Next Time You See Me (11 page)

I
waited until almost midnight for Jasmine to fall asleep. And then, when I was sure, I brought my clothes into the bathroom and changed out of my nightgown. I took a room key and my purse and quietly let myself out.

There was a business center off the hotel lobby, a windowless room with six cubicles stocked with computers, faxes, scanners, whatever you’d need to conduct business away from home base. The center was empty except for me. I chose a cubicle in the farthest corner of the room and went online.

Finding a local private investigator turned out to be incredibly easy. In fact, the area had an embarrassment of riches when it came to resources for nailing cheating husbands, bolstering your case in a custody battle, finding out if your business partner was embezzling, or whatever else you wanted to know but couldn’t find out yourself. One elaborate Web site after another offered an array of electronic and hands-on surveillance, and all you had to do was initiate a case and offer up your credit card number. It was that simple. As a former detective, I found the whole enterprise dubious; but on the other hand, I wanted someone to help me without letting Jasmine or anyone else know what I was doing. If she or my mother or Billy Staples or
anyone
knew that I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Mac who had evaded me at the Miami airport, they would invoke magical thinking, outright delusion, or worse. Too much crazy; but that didn’t mean I couldn’t satisfy my own curiosity.

I dialed the 800 number on the screen and in moments my call was answered by a man with an Indian accent.

“Hello! My name is Peter! You have reached Miami Investigation Services! How may I help you?”

He pronounced it
Meeami
, confirming my guess that I was talking to someone in a call center in India. No matter. In the morning, when an investigator picked up his roster of late night calls, he’d find my request.

I shared only the essentials with Peter, skipping the complications about Aileen and Hugh’s murders, Danny’s arrest, and Mac’s disappearance and presumed death. All he needed to know was that my husband had gone AWOL and I thought he might be in Miami.

“Do you have a photograph of your husband, ma’am? Of course it would much aid in the investigation.”

“I think I have some in my phone.”

I put the call on hold and scrolled through the pictures I’d snapped on impulse and forgotten about, each one inciting a poignant memory: Mac sitting on our couch, gazing down at Ben who slept in his arms; Ben gleefully throwing banana slices from his high chair to the floor while Mac grinned at me (at my phone, that every-ready surreptitious camera); Mac in front of our brownstone last winter, looking thoughtful and relaxed and very much like himself, less than a year before his life had come crashing down. That was the one. Peter gave me his e-mail address, I zapped the picture into the ether, and within moments Peter confirmed he’d received it. Next he asked for my credit card and a contact phone number, and Project Find Mac Alive was under way. Before I let Peter go, I made sure someone would call me tomorrow,
someone from Miami
, I specified. His answer, “Yes indeed, ma’am,” wasn’t all that reassuring, considering that I’d just agreed to a five-hundred-dollar retainer charged to my credit card, and I had no real idea who I was talking to or where exactly he was. Still, I slept well that night knowing that finally I had done something, or at least believed I had done something. Crazy or not, it felt right.

The next day, Saturday, was Jasmine’s birthday. We passed the morning at the beach, had lunch at a bayside café, and chartered a sailboat for the afternoon. I periodically checked my cell phone to make sure it was working. It was. As the hours passed I feared that I had thrown away five hundred dollars and also duped myself on a deeper level by tempting the impossible. It would serve me right for being such a fool. I was dying to discuss it with Jasmine but kept my lips sealed; I had promised not to ruin her birthday with
crazy
, and hiring a private eye over the Internet was certifiably nuts. I had been a cop; I definitely should have known better.

By the time we returned from our sail, feeling gorged on too much sun and heat and thoroughly exhausted, I had convinced myself that I would never hear from Miami Investigation Services Ltd., or Late Night Internet Rip-Off Inc., whatever you called it. But then, as we walked along the boardwalk on our way to our hotel, my cell phone rang. I was dying to answer but couldn’t in front of Jasmine, so I ignored it. Later, back at the hotel while she was in the shower cleaning up for dinner, I ducked into the hallway outside our room and returned the call.

“Lucky Herman here, you left me a message?” He had a voice that sounded as if it had survived too many cigarettes and too much booze, the private eye voice that was so classic it seemed like a put-on. But then I detected a faint operatic crescendo on his end of the phone and my assumptions readjusted themselves, smoothed out his edges. He was an opera buff, or he lived with an opera buff; either way, I knew nothing about him and it felt better that way.

“We have to speak quickly.”

He chuckled. Apparently he’d heard that before.

I repeated the basic information I’d told Peter last night. Lucky had the photo of Mac in front of him.

“Can I just ask you, Mr. Herman, what your experience is?”

“Detective with the Miami Police, twenty-two years, retired. If you met me in person you’d find out I don’t look anything like I sound. That’s what they tell me.”

“They.”

“People. Everyone. You know what I mean.”

“I’d like to meet you in person but I’m leaving for New York in the morning.”

“It’s up to you.” He coughed.

I wondered if he was telling the truth. If I met him in person, would he appear other than a broken husk of a former cop . . . who liked opera? I had known so many, and half of them sounded just like him.

“Find him if you can.”

“If he’s findable, I will. I’ve got your number if I have any questions or if your retainer runs out. If I locate him fast or decide it’s a lost cause, you’ll get the rest of your money back on your credit card. That’s how it works.”

Ten hours at fifty dollars an hour would go quickly, but what other choices did I have?

“Thank you.”

“I wish you luck.”

Was that how Lucky Herman always signed off at the end of a conversation? It was corny but effective. As I dressed for dinner, I found myself feeling optimistic that Lucky was a fitting name for the investigation I had just launched. If Mac was alive, and if he was in Miami, and if Lucky Herman was any good at his job, maybe I would find him.

But as the night progressed, and I treated Jasmine to a birthday meal at Le Bouchon de Grove, a French bistro recommended by the hotel concierge, my mind drifted in another unexpected direction. On the off chance that Mac actually
was
alive, and if he was here—why would he hide from me?

Chapter 7

I
t was the coldest January on record. The duplex apartment in the hundred-year-old brownstone seemed to leak heat from every window and door. The cost of oil was sky-high, and money was tight, so my mother and I kept the temperature as low as we could stand it. But on the morning of Ben’s second birthday, on a quiet Saturday, we cranked up the heat to make sure our home felt comfortable for all the visitors we’d invited to help celebrate over lunch.

Today marked another event, as well, at least in my mind: It was the final deadline I had set for any remaining shred of hope that Mac was out there somewhere, alive. All the holidays had passed without a word or sign that he was still in this world, that he remembered us. And I hadn’t heard anything from Lucky Herman since the one time we’d spoken on the phone. I had told myself that if Mac didn’t miraculously reappear today, if he failed to remember our son’s birthday, he
had
to be dead. It really
was
over. I would acquiesce to the obvious and embrace my second widowhood. Mac had now been gone more than four months.

The party was set for noon, but at eleven-fifteen the doorbell rang. Mom answered it. After a quick burst of animated chatter, Mac’s sister, Rosie, and her brood streamed in, pink-cheeked from the frigid cold outside. The three younger kids instantly dispersed in the directions of Ben, toys, and TV while the eldest, Dave, who was on winter break from college, joined his parents in greeting the adults.

“We came early to help out.” Rosie bear-hugged me with her husband, Larry, grinning behind her, and Dave, behind
him
, looking like a twenty-year time warp version of his father.

I kissed Larry hello and then looked over at the sudden activity that had filled the living room. “The kids are
huge
,” I remarked; thinking,
If only Mac was here, if he could see how his nieces and nephews had grown in so short a time
. “What are you feeding them?”

“I tried not feeding them at all, but they grew anyway,” Rosie said.

Larry emitted a bark of laughter.

Rosie winked. Then she squinted her eyes, assessing me. “You look good, Karin.”

“That’s bullsh—” I slapped a hand over my own mouth. Larry laughed again. I even caught my mother snickering behind me at the kitchen counter, where she was frosting cupcakes.

“I can’t believe he’s two years old.” Rosie shook her head, sighed, and plugged any chance of mournful feelings hijacking Ben’s birthday by issuing an order: “Put us to work! How many people do you have coming?”

“Around fifty.”

“Wow,” Larry muttered.

“Dad, that’s like what a party
is
.” Dave shook his head at his pathetically out-of-touch father.

“It’s snowballed a little out of proportion,” I admitted. “We invited family, plus all the kids from Ben’s tumbling class, and they’re
all
bringing their parents and siblings.”

Rosie followed me into the kitchen, saying, “The parties get more manageable when you can do drop-offs.” My mother handed her an apron, which she tied over her blue sweater.

In the bright kitchen, I noticed that it wasn’t just Rosie’s children who had grown these past months; Rosie herself had visibly aged. Her skin looked paler and drier, and the bags under her eyes had an ingrained, permanent quality they’d never had before. We had last seen each other in person at her parents’ funeral, and since then she had suffered the domino-like losses of her only siblings as well. She had remarked to me on the phone one time that she was “a real orphan now,” and “thank God I have Larry and the kids.” I’d reminded her that Danny was still alive and it was possible he would be acquitted for lack of evidence—an assumption I clung to. At that, she had snorted loudly and changed the subject. I wondered what she knew that I didn’t.

By noon, Rosie and my mother had finished frosting sixty-two cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla. Eight-year-old Alice had decorated them generously with rainbow sprinkles. The vegetarian chili Mom had made yesterday was heating on the stovetop, and the cornbread I had made from a mix that morning was keeping warm in the oven. A big pot of water was readied to boil hot dogs, and a heap of buns was laid out on a platter. Meanwhile, as Larry and I carried stacks of paper plates and bowls and plastic cutlery to the table, twelve-year-old Lindsay believed she had succeeded in teaching Ben how to send text messages, and five-year-old John had lost three Wiffle balls under various low-slung pieces of furniture.

By twelve-thirty the house was teeming with families, and the sheer force of so much innocence in one place created an infectious gaiety. There were so many children living in the moment you couldn’t help following them even a little bit through that looking glass of wonderment, of forgetting what came before and worrying about what might come after. It was a good party. A happy few hours. When I spotted Billy and Jasmine sitting together on the floor in the living room, playing jacks with Alice and two other littler girls, my heart swelled: I felt I saw their future in that moment; a marriage, a family, the turning of the eternal wheel.

And then, just as quickly as the party had come together, it was over. By four o’clock, everyone was gone. Ben was wired from exhaustion and so was Mom. They went downstairs to share a late nap on my bed.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and was busy cleaning up when I heard what sounded like Rosie shouting, “Lindsay, answer the phone! Lindsay, answer the phone!” over and over again. But they had left almost half an hour ago for the ride back to Long Island.

“Hello?” I answered into mid-air, confused.

“Lindsay, answer the phone! Lindsay, answer the phone!”

Just as I realized that Rosie’s voice sounded tinny and each repeated phrase was identical, I picked up a pile of scrunched-up SpongeBob napkins and unearthed Lindsay’s silvery pink cell phone, flashing with a picture of her mother.

“Okay,” I answered the call, “that scared the hell out of me.”

“That’s Mom’s special ring,” Lindsay said. “Like how she’s always yelling at me to do stuff?”

“You forgot your phone.”

“Gee you’re smart, Aunt Karin.” Her tone oozed with tween sarcasm.

“I’ll send it to you.”

“That would take
days
. Dad already turned the car around.”

“See you when you get here.”

As soon as I slipped the phone into my pocket, the doorbell rang.

“No way,” I muttered to myself, unless Lindsay was being clever and had called from just outside the door. Grinning, I simultaneously swung open the door and held out the pink phone.

It wasn’t Lindsay.

Instead, I was face to face with a man so short I had to look down to really see him. He was Indian, in his middle fifties, I guessed, with a halo of short white hair. Under a puffy red jacket he wore a suit and tie.

“Karin Schaeffer?”

That voice; I had heard it before. It took just a moment to place it.

“Lucky Herman?”

“I’ve got something for you.” He handed me an envelope.

A taxi idled on the sidewalk in front of the brownstone. Sitting in the back was an Indian woman with short black hair wearing red lipstick and big pearl earrings.

“You said you wanted to meet me in person.” His smile was tight and ironic but somehow friendly. A cop’s smile. The kind of smile that wanted the last word.

“Don’t tell me you came all the way here to—”

“
No
.” He chuckled. “My wife gave me tickets to the Metropolitan Opera for Christmas. This is the big weekend.
Carmen
with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. Looking forward to it.” He glanced at his watch. “Had plenty of time after the flight and this was on the way.”

“You brought me the balance of the retainer?” But even as I said it, I knew that wasn’t why he’d come.

My heart pounded as I opened the envelope. Lucky Herman stood there and watched me pull out a four-by-six glossy print of a man and a woman in conversation at a bar. The woman was perched on a barstool; I couldn’t see her face, just her slender curved back leaning toward the bar on which her elbow was propped. Her sleeveless white shirt was bright against her toffee skin, and you could see that she was wearing a necklace by the thin chain hugging the back of her neck. Something about her looked familiar, though I couldn’t place it. But she wasn’t the reason Lucky had brought this photograph all the way from Florida.

The man faced her, and this was what Lucky was really delivering to me: the clear, straight-on image of his face.

Mac
.

Sitting on a bar stool. His eyes fixed on the woman’s eyes. A half smile taking in something she had just said.

Was it Mac?

He looked so much like Mac. But thinner. His face more heavily lined. And tan.

The longer I looked at the picture, the less certain I became.

I felt dumbstruck and confused. I had sought this out, paid for it, demanded it. But now I wasn’t sure I really wanted it, because this image of a man who might or might not be Mac, this man sitting on a bar stool, did not solve anything. I tried to hand the photo back to Lucky but he refused.

“That’s what I hate about this line of work,” he said. “You give people what they ask for and then they argue with you.”

“My husband is dead.”

“That’s for you to decide.”

I looked again at the photo. “Do you think it’s possible for two people to look really alike—two people who aren’t twins and aren’t related?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Lucky?” his wife called to him from the taxi.

“There’s a check in the envelope for unused time. Truth is, I found him when I wasn’t looking. Had my assistant Peter pound the pavement at first—he costs half what I cost, by the hour—and I went out once or twice myself but it was a needle-in-a-haystack situation and I didn’t really think we’d find him. Then I went to meet a client at that bar and bingo. One picture.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. That’s why I thought I’d hand deliver the job, because I was coming to New York anyway. And that way, you could meet me.” He smiled.

“Lucky!” An unmistakable note of irritation now in his wife’s voice.

He turned and waved a one-minute finger at her. “She wants to get the most out of the weekend.”

“What bar is this?” I turned the photograph over as I asked and found the answer handwritten on the back: Hotel Collins, on Collins Avenue in South Beach, Miami.

“Not the kind of place I usually go,” he said. “Trendy. Drinks are expensive.”

“Thank you.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Schaeffer. Just give me a call if you need anything else. And don’t worry: That’s the only print and I erased the digital image.”

“I appreciate that.”

“It’s what we do.” He turned to leave.

“Wait! The necklace the woman’s wearing, did you see it?”

“No. She never faced the camera.”

“Did you notice if the chain was gold or silver? I can’t see it well enough in the picture.”

He came back up the stoop, took out his reading glasses, and looked closely. “Gold.”

A terrible sensation rattled through me. I stood there, thinking of Mac, the necklace, another woman—a slim, dark woman who from the back very much resembled his disgraced boss, Deidre—as Lucky Herman joined his wife in the back of the taxi and they drove away. Just then, Larry pulled up in the family minivan. The side door opened and Lindsay hopped out. I came down the stoop with the phone and handed it to her, but instead of saying good-bye I followed her to the van.

“Rosie.” I stuck my head in the driver’s window, looking past Larry. “Take a look at this.”

She stared hard at the photograph, then handed it back at me. “It’s a picture of Mac.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” And then her eyes brightened. “He looks a little different, though. When was this taken?”

“Yesterday.”

Larry grabbed the photo and studied it. “That’s not him.”

“It
is
him,” Rosie said.

Before the argument gathered steam, they all got out of the car and came back into the house. Hearing the commotion, my mother got up from her nap and joined us upstairs. For the first time I told them all about seeing Mac (or not) at the Miami airport in November and hiring Lucky Herman.

“Jasmine thought I was insane.
I
thought I was insane. I didn’t want all of you to think I just wasn’t accepting that he was dead.”

Mom took a close look at the photograph and concluded, “I don’t know. I’m just not sure.”

“I’m with her,” Larry said. “It looks like Mac, I’ll give you that, but it isn’t him.”

“I think it is him,” Rosie said.

“Honey,” Larry’s voice became syrupy, pleading, “he wouldn’t just disappear, not Mac.”

“But this picture,” she said in a tone that sounded as desperately hopeful, as delusional, as magically wishful as me on my worst days. And I knew: Rosie had suffered badly, too. She also wanted Mac resurrected enough to believe almost anything.