The Lady Vanishes
A case, in which Jack is missing sleep, Sam is missing simpler times, Martin is missing lunch, Vivian is missing her family, Danny is missing a vacation, and a Society matron is plain missing.
Disclaimer: Mine, all mine! Oh, well, a girl can dream.
Apologies for being late with the update. I blame it on the Season finale and the shock it left me in. Sigh.
Thank you all for the wonderful, as always, reviews. Rozzy07: "sock the reader on the jaw" is always a good way to get attention. LOL. Thank you!
And I promise that Allie will be back. It's only fair that she, and the readers, get some closure.
xxxxx
Danny set on the marble step, watching the coroner and the driver load the old lady's body into the van.
He felt numb. Finding her like that - in that fridge, stiff, brittle, seemingly less than human size, wrapped in an incongruous piece of filmy white cloth - felt unreal. Danny contemplated the nature of hope, that most stubborn and human trait. He saw it in the faces of the parents whose kids had disappeared years ago, and who kept haunting the FBI building for the glimmers of a chances that something new and encouraging might have surfaced. He saw it in spouses, children, siblings, and friends of countless people who had gone missing. Even if they knew better, even if the odds against those missing people ever being found alive were so overwhelming they didn't leave reasonable room for anything but despair and acceptance. But what had hope to do with reason or calculated odds? It was a commodity made of spirit and desire. It was the very antithesis of reason. And may be, because of that, it persisted where reason perished and the odds meant nothing.
Danny, despite everything that happened to him in his less-than-wonderful life, despite the nature and the reality of his job, was a hopeful person. He entered every fresh investigation with the kind of a stubborn belief that the person will be found alive, and, if not well, then at least well-enough to survive. He had a need to believe in that. Jack may have been onto something when he once suggested that this job was some sort of a cathartic therapy for Danny: a way to not so much relive his parents' tragic deaths, but rather to correct that outcome, to change the past by changing the future.
The coroner's van started and moved toward the corner of the narrow street, taking the broken hope with it.
Vivian came out of the house. Danny felt rather than saw her standing behind him on the step above. She didn't say anything - there was nothing to say. Not for the first time he wished they didn't get to know the missing person quite so well in the course of their investigation. At the beginning it was always just a face on a photograph, blown up and pinned to a white board. Just features with a case number to go with them. And then the humanity behind them would begin to take shape. Not always likable, never flawless, and seldom all good, but inevitably and uniquely alive. Some of them they grew to care more for, some less, but as the life of a person would take shape, the driving need to find them would strengthen. No longer a series on numbers and a sum of physical characteristics, but someone, whom, after all sorts of records and personal information, they felt as if they knew firsthand.
Danny was aware that this kind of knowledge was often inaccurate - intimacy twice removed, based on papers and someone else's accounts. Still, once they ate, slept, and breathed someone's life for any period of time, that life became tangible, almost familiar. Several times in his career, in especially drawn-out or emotional cases, Danny has found himself holding conversations with missing persons, a discourse of sorts, as if they were friends or acquaintances - something he never confided to anyone for fear of being thought strange or mentally unbalanced. He was neither, in fact - just a man with an often tragic job, who found a unique coping mechanism. Those imaginary conversations helped him, brought him closer to the missing, and, sometimes because of it, closer to finding them. It didn't often happen, and it didn't always work, but when it did, the outcome of the case, whether good or bad, would be particularly poignant for Danny.
He didn't mention it to anyone this time, either, but he had been talking to Mrs. Stevens-Newberg all through last night. Of nothing in particular, of life and its disappointments, of Allie and the real, positive influence Harriette had had on the girl. He had spoken to her as one would speak to a ghost: not acknowledging its presence exactly, but addressing it nonetheless. And all the time, even though subconsciously he knew that the lady was probably dead, the tiny, rudimentary hope never left.
"You shouldn't sit on the steps, Danny. It's cold." Vivian rubbed her hands together in a futile effort to warm them up. It was cold, he realized with a start. One of those unbearably chilly New York January days that make everything seem made of glass: still, brittle, translucent, and about to shutter.
"What now?" Officially, their investigation was over. They had found the missing person. Still, the questions lingered and the singular unsatisfactory feeling engendered by such a discovery would not let them close the book on this one.
"Now we wait." Vivian gave up on trying to be warm and turned back to the house. "I just spoke to Jack. He is sending an officer to stand guard here. Not that we think anyone will make a run for it, but still. Until the autopsy results, it should be impressed upon all involved that they should stay put. Later, per our request, the madam is going to come over to the headquarters - accompanied by the lawyer, I was informed - to answer all our questions."
"Sorry I left you alone with the Dragon Lady. I just couldn't deal with her for a moment." Danny smiled a sad, sheepish smile.
"It's all right. She is understandably subdued. She even managed to remember my name. I left her discussing her options and all sorts of possible scenarios with her lawyer. . . . We should wait for the cop and head back. Paperwork won't file itself, and, frankly, this house depresses me even more now than it did originally."
Danny nodded his ascend. He wouldn't have admitted it, but he didn't want to wait for Allie. He still had no idea of what to say to her. What can possibly be said to a grieving person - especially one young and hit fresh with a first tragedy - that wouldn't sound like a platitude? What possible words, so pale and meaningless - as Danny knew from his own experience - could lift the grief and lighten the pain? He couldn't face her yet, but he felt that, for whatever reason, this girl, who took up firm residence in his heart so quickly and unexpectedly, needed to be faced. He wouldn't have it any other way.
xxxxx
"You don't understand."
Jack sighed and closed his eyes. His headache, that never quite left, was back with reinforcements that took shape of prickling sparks of light somewhere behind his eyelids. He blinked slowly, deliberately, willing the prickling and the pain to subside. He was getting literally sick and tired of that phrase. Why did most people he questioned inevitably opened their answering statements declaring that he wouldn't understand. The sad truth was, he understood only too well.
It was late on Monday. A depressing evening capping a sadder day, and all Jack wanted was to go home, curl up on his narrow couch, turn off the lights, and wait for the headache to go away. He didn't want to ask this sad, suddenly disoriented woman any questions, especially those he already thought he knew the answers to. But it was his job, and it didn't matter how distasteful the process was to him at times, this needed to be finished.
"Why don't you explain it to me, Mrs. Stevens-Newberg." He managed to not sound contentious or bitter.
"You have no idea about the kind of pressure our position as a family imposes on us! You can have no knowledge of what it's like having to maintain the impossible standards set at easier times by much less complicated people! . . ." She pressed her long fingers to her temples, and the gesture, implying a headache, annoyed Jack. His own pain in full force, he didn't sympathize with the woman's theatrical gestures and her Greek Tragedy stance.
"Mrs. Stevens-Newberg, I fail to see how this is relevant. . . ."
"Of course, you fail to see! Why would you! But even you know that we are somebody! Do you know how closely we are watched? Our every move, our every decision, every word! Watched by all those people who claim to be our friends and social equals, but who cannot wait for us to make a false step, so they can take us down! . . . You would have no concept of what it took for Harrison to maintain the company at his parents' standards. Times and ways have changed, but the same results are expected. God forbid he makes a tiny, inconsequential mistake! . . . And then it got around, because these things inevitably do! I can't even blame the Livingstons, because they are in as much of a bind with this entire fraud investigation thing as we are. Why do you think Muffle was so eager to throw that abominably tasteless wedding for Tinsley? After the end of the Social Season, no less!"
Jack shifted in his chair, trying to piece together Camilla's frantic ranting into some sort of logic: "Are you saying these weddings are the means to saving face?"
Mrs. Stevens-Newberg regarded him with distaste, her carefully glossed lips pursed into a narrow line.
"I wouldn't put it into so base a wording, but yes. . . . Do you know how many snickering whispers we heard every time we were out for a benefit or a gala? How many stares, how many condescending smiles? This wedding . . . It was going to put a stop to that! It was going to show us holding our heads high. And the people who were invited - truly important, influential people! - would have solidified our position, cleared once and for all. . . . It was going to fix everything!"
The thick, shaking emotion in her voice was the first real feeling Camilla had exhibited, and Jack suddenly felt something almost like compassion for her. She wasn't, after all, a lioness she first appeared; not the cold, irritating and irritated lady of the manor; not the icy, tailored symbol of wealth and class, but a rather flustered, frightened, not terribly bright or imaginative outside of her comfort zone cornered fox in a well-toned, well-dressed, perfectly kept woman's body.
"But, Mrs. Stevens-Newberg, your husband's company is being investigated. I am sure you are aware that he, along with several of his officers, are about to be indicted. How a wedding could have possibly fixed that?"
"Oh, I knew you would take a simplistic view! Don't you realize how things are done? Don't you know anything? You sound just like Harriette!" She clenched and unclenched her fists, making half-moon dents on her palms with her long, manicured nails. "A right person . . . a word, judiciously uttered to the right guest or two, and any problem can be made to go away. . . . And she simply refused to understand! She never did business that way. She never had to resort. . . . The woman was impossible, and, though I wouldn't wish to speak ill of the dead, I simply can't avoid saying this. She pestered Harrison all day, first about the company and then about the wedding, and then she came to our place. To chastise us, like children! The truth is, she never understood Harrison, and she never understood me. Nor liked me very much, but I have learned to live with that. . . . I tried, Agent Malone, I really did. More so in the earlier years of my marriage, I would admit, but still, no one can say I didn't do my duty! And for her to accuse me of all sorts of things. . . . And that really ridiculous request to alter the guest list! As if such a thing could be done at the last moment!"
"Mrs. Stevens-Newberg, what happened Saturday night?"
"You know what happened: she had a heart-attack. There she was, ranting and berating me in that annoyingly reasonable tone of her's, and the next thing I knew, she was clutching her chest and sliding down on the floor."
"Was that after your eldest daughter left the room or during?"
"Oh, after. Blake had calls to make, she said her good-byes and her apologies and left. Blake is wonderful, really, but she does overdo the guilt thing sometimes. She was actually trying to convince me to invite that unnecessary friend of Harriette's to the wedding, if you can believe it! . . . Oh, what does it all matter now! She left, and that's when Harriette really let it rip! She usually felt more restrain around the children, but one-on-one she never made any bones about how she felt! And, oh, how she felt! Really, some of the language she used would hardly be suitable for our circles! I was very glad indeed that Blake was no longer in the room."
Jack raised his eyebrows in disbelief: "You mean, she cursed?"
"No, of course not," Camilla waved her hand dismissively. "It was the way she was saying things, implying things. . . . You wouldn't understand," the lady resorted to her old standby. Jack let it go.
"Why didn't you call an ambulance?"
Camilla shot an uncomfortable glance at her attorney, who, for a change, remained remarkably quiet.
"My first impulse was to call 911, of course. Or, rather, I was about to call Blake and ask her to do it. And then I lifted Harriette up onto the sofa, and she was suddenly so heavy, and so, well, dead. . . . And I started thinking about our situation, and how the wedding would have to be postponed, and how much time, energy, plotting, preparations, careful time management and sheer determination it took to get all these people to be there this Saturday. . . . And now it would all have had to be pushed to some indefinite day, and some of the key people would never again be able to commit to the same date. . . . Not to mention that, due to the tricky company situation, we needed this to happen now! And, in short, she was already dead, and what would that matter? Harrison was still in Paris. The entire family was coming for the wedding anyway. It would have made much more sense to keep this quiet for a short while, and then have the funeral right after the wedding. Sunday, perhaps. James and Blake could have postponed their honeymoon easily enough. It was the wedding that was important."
Jack shook his head in disbelief: "How were you planning to announce the death to your family? Just casually slip it into a post-reception conversation? 'Congratulations to the bride and groom, and, by the way, don't rush for the airport just yet, 'cause your grandmother is chilling in the fridge at home?'"
"Agent Malone, do you think we can refrain from sarcasm?" Leonard Morgan has finally made his presence known. "There's no call for this, and Mrs. Stevens-Newberg is here as a courtesy. She has committed no crime, and we have yet to confirm if even a misdemeanor can be argued here, however doubtful and ill-advised her actions may have seemed."
"I appreciate Mrs. Stevens-Newberg's courtesy - and stand by on the misdemeanor or any other charges - but knowing how mindful she is of her and her family's reputation, I am sure she wouldn't mind clearing this up as quickly and as thoroughly as possible."
"Is that a threat?" The lawyer fixed his owlish gaze on Jack.
"Oh, for goodness sakes. . . ." The woman's patience, never too formidable, was wearing thin, "what is there to discuss? Yes, I had an inspiration. It seemed simple enough. Blake, I knew, was upstairs, most likely on the phone. She seldom pays attention to who comes and goes around the house. Allie was in her room, all the way down the east hall, and, as usually, in her own world. The house, as you doubtless remember, is large enough for the people unfamiliar with it to get lost in. The cook doesn't work weekends, the maid has left half an hour before. I knew I could tell people Harriette's left, and no one would doubt it. I had to include the chauffeur, though, since he was waiting right outside, and, anyway, I needed help carrying Harriette downstairs. . . . I called him in, I explained the situation, and he was very understanding. Not in the least because I gave him a week's vacation, $5,000 in advance, plus a promise of $5,000 more after the wedding and the opportunity for the future employment with our family. . . . I found a suitable fabric among Blake's samples in the Blue room, and Frank supplied the chain and the lock: men tend to have such things in their car trunks. The lock was his idea. I was perfectly content to just call the cook and give her the week off. No one opens that larger fridge besides her, it's the smaller one that we use. But Frank pointed out that we should, perhaps, err on the side of caution. He really was most helpful. . . ." She trailed off, as if realizing that the cool efficiency of her recitation was off-putting.
"I just wanted what was best for the family. . . . And Harriette, I am convinced - as much as she disagreed with me on other things - would have understood that."
Jack sighed. "I am glad you can convince yourself of that. I still don't get, though, how you were going to explain your mother-in-law's absence at the wedding."
"Oh, that would have been easy. Blake already knew we had a disagreement. So did Harrison. . . . Not that I would have kept this a secret from Harrison, come to think of it, had the things gone the way they should have. I am positive he would have understood."
"He would have understood his mother's body in the fridge?"
"Well, when you put it like that. . . ."
"How would you put it?"
Camilla clenched her fists again: "I would have put it to him the way it was always put to him: family and it's best interest! Considering his situation, I don't think Harrison would have minded the funeral taking place a week later! . . . And as to the rest, the conflict was already established, and I was simply going to say that Harriette and I had a disagreement so strong, she felt compelled to go someplace and clear her head. When the wedding day arrived, I would have arranged for a telegram, saying that Harriette was wishing the couple all the best, but was unable to attend due to slight health situation. It would have been seen as unfortunate, but not really alarming or out of character. And it would have explained the subsequent 'death.' I was going to leave the keys for Frank when we all went to the Hamptons for the wedding. He was going to come over to the empty house, take Harriette out, and arrange her on the sofa, where we would have found her the next day, after coming home. She would have been well-preserved, and it would have been assumed that she came over and had a heart-attack. Which she did, only a week earlier! Frank was going to corroborate that he picked her up at a station and drove her over to the house a day before."
"Nice plan. Detailed. Flawed, but I've got to give you credit for audacity. The one thing you didn't count on, I guess, was the persistence of your youngest daughter."
Camilla sighed: "Allie is a teenager, and a contentious one at that. She absolutely doesn't listen, and her obsession with her grandmother is unfathomable to me."
Jack was about to make a reply when his phone rang. It was Danny.
"Jack, I just got the autopsy report." Danny's voice came somber and filled with some barely controlled emotion.
"So soon?"
"She is, after all, an FOG. They put a rush on it. It's only a preliminary, but it's conclusive enough for the coroner to make a definite pronouncement. Are you sitting down? . . . She died of exposure, Jack!" Jack lowered his phone away from his ear, looking at it as if this could make him comprehend what he had just heard.
"She didn't have a heart-attach?" He had to get up and walk to a corner of the room and whisper, so as not to be heard by the other two occupants.
"She did. But it wasn't fatal. . . . Jack, she froze to death!"