Grace Westphalen was sixty-nine—two years older than Nellie. A woman of many acquaintances but few real friends. Her sister had always been her best friend. No eccentricities. Certainly no enemies.
"When did you last see Grace?" Jack asked.
"Monday night. I finished watching The Tonight Show and when I looked in to say good night, she was propped up in bed reading. That was the last time I saw her." Nellie's lower lip trembled for an instant, then she got control of it. "Perhaps the last time I shall ever see her."
Jack looked to Gia. "No signs of foul play?"
"I didn't get here until late Tuesday," Gia said with a shrug. "But I do know the police couldn't figure out how Grace got out without tripping the alarm."
"You've got the place wired?" he asked Nellie.
"Wired? Oh, you mean the burglar system. Yes. And it was set—at least for downstairs. We've had so many false alarms over the years, however, that we had the upper floors disconnected.”
"What kind of false alarms?"
"Well, sometimes we'd forget and get up at night to open a window. The racket is terrifying. So now when we set the system, only the downstairs doors and windows are activated. "
"Which means Grace couldn't have left by the downstairs doors or windows without tripping an alarm..." A thought struck him. "Wait—all these systems have delays so you can arm it and get out the door without setting it off. That must have been what she did. She just walked out."
"But her key to the system is still upstairs on her dresser. And all her clothes are in her closets."
"May I see?"
"By all means, do come and look," Nellie said, rising.
They all trooped upstairs.
Jack found the small, frilly-feminine bedroom cloying. Everything seemed to be pink or have a lace ruffle, or both.
The pair of French doors at the far end of the room claimed his attention immediately. He opened them and found himself on a card-table-sized balcony rimmed with a waist-high wrought iron railing, overlooking the backyard. A good dozen feet below was a rose garden. In a shady corner sat the playhouse Vicky had mentioned; it looked far too heavy to have been dragged under the window, and would have flattened all the rose bushes if it had. Anyone wanting to climb up here had to bring a ladder with him or be one hell of a jumper.
"The police find any marks in the dirt down there?"
Nellie shook her head. "They thought someone might have used a ladder, but there was no sign. The ground is so hard and dry with no rain—"
Eunice the maid appeared at the door. "Telephone, mum."
Nellie excused herself and left Jack and Gia alone in the room.
"A locked-room mystery," he said. "I feel like Sherlock Holmes."
He got down on his knees and examined the carpet for specks of dirt, but found none. He looked under the bed; only a pair of slippers there.
"What are you doing?"
"Looking for clues. I'm supposed to be a detective, remember?”
"I don't think a woman's disappearance is anything to joke about," Gia said, the frost returning to her words now that Nellie was out of earshot.
"I'm not joking, nor am I taking it lightly. But you've got to admit the whole thing has the air of a British drawing room mystery about it. I mean, either Aunt Grace had an extra alarm key made and ran off into the night in her nightie—a pink and frilly one, I'll bet—or she jumped off her little balcony here in that same nightie, or someone climbed up the wall, knocked her out, and carried her off without a sound. None of them seem too plausible."
Gia appeared to be listening. That was something at least.
He went over to the dressing table and glanced at the dozens of perfume bottles there; some names were familiar, most not. He wandered into the private bathroom and was there confronted by another array of bottles: Metamucil, Phillips' Milk of Magnesia, Haley's M-O, Pericolace, Surfak, Ex-Lax and more. One bottle stood off to the side. Jack picked it up. It was clear glass, with a thick green fluid inside. The cap was the metal twist-off type, enameled white. All it needed was a Smirnoff label and it could have been an airline vodka bottle.
"Know what this is?"
"Ask Nellie."
Jack screwed off the cap and sniffed. At least he was sure of one thing: it wasn't perfume. The smell was heavily herbal, and not particularly pleasant.
As Nellie returned, she appeared to be finding it increasingly difficult to hide her anxiety. "That was the police. I rang up the detective in charge a while ago and he just told me that they have nothing new on Grace."
Jack handed her the bottle.
"What's this?"
Nellie looked it over, momentarily puzzled, then her face brightened.
"Oh, yes. Grace picked this up Monday. I'm not sure where, but she said it was a new product being test-marketed, and this was a free sample."
"But what's it for?"
"It's a physic."
“Pardon?”
"A physic. A cathartic. A laxative. Grace was very concerned—obsessed, you might say—with regulating her bowels. She's had that sort of problem all her life."
Jack took back the bottle. Something about an unlabeled bottle amid all the brand names intrigued him.
"May I keep this?"
"Certainly.”
He looked around awhile longer, for appearances more than anything else. He didn't have the faintest idea how he was going to begin looking for Grace Westphalen.
"Please remember to do two things," he told Nellie as he started downstairs. "Keep me informed of any leads the police turn up, and don't breathe a word of my involvement."
"Very well. But where are you going to start?"
He smiled—reassuringly, he hoped. "I've already started. I'll have to do some thinking and then start looking."
He fingered the bottle in his pocket. Something about it...
They left Nellie on the second floor, standing and gazing into her sister's empty room. Vicky came running in from the kitchen as Jack reached the bottom step. She held an orange section in her outstretched hand.
"Do the orange mouth! Do the orange mouth!"
He laughed, delighted that she remembered. "Sure!"
He shoved the section into his mouth and clamped his teeth behind the skin. Then he gave Vicky a big orange grin. She clapped and laughed.
"Isn't Jack funny, mom? Isn't he the funniest?"
"He's a riot, Vicky."
Jack pulled the orange slice from his mouth. "Where's that doll you wanted to introduce me to?"
Vicky slapped the side of her head dramatically, "Ms. Jelliroll! She's out back. I'll go—"
"Jack doesn't have time, honey," Gia said from behind him.
He winked at her. "Maybe next trip, okay?"
Vicky smiled and Jack noticed that a second tooth was starting to fill the gap left by her missing milk tooth.
"Okay. You coming back soon, Jack?"
"Real soon, Vicks."
He hoisted her onto his hip and carried her to the front door where he put her down and kissed her.
"See ya." He glanced up at Gia. "You, too."
She pulled Vicky back against the front of her jeans. "Yeah."
As Jack went down the front steps, he thought the door slammed with unnecessary force.
12
Vicky pulled Gia to the window and together they watched Jack stroll out of sight.
"He's going to find Aunt Grace, isn't he?"
"He says he's going to try."
"He'll do it."
"Please don't get your hopes up, honey." She knelt behind Vicky and enfolded her in her arms. "We may never find her."
She felt Vicky stiffen and wished she hadn't said it, wished she hadn't thought it. Grace had to be alive and well.
"Jack'll find her. Jack can do anything."
"No, Vicky. He can't. He really can't." Gia was torn between wanting Jack to fail, and wanting Grace returned to her home; between wanting to see Jack humbled in Vicky's eyes, and the urge to
protect her daughter from the pain of disillusionment.
"Why don't you love him anymore, Mommy?"
The question took Gia by surprise. "Who said I ever did?"
"You did," Vicky said, turning and facing her mother. Her guileless blue eyes looked straight into Gia's. "Don't you remember?"
"Well, maybe I did a little, but not anymore."
It's true. I don't love him anymore. Never did. Not really.
"Why not?"
"Sometimes things don't work out."
"Like with you and daddy?"
"Ummm..."
During the two and a half years she and Richard had been divorced, Gia had read every magazine article she could find on explaining the breakup of a marriage to a small child. There were all sorts of pat answers to give, answers that were satisfying when the father was still around for birthdays and holidays and weekends. But what to say to a child whose father had not only skipped town, but left the continent before she was five? How to tell a child that her daddy doesn't give a damn about her? Maybe Vicky knew. Maybe that's why she was so infatuated with Jack, who never passed up an opportunity to give her a hug or slip her a little present, who talked to her and treated her like a real person.
"Do you love Carl?" Vicky said with a sour face. Apparently she’d given up on an answer to her previous question and was trying a new one.
"No. We haven't known each other that long."
"He's yucky."
"He's really very nice. You just have to get to know him."
"Yucks, Mom. Yuck-o."
Gia laughed and tugged on Vicky's pigtails. Carl acted like any man unfamiliar with children. He was uncomfortable with Vicky; when he wasn't stiff, he was condescending. He’d been unable to break the ice, but he was trying.
Carl was an account exec at TBWAChiatDay. Bright, witty, sophisticated. A civilized man. Not like Jack. Not at all like Jack. They’d met at the agency when she’d delivered some art for one of his accounts. Phone calls, flowers, dinners had followed. Something was developing. Certainly not love yet, but a nice relationship. Carl was what they called a "good catch." Gia didn't like to think of a man that way; it made her feel predatory, and she wasn't hunting. Both Richard and Jack, the only two men in the last ten years of her life, had deeply disappointed her. So she was keeping Carl at arm's length for now.
Yet...there were certain things to be considered. With Richard out of touch for over a year now, money was a constant problem. Gia didn't want alimony, but some child support now and then would help. Richard had sent a few checks after running back to England—drawn in British pounds just to make things more difficult for her. Not that he had any financial problems—he controlled one-third of the Westphalen fortune. He was most definitely what those who evaluated such things would consider a "good catch." But as she’d found out soon after their marriage, Richard had a long history of impulsive and irresponsible behavior. He’d disappeared late last year. No one knew where he’d gone, but no one was worried. It wasn't the first time he’d decided on a whim to take off without a word to anyone.
And so Gia did the best she could. Good freelance work for a commercial artist was hard to find on a steady basis, but she managed. Carl was seeing to it that she got assignments from his accounts, and she appreciated that, though it worried her. She didn't want any of her decisions about their relationship to be influenced by economics.
But she needed those jobs. Freelance work was the only way she could be a breadwinner and a mother and father to Vicky—and do it right. She wanted to be home when Vicky got in from school. She wanted Vicky to know that even if her father had deserted her, her mother would always be there. But it wasn't easy.
Money-money-money.
It always came down to money. She couldn't think of anything in particular she wanted desperately to buy, nothing she really needed. She simply wanted enough so she could stop worrying about it all the time. Her day-to-day life would be enormously simplified by hitting the state lottery or having some rich uncle pass on and leave her fifty thousand or so. But there were no rich uncles waiting in the wings, and Gia didn't have enough left over at the end of the week for lottery tickets. She was going to have to make it on her own.
She was not so naive as to think that every problem could be solved by money—look at Nellie, lonely and miserable now, unable to buy back her sister despite all her riches—but a windfall would certainly let Gia sleep better at night.
All of which reminded Gia that her rent was due. The bill had been waiting for her when she’d stopped back at the apartment yesterday. Staying here and keeping Nellie company was a pleasant change of scenery; it was posh, cool, comfortable. But it was keeping her from her work. Two assignments had deadlines coming up, and she needed those checks. Paying the rent now was going to drop her account to the danger level, but it had to be done.
Might as well find the checkbook and get it over with.
"Why don't you go out to the playhouse," she told Vicky.
"It's dull out there, Mom."
"I know. But they bought it especially for you, so why don't you give it another try today. I'll come out and play with you in a few minutes. Got to take care of some business first.”
Vicky brightened. "Okay! We'll play Ms. Jelliroll. You can be Mr. Grape-grabber."
"Sure." Whatever would Vicky do without her Ms. Jelliroll doll?
Gia watched her race toward the rear of the house. Vicky loved to visit her aunts' place, but she got lonely after a while. No one her age around here; all her friends were back at the apartment house.
She went upstairs to the guest bedroom on the third floor where she and Vicky had spent the last two nights. Maybe she could get some work done. She missed her art setup back in her apartment, but she’d brought a large sketchpad and had to get going on the Burger-Meister place mat.
Burger-Meister was a McDonald's clone and a new client for Carl. The company had been regional in the south but was preparing to go national in a big way. They had the usual assortment of burgers, including their own answer to the Big Mac: the vaguely fascist-sounding Meister Burger. But what set them apart were their desserts. They put a lot of effort into offering a wide array of pastries—eclairs, napoleons, cream puffs and the like.
Gia's assignment was to come up with the art for a paper placemat to line the trays patrons used to carry food to the tables. The copywriter had decided the sheet should extol and catalog all the quick and wonderful services Burger-Meister offered. The art director had blocked it out: around the edges would be scenes of children laughing, running, swinging and sliding in the mini-playground, cars full of happy people threading the drive-thru, children celebrating birthdays in the special party room, all revolving around that jolly, official-looking fellow, Mr. Burger-Meister.
Something about this approach struck Gia as wrong. There were missed opportunities here. This was a place mat. That meant the person looking at it was already in the Burger-Meister and had already ordered a meal. She saw no further need for a come-on. Why not tempt them with some of the goodies on the dessert list? Show them pictures of sundaes and cookies and eclairs and cream puffs. Get the kids howling for dessert. It was a good idea, and it excited her.
You're a rat, Gia. Ten years ago this never would have crossed your mind. And if it had you’d have been horrified.
But she was not that same girl from Ottumwa who had arrived in the Big City fresh out of art school and looking for work. Since then she’d been married to a crumb and in love with a killer.
She began sketching desserts.
After an hour of work, she took a break. Now that she was rolling on the Burger-Meister job, she didn't feel too bad about paying the rent. She pulled the checkbook out of her purse but could not find the bill. It had been on the dresser this morning and now it was gone.
Gia went to the top of the stairs and called down.
"Eunice! Did you see an envelope on my dresser this morning?"
"No, mum," came the fa
int reply.
That left only one possibility.
13
Nellie overheard the exchange between Gia and Eunice.
Here it comes, she thought, knowing that Gia would explode when she learned what Nellie had done with the rent bill.
A lovely girl, that Gia, but so hot-tempered. And so proud, unwilling to accept any financial aid, no matter how often it was offered. A most impractical attitude. And yet...if Gia had welcomed handouts, Nellie knew she would not be so anxious to offer them. Gia's resistance to charity was like a red flag waving in Nellie's face, making her all the more determined to find ways of helping.
Preparing herself for the storm, Nellie stepped out onto the landing below Gia.
"I saw it."
"What happened to it?"
"I paid it."
Gia's jaw dropped. "You what?"
Nellie twisted her hands in a show of anxiety. "Don't think I was snooping, dearie. I simply went in to make sure that Eunice was taking proper care of you, and I saw it sitting on the bureau. I was paying a few of my own bills this morning and so I just paid yours, too."
Gia hurried down the stairs, pounding her hand on the banister as she approached.
"Nellie, you had no right!"
Nellie stood her ground. "Rubbish! I can spend my money any way I please."
"The least you could have done was ask me first!"
"True," Nellie said, trying her best to look contrite, "but as you know, I'm an old woman and frightfully forgetful."
The statement had the desired effect: Gia's frown wavered, fighting against a smile, then she broke into a laugh. "You're about as forgetful as a computer!"
"Ah, dearie," Nellie said, drawing to Gia's side and putting an arm around her waist, "I know I've taken you away from your work by asking you to stay with me, and that puts a strain on your finances. But I so love having you and Victoria here."
And I need you here, she thought. I couldn't bear to stay alone with only Eunice for company. I would surely go mad with grief and worry.
"Especially Victoria—I dare say she's the only decent thing that nephew of mine has ever done in his entire life. She's such a dear; I can't quite believe Richard had anything to do with her."
The Tomb (Repairman Jack) Page 5