Blowing Smoke (9 page)

 

 

Even though I tried, I couldn't get my telephone conversation with Pat Humphrey out of my mind. I knew she was scamming me ... and yet. But that's what people like her do—take advantage of everyone's desire to believe. Which was why I decided to pay her a visit. Off the clock. I wanted to make her admit she was lying about Murphy.

I arrived at her cottage a little after two-thirty the following afternoon. By that time, my T-shirt was sticking to my back, and the khaki skirt I'd put on that morning was a crumpled mess. I took my sunglasses off, wiped the sweat off the bridge of my nose, and redid my ponytail before heading for the house.

It was just as well, I decided, as I rang the doorbell, that I'd left Zsa Zsa with Tim. Cocker spaniels—in fact, dogs in general—don't do well when the temperature is in the nineties, and we were into triple digits. Of course, I don't do well, either. Unfortunately, I didn't have a nice owner who was willing to take care of me, not that Zsa Zsa was showing any signs of gratitude. But then, when you're a princess, you don't have to.

She hadn't even protested when I'd walked out the door. Usually she hates it when I go anywhere without her. But not now. She'd just opened one eye, then closed it again and gone back to her doggie dreams. Right now I wished I could join her. The one good thing about working these days was that the store was air-conditioned. I rang the bell again. No one answered.

I was turning to go when I noticed Humphrey's car was still in the garage. Which meant she was probably down the block, or maybe she was across the street visiting a neighbor. I rang the bell one more time just to make sure. When no one came to the door, I sat myself down on one of the porch chairs and reviewed the questions I had for her while I fanned myself with a pizza flyer that I'd found lying on the armrest.

Everything was quiet. The surrounding houses were closed up against the sun, their curtains drawn. The birds were hiding in their nests. The cats were snoozing under bushes. The air shimmered in the heat. A faint breeze brought with it the smell of hot tar mixed with roses. I listened to the murmur of the traffic down below and dreamed of iced tea. Somewhere, far away, a dog barked. Finally, after about twenty minutes or so, I roused myself from my torpor and walked around the back.

Pat Humphrey's backyard had a Mediterranean feel to it. An ornamental shadberry tree, its branches heavy with fruit, sat in the middle of the yard. Toward the rear, hugging a white wooden fence, was a medium-size vegetable garden, while perennial and herb beds, their curved borders marked with different-colored rocks, ran around the rest of the perimeter.

Three ceramic pigs of various sizes nestled in among the rosemary and lavender. Sunflowers grew along the back. A white wrought-iron table and two chairs sat on a small stone patio. A squirrel was sitting on the table eating the remains of a breakfast roll from a plate. When he saw me, he grabbed his bounty and ran away.

As I walked to the table, my feet sank into the ground. I felt something wet and looked down. A stream of water was running out of the garden hose. It must have been running for a while, because it had formed a small channel in the ground. Somehow I couldn't imagine Pat Humphrey leaving the water running like that. For that matter, I thought as I looked for the faucet handle, I couldn't imagine her leaving her breakfast dishes on the table. From the way she kept her house, she was much too neat a person for that.

After I shut off the water, I went over to the table. A line of ants was snaking its way over a half-eaten piece of toast and circling around the top of the capless jar of strawberry jam. Where the hell was the cap, I wondered as I looked at the almost-full cup of coffee sitting nearby. A drop of sweat working its way down my spine felt chilly as I contemplated the dead fly floating on top of the brown liquid.

I bit one of my nails as I tried to visualize what had occurred. Pat Humphrey had made herself breakfast and taken it outside, at which point she'd probably begun watering her plants.

And then she'd left.

Without turning the water off. Or putting the top back on the jam.

And she hadn't returned.

I pictured her standing here, garden hose in one hand, a piece of toast in the other, listening to the birds.

What had happened?

Had someone come along?

Had there been a sudden emergency?

Then another idea occurred to me. One I liked even less. Maybe Pat Humphrey was still here.

Inside.

And she hadn't answered the door because she couldn't. I was probably overdramatizing, I told myself. She was probably at a neighbor's. Nevertheless, I hesitated for a few seconds before I walked over, grasped the door handle, and pulled. It swung open. Steeling myself for the body that I hoped I wouldn't find sprawled on the floor—I can never get used to the look of surprise and indignation on the faces of homicide victims—I took a deep breath and stepped inside.

“Pat? Pat Humphrey?” I called, walking toward the middle of the room. “It's Robin Light.”

Nothing.

I tried again. All I heard was the humming of the refrigerator. I glanced around the kitchen. A coffeepot with a filter on top was sitting on the counter, a few cups and a knife and fork lay in the sink, but the cupboard doors were closed, the countertops were clean.
A
place
for everything and everything in its place,
my mind sang.

I don't know why, but I tiptoed through the living room and the dining room as if I were walking through rows of mourners at a funeral parlor. Since my last visit, Pat Humphrey had changed the flowers in the crystal vase on the mantel to orchids, just like the ones Rose Taylor grew.

I opened the hall closet. It was filled with the usual stuff: coats, sneakers, golf clubs, a couple of tennis rackets—nice ones—a canoe paddle. There were no signs of violence, no signs of Pat Humphrey having been dragged away. I backtracked and walked down a narrow hallway and took a quick peek into her bedroom. It smelled of sandalwood, just like the rest of the house. The walls were painted lavender. The trim was white. The bed was made. The curtains were partially open. The dresser drawers were closed. The room was neat and clean and tidy.

So was Pat Humphrey's office. A hot breeze from the open window billowed the voile curtains hung over it. I gingerly stepped over to the window and looked outside. All I could see was a bird feeder hanging from a small magnolia tree. I turned back and considered the room. The walls were decorated with Mexican ceremonial masks. A large staghorn fern hung from the curtain rod.

Seeing it reminded me of the one in Rose Taylor's house. I wondered if it was a relative. The bookshelves were lined with volumes on animal behavior, psychology, myths, and anthropology. The computer on top of the desk was brand new. The box it had come in was on the floor below it. There was nothing to see in here, so I returned to the kitchen. I was just about to leave when I noticed the blinking light on Pat Humphrey's answering machine. I hit the PLAY button.

“Call me as soon as you can,” a voice I recognized as that of Rose's nurse, Shana, commanded. It sounded, what? Concerned? Frightened?

Bingo, I thought, playing the message again. Gotcha.

M
y meeting with Hillary took a little less than half an hour. I thought she looked even paler than she had the last time I'd seen her.

“So let me get this straight,” she said to me when I told her about the message on Humphrey's answering machine. “You think that my mother's nurse is working with Pat Humphrey to defraud my mother.”

“I think it's a possibility.”

She leaned even farther forward on the edge of the armchair she was sitting in. “But you don't have proof.”

“No,” I admitted. “I don't.”

Hillary clicked her tongue against her teeth and pulled her yellow cardigan closer to her, a gesture that accentuated the narrowness of her rib cage, and looked down at the papers I'd given her. “I wonder if my mother knows about Humphrey's arrest record?”

“I'd be surprised if she did.” I pointed to my description of my visit to the two veterinarians. “To be fair, on the other hand, these people gave Humphrey a good report.”

Hillary balled my page of notes up and threw it in the trash. “It's a fluke.”

“All right.” I wasn't about to argue the point. “You want me to find out about the nurse?” I asked, wiping a drop of sweat out of my eye.

“It would be nice if Pat Humphrey didn't come back, wouldn't it?” she mused aloud instead of answering my question.

I didn't say anything.

Hillary smiled unpleasantly. “Maybe we got lucky and she got hit by a truck on the way to her neighbor's house. Maybe she's sitting in the morgue waiting to be claimed. It would save us all a lot of trouble.”

“Unfortunately, things don't work out that neatly,” I said, thinking of Raul. I got up from the sofa. “Do you want me to see what I can find out about your mother's nurse or not?” I repeated. Hillary's tone was making me uncomfortable.

“Not yet. Just send me a bill for your expenses so far.” She gathered up the musical score lying on the coffee table and rapped the pages into place with short, sharp gestures. “If you please. Out of curiosity, when you spoke to my mother, did she tell you I was irresponsible, that we all were?”

I allowed as how she had.

“Did she tell you we were after her money?”

I nodded, regretting I'd answered Hillary's first question truthfully. I needed to get going.

“That we'd tried to have her committed?”

“She mentioned it.”

“Bet she didn't tell you why, though?”

I waited.

“She was addicted to Valium. Valium and liquor. That's how she got herself to sleep every night. She got her prescriptions from three different doctors. What's the matter?” Hillary demanded. “Don't you believe me?”

“Sure. I just wondered, if that was the case, why you bothered intervening?”

“What do you mean?”

“Figure it out.”

Hillary glared at me. I glared back. She laughed and changed the subject. “I'll give her the house, though. She does have good taste.”

“It's impressive.”

“Not like this place.” The flash of anger in Hillary's eyes as she looked around telegraphed what she'd lost. “Did you see the Japanese scroll in the hallway?” I nodded. “Isn't it beautiful? It's almost seven hundred years old.” She swallowed, as if her mouth had gone dry with desire. “It just came back from an exhibition at the Met. My father wanted me to have it, he told me, but she's giving it to Geoff.” She hugged her music to her so tightly that the skin around her hands lost color and forced out a laugh. “Oh, well,” she said as she escorted me to the door, “if it's meant to be, then it'll happen, and if not, then so be it. By the way, I'm playing downtown this Wednesday. Come and see me if you have the time.”

I promised her I would.

As I stepped outside and took a great big burst of fresh air into my lungs, I realized Hillary's house reminded me of a tomb. I was halfway to the store when my cell phone rang. Manuel was on the line.

“Yo,
vieja.
I think I know where Bethany is,” he said.

“Think or know?” I asked as I maneuvered around a group of kids playing ball in the middle of the street.

“I've been talkin' to T.” T was a friend of Manuel's. “Remember that kid Karim you told me about? The friend of Bethany's. Well, T knows Karim's older brother.”

“And?”

“And Karim's been paying him to transport this girl out and back to a shack right alongside the Erieville Country Club.”

I slammed on my brakes as a squirrel ran in front of my car and ran back again. “Would that be Arrow View by any chance?”

“Whatever. Anyway, I told my friend you'd pay him fifty bucks if she's out there.”

What Manuel was telling me made sense. When teens run away, most of them tend to remain in close proximity to their friends.

“So what do you say?” Manuel asked. “Feel like going for a ride?”

“I'll be over in twenty.”

“I'll be waiting.”

The Arrow View Country Club was the ritziest golf club in Syracuse. Located outside of Manlius, it was frequented by the well-to-do and the well-connected. I was willing to bet that Bethany's parents played golf out there. I dialed up Mrs. Peterson to confirm my guess.

“We joined last year,” she said. “Why? Does this have something to do with Bethany?”

“Possibly. I'll call you if I have something to tell you.” And I turned my phone off.

So Bethany had been out there before. She probably knew about this shack. Probably all of her friends did. As I honked for Manuel, I decided that if she were there, I'd send him in while I waited outside. Despite his performance at the cemetery, he was usually pretty good at talking to kids.

Then, perhaps, when he was done, I could take a turn and convince her to talk to her mom and dad. Just talk. Or if that didn't work, perhaps I could convince her to stay at a friend's house until everyone was able to work things out. Turning her over to the courts was, of course, another option. But that wasn't my decision to make, and from what I'd seen, that didn't work too well.

The Arrow View Country Club announced itself with a big white sign. The road leading up to the clubhouse measured a good three-quarters of a mile. The grass on either side of the road was the color of money, while the bushes and flowers looked as if someone had gone over them with a nail clipper and tweezers. The clubhouse itself was a quarried-stone-and-wood affair. A row of golf carts were lined up on the pavement in front of it.

A few groups of people, looking as if they'd just come in from the course, were chatting with each other. As we approached, I saw Geoff walking inside. He had on his tennis whites and was carrying his racket under his arm. Engrossed in conversation with an attractive-looking older woman—not Rose Taylor—he didn't see me. I was about to honk when Manuel tapped me on the shoulder.

“We take the road that goes to the right.”

It turned out to be the service road. We went by the clubhouse and veered around the kitchen. A group of Latinos and Asians in soiled whites, taking a break outside the kitchen door, fell silent when we drove by. They didn't start talking again until we were almost out of sight. Coming around the garbage corral, I could see people playing off in the distance, and then the road turned again, and I was looking at trees. The road got more and more rutted until it gave out completely and we were driving on a dirt path.

“Where the hell are we going?” I asked Manuel as we bounced along. We were closing in on a copse of trees, and as far as I could tell, there was nothing there.

“You'll see,” Manuel said. A moment later, we came upon a broken-down wire fence. “Stop here,” he instructed.

I parked the car on the dirt, and we got out. Manuel took the lead. We stepped over the wire fence and onto a meadow. Manuel started walking.

“What's here?” I asked.

“This place used to be a farm, but the owner got killed, and now it's nothing. Come on.” He gestured, his eyes darting nervously to the left and right. “Let's get going.”

It was funny, but you could drop Manuel in the middle of the worst neighborhood in Syracuse and he'd be fine, but put him in the middle of the country and he started to twitch.

About four minutes later, Manuel pointed in front of him. “There it is.”

At some point, the shack must have been used for storing farm equipment, but that had been a long time ago. Now it was collapsing in on itself. There were holes in the boards toward the ground where the moisture had seeped in and rotted them out. There was also a hole near the roof so big that you could see through it to the other side. Weeds and vines twined up around the structure, covering it and pulling it back where it had come from.

“Bethany,” I cried as we approached. “It's Robin Light. I have a friend I'd like you to meet. Please don't run. I promise I'm not going to take you back to your parents, I'm not going to tell them where you are. We just want to talk to you.”

No one answered. When we stepped inside, two mourning doves fluttered their wings and flew out the door. I looked around. Someone was camped out here. They'd made a bed of straw in the corner of the shack that still had its roof intact. A small cache of food sat on a cardboard box. I picked up the box of Cookie-Crisp and put it down. A man's shirt and a pair of jeans were hanging from one of the tines of an upturned pitchfork. I removed the clothes and went through them. A small journal was nestled inside the shirt pocket.

I opened it up. On the front page was written,
“These are the private thoughts of Bethany Peterson.”
I started to read.

“You shouldn't do that,” Manuel said.

“I know,” I said as I thumbed through it.

“Don't know what to do,”
one passage read.
“Karim says I shouldn't say anything. So does Michelle. Maybe I'll consult my Tarot cards.”
In another passage, Bethany had written,
“My mother said I have to lose weight. No more sweets. Snuck five candy bars into the house. She found them and grounded me for a week. My father says I'm going nowhere fast.”
Another page contained the phrase
“I love Matt.”
She'd written his name on page after page and surrounded it with hearts and curlicues. Looking at it reminded me of myself in the ninth grade. I closed the book and put it back where I found it.

Manuel and I waited around for an hour, but Bethany didn't show up, and eventually we got in the car and went home. I had to get back to the store, and Manuel was meeting some friends downtown.

“I'll come back and check later tonight,” he told me.

“With what car?”

“T's.”

“Fine.” I didn't say anything about the fact that Manuel didn't have a license. He'd been driving since he'd stolen his first car at fourteen. That he couldn't legally get a license till he was twenty-one because of a variety of legal mishaps didn't seem to hinder him.

 

 

It was nine at night, closing time at the store—not that I couldn't have closed the place down earlier considering the day's business—when Geoff and Moss Ryan walked through the door of Noah's Ark. Up to that point, we'd taken in a grand total of twenty bucks. Not even enough to cover the day's operating expenses. I was half-lost in thought watching two marbled angelfish languidly swimming between the tall, waving grass fronds, their fins trailing behind them like bridal trains, contemplating everything I had to do and wasn't doing when I saw the black Mercedes pulling up. I waited to see what the two men were going to say to me. Somehow I didn't think they were coming to deliver any compliments.

“Rose wants to see you,” Moss Ryan said as he approached the counter. He had to raise his voice to be heard over Zsa Zsa's barking.

“Now,” Geoff added for punctuation. He'd changed out of his tennis whites and looked quite spiffy in his pressed linen slacks and polo shirt.

I stubbed out the cigarette I'd been smoking and dropped the butt into the coffee mug I was using as an ashtray. Somehow a strand of tobacco stayed on my tongue. “That's nice,” I said after I'd picked it off. “Have a good game of tennis?”

Geoff did a double take.

“I saw you at the club.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Looking for Bethany Peterson.”

“Oh. So you're the one they hired.” He smoothed back his hair with both hands. “I'm sure she'll turn up eventually. They always do.”

I shushed Zsa Zsa and moved the tally sheet I was supposed to be working on to one side. “Hopefully.”

Geoff's glance strayed to the picture Raul had given me. I'd taped it to the front of the cash register on the off chance that one of our customers would recognize him, since there are a fair number of Hispanics who lived in this part of town.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“No.” He gave a self-conscious laugh. “I usually don't come across people like that.”

“You have people like this working for you.”

Geoff adjusted his Rolex. “I meant socially. Anyway, Rose deals with the household help.”

“If you don't mind,” Moss Ryan interjected.

As I turned my attention to him, I saw he was wearing a lightweight navy suit, white shirt, and navy tie. I wondered if he ever wore anything else.

“Rose wants to speak to you about Pat Humphrey.” Ryan stopped, waiting for me to say something. After a couple of moments of silence on my part, he reluctantly continued. “She appears to have taken off.” He waited again. I continued to keep quiet. He folded his hands behind his back and looked somber. “One of her neighbors said they watched you go into her house.”