Vanishing Act Read online

  “They’re breaking in,” George said, our argument temporarily forgotten as the kids, startled by the noise from the Taurus, froze.

  A second later they’d recovered enough to sprint onto the sidewalk, across a lawn, and disappear into an alleyway. They were followed a few seconds later by a third kid getting out of the car. He took off too.

  George pointed at the retreating figure. “That’s Raymond.”

  “How can you tell?” The kids were all the same size. They were all wearing the same clothing.

  “Because I can.”

  George went after him.

  I followed.

  Chapter 14

  It’s hard to chase someone by foot in Syracuse in March, especially at night. During that time temperatures traditionally rise above freezing during the day and fall after sundown, which makes for large patches of thick ice over sidewalks, steps, and paths. The fact that George was wearing leather-soled boots and his nephew, in addition to being lighter and more agile, had on hightops didn’t help either. I’d gotten halfway down the street, when George came trotting toward me. He was hard-faced and empty-handed.

  “Why didn’t you follow in the car?” he growled, heading back toward the Taurus.

  “Maybe because you have the keys.”

  He got in the car without answering and slammed the door shut. If I’d been wearing my ski parka instead of a leather jacket, I would have walked the mile back to my cab.

  We circled the area for the next half hour locked in tension-filled silence, but the kids were gone. They were crouched down in the backseat of an open car or they’d slipped through an unlatched basement window and were hiding in someone’s house. Judging from the look of fury on George’s face, I couldn’t help thinking it was just as well he couldn’t find them. I found myself sitting toward the door. I was glad to get out of the Taurus when we got back to his house.

  “You know, sometimes you really are a schmuck,” I told him as he marched up the path toward his house.

  He kept on marching.

  Zsa Zsa and I got in the cab and went home.

  It had not been a good evening.

  Calli took a sip of her latte and pushed an envelope containing the articles I’d asked her to get on Jill Evans across the table with the tip of her finger. “What would you do if I were still in California?”

  “Pay the fee.”

  Calli laughed. I suddenly realized how much I’d missed not talking to her.

  “You didn’t have to bring them. I would have picked them up.”

  “I know. But this gave me an excuse to see you and have some coffee.”

  We were sitting in the café at Barnes & Noble.

  Calli looked around. “I know we’re not supposed to like the big chains, I know they’re driving out the little bookstores, but it’s still nice to have a place like this in Syracuse. It gives me the illusion of being au courant.”

  “Sorry you’ve come back?”

  She ripped open another packet of sugar and poured it into her coffee. “Well, this isn’t exactly the center of the universe. Especially if you’re single.”

  “Too true.” I put the envelope in my backpack. I wanted to read the articles in a quiet place, where I could concentrate.

  “Of course, you have George. If I had somebody, maybe I wouldn’t feel this way.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure.” I told her what had happened earlier. I’d found out from Tim how a beat cop had knocked on George’s door at one in the morning with Raymond in hand. “He picked him up on East Genesee. George could have called and told me.”

  “You did call him a putz.”

  “Schmuck.”

  “Big difference.”

  I ate a piece of my cheesecake. The one I used to make was better, but this one would do. “So I called him to ask him why he hadn’t called me, and you know what he said?”

  Calli shook his head.

  “He said he didn’t think I’d be interested.” I grimaced and ate another piece of cake. “I wish he’d put that kid back on the bus to New York.”

  “And admit that he can’t whip his nephew into shape? Don’t be ridiculous. What’s he doing with him?”

  “He has him under house arrest.”

  “Should be fun for you,” Calli observed.

  “The man is an asshole.”

  Calli took another sip of her latte and scraped the last crumbs of icing from her chocolate cake from the plate with her fork. “They all are, but at least yours is good in bed,” she said, licking the fork.

  “I’m not sure that’s enough.”

  “You used to say it was with Murphy.”

  I finished off my cake. “I’m changing my mind. Talking would be nice too.”

  “You must be getting older.”

  “That’s probably it.” I changed the topic to Jill Evans.

  As I read the articles in the store later that afternoon, I thought about what Calli had told me. What she’d said was that for all practical purposes all the information on Evans was contained in the newspaper articles. Sometimes that wasn’t the case, sometimes rumors swirled around the newsroom that never found their way into print, but evidently, as with Melissa Hayes, that wasn’t so here.

  I stretched, settled back in my chair, lit another cigarette, and considered what I’d read. According to the first article, a short item on the front page of the Post Standard, on the night of May 5, Jill Evans had fallen out of a third-floor window at 1800 Cumberland. According to the chief medical examiner at the Onondaga County medical examiner’s office, she’d died instantly from “multiple blunt-force injuries.” The university vice president of public relations had expressed his sorrow to the girl’s parents, said that foul play was not suspected, and taken the opportunity to state that more information would be released as soon as possible.

  The second article appeared the next day and ran for four paragraphs. It stated that toxicology reports from the coroner’s officer were pending, and though the university and the police department would not confirm or deny anything, the paper quoted a number of students who had seen Jill Evans engaging in what was called “heavy drinking” earlier that evening at the party she’d been attending. She’d evidently been doing Jell-O shots. No one seemed to know why she’d wandered up to the bedroom on the third floor, although she’d said something about feeling the need to lie down.

  The article went on to state no one at the party had seen her fall or even been aware that she had because the music had been so loud, it had blocked the sound. Her body had been discovered by a neighbor who had seen something lying on the ground in the back of the house. Curious, he’d gone to investigate and found Jill Evans, at which point he’d run into his house and called 911. The last paragraph of the article was an exercise in damage control from the university’s vice president of public relations to the effect that underage drinking was illegal and obviously forbidden to any of the school’s students and that appropriate measures would be taken if warranted. What those measures were and what would warrant them were not spelled out.

  The third article confirmed that Jill Evans had indeed been drinking and that her blood alcohol level was “quite high.” It also featured a bouquet of quotes from dormmates about what a nice girl Jill Evans had been; but then, when people are dead, they always are. You rarely read about someone saying “That guy was an absolute shit. The world’s a better place without him.” I became more interested when I noticed one of the people quoted was Melissa Hayes. “Jill was my best friend and now she’s gone,” she’d said. “It was a stupid way to die. I should have done more.”

  Done more of what? I wondered. Melissa had obviously felt guilty, but did she have a reason to, or was she feeling that general guilt that survivors get. Had that guilt gnawed at her till she couldn’t take it anymore? Despite what her mother had said, she was at an age when the death of a friend would hit her especially hard. I stubbed my cigarette out. I’d been smoking way too much lately, and pulled the la
st two articles out from underneath Pickles, who’d just vaulted onto the desk from the floor. She’d meowed a protest which I ignored. The cat shared a genius with most animals of her ilk for lying on whatever I was trying to read at the time.

  Both of these articles were short. One was a general article dealing with the problems of drinking on college campuses. It discussed the possible reasons for the increase in binge drinking over the last ten years in schools across the country, detailed fraternity drinking games, and ended with statistics on the concomitant rise in alcohol-related deaths.

  The last article, published two weeks after Jill Evans’s death, featured a quote by the now-familiar vice president of public relations to the effect that disciplinary action was being contemplated against any underage students who had been drinking with Jill at the time of her death. The vice president was also careful to point out the house the party had taken place in had been rented by non-students and was therefore not under their aegis, which was a fancy way of saying this whole mess wasn’t their responsibility.

  And that had been that. I put the copies of the articles in the folder I’d started for Melissa Hayes. On the surface, Calli was right. The story was clear cut. Jill Evans had gone to a party. She’d gotten very drunk. She’d leaned out a window, lost her balance, and toppled out. Sad, stupid, but no suggestion of foul play. As a previous article had pointed out, similiar incidents happened on college campuses all across the country every year. Pickles meowed for attention. I petted her, and she began to purr. A moment later she turned around and bit me. This, I decided, as I sucked the edge of my hand, was why I liked dogs better. At least with them you know where you stand. I was in the middle of trying to shoo Pickles off my desk—she didn’t want to move—when the phone rang. A voice identifying itself as Mr. West asked to speak to Robin Light.

  Mr. West, hunh? Tommy must have decided to tell his dad about our conversation. Why else would he be calling? From what Tommy had said, something told me this wasn’t going to be a friendly chat.

  “I’m Robin Light,” I said into the receiver.

  “Do you have any children, Ms. Light?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, as I know you know, I have one and he’s the most important thing in the world to me.”

  “I can appreciate that,” I replied cautiously.

  “I’m sure you can.” Mr. West’s voice had a rough quality to it. “That’s why I’m calling.”

  I waited to see what was coming next.

  “Tommy told me you paid him a visit the other day.”

  “That’s true,” I allowed.

  “It upset him a great deal.”

  I started to apologize, but Mr. West cut me off. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to do that.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And I can appreciate why you wanted to talk to him—this thing with Melissa is terrible—but I have to ask you to stay away from my son.”

  I reached for my lighter and started flicking it. The flame spurted up, sputtered, and died. I tried again. Nothing. I put the lighter down. The damn thing was out of fluid. “Melissa’s mother is terminally ill. She doesn’t have much longer to live.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Then how can you, as a parent, not understand how important it is to her to find out what happened to her daughter before she dies?”

  “Believe me, I do. My heart goes out to her, and if I thought my son could help her, I wouldn’t hesitate to have him do whatever was necessary to bring that end about.”

  “Maybe he can.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t the case. I promise you that he’s already told the police everything he knows, which, unfortunately, isn’t much.”

  “He left out one thing.”

  “What’s that?” I could hear the note of caution in Mr. West’s voice.

  I leaned back in my chair till it was balanced on its hind legs and contemplated the water stain on the opposite wall. Suspense is good for the soul.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time to play games, Ms. Light,” Mr. West responded after a few more seconds had passed. “If you have something to say, say it.”

  “I was going to. Your son didn’t tell the police he and Melissa were planning on getting married.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then I heard a sigh. “You see, this is the kind of thing I’m talking about. People like you take statements and then make them out to be something they’re not.”

  I ignored the “people like you.” Instead, I said, “I think it’s indicative that Tommy hasn’t told everything he knows.”

  “It isn’t indicative of anything,” Mr. West snapped. “I was the one who told him not to mention it to the police.”

  I brought my chair back down. Pickles stretched and nudged my hand with her head. She wanted me to pet her again. I kept my hand where it was. She meowed. I’m such a sucker, I thought as I caved in and stroked underneath her chin. She began purring again.

  “And why was that, Mr. West?” I asked. “That seems like an odd thing to do.”

  “I did it precisely because of what is happening now between you and me.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’re making more of this than it warrants.”

  “Maybe so. But I heard Melissa was very upset.”

  There was a short pause on the other end of the line, then West said, “Unfortunately, from what my son told me, Melissa was the kind of girl who became emotional about a lot of things. She had an extremely unrealistic view of the world.”

  “How so?”

  “She believed everything she learned in parochial school.”

  I wound the phone cord around one of my fingers. “Obviously you think that’s bad.”

  “I don’t think it equips people to deal with life as they will find it. Now, if there’s nothing else ...”

  “I have one more question I’d like to ask.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I’m just wondering: What else did you tell Tommy not to say anything about?”

  “Do you know who I am, Ms. Light?” he asked. An icy edge had crept into his tone.

  “You’re Mr. West, Tommy West’s father.”

  “That’s right. My first name is Michael.”

  I let out a low whistle.

  Chapter 15

  When I told Tim whom I’d been on the phone with, he stopped putting new bedding in the dwarf Russian hamsters’ cage and straightened up. Little shreds of pine bark clung to his black T-shirt. “Michael West?” he asked, brushing them off.

  I nodded as I watched the five hamsters, upset that their carefully amassed food store had disappeared, scurry around.

  “The Michael West?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Do I look as if I am?”

  “How could you not have known?”

  “Hey, West is a common name. No one told me,” I said, thinking of Marks. That son of a bitch. After the bargain I’d given him on the snake for his stepson. He’d owed me that much, at least.

  “But you saw him,” Tim protested, dusting himself off.

  “Only for a minute.” No wonder the guy had looked familiar. “Anyway, his picture isn’t in the paper that much. And it’s not exactly as if I travel in that social circle.” Zsa Zsa danced around my feet, and I absentmindedly held out a treat to her. “No wonder Mr. West didn’t want his son to get married,” I observed as she grabbed it out of my hand and ran away to eat it.

  “How much is West worth?”

  I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. I wasn’t good remembering numbers. “A lot.” The guy was a builder who’d made his fortune by taking inner-city housing, rehabing it, and convincing middle-class people to move in. He’d started out as a framer working for a contractor down in Miami and ended up a multimillionaire. In the last couple of years he’d been profiled in several magazines as an example of what businesses ca
n do to save American cities. Recently, he’d taken up politics. A major player in the Republican party, he was rumored to be up for an important party position.

  “What did West say to you?” Tim asked.

  “Basically, in so many words, he told me to stay away from his son.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Not much.”

  Tim gently tugged on the diamond stud in his right earlobe. “One of my friends did some electrical work for someone who worked for his company down in Georgia. He said he had ties to the mob.”

  One of the parrots started to shriek. “That doesn’t mean anything. If you work in that business, you work with the mob or you don’t work at all.”

  “Kip said he heard West’s a real bastard.”

  “No surprise there. You don’t get to where he is by being a nice guy.”

  “Yeah. The assholes are running the world.”

  “They always have.”

  Tim snorted. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  I nibbled on the edge of a torn cuticle. “That depends on where the questions I’m asking lead. I’m not going to go out of my way to talk to Tommy again, but I won’t not talk to him either, if I feel it’s warranted.”

  “Do you think his kid is involved?”

  I weighed the alternatives. “Given the way Mr. West is acting, it’s possible. His son certainly could have a motive for wanting Melissa out of his life. On the other hand, maybe Mr. West is telling the truth. Maybe the guy’s just trying to shield his kid. Maybe he’s an overprotective father.” A dull ache of pain made me look at my finger. Somehow I’d managed to rip the cuticle off. I cursed silently. The damn thing was going to hurt for a week now. The way my luck was going, it would probably get infected. “If I had a kid, I’d probably do the same thing myself.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Tim said, starting in on the hamster cage again. “I don’t think you do people favors by protecting them. If they don’t suffer the consequences of their actions, they’re never going to learn.”