Obsession, Deceit and Really Dark Chocolate (21 page)

I clung to this unlikely fantasy as we rode to Melanie’s house. When we arrived, Anatoly waited for me to get off the bike before placing both of our helmets in the saddle bags.

“Maybe she’s home from church by now,” I said hopefully as I studied her ornately carved double wood door from the sidewalk.

“Church?”

“That’s where she’s been,” I said. “I’ve decided.”

“I see.” For once Anatoly didn’t sound sarcastic. Worse, he sounded like he felt sorry for me, as if he knew that I was about to be dealt a terrible blow.

But he didn’t know any more than I did and I wasn’t going to let his pessimism freak me out. I started up the walkway but Anatoly grabbed my arm. “She didn’t pick up her paper this morning,” he noted.

I swallowed hard and stared at the untouched
Contra Costa Times
that lay on the well-manicured front lawn. “That’s because she was a little out of it. This was probably her first hangover.”

“Ah, this is something else you’ve decided?”

I nodded, pulled my arm free and strode up to her porch. I pressed the doorbell and waited a full minute before pounding on the door.

No answer.

Anatoly stepped onto the lawn and pressed his face against her bay window. Then, when he apparently didn’t see anything of interest, he went to the garage and looked up at the narrow windows that were well beyond his reach. “Come here,” he instructed.

I did as requested and didn’t make a peep when he lifted me up so that I could peer inside the windows. “Is her car there?” he asked, his hands firmly gripping my waist.

“Nope. See, I told you she went to church.”

“It’s Thursday.”

“She’s very religious.”

Anatoly put me back down on the ground. “You could be right. There could be nothing to worry about. She’s a grown woman and she’s been out of contact for less than twenty-four hours, so it’s a little early to alert the police.”

“Why the hell would we alert the police? Melanie was upset and she probably decided she didn’t want to return her phone calls right away. This behavior is not exactly the kind of thing you call in the cavalry for.”

“Not at all. Nonetheless…”

“Nonetheless, what?”

“Instinct tells me that something’s wrong. She was anxious to hear if I could make any sense out of that letter. Anxious people don’t ignore phone calls that could potentially put them at ease.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know we called. Maybe she’s with a lover.”

Anatoly raised an eyebrow. “You know something I don’t?”

“No, but as I’ve told you, I’ve decided that she got drunk last night, so she might have done something else out of character like pick up some stranger in a bar.”

Anatoly gave me an odd look and, despite my distress, I laughed. “Okay, I can’t really picture that one, either, but anything’s possible.” Anything except the thing we were both worried about.

Anatoly looked back at the front door. “She left the porch light on.”

I followed his gaze. It wasn’t immediately noticeable in the afternoon sun, but he was right, which meant that she either left earlier that day with the expectation of coming home after dark or she had left yesterday and never made it home.

“I’m going to walk around the house,” Anatoly said decisively. I considered following him but decided against it. Instead, I sat on the front step and gazed out at the tree-lined street. It was a little after three o’clock and minivans and Volvos were pulling out of driveways presumably to pick young children up from their after-school activities. Were these Melanie’s friends? I stood up and cut across Melanie’s yard to reach her neighbor’s house. A forty-something woman with a perfectly groomed brown bob answered the door. She had a tote-bag slung over her shoulder and her keys in her hand.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m a friend of Melanie’s and I was supposed to meet her a half hour ago,” I lied. “It’s not like her to stand me up and I was wondering if you might have seen her today.”

“Who’s Melanie?”

So much for the friend idea. “Your neighbor.” I gestured to Melanie’s house with my thumb.

“Ah, right, of course. She just lost her husband, didn’t she? No, I haven’t seen her. I’m sorry I can’t be of much help, but I have to go pick up my kids.”

“Yeah, okay.” I stepped aside as she breezed past me to get to the Mercedes parked in the driveway. “I don’t suppose you know if she’s friends with anyone else on the block?”

The woman shook her head as she opened the car door. “I couldn’t say for sure, but my guess is no. Her husband was a bit intolerant when it came to the children in the neighborhood, and since most of the people on the block have kids, we kept our distance.”

“Intolerant in what way?” I asked out of idle curiosity.

The woman paused briefly, one foot in the car. “He thought they should all act like Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

I smiled as I watched her drive away. That did sound like Eugene.

Anatoly came out from behind the house.

“Find anything worrisome?”
Please say no.

“No.”

Thank you.

Anatoly stuck his thumbs through his belt loops and cast another look at the empty house. “Are you still going to that dinner party tonight?”

“Forgot to tell you, I’ve been uninvited.”

Anatoly smiled slightly. “Don’t tell me Johnny has fallen out of love with you.”

“No, he still loves me but his boss doesn’t. He told Johnny he didn’t want me there.”

Anatoly did a quick double take. “Why’s that?”

“I have no idea except…you know, he called Melanie a while back and asked her if I worked at the
National Review.
She backed up my story but not very convincingly.”

“Perhaps he thinks you’re working for another publication, one that isn’t likely to feature him in a favorable light,” Anatoly mused. “If that’s the case he’d want to keep his distance.”

“True. But no matter what’s going on with Fitzgerald I still think Anne’s the most likely suspect. Not only does she have motive, but she knew way too much about Eugene when we talked to her.”

“Agreed,” Anatoly said as he directed me back to the Harley. “Come on, I’m taking you back to the city.”

“And then what?”

“And then you’re going to stick by the phone and your computer in case Melanie calls or e-mails, and I’m coming back here.”

“Here, as in this house?”

“Here, as in Contra Costa County. I’ll start in Livermore. I think the time has come for me to start tailing Anne Brooke.”

There were no messages on either one of our answering machines. While Anne Brooke worked in Livermore she lived in Lafayette, and Anatoly and I both agreed that in a suburban city known for its manicured lawns and safe family environment a Harley might be a little conspicuous, so he put in a call to Avis. I offered to lend him my car, but as he pointed out, the amount Melanie had paid him for this case was enough to cover the expense of renting a car, every day for a month, if necessary.

For once I didn’t ask to tag along. I felt the bizarre need to wait by the phone. The phone that didn’t ring. I tried to distract myself by calling Dena, but she was in the middle of an inventory, so I called Mary Ann at the dinner party. She told me that Fitzgerald and his wife were there and that Johnny felt awful about having to uninvite me. She swore up and down that she didn’t know why Fitzgerald had come to the Rotunda earlier that day, and I actually believed her, although I still felt she was holding something back. Eventually I let her off the phone and I brought my laptop into the living room, determined to lose myself in the creation of a new manuscript. But I couldn’t concentrate. At nine-thirty I called Leah on her cell. We hadn’t spoken since I stormed out of the restaurant in Pleasanton, but that was only because we had both been busy. Leah and I stormed out on each other all the time; we knew better than to take it seriously.

“Sophie, I just wrapped up that retirement dinner at the Marines’ Memorial,” she said triumphantly as soon as she picked up. “The whole event went off without a hitch!”

“Congratulations. Are you heading home now?”

“I was. I actually didn’t expect to be done this early so the babysitter won’t be expecting me for another hour. New babysitter,” she said, before I could ask, “not Liz-the-lap-dancer.”

When Leah had arrived to pick Jack up early after Eugene’s funeral she had found Liz sitting on Bruce’s lap listening to music. I’ll confess that I found this news a little shocking until Leah admitted that Liz hadn’t actually been sitting on Bruce so much as she had been sitting beside him with her calves resting on his lap and that Jack had been no more than ten feet away, trying to convince an incredulous puppy to attack a plastic squeaky hamburger. Oh, and the music that was playing was from
The Little Mermaid
sound-track. Nonetheless Leah had been horrified by the “vulgarity of it all.”

“Why don’t you stop by and tell me more about the party?” I asked.

“You want me to come over there and tell you about a dinner party I threw for a retiring CEO?” Leah asked slowly.

She knew as well as I did that under normal circumstances I’d rather get a root canal than listen to her drone on about something like that, but these weren’t normal circumstances. I needed a distraction and I’d take it in any form I could get it. “Yes,” I said firmly. “I want to know all the juicy details.”

Leah was silent for an uncharacteristically long stretch of time.

“Leah? Are you still there?”

“Yes, I was just thinking how odd it was that the earth could be warming at the same time that hell is freezing over.”

“Hell doesn’t have to freeze over for me to be interested in formal entertaining.”

“Really? That’s news to me,” she said with a note of amusement. “I’m only a few minutes away from your apartment, but with parking—”

“I’ll meet you at my front door and drive around with you while you look for a spot,” I suggested. “That way we won’t waste twenty minutes of visiting time.”

“Very well, see you in a minute.”

I knew my sister well enough to know that “a few minutes” usually meant a quarter of an hour, but Leah surprised me by pulling up in front of my door a mere ten minutes later. I hopped in the passenger seat and pushed aside the few shopping bags that she had placed on the floor of the car in order to make room for my feet.

“So,” Leah said as she slowly drove down a side street. “Why am I really here?”

“I told you. I want to hear about the party.”

“Yes, and earlier this evening I told an attractive stockbroker that I was twenty-four. That doesn’t make it true.”

“Leah! You’re only twenty-nine! You can’t start lying about your age until you’re at least forty!”

“But everybody expects you to lie about your age at forty. If you start lying at twenty-nine people don’t question you. That way when you reach forty everyone will actually believe you when you tell them you’re thirty-five.”

“So you’ve figured out what lies you need to tell now in order to make the lies you will want to tell eleven years from now more convincing?” I asked. “God, you are so organized. I could never plan for anything that far in advance.”

“It always pays to think ahead,” she said. “Now, tell me why you wanted me to come over. Does it have something to do with this investigation you’re doing for Melanie?”

“Sort of,” I hedged. I didn’t want to tell anyone that Melanie might be missing. There was no reason to alarm everyone until more time had passed and I was sure there actually was something to worry about.

“You figured out why you feel compelled to help her, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, that’s it. That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” I lied. “I’ve finally come to terms with how much I owe Melanie. When I was at my lowest, she was there for me. She helped me find my way and she basically turned me into a novelist. Everything I have, everything I
am
is the result of the decisions she helped me make during my college years. Now, with Eugene gone, Melanie’s going to have to take her life in a new direction. Maybe by helping her get justice for Eugene I will be giving her the peace of mind she needs to find that direction. I have to at least try to do for her what she did for me.” I f lashed Leah a proud smile. “So it seems your therapist was right, I was able to figure out my own issues without your spelling them out for me.”

Leah made a face but kept her eyes on the side of the road as she continued to look for parking. “I think my therapist would agree that telling you you’re still not seeing the big picture isn’t so much a criticism as it is a helpful hint.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” I dropped by head back against my seat. “What do you think I’m repressing now?”

“I’m not supposed to tell—”

“Enough, Leah. Knock off the Freud crap and tell me what’s on your mind!”

“Fine.” She double parked the car and shifted in her seat so she could look me in the eyes. “Melanie helped you get your life together. She showed you how to channel your anger and do what you needed to do in order to ensure yourself a prosperous future. But if you had stayed in touch with her, as in seen her more than once every other year, she would have started to push you to take the next step, which is to deal with the past. You were a daddy’s girl, Sophie. You two had a connection that he and I never had.”

“He loved you, too, Leah.”

“He adored me,” Leah agreed, “but you were his favorite and I’m Mama’s. Or at least I was Mama’s favorite until I married a slimeball in a church. I’m still making up for that. But as kids I was Mama’s princess and you were Dad’s pride and joy. And Dad-Dad was your world. You know you’ve never really said goodbye to him.”

I swallowed hard and looked away. “Maybe you should drive down Lexington. Sometimes I find parking there.”

“See! You can’t even talk about it! Melanie’s the only one you’ve ever really opened up to about Dad. You’ve shared your innermost feelings with her and now you expect her to play caretaker to those feelings so you don’t have to examine them again. It’s like you see grief as an object and you just gave yours to Melanie and asked her to put it somewhere so you didn’t have to look at it anymore. But by doing that you’ve created a situation that requires you to distance yourself from Melanie, because if you don’t she’ll eventually make you take your grief back and deal with it.”