Finally she saw one of the items she had been waiting for, a large white wooden crib. The men didn't dismantle it or even remove the mattress. Two of them simply carried it out and set it on the truck bed, then went back for more. Jane saw a changing table, a stroller, a big toy box, another box that seemed to hold brightly colored decorations, possibly a mobile.
Jane climbed down from the limb where she had been sitting and walked to the SUV, then drove toward the freeway. She passed the Beale house and saw the next truck was filling up rapidly because of the excess of laborers, so she drove ahead and waited in a mall parking lot near the freeway entrance.
About ten minutes later one of the white trucks passed her parking lot and rolled up the ramp onto the freeway. Jane waited for thirty seconds, then went after it. She drove hard until she could see the truck, then dropped far back and merely watched for it to take an exit.
She followed the truck until it entered the front gate of a real estate development called Florentine Ranch. She could see from outside the tall fence that it was full of large new homes, all of them vaguely Mediterranean with tile roofs and white stucco sides. Each of them was placed on a lot so small that the sides of the houses shaded each other in the morning sun. She parked her car down the road a distance where there was a second gate that had no gatehouse. She waited until a resident of the community coasted to the exit, opened the gate with a remote control, and drove out. As soon as the car passed she stepped inside.
It took her only a few minutes to find the right house. The first truck to arrive was leaving now, and the second was pulling up to the front to unload. As she walked along she studied the place. Its primary function as protection consisted of being different from the house in Rancho Santa Fe. It was the sort of place that only someone who had never broken into a house would think was safe.
She walked back to the gate where she had entered, found the button mounted on the wall for pedestrians to open the gate, pressed it, and walked out. As she drove back to Sharon's house she thought about the ways into the Beales' new home. There were two skylights on the roof that she could probably open, at least three windows on the sides of the house that she could unlock with a length of wire looped at the end, a set of French doors with very small panes of glass. She could tape one, break it without making much noise, reach in and turn the knob. There were certainly other ways she would discover if she came closer.
Jane went to a pay phone on a large plaza a few miles away from the development, and called Richard Beale's cell phone.
When he answered, she said, "Hello, Richard. It's me again. I've been to see your parents' new house."
"New house? What new house?"
"2952 Mona Lisa Terrace. It's a little cramped and kind of boxy. Not like the last one. I liked all that glass."
"I'll bet," he said. "This one will be a little harder for you, won't it?"
"Everything is good for me. The big one was better for looking, but this one is better for visiting. Nobody will see me until I'm inside."
"What do you want?"
"You know," said Jane. "I want Christine."
"You said that before. Why are you calling now?"
"I sensed that I wasn't really giving you your chance before. I called before you had time to find out that Derrick J. Smith really was dead. Did you know that was Pete Tilton's real name all along—Derrick J. Smith? It was in the paper."
"I don't know who you're talking about."
"Enough," said Jane. "I'm going to say it this time as clearly as I can. You and your employees kidnapped Christine. Until I have her, I'll keep doing whatever it takes to get her and her baby. I want to make sure you understand what I just said—whatever it takes. There are no limits, and I will never give up. When I leave, either she'll be with me, or every one of you will be dead."
Richard Beale's throat was so dry he couldn't swallow. His chest felt empty, as though it had been opened and everything had been scooped out of it. He didn't want to speak because he knew she would detect fear in his voice.
"Do you have anything to tell me, Richard? Last chance."
"Wait!" He held his breath. It took him a few seconds to get over the shock of what he had just done. He hadn't intended to say it, but he couldn't bear to let her hang up. He couldn't tell from her voice whether she really could kill him, but after listening to her he knew absolutely that she intended to try.
"I'm waiting, but not much longer."
"We can do this," he said. "We can solve it, make a deal."
She said, "There is nothing in the world that you can offer me except Christine and her baby. In exchange, I'll give you absolutely nothing. Does that sound like a deal?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm listening," she said.
"I want my life. That's all I'm asking for. You take Christine and the baby, and you leave me alone. Let me go on like it never happened."
"Tell me where she is, and when I have her I'm gone."
"Tonight. I'll bring her to the house my parents just moved out of, in Rancho Santa Fe. Let's say midnight. You call this number, and I'll release her."
"Why midnight? Why not right now, in daylight?"
"She's not here. She's in a resort hotel in Mexico, and it'll take hours to have somebody go down, pick her up, and bring her back."
"What about her baby?"
"The baby will be with her," he said.
"All right," she said. "If I see anyone there besides you, Christine, and the baby, it's off. If I see a weapon I open fire."
"How do I know I can trust you?"
"You wanted a deal. This is the deal. Still want it?"
"Yes."
Jane hung up. He was lying, of course. She drove back to Florentine Ranch, the gated community where she had seen the trucks unloading. After about an hour, she saw the first of the trucks returning to the new house where they had just brought the furniture. Richard must be moving his parents again, to a third house. That confirmed what she had suspected from the start. Richard was not assuming that Jane, Christine, and the baby would be leaving San Diego tonight. He was preparing for the possibility that Jane would still be nearby, alive and angry.
Jane waited for the rest of the trucks to arrive and begin loading up again, then followed the first truck as it left the gated enclave. It drove north all the way to San Juan Capistrano and up a long road to a new street that led to the summit of a hill. Jane waited for a few minutes, then drove up after them. She found the white truck being unloaded into a two-story stucco house. She memorized the address, then turned her SUV around and drove the way she had come. All the way back to the freeway she studied the route, because she knew that the next time she came here, it would be in the dark.
33
As Richard Beale spoke to his father on the telephone he paced from one end of his living room to the other. "You don't have to stay in San Juan Capistrano for long. I just need to have you and Mom and Robert out of here and safe until I'm sure this is over. You don't want that crazy woman climbing in your window some night, do you?"
Andy Beale said, "We're going to do what you ask this time, Richard. One more time we'll do things your way. But this had better solve the problem for good."
"You sound as though this is a big deal. I've already had them move your belongings out there. I don't know what difference it makes whether you're in Capistrano or San Diego."
He could hear his father's breaths coming out of his nose in snorts. "I worked a lifetime so nobody in this family would ever have to worry about money. Now I get to have some peace and do what I want for a few years before I die. I spent a lot of money on my boat, and I like taking it out on the ocean. It isn't saving the damn world or curing the clap, but I like it. If I'm in Capistrano, getting to the harbor and back takes two extra hours."