Where Are You Now? (17 page)

He saw the relief on their faces and knew he had convinced them to stay. And I didn't have to give them a raise
or promise to leave them in this apartment, he thought exultantly.

But as he accepted Lil's groveling gratitude and Gus's terse expression of thanks, he was burning to find out why they were so afraid, and what, if anything, they knew about the reason for Mack MacKenzie's disappearance ten years ago.

S
unday morning I went to the last Mass at St. Francis de Sales. I got there early, slipped into the last pew, and after that tried to study the faces of the arriving congregation. Needless to say, I didn't spot anyone who even vaguely resembled Mack. Uncle Dev always delivers a thoughtful homily, frequently laced with Irish humor. Today, I didn't hear a word of it.

When the Mass was over, I stopped in at the rectory for a quick cup of coffee. Smiling and waving me into his office, Devon said he was meeting friends in Westchester for a round of golf, but they could wait. He poured coffee into two thick white mugs and handed one to me as we sat down.

I hadn't yet told him that I had gone to see the Kramers, and when I did I was surprised to learn that he remembered them clearly. “After we knew that Mack was missing, I went over with your dad to that apartment on West End,” he said. “I remember the wife was all upset at the thought that something might have happened to Mack.”

“Do you remember anything about Gus Kramer's reaction?” I asked.

When Uncle Dev gets a thoughtful frown on his face, his resemblance to my father is almost startling. Sometimes that gives me comfort. Other times it hurts. Today, for some reason, was one of the days it hurt.

“You know, Carolyn,” he said, “that Kramer is an odd duck. I think he was more upset by the possibility of media attention than he was concerned about Mack.”

Ten years later that was exactly my reaction to Kramer, but knowing Devon had to be on his way soon, I didn't take the time to talk that over with him. Instead, I took out the recorder I had found in Mack's suitcase and explained how I had discovered it. Then I played the tape for him. I watched my uncle's sad smile at the sound of Mack's voice speaking to the teacher, then his bewildered frown when Mack began to recite, “When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.”

After I turned off the recorder, my uncle said, his voice husky, “I'm glad your mother wasn't around when you came across that tape, Carolyn. I don't think I'd ever play it for her.”

“I don't intend to let her hear it. But, Devon, I'm trying to figure out its significance, if any. Did Mack ever talk to you about taking private lessons with a drama teacher at Columbia?”

“I remember that in an offhand way he did. You know when Mack was about thirteen and his voice was changing, he went through a period where it was really high-pitched. He got unmercifully teased about it at school.”

“I don't remember Mack having a high-pitched voice,” I protested, then paused to search my memory. When Mack was thirteen I was eight years old.

“Of course, his voice deepened, but Mack was a more sensitive kid than most people realized. He didn't show his feelings when he was hurt, but years later, he admitted to me how miserable he had been during that period.” Uncle Dev tapped the side of his mug, remembering. “Maybe some residual of that pain got him involved in the voice lessons. On the other hand, Mack wanted to become a trial lawyer and a good one. He told me that a good trial lawyer must also be a good actor. Maybe that could account for both the lessons and the passage he recited on that tape.”

Obviously, we could come to no conclusion. Whether Mack had chosen that dark passage because of his own state of mind, or was simply reciting a prepared text, could only be a guessing game. Nor could we possibly know why he either stopped recording, or erased the rest of the session with the drama teacher.

At 12:30, Uncle Devon gave me a warm hug and went off to his golf game. I went back to Sutton Place and was glad to go there because I no longer felt at home in my West Village apartment. The fact that I lived next door to where Leesey Andrews lived was terribly troubling to me. If it were not for that fact, I thought, I am sure that Detective Barrott would not be trying to connect Mack to her disappearance.

I wanted to talk to Aaron Klein, the son of Mack's drama teacher. It would be easy enough to contact him.
Aaron had been working at Wallace and Madison for nearly twenty years and was now Uncle Elliott's chosen successor. I remembered that a year after Mack disappeared, his mother was the victim of a robbery and was murdered, and that Mom and Dad went with Uncle Elliott to visit him when he was sitting shiva.

The problem was I didn't want Uncle Elliott to be involved in our meeting. As far as Elliott was concerned, he believed that Mom and I were planning to accept Mack's request, which, in so many words, was “Leave me alone.” If Elliott knew I was contacting Aaron Klein because of Mack, as sure as day follows night he would feel it his duty to discuss it with Mom.

That meant I had to make an appointment with Klein outside the office and ask him to keep whatever conversation we had confidential, then trust him not to go blabbing to Elliott.

I went back to Dad's office, flicked on the light, and went over Mack's file again. I knew Lucas Reeves, the private investigator, had interviewed Mack's drama teacher, as well as other members of the Columbia University faculty. I had read his comments the other day and knew they weren't helpful, but now I was looking specifically for what he had written about Esther Klein.

It was very short. “Ms. Klein expressed her sorrow and shock over Mack's disappearance. She was unaware of any specific problem he may have been having.”

An innocuous statement, I thought, remembering the dictionary definition of the word “innocuous”: “Pallid; uninspiring; without power to interest or excite.”

The few words she and Mack had exchanged on the tape suggested they had had a warm relationship. Had Esther Klein been deliberately evasive when she was talking to Reeves? And if so, why?

It was a question that made me toss and turn in bed that night. Monday morning couldn't come fast enough for me. I took the chance that Aaron Klein was one of those executives who gets to his desk early, and at twenty of nine phoned Wallace and Madison and asked for him.

His secretary had the usual question: “What is this in reference to?” and seemed miffed when I said it was personal, but when she gave Aaron Klein my name, he took my call immediately.

As briefly as I could, I explained to him that I did not want to upset Elliott or my mother by continuing to search for my brother, but that I had come across a tape of Mack and Aaron's mother, and could I possibly meet him outside the office to play it for him?

His response was warm and understanding. “Elliott told me that your brother phoned on Mother's Day last week and left a note saying that you were not to search for him.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which is why I want to keep this between us. But the tape that I found may suggest that Mack was having a problem. I don't know how much your mother may have talked to you about him.”

“She was very fond of Mack,” Klein said swiftly. “I do understand why you don't want to involve Elliott and your mother. I've always been so sorry about your brother.
Listen, I'm leaving early today. My boys are in a school play this evening and I don't intend to miss it by being caught in traffic. I have all the tapes my mother made with her private students in a box in the attic. I'm sure any she made with your brother are there. Would you want to drive up to my house at about five o'clock this evening? I'll give them all to you.”

Of course I promptly agreed. I called down to the garage and told the attendant I'd be picking up my mother's car. I knew it would be hurtful to hear Mack's voice over and over again, but at least if I could be reasonably sure that the tape I found in the suitcase was one of many in that vein, it would end the gnawing fear that he disappeared because he had a terrible problem he could not share with us.

Satisfied that I had made the connection, I made a fresh pot of coffee and turned on the morning news, then listened with a sinking heart to the latest report on the Leesey Andrews case. Someone had tipped a reporter at the
Post
that she had phoned her father Saturday and had promised to call again on Mother's Day.

ON MOTHER'S DAY!

My cell phone rang. Every instinct told me that it was Detective Barrott. I did not answer, and a moment later when I checked my messages, I heard his voice. “Ms. MacKenzie, I'd like to see you again as soon as possible. My number is . . .”

I disconnected, my heart racing. I had his number, and I had no intention of calling him back until after I saw Aaron Klein.

*   *   *

At five o'clock that evening, when I arrived at the Klein home in Darien, I walked into a firestorm. After I rang the bell, the door was opened by an attractive woman in her late thirties who introduced herself as Aaron's wife, Jenny. The strained expression on her face told me that something was terribly wrong.

She brought me into the den. Aaron Klein was on his knees on the rug, surrounded by overturned boxes. Stacks of tapes had been separated in individual piles. There must have been three hundred of them at least.

Aaron's face was deathly pale. When he saw me, he got up slowly. He looked past me to his wife. “Jenny, they are absolutely not here, not one of them.”

“But it doesn't make sense, Aaron,” she protested. “Why would—?”

He interrupted her and looked at me, his expression hostile. “I have never been satisfied that my mother was the victim of a random crime,” he said flatly. “At the time, it didn't seem as if anything had been taken from her apartment, but that isn't true. There is not a single tape of your brother's lessons with her here, and I know there were at least twenty of them, and I know they were there after he disappeared. The only person who would want them would be your brother.”

“I don't understand,” I said, sinking into the nearest chair.

“I now believe my mother was killed because someone had to get something from her apartment. The person who killed her took her house key. At the time, I couldn't
find anything missing. But there
was
something taken—the box that contained all the tapes she had made of your brother.”

“But your mother was attacked nearly a year after Mack disappeared,” I said. “Why would he want them? What use would they be to him?” Then, suddenly outraged, I demanded, “What are you insinuating?”

“I'm not insinuating,” Aaron Klein snapped at me. “I am telling you that I now believe that your missing brother may have been responsible for my mother's death! There may have been something incriminating in those tapes.” He pointed out the window. “There is a girl from Greenwich who has been missing all week. I don't know her, but if the newscast I heard coming up here in the car is accurate, she called her father and promised to call again next Mother's Day. Isn't
that
the day of choice for your brother to call? No wonder he warned you not to try to find him.”

I stood up. “My brother is not a killer. He is not a predator. When the truth is known, Mack will not be responsible for whatever happened to your mother and Leesey Andrews.”

I walked out, got into the car, and began to drive home. I guess I was in such a state of shock that I was on some kind of mental autopilot, because my next clear memory is of pulling up in front of our building on Sutton Place—and seeing Detective Barrott waiting for me in the lobby.

O
h, come on, Poppa. You're not really mad at me. You know I love you.” Steve Hockney's tone was wheedling as he sat across the table from his elderly uncle, Derek Olsen. He had collected Olsen at his apartment and taken him by cab to Shun Lee West on Sixty-fifth Street for dinner. “We're having the best Chinese food in New York. So we're celebrating your birthday a few weeks late. Maybe we'll celebrate it all year.”