I was so shocked that I pushed the stop button as tears welled in my eyes. Mack. It was as though he were in the room bantering with me, his voice lively and animated.
These yearly Mother’s Day calls and the ever-increasing resentment that was my reaction to them had made me forget the way Mack used to sound, funny and energetic.
I pushed the play button again.
“Okay, here I go, Ms. Klein,” Mack was saying. “You said to select some passage from Shakespeare? How about this one? Then he cleared his throat and began, “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes…”
His tone had changed drastically, had suddenly become ragged and somber.
“…I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries-”
That was all that was on the tape. I rewound it and played it again. What did it mean? Was it a random selection or had it been chosen deliberately because it suited Mack’s frame of mind? When was it made? How long before he disappeared had it been made?
Esther Klein’s name was in the file of people the cops spoke to about Mack, but obviously she had offered nothing of consequence. I vaguely remembered that Dad and Mom had been surprised that Mack had been taking private acting lessons with her on the side. I can understand why he didn’t tell them. Dad was always afraid that Mack was becoming too interested in his theatre electives.
Then Esther Klein had been fatally mugged near her apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, nearly a year after Mack went missing. The thought occurred to me that there might have been other tapes that he made while he studied with her. If so, what happened to them after her death?
I stood in Mack’s room, holding the recorder, and realized it would be easy enough to find that out.
Esther Klein’s son, Aaron, was a close associate of Uncle Elliott. I would call him.
I put the recorder in my shoulder bag and began packing Mack’s clothes. When I was finished, the drawers in the dresser were empty, as were the closets. Mom had let Dad give Mack’s heavy coats away one particularly cold winter, when the charities were pleading for them.
As I was about to close the second suitcase, I hesitated, then took out the formal black tie I had tied for Mack just before we posed for our Christmas picture that last year. I held it in my hands thinking back to how I had told him to lean down because I couldn’t reach high enough to tie it tight.
As I wrapped it in tissue and put it in my shoulder bag to take back to Thompson Street with me, I remembered Mack’s laughing response, “‘Blest be the tie that binds.’ Now, please don’t make a mess of it, Carolyn.”
26
H e wondered if her father had heard the message yet. He could just imagine his reaction when he listened to it. His little girl was alive and didn’t want to see him! She said she would call on Mother’s Day! Only fifty-one weeks to wait!
Daddy must be twisting in the wind, he thought.
By now the cops undoubtedly had a wiretap on Dr. Andrews’s phone in Greenwich. He could just imagine the frenzy they were in. Would they throw up their hands and decide that Leesey has a right to her privacy and drop the search for her? Maybe. It was just the kind of thing people did.
It would be safer for him if they did.
Would they tell the media she had phoned?
I like the headlines, he thought. And I like reading about Leesey Andrews. They’ve known since Tuesday that she’s missing. She’s been in all the headlines the last three days. But today the story about her was buried on page four, which was disappointing.
It had been the same thing with the other three girls-within two weeks the story was dead.
As dead as they were.
I’ll play around with what to do to keep Leesey on everybody’s mind, but for now, he thought, I’ll have my fun moving her cell phone around. That must be driving them crazy. “Goosey, Goosey, Gander,” he whispered. “Wither do you wander? Upstairs? Downstairs? In my lady’s chamber?”
He laughed. All three places, he thought.
All three.
27
D octor, you’re sure that it is your sister’s voice on the answering machine?”
“Absolutely sure!” Unconsciously, Gregg kneaded his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. I never get headaches, he thought. I don’t need one to start now. Three hours after his father called he was downtown in the detective squad section of the District Attorney’s office. The message Leesey had left on the answering machine in his father’s Greenwich, Connecticut, home had been taken from the wiretap and amplified. In the tech room, Detective Barrott had already played it several times for him and Larry Ahearn.
“I agree with Gregg,” Ahearn told Barrott. “I’ve known Leesey since she was a little girl, and I would swear that’s her voice. She sounds nervous and agitated, but of course she may have had some sort of breakdown or…” He looked at Gregg. “Or she was forced to leave that message.”
“You mean by someone who abducted her?”
“Yes, Gregg, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“You’ve confirmed that that call was made from her cell phone?” Gregg asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Yes, it was,” Ahearn said. “It was bounced from the tower at Madison and Fiftieth. That’s why she may be being held somewhere in that area. On the other hand, if she did choose to disappear, I don’t see how she can walk outside in that location even to buy groceries without worrying about being spotted. Her picture has been all over the newspapers, television, and the Internet.”
“Unless she has some kind of disguise like a burka, that would hide everything except her eyes,” Barrott pointed out. “But even that would draw attention in Manhattan.” He began to rewind the tape of Leesey’s call. “Our tech guys are working on the background sound. Let’s concentrate on listening to that.”
Larry Ahearn caught the bleak expression on Gregg’s face. “I don’t think we need to hear it again, Roy.”
“What happens now?” Gregg asked him. “If you decide Leesey did leave voluntarily, do you give up looking for her?”
“No,” Ahearn said emphatically. “Not for one minute. Knowing Leesey as well as I do, even if she disappeared on her own, something is terribly wrong. We’re staying on this 24/7 until we find her.”
“Thank God for that.” There’s something else I need to ask them, Gregg thought. Oh, I know. “How about the media? Are you going to tell them that she’s contacted us?”
“We don’t want anyone to know,” Larry said, shaking his head. “That was the first thing I told your father when we spoke to him.”
“You told me the same thing, but I thought you meant you wanted to be sure it wasn’t a crank call, or someone just imitating Leesey’s voice.”
“Gregg, we don’t want a hint of this to get out,” Larry Ahearn said urgently. “Awful as this is, it’s good to know that as of a few hours ago Leesey was alive.”
“I guess I agree. But where is she if she’s alive? What may be happening to her? The other young women who disappeared after being at one of those clubs in SoHo were never found.”
“But neither did any of them call a member of the family, Gregg,” Ahearn reminded him.
“Dr. Andrews, there’s something else…” Barrott began.
“Make it Gregg, please.” A hint of a smile crossed Gregg Andrews’s lips. “After I got my M.D., if anyone called me at home and asked for Dr. Andrews, it took Leesey months before she didn’t automatically hand the phone to my father.”
