I wanted to wait with her before she left. But she told me to go back home and get some rest. She wanted to be alone for a while.
I said to her, “You’re going to call me, right? I mean, this isn’t good-bye.”
She stared at me for a long moment. “I’ll call,” she promised.
But she never did call. They never found Lonnie’s body, either.
THE END
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Extenuating Circumstances
The Lessing house was on Riverside Drive in Covington, almost directly across the Ohio River from the Stadium. I knew it was across from the Stadium because I could hear the afternoon baseball crowd grumbling in the distance, like an army of men talking fitfully in their sleep. I couldn’t see the Stadium itself, or much of anything on the Ohio side. The midsummer heat had raised a mist on the river, making the crowd noises drifting over the water seem detached, dreamlike. It could have been the Styx; the distant welter, the voices of the doomed. It could also have been the Ohio River on a hot, humid July afternoon with a baseball game in progress. It was a day to make you a little soft in the brain.
What I could see, had no trouble seeing, was a pretty French Quarter house on a small rise above the street where I had parked. A flagstone terrace dotted with cane furniture. A row of French windows in a white stucco wall. A second-story veranda, railed in wrought iron with a second row of French windows opening onto it. Two people were sitting on the terrace, a man and a woman looking in opposite directions, like drawings on a jelly glass. Neither one of them was looking at me.
I hied my way up a short flight of stone steps. The man turned toward me. He was too fat to be wearing the blue polo shirt he had on without a bra. He had a long, dour, jowly face that drooped down his neck like dough from a hook. His brown crew-cut hair was chopped level on top and mowed to about half an inch in height, like a fescue lawn. I put his age at about thirty.
The fat man trained his dark eyes on me savagely, as if I’d been dragged up the stairs by the cat. The girl continued to look off into space. She was very pretty and very young, no more than twenty-five, with the fragile, frozen, doting face of an enamel shepherdess—all porcelain and gold, with just the faintest hints of pale blue and pink in her eyes and mouth. She wore a fluffy tennis outfit that made her glow in the sun.
“Are you the detective?” the fat man said irritably.
“That’s me. Harry Stoner.”
“Janey? The detective is here.” The man turned toward the girl in the tennis outfit. His voice, which had sounded hard and officious to me, turned sugary and coaxing. I wondered if Janey was the kind of girl whom everyone addressed that way, like a favorite child.
Janey turned her head slowly toward us, and I saw that she’d been crying. The silver tear streaks made her delicate, white face even prettier. The fat man ducked his head unhappily, as if he couldn’t stand to see her in misery.
“This is Mr. Stoner,” he said under his breath.
Janey blinked once and wiped her eyes with both hands. Her fingernails were almond-shaped and painted a pearly pink.
“Hello,” she said in a childlike voice and forced a smile. The smile faded instantly, and she looked off again, abstractedly, into the distant mist of the river.
“Janey is Ira’s wife,” the fat man said categorically, as if he was reminding her, too.
“Are you the one who called me?” I asked him.
“Yes. I’m Len Trumaine. Ira Lessing’s partner.”
“And Ira is?”
The girl’s hazel eyes welled again with tears. “Gone,” she said plaintively, and Len Trumaine winced. “Ira’s gone.”
******
Janey Lessing led us into the French Quarter house, down a hall lined with framed Impressionist prints that lit up the walls like rays of sunlight coming through small, high windows. Len Trumaine eyed me nervously, then looked straight ahead at Janey’s tiny, skirted ass and pale enamel legs, as if she were his kid at the zoo and he was afraid to let her too far out of his sight. Eventually we came to a living room. A plump white couch, bracket-shaped, sat in front of a polished marble fireplace, with a fiery Rothko blazing above it. We settled there.
“You want a drink?” Trumaine said to me. I shook my head. “Well, I could use a drink. Janey?”
She shook her head no. Trumaine walked over to a brass liquor cart and poured himself a very stiff scotch. He’d almost drained the glass by the time he sat down on the couch. The liquor made his face flush and brought out a thick sweat on his forehead.
“You’re sweating, Len,” Janey said gruesomely.
Trumaine laughed lamely. “Yeah, well, I sweat when I’m nervous, Janey. You know that.” He turned to me with a weak smile. “Janey and I have known each other since we were kids. We grew up together.” He said it by way of excuse, as if he didn’t want to leave the impression that he was run by the girl, although that was the impression I was beginning to get.
Len Trumaine swallowed the rest of his scotch in a gulp and set the tumbler down on a glass coffee table. “I guess you’re wondering why we called you.”
“About Mr. Lessing’s disappearance, I assume.”
Trumaine flushed again. “I forgot Janey told you that. It’s about Ira, all right.”
“He’s been gone for two days,” Janey blurted out.
“Two days isn’t very long,” I said.
The girl’s face turned red, as if I’d insulted her. “Something’s happened to him!” she shrieked.
The shrillness of Janey Lessing’s voice startled me, as if she’d thrown a piece of crystal at my feet.
“What makes you think something’s happened to your husband?”
“I just know,” she said with the same piercing certainty.
“There are all sorts of reasons why a man might drop out of sight for a short time.”
The girl gave me a furious look, as if she had her heart set on tragedy, as if she usually got what her heart was set on. Trumaine quickly stepped in.
“Janey is right to be worried. Ira is a man of habit. He doesn’t just disappear for days on end.”
I turned toward Trumaine. “You said that you and he were partners?”
“We run a plastics company on Madison, here in Covington. Well, I run it. Ira has a number of other responsibilities.”
“Such as?”
“He’s a city commissioner, for one.”
“That’s like a councilman?”
Trumaine nodded. “Ira comes from one of this city’s oldest families. The Lessings have been on the commission for decades.”
“And when exactly did he disappear?”
“He left this house on the evening of the Fourth,” Janey Lessing said, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation. “We’d been watching the fireworks on the terrace, and when they were over Ira said he would be driving back to the office for a few hours.”
“Did he say why he was going to the office?”
“Business, of course.”
“Commissioner business or plastics business?”
The girl looked completely flustered. “What difference does it make what kind of business? My husband drove away on Sunday night and never came back.”
She fixed her eyes on me as if she expected me to produce Ira Lessing on the spot.
“Mrs. Lessing,” I said, “I’m not a magician. I need information to do my job.”
“But I don’t know what kind of business Ira had to do!” she cried. “I don’t know about his business!” Tears welled up again in her hazel eyes, and she covered her face with her hands.
Trumaine hopped to his feet, giving me an ugly, sidelong glance. “Janey, it’s going to be all right. Believe me, honey, we’ll find him.”
“Why did this happen, Len?” she said, behind her hands.
Len petted her head. “You should go lie down,” he said gently. “I’ll handle this.”
The girl got up as bidden, and walked out of the room without giving
me a glance. Trumaine stared after her with something a lot more self-interested than concern for a friend.
“You didn’t have to be so tough on her,” he said, turning to me.
“I wasn’t being tough. I was doing my job.”
“Well, do your job a little more tactfully from now on, at least around Janey. Ira means everything to her. I would think you could see that for yourself.” Trumaine sank into a white chair opposite me and wiped his sweaty brow. “I realize that Janey may appear to be...an alarmist. But the truth is that it is completely out of character for Ira to disappear like this, without leaving word. Ira’s compulsive. He does everything by a timetable. He wants everything in its place, if you see what I mean.”
“I’ve met the wife.”
Trumaine scowled weakly.
“Has Lessing made any enemies? Through the commission or through your business?”
“God, no. Everyone likes Ira. He’s a genuinely decent, extremely charitable man.”
There wasn’t a trace of irony in his voice, although there obviously should have been, considering how he felt about the Mrs.
“He doesn’t play around, does he? With other women?”
Trumaine looked shocked. “He’s got Janey,” he said, as if she were first prize in the lottery. “Why would he do that?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
Enjoy all of Jonathan Valin’s HARRY STONER series, as both Ebooks and Audiobooks!
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The Lime Pit: Harry Stoner Series #1
Final Notice: Harry Stoner Series #2
Dead Letter: Harry Stoner Series #3
Day of Wrath: Harry Stoner Series #4
Natural Causes: Harry Stoner Series #5
Life’s Work: Harry Stoner Series #6
Fire Lake: Harry Stoner Series #7
Extenuating Circumstances: Harry Stoner Series #8
Second Chance: Harry Stoner Series #9
The Music Lovers: Harry Stoner Series #10
Missing: Harry Stoner Series #11
Fire Lake Page 24