“So for all you know he slipped in the bathtub and hit his head.”
Calvin looked at him. “I said, no lights on. You think he bathed in the dark?”
“That’s a good point,” Myron said.
“Some hotshot investigator.”
“I’m a slow starter.”
They arrived at the team room. “Wait here,” Calvin said.
Myron took out his cellular. “Mind if I make a call?”
“Go ahead.”
Calvin disappeared behind the door. Myron turned on the power and dialed. Jessica answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“I’m going to have to cancel dinner tonight,” Myron said.
“You better have a good excuse,” Jessica said.
“A great one. I’ll be playing professional basketball for the New Jersey Dragons.”
“That’s nice. Have a good game, dear.”
“I’m serious. I’m playing for the Dragons. Actually, ‘playing’ is probably not the right word. Might be more accurate to say I’ll be getting fanny sores for the Dragons.”
“Are you for real?”
“It’s a long story, but yes, I’m now officially a professional basketball player.”
Silence.
“I’ve never boffed a professional basketball player,” Jessica said. “I’ll be just like Madonna.”
“Like a virgin,” Myron said.
“Wow. Talk about a dated reference.”
“Yeah, well, what can I say. I’m an eighties kinda guy.”
“So, Mr. Eighties, you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“No time now. Tonight. After the game. I’ll leave a ticket at the window.”
Calvin stuck his head back in. “What’s your waist? Thirty-four?”
“Thirty-six. Maybe thirty-seven.”
Calvin nodded and withdrew. Myron dialed the private line of Windsor Horne Lockwood III, president of the prestigious investment firm of Lock-Horne Securities in midtown Manhattan. Win answered on the third ring.
“Articulate,” Win said.
Myron shook his head. “Articulate?”
“I said articulate, not repeat.”
“We have a case,” Myron said.
“Oh yippee,” he drawled in that preppy, Philly Main-Line accent of his. “I’m enthralled. I’m elated. But before I completely wet myself, I must ask but one question.”
“Shoot.”
“Is this case of your customary charity persuasion?”
“Wet away,” Myron said. “The answer is no.”
“What? No moral crusade for brave Myron?”
“Not this time.”
“Heavens be, do tell.”
“Greg Downing is missing. It’s our job to find him.”
“And for services rendered we receive?”
“At least seventy-five grand plus a first round draft pick as a client.” Now was not the time to fill Win in on his temporary career change.
“My, my,” Win said happily. “Pray tell, what shall we do first?”
Myron gave him the address of Greg’s house in Ridgewood. “Meet me there in two hours.”
“I’ll take the Batmobile,” Win said and hung up.
Calvin returned. He held out a purple-and-aqua Dragon uniform. “Try this on.”
Myron did not reach for it right away. He stared at it, his stomach twisting and diving. When he spoke his voice was soft. “Number thirty-four?”
“Yeah,” Calvin said. “Your old number at Duke. I remembered.”
Silence.
Calvin finally broke it. “Go try it on.”
Myron felt something well up in his eye. He shook his head. “No need,” he said. “I’m sure it’s the right size.”
Chapter 3
Ridgewood was a primo suburb, one of those old towns that still calls itself a village, where ninety-five percent of the students go on to college and no one lets their kids associate with the other five percent. There were a couple of strips of tract housing, a few examples of the mid-sixties suburban explosion, but for the most part Ridgewood’s fine homes dated from an earlier, theoretically more innocent time.
Myron found the Downing house without any problem. Old Victorian. Very big but not unwieldy, three levels with perfectly faded cedar shingles. On the left side there was one of those rounded towers with a pointy top. Lots of outdoor porch space with all the Rockwellian touches: the kind of double swing where Atticus and Scout would share a lemonade on a hot Alabama night; a child’s bicycle tipped on its side; a Flexible Flyer snow sled, although it hadn’t snowed in six weeks. The required basketball hoop hung slightly rusted over the driveway. Fire Department “Tot Finder” stickers glistened red and silver from two upstairs windows. Old oak trees lined the walk like weathered sentries.
Win hadn’t arrived yet. Myron parked and rolled down a window. The perfect mid-March day. The sky was robin-egg blue. The birds chirped in cliche. He tried to picture Emily here, but the picture would not hold. It was far easier to see her in a New York high rise or one of those nouveau-riche mansions all done in white with Erte sculptures and silver pearls and too many gaudy mirrors. Then again he hadn’t spoken to Emily in ten years. She may have changed. Or he may have misjudged her all those years ago. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Funny being back in Ridgewood. Jessica had grown up here. She didn’t like coming back anymore, but now the two loves of his life—Jessica and Emily—had something else in common: the village of Ridgewood. That could be added to the list of commonalities between the two women—stuff like meeting Myron, being courted by Myron, falling in love with Myron, crushing Myron’s heart like a tomato under a stiletto heel. The usual fare.
Emily had been his first. Freshman year of college was late to lose one’s virginity, if one were to listen to the boasts of friends. But if there had indeed been a sexual revolution among American teenagers in the late seventies/early eighties, Myron had either missed it or been on the wrong side. Women had always liked him—it wasn’t that. But while his friends discoursed in great detail on their various orgylike experiences, Myron seemed to attract the wrong girls, the nice girls, the ones who still said no—or would have had Myron had the courage (or foresight) to try.
That changed in college when he met Emily.
Passion. It’s a word bandied about quite a bit, but Myron thought it might apply here. At a minimum, unconfined lust. Emily was the type of woman a man labels “hot,” as opposed to “beautiful.” See a truly “beautiful” woman and you want to paint or write a poem. See Emily and you want to engage in mutual fabric-ripping. She was raw sexuality, maybe ten pounds bigger than she should have been but those pounds were exquisitely distributed. The two of them made a potent mix. They were both under twenty, both away from home for the first time, both creative.
In a word:
The car phone rang. Myron picked it up.
“I assume,” Win said, “that you plan on having us break into the Downing residence.”
“Yes.”
“Then parking your car in front of said residence would not be a sound decision, would it?”
