“But I did worry about it. About the fact that it was…”
“Illegal?”
She made one of those little gasps again. “Oh, no, not illegal.”
“Off the books isn’t illegal now?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“He had no choice.”
She nodded.
I watched her for a moment, neither of us talking, Celia not wanting to say where the money came from, not wanting to talk about the fact that her lover had not only cheated on his wife, he cheated on his taxes as well, me wondering if this was the whole truth and nothing but the truth, wondering, too, if the stories of extra work were an excuse not to be with her, with Celia. Perhaps the money he gave her wasn’t that big a deal to him. Perhaps five or six thousand a month was chump change to the good doctor. Perhaps he took care of the family finances and his wife had no real idea what he earned and where the money went. That wouldn’t be uncommon. Perhaps there was some way he was able to fiddle around with the books at work, have the business pay Celia’s rent, claim it as something else. Who knew what was possible when there was powerful motivation matched with the need for secrecy? Who knew what people could and would do when they felt entitled to everything their beady little hearts desired?
Perhaps Bechman was cheating on Celia, too? Perhaps there was another girlfriend, another child stashed in yet another apartment? Did Celia ever wonder about that, all those nights she waited for him and he never came?
My mother always said I had an active imagination. But, still, it was possible, wasn’t it? It was as possible that Bechman was killed for philandering as he was for screwing up a shot of Botox. At least that’s what I was hoping at the moment.
I turned around and went back to the living room to pick up my jacket. I’d come to ask about Madison and I had. As for the rest, perhaps my mother was right. Perhaps I was just wishing that what I’d heard today might help with what I was hired for. But how? So what if Bechman wasn’t as lily white as Ms. Peach would like everyone to think. Big deal. Who was? How would the fact that he had hidden income from his wife and his government get Madison off the hook? Because that was the point, wasn’t it?
Celia was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.
“What now?” I asked her.
“I’m looking for a job. Charles said he could pick up JoAnn from school and take care of her until I got home.”
“Every day?”
She nodded.
“You’re a very lucky woman.”
“I guess so. I just don’t feel so lucky right now. It’s going to be hard,” she said. She looked small and vulnerable standing against the doorway, her arms folded across her chest as if she was trying her best to hold herself together. “I knew it would be hard when I decided to keep her.” She shook her head. “No, that wasn’t a decision. That was a given.” Tears in her eyes now.
“Was there talk of not keeping her?”
She shook her head, shook my question away. What difference could it make at this late date?
“It’s a mess, I know. It’s been a mess from the beginning. We tried to do this without hurting anyone.” She bit her lip, cocked her head. “But you can’t. We couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. I know that now.”
I turned to go and then turned back to her.
“Do you remember the song?” I asked.
“Gilbert’s song?” She smiled, a weary smile. “I do.”
“I’d like to hear it sometime.”
She nodded.
“What will happen to Madison?” she asked as I reached for the doorknob.
I shook my head without turning around. When all was said and done, that was the real question, and I was nowhere near a real answer.
CHAPTER 15
Ms. Peach, I thought when I left Celia’s apartment. And then again walking down all those stairs. Exactly what did Ms. Peach know?
I checked my watch. It was only ten-thirty. I could be at the office before she got there, or even better, after she got there but before office hours. We headed for Washington Square Park, the smells of ethnic cooking wafting out from the open doors of restaurants getting ready for lunch, pan-Asian on one corner, Indian in the middle of another street. An enormous slab of unwrapped salmon, cream-colored stripes of fat running through the orange flesh, was arced over a small man’s shoulder as he carried it into a Japanese place. A brown paper bag of baguettes sat on the stone step outside a small French bistro, not yet open.
Dashiell sneezed as we passed the open doorways making room for the odors of cumin, soy sauce, ginger and the sweet, yeasty smell of the warm bread. But when we got nearer to the park, he began to walk faster, the dog run on his mind. We could hear the dogs barking when we turned the other way, Dashiell looking up at me wondering why I was betraying him.
“Soon,” I told him. We had hours before Madison was due at my house, and at least one of those belonged to him.
I could see the lights on inside Dr. Bechman’s office. Ms. Peach was already at her post. Perhaps she’d come in early to catch up on her paperwork. Good for her, even better for me. Because on the way over, I’d realized that the silly story she’d told me wasn’t true. She hadn’t come back for her book, not from West Sixty-eighth Street where the phone book said she lived. She’d come back because Celia had called her to find out why Eric Bechman hadn’t shown up for dinner with his paramour and their daughter. It was Celia, it had to have been. Had she tried to page him and gotten no answer? Or was she afraid he’d forgotten and gone home? Was she afraid she’d have to tell JoAnn again that Daddy was too busy to join them that evening?
I rang the bell, and Ms. Peach came to the door, frowning at first because it was too early for patients to start coming, then even more so when she saw it was me.
She waved her hand from side to side, as if she were erasing a blackboard, as if erasing me. “I can’t talk to you now,” she said through the glass.
“It’ll only take a minute,” I said back.
“It’s against our insurance regulations,” she lied, as if I hadn’t heard that one before, the excuse for everything nowadays. “No patients in the office before business hours.”
“I’m not a patient,” I said.
Ms. Peach stood firm, shaking her head from side to side.
“I only have one question,” I told her.
When she saw I wasn’t about to go away, her chest heaved once. She reached for the lock, twisted it, opened the door and then filled the doorway so that I would say what I had to say standing in that little alcove under the stairs and not think she was letting me in.
“I just met Celia,” I said.
Her lips thinned out, her nose becoming pinched as she inhaled, and stood aside, making room for me and Dashiell. He went first. I followed. Ms. Peach, Louise, the phone book had said, bringing up the rear.
I went into the waiting room and sat on one of the easy-to-clean faux leather couches. Dashiell lay down next to a stuffed animal that was lying on the rug on the far side of the coffee table, a wooden rectangle covered with coloring books and games.
“Celia suspects there’s a third family somewhere, east of here perhaps?” I pointed toward NYU, in that direction.
“There most certainly is not.” Sitting across from me, her cheeks trembling.
I smiled. “Only the two, then?”
Louise Peach flushed from the neck of her white wash-and-wear uniform right to her hairline, but she didn’t speak.
“Tell me the story about the book again,” I said, “the one you came back to get. Must have been a thriller, something you couldn’t put down, something that couldn’t wait another day while you took a night off to watch Who Wants to Marry My Dad?”
“She called. Or did she tell you that already? Why are you even here if you know everything there is to know?” Arms crossed over her bosom.
“I came to ask about the money, the off-the-books side business that paid the rent and sundries fo
r Celia and JoAnn.”
“There was no…”
“A consulting job? That paid cash? Surely…” And then I stopped in mid-sentence. The way Ms. Peach furrowed her brow, I wondered if it was possible she didn’t know, that only Bechman, his employer and Celia knew. And since Celia hadn’t mentioned the name of the company, perhaps even she didn’t know that much. The less said, the safer. It was, after all, against the law.
“I can’t talk to you about this,” she said. “It’s—”
“Illegal?”
Ms. Peach looked around, as if there was someone else in the office who might hear us. Perhaps there was. Perhaps one of the doctors had come in early to catch up on paperwork. I listened carefully but didn’t hear a sound.
“He was doing the responsible thing,” she whispered.
“How so?” I whispered back, steeling myself for whatever was to come. Whatever it was, it was going to be amusing, to say the least, the way people could rationalize any kind of behavior, transforming a self-interested sinner into a self-sacrificing saint.
“He didn’t want to destroy his family and he wouldn’t abandon her, Celia, or JoAnn either.” She shrugged. “What choice did he have?”
“You mean he had to do the off-the-books consulting work?”
“Exactly.” She sat back, her arms on her lap now, glancing at the clock on the wall across from us. “I have so much—”
I nodded. “So what was the name of the company he consulted with? And when did he do this, after work, early mornings, between hospital rounds and office hours?”
She was shaking her head. “I’m not at liberty to discuss this with you and you know that.”
“And the money, you say he was paid in cash? So where did he keep it, here in the office?” And then it occurred to me, if he did, couldn’t someone have come in to take it, killing him in the process?
She pursed her lips, shook her head. “I wasn’t privy to any of this. I wasn’t involved in his private life.”
“Except for calls from Celia, trying to find out where he was.”
“Sometimes.”
“Even at home.”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re a very devoted person, Louise.” She blinked when I said her name. “The doctor was a lucky man to have you working for him.”
She bent her head, looking at her hands, which were clutching her thighs.
“You can keep a secret, too, can’t you?”
“It’s part of…”
I interrupted her. “Even from the police.”
“Well, I…”
“They don’t know any of this, do they? They don’t know there’s another family. They don’t know why you really came back that night. They don’t know about the money. It doesn’t show up anywhere, does it?”
She shook her head. “I guess he gave it right to her, to Celia.”
“Or perhaps there was a safe-deposit box?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Looking at the clock again.
“Or an office safe? Is there a safe here, Louise, one of those little wall ones hidden behind a painting, a place to stow cash until it was needed?”
“Patients will start arriving at any moment,” she said, standing now. “You’ll have to go. Please.”
I stood, too, and so did Dashiell. He left the waiting room and headed for the door, his tail wagging. His turn at last. I walked to the door. When I looked back, she was standing near her desk, waiting for me to leave.
“None of this has anything to do with your case,” she said. “None of this clears Madison or helps locate her mother. And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
I turned and left without giving her an answer, the sound of her voice staying with me, stabbing me, as I headed to the dog run with Dashiell.
CHAPTER 16
Madison, wearing Sally’s jean jacket, a backpack that looked bigger than she did hanging precariously down her back and the plastic purse with Emil/Emily in it swinging gently from her right hand, headed through the tunnel without seeming to notice me and without any gesture of good-bye to her father. Leon, bags under his eyes, his jacket buttoned a button off so that the ends didn’t match, stood outside the gate as if waiting for me to tell him what to do next. I reached out and touched his arm.
“We’ll be fine,” I said, wishing I could believe it myself.
Leon nodded, reaching into his pocket, pulling out a mess of bills. “For whatever,” he said, holding the money toward me, “dinner, a movie.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what you plan to do with her.”
“Neither do I,” I told him, pushing away the hand with the money. “I’ll bill you,” I told him, smiling, hoping he would know I was kidding.
Leon was still standing there. I turned around to see where Madison had gone and saw the rear half of my dog, his tail beating from side to side. Was he checking out Emil/Emily? Or was it Madison he was interested in?
“I might take her shopping,” I said, facing her worried father again. “If that’s okay with you?”
“Shopping?”
“I think she might need a starter bra,” I said. “Maybe a haircut, if she’s willing.”
“Sally used to cut her hair,” he said. He reached for his head, forgetting he had a baseball cap on. “Mine, too.”
“That was a long time ago, Leon. She must have gotten her hair cut since then.”
He scratched behind one ear, looked uncomfortable. “I tried it once.”
“And?”
He shook his head. I figured it must have turned out like his jacket, one side shorter than the other.
“I think she cuts it herself.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I…” Leon lifted one hand, let it come to rest on top of his camera. “Sometimes there’s hair on the bathroom floor, in front of the sink.”
“It’s not a problem, Leon. We’ll figure something out. The girl stuff, I mean. If she’s willing.”
“You’ll play it by ear?”
“My specialty.”
He looked as if he wanted to go, but he didn’t.
“Leon? Is there something you wanted to say?” I asked him.
“About Sally?” he said, a minuscule amount of hope showing for a bare second. “Is there anything yet?”
“I found out that she could have gotten out of the city with no money and even with Roy, but,” I sighed, “that doesn’t mean that’s what she did. It only means it’s what she might have done. I told you this would be hard, next to impossible.”
“You did.”
“Do you want me to continue with it? I can stop if you want me to.”
He shook his head. “How?” he asked. “How could she have…?”
“Hitchhiking. Not a car. The truckers in the meat market. I tried it with Dashiell. They’re so lonely, most of the drivers, they even stopped for someone with a pit bull.”
“And then?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a lot to go on, Leon. She’s been gone five years,” as if I had to tell him that. “But I am trying.”
He nodded, head down like a dog who’d just been caught in the act, as if everything was his fault, Sally’s disappearance, Bechman’s death, the horrifying decline of moral integrity in the so-called civilized world, global warming, terrorism, the whole nine yards.
“Don’t get your hopes too high,” I said, wondering if he could even do that at this point. “But don’t give up either.” Then I felt like a complete idiot, talking to him in bumper-sticker slogans, as if anything I said would change the way he felt. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
Leon opened his mouth, then closed it again. I closed and locked the gate and headed down the tunnel toward the sound of barking. The backpack still on her, the purse with the turtle still in her hand, Madison was running in a circle around the large oak in the middle of the garden, Dashiell at her heels, cognizant of the unwritten rules and letting her stay ahead, though since they were going in a circle, maybe it was the other way
around. I’d never seen Madison do anything normal, and watching them made me smile, but then I wondered if what she was doing could be considered normal, given the fact that she was doing it while carrying a turtle in a see-through lunch box.
“This way, gang,” I said, “there’s work to be done.”
Dashiell got to the door first. I thought showing off might pay off big in the near future, that it might help convince this kid I had something to offer, get her to trust me a bit, so I asked Dashiell to open the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Madison shoot a look at me, then quickly turn back to Dash. He took the doorknob in his mouth and twisted his head. I could hear the small click as the tongue of the unlocked door released. Then he let go of the knob, backed up one step and reared up, like a horse, hitting the door with his front paws and knocking it open. Madison was enthralled. Or at least attentive—it was hard to tell. And I began to think of the evening ahead as one long pet-therapy session. Where it would get me, I had no idea, but that seemed to be the hallmark of this case, a fact I didn’t even want to think about for now.
I’d made up my mind that connecting with the kid might help me find the mother. In the fading light of the fall garden, it seemed a ridiculous notion, given the fact that Madison was barely seven when her mother left and given the fact that she may have even been why the mother left. But it was all I could come up with at the moment, and I was sticking to it, with, I hoped, a lot of help from Dashiell.
Madison walked inside, looked around, wiggled out of the backpack and dropped it on one of the kitchen chairs. Then she carefully placed the purse in the center of the table, bending down and checking to make sure Emil/Emily was okay.
I went into the kitchen, got a big bowl, filled it partway with water and brought it out to the table.
“A swim before dinner?” I asked, not waiting for an answer. I’d be as likely to get one from Emil/Emily as I would from Madison. She opened the purse, picked up Emil/Emily and put him/her in the bowl, then stood bent over with her elbows on the table and watched the little turtle swim.
I walked back into the kitchen and took a piece of organic lettuce out of the crisper. I also had some chopped beef I was going to give Dashiell. I took a small piece out, rolling it in my palms to make a tiny ball. I put both on a plate and brought those out to the table.
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