Where Are You Now?

63

A fter my shouting match with Detective Barrott, I went upstairs to find concerned messages from both Nick and Elliott on the machine. “Where are you, Carolyn? Please give me a call. I’m worried about you.” That was from Nick. His final message had been left at midnight. “Carolyn, your cell phone isn’t turned on. When you get home, please call me, no matter what time it is.”

Elliott had left three messages, the latest at 11:30 P.M. “Carolyn, your cell phone is off. Please call me. I’m so concerned about you. I saw your mother this evening, and I feel that she is much stronger emotionally, but I feel as if in my concern for her, I may have been failing you. You know how dear you are to me. Call me as soon as you get this message.”

Listening to all the messages, the concern in both their voices, felt like stumbling into a warm room after an ice storm. I loved them both, but I was hardly going to call either one of them at 3:30 in the morning. I had rushed out of the restaurant in Martha’s Vineyard without having dinner, and now I realized I was starving. I went into the kitchen and had a glass of milk and half a peanut butter sandwich. I hadn’t eaten peanut butter in ages, but somehow at that moment I craved it. Then I got undressed and fell into bed. I was so wired that I didn’t think I would sleep, but the minute I closed my eyes I was gone.

Gone into a maze of mournful dreams and weeping shadows and something else. What was it? What face was I trying to see that was eluding me, taunting me? It wasn’t Mack. When I dreamt about him, I saw a boy of ten, with a cowlick and sandy hair and wide-set eyes. Mack’s son. My nephew. I woke up around eight o’clock, put on a robe, and, still half groggy, went down to the kitchen.

In the morning light, the kitchen seemed reassuringly familiar. Whenever Mom went on a trip, she let our longtime housekeeper have a mini-vacation; Sue would come in only once a week to keep the apartment fresh. All the little signs showed me that she had been in yesterday while I was at the Vineyard. There was fresh milk in the fridge, and the mail that I had dumped on a counter in the kitchen was neatly stacked. I was just grateful that she’d been here the one day I was away. I couldn’t have endured having her commiserate with me about Mack.

I didn’t have the faintest desire for anything to eat. But my head was clear, and I had some decisions to make. I tried to think them through over three cups of coffee.

Detective Barrott. I honestly thought I convinced him that I was not protecting Mack, but on the other hand, I had not told him about something that might have had everything to do with Mack’s disappearance…

Barbara had told me that Bruce’s anger at Mack was because of Mack’s treatment of her. But maybe there was a lot more to it than that. Bruce had always been desperately in love with Barbara. He obviously married her on her terms-“Be my baby’s father and send me to medical school.” Did he have anything to do with forcing Mack to run away? Did he threaten him? And if so, with what?

That simply didn’t make sense to me.

Mack’s child. I had to protect him. Barbara didn’t know I had seen him. He was growing up as the son of a pediatric surgeon and a wealthy real estate entrepreneur. He had two little sisters. I could never shatter his world, and if I tried to cast suspicion on Bruce, and Barrott began digging into the relationship between Barbara and Mack before Mack disappeared, that could happen.

I needed someone to talk to, someone whom I could trust implicitly. Nick? No. The lawyer we’d hired, Thurston Carver? No. And then the answer came, and it was so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner: Lucas Reeves! He had been in on the investigation since the beginning. He had interviewed Nick and Barbara and Bruce and the Kramers. I called his office. It was only 8:30, but he was already there. He told me to come over as soon as I could make it. He said that he and his staff were working on nothing but finding Leesey’s abductor.

“Even if it’s Mack?” I said.

“Of course, even if it’s Mack, but I absolutely do not believe the answer lies with him.”

I showered, then turned on the television and watched as I dressed. The police had released to the media the fact that another call had been received from Leesey. “The contents have not been revealed, but a police source confirmed that there is a high probability that she is now dead,” the CNN anchor said.

As I pulled on jeans and a long-sleeve cotton sweater, I thought that at least, by not releasing the exact contents of the conversation, Mack’s name had been kept out of it.

I like jewelry, and I always wear earrings and something around my neck. Today I chose a thin gold chain with a pearl that Daddy had given to me, and then I fished in the drawer for the earrings that Mack had presented to me on my sixteenth birthday. They were a gold sunburst design with a tiny diamond in the center. I felt close to both Daddy and Mack as I fastened them.

It was about a mile from Sutton Place to Reeves’s office, but I decided to walk. After so much time in the car in the last few days, I needed the exercise. The question was how I could avoid the media.

I did it by going down to the garage and waiting for a few minutes until a resident of the building came along. Then I begged a ride. He was a distinguished-looking older man. I had never met him. “Could I just hide on the floor of your backseat until we’re a couple of blocks away?” I pleaded.

He looked at me sympathetically. “Ms. MacKenzie, I certainly understand why you want to get away without the media, but I’m afraid I’m not the one who should help you. I’m a federal judge.”

I almost laughed in disbelief. But then the judge signaled to someone who had just gotten off the elevator. “Hi, David,” he said. “This young lady needs help, and I know you’ll provide it.” Feeling my cheeks burn with embarrassment, I thanked them both.

David whoever-he-was dropped me off at Park and Fifty-seventh. I walked the rest of the way, my thoughts as scattered as the scraps of paper that the breeze was picking up and depositing near the curb. The month of May was almost over. O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May. We used to sing that every May at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, and one year, when I was about seven, I got to crown the statue of the Virgin.

Fast-forward to the scene today-me kneeling on the floor of the car to avoid microphones and cameras!

When I got to Lucas Reeves’s office, the sight of that small, strong-featured man with the resonant voice helped me to focus again. He pumped my hand vigorously, as if he understood I needed human contact. “Come inside, Carolyn,” he said. “I’ve got quite a setup in here.” He led me into a large conference room. The walls were covered with pictures in which faces had been enlarged. Some of them were inside shots, others had obviously been taken outside. “These start when the first young woman disappeared ten years ago,” Reeves explained. “We’ve culled them from newspaper pictures, television clips, security cameras. They were taken in and around the clubs where the four young women disappeared. I have invited the detective squad of the District Attorney’s office to come here and inspect them to see if, just maybe, one face will trigger a connection that has been missed so far. Why don’t you look at them?”

I walked around the room, stopping when I saw the faces of Mack and Nick and some of their friends at that first club. They looked so young, I thought. Then I walked around all four walls, from one collage to the next, and then to the next, my eyes searching and searching. At one point, I stopped. That looks like-, I thought, then almost laughed out loud. How stupid. I couldn’t even see the man’s face, just his eyes and forehead.

“Anything?” Lucas asked.

“No. Just the obvious ones of Mack and Nick in that first club.”

“All right. Let’s go into my office.”

We settled in there. The ritual coffee was delivered, and then I told Lucas Reeves what I had learned in Martha’s Vineyard. He listened, his expression becoming increasingly grave. “So it now seems that Mack had a very good reason for disappearing. A woman he did not love was bearing his child. He did not want to marry her. He did not want to go to law school. So rather than risk the certain disappointment your parents, especially your father, would have felt, he ran away. The root cause of a vast majority of crimes is one of two factors, love or money. In Mack’s case, the primary motive for his disappearance would be his lack of love for Barbara.”

Reeves leaned back in his chair. “People have run away for less. If-and I repeat, if-Mack was involved in the death of that first young woman, that also might explain the theft of the tapes from his former teacher. When she was interviewed, she could give no explanation for his disappearance, except to say that he would have made an exceptionally fine actor. But perhaps he confided too much to her, and felt he had to retrieve his tapes somehow. I have studied the records. Her death was caused not so much by the blow to her head that rendered her unconscious, but by the fall itself onto the sidewalk. That was what caused the bleeding in the brain that took her life.”

He stood up and walked to the window. “Carolyn, there are questions here that we have not yet answered. Even if your brother is part of it, I don’t think he is all of it.” He paused, then added: “When I called Captain Ahearn, he did not divulge the full contents of the message Leesey left, but he did say she spoke about Mack.”

“Detective Barrott told me what she said.” My throat closed as I quoted Leesey’s agonizing words, and then I repeated what I had shouted at Barrott.

“And you are correct. She may have been forced to use his name.”

“I keep coming back to the fact that Bruce Galbraith hates Mack,” I said. “Think how much he must have hated him when Mack was involved with Barbara. Suppose Mack did just take off.” I started to speculate. “Suppose Bruce is still afraid he’ll show up someday, and Barbara will go running to him. She claims she hates Mack, but I wonder if that’s true. Mack was such a special human being. He always said that Bruce had zero personality. When I saw Bruce last week, he was openly hostile, so it was obviously not a normal social exchange. But he’s a plain-looking guy, and while he may be hugely successful, I bet that on a day-to-day basis, he’s still the same dull and boring person. Nick said they called him ‘the Lone Stranger,’ and he was in the club the night the first girl disappeared.” I watched Reeves as he considered all of this.

“I wonder how thoroughly Mr. Galbraith was investigated ten years ago,” Reeves said. “I’ll look into it.”

I got up. “I won’t keep you any longer, Lucas,” I said. “But I’m glad to have you in my corner.” I corrected myself, “In Mack’s corner, too.”

“Yes, I am.” He walked with me through the reception area to the door. “Carolyn, if I may be personal, you are living under a strain that would break the most hardy of men. Is there a place you could get away to, to be by yourself, or with a close friend?” He looked at me with concern.

“I’m thinking about it,” I said. “But first I’m going to visit my mother, whether she wants to see me or not. As you know, she’s in that private sanitarium in Connecticut, where Elliott brought her.”

“I do know.” At the door, Reeves took my hand again. “Carolyn, the entire detective squad from the District Attorney’s office will be in and out all afternoon. Maybe one of them will spot a face in that sea of faces that will open a door for us.”

I walked home. This time I did not try to sneak into the apartment building. The doors of media vans that had been keeping vigil sprang open, and reporters came rushing up to me as I approached our building.

“Carolyn…what do you think?”

“Ms. MacKenzie, would you broadcast an appeal to your brother to turn himself in?”

I turned to face the microphones. “I will broadcast an appeal to one and all to presume my brother innocent of any and all crimes. Remember, there is not one shred of proof against him. Everything is based on innuendo and supposition. And let me remind all of you that there are libel laws and serious penalties for violating them.”

I hurried inside, not giving them a chance to respond. I went up to the apartment and began to return the phone calls I had been ignoring. The first was to Nick. His relief at hearing my voice seemed so spontaneous that I tucked it away in a corner of my mind as something to think about later.

“Carolyn, don’t do this to me. I’ve been a wreck. I even called Captain Ahearn to see if they were holding you there. He said they hadn’t heard from you.”

“They hadn’t heard from me, but they knew where I was,” I said. “Evidently I was being followed.”

I told Nick that I had seen Barbara in Martha’s Vineyard, but it had been a useless trip. I selected carefully the information I would give him. “I agree with you. She probably married Bruce to get a ticket to medical school, but she seems to be keeping her share of the bargain.” I also couldn’t resist having a chance to slam her. “She let me know what a devoted and loving pediatric surgeon she is, that sometimes when she walks through the pediatric nursery, she goes over to a crying baby and picks it up to comfort it.”

“That would be Barbara,” Nick agreed. “Carolyn, how are you holding up?”

“Just barely.” I could hear the exhaustion in my voice.

“Me, too. The cops have been raking me and Benny over the coals again. One good piece of news?” His tone brightened. “I sold my Park Avenue apartment.”

“The one that makes you feel like Roy Rogers?” I smiled.

“Exactly. The agent tells me the buyer is planning to rip it to the studs and redesign it. Good luck to him.”

“Where will you go?”

“To the loft. I’m looking forward to it, if there’s anything I look forward to at this minute. We caught a nineteen-year-old with a phony driver’s license in the club last night. If we’d served her, we could have been shut down. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was planted by the cops to put more pressure on me.”

“Nothing would surprise me at this point,” I said, meaning it.

“Dinner tonight? I want to see you.”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m going to drive up and try to visit Mom. I need to see for myself how she’s doing.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“No, I have to go alone.”

“Carolyn, let me ask you something. Years ago, Mack told me that you had a crush on me and that I should be careful not to encourage it by playing up to you.” He paused, clearly trying to keep his tone playful. “Is there any way I could revive that crush, or now is it going to stay one-sided on my part?”

I know there was a smile in my voice. “It was mean of him to tell you.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Nick’s voice became serious again. “All right, Carolyn. I’ll let you go. But hang on to the thought that we’re going to make it through this mess.”

I started to cry. I didn’t want him to hear, and clicked off, but then immediately wondered if Nick hadn’t been starting to say, “together,” or did I only imagine hearing that word because I wanted so desperately for it to turn out that way?

Then it occurred to me for the first time that it was possible my cell phone and the telephone line in the apartment were being tapped. Of course they must be, I thought. Barrott has been sure I’m in touch with Mack. They wouldn’t take a chance on not knowing if he called.

Reflecting on my conversation with Nick, I wondered if their ears were burning at his suggestion that they might deliberately try to entrap him with an underaged drinker in the Woodshed.

I hoped so.