How I Spent My Summer Vacation (12 page)

It was obvious that most of Reese’s business must have been carried on elsewhere, at those junior colleges and retirement homes Frankie had mentioned, with elderly people reluctant to travel.

There were few personal touches, although some things had either already been put in cartons or were never unpacked. Two boxes, flaps open, sat near the bookcase. The books on the shelves looked fake, or chosen for their binding colors, the furnishings safe and predictable. The only individualized items hung on the wall behind his desk; a plaque from the Chamber of Commerce, a framed photograph of Mr. Reese and a hearty-looking man, and a soft-edged portrait of a woman, painted, apparently, by a brush full of marzipan. “His wife?” I murmured.

“Yes.”

The portrait must have been commissioned in Mrs. Reese’s pregrommet phase. She was wearing something translucent and dreamy.

Half Norma Evans’s attention was still in the outer office, listening to a droning male voice on the answering machine. I could make out his inflection—questioning—but not the words.

“Poor Mrs. Reese. She must be devastated,” I murmured. Jesse Reese’s desk was bare except for a clock and a narrow dish in which lay a pen, so I looked back at the wall, at the photograph of Reese in this very room, at this very desk below a wall that then held only the saccharine portrait of his wife. He was half out of his chair, en route to a handshake, one hand extended, the other flat on the desk, giving him balance. His little finger touched a photograph of a woman in a swimsuit and high heels. Miss Wannabe America. A smiling man who looked like a gone-to-seed athlete offered up the Cherry Hill Citizen of the Year plaque that now hung on the wall next to this picture.

Those tear sheets in which I had come almost to believe were, not surprisingly, nowhere to be found. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said in my Hildy whine.

She shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t imagine what became of them.”

“Did his wife take her photograph?” I asked. “The one on the desk in this photo?”

Miss Evans looked startled, checking me, then the desk, then the photo on the wall, then me again. “No,” she said. Miss Evans wasn’t in a mood to chatter.

The phone rang again, and again was followed by the patient, tired sounds of Norma Evans explaining the changed status of the office. It was a very changed status and a very long message.

“Maybe my tear sheets are inside one of the cabinets,” I suggested.

“I’m sorry, but those cabinets are false fronts,” she said in her near whisper. “They contain stereo equipment and a TV. There are no tear sheets here, Miss Johnson.”

In the outer office a querulous voice spoke—shouted, actually. “
Norma
,” it said, “don’t give
me
that crap about being closed. I know you’re there, so…”

The voice sounded mixed in a cement truck.

Norma Evans bolted and raced from the office, diving for her desk. She got to the receiver with amazing, middle-age-defying speed. For a second longer I heard the voice utter expletives, but then Miss Evans pressed a button and the sound stopped. “I’m
here
,” she said. “Somebody was—is—in the office and I’m
busy
.”

I couldn’t hear anything more, except for excited squawks from the caller. I crossed the room and looked into those two cartons.

Videotapes. Prerecorded. “An Afternoon with Jesse Reese,” it was. “Seminars on Savings.” My pocketbook was too small, but I shoved a tape under the baggy excess of Mackenzie’s sweater, my heart racing. Then, taking a deep breath, I went out to the reception area where Norma Evans was still on the phone. As I walked in, I faced the back of the woman’s desk, and I saw that the papers she’d been straightening so obsessively had been shoved, corners helter-skelter, into a large violet and navy bag, not into a desk drawer. Norma Evans, receiver still to her ear, followed the arc of my eyes and looked ashamed. I’d caught her being less than efficient. Downright slovenly, in fact.

When she hung up, I thought it was time for Hildy Johnson to be concerned about something besides her own prematurely terminated story. “The people who had accounts with Mr. Reese, what happens to them?” I asked.

“But surely,” she said, “since you won’t be interviewing—”

“I was thinking that if we’re protecting financial futures, we have to know what happens when your financial counselor dies.” Well, actually, it wasn’t John Q. Public as much as I who needed to know if there was any percentage in killing off your financial advisor. “Is it possible to get a list of his customers? Or do you call them clients?”

“I’m sorry,” she said once again. “That’s privileged information, not something I could share with you. But I can assure you that Mr. Reese’s clients are being duly notified.” She took a moment to compose herself. “It will be up to each of them to determine how and with whom to manage their funds from now on.”

“Given”—I gestured at the unoccupied office—”what’s happened, I’m thinking of a whole different spin for the article. ‘The Death of Professor Money.’ That’s what they called him, wasn’t it?”

“That sounds ghoulish,” she whispered, her hands to her chest.

I agreed, but there were still things I wanted to know. How did real journalists ferret out information, aside from those who arrived with big bucks as bribes? “It wouldn’t be,” I assured her. “I promise you that. It would be…moving. A
tribute
to him. You said…it…happened in Atlantic City. Was he there to see a client? Maybe that’s my angle.”

She looked startled again. She had a very small repertoire of visible emotions—timidity, unsettledness, shock, sorriness.

“Oh, maybe you’re worried about that…that woman. I wouldn’t mention any of that in print. I promise. That’s just between the two of us.”

“And the entire world. There will be a trial, of course, and it’s already in all the papers.”

“I meant, was he on business before then? Could I interview his last client? Follow her through what she does now, something like that?”

She shook her head. “The fact is, I don’t know who his appointment was with last night.” She looked as if that failure burned inside her with an angry flame. “It wasn’t on his calendar. Just the way you weren’t.”

“So, then, you can’t help me?” I forgot myself—Hildy Johnson forgot herself—and gesticulated, thereby almost dislodging the pilfered tape. I gasped and clutched my side, holding the tape in place.

Miss Evans blanched. Her eyes widened. A tiny spot of rust appeared on each cheek. She shook her head. “Are you all right?” she asked.

I nodded. “Just…disappointed,” I stammered.

I knew what was coming next.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Me, too.

* * *

I got into the car a bit shakily. It must take a while to get used to stealing, lying about who you are, and preying on and pestering the newly bereaved. I was really tired, and the recent tension had upped my back pain a few notches.

I thought longingly of my house, my bathtub, my bed, and my cat, but I didn’t feel brave enough to visit the last of these love objects, Macavity.

Leaving home without Macavity is more dangerous than without an American Express card because of the unique attention he receives at Old Mrs. Russell’s Cat Camp.

Nancy Russell, a lovely dealer in tribal jewelry, is my friend and neighbor who lives, when not shopping in obscure slivers of the world, with her mother, who is deaf, dictatorial, and convinced that most people and all “strange” animals are verminous disease carriers. Except for Macavity, who’s been granted special exemption from disgustingness. When I leave town, he goes to Old Mrs. Russell’s Cat Camp, where he does not exactly pine for me.

Old Mrs. Russell poaches him fresh salmon and bluefish fillets. She lights a fire on even the muggiest days and has a special Macavity pillow that she places in front of the flames. She tells him stories of delectable mice and exotic alleys, and makes sure that a dozen new catnip-laden play toys are on hand per visit. She provides a constant on-demand lap and petting hand and a special litter pan that’s got a little house built around it.

And then, to my and her daughter’s amazement, one day Old Mrs. Russell produced—proudly—her secret weapon, a vibrator with which she massages old Macavity’s stomach. “A nonsexual massage, you understand,” she said in her prim and haughty voice as I stood gape-mouthed. “But quite satisfying, as you can see.”

Neither I nor her daughter dared cross the haughtiness barrier to ask where and how the elderly woman had procured her instrument of delight.

But the bottom line is that a cat’s loyalty—make that my cat’s loyalty—is not the stuff of heroic ballads. Cats are pragmatists, not romantics. They know a good thing when they find it, and are not big on altruism. Macavity doesn’t speculate about whether he can go home again—he just knows he doesn’t want to.

So if I did visit, he’d ignore me, hoping I’d go away, and I wasn’t sure I could handle the additional stress right now.

I mentally wished my kitty a gloriously hedonistic holiday, looked up at the sky, which had turned thick, ominous, and lifeless, and reluctantly put the convertible top up, pointed the car east, and heard the first smack of rain as I pulled away. A summer storm without a summer. Or perhaps the half day of blue skies this morning had been it. I hoped I had enjoyed it sufficiently.

SOON OBVIOUSLY DIDN’T MEAN quite this soon, even though nearly three hours had passed since I first read Mackenzie’s message. Well, it was commuter time now, so I gave him further slack on getting back from wherever he’d gone in his search for Dunstan.

I wanted to believe he was taking his time because in the interim he’d found, arrested, and booked Dunstan Farmer.

I pushed Jesse Reese’s tape into the VCR and looked for the
play
button. And then I laughed out loud. All alone, laughing at nothing like a crazy person, but all the same it struck me as nearly hysterical that here I was, on the world’s most pathetic vacation, doing exactly what I had left home to avoid: sitting alone, watching a tape, and waiting for Mackenzie.

The musical introduction to Jesse Reese’s seminar sounded prefab, as if someone had pushed the soothingly-nondescript-background-tune button on a computer.

But the man himself was definitely not nondescript. Properly lit and photographed, he was better-looking than his portrait in the paper had suggested. His voice was deep, soothing, and convincing. A man to be trusted with your life’s earnings.

After a short introduction the screen was filled with a shifting montage of senior citizens enjoying what he called, in his voice-over, the dividend years. There were golfers and sailors and mall-walkers and grandchildren-cuddlers and travelers and gardeners and ballroom dancers and hammock swingers. The images almost made me want to fast-forward the next thirty or forty years of my life and get to this plane of pure pleasure.

Then Reese’s voice faded and we heard from the seniors themselves. “My whole life I dreamed of getting a college degree, and at age seventy-six, I…” “I always loved dollhouses, and now, with the time to collect and design them, I…”

I, of course, was Jesse Reese’s nightmare. A pension plan that wouldn’t kick in for years, and then only feebly. No savings. No safety net. Where would I be when I was their ages? On a soup line along with Frankie the bartender and other merry souls who thought financial planning was a boring topic? In a rocker at the Indigent Old Teachers’ Home? Or—worst of all, the nightmare—under the boardwalk along with Georgette?

Jesse Reese infomercialized me into slavish attention. How could I save myself before it was too late?

He sat, elegantly tailored, in a living room that had an edge of forced fakery, like a homey talk-show set. Two women and a man faced him, smiling nervously. One of the women looked like Norma Evans might if she invested in makeup and time.

Everybody’s awkwardness was endearing. They were marvelous actors who imitated nervous amateurs brilliantly.

“I’ve been a homemaker all my life,” a blond marshmallow puff said. “When my husband died, I realized I didn’t know the first thing about how to take care of myself financially.”

“My investment goals are pretty simple,” the man said. “I want to be able to stay independent. Don’t want to rely on the kids or anybody else, ever. Don’t want anybody’s handouts, but I don’t have enough money to interest one of those professional money managers, so what do I do?”

“I’ve worked all my life,” the second woman said. I squinted at her. She was handsome, in a large-boned, strong way. Clearly defined, and not all muzzy, the way Norma Evans had been. Her eyes were lined and lashes mascaraed, her lips were a bright crimson, her cheeks rosy. I was certain, almost, that she was, indeed, Jesse Reese’s secretary, testifying for her boss, being the serious ant contrast to the chubby blond homemaker’s grasshopper. “I couldn’t save much until recently.” She sounded like somebody who hadn’t quite fully memorized her script. “For a long time, I had a lot of family expenses because of illness and things like that. So now I’m really concerned about protecting myself.”

And to each, Jesse Reese extended sympathetic sounds, a pat on the hand, a smile, and then advice. He stood and made lists on an easel that happened to be part of his living room decor. He explained, he charted, he offered suggestions. And through it all, like a subliminal message, was the clear idea that if you wanted more guidance than a thirty-minute tape could provide, and no matter how large or small your net worth, Jesse Reese, a man who cared, a man with years of experience, would be more than happy to become your personal financial advisor.

“You convinced me, Jess,” I said. Talking to one’s TV is one of the ten warning signs of Needing to Get a Life. There was a message in all this, and it wasn’t about investments.

The rooms here had doorbells. Mine made an unpleasant noise between a honk and a howl. I wonder what designer having a bad day decided that all the irritants of home should be built into the hotel’s wiring. The bell sounded again, like an agitated goose.