Page 33 of Pro Bono

“Wait,” she said. “Come in and talk to me for a second.”

“Okay to come in now?”

“Yes.”

She was in the doorway of her bathroom with a towel around her and half hiding behind the door. “What happened?”

“I just learned that the two advisors from different companies who have been ripping you off are together right now at the home of one of them. I’ve got to go there and see if I can figure out what they’re doing.”

“Come back and tell me. I’ll be up.”

He went out and closed her door, and she heard his heavy footsteps hurrying down the hall, and then silence.

Warren was driving out of the building’s garage, looking for any cars that might be on his block doing surveillance on him. This was a street with high-rent apartments and high-priced condominiums. There were more parking spaces than cars left out at night, so they would have been easy to spot now that he’d seen the strategy at Vesper’s house. There were none.

He drove toward Mulholland without using a driving-directions app. He had taken the battery out of his regular phone, and kept the burner phone off to keep the GPS function dead. He had driven to Ollonsun’s house the night he had planted the AirTags, so he was sure he knew the best way there. It bothered him that he’d told Vesper she could call him, and had now disabled his phones, but he just had to hope she didn’t need him in a hurry.

When he reached the viewpoint lot surrounded by boulders where he had parked on his last visit, he maneuvered his rental car to a spot near the crest on the outer edge of the lot, where the headlights of cars passing on Mulholland Drive wouldn’t sweep across it on the curve and light it up. It was only a little after nine o’clock, too early for the police to get curious about it if they noticed it. He got out and began to jog, as a self-explanatory reason to be here on foot, and ran directly to the spot along the chain-link fence where he’d climbed in before. He put on his mask and gloves and climbed. He was more sure-footed this time than the first time and didn’t pause. As soon as he was on the ground, he headed for the Ollonsun house. He took quick strides along the sidewalk until he could see the house coming up, and then looked in every direction to be sure nobody was in sight or coming toward him in a car, then veered to his right and faded into the shadowy area in the broad spaces between the big houses that sat far back on acre-size lots.

He went to the backyard of the Ollonsun house. It was not anything like what he had been expecting. This was not the dark, tightly closed spot he had visited the first time. The outdoor lights at the rear of house were on, and a long picnic table was beneath them. He could see a large stainless steel propane stove was open, he could smell a smoke-and-meat aroma, and he could see the remains of a feast on the table—dishes and bowls, crumpled napkins, empty glasses and bottles.

The pool’s underwater lights glowed and the gentle swells on its surface threw a dappled light on the trunks of the trees along the back fence. There were four kids around the table laughing and talking—a boy about ten with very short light hair, and three girls. All four were wearing T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. The girls all had their long, wet hair combed out into strings. One was the old-enough-to-drive teenaged girl with blond hair he’d seen on his last visit. There was another, younger girl with dark hair, and a still-younger girl with similar features. It was clear that the swimming part of the day was over, and so was the dinner.

As Warren watched, adults appeared from the kitchen doorway. A man he recognized from the Great Oceana website as Patrick Ollonsun, forty-one with a golf tan and a receding hairline, came first, and then there was a man who looked a bit younger with longer, thicker hair. He was looking down as he descended the steps, so Warren wasn’t positive at first, but when the man reached the bottom, he looked up, and Warren was sure he was Ronald Talbert. They came out to the table and began to pick up plates and collect the trash into a black trash bag. After a little cajoling from the men, the four kids got up and started to help clear the table. He heard Ollonsun call out, “Zelda, help the younger kids with the dishes.” The older girl went to the top of the steps, leaned down, and said something to the younger kids, and they formed a chain, passing bowls and glasses from one to the other until they reached her in the doorway.

Warren hadn’t been prepared for this display of domestic harmony and happiness, and it made him uncomfortable to think that he had already sent to the men’s employers the evidence that could end their careers, and maybe send them to prison.

He watched the single file line of Talbert and Ollonsun children climb the steps with the last of the bowls and disappear into the kitchen. He saw that Patrick Ollonsun had not headed into the kitchen. He was bent over tying the top of the black trash bag. In a moment he would be heading toward the back corner of the yard, to the enclosure that held the refuse cans and Charlie Warren.

Warren ducked around to the back of the pool house and pressed his back against the wall. He heard Ollonsun coming. There was a slight rhythmic sound of cans clinking together as he walked. Then there was the top of the plastic trash can opening and then falling down to clap into place, and the sound of Ollonsun walking back to the house.

Warren ventured to the far side of the pool house and crouched in the shadows. He watched the kitchen door swing open again, and saw the blond woman he’d seen on his first visit come out onto the steps carrying a tray that held a bottle and four glasses. He assumed she was Ollonsun’s wife and the mother of the blond teenager.

The door opened again and another adult woman came out carrying a transparent bucket, glass or plastic he couldn’t tell, full of ice cubes. She had blond hair, nearly the same style and color as the first woman’s. He studied her face, the shape and movement of her body as she went down the steps.

Warren moved to the back wall. He had to use the time while the four adults were concentrating on negotiating the back steps and choosing seats at the conversation pit to hoist himself up and over. Then he headed along the border wall separating Ollonsun’s yard and the neighbor’s yardto the street. He jogged to Mulholland, climbed the chain-link fence, and jogged up the road to the small lot overlooking the city where he had left his rental car.

He drove to his condominium building, watching for any indication that he might be followed, then drove around the block to make sure, and pulled into the garage and left the car in his space. He hurried up the steps into the lobby, up the stairway to his condominium, and went in. He saw Vesper dressed in gray pajama pants and a blue shirt, with her feet curled under her. He had forgotten she’d said she would wait up for him. She stood and followed him at a distance while he tossed his baseball cap and hoodie on a chair and went toward his computer on the kitchen table.

He said, “They’re sisters.”

“Who are sisters?”

“I’m pretty sure they are, anyway. The wives of Patrick Ollonsun and Ronald Talbert.” He opened his laptop and began typing. He had tried the social media sites at the start of this case and found nothing personal about those two. Their stuff was all business, mostly ads for their companies.

Vesper said, “I found some herb tea in your cupboard. It’s pretty good.”

He seemed to be pulled back from a distance. “Yeah, somebody left it.”

“Can I pour you some? It says it won’t keep us awake, and there’s still hot water in the kettle.”

“Uh, sure. Thanks.” His attention went back to the computer.

Vesper heated the kettle some more while she found him a cup and saucer. She poured the tea, then watched him working, staring at the screen and clicking on things.

Warren googled the name Zelda Ollonsun. There she was, at the beach, then outside a high school that had a lot of eucalyptus trees anda big athletic field, then at some other house with friends of both sexes. Those were tagged with the names of the kids, which meant nothing to Warren.

There were summer vacation pictures. Zelda was standing with the ten-year-old boy and her father in some European city with narrow cobbled streets. There was a second picture with her mother, and he could see the distinctive inlaid stone wall pattern of the cathedral in Florence. The next one was on a mountain trail, with other mountains as a backdrop for her and her mother and the other blond woman he had seen tonight and the boy—the four blond people. It was tagged “Me, Mom, Aunt Fran, and Cousin Geoff.” He found a close-up of the two women sitting on a bench by a river. He turned his laptop around on the table and said, “Look at this.”

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