Authors: Alison Gaylin
Brenna normally tried to find out a little more about her subjects before confronting
them directly. But this was a Saturday during Christmas break, and even if Kate had
given her Robin’s social—which she hadn’t—she wouldn’t be able to do much with it,
at least until the weekend was through.
But if Brenna was going to be honest with herself, that wasn’t why she’d called Trent
at home on a Saturday and asked (
told?
) him to drive her here. If it were someone, anyone else, she would have waited. But
Brenna had the oddest feeling about Robin Tannenbaum—a craving to see her, to put
flesh to the shadow as soon as possible. It was a physical sensation—a pounding in
her veins. Brenna couldn’t put it into words, though. Not yet. It would hurt too much
if she were wrong.
“What a sweet little bird, Daddy. Can we fix him?”
To the right of the front door were three slotted mailboxes, each with a buzzer. She
turned to the one marked 2 and when she saw the name on it—TANNENBAUM—her pulse clicked
faster.
“I’ll take care of him, Daddy. I’ll keep him in a shoe box and I’ll feed him every
day. Brenna can help . . .”
Brenna pushed the thought away, reached for the buzzer.
“Question,” Trent said.
“Yeah?”
“If Lula Belle answers the door, what the hell are you going to tell her?”
“The truth.”
Trent sighed.
She pressed on the buzzer. Waited.
“Yes?” A woman’s voice.
Brenna took a breath. “Ms. Tannenbaum?”
“Yes?”
“She doesn’t sound Southern,” said Trent.
Brenna gave him a sharp look. “Sssh.”
“Who is this, please?” said the voice, which . . . well, Trent was right. No Southern
accent to speak of. Not all that sexy, either.
Was it familiar, though, in any way? “My name is Brenna Spector,” she said. “I’m a
private investigator.”
No response.
Brenna closed her eyes. “Ms. Tannenbaum? May I come in?”
Nothing.
Trent said, “I knew the truth was a dumb idea.”
Brenna stepped away from the buzzer. “I thought . . . I thought she might want to
see me.”
Trent frowned at her. “Why?”
“No reason.”
But then the front door buzzer was going off and the voice was back, brighter. “I
know you,” the voice said.
“H
ow would she know you?” Trent whispered, too loudly, as they stood outside the door
to Robin Tannenbaum’s apartment.
Brenna shrugged, the feeling growing, the wild hope, and for half a second, she allowed
herself to think it.
Lula Belle. Robin. Clea
.
Then the door opened.
“Whoa,” Trent said.
There stood a tiny, elderly woman in a pink terry cloth robe, carrot orange wig, and
thick cat’s-eye glasses. She couldn’t have been more than four-foot-ten, and she was
suffering from severe osteoporosis. Her humped back gave her a supplicant look, as
if she were continuously bowing.
“Ms. Tannenbaum?” Brenna said.
“Yes.”
Trent said, “Do you have a daughter?”
“Excuse me?”
“Granddaughter?”
Brenna cleared her throat, held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Tannenbaum. I’m—”
“Brenna Spector, yes. I know you.” The old woman smiled, revealing false teeth that
were very white and much too big for her mouth. “I’ve read about you in the papers.
You’re the Head-Case Hero.”
Brenna sighed. “Yes.”
“And I’m her studly young ward.”
“Excuse me?”
“Trent LaSalle. My associate. Please forgive him, he can’t help it.”
She gave Brenna a perplexed smile. “Of course. Come in, please.”
She ushered Brenna and Trent into the apartment—which felt surprisingly cramped for
a floor-through. It was the furniture’s fault. Piles of dark wood with polished brass
handles and thick, clawed legs . . . it seemed to strain against the delicacy of the
pink rug, the needlepoint pillows, the gilded frames on the faded photos . . .
It was the photos that interested Brenna.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Mrs. Tannenbaum said. “I’ll get some tea and cookies.”
Trent sat down on the couch—a brown leather beast that snapped at the backs of his
bare arms. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But silhouetted or not, there isn’t a version of
Aftereffects on the freakin’ planet that would make
that lady
look like—”
“Sssh.”
“Well, it’s true, dude.”
“Don’t call me dude.” Brenna moved over to the window. In front of it stood the enormous
credenza, which housed all the photos. “She never answered your question, you know,”
Brenna said as she peered at the pictures, “about having a daughter.”
She heard bustling in behind her, the clinking of plates, Trent saying, “That looks
delicious, ma’am.”
“Oh, it’s just a Bundt cake. Would you like a slice, Ms. Spector?”
“No thank you,” said Brenna. But she didn’t turn around. She was staring at the photos
on the credenza—all of which seemed to be of the same chubby-faced boy. There were
several black and white baby pictures, a christening shot, another at seven in a Little
League uniform and yet another, nervous-looking in a swimsuit, next to a scowling
man that had to be his father—he must have been around ten for that one. There was
a teenage photo of the boy, tall and pimpled, with a metallic grin. He was wearing
a pale blue tux, holding a corsage box, but he was alone—no date to wear the corsage.
It was very faded. Even if you overlooked how outdated the tux and the hairstyle were,
you’d have to figure it was at least twenty-five years old.
“That’s my son.” Mrs. Tannenbaum said it over Brenna’s shoulder—though technically,
tiny as she was, she was more at her waist.
Brenna turned around. “He looks like a nice person,” she said. “Is he your only child,
Mrs. Tannenbaum?”
She swallowed hard, her eyes watering. “You’d probably like a more recent picture.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh. I’m sorry . . . I . . . I thought . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well . . . being a private investigator and all,” she said, “I was hoping maybe you’d
come to tell me where he went. My goodness, some things sound so silly when you say
them out loud.”
“Where he went?”
She nodded slowly. “He was living here with me for a while but . . .”
“Yes?”
“I haven’t seen my Robbie in a long time.”
Brenna’s eyes widened. “Robbie.”
“Yes?”
“Is his full name Robin?”
“Yes.”
“
Robin is a dude!
”
“Pardon me, Mr. LaSalle?”
Brenna said, “How long has your son been missing, ma’am?”
“Over two months?” She looked at Brenna, the same way a child would do, waiting to
see if she’d answered a teacher correctly. “He comes and goes quite a bit, so I didn’t
really think much of it at first. He’d been here with me for about a year and a half—he
was in California before that. But this is the longest he’s gone without calling.”
“Two months.”
She nodded. “Robbie’s a grown man, of course. He can do what he wants. But I do wish
he’d pick up a phone.”
“How old is he?”
“Forty-five.” She looked a little surprised at the sound of it. “Forty-five. My word.”
She sighed. “Could I go to the police, and report a forty-five-year-old man missing
because he didn’t call his mother?”
Trent said, “Did he ever mention anything about a Web site?”
Her gaze shifted to the pink rug. “I’m not sure. I know he does some . . . some professional
work on his computer.”
“Any video work?” said Trent, and Brenna’s mind went to Morasco last night, watching
Lula Belle, noticing the shift in camera angle.
“He did go to film school. But I . . . wouldn’t know about work.”
“Did you see equipment in his room at all? Cameras or lights?” Brenna said.
“I didn’t go into Robbie’s room much.”
“Why not?”
In the kitchen, the phone rang. “I’d better get that.” She hurried into the other
room as if she’d been waiting for the call her whole life. Brenna listened to her
muffled voice. “Oh, hello Mr. Pokrovsky. No, no, I’m fine . . .”
Brenna looked at Trent. “What’s her deal with him?” she whispered.
“Mr. Pokrovsky?”
Brenna rolled her eyes. “No, Trent. Not Mr. Pokrovsky. Her
son
.”
“Yes, Mr. Pokrovsky, I know them. They’re friends of Robbie’s . . . No, no of course.
Thank you for your concern.”
She came back in the room. “Sorry about that. I don’t get visitors very often. The
neighbors worry.”
“Mrs. Tannenbaum,” Brenna said. “Why don’t you go into Robbie’s room?”
She adjusted her bright wig and kept watching the floor. Brenna followed her gaze
and found herself staring at Mrs. Tannenbaum’s feet—tiny as a child’s in fuzzy white
slippers, varicose veins wrapped around her weak ankles like the ivy on the side of
the house.
“What does Robbie do in there?”
“When my husband was alive,” she said, finally, “I found a stack of
Playboy
s.”
Trent said, “Uh . . .”
“Where did you find them?”
Her gaze lifted until she found Brenna’s face. “I found them at the bottom of his
closet, under some newspapers—a few dozen of them, including the Marilyn Monroe issue.
It was funny to me, because Walter always called those magazines smut, yet here he
was with his own secret collection. For weeks, I wondered how I would bring it up
with him, until one morning, it came to me. I didn’t need to bring it up at all. I
could forget I ever saw them. I could let him have his secret. We all have secrets,
don’t we, Ms. Spector?” She gave her a pleading look.
“Yes,” Brenna said. “Of course we do.”
“And that one . . .” She exhaled. “Well, it was harmless. More embarrassing than anything
else, what with Walter’s high moral standards.”
Brenna nodded.
“I never let him know I’d seen them.” Her eyelashes fluttered behind the glasses.
“The day after he died, I threw them out. It was as if they never existed at all.”
Trent looked at Brenna.
WTF?
he mouthed.
But Brenna understood. “Mrs. Tannenbaum.”
“We don’t need to be so formal, do we? You can call me Hildy if you like.”
“Robbie has his secrets, too, doesn’t he, Hildy?”
Her gazed dropped again. “Yes,” she said quietly.
“And do those secrets involve the computer?”
Very slowly, she shook her head.
“I know you might think of this as a betrayal, ma’am. But we’re looking for a missing
woman. She was on the computer—she made videos and streamed them and sold them to
people.” Brenna’s gaze drilled into hers. “To collect her payments, she used a series
of post office boxes. The last one was registered under Robbie’s name.”
Hildy Tannenbaum’s eyes went big. “No. It’s some mistake. I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”
“You do,” Brenna said. “I’m so sorry, but making yourself forget something doesn’t
make it go away. It’s like turning away from an accident. Whether you look at it or
not, someone is still getting hurt.”
“You’re calling me a liar, and I resent that.”
“Mrs. Tannenbaum. Hildy. That woman wasn’t a stack of
Playboy
s. She was connected to many people, and then she disappeared.” Brenna took a step
closer to her. She stared into her eyes. “She disappeared two months ago—the same
time as Robbie.”
“Oh my God.”
“If you help us, we might be able to find them both.”
Hildy removed her cat’s-eye glasses. The effort of that small gesture seemed to sap
all the remaining energy out of her, and when she put the glasses back on and looked
at Brenna, her eyes were bright with pain. “The woman,” she said. “The one from the
computer.”
“Yes?”
“Does she have a Southern accent?”
“F
ocus on your legs,” Yasmine, the yoga instructor, said. As always, she began to list
all the major leg muscles, describing in her honeyed voice how they were sinking into
the earth one at a time—the soleus and the gastrocnemius and the tibialis anterior—each
one glowing warm with red chakra energy.
Jill Freeman usually loved this part of her yoga class—shevasana, or corpse pose,
it was called, and it was the last pose of the hour. Such a soothing ten minutes:
You lie on your back, perfectly still, the lights low, your body and mind cleared
of tension, nothing in your world but Yasmine’s voice, and those lovely Latin words.
Yasmine had been working here for five weeks and she was so intelligent, a med student
on leave. The studio was lucky to have her. Sometimes, Jill even fell asleep during
Yasmine’s shevasana—her voice was that soothing. But today sleep wasn’t even a possibility.
Two weeks
. Back in grade school, Sister Mary Eunice had said,
With the possible exception of water, anyone should be able to do without anything
for two weeks
. Easy to say when you’re talking to a bunch of ten-year-old girls who couldn’t imagine
being deprived of anything more essential than Bonne Bell Lip Smacker or peanut M&M’s.
Easy to say, Sister Mary Eunice, when you’re a nun.
“Focus on your abdominal muscles—the iliac crest, the umbilicus, the rectus sheath
. . . feel them melting into the ground, glowing orange with creativity, joy, sensual
pleasure . . .”
Jill wanted to jump out of her skin.
Get it together. Deep breath in, deep breath out . . .
Really, for most couples married twenty years, two weeks without sex wasn’t that big
a deal. Her friend Cathy, for instance . . . Why, just the other day over coffee at
Starbucks, Cathy had mentioned, oh-so-casually, that she and Alex hadn’t “done the
deed” for three months. Three entire months—and that was fine by Cathy. It was a relief,
she’d insisted, considering how demanding Alex used to be before he went on antidepressants.
“I can read in bed, now,” Cathy had said, as if reading in bed were some wondrous
thing. “I don’t have to shave my legs every day.”
Three weeks ago, Jill might have felt sorry for her. But now . . . Now, she was feeling
sorry for herself.
Jill’s husband, Gary, had always been great in bed—tender and sweet when you wanted
him to be, passionate and forceful when you didn’t. In three years of dating and twenty
years of marriage, Jill could probably use the fingers on one hand to count the times
she wasn’t in the mood when Gary was—and it would have been because of the flu, or
maybe the last few days of pregnancy. It would have been for real reasons.
“Focus on the muscles that make up the chest—the pectoralis major and minor. Feel
them sinking, warming your heart . . .”
When they first got together, Gary’s friends would tease him about how unworthy he
was of her. They’d compare the two of them to Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley, speculate
that maybe Jill was an actress Gary had hired to make himself look more successful.
This because Jill had been a swimsuit model—two inches taller than Gary and nearly
ten years younger, while Gary was short, stocky, and rough around the edges, a transplant
from the East with dark, knowing eyes.
Dude, what does she see in you
, Gary’s best man Chris Curtis had joked during his wedding toast—Chris no great catch
himself.
What is your secret?
But even back then, even as a blushing bride of twenty-two who’d so recently put her
Catholic school days behind her, even then Jill had locked eyes with her groom over
her glass of champagne and grinned in such a way, the nuns would have slapped her.
If only you knew, Chris Curtis. . .
But these last two weeks . . . Actually, if she was going to be honest, it had been
going on for months. Not the lack of sex—that would’ve killed her. The distance. Lying
in bed together, sitting next to each other in the bleachers for Hannah’s soccer game
or Tessa’s cheerleading or Lucy’s gymnastics meet, during silences at the breakfast
table or at night on the couch while they were watching TV, Jill would get the odd
sense that something was going on inside Gary’s brain—something she’d never known
about and never would.
What is your secret?
“Focus on your neck—the levator scapulae, the trapezius muscle, which fuses to the
deltoid . . .”
Last night, Jill had woken up from a fitful sleep. She’d reached out for Gary and
felt nothing. It was four in the morning, and she was alone.
“The muscles in your neck are glowing green with a healing light.”
Jill had left the bedroom and moved down the hall, tiptoeing so as not to wake the
girls, her feet barely landing on the wood floors.
Midnight snack
, she’d thought. Gary was known to sneak down to the kitchen late at night and, as
he put it “relieve the fridge of any leftovers.” Jill had crept down the stairs, thinking
of what she might say to him when she saw him in the kitchen. She’d scold him, of
course, for eating so late. And then she would add something provocative.
I know something you can do that’s much better for you.
And he would laugh and grab her and . . .
He wasn’t in the kitchen. Jill was about to turn around and go back upstairs, when
she’d heard a rustling in his home office and noticed that he was in there, with the
door closed. Probably just catching up on work, she’d thought. But still, she had
a strange feeling . . . Why was the door closed? Why had he wanted to keep her out?
She wasn’t the type of woman to put her ear against a door. But still . . .
Still, she could have sworn she’d heard Gary in there, talking.
Jill had gone back to bed, but she hadn’t slept. Two hours later, with Gary snoring
beside her, she’d gotten up. She’d tiptoed back downstairs and snuck into his office.
She’d never been the type of woman to rummage through her husband’s desk. She couldn’t
even imagine being friends with someone who would open her husband’s top desk drawer,
who would slide her hand in and feel around for evidence of . . . something. But that
was what she’d done. That was what she had become.
In the drawer, she’d found a small, disposable phone. And without much thought, she’d
flipped it open, clicked on the icon for outgoing calls. She hadn’t recognized any
of the numbers, but she’d written them down anyway—only three numbers, none of them
from this area code.
If he’s having an affair
, she’d thought,
at least it’s long distance. . .
God, this was all so surreal, Jill thinking this way.
Twenty years going to bed every night with the same man, the man who’s held your hand
while you’ve given birth to his three daughters and taught you how to play chess and
hugged you so close at both your parents’ funerals, the man who puts his head next
to yours on the pillow and kisses the back of your neck when he thinks you’re asleep,
who teases you that no matter how old you get, you’ll always be his trophy wife. You
think you know that man. You think you know his thoughts.
“Focus on your skull, and then the beautiful mind it houses. Feel it glow purple with
spiritual energy. Feel it,” Yasmine said, “feel it.” But Jill couldn’t feel anything.
A
fter class, Jill said her good-byes quickly. She didn’t bother hitting the locker
room and showering or even getting changed. She just grabbed her purse, jammed her
feet into her plastic flip-flops, and hurried out to her car in her yoga pants and
Wise Up T-shirt.
Wise up, indeed
.
She slid into her car and stuck the key in the ignition, but instead of turning it,
she put her head down on the wheel and cried. Repeatedly, Jill tried to make herself
stop, but then more tears would come and she’d be sobbing again, her hair stuck to
her face, her nose running, praying no one she knew would walk by.
Talk to Gary
, said a voice inside her.
Drive home and ask to speak to him alone. Get him to explain
it all—the distant behavior
,
the disposable phone
,
what he was doing in his office at four in the morning with the door closed . . .
If he’s evasive in any way, just show him those numbers you wrote down. He’ll have
to tell you the truth. And it probably won’t be as bad as you think.
It was good advice—the same advice Jill would have given any of her friends.
Jill ran her hand over her wet face. It was hard to believe she’d had that many tears
inside her, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore. One of the nuns, Jill couldn’t
remember which one, had told her,“
God is the feeling you get after crying—that sense of comfort and calm
.”
“You mean, God is
in
the feeling, right, Sister?”
“No, dear. God
is
that feeling. He is the calm that gives you strength.”
Crying had probably been an overreaction—yoga always made Jill emotional. And really,
it had been only two weeks . . .
Jill reached into her purse for a Kleenex. But instead, she found herself grabbing
her phone, along with the slip of paper on which she’d written down Gary’s three outgoing
calls. She hadn’t planned on calling the numbers—she’d only written them to confront
Gary with. But here she was, yet again, surprising herself.
She turned on her phone, and tapped in the first number.
T
he new girl in Errol Ludlow’s employ was just leaving his apartment when his cell
phone rang. She was one of those women who looked better walking away than coming
toward you. And that was saying something, as her front—all of it—was superlative.
Errol smiled, took in the view. “A most delightful visit,” he said.
And it had been. He normally didn’t allow any of his employees into his apartment—it
was always a mistake to mix business with pleasure—but Diandra was special. Yes, that
was what she called herself—Diandra, a diminutive of the Greek Dianthe, meaning “flower
of the gods.” Errol suspected her real name was probably Madison or Brittany—she was
about as Greek as his left butt cheek—but oh, she was indeed a heavenly creature.
“You are a superb private detective,” Errol told the back of Diandra. “What you did
was truly above and beyond.”
She turned, delivering a grin that could melt a man’s belt buckle. “Are you talking
about the pictures I took at the Hustler Club? Or . . . the way we celebrated my taking
them?”
Errol blushed—
blushed
, at his age and experience. Truth be told, he had been talking about the pictures—startlingly
clear photographs of some poor, soon-to-be-divorced schmuck by the name of Dr. Marvin
Greene with a weakness for double Es and far too many hundred-dollar bills at his
disposal. But now that she mentioned it . . . “Well . . . I mean . . . the celebration
was . . .”
“Above.”
“Yes.”
“And beyond.”
“God, yes.”
“Well let me just tell you, Mr. Ludlow. It is a genuine pleasure to be on your staff.”
Diandra gazed at him for a few moments, making sure the double entendre landed and
stuck.
“Uh . . . thank you?”
She slipped through the front door and closed it behind her. And only then, when Errol
could breathe again, did he realize that his cell phone had been trilling for easily
thirty seconds. He picked it up. “Ludlow.”
“Pardon?”
Errol always made it a point to enunciate. His mother had been hard of hearing, and
so since his youth, he’d taken great pains to ensure he was understood by all around
him. In other words, no one said, “Pardon” to him, ever. “Lud. Low.” He glanced at
the screen on his cell phone. California area code. No wonder. They were all high
out there. All that smog and creosote.
“I’m sorry,” said the woman on the other line. “My name is Jill and I . . . uh . . .
I found this number on a disposable phone and . . . well . . . I thought you would
be a woman.”
“Your husband’s disposable phone?”
“Yes.”
“What is your husband’s name?”
She cleared her throat. “It’s Gary. Gary Freeman.”
Errol’s jaw tensed up. “Gary Freeman?” Wheels turned in his head, scenarios playing
out in fast-motion.
Should I tell her the truth? Where would that get me?
“I’ve never heard of him,” Errol said, finally.
“But . . . I . . . I saw several calls to you on the phone . . .”
“You live in Southern California, yes?”
“Yes.”
“South Pasadena? I recognize the area code.”
“Actually, just Pasadena. Not South.”
“Did you ever think your husband might be keeping that phone for a friend? I have
several clients in Southern California.”
“Clients?”
“I’m a private investigator,” Errol said. “My specialty is cheating spouses. You might
see how someone wouldn’t want a phone with my number on it to be seen by . . . well,
I suppose you’d call them loved ones.”
“You . . . You’re sure . . .”
“You can look me up online, ma’am. Ludlow Investigations. I have my own Web site.”
“Yes, but my husband . . .”
“I don’t know a Gary Freeman, ma’am.” Ludlow hung up.
Moments later, he was looking up Gary Freeman’s number in his contacts—the number
Freeman had requested, after firing Errol, that he never call again. He took a few
moments, figuring out in his head how much his continued silence might be worth. He
didn’t have much on Gary Freeman, this was true. But he did have Lula Belle’s Web
address. He had that fascinating download—
such talent!
—and he had the knowledge that Gary Freeman wanted to find Lula Belle, very badly.
Errol smiled. He’d been around enough angry wives to know that his keeping quiet about
these few factoids could be worth . . . Well, enough to keep Diandra in top-shelf
champagne for quite a long while.