Vanishing Act (16 page)

B
ryan hovered behind me as I stood in the doorway of his sister's room. “You didn't have to come over,” he told me again.

He hadn't been happy to see me when he'd answered the bell and seen me standing on his porch. Sporting a three-day stubble, bloodshot eyes, hair that needed a shampooing, and a stained flannel shirt and khakis, he looked as if he'd been on a bender.

“Had a late night?” I'd asked.

He'd run his hand over his chin. “Late enough. What are you doing here anyway?”

“You called, remember?”

He squinted. “Yeah. Right. Last night. I was just calling to find out how things were going.”

“The same as before. Which is why I decided I wanted to take another look at Melissa's room.”

“You already went through it.”

“I wasn't very thorough though. I'm hoping I missed something the first time around.” Coming here had been a spur-of-the-moment decision made with the help of a doughnut, a second cup of coffee, and the sinking feeling I wasn't getting anywhere.

“Like what?” Bryan demanded.

“If I knew, I would tell you.”

“I see.” Bryan had stepped aside and let me in the house reluctantly. Then he'd followed me up the steps to his sister's room.

“I don't like people pawing through her things,” he'd announced when we'd reached the doorway.

“Really.” I'd half turned. “You didn't seem to mind the first time.”

“I didn't like it then either. I just didn't say anything.” Bryan pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. They stayed there for a minute before sliding back down. “Melissa is a very private person. She'd be angry if she knew people were going over her belongings.”

“Given the circumstances, I'm sure she won't mind.”

“Yes, she would,” he insisted. “You don't know her like I do.”

“And therein lies the problem.” I took a couple of steps into her room.

Bryan followed me. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I don't know her. I don't have a sense of her. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to do this alone.”

“Why?” Unconsciously he ran the tips of his fingers over a small stuffed lion sitting on top of one of Melissa's dressers. “I can help.”

“I'm sure you can, but I really would prefer to go through her things by myself.” Everything else being equal, I couldn't concentrate with Bryan crowding me.

He scowled, reminding me of nothing so much as a Doberman who'd been told to stand down. “All right.” He took a hesitant step back. “But if you need me, I'll be in the kitchen.”

“Don't worry, I'll call you if I do,” I assured him.

He walked to the door and stayed there, anxiously watching me in what I was willing to bet had become for him a shrine. Either that or he was afraid that this time I was going to find something I shouldn't.

“Go,” I ordered, and waved him away.

Finally, when it became clear I wasn't going to do anything until he left, Bryan turned and walked down the stairs. A moment later, after I heard the opening of a cabinet door, the clink of cutlery, and the scrape of a chair being dragged across the floor, I went and sat down on Melissa's bed. The mattress was surprisingly soft and I sank down into it. I sighed, reached in my backpack for a cigarette, and studied Melissa's room. Nothing had changed. It still looked the same way it had the first time I was here. Her desk was still piled high with books, notebooks, miscellaneous sheets of paper, and a variety of pens and pencils. The duffel-sized laundry bags still lay on their sides on the beige carpeting, next to the four cartons crammed with stuff from her dorm room.

I sighed again, took another two puffs of my Camel, and flicked the ash into a glass that was sitting by the nightstand. I tried to block everything I'd been told about Melissa out of my mind, and just think about what her room was telling me.

But I guess it wasn't feeling conversationally inclined.

Because it wasn't telling me a thing.

Of course, if the room had spoken to me, I would have headed straight for the hospital. Which shows you what happens when you get old. In the days when I was dropping acid on a regular basis, the room could not only have said “hi” but metamorphosed into the frigging Australian outback, and the only thing I would have said was “cool.”

Now I'd be dialing 911.

That's progress for you.

Oh, well. I stubbed my cigarette out, stood up, and got to work. I skipped the cartons—I'd already inventoried their contents pretty thoroughly—and began with the laundry bags. I dumped the first one out. A musty odor filled the room as Melissa's sheets and towels fell onto the carpet. The only thing they told me was that she liked purple and green. The second bag contained variously colored T-shirts, shorts, jeans, cotton sweaters, sweats, men's shirts from the Gap, and a variety of underwear from Victoria's Secret.

I put everything back and started on the closet. I went through her blouses, mostly man-tailored, and skirts, mostly straight. I looked in the pockets of her jeans and slacks and jackets, but outside of the odd movie ticket stub, I didn't find anything of interest, after which I eyeballed a couple of pairs of inexpensive jogging pants and jackets. Those, along with the sweats I'd found in her laundry bag, made me remember that Chris had told me that Melissa jogged.

The three pairs of old running shoes I found on her top shelf confirmed his statement. I wondered why no one other than Chris had mentioned it to me as I dragged a chair over so I could get a better look at the other shoes sitting on the shelf. But maybe Melissa had been just a casual runner, someone who jogged once or twice a week, when the mood took her. I sighed. So far I hadn't turned up anything surprising. Melissa's clothes, sober, middle-of-the-road, confirmed the picture I'd built of her. If she was leading a double life, it had nothing to do with her wardrobe.

Ditto that for her shoes. Theywere boring, functional pumps, sandals, loafers, and boots, all in black and brown. No high-heeled red slingbacks, purple suede clogs, or black stilettos for her. Somehow, Melissa seemed awfully old for her age, I decided as I started in on her pocketbooks. There were four of them altogether, also in black and brown. The only things they contained were loose change, pens, more ticket stubs—the kid had been a moviegoer—and crumpled-up tissue.

I checked the back of the shelf. I found two empty shoe boxes, a sewing kit, eight wadded-up pairs of paint-stained sweat pants and shirts, some old socks, a couple of stained blouses, and a black plastic bag. The smell of mildew hit me when I opened it. Well, that was better than some of the other things I could be smelling, I reflected as I stepped off the chair and dumped the contents onto the carpet. A pair of jeans, a once-white T-shirt, a pair of socks, and sneakers tumbled out.

Everything was splotched with gray and lavender patches of mold. Melissa must have been out for a quick run and gotten caught in the rain, changed, thrown the stuff in a bag, and then forgotten about it. I'd done that kind of thing myself. Several times. I put the clothes back in the bag and set it where I'd remember to bring it down to Bryan. He could throw them out. Next I looked through Melissa's drawers again. The same wadded-up T-shirts, the same sweaters, the same nightgowns were still in there. I took out the collection of birthday cards tied up in a neat blue ribbon and went through them again.

All of them were from her mother and brother. Evidently, Melissa had saved everything they'd sent her since she was six years old. The thought that they might never see her again depressed me, and I tried to shove it out of my mind as I took the drawers out of the dresser and checked along the sides and the bottoms. I found three old sales slips, a jogging bra, and a pair of earrings. Not exactly earth-shattering finds.

I put everything back where it belonged, sat down on Melissa's bed, and began going through her nightstands. The last time I'd done that, I hadn't paid much attention, just opened and closed the drawers. This time I did more. The nightstand drawer on the left yielded a box of tissues, a bag of cough drops, and a tweezers. I moved on to the one on the right. I turned on the clock radio. It was still set to the campus station. I paged through the stack of
Glamour
magazines piled next to the radio.

Then I opened the nightstand drawer. I wasn't hoping for much, but in the back, underneath the paperback copy of
Carrie,
another box of tissues, and the bottle of prescription antihistamines, I found a manila envelope. I opened it. Inside was the first article on Jill Evans's death. On the border, above the headline, someone, Melissa, I assumed, had written, “Our responsibility to the dead informs our lives.” At the bottom, in the same handwriting, were three lines of poetry.

I reread the poem.

It reminded me of the one written in Melissa's philosophy textbook on moral responsibility.

I spread the sides of the envelope and shook it.

A laminated rose petal fell out.

I picked it up and held it to the light.

I
took in the Hayes kitchen as I walked toward Bryan. Because the room was in the back, I hadn't seen it the first time I'd been in the house. It had been done colonial style with knotty-pine wooden cabinets, wrought iron hinges, and curved moldings. Given the look of the appliances and the style of the cabinets, I'd say the kitchen had been remodeled about twenty years earlier. Aside from a few burn marks on the white Formica counter and some areas near the door where the linoleum was curling around the edges, the place showed evidence of having been lovingly cared for up until recently.

Several healthy-looking spider and ivy plants hung from hooks positioned in front of the window over the sink. The lettering on a set of blue ceramic jars clearly proclaimed they housed sugar, flour, and salt. A variety of kitchen implements sat in a matching blue and white splatterware pitcher. The salt and pepper shakers were also blue and white. So were the wall clock and the potholders.

Of course, the blue and white motif didn't quite go with the dozen or so Corona bottles sitting on the counter. Or maybe it did. After all, Corona's label was blue, wasn't it? A guy who color-coordinates his beer with the decor can't be all bad—although I had a feeling Mrs. Hayes wouldn't have seen her son's interior decorating style that way. I also had no doubt she wouldn't have been pleased to see the condition her son had reduced her kitchen to. I'd be willing to bet the room had been immaculate when Melissa and Mrs. Hayes had been here. But not now.

Now the white Formica counter was spotted with food stains, the sink was overflowing with dishes, the garbage can smelled as if it needed to be emptied, and the white linoleum floor had sticky black patches on it. Evidently housework wasn't Bryan's forte. But then, it appeared several other things weren't either: like coming up with answers to the questions I was asking him.

For the second time in as many minutes, Bryan eyes shifted to the newspaper article I'd laid out on the kitchen table and then back up at me.

“What's your point?” he finally said.

As I moved my chair a little closer to the table, Bryan's scent washed over me. He smelled as if he needed a bath. I pointed to the poem. “My point is what these lines indicate.”

“They don't indicate anything. Jill was her friend. She felt lousy when she died.”

“Her wings were plucked? Who plucked them?”

“Jill was a girl with a lot of problems.” Bryan ran his fingers through his hair. “Missy felt responsible for her, but then, she felt responsible for everyone.”

“Including you?”

“Yes. Including me.”

“So what kind of problems did Jill have?”

Bryan shrugged and scratched his side. “The usual college-coed kind.”

“And what are those?”

“In a word—guys.”

“Guys in general or one guy in particular?”

“One guy in particular. She was having a relationship. The guy dumped her and she got all depressed.”

“Depressed enough to throw herself out the window?”

Bryan shrugged again. “I guess.”

“You don't seem that upset.”

“What do you want me to say?” he demanded.

“You could pretend to be concerned.”

“I could, but I'm not going to. What she did was stupid. Wasteful. Thoughtless. She wasn't sick. There was nothing wrong that couldn't have been fixed. You don't take the gift of life and just toss it away.”

“You're thinking of your mother, aren't you?” I asked softly.

Bryan picked up the lacquered rose petal I'd found lying on top of the article and gently stroked it was his thumb. “My mom used to make these before she got really sick.” He took his wallet out of his pants pocket and opened it. “See,” he said, showing me his petal. “Every year she'd give Missy and me new ones. It's a good-luck charm. It means that Christ will protect you.” He reverently lay both petals on the table. “Although in this case it doesn't seem as if He's doing a very good job, does it?” He ran his hand through his hair again, then pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “God, I hate this not knowing. It's making me crazy.”

“I can imagine.”

“I can't concentrate on anything anymore. I go to the store and I forget what I went in for.”

The morning sun streaming though the window highlighted the circles under Bryan's eyes, the ashy undertone of his skin, and the stubble on his chin. Constantly moving his hands and shifting his weight around in his chair, he seemed unable to find a comfortable place to sit.

“What's that?” he asked, pointing to the bag I'd found in Melissa's closet.

I pushed it across the table.

Bryan wrinkled his nose when he opened it. “Running stuff. I think I can throw this stuff in the trash,” he told me, hastily closing the bag back up.

“It was in the back of her closet.”

Bryan's laugh ended in a choked little sob. He moved the petals around with the tip of his finger. “I remember once she forgot to put my clothes in the dryer. My mother discovered them in the washing machine a week later. She was furious. No matter how many times we washed them after that, we could never get the smell of mildew out. We finally had to throw them away.”

Bryan reached for the petals. “Do you mind?” he asked, picking them up. When I told him I didn't, he put both petals in his wallet and put the wallet back in his pants pocket. “Did you find anything else up there?”

“What I showed you is it.”

He grunted and took a sip out of the can of Coke in front of him. “What now?”

“I think we have to talk.”

“We are talking.”

“No. I mean really talk. If you want me to find your sister, you have to start being honest with me.”

“I have been.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Bryan picked up his pen and doodled a tulip in the margin of the paper he'd been editing.

I watched the dust motes dancing in the air around Bryan and listened to his breathing. He had a slight wheeze I hadn't heard before. I wondered if it was stress-induced.

“I don't think you have been.”

Bryan kept drawing. His eyes were fastened on his paper. “Why do you say that?”

“For openers, you didn't tell me you'd been arrested for threatening someone with a gun.”

Bryan's hand froze. Then he put down the pencil. “That was a long time ago. And I wasn't threatening, I was waving the gun around.”

“I like the distinction.”

“I don't see what that has to do with my sister going missing.”

“Why'd you have a gun in the first place?”

He leaned back in his chair and ran his finger along the edge of the table. “I needed it for protection.”

“Who were you protecting yourself from?”

“I owed some guys some money.”

“For what?”

“What difference does it make?” Bryan raised his voice.

“Was it for drugs?”

“It was a gambling debt, if you have to know.”

“That's not the story your mother told me.”

Bryan bowed his head. “I didn't want to upset her. She had enough on her plate.”

“How charitable. What happened to it?”

“The gun? The cops confiscated it.” Bryan picked up his pencil, drew a top hat, and began carefully coloring it in.

“You never got another one?” I asked. I was curious. Most people I know who have had a gun continue to want to have one.

“No.” Bryan laid the pencil back down. He blinked his eyes and looked down at the floor. “No, I didn't.”

He was lying. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

I didn't say anything. The refrigerator began to hum. The condenser had turned on.

“Why? Who told you different?” he demanded after a couple of moments.

I still didn't say anything.

“It was Tommy, wasn't it?”

I hoped this kid never got it into his head to play serious poker. “As a matter of fact, it wasn't.”

“I don't believe you.”

“You don't have to.”

We glared at each other. Two crows sitting on the branch of the oak tree outside the house cawed. Recently Syracuse had become inundated with them. They seemed to be everywhere.

Bryan swallowed. “What are you implying?” he finally said.

“I'm not implying anything. I was just asking if you'd ever gotten another gun.”

“What if I did?”

“Can I see it?”

“It was stolen.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Someone broke into our house and took off with some stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah. Stuff.” Bryan's tone was truculent. “Some of Melissa's jewelry. My gun. The cash we used to keep by the refrigerator in the kitchen.”

“When did this happen?”

“The middle of October.”

“I don't suppose you happened to report the break-in to the police?”

“Melissa did.”

“If I checked, would I find the report?”

“Go ahead.”

“Would I find the gun mentioned in it?”

Bryan didn't answer.

I answered for him. “I wouldn't, would I? Because it wasn't registered.”

“So what! Big deal! Lots of people have unregistered guns.”

“True. But their sisters aren't missing.”

Bryan got up, strode over to the sink, turned on the tap, filled a glass with water, and took a long swallow. As he drank, I noticed his hand was trembling slightly.

“See, this is why I didn't tell you about the gun in the first place.” He drained the glass, put it in the sink, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You do a couple of bad things and they follow you around for-fucking-ever.”

“I take it that's also the reason you didn't tell me you were sent away when you were younger.”

“That has nothing to do with now.”

“I understand that among other things you had problems with your sister. I understand that's why you were sent away.”

Bryan's jaw muscles tightened. “Is that what my mother said?”

I moved a bread crumb away from the edge of table with my finger. “Not directly. But she certainly implied it.”

Bryan crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet about six inches apart from each other. “The reason I was sent away was because my mother was never here to look after me. That's the reason I was sent away.”

“Then you never hurt Melissa?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I was a kid. Kids do dumb things. We got into a fight. I don't do that kind of stuff anymore. Period. End of story.”

I thought about Bryan's run-in with Tommy. Somehow I didn't think it was. “Your mother is worried that you have.”

“Is she now?” Bryan's eyelids dropped slightly, giving his eyes a hooded appearance. He jiggled his left foot up and down.

“She loves you.”

“She sure has a funny way of showing it.” The jiggling got faster.

“She asked me to make sure nothing happens to you.”

Bryan twisted his mouth in an imitation of a smile. “It's a little late now to be so concerned. You can tell her to relax. I've got everything covered.”

“She's worried.”

Bryan laughed bitterly. “I just bet she is. Don't look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“You were staring at me.”

“Sorry, I didn't realize I was.”

He hit the edge of the sink with the flat of his hand. “How would you feel if your mother suspected you of killing your own sister?”

“I don't think
suspect
is the right word.”

“It seems right enough to me.” Bryan began pacing back and forth in front of the sink. “No matter what I do, it's never good enough. No matter what I do, she's never going to trust me.”

I didn't say anything.

“The fact that my own mother—” He lifted his hands in the air and dropped them back down. “That she ... do you know what that makes me feel like?” he demanded.

“Not good, I imagine.” I lit a cigarette. “What kind of gun was it anyway?”

Bryan poured Rice Krispies and milk into a white bowl. “Just a cheapo Saturday night special. No big deal. The gun was a mistake. I admit it. But I like having one around. It makes me feel safe,” he told me as he fished a spoon out of the sink and rinsed it off. Then he sat back down next to me.

I put my lighter away. “Did you get another one?”

“No. I didn't. You know the old saying, three strikes and you're out. I figured two were enough in my case.”

What Bryan was telling me might be the truth—although I doubted it—but I let it go. I wanted to hear what else he had to say.

“Anyway, you shouldn't be talking to me, you should be talking to Tommy,” he informed me, going back to his old song.

“I've spoken to him.”

“And?”

“And I don't have anything to link him to Melissa's disappearance.”

“Speak to him some more.” He ate a spoonful of cereal.

“Why are you so set against him?”

“Because the guy's a schmuck.”

“That covers a lot of territory. Could you be a little more specific?”

“I bet he didn't tell you how upset Melissa was when he told her they weren't going to get married.”