Missing (12 page)

"When he came to see you on Thursday afternoon,
did he talk about any trouble with Cindy?" I asked.

"Not specifically," Mulhane said. "But
looking back on it, I can’t help thinking there was some sort of
coded message in Mason’s complaints. Something that I just missed
at the time. I’ve gone over it again and again, trying to decipher
it. But frankly, save for the fact that the visit was unscheduled, it
was so much like his usual office check-ups that I can’t be certain
that I’m not reading my own remorse into what he said."

"What exactly did he say?"

"He complained that he was tired, that he hadn’t
been able to sleep. He said he’d had a number of bad dreams."

"Did he tell you what the dreams were about?"

"Cindy, Del, Ralph Cable."

"Who is Cable?"

"Mason’s college roommate at Rutgers. Mason
had a love affair with Cable, and Cable took advantage of it to more
or less blackmail Mason into giving him cash and other possessions.
It was a particularly crushing experience for Mason—one that set
the tone for many future disappointments?

"Do you know if he saw Cable again recently?"

"Cable is dead," Mulhane said. "He was
killed in Viet Nam in l97l."

The next question was obvious. "You think it was
possible that someone else was blackmailing him?"

"I think that would be the sort of thing you
would be best equipped to find out. But I’ll say this, Mason was
not the naive, trusting soul he’d been when he was a college kid. I
doubt if anyone could have extorted money from him simply by
threatening to reveal that he was homosexual or bisexual."

In light of the storm he’d weathered after the Paul
Grandin scandal, I doubted it, too. Still it was the iirst thing like
a lead that I’d come across—something I could easily check out by
examining Greenleaf’s bank statements.

"At the time I thought the dreams were
symptomatic of Mason’s usual complex of anxieties. He tended to
convert them into physical complaints, and fatigue and sleeplessness
were nothing new. I gave him a prescription without thinking twice
about it."

I could see where the Seconals had become a major
regret. "He could have gotten the sleeping pills anywhere."

Terry Mulhane stared at me blankly. "What are
you talking about?"

"The pills you prescribed. Seconals."

"I didn’t prescribe Seconals," Mulhane
said defensively. "Mason was a heavy drinker, and I’d never
prescribe sleeping pills for a drinker. I gave him Buspar, a
tranquilizer that isn’t potentiated by alcohol."

"The coroner’s report said he died of
barbiturate poisoning."

"You’re sure?"

"Yes."

Looking surprised, the doctor sat back in his chair.
"Where the hell did he get the Seconals?"

"He didn’t see any other doctors, did he?"

"Not that I know of."

I wasn’t sure what to make of it, save that it was
something else to look into. I got up from the couch.

"You’ve been a help," I said to Mulhane.
And he had been.

Terry Mulhane scrubbed savagely at his beard with the
back of his hand. "I’m still mystified by the Seconal thing. I
just assumed Mason overdosed on alcohol. You think you could get me a
copy of the coroner’s report, so I can double-check the finding?"

"Sure, I can."

"I gotta tell you, Stoner, you’re not the kind
of man I thought you would be. I was afraid you were taking advantage
of an ugly situation, taking advantage of Cindy."

"Believe me, doc, I’ll be happy to get this
thing over with."

"We all will," he said.
 

13

MASON Greenleaf ’s bad dreams about an ex-lover
turned blackmailer didn’t constitute much of a lead, but they were
what I had. Besides, I figured it wouldn’t take much work to check
them out—just a quick look at Greenleaf ’s bank books. To do that
I was going to need a key to Greenleaf’s condo, which meant I was
going to have to talk to Cindy Dorn. Since I wanted to talk to her
anyway, I went back to the office and dialed her at home. I didn’t
plan on raising the possibility of blackmail with her—not until I
came across solid proof. But it had also occurred to me that finding
a money trail might tell me where Greenleaf had spent the last four
days of his life. Anyway, that was the excuse I was going to use.

A man answered Cindy’s phone on the second ring.
"Yello," he said. "Cindy Dorn’s residence."

There was enough Tennessee in the guy’s voice to
make me guess he was Greenleaf’s brother.

"Can I speak to Cindy?"

"Sure can."

He went off the line and Cindy came on. "I’ll
handle it, Sam," I \
heard her say off
the line before she said, "Hello."

"Cindy, it’s Harry. You’ve got company,
huh?"

I could hear her cup her hand over the receiver. "You
don’t know the half of it."

"I may need to get into Mason’s condo again."

"Why?"

"Nothing important," I said. "Just a
routine check of his bank statements—see if he had any unusual
expenses before he died. Something I should have done a long time
ago."

"All right. If you pick me up, I’ll go with
you over to Mason’s. Maybe we can get Mason’s car, too, on the
way back. Anything to get the hell out of this house for as long as
possible," she said, dropping her voice to a whisper.

"I’ll be out there in about thirty minutes."

After finishing with Cindy, I went through the
messages on the answering machine. Ron Sabato had called to tell me
that he’d located Greenleaf’s jacket and that I could pick it up
at Vice after eleven that evening. Someone else had called but hadn’t
left a name or a message. There was no word from Ira Sullivan.

I took the elevator down to the street and headed
west up Sixth to the Parkade. Although I was hungry again, I could
wait until after I checked Greenleaf’s condo before eating. Later
in the night I’d stop at Stacie’s and try to get a name.

I caught the expressway on Sixth Street and pulled up
in front of Cindy Dorn’s house a little past nine. There was still
enough light in the sky to fill the yard with the barbed shadow of
the hawthorn tree, twisting across the grass and walk.

A car was parked in Cindy’s driveway, a red Seville
burnished cinnamon in the sunset. A tall gray-haired man was bent
behind it, shifting luggage around in the trunk. As I pulled in, he
turned around and stared. He was wearing yellow hunting glasses, with
the sunset reflected in each lens.

When I got out of the Pinto, he strode down the
driveway to greet me. His loud voice and long shadow got to me before
he did.

"Hey, there!" he said. "I guess you
must be Harry Stoner." He held out his hand. "Sam Greenleaf
Mace’s older brother."

I shook with him.

In the face he looked a little like his brother, only
more robust and less bedeviled by life. He was taller than Greenleaf
had been, judging from the one photo I’d seen of Mason. Hair cut
short at the sides, military-style. There was a good deal of barracks
in the way he held himself too, ramrod straight with his feet a pace
apart and his hand folded at ease behind his back. He was dressed as
if he’d just stepped off the links—checked pants, white belt,
white shoes, golf shirt.

"Been wanting to meet you," he said in his
hale, too-loud voice. "I hear you’ve done a fine job for
Cindy."

"I haven’t done anything yet," I said,
wondering where the hell he’d gotten that notion—or whether he
was just blowing hard. He had that air about him.

"We stopped in to say good-bye to Cindy. Firm up
a few things about Mason’s estate. Terrible thing, this thing about
Mace. Terrible." He cast his burning yellow eyes down to his
white leather shoes. "I guess Cindy’s told you we weren’t a
particularly close family. Maybe we haven’t seen as much of each
other as we should’ve done, living in different cities like we all
do. But as you get older, you drift apart. Life just works out that
way. Nobody’s to blame."

It occurred to me that that had been the point of his
foray: that nobody was to blame. But I was wrong.

"Look, I want to say something to you before we
go inside," he said, lowering his voice and leaning his head
toward me, close enough that I could smell the stink of cigarettes on
his breath. "This thing’s been a real blow to my sister. Hell,
it would’ve killed my parents if they were still alive. I mean, it
would’ve killed them. The point here is, we don’t really need to
know all the gruesome details. What happened is bad enough, without
dragging Mace through some mud patch. Like I told the police, let the
dead bury the dead."

He didn’t know what I was going to uncover. But
he’d clearly seen enough of Mason’s life to fear the worst—and
the publicity that could possibly attend it. It was another
unfortunate echo of the Lessing case. Ira Lessing’s family had
wanted to disown the truth, too, along with their dead son. It made
me feel sorry for Mason Greenleaf, who had lived and died an outcast
of his own kin.

"I’m working for Ms. Dorn," I said.
"You’ll have to take it up with her."

"I know who the hell you’re working for,"
the man barked, and then smiled like his teeth hurt—to cover the
outburst.

"We’re Mason’s closest kin, me and my
sister," he said, moderating his tone. "And we’d just as
soon you left this situation alone. That’s all I wanted to say.
Take it for what it’s worth."

"I’ll keep it in mind," I said.

The man shifted uneasily on his feet. Having said his
piece, he was finished with me—like an officer who’s given an
order to a subordinate.

"Y’all a friend of Cindy’s, huh?" he
said, trying small talk. He smiled again, but the smile wasn’t
entirely friendly and neither was the way he’d put the question.

"I just met her a few weeks ago."

Sam Greenleaf chose to let that drop, along with his
aspersion and any further attempt to make conversation.

"Well, let’s get on inside, then."
Greenleaf waved his hand at the front door, as if he’d taken
possession of Cindy’s house. I followed him up the short path to
the front door. Inside I could hear a woman talking nervously in a
high-pitched southern voice. I stepped out of the twilight into Cindy
Dorn’s narrow, oblong living room. Cindy was on the couch, staring
with a glazed look at a smartly dressed blonde sitting on the chair
across from her. The woman, whom I took to be Greenleaf ’s sister,
had the tan, high-cheeked, drum-tight face of an aging Junior
Leaguer. One of those moneyed, half-pretty women who do good and
drink. The room was still a shambles of plastic plates and folding
chairs, leftover food and coffee.

"Found me a penny," Sam Greenleaf said,
bending down and picking a coin off the shag rug. "Must be my
lucky day."

Cindy flinched. "I haven’t had time to do a
lot of cleaning."

"Don’t have to apologize," Greenleaf
said, putting the penny down on the coffee table in front of the
couch.

"Heavens, no," the blond woman said,
casting a reproachful eye at her brother. She turned to me, smiling.
"I’m Cassie Greenleaf. Mason’s sister. And you’re Mr.
Stoner. Cindy said you’d be coming. I want to thank you for the
help you’ve been to Cindy and to us. The past few days have been so
awful."

She put a trembly hand to her brow. "So awful."

"Cassie," Sam Greenleaf said sharply,
"don’t let’s start up I again. We got a long trip ahead."
Turning to me, Greenleaf said, "Sit down, Stoner."

He took the other end of the couch, leaving me a
folding chair beside the door. Cindy Dorn gave me a hapless look.

"You know what I don’t understand?"
Cassie Greenleaf said, as if she were picking up the strand of a
previous conversation. "How can the police be sure that Mace
intended to do this thing? How can they be sure it wasn’t an
accident? People do have such accidents, don’t they? Drink too much
and take a sleeping pill. Isn’t that what happened to—who was
that woman, that gossip columnist used to be on TV?"

"Kilgallen," Sam Greenleaf said quickly, as
if it were a rerun of a quiz show.

"Yes, that’s right. And there have been lots
of others. Sometimes people have accidents that can kill them."

The brother shook his head. "It wasn’t an
accident. You know it, and so do I. Mace has been lost to us since he
left home. And there wasn’t a thing we could do to bring him back."

Cassie Greenleaf laughed scornfully. "Like you
even tried."

Sam Greenleaf flushed with embarrassment. "Now
ain’t the time to go into this, Cassie."

"Why, because we got a stranger in the house?"
the sister said with a practiced malice that made me certain that
they’d played this scene any number of times before, over any
number of things. "Not once since he moved away did you show him
any kind of love or understanding. Not once. He respected you, Sam.
You were his older brother."