Vanishing Act

by Barbara Block

  So far, though, I hadn’t been able to come up with anything to do, at least nothing that wouldn’t land me five to twenty in jail. Of course, I could have gone to the police, but what would have been the point? I couldn’t ID the guy who’d zapped me, I didn’t have the Camry’s license plate number, I didn’t have any marks on my body, and no one I knew of had heard West setting up the appointment, so what could the cops have done? Nothing. It was my word against Michael West’s, and I’d need a lot more than my word to get them to act, especially considering who he was and who I was.

  So why was I at Con Tex at nine in the morning? Maybe because I’d wanted to see the look on West’s face when I came through the door. Or maybe I just wanted to show that low-life son of a fish dropping that he’d picked the wrong person to try and intimidate.

  “It’s all right,” he was saying into the intercom as I barged through the door. I noticed he was already standing. “I’ll handle this.” He looked at me with expressionless eyes. If he felt surprise at seeing me there, he didn’t show it. “How dare you walk in here like this?” he demanded, puffing himself up. His voice boomed across the room.

  But the anger in West’s voice lacked conviction. I had the feeling he was displaying it more for the benefit of his secretary than for me. I wondered if this guy had taken voice lessons, because he could certainly project. I shut the door behind me. “Too bad you couldn’t make our meeting. I hope you didn’t stand up the guy at the airport too.”

  “Is that what this is about?” The corners of West’s mouth turned up. “I left a message on your machine. Did you get it?”

  “I know.” I’d listened to it when I’d gotten home. So sorry can’t keep our appointment. Family emergency. Blah. Blah. Blah. Hope you weren’t inconvenienced.

  Inconvenienced! If I’d had the energy, I would have thrown the answering machine across my kitchen. The sheer chutzpah of the message, the confidence behind it that there was nothing I could do to him, had taken me from numb to livid. I would have gone out to his house—never mind that I was still feeling as if someone had turned me inside out—then and there if I’d had his home address. But I didn’t. And it wasn’t listed in the phone book. No big surprise there.

  “You’d better tell me what you want. The only reason I haven’t had my secretary call security ...” West began.

  “Is because you have a lingering curiosity about what I’m going to tell you, and you figure you might as well give me a minute or two since you don’t think I can do anything to you.” I walked over to his desk and dropped my backpack on it. It landed with a thud. “Ever think that you’re wrong?”

  He glanced at the backpack nervously.

  I smiled. “What’s the matter? Scared that I have a present for you?” I reached inside my bag.

  He took a couple of quick steps back as I brought out my cigarettes and lighter.

  “Expecting something else?” I asked as I thumped the pack and extracted a Camel.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really?” I took out my gold lighter, lit my cigarette, and blew a stream of smoke in West’s direction. “Silly me. I figured maybe you thought I had a Taser in here. Or a gun.”

  He snorted derisively. “I heard you were crazy.”

  “I am.” I flashed him my crazy-woman grin, the one I’d perfected when I’d been riding the New York City subways alone at night. “You think you can do whatever you want, don’t you?”

  “You really need help. I can recommend a few people if you want.”

  “You’re too kind.” I blew a smoke ring. “So what you’re telling me is I imagined you sent one of your goons to warn me off last night?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He snorted and dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “I don’t employ people like that. I am a respectable businessman. A good, solid citizen. Someone who has brought money and jobs to this community. The only reason I’ve put up with you so far is because of the lingering regard and affection I have for Mary Margaret Hayes. When will you get it through your head that Melissa’s disappearance has nothing to do with my family, nothing at all.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “If you’re so sure, then why did you have me attacked?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I think your son may have been involved in a hit-and-run the night Jill Evans died. I think Melissa either witnessed it or your son told her. I think that may be why she disappeared.”

  West kept his face devoid of expression. “Can you support these allegations with proof?”

  I lied and said yes.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “That’s what I thought,” West told me. He shook his finger in front of my face. “You be very careful about what you’re saying. Very careful. You’re opening yourself up to libel charges here. I didn’t spend years building up this business for my son to take over so you could slander him. He’s going to be someone big, someone important, and I’m damned if I’ll see him brought down by some crazy female who can’t get her priorities straight.”

  “Crazy female? Is that what you think I am?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know and I don’t care.” West straight ened his tie and reined in his emotions. “Now, I’ve been patient with you, much more patient than I should have been, but I’ve had enough. If you’re smart, you’ll quit now.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  He shrugged. “You may be nuts, but I don’t think you’re stupid.”

  Chapter 30

  On the way out of Con Tex’s parking lot I spotted West’s Infiniti. Crazy, hunh? I thought about me last night rolling around in the dirt. I thought about West in his nice little office with his nice little secretary. I looked at the car again, all nice and new and shiny. When I got done with it, all it would be good for would be scrap metal. I started to whistle. Maybe West was right. Maybe I was a crazy female. I laughed. If I got caught, that’s what I’d tell the judge.

  Instead of going back to work, I drove around the area until I found a Mini Mart. There I bought three one-pound boxes of granulated sugar, a Snickers bar, a cup of coffee, The New York Times, and gas for the cab. On the way back to Con Tex I ate the candy bar and drank the coffee. The paper would have to wait until I got to work.

  West’s Infiniti was parked around the corner from the entranceway to the office building in the space reserved for him. A Taurus sat on one side and a Blazer on the other, effectively shielding the Infiniti from sight. The view from inside the office was obstructed by evergreen foundation plantings. Since it was a little after nine-thirty, the lot was full of cars but devoid of people. Everyone was inside, working. I parked on the periphery and waited for thirty minutes to see if security drove by, but they didn’t. Just like the other day. They didn’t seem to patrol. Something told me, though, that that was about to change. I waited another five minutes just to be sure, but the only living thing in the lot were the sea gulls and a couple of crows.

  As I was waiting I asked myself if I wanted to do this. I told myself yes. Now, if I’d asked myself if I should do it, the answer might have been different. But I didn’t. Which proves how important the right question can be. I was thinking about that as I pulled my cab up behind the Infiniti, killed the motor, and got out. It took me less than a minute to pry open the spring lock to the Infiniti’s gas tank top with a nail file (the manufacturer should really redesign the lock) ten seconds to screw off the gas cap, and another twenty seconds to pour the two boxes of sugar in the tank. (I was taking the third one back to the office.) Then I screwed the cap back on and closed the lid to the gas tank. There were a few scratches in the paint where I’d pried the top open, but none, I decided, that would be apparent if you weren’t looking for them.

  I smiled.

  Too bad I couldn’t be there when West heard wh
y his car wouldn’t start, but it was a pleasure that I’d have to forgo for obvious reasons.

  I hummed as I pulled out of the parking lot.

  Suddenly I was feeling better about last night.

  Today was going to be a good day after all.

  Maybe revenge isn’t good for your soul, but it certainly does wonders for your disposition.

  Even the rain couldn’t change my mood. It had begun coming down when I was halfway to Noah’s Ark. The leaden sky had turned even darker, and large drops splattered on the windshield and drummed on the roof of the cab. The gray of the sky accentuated the gray of the city’s streets, the brown of the grass, the peeling paint on the houses, and piles of litter dumped on the curbs. The people huddled inside the bus kiosks waiting for their rides to arrive looked damp and uncomfortable. It was a good day to be inside, and I felt guilty about the fact that I was glad I was going to spend it working inside the store instead of running around looking for leads to Melissa’s disappearance. Which I couldn’t have done even if I’d wanted to, since Tim had taken the day off. But it was just as well that he had, because I needed time to think.

  Also I needed to hear from Calli.

  I was getting increasingly impatient, when she finally phoned me at five-thirty that afternoon.

  “It’s about time,” I told her as I moved the mail out from underneath my cat Pickles’s stomach. Her reply was eclipsed by static. “What?” I yelled.

  She came back on a few seconds later. “Can you hear me now?”

  “Yes. Just.” She sounded as if she were talking from Afghanistan. “Where are you?”

  “In my car. Right outside Morrisville.”

  “What the hell are you doing there?”

  “I’m on my way to cover an accident at Colgate.” There was another short burst of static, and then she said, “You want to hear what I have or not?”

  “What do you think?” I put the mail on top of the cash register and gave Pickles a catnip mouse. She looked at it disdainfully, jumped off the counter, and sauntered away.

  “Here goes.” She told me what she’d been able to glean from the paper’s files. It wasn’t much. The hit-and-run I’d asked her to research had never been ID’d. The guy had been in his fifties. A Caucasian. Probably a street person, from the look of him.

  “Malnourished. Rags for clothes. Also no teeth.”

  “That doesn’t help,” I observed. Somehow dentures weren’t the same as dental records.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Calli agreed. Her voice faded out and came back in.

  “How about fingerprints?”

  “They ran them but nothing came up. Nothing came up through the feds’ NCIC list either.”

  I sighed and reached for a cigarette. So far this was not going well.

  “The guy’s probably not a local, because the cops showed his picture around. None of our bums could put a name to him.”

  “Ah. A tourist. He was pretty far from the highway and the bus station to just be passing through, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe he was going to visit someone. Maybe he was looking for the Salvation Army and got lost. Who knows?”

  “Who indeed.” Which got me thinking about Melissa and wondering if this guy had a family out there somewhere, wondering what had happened to him.

  “Anything else?” I inquired.

  “They’re still holding the body, hoping something will break and they can ID him. But no one downtown is real hopeful about that or catching the person who hit him,” Calli replied. “They don’t have anything. No one saw anything. They checked the repair shops. Nothing came out of that either.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “That’s it. I’ll talk to you later.” She said good-bye and hung up.

  Somehow I’d expected more. Oh, well. I stood behind the counter and looked at the angelfish and smoked my cigarette and thought.

  George handed me his beer as Zsa Zsa and I walked through the door of his house.

  “Don’t you want it?” I asked.

  “I’ll get another.” Even though it was only nine-thirty at night, George looked as if he should have been in bed hours before. He had rings under his eyes and stubble on his cheeks. I’d never seen him so tired and preoccupied. Come to think of it, I’d never seen his house look so messy. Messy for him, that is; for me it would have been neat. A ticket stub was lying on the hall carpet. Two pairs of large black sneakers and a pair of sweat pants were heaped alongside one wall, while a parka was draped over the hall table. From where I was standing, I could see there were still dishes and Chinese takeout containers sitting on the kitchen table.

  “It’s been a long day,” George offered by way of explanation.

  “Ditto. Where’s your nephew?”

  George scowled. It seemed to be his predominant expression these days. “I don’t want to discuss him,” he told me.

  Since we couldn’t talk about him without arguing, that was fine with me.

  “I found out what you asked me to,” he continued. “You were right. Tommy did get himself arrested.”

  I’d called George early that morning to see if he could confirm a hunch of mine. “When?”

  “Fifteen months ago. In April of last year.”

  The timing fit. I waited for George to go on, but he didn’t. Instead, he went into the kitchen to get himself another beer. I couldn’t help notice that his stride was jerky. As I hung my jacket in the closet, I realized I could hear the dull thud of the refrigerator door opening and closing in the kitchen. What I didn’t hear was any rap music, any pounding bass. In fact, I didn’t hear any music at all. Which meant wherever Raymond was, he wasn’t here.

  George was back a moment later with a Saranac for himself and a saucer for Zsa Zsa. We went into the living room, and I sat down on the sofa and poured a little of my beer into the saucer and set it on the floor for Zsa Zsa. She wagged her tail and started drinking.

  “You’re turning that animal into an alcoholic,” George said.

  “Don’t start,” I warned. “I’m not in a good mood.”

  “Me either.”

  “No kidding,” I observed as he plopped himself down next to me and began cracking his knuckles. When he was done with one hand, he started on the other. A moment later he got up and began pacing around the living room. I picked up a pillow that had fallen on the floor and put it back on the sofa. “Are you going to tell me what you found out about Tommy West or not?”

  Raymond was turning out to be the elephant in the middle of the living room, but I was damned if I was going to be the one to mention him first.

  George brushed aside the curtain and peered through the blind covering the front window. “Mailbox bingo.”

  “What?”

  George kept looking out the window. “Mailbox bingo,” he repeated. “Tommy West and his friends got arrested for mailbox bingo. You ride along a country road and whack at the mailboxes with a baseball bat. You get one point for hitting one, two for knocking it off. Whoever gets the most points wins.”

  Somehow, the way Tommy’s father had been acting, I’d expected something more than a high school prank.

  George cracked his knuckles. “They also ran their Jeep over a golf course and caused about ten thousand dollars worth of damage.”

  “What happened?”

  “To young Thomas Claudius West? He got fifty hours community service and adjournment in contemplation of dismissal. I assume the same was true of the other two.”

  “Did he stay out of trouble?”

  If he hadn’t, if Tommy had been arrested for anything again within six months of his arrest, he would have gone back to court, the case would go to trial, and the proceedings would go on his record.

  “As far as I know, the kid’s been a model citizen ever since.” George let go of the two slats he’d been holding apart, walked over to the sofa, and sat down next to me. The cushion sighed under his weight. “I heard Tommy’s little prank, between court costs, replacing the mai
lboxes, and fixing the golf course, cost his dad fifteen grand.”

  I whistled.

  “Does what I told you help?”

  “Maybe.” The time frame was right. I told George what I suspected.

  George cracked his knuckles while I talked. I wondered if that really did lead to arthritis like my grandmother had said. “So you’re saying Tommy was at this party that he wasn’t supposed to be at because he’s underage?”

  I nodded. “And if he got caught drinking, he would have been arrested, which, given the circumstances, would have been disastrous for him.”

  “So what?”

  “All right.” I made a frame with my hands. “Now, just imagine this. Tommy and Melissa are at the party. It’s late. They’ve had more than a few too many beers. Suddenly the next-door neighbor comes running in, yelling that they found a girl lying out in the back. Naturally Tommy and Melissa go take a look, along with everyone else. It’s Jill. Melissa is distraught. She’s standing there in the pouring rain, crying.

  “But Tommy’s afraid to. He’s scared if he does, he’s going to get busted when the police come. And anyway, there’s nothing they can do because Jill is dead. So he drags Melissa away. He’s taking her back to her dorm. She’s crying, they’re fighting, when he hears a bump, feels something against the car. He doesn’t stop. He figures he’s hit a garbage can or something. The next day Tommy sees the report on the hit-and-run in the paper. Doesn’t think anything of it. Then he goes out to go somewhere. He notices the fender of the car. There’s stuff on it, stuff that shouldn’t be there. He remembers the report. He panics and runs to his dad. Tells him everything.

  “His father says, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.’ That would explain his father’s reaction to me.”

  “So would a lot of other things.” George tilted his bottle of Saranac and took a sip of beer. “I bet you got good marks for story writing when you were in elementary school,” he said after he’d swallowed.

  “It’s a possibility,” I insisted.