From Cape Town with Love (18 page)

“Ask Nandi where she is,” I whispered as Maitlin opened her phone with trembling hands.

“Hel . . . Hello?” she said, her voice unsteady.

Loud static. Maitlin had pressed her speakerphone button.
Good girl!
I held my finger to my mouth:
Shhhhhh.
But I didn't have to. No one in the room drew a breath.

A raspy, metallic voice growled from the phone: “Take me off the goddamn speaker.” An English accent? It was hard to tell with the distortion, but it was possible.

“I'm sorry!” Maitlin cried out, fumbling to find the right button to push. Instead, the phone flew out of her hands, to the foot of the bed. With another cry, Maitlin lunged to grab it.

“Hello? Hello? . . . Please answer!” She looked at her telephone display, and her eyes widened with terror. “Oh, God—
I hung up on him!”

“Let me see,” said Alec, and he took the phone. “Hello? Hello?”

The keening from Maitlin's throat belonged at a child's funeral.

“Don't worry,” I said. “Everyone stay calm. He'll call back. They want your money.”

“Oh God oh God oh God . . . ,” Maitlin whispered, rocking like a lost child. Rachel Wentz sat beside her on the tiny bed with her arm around Maitlin's shoulder, her lips pursed as she fought tears. Alec looked at us helplessly, a powerful man reduced to waiting.

“Hardwick's right,” Roman said. “Panic doesn't help us, sir. They'll call back.”

We waited in a silence as thick as the walls. I readied the small note
pad and pen on the bed beside Maitlin where she'd already scribbled her first conversation with Nandi's kidnappers, writing only
NANDI
and
NO POLICE.
She took the pad, but barely noticed.

“Listen for anything,” Roman said. “Noises. Engines. Airplanes. Water.”

“Try to recognize the voice,” I said. “It may be someone who knows you.”

Maitlin sobbed, nodding.

Alec stood over Maitlin and rubbed the back of her neck, whispering tenderly, “It's all right, love . . . It's all right. Just breathe. It was an accident. It's not your fault.”
Good.
Maitlin would need all of the support she could get.

After two excruciating minutes, the phone rang again. Same caller ID.

This time, Maitlin seemed calmer as she answered. “Hello?” Quickly, she picked up her pen. “Yes, I'm sorry. I dropped the phone . . .” Her face clouded. “No, I swear—we haven't. It's just me and m-my staff. I d-did exactly what you said.” While the caller spoke, she looked at us, shaken. “No . . . It's me and my husband, and my m-manager. They were with me when I got the message. And the nanny . . . and Nandi's birth father. And my private security men, but they're not police. That's all, I swear.”

From the doorway, Alec's son raised his hand as if to remind her he was there, but Roman and I both waved to keep him quiet. Maitlin already had been way too specific.

Maitlin nodded wildly, writing on her pad. I couldn't make out everything upside down, but I saw the word
MONDAY.
Shit. They were planning to keep Nandi overnight!

“But can't we do it now? Tonight?” Maitlin whined. A pause, and I heard the vestige of a voice snapping at her. “No, whatever you say. Just please . . .” The caller cut her off, and she began writing furiously again. I saw the number 5. Gazing at the pad, Alec winced.

The kidnappers wanted five million dollars. I felt grudging admiration for their logic: By asking for so much less than Maitlin and her husband could afford, Maitlin was less likely to seek police help. The bastards were more likely to get their money.

“Can I just . . . c-can I just please talk to her again?” Maitlin said.

We all forgot to breathe. The caller said something that lifted
Maitlin's mouth into a sickly smile. “Sweetie? Are you there?” The barest whisper.

“Mommy!”

Nandi's voice on the mouthpiece was so clear that I wanted to look over my shoulder for her. Maitlin choked on a laugh. “Nandi—hello, my sweetheart! Are you okay?”

Nandi's chipper voice said something about
pizza.

They weren't hurting her. She didn't sound frightened, so maybe she hadn't been traumatized yet.
Thank you, Jesus.
Prayers didn't come to me often, but I was learning fast.

I took Maitlin's pad and scribbled a note to feed her dialogue:
Where are you?

A single word could help. Water. Boat. Truck. Anything.

Maitlin's anguished eyes came to mine, but she shook her head defiantly. “Have a great time, sweetheart,” she said to the phone, as if Nandi were at her grandparents' house. “Just be good, all right? Do what they say—no talking back. Mommy and Daddy will see you soon.”

“Okay, Mommy!”
Nandi sounded like she was in the room with us again.

“Sweetheart, where are you?” Maitlin said quickly. She believed she had comforted Nandi and given her enough skills to survive the night, so she was ready to take a chance.

“It's
fun
here—” I heard Nandi say, and then silence.

Maitlin's skin suddenly looked like chalk. “Hello? Nandi?” she said.
“Hello?”

She looked at her phone display, wide eyed. I peeked, too.
CALL ENDED
, it said.

As Maitlin wailed, the phone jittered in her unsteady fingers. “Oh G-God, they're going to hurt her! They're going to . . . to . . .” Her bones seemed to be dissolving. Alec and Rachel Wentz stroked her, trying to comfort her, but she was sinking out of the room.

I knelt down to meet Maitlin at eye level. I took her hand and squeezed it, almost hard enough to pinch. “No. They're
not
going to hurt her,” I said. “All they want is their money. They don't get anything out of hurting her except feeling like monsters.” I hoped I was right. I was rusty on my kidnapping statistics, but plenty of kids don't make it home.

I saw a film leave Maitlin's eyes, but the worry remained. “I told her to be good, but what if she doesn't listen? What if she makes them mad?”

“She's a baby, Sofia,” Alec said. “They won't hurt a baby.”

“Nandi is fine!” Wentz said. “She thinks she's on vacation. She's eating
pizza.”

Despite herself, Maitlin let out a strangled laugh.

“That's right, Sophie,” said Roman. “It's all gonna be fine.”

But if Maitlin had seen the look Roman gave me, she would have wailed again.

The household staff had been sent home except for the security team, so the house was eerily quiet. The only voices downstairs were ours.

“Moment of truth time,” Roman said as we rushed down the staircase. “No bullshit.”

“Works for me.”

Roman glanced at me with red eyes, and his voice shook. “I didn't want to bring you in on this. When all hell breaks loose, you look at the new people first. Or, you could have been a dickhead who'd say, ‘No police necessary, leave it all up to me,' charge a shitload of money, and shrug your shoulders when Nandi comes back in a body bag. I've put all that aside now.”

I had done something to impress him, apparently. I hoped he would listen to my advice: “We need the cops, Roman,” I said.

Roman nodded. “No fucking kidding. These pricks are pros. Snatched her in plain sight. But it's Sophie's call, just like it was her call to bring you in. She says no police.”

“Sometimes you gotta make the
right
call, man. Not what the boss wants.”

We stopped in a foyer so large that it felt like a Spanish courtyard. Ten-foot potted palm trees lined the walls, beneath a massive skylight glowing only faintly in the dark. Hidden crickets chirped from the trees' large ceramic planters.

“I think we got a fifty-fifty chance with this thing,” Roman said, his
glassy eyes on mine. “These motherfuckers might take the money and run. Nandi's old enough to say too much.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn't. Anything was possible.

“Another vote for the FBI,” I said.

“Fuck it, you're probably right. But we're gonna agree on one thing right here, right now: We're doing it her way. Period. It's her kid, so she calls it. If Alec and Sophie can live with their decision, so can we.”

I didn't know what we could live with, but I shook Roman's hand on it. His palm felt clammy, ice cold.

“The drop's tomorrow night at eleven, and that means me. You, too, if you want in,” Roman went on. “No way Sophie's going out there, or Alec. If we don't walk away with Nandi, we go to the feds.”

Let's hope any of us walks away,
I thought.
Let's hope Nandi will get a second chance.

“How'd they play us?” Roman said, pacing. When he looked at me, his eyes went straight through me, watching something distant and unspeakable unfold.
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK.
This shit . . . ,” he said.

“What?”

“I thought I'd never have to deal with this again.”

“Deal with what?”

“Not a what. A when.” He wasn't making sense. “April 2004. Al Anbar Province, Iraq. A bad month for Marines. A
very bad
month. FUBAR. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. IEDs. All battle-dressed up and nobody to kill in retaliation.” He slapped the banister hard enough to echo. “Not again. Not here. Not a child placed under
my
protection!”

Roman was losing it. I should have called the police right then.

I tried to bring Roman back into the room with me. “Someone could've been waiting for her in the bouncy house—maybe where I found the ribbon,” I said, and Roman's eyes focused back on home soil. “Maybe they rendered her unconscious. Maybe nitrous oxide. Dental supply store . . . hell, even a catering supply: They use it for whipped cream. She's small, so she wouldn't be tough to conceal or carry. A man, woman, or older child could have made the initial grab. They got her to the broken fence—maybe a bag, maybe a cart. Handed her off. Then . . .”

The scenario was getting blurry, but I pressed on. “They loaded her
up and drove off,” I went on. “But not in a service truck. I'd say it was a private car, or a limo. Five minutes, they're out.”

Pain seared Roman's face. “Shit.” We had argued about searching the guests' cars, but in the end it hadn't mattered a damn.

“Nandi could have been out on Mulholland before Zukisa knew she was missing,” I said.

“And I sent you to the fucking kitchen,” Roman said, his eyes flinching.

“Hindsight's a bitch.”

I wanted to know more about South African Sun on Melrose. Roman might have sent me on a fool's errand, but the restaurant could have orchestrated it. And I wanted to know more about Roman, too. He wasn't a full-blown suspect yet, but I hadn't crossed him off the list.

Roman studied me. “I'm head of security, I send you away from the scene right before the grab . . . ,” he said. “That doesn't knot up your balls?”

We thought just alike. Roman was pulling himself together.

“Like I said before, it's easy to paint a suspect,” I said.

“Like the guy I found with Nandi's ribbon in his hand?”

“Just like that.”

Roman nodded, and we pounded fists. “Until Nandi's back home, you live here. If you don't have a piece, I'll lend you one of mine. We're gonna work the office phone and computer to stick a microscope up the ass of anybody who was here today—and that's a long fucking list. You're gonna come up with ideas I don't. If we're lucky, it works both ways.”

“So far, so good. Partner.” I didn't want him to think he was my boss.

Roman's eyes bored into mine. “Right, partner: And if evidence convinces you that I had something to do with this, fuck the FBI. Shoot me in the head.”

I remembered Nandi's laughter as she rolled down the slide, a happy angel. “I could handle that.”

“Same here, Hardwick,” Roman said. His eyes reminded me of Hannibal Lecter's death stare from
Silence of the Lambs,
unblinking intensity. “Not a doubt in my fucking mind.”

If we didn't kill each other first, I had a partner. It was a start.

Roman led me toward his security room, which was a small, virtually windowless room off the front foyer. Inside, he had two desks, a swivel chair in front of a bank of small video screens, a console, and a computer and monitor. One security man I'd met only since the kidnapping—a thin-faced man in his forties with active eyes—was scanning the footage, cycling between cameras. With at least ten cameras on the grounds, that was a lot of footage for one man. But we were spread thin. Too bad we weren't the FBI.

One camera had captured Zukisa frantically running out of the bouncy house, looking right and left. The man paused the tape, which was marked 3:55
P.M.
“That's when she's thinking, ‘Oh, shit,'” the video man mumbled.

I saw movement in the dark shrubbery from one of the upper video screens marked
LIVE FEED
. My heart did a war dance when a flashlight's beam flared like the sun. But it was only our security patrol. Levitt. Roman had spread the rest of the team throughout the grounds.

“Talk to me, Skeeter,” Roman said to the video man.

“I don't have shit,” Skeeter said. “Damn clowns.”

“What about the clowns?” Roman said, anxious.

Skeeter shrugged. “I just fucking hate clowns.”

My cell phone vibrated, and I checked the caller ID:
SEXUAL HEALING
, it read.

That could only be Marsha. I slid my phone back into my pocket, but Roman waved to say
Go on.
Still, I almost didn't pick up. I could barely remember what Marsha looked like.

“Mmmmm . . . ,” Marsha purred when she heard my voice. “What are you doing tonight?”