No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale

by Pope, Christine

“Of course.”

  Again he led up up the now-familiar staircase to my room. We paused outside as he reached in his pocket for the key; then, as he slipped it into the lock and turned it, I reached out and laid my hand on his. His fingers were slender and strong beneath mine, still warm from the lingering effects of the sun.

  “Do you really think that’s still necessary?” I asked softly.

  He paused. The slightest tremor went through the hand holding the key, but he said nothing.

  Keeping my tone still gentle, with the slightest trace of pleading, I said, “Where do you think I would go? I heard the cars going past the gazebo earlier. I could have screamed for help if I had wanted to.”

  Still he was silent, but I could almost feel the physical force of his gaze as he stared down me, as if he were trying to rip the truth from my mind. Then at length he asked, the words barely above a whisper, “Do you truly mean that?”

  Hating myself, I forced the lie past my lips. “I do mean that. But if we’re to—to be together at all, then surely you can understand why I don’t want to feel like a prisoner in this place.”

  “Christine, I—” and then he fell silent, as if he were afraid to betray himself by speaking any further.

  It was too late. I had already heard the break in his voice as he said my name, and I could feel my eyes sting with sudden tears. Damn him—why couldn’t I just hate him and leave it at that? Why did I feel this overwhelming sense of betrayal? Why did I find it so hard to remember that I was the victim here?

  Quickly, before I had time to react, he took my hand from his and then raised it to his mouth. His breath was warm on my skin, the feel of his lips delicate, like the brush of a butterfly’s wing. Then he let go of me, and pushed the door inward.

  “I can deny you nothing, it seems,” he said, and suddenly his voice sounded very weary.

  Not knowing what else to do, I stepped inside and gently closed the door behind me. I waited for the inevitable sound of the key turning in the lock, but it never came. After a few moments, I put my hand on the door knob. It turned easily, but I did not open the door. Instead, I leaned my head against the lintel and suddenly, foolishly, began to weep.

  “You what?” Jerome glared at him, unbelieving.

  “I left her door unlocked,” Erik replied. Jerome’s rage would have been amusing if it weren’t for the fact that underneath his calm, Erik himself was a bit unnerved by the audacity of the move. Of course he had planned to take this step at some point, but not so soon, not even a week after Christine had arrived. Of course Jerome was furious, but Jerome hadn’t been there, hadn’t heard the faint tremor in her voice, seen the pleading in those shimmering sea-colored eyes. She had been right—how could they make any progress in their relationship if she continually thought of herself as his prisoner?

  “She’s trouble,” Jerome said ominously.

  “We knew that from the beginning,” Erik said, his voice smooth, although he was beginning to be irritated. After all, he was paying Jerome to do what he was told, not offer opinions.

  “I don’t mean that kind of trouble. The kidnapping was a calculated risk, but it went off fine. I mean that she’s too smart for her own good. And that’s what gets a woman into trouble.”

  At that Erik laughed and was gratified to see Jerome scowl. “I would never have taken you for a misogynist, Jerome.”

  “Oh, I like women just fine, sir. That’s not my point.”

  “And just what is your point?” Erik pushed his chair away from the desk and stood, going to the table by the window where his decanter of cognac sat. He poured himself a modest amount, pointedly not offering Jerome any—not that Jerome would have accepted it. Erik had never seen the man drink.

  “My point is that I’ve seen plenty of women, both smart and dumb, get themselves into trouble. The problem with the smart ones is that they usually drag other people along with them.” The man’s blue eyes narrowed; his expression was not pleasant. “She’s playing you, sir.”

  The rage welled up in him at Jerome’s casually cruel words, but Erik forced himself to take a calming sip of his cognac instead of lashing out at his assistant. “You know nothing about her,” he said at length, deliberately keeping his tone cold and distant.

  “Maybe I don’t, but I know plenty about women. They’ll say and do what they have to to survive. Can’t even blame them, really—they definitely got dealt a short hand out of the biological deck. But that doesn’t mean I trust them—especially not one who’s cornered, like Christine.”

  A small, hidden part of him wanted to acknowledge Jerome’s statements, since the man had had far more experience of the world than he, but Erik forced those pernicious thoughts away. Christine was not like that. Jerome had not seen the look in her eyes as she made her request, and Jerome hadn’t seen the easy way she had laughed and talked with him throughout that magical sunlit afternoon. Perhaps the scum Jerome had to deal with during his time with the FBI and as a private investigator soured him so much that he thought all women incapable of loyalty and compassion. Whatever the case, Jerome was obviously incapable of understanding Christine’s motivations. He could not comprehend anything that was pure.

  “I’m afraid you have little grasp of the situation, Jerome,” Erik said at length. He was pleased to see the man’s color rise slightly, his eyes narrow. But of course Jerome could not give in to his anger around Erik. “You may go now.”

  With that he turned to look out the window, effectively dismissing Jerome. He could hear his assistant hesitate for a moment, then say very quietly, “I’ll still be watching her.” But he gave Erik no time for a rebuttal, as he left immediately, closing the door with more force than was strictly necessary.

  “You do that,” Erik murmured, then lifted the glass of cognac to his lips once more. It would actually please him to have Jerome watch Christine and find nothing suspect. It would please him to be able to prove the man wrong, show him that his infallible knowledge of human nature wasn’t so infallible after all.

  It bordered on the ridiculous, really. Erik doubted very much that Jerome had ever met a woman exactly like Christine. In fact, Erik doubted that there was another woman exactly like Christine. She was a rare treasure, from her exquisite face to her magnificent voice to the agile mind behind it all. And now she was offering that treasure to him, unbelievable as it seemed. He could still feel the pressure of her delicate hand on his, the velvet texture of her skin against his lips. The thought of her gracing his home as an honored guest and future mistress instead of a prisoner pleased him very much.

  “To freedom,” he said aloud, and drank again.

  Chapter 18

  Detective Ortiz stood on the front porch of Christine’s bungalow, waiting for her landlord to show up and let him in. The man had some unpronounceable Greek name—Ortiz had to check his notes and read through it one more time to try to get it straight. Panagapoulos. He just hoped he wouldn’t mangle it too badly once the man actually got here.

  The potted plants on the porch were already wilting, he noticed. Other than that, there was no real sign that the bungalow’s inhabitant had been missing for a week—no papers piled on the front step, no overflowing mailbox. Probably she didn’t get much, except for bills and advertising circulars.

  It was quiet here, late morning on a weekday. The neighborhood consisted of other, mostly larger, bungalows built about the same time as Christine’s, and a few two-story clapboard farmhouse types that had probably bridged the gap between the late 1800s and the early years of this century. Nothing here to show that anything untoward had happened to explain Miss Daly’s disappearance.

  A late-model Lincoln pulled up to the curb, looking distinctly out of place in the shabby working-class neighborhood. After a moment, a heavyset man in his late fifties hauled himself out of the driver’s seat and came up the walk to meet Ortiz. The man did not look at all pleased to be there.

  “Mr. Panagapoulos?” Ortiz extended his hand. “I’m Detective
Ortiz.”

  Panagapoulos reached and shook Ortiz’s proffered hand. His clasp was damp and clammy. A big diamond sparkled on his ring finger. “You got the warrant?”

  Ortiz gladly abandoned the handshake and pulled the paperwork out of his breast pocket. Unfolding it, he handed the piece of paper to Panagapoulos so he could see it for himself. The man made a show of reading it closely, but Ortiz knew everything was in order.

  “Ah, okay,” the man said finally, pulling a heavy key ring out of his pants pocket. “Strange business, huh?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Ortiz said, trying to sound noncommittal.

  Panagapoulos opened the door and pushed it inward. “Okay if I stay out here? I want to smoke.”

  Inwardly Ortiz cheered—nothing was more annoying than tripping over an unnecessary observer when he was trying to conduct an investigation—but he only said, “Sure, no problem. This will only take a few minutes.”

  Christine’s landlord only gave a brief grunt in reply—he was already occupied with lighting his cigarette.

  That was good enough for Ortiz. He stepped into the tiny living room, noting the seen-better-days shabbiness of the furniture, the clutter of books on the built-in shelves. A light layer of dust lay over everything, but other than that the place was scrupulously clean. A drop-leaf table to one side had obviously functioned as her computer desk; he could see one of those portable printers you used with a laptop still sitting on the table, but the computer itself was nowhere in evidence.

  Nothing looked to have been disturbed—several textbooks lay stacked next to the printer, and a piece of sheet music sat open on the music stand of the tiny spinet. The roller blinds were pulled all the way down on all the windows, but if Christine truly had last been here on Thanksgiving evening, there was nothing particularly unusual about closed blinds. He didn’t know too many single young women who would have gone around at night with the blinds open.

  The living room opened directly into the tiny bedroom, which barely had space for a daybed and a small antique dresser. The bed was neatly made up with a faded blue and white quilt; no signs of any struggle there. He pushed aside the lace curtain she apparently used as a closet door and looked inside; the tiny closet could hold only the most meager of wardrobes, but most of the hangers were empty, signaling to Ortiz that the clothing had been taken away.

  Beyond the bedroom was one of the tiniest bathrooms Ortiz had ever seen, sparkling clean except for the inevitable rust stains in the sink and bathtub. He opened the medicine cabinet but found nothing except a half-used bottle of generic ibuprofen and a mostly empty box of band-aids. Toothbrush, toothpaste, any prescriptions or cosmetics she might have used—all that was gone.

  There was another door leading out of the bathroom into a small area that must have been the laundry room at one point. A few unused pipes coming out of the wall and a light square against the paint were hints of a wash basin that had probably occupied the space. Now, apparently, Christine used it for storage, as several boxes of books were stacked against one wall, and he also found a few pieces of inexpensive nylon luggage, the kind you would buy in sets at someplace like Target or Walmart. A large suitcase and a small carry-on still sat there, but it looked as if a medium-sized piece had once occupied the space between the two.

  As far as he could tell, everything he’d seen so far pointed to only one plausible conclusion—the pressure had been too much, and Christine had just bolted. Where and why, he had no idea, but that wasn’t really his problem.

  He came back through the bedroom. As he did so, his right foot connected with a small object, sending it skittering across the hardwood floor. Immediately he squatted down, scanning the wooden surface for the source of the sound. He spotted it almost immediately and picked it up with a pair of tweezers that he pulled out of his breast pocket—it was a woman’s ring, antique by the look of it, with a small oval ruby surrounded by tiny flickering diamonds in a filigree setting.

  Odd. Nothing in the meager tidiness of Christine’s home suggested that she would be careless with what looked like a family heirloom. That such a precious object would have been left on the floor when the rest of the house was in perfect order didn’t make any sense at all. Frowning, Ortiz fished in his coat pocket with his left hand, fumbling for one of the small plastic evidence bags he carried with him at all times. Finally he pulled it out and dropped the ring inside. He’d have to ask Randall or Meg if they’d ever seen it before.

  He gave the kitchen a cursory look before leaving—as he’d expected, it too was neat and tidy, with one plate and a coffee mug sitting in the wooden dish drain. Everything was in order: the refrigerator mostly empty except for a now-expired quart of milk and a couple of forlorn-looking yogurt containers, the coffee maker clean, a pair of bananas blackening in a bowl on the counter.

  Except for the ring, Ortiz couldn’t think of a single piece of evidence in the bungalow that pointed to anything but a planned, orderly departure by Christine. He knew he should probably just go back to his office and let Randall know that it looked as if Christine had just taken off—sorry, kid, them’s the breaks. But still, that carelessly dropped ring bothered him.

  Frowning, he came back out to the living room, took one last obligatory look around, but saw nothing else. With a sigh he stepped out onto the porch, where Panagapolous dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the carefully swept cement.

  “Find anything?”

  “Not really.” Not for the first time, Ortiz was glad of the conventions that kept him from having to discuss a case in progress.

  The landlord sniffed. “So what am I supposed to do with this place? The rent was due two days ago, and the girl’s missing. I’m not going to hold it forever.”

  Just when he’d thought he’d heard it all… Ortiz cleared his throat and said, “This is still an open case unless I say otherwise. Since this property is the site of a possible crime scene, you won’t do anything with it until you hear from me or the Pasadena P.D. Got that?”

  “All right.” The man’s small dark eyes narrowed even more. “I got bills to pay, same as everybody else.”

  Yeah, my heart bleeds, Ortiz thought, looking out to where the shiny Lincoln was parked at the curb. “I’ll inform you if the situation changes. Until then, the property stays as it is.”

  Not wanting to prolong the conversation, Ortiz capped his last statement with a brisk nod of dismissal, then strode down the front steps to his own Ford Crown Victoria—really, he thought, it might as well have a big sign on the door that said “unmarked police car.” Still, he was glad to heave himself in behind the wheel and get out of there. He’d had an overwhelming urge to pop Panagapolous in his fat mouth—here a girl had disappeared, a bright, beautiful, talented girl—and all the guy cared about was his lousy rent. Ortiz had seen worse over the years, but the petty small-mindedness of it still amazed him.

  By the time he pulled into the parking lot behind the station, he was in a foul mood. It hadn’t helped that some bastard had parked his car in Ortiz’s spot—he’d been forced to park off in a distant corner and hoof it in under a sky that looked increasingly like rain. Crazy weather. Last year it had been dry as a bone, and now they were seriously heading into ark-building mode as far as he could tell.

  Officer Campbell was on his tail almost the second he set foot inside the building. “Detective Ortiz—”

  “What?”

  She blinked her big chocolate-brown eyes at him, but Letisha Campbell had grown up in the rough end of Altadena—it would take more than a detective’s bark to put her off her stride. “Meg Garrison is waiting to talk to you. I told her you were out conducting an investigation, but she said she’d wait until you got back. Should I bring her over to your office?”

  “Yeah, sure. Give me a couple of minutes—I need to hit the men’s room before I get into anything else.”

  “Sure thing, detective.” She winked at him and then sauntered off.

  Feeling a little more himself a few
minutes later, he watched as Meg entered his office, sans Randall this time around. Today her dress was a little more subdued, as was her demeanor.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, detective, but you said I should contact you if I thought of anything else, and since I was on my way in to work—”

  “It’s no bother, Miss Garrison,” he said immediately. “What’s up?”

  She bit her lip. “Well, I’ve been thinking and thinking about Christine. About this guy she says she saw, about anything else unusual that might have happened to her. And for a while I really couldn’t think of anything, couldn’t see anything that would have a connection. But then I remembered Halloween, and thought I should tell you.”

  Ortiz picked up his pen. “What about Halloween?”

  “Well, it was a Saturday night, so George—our boss—had a big party for the evening: costume contest, dancing, that sort of thing.” Meg pushed up the sleeves of her jacket in a sudden nervous gesture. “Anyway, there was this guy who paid the hostess two hundred bucks so he could sit at Christine’s station.”

  The pen stopped scratching on the yellow pad. Ortiz looked up at Meg. “Two hundred dollars?”

  “Yes. And he left Christine a huge tip—almost three hundred and fifty. She didn’t think I saw it, but she got held up on her way back to the table, so I sneaked a peek. I figured a guy like that would have to be a pretty big tipper, but I wasn’t really expecting that.”

  Who would? thought Ortiz. Then he asked, “Description?”

  She hesitated. “Well, it was a costume party after all. He was dressed as the Phantom of the Opera.”

  Ortiz had a brief flash of Lon Chaney menacing a frizzy-haired singer; that unmasking scene had scared the crap out of him when he was a kid. “Must have been a hell of a makeup job,” he said.

  For a second she just looked at him blankly, and then gave a nervous laugh. “Not that Phantom of the Opera. The one from the musical—you know, with the half-mask.”