Second Chance (26 page)

There wasn't much to Cedar Falls, Ohio. Just a
numbered exit off 74-West, emptying into a short commercial drag
lined with two-story brick storefronts—half of them built in the
thirties by the WPA. A frayed red-and-white banner of Santa Claus and
his reindeer was strung between telephone poles at the head of Main
Street. There were no other decorations in store windows or on the
sidewalks. Even the banner didn't look festive. The winter wind had
dogged it to tatters.

I drove under the torn-up Santa, around a small,
deserted park at the end of Main, into the meager fringe of suburbs
outlying the town. A raw-faced boy at a Clark service station
directed me to Gallatin Street.

Dr. Sy Chase's office was the very last house on
Gallatin, a tired frame bungalow with a converted first floor. Beyond
Chase's office building the town simply died off into flat, snowy
farmland and distant pines glittering in the sun. I parked in a lot
beside the building, got out, and walked up to the porch. A sign with
a physician's caduceus on it was hanging above the door. I went in.

There was a small glassed-in office immediately to
the right of the door and a waiting area to the left. The waiting
area was empty, although someone had left an overcoat and purse on
one of the chairs. A red-haired nurse with a freckled, sharply
featured face was sitting on a stool inside the office. She watched
me intently, as if she was half afraid I planned to snatch the purse.

"I'd like to see Dr. Chase," I said,
smiling to soothe her nerves.

The alert look on the woman's face turned to
confusion. Wrinkling her nose she said, "Why, don't you know
that Dr. Chase doesn't work here anymore?"

"He moved?"

"He died. Thirteen, no, fourteen years ago. He
had a car accident and died."

"I see," I said with disappointment.

"You were a friend of his?"

"A friend of a friend's."

"I guess you could talk to Dr. Steele. He used
to be Dr. Chase's partner." She glanced down at an appointment
book on the ledge in front of her. "Doctor doesn't have any
patients for the rest of the afternoon. It's always slow like this
around Christmas."

"Dr. Steele would be fine."

"
Your name?"

"Harry Stoner."

The nurse showed me down a short hall to a
white-walled examination room. After a moment Steele came into the
room—a short, bony man in his early fifties, with thin grey hair
and a lean, fleshless face, grooved like nutmeat at either cheek. He
was wearing a white doctor's smock and carrying a styrofoam cup of
coffee in his right hand.

Steele took a sip of coffee and eyed me
speculatively.

"So you were a friend of Sy's?"

He had a flat, nasal voice with a trace of caution in
it—a good voice for a small-town doctor.

"I never met the man," I told him.

Steele looked taken aback. "I thought Sylvie
said-"

"I'm searching for someone Dr. Chase used to
know. A woman named Carla Chaney."

Steele gave me a long look. "Are you a
policeman?"

"
Does her name make you think of cops?"

"Frankly, you make me think of cops,"
Steele said.

I grinned at him. "I'm a P.I. working on a
missing persons case. Two kids from Cincinnati."

"And you think Carla is involved?"

I nodded.

He stared at me again. "After fourteen years
it's hard to imagine how you would end up in Cedar Falls, looking for
Carla Chaney. But I guess that doesn't matter. The short and sweet of
it is I have no idea where she is. I haven't seen ` her since the
spring of 1975."

"Then she used to live in Cedar Fa1ls?"

"No. She lived in Dayton and commuted to work
for a couple of months back at the end of '74 and the beginning of
'75."

I assumed those were the months that Carla had spent
at the Minton Street house with Rita and Charlotte Scarne, the months
before she'd moved to Terrace Avenue.

"What kind of work did she do here?"

"Official1y she was Sydney's nurse."

"And unofficial1y?"

Steele flushed.

Taking another sip of coffee he sat down on a leather
stool beside the mirrored cabinet. "I guess it won't matter if I
talk about it now. They're all gone anyway. Dead or gone. Even
Jeanne."

"
Jeanne?"

"Sy's wife," he said. "She left town
about a year after Sy was killed in the accident. And no one seems to
know what became of her. It's quite a mystery, really. Her parents
even hired a detective like you to look into it but . . . no luck."

He said it with deep regret. He had obviously liked
the woman. In fact talking about her disappearance made him eye me
anew, as if he was considering asking me to look into Jeanne Chase's
disappearance.

I said, "You were going to tell me about Carla,"
to head him off.

"I guess I was," Steele said. "Not to
put too fine a point on it Sy was boiling the hell out of her. I mean
they were having a four-star affair. At one stage Sy even hinted that
he was going to divorce Jeanne and marry Carla."

"But he didn't get the divorce?"

Steele shook his head. "He talked himself out of
the idea—or Jeanne did. The truth was Sy was just a bad little boy
who liked to peek up women's skirts. Jeanne knew that about him. When
it came down to it, she also knew that Sy would never leave her."

"Jeanne's family had money. If he divorced her
he'd lose his meal ticket. And Sy loved the good life too much to
throw it away, even for a beauty like Carla. Jeanne knew that about
him, too. We all did, except for Carla."

"So Chase broke the affair off?"

Steele shook his head. "He didn't have the guts
to tell Carla it was over, so Jeanne did it for him. There was a
scene—right here in the office. An ugly tiff. The next day the girl
quit and Jeanne went to work in her place. She was trained as a
nurse, but what she really wanted to do was keep Sy away from further
temptation."

"Did it work?"

Steele laughed dully. "Eventually. Sy kept
seeing Carla for a short time after that. I know he gave the girl
money out of the office account—to help her relocate in Cincy. It
was the kind of thing Sy was always doing, instead of the right
thing."

"You didn't like Chase much, did you?" I
said.

"No, I didn't," the man said without
reflection. "I took him into the practice as a favor to Jeanne's
father. But it was clear from the start that Sy was never interested
in the life of a country physician in a town like Cedar Falls. He'd
done his internship in psychiatry and fancied himself too well
educated for general practice. Hell, he was too well educated to
work. He was a weak man. A spoiled, self-indulgent man who thought
only of his own needs. Frankly I could never ligure out what Jeanne
or Carla saw in him."

"Perhaps someone who could be easily
manipulated," I said, thinking of the "toys" in
Carla's apartment. Toys to punish bad little boys.

"That's not a good enough reason," Steele
said. "At least it wouldn't have been for a woman like Jeanne.
God, I wonder what really happened to her."

But I was thinking of what had happened to the other
one—the one who had gone to Cincinnati.

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Before leaving the office I asked Steele about the
accident that had killed Sy Chase—whether there had been any doubt
that it was an accident. Suspicious deaths seem to follow Carla
Chaney around, whether she'd had a hand in them or not.

But Steele said there'd been nothing suspicious about
Sy Chase's death. One December night in 1975, on his way home from
Cincinnati, he'd driven his car off an icy road and died instantly in
the crash. The only possible connection Carla might have had to the
accident was incidental—Steele thought he'd might have gone looking
for the girl on the night he died.

"At least Jeanne suspected that was what he was
up to. She was pretty damn bitter about it, too. Sy swore to her that
he'd given Carla up."

"Carla was still living in Cincinnati at the
time of the accident?"

"Yes. Like I said, Sy supported her for a while
down there—until Jeanne found out about it. Then the money stopped.
Carla took a job and that was the end of their affair. He smiled. "Sy
was damn bitter about it. You see, it didn't take Carla long to find
someone new. After she got the job she dropped Sy like a hot rock."

"When was this?"

"In the fall of '75, I think."

That meant that Carla had probably been living on Sy
Chase's money throughout the summer when she'd
roomed
with Rita Scarne on Terrace Avenue. In the fall she'd found a
different way to support herself—and a different boyfriend.

It occurred to me that it would be danm convenient
from my angle if Phil Pearson turned out to be Carla's new
employer—and lover. Louise said that Phil had had several lovers
before her. Nurses and secretaries. Without question he would have
looked like a real catch to Carla. A successful, unhappily married
man who was talking divorce—that was how Louise had described him
in late '76. He probably wasn't much different in the fall of '75.
Another Sy Chase, without a wife to rein him in. A short, passionate
affair with a treacherous girl who loved money and had lethally
dangerous friends—it could have led to murder. Although what Phil
would have gained from killing off Stelle I didn't know. What Carla
had stood to gain was easier to figure: a rich husband. As for Rita,
she would have settled for some of Phil's cash.

"Do you happen to know who Carla went to work
for in Cincinnati?" I asked Steele.

He rubbed the side of his nose. "Some doctor, I
think. Sy probably mentioned his name. But after fourteen years . .

"It wasn't a psychiatrist named Pearson, was it?
Phil Pearson?"

"Frankly I don't remember. Could be I've got the
name written down at home in one of my old date books or calendars."

I took out my card and handed it to him. "If you
find it, give me a call."

It was past five when I got back to the office. The
first thing I did was phone Nurse Rostow to see if Carla Chaney had
gone to work at Rollman's Hospital in late 1975—while Phil Pearson
had been finishing his residency.

"The name doesn't ring a bell," Nurse
Rostow said. "I could consult our records if you wish."

"That would be fine."

While I was waiting for her call back I went through
the messages on my answering machine. There was one from Larry
Parker, telling me that the State Patrol hadn't found the children's
bodies yet. And one from a man named Elroy Stenger. I dialed him up.

"Elroy Stenger," the man said, as if l
should have placed his name immediately. "You know? Roy Stenger,
out at The Bluegrass Motel?"

"I thought a guy named Wilson ran the motel."

"He does," Stenger said. "I'm the
clerk. Wilson said I should call you."

"That was two days ago."

"I been sick. Ain't gonna come in here sick, you
know. No matter what that sumbitch Wilson says. He don't pay me
enough that I should come in here running no fever. Hell, I don't
feel a hunnert percent yet."

Roy Stenger had the whiney, sullen voice of a bom
loser, a man whose sole tactic was complaint. I could almost see him
standing in front of me—thin as a rail, with an anchor tatooed on
his arm, his back teeth pulled, a mean blue eye, and an attitude that
never quit. I could understand why Wilson had felt like poking him in
the nose.

"All right, Roy," I said wearily. "What's
up?"

"Ain't nothing up," he said, as if I'd
thrown him a curve. "Thought you had some questions you wanted
to ask me."

"Not anymore."

"You don't want to know about them phone calls?"
He didn't wait for me to answer. "There were two. One going out
and one coming in. That kid made that first one a little after he and
that girlfriend of his drove in on Monday afternoon, maybe 'bout five
or six o'clock. I got the number if you want."

"I already have it," I said.

"It was to some nursing agency."

"How did you know that?"

"I listened in on the line. Got nothing better
to do 'round here most evenings."

"Did you listen to the second call, too?" I
asked curiously.

"The one coming in?"

"Nope. The goddamn ice machine went on the fritz
again 'round eleven-thirty, so I missed most all of it." He 
said it like it was a TV show he'd been planning to watch. "It
was a woman, though. And she asked for Ethan Pearson by name."
He paused to clear his throat. "Maybe it was the woman who come
by that night. She was wearing a nurse's outfit. So likely it was."

I sat up in my chair. "What are you talking
about?"