Smoke (6 page)

“Have a seat,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, thanks,” said Matt. “We just really need to look at that tape. The information is going to be vital to our investigation.”

He nodded quickly and moved over to the screen without another word. He punched a few buttons on a remote and the monitor came to life.

The bank was crowded that day, a Friday afternoon. People
depositing checks and getting cash for the weekend were dressed for a coldish October afternoon with light jackets, some with hats. Jesamyn was scanning the faces in the crown for the face that had become so familiar to her that she was seeing it in her dreams. A youngish face—pretty, sweet, an open honesty to it.

“Right here,” said Davis, hitting the pause button. “Naturally, our fraud department was very concerned about your suspicions.”

A young girl stepped up to the counter wearing a navy blue coat and a red beret-type hat. Her silky hair fanned out around her shoulders. They both recognized her right away. It was Lily.

“Is that why it took you so long to get us the video?” asked Matt, leaning in closer to the screen.

Davis cleared his throat. “We have very strict security protocols. Our customers expect that, of course.”

When neither Jesamyn nor Matt said anything, he continued. “This teller, Thelma Baker,” said Davis, pointing to a woman on the screen, “said that Lily entered this branch in Riverdale at about noon and requested all the cash from her accounts. She had valid ID. Any of our customers are within their rights to cash out any of their accounts at any branch, at any time. The officer who helped her tried to discourage her from closing the money market account because of penalties. But she said—and I’m quoting—‘It’s an emergency. I need it for my brother.’ Which seems strange since you mentioned over the phone, Detective Stenopolis, that her brother had recently died.”

“It is strange,” said Jesamyn. She looked at the girl on the tape. There was nothing about her to suggest she was under any pressure. She looked grave, serious, no trace of the smile Jesamyn had seen in every photograph of her. But she appeared to be alone and acting of her own free will.

He let the tape play and they watched Lily being greeted by a young man. Brian paused the video. “That’s the bank officer,” he said.

He let the tape go again. Lily shook the man’s hand and smiled politely. Then he escorted her out of the range of the camera.

“What was the amount of the withdrawal?” asked Jesamyn.

“Thirty-eight thousand, nine hundred fifty-six dollars and eighty-three cents.”

It was a significant amount but certainly not enough to disappear on for very long, not these days. She looked over at Matt who was just staring at the screen. He had a kind of moony expression on his face. It was an expression she’d seen on him a number of times when she’d caught him looking at photographs of Lily. She worried about him. No grown man should be that lonely.

“Can we have a copy of this video?” asked Matt.

Davis handed him a CD jewel case, obviously a copy of the one in the DVD player. A sticker on it read: Lily Samuels, account closing, October 22.

“Does this help you at all, Detectives?” asked Brian.

“I’m not sure yet, Mr. Davis. But we appreciate your time,” said Jesamyn, rising.

“Brian,” he said, handing her a card. “Don’t hesitate to call if there’s
anything
I can do for you.”

She couldn’t keep from smiling at him as he took her hand. “If you or anyone at the branch thinks of anything else, please let us know,” she said.

“In fact,” said Matt, “can we have the names of the teller and the bank officer as well as the address of the branch?”

“Sure,” said Brian, slipping another card from his shirt. “The teller I mentioned was Thelma Baker. And the bank officer was a man named Angel Rodriquez.”

He scribbled on the back of his card. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” said Matt, shaking his hand.

B
ack in the car, both of them sat for a minute in silence, parked illegally by St. Patrick’s on Fifty-First Street. Fifth Avenue was a thick, noisy river of cars and the sky was still threatening snow. New Yorkers walked briskly carrying bags from Saks and Bendel, Tiffany, or briefcases, or backpacks. Tourists walked slowly, their eyes inevitably cast upward toward the tops of buildings, pausing to gawk at the cathedral. In a few more weeks, when the tree was up at Rockefeller Plaza, it would be nearly impossible to walk down the street in this neighborhood.
Jesamyn reminded herself, as she did every year, to get her shopping for Benji done early. But she never did.

“Now what?” said Matt, looking dejected.

“I don’t know, Mount. Maybe we have to face facts. If we’d had this video a week and a half ago, there wouldn’t even have been much of an investigation.”

She, for one, felt a little lighter for having seen the tape. For the past two weeks, Lily Samuels was never far from her thoughts, invading her dreams. She’d imagined in detail all the thousand things that might have happened to her: stranger abduction, murder, suicide, or accident—all the myriad nightmarish things that happen to people every day. The possibility that she’d just taken her money and driven off somewhere for some time alone or maybe to make a fresh start on her life … well, it was a relief to Jesamyn.

“Maybe she walked away from her life,” she said. “Maybe temporarily. Maybe not.”

Mount just shook his head like he couldn’t accept it. “It doesn’t feel right.”

He started the engine and rolled into traffic.

“Where are we going?” she asked, though she didn’t really have to.

“Riverdale. I want to talk to the people Lily talked to.”

At first she’d been “the vic,” toward the end of the first week she was “Samuels,” now she was “Lily.” He was always lecturing Jesamyn about getting too involved, too personally invested in the outcome of a case. And here he was. She knew a schoolboy crush when she saw one.

“Mount—,” she started. He raised a hand.

“Humor me this one time will ya’, Jez,” he said a little testily. “We go up there, ask a few questions. If there’s nothing, we’re back in front of the captain by noon. We’ll tell him we’re ready to declare her voluntary missing.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, raising her palms. “Let’s go to Riverdale.”

Four

L
ydia sat on the edge of the bed with the phone to her ear, zoning out as it rang. She’d noticed recently that it took her grandparents longer to get to the phone than it used to. Sometimes it rang five or six times before one of them picked it up. If anyone picked it up at all. They didn’t have an answering machine, though Lydia had purchased one for them as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago.

“It’s a trick,” said her grandfather. “A way for the phone company to make more money.”

“How’s that, Grandpa?” she’d asked.

“If people call and I don’t pick up, they know I’m not home, they don’t get charged. If it’s important, they’ll call back. If a machine answers, they get charged for the call.
And
I get charged when I call them back. They get to charge for
two
calls instead of just one.”

Lydia had laughed. She had to give it to him; he was right.

“Oh, David. Join the living, will you?” said her grandmother. “All my life, this Depression Era thinking. It’s—well, it’s
depressing
. Hook up the machine.”

Lydia was thinking it was a battle that her grandmother had apparently lost or given up on as she listened to the fifth ring. She was about to hang up when she heard her grandfather’s voice.

“Hey, Grandpa,” she said.

“What’s up, kid?”

She could see his silver hair, his broad shoulders and ruddy skin. She knew he was probably wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, probably Rockports or maybe sneakers.

“Jeffrey told me about my father,” she said, pulling up her feet so that she was sitting cross-legged on the bed. She looked at the clock. 9:36
A.M
. The shower was running in the bathroom, the hot water steaming it up the way she liked it. She knew the conversation with her grandparents would be short; it always was. Can’t let the phone company get too much of anyone’s money.

He was silent for a second. “So how did that hit you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, putting her hands in front of her eyes to block the bright morning sun that was streaming in the east-facing window. She got up and pulled the blind. “I’m not sure it has yet.”

“Well, the world’s a better place without him, if you ask me.” David Strong held a grudge; there was no doubt about it.

“Don’t hold back, Grandpa. Tell me how you really feel,” Lydia said.

He chuckled a little. “Well, don’t lose any sleep over it. I’ll put your grandmother on.”

She smiled to herself. What was it about that generation? They really hated the telephone; not that her grandfather was much of a communicator. Her grandmother always did most of the talking.

“How are you taking the news, dear?” asked her grandmother. Her grandmother’s voice still sounded young to Lydia’s ears. It was strong and vital, reminding her so much of her mother’s voice. It had the same pitch and cadence; their laughter was identical.

“I’m okay, Grandma.”

“Of course you are,” she said. “You’ve been through worse.”

That was definitely true. Much, much worse.

“Will we see you this weekend?” her grandmother asked. Since their wedding, Lydia and Jeffrey had made it a point to see her grandparents every couple of weeks. She’d been guilty of not appreciating them enough in the past, of getting so wrapped up in her work that months would go by. These days she tried to take better care of the relationships in her life. Now that they were in the city on the Upper West Side, it was easier. For a lot of reasons.

“On Sunday, around three?”

“Good. I have something for you,” she said.

“What?”

Lydia heard her grandmother take a breath, and then pause. “I’d rather just show it to you when you get here. Can I say one thing? About your father?”

“Sure.”

“You know, most of us do our best in this world. Even if that turns out to be pretty crappy. There’s no use to holding onto anger like your grandfather does. It’ll give you indigestion. Or worse.”

Lydia thought her grandmother might be watching too much Dr. Phil.

“I hear you, Grandma,” she said. “Thanks.”

I
n the shower, she let the hot pulsing streams of water beat thoughts of her father away. A lifetime ago she hadn’t allowed herself hot showers in the morning, only cold. Morning, she used to reason, was the time to get moving, not the time for lingering in a hot shower. Hot showers were for bedtime. Her perspective on lots of things had changed over the last few years. She was gentler with herself these days, and hence she found she was gentler with others. Well, some people anyway.

She washed her hair with a sage-mint aromatherapy shampoo and lathered her body with a shower gel containing the same two ingredients. The scent was heavenly, reminding her of New Mexico and easing some of the tension in her shoulders that had settled there while she hunched over her computer.

As she rinsed, she thought about Lily. She wondered how Detective Stenopolis had gone about his investigation into finding out what had happened to her. She’d gotten the sense that he was pragmatic, competent, dogged. That he’d probably started up in Riverdale, talking to the people who saw her last. He’d probably checked her banking and credit card records. She knew he’d checked Lily’s cell phone records. Worked his way to her friends and family from there. That’s the way Jeffrey would have done it; following the hard chain of facts that would hopefully lead him to a conclusion as to what had happened, if not to the girl herself.

Lydia’s style was a little different. She knew that sometimes the truth only left a footprint in the sand, a scent on the wind, a whisper
in your ear. You had to be present, use all your senses to find it, not just your eyes. Sometimes the path you see can lead you away from the truth. If it were my investigation, my story to write, where would I start? Lydia wondered. With Lily’s apartment and her closest friends. That was the place to begin looking for the true heart of a woman. And only in knowing that, can you know where she might have gone or to whom she was vulnerable.

S
he heard the phone ringing as she toweled off. Wrapping herself in a plush terry robe, she dove over the bed to catch the phone before the voicemail did.

“I’m looking for Ms. Lydia Strong?” said an officious sounding female voice when Lydia answered. Older. Stern.

“This is.”

“My name is Patricia O’Connell. I am the lawyer representing the estate of Arthur James Tavernier.”

It took a second for the name to register; when it did, her stomach bottomed out. Her father. “His estate?”

“Yes. Your father has left a number of things for you and I am charged with making sure you receive them.”

Part of her wanted to tell this lawyer that she had no interest in anything belonging to her father. But curiosity got the better of her. What kind of an estate could he have had? From what she knew of him he had no education, he couldn’t hold down a job. At least these were the things her mother had told her. And what would you leave to a daughter you’d only met once?

“What kind of things?”

“Those items are sealed and for your eyes only, Ms. Strong.”

Lydia was silent; she wasn’t quite sure what to say.

“Unfortunately,” said the lawyer, “your father died with considerable debt but it will be satisfied with the sale of his home. There’s no money.”

Lydia didn’t waste her time being offended at the stupidity and insensitivity of that statement. “Can you send me the items?”

“We’d appreciate it if you could pick them up at our offices. We’re
located at three-thirty-three West Fifty-Seventh Street. Will that be a problem?”

The offices of Mark, Striker and Strong were just a few blocks from that address. It wouldn’t be much trouble to go by or to send a messenger.