She's Not There

by P J Parrish

  “I think she loves him very much.”

  But she had taken an extra beat before answering. If she knew anything about what went on below the surface of the couple’s marriage, she wasn’t going to tell him. Women were no different than men. They protected their own.

  Joanna McCall was staring at her glass.

  “I have to ask you one more personal thing,” Buchanan said.

  She looked up.

  “Was Amelia seeing someone else?”

  Joanna was silent, just staring at him. Then she let out a long sigh. “I don’t think so,” she said softly.

  “Think hard. Did you ever see her with someone? Did she ever mention a name? If there was another man, she might have gone to him.”

  “I was her best friend. I would have known.” She shook her head slowly. “No, there was no one else in her life. I’m sure of it.”

  Buchanan sat back in his chair. He realized the background murmur had died. The room was empty except for the waiter hovering by the bar. And a man in a black suit standing stiffly by the door watching them.

  Joanna looked toward the man and gave a discreet nod. He started toward their table.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to end this now,” Joanna said, looking back at Buchanan. “If you need to speak with me again, you can reach me at home.”

  She didn’t make any move to get up, and Buchanan realized she probably expected him to rise first in respect. He did, and that’s when he saw the glint of metal on the chair next to hers. Two metal crutches, which had been hidden beneath the white linen tablecloth.

  The man in the black suit was at the table. “Are you ready to leave, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Yes, Jack, I am, thank you,” she said.

  The man helped her out of her chair. Joanna slipped on the crutches and they started slowly away.

  “Mrs. McCall?” Buchanan called after her.

  She turned and smiled. “Joanna.”

  Buchanan smiled back. “I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday, Joanna.”

  Her smiled faded. “Birthday? Today’s not my birthday. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Sorry, my mistake.”

  She turned and continued on to the door, her driver’s hand protective on her shoulder. Buchanan watched until she was gone and then sat down at the table. He reached into his bag and pulled out Amelia’s Day Runner, flipping it open to the current week.

  No, he had remembered it correctly. Amelia had inked in “J’s Birthday!” for today. If it wasn’t Joanna McCall, who the hell was it?

  She ran away. Wives do it all the time, don’t they?

  Buchanan had the feeling that Megan McCall had unknowingly given voice to his own suspicion—that Amelia had a lover somewhere.

  He looked out the windows at the gleaming pool and the yachts beyond. Past the yachts, across the Intracoastal Waterway, he could see a row of pastel mansions. He closed the Day Runner and rose.

  It was time to poke around inside the Tobias home.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Tobiases’ maid, a small woman in a white uniform and severe black bun, gave Buchanan the same weird greeting as the guy back at the yacht club: a smile on her mouth but suspicion in her eyes.

  Buchanan had called Alex Tobias, asking if he could look around the home for clues about Amelia, and Tobias, tied up in Miami inking the papers of some important merger, told him he would call Esperanza and let her know Buchanan was coming.

  Esperanza looked like she hadn’t gotten the call. But when Buchanan showed her his driver’s license, she stepped aside, holding the massive carved wood door to let him into the foyer.

  It was freezing, like walking into a meat locker.

  A nicely decorated meat locker, though—shiny white Carrera marble, white wainscoted walls, and a staircase that wound like a helix, drawing his eye upward two stories to a chandelier that floated from the ceiling like a giant crystal sea hydra. There was a sleek white pedestal table in the middle of the foyer with a huge arrangement of white orchids and thin curls of branches. Tucked off in one corner was a white baby grand piano.

  It was, Buchanan noted, one of those Disklavier models with a compact disc player stuck below the keyboard that you could program to play anything from Rachmaninoff to Jerry Lee Lewis. The rich man’s player piano, except you didn’t have to sit there and pump the thing with your feet, just hit “Play” on the remote.

  “Mr. Tobias said I need to show you his house.”

  Buchanan turned back to the maid. She looked perturbed, though whether it was because a stranger was in her lair or because she was expected to babysit him, he couldn’t tell.

  “That’s not necessary, Miss . . . ?” He paused respectfully.

  “Mrs. Diaz,” she said.

  He smiled. “I can look around by myself, Mrs. Diaz. I’m sure Mr. Tobias wouldn’t want you wasting your valuable time with me.”

  Her eyebrows knitted into one black caterpillar. But then she turned and walked away, her shoes squeaking on the marble.

  Buchanan looked around at the rooms and hallways radiating off the foyer.

  Where to start? The bedrooms were always the richest depositories of clues, but he decided to make a quick tour of the first floor to give Esperanza enough time to lose track of him.

  Two white marble pillars guarded the entry to what Buchanan supposed was a living room, though he was sure not much living went on inside.

  It was the size of a basketball court, more white marble topped with two zebra rugs. Two curved black silk sofas set off a coral-rock fireplace like quotation marks. A pair of modern white leather chairs sat in lonely isolation by a bank of long windows. The details were just as stark: crystal lamps with silver lacquer shades, crystal amoeba ashtrays, and lots of mirrors.

  He moved on through more white rooms, stopping in what he guessed was Alex’s study. It was all white lacquer built-ins, the chrome-and-glass desk topped only with a white Apple laptop. The only thing on the wall was a framed diploma from the Florida State School of Law.

  Buchanan headed down a long white hallway lined with large framed black-and-white photographs. They were landscapes, beautiful stark images of swamps, egrets, and twisty trees swagged with Spanish moss. He caught the signature in the corner of one—Clyde Butcher—and filed the name away in his memory.

  He poked his head in an open door. It was large room, dark as a cave. There was a dimmer switch just inside the door, and as he eased it upward, the room came to life—soft ceiling spots illuminating gray suede sofas and ottomans facing a ten-foot projection screen built into a wall of black cabinets.

  Buchanan lingered just outside the door, thinking about his dusty forty-two-inch Samsung with its ugly tangle of cable cords. He turned off the dimmer and moved on.

  In the white dining room, he paused. Three walls of mirrors and one of floor-to-ceiling windows that faced west offering a view of a flagstone patio, white loungers, and a glistening aqua pool. Squinting in the sunlight, he could glimpse the bow of a white yacht. He turned away from the blinding sun, but the outdoors was still there all around him in the mirrors, reflected back as if to infinity.

  For a second, he felt disoriented, like when he was seven and his dad had taken him to the funhouse at Buckroe Beach Park. He shut his eyes, trying to tamp down the beginnings of a headache.

  What kind of people lived in a place like this? A place where everything was bleached out and bone bare, where the only color came from outside and was glimpsed through mirrors?

  He left the dining room, passing through a gleaming butler’s pantry and into the kitchen. More French doors, white countertops, two giant Sub-Zero fridges, a hulking black stove. Black and silver pots and pans hung like art from a ceiling rack. There were some arrangements of ruffle-edged dishes and some rustic-looking baskets stuck here and there for a humble ef
fect. The one spot of color was a white ceramic bowl filled with acid-green apples.

  A Palm Beach designer’s wet dream of Provence.

  Buchanan was tempted to open one of the Sub-Zeros to see if there was any food. He grabbed the refrigerator handle and gave it a jerk but then heard the squeak of rubber soles on marble and turned.

  Esperanza was standing there, holding a dustpan and tiny broom, staring at him. He figured this was as good a time as any to pump her for whatever she could offer. But first, he had to defrost her a little.

  He shut the refrigerator and gave her his best smile. “I was looking for some water.”

  She moved to a cabinet and took out a tumbler. She filled it from the tap and held it out.

  Buchanan took the glass. “Thank you.”

  She seemed to be waiting for something, so he drained the water and handed the glass back to her. She rinsed it thoroughly and then stuck it in the dishwasher. With a glance back at him, she set about wiping down the spotless counter.

  “This is a beautiful house,” Buchanan said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. It must be a lot of work for you, keeping things so . . . white.”

  She kept wiping.

  “It’s not easy,” Buchanan went on, “keeping people’s houses up just the way they like them to be, I mean. I know how hard it is. My mother was a housekeeper.”

  It wasn’t a lie, exactly. His mother had changed the sheets and scoured the bathrooms at the Hilton off Interstate 38 for ten years. She came home at night smelling of Pine-Sol with her pockets filled with pilfered tubes of Crabtree & Evelyn hand lotion.

  The wiping slowed, but Esperanza still didn’t look at him.

  “Would you mind answering a few questions, Mrs. Diaz?” Buchanan asked.

  She turned. “What kind questions?”

  Start easy. “How long have you worked for Mr. and Mrs. Tobias?”

  “Two months, almost.”

  Shit. Not much time for her to get a good bead on the domestic dramas here. “Did Mrs. Tobias hire you?” he asked.

  “No, Mr. Tobias. He hire all the maids.”

  “All? There are others working here?”

  She hesitated, but her dark eyes were steady on his. “No, only me. I mean he hire all the ones who have come here.” She paused. “My boss, he say Mr. Tobias not seem to be happy with anyone.”

  “So Mr. Tobias is . . . hard to please?”

  Again she hesitated. “Better I not talk. He write my checks. I need this job bad.”

  Buchanan nodded. “What about Mrs. Tobias? Is she hard to work for?”

  Esperanza shook her head. “No, she nice lady.”

  She turned away, stowing the towel she had been using under the sink. Her eyes roamed around the gleaming kitchen, as if looking for something she had missed. Buchanan had the feeling that even though she had worked in this house only two months, she didn’t miss much.

  “Mrs. Diaz, do you live here in the house?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I come every morning. Except Monday. That is my day off.”

  “So you were here Friday?”

  She nodded.

  “What time do you start work here?”

  “I get here at nine. But last Friday I come at eight because my husband go to work early that day and he drop me off early.”

  “And Mrs. Tobias was here that morning?”

  Another nod.

  “You’re sure? You saw her?”

  “Yes, I saw her, right here in kitchen.” Esperanza glanced toward a door in the corner. “I always come in that door, and Mrs. Tobias was here in kitchen. She was cleaning the sink.”

  “Cleaning? You’re sure?”

  “Yes. She wear my yellow gloves and she clean sink. I think I surprise her and that she . . .” She frowned. “She get all red and I think she . . .”

  “Was embarrassed?” Buchanan finished.

  Esperanza nodded. “I think sometimes she clean house before I get here but I did not know before then. When she see me she was . . . embarrassed, yes, that is the word.”

  Buchanan looked beyond the maid out the French doors. A young man in shorts and a T-shirt was scooping leaves from the pool, his brown body swaying to whatever was piped in from his earbuds.

  “That Friday,” Buchanan went on, looking back at Esperanza, “did you notice anything strange about Mrs. Tobias?”

  “Strange?”

  “Did she act strange? Say anything strange? Did she seem normal?”

  Esperanza was quiet, thinking. “She quiet. She stay in her bedroom most the day.”

  “Did anyone come over?”

  She shook her head.

  “Phone calls?”

  “We not have phone here. Just the cell phones.”

  Buchanan let out a sigh.

  “There was one thing strange,” Esperanza said. “Every day, she has glass of red wine at four o’clock. Friday I take it to her bedroom, and she wasn’t there. I set it on bed table and I start to leave but I hear her crying. I go to bathroom door because I worry she not well, and I see her sitting on edge of tub crying.”

  “Why was that strange?” Buchanan said.

  “She was reading.”

  “Reading?”

  “Yes. She cry while she read.”

  Buchanan felt a click in his brain, the click that always came when something was falling into place. “She was reading her Kindle,” he said.

  Esperanza frowned. “Kindle?”

  “It’s a small computer that stores books. Was she reading that?”

  Esperanza nodded briskly. “Yes, that pink thing that she keep by her bed.”

  “What happened after that?” Buchanan prodded.

  “I sneak out so she not get . . . embarrassed. About an hour later, she come downstairs and tell me she is going out.”

  “Was she wearing a black dress? Like a fancy party dress?”

  Esperanza nodded.

  “Did she tell you where she was going?”

  “No. She seemed in hurry.”

  “And she left in her own car?”

  Another nod. “It was raining, so she used the door over there to go straight into the garage.”

  “No one was with her?”

  “No.”

  “Did she take anything with her?”

  “Just a purse, I think.”

  “No suitcase?”

  “Suitcase? Wait, yes, she had suitcase. But she bring it in not out.”

  “Bring it in? What do you mean exactly?

  “I remember good now. She left, went to garage and I hear the car go out. But then she come back in front door. I was going up the stairs when she came back in. She had suitcase. She see me and tell me to take suitcase back to garage.”

  “Garage? Are you sure she said to take it into the garage?”

  “Yes. That where I put it. Then she drive away.”

  Buchanan shook his head. None of it made any sense. Why would Amelia tell the maid to take a suitcase to the garage?

  “Did you move the suitcase after that?” he asked.

  “No, it still in garage.”

  “Can you show it to me?”

  She nodded, and Buchanan followed her through a door, down a narrow hall, and through another door. The four-car garage was huge and almost bare, except for some stainless metal shelving holding large plastic storage bins, two sleek bikes suspended on racks, and a shiny red BMW motorcycle with tires so clean Buchanan doubted it had ever seen pavement. Except for one tiny oil stain, the place was as clean as an operating room.

  “Mrs. Diaz, how many cars do the Tobiases have?” he asked.

  She paused. “Three. Mr. Tobias drive that big white truck thing and Mrs. Tobias drive a white car that has a silver cat on front of ho
od.”

  “A Jaguar?”

  “I don’t know. Very nice car. Very new.”

  “What about a small dark blue car? Did you ever see that here?”

  She nodded and pointed. “Yes. It is always there. I not know where it is now.”

  “Where is Mrs. Tobias’s white car?”

  “I think it is out being tuned. Yes, Mr. Tobias said something about the car need tuning.”

  “Where did you put the suitcase?”

  She pointed again to a shelf. Buchanan went to it and pulled down the suitcase. It was maybe three by four, and covered in soft tan leather. It looked old, like something out of one of those British colonial movies. He undid the straps and opened it. Empty.

  “You’re sure Mrs. Tobias brought this into the house that day?” Buchanan said, turning to Esperanza.

  She nodded, but she was frowning, as if she was upset with herself. It made him think, not for the first time, that sometimes the people whose lives were straightforward—people like maids, waitresses, and security guards—liked getting involved in his investigations, liked being brushed by the cold fingers of mystery. And Esperanza was thinking that she had somehow disappointed him.

  Buchanan closed the suitcase and put it back on the shelf. “You’ve been a great help to me, Mrs. Diaz,” he told her.

  She gave him a cautious smile. “Mrs. Tobias nice lady. I hope she come home.”

  “I’d like to look around some more if it’s okay with you?”

  “Yes. I will be in kitchen if you need me.”

  Buchanan followed her back into the house and then retraced his steps to the foyer. He climbed the helix to the second floor, looking in three rooms that appeared to be guest suites. There was a set of double white doors at the end of a long hallway so he headed toward them. The doors opened with a sigh onto a master suite dominated by an oversized bed decked out in a quilted white silk bedspread and a litter of throw pillows. It faced a white fireplace surrounded by more built-ins like those downstairs. It was only after Buchanan ventured farther into the room and turned around that he saw it—an exploding nova of color on the far wall.

  A painting of a face. A woman’s face? He went closer.

  Yeah, it was a woman because now he could see the harsh brush strokes that formed her long eyelashes, and a string of pearls around the elongated neck. It was modern in style with the carved-up perspective of Picasso crossed with the Crayola crassness of Leroy Neiman. He didn’t know much about art, just what he had absorbed from hanging around the homes of clients. So he wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking at.