Till said, “That might take a bit longer, that’s all. Nobody saw him do anything to Kit Stoddard. But there will be some connection between him and the others. We’ll find it.”
“We could even get something going this morning,” Poliakoff said. “I’ve got Horton waiting at the DA’s office. If this is the right Scott, I’ll make a call, and he’ll walk a search warrant through for us. I mean, how can it not be the right Scott? The blue Maserati in the picture is registered to him.”
They were quiet as they moved up the final block. Till could see that Schelling’s house was different from most of the others in this stretch. His was a long, two-story house with white siding and tall windows set far back from the street. It was a style that seemed almost antique now because most of the others had been bulldozed recently and replaced with oversized Tuscan villas closer to the street but built on raised ground, so visitors had to climb wide ornamental steps to reach the entrances.
The unmarked car pulled through the open gate, up the driveway, and stopped at the front of the house. Till and Poliakoff got out, and Till leaned back into the car. “Wendy, if you feel frightened, you can stay in the car. You’ll be able to see him through the window.”
“No, I want him to see me.” She got out and stood beside the car.
Till said, “Max.”
“What?”
“The garage. The lights.”
The garage door was open and there were two cars inside. The overhead lights in the garage were on, even though the morning sun was shining in through the open door. “Yeah,” he said. “Odd.”
Till stepped closer. “That’s the Maserati in the picture we found.” He turned around to see that the other two police cars had arrived. One had parked at the entrance to the driveway just inside the gate, and the other was now pulling up beside Poliakoff’s car in front of the house. Two officers got out and followed Poliakoff to the front door.
Poliakoff rang the doorbell and waited, then rang it again. Next he grasped the heavy door knocker and rapped on the door loudly. There was no response. The police officers looked at each other. Poliakoff took a small radio out of his coat pocket and said, “Dave, this is Max. Can you go to the gate and press the intercom button to let them know we’re here?” There was a hollow “Roger” from the little box. From the door they could hear a telephone ringing inside the house, but there was no sign that anyone was going to answer the call from the gate.
Till walked to the nearest window along the front of the building. “Max?”
“Yeah?”
“I see somebody lying on the floor in the foyer. Take a look.”
Poliakoff stepped up beside Till, held both hands beside his face to shade his eyes. “You’re right.” He turned to call to the other officers, “We’ve got to go in.”
One of the uniformed officers went to his car and opened the trunk while the others moved toward the front of the house. Poliakoff stepped back onto the porch. As an afterthought, he tried the doorknob. “Hold it,” he called. “No need to knock it down, it’s unlocked.” He turned the knob gingerly, then pushed the door open with his foot.
Till went inside with Poliakoff. After a moment Poliakoff came out to confer with the others, then went back inside. They seemed to be gone a long time, and then Till and Poliakoff emerged together. Poliakoff held two California driver’s licenses. He set them both on the roof of his car, so Wendy could see them clearly.
Till said, “Do you recognize either of these men?”
She began to blink back tears. “It’s them.”
Till put his arms around her and said quietly, “Then as soon as you tell me the rest, it will be over.”
She looked at him, then at Poliakoff, as though afraid he had heard.
Poliakoff said to Till, “If you want privacy, all I’ve got is my car.”
“Thanks,” Till said. He joined her in the back seat of the unmarked police car, and they sat still for a moment. Finally Till said, “How did you know him?”
“What do you mean? I didn’t know him. I saw him once, and I told you all about that.”
“You just saw a pair of driver’s licenses six years later, and you said, ‘It’s them.’ You got her into it, didn’t you?”
Her eyes were wide with disbelief and anger. “What are you talking about?”
“That was why you felt responsible for Kit when she disappeared. You felt as though it was your fault.”
Her eyes were filling with tears. “I didn’t know Scott Schelling at all. The one I had met was Carl. He was one of those good-looking guys who hang around clubs late at night. You see them a few times, and even though you don’t really know them, you feel as though you do. One night he asked me about a couple of girls I knew, and Kit was one of them.”
“How did he know you were in that business?”
“Oh, God,” she said. Her body slumped into the seat, as though her muscles had gone limp. “That wasn’t the way it was. It wasn’t a business, it was just social. The first time, it was at Banque, and a man named Jerry asked me about Olivia. The man was a good customer, a lawyer, and we were joking around. He said he would give me a thousand dollars just to introduce him to Olivia. I thought he was nice, so I laughed and held out my hand, and he gave me the money—just like that. I stopped Olivia in the little space between the dining room and the kitchen, and I showed her the money and pointed him out. We laughed because it was a big compliment, and she went along with the joke. She went to his table and they talked, and she made a date with him.” She shrugged. “The same thing happened later with Kit. Carl asked for an introduction, and then handed me some money. That was all.”
“That wasn’t all. This is me you’re talking to.”
“Yes. All right. There were others. A few times.”
“And you took money from the men.”
“Maybe once or twice. It sounds so sleazy, and it wasn’t like that.”
“Besides Jerry and Carl, who was there?”
“There was a businessman named Bryce, who was just a familiar face at first. He entertained clients from out of town and he asked me to scare up a few attractive friends to fill out a party.”
“Just once?”
“Well, no. A few times. It wasn’t a formal thing. He just didn’t know anybody, and he needed a favor. I knew girls—some who worked for me, some I had met in other ways—who loved the chance to go out to a nice party and meet some new men. I went once myself. What I did for him was what any hostess does. I invited people I knew would be fun. What any of them chose to do afterward was her business.”
“And the word got around.”
“No. It wasn’t like that, ever. There were only a few people, and it didn’t go on for that long. Nobody knew, really.”
“But Carl heard, and he paid you for an introduction to Kit.”
She was crying, her eyes on his in a pleading look, but she didn’t speak. He waited, and finally she said, “Yes.”
“And that’s why you lied to the police, and to me.”
“It wasn’t lying. Don’t you see? If anyone heard that I had taken money, then they would get a completely wrong idea. All I did was keep them from thinking something that wasn’t true.”
“You were afraid of being embarrassed?”
“It’s more than embarrassment, Jack. It would give the whole city the wrong idea about Banque, after we had worked so hard to make it the best kind of restaurant and attracted the very best patrons. Important men can’t afford to be seen in a place where people pay for sex. And no woman wants to be suspected of selling herself. The money would have dried up. The critics would have dropped us. Then some reporter would have found out who my father was, and I would be the story. I had a right to avoid that.”