The Lady Vanishes
A case, in which Jack is missing sleep, Sam is missing simpler times, Martin is missing lunch, Vivian is missing her family, Danny is missing a vacation, and a Society matron is plain missing.
Disclaimer: Mine, all mine! Oh, well, a girl can dream.
Sorry for the delay. My real life has no consideration for my imaginary one. :)
Thanks go out once again to all those kind people who dropped a line and encouraged me to continue.
xxxxx
"You lied to us, Mr. Argello," Martin stated the fact with an air of wearied surprise, "and that makes me sad. But that's nothing for you to be concerned about. What you need to worry about is Agent Malone here. He doesn't get sad when people lie to him, he gets cranky. And cranky Agent Malone is something you do not want to deal with, trust me on that."
Jack set motionless in his chair throughout Martin's speech, his face thoughtful and his hands very still on the top of the desk. He didn't even seem to blink, and yet, the already sweating chauffeur somehow got the impression that he wouldn't at all like to see this man cranky.
It was the formidable lawyer who replied first: "I would appreciate it if you didn't threaten my client."
"I would appreciate it if your client stopped wasting my time and impeding this investigation." Jack's statement was almost lazy in its delivery, but no one doubted its gravity.
"Look," Mr. Argello turned to Martin as the safest of the two interrogators, his eyes pleading something, "Look, I didn't lie exactly. I mean, I did say some things. . . . But it's not what you think!"
"It isn't?" Jack raised one lazy eyebrow. "We think you didn't take Mrs. Stevens-Newberg anywhere near Grand Central Station. You have been observed some time around 6:30 p.m. smoking in front of the Stevens-Newberg Upper East Side residence. We've been told that you helped your employer into the limo at, or a little after, 7 p.m. We know for a fact that you parked the said limo at the 86th Street Garage at 7:48 p.m. Alone. With Mrs. Stevens-Newberg nowhere in sight, and certainly not at the Grand Central, due to the sheer impossibility of you taking her there in such a short time. We also think that the money you said you received from the lady could not have come to you that way. I won't bore you with our reasoning, but let me tell you, Mr. Argello, that what we think is not at all good: you either covering for someone, or you did something to her. Either way, it does not work out well for you. So, I suggest you start talking. Fast."
Martin, who during Jack's speech was watching the driver carefully, couldn't help but feel sorry for the man: so pronounced was his discomfort and misery.
"I can't tell you," Frank looked around the table, shooting a sideways glance at the attorney, "I am between a rock and a hard place!"
"Mr. Argello, let me assure you that whatever difficulties you are having parting with information would seem like nothing at all compared to the real hard place you are headed for if you don't start cooperating now."
Leonard Morgan jumped in, once more faster than his client: "Again, I should point out. . . ."
"You know what you should do?" Jack interrupted conversationally, "You should start advising your client on the course of action that is beneficial to him, not to your other clients, Mr. Morgan. That's what you should do. Otherwise, it's a tricky conflict of interest. If I were looking out for Mr. Argello here - an, in a way, I am - I would tell him to fire you and employ an attorney whose sole purpose would be to provide the best advise possible in his situation."
There was a short silence, broken at last by the harassed driver: "He should go."
Frank indicated the lawyer with a slight nod.
"Mr. Morgan, I think you've just been released from your duties."
The attorney looked at Frank with clear if restrained disfavor. "You are making a mistake. They want to interrogate you without an attorney so they can browbeat you into saying all sorts of things you may later regret. . . ."
"Mr. Morgan," Jack interrupted, "I don't believe you heard clearly: You. Have. Been. Dismissed. Stop talking and leave."
Mr. Morgan made a slow, deliberate, passive-aggressive show of leaving. He collected his folders and pens painstakingly, he opened the briefcase with a loud clank, and he spent several minutes arranging the pens and the folders inside it. At the door, he turned around and said, addressing Frank but looking directly at Jack:
"Just remember, that whatever information you give here can clearly be considered as given under duress. You don't have any legal representation. It will not stand in court!"
"Duly noted, sir. The exit is to your left." Jack gave the lawyer one of his more polite smiles that never failed to make the recipients feel as if they had just been stung.
xxxxx
"Cherry soda?" Martin asked not unkindly. Frank nodded, his demeanor thoroughly defeated, yet oddly relieved.
They were facing him - Jack and Martin - watching the man wage some kind of a struggle with himself.
Sam, who came in with the soda, whispered to them: "Viv called. She and Danny are on the standby at the court house. Judge Horton's in, they can get a warrant as soon as we give them a go."
"As soon as we know what kind of warrant and for which place," Martin whispered back. Jack kept looking at the driver, his gaze quizzical and steady.
"It wasn't what you think." Frank felt the point needed reiterating. "No one killed no one. It just happened, and whatever we did afterward, that's not even illegal. . . . At least, she said it wasn't."
No one interrupted him, and no one asked questions, so Frank, after a gulp of soda, continued:
"She died. . . . Just died, pure and simple. The younger Mrs. said it was a heart-attach. Just an hour before she's fine as anything, and then, there she was on the couch, dead. Mrs. Camilla came out of the house to get me. . . ." The man stopped again, words getting out with some difficulty, indicating grief - his first real emotion besides fear. "Called me 'Frank,' she did, by my name like that. Unusual: I didn't think she remembered my name, for all I worked for her husband for 2 years. I knew right away something wasn't right. I knew even before, 'cause the old Mrs. took so long. She normally didn't do that: leave me waiting on the street, like I am not a person but a furniture to just sit there while she does what she wants. The old Mrs. wasn't that way. She saw people as people. . . . So, when she asked me to wait a little, I thought she's coming right back out, and then the whole hour and a half go by and she ain't coming, I thought something's not right. She's been upset all day. . . . But I never thought, not for a second, she was close to death!"
Frank took another sip. Jack watched him silently, his lips pursed, his eyes focused and filled with emotion Martin thought he understood.
Martin, himself, felt suddenly drained. The rush of throwing yourself into a case, the adrenaline that sustained him for two days, has run out. The feeling of hopelessness and failure was settling in. He hated when the cases ended like this: with no live person to find and bring home. What initially drew him to this particular FBI Unit, what drew all of them here, was the possibility, the hope of finding people alive, of restoring them to their loved ones, of, in short, arriving in time to save the day.
He's been here long enough now to know that it didn't always happen. In fact, it happened but rarely. Often - more often than any of them liked - what they found at last was a dead body. Or a dead end. That the "happy endings" didn't always happen even for those they found in time to save or bring home. Still, every time a case closed with finding someone dead, Martin felt it afresh as a personal injury and a very private defeat. He knew for a fact that Samantha felt the same way: she told him as much during one of their more unguarded conversations. He also suspected that the rest of the team took those outcomes just as personally. And it didn't matter that usually, by the time the case was brought to them, the people they were looking for were already dead. It still hurt like a half-healed wound cut open and aggravated anew.
Frank coughed, took out a large handkerchief, and wiped his forehead. Sam silently pushed another soda can toward the man. It probably wasn't good for him - all that sugar - but he took it eagerly and no one gave it a thought.
Frank continued after a short and sad silence: "She set me down, the younger Mrs., in that fancy room, and she talked to me real nice. She told me a lot of things I can't even remember or repeat, but she was real persuasive. And I helped her. . . . I took the money, sure, but why wouldn't I if she just handed it to me? It's not like there was a crime. And she promised to keep me on with the family. You know how hard it is to find a good position at my age? I mean, what does it matter if the funeral's today or a week after? It can't possibly matter to the old lady. She's dead. . . ."
Another pause stretched out and suddenly Martin felt an uncontrollable irritation.
"Where's the body, Mr. Argello!"
Frank looked up, tears in his eyes, whether of grief or self-pity, they couldn't tell. "I think you should talk to Mrs. Stevens-Newberg."
xxxxxxx
"It's where? Oh my God!" Vivian held the phone away from her face and looked at it in slight shock.
Danny next to her shivered in the January wind. He didn't ask, knowing well she'd tell him momentarily, but the chill he felt penetrating all the way to his heart had little to do with the cold outside. Image of Allie came unbidden, and Danny was suddenly filled with a helpless sort of rage at the injustice and sadness of it all. From Vivan's response to Martin's phone call - and, to be honest, long before that - Danny knew that Mrs. Stevens-Newberg was dead. He knew it unequivocally, as surely as he knew that her death, whether natural or not, would leave a trail of broken hearts, lives, and hopes.
Vivan sighed, pressing a button on her cell, and turned to face him. "Let's go get that warrant. For the Stevens-Newberg residence." She mounted the stairs of the courthouse, Danny slow in her wake, both of them moving as if weighed down by an unbearable burden.
xxxxxxx
He couldn't believe it was only yesterday that he stood on this elegant doorstep, annoyed and fretting the case. It seemed a lifetime ago. Danny was half-afraid of Allie opening the door, as she did the day before. He couldn't face her now, not with the terrible news and no real answers. Let it be later. Let it be with something comforting: some miraculous wisdom he would be able to summon up and offer her at some future time.
The door was opened by a maid. Not the one that they've spoken to previously, but an unknown, middle-aged woman - probably the second one who didn't work on Saturday.
She offered to show them into the Breakfast room, and Danny suppressed a twinge of a smile, remembering Allie's comments. The smile faded immediately as Vivian produced the warrant and asked to be taken to the kitchen instead.
The maid, flustered and clearly at a loss, handed them back the warrant without even glancing at it.
"You will wait for Mrs. Stevens-Newberg, please?" She half asked, half told the agents.
They stood there in the imposing hall, a strange and subdued group of two special agents, three forensics specialists, and a corner. A group that, in its general gravity, seemed to be already at a funeral.
The house was quiet. A lot quieter than the day before, which stood to reason. It was Monday. Mr. Stevens-Newberg, they knew, despite everything, went to the office. Considering the state of his business, he probably couldn't afford not to. Allie was at school, Danny guessed, and Blake - probably at another fitting. Except for the maid who showed them in, there didn't seem to be any other servants about. Knowing what they did now, Danny and Viv wouldn't have been surprised if the cook was offered a week off, as well.
She came downstairs slowly, some of her arrogance still intact, though one could tell she was not the same irritated majesty she appeared to be yesterday. Again, there was no surprise on Danny and Vivian's part when they noted that Mrs. Stevens-Newberg was being accompanied by Leonard Morgan, attorney at law.
It was Mr. Morgan who spoke - a fact that made Danny smile again. He imagined it was a habit with the lawyer: to anticipate any and all hasty and ill-advised remarks by his clients.
"First, I want it on record that this prosecution of a respectable and esteemed family will not go unnoticed or unreported."
"Yes, we know, Mr. Morgan, we know," Vivan's calm and reasonable voice cut the attorney's habitual protests short. "Before you launch any complaints, though, I think you should take a careful look at this warrant."
She handed the paper to him, her eyes on Mrs. Stevens-Newberg. Two women regarded each other steadily, each a strong and formidable presence in her own right. Danny sighed impatiently. The house was oppressing him, its elegance suddenly cumbersome and insulting. He wanted for this to be over. He wanted a better outcome. He wanted for this unshakably-selfish woman in her impeccably tailored pale yellow suit to snap out of whatever self-righteous kick she was on and face her responsibilities. The real responsibilities of motherhood and family, and not the ones she elevated into such unbearable importance.
"I will be calling the judge immediately. This is an outrage! To grant a warrant based on some dubious story of a highly doubtful character. . . ."
"Yeah, you do that," Danny interrupted the lawyer mid-outburst and headed for the kitchen, the rest of the team on his hills. "You call the judge, you call the Governor, you call the United Nations, if you think that might be productive. In the meantime, we have a job to do. Kitchen's that way, right?" He addressed the maid who stood frozen by the front door during the entire exchange. She nodded slightly, not without shooting a frightened glance at her employer.
The kitchen was actually a series of three open-ended rooms: one housing several stoves and various preparation surfaces, the other serving as pantry, and the third occupied mostly by two large refrigerators.
It was for these refrigerators that Danny and Viv headed.
One of them, a smaller-sized actual fridge, was a fairly standard affair. The other was larger, titanium, and had been fastened with a lock attached to a chain. Danny nodded to one of the forensics people, who produced a pair of metal cutters from a kit. A click, a metal clang of the lock hitting the floor, and they all stood there, unsure of who should open the door and not really wanting to.
Vivian was the first to summon up the courage. She pulled the handle and a large freezer stood wide open, with the light going on automatically inside.
There were no gasps or any audible sounds in the room, though the silence that followed was deafening.