Resurgence (30 page)
Nate’s disappointment is difficult to conceal as she dollops equal amounts of sour cream and applesauce onto the plate she’s preparing for a figment of her imagination. When she leaves the room, the temptation to make a break for it is difficult to resist; so is the temptation to wonder just how many plates of food might be moldering in an unoccupied upstairs room.
He manages to remain in the character created for him when she comes back, promises to follow up on the invaluable leads provided, and restore the job of overseer and handyman of the Chandler property to the foreign fellow if at all possible.
He’s not altogether faking it; he or his assigns will pursue those leads, even though they’ve been seriously compromised by this fresh evidence of Mrs. Floss’s fallibility. He overdoes it a little with his thanks for lunch, maybe a little too effusive, but no more than he’d offer one of his elderly aunts, who doesn’t cook nearly as well.
Mrs. Floss walks with him to his car, where she insists he take with him a large foil-wrapped square of kugel and two pages torn from her sketchpad. She ogles the car as though seeing it for the first time. “You
are
doing the right thing, you know. By the looks of this car you don’t need the job at all.”
She could not be more right, he agrees as he eases the uber-pricey car away from the curb and into the Chandler driveway, where he’ll perform the final act of this charade by giving the place a cursory inspection as long as he’s in the neighborhood.
Before going in, he thinks to jot down the particulars most likely to escape him, starting with the alphanumeric of the Michigan license plate, and finishing with the possible importance of a sign reportedly applied upside down to a flashy coupe utility vehicle. He caps his pen, closes the notepad, and is immediately hit with the feeling he’s left something out. But what? He reopens the notepad, reviews the seconds-old scribbles, and it comes to him. But not from these notes. He’s recalling a detail from his original run-in with Mrs. Floss, when she alleged that the day laborer in question didn’t speak much English. A significant detail now that the burden of proof rests on establishing the guy to be native, not foreign.
The key to 13 Old Quarry Court is still in the glove box. So are Amanda’s precise driving and entry instructions from his first trip here. Nate reviews the entry instructions, not that he needs to; he hasn’t forgotten that the key will open any of the exterior doors—a woeful security lapse in his estimation. But that’s not what he’s here for. He’s not here to find fault or make recommendations. This is simply a courtesy walkthrough to confirm the windows are all closed and no squirrels have invaded the attic, say. And to satisfy the assumptions of the ever-watchful Mrs. Floss.
He lets himself in by the front door. Everything appears in order on the ground floor. The kitchen is as remembered, and the rooms off the central corridor appear undisturbed.
On the second floor, he can’t be so sure. The day of the appraisal he didn’t bother coming up here, so unless something is glaringly out of place, he won’t notice. A kind of reverse Goldilocks thing is going on when he peers into bedrooms where beds have clearly not been slept in. Then it’s a voyeur thing when he encounters a large stripped bed which probably saw some heavy action a month or so ago. The last bedroom he comes to provokes nothing but curiosity. Why is it unfurnished and bare of decoration of any kind—even curtains? And why has money been left on the windowsill in plain sight?
Nate instinctively pockets the money for safekeeping, at the same time realizing this must be the cash found by the hypercritical appraiser when he happened on Laurel’s girlhood hiding place. And doesn’t it just figure that the anal prick would gather up the bills and stack them in a tidy, however obvious, pile. This suggests the appraiser may have done similar with the so-called rodenticide in the attic, and encourages Nate to have a look at that situation.
The door to the attic doesn’t reveal itself right away. He’s in and out of linen closets, bathrooms, and stairwells before he discovers the hatchway in a cedar closet and boosts himself through the opening and onto a fair-sized platform spanning several widths of rafters. Light from the closet shows the platform bare of all but a few sagging cartons and some outlines in the dust where luggage might have been stored.
Yes, luggage, in all probability. Suitcases, weekenders, satchels, carryalls, gym bags. This is where Laurel said her brothers routinely tossed their gym bags—where a presumed spill of talcum powder led the sanctimonious appraiser to believe rodent killer had been distributed.
Crouched down on his heels, he can just make out a whitish dusting of something between the rafters nearest the hatchway. He wets a finger, blots up some of the substance, rubs it between finger and thumb. On the gritty side. If it is talcum, it must contain an exfoliating agent. How good would that feel between your toes, or on your balls, say? He wets another finger, not yet convinced this is something he’d dare taste, brings up another sample that he holds to the light from the closet and knows without tasting what it is.
“Son-of-a-
bitch
!” He confounds himself with a nonstandard epithet, rocks off his heels and onto his ass. The platform takes on aspects of a raft set adrift in the middle of the ocean as he sits there contemplating evidence he has no idea what to do with.
This discovery is in the category of returning to the Northern Michigan wreckage to find Aurora’s head missing. He wants to block it out, deny it as way too complicating a factor, and just get the hell out of here like it never happened. He wants to wash the tainted fingers with soap and water instead of sucking off the residue, thereby confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s coke that was sprinkled here.
After he’s made that confirmation and scrubbed at his hands like a latter-day Lady Macbeth, his thought processes recover. He comprehends that this finding may not have bearing on his concerns, that Laurel’s college-age brothers may utilize a little blow now and then. And that doesn’t have to mean they’re permanent write-offs, or that he’s compelled to report their leisure time activity to Laurel. No, not at all.
He’s willing to make that judgment call, but not before giving the rafter spaces surrounding the platform a good groping. If he finds anything more than a light sprinkle, it’ll be another story altogether. And no one will be spared—not even Laurel.
The only area of residue is the spot near the door. That increases the likelihood it was a onetime event, an accidental spill rather than a regular hiding place.
When he drops though the hatchway onto the closet floor, his stiffened knees let him know he rode that raft of indecision a lot longer than thought. Without checking basement or garage, he lets himself out of the house the same way he came in. Because Mrs. Floss is presumed watching and nodding approval at the length of time spent on his supposed job, he does a parade lap of the court before squealing onto the connector road.
On Route 3, he drives like he just stole the car. He cannot get home soon enough; he cannot talk to Amanda soon enough; he cannot begin to decide what all to tell her.
The fast trip home does not provide the catharsis hoped for. When he hands the car off to the garage attendant, he’s no closer to deciding how much Amanda should be told. Has he gone full circle? Is ambivalence again his byword?
In the kitchen, he checks for phone messages even though it’s too early to hear from Amanda. At five p.m. New York time, the evening’s far from over in rural Kent. Two, even three more hours may have to pass before she can break away from her hosts to place a discreet call.
He forgoes the drink he was craving all the way home and heads straight for the study to collect his thoughts on paper.
“And then what?” Nate muses aloud once the essentials of the bizarre experience are down in black and white. Go to the cops with a shitload of allegations based on chronic paranoia, coincidence, half-baked conclusions, fevered imaginations, and the testimony of an eyewitness who serves lunch to her long-dead husband? “Yeah, right,” he mumbles.
The zeal that brought him this far is collapsing around him. Despite having more to go on than ever before, it takes a real act of will to call out-of-favor PI, Harry Newblatt, the logical means for determining if those Michigan license plates were issued to Jakeway.
Newblatt’s usual answering machine foolishness is tolerated before the investigator picks up. Then, Nate states his business as though he’d never had issues with the guy.
“I’m told the plates were originally issued for a blue ’seventy-five Jimmy and recently transferred to an ’eighty-six maroon and silver El Camino or Caballero. There’s reason to believe the transfer took place in New Jersey.” Nate spells out the identifiers on the plates, over-enunciating like he’s talking to a hearing-impaired three-year-old. “See what you can do. Okay?”
Newblatt registers no surprise at falling back into favor, only reminds that it’s the weekend, not to expect results before Tuesday or Wednesday, and asks if a pinpoint is wanted on the coupe utility vehicle.
“Wouldn’t hurt, and probably wouldn’t hurt to extend the search beyond Jersey. But if you should track it down, do
not
interfere in any way. I cannot stress that strongly enough. Do not mess with this guy, and do not report his location to anyone but me. Got it?”
Newblatt indicates he’ll be handling the inquiry himself and instructions will be followed to the letter—oblique reference to the bungled Laurel Chandler surveillance and, under the circumstances, an adequate apology.
Nate returns to the kitchen, prepares a generous vodka on the rocks and wanders into the library cum picture gallery to renew acquaintance with the Klimt portraits and contemplate his next move.
It’s too late in the day to call the Edelweiss landscaping outfit. Chances are, Hoople Jakeway’s name never appeared on any employee roster, anyway. Not because he registered with a fake name, but because he never registered there at all. Why would he if his physical characteristics enabled him to infiltrate the ethnic group currently dominating the field of day laborers? And if gullible Mrs. Floss chose to take him for a foreigner, why would he do anything to dispel that notion—such as speak more than a few words of English?
In the salon, he strikes a few notes to check the tuning of the Bosendorfer grand and rejects another option. Attempting to track down the tri-state area manufacturer of magnetic signs that recently fabricated one with the word “superior” in the display, is just plain laughable. Everything’s superior these days, whether referring to a rating or a place.
Nate circles back to the kitchen, adds ice to his drink and takes a seat at the housekeeper’s planning desk, where he acknowledges that timeframe won’t be easy to establish, either. Did Mrs. Floss ever say exactly when the supposed foreigner was first observed? Or when he was last seen? Would she be able to now?
The phone rings before he can further defeat himself with that problem.
“Yes!” he answers, suddenly hopeful that Amanda has been able to make an early night of it in Kent.
“I kinda doubt that gung ho greeting was meant for me,” Brownie Yates says, his coarse regional twang unmistakable. “But don’t hang up till you’ve heard what I’ve got to say. You with me?”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Nate says, infused with another kind of hope because Brownie wouldn’t dare call here without something important to say.
“St. Joseph’s Hospital. West Village. My balls. Your money. Get the drift?” Brownie says.
“I’m starting to.”
“Good, then get this. Sheer persistence and a judicious application of currency surfaced Hoople Jakeway’s name on the hospital guest list the day the Sid Kaplan jerk-off was carved and stuffed.”
“
No shit
!”
“No shit,” Brownie echoes.
“Don’t say another word. Not now, not on the phone. Meet me at P.J. Clarke’s in an hour. Bring everything you’ve got.”
“And you bring cash. I’m out a grand.”
“Fuckitfuckitfuckitfuckitfuckit,” Nate mutters while placing an international call to Colin Elliot’s main number in Kent. Although his luck has improved, there’s no reason to believe the improvement precludes Colin answering the phone.
He’s ready for a heated exchange or a hang-up, but Rachel Elliot answers and blessedly agrees to pass his call off as having originated with Amanda’s service.
Amanda calls back within minutes. “I thought we agreed to talk later,” she says sounding mildly alarmed, maybe even a little annoyed.
“We did, and I intended to wait, but something’s come up. I have to go out.”
“Oh?”
“To meet Brownie Yates.”
“Oh!”
“Yeah, and here’s the deal. Turns out my day was more productive than first thought. Things are happening, things are coming together and I need help. I need you. Here. With me.”
“Are you saying you want me to flat-out dump Colin?” she says after a worrisome pause.