“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.
64
Lil and Gus Kramer sat nervously
rigid in Captain Larry Ahearn’s office. Ahearn eyed them carefully, figuring out his approach to them. It was obvious when Gaylor ushered them in that Lil Kramer was on the verge of a total breakdown. Her hands were trembling. There was a distinct twitch at the side of her mouth. She was on the brink of tears. Start gently, or let her have it? He decided on the rough approach.
“Lil, you didn’t let on to us that you spent two years in prison for jewelry theft,” he snapped.
It was as if he had punched her in the mouth. She gasped, her eyes widened, and she began to moan. Gus jumped to his feet. “You shut up,” he yelled at Ahearn. “Look up that case. She was a young girl from Idaho, without a family, caring for an old lady night and day. She never touched that jewelry! The old lady’s cousins were the only ones who had the combination of the safe in her house. They framed Lil so that they not only had the jewelry but the insurance, may they rot in hell.”
“I never met anyone who went to prison who wasn’t framed,” Ahearn said brusquely. “Sit down, Mr. Kramer.” He turned back to Lil. “Did Mack ever accuse you of stealing anything?”
“Lil, don’t say a word. These people are trying to frame you again.”
Lil Kramer’s shoulders sagged. “I can’t help it if they do. No one will believe me. Just before he disappeared, Mack asked about his new watch, if I had seen it. I knew he was hinting that I had taken it. I got so upset, I yelled at him. I said the three of you in that apartment are all so careless, then when you can’t find something you blame it on me.”
“Who else blamed you?” Ahearn demanded.
“That nasty Bruce Galbraith. He couldn’t find his college ring, as if I would have anything to do with taking it. What would I do with it? Then, a week later, he said he had found it in the pocket of his slacks. No apology, of course. No, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Kramer.’ ” She was weeping now, tired, hopeless tears.
Ahearn and Gaylor looked at each other, knowing they were thinking the same thing: That would be easy to check.
“Then you don’t know if Mack found his watch before he disappeared?”
“No, I don’t. And that’s why I’m so afraid that when he comes back, he’ll accuse me again.” Lil Kramer began to wail. “And that’s why when I thought I saw him in church that day—”
“You thought you saw him in church!” Ahearn interrupted. “You told us you were certain you saw him there.”
“I saw someone about his size, then when I heard he had dropped the note, I was sure, but then I wasn’t sure, and I guess I’m sure now, but—”
“Why did you suddenly decide to move to Pennsylvania?” Gaylor interrupted.
“Because Mr. Olsen’s nephew, Steve Hockney, overheard Mack asking me about the watch, and now Steve is holding that over my head,” she screamed. “Because he wants us to complain about Howie to his uncle and get him fired and . . . and . . . I can’t . . . take . . . it . . . anymore. I just want to die. I want to die . . .”
Lil Kramer leaned forward and covered her face with her hands. Her thin shoulders shook as she sobbed. Gus knelt beside her and put his arms around her. “It’s all right, Lil,” he said, “it’s all right. We’re going home now.”
He looked up, first at Ahearn, and then at Gaylor. “This is what I think of you two,” he said, and spat on the carpet.
65
The other phone call after I finished speaking with Nick was to Jackie Reynolds, my psychologist friend, who had been trying to reach me and whom I’d put off calling. Of course Jackie had been reading the newspapers, but we hadn’t talked much since our dinner when all of this began. Remembering my suspicion that the phone might be tapped, I gave very general answers to her questions.
I knew she caught on. “Carolyn, I’ve had a couple of cancellations,” she said. “Have you any plans for lunch?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t you come up here, and we’ll send out for sandwiches and coffee?”
That sounded good to me. Jackie’s office adjoins the apartment where she lives on East Seventy-fourth Street and Second Avenue. As I hung up, I realized how much I wanted her guidance about my planned visit to Mom. Which reminded me that I had not yet spoken to Elliott.
I dialed his office, and was put straight through to him. “Carolyn, I didn’t know what to think when I couldn’t reach you.”
I heard the reproach in his voice and apologized. I knew I owed him that. I explained that I had gone to Martha’s Vineyard and the reason for it. Then, keenly aware of the probable wiretap, I said that it was a wasted visit, and that I was going to drive up later this afternoon to see Mom. “If she refuses to see me, at least I tried. I’ll get there between four and five,” I told him.
“I think that might be good timing,” he said slowly. “I hope to get up there around five myself. I want to talk to you and Olivia together.”
With that, we left it. What did he want to talk to the two of us about? I wondered. Surely in Mom’s fragile state, he wouldn’t withdraw his support from her now. Please, God, not that! She needed him. I thought about the night only a few weeks ago, after Mack left the note and at dinner she announced she had decided to let him live his own life. I thought of the way she and Elliott had looked at each other, and how he had planned to join her in Greece. I thought about the way their shoulders were touching when they walked down the street after we left Le Cirque. Elliott could make Mom happy. Mom is sixty-two. She has every chance of living another twenty or thirty good years—unless, of course, I’ve ruined it for her by blundering into the detective squad room and meeting Barrott.
I changed into a jacket and slacks and, as I did last night in Martha’s Vineyard, tried to mask the dark circles under my eyes with foundation and added color to my overall washed-out appearance with mascara and lipstick.
I drove out of the garage, this time in my own car, and—surprise! surprise!—for the present, the media vans were gone. I guess they figured they had about as much out of me as they were going to get for the day.
When I got to Seventy-fourth Street, I left the car in Jackie’s garage and went upstairs. When she came to the door, we hugged each other. “Nothing like lots of stress as a daily diet,” she commented. “I haven’t seen you in two weeks, and I bet you’ve lost at least five or six pounds.”
“At least,” I agreed as I followed her into her office. It’s a medium-sized, comfortable room with a couple of upholstered armchairs facing her desk. I remembered she collects nineteenth-century English prints of dogs and horses, and admired aloud some really wonderful examples framed on the wall. I imagined new patients remarking on them before revealing the problem that had driven them to seek Jackie’s help.
We agreed on ham and Swiss cheese on rye with lettuce and mustard and black coffee. She phoned in the order, then we settled down to talk. I told her about my meeting with Barbara, holding back only the fact that she had given birth to Mack’s son. Instead, feeling dishonest, I gave Barbara’s version, that she had had an abortion.
“It’s a viable reason for Mack to escape,” she agreed. “But just suppose he had gone to your father and/or your mother. What would either or both of them have done, do you think?”
“Supported them in their decision to marry and have the baby. Put Mack through law school.”
“Put Barbara through medical school?”
“I don’t know.”
“Knowing your father as I did, he certainly wouldn’t have put up with Mack taking a crack at acting.”
“Now that is a certainty, I agree.” Then I told Jackie how worried I was that Elliott might reconsider wanting to marry Mom while the present suspicion of Mack existed, or if he ever was arrested and put on trial.
“I’d worry, too,” Jackie agreed frankly. “Appearances mean so much to people like Elliott. I know someone like that. He’s about Elliott’s age, a widower, one of the nicest people you’d ever want to know, but a snob. I joke with him that he’d be caught dead before he’d date anyone who wasn’t a socialite,
no matter how accomplished and beautiful she was.”
“What did he say when you told him that?” I asked Jackie.
“He laughed, but he didn’t deny it.”
The desk called to say that the delivery was on the way. We settled down to lunch, and Jackie started to remind me that I was planning to apply for a job in the District Attorney’s office. Then I knew she could have bitten her tongue. Can you just imagine the District Attorney of Manhattan hiring the sister of an accused murderer?
66
All afternoon, either alone or in pairs, the members of the Detective Squad visited Lucas Reeves’s office and studied the photos he had prepared for their inspection. Sometimes they lingered over one or several pictures. They studied the enhanced shot of Mack MacKenzie as he might look today. Some of them held it up to compare with a headshot on the wall, but in the end they all left shrugging their shoulders in disappointment and defeat.
Roy Barrott was one of the last to arrive, at quarter of five. He had gone home and crashed for three hours. Now, freshly shaved and alert, he went painstakingly through the hundreds of stills while Lucas Reeves waited patiently in his office.
Finally, at seven fifteen, as Lucas came in to check on him, he gave up. “They’re all starting to look familiar,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I feel as if I’m missing something over there.” He pointed his hand to the far wall.
Lucas Reeves frowned. “Oddly, Carolyn MacKenzie paused at that area as well. I had the feeling that something interested her, but she must have dismissed the possibility. Otherwise I am sure she would have said something.”
Barrott stood in front of it again. “It’s not going to happen, at least not tonight.”
Reeves reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “I have written down my cell phone number for you. If anything occurs to you and you want to come back here at any hour, call me and I will instruct the security guard to let you in immediately.”