Missing

by Jonathan Valin

  Terry Mulhane stared at me blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  “The pills you prescribed. Seconals.”

  “I didn’t prescribe Seconals,” Mulhane said defensively. “Mason was a heavy drinker, and I’d never prescribe sleeping pills for a drinker. I gave him Buspar, a tranquilizer that isn’t potentiated by alcohol.”

  “The coroner’s report said he died of barbiturate poisoning.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Looking surprised, the doctor sat back in his chair. “Where the hell did he get the Seconals?”

  “He didn’t see any other doctors, did he?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of it, save that it was something else to look into. I got up from the couch.

  “You’ve been a help,” I said to Mulhane. And he had been.

  Terry Mulhane scrubbed savagely at his beard with the back of his hand. “I’m still mystified by the Seconal thing. I just assumed Mason overdosed on alcohol. You think you could get me a copy of the coroner’s report, so I can double-check the finding?”

  “Sure, I can.”

  “I gotta tell you, Stoner, you’re not the kind of man I thought you would be. I was afraid you were taking advantage of an ugly situation, taking advantage of Cindy.”

  “Believe me, doc, I’ll be happy to get this thing over with.”

  “We all will,” he said.

  13

  MASON GREENLEAF’S bad dreams about an ex-lover turned blackmailer didn’t constitute much of a lead, but they were what I had. Besides, I figured it wouldn’t take much work to check them out—just a quick look at Greenleaf’s bank books. To do that I was going to need a key to Greenleaf’s condo, which meant I was going to have to talk to Cindy Dorn. Since I wanted to talk to her anyway, I went back to the office and dialed her at home. I didn’t plan on raising the possibility of blackmail with her—not until I came across solid proof. But it had also occurred to me that finding a money trail might tell me where Greenleaf had spent the last four days of his life. Anyway, that was the excuse I was going to use.

  A man answered Cindy’s phone on the second ring. “Yello,” he said. “Cindy Dorn’s residence.”

  There was enough Tennessee in the guy’s voice to make me guess he was Greenleaf’s brother.

  “Can I speak to Cindy?”

  “Sure can.”

  He went off the line and Cindy came on. “I’ll handle it, Sam,” I heard her say off the line before she said, “Hello.”

  “Cindy, it’s Harry. You’ve got company, huh?”

  I could hear her cup her hand over the receiver. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “I may need to get into Mason’s condo again.”

  “Why?”

  “Nothing important,” I said. “Just a routine check of his bank statements—see if he had any unusual expenses before he died. Something I should have done a long time ago.”

  “All right. If you pick me up, I’ll go with you over to Mason’s. Maybe we can get Mason’s car, too, on the way back. Anything to get the hell out of this house for as long as possible,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper.

  “I’ll be out there in about thirty minutes.”

  After finishing with Cindy, I went through the messages on the answering machine. Ron Sabato had called to tell me that he’d located Greenleaf’s jacket and that I could pick it up at Vice after eleven that evening. Someone else had called but hadn’t left a name or a message. There was no word from Ira Sullivan.

  I took the elevator down to the street and headed west up Sixth to the Parkade. Although I was hungry again, I could wait until after I checked Greenleaf’s condo before eating. Later in the night I’d stop at Stacie’s and try to get a name.

  ******

  I caught the expressway on Sixth Street and pulled up in front of Cindy Dorn’s house a little past nine. There was still enough light in the sky to fill the yard with the barbed shadow of the hawthorn tree, twisting across the grass and walk.

  A car was parked in Cindy’s driveway, a red Seville burnished cinnamon in the sunset. A tall gray-haired man was bent behind it, shifting luggage around in the trunk. As I pulled in, he turned around and stared. He was wearing yellow hunting glasses, with the sunset reflected in each lens.

  When I got out of the Pinto, he strode down the driveway to greet me. His loud voice and long shadow got to me before he did.

  “Hey, there!” he said. “I guess you must be Harry Stoner.” He held out his hand. “Sam Greenleaf, Mace’s older brother.”

  I shook with him.

  In the face he looked a little like his brother, only more robust and less bedeviled by life. He was taller than Greenleaf had been, judging from the one photo I’d seen of Mason. Hair cut short at the sides, military-style. There was a good deal of barracks in the way he held himself too, ramrod straight with his feet a pace apart and his hand folded at ease behind his back. He was dressed as if he’d just stepped off the links—checked pants, white belt, white shoes, golf shirt.

  “Been wanting to meet you,” he said in his hale, too-loud voice. “I hear you’ve done a fine job for Cindy.”

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” I said, wondering where the hell he’d gotten that notion—or whether he was just blowing hard. He had that air about him.

  “We stopped in to say good-bye to Cindy. Firm up a few things about Mason’s estate. Terrible thing, this thing about Mace. Terrible.” He cast his burning yellow eyes down to his white leather shoes. “I guess Cindy’s told you we weren’t a particularly close family. Maybe we haven’t seen as much of each other as we should’ve done, living in different cities like we all do. But as you get older, you drift apart. Life just works out that way. Nobody’s to blame.”

  It occurred to me that that had been the point of his foray: that nobody was to blame. But I was wrong.

  “Look, I want to say something to you before we go inside,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning his head toward me, close enough that I could smell the stink of cigarettes on his breath. “This thing’s been a real blow to my sister. Hell, it would’ve killed my parents if they were still alive. I mean, it would’ve killed them. The point here is, we don’t really need to know all the gruesome details. What happened is bad enough, without dragging Mace through some mud patch. Like I told the police, let the dead bury the dead.”

  He didn’t know what I was going to uncover. But he’d clearly seen enough of Mason’s life to fear the worst—and the publicity that could possibly attend it. It was another unfortunate echo of the Lessing case. Ira Lessing’s family had wanted to disown the truth, too, along with their dead son. It made me feel sorry for Mason Greenleaf, who had lived and died an outcast of his own kin.

  “I’m working for Ms. Dorn,” I said. “You’ll have to take it up with her.”

  “I know who the hell you’re working for,” the man barked, and then smiled like his teeth hurt—to cover the outburst.

  “We’re Mason’s closest kin, me and my sister,” he said, moderating his tone. “And we’d just as soon you left this situation alone. That’s all I wanted to say. Take it for what it’s worth.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

  The man shifted uneasily on his feet. Having said his piece, he was finished with me—like an officer who’s given an order to a subordinate.

  “Y’all a friend of Cindy’s, huh?” he said, trying small talk. He smiled again, but the smile wasn’t entirely friendly and neither was the way he’d put the question.

  “I just met her a few weeks ago.”

  Sam Greenleaf chose to let that drop, along with his aspersion and any further attempt to make conversation.

  “Well, let’s get on inside, then.” Greenleaf waved his hand at the front door, as if he’d taken possession of Cindy’s house.

  I followed him up the short path to the front door. Inside I could hear a woman talking nervo
usly in a high-pitched southern voice.

  I stepped out of the twilight into Cindy Dorn’s narrow, oblong living room. Cindy was on the couch, staring with a glazed look at a smartly dressed blonde sitting on the chair across from her. The woman, whom I took to be Greenleaf’s sister, had the tan, high-cheeked, drum-tight face of an aging Junior Leaguer. One of those moneyed, half-pretty women who do good and drink. The room was still a shambles of plastic plates and folding chairs, leftover food and coffee.

  “Found me a penny,” Sam Greenleaf said, bending down and picking a coin off the shag rug. “Must be my lucky day.”

  Cindy flinched. “I haven’t had time to do a lot of cleaning.”

  “Don’t have to apologize,” Greenleaf said, putting the penny down on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  “Heavens, no,” the blond woman said, casting a reproachful eye at her brother. She turned to me, smiling. “I’m Cassie Greenleaf. Mason’s sister. And you’re Mr. Stoner. Cindy said you’d be coming. I want to thank you for the help you’ve been to Cindy and to us. The past few days have been so awful.”

  She put a trembly hand to her brow. “So awful.”

  “Cassie,” Sam Greenleaf said sharply, “don’t let’s start up again. We got a long trip ahead.” Turning to me, Greenleaf said, “Sit down, Stoner.”

  He took the other end of the couch, leaving me a folding chair beside the door. Cindy Dorn gave me a hapless look.

  “You know what I don’t understand?” Cassie Greenleaf said, as if she were picking up the strand of a previous conversation. “How can the police be sure that Mace intended to do this thing? How can they be sure it wasn’t an accident? People do have such accidents, don’t they? Drink too much and take a sleeping pill. Isn’t that what happened to—who was that woman, that gossip columnist used to be on TV?”

  “Kilgallen,” Sam Greenleaf said quickly, as if it were a rerun of a quiz show.

  “Yes, that’s right. And there have been lots of others. Sometimes people have accidents that can kill them.”

  The brother shook his head. “It wasn’t an accident. You know it, and so do I. Mace has been lost to us since he left home. And there wasn’t a thing we could do to bring him back.”

  Cassie Greenleaf laughed scornfully. “Like you even tried.”

  Sam Greenleaf flushed with embarrassment. “Now ain’t the time to go into this, Cassie.”

  “Why, because we got a stranger in the house?” the sister said with a practiced malice that made me certain that they’d played this scene any number of times before, over any number of things. “Not once since he moved away did you show him any kind of love or understanding. Not once. He respected you, Sam. You were his older brother.”

  Cindy Dorn put her hands to her face, as if her head were about to split open and she were trying to hold it together by main force. “Please,” she said. “Could we please not do this again?”

  The brother and sister stared at her for a moment, then looked away at opposite sides of the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie Greenleaf said in a whisper. “We’re not usually like this, if you can believe it. And I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t.”

  “There has been a lot of strain,” the brother said in what was, for a man like him, close to an apologetic tone. “No one wanted this to happen. No one.” He looked over at me. “You didn’t ever find out who he was with there at the end? At that bar?”

  “No.”

  “Surely somebody ought to find out,” he said unthinkingly, before he realized where that line would lead him.

  “The men he was with in the bar didn’t leave with him,” I said. “Mason was by himself when he died.”

  “Alone,” Greenleaf said dismally, as if that was less of a comfort than he’d expected it would be.

  The sister started to cry openly. The brother put a hand to his brow.

  “I think we better call it a night,” Cindy Dorn said, getting up from the couch.

  “Yes, we should go,” Sam Greenleaf said to his sister, who was still weeping. “We got a six-hour drive to Nashville.” He turned to Cindy. “I’ll come up in a week or so and settle Mason’s affairs. If there’s anything you want from his house, you just . . .” He looked down at the floor. “Anything you want.”

  ******

  It took another ten minutes to get the Greenleafs out of the house, into the car, and on their way to Tennessee. Cindy maintained a thin-lipped show of politeness almost to the end. But when Cassie Greenleaf tried to kiss her good-bye, she simply turned her face away. Trembling, the sister started to cry again, as the brother led her by the hand to the Seville.

  “You see what you’ve done,” she moaned to Sam Greenleaf. “Now she hates me because of your bullying.”

  “Just get the hell in the car,” he snapped. “You can run to your shrink when you get home. Tell him any goddamn thing you want.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Cindy whispered, as we watched them pull out of the driveway and off into the night. “Can you imagine being related to them? That braying jackass actually had the nerve to tell me that Mason’s problems were all in his head, like a brain tumor.”

  “He’s certainly washed his hands of him at this point. The brother more or less told me he didn’t want me to continue to investigate.”

  “Of course he doesn’t want to continue. The blood might end up on his front door.” She blew some steam out of her mouth. “You said you needed to get into Mason’s condo?”

  “If you can handle it.”

  “After that crew, I can handle anything.”

  ******

  On the way over to Mount Adams, I filled Cindy in on the little that I’d learned that day. Just going over it in my own mind reminded me of how vague it really was—speculative and inconclusive opinions, divided somewhat depressingly between gay and straight. The only good news—and it was good news for Cindy—was that it didn’t appear that Greenleaf had been betraying her with Del Cavanaugh. I’d expected her to be greatly relieved, but she didn’t react with relief. Instead she curled up in the car seat and didn’t say a thing.

  After a time I asked her what was wrong.

  “Everything,” she said miserably. “Seeing his brother and sister, how ashamed they are of him, even now. Hearing what his gay friends said about him—about me. Like they’re gossiping about some dead actor and his fag-hag moll, when he was just this shy, decent, mixed-up man. It’s disgusting to be everybody’s meat.”

  “It doesn’t change who he was,” I said, “or who you are.”

  “Everything’s changed,” she said angrily. “He changed everything by what he did. And now I’ve got to live with it. With the ugly inconclusive horror of it. I mean, you were in that hotel room with me. You saw what he looked like—what Sam and Cassie are so embarrassed to call their own. What Sully and Del say he was doomed to come to. What the rest of them are wondering if I drove him to.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, so what if he wasn’t with Del? So what? He left me alone, without a word.”

  “You want to forget about this, Cindy?” I said.

  “Yes, I want to forget about it. But I can’t. I can’t sleep, and I can’t stand to be awake. So what do you suggest?”

  By then, we were at the foot of Mount Adams, climbing the hillside. Instead of turning onto Celestial, I drove up past the bar district and parked beneath some maple trees, in a little cul-de-sac overlooking the river. It was dark and fairly quiet, save for crickets and the distant bar noise.

  “I’m sorry,” Cindy said, after sitting there in silence for some time. “I’m just fresh out of inner resources. All the people who’ve been parading through the house. Seeing my dirty socks, my dirty house, my dirty, screwed-up life. I feel completely exposed.” She hugged her arms around her breasts. “And alone.”

  She leaned her head back against the seat and looked over at me. I felt a surge of protectiveness run through me like a current. Without thinking, I pulled he
r to me and kissed her on the mouth. After a moment she drew back and stared at me uncertainly.

  “Are we going to do this thing?” she said, asking it more of herself than of me—although it was a damn good question.

  “Do you want to do it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. My needs are pretty enormous right now.” She stared at me uneasily. “I could fall in love with you, Harry.”

  “What would be wrong with that?” I said, knowing full well that there could be plenty wrong with it—for me as well as for her. A part-time drunk who’d been living without real hope or attachments for the better part of a decade.

  “It’s what I used to do when I had a problem,” Cindy said in a small voice. “Fall in love. Usually with the wrong guy.”

  I inched back in the seat. “You have to do what’s right for you.”

  “Don’t be mad. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about me.”

  “I’m not mad, Cindy. You’re right to be careful. You should think about this. Maybe we both should.”

  She gave me a shy, sidelong look. “What you said at the hospital, about being on different stars, scared me. You live in a cold place.”

  “I’ve seen a different side of life than you have,” I said, feeling more stung by what she said than I had any right to be. What she had said was true.

  “I didn’t say it scared me away. It’s just—there are some things about me you don’t know. Things you should know, maybe. I mean aside from the fact that my last lover was bisexual.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  I told her the truth. “Yeah, it bothers me. But you had safe sex. And I haven’t wanted to take a chance on anyone for so long, I figure I can’t let it matter.”

  “You’re honest enough.” Leaning over, she caressed my cheek, then kissed me on the mouth. “I’m not a cock tease, you know. You don’t know me very well yet, but believe me, I’m not.”

  Smiling, I said, “I believe you.”

  I started the car, nervously feeling as if I’d actually taken a chance for the first time in about ten years—reached out and grabbed the Opportunity I’d always seem to let pass by. It was unsettling, because the old familiar drunk in me had planned to let her pass by, too. Apparently, the rest of me had different priorities.