“I might object. I don’t know yet. Why don’t you ask and I’ll tell you what I can?”
He opened his notebook, flipping to a blank page, and clicked the tip of a ballpoint pen into place. “Let’s go back to your client’s name.”
I went through a hasty internal debate. If I’d been working for an attorney in a civil or criminal matter, the question of confidentiality would have been clear-cut. In my dealings with Hallie Bettancourt, there were no legal issues at stake. The information I’d been hired to find seemed uncomplicated on the face of it. If Hallie paid me with tainted cash, the act might or might not have been intentional. Therefore what? My recollection of the ethical niceties was as follows: No privilege exists between the investigator and a third party, nor does it exist in communications outside the scope of the reason for legal representation.
So how did that apply to the current circumstance? Was I at liberty to blab her business to this nice plainclothes police detective? Ordinarily, I’m protective of clients, but in this case, I thought a police inquiry took precedence.
“Hallie Bettancourt,” I said. I paused to spell her name for him and watched him make a note of it before I went on. “Now it’s my turn to ask. We’ll trade off. You ask me and then I’ll ask you.”
“Fair enough. Go ahead.”
“You said ‘felony.’ So what was the crime?” I watched him deciding how forthcoming he should be, the same debate he’d gone through moments before.
Finally, he said, “Nineteen eighty-seven, a painting was stolen from a wealthy Montebello resident. His collection was uninsured and the painting in question was valued at one-point-two million.”
“Yikes.”
“That was my reaction. He was in a white-hot sweat to get the painting back and decided to offer a reward. We opposed the plan, but you can only push people so far, and he ended up winning the argument. He posted the reward, and shortly afterward, someone contacted him, claiming to know the painting’s whereabouts.”
“Which ‘someone’ would be happy to confide as soon as the arrangements were made,” I said. “How much was the reward?”
“Fifteen grand. The caller was a ‘she’ in this case,” he said. “The woman insisted on the reward being bumped from fifteen to twenty-five grand; five thousand of it in hundred-dollar bills and the rest in smaller denominations.”
“More like ransom.”
“Exactly. My turn now, isn’t it?”
I conceded the point with a careless wave of my hand.
He checked his notes. “Aside from that Monday, how many times did you meet with your client?”
“First and only time. She lives up on Sky View in Montebello, off Winding Canyon Road. The old Clipper estate, in case you’re about to ask.” I gave him the house number and watched him make a note. “I can’t believe I missed this whole ransom thing.”
“It was only in the paper briefly. A reporter got wind of it and ran with the story before we could shut her down. We wanted to keep a lid on it, figuring if word got out we’d have a rash of copycats,” he said. He checked his notes again. “Can you give me Ms. Bettancourt’s phone number?”
“I didn’t get a local number. There wasn’t any need. When she called the office, I was here and I picked up the phone. After we met, I didn’t have occasion to call her. She was leaving town the next morning, so she gave me a couple of numbers in Malibu. She and her husband have a second home down there. He has an office in Malibu as well.”
As he was about to ask anyway, I reached into my bag and pulled out my index cards, sorting through until I found the relevant numbers, which I recited while he made notes.
“And she hired you to do what?”
“Nuh-uh. My turn. What happened to the reward? Did the woman collect?”
“Unfortunately, yes. We advised the victim not to pay, but he was adamant. The best we could do was talk him into letting us record the serial numbers on the bills. Long story short, he paid, the painting came back, and that was the end of it until that bill showed up,” he said. “What did she hire you to do?”
Another quick debate, but I couldn’t see how the job I’d been hired to do was in any way connected to the painting-for-ransom scheme. “She wanted contact information for a kid she put up for adoption thirty-two years ago. The story’s more complicated, but essentially that’s it.”
“Whose idea was the cash?”
I thought back to the conversation. “Hers, though I’d have suggested it if she hadn’t brought it up herself. She said she’d be out of town until June. Under the circumstances, I would have been leery about taking a check. Please note I just allowed you an extra question.”