by Charles Ayer
“Huh. So he’s into something he doesn’t want his wife to know about.”
“That would be my guess.”
“And here I was thinking they were Ozzie and Harriet,” said Richie.
“You and everybody else,” I said. Lacey’s words were still buzzing in my head like a loose wire, but I didn’t want to get into that right now. That would have to be between Doreen and me. “And he’s also apparently not what everybody thought he was at the bank.”
“Now, that surprises me,” said the man I bet wasn’t surprised by much. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I thought he was one step from the president’s office, but he’s actually pretty far down the totem pole. And so is his salary.”
“That surprises me even more. And it also makes me wonder where the lifestyle’s coming from.”
“Right. You got any guesses?”
“Nah,” said Richie. “Doreen and I have always been tight, still are, but David and I were never what you’d call close. I think I’ve seen him maybe five times since we graduated. But I didn’t take it personally. I think he was like that with just about everyone except you and Kenny.”
“But they hosted charity galas all the time, right?”
“Yeah, but from what I could tell, that was mostly Doreen’s thing. David would be there to tell his football stories for the hundredth time to anyone who wanted to hear them again, but that was about it. From what I could tell, the only things David really cared about were his kids and his reputation in the community. He’s never set foot in here, and I think if you asked all the pub owners in the area, they’d tell you the same thing.”
“Because he didn’t want to put himself in any situations that might sully his reputation?”
“Yeah,” said Richie. “You know, even after all this time, there’s still plenty of women around here who wouldn’t mind putting a notch for David Chandler on their belts. He didn’t want to have anything to do with that, and he didn’t want his kids growing up with a drinker as a father.”
My gaze drifted over to Kenny.
“Right,” said Richie, seeing where my eyes had gone.
“Richie, I know this is an awkward question, but David isn’t gay, is he?”
“My man, that is not a question you are supposed to ask someone like me, and it is definitely not a question a guy like me is going to answer. We are a small community around these parts, and we don’t rat each other out. Period.”
“I’m sorry, Richie,” I said, knowing he was right. There were plenty of gay cops in the NYPD, but nobody, nobody at all, talked about it.
“But he’s not. No harm in telling you that.”
“You’re sure?”
Richie just stared at me.
“Sorry,” I said again. I drained the last of my beer.
“Sounds to me like you’ve got more talking to do to that wife of his,” said Richie, removing the bottle but not replacing it.
“I guess I do,” I said, pulling out my wallet to settle the bill.
“Forget it,” said Richie, holding up a giant hand palm out.
I got up to leave.
“Good to see you, man,” I said.
“Same back,” said Richie. “And Matt?”
“Yeah Richie?”
“Be careful, okay?”
“Careful of what?”
“You been away a long time,” said Richie, “and you’re getting into some heavy shit. That’s all.”
“Gotcha,” I said, wondering how much more the man knew and wondering if it was the same as what Lacey seemed to know.
I looked over at Kenny one last time, but I don’t think he noticed when I walked out the door.
CHAPTER TEN
I WAS STILL TASTING THE POTATO SKINS when I got to Doreen’s house the next morning. Not that that was a bad thing.
It was already hot, and she came to the door wearing a pair of severely cutoff jeans and a “Yankees Baseball” tee shirt with, I was pretty sure, nothing on underneath. The fact that I couldn’t be sure said more about Doreen than it did about me. Her hair looked hastily brushed and she wore no makeup. But she was Doreen, and she looked good.
“Matt, you’re early,” she said.
“Sorry, do you want me to come back a little later?”
“Of course not,” she said. “Come on in.”
I looked around the house with new eyes. It was clean and bright, furnished with all the right touches. The rooms were large and airy, the ceilings were high, and tasteful art hung on the walls. The air conditioning was already humming. It was easily worth three-quarters of a million, I estimated. Lacey was right: David’s bank salary wouldn’t even cover the property taxes on this place.
“It’s already hot, so let’s go and sit by the pool,” she said. “I’ve got coffee on. Do you want anything to eat?”
“Coffee’s fine,” I said. I was starving, but this wasn’t going to be a conversation I wanted to have over bagels and cream cheese.
She led me through the house to the door leading to the pool yard. “Go on out and make yourself comfortable; I’ll be right out with the coffee.”
When she came out with the coffee her hair was more carefully combed, and there was a little makeup on her face. She was still wearing the tee shirt and the cutoffs, but there was now definitely a bra underneath. I wondered if I’d been staring again.
Pool yards are nice in the morning, especially this one. It had been carefully landscaped with shrubs and flowers that sparkled with dew and shone with the vivid colors of their early summer foliage. The air was quiet, and the water was clear and undisturbed. The filter motor whispered. Birds perched on the shrubs and sang. It was a moment I didn’t want to ruin.
“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?” said Doreen as she poured the coffee. Her voice sounded as sunny as the morning, but I thought I heard an undertone of tension.
“First, I’d like to apologize.”
“Apologize? For what?”
“Come on, Doreen. David’s been missing for a week, and I still don’t have any idea where he is. Maybe you got yourself the wrong investigator.” Maybe I was hoping she would agree with me. Maybe I already knew more than I wanted to know about my childhood friends.
“Matt,” she said, looking me in the eye, “I still don’t have any idea, either. David is an intelligent man. If he doesn’t want to be found, it’s going to be awfully difficult for anyone to find him. Perhaps I should be the one apologizing to you for giving you an impossible job. Just give yourself a chance, okay?”
“You’re the boss, Doreen.”
“Give me a break, Matt. Now, why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned so far.”
All I wanted to do was to keep things just as they were. I wanted to listen to the birds rustling in the shrubs as the dew dried. I wanted to inhale the aroma of warming grass and fresh buds. I wanted to relish that exquisite morning in the company of this warm, beautiful woman. She made the coffee taste better; she made the flowers brighter. It had been so long.
“I went over to Orange County Bank & Trust and talked to a woman named Angie Forrester,” I said.
For a moment there was silence. The birds paused in mid-note. The flowers winced.
“Oh?”
“Doreen, it just isn’t possible that you don’t know what I found out.”
“See that, Matt?” she said after a long pause while she stared at her coffee cup. “You’re a pretty good investigator after all, aren’t you?” She looked up at me with a smile that wasn’t happy.
“Doreen…”
“Matt, it’s all right. I would’ve been disappointed if you hadn’t found out. And you have to ask about it, because you have to know if David had been involved in any shady business, or with shady people, so that we could live the way we do, right?”
“Yes, Doreen, that’s right.”
“And you of course assumed that I was a stay at home mom who contributed no income, right?”
“You’re makin
g it sound like I think that’s something bad, Doreen. It’s not like that. It’s the way I thought it was, that’s all.”
“I know, Matt. I’m sorry. That’s just the way I wanted it to look, actually.”
“For David’s sake?”
“Of course, for David’s sake.”
“Help me, Doreen. I don’t get it.”
“Of course you don’t get it, Matt. You left. Whatever successes or failures you experienced at least weren’t on display in front of a hometown crowd. But David was, you know; David Chandler, Hometown Hero, who went off to the big city to go to college and came back to marry the Homecoming Queen and become a successful banker, civic leader, and family man. He was never allowed to forget that, Matt. Never. The pressure was ridiculous.”
“And I’m guessing it got even worse when he started to realize that he wasn’t much of a banker.”
“Well, yes and no.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that answer, so I decided to let it go.
“Either way,” I said, “I guess I come back to the same question: Did David get himself in trouble over money?”
“You weren’t listening, Matt. No, he didn’t. I took care of all that.”
I didn’t know what she expected me to hear, but I guessed I was about to learn.
“But how?” I said. “We grew up two houses down from each other. Your parents didn’t have any more money than my parents did. Where did you get the money that would support this kind of life style?”
Doreen stared at me silently for what was, at least for me, an uncomfortably long time.
“Sometimes it’s so damn tough being a woman,” she said, almost under her breath as she stared at her cold coffee. “Even you, Matt. That makes it even harder.”
“What do you mean?” I said, feeling myself being drawn into one of those discussions with a woman that men always lose.
“When we were growing up together, when we were going to school together, did I somehow leave you with the impression that I was stupid?”
“Of course you didn’t. You were the class valedictorian, for heaven’s sake.”
“What a waste, right? The valedictorian should’ve been a boy, like David, or you, who would go on to become something more than a housewife, right?”
“Dammit all, Doreen, I never said that, and you know it. And I never thought it, either, and you know that, too.”
Doreen paused for a second and then looked up at me with those eyes. I wasn’t mad anymore.
“I’m sorry, Matt, I know that. It’s just kind of a hot button with me, you know?”
“I know,” I said, and I did. It was always a hot button with Marianne, too. It was one of the few things we agreed on. “But, so tell me. How did this all happen?” I said, looking around at the pool and the house.
“It was kind of serendipity, I guess.” She put her coffee cup down and stared at the pool. “I was doing freelance software development from home. It was just after I’d had the twins, and I was doing it more to keep my sanity than anything else.”
“You were doing software development? I thought you majored in psychology or something in college.”
“Philosophy, Matt. I graduated with highest honors and a Phi Beta Kappa key.”
“Okay. But still, it was philosophy. Where did the computer stuff come from?”
“Anyone can learn to write code, Matt. The trick is identifying a problem, thinking it through, and developing a workable solution.”
“And studying philosophy did that for you?”
“Absolutely. Nothing teaches you intellectual discipline more effectively than studying the great thinkers.”
“Okay, so tell me. What did you do?”
“Like I said, I was doing small freelance jobs for bigger firms. It kept me busy, and the little bit of money I earned helped pay the bills. But in my spare time I was working on something that had kind of fascinated me for a long time.”
“What was that?”
“I began to think about how computers could recognize human voices.”
“What did you find interesting about that?”
“Mostly I found it interesting because it was a hard problem, that’s all, and because language is what separates us humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. It really engaged my mind. But I also knew that it could have practical applications. People spend a lot of time in their cars where they can’t use their hands, or at least they shouldn’t. And even when they’re at home or at work, not very many people are good typists, and they spend a lot of valuable time hunting and pecking at their computer keyboards. So to make a long story short, by the time the twins were out of diapers, I’d developed the underlying architecture for voice recognition software. Then I patented it; and then I sold some of the intellectual property and held on to the rest for royalty income. A lot of work had to be done by a lot of other brilliant software developers over a long period of time to mature the technology and it still has a long way to go, but they all used my stuff as the foundation. Still do.”
“And that got you all this?” I said, once again scanning the property.
“Oh, Matt, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t mean to brag, but I believe the technical term for what I made is ‘a stinking shitload.’”
“So you could live a lot better if you wanted to.”
“A lot better.”
“But that would blow David’s cover, right?”
“Now you’re getting it,” said Doreen, giving me one of her patented smiles.
“So you deliberately built a lifestyle consistent with the image of David Chandler, Successful Banker.”
“Yes,” she said, proudly. I couldn’t blame her.
“And you kept all your success to yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Doreen, I don’t know what to say. What an amazing story. I’ve always admired you, you know that, but…”
“Oh, stop your gushing, Matt. I like you better when the only thing you’re admiring about me is my ass.”
I felt myself turning bright red. I tried to say something, but all that came out was something that sounded like “gret.”
“What, do you think I never noticed?” she said, laughing. “It was always one of the things I liked about you. You were just so honest about it. And after all, it’s a pretty admirable ass.”
“Amen to that,” I said, and we both burst out laughing. I noticed the warm sun again, and the birds chirping in the thick shrubs. But I couldn’t let myself enjoy it all, at least not yet. I still had another question.
“Doreen, how much does David know about all this?”
“Not much,” she said, her expression turning serious again. “Just enough, I’d say.”
“So all he knows is that he’s making money, and you’re making some money on the side, and somehow this is all working.”
“Something like that. He’s asked a couple of times over the years what I’m doing on my computer, but I just tell him ‘software stuff’ and that seems to satisfy his curiosity. He’s not really very inquisitive. And frankly, David isn’t all that good with money, so he’s never really tried to put two and two together and make it all add up. I think he honestly believes that he still makes the lion’s share, and I’m just pitching in a little small change.”
“So you don’t think all this has anything to do with his disappearance?”
“I just don’t see how it would, Matt. Whatever he understands about our financial situation, the money has been a fact of our lives for years. Why would it have anything to do with his disappearance now?”
“I don’t know, Doreen. I guess I’m just grabbing at anything at this point.”
“I know. So am I.”
I got up to leave.
“Well,” I said, “I guess I have a lot of work to do.”
“Oh, Matt, don’t leave. Why don’t you stay and go for a swim with me? I can make some sandwiches and some iced tea. It would be so nice.”
“I reall
y should get going,” I said, with utterly no conviction.
“I’ll let you look at my ass all you want,” she said, with a mischievous smile on her face and the devil in her eyes. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
I felt something stir that hadn’t stirred in an awfully long time. I heard an inner voice warn me that this could be a big mistake. The stirring won.
“You know what?” I said, smiling back. “That sounds great after all.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING KNOWING TWO THINGS.
The first thing I knew was that, as open as she’d been with me, and as much as I trusted her, Doreen still hadn’t told me everything, not by a long shot; and I needed to know the rest of the story if I was ever going to find David. Lacey had been right. There was a lot I didn’t know about Doreen.
The second thing I knew was that I was falling in love with my best friend’s wife.
At least I’d succeeded in not making a fool of myself the day before, but it was more out of a fear of rejection and humiliation than any sense of honor or decency. I wanted the woman. I wanted her badly, no matter who she was married to, and there was no denying it. The stark fact, I now had to admit, was that I hadn’t stopped wanting her since that day at the town pool all those years ago. I had married another woman, and I had been faithful and loving. I had gone almost a decade without seeing her. I had told myself over and over again that what I had felt for her had been a youthful crush and nothing more. But now I had to admit that I’d been kidding myself.
Marianne had always thrown that in my face when we were having fights, and I’d always indignantly denied it, but apparently she’d been right. And now I had to contemplate the possibility that my long buried feelings for Doreen had been a part of the ugly brew of misunderstandings, denials, and betrayals that had destroyed my marriage.
What made it harder was my sense that, just perhaps, my feelings were not completely unreciprocated. On the surface, everything the day before had been completely innocent. Even when we were horsing around in the pool together there had been no untoward grabbing or touching, but when she’d gotten out of the water she’d looked back at me with a grin and smacked herself on her barely concealed derrière. We’d both laughed it off, but still. Of course, I could have been imagining things. Men, especially men who have gone without affection, physical or otherwise, for as long as I had are good at that.