by Charles Ayer
“Okay, okay. But what are you doing here?”
“I told you I’d get back to you in a couple of days, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“That was a couple of days ago.”
“I guess it was.”
“Okay, then. Why don’t you pull your chair around and I’ll show you what I’ve got for you.”
I did, and she angled her laptop so that we both could see it. She pushed a button.
“Wow,” I said, as I stared at a sharp, full-color page with a header that said, “C. Matthew Hunter, Private Investigator,” along with a recent photo of me that had been taken at a charity event I’d attended with Marianne, but that had been photo-shopped to look like it was a studio photo. There was also a cleverly written bio and a summary of the services I was offering. It made me sound experienced and accomplished, a true triumph of the art of fiction.
“You like?” said Lacey.
“It’s terrific,” I said. “Where did you get that picture?”
“I figured Marianne would post pictures of social events she thought were good for her image on Facebook, and, surprise, surprise, I was right. If you want to make any changes or additions to the stuff I wrote, feel free.”
“No, no, this is great, Lace. Thanks so much.”
“Now, you know what this is, right?”
“It’s my web page right?”
“Right. Now, watch,” she said as she exited the page, returning the search engine to her home page which was, remarkably, the Wall Street Journal online edition. Then she typed into the search bar, “Local Private Investigators,” and hit the enter button. My web site came up at the top of the search list. She clicked on it and there was my new page again.
“How did you do that?” I said. “Of all the private investigators in the country, mine comes up first?”
“Only in this local area,” she said. “These search engines have locator capability, so they know where you are when you make the search request. So it searched the local area just like I asked it to.”
“But still, how come my site came up first? My name doesn’t start with an “A,” and there are a lot of other private investigators in the area.”
“Because, dear brother, I gave your site a search history. It has more hits than any other investigation agency within a hundred miles.”
“You could do that?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that illegal or something?”
Lacey simply stared at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Now,” she said, turning her attention back to the screen, “here you are in the Yellow Pages. I gave you a large box with your web address and email address, as well as your phone number. It’ll make you stand out better.”
I stared at what she’d done in less than two days, and I thought back to the week it had taken me to get those crummy business cards printed up.
“I don’t know what to say, Lace. This is incredible.”
“You’re welcome, but now comes the hard part.”
“What’s that?”
“Go to your email.”
I did, and in my Inbox were emails from two people I didn’t know. I stared at Lacey.
“You now have potential clients, dear brother. That’s the hard part.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got to do your job. I can’t help you with that.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, suddenly feeling in over my head.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, but she was smiling.
“Hey,” I said. “I hate to change the subject, but, speaking of my job, maybe there’s something else you can help me with.”
“Why not?” she said. “I’ve been ignoring my real job all morning anyway. What is it?”
I told her about my visit to Angie Forrester at the Orange County Bank and Trust.
“Sounds like it was a productive visit,” said Lacey when I’d finished. “You now know that he wasn’t kidnapped, which is a crucial data point. You also know, or at least can be pretty sure, that he didn’t suddenly have a nervous breakdown or an attack of amnesia. He had a plan, whatever that was, and he carried it out.”
I hadn’t thought of any of that, but I couldn’t admit that to my little sister.
“I guess that’s not what I was thinking about.”
“Okay, then, what?”
“Well, I always thought that when someone was called a Vice President, that meant that he was, you know, the guy second in line to the President, that he would report directly to him, you know?”
“So?”
“Well, I got the impression that David didn’t report to the president of the bank, that he might have reported to Angie instead.”
“Let’s take a look,” said Lacey, as her fingers once more started flying over the keyboard of her laptop.
“Okay,” she said after a few brief seconds and again turned the screen so that I could see. “Here’s the website of the Orange County Bank and Trust.”
There was a large image of the bank, taken on what looked like another beautiful summer day. Above the image was the bank’s logo, something that vaguely resembled a hot dog with wings with something written in Latin on the hot dog. Beneath the image was written in some kind of fancy font: “Proudly Serving Our Community For Over One-Hundred Years.”
Lacey moved her cursor over to a small box that said, “Our Management Team,” and clicked on it. Up popped an organization chart. At the top was a single picture of “Martin Shoemaker, President and Chief Executive Officer.” Mr. Shoemaker wore an expression that seemed to say, “Nobody calls me ‘Marty.’” Beneath Shoemaker’s picture were six more pictures, all of them of people with the title of “Senior Vice President.” I spotted Angie’s picture. It was good. She looked friendly, the kind of person you’d rather see about a loan than Martin Shoemaker. Beneath her was a picture of “Emerson Baker, Executive Vice President.” He didn’t have his shoes up on his desk in this image, but he had kind of a “Hi, guys!” smile on his face. And beneath Baker was a picture of David, my friend, looking somehow smaller than I’d ever seen him.
Lacey looked over and saw the befuddled expression on my face.
“Matt,” she said, quietly, “there’s something you have to understand about banks.”
“I guess there’s a lot I need to understand about banks,” I said.
“Well, right now what you need to know is that almost everybody who works at a bank is a vice president.”
“Apparently,” I said as I stared at the org chart, which at David’s level looked like the puppy section at the local animal shelter. “I don’t get it.”
“When people come into a bank, they want to feel like they’re talking to someone important, someone with some clout; someone who’s, you know, a vice president.”
“So they just make everybody a vice president?”
“Not everybody, but enough to make it seem that way. If you’re someone with a college degree, once you’ve been there a few years you’re made a Junior Vice President. In a couple more years you’re promoted to an Assistant Vice President, and so on.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Knowledge is survival, Matt. Also, the company I work for has a lot of banks for clients.”
“So David’s nowhere near the top of the bank’s organization?”
“No, he’s actually pretty far down. It sounds like that surprises you.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense, that’s all.”
“Why not, Matt? You think just because he was the quarterback of your high school football team he was destined to be the president of a bank?”
Well, yes, I thought.
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “It’s just that David and Doreen live in one of the nicest houses in town. They’re always hosting charity fundraisers and they’re always the biggest donors.”
“Does Doreen work?”
“No, at least not as far as I know. She always
stayed home and raised the kids and managed the household.”
“Did either of them ever inherit money from relatives?”
“I don’t think so, Lace. They both came from families like ours.”
“Then I don’t get it either,” said Lacey, “because a guy at that level at a local bank probably makes about $65,000 a year, and you know what that buys you around here.”
“Do you think this might have something to do with why he disappeared?”
“I don’t know, but it just might.”
“So what do I do?”
“I know this won’t be easy for you, Matt, but you might want to go and have another conversation with Doreen. I know she’s an old friend, but she obviously hasn’t been completely up front with you.”
“Which is another reason I should be suspicious, I guess.”
“Now you’re catching on.”
“Some private investigator, huh?”
“Don’t worry about it. But Matt?”
“Yeah, Lacey?”
“Are you still sure you want to get into this?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like I tried to tell you the other night, Matt. These people are your lifelong friends, the people you grew up with. I’m afraid you’re going to find out things about them that you’d be a lot happier not knowing, that’s all. Maybe you should reply to the emails you got and ask Doreen Chandler to take her business elsewhere.”
“I’m not sure I can do that, Lace,” I said.
“Then just be careful, okay?” said Lacey, sounding like the older sibling. “And don’t forget, I’m always around.”
“I won’t,” I said, meaning it.
CHAPTER NINE
“THAT’S THE THING I LOVE ABOUT THIS BUSINESS,” said Richie Glazier, as I sat down at the far end of the bar at the Latitude Pub and Grill. “You never know what the cat’s going to drag in.” I hadn’t been ready yet for what was going to be an awkward discussion with Doreen, so I’d wasted the afternoon learning to navigate my new website. Then I’d made myself a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on white bread with potato chips for dinner and washed it down with a beer. It was still early, and the Mets weren’t playing, so I figured it was time to catch up with Richie.
He was a big guy with skin the color of unsweetened chocolate and a retro Afro that made him look seven feet tall. He looked great. Unlike Kenny, he hadn’t gone to fat. In fact, he looked probably twenty pounds lighter than his old playing weight of 240, when he’d been a starting tackle both ways. He was also gay, which didn’t bother me a bit, and I would have kept my mouth shut if it did.
“Good evening, Mr. Glazier, Sir,” I said referring back to an old joke. When he used to walk up to the line before a play, Richie would look across at his usually frightened opponent and say, “If you call me Sir, I might be nice to you.” Richie was never nice to anyone on the football field, but the joke carried over to his friends, and his nickname had been “Sir” all through high school.
“Good evening yourself, stranger,” he said, smiling, but appraising me at the same time. “You’re not looking bad for an old guy who ignores his old friends.”
“You seem to be surviving pretty well yourself,” I said, ignoring the jibe, “and the place looks great. Looks like you’ve sunk some money into it.”
Richie’s parents had been poor, and he’d never gone to college. Instead, he’d gotten a job tending bar and bouncing at the Latitude, which was pretty much a dive at the time. But Richie was smart despite his lack of education, and he was disciplined. After a few years he’d scraped up enough money to buy the place, which the previous owner sold to him for a song because the guy had just wanted to get out from under it, and because it was a dump.
“Yeah, I’ve invested in the place, but it’s paid off,” said Richie, scanning the crowd in both the bar and the dining room, which were both packed. Twenty years ago no one had dared order food at the Latitude, but last year a local magazine, “Hudson Valley Living,” had dubbed its cuisine, “Best Pub Food In Orange County.”
“Did David help you get a loan so that you could make the improvements?” I said, fishing.
“Nah,” said Richie. “Even David didn’t have the juice to get a loan for an uneducated black kid wanting to throw good money after bad.”
I was beginning to suspect that David didn’t have that kind of juice for anyone, but that was beside the point for the moment.
“So how’d you do it?” I said.
“I lived in the janitor’s closet in the back till I was thirty, that’s how.”
“I really admire that,” I said, meaning it. If I’d been that focused, maybe things would have turned out differently in my own life.
“I really appreciate your admiration, Matt,” he said, “but what I’d appreciate more is a little bit of your business. You’ve been sitting here taking up space for five minutes now, and not even the legendary Matt Hunter gets more than that.”
“You got any fancy beers that you recommend?”
“I’ve got some Jupiler from Belgium. Nice and light but a lot of flavor.”
“Good. I’ll have one.”
“And would you like an order of my award winning stuffed baked potato skins to go along with it?”
“Geez, Richie, it’s 9 o’clock and I already had dinner.”
“And would you like an order of my award winning stuffed baked potato skins to go along with it?”
“Sounds great.”
“My man.”
Just as Richie was about to walk off to place my order, Kenny came through the door. He didn’t just come through the door, actually. He made an entrance. He stood at the door with a 100-watt smile on his face looking like he’d just arrived on the red carpet at the Oscars. Sure enough, after only a few seconds, heads turned, followed by shouts of “Hey, Kenny!” and “My man!” He started walking toward the bar, high-fiving and shaking hands like a ballplayer who’d just hit a grand slam. By the time he got to the bar there was a Heineken waiting for him.
“Hey! Thanks Richie!” said Kenny, giving me an “I told you” look.
“My man,” said Richie.
“And while you’re at it, why don’t you put my friend here’s beer on my tab.”
“No problem, my man,” said Richie, as he went off to get my beer and potato skins.
“What’d I tell ya, huh?” said Kenny, giving me a friendly punch on the shoulder. From the smell of his breath, I was pretty sure that he’d already polished off his first six-pack of the evening and that his dinner had consisted of a pepperoni pizza.
“You’re the man, Kenny,” I said, “that’s for sure.”
“Damn right,” he said.
And he was. Before long he was surrounded by old buddies, some of whom I remembered, and more that I should have. Some said “hi” to me, but I was now a faded memory, not one of the gang who had stayed in town, and after a few minutes Kenny and the crowd had moved off, and I was left alone at the bar with Richie.
“Does he come in here a lot?” I said, as I swallowed the last bite of potato skins. I hadn’t been hungry but they’d been irresistible.
“Yeah,” Richie said as he removed my plate from the bar, “probably five or six nights a week. He usually gets here after he’s had his first six-pack or so at the Riverside to wash down the pizza or the foot-long sausage sub that’s his usual dinner, and then he comes here for another five or six. Then he might stop off at The Clover Leaf on the other end of town for another two or three on his way home. He is, as we say, a man about town.”
“And you comp him every night?”
“Yeah.”
“That must be a helluva drain on your bottom line.”
“Not really,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Look, man,” Richie said, starting to look a little uncomfortable, “I’ve already said too much.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m not trying to be nosy.” I proceeded to
tell him about David’s disappearance, that Doreen had hired me to find him, and that I was just trying to gather any information that might be helpful. He gave me another appraising look.
“Okay,” he said after a short pause, deciding to give me a pass on what the connection might be. “Well, the other business owners in town and I knew that we couldn’t comp the guy forever, but nobody had the heart to tell him that. So I was deputized to go see Allie and have an informal chat with her.”
“What, did you draw the short straw?”
“Naw, it’s just that the other guys figured she might want a shoulder to cry on, and there’d be no chance of anything, you know, out of line ensuing if I went.”
“’Ensuing,’ huh? Pretty big word for a down lineman.”
“I give my friends in the gay community all the credit for looking after my formal education. I am told that I have developed polish and excellent comportment,” said Richie with a straight face.
“I bet you have,” I said, looking for some signal that he was joking, but none was forthcoming. “So how did that work out?”
“Allie was upset, but I don’t think she was surprised. She was more humiliated than anything, I think.”
“So she agreed to pay you all?”
“Yes, and we all agreed only to charge her wholesale. We’ve been handling it very quietly ever since.”
“And Kenny doesn’t know about it?”
“Not a thing, and it’s going to stay that way,” he said, giving me a stern look.
I looked around the room and spotted Kenny, the center of attention, laughing and yapping, swilling yet another beer. His color was high, and he seemed to be perspiring. This was not going to end well. I finished my beer and was getting ready to settle my bill, but Richie put another bottle in front of me.
“So tell me about David,” he said.
“I wish I had something to tell you, Richie.”
“You must know something by now.”
“Look, all I know is that he supposedly left for work last Thursday morning, and that’s the last time Doreen saw him. But when I went to the bank, I was told that on the previous Wednesday evening he’d told his boss – who is not the president of the bank, by the way – that he’d be taking a few days off.”
