And Justice For Mall, page 22
With help from T’Aisha, who knew everyone involved in Helene’s murder and had their contact information, it took only about half an hour to set up the weirdest Zoom meeting in my experience. I was staring into my laptop screen with Angie to my left and Judy to the right, both out of camera range.
On the screen was a true rogue’s gallery of suspects: Lisa Conforto and her husband Ken Warshofsky were oddly in separate rooms. From the backgrounds I guessed that Ken was at his desk at ImagiNails and Lisa was in her bedroom. Alicia Nestor Jennings had not moved off that stupid sofa and although I couldn’t see her legs, I was certain they were crossed perfectly. Jason Kemper might have been anywhere. Well, anywhere indoors. But his virtual backdrop was very good; it was only because I’d been to his office that I knew he didn’t really have a full-sized American flag mounted on the wall. I wondered if Jason wanted to run for office.
Of the people I thought might have killed Helene Nestor, only Jack Schoenberg and Peter Lucchesi had not responded to the invitation. I guessed they had other things they needed to be doing that day, like evading every cop in a 200-mile radius, not to mention the FBI. That’d take up a lot of your time, I supposed.
I had them all muted because – as the host of the event – I had that ability, and quite frankly they’d all been talking at once when I let them into the session, mostly complaining about having their day interrupted by some lawyer who wanted god knows what when they were very busy important people who didn’t need to sit still for this kind of inquisition. What kind of inquisition they did need to sit still for was a topic I had chosen not to explore.
Once everyone was present and without sound, I unmuted my own microphone, gave first Judy and then Angie one last look to bolster my diminishing confidence in this scheme, and cleared my throat. That didn’t seem to have any effect on the people in the conference, so I just dived right in.
‘I suppose you’re all wondering why I called you here today,’ I said. Why not? How often do you get a chance like this? ‘As you’re all no doubt aware, Riley Schoenberg is missing and her abduction seems almost certainly connected to the murder of her mother. I’ve asked you all to attend this meeting – and thank you all for coming – because I think we might be able to help find Riley if we have some very frank conversations about Helene’s murder.’
That seemed straightforward enough, but there was a good deal of eye-rolling going on in front of me, particularly from Alicia, who no doubt had some much more urgent sitting on her couch to do. I pressed on without unmuting anybody.
‘I’m going to talk to each of you separately because crosstalk is only going to make this conversation last much longer and keep you all away from your busy schedules.’ Let them think you have their interests at heart, even when you definitely don’t. ‘So let me start with you, Jason. Some of the others might not know you well, but allow me to explain that Jason Kemper was a business associate of Helene’s, one of the first investors in ImagiNails, and now runs a private investment firm. Is that a fair introduction, Jason?’
Before he could even answer, a chat message from Alicia appeared: We all know Jack killed Helene. Why are we even doing this?
I chose to ignore her because I knew she wouldn’t leave for fear that the others would talk about her behind her back.
‘That is fairly accurate,’ Jason said, no doubt having either missed or ignored Alicia’s message entirely. ‘But you failed to mention that I should have been one of the four people who profited from ImagiNails’ merger, but wasn’t because Helene chose to exclude me from that deal.’
He has motive, Lisa added in chat. Being muted in a Zoom meeting wasn’t going to stop this crowd.
‘You’ve never explained to me exactly how she did that,’ I told Jason. I decided on the spot I wouldn’t respond to any chat messages but let the group see them if possible. Let them stew on it. ‘Could Helene simply decide who would and would not be included in the deal?’
‘Pretty much, yes,’ Jason said. ‘It was a very informal company at that point, operating basically out of a storefront. We had board meetings that were the five of us and a couple of pizzas. So when Helene, who was the sole owner of the company, no matter how much the rest of us had invested, decided to cut me out and keep the others, she could do it.’
‘Why?’ I asked. I had asked him this in less direct terms once before and not gotten a satisfactory answer. ‘Why did Helene single you out among the four investors?’
It was Ken, who spoke only when it was absolutely necessary and sanctioned by his wife, who broke in on chat. I know why she did that.
‘OK, hang on. I’m going to mute you for a while, Jason and talk to Ken.’ It was a way of manipulating the conversation without acknowledging that I was doing so based on the chat or I’d have a four-person melee going on in my chat box. ‘Ken, you were one of the investors who was not excluded from the merger deal. Do you have any idea why Jason was not brought in with the rest?’
I might have been wrong about Ken being in his office because from the background noise it seemed much more likely he was in his car. Who uses a Zoom background in a car? ‘I was there when Helene told us she was doing it,’ he answered. ‘She said that Jason wasn’t to be trusted because he had reservations about the product.’
The product? ‘He didn’t believe in the fake fingernails?’ I said. When I’m surprised my bluntness is more, you know, blunt.
‘Jason kept saying there was a flaw in the formula, that the nails didn’t really grow on people’s fingers or that they would prove to be dangerous if we didn’t go back to the drawing board.’
From Jason on chat: I never said any such thing.
‘Yes you did, Jason,’ Ken continued. I made an executive decision and unmuted Jason so they could argue this one independent of the others. ‘Helene knew you were going to go to the press with it and so she cut you out of the merger. It came up again before the IPO was going to happen and everybody knew it was you.’
‘It’s not true,’ Jason protested. ‘I didn’t even have a voice in the actual formula of the product. I came on after Helene had invented it herself.’
‘I work with that end of the company,’ Ken told him. ‘I have emails dating back to then showing you threatening to go to the LA Times. I mean, print? Really?’
I’ve never been good at texting while doing something else. Other people can text while walking, text while eating, text while playing piano, for all I know. I have to be doing just that and nothing else, so it was a serious effort for me to get my phone off the table in front of me, place it under the table and therefore out of sight from those watching me on Zoom, and text T’Aisha Kendall: Did you know of any questions from Jason Kemper about the formula of ImagiNails?
‘It never happened,’ Jason insisted. He was just going to keep repeating himself so I muted him again. Then I muted Ken too because how much can you take?
‘Lisa,’ I said, hitting the button to make her audible, ‘you said the night Helene was killed that Jack came to see you and Ken, is that right?’
Lisa looked a little startled that I’d spoken to her. She looked around, as if trying to find the source of that odd voice, but then looked directly – and somewhat eerily – into her webcam. ‘Yes. Well, Jack came to see me but Ken was there because he’s my husband.’ And the way she said it made me wonder if they really were married. I texted Jon to look for a record of marriage between the two. If you’re going to text under the table, go to town I say.
‘Jack wanted to talk about some new business venture he was planning?’ You have to prod them sometimes or they won’t say anything interesting.
‘That’s right. Jack wanted to supply movie sets with biodegradable utensils and things for their craft services departments. He thought it would bring him income so he wouldn’t have to rely on Helene so much anymore.’
This was like questioning a witness in court, I decided. ‘So then Jack had plans to start a new business and he wasn’t just livid with Helene that night,’ I said.
‘He was ticked off at her because she’d kind of insulted him, but no, he wasn’t livid,’ Lisa said.
‘And did Ken talk to Jack about the business angle?’ I asked.
Ken was shaking his head but – like Lisa – I felt it was best not to let him speak. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was more interested in the ingredients of the hors d’oeuvres he was serving that night. Like the oven temperature he’d set was too high and he had boiled the vinegar or something. I never understand when he talks about those things.’ Ken rolled his eyes. Wives.
I wasn’t exactly Perry-Mason-ing this interrogation. None of my witnesses had confessed to killing Helene, and so far I hadn’t gotten one inch closer to finding Riley. So that left me with Alicia.
A text from T’Aisha made me surreptitiously – I thought – look down at my phone. NTYMI, there were rumblings about the ImagiNails formula, but not from Kemper. Pretty much from Helene herself. Not corroborated after she died. I left the phone on my lap to keep this multitasking conversation alive.
NTYMI? I sent back
Now that you mention it. I just wasn’t made for these times.
After muting everyone else and unmuting her I asked Alicia, since she knew both Jack and Pete, where she thought they might have taken Riley.
‘I don’t know and frankly I don’t care,’ she said. Lauren Bacall on her best day couldn’t have topped Alicia’s nonchalance.
Jason, of all people, wrote bitch in the chat space. But he sent it just to me so I wasn’t sure which of us he was discussing.
In my lap the phone vibrated, and I looked down to see a text from Jon. No marriage license for Warshofsky and Conforto. That was interesting. I didn’t know if it was relevant, but any information gained could always turn out to be helpful.
‘Everybody’s very impressed with how much you don’t care, but right now I’m asking for an opinion,’ I said. ‘An eleven-year-old girl’s life might be on the line and your indifference just isn’t playing too well. So answer my question: Where would Pete and/or Jack take Riley to hide? And let’s keep in mind that I’ve been to Jack’s supposed fishing cabin and they’re not there.’
‘Oh, fine,’ Alicia said. My trying to save her niece’s life was such an inconvenience. ‘I’d have bet they’d go back to the old house. It’s never been sold.’
The cops would look there first. Advice in chat from Ken. And they probably still have people watching the house because somebody just got shot there. Again. In chat Ken was downright snippy. It’s funny how people’s inhibitions are dissolved online, but don’t get me started about Twitter.
‘It’s true.’ I’d given up all pretense about not watching the chat because it was clear everyone else was. Watching. ‘I don’t see how they could occupy their old house now.’
‘Not that house.’ Alicia was so weary of dealing with the unwashed. Like me. ‘The original one, the one that they lived in when Helene was just starting the business. In Chatsworth.’
Even on the chat there was a stunned silence. Angie, next to me, said under her breath, ‘Chatsworth?’ Apparently that was a surprise. I didn’t know Chatsworth from Venice. The one in Italy.
‘What house in Chatsworth?’ I said, because somebody had to.
‘When Helene was starting out,’ she said again, because clearly everyone else on this meeting was too deficient mentally to grasp the concept. ‘She got out of the apartment once she had a fairly steady income from the nails thing and bought a little house – well, it was really a trailer if the truth be known – in Chatsworth.’
‘And it was never sold, even after all the millions were part of the picture?’ I asked. Why keep a trailer when you had a perfect little home where you could get shot and still maintain some sense of family?
‘Yeah. I don’t know if it slipped through the cracks or what, but the place was never even put on the market. I asked Helene about it once and she made some noises about it being where she first lived with Jack so it was sentimental or something. Now I have another meeting I have to get on so I’m going to leave now. Good luck finding the kid.’ And she was gone before I could protest.
I didn’t even care if anyone saw me texting during the meeting now. I was back to Jon and Nate at the same time. Helene Nestor owns a trailer in Chatsworth. Find it.
On it. That was Jon.
You know, I have actual work. Nate. That meant he’d be on the task in a moment.
I looked over at Angie once I’d closed the meeting. ‘Well that led to a whole lot of nothing,’ she said.
‘Not at all,’ I told her. ‘I know where Riley is and I know who killed Helene Nestor.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘Chatsworth isn’t exactly Bel Air,’ Patrick said. ‘But it’s not the ends of the earth, either. There are sections that are less upscale, and if Helene and her husband were living in a converted trailer, it’s quite likely that is the type of neighborhood we’re going to enter.’
The Zoom meeting had broken up within seconds of Alicia bailing out and had left me with a number of questions, which Nate, Jon and T’Aisha were busy answering now. Angie had gone off to meet Nate so we could try to coordinate at the Chatsworth house, but it would take time to get to Nate’s and then start out. I wasn’t willing to wait.
I had no doubt that Alicia, who had wanted to help the least, had provided us with the right direction to find Riley. Jack would appreciate the sentimentality of going back to the house he’d first shared with his late wife. Pete, if he was calling the shots, would be more enamored of the property’s total anonymity while he was trying to get funding together to get out of Los Angeles and probably the country. He’d need fake driver’s licenses, passports and cash. In fact, he’d need the cash to get the fake driver’s licenses and passports.
‘I get that it’s not the lap of luxury,’ I told him. ‘But the very least we can do is get there.’ The traffic on Route 405 (‘the 405’ to natives and those who have successfully assimilated) was even worse than a normal Los Angeles rush hour. Which is to say we weren’t moving at all. My best guess was that someone was herding a rout of exotic snails (look it up) across the highway, and everyone else just had to wait until they’d made it safely to the other side.
Judy, in the back seat and constantly on the alert, said, ‘I believe it would have made more sense and been more practical to have alerted Lieutenant Valdez or Lieutenant Trench to your theories, ma’am.’ Judy would sooner have her fingernails pulled out with a rusty pair of pliers than call me Sandy.
‘You’re right to call them theories, Judy, and that’s exactly why I’m not calling either of the lieutenants,’ I said. Literally, we were going nowhere. We could have plugged in Patrick’s Tesla right here on the highway and had no anxiety about having to leave too soon to completely charge it. Luckily right now he was driving his hybrid Lexus (he’d returned the Rolls) because he knew the roads and I didn’t. Of course, knowing the roads is only an advantage if you’re actually traveling somewhere, and not posing for a picture of Los Angeles traffic that will one day grace a museum exhibit on how we ignored climate change until it was too late. ‘They’d tell me I was just guessing and keep doing whatever it is they’re doing now. If they knew about the Chatsworth house I’d be surprised. It didn’t even show up in a list of Helene’s real-estate holdings, because guess whose name it’s listed under.’
‘Riley’s,’ Patrick and Judy said together.
‘OK, so you know how to not help me feel smart, but you’re right. And the cops or the FBI or MI6 or whoever is searching for Riley isn’t going to think to look for real-estate properties owned by an eleven-year-old girl. We have to get there first and find Riley and we only have ninety-three minutes left.’
I just knew I had to get there in the next … ninety-two minutes now, and we had not progressed as much as an inch. The 405 (there, you got me to say it) is notorious even among Los Angeles highways, and it was living up to its horrendous reputation today of all days.
This wasn’t even rush hour.
‘How far is the house from here?’ I asked Judy, who would undoubtedly know without having to check on any piece of technology.
‘Five-point-one miles,’ she said. Perhaps Judy is a piece of technology. It would explain so much.
I did some quick math in my head, which is rarely a winning strategy for me. ‘I’m gonna walk it,’ I said.
‘What?’ Patrick turned around from the driver’s seat because why not?
‘I’ll walk it. I’ll get there faster that way.’ I unbuckled the harness I was wearing (to save me from zero-mile-per-hour collisions) and reached for the door handle.
‘Sandy!’ Patrick shouted. ‘You have no idea where you’re going and you’re on a five-lane highway.’
I turned back and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I have the GPS on my phone and I’m in absolutely no danger of being run over. It’s a used car lot out there.’
Judy unbuckled her harness as well. ‘If you’re going, I’m going with you, ma’am.’ There was no arguing with Judy. So I didn’t argue with Judy.
‘I’m worried about you, love.’ Patrick hates not being the hero because he’s so used to it. He’s a hero at least once a week on television. More often if you binge him on Hulu. ‘You don’t know what you’ll be facing once you get to the house. Those people might be more dangerous than you think.’
‘At least one of them has already killed two women and kidnapped a preteen,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m fairly sure they’re dangerous, but I’ll have Judy with me and the element of surprise.’
‘The element of surprise,’ Patrick grumbled.
I tried to smile reassuringly, but I’m no actress. ‘Look at the bright side, Patrick. If they kill me you won’t have to buy the teal house, and I know you don’t want to.’ I had no intention of making him buy the teal house, but it was an exit line. Not a great exit line, but the best I had in the moment.
‘Did Angie tell you something?’ Now Patrick didn’t know whether to be terrified or just pissed off at Angie.
