Sure, stringer for The New York Times and publishing mogul overseeing a behemoth multimedia empire were totally the same, but the answer suited Audra.
“Maybe you could make a poster for Helena,” she suggested. “Like when Mrs. Andreau lost her kitty. She put up a picture of Fluffles in all the elevators. He was in the storage basement chasing mice, and he came home.”
He nodded gravely, soaking in her preschool wisdom. “Great idea. Hey, did Helena say anything to you on Friday about taking a trip or going away?” he probed gently.
It struck me that at no time during the morning’s crisis had anyone else thought to ask Audra if she knew where Helena might be. One point for the journalist.
Audra thought for a moment then gave her head a shake, sending her long blond ponytail of hair whipping across her shoulders. “No, no trips. But she was crying right before it was time to go home.”
“She was crying?” I echoed.
“Uh-huh. I asked her if she hurt herself. She said no, she was crying because she was going to miss me. But then we sang the days of the week song, and I said only two days and then we’d be able to play again. There’s Sunday and there’s Monday, there’s Tuesday and there’s Wednesday, there’s Thursday and there’s Friday. And then there’s Saturday! Days of the week! Bum, bum. Days of the week!”
I giggled at her performance, but Victor blanched again. He swallowed hard. “Thank you, ladies. I’ve taken up enough of your time.” He bent and shook Audra’s hand then stood and pulled out a business card.
“Please, if you hear from Helena, call me. That’s my cell phone number, day or night.” He pressed the card into my hand.
I glanced at it then slipped it into my sweater pocket. “I will,” I promised.
3
I put Helena and her distraught, hot brother out of my mind for the rest of the day. At three o’clock, Cate’s assistant called to let me know that Audra’s music and movement teacher was on her way over to relieve me.
“Cate wanted me to tell you she’s interviewing replacement candidates this evening, and with any luck your services won’t be needed tomorrow,” she said in a clipped, efficient voice.
I looked sidelong at Audra, who was absorbed in her sticker book.
“Listen, Maura,” I said in a near-whisper. “Audra’s a great kid, but I have other clients. I’m not canceling appointments to play babysitter. You need to make sure Cate understands that my services aren’t an option tomorrow.”
I heard Maura’s soft sigh through the phone. “Thyme, I can’t perform miracles. Believe me. If I could, I would completely squander that talent on keeping Cate’s life bump-free. She doesn’t care about your other clients. She did say to tell you she’ll pay your regular rate for today.”
She was paying me a hundred and fifty dollars an hour to watch her kid? It must be nice to solve your problems by reaching into your Birkin bag, grabbing your Valentino wallet, and casually tossing it in the general direction of whatever’s troubling you. And, voila, problem solved.
“All the same. One of these replacements better work out.”
“Agreed. Or, even better, Helena could make an appearance.”
That stunned me. “Cate would let her come back?”
Maura laughed. “I know, right? If you or I pulled a stunt like this, it would be sayonara, don’t let the door hit ya’. But Audra loves Helena. And Cate, despite all appearances, dotes on Audra. She’d take Helena back in a heartbeat.”
“And the nanny service hasn’t heard from her?”
“Nope. And the case manager there said it’s virtually impossible that Helena could get another nannying gig in this city without impeccable references, which she obviously won’t have.”
I thought. “Maybe she’s just taking a break, you know? She’s socked away some money and plans to bum around.” Helena was probably no older than me. Lots of people flake out on their first real jobs.
“Not a chance. She’s here on a work visa. If she’s not employed, she’s gotta go back to Brazil.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, huh.”
After I ended the call with Maura, I told Audra that Miss Emily was on her way, and she started dancing around her bedroom, clapping her hands.
“I had fun with you today,” I told her as I shoved toys into linen bins and generally tried to restore some semblance of order to the place.
“Me, too,” she agreed. “Mom says you can leave them. Becky will clean them up when she comes.”
I crouched beside her. “Your mom’s confused. Even when we’re lucky enough to have people to help us keep our houses clean and take care of us, we still need to take care of our own things. Becky’s a helper, but you need to be a helper, too.”
She wrinkled her little forehead in confusion but, after a moment, joined me in tossing dolls and puzzle pieces into their designated spaces. A moment later, the doorbell rang, and we raced to the door to greet Miss Emily. I didn’t know if my subversive act would stick, but for now, I was feeling pretty good about trying to steer Audra off the path of the obliviously wealthy and onto a more thoughtful course. Cate could thank me later—or not, as the case may be.
* * *
I needed to de-stress, so I popped in for a quick Bikram session at the studio around the corner from the Whittier-Clay’s co-op. There’s nothing like a one-hundred-and-five-degree yoga class to leave a soul relaxed and placid.
My calm and tranquility were short-lived, though, because when I left the yoga studio I ran into Victor Callais. And when I say ‘ran,’ I mean I bounced off his well-muscled chest. I was still in my post-yoga noodle state, so he had to reach out and steady me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, acutely aware of the fact that I was slick with sweat. Yes, the studio had a shower, but I prefer a nice long soak in a tub full of lavender essential oils and Epsom salts after a vigorous class. Sue me.
“Thyme, hey!” He seemed inordinately excited to see me.
“Hi.” I smiled at him and ever-so-casually raised my arm to take a quick sniff. Eh, passable. Then I noticed the fistful of flyers in his hands and forgot all about my post-workout aroma. He’d taken Audra’s advice and made missing person posters. A black-and-white Helena smiled up at me under an all-caps heading that read “Have You Seen Me?”
I nodded at the papers. “She still hasn’t turned up?”
He shook his head. His eyes were sad. “No. I posted on all my social media accounts, and as many of hers as I could crack the passwords for—but finally I decided to go old school.”
Way across town, my bathtub was calling my name. I could almost hear its siren song from here. But then I imagined about how I’d feel if Rosemary or Sage were missing, and my heart started to hammer in my chest just at the thought. I looked into his bottomless dark brown eyes and sighed. “Let me help you.”
Thirty-four telephone poles and coffee shop billboards later, we were out of flyers. We stood awkwardly at the corner, avoiding the hot garbage air that rose from the sidewalk grate.
“Well, thanks,” he said.
For a journalist, he wasn’t very wordy.
“No problem. I hope she’s all right.” My platitude sounded weak to my own ears, but then again, I wasn’t paid by the word.
We nodded at each other, and I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned to leave.
“Wait.”
I twisted and looked at him over my shoulder. “Yeah?”
He inhaled deeply and then let out a big, trembly breath. “I’m going to try her apartment one last time. I already hung flyers around her neighborhood. But ... I really don’t want to go back to her building by myself. Keep me company?”
His chocolate eyes were pleading. They reminded me of Parsley, my family’s cat, when he really wanted someone to sneak him a shrimp or a piece of turkey.
I felt myself giving in. “Where’s her place?” If he said Brooklyn or Washington Heights, he was on his own.
“Midtown,” he said perkily, almost l
ike he could read my mind.
I shrugged. “Sure. That’s on my way.”
His shoulders sagged with relief. “I really appreciate this, Thyme.”
“I can’t imagine how crazy I’d be going if one of my sisters were missing,” I told him.
“How many sisters do you have?”
“Two,” I answered before I realized he wasn’t beside me any longer. I turned and saw him hailing a cab. I’d instinctively headed for the subway station. I joined him at the cab stand in front of some boutiquey hotel I’d never noticed before. “Taxis? Are you independently wealthy?”
He flashed me a smile. “I got my hack license when I first came to your country. Worked my way through Columbia’s journalism school driving a cab. Guess I have a soft spot for these guys, you know?”
A cab pulled to a stop alongside us, and Victor opened the door and ushered me into the back seat. He settled in beside me and gave the driver an address—presumably, Helena’s—then glanced over at me. “So tell me about your sisters.”
“Well, I’m the youngest. Rosemary, the oldest, got her degree in science, but now she runs her own holistic catering company in California. She’s dating a homicide detective. Sage is in the middle. She used to be an accountant, but now she’s a parenting consultant—basically, a fancy nanny—for a professional golfer and his family in South Carolina. She’s dating a caddy.”
“And you? What did you used to be before you were a personal trainer?”
“I got my psychology degree. I was planning to go to grad school but …” I trailed off, unsure how to explain my family’s financial situation in a pithy way.
“Interesting that you all reinvented yourselves,” he mused, more to himself than to me. “And who are you dating?”
I blushed. I knew he was just asking because I’d included Sage and Rosemary’s relationship statuses in my little summary. But, there was the teensiest chance he was asking because he was interested. And I was currently on boyfriend hiatus after a disastrous breakup with my college sweetheart.
He was watching my face, half-smiling.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I turned my face and looked out the window to make it crystal clear that the topic wasn’t one I cared to elaborate on. We rode in silence, except for the driver’s persistent stream of soft curse words aimed at every New Yorker who dared to cross his path. At least he was quiet about it. Nothing stressed me out more than a cab driver who screamed, red-faced, while pounding his fist on the steering wheel. It sounds like a caricature, I know, but cross-town traffic could bring out the maniacal side of just about anyone. I’d yet to drive in the city, and I hoped to keep it that way.
The cab lurched to a stop in front of a pre-war apartment building. Victor paid the fare and exchanged some cabbie pleasantries with the driver while I scooted out of the back seat and inhaled the crisp, fall air. As much as I didn’t want to drive in New York, riding around as a passenger tended to leave me slightly carsick and queasy. I took another deep breath.
“Are you okay?” Victor asked as he joined me on the sidewalk.
I nodded and sneaked a peek at his face. He looked a bit green, himself. Either he was also carsick ... or he was worried about what we might find in his sister’s apartment.
My pulse ticked up a notch. I hadn’t really considered all the possible ramifications of Helena’s disappearance, which, in retrospect, was kind of silly of me. I mean, in the past six months, each of my sisters had been involved in a murder investigation. What if death really did come in threes?
Stop that, you sound like Mom with the old wives’ tales. Death doesn’t come in threes, fours, or twelve-packs. It’s random, I reassured myself; only, somehow, that wasn’t very reassuring.
I took another look at Victor and swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Do you have a key to Helena’s place?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I waited but apparently he was going to leave his answer at a terse, one-worder.
“So then, what’s your plan?” I pressed him as we walked up the wide stairs to the row of buzzers beside the double front doors to the building. This wasn’t a doorman building, that much was clear.
“It’s a work in progress,” he muttered cryptically, scanning the rows of typewritten names, some yellowed with age, some curling up at the edges, and others brand-spanking new.
I peered over his shoulder. He pressed the button beside “V. Smith.”
“Who’s that?”
“That’s Helena’s apartment.”
“V. Smith?”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “It’s urban safety 101, Thyme. Please tell me your buzzer label doesn’t identify you as a single woman living alone?”
One, I highly doubted that ‘Thyme’ screamed ‘I’m a lady.’ But, two, just in case, I did list my name as “T. Field” everywhere because I wasn’t actually an idiot. I didn’t use a pseudonym, though.
“No, it doesn’t,” I assured him. “But why ‘Smith’? Isn’t her last name Callais, like yours?” I asked knowing full well that it was.
He either didn’t hear the question or pretended not to. He laid on the buzzer again. After a moment, he sighed. “No answer.”
I squinted at the buzzer labels. “Do you know which of these is the building super?”
“I do, but he’s a dead end. I called him this morning and he said the only way he’s letting me into Helena’s apartment is if I have the boys in blue with me.”
I shrugged. I could kind of see the guy’s point. Helena was an adult. If she just happened to have met her dream man over the weekend, and they were holed up in her bedroom with a vat of whip cream or a family-sized bottle of baby oil, it would be pretty awful to come storming in with her brother.
“Have you considered calling them? The police, I mean?”
“No. Not yet.” His face darkened.
I decided not to push the issue. “Okay? So are we going to hang out here until someone comes home and try to talk our way in, or what?” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I mean, it wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm. And as the autumn sun dropped lower and lower in the sky, it was only going to get cooler. Already, my dried hot yoga sweat was giving me a slight chill—at least I hoped that was the cause of my shivering.
He flashed me a smile. “Watch and learn.”
He started at the uppermost button on the far left. He gave it one short press, waited a moment to see if there would be a response, and then moved to the button to its immediate right. It was late afternoon on a weekday, so assuming most of the apartment dwellers in Helena’s building worked, the majority of them were unlikely to be home. He kept pressing, moving left-to-right, top-to-bottom, in search of a shift worker, a stay-at-home parent, or a retiree. On the eleventh button, he got a hit.
“Who is it?” a distorted male voice answered.
I checked the label. ‘Bizwan Malta.’ Works from home in tech support, I guessed, based on nothing.
“This is Victor Callais. I’m a reporter with The New York Times. I’m doing a man on the street feature about the mayor’s latest crime-prevention initiative and wondered if you’d like to share your thoughts?”
“I’m not on the street. And no.” Bizwan dismissed him and went back to helping a frustrated computer user reinstall Windows 8.1 or whatever it was he’d been doing before his buzzer had interrupted him.
Undeterred, Victor resumed his relentless march through the buzzers.
He had another hit on the nineteenth try.
“Yes?” A cautious female voice answered. Apparently, its owner had taken urban safety 101. The nameplate read ‘Keith Binder.’
“Hi, my name’s Victor Callais. I’m a reporter with The New York Times, and I wanted to ask Mr. Binder his views on the new magnet school that’s being proposed for this neighborhood.”
“Oh. Um, he’s ... not here right now. But I—we—don’t have kids, so I don’t think we have an opinion. You should try Mrs. Chandra in 4-B.”
He hovered his finger over the button marked ‘Chandra.’ “She’s a parent of school-aged children?” he asked.
“No, but she’s a retired teacher. And a talker.” ‘Keith’ gave a short laugh, as though Mrs. Chandra had waylaid her more than once with an armload of groceries for a nice long chat.
“Perfect. Thanks so much!”
“No problem.”
He grinned at me and then pressed Mrs. Chandra’s buzzer. As promised, she was more than willing to share her thoughts about the state of public education. After about a minute and a half, she paused to take a breath, and Victor pounced.
“Would you mind if I come inside? The intercom system makes it hard to hear you, and I want to be sure to quote you accurately. Perhaps we can talk in the hallway?” he suggested.
There were several seconds of silence. I imagined Mrs. Chandra was weighing her safety against her loneliness and desire for the limelight. “I suppose that would be all right. I’m on the fourth floor. I’ll meet you in the hallway.” A long metallic click sounded, and Victor pushed open the door.
We were in.
“Now what?” I whispered as he hurried passed the rows of metal mailboxes and through an interior door.
“Now we take the stairs to the second floor,” he said, pushing open a metal fire door and ushering me into a dimly lit stairwell.
“What about Mrs. Chandra?”
He shrugged. “She’ll get tired of waiting and go back inside. She’ll forget all about us in no time.”
I tried to shake the icky feeling that I got thinking of the gregarious old lady waiting a few floors above and mounted the stairs behind him.
4
We came to a stop outside Helena’s door. He rattled the knob. I shifted nervously and checked the hallway for traffic. There was none. No residents headed to the laundry room. In fact, it was eerily quiet. No televisions blared from behind the rows of closed doors. No voices raised in conversation or argument floated out into the hallway. The only sounds I heard were my own shallow breathing and my thrumming heartbeat.
Thyme to Live: A We Sisters Three Mystery Page 2
