Noah's Rainy Day (23 page)

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.”

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.”

“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?”

“I waited twenty minutes at the security exit at the bottom of the escalator to baggage claim and I saw that nearly everyone from that flight had already passed me, retrieved their bags from the carousel, and were leaving. So I called Max.”

“What time was that?” Streeter asked.

She looked at me for reassurance, her eyes wide when the answer didn’t come to her right away. I offered her a tiny smile of encouragement. She was thinking. I was studying her face; she had mascara smudges under her eyes from crying. She drew a breath, wiped away the black, and finally said, “I’m pretty sure it was around 3:45 p.m.”

“That’s Pacific standard time,” Streeter clarified for the record. “And what did he say?”

“He said he put little Max on the plane.”

“And you believed him?”

“Not at first. I thought he was messing with me, punishing me for demanding that little Max come to my house on Christmas Eve. He had wanted to keep him until the day after Christmas. He didn’t want Aldo and me taking little Max to Papeete. Max is jealous. We argued over it earlier in the week, so I thought he’d decided to exercise his muscle in his usual way and keep little Max.”

“What eventually made you believe him? That he’d put little Max on the plane?”

“When I noticed little Max’s bag on the carousel and his Yankees bear on the handle, I … I lost it.”

“What do you mean, lost it?” Gates pressed her.

She unceremoniously lifted her arm, shrugging out of her faux mink coat to show the early signs of bruising. “I fainted. I hit my arm on the carousel on the way down. Airport medics took care of me until I was alert enough to tell my story.”

“Which was?”

Melissa’s eyes welled with tears again. “That little Max was missing and that someone better find him for me or I was going to start taking names and filing lawsuits.”

My question startled Streeter and Tony as much as it did Melissa. “And what is Aldo planning to buy for little Max?”

“What?” she said, sniffling, confusion etched on her otherwise perfect forehead.

Streeter swung his gaze toward me, probably thinking me quite insane for asking. But I had a purpose.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Aldo loves you, right? Plans to marry you as soon as the divorce is final?”

She nodded, looking perplexed.

“Loves you enough to buy you snow on a tropical island, because you said you’d miss it when you move there, right?”

She nodded again, lowering the tissue she had been using to dab away any flawed makeup.

“And Aldo certainly loves little Max, doesn’t he?”

She didn’t nod at first, hesitated, then blinked, and said, “Of course.”

“What did Aldo tell you he was planning to buy for little Max once you moved to Papeete? Once you were married?” I asked my questions with just enough casualness, forcing a smile to my eyes to comfort her. “What did you talk about that little Max would miss the most?”

“A nanny,” she answered without hesitation. “Aldo said he was working on arrangements for someone to take care of the boy.”

“What about Nanny Judy? Wouldn’t she go with you?”

Melissa shook her head. “She wouldn’t be needed in Papeete. Aldo and I don’t like the way she’s raising little Max. It’s unnatural the way she treats him. We’ve talked about it. As soon as the divorce is final, little Max will spend half of his time with us. Mostly in Papeete, but sometimes in Hollywood, and half of his time with Max, in New York City. That part of the divorce is already approved.”

“And have you told Nanny Judy?”

Melissa nodded. “That was part of the argument Max and I had. He hadn’t told Nanny Judy. We argued about it. I know she hates me, but I’m little Max’s mother. And I don’t agree with how she keeps worming into his life, delusional and acting like she’s his mother. She’s his nanny and she never seemed to get that concept through her head from day one. She loves the boy and I knew it would devastate her when she learned of our plans. But Max hadn’t told her.”