Smoke

A slight smile tentatively turned up the corners of Samuel’s mouth.

“Mickey had more girls in a month than I’ve had in my life,” he said with a male admiration Lydia found slightly distasteful. “But Monica and I have never met anyone more than once. I don’t remember anyone by that name.”

“What about a ‘Michele’? A very pretty blonde,” said Lydia.

“Ms. Strong, they were all very pretty blondes. That was his type. Tall, willowy blondes; that’s what he liked.”

She took the picture from her pocket, as well as the license photo, and handed them both to Samuels. Something on his face seemed to freeze, but a second later he pulled his forehead into a frown.

“These are the same girl?” he said, holding one in each hand and making a point of looking back and forth.

“Yes,” said Lydia.

He pursed his lips and shook his head again. He handed both of the photographs back to Lydia. “I’ve never seen her before. I’m sure of it.”

Lydia nodded and replaced the pictures in her jacket. She was having a hard time getting a real vibe off of Tim Samuels.

“According to Jasmine, Lily wasn’t too thrilled with Mariah. She and Mickey were at odds about it.”

He rubbed his eyes. “That’s news to me. Neither of them mentioned a problem.”

He looked at them with eyes that were a little too wide for Lydia, eyebrows raised a little too high. She held his gaze and, after a second, he looked to the floor.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” he said. “We raised the kids to be very skeptical about religion. We didn’t raise them in the church. We taught them about God and about our spiritual beliefs, about our faith in a benevolent universe. But we were pretty down on organized religion. I’m fairly certain neither one of them would have joined up with one-even a ‘New Age’ one.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Lydia, though she wasn’t sure of anything. She removed the pink diamond from her pocket and held it out to him on a piece of velvet she’d wrapped it in. It glittered in her palm, shimmering with a deep fire in the light from the window.

“Did you ever see Lily wear anything like this?” asked Lydia. He glanced at it quickly and shook his head. He didn’t seem to recognize its value or to be impressed by it in any way.

“Lily isn’t much into jewelry,” he said absently. She expected him to ask where they’d found the stone but he didn’t and for some reason, she didn’t offer. Because she had the sense that he was not being entirely open with them, Lydia felt it best not to be entirely open with him. She wrapped the stone back up and put it back in her pocket. She felt disappointed and vaguely dissatisfied, as if there was something obvious she was missing or a question she needed to ask but hadn’t thought of yet.

Samuels let out a long deep breath and shifted in his seat. He seemed suddenly uncomfortable and frustrated.

“Anyway, how does any of this help you find Lily?” he said, rubbing his eyes.

“The police have done a thorough job of tracing Lily’s steps,” said Lydia. “But I think that she was tracing Mickey’s steps. So that’s what I’m trying to do.”

He looked at her skeptically. “So are you saying that you don’t think Mickey killed himself?”

“No. I’m not saying that. But I know that Lily didn’t believe that; so I’m just doing what I would do if I were in her place. Do you see?”

“I see,” he said, leaning back and looking at her. There was something on his face now that she couldn’t read, a slight narrowing of his eyes.

“Okay. What can I do to help you?” he asked, after examining her a moment.

“You don’t by chance have records of those hotline calls, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Turns out there’s a service you can hire to monitor all the calls that come in to a particular hotline established for these purposes and provide reports that include transcripts, telephone numbers, even names and addresses if the caller dials in from a listed number. I was turning them over to the police every day but I kept copies. I’ll warn you, there are two boxes of printouts. Nothing has come of them so far.”

“You’ve been turning them over to Detective Stenopolis?”

“Yes, at first. But, like I said, nothing really came of it. They got a couple of calls on the Crime Stoppers Hotline, too. As far as I know, those turned out to be dead ends, as well. And, you know, once they got those banking records indicating that Lily had cleaned out her accounts, there was a definite falling off of urgency. I was just considering looking into hiring a private investigator when you called.”

He stood and motioned for Lydia and Jeffrey to follow. He took them into a home office, which might have been neat and organized at one point but was now cluttered with piles of postcards and flyers. A long folding table had been placed along the far wall, opposite a large oak desk that had the look of an antique. Several chairs, which looked as if they’d been taken from a dining room set, sat empty facing the phones. Two large boxes filled with files sat under the phone. There was a big blow-up of Lily’s face on a poster on the wall. Lydia could imagine the place bustling with urgency, volunteers working hard, family and friends still hopeful, phones ringing, excitement rising following a tip and then dropping lower with each disappointment. The silence in the room was the sound of despair.

“Lily Central,” he said solemnly. “For all the good it did.”

“It’s not over yet, Mr. Samuels,” said Lydia, putting a hand on his arm.

“No,” he said. It might never be over. That was what he was thinking but didn’t say. She could see it on his face.

“Did anybody you didn’t recognize come to Mickey’s funeral?” Jeffrey asked.

Samuels let out a little laugh.

“The queen of England could have showed up at Mickey’s funeral and I wouldn’t have noticed. It was a very bad day and to be honest I hardly remember it. I think, in fact, I tapped into Rebecca’s tranquilizers. I just didn’t see how else you were supposed to get through something like that. We were zombies, I’m sure. Not very present for Lily. Not as present as we clearly should have been.”

Samuels’ words echoed Jasmine’s words. Not present enough, not there for her. Lydia wondered if anybody had been present for Lily. How vulnerable she must have been, grief-stricken and alone. Any predator could have smelled the sadness on her, used it to lure her into danger. The copy from the New Day website came back to her. Perhaps you’ve suffered a tragedy, a terrible loss, and you find you just can’t move on.

“I’d like to contribute to your investigation,” said Samuels, taking a checkbook from the drawer in his desk and sinking into the leather chair behind it.

“That’s not necessary,” said Lydia, holding up a hand. “Lily’s a friend. We want to do this for her.”

Money didn’t motivate Lydia. She was drawn into investigations by something other than financial gain. She’d only had one case where there was an actual client involved and the truth of it was that she didn’t like answering to people. These days, she had the luxury of answering only to herself and her instincts. The other cases they took at the firm she’d helped to build allowed Lydia the freedom and the resources to follow her gut, her buzz, with little concern about cost.

“Thank you,” he said with that same unreadable expression she’d seen in the living room. “And I know Monica will thank you, too, when she can.”

They talked some about the lead Detective Stenopolis had discovered during his interview at the bank. Samuels didn’t recognize the vehicle description but seemed heartened by the news.

“I don’t understand why he didn’t call to let me know this,” said Samuels. “He’s been pretty good about keeping me in the loop.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to get your hopes up. There may not be anything to it,” said Lydia with a shrug.

“It’s our impression that he has pressure from above to move on,” said Jeffrey. “From a police perspective, it looks a lot like Lily just took off. They’re not going to devote resources to her disappearance much longer. He might be embarrassed. Not looking forward to giving you that news.”

Samuels nodded his understanding and looked at him eagerly. “Are you going to follow up on those hits?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Jeffrey. “We already have someone on it.”