Why all the hoo-ha with Lehman? I don’t know. He probably was just a nice, high-strung kid. And there’s nothing at all odd about someone being jumpy when he’s being questioned by a cop, private or otherwise, and especially when it’s about a coworker who’s disappeared without, as the saying goes, a trace. That Lehman had tried to get something going with Meredith and had been rebuffed would only add to his nervousness. It was just the kind of tidbit a crime novelist would make something of.
In my off hours I’m a crime novelist.
I didn’t really think Steve Lehman had kidnaped Meredith Berens, you understand, or done her any other kind of violence. Not really. I mean, how often does it happen that the jilted lover nabs his unrequited and locks her up somewhere until she agrees to marry him? Except in the old movies. Still, a guy never knows. I had had one case that year that, on the surface, at least, bore a strange resemblance to the little melodrama I just sketched. It’s the things beneath the surface that’ll bite you every time. The odds were that Steve Lehman was exactly what he appeared to be: a nice guy. But I’ve seen plenty of things that worked out to be the exact opposite of what they appeared. And I’ve seen plenty of nice guys do plenty of not-nice things. Until you have reason to do otherwise, your best tack is to follow Inspector Clouseau’s line: I suspect everybody … and nobody.
Cut to the benediction: I found a phone book, matched Lehman’s home number against the Lehmans listed—there was a baker’s dozen, not counting the Lehmanns and Laymans the book suggested, erroneously, I might want to try. Steve Lehman was listed as, simply, lehman steve, which meant I hadn’t needed to be as clever as I had been about getting his home number, but I didn’t know that then.
The apartment was in one of the huge complexes whose stout backs you see from I-680 on the extreme west end of town—the ones with the big banners telling where to call for rental information. They were glowering, dark buildings, each three-stories high and half-again as wide, with low eaves and shake-shingles and security foyers. I found Lehman’s building and waited.
There are perhaps eleven or twelve quick-and-dirty ways to get into a security building. Not counting having someone inside buzz you in, that is. I used Number Seven, which requires only a little patience—in this case, about four minutes’ worth. I waited in the car until I saw a young woman approach the building. Definitely a resident: She lugged two bulging brown grocery bags from Hinky Dinky, and from her right hand dangled a set of keys attached to a yellow plastic sunflower. I got out of the car and timed my arrival at the front door so as to be just seconds behind her.
Her key was already in the lock of the heavy security door when I stepped into the foyer.
“Here, let me give you a hand,” I said. But by then, of course, the hard part was already over: She had the door unlocked and open an inch. I reached over her head and opened the door further, and she ducked under my arm with her packages, laughing her thanks.
She went upstairs and I went down, where I did an about-face, as soon as I was sure I was alone, and headed back to the foyer. It was small enough that I could lean through the self-locking door and read the names on the mailboxes while still keeping a foot in the doorway. Lehman’s was apartment 312. “Three-twelve again,” I breathed to myself as I hot-footed up the carpeted stairs. “This week’s magic number.”
I found the apartment and knocked. On the end of the third rap it occurred to me that Lehman might have a roommate. Well, that would be okay.
If there was a roommate, he or she didn’t answer. I put my ear against the door. It was thick—the door, not my ear—but not that thick. When I depressed the doorbell button I could hear the bell in the apartment easily if not exactly clearly.
There was not a sound in the apartment, other than the bell when I plied the button a couple more times. No TV or stereo. No furtive movements. No muffled pleas for help.
The lock looked sturdy enough, but not too formidable. Still, I wasn’t in the mood for breaking and entering. There was no concrete reason to suspect Steve Lehman of anything except closet masochism. Certainly nothing here had given me cause. It would have been nice if Lehman had been keeping Meredith a prisoner in his apartment until she agreed to lose Thomas Wayne and marry him, but the chances looked a little slim. We won’t even talk about probability.
I left the place with equal parts disappointment and relief.
The mailbox was full of past-due notices and the answering machine was full of messages back at Decatur Street. I dumped the former on the kitchen counter and rewound the tape on the latter while I rummaged in the fridge to see what I might scrape up for lunch. There was no bread, so I cut some Colby into small, square slices and arranged them on saltines spread with mustard. The apples in the vegetable bin weren’t too unreasonably mealy yet, so I quartered two and ringed the edge of the plate with them. There was a squat bottle of Schmidt in the door. I grabbed it, kicked the icebox shut, and ate my lunch at the coffee table while I listened to the machine.
It’s the world’s cheapest answering machine, in quality if not price, and what it lacks in features it more than makes up for in inconvenience. It’s a single-cassette gadget, which means you have to record your greeting, then leave thirty seconds’ worth of space for a message, then record your greeting, then leave thirty seconds, and so on for half an hour’s worth of tape. Then, of course, when you listen to your messages, you have to listen to your inane greeting each time too. The machine’s supposed to be smart enough to handle the sandwiching of incoming messages between outgoing greetings, but I’d discovered that if there are more than eight or ten messages piled up, the machine gets confused and starts recording when it should be playing and vice versa. The wonders of technology.
There were two hanger-uppers; then a message from the bank that handles my VISA card; then a message from Kim Banner at OPD; then a hanger-upper; then a message from Dianna Castelli; then a message from my publisher; then a week-old message that told me it was time to shut off the answering machine.
I checked the clock on the stove. Calls to New York must be carefully timed so that the bulk of long-distance expense is borne by my publisher, as God intended, and not by me. It was nearly two-fifteen in New York. The chances were good, though narrowing by the minute, that my editor wouldn’t be back from lunch yet. If he was back, I was on the hook for a toll charge for upward of half an hour on the wire, prime-time rates. If he wasn’t back, I’d get stung for a minute or two at most. Fifty-six cents, on average.
I placed the call. And left word with his assistant. And was off the line inside of ninety seconds.
In this manner my editor and I could avoid direct communication for days on end.
Kim Banner was out on a call. It was nice to see there was more to her career than paperwork. Dianna Castelli picked up no more than twelve seconds after I gave my name to her receptionist. There was an excited quality to her voice.
“Someone called here for Meredith a little while after you left.”
“Anybody interesting?”
I heard the rustle of paper. “She just said her name was Jahna. Not Janet—Jahna. I had her spell it for me.” Dianna spelled it for me, and I wrote it down.
“Taking your own calls these days?”
“Kelly insists that I have to let her go to lunch at least once a day. Usually Meredith covers the phones when she’s out. Here’s the number.”
I made a note of it. “No last name? Did she say why she wanted to talk to Meredith?”
“No. To both. She asked for Meredith, I said she wasn’t in today and could I take a message. She said, ‘Just tell her Jahna called.’ I asked what it was in regard to, and she said she was just a friend.”
“Did Meredith ever mention a friend named Jahna?”
“No,” Dianna said with conviction. “I’m positive. I’d remember a name like that.”
It seemed that Meredith Berens did a good job of keeping her life nicely compartmentalized. The people at her office knew preciou
s little about her family life and background; her mother knew nothing about her fiancé, her maybe-fiancé, and the fact, or the strong possibility, that Meredith had been in touch with her father; now this unknown, never-before-mentioned friend pops out of the woodwork. Dianna Castelli had never heard of the woman. I wondered if Donna Berens ever had.
“Is Steve Lehman there?” I asked.
“No. He should be back any time now, though. Want me to have him call you? I know you want to talk with him …”
“I already talked to him,” I admitted. “I was just thinking it’d be interesting to know if he had ever heard Meredith mention this Jahna person. You can ask him yourself when he gets in, if you think of it.”
“I will.” There was a pause, and faint sounds of static and swirling electronic noises filled the break. Finally she said, “When did you talk to Steve?”
“After I left your shop. You had said he was at Traveso’s. I went out there and caught up with him as he was leaving.”
“That was kind of sneaky.”
“Not really. I told him who I was and what I wanted. We had a nice chat. What’s bugging you?”
“You could have mentioned you were going to do that. He does work for me, you know.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know he was your kid. Listen, Dianna, I understand your maternal feelings toward your employees. I’m sure it’s much better than working for a faceless corporation. But I don’t think I need to clear it with you first if I’m going to talk to any of them in the course of my investigation. Or in any other context, for that matter.”
She sighed heavily into the phone—it came out harsh and hard and buzzy on my end—and said, “You’re right. I apologize. I’m on edge. You know that. This business with Meredith and … Well, I guess I’m feeling kind of, I don’t know, jealous or something. I thought that Meredith and I were close friends. I mean, there’s almost fifteen years’ difference between our ages, but even so I thought we had a real good rapport. I thought she told me things, confided in me, the way she would with a girlfriend or an older sister. Now I’m finding out there are all kinds of things she never even hinted at—whole parts of her life that she shielded from me, from everybody. It hurts. If that sounds stupid, or petty, I can’t help it.”
“I don’t think it sounds stupid,” I lied. “But Dianna—did you tell Meredith everything?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing. The fact is, nobody tells everything, not even to their closest friend, their spouse, or their lover. We’re privacy-loving animals. I doubt we could tell everything even if we wanted to; we’re just not put together that way. And it looks like Meredith was a bit more compulsive in that regard than most people. Maybe because Donna had her nose in every aspect of Meredith’s life for all those years. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. All I’m getting at is, I don’t think it has anything to do with you. It has to do with Meredith. The whole thing has to do with Meredith.”
“You’re right,” she said heavily. “I keep feeling sorry for myself when it’s Meredith who’s important here. Okay.” She made a visible, or I should say audible effort to throw off the self-pity. “Enough of that. Was Steve any help?”
“Not much, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, he can be like that around here, too. Anything else going on?”
I told her no. There was no point mentioning the call from Banner, certainly not until I knew what it was about.
“All right, then. Well, back to the grind.”
I hit the disconnect button on the one-piece phone and dialed Banner. Still out.
I dialed the number Dianna had given me for Meredith’s friend Jahna. No answer.
Then I called the security department at the phone company and got the name and address that went to that number. It gave me a feeling of accomplishment out of all proportion to the feat itself, but it was about the first thing I’d tackled and achieved without being thwarted once or twice first, and I felt downright smug about it, if you must know.
The listing was held by one Jahna Johansen—surely there could be only one—and the address was an apartment on Leavenworth near Fifty-second. At the moment it was useless information, but I felt better for having it.
I sat in the living room, listening to the refrigerator hum and thinking great thoughts, for however long it took me to finish a second beer. Then I picked up the phone to call my client. Then I set down the phone and told myself I was being a coward. Then I got up and brushed my teeth and went out again into the damp.
Donna Berens was as cool and reserved, as collected as she had been the day before. I suspected she was never otherwise. People like that, the ones who are always on an even keel, what are they like in a crisis? In an emergency? In bed? The same? Or do they disintegrate into very small pieces that you have to glue back together later?
She invited me in politely though not warmly, slipped me a cup of coffee—no china, this time: I had graduated, or descended, to a plain white ceramic mug with a thin strip of gold at the lip; we were in the kitchen today, too, at a tiny white ice-cream table in a corner of the white-and-blue room—and waited calmly for me to speak. Ordinarily I don’t get the opening line: The client is far too eager for information. Not that I was exactly brimming with data. I admitted it straight out: “First of all, Mrs. Berens, I don’t know what’s become of your daughter. I checked her apartment. There’s no sign of a struggle or any of what they call ‘foul play’ in the movies. Nor is there any sign that Meredith packed a bag or made any of the arrangements a person ordinarily would make if she were going away for a few days. I checked with the police—”
Donna Berens drew in her breath, as if to speak, but held her tongue.
“—and learned that there are no unidentified women fitting Meredith’s description in the local hospitals. Or morgue.”
She looked at me steadily. “I didn’t want the police involved.”
“They aren’t involved. They merely gave me some information. However, by this time tomorrow they will be involved.”
She asked the question with her dark, liquid eyes.
“Dianna Castelli intends to file a missing-person report tomorrow if we don’t know anything definite by then.”
There was a flash of lightning behind the expressionless eyes, a glint of something hot and defiant. “She has no right!”
“She does, and she will do it.” There seemed no point in telling where Castelli got the idea in the first place. “And it should be done, Mrs. Berens. Your daughter has been missing—without a trace—for going on three days now.”
Donna Berens got to her feet and crossed the room, stopping in front of the electric range, regarding her reflection in the black door to the microwave at eye level. “I’m aware of that, Mr. Nebraska,” she said icily. “You infer that Dianna Castelli is more concerned about my daughter’s welfare than I am. That isn’t true.”
“I don’t infer,” I said. “You infer; I imply—and I don’t imply. I simply say that it’s time to bring in the police. They have the manpower and resources—I told you all this yesterday.”
“Yes,” she said wearily. “Yes, you did. And I told you I didn’t want the police involved. I still don’t. I want you to talk the Castelli woman out of this … this harebrained idea. It would be … not good to have the police in on this.”
“ ‘Not good’?” I said angrily. “What the hell does ‘not good’ mean?”
She hadn’t turned, hadn’t budged. “The publicity …” she told her reflection in the oven door.
“Ah, the publicity,” I said. I stood up and walked across the room and stood very close to her, my mouth very near her right ear. It was small and pink and shell-like, and I said into it, “Fuck the publicity, Mrs. Berens. We are talking about your daughter.”
She said nothing.
I said, “Or are we?”
It got her to look at me, at least.
“It’s not the publicity per se you’re worried about,” I ad-libbed. “It’
s something that would come of the publicity, something you want to avoid.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She pushed past me.
“I always try, but sometimes it can’t be avoided. Let’s see, then—is it something to do with you? Some deep dark secret? Did you used to be a stripper, Mrs. Berens?”
She stopped and turned and looked at me. Her face was no more nor any less composed than it had ever been, but small hotspots had developed above each of the prominent cheekbones. “You are a disgusting, dirty-minded little man, Mr. Nebraska.”
“I’m a product of my environment. But enough about me; let’s talk about your husband.”
No response. No reaction.
I moved closer. “Is he the issue here, Mrs. Berens? Is he somebody important? Somebody famous? Somebody infamous? Or are you hiding from him and don’t want him to know where you’re living? If you tell me, I can help.”
She spat a laugh that was hard and harsh and ugly. “You can,” she said sarcastically. “You. I know you, Mr. Nebraska, I know all about you—enough about you. I know you’ve failed at nearly everything you’ve ever tried. You’ve had more jobs than most people have had hot meals, but you don’t have what it takes to keep at them. You fancy yourself a writer now, but you’re still crawling around doing penny-ante keyhole-peeping because you’re no more a success at writing than at anything else. Your wife walked out on you and you haven’t got balls enough or brains enough to divorce her. You let things happen. And you’re going to help me?” She stretched a smile that was a sneer across her broad, full mouth and shook her head. “Thanks for the offer.”
Things Invisible (A Nebraska Mystery Book 4) Page 11
