Long Time No See

by Susan Isaacs

  “All that fingerprint evidence and the teeth business are considered conclusive, right?” I asked.

  “In a lot of cases.”

  “So did anyone on the Logan case bother to compare DNA from the body with DNA from Morgan or Travis?”

  Nelson sat back down. “Oh shit!” he replied.

  By the time he left, he was still wavering. Though taken with what I had to say, he was not completely convinced that he hadn’t fallen for a story, my diverting fusion of random facts. Nevertheless, he was intrigued by the Courtney-Emily link: the Baltimore meeting; the cell phone that had made calls to Emily’s office and Courtney’s house; the possible identification of Emily by Steffi Deissenburger. He was aching to bust open the case. But I’d studied the FDR years long enough to have a pretty good feel for politics. I understood that the last thing Nelson would do was go out on a limb and risk making a fool of himself in front of the department’s top brass and the new chief of Homicide.

  The next couple of days were rough. I was never much good at waiting around for things to happen, but I didn’t dare try anything rash. So I kept a lid on it. Just to show Fancy Phil I was still on the case, I had another breakfast with him. Raisin Bran for me. For him, two stacks of pancakes, a plate of French toast. His morning jewelry was a ring with a giant seal that looked as if it had been snitched from the Vatican, and a double length of huge gold chain links that might have been a combo of jewelry/equipment for a sex game I did not want to envision. I kept my Emily-in-pool theory to myself, but reported to Fancy that I was pursuing leads on the two women in both Shorehaven and Cherry Hill.

  Nelson called mid-afternoon. I could hear him trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. He’d been able to get a copy of Samantha Corby’s charges from an ex-cop he knew who was now working in the compliance department of American Express. Heavy-duty purchases in the best of the best stores in Manhattan during October, a car rental there, and meals at some pretty tony restaurants. For a few minutes I puzzled over why she hadn’t shopped locally, then realized, given her spending habits, she couldn’t pass herself off as Samantha Corby on the north shore of Long Island, being well known already as Lady Bountiful, aka Courtney Logan. Among the other charges were some first-class tickets to Miami and a hefty Miami hotel bill. I couldn’t believe she had the gall or carelessness not to worry about running into someone from her New York life there. Then to—Bingo!—Nevis in the British Virgin Islands for two days. Offshore whatever! I gloated. Visiting her money! Nelson countered with: How about scuba diving? After that interlude, Samantha Corby had gone back to the Miami area, to Key Biscayne, for two weeks, then on to Boise, Idaho—about one hundred fifty miles away from Sun Valley—where she spent over four thousand dollars on ski gear.

  “The charges stop the end of December,” Nelson said.

  “What?” Since he wouldn’t fax me the list of charges, I’d been cradling the phone between ear and shoulder and scribbling notes as fast as I could. “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you have a theory.”

  “Come on, Judith,” he said. “I can’t stay on with you. I’ve got a lot to do.”

  “What’s your theory, and don’t give me your I’m-being-tolerant sigh. Why no charges after December?”

  “If there’s actually a Samantha R. Corby—and so far there isn’t any—I’d say she overdid it on her Christmas spending and needed time to recoup.”

  “But if it’s Courtney?”

  “Then she could be as smart as you think. All the American Express bills were paid in full.”

  “Why is that smart?” I asked, musing if I was a sociopath and had no qualms about murder, I could probably live with stiffing Neiman Marcus.

  “Because if you’re going to get lost, you pay your bills. The last thing you want are bill collectors or skip tracers hunting you down. They stay at it longer than cops can and they have more money to search with.”

  “Then what happened after December?” I asked.

  “You know as much as I do.”

  “No, Nelson, you know more. You’re a detective.”

  “I thought that’s what you are.”

  “Don’t banter with me now. I’m not in a bantering mood. Just tell me what you think.”

  “If it’s Courtney? She’s either dead or, more likely, using another name. And if she dropped Samantha, which would be super-cautious but also super-smart, she probably dropped Sun Valley, too.”

  All that kept me from going into a complete funk was the belief that even if Courtney had gotten away, there remained the possibility of clearing Greg Logan of the murder charge that had been hounding him since his wife’s disappearance. A DNA test would do it. Actually, the other thing that kept me out of funkdom was Nelson’s calling at seven-thirty that evening asking if he could come over for a while.

  This time we made love in Joey’s ex-bedroom, under a Metropolis poster. He waited until he was dressed again to give me the news that Courtney Logan had been cremated. Before I could howl in despair, he added that the medical examiner’s office always kept tissue samples for later testing. In this case, with the body so decomposed after all those months in the pool, they’d kept teeth and bone instead of tissue. The pulp cavity of a tooth and the marrow of a bone would retain blood elements that could be tested. Not conventional postcoital sweet nothings, I admit, but I was exhilarated—until he said he was going to wait to get dental records from Washington or Oklahoma before he put his ass on the line and pushed for the DNA test. Also, he was swamped with his own cases, so please, no pressure.

  The next morning I tried Fancy Phil. No luck with him. Maybe he really had turned over that new leaf and was at that moment studying Talmud. Or if he was still the same old Fancy, he could have been occupied with some new white-collar crime or with his old, reliable: assault with intent to kill. He finally responded to his beeper after noon. Just to keep him from getting too inquisitive, I asked him to get the names of Courtney’s gynecologist, dentist, and accountant, figuring that with Fancy Phil, teeth (and their implications) would be overlooked when bracketed by vagina and money.

  Having not much to occupy me after Fancy, I called the Red Oak Bank, said I was working for Dewey and Bricker, and asked for the person who had done secretarial work for Emily Chavarria.

  “Helloooo,” I heard at last. Gina Berke trilled so high her voice probably fell more into the hearing range of rodents than humans. “How may I help you?” I gave her a story about Emily being missing for so long now, and how the family had scrimped and saved and had come to Dewey and Bricker Investigations in Oklahoma City. Would she know offhand who Emily used as a doctor and dentist in New Jersey? Before she put me on hold, I considered saying Thanks, ma’am to sound more western, but decided not to push my luck. When Gina picked up the phone again, she gave me Dr. Alan Jerrold, D.D.S.—“Can you believe he’s still on my computer?”—and Jack Goldberg, M.D. While I had her at her screen, I asked if she’d ever made any hairdresser appointments for Emily.

  “God, it’s funny you’re asking that. Not till the last couple of months. You should have seen her before. Very plain Jane. You wouldn’t have ever thought of her as a blonde, but she started looking so good.”

  “A new boyfriend or something?”

  “I don’t know. Emily didn’t talk all that much. Very, very, very shy socially.”

  “Could she talk for banking business?”

  “Oh yeah. Sure. She was ... I forget the word, but really, really good at what she does. Did. Sorry.”

  “I heard she was close with Richard Grey,” I said.

  “I don’t know if she was close. He’s engaged.”

  “I meant in a business sense.”

  “Oh, sure, Mr. Grey would have trusted her with his life. When she didn’t come back ... He was beyond the valley of upset, if you know what I mean.”

  “Right. And her hairdresser?”

  “Mane—M-A-N-E—Magic.” And she
gave me the number.

  “By the way, just out of curiosity. Was Emily sickly or kind of weak? Or strong?”

  “She never, ever missed a day of work.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “But she looked like if you’d blow her over, like, she’d get blown over.”

  When Fancy Phil called back with the names of Courtney’s accountant, gynecologist, and dentist, he wanted to know why I needed them. Greg was curious, too.

  “Does Greg know about me yet?” I asked.

  “Look, Doc honey, I’m asking him a lot of questions, you know? So he must know I got someone looking into something, but he don’t know it’s you. How come you’re asking about her gyno and her dentist and CPA?”

  “No reason. I guess I’m grasping at straws, Phil.”

  “You know, that’s one of those stupid sayings, ‘grasping at straws.’ Not that I’m blaming you. But who the hell invented something that goddamn stupid?”

  “Beats me.” I took down the names and said I’d get back to him.

  Courtney’s dentist in Shorehaven was Winslow Gaines, D.D.S. I had a hazy recollection of hearing the name from Nancy. Assuming Gaines hadn’t been Ginsberg a generation earlier and speculating that between the Millers’ church and Larry’s country and yacht clubs, she, of all my friends, would have the best chance of knowing a Winslow Gaines anyway, I called her at Newsday. After both of us vented our spleens about the disgusting attacks on women and girls by forty men in Central Park and made a date for dinner that night, we got to Winslow. Not only did Nancy know Win, a member of North Bay Yacht Club, she’d known him, chuckle-chuckle, about ten years earlier. Didn’t she ever mention him? The knowing had lasted less than a month because of his fondness for dental humor. Without too much of a fuss she said, All right, I’ll call him. I know he’d adore hearing from me again. As always with Nancy, I simply could not imagine an American girlhood that could have engendered that much ostensible self-esteem. If I’d had a hat I would have taken it off to her. Anyhow, she commanded me to meet her at his office around six o’clock. I asked if she didn’t want to check with him first. She said, Oh, please!

  For a man in his early sixties, Winslow Gaines was quite a hunk. Tall, broad-shouldered in his white dental tunic, with white at the temples of his light brown hair and a cleft in his chin. He had the ho-hum handsomeness of a soap-opera star. He certainly was friendly enough, though it was hard to get his attention, as it kept wandering to Nancy, who, I could tell, had changed from the usual slacks and shirt she wore to work into a sleeveless beige linen dress cut to bare a little shoulder and a lot of leg.

  “The last time Courtney came in?” he said as he sat down at the receptionist’s computer. His staff was gone. The waiting room, with its pictures of sailboats and copies of Yachting World and Classic Boat, along with What’s New in Tooth Whitening?, was empty. The dentist was not a natural cyberguy, hitting the keys slowly with his index fingers. Nancy, standing behind him, hands familiarly on his shoulders, rolled her eyes at his bumbling. When he turned back to glance at her, she flashed him a provocative smile. “Let’s see,” he muttered. After poking a few more keys, he swung his office chair around to me. “How did the dentist break his mirror?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” I told him.

  “Acci-DENTAL-ly!”

  I chortled along with him while Nancy said, “Come on now, Win. You’re looking for Courtney Logan.”

  Finally, he pointed to the screen. “Here she is! Last came in on October twenty-sixth, in ’ninety-nine. Complained of tooth pain, but it was periodontal. I remember telling her that her home care was pretty far from exemplary, and she was on her way to serious gum disease if she didn’t mend her ways.” He shook his head sadly. “You know, after she disappeared, and then all that stuff later, finding her ... You remember things like that. Nice, nice woman.”

  “How were her teeth?” I asked.

  “Not bad at all. But like most people with good teeth, you think everything will be fine forever. Oral hygiene is way, way down on your list of priorities. You can’t live like that.”

  “Around that time,” I told him, “someone else might have come in, probably a new patient. A woman. Also on the small side, like Courtney. Streaky, blondish hair, on the quiet side.”

  “Do you know her name?” he asked. I suggested Emily Chavarria, Vanessa Russell—the name of the cell phone’s owner—and Samantha R. Corby. He typed in the names, but none came up on the screen.

  “Do it by date,” Nancy directed him. When he turned around looking befuddled, she shooed him off the chair, sat herself down, and began to type.

  “Why did the guru refuse Novocain at the dentist’s?” he asked me. He was lounging against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, looking incongruously bon vivant.

  “I give up.”

  “Quiet!” Nancy demanded. “What does NP mean? New patient?” Win nodded. “Seven new patients in October. Look at these names,” she commanded him.

  He whispered “He wanted to transcend dental medication” to me, gave me a wink, then leaned over toward Nancy until the side of his face was touching hers. He pointed to a box that said AGE and immediately eliminated four from the group as being children. Of the others, two were women, one of whom was fifty-seven years old.

  The other was twenty-eight. “Polly Hastings,” Nancy announced. “An alias if I ever heard one. Win, do you remember Polly?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Twenty-eight, angel. You must have some memory.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” he answered.

  “Look! She came in on October the twenty-sixth!” Nancy said.

  “What time?” I asked.

  “Two o’clock.”

  “And Courtney?”

  “Two-fifteen.”

  “Oh my God!” I said. “She could have snatched Emily’s file for a minute. All she had to do was go into the room Emily was in to say hi.”

  “Or while the X rays were drying,” Nancy chimed in.

  “What’s going on?” Win asked. “Who’s Emily?”

  “Or she found a way to get into the records room,” Nancy said.

  “Patients don’t walk into the file room,” Win said. He looked as much confused as disturbed, although in either case, handsomely so. “This new woman was just in for a checkup. Oh, Wendy gave her a cleaning and took X rays.” I took out the photograph of Emily Chavarria I’d gotten off the Web and emailed to Steffi. He studied it and shook his handsome head. “I mean, she’s not really, uh, that memorable, is she? Well, maybe it’s not a great picture.”

  “Imagine her all dolled up,” I suggested. “Longer, blonder hair. Makeup. Does she look at all familiar?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, I have no recollection.”

  “Well, give us a copy of her X rays, then,” Nancy directed him. I think he was about to explain about doctor-patient confidentiality when she took his hand and led him farther back into the office. I assumed she was taking him to the file room, or (if the good Dr. Gaines was still having compunctions) for a few magical moments on a chair in one of his examining rooms. To while away the time, I sat down at the computer and managed to retrieve Courtney’s record. Good health, it appeared. No allergies. In the four years she had been a patient, she’d only had X rays, cleanings every six months like clockwork, and what I guessed was some sort of custom-fitted gizmo made for teeth brightening.

  “I hate to ask what took you so long,” I said to Nancy later.

  “Then don’t ask.”

  “Fine.” We were sitting at the town dock watching the day wind down before going out to dinner, although the gulls were busy with theirs. They flew, then rode the wind, then zoomed down to the water for their entrée.

  “Besides having to work my wiles to get the X rays, do you know what else I got from Win?” she asked.

  “I hope nothing that will require medication.”

  “Dubious. I got ‘What ride in amusement parks do dentis
ts like most?’ Don’t bother to guess. ‘A molar coaster.’ The man cannot control himself. And his wife: I see her at the club and she always looks vague. She probably punctured her eardrums. Well, in any case ...” She waved a manila envelope. “We have Polly Hastings’s X rays. What are you going to do with them?”

  “If he swears to give them back or have a copy made for me, I’ll give them to Nelson. To see if they match Courtney’s childhood and teenage records from Olympia, Washington. I bet they do, because Courtney went and switched the X rays, hers for Emily’s. If Nelson can’t get the information, I’ll give it to Fancy Phil, and maybe Greg or Greg’s lawyer can work out some deal with the Washington dentist.”

  “Let me be clear. These really aren’t Polly’s teeth,” Nancy drawled. “Well, Emily’s teeth. These are what you were talking about, from the old switcheroo, so they’re actually Courtney Logan’s. Right?”

  “Right. If they aren’t, I’m making a major fool of myself.” Her silence spoke loudly. “I’m not making a fool of myself with him, Nan.”

  “Still the same old fire?”

  “Still the same. It’s not just fire. I love him.” Way out on the bay, we watched as a sunfish bounced happily through the wake of a grand sailboat.

  “This is the strangest relationship.”

  “Nancy, loving a man is not strange. Some might say sleeping with so many men that you stopped counting because you couldn’t remember if it was seventy-one or seventy-two is a bit peculiar.”

  “It’s not peculiar,” she said somewhat huffily. “It’s promiscuous. What did our man in blue say about his wife?”

  “I didn’t want to talk about her.”

  “Why not? Afraid he’ll say he’s staying?”

  Clearly, although I didn’t say so.

  The next morning, to get away from Nelson and Captain Sharpe, both of whom seemed to be exerting an undue influence over my life, I got on a flight leaving La Guardia Airport for Salt Lake City. By mid-afternoon Idaho time, I found myself on an exceedingly small plane being piloted by an excessively young woman over the Sawtooth Mountains. It landed in Hailey. That’s about ten miles from Sun Valley. And six miles from Wiggins, where I found Samantha R. Corby’s rented condo.