A woman in her mid-to-late sixties answered the door. Nerine Barstok was around five-three or so and thin like Eugene. She had a prominent nose, and lips that had once been full but were now diminished by the crevices of time. On her wedding-ring finger was a boulder-sized opal. Her close-cropped gray hair and the navy gabardine pantsuit and white turtleneck sweater ensemble made her look militaristic. The plastic grocery bags strapped to her feet made her look as if she was about to perform surgery in the produce aisle of Ralph’s supermarket.
Near the door to the kitchen was a carpet shampooer, the kind you rent at the grocery store. Paper towels had been rolled out on the floor, forming crisscrossed paths leading from the door to the living room to the kitchen and beyond.
I introduced myself and she invited me in.
“Please take off your shoes,” she said in a pleasant tone. “One never knows what kind of nasty things you’ve been stepping in.”
As instructed, I kicked off my shoes and left them by the door.
“Walk on the towels. The carpet may still be wet.”
I put one foot in front of the other along the narrow strip of towels. By the time I reached the couch, I felt as if I’d passed some kind of quicker-picker-upper field sobriety test.
Eugene had filled his cozy apartment with furniture bought at garage sales and flea markets. He’d chosen pieces with a retro feel, adding paint and repairs where needed. A beat-up wooden hutch had been converted into a bookcase. It had been painted blue at one time, but the paint had chipped off. He’d chosen to leave it that way, and somehow it looked just right. An afghan in shades of rust, blue, and gold was draped artistically over the back of the couch. Beneath each foot of the bamboo couch, the matching chairs, and the end table was a square of waxed paper forming a barrier between the wood and the wet carpet.
A comforter and pillows were piled on a chair in the corner of the room, along with a stack of papers. The apartment had only one bedroom. I assumed Eugene had been relegated to sleeping on the couch. Framed photographs of his two cats sat on a nearby table, but I saw no sign of Liza and Fergie.
I sat on the couch next to a pair of sensible navy pumps that were parked on a paper towel on the floor. The toes were perfectly aligned, as if they were sister battleships docked in port after months at sea.
“I wish I could offer you a drink,” Nerine said. “I can’t believe my son doesn’t have a properly stocked liquor cabinet. Not even a decent bottle of bourbon. I thought I taught him better than that.”
I couldn’t believe she was thinking about alcohol so early in the day. She must have had one of those clocks with every number marked five.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m not into booze in the morning.”
Nerine stared at me as if I was something growing in a Petri dish. “I’m not talking about booze, dear. I’m talking about Booker’s, the best bourbon money can buy.”
I decided against pushing her toward any kind of show-down. For all I knew, Nerine could be housing nuclear war-heads in that opal ring of hers.
“Is Eugene here?” I said.
She stood abruptly. “How about a macaroon? I brought them with me on the plane from Tallahassee. In a sealed container, of course.”
She didn’t wait for my response. She marched into the tiny kitchen, past a clock on the wall that Eugene called Big Ben. I heard the water running and the clatter of crockery. She returned shortly, carrying a paper doily and a plate filled with cookies shriveled from the interaction of coconut, cookie dough, and hermetically sealed plastic.
I craned my neck and looked down the hallway toward the bedroom. “Where did you say Eugene was?”
She set the doily on the coffee table and spent a few seconds centering the plate so it was equidistant from all edges.
“Running errands.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“Soon.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“A while.”
Her answers seemed deliberately evasive. She was hiding something from me. Maybe she and Eugene had argued and she locked him in the cat carrier.
“Where are Liza and Fergie?”
“Hiding. I think they know I don’t like cats. Neither does the colonel. In fact, we never allowed the children to have pets of any kind. We moved so often, it wasn’t worth the fuss.”
I leaned back into the cushions of the couch and crossed my legs, racking my brain for a way to circumvent the chitchat without appearing rude. I wasn’t there to foment war. I just wanted to find Eugene. Nerine stared at my legs and frowned. I followed her gaze to make sure my feet weren’t shedding germs on the cookies, but the distance seemed okay to me.
“You shouldn’t cross your legs like that,” she said. “You could get a deep vein thrombosis. It happens to people sitting on airplanes or cramped in a car all day. The blood clots up and you’re dead, just like that. Besides, ladies should cross at the ankles. Modesty before comfort, they say.”
“Mrs. Barstok—”
“How long have you known Eugene?”
I drummed my fingers on my thigh and counted to ten. “We’ve worked together for about five years. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”
She brushed at a wad of cat hair on her navy wool pants. “Perhaps he did, but it’s such a chore to remember all the details. So where are your people from?”
“Los Angeles. Look, I need to find—”
She flashed a smug smile. “My goodness, don’t you feel claustrophobic staying in one spot all of your life?” She didn’t wait for my reply. “The colonel and I have traveled extensively. It’s a broadening experience. Maybe one day you’ll have a chance to try it.”
“I went to France last summer,” I mumbled.
She paused to center the opal on her finger. “As the colonel always says, France would be wonderful if it weren’t for the French.”
No wonder Eugene suffered from low self-esteem. It must have been toxic growing up with this woman. Pookie had her faults, but she was merely unstructured and ill prepared. Nerine was a horse of a different color, as my grandma Felder always said. We all had to make the best of the cards we were dealt, but somehow Eugene’s hand seemed even unluckier than mine.
I made another attempt to ask about him, but Nerine spoke over my words, as if she hadn’t even heard them. “My son tells me you’re a successful businesswoman. I wanted to be a school teacher, myself.” She averted her gaze in a move that seemed pensive almost melancholy. “Not very imaginative, is it? Anyway, then the children came along, and the rest is history.”
“I’m sure you would have had a brilliant career,” I said, “but Eugene must have been worth the sacrifice.”
“Touché,” she said, acknowledging the implied criticism. “Yes. I suppose it worked out for all of us. He was a challenge, though. I’m just grateful he’s been able to keep a job. Personally, I never thought he was cut out for the sort of work he’s doing now. He never had that killer instinct.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Being an administrative assistant for a business consultant didn’t exactly require hazardous-duty pay. Even his work for Charley was mainly secretarial.
“Eugene has excellent skills,” I said. “He can be anything he wants to be.”
“That’s very sweet of you, dear, but you know what they say. All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.”
My irritation bubbled over. “Mrs. Barstok, Eugene didn’t show up for work today. That’s not like him. I need to know where he is.”
She seemed taken aback by my sharp tone. “Why don’t you ask that private detective he works for?”
“Charley doesn’t know where he is, either.”
Nerine frowned. “I don’t understand. I thought Mr. Tate was the one who sent him out of town.”
My stomach was churning. “What are you talking about? Neither of us sent Eugene anywhere.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken.” Her voice had become
brittle. “My son told me he was working on an important assignment. He asked me not to tell anybody. It sounded ridiculously clandestine, but I agreed.”
“Did he say what kind of an assignment?”
“I didn’t ask. He worked at the office all day Saturday. When he came home that night, he was rather quiet. I thought he was just tired. The next morning, he got up and packed a bag. He said he was going to work for a while and then he had to go away on business. He called that afternoon at about four thirty. Said he was just leaving and wanted to say good-bye.”
I stood and walked into the kitchen, ignoring the paper towels.
“Excuse me,” Nerine said. “The carpet—”
I checked the notepad near the telephone in case Eugene had left a message. The top sheet was blank. I held it up to the light to see if I could make out indentations from a previous message, but found none.
Eugene had an appointment book somewhere. If he hadn’t taken it with him, it might still be in the apartment. I returned to the living room and opened each drawer of the bookcase. The address book wasn’t there.
“Did Eugene say when he’d be back?” I said.
“Today.” “Today”.
I whipped around to face her. “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Mrs. Barstok, but it’s today and he’s not back. Aren’t you worried about him? Even a little?”
She pursed her lips and glared at me. “Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.”
I walked down the hall toward the bedroom. The plastic bags on Nerine’s feet made swishing sounds as she marched over the carpet behind me.
“Has he called since he left?” I said.
“I haven’t been answering the phone. I thought it might be the colonel. We’re having some difficulties right now, and I didn’t want to talk to him.”
Nerine’s cosmetics were lined up on Eugene’s dresser like soldiers in formation. His clothes had been shoved to one end of the closet to make room for hers. In the dark interior I saw two sets of eyes peering at me. The cats. There was no point in trying to lure them out now.
“What are you looking for?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
The bedroom held no clues to Eugene’s whereabouts. Discouraged, I retraced my steps down the hallway, stopping at the bathroom. The medicine cabinet was stocked with over-the-counter items like aspirin and antibiotic cream but no appointment book.
A wastebasket sat in one corner. Several pieces of balled-up papers lay in the bottom, including a receipt for gas from earlier in the week, and a piece of paper with a cryptic notation: Six p.m. Sunday SB/MI. It was Eugene’s handwriting, but I had no idea what it meant.
I took the discarded paper and went back to the living room. On top of the bookcase was a framed photo of Eugene. He was holding Liza and smiling into the camera. I grabbed it and slipped it into my purse.
Nerine grabbed my arm. “Put that back. You have no right to take my son’s things.”
I shook her off. “Look, Eugene is missing. That’s all the right I need. Call me the minute you hear from him. And if you leave the apartment, turn on the message machine.”
Nerine clicked her tongue against her palate. “My God, what’s that boy done now?”
My head was throbbing as I headed back to Culver City. It was one thing for Eugene not to tell his mother where he was going. It was quite another not to tell Charley or me. That set off all sorts of alarms. Not only were we his employers, we were also his friends.
Eugene was supposed to search the Internet for information on the quetzal. Nothing more. I’d made it clear to him. I was worried he’d taken the assignment a step further and gone off to investigate on his own. I had to find out where he was before he got himself into trouble.
I dialed Charley’s number and waited for all hell to break loose.
Chapter 14
When I reached Charley, he was in his car on the way to the Century City shopping mall to return a six-pack of MY POPS IS TOPS onesies that Lorna no longer needed because the home pregnancy test she’d just taken had turned out negative. We agreed to meet outside Bloomingdales to discuss Eugene.
The mall was crowded with people in business suits who had come from nearby high-rises for an hour of eating and shopping. I bought a latte at a coffee kiosk, but Charley demurred on caffeine. I was glad. He seemed hyped up enough already.
“She didn’t even tell me she’d gone off the pill,” he said. “I told her she better start taking them again or I’d be sleeping in the spare bedroom from now on.”
“That must have gone over big.”
“I can’t take much more of this, Sinclair.”
“Okay, but I think it’s dangerous to press the snooze button on Lorna’s biological clock. Taking away her onesies is a little radical.”
“Look, I don’t want that baby crap in my house. It’s like Lorna is deciding something and forcing me to like it.”
The talk about babies seemed to spike his blood pressure, so we shifted the discussion to Nerine Barstok and what she’d told me about Eugene.
“Where do you think he is?” I said.
“From the way you describe his mother, I’d say he’s hiding until she leaves town.”
“If Eugene was hiding from his mother, he’d tell us. Look, there was a lot going on in his life. He was upset about Helen’s problems. He thought Roberto Ortiz was innocent. And he felt pressure to impress his mother. I’m afraid he went off looking for antisugar terrorists just to prove something to Nerine.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“He would, Charley. You know he would. He’s been fighting all of his life to show his parents he’s more than just a mistake. He’s more confident now, but Nerine could destroy all his progress with one little oops. I’ve seen her in action. The constant criticism could push anybody over the edge.”
Charley pinched the bridge of his nose as if he was trying to cut off a monster headache. “I need to retire.”
“If you retire, you’ll be home with Lorna twenty-four/ seven. Sounds like a life sentence to me.”
He raised one eyebrow. “After all the time we’ve known each other, you still can’t tell when I’m joking.”
“What are we going to do about Eugene? Can we file a missing person’s report?”
“We can try, but he’s only been out of touch twenty-four hours. He’s an adult. The cops might tell you to wait a few days.”
“I can’t wait. I have to find him.”
Charley brushed his hand over his crew cut, a sure sign he was thinking. “You can canvass our building. Find out if anybody else was working on Sunday. See if you can pinpoint when Eugene left work, what direction he was heading, and if he was with anybody. Then call all of his friends, and don’t forget that old folks’ home where he volunteers. See if anybody’s heard from him.”
After that, Charley went to Bloomingdales to return the onesies and I headed back to the office. On the way, I called Venus. She and Eugene had a contentious sort of friendship, but there was a chance he may have contacted her. He hadn’t.
“You know how he gets,” she said. “He’s probably locked up in a room at the Holiday Inn with a ball of yarn and a year’s supply of lorazepam.”
“Yeah, maybe.” But I knew Venus was wrong. That may have described Eugene in the old days, but not anymore.
“I hear you called Dr. Rich.” Her tone sounded teasing and just a bit coy. “You two are going to dinner and the theater.”
“Yes, on Tuesday. It’s some kind of fund-raiser for Air Health. The invitation seemed odd, almost like he was asking me out on a date. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“The only thing I know,” Venus said, “is that this is the first time in months you’ve been alone with a man.”
I felt my jaw clench. “You didn’t tell him that, did you?”
“I might have let something slip.”
“I hope you didn’t talk him into some kind of pity date.”
&n
bsp; “Don’t be so sensitive. All Jordan’s offering you is dinner and some adult conversation.”
It was futile to argue with her. The damage had already been done. I’d just have to set Dr. Rich straight when we met on Tuesday. I ended the call with Venus and dialed the number for the assisted-living facility where Eugene volunteered every week. The administrator told me he’d called to cancel his regular visit on Saturday. She said there was an elderly resident with whom he spent a good deal of time. She didn’t know if Mr. Winn would be able to provide any further information, but I was welcome to speak with him. The facility wasn’t too far out of my way, so I told her I would stop by in a few minutes.
“I’ll tell him to expect you,” she said.
When I arrived at the home, an elderly man was leaning on a cane by the front door, smoking a cigar. His eyes were watery blue but intelligent. Age had expanded his ears and compacted his body into a tidy mass that measured less than five feet tall. He had on a white guayabera over gray slacks and a tasseled beret that was one of many Eugene had knitted for residents of the home. Only a flare-up of carpel tunnel syndrome had stopped him from making more.
“I bet you’re here to see me,” Winn said.
“How did you know?”
Even with the stogy in his mouth, there was room for a smile. “Eugene said you were a beanpole. He also said you had dark hair and a few freckles and a cowlick just like his. He didn’t say you were pretty, but you are. I know why you’re here, too. They called my room and told me.”
He tottered over to a planter that rimmed the front facade and sat down. He tapped his cane on the brick, indicating he wanted me to sit beside him. I did. Traffic was heavy on Olympic Boulevard. The air was thick with dust and the sounds of car horns and screeching brakes—L.A. Symphony No. 3 in D Minor with horns.
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