation and time is of the essence.”
“Then why did you keep us waiting so long,” whined the man with long hair on Melissa’s side of the divide. I think he was the one she called her publicist, but he could have been her hair-and-makeup artist.
“Because we were in critical interviews that will hopefully lead to the recovery of little Max,” Streeter said. His voice was sugary, yet firm. “We have rooms set up for everyone. We will lead you to your assigned rooms where individual interviews will occur, and we have other agents who will be helping us gather information.”
“From us? What kind of information?” The man was on Max’s side of the divide and I think he said he was one of the attorneys. Max brought several.
Streeter added evenly, “Information that may help us find little Max.”
Separate and conquer. Well done, Streeter. The seventeen people in the room who were friends and business associates were rumbling. The Williamses said nothing. Standing midway in the room, careful not to choose sides by my position, I felt like firing the starting gun for the battle at Gettysburg.
“For the record, the interviews are being recorded and we’ll need to have you speak your names clearly, please,” Streeter stated the date, location, and names of the officials present for the interview including himself, Tony, Phil, and me.
“Wait,” Max interrupted. “Isn’t Agent Bergen going to conduct the interviews?”
Streeter looked to me to answer, knowing this was about who was lead. To avoid further delays, I simply said, “No, Agent Pierce will.”
Max’s eyes slowly moved from my face to Streeter’s as he calculated his next move.
Streeter continued, “Mrs. Williams, can you please introduce each of your friends to me and tell me his or her relationship to little Max so I know what room to assign them to?”
Melissa looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Her perfectly lined lips parted and then closed. She started again with a hug to the woman sitting next to her. “This is my publicity agent.” Then she pointed. “My hairdresser. My makeup artist. That’s my attorney. Those two are bodyguards. And that’s my pilot and copilot.”
No one moved. They all just sat there. Streeter stared. So did I. Not one name. Maybe Melissa didn’t know their names. Streeter addressed the first woman. “Your name and relationship with little Max?”
And the eight people stated their names for the record, all of them indicating how they knew little Max. Most had met him, but none of them stated anything more than that, except one bodyguard who admitted he had to babysit the child once and the hairdresser who indicated he’d cut the boy’s hair on a couple of occasions.
Streeter turned to the other end of the room, saying, “Mr. Williams?”
“Following my brilliant wife’s lead—”
“Ex-wife,” Melissa corrected.
“Not yet, dear,” Max added, his smile forced. “To be brief: pilot, copilot, attorney, attorney, attorney, bodyguard, bodyguard, assistant, and personal assistant.”
Streeter repeated his line of questions, asking for each person to state his or her name and indicate how
he or she knew little Max. Most had met the boy but had little interaction with him.
“And the nanny? The child’s caregiver? You mentioned her on the phone.” Streeter asked, “Judy Manning, is it? Did she come with either of you?”
Melissa jerked her head in Max’s direction. Streeter, Tony, Phil, and I looked to him for an answer.
“No, I did not bring her. It’s Christmas. She had the week off. She was planning to go back to England for the holidays,” Max answered.
“Who took little Max to the airport?”
“Nanny Judy.”
CHAPTER 27
STREETER REFRAINED FROM COMMENT and stood. “I am going to check on the rooms and agents assigned to each of you so we can get started. Mr. and Mrs. Williams, I want you to stay here so Chief Gates, Agent Bergen, and I can talk with you. Alone.”
“Very good. But I want one of my attorneys to stay,” Max said.
“Me too,” Melissa piped in.
Streeter smiled. “Then that changes things.”
He left the room and indicated that I follow. Outside, he stepped toward Kelleher and said, “Set up the room for Mr. Williams and his attorney. I want cameras rolling in there, if they give us their consent. I’m going to leave Mrs. Williams and her attorney in here. We’ll put them together after we’ve interviewed them separately.”
I went back inside the room with Melissa and her attorney until everyone was situated. Gates was helping Streeter with the arrangements and with what I assumed would be a plan for the interview.
As she sat next to her preoccupied attorney, who was busy with his smartphone, I couldn’t help but stare at Melissa, whose eyes were staring at the windows. She had an intoxicating beauty. I decided to make small talk with her until the men returned. “I don’t suppose there’s such a thing as a white Christmas in LA,” I mused, staring at the snow falling in the blackness beyond the windows.
Melissa shook her head. The room grew silent. So much for small talk. After a long moment, she said, “It’s what I miss the most about New York. Aldo said he’ll buy me snow. All the snow I can stand. After we move to Papeete. Is that even possible?”
“Where’s Papeete?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s on Tahiti, an island in French Polynesia. Aldo owns a whole bunch of real estate there. But it’s so hot,” Melissa admitted with a sigh. “And I told him I’d miss the snow.”
“Well, have you ever heard of Ski Dubai?”
She turned to face me, really studying me for the first time, her eyes settling on the scratches on my face. She shook her head, loosening a blond lock that tumbled down from a fashionable pile at the nape of her neck and bounced against her cheek.
“It’s a ski park in the Middle East.”
“In the desert?”
I nodded. “Anything can be done with enough money.”
“That’s what Aldo says.”
“Who’s Aldo?”
“My boyfriend. We’re going to get married as soon as—”
“Melissa,” the attorney said, placing his hand on her arm.
It was a signal to stop talking. I could tell by the apologetic look in her eye. I offered her a sympathetic smile and gazed off at the snow. The attorney went back to tapping cryptically on his smartphone. She motioned for me to follow her and she eased away from the table and walked toward the windows.
“I didn’t think I’d like you,” she said almost wistfully, staring out at the snow racing through the black night.
“Me? Why?” I asked.
“Max told me about you. About your sister. I thought I’d be jealous.” Her eyes went up to my baseball cap, lingered on the scratches across my cheek, and moved quickly down to my grubby shirt and jeans. “But I’m not.”
“Thank you, I think.” She had no idea how jealous she should be since Ida was drop-dead gorgeous, not like me. But I had to say, both Ida and Melissa were striking. I just didn’t see what either of them saw in Max, other than that he was easy on the eyes. Too perfect looking for my taste, though.
“Why’d he pick me?” I asked.
“To be assigned the case?”
I nodded.
She shrugged. “He told me he didn’t. He said he had no idea you were with the FBI here. But I knew he did the second you introduced yourself to me. He does that. Exercises his muscle now and again. He hadn’t put Chandler on the spot in years. No need for the FBI, I guess. Until now.” She stared in silence for a long moment and whispered, “Or it was to piss me off? Who knows?”
“Are you pissed? That I was assigned the case?”
“Like I said, I thought I’d be jealous,” she answered, giving me the once-over again. “But I’m not. You’re okay.”
“I’m okay, but Agent Pierce is the best.”
As if I’d conjured him, in walked Streeter. He was the kind of man who suited my taste.
Not someone like Max. Streeter was not as tall or as lean as Max, and his white buzz was nothing like Max’s full head of black, wavy hair. The play of a boyish grin on the corner of Streeter’s manly mouth was much more appealing to me than Max’s commanding presence. But it was Max’s eyes that unsettled me, always shifting from a wary cunning and then back to charm.
Melissa’s attorney looked up from his smartphone, just noticing Melissa and me returning to the table. “About time. Do you have any idea how late it is on the West Coast?”
“An hour earlier than here, Mr. Sinclair,” Streeter said, coming around the table with Gates and taking a seat next to me. “And it’s two hours earlier here than on the East Coast, where the other Williams party came from, so shouldn’t we be starting with them, based on the late hour?”
“I apologize. It’s been a long day. We’re just edgy, eager to locate the boy.”
“So are we,” Streeter replied. “Mind if we get started? Videotaping? I’ll need verbal confirmation from both of you.”
They both said it was okay.
“Mrs. Williams, when did you discover your son was missing?”
She looked at me before answering. “When I went to pick him up at the airport today.”
Streeter said, “Let the time reflect that it’s 1:17 a.m. December 25. You mean yesterday, the 24th?”
“Yes. My driver took me out to LAX. Aldo was busy with last-minute planning for our trip to Papeete. We were scheduled to leave today, on Christmas, for a week away with little Max.”
“Aldo is who?” Streeter asked.
“Aldo Giottani. He’s a billionaire. He lives in Papeete but has a second home in Hollywood. That’s how we met. At a director’s party.”
“When was this?”
“Does it matter?” the attorney asked. “We do have a pending divorce case and unless this is relevant, I’m going to have to instruct my client not to answer.”
“I heard Mr. Williams make reference to that a few minutes ago.” Streeter cleared his throat. “Both Mr. and Mrs. Williams referred to themselves earlier as divorced, not separated. So the divorce is not yet final?”
The attorney answered, “We’re waiting for the final hearing on distribution of assets.”
Streeter nodded and made a note.
Melissa blinked and then stared at Sinclair. It appeared to me that she didn’t understand why he was being difficult with Streeter. I wondered if it was because she cared so much about her son that she didn’t expect anyone on her team to be an obstacle, or if it was because she didn’t fully grasp the exchange. But maybe I was judging her too harshly.
“Then a point of clarification, Mrs. Williams. Aldo is a billionaire with land in and around Papeete in Tahiti and a home in Hollywood, but what relationship is he to you and your son?”
“We’re getting married and we—”
Mr. Sinclair put his hand on her arm. “As I said, the divorce is not final and I’d appreciate some discretion when asking these questions.”
“Mr. Sinclair, I really don’t give a flying fig about the divorce. What I care about is finding Mrs. Williams’s
son. And unless and until I identify all the people in little Max’s life who may have an interest in his well-being, I really am ill equipped to find him.”
Gates added, “So forget about your job of protecting her assets for the time being and focus on protecting her ass.”
“My ass? Am I in trouble here?”
“You have insisted on having a lawyer during an interview about your missing son. Innocent people don’t choose that,” Gates said.
“I only chose it because Max insisted on having his lawyer there. Go. Step outside. I have nothing to hide.” She was shooing away her attorney.
Sinclair’s eyes widened. “Melissa, I would advise—”
“Go. I’ll be fine.”
Sinclair eyed each of us before slowly pushing himself away from the table and walking toward the door, letting himself out.
Gates called after him, “Turn left, three doors down on your left. Go on in. They’ll take care of you.”
“Thank you,” Streeter said to Melissa. “You know, you’re within your rights to have an attorney with you.”
She smiled and nodded. “I know. But I don’t need a lawyer to protect my ass. I need to get my son back.”
CHAPTER 28
“OKAY, MRS. WILLIAMS,” STREETER continued. “You arrived at LAX at what time?”
“Around 3:00 p.m. I wanted to make sure I was there for little Max. He’d be worried if no one was there to pick him up.”
“And his flight was scheduled to arrive at 3:20 p.m.?” Gates asked.
She nodded. The muscles around her eyes sagged. She looked as if she was about to cry.
“And then what?”
I could tell by the change in Streeter’s tone that he noticed it, too.
“I … my driver said he’d circle in a pattern and to wait for him on the curb right where he dropped me off. I never made it back out there.” She started crying; her attorney wasn’t there to pat her arm. She said. “My driver eventually parked the car and came looking for me. He found me inside with airport security. They were trying to help me locate my son.”
“How did you know he was missing?”
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