“Please do.” She handed me the receiver and I punched out the eleven digits. When the little musical selection ended there was dead air for a space, then the metallic clunking and clacking of a toll call, then, at last, a distant ringing.
“Is it ringing?” Dianna asked eagerly. I nodded.
When there was no pickup after the sixth ring, I went to hang up—just as the receiver was lifted on the other end of the line and a deep, male voice said, “Yes?”
I brought the phone back to my ear, fast. “Uh … hi,” I said with all the rapier-like wit at my command. “Uh, is Meredith Berens there?”
There was a long pause on the end of the line that was in Chicagoland.
“Who is this?” the male voice said. There was nothing to be read in the voice. It was neither hostile nor friendly, neither suspicious nor helpful.
“I’m calling from her office,” I said, which was true. “Who is this?”
Another pause, somewhat briefer than the first.
“Who did you say you wanted?”
“Meredith Berens. We’re a little concerned about her. We haven’t seen her for a couple of days. No one seems to have heard of her. No one knows where she’s gone to. We’re hoping she’s there. Is this Meredith’s father, by any chance?”
Again with the pause. This time, though, just as I finished speaking, I thought I detected a noise on the wire, a faint, hollow little poonk. As if I was being put on hold for those few seconds between exchanges with the man. I closed my eyes and held my breath and concentrated on listening to the open line. There was just a little static, a steady hiss way down in the background, and a little bit of crosstalk, too faint to make out. Dianna Castelli tried to find out what I was doing, but I cut her off with an impatient chop of my left hand.
Yes, the poonk sound definitely occurred milliseconds before the deep-voiced man spoke again. “Sorry,” he said smoothly. “You’ve got the wrong number.”
“Well, is this Area Code three-one-t—Hello? Hello?”
“What happened?” Dianna wondered anxiously.
“Hello,” I said again into the phone, which was very, very dead. I cradled the receiver, pensively.
“What happened?” Dianna persisted.
I tapped the desktop lightly with a corner of the Rolodex card. “Something peculiar,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Traveso’s Restaurant Supply, Inc., occupied a big, ugly steel barn south of 480 at about 110th Street. The building looked like one of those prefab numbers—corrugated blue-green steel, low-pitched roof, no windows except those in the little stone-façade visitors’ entrance tacked onto the front of the building. Four parking spaces in front of the entrance were marked for company. Two of the spaces were filled, one with a little blue Ford pickup, the other with a little red Honda CRX.
Account executives, even those associated with tiny local PR firms, don’t drive Ford pickups. Still, you don’t have to be an account exec to drive a sporty car.
I swung out of the lot and trailed down the frontage road, parallel to the Interstate, until I found a pay phone in front of a convenience store. I sank change into the box and dialed Traveso’s. It was answered on the second ring by a flat, nasal Iowa twang. I imitated it.
“Hi, there,” I said brightly. “How’y’doin’ today? Say, I’m supposed to have lunch with Steve Lehman from Castelli, but I’m darned if I can remember where! Can you tell me if he’s left there yet?”
“No,” Iowa said. “I think he’s still with Mr. Pinkowski. I can transfer you …”
I hung up the moment she put me on hold.
Back in the lot of Traveso’s, I swung around to the south of the little stone addition, putting myself out of the line of sight of any interested parties behind the windows, but leaving myself a good view of the two cars in the visitors’ spaces.
After ten minutes, a tall, balding, gray-haired fellow with a gut that stretched the limits of his green coveralls emerged from the building, climbed into the Ford, and drove off. Obviously not young Lehman. I would have patted myself on the back, but there wasn’t enough room in the front seat of my old Impala.
Another twenty minutes went by. I listened to the radio, watched the mist bead up on the windshield, and played with the temperature dial on the car heater’s “vent” setting, trying to find something comfortable. It was pointless. I wished Lehman would hurry up and finish his business and come out of the building. Every passing minute eroded my confidence in the CRX being Lehman’s car—but it had to be. I checked my wristwatch for the ninetieth time. I wanted to get hold of Elmo Lammers, give him the 312 number I had called from Castelli and Company, and see what fun he could have with it. Before leaving Castelli, I had called 312 directory assistance to see if I could buy the name and address that belonged to that number. I couldn’t. Northwestern Bell, before uglifying its name to U S West Communications (no periods; it must not stand for anything), used to sell the service for fifty cents a name or something, but a federal judge determined it was too convenient for people and put the kibosh on it. If Illinois Bell ever offered the service, it didn’t now. That didn’t mean it was impossible to get the name that went with the number. The various dial-tone suppliers are usually pretty good about cooperating with licensed investigators, but I didn’t know anyone in security at Illinois Bell. Elmo Lammers certainly would. I had a sneaking suspicion that the number on Meredith’s Rolodex would prove to be unlisted, which always makes the data-gathering process trickier, but there are ways and there are ways, and I knew Elmo would know one or two that are not open to the general public.
I had the distinct feeling that whoever I was talking with at that number—and I also had the distinct feeling that it was not Meredith Berens’s father—was taking direction or instructions from someone else on his end of the line. The way he would put me on hold or mute or whatever for those few seconds between our exchanges, as if he needed to consult someone, privately, before addressing me.
Odd.
Whom was he consulting? Meredith’s father? Why wouldn’t he come on the line himself? Presumably he would care about his missing daughter. Was she there? Well, then why the elaborate minuet? Why not simply say she’s there but she doesn’t want to talk? At least we could all quit worrying. Was the unheard party Meredith herself? In that case, the same question arises: Why the game?
Or was my wild shot-in-the-dark fantasy about Meredith’s having been kidnaped something close to the truth?
Clearly, though, I had not reached a wrong number. Whomever I was speaking with knew something, and whomever he was speaking with didn’t want him sharing that or any other information with me.
Very odd.
I half-wondered whether a junket to Chicago was in my future after all. But there were still a couple of bases to be covered locally, and my pal Elmo was more than competent. Which didn’t make the waiting much easier.
Finally the glass door on the west end of the building swung open and a red-haired young man strode out. He carried a three-ring binder under one arm and a flat leatherette portfolio case in the other hand. While he fumbled with his accessories and his car keys, I hauled myself out of the Chevy and covered the distance between our cars.
“Hey, Steve.”
He looked up. He was a tall, solidly built kid whose reddish hair was already beginning the steady retreat up his forehead. He had flat, roundish features and a fleshy, pouty mouth and fingernails chewed to the quick. He wore a blue suit with a red tie and black wing tips, and, like a good salesman, he responded to my greeting in a hearty but nonspecific way while his brain shifted into high gear to try to place me.
“Save the sweat, kid,” I said, not unkindly. “You don’t know me, but I know you. I just left your boss.” I showed him the ID and sketched him the background. “Let’s go somewhere and drink some coffee.”
We settled on a Denny’s on Eighty-fourth, just off the Interstate, and were seated in a booth there within ten minutes despite the heavy lun
ch trade. Lehman was young and earnest, likeable and outgoing, if a bit high-strung, and apparently willing to help. I decided the half-hour wait in Traveso’s lot wasn’t a waste after all: Lehman’s openness would have been blunted by Dianna Castelli’s protectiveness if I had arranged to interview him at the agency.
“Dianna told me Meredith’s mother had hired a detective to look for her. But what do you want me for?”
“You’re a friend of Meredith’s. One of her few friends.”
“I suppose so …” He played with his spoon, pressing down on the bowl and letting the long end come up from the plastic tabletop and drop back again. And again and again and again.
“Her and me and Dianna. We stopped off for a couple of drinks, a few laughs, and et cetera.”
I cringed inwardly and thought to say something, and thought better of it. The world is full of people who say “and et cetera” and “between you and I” and “very unique.” Many of them consider themselves well-educated. Going around correcting them would be a full-time job, and could lead to the rearrangement of one’s nose. “How did she act then?”
“Meredith?” He thought about it. “Fine, I guess. I mean, I didn’t notice anything weird, and I can’t think of anything now, so she must have been acting normal. Right?”
Probably. I watched him gnaw a nonexistent fingernail for a moment, then said, “I have got the idea that you would have liked to be more than just friends with Meredith.”
He looked at me with some surprise. “Where’d you get an idea like that? Me and Meredith, we just work together. We’re friends.”
The phrase came easily to the tongue. It always does. “That’s what you are. I’m talking about what you would have liked to be. I have it on the best authority.”
Lehman stared at me for a few moments, then, with wry disgust, muttered, “Thank you, Dianna. Okay, I suppose it’s true. I asked Meredith out once, but she said she was too involved with Thomas Wayne and et cetera, and … well, and that was it.” He shrugged, perhaps just a little too nonchalantly, and fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers.
I took them away from him and replaced them in their wire rack, but just then our coffee came and he had an excuse to dink with the sugar caddy instead.
“That was it, huh?” I said.
He nodded, stirring a packet of sugar into his coffee. The spoon clinked against the inside of his coffee mug twice per stir—once left, once right. “She wasn’t interested. She made that pretty clear.” Again with the shrug.
I sipped some coffee. Not bad, for restaurant brew. Probably a fresh batch for the lunchers. “Do you know Wayne?”
“I met him, once. At a party at Dianna’s.”
“Like him?”
Steve Lehman tasted his coffee, frowned, and tore open another packet of sugar. More stirring, more clinking. “I don’t know,” he said. “I only met him for a second, you know? He seemed all right. Nice guy, I guess. Pretty friendly. Meredith likes him. A lot, I guess—pretty obvious, huh?”
“Did she ever talk to you about him?”
He had done enough stirring. I took the spoon from him and set it among my flatware.
“No, not really. When I asked her out that time she told me that she would except she was involved—that was the word she used—with Wayne. Then, later, of course, she told me about the engagement.”
“How did she break the news to you?”
Lehman looked around the table, as if hunting for something else to play with. But I had taken away all his toys. He attacked his savaged fingernails instead. I said, “I read somewhere once that fingernail-biters are closet masochists. Self-mutilation, something like that.”
He gave me a look. “Yeah, my mom’s read the same stuff. So?”
I laughed. “So how did Meredith tell you about her engagement to Thomas Wayne?”
“Well …” He turned his head and spit invisible flecks of fingernail. “She didn’t, really. She told Dianna and Dianna told me—” He looked up. “It wasn’t a secret or anything. So she told Dianna and Dianna told me, and I went over to Meredith and, you know, told her I thought it was great.”
“And did you?”
Lehman shrugged. “Sure. I guess so. Like I said, I didn’t even know the guy, so how do I know whether marrying him’s a good idea or not? But that’s not what you tell somebody when they get engaged.”
“Were you surprised when you heard about the engagement?”
“Sort of. And sort of not. I knew that Meredith was really nuts about this guy—”
“How?”
“I just did, that’s all. You know, from stuff around the office. I didn’t know they were thinking about getting married. But there’s no reason I would, I guess. Look, what is it you want from me?”
“Just to talk.”
Lehman frowned. His reddish eyebrows were so light and thin as to be invisible. “You think something’s happened to Meredith?”
“I think she’s missing, without any explanation. Why?”
He horsed around with the white ceramic mug until he slopped sweet coffee over the side. He mopped it with his napkin. “The kind of questions you’re asking,” he said, “they’re kind of half like you wonder where Meredith has gone to—like going away was her idea—and then they’re kind of half like you wonder if someone did something to Meredith.”
“Like what?”
“Like hurt her. Kidnaped her.” He acted almost embarrassed to say it, and why not? It does sound melodramatic. How many people do you know who have been kidnaped?
“Like who?”
He looked at me. “Like me. Like Thomas Wayne. Him and me, we’re the ones you keep asking me about.”
“Who else should I be asking about? Who are Meredith’s friends?”
He shrugged. “No one you don’t know about already, probably.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Even Donna Berens didn’t know about her daughter’s intended.
Lehman thought, worrying the fingernail some more. “Well … I suppose Dianna’s probably her closest friend. She gets along okay with the rest of the guys at the office, but Dianna’s the only one she’s, like, close to. I guess she must have friends outside the agency. But I don’t know any of them.”
I asked whether Meredith ever talked to Lehman about her father.
“Just her mother. Is her father still alive?”
“Apparently he lives around Chicago somewhere. Has Meredith ever mentioned Chicago to you? Has she ever visited there, to your knowledge?”
“No, I don’t think so—both questions.” He gulped coffee in a quick, nervous gesture. “Look, Mr., uh, Nebraska, I really want to help—because I really care about Meredith, you know—but I don’t think I know anything that can help you, and anyway I’m late for a luncheon appointment with a client.”
I considered him for a long moment before I said, “Then you better get going. For a small agency, Castelli seems to have plenty of clients.”
He smiled, and made a noise that might have been laughter or exasperation. “Tell that to Dianna, okay? The problem is, most of our clients are one-shots—no ongoing stuff—so we’re always scrambling for work. We need more clients like Methodist Hospital. We do a quarterly newsletter for them. In fact, that’s where I’m supposed to be right now, so …”
“I won’t keep you. Thanks for your help.”
“I wish I could really help.”
“Give me your card, will you, in case I need to get hold of you later.”
“Sure.” He pulled a small leather case from his pocket, extracted a card, and handed it over. It was a textured pale-gray paper bearing the Castelli logo in hot-pink foil and, beneath it, in black, Lehman’s name and title.
“Great. How ’bout your home number too?”
He gave it to me, and I wrote it on back of the card. Then he stood and hesitated awkwardly.
“Something?” I said.
“I—Well, I hope you find Meredith, that’s all.”
“That’s
all I hope, too, Steve,” I said.
Steve Lehman left the Denny’s lot and headed up Eighty-fourth to Center. He took Center east to the cloverleaf that put him onto Seventy-second, heading north. At Dodge Street, near the newly facelifted Crossroads shopping center, he made the left turn and steamed up the hill to Nebraska Methodist Hospital, off of Dodge in the Indian Hills district.
I know because I followed him. He was an easy tail. The only time I was in danger of losing him was at the left-turn arrow at Seventy-second and Dodge. Fortunately, like most Omahans, I drive like a maniac, and little things like extinguished left-turn arrows don’t bother me any.
Steve Lehman parked his little Honda and went into the big dark-glass building. Remember when Hondas were motorcycles, not cars—which are getting bigger every year, I think—and lawn mowers and whatnot? I think Honda moved in to scoop up the ball dropped by Volkswagen in the seventies, but I also think they’re following the same road to ruin, going for sex and splash rather than good, dependable, boring little cars. It might work for a while, but how much good have you heard about VW since they axed the Beetle?
I farted around in the parking lot for a few minutes, thinking automotive thoughts, long enough to make sure that Lehman wasn’t coming straight out again. I didn’t get where I am today by accepting too much at face value. Then I left my car and, surveying the terrain, ankled toward the Honda.
The driver’s side door was unlocked. I popped it and slid in behind the wheel. Nice car. Or it had been when Lehman took delivery. Since then he had filled the front seat with cassette tapes, pens, and coffee cups; the backseat with the paper and plastic remnants of carry-out meals long gone. Whatever I was looking for wasn’t there. And the trouble with these hatchbacks is there’s no trunk in which to hide who knows what. Or who.
I went back to my own jalopy, fired it up, and moved out.
There was a lot of traffic on Dodge, which is one of the town’s main east-west drags, if not the. Like most midwestern cities, Omaha’s freeway system leaves something to be desired. A freeway system, for instance. What we have is the Interstate, which I’m sure is real swell, but all it really does is circle the city; there is no crosstown freeway. Dodge Street, through good planning or good luck—probably the latter—is the only major thoroughfare that provides a straight, no-detours shot from end to end. That means it carries a lot of traffic. At the noon hour on that particular Tuesday, I would have been willing to testify that only one of Omaha’s three-hundred-and-some-thousand souls was not on Dodge: Steve Lehman, and only because I had seen him go into the hospital.
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