Vanishing Act (8 page)

I told her I'd do as much as I could.

Given the circumstances, what else could I say?

She smiled and nodded her head approvingly. “Good. I'm going to ask the sisters to light a candle for you.” I thanked her, but there must have been something in the tone of my voice I didn't realize, because she said, “You don't believe in that sort of thing, do you, dear? You think it's silly.”

“It's not that,” I stammered.

“You should believe,” she told me. “It helps a lot. I don't think I could go on if I didn't.” Her eyelids fluttered, then closed. It was time for me to go.

I knew what Mrs. Hayes was saying was true. Believing does help a lot, and I envied people who were able to. Unfortunately, I'd never been one of them. I guess that's why I didn't go to synagogue anymore.

I checked my watch as I walked out into the corridor. It was a little after eight-thirty. I could have gone home, but I decided to try to catch up with Melissa's suitemates and boyfriend instead. Maybe they could provide with me with a little more information.

T
he frat Tommy West belonged to was housed in a big white faux-antebellum plantation job that would have looked at home on the
Gone With the Wind
set, but had actually been built by one of the city's rich merchants when the Erie Canal was in use and the cities along its banks thrived. But not anymore. Rome. Utica. Syracuse. All were on a long downward slide.

I stepped inside and shouted out a hello. It was easy to imagine a white-gloved butler gliding through the high-ceilinged hallway with its wainscoting and decorative molding to inform the lady of the house that I had arrived. A sweatpants-clad, pimple-faced kid showed up instead.

“I'll get Charmer Boy,” he volunteered when I told him whom I wanted to speak to.

“Charmer Boy?”

“You know. Snakes.” He took off, leaving me standing there, studying the parquet floor, which was cluttered with sneakers, sporting equipment, and boots, and inhaling the orders of take-out Chinese food and pizza.

Someone was playing rap music in one of the rooms upstairs, and I amused myself by trying to make out the lyrics over the force of the bass. Six guys were sprawled out in the living room, watching a movie. I nodded to them and they nodded back indifferently. A minute later Tommy West appeared from a door to the left. He was tucking his denim shirt into his jeans with one hand. In the other he was holding a glass of milk and a couple of Oreo cookies. Of medium height, he had tousled curly dirty-blond hair, a squarish face, pale blue eyes, a small nose and mouth, and a chin that receded slightly.

He frowned when he saw me. “Do I know you?” he asked, approaching me warily.

“I doubt it.” I held out the business card that says inquiries conducted.

He put the milk and cookies on the table along the wall and took the card. “I don't understand,” he said after he read it, though his expression said he did.

“I'm trying to find Melissa Hayes. I've heard you were her boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“That's why I'd like to talk to you.”

He wet his lips with his tongue. “I've already spoken to the police. And campus security. A couple of times.”

“I was hoping you'd speak to me as well.”

Tommy scratched his ear indecisively. “She's been gone for a while. You really think you can find her?”

Then his eyes narrowed as a new idea occurred to him. “Who hired you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Her brother,” I replied, making the decision not to lie. It turned out to be the wrong one. “But—”

“That asshole,” he spluttered, anger sweeping his tentative manner aside.

“Listen—”

“No. You listen.” He pointed to the door. The blue in his eyes had darkened. “You can just turn around and go right back out again.”

“No.” I folded my arms across my chest. What was the worst that could happen? He'd threaten to call the cops and I'd leave. I watched the muscles on the sides of Tommy's jaws tighten. “I can understand why you feel that way.”

“Can you?” Tommy jabbed the air with a finger, using the gesture to punctuate the end of each sentence. “Can you really? My father had to go to court and get an order of protection taken out on that jerk.”

“He told me.”

Tommy's voice was loud enough to have attracted the attention of his television-watching fraternity brothers. They had drifted over and now stood around in a half circle, their interest piqued, waiting with anticipation to see what was coming next.

Tommy moved closer to me. I could smell the chocolate from the Oreos he'd been eating on his breath. “Did he also tell you that he threatened me with a bat?”

“Marks told me,” I replied, thinking as I did that this was the second time in two days that I'd heard Bryan and a weapon mentioned in the same sentence.

“He burst in here and started right for me. That guy is crazy. You tell him, he comes near me again and me and my friends will hurt him real bad.”

The perks of living in a fraternity. “I don't think that'll be necessary.”

“So you say,” he sneered. He was now about six inches away from me.

I held my ground. “Yes, I do.”

Tommy stopped. I think he'd expected me to flinch and move back. When I didn't, he didn't know what to do. I looked up at him. “Don't you want to know what happened to Melissa? Don't you care?”

“Of course I do,” he exclaimed.

“Then why don't you help me find her?”

“You want to find her, talk to her brother.”

“I have, and now I want to talk to you.”

“My father told me not to talk to anyone else.”

“You always do everything your father asks you to?”

Tommy flushed. A murmur went up from the guys standing around us. “It's not that,” he stuttered, deflated.

“Then, what is it?”

He ground his heel into a floorboard and glared at me helplessly.

I glared back. “Bryan said you didn't care. I guess he was right.”

Tommy swallowed. I watched the conflicting emotions march across his face. I could understand why his father had told him not to talk to anyone. He seemed like the overly emotional type, reactive, vulnerable to whatever came along, easy to bully. In that way he and Bryan were a lot alike. They acted first and thought about the consequences later. Maybe that's why Melissa had been attracted to Tommy in the first place. Because he reminded her of her brother.

“He's always hated me, right from the day we met,” Tommy stated, intruding on my train of thought.

“Actually, I think it's your Burmese he hates.”

Tommy's frown dissolved into a mischievous grin, transforming his face into one that looked boyishly charming. He chuckled. “Yeah, he's scared of her all right.”

I couldn't help smiling as well. I knew the guilty pleasure of handing someone a snake and watching them jump back.

“But Missy loved Burma. She used to say she thought she was the perfect combination of beauty and strength.”

“They are that,” I agreed as I watched the guys around us turn and drift back into the other room. Since there wasn't going to be a fight, there was no point in staying.

“Can I see her?” I asked after they'd gone.

Tommy beamed. Who said the way to man's heart was through his stomach?

“I've had her since she was six months old,” he told me as I followed him up the large winding staircase that I was sure, in its younger days, had heard the crinkle of taffeta as young women swept down the steps in their ball gowns.

“What's she eating?”

“A mouse once a week. I was feeding her twice a week, but I read that wasn't good.”

“No, it's not.” Overfeeding is as bad for snakes as it is for people. “She shedding okay?”

“Fine. You sound like you know about this stuff. Do you have one?”

“In a manner of speaking. I own Noah's Ark.” By now we'd reached the landing. I glanced around. The long, wide hallway meandered off to the left. A worn red print carpet covered the floor. The yellowish-white walls looked as if they could use a coat of paint.

Tommy smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand as he walked. “God, I feel like an idiot. I hear you got some great stuff in there.”

I smiled. “We try.”

“Could you get me an emerald boa?”

“I could order one for you, but they run somewhere between four and five hundred dollars.”

He paused in front of a door. “That much?”

I nodded.

He pushed it open.

“Think about a corn snake. They're attractive and they're easy keepers.”

“How much do they go for?” Tommy asked.

“Anywhere between eighty and one twenty-five,” I informed him as we stepped inside his room.

It looked like your standard college-student disaster area. Clothes, all that Tommy possessed from the look of it, were piled on a chair next to a state-of the-art stereo system. A couple of garbage bags full of empty beer cans stood along the far wall. Tommy's lacrosse equipment lay on the floor nearby, as did his scuba gear, weight-lifting belt, and golf clubs. Books and papers covered every inch of the desk's surface. A couple of Syracuse lacrosse posters sat next to pictures of bands I'd never heard of. The room smelled of sweaty socks and stale beer.

“Sorry for the mess. I guess I should dig it out. Melissa used to help me clean up. But since she's gone ...” Tommy shrugged his shoulders and closed the door behind us. “I never seem to get around to it.”

It's amazing. Twenty years of women's lib and nothing has changed, I thought as I negotiated the distance to Burma's cage. Getting to it involved an obstacle course of shoes, socks, and empty pizza boxes. “Nice setup,” I observed. If the room was a mess, Burma's cage was pristine.

Tommy nodded. “I make sure to keep it that way. You want to see her?”

“Sure. ”

I watched him as he unfastened the metal clips and took the top off. Burma uncoiled herself and glided upward. Tommy reached in and grabbed her. His grasp was gentle but firm. He seemed at home with her. He stroked her for a minute before handing the boid to me.

She lay quietly in my hands. “Nice coloring.” She was seven feet at the most, thin by Burmese standards. Marks was right about this one. Bryan was full of it. She didn't have the power to strangle a girl of Melissa's size. “Is she always this docile?”

Tommy grinned, took her back, and put her around his neck. “She's a real sweetie. She wouldn't hurt anyone.”

“Except a mouse.” I looked for a place to sit and finally settled on an upside-down plastic milk crate. “When did you last see Melissa?” I asked.

Tommy smiled nervously. “How big do corn snakes get anyway?”

“Big enough.” It looked as if Tommy was having a change of heart. “Talking to me can't hurt,” I urged.

He stroked Burma. “I don't know.”

“I won't tell your father if you don't.”

He hesitated again. I wondered if his father was really that protective, if Tommy was really that obedient, or if he knew something he didn't want to tell me and was using his father as an excuse.

I repeated the question I'd asked downstairs. “Don't you want to know what happened to your girlfriend?”

“Of course I do.” Given the circumstances, what else could the kid say? “It's not that.” Tommy licked his lips. I tried to catch his eye, but he kept looking away from me.

“Maybe you don't want to talk to me because you have something to hide.”

His eyes darkened again. “That's ridiculous,” he snapped.

I shrugged. “Sorry. I just figured from the way you're acting ...”

“You're wrong.” Tommy kicked the pizza box by his foot for emphasis. Burma arched her back and hissed in alarm.

“Then tell me when you last saw Melissa,” I said to Tommy as he calmed Burma down.

“Fine.” The boid relaxed her spine. “I saw Missy two days before she disappeared, but I spoke to her on the phone the evening before. Everything was okay.”

“What did you two talk about?”

“The usual stuff. The paper she had to write. How she was behind in psych. You know, like that. She was going to come over here after she got back from seeing her mom at the hospital.” He furrowed his brow.

I pushed a lock of my hair off my face and tucked it behind my ear. “What did you do when she didn't show up?”

He fidgeted. “Actually I wasn't here,” he admitted sheepishly.

I
raised an eyebrow.

Tommy explained. “I'd gone from class straight to the mall. When I realized what time it was, I called the house and told John O. to tell Missy I'd be a little late. I told him to tell her to ring me on my beeper when she got to my room, but she never called.”

I ran my thumb over my lip. “Did you tell Marks this?”

“Of course.”

“You didn't come back to wait?”

Tommy looked defensive. “It's only ten minutes from Carousel to here. It wasn't like we had a date. She was going to drop by. I figured something else had come up.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Maybe she'd gotten involved in a discussion with her brother and she didn't want to tell him she was meeting me. Maybe she was at the library and had lost track of time. Maybe she was hanging with Beth and her suitemates. It could have been anything.”

My calf muscles were beginning to cramp. This didn't sound like someone who was planning to elope, I thought as I stretched out my legs and massaged them. “What were you doing at the mall?”

“I was buying my mom a birthday present.”

“What did you get her?”

“A scarf from People's Pottery. A hand-printed silk job. With big flowers. It's real nice.”

“I assume you can prove this?”

“The police have my credit card slips.”

“Did you buy anything else?”

“Socks, a new pair of sneakers, some sweats, a couple of CDs.” He named some groups I hadn't heard of. “Then I had a bite to eat and caught a movie.”

“So you got back here ...”

“A little after ten.”

“When did you realize Melissa was gone?”

“Not until Beth and Bryan came by to check. He just went off, man.” Tommy shook his head at the memory. “Me and John O. had to throw him out of the house. He kept yelling that it was all my fault. Truth is, I think he had a guilty conscience.”

“How so?”

Tommy hunched forward. “They were always fighting.” “I heard you and Melissa did too.”

“But our fights didn't mean anything,” Tommy protested. “The fights she got into with Bryan did.”

“What were they about?”

“Me, among other things.”

“Why does Bryan dislike you so much?”

Tommy twisted his mouth into a wry smile. “I think he'd dislike any guy who got too close to his sister. He thinks she's too good for everyone. He didn't even want her to live in the dorms. He wanted her to stay home and take care of the house.”

“But she didn't want to?”

“Of course not. She loved him, but she wanted her own life. The guy's a nutter.”

I moved my leg back and forth. The cramp began to go away. “Maybe he doesn't like you because he found out you were planning on marrying his sister and he thought she should finish school.”

The color on Tommy West's face rose again. It made his eyes look bluer. “Who told you that?”

“Her roommate.”

“I told Missy not to tell anyone.”

“She was excited.”

Somewhere nearby someone had turned a stereo on. The sound of the Grateful Dead flooded the room.

Tommy frowned and bowed his head. Burma began crawling up his neck, past his ear, and onto the top of his head. “That's not exactly true.”

“You mean you're not.”

Tommy raised his head. “We were going to, but ...”

“But what?”

He pulled Burma off his head and put her back around his neck. “My father found out. He said he wouldn't pay for college if I did. I told Melissa we could wait till after I graduated, but she didn't want to do that.”

“Why?”

“She said if we loved each other, nothing else should matter. We had this fight over the phone.” He closed his eyes and opened them again, as if he were blanking out the scene. “I thought we'd made up. But with her, sometimes you can't tell. When she didn't show up, I figured she was still pissed at me.”

He frowned and looked out the window. I followed his gaze. A boy and girl were kissing in front of the fraternity house. Tommy bit his lip. The girl walked to her car, got in, and drove away. The boy went inside. Tommy brought his attention back to me.

“Did she do that kind of thing a lot?”

“You mean not show up?”

I nodded.

“Yeah.” I heard the clump of shoes as someone walked down the hall outside.

“I understand that's not all she did when she got upset.”

Tommy tensed his shoulders and pulled his arms into his sides. “That's Beth talking, isn't it?”

“I don't think it matters.”

He scrunched his neck down and chewed on the inside of his lip. “Okay,” he finally blurted out. “She used to get a little overemotional about stuff. So what? It wasn't a big deal.”

“It must be hard not to hit someone when they're scratching you,” I noted.

“Forget it,” he cried.

“Forget what?”

“What you're thinking. I would never hurt her.”

“I didn't say you did.”

“But you implied it.”

I apologized. “What do you think happened to her?”

“You got me.” Tommy pulled on his earlobe. “At first I thought she was doing this disappearing act to get me upset, to try and teach me a lesson. You know, one of those he'll-be-sorry-when-I' m-gone routines. I thought she'd be back in a couple of days. I told Bryan to cool it, but he was too whacked to hear what I was saying.”

“And when she didn't return?”

He cracked his knuckles. “I don't know. I don't know what to think anymore.” He lapsed into silence. I watched as he got up and put Burma back in her cage.

“Was anything else bothering her?”

“Her mother.”

“Besides that.”

“Like I said, she was fighting with her brother a lot.”

“About what?”

“Mostly me. Listen to this!” Tommy said indignantly. “He wanted her to go to the psychologist at the health center. He said her going out with me was indicative of a deep-seated depression.”

“Was she depressed?” I asked as he refastened the latches that held the top on the cage.

Tommy turned around and faced me. “She was stressed.”

“Her roommate said she used to cry in her sleep.”

“Really?” Tommy raised an eyebrow, indicating his surprise. “I never heard her do that.”

“Maybe she never did it with you. Do you mind?” I asked, pointing to the pack of cigarettes I'd just taken out of my backpack. Tommy shook his head and I lit one, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs. He passed me a shot glass to use as an ashtray.

“She always acted fine when she was with me.”

“Her mother told me something had happened that was bothering her. I figured maybe it was her roommate's death.”

Tommy began folding a piece of paper into little pieces. “Sure it bothered it. That kind of thing gets you where you live, but I think she was over it—at least as much as anyone is ever over something like that. You should talk to Beth.”

“I did. She said I should talk to her psych professor.”

“Fell?” Tommy scrunched up his face.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. I just don't like the guy.”

“Why's that?”

Tommy didn't answer. He looked as if he were thinking about something else. I repeated my question.

“Sorry.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I guess because Missy was always running off to ask him for advice,” he replied, picking his words carefully.

“Jealous?”

“It's not that.” Tommy smiled ruefully. “Or maybe it is. I just thought we would have talked more if he wasn't there. I was always hearing about how he said this or he said that. It got annoying after a while.”

“I bet.” I took another puff and tapped the ash into my glass. “Is that why you and Missy fought?”

“Among other reasons. All right. We did argue a lot. That's true. But we always made up.” Tommy swallowed. He picked up his lacrosse stick and started twisting it from side to side. “She really ... I don't know ... We couldn't stay together without fighting ... just stupid stuff ... we got on each other's nerves a lot ... but whenever we were apart, I couldn't stop thinking about her. I still can't. We could have worked something out. I know we could have. I really miss her.” He blinked several times. His eyes misted over.

When I left ten minutes later, Tommy had Tony Bennett on the stereo and a bottle of Jim Beam in his hand. I hoped he'd done his homework, because from the look on his face, he wasn't going to be doing much of anything else that night.

As I was going down the stairs, a man was coming in the front door. He looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. Stocky, with a strongly featured face, and dark, commanding eyes, he strode into the TV room.

“Is my son around?” he asked in a loud, booming voice.

“Yes, Mr. West,” someone answered. “I think he's upstairs.”

I made it my business to be out the door before Tommy's father went up the stairs.

Now I began to see why Tommy hadn't wanted to talk to me.

His father looked like somebody I wouldn't have wanted to argue with at Tommy's age either.