“Not really.”
“Question: If your men were following me, then you knew I wasn’t at my capsule this morning. You also knew I didn’t take the boy.”
“That’s a question?”
“Why the big show of force in the woods, if you knew I wasn’t there?”
“We didn’t know.”
“You just said you were following—”
“Not you, Wilde. We weren’t following you.”
Strauss. They were following Strauss.
“Saul Strauss is a loon — and a threat,” Gavin said. “You can see that.”
“I can,” Wilde said.
“So what did he want with you?”
Wilde considered how to answer this.
“I’m not going away,” Gavin Chambers said. “We can either work together like we said before — I know more about Crash, you know more about Naomi — or I can just bulldoze my way into representing Rusty’s interest without your cooperation.”
Wilde wasn’t certain of the right move here, but the old proverb about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer echoed in his head.
“Strauss knew Naomi was missing,” Wilde said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. But he knew there was a connection between Naomi and Crash.”
“Why the hell would Saul Strauss care about Naomi Pine?” Chambers asked.
Something else surfaced in Wilde’s head, one of the first things Saul Strauss had said to him: “I hear you had a run-in with the Maynard kid today.”
Saul Strauss had known that Wilde had been at the school.
How had he known that?
There were witnesses in the parking lot, of course, but the only other person who might know more than that, the only other person who could really say what had gone on in that art room, was Ava O’Brien.
But no. How would Ava be involved in this?
She couldn’t be. She was just a part-time art teacher.
Wilde said, “You have a relationship with him, right?”
“Saul Strauss? We served together. I saw him yesterday when he protested by the Maynards’ office.”
“So maybe the first step is to find him,” Wilde said.
“You don’t think I thought of that already?”
“So—”
“Remember how he walked out of the Sheraton hotel?”
Wilde nodded. “He walked toward the back exit.”
“Maybe,” Gavin said.
“What do you mean?”
“My men saw Strauss go in. They never saw him go out. We lost him.”
The Maynards had given Wilde a Lexus GS to use. As he slipped behind the driver’s seat, he called Ava O’Brien. The call went into her voicemail. No one he knew ever checked voicemail, so he sent Ava a quick text:
Need to talk ASAP.
No immediate reply, no dancing dots. He wasn’t sure what he would ask her anyway. If Ava O’Brien was somehow aligned with Saul Strauss... no, that made no sense.
Speaking of Strauss.
As Wilde pulled into Bernard Pine’s driveway, he took out the business card Saul Strauss had given him and dialed the number. It went straight to voicemail.
“It’s Wilde. You told me to call if I had any information. I do. You’ll want to hear it.”
He didn’t know whether that was strictly true, but he figured that that message might get Strauss’s attention. Wilde thought about Ava. He thought about Strauss. He thought about Gavin and Crash and yes, of course, Naomi.
He was missing something.
Bernard Pine, Naomi’s father, opened his front door before Wilde could ring the bell.
“Do you know a man named Saul Strauss?” Wilde asked.
“Who?”
“Saul Strauss. He’s on TV sometimes. Maybe Naomi has mentioned him.”
Pine shook his head. “Never heard of him. Have you found anything new?”
“Have you?”
“No. I’m going to the police again. But I don’t think they’ll listen.”
“Do you know if Naomi’s passport is still here?”
“I can take a look,” Pine said. “Come on in.” He stepped back and let Wilde inside. The foyer smelled stale. Wilde spotted the half-full glass and half-full bottle of bourbon on the coffee table. Bernard spotted him spotting it.
“Taking a personal day,” Bernard said.
Wilde saw no reason to reply.
“Why do you need her passport?”
“Any chance Naomi is with her mother?”
Something skittered across his face. “Why do you ask that?”
“We called her.”
“You called Pia?”
No reason to clarify that the call was made by Hester’s office. “Last time we called, your ex-wife straight-up told us that Naomi wasn’t with her. This time she wouldn’t reply. We also have a report your ex is overseas.”
“Which is why you asked me about her passport.” Pine led Wilde to a home office in the back of the house. Standard stuff — desk, computer, printer, file cabinet. Wilde spotted an electric bill and something from the cable company on the right. The checkbook was out. The screensaver was a generic ocean shot, probably one of the computer default screens. The paperweight was a Lucite-block award with Bernard’s name on it, some kind of “salesman of the month” type thing. There was a classic photograph of a golf foursome at a pro-am outing, Bernard beaming on the far right as he held his driver.
There were no photographs of his daughter.
Bernard Pine rummaged through the drawer, ducking his head for a better look. “Here.”
He pulled out the passport. Wilde held out his hand. Bernard hesitated and handed Naomi’s passport over. There was only one foreign stamp — Heathrow Airport in London three years ago.
“Naomi is not with my ex,” Pine said.
There was no doubt in his tone.
“Can I show you something?”
Wilde nodded.
“I don’t want you to think I’m weird or anything.” Bernard Pine turned around to the file cabinet. He fumbled for a key, unlocked it, opened the bottom drawer. He reached into the back and pulled out a magazine in protective wrap. The magazine was called SportsGlobe. The publication date was from two decades ago. On the cover was a swimsuit model.
There was a yellow Post-it marking a page. Pine carefully turned to it.
“Pia,” he said, with a longing that made even Wilde pull up. “Gorgeous, right?”
Wilde looked down at the model in the floss bikini.
“This was taken a year after we met. Pia mostly modeled lingerie and bikinis. She tried out for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. You remember how big that used to be?”
Wilde said nothing.
“So Pia goes on an audition or whatever they call it and you know what Sports Illustrated tells her?”
He stopped and waited for Wilde to answer. To keep things moving, Wilde said, “No.”
“They say she’s too curvy. That’s the word they used. Curvy. They thought her...” — he cupped his hands in front of his chest — “had to be fake. Can you believe that? They said they were so great, they had to be implants.” He gestured toward the photograph. “But those are real. Amazing, right?”
Wilde said nothing.
“I sound like a pig, don’t I?”
Wilde chose the lie that would keep him talking. “Not really.”
“Pia and I met at a club in the East Village. I couldn’t believe my luck. I mean, every guy wanted her. But we just hit it off. She was so beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at her. We fell pretty hard. I was working at Smith Barney back then. Making pretty sweet dollars. Pia was modeling just enough. I’m not saying it was perfect. Beautiful women, women who look like this, they always have a little crazy. It comes with the package, I guess. But back then I found that so exciting, you know, and she was just so superhot. We were in love, we had money, we had the city, we had no responsibilities...”