No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale

by Pope, Christine

  Chapter 27

  Ortiz paused the tape, hit “Rewind,” then listened to the message once again. Even somewhat distorted in its transfer from Meg’s voicemail to cassette, Christine’s voice was still pretty, a clear light soprano with a crispness of diction he attributed to her years of vocal training, and exhibiting none of the usual Southern California drawl. She spoke quickly, the words sounding a little rushed and breathless, but he did not detect any overt sounds of strain or fear. If anything, she sounded as if she were simply trying to squeeze in the phone call between other similarly pressing engagements.

  “What the hell...?” he said aloud, then tilted back in his chair and glared up at a water spot on the ceiling tiles. It just didn’t make sense—but then, when had anything in this case made sense? He had the disconcerting feeling that he was missing a vital piece of the puzzle, the one key that would suddenly turn this series of disjointed facts into a coherent whole.

  Meg had called late that afternoon, apparently as soon as she had retrieved the voicemail. “I heard it ring, but I didn’t pick it up because it said it was from a restricted number,” she’d explained. “I only answer calls from numbers I recognize.”

  Restricted number. It figured. Of course they couldn’t be so lucky as to have Christine calling from a phone that could be traced.

  He’d asked Meg to come by the station as soon as possible so they could record the message off her voicemail, and she’d answered that was no problem. She was heading in to work at L’Opéra anyway, and the police station was only a few streets over from there.

  “Should I call Randall?” she’d asked of Ortiz while the technician transferred the message onto a cassette.

  God, no! had been Ortiz’s first thought. The last thing he needed was Randall underfoot, asking unanswerable questions and generally getting in the way. But he’d said only, “I can handle that. We need to perform more analysis of the message before we let him know about this.”

  “Okay…” she’d replied slowly, looking a little puzzled. But apparently she’d decided that it was better not to question him about it. “Well, I hope it helps. I’m just glad to know she’s all right—but if she’s been okay all along, why didn’t she call sooner?”

  Why, indeed. Christine, you got some splainin’ to do, he’d thought in his best Ricky Ricardo voice, but of course he’d only murmured something noncommittal to Meg and then got rid of her as soon as he could.

  “Analysis” had consisted of Ortiz listening to the tape over and over again, hunting for any subtle inflections, any oddness of word choice that might indicate she was under duress of any sort. But he’d found nothing. In tone it sounded like the sort of commonplace message any girl Christine’s age might have left on a friend’s voicemail—except that in this case the girl leaving the message had now been missing for two weeks.

  The only ambiguous element in the message had been Christine’s use of the word “can’t.” I can’t really tell you where I am, she’d said. Did that mean she really was being forced to keep her location a secret, or was it just a careless choice of words? And what was that bit about not wanting to cause any trouble? Had she really just gotten up and bailed out on her life for a few weeks? And if that were the case, then why the involvement of Jerome Manning and the trusty wrecking crew at Rigoberto’s A-1 Auto Repair? Manning had been lying through his teeth, but the evidence linking him to the Daly case had been so scanty and circumstantial that there was no way they could have held him.

  Ortiz resisted the urge to pull out the last few stalwart hairs on his head. Instead, he sighed, hit “Rewind,” and listened to the tape one more time. Afterward he glanced at his watch. Good—only ten minutes to go. Then he could get the hell out of here and try not to think about Christine Daly for a few hours at least.

  I’m sorry if I’ve caused any trouble, came her sweet, oblivious voice from the tape recorder, and Ortiz winced.

  Girl, you don’t know the half of it, he thought, then turned off the tape recorder. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so happy to see six o’clock roll around.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what I had been expecting of Erik’s attorney—I just knew that Martin Greenburg was not it. For one thing, he was fairly young, probably in his mid-thirties at best, with a strong-featured face that was more interesting than attractive. For another, he had overlong hair that brushed the edges of his collar, and instead of the typical dark suit he wore a sport coat over a pair of dark jeans, a dark blue shirt, and a wide tie that looked as if it came straight out of the bargain bin at the local vintage clothing store. He looked for all the world like the software industry’s latest wunderkind—or one of the guys who staffed the help desk at school.

  I could feel my eyebrows shooting up even as Erik got up from his chair and went to shake the attorney’s hand. Then Erik turned toward me and said, “This is Miss Daly, Martin. Christine, this is Martin Greenburg.”

  Greenburg extended his hand and I took it, offering a smile and hoping that he hadn’t noticed my shock.

  The dark eyes that met mine were very shrewd, however, and I could see the amusement dancing in them. “Ah, the infamous Miss Daly,” he said.

  “Martin—” Erik said, and Greenburg only smiled, then set his briefcase down on the table.

  “Shall we, then?” he asked, and Erik took his seat once again.

  We sat around a large mahogany table in a conference room located to one side of Erik’s private office. I had never been in there before, and had wondered, when I first saw it, at the presence of such a room in a house that never seemed to have visitors. But of course Erik’s grandfather had built the house, and Erik’s father had lived here as well. Presumably they had used this conference room when they hadn’t wished to leave the estate to attend to business.

  Greenburg didn’t seem at all taken aback by Erik’s mask, and so I guessed that they must have had some face-to-face dealings in the past. Likewise, Erik seemed to take Greenburg’s decidedly unorthodox appearance in stride, and so I thought I had better try to do the same. He had to be good, or he wouldn’t be Erik’s attorney.

  “I assume Erik has already told you that I am less than thrilled with the situation,” Greenburg said, fixing me with a stare that clearly said he thought this was all my fault. “However, since he pays me the big bucks to keep his fat out of the fire, let’s attempt to do some damage control.”

  “Martin—” Erik said again, but his tone was milder than I would have thought possible. “Miss Daly is certainly not responsible for my actions.”

  “Possibly, but your actions could get you fifteen to twenty in a federal prison. If we can make this more about her, there’s a chance you can walk away with this with stories to tell your grandchildren.”

  Erik and I exchanged a significant glance at the “grandchildren” comment, but we both remained silent, waiting to hear what he had to say.

  Lifting a heavy brow at me, Greenburg said, “So you first met Mr. Deitrich at your place of business.”

  “Yes. He paid the hostess so he could sit at my station.”

  To my surprise, the attorney slammed his hand down on the table. Erik and I both jumped. “No!” Greenburg said. “That is hearsay, Miss Daly. The hostess told you Mr. Deitrich paid to sit at your station, but you didn’t actually see the transaction, did you?”

  “Well, no,” I replied.

  “Very good. And what did you think of Mr. Deitrich?”

  I shot a helpless glance at Erik. What the heck had I thought of him? That night seemed to have taken place in another life, when I stopped to think of all that had happened since then. “I thought he was interesting,” I said cautiously, not wanting to invite another table-pounding.

  “Just interesting? Did you find him attractive?”

  God, this was excruciating. “I - I suppose I did.”

  “So you were attracted to him even though you were seeing someone else at the time?”

  Erik interrupted, his tone a l
ittle sharper this time. “I don’t really see the point here—”

  “You will.” Greenburg picked up his Mont Blanc pen and directed another one of those laser-beam stares at me. “Miss Daly?”

  “Yes, I thought he was attractive. I was attracted to him. Satisfied?”

  “Very.” He scribbled a few lines on a legal pad while I stared down at my hands and absently twisted the sapphire on my right ring finger. “And did you continue to think about him after that first night?”

  I lifted my shoulders. “I - I might have.”

  “So may I postulate that you were attracted to him, continued to think of him, and were receptive to seeing him again?”

  “Well, I never really thought of it that way—”

  “And that when he proposed seeing you again, you readily accepted?”

  Now Erik and I exchanged incredulous looks. How the hell had he managed to jump from forcible kidnapping to a hypothetical date?

  “What exactly are you driving at here, Martin?” Erik asked, his voice ominously calm.

  “I am driving at keeping you out of prison, Mr. Deitrich,” Greenburg replied, seemingly unruffled. “We must represent your current relationship as a natural progression of a completely normal attachment.”

  “Normal” and “natural” were not exactly words I would have used to describe the formative periods of Erik’s and my relationship, but I’d begun to see where Greenburg was going with all this. I knew I’d have to talk to the police, and soon, and I had damn well have my story straight before I went to them.

  “Yes,” I said steadily, trying to ignore Erik’s outraged stare. “I felt bad about it, since I was sort of dating Randall at the time, but I really wanted to be with Erik.”

  “Have you both lost your minds?” Erik snapped. “Or are you preparing testimony for a court in Never-Never land?”

  “Erik,” I said, and I looked at him steadily, willing him to go along with this. “I have to lie. There’s no other way.”

  He held my gaze for a moment, but again his face was unreadable, as opaque as the half-mask he wore. “Martin, I can’t believe you’re telling her to perjure herself—”

  “When she goes to the police, she’d better not be telling them the truth.”

  “Who said anything about going to the police?”

  Greenburg set down his pen and folded his arms against his chest. “Mr. Deitrich, for all your brilliance, you can be remarkably obtuse at times.”

  “I have to, Erik,” I said quietly, the words coming slowly as I wrestled with the dawning realization of what I must do. “Are we going to let the police trail after Jerome for the rest of his life? Are we just going to hide here and hope that no one ever finds out where I am? You know that’s not possible.”

  He looked away from me then, and I could see the tense muscles working in his jaw and throat. “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said at length, the words barely above a whisper.

  “And I don’t want anything to happen to you,” I returned. “So you have to let me do this.”

  Greenburg was looking at me with new respect. God knows what he had thought of me before. “The police will question you, Miss Daly, and they won’t be happy when they find out that they’ve been wasting their time on an apparently false kidnapping case. Still, if you stick to your story, there’s not much they can do but accept it.” He transferred his stare to Erik. “And since she’s not actually testifying in a court of law, no one can prosecute her for perjury. She should be fine as long as she keeps her story straight.”

  A long silence then, as Erik studiously looked away from us and appeared to stare at a portrait of a handsome middle-aged man that hung between the two windows on the opposite wall. The man in the portrait looked vaguely familiar, and I suddenly realized he must be Erik’s father. To look at his face was to realize exactly how much damage had really been done to his son’s own visage....

  “And you would do this for me?” he asked at last. “Lie? Hurt your friends?”

  His words made me begin to understand what my falsehoods would mean to Meg and, more importantly, to Randall. He would think that I had callously left him for another man, not caring what sort of pain and worry I might be causing him. It would be a betrayal of the worst sort, and he would never be able to know that it had all been a lie. I could feel a sudden constriction in my throat, the painful sting of tears behind my lashes. Still, I knew what I must do.

  “I would do it for us,” I said gently.

  Greenburg cleared his throat. I could tell he was made uncomfortable by the raw emotion in the room, but he was too much the professional to do anything but say, “Then we’re in agreement?”

  “Yes,” I said immediately, and after a moment Erik nodded.

  “If it’s the only way,” he said.

  “I assure you, it is.” Greenburg slid his legal pad back into his briefcase and tucked his pen into his breast pocket. For the first time I noticed the gold wedding ring on his left hand. “And I would prefer to do it as soon as possible. I know the police are investigating this case aggressively, and it’s better to call a halt to the whole thing before they get any closer to the truth.”

  “Today?” I asked in a small voice. I had known this was coming, but now it seemed far too sudden.

  “Today,” he repeated. “Take a bit of time to compose yourself. Wait until after lunch, if that will help. But don’t wait any longer than that. Here’s my card.” He reached into his other breast pocket and pulled out a business card. “If you start to feel as if you’re in over your head, or the questioning is going in a bad direction, just tell them you need to take a break and give me a call.”

  I took the little piece of ivory card stock and felt a little relieved. At least I wasn’t going into this completely without backup.

  At that point Erik stood and came over to me, laying a reassuring hand on my shoulder and gently stroking my hair with the other. His touch calmed me even as I thrilled to it. This was what I was fighting for, after all—the chance to spend my life with him, to bring our love out of the shadows and into the light.

  I reached up to touch the hand that lay on my shoulder. “With both of you in my corner, how can I do anything but succeed?” I asked, and was gratified to see Greenburg smile and feel Erik’s hand tighten on mine.

  At that moment, I truly did feel invincible.

  Erik watched as Greenburg’s BMW disappeared down the driveway, heading through the gates that had already been opened for it. While he knew intellectually that it had to be Christine who went to the police and closed the case once and for all, that knowledge didn’t make this any easier. Even now his stomach felt knotted with worry, his heart already beating heavily with pent-up anxiety.

  He turned away from the door and shut it. Christine stood in the foyer, elegant in the royal blue cashmere twin set and black pencil skirt he had bought her, the sapphires once again winking at her throat. She had dressed up for the meeting with Greenburg, abandoning her usual slacks or jeans.

  “It’s almost noon,” she said, and her tone was studiously casual. “I should bring Ennis a tray, and we both need to eat something as well.”

  “Christine, I—” Somehow the words failed him, and he paused, trying desperately to think of something comforting, something to take away the suspicious brightness in her eyes.

  “It’s all right, Erik,” she said. “I can do this. But I need to eat first. I can’t take tests on an empty stomach, either.”

  Somehow that little commonplace brought a smile to his lips, and he replied, “Well, I’m sure we can find something. It’s Michel’s day off, but—”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, and a little of the tension seemed to leave her mouth. “I’ve had to fend for myself for quite some time.”

  That much was true. And although she was still not familiar with the huge kitchen pantries or the oversize commercial stove, somehow she managed to make up some consommé and toast for Ennis and a pair of cheese o
melets for the both of them. As he watched her breeze through these tasks, he was once again struck by the fierceness of his desire for her—not just for her body, but for her continued presence in his life. She seemed so at home here now; he couldn’t imagine the house without her.

  She sent him off with Ennis’s tray and an admonishment to be quick or their omelets would get cold. Luckily Ennis was caught up in a broadcast of BBC World News and merely murmured his thanks before turning his attention to the television once more, so Erik was able to hurry back to the kitchen after only a few moments.

  They took their trays to the little breakfast room off the kitchen, where the lovely view out the windows was dampened a bit by the arrival of yet another storm. But there was something cozy and companionable about sitting in the cheery little room together and eating Christine’s quite excellent omelets as the rain pattered down the windows.

  “Some time I’ll have to return the favor,” he said, gesturing toward the omelet with his fork. “I make quite a good Dagwood sandwich.”

  Christine raised an eyebrow. “What’s in one of those, anyway?”

  “Just about everything you can find in the cold-cut compartment in your refrigerator. I believe it was invented by someone who went on a midnight refrigerator raid.”

  “Is that when you make yours?”

  “Of course. Dagwoods make excellent midnight snacks.”

  “‘Snacks’?” She shook her head, the curls bouncing over her shoulders. “Too many snacks like that and I won’t be able to fit into this skirt.”