Smoke (5 page)

Her work as a true crime writer had led her to consult with Jeffrey’s firm long before he made her a partner. And though she sometimes felt more like an investigator than a writer, the word was her first love.
That was the place she could put order to the chaos she found in the world. That was the place she
tried
to do so, anyway. But her book was finished. She would turn it in today and it would be
months
before her editor took a scalpel to it. She would have a little time on her hands.

A low-level anxiety started to bubble beneath the surface of her skin as she looked around her office. Over the years, Jeffrey had dubbed this feeling “The Buzz.” The feeling she got when something needed investigating or was not quite what it seemed. She had that feeling now about Lily. And then, of course, there was her thing about lost girls.

Shawna Fox, Tatiana Quinn, even Wanda Jane Felix, who was lost in another way. She carried little pieces of all of them with her, the cases from her past, the girls she couldn’t help in spite of her best efforts. When she thought of them, which was more often than she would admit, she had the feeling you might have if you dropped a diamond down a sewer. As if through your own clumsiness you lost something so precious to someplace so dark and labyrinthine that it could never be found. Of course, intellectually, Lydia knew she was in no way responsible for what had happened to her lost girls. But that didn’t help her to manage her sadness over their fate and the vague
if onlys
that occasionally haunted her.

Of course, Lily was not a girl. She was a woman and a writer, not so unlike Lydia. And she was a friend.

“I guess I don’t have to ask what you’re doing,” said Jeffrey, walking into her office. He placed a hot cup of coffee on her desk and took his own cup over to the couch where he reclined, throwing his feet up onto the coffee table and looking at Lydia with an expression that reminded her that he knew her better than anyone. The mystery was gone. She was an open book.

“You don’t know
everything
,” she said.

“Hmm.”

She raised her coffee to him. “Thanks,” she said with a smile.

“My pleasure.” Then, “The detective said that Lily Samuels had quite a bit of cash on her.”

She
knew
he’d been thinking about it, too. “Yeah,” she answered with a shrug.

“So maybe she’s just taking some time out to get her head together.
Her brother just killed himself, you know. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found at the moment.”

“Do you think she’d really do that to her mother, who was still reeling from Mickey’s death?”

“People do weird things when they’re grieving … especially after a suicide. It’s a painful, solitary time.”

“Still. My experience with Lily is that she is a remarkably sweet and compassionate person. It seems out of character.”

“But you really don’t know her
that
well, right? I mean you said yourself that it was more of a mentoring relationship than a friendship, which means that she looked up to you and probably wanted to impress you. Maybe you only saw what you wanted to see.”

“I don’t think so, Jeffrey. I really don’t.”

He stood up. “Well, I’ll have Craig copy that voicemail message and email it over to Detective Stenopolis. I’ll give Craig our login and password; he can dial in from the office.”

“Actually, can you just have him copy it onto a CD?”

He gave her a look. “Then we’d have to deliver it to the Ninth Precinct.”

She smiled sweetly. “I can take care of that.”

He shook his head and couldn’t keep himself from returning her smile. “Well, Lydia, that’s awfully considerate of you.”

“You know me. Always happy to help.”

“He’s not going to tell you anything,” warned Jeffrey.

“We’ll see.”

N
o matter how stressful her life became, the smell of her son’s hair could soothe her. Baby fine, silky blonde, and infused with the aroma of the Johnson’s Baby Shampoo she’d washed it with all his life. Of course, sometimes it smelled like spaghetti or Play-Doh but those were just variations on a theme.

Jesamyn Breslow tried not to stare at Benjamin as he ate his Cheerios with bananas, because she didn’t want to be one of
those
mothers who was always mooning, stroking, adjusting. But she just loved to watch him, his peaches-and-cream skin, his cute little feet. He wasn’t quite at the point
where he was squirming away from her hugs and kisses. He still threw his arms around her and told her he loved her. But she’d seen the little boys at school, just a year or two older than Benjamin, endure their mother’s affections with stoic misery. She knew those days weren’t far away. Her nephew, her brother’s son, had been the most loving child until the third grade. Now his parents were looking around for the pod that contained their real child, eager to be rid of the alien that refused good-bye kisses and suddenly insisted that the bathroom door be closed
and
locked.

“What’s the matter, Mom?” Benjamin asked. She’d been zoning out, staring into her own bowl of Cheerios.

“Nothing. I’m just tired, babe,” she said, touching his head. She looked into his face. Even she knew it was a tiny mirror of her own face, with shades of his father in his mischievous eyes and irresistible smile.

“How can you be tired? You just woke up,” he said, spreading out his hands.

“Good question,” she said.

She looked at the clock on the wall. “Okay, champ, time to brush your teeth and get your coat on. We gotta get you to school.”

She cleared his bowl and her own off the round beechwood table and brought them over to the sink, rinsed them and stuck them in the dishwasher. The sky outside was a sad gray, contemplating snow. She placed the milk in the refrigerator, which was so totally papered with Benji’s drawings and cards and reports that she could almost forget its hideous avocado color. With her toe, she pressed down a piece of one of the Formica tiles that was peeling up. The place needed serious work but she lacked the time and the inclination to take care of it. That was the only thing she missed about her marriage to Dylan: a live-in handyman who didn’t charge. Well, that and the regular sex.

“Mom? Are you going to let me take the bus ever?” asked Benji, draining the last of his orange juice. “Dad says I should start taking the bus.”

“We’ll see. Let’s just get through today.”

“That’s what you
always
say.”

She patted him on the butt. “Teeth. Coat. Five minutes.” He marched off like a good little soldier.

That was the big battle. The school bus. She wasn’t ready for that.
The bullies, the unsupervised time at the bus stop. The fact that he’d have to take a different bus to get to her mother’s place on the days she couldn’t be home for him. She liked to drive him, have those last twenty minutes with him in the car and the peace of mind of seeing him enter the double wooden doors. She knew he was safe for the day, or at least as safe as
she
could make him. If he took the bus, all day she’d have to wonder. After all, they lived in New York City, lots of variables. Too many for the mind of a mother and a cop. Paranoid, that’s what Dylan called it. He could think what he wanted.

From their apartment on the Upper West Side, it only took about fifteen minutes without traffic to get to Riverdale where Benjamin attended a private academy that cost Jesamyn a small fortune. But because of her grandfathered apartment, a three-bedroom that cost only an unheard of $850 a month, some help from her mother, and child support from Dylan, she was able to swing it. It was the one thing on which she and Dylan were able to agree, that Benjamin should have the very best education no matter what other sacrifices they all had to make. And he was thriving there; he loved it. That was priceless to her.

She wound up Riverside Drive and eventually merged onto the Henry Hudson, getting off at the Fieldston exit. She passed through oak-lined streets with multimillion-dollar homes nestled on perfectly manicured lawns. The leaves were turning and the sun, which had decided to shine on Riverdale at least, created a brilliant light show of amber, rust, and green.

“My friend Stone lives in that house,” said Benji. “He has a pool
and
a hot tub.”

“Wow,” said Jesamyn.
Stone
, she thought. What kind of name was that for a kid? The house looked like a monastery to her with a stone façade and a large varnished wooden door with a wrought iron knocker in its center, a barrel-tiled roof. Two million, at least. At least.

“Is he nice?” she asked, having a hard time imagining that Stone was not a spoiled brat. But that was just her bias. “That’s more important than the things he
has
, I think.”

“I know, Mom,” said Ben, rolling his eyes. He’d heard the lecture a hundred times before. “Yes, he’s nice. Very nice. He also has a bed shaped like a race car.”

When she pulled up the winding drive toward the large brick buildings, through the expansive grounds, past the soccer field and the giant library, she was, as always, washed with gratitude that she had been able to give that to her son. She felt like he could go on to be anything he wanted from this place.

“Okay, see ya,” said Ben, undoing his seat belt and grabbing his Lord of the Rings backpack from the floor in front of him.

“Don’t forget, Grandma will pick you up after soccer and I’ll see you for dinner.”

“I won’t forget,” he said as she hugged him and kissed his face.

“I love you, Benji,” she said.

“I love you,” he said with a wide smile.

She watched as he met up with a couple of other kids on the steps and ran into the school. She caught sight of another mom, standing on the sidewalk gazing after a little girl wistfully. They exchanged a look and knew each other’s hearts too well.

The traffic was bumper to bumper down the Henry Hudson and it took her nearly an hour to make it to the precinct where Mount was waiting for her by the Caprice. She parked her car in the lot. Some of the guys were playing a pick-up game of basketball in the playground next door. They mock catcalled and whistled at her as she waited to cross the street. She gave them the finger, smiled at their whooping response, and jogged over to Mount. He looked annoyed, like he’d been waiting.

“What?” she said. “Did you sleep here?”

“Actually, I did.”

She shook her head and patted him on the elbow. “You really need to get a life,” she said. “Or at least a date every now and then. You live like a monk.”

“Tell me about it.”

Mount was kind of cute in spite of his size. He had thick dark hair, with equally dark eyes that communicated his kindness and depth. But there was sadness there, too. She would call him intense, smoldering even. But he was just so awkward; she figured women might find it kind of a turn-off. Maybe if he were a basketball player making millions, he’d have more luck with women. But he was a cop. A really big cop.

“You just need to find the right kind of woman,” she advised as he bounced her around the Caprice trying to get himself in.

“And what kind of woman is that precisely? Someone who can see beyond my physical deformities? Is that what you mean?”

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not deformed. You’re tall. There’s a difference. You should go on the Internet. Maybe there’s a website, like ‘I dig tall guys dot com.’ ”

“That’s very funny. And I mean hilarious.”

“Can we stop at Starbucks?”

He sighed heavily. “This is New York City and you want to stop at a
chain
. Support the independents. Resist the homogenization of America.”

“Can you pull over, please?”

He pulled in front of Veselka, a neighborhood Ukrainian restaurant that had become an East Village institution, and she popped in for coffee for both of them, as was their ritual when they worked mornings. She had only brought up Starbucks to aggravate him.

T
he downtown offices of Lily’s bank were all oak paneling and navy blue carpets, ecru walls. Everything about it said staid, reliable, and discreet. The phones rang constantly in a low electronic hum, the receptionist answering in a mellow, barely audible voice. The lighting was pleasant, having a slightly pinkish hue—not the harsh white typical of fluorescents.

“I should have been a banker,” said Jesamyn, flipping through the pages of
Money
magazine. She sat on a soft leather chair so deep her feet barely touched the floor. Matt sat on a love seat near her, taking up the entire thing.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. Less stress. More money.”

“Yeah, but you’d have to be nice.”

“Hmm. That would be hard.”

They both looked up as they heard a door push open and a fit-looking young man entered the room.

“Detectives Breslow and Stenopolis?” he said. “I’m Brian Davis, head of branch security.”

Jesamyn smiled to see the young man’s eyes go wide as Matt stood to his full height.

“Whoa,” Davis said. “Wow. I hope you play basketball.”

Matt shook his hand. “Only when I’m not rescuing kittens from trees.”

“Sorry,” he answered with an embarrassed smile. “You must get stupid comments like that all the time.”

Davis shook Jesamyn’s hand and held onto it a second longer than he needed to. Jesamyn found herself forced to look into a set of warm blue eyes set in relief against ink black hair and paper pale skin. In a millisecond, she’d processed the expensive cut of his charcoal suit, the lack of a wedding ring on his left hand, the scent of his cologne.
Cute
, she thought, and smiled.

“No offense,” said Matt, which was usually what he said right before he offended someone. “You look a little young to be the head of branch security.”

“Well, thanks, I guess,” he said, seemingly unperturbed. “I came to the bank after a few years in the FBI small-business investigation division. So I guess I skipped some rungs on the ladder.”

Jesamyn found herself wondering how old that meant he was but couldn’t ask without it sounding like she was flirting so she kept her mouth shut. Davis escorted them through a door, down a long gray hallway, and finally to a conference room. More oak wainscoting and navy carpets. The lights in the room were a dim orange. A flat-screen monitor hung on the far wall and the highly varnished table was surrounded by very ergonomic-looking black chairs. Very posh and high tech at the same time.