Lady Vanishes Read online

  “No problem,” I told him. “Follow us.”

  He was a little man, I mean really little—five-one, five-two at most. He wore a uniform, a navy jumpsuit, his name embroidered on the chest. H. Wiggens, it said, Harbor View. He had a funny walk, a little stiff in the legs, a little bent forward, his head held up though, his thin gray hair slicked down neat, his black leather oxfords shined so high you could use them as a mirror. A sign of growing up poor, I thought, taking such good care of your shoes.

  We got to the top of the stairs, and I looked left, where his voice had come from, seeing the lady I’d seen in the dining room, the crown on her head then.

  “Bella Romanov,” he whispered. “But she don’t answer to nothin’ but Anastasia, swears she’s royal, she survived the massacre. Dr. K. says to go along with it, makes her feel better.”

  I nodded.

  But I didn’t call her anything. Nor did I go into her room. Instead, I motioned for Homer to go, moved my thumb and pointer to tell him to talk to her, then bent down and whispered to Dashiell, “Find” and “Bring.” In this case, I didn’t expect he’d find anything more dangerous than a stray brassiere or hopefully a lost tiara—no bombs, no guns, nothing that would harm him or anyone else, and I didn’t want him alerting me in the usual way, with a bark so loud it could shake the paint off the walls.

  Quietly, he followed Homer into the room. Standing out in the hall, I could hear two comforting things: the sound of Homer’s voice telling Bella Romanov just where he was going to look for her crown, and the sound of one dog sniffing, music to my ears.

  Dashiell wasn’t looking for a tiara, of course. He was looking for anything that was out of place, something that, in his judgment, didn’t belong where it was.

  In no time, there he was, the largest pair of underpants I’d ever seen hanging from his powerful jaws. I scratched his head and sent him back. The second time he didn’t come back.

  “Oh, saints preserve us, Your Highness, and here it is without me having to go all the way down to the dining room and look under every table and chair. The new dog found it for you, right here in your very own room.

  “I’m going to smooth it out just like this, and now I can get on with my work and you can get a good night’s sleep.”

  A moment later Homer and Dashiell appeared out in the hallway, Homer giving me a thumbs-up sign, me handing him Anastasia’s underwear, which he tossed back into her room. I was thinking fast, figuring this man must have the keys to everything; he could get me into Venus’s office. I was determined, even if I had to rappel down from the damn roof, to check her phone before I left Harbor View.

  “Oh, no,” I said, making it up as I was saying it, what my former mentor, Frank Petrie, said was my greatest talent. “Look at the time. I was so busy working on a routine for Dashiell to do with the kids in Sammy’s movement class, I didn’t pay one bit of attention to how late it is. I have to call my boyfriend. He must be worried sick. Is there a phone anywhere?”

  Homer pulled his key ring out of his pocket “I’ll let you into Miss White’s office. You can use her phone,” he said.

  That’s when we heard it, a plaintive cry from Bella’s room.

  “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

  I turned and started back up the stairs, but Homer grabbed my arm. When I looked, he was shaking his head.

  “But she’s fallen.”

  “Did you hear a thump?”

  “No. I didn’t”

  “She says it every night, ever since she heard it on the TV.” He shrugged. “They mimic things. Sometimes they don’t even know what the words mean.”

  I followed him down to the first floor, across the lobby, and to Venus’s door. He unlocked the door and held it open. I was just about to ask for a little privacy when he spoke first.

  “You don’t mind if I leave you a moment, do you? I have to do a bed check, make sure all my little ones are tucked in, doing okay. They get scared sometimes and need a bit of comforting. I got to know everyone’s hunky-dory before I start my cleaning. Dr. K., he always tells me, if anyone needs you, Homer, leave the dust. It won’t go anywhere, he tells me, it’ll wait for another day. But I like to make it nice for them, floors all spotless for when they come down for breakfast, everything just right.”

  “He sounds like he’s good to work for, Dr. Kagan.”

  “He’s a fine man, the doctor is, very good to us what works for him.”

  “How about Mr. Dietrich? Was he a good boss, too?”

  “Oh, absolutely, a saint of a man.” Homer crossed himself. “I won’t be but a few minutes,” he told me, not looking at me, still staring down at those buffed-up shoes of his, the way he had when he’d lied about Harry.

  “Take your time,” I told him, meaning it sincerely.

  “You’ll wait right here for me, Rachel, okay?”

  “You bet.”

  “I have a little treat for Dashiell. Least I can do to thank him for finding herself’s crown, now isn’t it?”

  I lifted the phone and dialed my house, listening to Dashiell’s barking, my outgoing message. When the sound of Homer’s shoes going across the lobby floor had faded, I depressed the button and unscrewed the mouthpiece, finding the bug I would have bet big bucks would be there. As I had before, I left it in place.

  It would be too much for anyone to hope that all the kids were sleeping. Luckily for me, that wasn’t what I was wishing for. I was counting on the fact that someone needed a bed change, a story, a cup of cocoa. I closed the door almost all the way, so that no one could look in but I would still hear Homer’s steps as he approached.

  The back of Venus’s door was plastered with drawings, the way the front of Harry’s door was, his to make his office seem less threatening, Venus’s for her, a peek at the hidden inner workings of her kids.

  There were two of Jackson’s paintings, color dripped in swirls and circles. The other drawings were done in pencil or crayon and looked like the work of little kids, primitive, charming, and mostly indecipherable.

  I began to check Venus’s files, which were also, as I thought they’d be, meticulous and easy to understand—so easy, in fact, that it only took minutes to find Venus’s copy of Harry’s will, which made me feel so smug that I almost closed the file drawer without looking at it.

  That would have been a huge mistake, because when I changed my mind, I noticed something peculiar. This copy was not the same as the one I’d faxed home. This one was only eleven days old. It had been completed and signed a week and a day before Harry’s death.

  Venus’s fax machine was on the shelf behind her desk. I took out the staple, slipped the pages into place, and dialed my number, sending the newer will home, then watched as the originals emerged from the machine, touched down on the skinny shelf, and slid onto the floor.

  Just as the machine beeped its loudest signal, telling me the job had been successfully completed, Homer spoke, jump-starting my adrenal gland and making my heart pound. I hadn’t heard him over the gurgling of the machine.

  “She get a fax?” he asked. “People have no sense, doing business in the middle of the night. Of course, half the time Dr. Kagan’s here, coming in eleven, twelve o’clock at night, working until it’s almost light out, then grabbing a couple of hours of sleep on his couch. He says he can think better when things are quiet. Says he gets more done then.”

  “No fax this time,” I said, “that was Dashiell. It was just an accident. You know that old expression, Curiosity killed the cat? Well, dogs, they’re, uh, just as bad. He’s always poking everything with that big nose of his, so he can get the scent of it. He probably just sniffed the send button on the fax.”

  Dashiell looked up at me, his brow pleated in concern. To him, my heartbeat must have sounded like hail on a tin roof. Not one to miss a serendipitous opportunity, I tapped the desk with one finger, and Dashiell obeyed, his paws landing with a thunk right where I’d pointed.

  “See what I mean?” I told H
omer. “He probably thinks Venus has a jar of dog biscuits up here, like I do at home. He’s a big boy,” I said, “with a big appetite. Always looking to snag a snack.”

  If I kept running off at the mouth, maybe Homer wouldn’t notice the pages of Harry’s will lying on the rug behind the desk.

  “Well, let’s get him what he’s after. I can lock up here, and we can go to the kitchen. I’m ready for a cup of tea myself. Can I make you one, Rachel, before you head home?”

  “It was busy,” I said.

  “Say again?”

  “The phone.”

  Dashiell was psyched, listening carefully for the next cue. Thinking he’d heard it, he put his paws back up on the desk, lifted the handset, and when he discovered that he couldn’t get anywhere with it, because unlike the one at home, this phone had a cord, he dropped it hard onto the desk, which is how I found out that in my haste I hadn’t screwed the mouthpiece back on properly. There it was, lying on the desk, inches away from where it belonged.

  “Oh, my god, he broke the phone,” I said, grateful the bug hadn’t been dislodged and gone skittering across Venus’s desk. My luck, it would have landed on the floor, right next to the copy of Harry’s will.

  Homer took a few steps closer, lifted the handset, studied it for a moment, then screwed the phone back together.

  “Must have been loose,” he said. “Ready for your cup of tea, Rachel?”

  “My boyfriend—his line was busy. He was probably trying to call me. Do you mind if I try him again?”

  “’Course not.”

  He stood there, hands on the desk, watching.

  “Maybe you could put the kettle up. I could meet you in the kitchen in a minute.”

  “Sure, I could,” he said, but he gave me a funny look.

  Then he got it. Or thought he did.

  “Young people,” he said, starting to pull the door shut behind him.

  “That locks automatically, doesn’t it?” I asked. “I don’t want to leave Venus’s office open.”

  Homer checked the latch. “Locks when you close it,” he said. “You know where the kitchen is?”

  “I do. Besides, Dashiell could find it. There’s food there, isn’t there?”

  “Right you are.”

  This time he left the door open.

  “I’m going to close this. It’s late, and it makes me feel spooky.”

  “I can wait right here if you like.”

  “No, I’m dying for that tea. Besides, Dash will close it. Step outside. I’ll show you.”

  Homer backed out the door. I sent Dashiell to close it and heard the lock click as the door slammed shut.

  “Terrific trick,” Homer shouted from the other side as I picked up the drawing Dashiell’s big feet had pulled off the door. What was it? A man, or a woman wearing pants, drawn from the rear, with what appeared to be spoons stuck into the person’s hair.

  I wondered if it was supposed to be an alien, if the kids watched Star Trek or The X Files.

  I looked at it again. There was a snaky ground line, someone trying like hell to add a sense of place to his art, someone who might not feel that comfort, that kind of connection in his own life.

  I taped it back where it had been, shouting back to Homer, “I’ll just give this one more try, then I’ll join you in the kitchen.”

  I listened at the door as his footsteps receded.

  Quickly picking up the pages of the will, I stapled them exactly as they’d been before and replaced them in the file at the very back of the bottom drawer. Then, just in case Homer had taken off his shoes, come back in his stocking feet, and was listening outside the door, I dialed my house and, a moment later, hung up and headed for the kitchen to see if I might learn something useful, something I ought to know before things got any worse than they already were.

  CHAPTER 15

  Star-Crossed Lovers, He Said

  My first three faxes were lying on the desk. I picked them up, tapped them into a neat pile, and turned them over. The first was from Marty. It was handwritten and very short.

  “No news.” And he’d signed his name.

  Sometimes, like two dogs with one bone, the boys in blue don’t like to share.

  I sat down on the daybed and read the wills, saving the good stuff, I figured, for last. In the older will, Harry’s next-to-last will and testament, written when Harry’s wife, Marilyn, was alive, monies were in trust so that she would have no trouble living in the style to which she’d become accustomed, for all I knew, since birth, and substantial sums were allotted for her sister Arlene and Arlene’s offspring, Bailey Poole and Janice Poole Richardson. Most of the money—about two-thirds of it, all invested in what I assumed was a well-diversified portfolio—was left in trust for Harbor View, and it seemed to me to be enough that at no time in the foreseeable future would the institution be short of cash. The trust was to be managed by Harry’s partner, Eli Kagan, whose sons, Nathan and Samuel, were each left what appeared to be a very modest stock package, something that might have been more a gesture to Eli than actual affection for his sons. No surprises at all in this will, everything glatt kosher, as my grandmother Sonya would have said.

  On the second will, the signatures would barely have been dry if this had been the original, but of course it wasn’t. Harry’s lawyer had that. This will was full of surprises, some of which I didn’t think would go down well at all with most of the people named as heirs. The will still named Marilyn’s relatives, Arlene, Bailey, and Janice, who was now Janice Poole—divorced, I assumed, sometime between the last two wills. But this time they were given small amounts of stock and some tokens of their departed relative’s affection for them. Actually, when I looked over the “tokens,” it occurred to me that the purpose of those gifts might be to make sure it didn’t appear these relatives had been overlooked. In other words, the gifts were so trivial compared to those in the earlier will that their presence there might have been to prevent a lawsuit.

  Fat chance, I thought, turning the page.

  The Kagan boys fared no better and no worse in this will. They had apparently neither fallen from favor nor gained any ground. The surprise was yet to come.

  The bulk of the money was left in trust for Harbor View. So far, so good. But the trustee was no longer Eli Kagan. The trustee and manager, the person now named to take over Harry’s role, was none other than Venus White, who had every reason to think that as of Friday, which I was sure was the day the heirs would be made aware of the provisions of the new will, her life would be in danger.

  Although, if those bugs were still functional, she might already be in danger.

  This was no ordinary will—the sort where the lawyer could simply mail copies to each heir. There would be questions, shouting, tears, accusations. Friday was going to be one hell of a day.

  I looked back at the will. Interestingly enough, no stock package, real estate, or real property was left directly to Venus. She would, however, as trustee, be able to take a percentage of the estate she was managing as a yearly stipend. Whether or not she would, only she knew.

  I got up and erased the note on my blackboard, feeling a pang of guilt as I did. Despite the reminder, I’d neglected to call my aunt Ceil to wish her a happy birthday.

  I made three lists. On the left I wrote the names of people who would profit from Harry’s new will. On that list I wrote one name: Venus White.

  On the right I listed the people who would have gained more had there not been a later will. On that side I wrote: Eli Kagan, Arlene Poole, Bailey Poole, Janice Poole.

  In the middle, under the heading No Change: Samuel Kagan, Nathan Kagan.

  Then I wondered what Samuel would think, sweating away seven days a week at Harbor View and getting not much beyond the satisfaction the work itself gave him. It was, it seemed to me, a job with no future. And Harry’s will did nothing to change that.

  As for Nathan, I wondered if he had any connection to Harbor View at all, or if he’d wisely opted out of
Eli and Harry’s folie à deux.

  I wondered how all of them would feel, and when I thought I knew, I went downstairs to give Dashiell one last outing, opening the door to the garden just as the phone rang.

  “Alexander,” I said, very much in the work mode, both wills still in one hand.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No. I’m up.”

  I walked outside and sat on the steps.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about your case,” he said. “So, did she tell you who the guy was, the on-line lover?”

  “You bet. It was Harry.”

  “Dietrich? The old man? No kidding.”

  “Pinkie swear.”

  “Incredible, of all the people it could have been. Was that the end of it, when they met, saw who the other was?”

  “No,” I said, thinking about the new will. “They were really in love. It wasn’t over until Harry was killed.”

  “Star-crossed lovers,” he said, my hopeless romantic.

  “We’re not exactly talking Romeo and Juliet here. These are not teenagers.”

  “He was only seventy-four,” Chip said. “That’s the prime of life for a man.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Okay, so he was old enough to retire and move to Miami, but still. That doesn’t mean he no longer had feelings, desires.”

  “You’re picturing a little love nest in God’s waiting room? Look, he was short and fat, as ugly as a cheap motel room, and old enough to be her father. All that aside, he was married to someone else when they fell in love. Some Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Meaning the families wouldn’t have been unhappy at the romance?”

  “Oh. That Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Rachel, I would still love you if you were short, fat, and old enough to be my father.”

  There was a pause. He waited for me to comment. I waited for him to continue his adolescent fantasy, get it done and out of the way.

  “You don’t think my heart would have seen beyond a homely-as-a-junkyard-dog visage, that I would have seen and loved the real you underneath?”