Blowing Smoke (5 page)

I put the card down next to the photograph of the Mexican family. Well, one thing was for sure: It was going to be an interesting visit. I went into the back and poured myself a cup of coffee and checked in with Bethany's parents. She hadn't shown—big surprise. Then I called up another one of Bethany's friends and got a possible line on one of the boys she was staying with. I was just looking up his name in the phone book when Calli called me.

“B&N. Tomorrow night around nine. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Great. Gotta go. I'm on deadline.”

“Just give me a two-minute precis on Hillary and her mother.”

“You got it.” I took notes while she talked.

After she hung up, I went back to looking up Bethany's boyfriend's address. Matt Andrews lived on Seymour Street, which wasn't that far away from the store. I called the number listed and was informed by a man with a thick Russian accent that he was out painting houses and would be back around four that afternoon. I thanked him and hung up. Maybe if I was lucky, Bethany would be there too.

I
intercepted Matt Andrews just as he was going up the steps of his house. He was a good-looking, compactly built guy in his twenties with closely cropped blond hair and a killer tan. I could see where Bethany would want him, but why would he want Bethany?

“Yes?” he asked as I approached him. His face closed up as if he were expecting trouble, and he hugged the six-pack of beer he was carrying a little closer to his chest.

I gave him my card. “Bethany's parents would like her to come home.”

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

I pointed at the SUV parked in the driveway. It was the same one I'd seen drive away from Karim's house. “You picked her up the other night.”

“I don't have to talk to you.” He started back up the steps.

“Do the words statutory rape mean anything to you?” I called after him.

He kept going.

“Her parents don't want to prosecute, but they will. She's just fifteen.”

He stiffened and whirled around. “Fifteen? You're kidding me, right?”

“What do you think?”

“She told me she was eighteen,” he protested.

She looked eighteen the way I looked twenty-five. “Well, she's fifteen. Now where is she?”

“I don't know. Honest,” he added after a few beats had gone by.

“Think about it. No. Don't shake your head. At this moment, you're liable to prosecution. You know, being labeled as a sex offender—that wouldn't be good at all.”

“Hey.” He shook a finger at me. “I didn't force myself on her. She gave it up of her own free will. She wanted it.”

“Legally, a fifteen-year-old girl doesn't have free will. Is she in your apartment?”

“No.”

“You mind if I take a look?”

“Be my guest.” I followed him inside. Salsa music and the smell of frying potatoes wafted down from upstairs. “I keep telling them to lower the volume,” he groused as he unlocked the door.

The inside of the apartment was surprisingly neat. It was furnished with odd pieces of mismatched, tattered, nicked furniture, but the windows, floors, and walls were spotless.

“See?” Andrews said as he followed me from room to room. “I told you she wasn't here.”

“So who else does she hang out with?” I inquired when we were back in the living room. When he didn't answer, I nudged him a little. “Remember, a sex-offender status will follow you wherever you go.”

He tugged at his painter's hat. “Sometimes,” he said reluctantly, “she hangs at this tattoo parlor on the North Side.” And he gave me the address. I wrote it down. “She has a friend that works there.”

I consulted my watch. I'd have to drop in there later. The drive out to Rose Taylor's would take me at least a half hour—if there wasn't any traffic on the road. Plus, I was stopping on the way and seeing Bethany's parents before I hit Rose Taylor's. It was a meeting I wasn't looking forward to. After all, how do you tell someone that their fifteen-year-old daughter is stealing money from people? And that was the good news?

I took my card out of Matt Andrews's hand, scribbled my cell phone number on the bottom of it, and handed it back to him. “If she comes by, be smart and call me immediately.”

“Don't worry. Believe me, I will.”

“Good. Because you don't need the kind of trouble she's going to cause you.” And I got in my car and took off. Hopefully, I'd scared him enough so he would.

As I drove along Route 92, I pondered what Calli had told me about Rose Taylor. She was definitely a high-powered lady. The widow of Sanford Taylor, a down-home guy who had been known as one of the powers behind the throne in the New York State Republican Party. A power broker and financier, he'd inherited the family fortune from his dad, Hubbell Taylor, who'd made his money manufacturing office equipment. Sanford had dramatically increased his fortune by strategically aligning himself with certain prominent families that had widespread interests in construction, trucking, waste disposal, and real estate. Rose Taylor was his second wife, his first one having died in an automobile accident.

Twenty-five years younger than her husband, she'd been a nurse, training that had served her well when her husband had come down with rheumatoid arthritis. He'd remained bedridden for five years before he died at the relatively young age of sixty-five. It was rumored she'd become the brains behind his particular operation, the person in charge. Nothing went through without her say-so.

Maybe that's why Sanford had left everything to her. She, in turn, according to Calli, was supposed to look after her children's needs out of the money in the estate. Then, when she died, they'd inherit what was left over. The kids had outstanding debts all over town that the mother was refusing to honor. Not a good recipe for family harmony, I decided as I lit a cigarette. Not a good recipe at all.

 

 

Eagerness made palpable, Arthur and Millie Peterson were waiting for me when I pulled into the driveway of their house. Once we were seated in the living room, I told them everything I'd found out about their daughter. I kept my hands folded and my eyes focused somewhere in the middle of the room, because I didn't want to see their reactions.

“You're wrong,” the mother cried when I was done. “Bethany would never do those things. She's still a baby.”

I felt as if I'd just shot Bambi.

“I just want her to come home.” She covered her face with her hands. Sobs flew out between her fingers.

I couldn't think of anything to say. I studied a piece of pottery and tried not to see her. Her husband put his arms around her and held her close.

“It'll be all right,” he murmured. “You'll see. We'll get through this.”

I couldn't get out of the Petersons' house soon enough. I hate giving people this kind of news, I wished I was back in Noah's Ark, taking care of my fish, cleaning out the bird cages, and feeding Zsa Zsa her dog biscuits. Everything is so much simpler there.

 

 

Like Bethany's parents, Rose Taylor lived in Cazenovia, but in a ritzier part. Normally, I liked driving through the town. Bordering on Cazenovia Lake, it is one of those quaint summer resorts that turn up in tour guides under the heading of undiscovered American gems. It has its share of bed-and-breakfasts, hotels with colorful faux British names, and shops selling amusing postcards, expensive, imported scented soaps, and candles.

Until recently a WASP stronghold, although not as conservative or rich as Skaneateles, another small lakeside resort town in our area, it still harbors a sizable contingent of the wealthy, though their numbers are dwindling as the middle class moved in. What's even worse, from some people's point of view, is that the college there, once an all-girls school, in an attempt to shore up their enrollment, not only turned coed but was now recruiting minority students from New York City. The barbarians were no longer at the gates. They were inside. But they hadn't reached Rose Taylor's house yet.

A white plantation-style manor, it looked like some of the ones I'd once seen on a trip to Newport, Rhode Island, except smaller. Located about forty feet back from the lake, the house was surrounded by a vast, manicured emerald green lawn, which gently unfurled itself as it ran down to the dock. It was a Henry James kind of lawn. I expected to see men and women dressed in white playing croquet. Several sprinklers were set up on the grass, the fine mists of water dancing in the sun, catching the colors of the light. Maybe there was a drought in the rest of Onondaga County, but there wasn't one here.

The bucolic nature of the place was further emphasized by the series of gently rolling hills off in the distance. They were so evenly spaced, they looked as if they had been airbrushed in. The only thing missing was sheep dotting the hillside. Naturally, there was a tennis court and a swimming pool off to one side. I parked the car in the circular driveway a little over to the left. As I walked up the black brick road— no tarmac for Rose Taylor—two gardeners stopped and watched me go by. The sun had turned their skin the color of walnuts.

A maid answered the door a few seconds after I rang. She was dressed in the traditional maid's uniform, a black dress with a white apron, something you don't see too often anymore. Or let me correct that. Something I don't see too often anymore—something that I actually had never seen at all, if we're being accurate.

“The service entrance is around the back,” she told me in heavily accented English.

I guess I should have changed out of my jeans and T-shirt. I handed her my card and told her who I was.

“Really,” I said, giving her my best middle-class smile. “Mrs. Taylor is expecting me. Check if you want.”

“That is not necessary.” The maid's disdainful glance lingered on the place on my T-shirt where I'd wiped my hands after I'd scooped some algae out of one of the fish tanks. Up until now I'd forgotten about the yellow-green stain. Then she gave a slight, resigned shrug, as if to say she only worked here, it wasn't any business of hers who came in.

“Mrs. Taylor is waiting for you in the sunroom.”

I stepped inside, and she closed the door. Constructed from wood, with palm-sized metal rivets, it reminded me of the doors you see on old buildings in Florence or Rome. The maid's short-legged body and the slightly flat shape of the back of her head made me think she was Mayan, probably from Chiapas or the Yucatan. At one time, I would have thought that was unusual, but in the past few years I've been seeing more and more Mexicans in this area.

She turned and started down the hall. I trotted behind her, my slides click-clacking on the black-and-white marble floor. My stomach started to clench. At first, I thought I was nervous about the upcoming meeting, but then I realized it was the house itself. It reminded me of my mother's apartment. The house was perfect. Like a museum. Filled with beautiful objects, it was devoid of the clutter that would have made it a home. From what I could see, it was also devoid of things like computers, television sets, and stereos. The furniture in the rooms we passed was mostly French, the rugs Persian. There were landscapes on the walls and a collection of blue-and-white Chinese pottery displayed in the hall, along with two large antique Japanese scrolls. An old Coromandel screen, similar to one I'd seen in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stood over in one corner.

As I slowed down to contemplate a fifteenth-century Buddha sitting, palms upraised, staring out at a blank wall, consoling no one, I wondered why Hillary had chosen to decorate her house the way she had. Most people in her situation would have picked another motif instead of coming up with a cheap copy of her mother's. I know I had. Maybe Hillary was making an ironic commentary on the nature of wealth and possessions, except she didn't strike me as either distanced or sophisticated enough to do that. I was still wondering about that when I walked into the sunroom.

“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Taylor said, indicating she wanted me to come closer with a crisp wave of her right hand. The gesture was as precise as her penmanship.

She was seated on a cushioned wicker chaise longue, stroking the lilac-point Siamese cat resting on her lap, the cat, I presumed, Pat Humphrey was talking to on a regular basis. A cluster of weeping ficus trees that almost reached the ceiling stood behind her. To her right was a priestly-looking man in a lightweight navy suit, while to her left was the man who'd delivered her note to me this morning.

“Did you have a nice drive over?” she inquired.

I nodded as I advanced across the floor. The place smelled of dead flowers and cloves.

“Good.”

The room was all windows and oak. Off to one side was a small greenhouse that could be closed off from the main room by a sliding-glass door. Baskets of large staghorn and maidenhair ferns hung from the ceiling, while pots of improbably colored orchids sat on the center table.

“Orchids are a hobby of mine,” she explained, following my glance. “I like them because they're a challenge. They're difficult to propagate and difficult to raise. Unlike some other flowers, such as my namesake—roses. Which, despite what some people say, are essentially boring.”

If I were going to guess, I'd say Rose Taylor was about seventy. It was easy to see how pretty she must have been forty years ago. She still had the cheekbones, the large eyes, and a wide, generous mouth. Her gray hair was pulled back in a chignon. Her makeup was light. She hadn't made the mistake of trying to disguise the wrinkles on her face. Her dress was simple, a pair of black linen pants and a thin white linen shirt with decorative embroidery around the collar. Her only jewelry was a pair of large emerald earrings.

“This,” she said, pointing to her cat, “is Sheba, and this,” she said pointing to the tall, painfully thin man in the blue suit, “is my old friend and lawyer, Mr. Moss Ryan. And this person, whom you met in the store this morning, is my husband, Geoffrey Lang.”

I don't know if my jaw dropped or not. But her expression told me how much she enjoyed the look of amazement that had to be appearing on my face.

We were talking about what here? An age difference of twenty-five or thirty years?

For some reason I found myself thinking of the Cheshire cat. Maybe it was Rose Taylor's smile.

Her smile showed off her teeth. They were very small and very white, and they looked as if they could still take a nasty bite out of someone.

“You see,” she purred. “People are wrong when they say money can't buy happiness.”