Angel Among Us (28 page)

Alice shook her head. ‘I checked all the rooms, the closets, the hallways, even the bathroom closets. I checked dimensions and looked for discrepancies. Definitely no hidden rooms. Haven't been able to check her majesty's room closely yet, though. No chance.'

‘Maybe you should try harder,' Calvano suggested testily.

‘Maybe I should,' Alice agreed. ‘But I have to do it when her majesty is not in the room, and since she spends every moment of her waking life wallowing in her bed, it's going to be tough.'

Calvano glared at her but Alice just smiled back agreeably, revealing perfectly lovely white teeth and an enchanting smile that was completely lost on Calvano, at least at that particular moment.

‘Did her husband call her today?' Maggie asked. ‘Gonzales is itching to nail Enrique Romero for everything.'

‘I bet he is,' Alice said. ‘I heard Romero complained about him to the governor for something Gonzales said about him on Lindsey Stanford's show. The commander got ripped a new one.'

‘What?' Maggie turned to look at her. ‘Where did you hear that?
How
did you hear that before I did?'

Alice smiled enigmatically. ‘You have your sources and I have mine.'

Calvano groaned. ‘Now Gonzales is going to be even hotter to get Romero for this, whether he did it or not. Or Flores. Basically, the commander is not going to rest until he can pin it on someone who is Hispanic.' He looked over his shoulder and leered at Alice. ‘Play your cards right, Hernandez, and it could be you.'

Maggie gave him a withering look. ‘Did Romero call his wife today?' she asked Alice.

Alice shrugged. ‘I think so. Her majesty was on the phone crying and begging someone to come back, talking about how he couldn't leave her because they were having a child together. It was pretty pathetic. You would never catch me talking to a guy like that.'

When she gave Calvano a look like he was to blame for the entire male species, I started to wonder if maybe there wasn't something already up and running about those two. They disliked each other a little too much for there to be only casual feelings between them.

‘But whoever she was talking to wasn't buying her act,' Alice added. ‘She hung up just as unhappy as when she had started.'

‘That guy is a jerk,' Calvano said suddenly. ‘If my wife was on bed rest and having a baby, I would not fly to the other side of the country and cheat on her before the plane engine had cooled.'

‘Cheat on her?' Alice asked. ‘What do you do know that I don't know?'

Maggie filled her in. ‘Gonzales called in some favors from the LAPD and they came up with some photos of him cheating on his wife with a hot-looking woman who looks exactly like Arcelia Gallagher. Except it isn't her.'

‘No kidding? You mean this whole business of him marrying an endless parade of anorexic blondes is just for the publicity? I can't decide if that's pathetic or hilarious. You know he gets condemned in the Latino press for turning his back on ‘his people', whatever the hell that means, and now you're telling me he actually prefers hot Latinas?'

‘Apparently so,' Maggie said with a shrug.

Calvano could not resist the opening. ‘Play your cards right, Hernandez, and maybe he'll hit on you. I bet that would be your dream come true.'

‘Nightmare, maybe,' she snapped back. ‘He's not my type. I like Italian food better.'

I'm quite sure she had not meant to say that out loud, at least not in front of Calvano. She flushed and the silence in the car, while brief, was electric.

Calvano was the first to break the silence. His voice sounded a little high when he said, ‘Whatever. The guy is still a world class jerk for cheating on his wife.'

‘That may be, Adrian,' Maggie said. ‘But we can't arrest him for being a jerk.' She turned to Alice. ‘Nothing else at all you think is out of the ordinary?'

She hesitated, but she had something, all right. ‘Sometimes I think that old butler is not as old and slow as he lets on,' she said. ‘I may have caught him eavesdropping earlier today. I came around the corner and saw him down the hall, standing near Carter's bedroom. I turned around and went the other way before he saw me. But I am pretty sure he was standing outside of the door, listening in on Carter.'

‘I told you, the butler did it,' Calvano said triumphantly. Both Maggie and Alice ignored him. Boy, it was a tough crowd.

‘I don't know if Carter was in his bedroom at the time, though. He is always in
her
bedroom, from what I can tell,' Alice continued. ‘I think it's creepy. I'm thinking Enrique Romero also thinks it's a little creepy. Maybe he's paying the butler to keep an eye on Carter for him?'

‘That could be something,' Maggie mumbled, but she did not sound convinced.

‘We're sure this chick is pregnant, right?' Alice asked.

‘Why do you say that?' Maggie said.

Alice shrugged. ‘I don't know. She never gets out of bed, so I can't tell you for sure, but she seems pretty damn skinny to me. If there's a kid in there, it's starving to death. And she doesn't act pregnant to me.'

‘Romero hasn't had a kid in four or five prior marriages,' Maggie admitted. ‘We checked on it. That tells me he's shooting blanks. Maybe they're planning to adopt and her pregnancy is a ruse?'

‘She could be faking it,' Calvano agreed reluctantly. ‘Or just sort of misrepresenting it, and as soon as the adoption goes through, they'll announce it to the papers as their own. They wouldn't be the first couple in Hollywood to do that.'

‘As soon as the adoption goes through?' Maggie asked. ‘Or as soon as the kidnapping goes through?'

This time Alice took Calvano's side. ‘I don't think she's involved with any kidnapping,' Alice said reluctantly. ‘She's not organized enough. I'm not sure she's pregnant, but I am sure she is not involved with Arcelia Gallagher's disappearance. She doesn't have it together enough to kidnap someone. She couldn't kidnap her own lunch. Not that she eats lunch.'

‘Lamont Carter might have it together enough,' Maggie pointed out.

‘Now, him I would believe,' Alice admitted. ‘He gives me the willies.'

This was, of course, the perfect opening for Calvano to make a dirty remark. It was proof that he really did like Alice Fernandez that he held back and instead said, ‘Keep an eye on Carter, will you, Hernandez? And watch your back. The guy could be dangerous.'

‘Will do. Call me on my cell if you get anything I need to follow-up on. I've got to jump. The old guy needs help in the kitchen.'

‘Sheesh, you really like the old guy,' Calvano said. Was he jealous of the butler? I doubted irrational jealousy was what Alice Fernandez liked about Italian men.

‘There's nothing wrong with caring about other people,' Alice told him and her tone was scathing. ‘You ought to try it sometime.' She hopped from the car and disappeared into the grove of trees, the white bow on her uniform bobbing up and down like a rabbit's tail until she disappeared.

‘You are so out of your league,' Maggie told Calvano when she noticed him watching Alice leave. ‘That woman is way too smart to go out with you.'

‘So says the woman who not only went out with the number one douche bag in America, but actually married him, too.'

‘Touché,' Maggie said. ‘Speaking of which, wonder who Skip is blaming for his black eye today?'

They would not get a chance to find out. Alice came running back to the car and this time she was all business. ‘Did you say that Arcelia Gallagher was driving an old black Volvo when she disappeared?'

‘Yes,' Maggie confirmed. ‘It was a 1986 Volvo sedan with gray interior and it has a bumper sticker on it that says something like “Eat Organic” on it.'

‘I just found it,' Alice said. Her voice rose with excitement. ‘I was cutting through the woods, when I saw a corner of its trim catch the sunlight. It's right off the road, barely in the woods, and someone has piled a whole bunch of branches around it. I'm sure it's hers.'

Maggie and Calvano were on it instantly. ‘OK,' Maggie said. ‘We'll call it in. But don't say anything to anyone back at the house. I'm going to have them process the car quietly, understand? I don't want anyone in that house alerted that we found it. Our best hope for finding Arcelia is for someone to lead us to her – and they're only going to do that if they think no one is watching them.'

‘Understood,' Alice said. And with that she was off again.

I
did not stay to watch the forensic team process Arcelia Gallagher's car. I knew it would take them a long time to get to it without being seen on the main road. I also knew that their evidence gathering would be even more painstaking than usual. Maggie was after a search warrant for the Delmonte House and she needed irrefutable evidence that someone who lived in the mansion had been in Arcelia's car to get one. She would not want any mistakes made. I wondered if they would even find anything to justify a warrant. As it was, the car was just over the line on to the neighbor's property. She had a tough fight ahead. This might be her only shot and she didn't want to blow it.

Instead of watching them work, I returned to the mansion to see if I could find out on my own who had taken Arcelia Gallagher and where she was being hidden.

Alice was in the kitchen preparing a sandwich for the butler's wife. She put it down in front of the old woman, then sat and encouraged her to lift it to her mouth and take a bite. But as I watched the two women, I felt a current of animosity wind its way into the cheerful kitchen and discovered Lamont Carter standing in the hallway, looking in at them. His eyes narrowed as he watched Alice.

This was not good. How long had he been standing there and why was he watching Alice? Carter said nothing, however, and stayed hidden from their view. After a moment, he turned and left. I followed him – and just like that, there it was. I could feel traces of Arcelia Gallagher's hopelessness clinging to him. He had been near her. I was certain of it. Lamont Carter had taken her and I knew why.

Carter headed for Dakota Wylie's bedroom. She was propped up against her pillows, groggy from pills, watching herself on television. Carter sat in the chair next to her bed and crossed his legs. His foot jumped up and down as his knee jiggled nervously.

‘I don't like the new maid,' he told her.

Dakota blinked her famously blue eyes at him, trying to focus on what he was saying. It took a moment for his words to filter through. When she answered, her voice was slower than usual. ‘Oh, Lonnie, you don't trust anybody. My room is cleaner than it has been in six months. You've got to learn to trust people. You're so hard.'

‘And if I weren't a hard man, where would you be?' he asked, his eyes flickering away from her as he unconsciously surveyed the room, taking in its size and height, toting up the value of the insanely expensive furnishings. Yes, possessions meant a lot to him.

‘I can't do this much longer,' Dakota Wylie said to him. ‘I want Enrique to come home. I miss him.'

Carter shook his head. ‘You've got the worst taste in men, Dixie. The worst.'

‘Better to have bad taste than no taste at all. I worry about you, Lonnie. Why are you always alone? Don't you want someone in your life?'

‘I don't need anyone in my life,' Carter said. ‘I have you.' He took her hand and they turned as one to stare at the television screen where a younger Dakota Wylie walked across a fake campus, capturing the hearts of all with her effortless beauty. The two of them together suddenly seemed too much for me to take, but I made myself stay and watch them, lost in their own private world and happily oblivious to anyone's needs but their own, until Carter stood and announced he had business to attend to. Dakota waved him away, too enraptured with her younger self to pay much attention to his leaving.

I had felt traces of Arcelia Gallagher's despair clinging to Lamont Carter, so I knew he must have been near her recently. I had learned that emotions that strong did not simply disappear, they clung to the people who had been there when the emotions were first created. And I was not going to let Carter out of my sight until I found her. He spent the rest of the day in his room, making fruitless phone calls to people on the West Coast, hoping to land a meeting to discuss a new television series for Dakota. It sounded like word had leaked out about her plastic surgery, probably through her husband, I thought to myself, and Carter did not have any luck all afternoon. No one would even take his calls.

Between each call, he left to check on his client. She spent the entire day in bed, as she had spent so many other days, clutching a pillow to her belly and staring at the television in a dreamy, drug-induced haze while her sitcom played endlessly in the corner of the bedroom. How long had she been like this? I wondered. Weeks? Months? How long could she stay like that without affecting her baby? If she was even pregnant.

Lamont Carter would sit with Dakota for a few minutes each time he checked in, lying to her about what he had arranged during his phone calls. One day he would have to come clean and explain to his client that she had ruined both her face and her livelihood. It was not going to be anytime soon, though, if his lies were any indication.

Each time Carter left, I followed him back to his room where he would make more unproductive phone calls and occasionally pour himself a drink from the bar in his man cave. He was a strange man. Small and coiled, stronger than he looked at first glance, and completely withdrawn from the world. In his closet, he had rows of nearly identical black shirts and gray slacks lined up, with leather oxfords beneath him. He had a look that clearly meant affluence to him, and one look only. There was little else in his wardrobe.