Chance (15 page)

The high school had been built during a time when people thought learning was important and the buildings in which it was supposed to take place reflected that view. There were a lot of libraries scattered around Massachusetts that had been built during the same period and had the same British Imperial look. The high school, like so many of the libraries, had gotten a little shabbier, as if to reflect current attitudes.

There were a few teachers there who'd been there eighteen years ago, but no one remembered any student named Bibi. A tight-jawed English teacher told me that she tried to forget them as soon as they left her room. And the principal told me he only remembered the bad ones.

"Yearbooks?" I said.

"We keep them in here," the principal told me.

"If we keep them in the library, the students will deface them."

"Students are great, aren't they?" I said.

The principal was a cautious man. He didn't commit himself on that. But, once he had assured himself that I wouldn't deface it, he gave me the 1977 Fairhaven High School yearbook, and allowed me to sit on a straight chair in the school secretary's office to read it. I found Bibi's picture easy enough. Except for the acquired scar tissue she still looked like seventeen-year-old Beatrice Costa had looked. Most Congenial. Drama Club 2,3,4. Yearbook Staff 4.

Newspaper 2,3,4. Cheerleader 3,4. Ambition: television news reporter. Quote, "Hey, Abbey, where's the party." There was nothing there about marrying Marty Anaheim and getting her nose busted.

I kept looking at the pictures until I found Abigail Olivetti, whose quote was, "Bibi and I…"

I read the yearbook through for another hour and found nothing else to help me. The school had no record of Beatrice Costa's address or Abigail Olivetti's. The secretary told me that in a way to indicate that the question was stupid.

"We are not running a clearinghouse here," she told me.

"Probably more of a warehouse," I said.

"May I use your phone book?"

She handed it to me, and turned back to her desk work with an audible sigh. It was clear that I had no real understanding of her importance, and the pressing nature of her work. Not everyone can file detention slips.

There were seventeen Costas listed in Fairhaven, and one Olivetti. I wrote down the phone numbers and addresses and gave the phone book and the yearbook back to the secretary, and gave her my full-voltage smile. It was the smile that normally made them take off their glasses and let down their hair. I waited. Nothing happened. The woman was obviously frigid.

"Are you through here?" she said finally.

"No more pencils," I said.

"No more books. No more teacher's dirty looks."

"Really!" she said.

As I left the building, classes were changing and the students were milling about in the halls. They seemed inconceivably young to me. Full of pretense, massively other oriented, ill formed, partial, angry, earnest, resentful, excited, frantic, depressed, hopeful, and scared. When she was this age, Beatrice Costa had pledged herself to Marty Anaheim and nothing after was ever the same.

I sat in my car with the motor running and looked at my lists of names. It made more sense to start with the one Olivetti than to work my way through all seventeen Costas. I dialed the number and a woman answered.

"My name is Spenser," I said.

"I'm a detective trying to locate a woman named Bibi Anaheim, whose maiden name was Bibi Costa."

"I remember Bibi," the woman said.

"She's a friend of my daughter's."

"Your daughter is Abigail Olivetti?"

"Yes. Where did you get her name?"

"From the high school," I said.

"Does your daughter still see Bibi?"

"Oh, I should think so, they've been best friends since they were little," the woman said.

"Does your daughter live in town?" I said.

"No, she's up in Needham."

"Mass.?"

"Un huh. She's all grown up now of course. Married and kids and all. And she waited, thank God, until she was old enough."

"Who'd she marry?" I said.

"Carl Becker. He's got a big job with the phone company and they had to move up there. But she calls home every week, and sometimes the kids get on."

"Isn't that nice," I said.

"Is she a housewife?"

"No, she works in a bank. I think it's too much, with the children and all, but she's very modern, I guess. Things are different now."

"Ain't it the truth," I said.

"Can you give me her address and phone number? I'd like to get in touch with her."

"About Bibi Costa?"

"Yes."

"Is Bibi in some kind of trouble?"

"I don't know," I said.

"She's missing and I'd like to find her."

"I don't think I should give out Abbey's number," the woman said.

"Well, just the address then."

"No, I think you should talk with my husband. You can call back tonight if you'd like to. He gets home about six."

"Thank you," I said.

"That won't be necessary. Can you tell me if any of Bibi's family lives in town?"

"No, there was just Bibi and her mother. Her mother remarried and moved away years ago."

"You don't know where?"

"No."

"Do you remember who she married?"

"No."

"Well, thank you very much," I said, "for your time."

We hung up.

It goes that way a lot, conversation often dries up as they start thinking about how they don't actually know you, and don't quite know what you're up to. It's always wise to get as much as you can as soon as you can. If I couldn't find Abbey Becker in Needham, Massachusetts, I'd turn in my file of Dick Tracy Crimestopper tips.

As I started back across the bridge toward New Bedford, I was calling information on my car phone.

Abigail's mother would certainly have called her and told her about me. She would also have said that she didn't tell me where Abigail lived, and maybe Abigail would believe it. Though if I could find her mother, she might figure that I could find her. I sat.

The rain on my windshield made the colors of the fall trees look. like an impressionist painting. I ate a donut and drank some coffee. I could see the house okay. The rain had little effect on the side windows. I ate my second donut and finished my decaf. There was no sign of life in the Becker house. I got out of the car and walked to the front door. They had kids in school. The parents worked. They'd hide a key somewhere. I looked around for the best spot as I went up the walk. There was a doormat, but that was so obvious they probably wouldn't use it. On the front step I paused, glanced around, and opened the mailbox. No. There were windows on either side of the front door, and there were shutters on either side of the windows. I ran a hand behind the shutter to the right of the door. No. I tried the other one, and the key was there hanging on a loop of string from a thumbtack in the back side of the shutter frame. I rang the bell and waited. Nothing. I opened the front door and went in. The house was empty. I could feel the emptiness immediately. The living room was to the right, the dining room to the left. They were both furnished in cheap Danish modern. Five piece living room set now only $1100. The dining room was walnut. The living room was blond. In the living room, on the mantel over the clean fireplace, were pictures of three young girls, elementary-school age, maybe twelve, ten, and eight. I went down the short center hall to the kitchen. Cereal bowls and plates with toast crumbs on them, coffee cups and juice glasses and cutlery were stacked in the sink. An empty milk carton sat on the kitchen table, and a jar of grape jelly with the cap still off stood on the table beside it.

Across the hall was a family room with a day bed in it, one of those kind on wheels which you can rent. It didn't look like it belonged there. Furniture had been pushed out of the way to make room for it. The bed was unmade. There was a small lavatory off the family room. There was a lip liner on the sink, and in the wastebasket several tissues with the kiss imprint that women leave when they blot their lipstick. There was no sign of clothing.

Upstairs there were four bedrooms, the beds unmade, clothing scattered on the floor. There were damp towels wadded on the floor of the bathroom, and a cap less tube of toothpaste oozed some of its contents onto the sink top. Three of the bedrooms obviously belonged to the girls. The fourth was larger and appeared to be the master bedroom. There was a king-sized bed, unmade, and two closets. One was full of women's clothes, the other full of men's. A pair of white panty hose was draped over the foot of the bed. Some boxer shorts had been tossed toward the laundry basket in one of the closets and fallen considerably short. The house was a mess.

I'd been in enough houses on short notice, or none, to know that houses were often a mess. There were three kids to get dressed and fed and off to school before their parents got ready for work.

They'd pick up a little when they got home. They might clean on the weekend. They'd put everything in order before they had company. They were not expecting a burglar. I had broken and entered often enough in my life to be used to it. But I never liked it. I always felt sort of voyeuristic, peeping in on the personal clutter of people's privacy.

I went back downstairs and looked around in the family room again. There was a pale green plastic hair roller on the floor under the rollaway bed. There was an empty bottle of nail polish remover on top of the television set and a highball glass with a little water in the bottom. I smelled it. It smelled like bourbon. The water was probably melted ice. Someone, presumably a woman, had been staying in the room. But there were no clothes, no luggage. I went back up to the master bedroom and looked more carefully through the closet and the bureau. All the woman's clothes were size 12.

They all seemed consistent in style. Susan would have been helpful here, but she had always had some kind of hang-up on breaking into people's homes and snooping in their closets.

I walked around the house again and saw nothing else that would help me so I went back out the front door, hung the key up behind the shutter, and walked toward my car. The rain was still coming down, making the still suburban street shine a glossy black. I turned up my collar as I walked.

In my car I started the motor and turned on the wipers, set the heater on low, and sat some more, looking at the house across the street. The houseguest could have been Bibi and she could have scooted when Abbey's mother told her a detective was looking for her. Perfect. Trying to find her may have made her harder to find.

The universe was a recalcitrant bastard.

I had a west suburban directory in the car with me and I started calling banks on the car phone until I found one that employed Abigail Becker. She worked close to home, at a branch of DePaul Federal right here in Needham, downtown, maybe a mile from her house. I found her there, behind a desk on the customer side of the counter. The sign on the desk said she was Branch Manager. She was a biggish woman, but attractive enough with neat brown hair and blue eyes, and nice smile lines at the corner of her mouth. She didn't look like a lousy housekeeper. She had on a tan tweed suit which fit her well, and a dark brown blouse. That's why she hadn't worn the white panty hose. She would want tan to go with her outfit. She stood as I approached her desk. She would be about Bibi's age, which if they graduated '77, would make her thirty-six.

"May I help you, sir?"

"Ycu Mrs. Becker?" I said.

"Yes, I'm the branch manager. How can I help."

I took out my wallet and showed her my license.

"My name is Spenser," I said.

"I talked with your mother yesterday. I'm looking for Bibi Anaheim, formerly Bibi Costa."

"Mother told me you'd called her. I didn't realize she'd told you how to reach me."

"She didn't," I said.

"Intentionally. But she mentioned your name and said you lived in Needham, and…" I shrugged modestly.

"Elementary."

"Yes, of course, won't you sit down."

I sat.

"You and Bibi were high school friends."

"Yes, earlier than that. We were friends all through school."

"Do you still hear from her?"

"Not very much, I'm afraid. We exchange Christmas cards, really, very little more than that."

"You know where she is now?"

"Well, I gather she's not at home, in Medford?"

"No, would you have any idea where she might be?"

"No, I'm sorry. I don't."

"You've not heard from her?"

"No. Not in ages."

She shifted in her chair and crossed her legs. I was right. The panty hose were dark tan. The legs were good, too.

"And you have no thoughts where I might find her?"

"No, I'm very sorry, but I really don't."

"Names of any friends she might have contacted?"

She shook her head slowly.

I stood and took one of my business cards out and gave it to her.

"Well, if you do hear from her, or you think of anything that might be useful in finding her, please give me a call."

"Of course," she said and stood and shook hands with me.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful."

"Me too," I said and went back out into the rain with the collar of my trench coat turned up. In uniform. Driving back to Boston I thought about how she had not once asked why I was looking for Bibi or if she might be in trouble, or any of the questions she might have asked if she really hadn't talked with Bibi. Maybe if I laid low in the weeds for a while and didn't bother Abigail any more, the houseguest, whoever she was, might assume the risk was over and come back.