“Wait a minute,” he said. “Why would one old man need two laundry rooms?”

Lefebvre frowned. “Yes-you’re right-there’s a newer washer and dryer upstairs.” He walked over to the water heater cabinet. “And why would he need two water heaters?”

He opened the cabinet. It was empty. The back wall of the cabinet was a narrow metal door, sealed by a thick steel bar, which was held in place by three heavy padlocks. New padlocks.

Lefebvre banged the end of his flashlight on the door. “Irene! Max!” They listened, but heard no response. Lefebvre called to one of the uniformed officers and instructed him to keep tapping at the door.

“Let’s try to find the other end of it,” he said to O’Connor.

They met Haycroft on the way out. Two uniformed officers would wait for him to look for fingerprints, then work with bolt cutters to remove the locks. “I’ll have my radio with me-call me the moment you’re through that door. Oh-see if we can get someone from the beach patrol to meet us down at the bluffs.”

On the way out, he asked another uniformed officer to cross the street and walk to the railing at the top of the bluffs. “Stand directly across from the house. Use your flashlight to signal me toward your location when we’re on the beach.”

The beach patrol received the message and met them with a Jeep at the bottom of the public stairway that led from a nearby parking lot down to the beach. They drove until they saw the signal made by the officer at the top of the bluffs.

“Now what, sir?” the driver asked Lefebvre.

“Let us out. Keep your headlights on the section of the bluffs just below where that officer stands.”

O’Connor and Lefebvre hurried toward the vine-covered section of the bluffs.

“All this bougainvillea,” O’Connor said. “We’ll never see an opening through it.”

“Irene!” Lefebvre called. “Max!”

They listened. The tide was coming in, but over the pounding of the surf, O’Connor swore he heard a voice.

Lefebvre had heard it, too. “Keep calling to us!”

It was a faint sound, nearly lost in the wind. Try as he might, he could not find its source.

Suddenly, O’Connor saw a flash of white. “There!” he cried, pointing a few yards away. “Near the ground. She’s signaling us.”

“What in God’s name is that?” Lefebvre asked.

“If I’m not mistaken,” O’Connor said, “it’s her blouse.”

49

I FELT MIXED EMOTIONS AS I WATCHED THE AMBULANCE LEAVE. I WAS relieved to know Max would be getting medical attention, but I felt as if I were abandoning him, even though it was I who stayed behind.

Lefebvre and O’Connor had waited patiently on the beach, talking with me and relaying information I gave them about Max’s condition to the paramedics, while our rescuers worked to break in through the other end of the tunnel. They brought lights, water, and a stretcher for Max. I had my blouse back on, but I was still cold, so I was grateful for the blanket they gave me to wrap around my shoulders. Eventually someone found a way to bring me a cup of hot coffee.

I felt really bad about not being able to give much of a description of my assailants, but Lefebvre assured me that they would be caught whether I had seen them or not. I was starting to feel shaken, now that the main emergency was over and someone else was in charge, but Lefebvre’s steadiness reached me, kept me from giving in to an urge to fall apart.

Lefebvre was watching me and said, “O’Connor put a big dent in your car.”

“What?” Outrage snapped me out of fear into anger.

“For the Lord’s sake,” O’Connor said, “you’re as full as you can hold, Lefebvre. Making it sound as if I hit it with a sledgehammer.”

“I told you she’d be mad,” Lefebvre said, but by then I had seen that glint of amusement in his eye, and caught on to his game.

“I’ll be all right,” I said.

“Do you have any guesses who might have attacked you?” Lefebvre asked.

“Eric Yeager,” I said without hesitation. “I suppose his brother might have been the other one.”

He exchanged a look with O’Connor and asked me why. I told him about our encounter with Eric at the Cliffside.

O’Connor was outraged that I hadn’t told him about that. I had the pleasure of hearing Lefebvre tell him to lay off.

Lefebvre said some objects had been found near the basement entrance of the tunnel. “Including a long-handled flashlight that looks as if it was used to hit Max.”

“Like the flashlight that might have been used to hit Katy Ducane?” I asked.

Lefebvre said, “The thought has occurred to me that it might be a familiar method for Max’s attacker.”

“But they wore gloves today, right?” O’Connor said. “Probably no fingerprints on it.”

“Probably not,” I said, then remembered my own flashlight. “Wait-the batteries! They might have worn gloves today, but I’ll bet they touched the batteries in their flashlight with bare fingers!”

“That would be the natural thing to do,” Lefebvre conceded. He called to one of the men from the lab and asked him to check for fingerprints on the batteries in the flashlight used to strike Max.

“And on the one left in the buried car,” I said.

The lab man looked from me to Lefebvre.

“It’s worth a try,” Lefebvre said.

Eventually, I was told I could go home. O’Connor walked me to the Karmann Ghia.

“I’ll pay for any damage I did to your car,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot. There is no damage, and besides, I owe you big time.”

“I’ll follow you home,” he said.

I didn’t object. In fact, I thanked him.

50

E RIC AND IAN HAD BEEN CAUGHT TRYING TO FLEE THE COUNTRY WITH large amounts of cash and false passports in their possession. That gave the police enough reason to take them into custody, and later, it helped to ensure that bail was set astronomically high. Mitch Yeager paid it, but it took him a couple of days to do it.

Lefebvre’s case against them for their assault and kidnapping of Max and me began with fingerprints found on the batteries, but was supported by other evidence. They literally had a trunkful of it. The end of a roll of duct tape found in the trunk of the car was compared microscopically with the ends of the pieces of tape used to bind and gag us-they matched. There was blood matching Max’s blood type on gloves found in the trunk and on clothing stashed there as well. My flashlight, with my fingerprints on my new batteries, was also in the trunk of the BMW. And sensitive chemical tests showed traces of chloroform on one of Eric’s gloves.

The note about the doorbell being broken was found wadded up in their trunk. The questioned documents expert in the Las Piernas lab was also able to match the perforated edge of the note about Warren Ducane with the edges left behind in a spiral-bound notebook in the car, as well as handwriting characteristics in the printing, and the ink type in a fancy pen carried by Ian.

There was trace evidence as well-hair and fibers found in the room where we were attacked matched samples taken from Eric and Ian, and strands of our hair and fibers from our clothes were found on theirs. The photos Stephen Gerard took, and his testimony about the places and times he had seen the BMW, convinced the jury that Eric had planned my kidnapping for some time.

Together with testimony from Max and me, they were convicted.

Eric and Ian Yeager were each sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.

Max, O’Connor, and I went drinking with the boys from the newsroom. The events in the Baer mansion seemed to have moved my status on the staff from that of outsider to team member-they closed ranks when they heard that one of their own had been attacked. That didn’t stop several of them from asking me, from time to time, to take my blouse off and demonstrate how I had signaled for help, but their regard for me seemed to outlast the joke.